Paint companies blame bad genes in lead paint case

Byoliveridley

Gene defense in lead paint case rankles – Yahoo! News

But one of the nation’s largest paint companies has another explanation — bad traits that were simply passed on in their genes. “Their argument is … they have a family history of poor performance. Basically, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” said Michael Casano, who is representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that seeks unspecified damages

Well, take the Bell Curve, add dollops of greed and you can make a transparently racist argument that five families, all poor and black, of course, have some mysterious genetic defect that perfectly mimics the effects of lead poisoning on children.

If not detected early, children with high levels of lead in
their bodies can suffer from:

  • Damage to the brain and nervous system

  • Behavior and learning problems (such as hyperactivity)

  • Slowed growth

  • Hearing problems

  • Headaches

Hmm, if all these symptoms were genetic in nature, I wonder if the lawyers that make this case would let their children ingest some lead paint everyday for a few years, I am sure their perfect genes will protect them? It would be a great control group, No?

Similar Posts

|

Bye Bye, Bisphenol A

Byoliveridley

Canada is expected to formally declare on Saturday that the controversial chemical bisphenol A (BPA) is a hazardous substance.

The move will make Canada the first country in the world to put the chemical on a list of toxic substances that will ban the material from being used in such products as baby bottles.

via CTV.ca | Canada to put BPA on toxic substances list

Good for Canada. Timing of when cans (the biggest potential source of adult exposure) will be BPA free is up in the air.

Pesticides

Byoliveridley

farmerA friend pointed me in the direction of this letter by EPA union leaders about the upcoming re-registration of some very commonly used organophosphate and carbamate pesticides. This ens-newswire article provides an excellent summary.

In the absence of “a robust body of data” the union leaders remind Johnson that the Food Quality Protection Act requires the EPA to use “an additional 10-fold safety factor in its risk assessments when setting pesticide tolerances.

This is the key point, and the reason that Pesticide industry and the EPA came up with the infamous “CHEERS” study (talk about Kafkaesque naming!) to study children’s exposure knowing fully well that they would not be able to accurately assess health effects on children with an observational study. The hope was that using a short term “study” that assessed acute toxicity, they would be able to “prove” no significant harm to children and get rid of the safety factor. A factor of 10 is big, and the pesticide manufacturers hate it because the tolerances become low enough that people will be over-exposed.

Isn’t that the whole point of a safety factor? We are still figuring out what happens at low levels of exposure to certain pesticides. This is truly an Environmental Justice issue. It is not the children of EPA administrators eating non-organic fruits and veggies that are going to be exposed. The gains from eating organic food vs. non-organic are dwarfed by the incidental exposure of the families of farmworkers and other people applying pesticides. Yes, you guessed it, they do not tend to be particularly rich or influential, but they are most in need of protection from government to ensure that their children do not get exposed to levels that may be harmful. This is not about shopping at Whole Foods, which is where most of elite America hears about pesticides, this is about the people being exposed to much higher doses. The safety factor is a must to keep them safe.

|

Bush Administration to enshrine destructive coal mining practice

Byoliveridley

Rule to Expand Mountaintop Coal Mining – New York Times

The Bush administration is set to issue a regulation on Friday that would enshrine the coal mining practice of mountaintop removal. The technique involves blasting off the tops of mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys and streams.

The journalist who wrote this piece lets some unsupported talking points just slip by. First of all, coal does not solve the US dependence on “foreign oil”. Coal is used for electricity, oil is used for cars, there is little overlap. Secondly, he claims that mountaintop mining is safer. I guess it is safer because it is cheaper to ensure the safety of the miners above ground rather than underground. But, that does not make it inherently safer!

For all the devastating effects of mountaintop removal mining, including death, water pollution, habitat destruction, flooding, landslides, read this grist article from 2006.

The go-to site for activism relating to this issue is IloveMountains. Go see it!

Technorati Tags: , ,

NY Times uses football columnist to diss Al Gore on global warming

Byoliveridley

Ok, I exaggerate a wee bit, he’s also a scholar at Brookings.

