June 22nd, 2010
The current New England Journal of Medicine (June 17, 2010; No. 24V.362:2319-2325) has an important article offered as free full text to online readers entitled, “Regulation of Smoking in Public Housing” (Winnikoff, Gottlieb and Mello). The introduction summarizes how the regulation of smoking in public and workplaces has led to very significant improvements in public health while residences remain outside of the realm of regulation. A summary of their recommendation of banning tobacco in public housing appeared in the LA Times last week as well, here.
Given the fact that over seven million people live in public housing because they cannot afford to live elsewhere, these residents are basically required to become unwilling consumers of tobacco by-products. Of course, multi-unit housing is quite common in the private sector with a small but slowly increasing number of landlords mandating (but rarely enforcing) lease stipulations requiring smoking to be done outdoors. Property values come into play given the fact that smoke contaminates the environment with “… more than 250 poisonous gasses, metals and chemicals… .” Taking the extreme measures required to decontaminate these premises from residues (considered a tertiary form of passive tobacco consumption) also assumes landlords possess the knowledge of what needs to be done and the financial resources to expend on the astronomical costs of remediation.
A key concept described is that smoke cannot be prevented from drifting throughout an apartment nor can it be stopped from entering surrounding units. Residues from these poisonous substances are present in the urine of those exposed to smoke by both inhalation and contact with nicotine-contaminated materials.
Remember the discussions that followed the 9/11 attacks about the uselessness of employing duct tape and plastic sheeting to combat chemical warfare? Beliefs that gases coming from lit cigarettes can be contained within four walls, or absorbed by air purifiers, are part of a faulty public perception based in advertising.
Industry is happy to exploit the ever-present human desire for immediate gratification through fast acting chemicals to kill bugs and clean the furnace, regardless of the collateral damage done by those products. We want to cover the walls and floors with something cheap and decorative that will last forever.
We have a Disneyland-ish expectation that the poisons around us dissipate within hours, if not minutes. Affected people are expected to spring back to full health and vigor, like those animated characters in cartoons who have been flattened by bulldozers or dropped off of cliffs.
We measure residues by smell, never considering that most products today are marketed with perfumes or masking fragrances to hide the odors that normally signal chemical hazards. Carbon monoxide is odorless, yet we evacuate neighboring apartments when a stove leaks, and monitors are legally required in many states. Why aren’t we just
as concerned with cigarette smoke?
We now know that the dangers of tobacco are not limited to the delayed effects of exposure to its carcinogenic properties. Smoking bans have led to impressive reductions in cardiac and respiratory disorders in non-smokers, merely through restrictions in areas such as workplaces, occupied for only part of the day.
Imagine being freed of contact with such hazardous substances in smoke-free residences. Those choosing to smoke can always go to an outside designated location. Where will you go with your three-month-old infant or elderly parent suffering from COPD? Eventually, the costs of environmentally induced illnesses will lead to recognition of just how easily toxic fumes spread within buildings and permit a NIOSH or OSHA-like agency to assess indoor air quality within residential settings. That will lead to least toxic formulas being developed for pesticides, construction materials, cleaning products etc. Application methods will not just be determined by efficacy but also by residual amounts present in and around locations of product usage.
Please write a letter to the editor of this journal and thank them for offering important articles like this one for free access to all. Then ask them to solicit and publish research on other indoor air quality issues.
Be an armchair activist. Only through such articles can we remove the taint of industry claiming there is no ‘sound science’ to restrain their right to sell any product or service. However, without public awareness of that science, we can’t make informed decisions as consumers and voters.
My letter (unpublished) was as follows:
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Categories: Letters, New England Journal of Medicine
Tags: indoor air quality, industry regulation, smoking
March 8th, 2010
I’m convinced that failure to legislate access to health care for all Americans is a means of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Where’s the Patriot Act when you really need it? Between 1956 and 1998, the conflict in Southeast Asia (Vietnam War for my fellow oldsters) caused the deaths of approximately 58,193 military personnel. Now, in this country each year, some 45,000 American non-combatants die for lack of health insurance. When did being uninsured become more hazardous than wartime service?
