http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/nationalconversation/

Project goals – http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/nationalconversation/accomplish.html

The National Conversation’s vision is to ensure that chemicals are used and managed in safe and healthy ways for all people.  The goal of the National Conversation is to develop an action agenda—clear, achievable recommendations—that will help government agencies and other organizations strengthen their efforts to protect the public from harmful chemical exposures.  The action agenda will help our nation identify better ways to

• Collect information about chemical use, people who are exposed, and the levels at which they are exposed.
• Understand how chemicals affect people’s health.
• Use policies and practices that tell us about risks, how to reduce harmful exposures, and how to create and use safe chemicals.
• Prevent, prepare for, and respond to chemical-related emergencies.
• Protect all communities from harmful chemical exposures.
• Create a well-informed public and health care provider network to help people understand chemical exposure risks.
• Involve the public in government decision making.
• Encourage teamwork among partner groups and agencies.

To help with this, work groups were formed last year to discuss six cross-cutting issues.  After receiving public input, they have released draft reports for public comment.  You can download the report for each work group from the pages linked to below and submit your comments via those pages, e-mail or other means listed there.

• Monitoring
• Scientific Understanding
• Policies and Practices
• Chemical Emergencies
• Serving Communities
• Education and Communication

CDC and ATSDR are working with RESOLVE, a non-profit facilitation group that will compile the comments, as well as other organizations such as the American Public Health Association, Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, and National Association of County and City Health Officials.

The Legacy of the Gulf Spill: What to Expect for the Future?

by John McQuaid

The Gulf of Mexico’s capacity to recover from previous environmental assaults — especially the 1979 Ixtoc explosion — provides encouragement about the prospects for its post-Deepwater future. But scientists remain worried about the BP spill’s long-term effects on the health of the Gulf and its sea life.

The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: An Accident Waiting to Happen (May 10, 2010)

by John McQuaid

The oil slick spreading across the Gulf of Mexico has shattered the notion that offshore drilling had become safe. A close look at the accident shows that lax federal oversight, complacency by BP and the other companies involved, and the complexities of drilling a mile deep all combined to create the perfect environmental storm.

McQuaid notes:

“The Deepwater Horizon disaster is a classic “low probability, high impact event” — the kind we’ve seen more than our share of recently, including space shuttle disasters, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina. And if there’s a single lesson from those disparate catastrophes, it’s that pre-disaster assumptions tend to be dramatically off-base, and the worst-case scenarios downplayed or ignored. The Gulf spill is no exception.

McQuaid addresses the issue of risk in

Andrew Hopkins, a sociology professor at the Australian National University and an expert on industrial accidents, wrote a book called Failure to Learn about a massive explosion at a BP refinery in Texas City in 2005 that killed 15 people. He says that disaster has several possible insights for the oil spill: one was that BP and other corporations sometimes marginalize their health, safety, and environmental departments. “The crucial voice for safety in Texas City was shielded from the site manager, and the very senior agency people in the BP corporate head office in London had no role in ensuring safety at the site level,” he said. “The organizational structures disempowered the voices for safety and I think you’ve got the same thing here” in the Gulf spill.

But the more profound problem is a failure to put risks in perspective. BP and other companies tend to measure safety and environmental compliance on a day-to-day, checklist basis, to the point of basing executive bonuses on those metrics. But even if worker accident rates fall to zero, that may reveal nothing about the risk of a major disaster. “These things we are talking about are risks that won’t show up this year, next year — it may be 10 years down the road before you see one of these big blowouts or refinery accidents,” Hopkins said. “This same thing happened in the global financial crisis. Bankers were paid big bonuses for risks taken this year or next year, but the real risks came home to roost years later.”

That assumption — that catastrophic risks were so unlikely they were unworthy of serious attention — appears to have driven a lot of the government decision-making on drilling as well. The Minerals Management Service, a division of the Interior Department, oversees drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf. Since the 1980s, the MMS has routinely granted  a blanket exemption from doing a comprehensive environmental impact statement to individual drilling operations, according to Holly Doremus, a professor of environmental law at Berkeley. The Washington Post and the Associated Press reported last week that BP’s Deepwater Horizon lease received that exemption (called a “categorical exclusion”) last year. It was based on several analyses that downplayed the risks of a major oil spill. One, published in 2007, estimated the “most likely size” of an offshore spill at 4,600 barrels. NOAA’s current, conservative estimate of the Gulf spill put its total at more than 80,000 barrels, increasing at a rate of 5,000 per day.

