Cancer, Animals and Man – The Case of TCE, Part 1

This was getting too long, so I’m going to have to roll it out in multiple posts. Previously, I introduced a recently published report that highlights the role of carcinogenic chemicals in the environment as possible causes for the incidence of cancer in the U.S. Revere addresses the issue of why we need to be able to identify environmental carcinogens, and why we need to rely on cancer bioassays using laboratory animals for carcinogen identification. Well-conducted epidemiological studies that show an association between exposure to an agent and occurrence of disease are the most convincing evidence of human health risk. But epidemiological studies, even when they aren’t confounded, often don’t point clearly to an exposure-disease relationship. Few studies are sufficiently powerful to detect anything but highly potent carcinogens. Finally, epidemiological studies don’t produce findings for many years after exposure occurs, and not until a sizeable number of people are ill or dying. Epidemiology has a crucial role in evaluating the human carcinogenicity of chemical substances, but if you’re trying to “get out in front” of carcinogenic exposures and address them promptly, epidemiological studies aren’t the tool you want to put a lot of reliance on.

However, carcinogenicity is not a “yes/no” property in a chemical. Even with animal bioassays, identification and evaluation of carcinogenicity in a chemical can be murky. If it’s a chemical where substantial costs might be involved in mitigation or substitution, the deliberations of its carcinogenicity can become torturous and prolonged.

Take trichloroethylene (TCE), for example. TCE is used as a intermediate in chemical manufacturing, and as a solvent for metal cleaning. Historic waste management and disposal practices associated with the latter use in particular have resulted in soil and groundwater contamination at thousands of sites in the U.S. Use of TCE as a cleaning solvent has decreased in favor of less toxic, water soluble alternatives, due to occupational health concerns and more stringent waste management regulations. However, there remains an enormous mortgage for the cleanup of the contamination remaining from past practices.

IARC judges TCE to be probably carcinogenic in humans, based on limited evidence in humans and sufficient evidence in laboratory animals. The NTP states that:

Trichloroethylene (TCE) is reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen based on limited evidence of carcinogenicity from studies in humans, sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity from studies in experimental animals, which indicates there is an increased incidence of malignant and/or a combination of malignant and benign tumors at multiple tissue sites in multiple species of experimental animals and information suggesting TCE acts through mechanisms that indicate it would likely cause cancer in humans.

Even the solvents industry acknowledges that TCE is an animal carcinogen, but they do question the relevance of the tumors to human health.

For many people, that summation of TCE’s carcinogenicity is enough to demand that we get it out of our environment – stop using it and use safer alternatives, and clean it up from contaminated soil and groundwater. As always, the devil’s in the details, in terms of figuring out step-by-step how those objectives are accomplished; particularly in the cleanup department – how low do you have to go? As you will see in the follow up post, science has its limits in helping answer these questions. Some have argued (as Ellen Silbergeld did several years ago) that risk assessment was a waste of time and an impediment to regulation. However, it also may be one of the tools to help all of us get involved with answering the questions of what to do about chemicals and our health.

I'm wading further into TCE science, and I hope to write more about this again soon.

Four Memes

Noone passed it on to me, but my contributions are:

Four jobs you’ve had in your life: paperboy, county parks and recreation worker, analytical chemist, environmental consultant.

Four movies you could watch over and over: Casablanca; Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan; Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; Monte Python and the Holy Grail.

Four places you’ve lived: Monterey County, California; southeastern Washington state; western Oregon; southwestern Ohio.

Four TV shows you love to watch: Babylon 5, the original Star Trek series, Monte Python’s Flying Circus, Warner Bros. Loonie Toons cartoons (does that qualify?).

Four places you’ve been on vacation: Point Reyes; Disneyland; Vancouver, BC; southern Pennsylvania (Amish country).

Four websites you visit daily: Left Coaster; Boingboing; Robot Wisdom Weblog; The Poor Man.

Four of your favorite foods: moderately spicy curried chicken; Vietnamese lemon grass chicken (a restaurant in Sacramento fixed the best lemon grass chicken on the continent, until they went vegetarian a few years ago); Ghirardelli’s milk chocolate; and grilled Copper River salmon.

Four places you’d rather be: New Zealand; western Oregon (not Portland or Eugene, though), Montreal, Quebec; Flagstaff, Arizona.

