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The LA Times and the American Chemistry Council

Byoliveridley

Giving the American Chemistry Council a forum to sing paeans to its chemical du jour is kinda like giving Donald Trump an Op-Ed column on the harmlessness of gambling. The ACC is a trade association that gets all its funding from the chemical industry and is the reliable source on producing just about enough fudge to create “reasonable doubt” about chemicals. The ACC is notorious for its various astroturf websites including the Phthalate information center, the Plastic Resource, dioxin facts (seeing a pattern here?), and many other websites that propagate biased industry funded research, outright misinformation, and unrestrained cheerleading. They also spend vast amounts of money lobbying congress. Bora, and other Open Access advocates, note the similarities in the arguments used in the above websites to some recent attacks on Open Access, the imprint of Nicholas-Dezenhall is all over the ACC’s strategies!

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    Colonialism: Environmental Edition

    Byoliveridley

    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.

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    Sri Lankan Government registers all Tamils

    Byoliveridley

    The Americans put all citizens of Japanese origin into camps for the duration of the World War. Did you know that?’She did not say anything.‘What if we place all Tamil citizens in camps for a period of one year,’ I asked. ‘We’d use that year to flush out and kill all the rebels hiding in the Wanni. You can’t blow up our cities when your bombers are not allowed free access to economic and civilian targets, pretending to be innocents.’‘That idea is barbaric. It is only a short step from there to the gas chambers,’ she said furiously and then brightened. ‘But I like the idea. When you start on it, the whole world will condemn you…. It will help our cause in other ways as well. We’ll have plenty of new recruits and funding from our expatriate community will increase immediately.’‘Oh, I understand that the idea is impractical but we don’t have many options.’”So goes the dialogue between Captain Wasantha Ratnayaka, the Sinhalese officer in the Sri Lanka Army, and Kamala Velaithan, a female cadre of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who pretends to be an informer of the diabolical plans of the Tigers, in the much-acclaimed novel of the late Nihal de Silva titled The Road from Elephant Pass.On September 21, the Sri Lankan government almost made real this surreal scenario with its diktat that all citizens from the five districts of the LTTE-dominated North who have been living in and around Colombo (Western Province) for the past five years “re-register” themselves with the police.The professed logic of the government, or to be precise the Defence Ministry, was almost on the lines narrated by Captain Ratnayaka in the novel but with a twist. While the officer-character portrayed in the novel concurs with the illogic of its logic, the collective wisdom of the Sri Lankan establishment did not betray signs of any such reasoning. Even assuming it did, the drumbeats of war have numbed its senses to such an extent that Colombo has stopped bothering about the repercussions of its actions.The latest move by the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime is astonishing to say the least as just over a year ago the government was condemned from within and without for a similar action. Besides, it comes at a juncture when the armed forces have driven the LTTE into wilderness in its own heartland and the entire world is lined up behind the government in its war.

    Profiling problem

    More on the Sri Lankan government’s astonishingly appalling treatment of Tamils. Clearly, they do not view Tamils as equal citizens of Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese state bears equal responsibility for Sri Lanka’s problems. I do not know what this sudden increase in pressure from India will do. There is some indication that the Sri Lankan government is paying attention.

    A day after India officially communicated to Colombo the need for a peacefully negotiated political settlement to the Tamil issue in Sri Lanka, President Mahinda Rajapaksa telephoned Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday to give an assurance that all necessary measures were being taken to ensure the safety and welfare of Tamils in the island nation.

    Very empty and meaningless words. My question is, who will speak for the Tamils in a negotiated settlement. Are there any credible voices for peace on either side of the conflict?

  • Coal Fired Power Plants – Moratorium needed

    Byoliveridley

    Cleaner Coal Is Attracting Some Doubts – New York Times

    Within the next few years, power companies are planning to build about 150 coal plants to meet growing electricity demands. Despite expectations that global warming rules are coming, almost none of the plants will be built to capture the thousands of tons of carbon dioxide that burning coal spews into the atmosphere.

    This is batshit insane and irresponsible. The US of A does not have a carbon policy (other than use as much as you possibly can!), and, only in the last few months have phrases like cap and trade and carbon taxes been used in respectable society. I am not going to get into the policy solutions here, there are much better discussions going on elsewhere.

    My question is this. When you know that 150 coal fired power plants are going to have a significant effect on the carbon emissions, how can you even think of approving them unless you have a carbon emissions mitigation policy in place already? If you let them be built, they will somehow grandfather themselves out of the controls. The power of existence is a big deal. Will anyone dismantle one of these once they’re operational? Think of the children!!

    There needs to be a moratorium on any large new power plants and other global warming sources until this country has figured out what emission targets it’s going to meet, how it’s going to meet them, and when it is going to meet them. Only then can the market decide which choices are feasible and which ones just don’t make sense. How will I know whether gasification or conventional burning/sequestration is better unless I have the metrics to measure them by? Depending on the emission reduction targets, they could both be economically viable, or neither.

    Something tells me that the word “moratorium” and the phrase “coal fired power plant” will never be uttered in the same sentence.

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    Common chemicals are linked to breast cancer

    Byoliveridley

    The LA Times features a study arising from the Silent Spring institute.

    Common chemicals are linked to breast cancer – Los Angeles Times

    More than 200 chemicals — many found in urban air and everyday consumer products — cause breast cancer in animal tests, according to a compilation of scientific reports published today.

    Writing in a publication of the American Cancer Society, researchers concluded that reducing exposure to the compounds could prevent many women from developing the disease.

    The research team from five institutions analyzed a growing body of evidence linking environmental contaminants to breast cancer, the leading killer of U.S. women in their late 30s to early 50s.

    Experts say that family history and genes are responsible for a small percentage of breast cancer cases but that environmental or lifestyle factors such as diet are probably involved in the vast majority.

    “Overall, exposure to mammary gland carcinogens is widespread,” the researchers wrote in a special supplement to the journal Cancer. “These compounds are widely detected in human tissues and in environments, such as homes, where women spend time.”

    The scientists said data were too incomplete to estimate how many breast cancer cases might be linked to chemical exposures.

    The resources to come out of this study include two databases, one that summarizes animal mechanistic studies, and one that summarizes human epidemiological studies. It’s a good start and I hope these databases are continually expanded. The study was essentially a big lit review and data organization project.

    There are two major issues with the way carcinogenicity is studied. Firstly, animals other than humans are dosed at high levels to test for possible cancer outcomes. This leaves most researchers vulnerable to the charge that these high dose studies do not translate well to humans because the dose-response relationship at ambient levels is not well studied. So, the obvious criticism is that just because cancer endpoints were seen at high levels does not mean that the same thing will happen at low levels. This cuts both ways, though. We’re seeing with bisphenol A that low doses can cause more harm than intermediate doses. Another issue is the additivity of the interactions. Does 1 “dose” of PAH + 1 “dose” of PCB = 2 “doses” of PAH? We’re exposed to a whole host of chemicals all our lives, who knows which ones add, which ones subtract, which ones multiply, etc.

    Of course, as with most diseases, some macro variables dominate. For instance, the US has seen 8-9% decline in breast cancer incidence recently due to a decreased use of hormone replacement therapy. So, as with all diseases, taking care of some of these big ticket items is very important. One discouraging story I read today reported on a four percentage point decline in mammograms (70 to 66%) in women age 40 and older. Why? decreased access to health insurance and dropping the ball on promotion.

    The depressing fact of the matter is that the boring basics of good preventative healthcare, screening, good lifestyle and diet are the most important factors, and if we take care of these factors, we will make most health issues easier to deal with.

  • 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.