Of course, “Energy companies have aggressively lobbied to avoid formally analyzing worst-case scenarios since the Carter administration first required them in instances where there was uncertainty about the risk of disaster….”

So, will we have learned?

Interviews

A Louisiana Bird Expert Assesses Damage from the Spill

The images of pelicans and other Gulf of Mexico seabirds drenched in oil have stirred sadness and outrage around the world. But, says conservationist Melanie Driscoll, the unseen effects are probably far greater, with some birds perishing out of sight, far from shore, and others facing spill-related declines in the fish on which they depend.

How Marketplace Economics Can Help Build a Greener World

by Daniel Goleman
Consumers now have little information about the true ecological impacts of what they buy. But that may be about to change, as new technologies that track supply chains are emerging and companies as diverse as Unilever and Google look to make their products more sustainable.

I was struck by a quote by Paul Hawken cited in the post:

“At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product … We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation.”

(The post also notes that Hawken’s book, The Ecology of Commerce was voted the No. 1 college text by business professors.)

Press release

Also reported on the Global Fight Against Cancer Blog, “American Cancer Society and LIVESTRONG® Release First-of-its-kind Study ‘Global Economic Cost of Cancer’“

Link to report summary

This was also reported on by the Associated Press, “Report: Cancer is the world’s costliest disease.”  Costs, not including direct medical costs, are estimated at $895 billion.

LIVESTRONG® also sponsored a report by The Economist Intelligence Unit, which presents the results of research and analysis on the health
and economic burden of cancer, global expenditures for cancer control and the funding gap relating to achieving a global expenditure standard for treatment and care.  (It’s not clear what the relationship between these two reports is.)

The Economist/LIVESTRONG® report on the global burden of cancer

LIVESTRONG® Summary

Full report: “Breakaway: The global burden of cancer—challenges and opportunities” (PDF, 73 pp.)

The primary collaborators on this project were Nancy Beaulieu and David E. Bloom of the Harvard School of Public Health, Lakshmi Reddy Bloom of Data For Decisions LLC and Richard M. Stein of the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The American Cancer Society reports that in 2009 the National Institutes of Health estimated the total cost of cancer as $228.1 billion.  That included direct medical costs and indirect costs due to loss of productivity due to illness and premature death.

The recent global report did not include direct medical costs.

Other resources

World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)

That was the third meeting of the committee.  The fourth is being held today and tomorrow.  See the National Academies’ Project System for more info.

Background documents from the Aug. 12-13 meeting can be found at http://sites.nationalacademies.org/BlowoutPrevention/documents/index.htm.  They include PowerPoint presentations from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, American Petroleum Institute, Coast Guard, Marshall Islands, and American Bureau of Shipping.  Right now they’re available only in PowerPoint so you will need that or one that can open PPT docs.

Under Related links you will find a link to a 1990 National Research Council report on Alternatives for Inspecting Outer Continental Shelf Operations.

In addition, the summary of the Institute of Medicine’s June workshop on Assessing the Effects of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill on Human Health is now available at http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2010/Assessing-the-Effects-of-the-Gulf-of-Mexico-Oil-Spill-on-Human-Health.aspx.

The agenda for the public session includes invited presentations and a brief opportunity for public comment.  One of the invited presenters is the executive director of the Silent Spring Institute, which conducts and sponsors research on the links between the environment and breast cancer, other environmental health issues, and green chemistry.  Silent Spring maintains science review databases and other tools on the environment and breast cancer.

Its publications include the Guide to Breast Cancer Cohort Studies and

Self-reported chemicals exposure, beliefs about disease causation, and risk of breast cancer

Attending the IOM meeting

If you’re interested in attending the IOM meeting or commenting you should probably contact the Institute beforehand. (You can register for the meeting online.)

They’ve listed the contact information on the meeting page, but below is the information as of today:

Other resources

Center for Democracy and Technology

CDT’s Guide to Online Privacy

Issues:

• Consumer Privacy
• Health Privacy
• Security & Surveillance

CDT’s Deeplinks Blog covers issues ranging from Anonymity to Locational privacy to Online behavioral tracking.

