Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
I really will get on to talking further about how much we should be afraid or not afraid that our dry cleaning (or more specifically, the perchloroethylene emissions from our dry cleaning) is going to affect our health, and whether or not we should stop taking fish oil capsules (see me in the comments) because the Manteel Justice Foundation has a bug up its ass about PCB contamination in marine fish oils. But for now, I’m sharing this neat post about data analysis – it’s oriented towards market analytics using the Star Trek red shirt-guy-who-dies-in-each-episode trope (may all Wall Street bankers, stock traders and market analysts have unsatisfactory sexual relationships forever for ruining our economy), but is a useful tale for how to analyze data in general.
Here’s hoping that blogging resembling real environmental health science resumes soon. My apologies for subjecting you to this. I’m recovering from a head cold, and I’m overly preoccupied with the day job, and both seem to impede me from thinking very clearly.
RadCon was in town last week (RadCon, in the Tri-Cities, Washington. . . near where the Hanford Site is located. . . get it, RadCon. . . oh, never mind). I hauled both of the youth over to the Red Lion in Pasco to participate. They’re not into cosplay, and didn’t show up in costume, though my daughter did buy some steampunk-themed welding goggles. She also expressed an interest in the folks in neo-apocalyptic garb including respiratory protection. We saw several folks wearing half-face air-purifying respirators (I started telling her that the cartridges with the magenta stripes on them meant they were for filtering radioactive substances except tritium and noble gases, but stopped when I noticed that her eyes started glazing over), and one young woman in a faux-U.S. Army helmet, World War II style and faux-World War I full-face canister respirator (what most people would call a “gas mask”). I said she could have one for her birthday if she’d like.
The mixture of lectures, vendors, game rooms and people wandering about in costume made for a pleasant venue. It was clear that my kids (kids, hah – they’re close to adults now) were in their element there – my son pondered attending a lecture presented by some science-fiction authors about writing about time travel; over the years we’ve had several discussions regarding the nature of time travel, after I had given him a copy of Michio Kaku’s Hyperspace. Later, both of them sat in on a lecture on character development. In that one, my daughter asked a question about how to make a whiny, angst-ridden, emo character interesting. The participants struggled with that for a moment, until my son chimed in “like Anakin”, which provoked groans and chuckles from participants and the panel alike, but got the point across.
I couldn’t participate as much as I would have liked, since the whole work-life balance thing isn’t going so well right now. However, I attended a talk on protecting ourselves from collision with near-Earth asteroids. . . talk about a major environmental problem that is being almost totally ignored . . , which included on the panel Larry Niven, looking like the stereotypical grandpa of the “you kids get off my lawn” variety. I quickly got bored and didn’t sit through the whole session, since it was focused on the cool technologies that in theory could be deployed to save the Earth from asteroid impaction. I’m into cool technology as much as the next geek, but there’s the practical side of me who’s interested in hearing about the societal and technological changes involved in putting us on the path to achieve such a deployment (. . . boring. . .), and when are we going to pull our heads out of our asses and get on with it. . . . Sorry, this isn’t intended to be a rant. But the list of Manhattan Project-sized projects on the to-do list (manage climate change, achieve energy independence, preserve biodiversity, keep big rocks from dropping from orbit onto our heads) is starting to add up.
Attending a science fiction and fantasy con prompted me to think about the stories I’ve read with an environmental health theme. There’s Norman Spinrad’s short story Carcinoma Angels, where the hero is a cancer victim who uses guided imagery to direct his own molecular and cellular defense mechanisms and save himself, but can’t wake from his drug-induced trance; John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up, with it’s unsubtle message about unsustainable lifestyles including a scene in which hallucinogenic chemical warfare agents leaching into groundwater from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal make people in Denver crazy; Cordwainer Smith’s short story The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzdal, with a planet where being female is carcinogenic, a foretelling of life with endocrine disruptors including a frank description of homosexual lifestyles (you see, everyone has to become male in order to survive. . .). While it doesn’t harp on the subject, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy does mention the problem with space travel of astronauts accumulating potentially life-shortening radiation doses, though he pulls out the plot device of anti-aging drugs to offset that problem and keep his characters into the multi-generational story. I did enjoy the Mars Trilogy with it’s themes of ecological economics, and using the mission to Mars to give aerospace defense contractors something to do other than build implements of destruction. Maybe this whole topic could be a workshop at next year’s con.