Dispatch from the War on Terra

I’m really trying to get a difficult-to-write post on chemical carcinogens done, and it’s not getting any easier when just plainly bizarre stuff like this shows up in the news. After hearing that government investigators were monitoring private property for nuclear weapons, specifically locations owned by Muslims including mosques, businesses, residences and warehouses, one of my question was would it really work? I guess if there’s anything worse than a warrentless intrusion on peoples’ privacy, though some think it’s perfectly ok, it’s an ineffective warrentless intrusion. At least someone in the media is on the job, though there are those who think this constitutes blowing the cover of an important domestic surveillance program.

You would think there would be some demonstrable effectiveness to the monitoring program because it’s being carried out by DOE’s (or DHS’s – I can’t keep track any longer) Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST). But I wonder now. News articles going back a couple of years have raised questions about the effectiveness of radiation detectors for finding smuggled bomb-grade material: For example, a 2002 article from the National Journal, and republished by nti.org, quoted Frank von Hippel, physicist and professor of science policy at Princeton University as saying that under ideal conditions, it is possible to detect a nuclear weapon from more than 200 feet away. However, factors such as shielding, natural radioactive background and the fact that uranium and plutonium are not strong emitters of external (gamma) radiation, might reduce the effective of detectors. Another story in 2004 reported that the radiation detectors, which scan for gamma ray and neutron emissions and used at ports and border crossings to detect smuggling of nuclear materials, were ineffective and prone to nuisance alarms. Also cited in the 2004 story was a Stanford University study that concluded that with all aspects of port security, including radiation detectors, there is less than a 10-percent chance of border and customs inspectors detecting a shielded nuclear weapon transported by an unknown carrier, increasing to a 24-percent chance with a certified shipper.

A more recent paper published by the Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation states flatly, “Fixed detectors, portal, and NEST teams won’t work for shielded HEU* on a national scale; a distributed network of in-vehicle detectors is also necessary to deter nuclear terrorism.” This October 2005 paper concluded:

Calculations of a link budget for passive detection of HEU and Plutonium (Pu) show that using emitted gamma rays and neutrons is physically limited by the sharp attenuation of its radioactivity with distance/shielding (2-4 feet or less) and the time required to count a sufficient number of particles (several minutes to hours), although Pu may be easier to detect than HEU.

Of course, we don’t know (and rightly so) what the surveillance teams are using as detection devices. Passive methods are likely being use, but what else? Air sampling? Soil sampling? These appear to be more useful for detecting facilities for manufacturing weapons-grade nuclear materials and fabricating weapons, activities that are likely to leave radioactive particles strewn about or produce emissions to the air (see here, here and here). So, unless there’s something about the detection technology not disclosed to those of us without the need-to-know (always a possibility), there is reason to question what these needle-in-a-haystack clandestine surveys have accomplished other than to demonstrate the Bush Administration’s willingness to do something else that is seemingly both paranoid and pointless in the name of the “war on terra”.

Meanwhile, actions that might have some real effect on nuclear terrorism, such as improved port security and international nuclear non-proliferation activities, suffer from neglect.

*HEU – highly-enriched uranium

No Word on Prevention

This just seems to be the time to talk about carcinogens and cancer. The New York Times today discusses the problem of diminishing returns with drugs used for treating cancer. Few drugs are being marketed, have been very expensive to produce and test, and provide few of the expected benefits. Better methods for imaging and diagnosis are needed (X-rays in particular are identified as having questionable accuracy). The problem has been chalked up as an obsolete drug development process.

For example, the FDA just approved Nexavar, a drug described by its developer Bayer as the first approved treatment for advanced renal cell carcinoma in more than a decade. Nexavar has been shown to double the progression-free survival in patients with advanced RCC. Before getting too excited about that news, it’s important to note this meant the median progression-free survival doubled from 84 days (with the placebo) to 167 days (with Nexavar).

When you factor in the more common side effects, skin rashes, diarrhea, and hypertension, on top of the additional three months of life, you start to wonder how worthwhile Nexavar really is, in the overall quality of life department.

Also, not a word about prevention in the Times article. Maybe Sam Epstein has a point about the cancer orthodoxy.

Maybe There Should Be A Plot

"Your attorney general has singled out French fries and potato chips, which reveals that something else is going on here," says Elizabeth M. Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health, a consumer advocacy group that receives funding from the food industry.

"There's a huge list of foods containing acrylamide, including bread and olives. Maybe he decided he didn't want people to eat these so-called junk foods."

That was from the LA Times story on acrylamide, datelined today (see yesterday’s post). I had opined that some might see going for a Prop 65 listing for high-carb junk food as a plot.

