With the 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster coming next week, a new book has been published by the New York Academy of Sciences which concludes that between 1986, when the accident happened, and 2004 some 985,000 people died, especially of cancer, as a result of the radioactivity that was emitted.
The 985,000 figure is based on health data, radiological reports and scientific studies—some 5,000 in all—especially from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus but from other affected nations as well.
It belies the assertion of the International Atomic Energy Agency that, as the IAEA still claims on its website, the “total number of deaths already attributable to Chernobyl or expected in the future…is estimated to be about 4,000.” That claim of the IAEA, which was set up in 1957 “to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy,” has been widely reported as the toll from the disaster.
The new book, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, shows it to be an extreme minimization.
It is authored by three noted scientists: Dr. Alexey Yablokov of Russia, a biologist and former environmental advisor to the Russian president; Dr. Alexey Nesterenko, a biologist and ecologist in Belarus; and Dr.Vassili Nesterenko, a physicist, and at the time of the accident director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. The consulting editor is Dr. Janette D. Sherman, a Virginia-based physician and toxicologist who has long specialized on the impacts of radioactivity.
The work is comprehensive, indeed, the most encompassing study that has ever been done of the Chernobyl accident. It is anchored in strong evidence. And it is chilling.
The radioactive release from Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, starting with it exploding on April 26, 1986 and ending when it stopped burning in mid-May, “was many hundreds of millions of curies, a quantity hundreds of times larger than the fallout from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” notes the book.
The “winds around Chernobyl” kept changing, covering 360-degrees “so the radioactive emissions from the mix of radionuclides varied from day to day and covered an enormous territory.” The radioactive poisons included Cesium-137, Plutonium, Iodine-131 and Strontium-90, among others.
A country-by-country breakdown of where they fell out, with the detailed measurements taken and maps, follow. The list starts with Belarus—“Practically the entire country of Belarus was covered by the Chernobyl cloud”—and on to Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Sweden, United Kingdom and so on to Asia and North America, where “some 1% of all Chernobyl radionuclides…fell.”
The consequences on public health are exhaustively analyzed, first “General Morbidity, Impairment, and Disability.” Again, the grisly list starts with Belarus where, it is noted: “According to data from the Belarusian Ministry of Public Health, just before the catastrophe…90% of children were considered ‘practically healthy.’ By 2000, fewer than 20% were considered so.” Rises in nonmalignant diseases including blood and cardiovascular diseases are examined.
There is a focus on genetic impacts with records showing an increase in “chromosomal aberrations” cited. This will continue through the “children of irradiated parents for as many as seven generations.” Thus, “the genetic consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe will impact hundreds of millions of people.”
And then comes cancer—with records illuminated by charts showing the increases in various countries of childhood cancer, thyroid cancer, leukemia and other cancers. For Ukraine, for instance, “According to official data, the general [cancerl] mortality rate in the heavily contaminated territories was 18.3 per 1,000 in 1999, some 28% higher than the national average of 14.9 per 1,000.”
Considering health data of people in all nations impacted by the fallout, the “overall [cancer] mortality for the period from April 1986 to the end of 2004 from the Chernobyl catastrophe was estimated as 985,000 additional deaths.”
Moreover, “the concentrations” of some of the poisons, because they have radioactive half-lives ranging from 20,000 to 200,000 years, “will remain practically the same virtually forever.”So “the number of Chernobyl victims will continue to grow in the next several generations.”
The book investigates, too, the impact on flora, fauna and animals. It presents numerous studies, including those finding rapid genetic alterations, and, as to animals, notes “serious increases in morbidity and mortality that bear striking resemblance to changes in the public health of humans—increasing tumor rates, immunodeficiencies, decreasing life expectancy…”
The book concludes: “The Chernobyl catastrophe demonstrates that the nuclear industry’s willingness to risk the health of humanity and our environment with nuclear power plants will result, not only theoretically, but practically, in the same level of hazard as nuclear weapons.”
Dr. Sherman, speaking of her experience editing the book, commented: “Every single system that was studied—whether human or wolves or livestock or fish or trees or mushrooms or bacteria—all were changed, some of them irreversibly. The scope of the damage is stunning.”
In his foreword, Dr. Dimitro Grodzinsky, chairman of the Ukranian National Commission on Radiation Protection, writes about how “apologists of nuclear power” sought to hide the real impacts of the Chernobyl disaster from the time when the accident occurred. The book “provides the largest and most complete collection of data concerning the negative consequences of Chernobyl on the health of people and the environment...The main conclusion of the book is that it is impossible and wrong ‘to forget Chernobyl.’”
The claim that “only” 4,000 people will die as a result of the Chernobyl catastrophe is among the biggest lies of modern times.
The Chernobyl disaster should not only be remembered but must not be allowed to be repeated—which will happen regularly if the forces behind nuclear power get their way in their effort to “revive” nuclear power and build more nuclear plants.
Those in operation now need to be shut down and no more built—and a rapid transition made to clean, safe energy technologies available today, led by solar and wind power, which don’t kill people and other forms of life.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Offshore Oil Drillilng Stupidity
Larry Penny, the director of natural resources here in East Hampton Town on Long Island, tells of being out in a small boat having taken friends to the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara, California when a blow-out on an offshore oil rig resulted in a massive oil spill in 1969.
The oil on the Pacific Ocean through which his boat needed to travel was “about a foot thick,” he recouns. He only barely made it through the “black mess” and got back. “It sure choked up the motor.” The next day he went up in a small plane and saw the devastation from the air. The “wind had been blowing from the west” and the shoreline was coated with oil.
Penny was a fisherman, ran an aquarium and was a teacher in Santa Barbara at the time. The spill was a pivotal event for him—and many others. It resulted in the organization Get Oil Out (GOO) demanding an end to the drilling—and today the waters from Santa Barbara to north of San Francisco have been declared marine sanctuaries and no longer is there offshore oil drilling there.
\
Thus the announcement last week by President Obama that he is moving to open up large sections of offshore waters to oil drilling—including the Atlantic from Delaware to Florida, a stretch also barred to drilling for decades—is seen as an outrage by Penny.
The waters off Long Island are not—now—part of what Obama wants opened to drilling. But Penny notes that spilled oil travels far and Delaware and Maryland are not that distant—especially considering frequent southerly winds and the Gulf Stream off our coast, both of which would send black goo north. Moreover, those rigs would go up right in hurricane alley.
And the East Coast stands to be far more damaged by an oil spill than the West Coast, notes Penny, considering that it is lined with wetlands, the feeding and breeding grounds of sea life. “Once oil gets in the marshes, that’s it.”
“This is completely unnecessary,” protests Penny. The technologies for clean, renewable energy are here today waiting to be fully implemented. “In this day and age this is ridiculous.”
It would be a huge threat to marine life, the fishing industry and the recreational industry which serves as an economic base for much of the East Coast. As New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg said last week, Obama’s gift to “Big Oil” is a “kill baby kill policy. It threatens to kill jobs, kill marine life and kill coastal economies that generate billions of dollars.”