In war, you know the identity of your enemy. Nicholas Kristoff asks an excellent question in this Op Ed piece for the NY Times, “Do We Really Want the Status Quo on Health Care?“. It identified lack of health care as part of the current status quo. The next question to ask here is just who or what is the enemy, taking out so many non-combatants each year? Is it health care costs? Certainly a single payer system would go far towards cost containment since the private sector is guilty of price fixing in setting values upon products and services – be it a mortgage or an MRI. Health care constitutes more than 17% of our gross domestic product for other reasons. (more…)
Categories: Letters
Tags: Environment, Free Market, Health, Newspaper Commentary, politics
February 13th, 2010
The New Hampshire legislative committee on the Environment and Agriculture held a hearing on 2/11/10 to discuss Bill #1456 presented by Representative Suzanne Smith. This bill proposed the creation of a committee to study the use of pesticides in the schools and other places where children congregate. Here is the text of my written testimony regarding the need for every state to recognize that they can work as partners with the pest control industry without exposing children and school staff to poisons.
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Categories: Testimony
Tags: agriculture, autoimmune disease, body burden, ddt, Environment, environmental effects of pesticides, integrated pest management, learning disability, medicine, nyc school, organophosphate, pest, pest control, pesticide, pesticide poisoning, pesticides, school program, schooling, soil contamination
January 26th, 2010
It’s happened again. Not to be outdone by the Supreme Court judges of 1886 who first pronounced corporations as possessing the same privileges as citizens with regard to property rights, the current crop of judges have now confirmed our paper citizens can meddle in the election process. This decision is brilliantly reviewed in this excellent editorial by the NY Times.
Corporations have had their rights to endorse candidates and contribute to their campaigns restored so they can be just like regular citizens – you know, the ones with actual beating hearts. Well, you’d have to multiply what we regular citizens might contribute by a gazillion, but yes, paper citizens enjoy the same rights to participate in politics. That must buy a lot of gratitude on the part of a candidate, although a corporation would be hard to take to lunch as a polite ‘thank you’ gesture.
What does IBM eat? Italian? Thai? DW-40? Perhaps a thank-you card would be a better idea.
Here’s my problem with this issue. It duplicates and magnifies the rights of corporate owners and officers to twice engage in electioneering, on their own and then again via the combined use of assets/monies which aren’t necessarily theirs to use for this purpose. Does it say in the prospectus that the corporation is a registered member of a particular party?
Perhaps this is an overly simplistic view but if every person working in or owning a corporation has the individual right to engage in electioneering and fund raising for a campaign, why would they be able to do so again through their business? The initial notion of a corporation having the status as a ‘person’ is attributed to the bizarre phrasing of a judge summing up a Supreme Court decision of 1886 regarding a railroad. Why it is assumed that the right to due process of law for a business belongs to the corporate entity rather than to the corporation’s owner(s) on behalf of that entity, is a form of non-reasoning which escapes me. But then, I’m not a lawyer.
If each individual working in or owning a corporation has the right to engage in electioneering and fund raising for a campaign, why would they be allowed to engage in such activities a second time via their business? If a corporation has status as a ‘person’ shouldn’t the Corporation vote as well? Perhaps the age of the corporation might be important to define, ensuring it has the knowledge and maturity to make such a decision. I supposed any corporation which has been around for 18 years or so might be qualified, assuming it is legally registered within the United States. I’m not sure which corporate representative should have the privilege of casting it’s vote, along with his or her own, but that would be nitpicking.
Of course, this may abridge the rights of shareholders expecting a certain percentage of profits to come to them directly, rather than reducing them through the making of contributions to candidates they may not even personally support. This will certainly limit the hopes of employees for a better tier of medical plan as monies accrued through their labor go to some yutz running for office. And about that 401K… .
Corporations have some really hard decisions to make.
