Double for Nothing: Leaving the left lane empty

Byoliveridley

Car Space

Apparently. my fine province is poised to bear down heavily on those most dastardly of villains, people who dare drive their motor vehicle in the left lane…

“There will be a number of measures that we will be implementing to do a better job in getting people out of the left lane,” Stone told Kamloops’ CHNL radio last week. “You know, it already is the law, today, not to be in the left lane unless they’re passing. … [There are] a number of initiatives that we’ll be announcing soon that we hope will make a difference to get those left-lane hogs out of the way.” – See more at: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/jack-knox-b-c-poised-to-make-a-move-on-left-lane-hogs-1.1158661#sthash.MYd8WAan.dpuf
“There will be a number of measures that we will be implementing to do a better job in getting people out of the left lane,” Stone told Kamloops’ CHNL radio last week. “You know, it already is the law, today, not to be in the left lane unless they’re passing. … [There are] a number of initiatives that we’ll be announcing soon that we hope will make a difference to get those left-lane hogs out of the way.” – See more at: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/jack-knox-b-c-poised-to-make-a-move-on-left-lane-hogs-1.1158661#sthash.MYd8WAan.dpuf

“There will be a number of measures that we will be implementing to do a better job in getting people out of the left lane,” Stone told Kamloops’ CHNL radio last week. “You know, it already is the law, today, not to be in the left lane unless they’re passing. … [There are] a number of initiatives that we’ll be announcing soon that we hope will make a difference to get those left-lane hogs out of the way.

Jack Knox: B.C. poised to make a move on left-lane hogs – Local – Times Colonist.

I get it, people who drive slowly in the left lane are annoying and are a potential safety hazard. But, given that a car already needs so much more space than a bicycle, a bus full of people or pedestrians, does having a rule saying you’re only supposed to use half the road for the majority of your driving make any sense? Think about an alternative reality in which bike lanes are built for double the capacity just in case you want to pass a slower cyclist, would never happen, right?

A minor point, but some of the aspects of our personal auto culture are egregiously wasteful, yet attract little attention because “it’s always been that way.”

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    Chemical agency ties under review – Los Angeles Times

    Byoliveridley

    As I mentioned a couple of days back, Sciences International has some conflicts of interests in this bisphenol A issue. I am glad that NIEHS is taking note.

    Chemical agency ties under review – Los Angeles Times

    The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has begun a review of ties between a federal health center that evaluates the risks of chemicals to reproductive health and a consulting firm funded by companies that produce chemicals linked to reproductive disorders.

    The investigation follows a Times report on Sunday that Sciences International, an Alexandria, Va., firm funded by more than 50 industrial companies, helps manage the federal Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction.

    Among the firms with financial ties to Sciences International are two that produce bisphenol A, a chemical in polycarbonate plastic bottles that has been linked in animal testing to prostate and breast cancer and reduced fertility.

    Since 1998, Sciences International has helped manage the federal reproductive health center and prepared draft reports analyzing bisphenol A and 16 other chemicals. The company has a $5-million contract with the center.

    The center’s scientific advisory panel was scheduled to decide today whether bisphenol A endangers reproductive health in humans.

    But on Tuesday, director Michael Shelby announced that the panel, after two days of reviewing the 372-page report that Sciences International prepared on bisphenol A, known as BPA, still had too many unresolved questions and was postponing its decision for six weeks.

    Good investigative journalism still makes a big difference.

    As always, as I was writing this post, I noticed that the ever excellent folks at the pump handle read my mind and posted about it (2nd time in 3 days!), so I will stop writing (and thinking about Bisphenol A) and direct your attention to their post!

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    Small California Study Finds Correlational Link Between Organochlorine Pesticides and Autism

    Byoliveridley

    That would have been my headline! It was a study of 29 women, and the results show a six-fold increase in the incidence of autism in children whose mothers were close to fields being sprayed with organochlorine pesticides. A factor of 6 is a big number, which is why they found statistical significance at such a low sample size.