It was exactly 40 years ago, in 1970, that as a reporter for the daily Long Island Press
that I broke the story of the oil industry seeking to drill in the offshore Atlantic. I got a tip from a fisherman in Montauk who said he had seen in the ocean east of Montauk the same sort of vessel as the boats he observed searching for oil when he was a shrimper in the Gulf of Mexico.
I spent the day telephoning oil companies. PR people for each said their companies were not involved in searching for oil in the Atlantic. But at day’s end, as I was walking out of the office, there was a call from a PR guy at Gulf saying, yes, Gulf was involved in exploring for oil in the Atlantic—as part of a “consortium” of 32 oil companies. These included the companies which all day issued denials. It was a first lesson in oil industry honesty, an oxymoron.
I traveled widely on the issue including in 1971 visiting the first drilling rig set up in the Atlantic, off Nova Scotia. The process was fraught with danger. A rescue boat went round and round the rig as the man from Shell Canada explained: “We treat every foot of hole like a potential disaster.” An oil well blow-out, a gusher, is one thing on land and another entirely on water. The Shell Canada official acknowledged that curtains, booms and other devices the oil industry still claims clean up spills “just don’t work in over five foot-foot seas.”
In 1974, the President’s Council on Environmental Quality stated that a major spill along the Atlantic Coast “could devastate the areas affected…the Atlantic [is a] hostile environment for oil and gas operations. Storm and seismic conditions may be more severe than in the North Sea or the Gulf of Mexico.” There were strong Congressional, state and local challenges and the Atlantic was closed to offshore oil drilling.
The Republican presidential slate, John McCain and Sarah Palin, advocated offshore oil drilling. Obama, as a candidate, opposed it. As president, Obama has—as he earlier did on nuclear power—done a complete reversal. “This is stupid,” said Penny. It sure is and needs to be stopped with citizen action and Congressional, state and local opposition.
The oil on the Pacific Ocean through which his boat needed to travel was “about a foot thick,” he recouns. He only barely made it through the “black mess” and got back. “It sure choked up the motor.” The next day he went up in a small plane and saw the devastation from the air. The “wind had been blowing from the west” and the shoreline was coated with oil.
Penny was a fisherman, ran an aquarium and was a teacher in Santa Barbara at the time. The spill was a pivotal event for him—and many others. It resulted in the organization Get Oil Out (GOO) demanding an end to the drilling—and today the waters from Santa Barbara to north of San Francisco have been declared marine sanctuaries and no longer is there offshore oil drilling there.
\
Thus the announcement last week by President Obama that he is moving to open up large sections of offshore waters to oil drilling—including the Atlantic from Delaware to Florida, a stretch also barred to drilling for decades—is seen as an outrage by Penny.
The waters off Long Island are not—now—part of what Obama wants opened to drilling. But Penny notes that spilled oil travels far and Delaware and Maryland are not that distant—especially considering frequent southerly winds and the Gulf Stream off our coast, both of which would send black goo north. Moreover, those rigs would go up right in hurricane alley.
And the East Coast stands to be far more damaged by an oil spill than the West Coast, notes Penny, considering that it is lined with wetlands, the feeding and breeding grounds of sea life. “Once oil gets in the marshes, that’s it.”
“This is completely unnecessary,” protests Penny. The technologies for clean, renewable energy are here today waiting to be fully implemented. “In this day and age this is ridiculous.”
It would be a huge threat to marine life, the fishing industry and the recreational industry which serves as an economic base for much of the East Coast. As New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg said last week, Obama’s gift to “Big Oil” is a “kill baby kill policy. It threatens to kill jobs, kill marine life and kill coastal economies that generate billions of dollars.”
It was exactly 40 years ago, in 1970, that as a reporter for the daily Long Island Press
that I broke the story of the oil industry seeking to drill in the offshore Atlantic. I got a tip from a fisherman in Montauk who said he had seen in the ocean east of Montauk the same sort of vessel as the boats he observed searching for oil when he was a shrimper in the Gulf of Mexico.
I spent the day telephoning oil companies. PR people for each said their companies were not involved in searching for oil in the Atlantic. But at day’s end, as I was walking out of the office, there was a call from a PR guy at Gulf saying, yes, Gulf was involved in exploring for oil in the Atlantic—as part of a “consortium” of 32 oil companies. These included the companies which all day issued denials. It was a first lesson in oil industry honesty, an oxymoron.
I traveled widely on the issue including in 1971 visiting the first drilling rig set up in the Atlantic, off Nova Scotia. The process was fraught with danger. A rescue boat went round and round the rig as the man from Shell Canada explained: “We treat every foot of hole like a potential disaster.” An oil well blow-out, a gusher, is one thing on land and another entirely on water. The Shell Canada official acknowledged that curtains, booms and other devices the oil industry still claims clean up spills “just don’t work in over five foot-foot seas.”
In 1974, the President’s Council on Environmental Quality stated that a major spill along the Atlantic Coast “could devastate the areas affected…the Atlantic [is a] hostile environment for oil and gas operations. Storm and seismic conditions may be more severe than in the North Sea or the Gulf of Mexico.” There were strong Congressional, state and local challenges and the Atlantic was closed to offshore oil drilling.
The Republican presidential slate, John McCain and Sarah Palin, advocated offshore oil drilling. Obama, as a candidate, opposed it. As president, Obama has—as he earlier did on nuclear power—done a complete reversal. “This is stupid,” said Penny. It sure is and needs to be stopped with citizen action and Congressional, state and local opposition.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Obama Goes Nuclear
Published on Counterpunch February 17, 2010.
Is there any chance that President Barak Obama can return to his long-held stand critical of nuclear power? Is he open to hearing from scientists and energy experts, such as Amory Lovins, who can refute the pro-nuclear arguments that have apparently influenced him?
Obama’s declaration in his State of the Union speech on January 27 about “building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country” marked a significant change for him. His announcement Tuesday on moving ahead on $8.3 billion in federal government loan guarantees to build new nuclear plants and increasing the loan guarantee fund to $54.5 billion was a further major step. Wall Street is reluctant to invest money in the dangerous and extremely expensive technology.
Before taking office, including as a candidate for president, Obama not only was negative about atomic energy but—unusual for a politician—indicated a detailed knowledge of its threat to life.
“I start off with the premise that nuclear energy is not optimal and so I am not a nuclear energy proponent,” Obama said at a campaign stop in Newton, Iowa on December 30, 2007. “My general view is that until we can make certain that nuclear power plants are safe, that they have solved the storage problem—because I’m opposed to Yucca Mountain and just dumping…in one state, in Nevada particularly, since there’s potentially an earthquake line there—until we solve those problems and the whole nuclear industry can show that they can produce clean, safe energy without enormous subsidies from the U.S. government, I don’t think that’s the best option. I am much more interested in solar and wind and bio-diesel and strategies [for] alternative fuels.”