So do we. Corporations needing friends in government obviously no longer have enough friends among consumers. There’s a reason for that – consumers wouldn’t voluntarily buy their ‘stuff’ without the assistance of government to hide selected ingredients in labeling, restrict competition as corporate monopolies multiply freely or lowering prices by offering starvation wages to their employees.
Learn about the companies you reward with your purchasing dollars and shop accordingly.
Categories: NY Times
Tags: politics, Rant, undue corporate influence
January 3rd, 2010
This New Years saw yet another revival of the ‘personal liberties’ debate about exposure to second-hand smoke in this NY Times article,
“Blowing Smoke at a Ban” by Douglas Quenqua. Once again we have an article showcasing the derision of the public for these bans in the absence of citations of data regarding why these bans haven’t been repealed after years of study. Reporters striving for objectivity in reporting are wrongly presenting ‘sides’ which don’t actually exist.
Public perception of today’s societal burdens is largely the product of media presentation. Objective reporting goes out the window when the tactic of appealing to the ‘human interest’ readership portrays abusive viewpoints as legitimate (e.g. blowing poisonous fumes into communal airspace). Would you expect reporters to present a ‘side’ by a serial killer about why his victims ‘made him do it’? Does it honestly matter that smokers don’t like leaving a nice warm bar to smoke outside before returning to their fun when non-smoking patrons and bar employees will live to enjoy a new dawn because of such bans? My comment at that site contains links to mainstream research which should help the hapless victims of drifting tobacco smoke to explain the urgency with which the non-smoking public requires protective legislation.
Enforcing it would be nice, too.
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Categories: NY Times, Published
Tags: Newspaper Commentary
January 1st, 2010
This article appeared in the Winter, 2002 edition of “Sully’s Living Without” magazine. It should be noted that most of the population in the United States was exposed to the same chemical as the child in this article, prior to the banning of many organophosphate pesticides from use in residences and schools in recent years. Unfortunately, the majority of staff and parents of children attending schools throughout this country – institutions designed to nurture children’s minds and bodies – are still left in ignorance of chemical applications on those sites. The hypocrisy is staggering and will hopefully be addressed in every state as the EPA, under the Obama adminstration, begins to consider the needs of citizens as opposed to reducing our constitutional status to that of mere consumers.
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Categories: Articles, Published, Sully's Living Without magazine
December 20th, 2009
How does one debate the subject of life and death? Really, what are we pretending is happening here? Either access to medical care is a basic right of citizens in a civilized society or it’s a privilege restricted to middle and upper income level consumers (until such time as it’s withdrawn by those conferring the privilege). Journalists like Gail Collins and David Brooks keep showcasing the misrepresentations and excuses of those proponents of retaining privilege for a select few (getting fewer by the day). However, life tends to be rather uncompromising. The heart beats or it doesn’t. If we don’t offer access to even basic health care now to the millions lacking it or about to lose it, there won’t be another chance to do so for decades to come. This is a defining moment for America. The deficiencies in the bill will certainly highlight the fact that America stands for it’s corporate citizens but that will only help the citizens with the beating hearts to better understand the changes which have to be made. It is better to learn about that while being able to see a doctor so you can lower your blood pressure while getting acquainted with these truths.
Unfortunately, the media is just another form of ‘show biz’, further separating people from important direct and concise summations of issues. The NY Times demonstrates how little can be learned from participating in the pomp and circumstance of a 24 hour news cycle when journalists reiterate their diametrically opposing points in ‘counterpoint’. You don’t really have a conversation that way but just fill more space with the same signatures.
So, when this weeks NY Times Op Ed columnists, David Brooks and Gail Collins each posted their views of the current health reform nonsense – that bipartisan race to preserve medical care for the healthy and wealthy – it is impossible not to recognize how this country turns a basic philosophical premise about how we view human life into a comedy sketch. I keep expecting Brooks to address Collins as “Gail, you ignorant slut.”, in a parody of the old Saturday Night Live take-offs of similar debates to the ‘Conversations‘ of these two writers.
