This is a monumental and unprecedented environmental catastrophe. The TVA Tennessee Valley Authority disaster is now estimated at 5.3 million cubic yards of coal ash, or almost twice as large as the 2.8 million cubic yards generated by the World Trade Center collapse.
via Dave Cooper: A First Hand Account of the TVA Coal Ash Disaster in Kingston, TN.
The Canadian Medical Association Journal is denouncing the federal government for what it expects will be Canada's continued efforts to block international controls on asbestos at UN-sponsored negotiations next week.
A strongly worded editorial, appearing in tomorrow's issue of the journal, says the government "knows what it is doing is shameful and wrong" and compared Ottawa's moral stature in continuing to promote the use of the cancer-causing material to that of arms traders.
The negotiations, known as the Rotterdam Convention, are to start Oct. 27 in Rome. The focus of the talks will be on whether to add the chrysotile variety of asbestos to the world's list of most dangerous substances. Once a substance is listed, countries must give prior informed consent that they know they are buying a highly dangerous material before being allowed to accept any imports.
via globeandmail.com: Medical journal blasts Ottawa for promoting asbestos abroad
Canada’s national shame, its export of a killer product not used by Canadians to developing countries where the safeguards it insists on for the ‘safe” use of this product can’t possibly be carried out or enforced. For god’s sake, it’s 700 jobs, and people who can be retrained to do something that does not kill people.
BBC NEWS | Health | Benefits of fish ‘outweigh risks’
Dariush Mozaffarian, lead author of the study said: “Overall, for major health outcomes among adults, the benefits of eating fish greatly outweigh the risks.
“Somehow this evidence has been lost on the public.”
Concerns have been raised about chemicals found in fish from pollution.
These include mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxins.
And in other news, “breathing is good for you”. Please, I can’t take this any more. The question is NOT, and NEVER WILL BE, “Is fish good for you?”. Of course it is. The question is: “What kind of fish is good for you, and whether appropriate labeling can help the consumer decide”.
At least in the US of A, which is where I have eaten the bulk of my fish, the primary source of information you can get about eating fish is on the web and for North Carolina, here. So, you’re supposed to go around with a checklist of good and bad fish in your head when you go to the grocery store. Most consumers do not have this kind of information, especially when there are so many categories to choose from. Is it fatty, or non? Is it freshwater or marine? Is it canned, fresh or frozen? Is it caught or farmed? Canned light tuna is okay, but canned albacore tuna is not, can you remember this when shopping for 30 other things at the store?
Confused enough? How about, tilefish at 3.99 a pound versus salmon at 7.99 a pound? What will you buy on a tight budget?
If you’re the average consumer, you have a minute to decide whether it’s fish for dinner, or something else, unless you’re carrying around this handy checklist in your hand/PDA (in which case you’re not the average consumer), you have two opposing thoughts in your head….
What will you do given that you have one minute to decide, you have no information in the store, and you have no one in the store looking out for you?
And this paper wonders, and I paraphrase,
“Somehow this evidence has been lost on the public”
Labeling is important, information is power, if you’re buying fish, you want to know where it is from, what the average pollutant loadings of the fish from this area are, and what the advisory on this fish is, so you can make an informed choice in the one minute that you have. This has been widely researched, and the information is easily available (on the web, where you don’t shop for groceries). Is it too much to ask for a list to be posted wherever fish is sold? I guess it “hurts business”.
Personal responsibilty is accepted, but if you do not give people the tools to make informed choices, it’s just a cynical ploy to shift blame, shift burden, and shift risk.
This paper deserves to be read in full, so here’s the abstract. Needless to say, the study, funded in full by tax payer money through the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, is behind a subscription wall.
Fish Intake, Contaminants, and Human Health
Evaluating the Risks and the Benefits
Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, DrPH; Eric B. Rimm, ScD
JAMA. 2006;296:1885-1899.
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Context Fish (finfish or shellfish) may have health benefits and also contain contaminants, resulting in confusion over the role of fish consumption in a healthy diet.
Evidence Acquisition We searched MEDLINE, governmental reports, and meta-analyses, supplemented by hand reviews of references and direct investigator contacts, to identify reports published through April 2006 evaluating (1) intake of fish or fish oil and cardiovascular risk, (2) effects of methylmercury and fish oil on early neurodevelopment, (3) risks of methylmercury for cardiovascular and neurologic outcomes in adults, and (4) health risks of dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls in fish. We concentrated on studies evaluating risk in humans, focusing on evidence, when available, from randomized trials and large prospective studies. When possible, meta-analyses were performed to characterize benefits and risks most precisely.