As he told the editorial board of the Keene Sentinel in New Hampshire on November 25, 2007: “I don’t think there’s anything that we inevitably dislike about nuclear power. We just dislike the fact that it might blow up…and irradiate us…and kill us. That’s the problem.”
Yes, that’s the big problem with splitting the atom—one that has existed since the start of nuclear power and will always be inherent in the technology. Using the perilous process of fission to generate electricity with its capacity for catastrophic accidents and its production of highly toxic radioactive poisons called nuclear waste will always be unsafe. And it is unnecessary considering the safe energy technologies now available, from solar, wind and other clean sources.
Just how dangerous it is has been underlined in a book just published by the New York Academy of Sciences, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. Written by a team of scientists led by noted Russian biologist Dr. Alexey Yablokov, using health data that have become available since the 1986 accident, it concludes that the fatality total “from April 1986 to the end of 2004 from the Chernobyl catastrophe was estimated at 985,000 additional [cancer] deaths.” This is in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other countries where Chernobyl’s poisons fell. The toll, they relate, continues to rise.
Chernobyl was a different design from the nuclear plants which the U.S., France and Japan seek now to build but disasters can also happen involving these plants and they, too, produce the highly toxic nuclear waste poisons. The problem is fission itself. It’s no way to produce electricity.
Obama has been aware of this. As he stated at a Londonderry, New Hampshire town meeting on October 7, 2007: “Nuclear power has a host of problems that have not been solved. We haven’t solved the storage situation effectively. We have not dealt with all of the security aspects of our nuclear plants and nuclear power is very expensive.”
He still left the door open to it. His Energy Plan as a candidate stated: “It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power from the table. However, there is no future for expanded nuclear without first addressing four key issues: public right-to-know, security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and [nuclear weapons] proliferation.”
In his first year as president, nuclear power proponents worked to influence him. Among nuclear opponents, there has been anxiety regarding Obama’s two top aides, both of whom have been involved with what is now the utility operating more nuclear power plants than any other in the United States, Exelon.
Rahm Emanuel, now Obama’s chief of staff, as an investment banker was in the middle of the $8.2 billion merger in 1999 of Unicom, the parent company of Commonwealth Edison of Chicago, and Peco Energy to put together Exelon. David Axelrod, now a senior Obama advisor and formerly chief campaign strategist, was an Exelon consultant. Candidate Obama received sizeable contributions from Exelon executives including from John Rowe, its president and chief executive officer who in 2007 also became chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the U.S. nuclear industry’s main trade group.
It’s not only been nuclear opponents who have seen a link between Exelon and the Obama administration. Forbes magazine, in its January 18th issue, in an article on John Rowe and how he has “focused the company on nuclear,” displayed a sidebar headlined, “The President’s Utility.” It read: “Ties are tight between Exelon and the Obama administration,” noting Exelon political contributions and featuring Emanuel and Axelrod with photos and descriptions of their Exelon connections.
The Forbes article spoke of how last year “Emanuel e-mailed Rowe on the eve of the House vote on global warming legislation and asked that he reach out to some uncommitted Democrats. ‘We are proud to be the President’s utility,’ says Elizabeth Moler, Exelon’s chief lobbyist,” the article went on. “It’s nice for John to be able to go to the White House and they know his name.’”
Chicago-based Exelon’s website boasts of its operating “the largest nuclear fleet in the nation and the third largest in the world.” It owns 17 nuclear power plants which “represent approximately 20 percent of the U.S. nuclear industry’s power capacity.”
The climate change or global warming issue is another factor in Obama’s change on nuclear power. An Associated Press article of January 31 on Obama’s having “singled out nuclear power in his State of the Union address and his spending plan for the next budget,” began: “President Barack Obama is endorsing nuclear energy like never before, trying to win over Republicans and moderate Democrats on climate and energy legislation.”
MSNBC’s Mike Stuckey on February 9 reported about “Obama’s new support for nuclear power, which some feel may be a down payment for Republican backing on a climate change bill.”
After the “safe, clean nuclear power” claim, Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, declared: “Politically, Obama likely was simply parroting the effort being led by Senators John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham to gain support for a climate bill by adding massive subsidies for nuclear power, offshore oil and ‘clean’ coal. But recycling George W. Bush energy talking points is no way to solve the climate crisis or develop a sustainable energy policy…Indeed, Obama knows better. Candidate Obama understood that nuclear power is neither safe nor clean.”
Climate change has been used by those promoting a “revival” of nuclear power—there hasn’t been a new nuclear plant ordered and built in the U.S. in 37 years—as a new argument. In fact, nuclear power makes a substantial contribution to global warming considering the overall “nuclear cycle”—uranium mining and milling, conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication and the disposition of radioactive waste, and so on.
Climate change is also one argument for pushing atomic energy of another major influence on Obama on nuclear power, Steven Chu, his Department of Energy secretary. Chu typifies the religious-like zeal for nuclear power emanating for decades from scientists in the U.S. government’s string of national nuclear laboratories. Chu was director of one of these, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, before becoming head of DOE.
First established during World War II’s Manhattan Project to build atomic weapons, the laboratories after the war began promoting civilian nuclear technology—and have been pushing it unceasingly ever since. It has been a way to perpetuate the vested interest created during World War II. The number of nuclear weapons that could be built was limited because atomic bombs don’t lend themselves to commercial distribution, but in pushing food irradiation, nuclear-powered airplanes and rockets, atomic devices for excavation and, of course, nuclear power, the budgets and staffs of the national nuclear laboratories could be maintained, indeed increase.
That was the analysis of David Lilienthal, first chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, which preceded the Department of Energy. Lilienthal in his 1963 book Change, Hope, and the Bomb wrote: “The classic picture of the scientist as a creative individual, a man obsessed, working alone through the night, a man in a laboratory pushing an idea—this has changed. Now scientists are ranked in platoons. They are organization men. In many cases the independent and humble search for new truths about nature has been confused with the bureaucratic impulse to justify expenditure and see that next year’s budget is bigger than last’s.”
Lilienthal wrote about the “elaborate and even luxurious [national nuclear] laboratories that have grown up at Oak Ridge, Argonne, Brookhaven” and the push to use nuclear devices for “blowing out harbors, making explosions underground to produce steam, and so on” which show “how far scientists and administrators will go to try to establish a nonmilitary use” for nuclear technology.
Chu, like so many of the national nuclear laboratory scientists and administrators, minimizes the dangers of radioactivity. If they didn’t, if they acknowledged how life-threatening the radiation produced by nuclear technology is, their favorite technology would crumble.
A major theme of Chu, too, is a return to the notion promoted by the national nuclear laboratories in the 1950s and 60s of “recycling” and “reusing” nuclear waste. This way, they have hoped, it might not be seen as waste at all. The concept was to use radioactive Cesium-137 (the main poison discharged in the Chernobyl disaster) to irradiate food, to use depleted uranium to harden bullets and shells, and so on. In recent weeks, with Obama carrying out his pledge not to allow Yucca Mountain to become a nuclear waste dump, Chu set up a “blue-ribbon” panel on radioactive waste—stacked with nuclear power advocates including Exelon’s John Rowe—that is expected to stress the “recycling” theory.
