This looks like a slick idea for increasing the popularity of household recycling. Residents enrolling in this pilot program in Philadelphia are paid based on the volume of recyclables they generate, which is measured by recycling bins equipped with RFID (radio frequency identification) chips. Payment is in the form of coupons deposited into an online account, which then can be redeemed by participating local retailers. It’s called the RecycleBank, and you can find out more about it here.
Here is a story that has long been under the radar. I strongly urge you to read this article in today’s WaPo, then head over to Environmental Health and get the paper. This puts my profession in a very unappealing light, particularly coming on the heels of this story, and this story. It has less to do with hexavalent chromium as it does about scientific integrity in general. Manufacturing uncertainty about occupational and environmental health hazards seems to be a growth industry (we’ll see brochures from consulting firms offering it as a service before long). Unfortunately, at this moment, I don’t have the blogging time available to do this topic justice. While I fight to get my head above water, use this as your resource guide.
The daily newspaper has seen a rise in reported deaths. Local funeral homes are burying just as many people as they did last year, though the population has decreased. Families say that their kin who had been in good health are dying, and attribute that to the stress brought on by the hurricane, flooding and relocations.
It is too early for state officials to have statistics for last year, said Bob Johannessen of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. And epidemiologists are reluctant to draw conclusions based on anecdotal information.
So the epidemiologists are reluctant to draw conclusions? Let the economists look into it! Maybe they can come to a conclusion because they aren’t quite as weighed down by the rigors of empirical science, which can’t logically infer cause and effect relationships.
All of us over here at the environmental and public health corner of the blogosphere can stand down. The economists will take over now (actually, they did a long time ago. . .). If you have questions about the effects of television watching on your child’s brain, who are you going to ask, your pediatrician or an economist?
Watching the expressions of shock and dismay as the country veer to one-party hegemony both from a governmental and media perspective, I have to wonder what liberals (and particularly the left blogosphere) are expecting to happen in the future. Is the expectation there will be some kind of a progressive efflorescence, after conditions become so bad that millions of voters turn from the failed right? That could be dangerously delusional thinking.
An example of this diagnosis of the problem of one-party rule is Jonathan Schell’s final essay in his “Lessons from Ground Zero” series:
. . . today the many disparate crises of the past have combined into one general systemic crisis, placing the basic structure of the Republic at mortal risk. At the forefront of concern must be the question: Will the Constitution of the United States survive? Is the American state now in the midst of a transmutation in which the 217-year-old provisions for a balance of powers and popular freedoms are being overridden and canceled? Or will defenders of the Constitution step forward, as has happened in constitutional crises of the past, to save the system and restore its integrity?
The obvious precedent is Watergate. Then as now, the presidency became "imperial." Then as now, a misconceived and misbegotten war led to presidential law-breaking at home. Then as now, a quixotic crusade for freedom abroad really menaced freedom at home. Then as now, the law-breaking President was re-elected to a second term. Then as now, the systemic rot went so deep that only a drastic cure could be effectual. Then as now, opposition at the outset consisted not of any great public outrage but the lonely courage of a few bureaucrats, legislators, and reporters. Then it was the war in Vietnam; now it is the war in Iraq and the wider and more lasting "war on terror." Then it was secret break-ins and illegal wiretapping; now it is arbitrary imprisonment, torture and, again, illegal wiretapping. Then it was presidential assertion of "executive privilege"; now it is a full-scale reinterpretation of the Constitution to give the "unitary executive" power to do anything it likes in "wartime."
Arguments such as these have a disquieting touch of liberal smugness – “we’ve tried to protect the Republic from itself, and at least we aren’t sociopaths threatening peoples’ liberties” – that misses the real problem. I’ll quote from James Howard Kunstler as I like how he frames this real problem:
Practically everyone I know spends hours each day wringing his hands over George W. Bush becoming a fascist despot. But Bush is not the one to worry about as far as that goes -- anymore than Louis XVI was capable of acting like Napoleon Bonaparte. What they had in common was something different. Their regimes ushered in a loss of legitimacy.
