ED is not just Erectile Dysfunction.

Byoliveridley

The grist features a must read post on endocrine disruption (ED). Great first paragraph, BTW, but read the whole thing. Before Viagra, had any one other than doctors and the unfortunate masses suffering such dysfunction ever heard of erectile dysfunction? The effects of direct to consumer drug marketing of diseases and disorders is the subject of other posts, but this one’s about endocrine disruptors!

Side note, Erectile dysfunction has 2.3 million hits in google, Endocrine Disruption (or disruptors) has 1.7 million, so, at least google is catching up!

The ED you should really be worried about: Endocrine disruption | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist

What a crazy world we live in when almost everyone knows what the acronym ED stands for. Millions of dollars have been poured into creating awareness of ED, erectile dysfunction, because it is profitable. This 21st-century sales-pitch strategy — “disease mongering” — has proven to be good for the bottom line. The irony of all this is that there is another ED out there into which millions have also been poured — to keep it a secret. That ED is endocrine disruption, and if the public were to learn about it, bottom lines could shrink instead of grow.

Endocrine disruption should be right at the top of the list of most critical technological disasters facing the world today, up with climate change. With little notice, vast volumes and combinations of synthetic chemicals have settled in every environment in the world, including the womb environment. Synthetic chemicals at very low concentrations in the womb change how genes are programmed, cells develop, tissues form, and organs function, and thus undermine the potential and survival of developing animals, including humans. The chemicals threatening the integrity of future generations are derived from the processing of crude oil and natural gas, the same processes that are driving climate change. This is an integral part of the climate change story.

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    Smoking bans in North Carolina?

    Byoliveridley

    After this morning’s post about Tennessee, I got curious and wanted to see what we were doing in North Carolina on smoking bans. So, I looked up my very own NC General assembly homepage and used their full text bill search function (key word smoking!). Here’s what I found.

    In the State Senate

    Great! Senate Bill S635 will ban smoking in all public places indoors except in tobacco shops, designated smoking rooms in hotels and for “research”. Follow the progress of this bill using the bill’s very own rss feed!

    In the House

    Not so good, House bill H259 has been referred to committee. But it has giant loopholes for all bars and “private clubs”. It has its very own rss feed too.

    Observations

    1. It is good to see that my representatives Kinnaird (we share a yoga class on Monday nights!) and Insko are co-sponsors on the bills. But I live in that bastion of progressivism (in the South, anyways!) Chapel Hill/Carrboro, so this is pretty unsurprising!
    2. My question to the House is this: Why are bartenders, employees of bars and private clubs, and patrons of such establishments considered not worthy of protection from second hand smoke? As someone who goes out drinking often, this is where all my exposure to second hand smoke occurs.
    3. Kudos to North Carolina for designing an accessible and easily searchable bill repository complete with rss feeds, way to go!

    Once I hear back from Sen. Kinnaird on the prospects of legislation this session, I’ll be sure to post about it.

    Update: See this. The House and Senate bills have gotten a lot closer, and most of the loopholes are gone.

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    India goes solar

    Byoliveridley

    India, of course, gets a lot of sun, it is wasted in the sense that it makes us sweat, causes us to use increasing amounts of electricity for air conditioning, and all in all, is a pain. So, a plan to use that sun to generate solar energy, of course, is very welcome. Solar energy use obviously is not new in India, my best friend growing up had a solar water heater at home (his family business used to make them). Policy has never kept up because there has not been a push, is this one?

    The Union Government has finalised the draft for the National Solar Mission. It aims to make India a global leader in solar energy and envisages an installed solar generation capacity of 20,000 MW by 2020, of 1,00,000 MW by 2030 and of 2,00,000 MW by 2050.

    The total expected funding from the government for the 30-year period will run to Rs. 85,000 crore to Rs. 105,000 crore. The requirement during the current Five Year Plan is estimated to be Rs. 5,000 crore to Rs. 6,000 crore. It will rise to between Rs. 12,000 crore and Rs. 15,000 crore during the 12th Five Year Plan.