    Most organochlorine pesticides (the most famous being DDT) are already banned in the first world. The ones suspected here, endosulfan and dicofol are banned in quite a few countries including Belize, Singapore. Cambodia and Germany. The Stockholm convention (international treaty to identify and restrict the use of persistent organic pollutants) has identified endosulfan as a possible addition to its list of POPs.

    Of course, the US has not even ratified the Stockholm convention thanks to the pesticide lobbies. So, nothing the Stockholm convention decides about endosulfan will  carry any legal weight. In this country, pesticides and most other chemicals in current use are “innocent until proven guilty”, meaning harm must be conclusively proven in a manner that will withstand court challenge. With industry sponsored research and lobbying, such a burden of proof is often insurmountable and therefore, hazardous pollutants are used in the US well beyond their sell-by dates.

    Pesticide link to autism suspected – Los Angeles Times

    Women who live near California farm fields sprayed with organochlorine pesticides may be more likely to give birth to children with autism, according to a study by state health officials to be published today. The rate of autism among the children of 29 women who lived near the fields was extremely high, suggesting that exposure to the insecticides in the womb might have played a role. The study is the first to report a link between pesticides and the neurological disorder, which affects one in every 150 children. But the state scientists cautioned that their finding is highly preliminary because of the small number of women and children involved and lack of evidence from other studies.

    Clearly, the increase in autism incidence has many more factors linked to it than environmental chemical exposure, but this is interesting and good work. This study will doubtless be severely criticized by the pesticide lobby. After all, it’s only a correlation, no mechanism has been proposed, and the sample size is very small. But, as I mentioned before, you don’t normally see six-fold increases in disease incidences with ambient environmental exposure, so there is definitely something going on here.

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  • Powerful Story of Environmental Racism

    Byoliveridley

    I have nothing to say, just read and weep.

    A Well of Pain – washingtonpost.com

    She has had cervical polyps. Another of her daughters, Holt-Orsted’s sister, has had colon polyps. Three of Holt-Orsted’s cousins have had cancer. Her aunt next door has had cancer. Her aunt across the street has had chemotherapy for a bone disease. Her uncle died of Hodgkin’s disease. Her daughter, 12-year-old Jasmine, has a speech defect.

    They believe trichloroethylene, or TCE, is to blame for it all. The carcinogen leaked from the county landfill, just 500 feet away, and contaminated the Holts’ well water. That fact is undisputed. For years, the family drank that water, bathed in that water, cooked in that water — and had no clue that it might harm them.

    More…

    In that box, she found letters and documents indicating that Tennessee environmental and water officials had concerns about the possibility of TCE appearing in the Holt’s well water as early as 1988. The Holts’ well was left untested for nine years while TCE problems in the wells of white families were tended to with haste, the records showed.

    Even more…

    Meanwhile, the toxin also showed up at high levels in a spring and several wells in 1993 and 1994. The white families at those sites were immediately told to stop using the water. And tests were conducted repeatedly all around the landfill — but not at the Holt well.

  • Excellent Editorial on CO2 mitigation

    Byoliveridley

    It is nice to get away into the mountains for a while and not think about work, or climate change, but, reality drags you back. This is a great primer on various CO2 mitigation strategies, explaining in plain language, carbon taxes, cap and trade systems and such. It does tilt heavily towards the carbon tax approach, but that’s fine, I like it better than cap and trade anyway!

    Time to tax carbon – Los Angeles Times

    The proposed fixes for climate change are as numerous as its causes. Most only tinker at the edges of the problem, such as a California bill to phase out energy-inefficient lightbulbs. To produce the cuts in greenhouse gases needed to slow or stop global warming, the world will have to phase out the fossil fuels on which it relies for most of its power supply and transportation — especially the coal-burning power plants that account for about 32% of the annual emissions of carbon dioxide in the U.S. and that generate about half of our electricity. There are three basic methods of doing that, which are the subject of debate and legislation at every level of government.

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