Legitimacy is the quality that society vests in the individuals and institutions who run things, the belief that their authority is credible and deserved. Legitimacy can slip out from under authority all of a sudden, as a critical mass of the public loses faith at a deep level in the people in charge. Sometimes the result is the overthrow of government. Sometimes cultural authority goes out the window, too, as happened in the aftermath of the First World War in Europe, which produced a kind of nervous breakdown in the arts as well as the death of three dynasties (the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs, and the Romanovs).
The last loss of legitimacy in American political life climaxed in Richard Nixon's resignation. It was an orderly process, enabled by the ingenious framework of the US Constitution, but the institution of the presidency suffered, too -- and that is one of the reasons why Baby Boomers who lived through it are among the greatest hand-wringers over Bush. To many of us over fifty, all presidents after JFK are to some degree assholes.
It is easy to see the potential loss of legitimacy among all the authorities in American life today. In government, it is the astounding denial of such obvious dangers as global warming, recklessness in finance, and the gathering permanent energy crisis. The news media also fritters away its legitimacy, as when CBS's "60 Minutes" show broadcast a mendacious segment telling the public that the tar sands of Alberta would immunize us from a global energy shock. The arts lost their legitimacy decades ago, leaving little besides irony over their failings.
Kunstler doesn’t see us pulling back from the brink, either:
But if the American public becomes subject to political despotism in the years ahead, it will come from somebody other than Bush and it will come because the public will demand it. The American public itself has been so grossly passive, complacent, and irresponsible in its raptures of credit-card shopping, infotainment, and easy motoring, that when our society runs into trouble due to the things we have ignored, the public will beg to be pushed around, they will crave to be directed toward some purposeful action to save their asses.
That's why I think it's ridiculous to waste time wringing our hands over Bush. One day, very soon, for instance, we will find ourselves in a gasoline crisis that will not end. We will not be able to transport people and the goods they need around our country. Our railroad system will be a shambles because leaders like John Kerry were too busy wringing their hands over other things -- so we'll be stuck with no alternative to the interstate highway system. Likewise when the housing bubble implodes and the public discovers that an economy based on cheap oil suburbs and credit for the uncreditworthy can't continue, and nobody warned them about it.
At some point not far away, we'll have a president who puts children in uniforms because their parents will have been scared to death by their own lifetime of slovenliness. It may not get us anything, except the illusion that we can regain what has been lost forever. And it may not last long, as the illusions finally fall away and we are left with only what we can do for ourselves locally. But it will not come from George W. Bush. It will come because of our own fantastic inattention to the things that really matter.
Severe economic and social disruption from the next energy crisis. More Category 5 hurricanes in the Southeastern U.S. Water riots in the densely populated Southwestern U.S. The worst-case flu pandemic. As some point in our future, we will see ourselves being herded about and told what to do, not just because conditions are bad enough that despotic measures are needed, but also because we have become accustomed to them.
Particulate Matter Regulatory Controversies and the Maryland Nurses Association Study
Emissions from Maryland's six largest coal-burning power plants contribute to 700 deaths each year, including 100 deaths in Maryland, according to a Harvard University study sponsored by the Maryland Nurses Association. The MNA supports a bill in the state legislature that would require power plants to sharply reduce pollution over the next decade.
The investigators from the Harvard School of Public Health used published emissions data of oxidant gases (oxides of nitrogen and sulfur dioxide) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) for the six coal-fired power plants, estimated the concentrations in air surrounding those plants using an air dispersion model, and combined those modeled concentrations with published concentration-response functions (responses being mortality or morbidity as reflected in hospital admissions) and population statistics to estimate the health impacts.
This study concluded that the total contribution to ambient PM2.5 concentrations in Maryland is around 0.2 to 1 ug/m3. While it’s a small contribution to the overall PM2.5 concentrations, which range from 12 to 17 ug/m3, the investigators concluded there may be important public health considerations associated with that increment. Relatively small reductions in concentrations could yield substantial public health benefits. For example, the investigators project the impacts to Maryland, and nationally (i.e. the surrounding six states such as Pennsylvania and New York) from emissions from the six power plants:
Scaling to current population data and aggregating across all six power plants, I estimate an annual impact in Maryland on the order of 100 premature deaths, 4,000 asthma attacks, and over 100,000 person-days with minor restrictions in activity. The corresponding annual national impacts from the six power plants are approximately 700 deaths, 30,000 asthma attacks, and nearly 800,000 person-days with minor restrictions in activity.