Dotrights.org

Describes what information about you is gathered online and how it is used. Sponsored by ACLU of Northern California.

Electronic Frontier Foundation

• Privacy: http://www.eff.org/issues/privacy

Electronic Privacy Information Center – http://epic.org/

Covers a wide range of privacy issues.

In a post from last spring, I discussed what some people have called “Nature Deficit Disorder” and how that could be another factor contributing to increased obesity rates, a decline in mental well-being, decreased happiness, and other problems.  Here are some resources that could help counter that.

Discover the Forest – http://www.discovertheforest.org/

A USDA Forest Service website, sponsored in part by Dreamworks (if you’ve seen the public service announcement, you know that Shrek is part of this campaign) and The North Face.

Includes information on:

• Where to Go – Find Forests and Parks (based on the National Wildlife Federation’s NatureFind app – see below)
• What to Do – Forest Snapshot game, animal sounds, animal tracks, tree leaves, how to use a compass, how to become a Junior Forest Ranger.

Note about the Forest Snapshot Game: Kids have an opportunity to upload photos of their own.  This may not be widely known, but GPS-enabled cameras and smartphones can embed locational data in photos.  If they or you are posting such pictures on the Web, you are letting EVERYONE know where you live.  There are supposed to be ways to disable that feature, so if you’re concerned about that you might want to consider turning disabling that before you basically upload information about where you live to the Web.  (For more information on potential problems resulting from posting locational information, see the Please Rob Me website.)

That said, this is a neat idea.  (Note: The game took a minute or two to load on my PC.)

• Information for parents

Provides links to resources, information on getting kids outdoors more (and maybe yourself, too!)

• The Why page links to nature websites and tips on how to enjoy nature without ruining it.

Children and Nature Initiative

One of the Discover the Forest campaign’s recommended sites is the National Environmental Education Foundation’s Children and Nature Initiative – http://neefusa.org/health/children_nature.htm

NEEF’s Children and Nature Initiative, launched in May 2010, addresses two important issues—preventing serious health conditions like obesity and diabetes and reconnecting children to nature. Research indicates that unstructured outdoor activities may improve children’s health by increasing physical activity, reducing stress, and serving as a support mechanism for attention disorders. The Children and Nature Initiative educates pediatric health care providers about prescribing outdoor activities to children. The program also connects health care providers with local nature sites, so that they can refer families to safe and easily accessible outdoor areas.

A fact sheet on Children’s Health and Nature describes benefits of children’s exposure to the natural environment and includes recommendations from the CDC, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Medical Association and American College of Sports Medicine.

Problems that may be caused by (or at least exacerbated by) a lack of outdoor activity

• Childhood obesity
• Attention disorders
• Vitamin D deficiency

The fact sheet includes summaries of research showing connections between nature and health.

Unstructured outdoor play time is important for children’s overall well-being. How does nature play a role in children’s health? The fact sheet describes highlights from the published literature on the health benefits of the natural environment.  Free play is important.

Resources from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

CDC’s National Trail Days website – http://www.cdc.gov/Features/ParksAndTrails/
Physical activity guidelines for children and adolescents – http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/physicalactivity/guidelines.htm

• Includes a Youth Physical Activity Guidelines Toolkit available for downloading

Tread Lightly

Tread Lightly on Land and Water – http://www.treadlightly.org/ – is a nonprofit organization with a mission to promote responsible outdoor recreation through ethics education and stewardship.  Learn simple ways to minimize your impact on the environment when engaging in outdoor activities.

Tread Lightly’s Tips for Responsible Recreation – http://www.treadlightly.org/page.php/education-recreationtips/Recreation-Tips.html

Children and Nature Network – http://www.childrenandnature.org/

Described in an article in the Kiwi magazine blog, The Whole Child: Prescription for Play – http://kiwimagonline.com/kiwilog/the-whole-child/the-whole-child-prescription-for-play
C&NN Blog – http://www.childrenandnature.org/blog/
Nature Clubs for Families Toolkit – http://www.childrenandnature.org/downloads/NCFF_toolkit.pdf

HEALTH BENEFITS TO CHILDREN FROM CONTACT WITH THE OUTDOORS & NATURE

http://www.childrenandnature.org/downloads/C&NNHealthBenefits.pdf
Includes literature reviews  and overview documents as well as summaries of articles describing benefits of children’s contact with the outdoors on children’s mental and physical health.