“We are aggressively pursuing nuclear energy,” declared Chu in January as he announced DOE’s budget plan—which included an increase in the 2011 federal budget in monies for nuclear loan guarantees to build new nuclear plants cited by Obama Tuesday. “We are, as we have repeatedly said, working hard to restart the American nuclear power industry.”
The $8.3 billion in loan guarantees Obama announced Tuesday is to come from $18.5 billion in guarantees proposed by the George W. Bush administration and authorized by Congress in 2005. “My budget proposes tripling the loan guarantees we provide to help finance safe, clean nuclear facilities,” said Obama Tuesday, referring to the DOE plan which would add $36 billion and bring the loan guarantee fund to $54.5. And this despite candidate Obama warning about “enormous subsidies from the U.S. government” to the nuclear industry.
The $8.3 billion in loan guarantees is to go toward the Southern Company of Atlanta constructing two nuclear power reactors in Burke, Georgia. These are to be AP1000 nuclear power plants designed by the Westinghouse nuclear division (now owned by Toshiba) although in October the designs were rejected by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as likely being unable to withstand events like tornadoes and earthquakes.
Obama’s change of stance on nuclear power has led to an earthquake of its own politically. MoveOn, the nonprofit advocacy group that has raised millions of dollars for Democratic candidates including Obama, gauged sentiment of his State of the Union speech by having10,000 MoveOn members record their views. Every few seconds they pressed a button signaling their reactions—ranging from “great” to “awful.” When Obama got to his line on energy, the overwhelming judgment was awful. “The most definitive drop in enthusiasm is when President Obama talked about nuclear power and offshore drilling,” said Ilyse Hogue, MoveOn’s director of political advocacy. “They’re looking for clean energy sources that prioritize wind and solar.”
“Safe, clean nuclear power—it’s an oxymoron,” said Jim Riccio, nuclear policy analyst for Greenpeace USA. “The president knows better. Just because radiation is invisible doesn’t mean it’s clean.”
“From a health perspective, the proposal of the Obama administration to increase federal loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors poses a serious risk to Americans,” said Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project. “Adding new reactors will raise the chance for a catastrophic meltdown. It will also increase the amount of radioactive chemicals routinely emitted from reactors into the environment—and human bodies. New reactors will raise rates of cancer—which are already unacceptably high—especially to infants and children. Public policies affecting America's energy future should reduce, rather than raise, hazards to our citizens."
As to government loan guarantees, “The last thing Americans want is another government bailout for a failing industry, but that’s exactly what they’re getting from the Obama administration,” said Ben Schreiber, the climate and energy tax analyst of Friends of the Earth.
“It would be not only good policy but good politics for Obama to abandon the nuclear loan guarantee program,” said Mariotte of NIRS.
After Obama’s Tuesday declaration on loan guarantees, Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Oversight Project of the organization Beyond Nuclear, said: “Unfortunately, the president’s decision is fuel for opposition to costly and dangerous nuclear power. It signals a widening of a divide as the administration steps back from its promise for a change in energy policy and those of us who are committed to a change.”
“We are deeply disturbed by President Obama’s decision,” said Peter Wilk, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “Not only does this put taxpayers on the hook for billions, it prioritizes a dirty, dangerous, and expensive technology over public health. From the beginning to the end of the nuclear fuel cycle, nuclear reactors remain a serious threat to public health and safety. From uranium mining waste to operating reactors leaking radioactivity to the lack of radioactive waste solutions, nuclear power continues to pose serious public health threats.”
Nuclear opponents have been disappointed in a lack of access to the Obama White House of those with a critical view on nuclear power—who could counteract the pro-nuclear arguments that Obama has been fed. Will President Obama open himself to hearing from those who question nuclear power?
Obama has credibility trouble already. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote
on January 26: “Who is Barack Obama? Americans are still looking for the answer…Mr. Obama may be personally very appealing, but he has positioned himself all over the political map…Mr. Obama is in danger of being perceived as someone whose rhetoric, however skillful, cannot always be trusted. He is creating a credibility gap for himself, and if it widens much more he won’t be able to close it.”
Is there any chance that President Barak Obama can return to his long-held stand critical of nuclear power? Is he open to hearing from scientists and energy experts, such as Amory Lovins, who can refute the pro-nuclear arguments that have apparently influenced him?
Obama’s declaration in his State of the Union speech on January 27 about “building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country” marked a significant change for him. His announcement Tuesday on moving ahead on $8.3 billion in federal government loan guarantees to build new nuclear plants and increasing the loan guarantee fund to $54.5 billion was a further major step. Wall Street is reluctant to invest money in the dangerous and extremely expensive technology.
Before taking office, including as a candidate for president, Obama not only was negative about atomic energy but—unusual for a politician—indicated a detailed knowledge of its threat to life.
“I start off with the premise that nuclear energy is not optimal and so I am not a nuclear energy proponent,” Obama said at a campaign stop in Newton, Iowa on December 30, 2007. “My general view is that until we can make certain that nuclear power plants are safe, that they have solved the storage problem—because I’m opposed to Yucca Mountain and just dumping…in one state, in Nevada particularly, since there’s potentially an earthquake line there—until we solve those problems and the whole nuclear industry can show that they can produce clean, safe energy without enormous subsidies from the U.S. government, I don’t think that’s the best option. I am much more interested in solar and wind and bio-diesel and strategies [for] alternative fuels.”
As he told the editorial board of the Keene Sentinel in New Hampshire on November 25, 2007: “I don’t think there’s anything that we inevitably dislike about nuclear power. We just dislike the fact that it might blow up…and irradiate us…and kill us. That’s the problem.”
Yes, that’s the big problem with splitting the atom—one that has existed since the start of nuclear power and will always be inherent in the technology. Using the perilous process of fission to generate electricity with its capacity for catastrophic accidents and its production of highly toxic radioactive poisons called nuclear waste will always be unsafe. And it is unnecessary considering the safe energy technologies now available, from solar, wind and other clean sources.
Just how dangerous it is has been underlined in a book just published by the New York Academy of Sciences, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. Written by a team of scientists led by noted Russian biologist Dr. Alexey Yablokov, using health data that have become available since the 1986 accident, it concludes that the fatality total “from April 1986 to the end of 2004 from the Chernobyl catastrophe was estimated at 985,000 additional [cancer] deaths.” This is in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other countries where Chernobyl’s poisons fell. The toll, they relate, continues to rise.
Chernobyl was a different design from the nuclear plants which the U.S., France and Japan seek now to build but disasters can also happen involving these plants and they, too, produce the highly toxic nuclear waste poisons. The problem is fission itself. It’s no way to produce electricity.