Huffpo is info-smack for me. I really should dry out from it, but. . . well, what can you say? Maybe the smack example is a little much, so perhaps it’s like Pop-Tarts, tasty and somewhat filling, if completely un-nutritious. . . .
But sometimes, I get something mildly usable from it, at least enough to keep up the blogging rate. Today’s example is a post in Huffpo about the city in the nation with the highest home foreclosure rate, along with 16% unemployment: Stockton, CA.
I remember Stockton. Thirty years ago, I lived in Sacramento just about an hour north of Stockton, first working for the State of California regulating pesticides, then working for a couple of environmental consulting firms. I passed through Stockton more times than I can remember, on the way to the Bay Area – taking I-5 to I-205 and through the Altamont Pass was longer than I-80, but I would gladly drive the extra 70 miles, if I could go 80 mph all the way and avoid being stuck in traffic. Stockton was also a waypoint when driving south to the San Joaquin Valley, to work sites where I could observe and monitor workers using pesticides, measuring their exposure and collecting data to figure out methods for reducing those exposures.
I was just starting to see the growth in the Valley towns when we left California – tens of thousands of people who bought homes in places such as Stockton, Modesto, Merced, Patterson, and commuted two-plus hours per day one way to jobs in the Bay Area. I don’t think I have to read further to figure out what’s happened – the jobs in the Bay Area are starting to dry up, and there’s nothing locally to replace them. . . .
I’ve managed to miss all of this. We left California in 1995 for opportunities elsewhere, and it feels as if we dodged a bullet. It’s difficult for me to imagine what would be so desirable in a job that would make it worth driving 60 miles, one way in heavy traffic, while living in a garden spot such as Stockton. Don’t get me wrong, I could live there, if I had a job in town. Driving to Hayward to work every day? No way. But that’s me. In the end, I’m relieved that we got out when we did. California – forty million people can be wrong.
Wired Magazine online just published its top scientific breakthroughs in 2009, and there are two environmental health ones in the list: the sensor that can “smell cancer”, or in other words, can detect exhaled volatile organic compounds that are early biomarkers of potential lung tumors (blogged about earlier) and bisphenol-a. Wired cites a report from the Knight Science Journalism Tracker, which reports on a recently published paper in Human Reproduction about evidence of adverse male reproductive effects in workers exposed to high levels of bisphenol-a (BPA). Male factory workers at a facility in China with BPA exposure have “strikingly high rates of erectile dysfunction and impairment of ejaculation”. The study is on my reading list, but if this proves to be a real adverse effect, maybe it will be the thing that finally stirs some action to address BPA exposure. That or boost stocks in PDE-5 inhibitors.
I lurk over at Scienceblogs, where some of the bloggers routinely express their outrage at particular leaders of the “autism community”, when those leaders speak out about vaccinations as a cause for the cases of autism observed in this country. That outrage stems from the unscientific nature of the anti-vaccination arguments, the public health risk created from certain infectious diseases if vaccination rates begin to fall, and the that fact that it appear to work – despite the wrongheadedness of it, the proponents of anti-vaccination are experiencing some success in getting their messages across in the mass media.
Ok, so maybe everyone knows this stuff already, and I’m just demonstrating a firm grasp of the obvious, but there may be a conceptual model which provides some understanding about why the anti-vaccination spokespeople are resonating, and the science bloggers. . . aren’t. Consider: if it’s selling, if you yell it loud and long enough, and if enough people start believing it, whatever “it” is becomes the truth regardless of what the facts are. Also, it helps if the spokespeople are appealing on camera and speak from their Gut (which if you allow it, passes for “common sense”).
I can’t take credit for that analysis, but have absorbed it from a recent reading of Charles Pierce’s new book. I’ll be optimistic that Pierce’s message is something the Sciencebloggers can absorb and use, because it sure seems that being rational, sensible and evidence-based just isn’t cutting it.
In solidarity with Orac over at Scienceblogs, who is annoyed with overwrought science reporting, I offer the following submittal.
By sheer coincidence, I started blogging on environmental health, risk assessment and other stuff five years ago today. I’m ramping up to move Impact Analysis onto Wordpress and take advantage of all of the neat stuff it has. Expect it to be a bit of a slow process – I really should be doing day-job stuff instead of this right now. The blog isn’t going to be very pretty for awhile yet, but there’s hope. Wordpress promises to be pretty neat, but it’s going to take awhile to figure out.