Take a pill!

Yesterday at the smog summit I met a guy who claimed to be a former bigwig in the Canadian pharmaceutical industry (now he's into packaging (which seems an odd switch for a former pharma-guy); I gather he was at the smog summit because he's helping Loblaws to reduce their corrugated cardboard use by 50%) .

Her figures the next big thing in the air quality/health field will be drugs that treat the health impacts of exposure to air pollution. As in, something that would clean your blood of all those nasty toxins, or somehow prevent those respiratory effects if taken as a preventive agent.


He was trying to tell me that this should be where I focus my energies. You know, so that I can be successful and rich.

Even if I thought that he was right about this being a money-maker (and honestly? I can picture pharmaceutical companies trying it) I can't see myself ever being comfortable with such an approach. Aside from the fact that air pollution causes ecological and visibility problems in addition to health effects, I think that prevention is the only ethical approach to our air quality problems.

God. Let's not treat the symptom (ha! and any attendant side effects!). Let's prevent the disease in the first place.

Clean Air Day

Today I was at the smog summit in Toronto, which is held for the various constituent municipalities and regions to talk about different initiatives they've taken on and challenges they face when it comes to clean air. It's organized by the Clean Air Partnership.

It's great to hear that all municipalities are doing something - most of them have anti-idling bylaws, are involved in education campaigns in the schools, and are retrofitting municipal buildings to be more energy efficient. Some are replacing traditional streetlights with LEDs, which are much cheaper and more efficient, and others are investing in biodiesel and hybrid vehicles for the municipal fleets. Here are some of the highlights in my opinion:

• Burlington is offering free transit today and on several other days this summer to encourage residents to try it out
• Caledon is the first municipality to purchase all its power from Bullfrog power
• Newmarket has an environmentally progressive subdivision being built and another developer interested in following suit
• Vaughn works with local manufacturers to figure out how they can be more efficient and save money. In one case, a business was able to save about $80 000 in less than a year by becoming more efficient and less pollution. Now that makes sense!

Still, there's lots of work. Nobody mentioned the amount of money being put into highway and road construction and how new roads always seem to attract new cars. Ajax and at least one other municipality (AUGH! I can't recall which one!) were concerned that the Federal government appears unwilling to be a full partner in air quality and climate change initiatives. (And I was concerned that the federal minister of the environment was not at the summit.) As well, although the municipalities are trying to lead the way into sustainability, it is still not clear to me how they will convince the public and the corporate world to follow them.

a largely satisfactory cartoon

Today I came across an "archive of largely satisfactory cartoon freeware".

I enjoyed several of the cartoons so thought I'd share an environmental risk-assessment-type one (since I'm sort of an environmental risk assessment type myself):

Bush gets interested in climate change?

PICTURE THANKS TO NASA

Apparently climate change might be a big threat to Florida. Two researchers say that warming is causing a long-term increase in the number of bad storms experienced by the state. They say that warming of the ocean by 1 degree Farenheit since 1970 has doubled the number of Category 4 or 5 hurricanes.

There's lots of debate (as usual with the climate change issue) about whether they're right - some say that the region is experiencing a natural upswing in the number of bad storms, and that climate change isn't a factor.

A reason this might be news is that the state Governor met to talk with the researchers, and Bush has even commented on their results (apparently he thinks they are "compelling". I'm sure he's experienced in critical thinking about approaches to hurricane modelling and can tell whether their research is any good).

Maybe Bush will pay attention. After all, he owes Florida and its hanging chads bigtime.

Risk tradeoffs

Environmental Defence released a roport today describing a study blood samples were collected from several families across Canada and then tested for various toxins. The most important finding appears to be that many of the children have higher blood levels of some toxins than their parents do.

This is worrisome - after all, these kids have years of exposure left ahead of them. The main chemicals of concern are those used in flame retardants and stain-resistant clothing - chemicals which are extensively used today.

The story seems to have been extensively picked up by the media - and of course Canadians should be kept informed about potential risks like this.

But.