This document notes:

There is a strong body of evidence attributing improved health with physical activity. In addition, there is evidence suggesting that nature specifically can improve attention and other psychological aspects of health. Playing in nature can positively impact children’s health and well-being.

National Wildlife Federation’s “Green Hour” Campaign

http://www.nwf.org/Get-Outside/Be-Out-There/Why-Be-Out-There/What-is-a-Green-Hour.aspx

NWF NatureFind – http://www.nwf.org/naturefind/ – Lets you search for activities from a wide variety of sites.  Most are outdoor, but they also include events at sites like museums, botanical gardens, and nature centers.

I discussed some of this in a couple of posts months ago (“Impact of technology on kids’ thinking abilities” and “The Virtual Frontier”).  But being more conscious of the effects of the Web (and not just the Web, but TV as well), viewing my experience with kids in the time since then, along with some other reading, has led me to believe that Carr is right.

I recently finished reading Rafe Esquith’s Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-Up, Muddled-Up, Shook-Up World.  Esquith, who teaches in a public elementary school in Los Angeles, describes the differences between kids who watch a lot of TV and those who don’t.  Anecdotal?  Yes, but highly persuasive.  And I think a lot of studies bear out his observations.

I believe it’s in the article above that someone says that the Web is really no different than TV — and TV hasn’t messed us up.   I would argue that the latter is disputable.  There’s a lot of garbage on TV.

And TV, by including the visual element, naturally draws our attention even more than radio.  And to a kid it can be hypnotic.  The Web requires even more attention.  That makes it even more addictive in a way, but that’s also an improvement of sorts over TV.  TV was a passive medium.  The Web requires you to at least get involved.  But kids’ brains are still developing.  Do most kids have the self-discipline to know when to stop?  Even if they do, can they?  Some studies show that Web use triggers the release of dopamine.

We need to teach kids how to make good decisions

Does this mean we should shut down the Web?  Or prohibit kids from using it?  The answer is obviously no.  The Web is a great tool.  But it can also be a great time-waster.  And too much exposure is not good for kids.  And another reason to be cautious is that marketing has become the predominant driver of the Web.  (See the Wall Street Journal series about Internet privacy for more info on how much information about you companies are tracking so they can target purchasing choices for you.)  Our economy thrives on people who don’t want to delay gratification.  And I think short attention spans make it more difficult to resist buying.  (This would be more coherent, but I’ve spent too much time on the Web.)

I also have to say that I do disagree with some of the comments in the articles about the distraction of hypertext links.  When I was a kid I would often thumb back and forth between pages in encyclopedias and other books, hopping from one reference to another (or even pulling different books off the shelf).  Hyperlinks make it so much easier to check references.  Well, that’s a good example of how people differ.  I find that incredibly useful and I can ignore ones that I’m not interested in.  (Though I have on occasion been known to wander far afield from where I started.)

I’ve also started reading Raising Self-Reliant Children in a Self-Indulgent World by H. Stephen Glenn and Jane Nelsen.  That was written twenty years earlier than Esquith’s book, but also discusses the problems caused by too much exposure to TV, the inability to delay gratification, etc.  It also discusses how the breakdown of family structures after the Second World War and increasing urbanization also have contributed to problems for kids in many ways.  (I’m behind on summarizing books, so I won’t get into the details.)  I do want to say that the book is focused on building up kids and not tearing them down.  It’s based on what the authors call “perceptual psychology.”

‘The Shallows’ by Nicholas Carr: The Internet warps you

Book review by Steve Weinberg, USA Today

“What can science tell us about the actual effects that Internet use is having on the way our minds work?” [Carr] asks. His answer, iterated throughout this often repetitive but otherwise excellent book: “The news is even more disturbing than I had suspected. Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, educators and Web designers point to the same conclusion: When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking and superficial learning. It’s possible to think deeply while surfing the Net, just like it’s possible to think shallowly while reading a book, but that’s not the type of thinking the technology encourages and rewards.”

