All you ever wanted to know about food
Unhappy Meals – Michael Pollan – New York Times
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
It’s a 12 page article in the NY Times Sunday Magazine, but that is all you need to know!
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Ionic Air Purifiers may actually Increase Particle Concentrations
Take that, Sharper Image, your air purifiers that you waste tons of paper sending me monthly catalogs for don’t work. The ones that use ozone react with organic compounds in the air, especially your fragrances in cleaning products, air fresheners and perfumes to make fine particles in that crucial 0.1-1 um size range that your lungs don’t clear very effectively.
Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, especially with other indoor pollutants. But I always thought these air purifiers were a scam, I am glad somebody actually got the NSF to fund this study and get some proof!
Kinetic Analysis of Competition between Aerosol Particle Removal and Generation by Ionization Air Purifiers
Ahmad Alshawa, Ashley R. Russell, and Sergey A. Nizkorodov*
Department of Chemistry, University of California, Irvine, California 92697-2025
Abstract:
Ionization air purifiers are increasingly used to remove aerosol particles from indoor air. However, certain ionization air purifiers also emit ozone. Reactions between the emitted ozone and unsaturated volatile organic compounds (VOC) commonly found in indoor air produce additional respirable aerosol particles in the ultrafine (This model predicts that certain widely used ionization air purifiers may actually increase the mass concentration of fine and ultrafine particulates in the presence of common unsaturated VOC, such as limonene contained in many household cleaning products. This prediction is supported by an explicit observation of ultrafine particle nucleation events caused by the addition of D-limonene to a ventilated office room equipped with a common ionization air purifier.
Colonialism: Environmental Edition
Does put recycling in context…
Independent Online Edition > Environment
Regardless of how carefully you separate your waste, there is a good chance a disposal firm will dump it all in together with other kinds of plastic trash and ship it to the developing world to be dealt with by a family of migrant workers earning a pittance. They will deal with the salad-bar container, the pistachio ice-cream container and the superfluous bag for carrots in your shopping basket in a variety of different ways – it may be recycled, it may become landfill or it may simply be burnt. Whatever happens, it is generally not a priority for the waste disposal company. Britain dumps around two million tonnes of waste in China every year, everything from plastic mineral water bottles to shopping bags and other forms of superfluous packaging from some of the country’s biggest supermarkets.
Same for India as well. The article says that all of this “recycling” is illegal. But how do you hide 200,000 tonnes of plastic waste?
Read the whole article, it is tragic. Some highlights:
So too are the many and varied health complaints suffered by the local population, who risk multiple skin ailments and exposure to potent carcinogens as they touch the contaminated materials. Poisonous chemical effluents stream into their water supply, turning it black or lurid red, and studies by Greenpeace show that acid rain is the norm in this region. Children are prone to fevers and coughs. Their skin is often disfigured by the toxic plastic waste they have to process.
A report by the University of Shantou on the town of Guiyu, another Guangdong recycling hub, showed that more than 80 per cent of local children suffer from lead poisoning.
Is Chronic Occupational Pain a Class Issue?
Americans in households making less than $30,000 a year spend nearly 20% of their lives in moderate to severe pain, compared with less than 8% of people in households earning above $100,000
Millions of Americans in Chronic Pain – TIME
Based on a study published in the Lancet (much moolah required to read, funny that the authors of an article on the class/money based nature of pain would publish in a journal that requires all kinds of money to read, heard of PLOS?), one would have to say yes. People in low paying service jobs don’t have the luxury of mid afternoon yoga, or that once a week massage, or being able to take a “mental health” day, or any such luck. Also, the work is physically demanding, long hours of standing, heavy lifting, and repetitive motions the body was not designed for.
Krueger notes that the type of pain people reported typically fell on either side of the rich-poor divide. “Those with higher incomes welcome pain almost by choice, usually through exercise,” he says. “At lower incomes, pain comes as the result of work.” Indeed, Krueger and Stone found that blue-collar workers felt more pain, from physical labor or repetitive motion, while on the job
It is very sad, but a lot of this pain is avoidable. Next time you go to the grocery store, notice that the people at the check out counter stand all the time. Why? What about their job requires continuous standing? I’ve been to other countries, Germany for instance, where they are provided with high chairs that help them move the items from the conveyor through the scanner to the bagging area with much less effort. How many chairs have you seen in a grocery store lately?
Why can’t this very simple system be implemented? It would provide much relief. Three major issues:
- Lack of bargaining power: Unions are a dirty word. Last I heard, the unionization rate in the states was 12%. No one speaks for the cashier. It is considered a low paying, low skill occupation where people can be replaced easily and without “pain”. So, you’re on your own, ask for a chair, and you’ll be seated in one very soon (at home, your ass fired and tired).
- Money: And this is linked to point 1. Implementation of any programs designed to make workers’ lives a little easier costs money up front. Since workers are expendable and have no voice, it’s easiest to steal from them and deny them basic comforts.
- The American notion of individualism: You deserve what you get based on how hard you work and how intelligent you are. Grocery store cashiers must be lazy and dumb to be where they are. they “deserve it”
I don’t see it changing at all. But next time you walk into a grocery store and find a rather sullen clerk, it’s not that she’s lazy or has a bad attitude, she may just be in a lot of pain.
Happy Sunday!
