via Ottawa Citizen | Canada’s Asbestos Time Bomb
Comprehensive series of articles on the health effects of Canadian asbestos in India.
Oct 272008
Oct 222008
Dow AgroSciences is considering using the controversial investor-protection provisions of the North American free-trade agreement to seek compensation from the federal government over Quebec's ban on the cosmetic use of pesticides.
The company, a maker of the weed-killer 2,4-D, filed a notice of intent to submit a claim to arbitration under NAFTA in late August. The 27-page legal action was posted yesterday on the Foreign Affairs website, where it is listed as a dispute to which Canada is a party.
via globeandmail.com: Ban on pesticides may face NAFTA test
Here is Sierra Club’s assessment of 2,4-D. It is not as bad as, say, DDT, but not something an average householder would ever need to use. Limiting use and exposure is in everyone’s best interest except Dow’s, which is why they have filed this lawsuit.
I would say it infringes on a province’s right to set strict health and safety standards for its people, but if we accept that corporations have more rights than people, we would expect this kind of lawsuit to happen with more frequency.
Note that a much more egregious actor, lindane, which was deregistered by even the Bush EPA is subject of a similar challenge in Canada, and Bisphenol A is probably next.
Can’t blame the companies for exploiting loopholes (that they no doubt inserted, of course), but it seems that countries should always have the right to enforce stricter standards if they so desire.
Oct 202008
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.
Oct 172008
Canada is expected to formally declare on Saturday that the controversial chemical bisphenol A (BPA) is a hazardous substance.
The move will make Canada the first country in the world to put the chemical on a list of toxic substances that will ban the material from being used in such products as baby bottles.
via CTV.ca | Canada to put BPA on toxic substances list
Good for Canada. Timing of when cans (the biggest potential source of adult exposure) will be BPA free is up in the air.
May 062008
Scientists have pinpointed a reason why people with Indian ancestry may be more prone to weight problems.They have found this group is more likely to carry a gene sequence linked to an expanding waist line, weight gain and type 2 diabetes.The sequence, discovered by a team led by Imperial College London, is carried by 50% of the population – but is a third more common in Indian Asians.
BBC NEWS | Health | Genes ‘up Indians’ obesity risk’
Relax, all desis, it’s not your fault, it’s genetics.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Americans in households making less than $30,000 a year spend nearly 20% of their lives in moderate to severe pain, compared with less than 8% of people in households earning above $100,000
Millions of Americans in Chronic Pain – TIME
Based on a study published in the Lancet (much moolah required to read, funny that the authors of an article on the class/money based nature of pain would publish in a journal that requires all kinds of money to read, heard of PLOS?), one would have to say yes. People in low paying service jobs don’t have the luxury of mid afternoon yoga, or that once a week massage, or being able to take a “mental health” day, or any such luck. Also, the work is physically demanding, long hours of standing, heavy lifting, and repetitive motions the body was not designed for.
Krueger notes that the type of pain people reported typically fell on either side of the rich-poor divide. “Those with higher incomes welcome pain almost by choice, usually through exercise,” he says. “At lower incomes, pain comes as the result of work.” Indeed, Krueger and Stone found that blue-collar workers felt more pain, from physical labor or repetitive motion, while on the job
It is very sad, but a lot of this pain is avoidable. Next time you go to the grocery store, notice that the people at the check out counter stand all the time. Why? What about their job requires continuous standing? I’ve been to other countries, Germany for instance, where they are provided with high chairs that help them move the items from the conveyor through the scanner to the bagging area with much less effort. How many chairs have you seen in a grocery store lately?
Why can’t this very simple system be implemented? It would provide much relief. Three major issues:
- Lack of bargaining power: Unions are a dirty word. Last I heard, the unionization rate in the states was 12%. No one speaks for the cashier. It is considered a low paying, low skill occupation where people can be replaced easily and without “pain”. So, you’re on your own, ask for a chair, and you’ll be seated in one very soon (at home, your ass fired and tired).
- Money: And this is linked to point 1. Implementation of any programs designed to make workers’ lives a little easier costs money up front. Since workers are expendable and have no voice, it’s easiest to steal from them and deny them basic comforts.
- The American notion of individualism: You deserve what you get based on how hard you work and how intelligent you are. Grocery store cashiers must be lazy and dumb to be where they are. they “deserve it”
I don’t see it changing at all. But next time you walk into a grocery store and find a rather sullen clerk, it’s not that she’s lazy or has a bad attitude, she may just be in a lot of pain.
Happy Sunday!
Tags: OccupationalHealth, Pain
Why else do they not want people to know that their product is being used? You would think that Monsanto with its millions in profits and its monopoly in bovine growth hormone, would let the free market decide whether people want their ice cream/milk rBGH free or not. Surely, wouldn’t Monsanto’s commanding market presence, and the simple fact that conventional milk supplied by hormone injected cows tends to be cheaper than rBGH free milk be a sufficient counterweight against a simple rBGH free label?
The ice cream maker has joined a national campaign to block what critics say is an effort driven by Monsanto (MON), which markets recombinant bovine somatotropin, or rBST, also known as recombinant bovine growth hormone, or rBGH.The hormone, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration to boost production in dairy cows in the early 1990s, was not approved in Canada, Japan or the European Union, largely out of concern it may be harmful to animals.A newly formed dairy producers’ group, backed by Monsanto, is pushing for labeling changes, saying hormone-free labels imply that the milk is safer than other milk, when they say it’s not.
Ben & Jerry’s in fight over hormone labeling – USATODAY.com
This is a classic strawman’s argument. I don’t know if there is sufficient evidence to show that hormone filled milk is harmful to humans, but there is sufficient evidence that it is harmful to cows. As always, I point to the Meatrix (Note, available on youtube as well, but embedding has been disabled…).