Carr cites numerous studies to delineate not only the impact on the brain, but also the alterations in brain biology that lead to the impact. It turns out the human brain is a shape shifter, the technical term being “neuroplasticity.” The phenomenon is not easy to explain, but Carr is adept at explaining with as little jargon as possible. “As particular circuits in our brain strengthen through the repetition of a physical or mental activity, they begin to transform that activity into a habit.”

A second USA Today story, this one about college students and information technology, contains mention of a study that I thought worth pointing out.

Back to school: Do kids learn as well on iPads, e-books? … (USA Today, Aug. 10, 2010) by Mary Beth Marklein

Some of the newer devices try to mimic traditional study behavior with features such as the ability to highlight text and take notes in the margins. Still, the gee-whiz technology doesn’t necessarily help students study better, suggests a study published this month in Journal of Educational Psychology. Students often highlight too much material, so building a highlighting function into the technology may simply enable students to continue an ineffective habit, the study found. “Worse, they may not even process or understand what they select,” says study author Ken Kiewra, a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

‘Dumbest Generation’? Professor blames technology by Erin Thompson, USA Today, June 3, 2009

Reviews Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30), recently released in paperback (Tarcher/Penguin, 236 pp.).

Tagged: brain development, neuroplasticity, Nicholas Carr, parenting, reasoning, television, thinking ]]> http://amidthemaddingcrowd.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/caught-in-the-web/feed/ 0 mylestougeau http://amidthemaddingcrowd.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/ecological-intelligence/ http://amidthemaddingcrowd.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/ecological-intelligence/#comments Sat, 07 Aug 2010 13:23:27 +0000 Myles Tougeau http://amidthemaddingcrowd.wordpress.com/?p=556 ]]> I recently began reading Ecological Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, who  is probably best known for his books on Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence.  He puts ecological intelligence in a different category that some of the other intelligences identified by Howard Gardner in that ecological intelligence has to be developed because the activities, and the impacts they have, are beyond our awareness and occur at such slow rates that there was no need for humans to develop that type of intelligence.  Climate change is one such example.

The subtitle is “How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything.”  He focuses on many of the same issues that William McDonough in Cradle to Cradle and Annie Leonard in The Story of Stuff do.  I found it delightfully surprising that a book by an author known for books on issues like emotional intelligence starts right off with a discussion of Life Cycle Assessment and industrial ecology.  (In fact, he refers to William McDonough’s “cradle to cradle” approach in several places.)

His discussion of why “green” isn’t always as green as it seems is useful for anyone wanting to make ecologically responsible purchases.

Goleman argues that one of the best ways to increase our ecological intelligence is through full disclosure of the impact of the products we buy, the notion of radical transparency.  He cites examples such as companies being required to disclose their financial workings as examples of how that disclosure helps investors make better decisions.

He weaves together stories about the effect of synthetic chemicals on our bodies, especially on our immune systems, and discusses how inflammation and oxidative stress could be at the root of all sorts of diseases (going well beyond cancer).  Body burden, toxicology, epigenetics, and green supply chains are all covered, even if only briefly.  He weaves together these topics in a very readable, understandable fashion.

Postscript: Just checked out his website for the first time.  His latest blog post is entitled “Leading sustainability” and discusses how consumers can use resources like GoodGuide.com to make more informed choices.  And I’m encouraged by the fact that he is working with folks like Peter Senge, a management guru.

Bisphenol A

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) recently announced the findings of a study that found BPA in a large percentage of paper receipts it had collected.  http://ewg.org/BPA_Found_In_Receipts

Chemicals in cosmetics

Another resource EWG maintains is the Skin Deep cosmetic safety database.

http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/

Speaking of cosmetics, Annie Leonard (“The Story of Stuff”) has come out with “The Story of Cosmetics”, a look at chemicals in cosmetics and personal care products.  The Story of Stuff blog looks at the cosmetics industry’s reaction.

Learning and developmental disabilities and other diseases and conditions

The Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE) covers a wide range of topics, from learning and developmental disabilities to the CHE Toxicant and Disease Database, a searchable database that summarizes links between chemical contaminants and approximately 180 human diseases or conditions, to the Metabolic Syndrome Discussion Group.

BP (not just oil spills)

The CHE site also includes news items like:

6 Aug Thousands sign on for $10 billion BP suit. The revelation that BP’s Texas City refinery emitted toxic benzene for more than a month has ignited a furor in the port community that has suffered its share of deadly industrial accidents and toxic spills. Houston Chronicle.