The way the media handles stories like this sometimes bugs me - it often feels alarmist. Here are some things that bothered me this time around:

1. in no secondary report could I actually find what the measured levels were! (I have now downloaded the original report which does contain this information - and have realized that I don't have the expertise to interpret the levels of risk associated with these exposures anyway. )

2. the report also concludes that for substances which have been regulated, childrens' blood levels were lower than their parents'. This was not the highlight of the news stories - but is equally important information IMO.

3. sometimes the cost-benefit implications of getting rid of a chemical should be considered - what is the risk of chronic exposure to flame retardants versus the number of kids who are likely to be more severely burned in their absence? Is there an alternative that we know is safe? I don't know the answer to those questions and I'd like to.

Thanks to Caroline who pointed out the report to me this morning

My precioussssss!

Yeurgh. It seems that although China's one-per-family babies should be awfully precious, there are a number of companies over there who are willing to risk the health of the country's next generation for profit. The most recent example has a company using plastic from discarded CDs to make baby bottles. According to the factory manager (in an article from China Daily),

"the factory used the reclaimed plastic because it was much cheaper than clean material"

It turns out that the bottles contain hydroxybenzene, a yucky chemical that leaches into warm milk and harms the kidneys and liver.

This company is not alone either: Reuters is reporting that two years ago, 13 babies died and more than 200 got sick after ingesting fake milk powder, and more recently, tests on children’s clothing have found that many containe a dye that can cause bladder and urethra cancer with chronic exposure. As in, the type of exposure you might get from wearing a piece of clothing a lot.

Ahhh, capitalism has come to China.

Maybe these examples are the exception; I hope so. Although it's hard to know how to value the health of the next generation, even in purely economic terms it's a poor trade for the financial gains these ethically-challenged companies are hoping for.

Besides. It's just so wrong.

In Celebration of Bike Week

It is Toronto Bike Week this week. And as it turns out I have an awesome, new, thematically appropriate (for this blog, anyway) cycling shirt with which to celebrate:

IT'S A SUSHI BIKE SHIRT!!!

I love sushi. I love biking. I especially love biking when it replaces driving and reduces air pollution and gets me a workout. And completely concidentally, we've been invited out tomorrow - to visit a Japanese friend who is preparing food for us. Oo, this is good.

Left or Right?

Last night some guy wearing a "Green Party" button on his lapel was outside our local cafe having a smoke.

I don't get it:

Aren't green party people typically environmentalist, socialist, left-wing types? And aren't cigarette companies representative of everything corporate, and capitalist? I mean, Philip Morris owns Kraft - between the cigarettes, peanut butter and that unnaturally orange macaroni and cheese, they are making trillions of dollars. And I'm thinking that altrusim is not a major part of their investment portfolio.

Why is it that the stereotype of the artsy left-wing types so often includes smoking? It seems like such a contradction in values to me.

Holes in the upper atmosphere and beyond

Yesterday I was writing about how I hoped that our collective actions - and those of our governments - really have made a difference to the ozone layer, but that although a new model predicted that the hole will disappear by 2050, I wanted more data before I would really believe that the hole is truly shrinking.

Ask and ye shall receive, I guess!

Apparently there is other evidence out there that the loss of ozone is levelling off: data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), from NASA and from a global monitoring network have shown that chlorine (a major component of CFCs, which caused the hole in the ozone layer in the first place) has leveled off in the atmosphere, and now show that ozone loss is leveling off, too.

The paper, by Betsy Weatherhead of NOAA says that the improvements are due to the 1987 enaction of the Montreal protocol. So hopefully that shrinkage will start to happen soon.

How nice to have a Canadian association to an environmental success story (however remote). How frustrating that the current Canadian environmental agenda seems to have disappeared into a hole of a blacker variety.

Click here for NOAA's latest view of the hole in the ozone layer. I wanted to show you today's picture but it won't upload for some reason. Grrr.

Here's to shrinkage

Everyone always says, " look after the environment, don't pollute, we're wrecking this place and we all need to take action". And then it always feels like any action I might take is pretty tiny compared to the big 'ole problems we seem to be facing, and that geez, nobody else is taking that action along with me.

Today I read that the hole in the ozone layer might actually start shrinking - and that it could be gone by 2050. Of course this is based on a computer model developed by one research group - and as with all science there's a bit of disagreement about whether or not they're right - but the point is, we found out there was a problem (CFC emissions), we took some action (reducing CFC emissions, disallowing them in newer products) and we got a result.