Tags: OccupationalHealth, Pain
Al Franken is good for health
You know what's in your food and many beauty products. Senator Al Franken wants to make it possible to see exactly what's in your household cleaning products as well.The Minnesota Democrat introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate requiring producers to fully disclose all ingredients on their product labels, including those suspected of causing long-term harm. Currently the warnings on cleansers are designed to prevent immediate harm due to swallowing, splashing in eyes or other unintended uses.
via Kare 11
It would seem common sense to have information on labels, especially on the harsh and powerful chemicals we use every day. You may not understand what they mean, or how to pronounce the chemical names, but you don’t have to! Organizations such as the Environmental Working Group have extensive information on common high volume chemicals so people can match what they see on the label with what they would like to avoid.
But it is not the law of the land in the US, or Canada for that matter. Al Franken, comedian, talk show host and an intelligent man turned senator would like to change that in the US. Of course, we in Canada would benefit as well.
Chemical manufacturers aren’t having any of this.
There’s always a concern about turning labels into encyclopedias,” Brian Sansoni of the Soap and Detergent Association, in Washington, D.C., told KARE Tuesday.
Pretty insulting, claiming that your consumer does not like encyclopedias, or is not capable of reading and googling.
Information helps drive consumers to safer alternatives. If you see two cleaners, both of which claim to work equally well, a quick read of the ingredients will drive you to the safer (or simpler) choice. Clearly, sale by obfuscation is the preferred marketing strategy here.
If I were American, I would call my senator/congressperson and ask them to support Al Franken.
Brazil bypasses patent on U.S. AIDS drug – Yahoo! News
As I mentioned previously, compulsory licensing is a perfectly legal option underlined by TRIPs (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) in response to national emergencies for governments to authororize the bypassing of drug patents. Thailand threatened to do it recently, Brazil goes one better.
Brazil bypasses patent on U.S. AIDS drug – Yahoo! News
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took steps Friday to let Brazil buy an inexpensive generic version of an AIDS drug made by Merck & Co. despite the U.S. drug company’s patent.
Silva issued a “compulsory license” that would bypass Merck’s patent on the AIDS drug efavirenz, a day after the Brazilian government rejected Merck’s offer to sell the drug at a 30 percent discount, or $1.10 per pill, down from $1.57.
The country was seeking to purchase the drug at 65 cents a pill, the same price Thailand pays.
This story fits the script in every possible way. Here’s the drug company’s “disappointed” response:
Amy Rose, a spokeswoman for Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based Merck, said earlier that the company would be “profoundly disappointed if Brazil goes ahead with a compulsory license.”
“As the world’s 12th largest economy, Brazil has a greater capacity to pay for HIV medicines than countries that are poorer or harder hit by the disease,” Merck said in a statement after Silva’s announcement.
Ah, the irony of a large pharma company appealing to Brazil’s sense of fairness!
The usual US government/chamber of commerce type’s scold and threat to withold further foreign investment:
But the U.S.-Brazil Business Council said the decision was a “major step backward” in intellectual property law and warned it could harm development.
“Brazil is working to attract investment in innovative industries … and this move will likely cause investments to go elsewhere,” the council said in a statement.
Who are the US-Brazil Business Council? It is an affiliate of the U.S Chamber of Commerce. Its website reveals it to be a lobbying and networking group of high powered U.S executives “fostering” U.S-Brazil trade relations. Hmm, I wonder who’s side they will take!
But, we forget what this is about, the health of thousands of AIDs patients (and the money it costs to treat them).
Brazil provides free AIDS drugs to anyone who needs them and manufactures generic versions of several drugs that were in production before Brazil enacted an intellectual property law in 1997 to join the WTO.
But as newer drugs have emerged, costs ballooned and health officials warned that without deep discounts, they would be forced to issue compulsory licenses.
Efavirenz is used by 75,000 of the 180,000 Brazilians who receive free AIDS drugs from the government. The drug currently costs about the government about $580 per patient per year.
Brazil is doing absolutely the right thing by bargaining and playing hardball. it wants to pay the same prices Thailand pays, and should continue to bargain till it gets there. There’s no sense in being a sovereign powerful nation if you can’t shakedown a pharma company, is there!
Bisphenol A – Getting More Powerful Everyday
So is it Mondays with Bisphenol?? You know what, the scary thing about this chemical is that its acute (short term, immediate) toxicity at high doses, which is the only safety testing that is ever done, does not correlate with all the subtle effects that are seen at low doses (chronic). Here’s another study where ambient level exposure to bisphenol A interferes with prostate cancer treatment by making the tumor cells androgen independent, so the standard testosterone deprivation therapy will not work any more.
Environmental Health News: New Science
A common plastic molecule to which virtually all Americans are exposed may interfere with the standard medical treatment for prostate cancer, according to new experiments with human prostate tumors implanted into mice. The doses of the plastic molecule, bisphenol A, were chosen specifically to be within the range of common human exposures. Tumor size and PSA levels were significantly greater in exposed animals just one month after treatment.
One of the principal known sources of exposure to bisphenol A in the U.S. is through its use to make a resin that lines the majority of food cans sold in markets. These new results by Wetherill et al. suggest men concerned about prostate cancer may want to reduce their consumption of canned goods and their use of polycarbonate water bottles, another common source of exposure
This is one powerful (if not actually more dangerous) chemical. it is so ubiquitous that finding a substitute is not going to be easy.