Maybe there should be a plot to stop people from eating so much junk food. It’s pretty bad when the BBC has more of a clue about our health than any of our news media.

I Don’t Eat French Fries to Avoid the Acrylamide, But It’s a Collateral Benefit

The LA Times contains an article that skims the surface on acrylamide, an animal carcinogen discovered to be formed from the cooking of carbohydrate-rich foods such as French fries and potato chips. The California state attorney general is looking into requiring posting exposure warnings under Proposition 65.

Acrylamide exposure in foods is a perfect example of the problem of carcinogen identification, risk assessment and exposure mitigation, particularly for substances that are known animal carcinogens but are uncertain as human carcinogens. Revere is taking a crack at the subject – you can read about it here. With regard to the mitigation piece, I’ve always seen Proposition 65 (essentially a mechanism that forces industries to either conservatively assess the risks of carcinogens or reproductive toxicants, or eliminate them from their products, or else be forced to disclose their presence in very candid language) as a very blunt tool for risk communication or exposure reduction. When you have a substance such as benzene, which is present at a couple of percent level in gasoline, you wind up with Prop 65 warnings on every gasoline pump in the state. As a former California resident, I’ve seen the blizzard of warnings everywhere, and can attest that you tune them out after awhile.

What I found amusing in the Times article was the interview of Elizabeth Whelan at ACSH, who wondered if the attorney general’s focus on French fries and potato chips was a plot. Typical. I avoid eating French fries because they’re empty calories, but I suppose keeping the trans fats and a few micrograms of acrylamide out of my diet are collateral benefits.

AP’s “Unhealthy Air” Report – How They Did It

By now, most people who follow the news have heard about AP’s report about unhealthy air, (also here and here) which focuses on emissions from industrial facilities, as tracked by EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory program. They ran the analysis using EPA’s Risk Screening Environmental Indicators model, which can be downloaded here. I ordered a copy (it’s free), and I’m learning how to use it – I’ll have more insights on the impacts associated with TRI releases as I get more proficient with it.

TRI and RSEI are counter-examples of the trend towards less transparency concerning chemical substances in the environment. Take advantage of it while you can. EPA is proposing to reduce reporting frequency and change the threshold for reporting for TRI, ostensibly to reduce the burden on small industries with small chemical inventories. You still have time to provide comments on the rule. As you can imagine, not everyone favors the idea.

Environmental Cancer Orthodoxy

There’s little time to post today, but I wanted to draw attention to this article by Gina Kolata in the New York Times discussing environmental carcinogens, which includes this bit of orthodoxy:

Rates of cancer have been steadily dropping for 50 years, if tobacco-related cancers are taken out of the equation, said Prof. Richard Peto, an epidemiologist and a biostatistician at Oxford University.

What appear as increases in cancers of the breast and prostate, Dr. Peto added, are in fact artifacts of increased screening. When healthy people are screened, the tests find not only cancers that would be deadly if untreated, but also a certain percentage of tumors that would never cause problems if let alone.

His analysis of cancer statistics leads Dr. Peto to this firm conclusion: "Pollution is not a major determinant of U.S. cancer rates."

Not everyone would agree. I’ve had a chance to skim the report from the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production titled Environmental and Occupational Causes of Cancer: A Review of Recent Scientific Literature (mentioned previously here), which does a reanalysis of cancer trend data published by the federal government, SEER, for example, and at best showing a lot of flat time trends – not steady drops in rates.

The Lowell report (co-published by the Collaborative on Health and the Environment – another interesting find) makes a reasonable point:

Cancer evolves from a complicated combination of multiple exposures. Attempting to assign certain exposures (i.e. diet, smoking, environment, etc.) certain roles in causing cancer that will total 100% is inappropriate given that no one exposure singlehandedly produces cancer and many causes of cancer are still unknown. Comprehensive cancer prevention programs need to reduce exposures from all avoidable sources. Cancer prevention programs focused on tobacco use, diet, and other individual behaviors disregard the lessons of science.

More on this later. The gym beckons.

Disaster Mitigation and the Unfinished Agenda

The Christian Science Monitor has an editorial today by Paul C. Light, a New York University political science professor about preparing Americans for disaster, pointing out one place where we’re really getting it wrong – media coverage (he’s got other comments too):

Despite unrelenting coverage of the chaos that followed the storm, Katrina had virtually no effect on the public's preparedness for disaster.

