The Brockovich Report

Sometimes I feel like I'm the little dutch boy, sticking my finger in a hole in the dike. Except that the dike is like a piece of cheese, and the more fingers I use, the more leaks the dike sprouts.

I was recently in Greece talking about the Asopos River. Now their government is at least starting to work on handling the problem--porting in water for the locals to use instead of the contaminated river water, prosecuting some of the industries who were guilty of dumping, looking for disposal pipes. Only now I am getting letters that tell me how the remaining industries aren't piping their contamination toward the river; they're drilling and dumping it into local wells, so it gets into the groundwater. I hear that Greek Minister for the Environment, Physical Planning and Public Works, Georgios Souflias is resisting the creation of an independent Environmental Ministry. The people of Oinofita are still screaming for justice. The Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA) leader Alekos Alavanos has toured the river and says the local drinking water grid should be hooked up to that of the greater Athens' water utility (EYDAP)--of course that is supposed to already be in the works. By the time the infrastructure is built to support it, he may be in office.

I came home to a mailbox full of things going on here at home.

Letters about TexCom Gulf Disposal who wants to inject supposedly nonhazardous wastewater into wells that run into the local groundwater. I'd always like to take these experts who swear the groundwater is safe and see them drink a couple of gallons of it.

Letters from fema trailer residents, who have come up with sick building syndrome from the high formaldehyde levels. The symptoms include nosebleeds, headaches and assorted respiratory illnesses.

A letter from an Americana Apartment resident having to deal with asbestos dust from improperly removed roofing. A similar letter to a similar situation--in the UK.

And here at home, the untreated local water supply of Woodland and Davis is so full of magnesium, sodium and calcium (and chromium 6) that engineers want to daily pipe in 52 million gallons of the purer softer water from the Sacramento river. This is mostly water from very deep fifty year old wells, but that is augmented by newer shallower wells that tap into a much purer local aquifer.

There's so much salt in the wastewater that salinity is also a problem, and the mayor would prefer to rebuild the wastewater facility. What is being projected is an intake river running from "West Sacramento north of Interstate 5, a central treatment plant near Woodland and a pipeline system supplying water to Woodland, Davis and UC Davis." Local water rates would double and the project would not be completed until 2016.

I'm not an engineer, but this looks like it might be staring at the greener grass across the fence. Would it cost that much and take that long to set up a system to filter the local water? What are the alternatives here?

Because unlike the little dutch boy, I don't think sticking my fingers in the holes in the dike is going to be enough.

Posted by Erin Brockovich | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (1)

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My daughter used to bring home artwork made of little beads from school .

Such innocent little pellets.

Who knew that if ingested, they would degrade in the digestive system into gamma hydroxy butyrate, otherwise known as the date rape drug? Over the years, how many children have ingested those little tablets?

Not that it was ever marketed to young children--but there are an awful lot of households with older and younger children. And what younger sibling ever really kept his hands off of big brother's or big sister's toys?

This is the kind of recall that really makes you wonder how such inappropriate toys come to market to begin with. Aren't toys automatically supposed to be safe out of the box? But they are obviously not. With all the different types of benign medically safe plastics out there, how did it happen that some chemist or industrial "suit" chose to make a toy of the particular formation that would happen to degrade into gamma hydroxy butyrate when ingested?

It is a shame that we have to be so vigilant, hunting out unsafe toys thru strip malls, department stores and dollar stores the way our ancestors used to watch the forest for bears. How has it come to this, in this contemporary cornucopia of plenty that it is our very prosperity and ingenuity that holds one of the greatest threats to our children? Were Laura Ingalls Wilder's corn husk dolls this dangerous?

I wonder if the danger is a symptom of our high functioning society or if we're moving backwards.

Just look at the problem in the context of Maslow's hierarchy of need. Maslow analyzed society and need, and came up with a hierarchy of how people handle their most pressing issues in a certain order. First is food, shelter, all the physiological needs. That makes sense. First cavemen came in from the rain. After they had shelter, then they could worry about other stuff. Etc... Then comes safety, and after that is love and belonging, followed by esteem; and up at the very top, when all other needs are satisfied, is self-actualization. Most societies in centuries before this one were so busy surviving, they didn't worry about actualization, except for fifteen minutes or so, during the Renaissance.

But back to toys.

Back in day when we were cave dwellers, Wilma Flintstone didn't go to the department store. Maybe she handed little Bam Bam a rock, and just hoped he wouldn't brain his little brother. (Maybe he did, sometimes. Maybe that's why we now have the song "little bunny foo foo." But I digress.) Probably little Bam Bam and his little paleolithic brethren considered themselves lucky if they found anything to play with beyond the bones of yesterday's dinner. But as we developed society, the idea of toys for children developed. As society became more complex, toys themselves became more complicated, to help children learn to exist in their contemporary world.

So, in terms of watching the quality of toys, we've moved beyond the initial stages of basic "toyhood" and we're looking at toys closer, toward the top of the hierarchy, dissecting them under the sophisticated eye of "actualization." (Because, after all, each generation of children is the actualization of the last generation of adults--or at least that's what I'm theorizing. )

Now that as a society, we are looking at toys in terms of safety, it takes us back developmentally several steps, to safety. Ironically, the only reason that we can do this is because we've actually moved to the top of the ladder, to actualization. We have the time to analyze the quality of children's toys because we've got all of those other bases covered. In other words, Fred Flintstone was too worried keeping the saber-toothed whatsit from the door to worry whether or not Bam Bam's toy had lead paint on it.