Using standard economic values corresponding to health endpoints, the investigators conclude that the annual economic burden would be on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars within Maryland and billions of dollars nationally. There are uncertainties in these estimates, driven in large part by the economic value assigned to a premature death (i.e. the so-called “six million dollar man”), but they are close enough for purposes of discussing the relative merits of various control decisions. The report observes that most of the remaining fine particulate matter comes from numerous other sources such as mobile source emissions and out of state power plants, which may be more difficult for the state of Maryland to control (yes, I can hear the power companies now, “why is that our problem?” But there’s a political solution to the public health problem, if everyone works together). According to the American Lung Association of Maryland, there are feasible control technologies to reduce power plant emissions; much of the fine particulate matter impact is related to sulfur dioxide emissions from coal burning (sulfur dioxide oxidizes in the atmosphere to form particulate sulfates), which can be addressed using flue gas desulfurization.
The publication of this study comes on the heels of EPA’s proposed revisions to the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for particulate matter. Over the past several years, EPA has been conducting a scientific review of the PM NAAQS, a concentration in air that is intended by Congress to protect public health with an ample margin of safety. EPA’s review has been overseen by the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee or CASAC, a panel of EPA’s Science Advisory Board. According to the LA Times, the EPA has chosen to ignore the advisory committee’s recommendations, apparently an unprecedented act. In addition, one participant in the standard-setting process noted that the Office of Management and Budget had extensively marked up the draft standard, revisions that did not receive any public comment.
EPA proposed to slightly tighten particulate matter standards, but to a lesser extent than recommended by CASAC. The agency also proposed to exempt rural areas and mining and agriculture industries from standards governing larger coarse particles, and declined to adopt CASAC’s proposed welfare standards (i.e. for reduction of visible haze). According to the LA Times, some panel members called the actions on the part of EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson "egregious" and said his proposals "twisted" or "misrepresented" their recommendations. Following a teleconference Friday February 3, 2006, the committee members will urge Johnson to reconsider his proposals. It was the first time since the committee was established under the Clean Air Act nearly 30 years ago that it has asked the EPA to change course, according to EPA staffers and committee members. A brief description of this controversy is in a statement issued by the American Lung Association, following the February 3, 2006 teleconference held by CASAC.
The NAAQS thing isn’t news – there was a squabble over it at Political Animal a couple of weeks back (true to form though, that post and the comments provided little of a cogent analysis). The CASAC and EPA Administrator (and OMB for that matter) are arguing over fairly small differences in PM concentrations in terms of a standard; though those fairly small differences appear to have significant public health consequences. I’ve been drafting a post about it, which has stalled a bit because I’ve had to go back and refresh my memory about the relative significance of the 24-hour and annual average NAAQS to do it justice. It isn’t the easiest thing to write a readable analysis of a highly technical topic and still have it be fresh news.
In many respects, our report is a litany of mistakes, misjudgments, lapses, and absurdities all cascading together, blinding us to what was coming and hobbling any collective effort to respond.
Now that “A Failure of Initiative” has come out, one hopes that people will stop watching television, shopping, driving around, or whatever the hell they’re doing long enough to download this report and read at least the preface and executive summary, because it’s only eight pages total. And then I hope it makes them good and mad – mad enough to demand more accountability – from bureaucrats, from the President and. . . from the Congress. Congressman Melancon was right on point when he said that the majority report doesn’t adequately assign responsibility for the failed disaster response, but I wonder if he was including himself and his colleagues in that list of responsible parties.
Time and time again I read in the report that “the government” failed. Not to let the bureaucracy off the hook (they in essence are the adult supervision in such matters), the government isn’t just FEMA or Department of Homeland Security. The government is also Congress, the President, and all of us. Either directly or by default (by not voting, or speaking out), we’ve encouraged Congress and the President to shape the priorities, agendas and funding of government agencies. We’ve encouraged Congress and the President to have DHS focused on all the fun paramilitary stuff designed to prevent terrorism to the exclusion of the disaster response and mitigation, ironically, something we would desperately need, if the terrorists were to get through in a big way. . ..