Obama has been aware of this. As he stated at a Londonderry, New Hampshire town meeting on October 7, 2007: “Nuclear power has a host of problems that have not been solved. We haven’t solved the storage situation effectively. We have not dealt with all of the security aspects of our nuclear plants and nuclear power is very expensive.”
He still left the door open to it. His Energy Plan as a candidate stated: “It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power from the table. However, there is no future for expanded nuclear without first addressing four key issues: public right-to-know, security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and [nuclear weapons] proliferation.”
In his first year as president, nuclear power proponents worked to influence him. Among nuclear opponents, there has been anxiety regarding Obama’s two top aides, both of whom have been involved with what is now the utility operating more nuclear power plants than any other in the United States, Exelon.
Rahm Emanuel, now Obama’s chief of staff, as an investment banker was in the middle of the $8.2 billion merger in 1999 of Unicom, the parent company of Commonwealth Edison of Chicago, and Peco Energy to put together Exelon. David Axelrod, now a senior Obama advisor and formerly chief campaign strategist, was an Exelon consultant. Candidate Obama received sizeable contributions from Exelon executives including from John Rowe, its president and chief executive officer who in 2007 also became chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the U.S. nuclear industry’s main trade group.
It’s not only been nuclear opponents who have seen a link between Exelon and the Obama administration. Forbes magazine, in its January 18th issue, in an article on John Rowe and how he has “focused the company on nuclear,” displayed a sidebar headlined, “The President’s Utility.” It read: “Ties are tight between Exelon and the Obama administration,” noting Exelon political contributions and featuring Emanuel and Axelrod with photos and descriptions of their Exelon connections.
The Forbes article spoke of how last year “Emanuel e-mailed Rowe on the eve of the House vote on global warming legislation and asked that he reach out to some uncommitted Democrats. ‘We are proud to be the President’s utility,’ says Elizabeth Moler, Exelon’s chief lobbyist,” the article went on. “It’s nice for John to be able to go to the White House and they know his name.’”
Chicago-based Exelon’s website boasts of its operating “the largest nuclear fleet in the nation and the third largest in the world.” It owns 17 nuclear power plants which “represent approximately 20 percent of the U.S. nuclear industry’s power capacity.”
The climate change or global warming issue is another factor in Obama’s change on nuclear power. An Associated Press article of January 31 on Obama’s having “singled out nuclear power in his State of the Union address and his spending plan for the next budget,” began: “President Barack Obama is endorsing nuclear energy like never before, trying to win over Republicans and moderate Democrats on climate and energy legislation.”
MSNBC’s Mike Stuckey on February 9 reported about “Obama’s new support for nuclear power, which some feel may be a down payment for Republican backing on a climate change bill.”
After the “safe, clean nuclear power” claim, Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, declared: “Politically, Obama likely was simply parroting the effort being led by Senators John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham to gain support for a climate bill by adding massive subsidies for nuclear power, offshore oil and ‘clean’ coal. But recycling George W. Bush energy talking points is no way to solve the climate crisis or develop a sustainable energy policy…Indeed, Obama knows better. Candidate Obama understood that nuclear power is neither safe nor clean.”
Climate change has been used by those promoting a “revival” of nuclear power—there hasn’t been a new nuclear plant ordered and built in the U.S. in 37 years—as a new argument. In fact, nuclear power makes a substantial contribution to global warming considering the overall “nuclear cycle”—uranium mining and milling, conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication and the disposition of radioactive waste, and so on.
Climate change is also one argument for pushing atomic energy of another major influence on Obama on nuclear power, Steven Chu, his Department of Energy secretary. Chu typifies the religious-like zeal for nuclear power emanating for decades from scientists in the U.S. government’s string of national nuclear laboratories. Chu was director of one of these, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, before becoming head of DOE.
First established during World War II’s Manhattan Project to build atomic weapons, the laboratories after the war began promoting civilian nuclear technology—and have been pushing it unceasingly ever since. It has been a way to perpetuate the vested interest created during World War II. The number of nuclear weapons that could be built was limited because atomic bombs don’t lend themselves to commercial distribution, but in pushing food irradiation, nuclear-powered airplanes and rockets, atomic devices for excavation and, of course, nuclear power, the budgets and staffs of the national nuclear laboratories could be maintained, indeed increase.
That was the analysis of David Lilienthal, first chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, which preceded the Department of Energy. Lilienthal in his 1963 book Change, Hope, and the Bomb wrote: “The classic picture of the scientist as a creative individual, a man obsessed, working alone through the night, a man in a laboratory pushing an idea—this has changed. Now scientists are ranked in platoons. They are organization men. In many cases the independent and humble search for new truths about nature has been confused with the bureaucratic impulse to justify expenditure and see that next year’s budget is bigger than last’s.”
Lilienthal wrote about the “elaborate and even luxurious [national nuclear] laboratories that have grown up at Oak Ridge, Argonne, Brookhaven” and the push to use nuclear devices for “blowing out harbors, making explosions underground to produce steam, and so on” which show “how far scientists and administrators will go to try to establish a nonmilitary use” for nuclear technology.
Chu, like so many of the national nuclear laboratory scientists and administrators, minimizes the dangers of radioactivity. If they didn’t, if they acknowledged how life-threatening the radiation produced by nuclear technology is, their favorite technology would crumble.
A major theme of Chu, too, is a return to the notion promoted by the national nuclear laboratories in the 1950s and 60s of “recycling” and “reusing” nuclear waste. This way, they have hoped, it might not be seen as waste at all. The concept was to use radioactive Cesium-137 (the main poison discharged in the Chernobyl disaster) to irradiate food, to use depleted uranium to harden bullets and shells, and so on. In recent weeks, with Obama carrying out his pledge not to allow Yucca Mountain to become a nuclear waste dump, Chu set up a “blue-ribbon” panel on radioactive waste—stacked with nuclear power advocates including Exelon’s John Rowe—that is expected to stress the “recycling” theory.
“We are aggressively pursuing nuclear energy,” declared Chu in January as he announced DOE’s budget plan—which included an increase in the 2011 federal budget in monies for nuclear loan guarantees to build new nuclear plants cited by Obama Tuesday. “We are, as we have repeatedly said, working hard to restart the American nuclear power industry.”
The $8.3 billion in loan guarantees Obama announced Tuesday is to come from $18.5 billion in guarantees proposed by the George W. Bush administration and authorized by Congress in 2005. “My budget proposes tripling the loan guarantees we provide to help finance safe, clean nuclear facilities,” said Obama Tuesday, referring to the DOE plan which would add $36 billion and bring the loan guarantee fund to $54.5. And this despite candidate Obama warning about “enormous subsidies from the U.S. government” to the nuclear industry.
The $8.3 billion in loan guarantees is to go toward the Southern Company of Atlanta constructing two nuclear power reactors in Burke, Georgia. These are to be AP1000 nuclear power plants designed by the Westinghouse nuclear division (now owned by Toshiba) although in October the designs were rejected by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as likely being unable to withstand events like tornadoes and earthquakes.