    A crore, BTW, is 10 million. India still uses its own number multiplier system for money that goes in 100s, not thousands. So, a 100,000 is a lakh, and a 100 lakhs is a crore. I never understood why this was not changed when the country went metric. Lakhs and crores, of course, are metric, but can get confusing.

    The plan will start off by mandating roof top solar panels for government and government owned industry buildings in an attempt to reduce costs by scaling up. It will be followed by mandated solar water heaters for all commercial buildings and apartment complexes, and use of solar panels for all in industrial buildings. All this is supposed to happen in the next three years, which appears to be wildly ambitious.

    India is a federal country with delineation of jurisdictions between the central and state governments on regulation. Electricity happens to be on the concurrent list, meaning both the state and central governments can make laws, and the central government’s laws will always preempt the states. However, building appears to be a local government issue, so managing this huge transition could get tricky. They are all supposed to use the same building code, but given the unevenness of local governance, who knows what implementation will look like.

    In Phase II, starting 2012, India will go solar thermal. India and Pakistan have 200,000 sq km of the Thar Desert, a typical dry tropical desert with oodles of space and sun. It would be a good place to site all kinds of capacity similar to efforts in North Africa and Spain.

    Solar thermal, if combined with the right kind of transmission and storage technology, could power the world in 7000 sq km, so theoretical capacity may not be an issue. Of course, the storage and distribution are key. Molten salt batteries look very promising for solar energy storage and night use.

    India’s electricity needs are daunting. This WolframAlpha search provides the following:

    IndiaCanada

    Note to Wolfram: your data presentation would result in a failing grade on a middle school term paper, where are the sources? Where did you get your numbers? BIG FAIL!

    We in Canada use more electricity than India for about a billion fewer people. Clearly, if India was as profligate as Canada in energy consumption and got the power it needed to get there from coal, we would all be dead soon. India needs to go solar in a hurry and I am glad the government has released a policy that is more ambitious than the US or Canada. It needs the support and funding to make it happen and I for one will be very happy to see progress in this area. Solar power needs big up front costs and little ongoing costs.

    Can Indian industry provide the money needed? We shall see. I am not too worried about the photovoltaic panel parts, they will muddle along in typical patchwork Indian fashion with the quality of governance being the controlling factor in success or failure. It is the capital and political will needed for solar thermal that strikes me as problematic. The coal and mining industries are entrenched in some population (and vote) rich states like Bihar based in the central and north east regions and there could be some big losers if India went away from coal (as it needs to in order to prevent catastrophic climate change) and toward solar thermal, which I assume would come out of Rajasthan (West).

    Anyway, we live in interesting and sunshiny times, stay tuned for more.

    h/t to my one of my favourite climate blogs, solve climate for bringing this article to my attention, love your blog folks!

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    FDA cannot find anything in China

    Byoliveridley

    FDA Finds Chinese Food Producers Shut Down – washingtonpost.com

    American inspectors who arrived in China last week to investigate the two companies that exported tainted pet food ingredients found that the suspect facilities had been hastily closed down and cleaned up, federal officials said yesterday.

    “There is nothing to be found. They are essentially shut down and not operating,” said Walter Batts, deputy director of the Food and Drug Administration’s office of international programs.

    Well, we gave them plenty of warning, did we not!

  • Canada's Environmental Corpus Callosum malfunction

    Byoliveridley

    One of my first impressions on moving to Victoria was the high environmental consciousness of the people here. The obvious markers of environmental consciousness such as recycling, composting, organic food consumption, local food consumption, small car driving, and most importantly, pride at being environmentally conscious are off the charts here  (and I am  most definitely  one of those people as well!).