So, it’s time to take our medicine. The report was available fairly late in the day on Wednesday, and I’ve only started skimming it, but here are the big-picture conclusions in the executive summary:
The accuracy and timeliness of National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center forecasts prevented further loss of life
The Hurricane Pam exercise reflected recognition by all levels of government of the dangers of a category 4 or 5 hurricane striking New Orleans
Levees protecting New Orleans were not built for the most severe hurricanes
The failure of complete evacuations led to preventable deaths, great suffering, and further delays in relief
Critical elements of the National Response Plan were executed late, ineffectively, or not at all
DHS and the states were not prepared for this catastrophic event
Massive communications damage and a failure to adequately plan for alternatives impaired response efforts, command and control, and situational awareness
Command and control was impaired at all levels, delaying relief
The military played an invaluable role, but coordination was lacking
Medical care and evacuations suffered from a lack of advance preparations, inadequate communications, and difficulties coordinating efforts
Long-standing weaknesses and the magnitude of the disaster overwhelmed FEMA’s ability to provide emergency shelter and temporary housing
FEMA logistics and contracting systems did not support a targeted, massive, and sustained provision of commodities
Contributions by charitable organizations assisted many in need, but the American Red Cross and others faced challenges due to the size of the mission, inadequate logistics capacity, and a disorganized shelter process
The committee makes the point this disaster not only was predictable, but predicted, and expresses dismay that the response could have been so poor with so much advanced notice. It finds this particularly distressing in the face of the risk of terrorist attack, and the oncoming 2006 hurricane season. I wonder how well we’re going to respond to a really slow-moving oncoming disaster.
Preview of the “Failure of Initiative” Report on Hurricane Katrina Disaster Response
The House of Representatives Select Bipartisan Committee report on disaster response from Hurricane Katrina, which has been described as “blistering” by the Washington Post, is due out tomorrow. But you can get a preview from the minority report issued by Democratic members on the Committee, Representatives Charles Melacon and William J. Jefferson. The minority report can be found on Representative Melacon’s web page. Here’s a fair sample of it, from the executive summary:
Overall, the majority report is a comprehensive, detailed recitation of the problems that occurred in responding to Hurricane Katrina. It is also a condemnation of the nation’s progress in responding to catastrophic events since 9/11. We concur with the report’s overarching conclusion that the response to Hurricane Katrina was “a national failure, an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare.” We also agree that Hurricane Katrina was “a failure of leadership.”
For all it accomplished, however, the Select Committee adopted an approach that largely eschews direct accountability. The majority report rarely assesses how these problems occurred, why they were not corrected sooner, and who in particular was responsible. Instead, the report uses the passive voice to describe generic “institutional” failures, general “communications problems,” and vague “bureaucratic inertia.” It seldom holds anyone accountable for these failures.
“. . . a national failure, an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare” is what the Republicans in Congress are saying about the Bush Administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina. One wonders how much more scathing the Democratic version is. Hopefully, this small taste will encourage you to go to Representative Melacon’s page, download the minority report and start reading. Hopefully, I’ll have a post up on the majority report tomorrow.
Jordan over at Confined Space reminds us of last year’s disaster in Graniteville, South Carolina January 6, 2005, when a train transporting pressurized chlorine cylinders crashed into a parked train. According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report released in November 2005, the train engineer and eight other people died as a result of chlorine gas inhalation. About 554 people complaining of respiratory difficulties were taken to local hospitals. Of these, 75 were admitted for treatment. Because of the chlorine release, about 5,400 people within a 1-mile radius of the derailment site were evacuated for several days.
The NTSB concluded that the probable cause of the accident was collision with a train parked on a siding. The crew of the parked train failed to return the switch to the main line after moving onto the siding. One of the chlorine cylinders was punctured, despite being constructed of normalized steel which is more resistant to catastrophic rupture.
The lessons learned from this episode have been coming out. In addition to the NTSB report, Steve Brittle, who runs the web site chemicalspill.org has provided a detailed list of the lessons learned from the emergency response, based on analysis of news reports and personal observations while in Graniteville. The synthesis of those documents has turned into a relatively long post, which is forthcoming. However, what I’ve found instructive from this tragic episode is this: one out of three chlorine tank cars was punctured during the accident; the tank did not empty completely – one third of its contents remained after the accident; and the accident occurred in a relatively thinly-settled area. Some might be reassured the impact from this incident wasn’t much worse; I wonder what might happen if something similar occurs somewhere more densely settled, and with a larger hazardous materials inventory. The NTSB report concluded "even the strongest tank cars in service can be punctured in accidents involving trains operating at moderate speeds."
