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A Company that Specializes in Profiting from Harm

Byoliveridley

The LA Times has an interesting investigation on the activities of Amvac.

Pesticide maker sees profit when others see risks – Los Angeles Times

Amvac is a leading maker of organophosphates, a class of older, highly toxic pesticides that has been under regulatory scrutiny since the late 1980s. As larger firms have stopped manufacturing some of their organophosphates, Amvac has bought the rights to make or sell 10 of them since 1989, according to company records and interviews. One of them, mevinphos, was banned in the U.S. in 1994 after a study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that it was responsible for poisoning more field workers in California than any other agricultural chemical. Amvac continues selling the product overseas, according to company officials. Amvac is by no means the largest producer of pesticides that have attracted regulatory scrutiny, but the company stands out for its willingness to embrace chemicals that other firms have abandoned.

Amvac Slogan

Love that slogan, don’t ya’! There are so many loopholes in pesticide regulation that a company like Amvac can post impressive profits by using these loopholes, having a significant say in the writing of the regulation, and effortlessly denying and delaying action. It’s a well researched piece, read in full.

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    On Google map, everythings back to normal after Katrina | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle

    Byoliveridley

    TBTB (Too busy to blog), but this struck me as very weird.

    On Google map, everythings back to normal after Katrina | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle

    Google’s popular map portal has replaced post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery with pictures taken before the storm, leaving locals feeling like they’re in a time loop and even fueling suspicions of a conspiracy.

    Scroll across the city and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and everything is back to normal: Marinas are filled with boats, bridges are intact and parks are filled with healthy trees.

    “Come on,” said an incredulous Ruston Henry, president of the economic development association in New Orleans’ devastated Lower 9th Ward. “Just put in big bold this: ‘Google, don’t pull the wool over the world’s eyes. Let the truth shine.’ “

    I am sure there is the usual, non-conspiracy involving explanation to all of this, and I don’t know enough about NO geography to even verify this fact, but an explanation would be nice!

    Update:

    Turns out there was a major upgrade of the imagery on the 29th of March. Still does not explain the above…

  • US Senate Bill on Global Warming

    Byoliveridley

    Sanders, Leahy re-introduce Jeffords global warming bill – Boston.com

    “The good news is that we know how to address the problem. The bad new is that, for many years now, government policy has been totally inadequate,” Sanders said. “The forward-thinking legislation will put the United States on track to lead the way toward a cleaner future for all and I look forward to strong support as we push to protect our planet.”

    The bill was originally introduced in July of 2006, when it (predictably) went nowhere. Here is Sanders’ summary of the bill.

    The Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act calls for carbon dioxide (CO2) and other heat-trapping emissions to be reduced to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

    80% is the reduction called for in the Stern Review as well. The point is to stabilize global concentration at 450 ppm.

    It is still early to say what the prognoses in the Congress and Senate are, but one thing is sure, the US emperor will veto it. The point is, however, to establish this bill as the starting point of any negotiation/bargaining that will surely occur.

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    Diacetyl hits the big time

    Byoliveridley

    It’s well known that occupational exposure to various pollutants including pesticides, manufacturing raw materials, and in this case, flavoring agents, is a serious problem affecting millions of factory and farm workers all over the world.

    Which is why it is interesting when one case of a man contracting an illness possibly linked to at-home diacetyl exposure makes much more splashy news than the well documented cases of many workers dying of such exposure at work. It is unfortunate, but people working at factories and in farms are somehow expected to handle higher levels of exposure and risk. The assumption is that they are protected by agencies such as OSHA, and that they will provided with protective wear, etc. But, when the agencies drop the ball on protecting workers, it takes an “escape” of the incident into the ambient realm for the news agencies to pick it up as a headline.

    I guess the good thing now is that this diacetyl issue is blown open, and should result in reform, because alternatives are available.

    Doctor Links a Man’s Illness to a Microwave Popcorn Habit – New York Times

    A fondness for microwave buttered popcorn may have led a 53-year-old Colorado man to develop a serious lung condition that until now has been found only in people working in popcorn plants.

    Lung specialists and even a top industry official say the case, the first of its kind, raises serious concerns about the safety of microwave butter-flavored popcorn.

    “We’ve all been working on the workplace safety side of this, but the potential for consumer exposure is very concerning,” said John B. Hallagan, general counsel for the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association of the United States, a trade association of companies that make butter flavorings for popcorn producers. “Are there other cases out there? There could be.”

    A spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration said that the agency was considering the case as part of a review of the safety of diacetyl, which adds the buttery taste to many microwave popcorns, including Orville Redenbacher and Act II.

    Meanwhile, ConAgra, the biggest manufacturer of popcorn, announces plans to drop diacetyl at some undetermined “later date”. Weird, their website’s currently down!

  • Plugin Hybrids even closer

    Byoliveridley

    I tend to be a bad news blogger, so when some good news comes along, I really should mention it…  A plugin hybrid (PHEV) is a gasoline car with a battery that can be charged. So, you go 30 miles or so on battery power before switching to gasoline, and plug the cars in at night so that they will be ready to go again the next morning. The average American commute is 16 miles (one way), so the amount of gas used for work and back for me will be reduced from around 1.2 gallons (assuming about 28 mpg city for my current car) to around 0.1 gallons. Think about that!

    The good thing about these batteries is that they seem to be built with ruggedness (10 year, 150,000 miles) in mind.

    The Energy Blog: A123Systems Announces Li-ion Automotive Batteries

    A123Systems today introduced its 32-series Nanophosphate™ Lithium Ion cells, specifically designed for Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) use. These batteries leverage the company’s existing low-cost, high-volume manufacturing techniques to offer the electric drive industry a new level of price-performance.

    Hope they work as advertised. My next car is definitely a PHEV.

    Meanwhile, America’s most experienced, most accomplished and most sensible presidential candidate gives a truly forward looking speech on energy policy, and nobody notices. I guess he’s just not good looking enough.

  • Models underestimate global warming impacts

    Byoliveridley

    No, not Tyra Banks and Riyo Mori, climate models that is.

    ES&T Online News: Models underestimate global warming impacts

    Modelers don’t purposely err on the conservative side, says Marika Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, but some processes “are just not well understood, and because of that have not been incorporated into climate models.” Holland has published model results on the fate of sea ice and coauthored the recent paper showing that ice is melting faster than models predicted. There are many reasons for the underestimates, she says. For example, models don’t fully capture heat transport between ocean and atmosphere, or faster warming as reflective ice gives way to darker, heat-absorbing waters.
    But Rahmstorf says that modelers might unwittingly make models more conservative by applying “one-sided filters”, weeding out models that clearly overestimate the changes seen so far, but hanging onto ones “where everything is too well behaved and stable.”

    Scientists are human too. The political and social climate in the US have been harsh to people who overestimate the effects of climate change. So, modeling scenarios that deviate significantly from accepted limits or runaway uncontrollably are discarded. Models are sets of assumptions based on underlying theory. If the theory of a particular sub-process is not clearly understood, then the assumptions become subjective. In a social climate that is waiting to pounce on an overestimate as example of negating the entire global warming phenomenon, assumptions made are conservative. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it comes at a price! As more observations come in, it does become clear that sometimes, things are happening faster and at greater magnitudes than our model predicted.