Yes, before the BP oil spill there was the BP Texas City refinery explosion.  The U.S. Chemical Safety Board conducted an investigation.  I believe that they are looking into whether these incidents show that BP fostered a culture of cutting corners.

Chemicals and depression?

Was reading Peter Kramer’s Against Depression, where he argued that depression is a true illness.  (At least that’s what I’m getting out of it.)  He makes a couple of points that struck me.  One, on p. 156 he states that there is a connection between diabetes and depression.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t cite a source for that.  And if true, it’s not clear which caused which.  That is, does having diabetes make it more likely that you would be depressed?  Or does depression in some way connected to the development of diabetes.  Or could diabetes and depression be caused by the same agent?  (Or some combination of the above.)

He also talks about how long-term stress can result in increased levels of corticotropin and that such stress can lead to depression and illness.  Of course, corticotropin is but one element of the neuroendocrine system.  And with many of these things, there are feedback loops that get out of whack if enough recovery time is not available.  That’s actually why some scientists have proposed that a chronic lack of sleep can cause obesity over the long haul.  The International Agency for Research on Cancer and NIOSH are looking at whether “shift work” (along with a number of chemicals) can be considered carcinogenic.

Leptin: An example of what we didn’t know

Leptin, the appetite hormone, was not discovered until 1994 (though its effects had been observed much earlier).  (Zhang Y, Proenca R, Maffei M, Barone M, Leopold L, Friedman JM (December 1994). “Positional cloning of the mouse obese gene and its human homologue”. Nature 372 (6505): 425–32. doi:10.1038/372425a0. PMID 7984236.) I mention that because chemical industry apologists seem to ignore the fact that we’ve learned a lot about the human body in the last 15-20 years.  And the more we learn, the more we discover how chemicals can mess up our systems.

Regarding leptin, I found the following using the National Library of Medicine’s MedlinePlus service.

A National Cancer Institute fact sheet on physical activity and cancer states that “increasing physical activity may influence insulin and leptin levels and influence breast cancer prognosis.”

An EPA report, “A Decade of Children’s Environmental Health Research:  Highlights from EPA’s Science to Achieve Results Program,” cites an EPA-funded study that found that “autistic children showed higher levels of leptin (a hormone that affects the regulation of body weight, metabolism, and reproductive function, and influences the immune system) in their blood when compared to typically developing children (Ashwood et al. 2007; R829388C002).”

Citation: Ashwood P., Kwong C., Hansen R., Hertz-Picciotto I., Croen L., Krakowiak P., Walker W., Pessah I.N., and Van de Water J. 2007. “Brief report: Plasma leptin levels are elevated in autism: association with early onset phenotype?” J. Autism Dev. Disord. Advanced online publication (DOI 10.1007/s10803-006-0353-1).  Abstract

So our bodies are these incredibly complex systems.  Some chemical companies would have you believe that the stuff they make, even the synthetic chemicals that human beings have never been exposed to before, have absolutely NO effect on our health.

Truth is, despite the Environmental Defense Fund saying that we’re not guinea pigs, we all are.  (See previous post: “Tired of being a guinea pig?“)

“Would you like BPA with those fries?”

A routine study to determine the extent of man’s encroachment on the environment stumbled across a major finding late last week. Scientists sent out into the field to measure the size of the remaining tracts of nature realized, as they walked further and further from their cities, that common city chemicals may be ending up in some unexpected places.

“As I looked overhead, I realized that air was flowing into nature from the cities,” reported one scientist. “I was shocked when I realized that the pollution created in the cities might actually have been escaping into nature all this time.” (more)

Okay, so I was a little slow (it’s late) and didn’t really catch on until I read “New Human Is ‘Corn’s Koala,’ Says Monplanto” (LOL now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this happens in the future).

At a Friday morning press conference, biotech giant Monplanto announced that it had created a genetically modified human that derives all its necessary nutrients from corn.

“Just as the koala subsists entirely on a diet of eucalyptus, this new strain of human can live a full, healthy and happy existence simply by eating corn,” said Monplanto company representative Clyde Jackson. “No longer will we have to waste time wondering what to eat at every meal—the answer will always be the same: delicious, nutritious corn.”