Evidence Synthesis Modest consumption of fish (eg, 1-2 servings/wk), especially species higher in the n-3 fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), reduces risk of coronary death by 36% (95% confidence interval, 20%-50%; P<.001) and total mortality by 17% (95% confidence interval, 0%-32%; P = .046) and may favorably affect other clinical outcomes. Intake of 250 mg/d of EPA and DHA appears sufficient for primary prevention. DHA appears beneficial for, and low-level methylmercury may adversely affect, early neurodevelopment. Women of childbearing age and nursing mothers should consume 2 seafood servings/wk, limiting intake of selected species. Health effects of low-level methylmercury in adults are not clearly established; methylmercury may modestly decrease the cardiovascular benefits of fish intake. A variety of seafood should be consumed; individuals with very high consumption (
5 servings/wk) should limit intake of species highest in mercury levels. Levels of dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls in fish are low, and potential carcinogenic and other effects are outweighed by potential benefits of fish intake and should have little impact on choices or consumption of seafood (women of childbearing age should consult regional advisories for locally caught freshwater fish).
Conclusions For major health outcomes among adults, based on both the strength of the evidence and the potential magnitudes of effect, the benefits of fish intake exceed the potential risks. For women of childbearing age, benefits of modest fish
intake, excepting a few selected species, also outweigh risks.
Seeing red over ‘green scare’ – Los Angeles Times:
For example, Gore blames the disappearing snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro on global warming, but a 2003 study in Nature identified the clear-cutting of surrounding moisture-rich forests as the culprit. In the famously fact-checked New Yorker, Editor David Remnick pens a love letter to Gore in which he laments that Earth will “likely be an uninhabitable planet” if we don’t heed Gore’s jeremiads. Oh … come … on!
Well, it’s hard to figure out where to begin refuting nonsense like this, which has been refuted a million times. You don’t take down scientific consensus by pointing out minor inaccuracies in work done by Al Gore, of all people. Yes, it can be argued (Kaser et al., INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY 24 (3): 329-339 MAR 15 2004) that Kilimanjaro’s ice cap regression may have to do more with loss of moisture than with temperature. That does not make a case of the “Green Meanie” ( typical demonising phrase – should we call Goldberg an ignorant ostrich, well, does not have the same evocativeness!). Repeat after me, one inaccuracy does not disprove millions of observations. I suggest he read Field Notes from a Catastrophe, written in language even he could understand to find a few more experimental observations to “debunk”.
Major news media have gone after scientists who argue there’s still time to study global warming (IRAQ’s WMD – substitute) rather than plunge into some half-baked environmental jihad (IRAQ WAR – substitute) that could waste possibly trillions of dollars.
Sweet words coming out of one of the war’s most fervent supporters. I like people who can have it both ways on a single day and pretend to not see the contradictions.
Maybe he should read this editorial published right below his.
Update 4/21/06 3:30 PM
The Think Progress Blog has more refutation, if this drivel needed any more refuting.
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.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the chief of NASA, Michael Griffin
NASA chief not worried about climate – Yahoo! News
I guess I would ask which human beings, where and when, are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now, is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take,” Griffin said.
Nothing more to say other than if I were American, I would first be a little ashamed, I would then start demanding his resignation. This is the chief of one of this country’s premier scientific institutions, one that does a lot of weather and climate research, one that employs the world’s foremost scientific voice on global warming. Here’s what Hansen had to say…
James Hansen, a top NASA climate scientist, said Griffin’s comments showed “arrogance and ignorance,” because millions of people will likely be harmed by global warming in the future.
Wow, he was being kind.
Overheard this morning on The Marketplace morning report…
“The use of scrubbers have made coal fired power plants much cleaner”
Umm, this only refers to the scrubbing of particulate matter and sulfur dioxide. Unless some marvelous scrubber has been invented and perfected (top secret, the coal fired power plants don’t want you to know about all the good things they do!) that picks up all the CO2 belching out of those smokestacks, no claim can be made that coal is cleaner.
Dear Marketplace, your own website says the following:
KAI RYSSDAL: And it’s official. Carbon dioxide is a pollutant. The Supreme Court says so. The Bush Administration had been arguing the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases
To argue this from a strictly legalistic standpoint, coal is dirtier now than it has ever been because we finally count CO2 as a pollutant (Yes, I know, Supreme Court only ruled on automobile emissions because that was the case in front of it, but gas is gas!).
Dear Marketplace, please stop using the words clean and coal in the same sentence unless and until CO2 emissions from coal are scrubbed!
Update 30Aug07: Apparently (see comments!), NPR does not like the use of the word NPR in the blog title because (and I quote)
“Marketplace” is not an NPR show. It is produced by American Public Media, a separate company, and has its own news operation”
True, so it’s not dear NPR anymore, it’s “dear American Public Media”. There, that takes care of that. My point obviously stands, coal is not clean!!