Al Gore’s Outsourcing Solution – New York Times
Shorter Gregg Easterbrook

  1. Al Gore is a big fat phony, so let’s not listen to him
  2. China and India will emit a lot of greenhouse gases, so it is useless for the US to control itself

This guy should stick to writing about football, simple fact, the country that is the so called “leader of the free world” and that is currently the single largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has to take the lead, or at least participate in the discussion.

As my favorite economist Dean Baker points out, he even gets his facts misleading on China’s GDP using gross unadjusted GDP instead of numbers adjusted for purchasing power parity.

To be fair, he makes the valid point that a lot of gains are to be had by investing in India and China to make processes more efficient and hence reduce energy needs and emissions, but it’s not an either-or scenario. Even if India and China pass the U.S in emissions at some point in time, that still makes the U.S the third largest emitter, and if you look at both per-capita and aggregate consumption together, the U.S has to take major steps in addition to helping China and India with offsets and tech transfers. But you have to play the game!

Is Easterbrook saying the U.S can’t walk and chew gum at the same time? C’Mon!

|

Senate 1, Plutocrats 2

Byoliveridley

It was a close game. But in the end, the plutocrats prevailed on energy legislation. Yes, fuel economy will go up some, but the push towards renewable energy will have to wait. Even on fuel economy standards, the requirement to incrementally increase standards every year after  getting to 35 mpg by 2020 was dropped.

Well, given the notoriously undemocratic nature of the US senate, progress will be slow.
Senate Adopts an Energy Bill Raising Mileage for Cars – New York Times

The Senate passed a broad energy bill late Thursday that would, among other things, require the first big increase in fuel mileage requirements for passenger cars in more than two decades. The vote, 65 to 27, was a major defeat for car manufacturers, which had fought for a much smaller increase in fuel economy standards and is expected to keep fighting as the House takes up the issue. But Senate Democrats also fell short of their own goals. In a victory for the oil industry, Republican lawmakers successfully blocked a crucial component of the Democratic plan that would have raised taxes on oil companies by about $32 billion and used the money on tax breaks for wind power, solar power, ethanol and other renewable fuels. Republicans also blocked a provision of the legislation that would have required electric utilities to greatly increase the share of power they get from renewable sources of energy. As a result, Senate Democrats had to settle for a bill that calls for a vast expansion of renewable fuels over the next decade — to 36 billion gallons a year of alternatives to gasoline — but does little to actually promote those fuels through tax breaks or other subsidies. The combination of breakthroughs and setbacks highlighted the blocking power of the entrenched industry groups, from oil companies and electric utilities to car manufacturers, that had blanketed Congress in recent days to defend their interests.

Technorati Tags:

Environmental Racism at work

Byoliveridley

Could not get any clearer than this.

ScienceDaily: Study Verifies More Hazardous Waste Facilities Located In Minority Areas

The other side of that argument is that the hazardous waste facilities came first, which causes the neighborhood demographics to change. As that argument goes, the more affluent white people move out, and poorer minority people are forced to stay or move in, said Paul Mohai, a professor in the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment. However, done in collaboration with Robin Saha, a former U-M PhD student and post-doctoral scholar, now an assistant professor at University of Montana, shows that minorities were living in the areas where hazardous waste facilities decided to locate before the facilities arrived. Their study also shows that the demographics in the neighborhoods were already changing and that white residents had already started to move out when the facility was sited. “What we discovered is that there are demographic changes after the siting but they started before the siting,” Mohai said. “Our argument is that what’s likely happening is the area is going through a demographic shift, and it lowers the social capital and political clout of the neighborhood so it becomes the path of least resistance.”

This is not just about the money. Over and above social capital and political clout, it seems that race trumps all.

Using the new method, researchers have found that racial disparities in the location of hazardous waste facilities are much greater than previous studies have shown. Furthermore, the disparities persist even when controlling for economic and sociopolitical variables, suggesting that racial targeting, housing discrimination and other factors uniquely associated with race influence the location of the nations’ hazardous waste facilities.

Depressing.