Erm, well not yet actually. We definitely got reduced CFC emissions... however, according to these modellers, the hole has reached its maximum size. Which sort of implies to me that it hasn't actually started shrinking yet. I know a lot of equations and complicated stuff goes into those models but I'll be feeling a whole lot more confident once that hole in the ozone layer is for sure getting smaller again.

I feel famous

Today, I found out that my blog has independently been discovered by two really cool forces in my life - by someone I know - the director of my choir, Cantores Celestes - which I talked about in this post, and by my very favorite girl-nerd science blog, inkycircus, who picked up on my Rustle the Leaf post from a couple of days ago. Aw, I like Rustle too.

Second Cup and the mystery of the expanding coffee

Second Cup has decided to change all their coffee sizes. Except they haven't actually changed much about the cup size except to rename them. What I used to get when I ordered a medium is now called "small". What Pat used to get when he ordered a large is now called "medium". And so on.

I think the price per cup (for the medium aka small) has gone up by two pennies.



So what are they doing?

(a) hoping that multitudes of people will initially order the wrong size and so they'll get more coffee and pay more by accident thereby temporarily increasing profits for Second Cup

(b) planning to cash in on that extra two cents per cup (I soppose that two cents per cup times many many cups isn't insignificant) and hoping that people won't notice the price difference because they'll be too busy wondering what size they should order

(c) hoping that we'll all get used to drinking bigger cups of coffee because we'll start off ordering the wrong size by mistake - but will end up getting used to buying and paying for more java, thereby increasing profits for Second Cup

(d) Just messing with us so that someone can claim they've rebranded the company or some such nonsense. Which, presumably, would be aimed at increasing customers thereby increasing profits for Second Cup

Ya, really, who knows what they're up to.

The illusion of May 24th long weekend

Every year it happens. I look forward to the long weekend in May. May two-four. Yep, the unofficial beginning of summer.

Like lots of other Canadians, I percieve that this long weekend is the first time it's sensible to go hang out in the woods - or to be outdoors doing something at least vaguely adventurous that doesn't require wearing snowpants.

Except that every year it rains. And it's cold. And this year I forgot the freakin' tent poles! Yep, three whole hours away from Toronto, and I have a brainwave that the tent poles may not have actually been packed in the bag with the tent. Sure enough, the tent bag was very squishy. No hope that I might be wrong.

So we end up shelling out a bunch of cash for a Coleman tent that has a fly about the size of my pinkie fingernail, and which proceeds to leak like a sieve precisely at each of the four corners as it pours rain overnight. Which is does, since it's May 24th weekend and it pretty much rains every year as far as I can recall.

Ah well. We managed to stay warm due to multiple layers of fleece and dry due to the astounding floorspace involved in the Coleman version of the "3-man tent". And we even got in some hiking along the Bruce Trail and saw some pretty spectacular scenery.

And this time next year, I'll probably be getting ready to enjoy my first "outside" weekend of the year once again.

More climate change propaganda?

Rustle the Leaf is a weekly syndicated comic strip designed "to communicate essential environmental themes and truths". It's an educational website and they provide instructions on how to link to the current strip, so I don't think thye'll mind me posting this one from their archives here.

It's got an odd but environmentally appropriate cast of characters that includes Rustle (the leaf), an acorn, and a water drop. [Reminds me of the stories my Dad used to tell about the adventures of Henry the water drop. I think the science-y part of me has clear genetic origins!]

Ironically, this week's strip is about converting animal waste into energy - so maybe the comment in my post from yesterday about not wanting to have extra poo around was a bit premature!

My propaganda wins

Oh, goody. A group I've never heard of called the Competitive Enterprise Institute has come up with a commercial extolling the benefits of a greenhouse gas. The idea is to counter some of the alarmist climate change stuff coming out in the media - most notably, the documentry featuring Al Gore called "An Inconvenient Truth".

Apparently the ad starts off like this:

A little girl blows away dandelion fluff as an announcer says, "Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution; we call it life".