Of course, it hasn’t been too long following the disaster, but he’s probably right. There likely isn’t going to be some epiphany that promotes a flurry of first aid class taking, fire extinguisher buying, home emergency planning, town meeting, etc. sometime down the road. However, we fail to pay attention to this stuff at our risk:

Such complacency can only breed the kind of chaos seen on the streets of New Orleans after Katrina. Asked what they would do if a suicide bombing or biological attack occurred in their own communities, Americans said they would go every which way but loose. Some said they would flee, others would volunteer, and still others would contact their friends and family, try to learn more about the event, gather supplies, pray, or lock and load. Americans have never been more dependent on local governments, businesses, and charitable institutions to guide them after disaster strikes.

Dr. Light’s editorial comes on the heels of the 9-11 Public Discourse Project’s Unfinished Agenda report, which recently gave some pretty poor grades to the federal government on homeland security and emergency preparedness and response. I don’t know if state and/or local governments would do any better, though. Returning to Dr. Light for a moment:

Unfortunately, according to a second New York University survey conducted in mid-October, Katrina eroded public confidence in the very institutions that they depend upon. Barely a third said their fire departments and charitable organizations were very well prepared to help people in need, less than a fifth said the same about their local police, and barely a tenth said the same about local businesses and governments.

Katrina also created serious doubts about how well the federal government would respond to specific disasters such as terrorist bombings and a flu epidemic. Although the number of Americans who said they know what to expect from a potential disaster almost doubled in the weeks before and after Katrina, many appear to expect government failure. Only 11 percent of Americans said that the federal government was very well prepared for a flu epidemic, for example.

As the 9-11 Commission’s earlier report on the terrorism response says, the system is blinking red on this one.

Afterword: perversely, some of our news institutions, such as Fox, are actively undermining efforts to raise concerns and take action on these issues. Over the weekend at the gym, I was on the elliptical across from the TV broadcasting Fox morning business shows. Despite my best efforts not to pay attention (cardio can be a bit boring until the endorphin buzz starts kicking in), I watched the Fox commentators bloviate about the market “proving the 9-11 Commission wrong” that we’re not prepared for another disaster. I had a similar response as James Wolcott here – a smarmy cold-hearted bunch, all of them. Who are the real Americans, here?

China’s Other Miracle

It’s a miracle they’re not all ill yet over there. I suppose it’s a good time to remind folks about The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future, which was reviewed last year here.

Years to Your Life

While doing my research on an upcoming cancer causation post (see Thursday’s post for the backstory), I scanned a chapter on the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s web site, which promotes the messages that chemicals have been enormously valuable to us all and the health risks are trivial, followed by a cartoon depiction of the precautionary principle. See for yourself.

As with the controversy over teaching intelligent design versus evolutionary theory in science classrooms, presenting the “sound science” counterpoint to the precautionary principle in environmental health doesn’t necessarily constitute a balanced debate. But that’s a topic for another day. What drew my attention to the CEI’s paper was the opening argument that the American lifespan has increased immensely over the past century, and that we have pharmaceuticals, pest control, water treatment and plastics to thank for it. True, in part, though what phthalates in the bottles containing Mountain Dew have to do with any of it is a bit of a mystery.

We might be living longer, but are they quality years? CEI doesn’t talk about that, because the data probably wouldn’t support its thesis statement. According to the Centers for Disease Control:

At least 80% of seniors have at least one chronic condition, and 50% have at least two. These conditions can cause years of pain, disability, and loss of function. About 12 million seniors living at home report that chronic conditions limit their activities. Three million older adults say they cannot perform basic activities of daily living, such as bathing, shopping, dressing, or eating. Their quality of life suffers as a result, and demands on family and caregivers can be challenging.

This isn’t the way I want to live my rapidly approaching elder years, which is why I tend to pay much more attention to my own health promotion. How quality of life links to multiple environmental carcinogen exposures is uncertain, but that’s the point underlying the precautionary principle; that uncertainty should make us more thoughtful about creating exposures unnecessarily. The practice of “manufactured uncertainty” turns this concept on its head, almost in effect saying that because our understanding of potential health risks is uncertain, we can proceed full-speed ahead in producing and distributing chemicals into the environment (an antidote to manufactured uncertainty can be found here).