But unlike hunting and gathering cultures, we contemporary people have tons of leisure time. We don't search for food from dawn to dusk; we come home from work and have long hours free. Free for self actualization. Free for entertainment. Free for nitpicking the quality of our children's toys.

Don't get me wrong. We SHOULD have high standards for the safety of children's toys. There's no excuse for marketing a toy that's dangerous to its target audience. It's really just that the miracle of our inventive genius--and the commercial market--that is so driven to keep producing ever newer, ever more wonderful gadgets...that keep finding new ways to be dangerous.

With the toy buying season upon us, we should be careful consumers. Specifically, careful toy consumers--for those of us who will be buying for children. Even with safe toys, there's no substitute for supervision or...wait, what is that thing called, I know I've heard of it. Oh yeah. Parenting. There's no substitute for parenting.

Take a look at the consumer group "WATCH."

World Against Toys Causing Harm (Watch) is a Massachusetts charitable non-profit corporation founded by Edward M. Swartz, a nationally known trial lawyer and child safety consumer advocate. I know how often lawyers form consumer groups like this just to be able to draw a pool of clients within an unofficial "area of expertise" but the concept behind this group is a pretty good one. Anyway, this group has compiled a list of toys. I can't say that I agree with all of these items on the list, because some problems, such as Jack Sparrow's Spinning Dagger have more to do with age appropriateness than intrinsic lack of safety. Look at the list. Then judge for yourself.

That said...don't tell my kids, but, when I was little, we rode bikes without bicycle helmets. We skated without padding. We got "Mattel" thingmakers where you'd pour weird colorful goop into metal molds and then put the molds into hot little ovens to make flowers or creepy crawlies; we'd play with clackers and accidentally hit ourselves on the head; paint model sets that came with Toluene paint thinner and throw lethal lawn darts. Neighborhood boys horrified girls by shooting at crows with their pump action air rifles; and the light bulbs in our easy bake ovens actually got hot enough to burn us.

Are parents of today too careful? I don't think so. Our world gets less dangerous and more dangerous every day, and as long as we parents have the free time, we should spend it making certain sure that our children have room to grow in an environment that is as safe as we can make it.

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I've seen the One Less commercial. The one for Gardasil. I guess you know it too, If you're in the US and have a television, you can't help having seen it. The one that talks about being one One Less

One less what? I wondered, until I finally sat down and made myself pay attention.

Then what struck me most when I actually heard this commercial was how indefinite it was.

It begins aggressively, with strong girls who have definite opinions. They are very certain they want to be One Less. (One less woman to battle cervical cancer.) Well, okay. No one WANTS to have cervical cancer.

But the commercial gets very indefinite when it starts talking about this miracle drug.

Gardasil. The commercial says "It is the only vaccine that MAY guard..(it doesn't say that it DOES guard, just that it may) ...

May what? eliminate the disease? No, nothing so solid. It MAY help protect. You see, it doesn't actually protect, eliminate or prevent. It just MIGHT help.

What might it protect from? It might help protect your daughters from the 4 types of hpv. Ok, that should be a good thing. And this is especially good because hpv causes 70% of cervical cancer. And then, the ad goes on to say, it might not fully protect everyone from 70%. I won't get started on talking about the side affects that are mentioned in the commercial. I'm more worried about the side affects that come afterwards for a drug that "might protect some girls against some of the causes" of cervical cancer.

And now we hear how some people have died after taking it.

Is this a drug that we should be requiring ALL girls to take?

I would understand if it were a vaccine that works across the board like some of the others. Like the vaccine against polio that actually DOES work to make everyone's (uncompromised) immune systems able to resist polio. But this is something else...a vaccine against a virus which might protect some girls against a percentage of some viruses that cause some cancer.

I really don't know how smart this is to require all girls to take this drug, especially when there's some interaction that has caused several deaths related to Gardasil test cases and it only protects a percentage of some girls against some of the virus that causes some of the cancer.

What if Gardasil causes some unknown thing down the road? The way that there already seems to be some unknown thing--some drug, or food, or additive, or who knows what?-that causes some children to develop autism?

Shouldn't we know more about what this drug is going to do to our precious daughters ten years down the road?

Girls have died from taking this drug. Girls have been found with Guillain-Barre Syndrome that showed up after vaccination. The highest incidence of GBS is when the drug was administered in conjunction with more than one type of vaccine - i.e., Gardasil with menactra, or other combinations.

Okay, statistically, the numbers sound like scare tactics. Three deaths out of how many? More importantly--since those deaths seem to have been related to pre-existing conditions like heart disease, what about girls who have undiagnosed heart disease? Is this drug going to kill off all girls with undiagnosed heart disease? Or was it an interaction with something they were taking? And how is this vaccine going to affect girls in ten years? Can the drug developer's scientific research guarantee that--for example--that a percentage won't develop Guillain-Barre Syndrome as the result of some interaction? Or a percentage bear autistic children as a result? or some other unknown consequence?

A note: Boys don't have cervixes but they get HPV too. Don't some of them deserve protection from some HPV also? If not, why not? This is a disease that is spread thru sexual contact. If this drug is safe enough for girls to take, why is it ok for boys to be carriers?

People. Let the scientists work on this one until it's ripe before we start requiring it across the board. Do we have to fall for a drug company's lobby to make their product mandatory?

I want to be one less.
One less parent feeding my daughter an incompletely researched drug in the hopes of finding a magic bullet.

At least leave the decision in my hands. Does everything have to be a government mandate?

*Note: Want to discuss this topic?

Visit the forum I host here:
http://forum.townsquareforums.com/index.php

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Posted by Erin Brockovich | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (3)

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