Yup, that waste product left over when our bodies have gotten all the oxygen goodness out of it is part of life. Mind you, our bodies creates a variety of other waste products as well and I'm not sure that I'd happily accept having an excess of that stuff around in my "ambient environment" just because it was a byproduct of some useful industrial process... I won't even to get started listing chemicals that are vital for life and which are poisonous at high exposure levels.

"The fuels that produce CO2 (carbon dioxide) have freed us from a world of back-breaking labor, lighting up our lives, allowing us to create and move the things we need, the people we love," the ad runs. "Now some politicians want to label carbon dioxide a pollutant. Imagine if they succeed -- what would our lives be like then?"

I'm guessing that the alternative they're implying is something out of the dark ages. We'll have no light,ever, be forced to eat everything raw, and have walk miles to our workplaces (uphill both ways, and we won't even have any good hiking boots because they're probably all made in China).

I humbly offer an alternative view: phased-in green power including hydroelectric and wind power coupled with development of efficient products (heard of the Energuide?), reduction in electricity use (ahem, could we turn off the office lights overnight, please?) , embracing locally-grown produce, and designing communities that encourage walking and cycling.

AM I TILTING AT WINDMILLS?

Mmm... you smell... funny.

I read on popgadget today that Demeter Fragrance Library (I've never heard of them before but who knows, I don't relaly keep up with the fragrance world) is releasing a limited edition of...

Eau de Play-Doh. 1 oz costs $19. (U.S. funds, I presume.)

I guess it's in honour of Play-doh's fiftieth anniversary, but if you ask me it's plain wierd. I can imagine two seconds of nostalgic happiness followed by mild disgust for the rest of the day. Nope, could not wear this to the office. (Well, you know - if I went to an office)

I checked the website for Demeter Fragrance Library, and they have other scnts too, including chocolate chip cookie, mojito, and kahala Kamikazee (all YUM!) as well as beetroot, turpentine, sawdust, and holy water.

I'm still wondering what the holy water smell would be.

Census Day!

Today is census day in Canada. Apparently you can actually get fined $500 or spend three months in jail if you don't fill it out - although I don't know how often that actually happens. On the National tonight, it was reported that for every person not counted, the province loses 11000 dollars in federal transfer payments. Sounds like a lot of cashola!

We got the long form - which included over 50 questions and took P. ages to fill out online. Some of the questions were even a bit subjective - how many hours of unpaid housework did I do last week... umm... I'm not too sure?

And what a warm fuzzy feeling I get inside when I think of how we've helped all those companies that use postal codes and census data to direct their marketing.

Another H2O commercial gripe

Brita has a new TV commercial that points out that tap water and the water in your toilet tank come from the SAME source.

I think I was supposed to think: Ewww. And that obviously, it must be a good idea to put a filter on my tap, because who wants to think about drinking that nasty water in the toilet, right?

Before we hit the commercial's punch line I was actually thinking that maybe the ad was about water conservation. Silly moi.

Sheesh. Talk about playing on peoples' fears about bacteria.

Canada Health Day

According to a supplement in my daily national newspaper (provided for the Canada Health Network) today is Canada Health Day.

I find it a little odd that I'm registered in a graduate-level University program all about health, where a lot of us (rather unsurprisingly) research public health issues - and I hadn't heard of Canada health day at all.

Not through school, or the media, or just random emails from various agiencies I deal with.

What is Canada health day supposed to be? 'Cuz if I didn't even know about it - surely - it wasn't an education/awareness campaign?

A bit of drama..

Two nights ago as P. and I were cleaning up after dinner, we had the back door open because it was warm in the kitchen.

"Smell like campfire", I commented.

Several minutes later, this was the scene from our front window:


Turns out the the apartment three units to our left was well and truly on fire. The firefighters had to go in with sledgehammers and we could hear them tearing apart the walls as we stood on our back deck. Lots of smoke too. Considering that all the buildings are essentially the same building here - one big string of storefronts with apartments above them, I wasn't really sure that we should actually bestanding on our back deck...!

Hurrah for the Toronto fire department - they managed to get everything under control relatively quickly. I did decide to not go to bed until I was sure they were packing up their equipment though!