    My second impression was that a country with such a resource driven economy can’t possibly live up to what its citizens think it is doing. And I was right. The country as a whole performs abysmally. Canada vs. the OECD (a report produced by my very hometown University of Victoria) compares Canada’s performance vs. the OECD on a number of environmental parameters. It is shocking. The picture is painted of an inefficient economy whose consumption of major resources and pollution indicators are growing at a time they should be dropping. For example:

    Canada is among the three worst countries on nine indicators (per capita greenhouse gas emissions, sulphur dioxide emissions, carbon monoxide emissions, volatile organic compound emissions, water consumption, energy consumption, energy efficiency, volume of timber logged and generation of nuclear waste);

    Canada’s economy is inefficient, in that we use much more energy and generate much more pollution to produce a given amount of goods and services relative to our industrial competitors, including 33% more energy than the United States per unit of GDP; and

    Canada’s performance on most environmental indicators continues to worsen

    So, not only are things bad, they’re getting worse, but the people don’t seem to notice. Massive corpus callosum1 malfuction?

    BTW, this is what happens to people when their corpus callosum is removed.

    [youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMLzP1VCANo’]

    Once this theme crystallized in my head, I went searching for earlier work that would reinforce my conclusion and came upon this book Unnatural Law – Rethinking Canadian Environmental Law and Policy. From the First chapter:

    Is Canada an environmental leader or an environmental laggard? Is Canada contributing to solving environmental challenges or are we exacerbating these problems?

    Great, a book that reinforces my frame in the very first paragraph! I’ll let you know after I finish reading the book (helpfully available from my local library and written by a former ED for the SIerra Legal Defence Fund (now known as Ecojustice) and who lives on Pender Island, a few islands away from where I live! Promises to be an interesting and illuminating read.

    1Corpus Callosum = Part of brain that connects the two hemispheres.

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    California Ban on Diacetyl?

    Byoliveridley

    Flavoring-Factory Illnesses Raise Inquiries – New York Times

    For a good background on flavoring-factory lung disease (formerly known as popcorn worker’s lung), check out the Pump Handle’s many posts, especially this recent one. Short primer, diacetyl is the chemical that gives popcorn its so called buttery taste (and smell, it’s fake!!). Well, there’s pretty good evidence that diacetyl causes bronchiolitis obliterans. Some symptoms…

    Bronchiolitis obliterans renders its victims unable to exert even a little energy without becoming winded or faint.

    “The airways to the lung have been eaten up,” said Barbara Materna, the chief of the occupational health branch in the California Department of Health Services. “They can’t work anymore, and they can’t walk a short distance without severe shortness of breath.”

    OSHA has been unwilling to seriously regulate diacetyl, so California, as it is wont to do, is considering banning this killer chemical.

    But in California, which has 28 flavoring plants known to use diacetyl, some legislators and government officials seem unwilling to wait. A bill to ban diacetyl in the workplace by 2010 has passed two committees in the State Assembly and could be taken up by the full body this summer. It is the first proposal of its kind in the nation. Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, the author of the bill, said she introduced it because of what she said was the slow response by the flavoring industry, which is largely self-regulating on occupational safety. “What we’ve heard is that the flavoring industry has known for years that this is potentially a problem, and they haven’t taken action,” said Ms. Lieber, a Democrat.

    I am all for California’s regulation. But as written, this law will only protect workers in California. They should also consider going one step further by restricting the use of diacetyl in food sold in California. Only then can the giant market that is California exert its influence on the diacetyl manufacturers and users.

  • Acrolein Main Cigarette Culprit?

    Byoliveridley

    Chemical & Engineering News: Latest News – Cigarettes’ Smoking Gun?

    Acrolein, one of the 4,000 constituents of cigarette smoke, has been found unexpectedly to cause DNA damage in the gene for the infamous tumor-suppressor p53, which is often disrupted by cancer. In particular, the pattern of DNA mutations caused by acrolein mimics what is often found in human lung cancer samples (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0607031103).

    “If cigarette smoke is the weapon that causes lung cancer, then these mutations are fingerprints on the knife,” says author Moon-shong Tang of New York University School of Medicine, in Tuxedo. Tang was also involved in identifying another cigarette-smoke component that can induce such mutations: a metabolite of a polycyclic hydrocarbon called benzo[a]pyrene. Acrolein is present in cigarette smoke in levels of up to 1,000 times greater than benzo[a]pyrene.

    So, if you remove acrolein from tobacco smoke, does that make for a much safer smoking experience? Is this a research question worth answering? FYI, I watched Thank You for Smoking last night, so, fresh on my mind!