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Duke Energy and Cliffside
You know what I think about Cliffside, the coal plant Duke Energy is trying to build. Here’s a video created by Brian Russell that summarizes the problem and exhorts you to action.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twaFDdOr3pc]
Do it!
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Tags: DukeEnergy, Cliffside, North Carolina, Environment
Smoking bans in North Carolina?
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
- 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!
- 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.
- 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.
U.S. Given Poor Marks on the Environment – New York Times
A new international ranking of environmental performance puts the United States at the bottom of the Group of 8 industrialized nations and 39th among the 149 countries on the list.European nations dominate the top places in the ranking, which evaluates sanitation, greenhouse gas emissions, agricultural policies, air pollution and 20 other measures to formulate an overall score, with 100 the best possible.The top 10 countries, with scores of 87 or better, were led by Switzerland, Sweden, Norway and Finland. The others at the top were Austria, France, Latvia, Costa Rica, Colombia and New Zealand, the leader in the 2006 version of the analysis, which is conducted by researchers at Yale and Columbia Universities.
U.S. Given Poor Marks on the Environment – New York Times
Gee, I wonder why??
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Policy is more Important than Science?
Excellent article in today’s Washington Post
You can even cut carbon using no technology whatever. Mexico City has reduced its output of carbon dioxide by almost 55,000 tons a year by opening one efficient bus route; the key innovation here was the creation of two bus lanes. The new buses run on diesel — not exactly a technological breakthrough. But because they are rapid and frequent, the buses have brought car use down and reduced emissions. So what matters is not just the technologies we have but the incentives to deploy them. The average Western European uses half as much energy as the average American, and that’s not because there’s more technology in Europe. Rather, Europeans have embraced anti-carbon policies ranging from gas taxes to emissions caps, from an absence of extravagant mortgage subsidies that encourage super-size homes to congestion charges for drivers in London and Stockholm.
Sing it, Cap’n Obvious, actually, it is not obvious to a lot of people. Politicians love “research” because they can turn around and say that they are doing something about a problem when all they are doing is postponing the discussion by calling for “new technology” to fix the problem. Scientists like this as well because this means money in their pocket. Research groups, be they in universities or in government institutes, perpetuate themselves by getting more funding to do more research, which leads to getting more funding to do more research while keeping an army of post docs, grad students, research assistants and professors gainfully employed. It’s kinda like reproduction, only less fun! It is a good system and a lot of good work gets done, but for a lot of questions, the answers are already there.
Policy level decisions require that clear cut choices be made, while they are NOT zero sum games, there are winners and losers in most of the decisions, and this current incarnation of politicians do not seem to want to make these kinds of decisions unless the winners are big companies (energy, pharma, healthcare, etc), rich people (tax cuts, etc.) or war.
Benzene in Soft Drinks – Analytical Artifact?
An update on the benzene story from last month.
Chemical & Engineering News: Latest News – Dispute Over Benzene In Drinks
In late 2005, FDA began analyzing beverages containing benzoate and ascorbic acid. The majority of samples contained either no detectable benzene or levels below 5 ppb, says Robert E. Brackett, director of FDA’s Center for Food Safety & Applied Nutrition. FDA’s results are preliminary. After its survey is complete, the agency will determine what, if any, additional action is necessary, Brackett wrote to EWG. Changes in FDA’s analytical procedures may account for the differences in results. To collect benzene in the earlier tests, FDA used a purge-and-trap method, in which the samples were heated to 100 °C for 30 minutes. Recently, the agency has been using a static-headspace methodology, which does not involve much heat. In the earlier tests, the high heat was probably creating benzene, says an FDA source who asked not to be identified.
The explanation seems to make sense. Low level analysis is riddled with instances such as these, where the analyte you’re looking for is introduced into the sample after the fact. It is impossible to decide without looking at the protocol whether this happened or not. Since the source of the benzene is from the reaction of ascorbic acid (aka Vitamin C) and benzoate salts, notably sodium benzoate, it would have been clear to anyone doing the analysis to avoid conditions that would result in the formation of benzene during the analysis, or maybe not…
Static Headspace analysis usually involves some heating as well, at much lower temperatures for shorter periods of time, though in the case of something as hydrophobic as benzene, not much heat would be required. So, the artifacts in static headspace would in this case be lower than in purge and trap analysis.
Still not a concern in the grand scheme of aggregate benzene exposure.
Black Lung – Miners pay so you can get more coal
The Pump Handle alerts us to a special report on coal miners and their lungs, not for the faint of heart, but something to keep in mind when you hear the phrases “Cheap Energy” and “coal” in one sentence, it’s not so cheap for these people.
Black Lung: Dust Hasn’t Settled on Deadly Disease « The Pump Handle
Louisville-Courier Journal reporters Laura Unger and Ralph Dunlop offer us the voices and faces of miners who are suffering from coal workers’ pneumoconiosis. Their special report, Black Lung: Dust Hasn’t Settled on Deadly Disease, includes an on-line version which features five compelling videos featuring 40- and 50-year old coal miners who are now suffering with the disabling lung disease. Mr. Danny Hall, 56, for example, who is still severely impaired despite receiving a lung transplant says “if I had to do over, I wouldn’t ever go into coal mining.”