Obama’s change of stance on nuclear power has led to an earthquake of its own politically. MoveOn, the nonprofit advocacy group that has raised millions of dollars for Democratic candidates including Obama, gauged sentiment of his State of the Union speech by having10,000 MoveOn members record their views. Every few seconds they pressed a button signaling their reactions—ranging from “great” to “awful.” When Obama got to his line on energy, the overwhelming judgment was awful. “The most definitive drop in enthusiasm is when President Obama talked about nuclear power and offshore drilling,” said Ilyse Hogue, MoveOn’s director of political advocacy. “They’re looking for clean energy sources that prioritize wind and solar.”
“Safe, clean nuclear power—it’s an oxymoron,” said Jim Riccio, nuclear policy analyst for Greenpeace USA. “The president knows better. Just because radiation is invisible doesn’t mean it’s clean.”
“From a health perspective, the proposal of the Obama administration to increase federal loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors poses a serious risk to Americans,” said Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project. “Adding new reactors will raise the chance for a catastrophic meltdown. It will also increase the amount of radioactive chemicals routinely emitted from reactors into the environment—and human bodies. New reactors will raise rates of cancer—which are already unacceptably high—especially to infants and children. Public policies affecting America's energy future should reduce, rather than raise, hazards to our citizens."
As to government loan guarantees, “The last thing Americans want is another government bailout for a failing industry, but that’s exactly what they’re getting from the Obama administration,” said Ben Schreiber, the climate and energy tax analyst of Friends of the Earth.
“It would be not only good policy but good politics for Obama to abandon the nuclear loan guarantee program,” said Mariotte of NIRS.
After Obama’s Tuesday declaration on loan guarantees, Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Oversight Project of the organization Beyond Nuclear, said: “Unfortunately, the president’s decision is fuel for opposition to costly and dangerous nuclear power. It signals a widening of a divide as the administration steps back from its promise for a change in energy policy and those of us who are committed to a change.”
“We are deeply disturbed by President Obama’s decision,” said Peter Wilk, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “Not only does this put taxpayers on the hook for billions, it prioritizes a dirty, dangerous, and expensive technology over public health. From the beginning to the end of the nuclear fuel cycle, nuclear reactors remain a serious threat to public health and safety. From uranium mining waste to operating reactors leaking radioactivity to the lack of radioactive waste solutions, nuclear power continues to pose serious public health threats.”
Nuclear opponents have been disappointed in a lack of access to the Obama White House of those with a critical view on nuclear power—who could counteract the pro-nuclear arguments that Obama has been fed. Will President Obama open himself to hearing from those who question nuclear power?
Obama has credibility trouble already. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote
on January 26: “Who is Barack Obama? Americans are still looking for the answer…Mr. Obama may be personally very appealing, but he has positioned himself all over the political map…Mr. Obama is in danger of being perceived as someone whose rhetoric, however skillful, cannot always be trusted. He is creating a credibility gap for himself, and if it widens much more he won’t be able to close it.”
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Credit Card Company Usury
The behavior of credit card companies in recent months has been unbelievable.
Hysterical that new federal rules are to take effect dealing with their operations, the credit card companies have, among other things, been raising interest rates to levels otherwise only charged by Mafia loan sharks—to 30 and 40 percent.
A definition of usury: “An interest rate that greatly exceeds the bounds of reason or moderation, one that is exorbitant.” Like 30 and 40 percent.
The new rules—provisions of the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009—include:
· Not allowing an interest rate increase to be applied to an existing balance unless a cardholder is delinquent.
· Notifying cardholders of an interest rate jump 45 days in advance.
· Stopping young people with no income from getting hooked on credit cards; under-21-year-olds would need a co-signer or a job.
Some of the rules are to take effect in February, some in August.
But importantly, there’s no cap in the new rules on interest rates—a gargantuan hole considering the recent behavior, indeed the history of credit card companies.
Did you ever wonder why you mail your payments to credit card companies in states like South Dakota, Utah Delaware? It’s because these states have no or very loose usury laws.
Vermont’s independent Senator Bernie Sanders tried to get a cap set on credit card interest rates of 15 percent in the new rules. With rates of 30 and 40 percent, the credit card companies, he said, weren’t “making credit available. They’re engaging in loan-sharking.”
His effort failed—only 33 senators supported it. The banking lobby is plenty powerful in Washington.
Because of the recent credit card company machinations, there’s a second bill now before Congress, the Expedited Card Reform for Consumers Act of 2009—to make them comply with the new rules starting next month.
Incidentally, folks with solid finances who pay off their credit card bills every month are also being victimized-- with big hikes in fees.
New York’s U.S. Senator Charles Schumer says the “sneaky fees and tricks” of the credit card companies “are ripping off consumers across the country and it’s time to stop them dead in their tracks.”
He’s right, but just expediting the new rules won’t do it. Necessary are tougher rules—including a cap on credit card interest to end credit card company usury.
Hysterical that new federal rules are to take effect dealing with their operations, the credit card companies have, among other things, been raising interest rates to levels otherwise only charged by Mafia loan sharks—to 30 and 40 percent.
A definition of usury: “An interest rate that greatly exceeds the bounds of reason or moderation, one that is exorbitant.” Like 30 and 40 percent.
The new rules—provisions of the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009—include:
· Not allowing an interest rate increase to be applied to an existing balance unless a cardholder is delinquent.
· Notifying cardholders of an interest rate jump 45 days in advance.
· Stopping young people with no income from getting hooked on credit cards; under-21-year-olds would need a co-signer or a job.
Some of the rules are to take effect in February, some in August.
But importantly, there’s no cap in the new rules on interest rates—a gargantuan hole considering the recent behavior, indeed the history of credit card companies.
Did you ever wonder why you mail your payments to credit card companies in states like South Dakota, Utah Delaware? It’s because these states have no or very loose usury laws.
Vermont’s independent Senator Bernie Sanders tried to get a cap set on credit card interest rates of 15 percent in the new rules. With rates of 30 and 40 percent, the credit card companies, he said, weren’t “making credit available. They’re engaging in loan-sharking.”
His effort failed—only 33 senators supported it. The banking lobby is plenty powerful in Washington.
Because of the recent credit card company machinations, there’s a second bill now before Congress, the Expedited Card Reform for Consumers Act of 2009—to make them comply with the new rules starting next month.
Incidentally, folks with solid finances who pay off their credit card bills every month are also being victimized-- with big hikes in fees.
New York’s U.S. Senator Charles Schumer says the “sneaky fees and tricks” of the credit card companies “are ripping off consumers across the country and it’s time to stop them dead in their tracks.”
He’s right, but just expediting the new rules won’t do it. Necessary are tougher rules—including a cap on credit card interest to end credit card company usury.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
No Family History
No Family History: The Environmental Links to Breast Cancer is the title of a just-published book by Sabrina McCormick, who has also produced and directed and accompanying video documentary.