NSTB reported that emergency response by the local authorities was “timely, appropriate and effective”, though first responders from the local fire department entered the crash site without first donning personal protective equipment, which, according to Mr. Brittle’s evaluation, degraded their response capabilities and produced injuries. Perhaps it was good that the response stayed local, and FEMA elected not to get involved (it wasn’t a natural disaster). The forthcoming House of Representatives report on disaster response from Hurricane Katrina is described as “blistering” by the Washington Post. Similarly, there is a perception that little has been done in the aftermath of the Graniteville accident to improve the safety of hazardous materials transportation. Local authorities everywhere should sit up and take note of this.
So it looks like the White House is cutting loose Michael Brown (as in “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job”), and in response, he’s going to testify before Congress on his conversations with the President et al as Hurricane Katrina made landfall back in August.
It’s a little late, but this might shed some light on why the government’s response to the disaster was so stunningly ineffective. The White House has consistently refused to cooperate fully with Congressional oversight committees trying to get to the bottom of the Hurricane Katrina debacle.
However, enough has come out to provide some lessons in how not to respond to a disaster. Some of the points made in today’s New York Times include the fact that federal officials knew well in advance that a 100,000 people in New Orleans had no way to escape on their own from a major hurricane; Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Department of Homeland Security did not appoint a principal official to oversee disaster response and coordinate activities of the different agencies involved; the Louisiana transportation secretary flatly admitted there were no plans in place to evacuate thousands in nursing homes and hospitals; city of New Orleans officials delayed in issuing an evacuation order; city search and rescue capabilities were inadequate despite many years warning about a catastrophic event; FEMA did not have food and water supplies waiting at the Convention Center, even though the city has designated it as an emergency shelter.
The National Weather Service worked effectively, accurately predicting the force of the storm. But noone heeded the warning. President Bush, on vacation in Texas during the disaster had announced that New Orleans had “dodged the bullet”. However, the previous evening, a federal emergency response official had sent a message to DHS (which made its way to the White House) that the levee had failed and that New Orleans was being flooded.
Hopefully, the Congressional committees investigating this debacle produce some useful lessons for the future. One wonders how much of a red-state American you have to be to feel comfortable leaving these guys, or anyone resembling them, in charge of this stuff. Do you think they're prepared any better now than last fall for something similar? This should be a wakeup call to any community, red, blue, purple or whatnot, that the Bush Administration just isn’t going to be there for you in the event of a disaster, natural or otherwise.
I became very familiar with methyl bromide over 20 years ago studying pesticide exposure as a state regulator. We were trying to phase it out because of the human health hazards, even in the 1980s. Chemicals generally don’t scare me that much, but working around methyl bromide, even the casual exposures I experienced, were a bit worrisome – odorless, colorless, delayed onset neurotoxicant with either acute or chronic exposures. One of the stories I heard about the early years (the 1940s) of methyl bromide use was that sheriffs deputies in Indio would pick up men wandering the streets at night, hallucinating, under the suspicion that they were stoned from smoking marijuana – later it would be discovered they were simply warehouse workers who had been busily fumigating dates all day.
So, you have a chemical that’s a gas at room temperature, with virtually no warning properties of exposure, produces delayed onset neurotoxicity including long-lasting cognitive and peripheral neurological effects and, is an ozone-depleting chemical.
And growers in the U.S. continue to fight like mad to continue using it.
The EPA is proposing to allow continued use of methyl bromide for agricultural pest control, deemed a critical use under the Montreal Protocol, at least through 2008.
This is a significant threat to our sovereignty, as you can see from reading Rising Above The Gathering Storm. However some Band-Aid measures to hire more teachers and start more programs isn’t enough. Americans need to make a fundamental change in their worldview, currently characterized by James Howard Kunstler:
It has been very hard for Americans - lost in dark raptures of nonstop infotainment, recreational shopping and compulsive motoring - to make sense of the gathering forces that will fundamentally alter the terms of everyday life in our technological society.
I don’t think this President can or will ask us to make that fundamental change. It’s not good for business.
