environmental activists

The BPA Myth – continued

by Iain Murray on April 7, 2010

in Environment, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

I have an article today on both NRO and NPR about the environmental establishment’s continued war on science as it relates to the chemical BPA.  An excerpt:

California provides a good example of how the environmentalists have waged their war. On July 15, 2009, the state’s Developmental and Reproductive Toxicant Identification Committee voted not to list BPA as a reproductive toxicant under the terms of California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 (Proposition 65). The very same day, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) submitted a 327-page petition to the California Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to begin a different process by which BPA could be listed as a reproductive toxicant.

The NRDC petition is pathetically weak. It includes as evidence a 2008 National Toxicology Program (NTP) report that showed no harm to humans from BPA, but called for further study. That study is now under way at the federal level, with the National Institutes of Health spending $30 million on research over the next two years. Neither the petition or the NTP report provides any reason for California to ban the substance before the results of the study come in.

Other evidence favors keeping BPA on the market. A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report published in the scholarly journal Toxicological Sciences in October 2009 also showed no harm to humans from BPA.

The state — which is mired in budget crisis — is wasting public funds to indulge the whims of a single special-interest group. Yet it is not just taxpayer money that is at stake. NRDC is sending a message to businesses nationwide: If you use BPA — whether to make toys, eyeglasses, or medical equipment — don’t invest here. For no company will invest in a state — and thus create jobs and expand facilities in that state — if the state is threatening to stop manufacturing in the near future. NRDC’s whim is helping to prolong California’s recession.

I also point out the environmental groups’ double standards in attacking the substance that the EPA found safe while ignoring the one that the EPA found dangerous.  Nanny can be very selective at times.

Cross-posted from FightNanny.

A disease cluster scare implodes; a new one is born

by Michael Fumento on February 8, 2010

in Health and Illness, Precaution & Risk

Yesterday I wrote that a scare over a scleroderma cluster in South Boston had been resolved when the state department of health found no links to anything manmade, but rather than the sufferers were simply genetically more inclined to developing the disease.

But now Florida activists have just goaded the Palm Beach County Health Department into declaring a cluster of child cancer cases in the town of Acreage. Residents are alternately angered and terrified, including by none other than uber-activist Erin Brockovich herself, about whose cold-blooded antics I’ve published 15 articles. She came to town to express her concern and outrage, with two law firms in tow handing out contracts labeled “Contingency Fee Agreement & Power of Attorney.”

Implicated have been radioactive well water, pesticides, solvents, jet fuel, and other causes. Everything but coincidence, as health officials obviously believe. Meanwhile, in addition to being terrified over their kids’ health, people in the town have found they can’t move if they want to because their property values have collapsed.

Implicated have been pesticides, solvents, radium, jet fuel, and other causes. Everything but coincidence, as health officials obviously believe.

I found out about this because I received an email today that read in part:

I wrote to you earlier because Erin Brockovich was starting hysteria and pressing the government to call our community a cancer cluster.  Now, with skewed population numbers and a number as small as three, the health officials have deemed us a pediatric cancer cluster.  Now people are calling to condemn this community with 12,000 CHILDREN (not total). People are scared and trying to blame whatever and whoever.

An unofficial poll by a newspaper online website found two-thirds of those voting thought Brocko was only out for personal gain (Oh, such ingrates!), and some comments by townspeople seemed to reflect, shall we say, a certain degree of anger. Here’s one.

The people of the Acreage have alot to lose, cant move, cant refi, cant sell, cant do anything with your property but still pay taxes and your mortgage for how ever many years this takes.

No mortgage company is going to work with anybody out here till this is over how long do you figure it will take? 5 years? 10 years? And while were all sitting on worthless property we will have the added cost of city water to be stuck with..

And while this is going on we all live on dead ground good for nothing…….Show me the proof!!! You can’t there is none!!!!

I dunno. Call me insensitive. But I don’t think doing this to people is right.