The book and video lay out the case that what must be done about the epidemic of breast cancer is dealing with the toxins in the environment that largely cause it.
Dr. McCormick chose where I’m from–Long Island—as the geographical centerpiece of the book and video because of Long Island’s high rates of breast cancer ranging up to 200 percent over the national average. She is the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania and an assistant professor of environmental science and sociology at Michigan State University,
The key figure in the video and book is Robin Caslenova, a 44-year-old woman from West Islip, Long Island who was diagnosed with breast cancer without a family history of the disease.
Her ordeal in followed over several years—including the operation she must undergo, chemotherapy and breast reconstruction.
The video is graphic. Indeed, the announcement for the recent New York premiere of it, issued by the Suffolk County Cancer Awareness Task Force and the Huntington, Long Island-based initiative, Prevention is the Cure, noted: “This documentary contains adult material, scenes during and after a real-life surgery and its aftermath, and medical situations and discussions which may not be suitable for children or those with weak stomachs.” No matter how queasy your stomach might get, this is a video and book that are essential viewing and reading. The truth about cancer, its causes and the ordeal it puts people through, must be faced squarely.
In the book, published by Rowman & Littlefield, Dr. McCormick speaks of a “political economy of disease—a vast, powerful group of corporations protected by weak governmental practices that have shaped what we are exposed to every day…It affects everyday lives and deaths.” This “political economy...has caused us to focus on treatment, detection, and cure while missing a more difficult and political piece of the puzzle—how to prevent breast cancer.” These “institutions often prioritize major corporate interests instead of the public’s health and well-being.”
In the book and video, Dr. McCormick details how cancer-causing chemicals “permeate the planet.” Meanwhile, in 1964 one in 20 women was afflicted with breast cancer and by 2006 it “reached one in eight.” Few have a family history. Breast cancer has become “the most common killer of middle-aged women in the United States, Canada and northern Europe.”
“We exercise. We get mammograms. We also walk, shop, and race for a cure. We know what pink stands for. It means breast cancer. It means raising money. It means finding a cure. The fact is that we are missing the boat,” she writes.
She is especially critical of corporations that promote treatment and donate to cancer research while manufacturing cancer-causing toxins. For more information on her documentary and book, visit www.nofamilyhistory.com
Mrs. Caslenova, with her supportive husband and their three children, were at the premiere of the video, at which Mrs. Caslenova also spoke. Buoyant despite her travails, she told of having “a great family that lifted me up" and she declared that “prevention is so minimal” in how cancer is being challenged.
This must change as a matter of life and death.
The book and video lay out the case that what must be done about the epidemic of breast cancer is dealing with the toxins in the environment that largely cause it.
Dr. McCormick chose where I’m from–Long Island—as the geographical centerpiece of the book and video because of Long Island’s high rates of breast cancer ranging up to 200 percent over the national average. She is the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania and an assistant professor of environmental science and sociology at Michigan State University,
The key figure in the video and book is Robin Caslenova, a 44-year-old woman from West Islip, Long Island who was diagnosed with breast cancer without a family history of the disease.
Her ordeal in followed over several years—including the operation she must undergo, chemotherapy and breast reconstruction.
The video is graphic. Indeed, the announcement for the recent New York premiere of it, issued by the Suffolk County Cancer Awareness Task Force and the Huntington, Long Island-based initiative, Prevention is the Cure, noted: “This documentary contains adult material, scenes during and after a real-life surgery and its aftermath, and medical situations and discussions which may not be suitable for children or those with weak stomachs.” No matter how queasy your stomach might get, this is a video and book that are essential viewing and reading. The truth about cancer, its causes and the ordeal it puts people through, must be faced squarely.
In the book, published by Rowman & Littlefield, Dr. McCormick speaks of a “political economy of disease—a vast, powerful group of corporations protected by weak governmental practices that have shaped what we are exposed to every day…It affects everyday lives and deaths.” This “political economy...has caused us to focus on treatment, detection, and cure while missing a more difficult and political piece of the puzzle—how to prevent breast cancer.” These “institutions often prioritize major corporate interests instead of the public’s health and well-being.”
In the book and video, Dr. McCormick details how cancer-causing chemicals “permeate the planet.” Meanwhile, in 1964 one in 20 women was afflicted with breast cancer and by 2006 it “reached one in eight.” Few have a family history. Breast cancer has become “the most common killer of middle-aged women in the United States, Canada and northern Europe.”
“We exercise. We get mammograms. We also walk, shop, and race for a cure. We know what pink stands for. It means breast cancer. It means raising money. It means finding a cure. The fact is that we are missing the boat,” she writes.
She is especially critical of corporations that promote treatment and donate to cancer research while manufacturing cancer-causing toxins. For more information on her documentary and book, visit www.nofamilyhistory.com
Mrs. Caslenova, with her supportive husband and their three children, were at the premiere of the video, at which Mrs. Caslenova also spoke. Buoyant despite her travails, she told of having “a great family that lifted me up" and she declared that “prevention is so minimal” in how cancer is being challenged.
This must change as a matter of life and death.
Friday, August 14, 2009
FAA--Forget About Administration
Published on OpEdNews.com, August 14, 2009
FAA—Forget About Administration. That should be the official name of the Federal Aviation Administration for it is a toothless government agency long in bed with the industry it is supposed to regulate.
The recent fatal collision between an airplane and sighteeing helicopter over the Hudson River is yet another episode involving a regulatory agency with little interest in regulation. The busy Hudson River corridor adjacent to the skyscrapers of Manhattan is, because of FAA inaction, “unregulated” airspace.
“It is unconscionable that the FAA permits unregulated flights in a crowded airspace in a major metropolitan area,” declared Congressman Jerrold Nadler this week. “The Hudson River flight corridor must not continue to be the Wild West.”
But that’s the FAA—which prefers to let industry do its thing.
To the east of where that tragedy occurred, the people of Long Island have gotten a lesson on this in recent times as they’ve tried to seek action to deal with the racket of helicopters ferrying people between Manhattan and the Hamptons.
Despite the economic downturn, the helicopter traffic to and from the Hamptons, a warm-weather vacation mecca, is booming allowing the well-heeled to avoid traffic jams below—at the cost of peace for residents of the highly-populated island also below.
In the island’s largest county, Suffolk County, a law was proposed seeking to quell the noise. “Low flying helicopters have become a public nuisance in Suffolk County,” it declared. It continued: the FAA “has failed to regulate the operation” of the helicopters. Thus, it held, it was necessary for the county to step in.
“The operation of helicopters at low altitudes is presumed to be a hazard to persons and property on the surface and constitutes careless and reckless operation,” said the bill authored by Suffolk County Legislator Edward Romaine.
Standing with the helicopter industry against the measure was…yes, the FAA.
FAA Regional Executive Manager Diane Crean came before the legislature last year and declared that the FAA has “supreme” power over air traffic. The proposed law was “pre-empted” by the FAA, she insisted.