Here’s a letter from the Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility summarizing the harmful effects of rBGH.
- Increase in IGF-1 levels – possible link to cancer in humans
- Mastitis in Cows – Do you want your breasts infected and painfully inflamed? That’s what RBGH does to cows
- Antibiotics Resistance – To combat mastitis, the cows are pumped with antibiotics, which end up in the solid waste, and water runoff.
- 15 other side effects in cows, bad enough that Canada and the EU do not permit this growth hormone
All right, the product is still legal here in the US and I absolutely respect Monsanto’s right to sell it, fight for it and conduct a vigorous product defense (including obligatory astroturf group rbstfacts). But stop trying to get the government to do your dirty work for you and “banning” companies from telling consumers that they did not use your product, it’s shameful and unnecessary.
Consumers have a right to pay premium for a product that they think is superior for one reason or the other. It is anti-free market and protectionist to restrict information that will help these consumers decide.
What next? We all know that cosmetics tested on animals are not more harmful to people than animal cruelty free cosmetics. Shouldn’t that label be banned as well?
Tags: bovinegrowth hormone, monsanto
Sure makes my graduate work in air quality seem a little tame!
The man behind the subterfuge (Researcher 2, male) was Ryan David Kennedy, 34, a scrappy Canadian graduate student with crooked glasses who is studying the impact of tobacco on air quality.He crossed the border at Buffalo on Monday morning and on Tuesday crashed the giant cigar party and trade show sponsored by the publisher of Cigar Aficionado magazine at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.
At a Cigar Show, an Air-Quality Scientist Under Deep, Smoky Cover – New York Times
Well, what did he find? Particulate matter readings four times higher than “hazardous”. Sometimes I think of strapping on a sampler and going to the local bar just out of curiosity. I can leave the bar if it gets smoky, the bartenders and wait staff can’t. I don’t see why this is not a clear case of hazardous working conditions leading to an immediate indoor smoking ban. but what do I know, I’m just a scientist!
Happy Thanksgiving.
Blogged with Flock
Oct 302007
In a normal world, when something is severely restricted in your country, you would not export it to another country under the pretense that used under certain, very restricted conditions, your product only causes a moderate increase in cancer.
While the federal government projects an image of being a helpful, international Boy Scout on issues ranging from peacekeeping to nuclear proliferation, Canada has a peculiar relationship to asbestos.
globeandmail.com: Asbestos shame
But we don’t live in a normal world, because asbestos is exported from Canada to India where it is added to cement.
Tushar Joshi, a noted New Delhi occupational health expert, is flabbergasted over asbestos sales by a country of Canada’s stature. “As a developed country, you expect more civilized behaviour,” Dr. Joshi says. Canada’s activities are “beyond comprehension,” he adds, calling Ottawa’s promotion of asbestos “a black spot on a sparkling white dress.”
yes, well said. It is very mysterious that asbestos use in India went up in the 1980s just as evidence about its incredibly destructive effects on respiratory systems had curtailed use in most of the first world. Clearly, third world lungs are not as important as Canadian lungs.
Asbestos is one area where Canada lags even behind the US. And Canada’s environmental practices are going to come under increasing scrutiny as climate change unfreezes the great white North and exposes the resources underneath.
Canada, the world is watching.
Tags: Development, Environment, Health, Asbestos, Canada
Oct 212007
The next time Giuliani tries to take credit for the decrease in violence during his tenure as NYC’s mayor, send him this chart.
The NY Times shines some light on Jessica Reyes’ excellent work linking decreased lead exposure to a drop in violent crime in the US. The decreased lead exposure, of course, was from the phase-out of leaded gasoline from the American market. BTW, Nascar still uses leaded gasoline in its cars, nice going, guys.
The answer, according to Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, an economist at Amherst College, lies in the cleanup of a toxic chemical that affected nearly everyone in the United States for most of the last century. After moving out of an old townhouse in Boston when her first child was born in 2000, Reyes started looking into the effects of lead poisoning. She learned that even low levels of lead can cause brain damage that makes children less intelligent and, in some cases, more impulsive and aggressive (Emphasis Added).
Lead exposure at an early age (2-3 years) is especially significant as this is an age where personality development occurs and any interference in neuron development and apoptosis (death!) can cause permanent changes in personality. This excellent review article summarizes the effects of lead on neuronal development.
Reyes’ research mentions that while decreased lead exposure was very well correlated with violent crime (accounting for 56% of the reduction in crime), no correlation was found to property crimes (such as theft). This of course makes intuitive sense. A property crime is usually premeditated whereas violence is usually impulsive (excluding serial killers, of course). It is more likely that a budding criminal sets out to steal a car than to beat somebody to pulp. It is when the crime goes wrong that the probability of a violent crime increases. An individual with damaged impulse control is then more likely to seek a violent way out of the bad situation.
Our society (like most) views violent crime as a moral issue, a matter of good and evil that is determined by your “character”. So, a simple chemical correlator to violent crime that can explain a majority of the commission of violent acts goes a long way in undermining this whole notion of morality and crime. Of course, there are other sociological factors at play which need to be addressed. But it is heartening to know that beyond all the complicated and recalcitrant social issues that underly crime, there’s a ubiquitously evil pollutant lurking that can be eliminated. I am guessing that this line of reasoning is not going to be very popular among the “tough on crime” types that perpetrate our political airwaves these days.
Reference
Reyes, Jessica Wolpaw (2007) “Environmental Policy as Social Policy? The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Crime,” The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy: Vol. 7 : Iss. 1 (Contributions), Article 51.