In her column this week entitled, “The New Perils of Pauline“, Gail Collins demonstrates the classic dilution of feminist theory and rhetoric as she competes for attention with male colleagues in this still mostly-male domain. David Brooks presented us with his ‘views’ in another colunm, “The Hardest Call“. Brooks is the Times’ resident conservative who continues to make abject apologies to the Republican party for breaking faith with them and voting for Obama.
Let’s get down to the basics. Women in this country are far more likely to be uninsured due to underemployment and therefore more likely to fall into unemployment and disability/homelessness than our male compatriots. Women raise children and are essential to the workforce. How is depriving women of health insurance contributing to the economic stability of the United States? As far as looking for equity in medical care for women (e.g. reimbursed for birth control or coverage for abortion as men are covered for Viagra prescriptions), we have to start with a woman’s right to coverage for a simple appendectomy. The rest will come through legislation or litigation by healthy women in active pursuit of that goal.
Don’t ask David Brooks for answers, Ms. Collins. He cited his fears that a vote to allow another thirty million Americans access to health care will lead to overconsumption of services which will then raise health care costs. Should we assume Mr. Brooks is going to forgo health care when he gets sick in order to prevent such a rise in costs? Never mind, that’s another ‘conversation’ which shouldn’t take place.
Health care costs cannot be studied in the same manner as other relationships between goods/services and consumption. This is because consumption of health care services is not dictated by a positive leaning towards a product like that second TV gracing so many households. It is dictated by a problem which likely shouldn’t exist – that of enormous rates of sickness in the population. The mapping of health care provided to the population is a map for understanding the nature of illness itself and the actual key to reducing need, and therefore demand, for medical services.
Legislation to ban smoking in workplaces and public places was based in the high costs of medical services to people with tobacco-related ailments. The controversy surrounding this landmark legislation meandered around the block many times into the land of ‘free choice’, Big Brotherdom and loss of income to bars and restaurants where smokers gather to, well, choke together over coffee or gin and tonics.
Even physicians were among the doubting Thomases despite knowing how harmful smoking is to their patients. To everyone’s astonishment (okay, not mine but I’m an asthmatic who can detect cigarette smoke from a block away), passage of this legislation led to a reduction in heart disease/cardiac events in the population by one third! Non-smokers were dropping like flies because they became secondary consumers of tobacco products without such legal protections. Imagine the savings in health care costs, not to mention human suffering!
Here is my comment to Ms. Collins as she wanders through the labyrinth of corporate America’s road blocks with her fellow journalists.
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Categories: NY Times, Published
Tags: feminism, health care, Newspaper Commentary, Rant
November 21st, 2009
This suggestion is the result of an article which recently came to my attention, appearing in a UK newspaper instead of one of our own publications. The Word Trade Center (WTC) workers are certainly veterans of the war declared upon the US by terrorists. Therefore it is logical that they receive similar attentions on this day of remembrance as they continue to fight their own injuries incurred by the events of September 11, not unlike that of our Gulf War Veterans.
Chemical induced injuries of war are still with us. Terminal illness is mounting among the rescue workers, as revealed in this news article titled, “9/11′s Delayed Legacy: Cancer for Many of the Rescuers” . Additionally we should recognize the health effects suffered by the crews which spent a year removing the carnage of 911. Their participation can easily be compared with that of military construction crews serving our nation such as the Seabees.
I recall those terrible days following the collapse of the towers and the helpless feeling as those black clouds passed over our city. The particles stained our buildings and became one with our bodies as we inhaled their unspeakable contents. As the shock of the attack upon home soil began to fade, further betrayal was experienced when subsequent hazards in the form of poisonous fumes were not just downplayed but actually suppressed by officials. Our leaders had a duty to ensure New Yorkers and responders were adequately warned and protected. Having been disabled myself by toxic fumes just a couple of years earlier, seeing the live footage of workers wearing flimsy surgical masks -if anything at all – was shocking, to say the least. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to understand the hazards of a basic, average building fire and the events of 9/11 were most definitely not ‘average’ fires contributing some transient particulate pollution problem to a confined area. The magnitude of the destruction here could not have left anyone with a grain of sense in doubt as to the immediate and deferred effects.