Coda: while a bit off-topic, it’s still an interesting point. Poor health, disease and environmental contamination perversely contribute to economic well-being (the latter pays my bills), by being included in the Gross Domestic Product. In an article published in Atlantic Monthly in October 1995 by Clifford Cobb, Ted Halstead, and Jonathan Rowe (no longer available online, but is discussed further here), the GDP was described as:

. . . a Mad Hatter's accounting system which adds but never subtracts. It lumps together just about everything that happens in the economy (the monetized portion, at least) under the archaic assumption that people become happier and better off whenever money changes hands. If you have been maimed in a multicar wreck, or gone through a grueling and costly divorce, or installed water filters in your home because the water supply is so bad, then please take a bow. You have caused economists to smile, and made your contribution to the GDP.

That quote was from an article by Jonathan Rowe, “Down Among the Economists”, about attending an annual meetings of the American Economic Association. It was published in Adbusters some years ago (not available online there – but can be found here). It’s still entertaining reading after all of these years, particularly in the observation that even Paul Krugman apparently was blind to the value of the Genuine Progress Index.

New Look – Rachel’s Democracy and Health News

No longer “Rachel’s Environment and Health News” but now “Rachel’s Democracy and Health News”, this progressive online newsletter now has the goal:

. . . to connect the dots to reveal the root causes of declining human health, the destruction of nature, and the inequalities and injustices that are rising like flood waters around us all. Who gets to decide? How do the few control the many?

Over the years, I’ve found REHN to be a useful resource, both in terms of spotlighting important trends and in framing the progressive perspective with regard to environmental health. I’ve not agreed with everything they’ve published, but reading their articles has helped shape my views of the conflict between the precautionary principle and “sound science” in environmental health. And, you cannot doubt Peter Montague’s passion and conviction when he writes about environmental health hazards from chemical substances in commerce. The articles are polemics and unabashedly so.

The introductory issue of the new RDHN showcases a report prepared by a team from Boston University and University of Massachusetts Lowell, and published by the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production titled Environmental and Occupational Causes of Cancer: A Review of Recent Scientific Literature. There’s a blog post on this in the future (so many projects, so little time), because I’m particularly interested in the contrast with the perspective regarding significant causes of cancer presented in Doll and Peto’s landmark paper, The causes of cancer: quantitative estimates of avoidable risks of cancer in the United States today.

The second issue tackles risk assessment, something I do for a living, with “The Emperor of Risk Assessment isn’t Wearing Any Clothes”. In my little forum here, I will be offering a counterpoint, because while I’m not blind to the possible abuses of risk assessment, I am also aware of its potential benefits for informing decision making about chemical hazards. There is a lot of value in this article, and it will require some time for the deconstruction to tease it out. Look for it soon.

Who Needs PCE?

Perchloroethylene (PCE) in dry cleaning is a poster child for the cause of finding alternatives to toxic chemicals in commerce, in today’s market-driven environment. As a society, if we can’t summon the collective will to solve the problem of implementing lower-risk fabric care products in place of PCE, we’re going to have real problems dealing with other widespread substances with health concerns, such as brominated fire retardants, phthalates or bisphenol-A.

Most stakeholders in the PCE “game” don’t really need it. People who use dry cleaning don’t “need” PCE; what they really need is convenient and affordable fabric care. Clothing manufacturers don’t “need” PCE, they need fabric care products that clean without damaging clothes. Dry cleaners “need” PCE, because many of them cannot afford the retrofits to use PCE alternatives and are afraid that customers, unwilling to risk their clothes on an “unproven” cleaning method, may start going to competitors.

Do chemical manufacturers “need” PCE? Available information suggests that current demand for PCE is around 300 million pounds per year, and is manufactured domestically in three facilities in the U.S. Government statistics report that approximately half of that used for dry cleaning, though a solvents industry statistic estimates that 12 percent is used for dry cleaning. A limited survey suggests that the cost for PCE is around one dollar per pound (or around ten dollars per gallon). Sources are here, here and here. The total annual value of PCE delivered to the dry cleaning industry (something less than $300 million?) would appear to be a small fraction of the total value of deliveries of all petrochemicals ($20.3 billion in 2002). This doesn’t include what users have to pay for emissions controls and waste management – but those aren’t things the chemical manufacturers have to worry about in determining the price for PCE. The point here is that chemical manufacturers might be able to manage without the PCE for dry cleaning market. The real challenges and costs are in helping dry cleaners convert from PCE.

This line of argument implies that I’ve already decided that the risks from PCE warrant finding substitutes, though not everyone would agree with me (see here and here). However, a fair-minded individual would entertain the possibility that having to do this much parsing of the uncertainty in health risks, for a setting involving widespread public and worker exposures, indicates that alternatives to PCE in dry cleaning should be given some consideration.