Jackson said that Monplanto is merely freeing up time for busy Americans, who would rather be at the beach or playing video games than staring into the fridge with indecision.

“We have better things to do with our time than decide what’s for dinner,” he said. “Americans are all about being free, and this will provide freedom from food decisions.” <snip>

At the press conference, it was revealed that Monplanto’s corporate executives had popular food author Michael Pollan to thank for the idea of creating “corn’s koala.” The concept was first introduced in Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The author was reportedly “not pleased” with this attribution.

Nicely done! And I love the name!  (Cute picture, too. Ah, if life were only that simple.)

100 days of oil: Gulf life will never be the same (AP, July 28, 2010)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill100_days

BP’s oil spill caused by fed’s “dangerous culture of permissiveness” (McClatchy, July 20, 2010)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/3572169

House Energy and Commerce committee questions current and former Department of the Interior secretaries about the Minerals Management Service.

Gulf focus shifts, but where is all the oil? (AFP, July 27, 2010) – http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100727/sc_afp/usoilpollutionenvironmentsurface

Some 1.8 million gallons of the controversial chemical Corexit were poured into the Gulf from a short time after the spill began until early July.  (For more on dispersants, see below.)

“Less oil on the surface does not mean that there isn’t oil beneath the surface however or that our beaches and marshes aren’t still at risk. We are extremely concerned about the ongoing short-term and long-term impacts to the Gulf eco-system,” said [NOAA Administrator Jane] Lubchenco.

Mother Jones magazine’s Blue Marble Environment site comments on the AFP story above:

Mainstream Media Helps BP Pretend There’s No Oil

http://motherjones.com/rights-stuff/2010/07/mainstream-media-helps-bp-pretend-theres-no-oil

Media Runs Defense for BP, Again

“Disasters are Just a Normal Part of Doing Business for These Oil Companies”

Cites a new National Wildlife Federation report on oil disasters, “Assault on America: A Decade of Petroleum Company Disaster, Pollution, and Profit”

Report: Oil Disasters Common in Last Decade (National Wildlife Federation press release)

Also at http://motherjones.com/files/NWF_OilSpillsExplosions_pages.pdf (though it wouldn’t load for me)

Dispersants

Is the EPA Playing Dumb on Dispersants? | Mother Jones (July 20, 2010)

An Environmental Protection Agency staff member is accusing his employer of being coy when it comes to dispersant use in the Gulf. Career whistleblower Hugh Kaufman says EPA officials know that the chemicals present a threat to public health and the Gulf ecosystem and should be banned; they just don’t want to say so.

EPA Whistleblower Accuses Agency of Covering Up Effects of Dispersant in BP Oil Spill Cleanup

“Rush transcript” of interview on DemocracyNow.org

With BP having poured nearly two million gallons of the dispersant known as Corexit into the Gulf of Mexico, many lawmakers and advocacy groups say the Obama administration is not being candid about the lethal effects of dispersants. We speak with Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response and a leading critic of the decision to use Corexit. [includes rush transcript]

BP Gulf Disaster Act Two: The Corexit Calamity (Triple Pundit)

Stone Hearth Newsletters Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oil Spill blog

Chinese Oil spill

First details on China oil spill’s cause emerge (AP, July 23, 2010) – http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_china_pipeline_explosion

Michigan oil spill

Oil pipeline leak pollutes major Michigan river (AP, July 27, 2010) – http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100727/ap_on_bi_ge/us_michigan_river_oil_spill

Yet Another Oil Disaster … in Michigan (Mother Jones)

Crews work to keep oil spill from Lake Michigan (July 29, 2010) – http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100729/ap_on_bi_ge/us_michigan_river_oil_spill_24

New Gulf oil accident

Barge hits well near Gulf, sends oil, gas spewing (AP, July 27, 2010) – http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100727/ap_on_re_us/us_oil_well_accident

Apparently it hit an abandoned wellhead.  (See my earlier blog post, “Anticipating health effects from the BP oil spill,” for information about abandoned wells.  Or look at a list of GAO reports on abandoned wells and other oil and gas management issues for the same.)

http://www.saferchemicals.org/resources/obesity.html

Includes link to April 2010 report from the Washington Toxics Coalition.

http://www.saferchemicals.org/PDF/resources/obesity_factsheet.pdf