In the immediacy of the moment, the responding heroes used what was at hand. That meant filters filled, quickly becoming useless so that responders couldn’t function with them in those early hours of the crisis. However, the situation didn’t appear to change over the successive days and weeks as misinformation was generated and publicized.
Someone recently found copies of letters to the editor of the New York Post which I had written in reply to that misinformation. They are reprinted below and should serve as reminders that contaminants in our air are largely unknown to us; greatly mischaracterized by those with profits at stake and often dismissed outright as folly on the part of fear-mongering hypochondriacs. In reality, we see that they do indeed pack a lethal punch in the form of many diseases our strongest and healthiest should never, ever have contracted in their youth. We are just learning about the impaired health of area residents and one of the letters below deals with school children.
From where I stand, we’ve learned nothing but, perhaps, how to be better at evading the truth. We are all veterans of lies which pit citizens of other nations against us and American against American here at home. Conflicts based in true misunderstanding can be resolved. Wars can bring about an end to tyranny. Unfortunately, when conflicts of interest are all that matters, profits from the immediate resumption of commerce and acts to mitigate future liabilities led us to sacrifice more of our best and brightest. Start digging more trenches over at Arlington. There are uncounted veterans of great LIES.
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Categories: Letters, NY Post
Tags: WTC
October 30th, 2009
However, if I were in the mood to send an email to the NY Times about their declining standards for Op Ed columns, it would be this one:
To the Editor;
I wish to express my objection to your absence of supervision over your Op-Ed contributors. David Brooks’ latest column, “The Tenacity Question” cites unnamed, but prominent, military sources as approving the President’s manner of policy-setting. However, Brooks then tells us these ‘experts’ (of unstated party affiliation) worry that Obama’s character is such as to preclude his continuing in this apparently praise-worthy manner.
I don’t recall hearing Brooks publishing his concerns regarding the manner in which George Bush’s military decisions were reached via the active counsel of The Lord. It is doubtful that Brooks’ sources were sufficiently lofty to confirm Bush’s claims, but he nonetheless failed to warn us that Bush might not have the resolve to see His work through to the end.
The election is over. Perhaps you should request that your columnist take his non-newsworthy fears to Face-Book or Twitter. This would be preferable to using up valuable space on your pages, at least until the next campaign begins. Republicans can then re-introduce issues of character as their replacement for substantive policy R&D.
Barbara Rubin
Categories: Newspaper Commentary
Tags: Rant
October 11th, 2009
Several recent articles and a blog have served as powerful reminders that governments cannot be discussed without reference to issues of male dominance and violence. These issues overshadow economic, political and cultural factors often cited as the reason why the intolerable should be accepted. Oppression can never be relegated to the level of a mere difference of opinion, a matter of ‘lifestyle’ choice or a ‘practical’ reality.
First is this column by Charles Blow of the NY Times. Mr. Blow read a blog entry by Tyler Perry, detailing his horrendous childhood experiences at the hands of a drunken father. Reading the words of this survivor of child abuse made it clear that Perry lost his opportunity to escape his father’s influence because his fleeing mother had been returned to that abusive man, much like the other ‘property’ he’d declared stolen – the family car. Perry was additional baggage, not even separated from his mother during her incarceration while waiting to be ‘claimed’, and a witness to his mother being beaten throughout that endless drive home.
Being forced to witness abuse is also abuse. Children, by their egocentric natures, feel they are integral parts of the problems surrounding them, requiring tremendous reassurance of their blamelessness. That balm is simply unavailable in the face of overwhelming pathology. This leaves the children of such homes forever marked not just by fear, but the sense of shame and guilt accompanying inaction. That inaction on the part of all who know or suspect abuse extends that helplessness into an all-pervasive characteristic of society.
How convenient for those in authority.
Here was my comment (minor corrections added), posted in reply to the column, “No More Suffering”, by Charles Blow (NY Times, 10/10/09):
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Categories: NY Times, Newspaper Commentary, Published
Tags: Add new tag, feminism, Newspaper Commentary