If we get to this point, the next step is to figure out, based on the risks from PCE exposure, what the alternatives should be. What kinds of risks need to be reduced, and how quickly should risk reduction occur? Can risks be reduced by the application of control technologies, or is substitution for fabric care chemicals needed? What are the relative costs of these various alternatives, and how permanent are they? Are there intermediate steps involved – should dry cleaners invest in PCE emissions controls now and purchase non-PCE-using wet-cleaning machines later, or is the appropriate wet-cleaning technology available now? What encouragement needs to be applied to the garment manufacturers to modify their “dry-cleaning only” labels, so that non-PCE alternatives can be used on clothes? What are the economic impacts of the additional risk reductions? How are these impacts offset for those firms hit the hardest by them?

For some, this sounds too much like risk and cost-benefit analysis, something which in theory is a useful tool for helping make complex decisions affecting different stakeholder groups. However, it’s flawed if not used in a democratic fashion (a discussion on making these kinds of analyses more democratic is here). Cost-benefit analysis enjoyed some brief popularity in the mid-1990s, but rapidly lost favor thanks to the Republicans in Congress, who brought it into disrepute by molding it into a tool for slowing the pace of environmental regulation and reducing regulatory impact to industries.

About the same time, there was active research into alternatives to PCE in dry cleaning – which seem to have tapered off. The work is still on the shelf though, waiting for us to summon the political will to get the process started. By itself, PCE is not the largest chemical or environmental health problem we face. But it could become the template for how we start developing alternatives for higher-hazard chemicals in general, if that’s what we want to do.

Minor Details

This morning, the Washington Post has a story about how high prices for natural gas has prompted new efforts to find and deliver more supplies to Americans:

Soaring energy prices and profits have revived plans for two massive pipelines -- the biggest private construction projects in North America -- to bring natural gas hundreds of miles south from the frozen Arctic Ocean, through vast untouched forests and under wild rivers, to the United States.

The plans would flood isolated areas of Alaska and Canada with thousands of construction workers, pump billions of dollars into poor native economies, and bring the roar of heavy cranes and bulldozers to pristine areas where it is now quiet enough to hear the hoots of snowy owls and the rustle of pine boughs.

The projects are crucial to keep up with the growing thirst for energy in the United States, say oil company officials and energy analysts. Supporters and opponents agree that the projects would affect Canada's sparsely populated north on a scale larger than the Alaska oil pipeline in the 1970s, and unleash a rush of new exploration and drilling.

Putting aside the questions for a moment about the habitat damage caused by new pipeline corridors, if natural gas is getting scarce, shouldn’t one priority be to conserve it for producing chemicals, such as fertilizer (so that we don’t starve in an effort to stay warm)? If you’re not aware of this already, nitrogenous agriculture fertilizers are produced using ammonia, and most of the ammonia used in this country is produced from natural gas.

Total annual natural gas consumption in the U.S. is currently around 2.2E+13 cubic feet. Non-fuel (i.e. feedstock) uses were reported to be 6.6E+11 cubic feet during the most recent Energy Information Administration survey of manufacturing energy consumption. Feedstock uses for producing nitrogenous fertilizers were reported to be 2.9E+11 cubic feet. So, total feedstock and fertilizer production uses of natural gas currently are only around 3 and 1.3 percent of total consumption. While it’s not a cause for alarm yet, demand for natural gas is forecasted to increase. So, if we don’t start thinking about these things now, when does that thinking happen?

Some Transparency

Josh Marshall congratulates the State of Louisiana, as a model of transparency compared with the federal government, for releasing publicly its copies of documents that provide an account of the disaster response to Hurricane Katrina. Of course, using the Bush administration as a benchmark of transparency for any organization is setting the bar pretty low.

I didn’t get as excited about this news, particularly when reading that distribution of the documents will be limited to the news media. According to the Governor’s office:

NOTE TO WORKING MEDIA FROM THE GOVERNOR'S PRESS OFFICE:
There are approximately 100,000 pages of documents that will be made available to the working media through a web based document management system at the Louisiana Department of Justice. In order to gain access to this system, please send a public records request on your news organization's letterhead including your name, address, telephone number and email address to the Governor's Press Office. . . .

“Non-working media” (meaning bloggers) and the public need not apply. Some transparency. This isn’t helping us much in getting prepared for future disasters.