Romaine countered that the FAA insists “we control” helicopter traffic but, in fact, “doesn’t control it” and will allow the Hamptons choppers to fly at any altitude and without any plans. The FAA policy, he said, is: “Essentially, you’re on your own.”
Despite the FAA opposition, Suffolk County legislation to attempt to din the chopper racket passed and was signed into law in June. And it has teeth: “up to $1,000 and/or one year in prison per offense.”
FAA inaction is a national problem. The New York Times in a front-page article August 14 detailed the agency’s inaction when it came to recommendations of the National Transportation Safety Board. “Fatal Collision Above the Hudson Bares a Longtime Rift Over Air Safety,” declared a headline for the piece. It related: “The safety board and the FAA have a long history of being frustrated with each other in matters involving major airliners or crashes of commercial jetliners, and there are various theories about why. On the one hand, the safety board sometimes proposes fixes that require technological advances or are viewed as too costly. On the other, the FAA is sometimes criticized as working too closely and protectively with the airline industry.”
The FAA website declares: “Our continuing mission is to provide the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world…Safety is our passion…Integrity is our character. We do the right thing, even when no one is looking.” Can a government agency be charged with false advertising? (The FAA, not too incidentally, has an annual budget of more than $14 billion.)
Appearing with Congressman Nadler along the Hudson August 10, near where the airplane-helicopter crash took place, New York State Assemblyman Richard Gottfried said: “It’s obvious the FAA’s policy of leaving pilots to fend for themselves endangers people in the area and the rest of us down below. That’s got to change.”
Change must come—including complete reform of the FAA.
FAA—Forget About Administration. That should be the official name of the Federal Aviation Administration for it is a toothless government agency long in bed with the industry it is supposed to regulate.
The recent fatal collision between an airplane and sighteeing helicopter over the Hudson River is yet another episode involving a regulatory agency with little interest in regulation. The busy Hudson River corridor adjacent to the skyscrapers of Manhattan is, because of FAA inaction, “unregulated” airspace.
“It is unconscionable that the FAA permits unregulated flights in a crowded airspace in a major metropolitan area,” declared Congressman Jerrold Nadler this week. “The Hudson River flight corridor must not continue to be the Wild West.”
But that’s the FAA—which prefers to let industry do its thing.
To the east of where that tragedy occurred, the people of Long Island have gotten a lesson on this in recent times as they’ve tried to seek action to deal with the racket of helicopters ferrying people between Manhattan and the Hamptons.
Despite the economic downturn, the helicopter traffic to and from the Hamptons, a warm-weather vacation mecca, is booming allowing the well-heeled to avoid traffic jams below—at the cost of peace for residents of the highly-populated island also below.
In the island’s largest county, Suffolk County, a law was proposed seeking to quell the noise. “Low flying helicopters have become a public nuisance in Suffolk County,” it declared. It continued: the FAA “has failed to regulate the operation” of the helicopters. Thus, it held, it was necessary for the county to step in.
“The operation of helicopters at low altitudes is presumed to be a hazard to persons and property on the surface and constitutes careless and reckless operation,” said the bill authored by Suffolk County Legislator Edward Romaine.
Standing with the helicopter industry against the measure was…yes, the FAA.
FAA Regional Executive Manager Diane Crean came before the legislature last year and declared that the FAA has “supreme” power over air traffic. The proposed law was “pre-empted” by the FAA, she insisted.
Romaine countered that the FAA insists “we control” helicopter traffic but, in fact, “doesn’t control it” and will allow the Hamptons choppers to fly at any altitude and without any plans. The FAA policy, he said, is: “Essentially, you’re on your own.”
Despite the FAA opposition, Suffolk County legislation to attempt to din the chopper racket passed and was signed into law in June. And it has teeth: “up to $1,000 and/or one year in prison per offense.”
FAA inaction is a national problem. The New York Times in a front-page article August 14 detailed the agency’s inaction when it came to recommendations of the National Transportation Safety Board. “Fatal Collision Above the Hudson Bares a Longtime Rift Over Air Safety,” declared a headline for the piece. It related: “The safety board and the FAA have a long history of being frustrated with each other in matters involving major airliners or crashes of commercial jetliners, and there are various theories about why. On the one hand, the safety board sometimes proposes fixes that require technological advances or are viewed as too costly. On the other, the FAA is sometimes criticized as working too closely and protectively with the airline industry.”
The FAA website declares: “Our continuing mission is to provide the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world…Safety is our passion…Integrity is our character. We do the right thing, even when no one is looking.” Can a government agency be charged with false advertising? (The FAA, not too incidentally, has an annual budget of more than $14 billion.)
Appearing with Congressman Nadler along the Hudson August 10, near where the airplane-helicopter crash took place, New York State Assemblyman Richard Gottfried said: “It’s obvious the FAA’s policy of leaving pilots to fend for themselves endangers people in the area and the rest of us down below. That’s got to change.”
Change must come—including complete reform of the FAA.
Monday, August 10, 2009
The "Freedom" to Be Given Cancer
The link between tanning beds and cancer, in particular that deadly skin cancer, melanoma, has been known for years. It’s the reason that laws have been passed across the United States to deal with tanning salons—despite intense lobbying by the tanning industry.
Now, the basis for those laws has been thoroughly confirmed by a comprehensive report of the World Health Organization http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs287/en/
putting tanning beds into the top cancer risk category—deeming them as deadly as arsenic and mustard gas.
Younger people were found to be the biggest victims: Said the report: “The risk of skin melanoma is increased 75 percent when use of tanning devices starts before 30 years of age.”
The International Tanning Association and other segments of the tanning industry are, meanwhile, trying to refute the study.
Where I live, in Suffolk County, Long Island, early on there was a move to regulate tanning salons. Suffolk County Legislator Vivian Viloria-Fisher in early 2005 introduced a bill requiring young people between 14 and 18 only be allowed to get toasted in a tanning salon if accompanied by a parent.
She was inspired by her experience as a high school teacher when, she recalls, “I saw students coming to school in the winter months with tans,” especially girls and not from vacations but from going to tanning salons. “I would lecture the students about what they were doing to their skin…the health dangers involved.”
Ms. Viloria-Fisher's bill faced “tremendous resistance” from the tanning industry and became stuck in committee.
It’s amazing how vested interests—entities seeking to perpetuate themselves and their dubious doings—have the power all over the United States to stop sensible governmental action. (Consider currently the insurance industry and health care.)
The Indoor Tanning Association proclaims on its website (www.theita.com): “Promoting Responsible Sun Care.” It stresses that it “represents thousands of indoor tanning manufacturers, distributors, facility owners and members from other support industries. The professional indoor tanning industry employs more than 160,000 people and generates an economic impact of more than $5 billion annually.” It was “founded to protect the freedom of individuals to acquire a suntan.” Its claims include how the “sunshine vitamin may make you brighter…may help older people stay mentally fit.”
A major break on the tanning salon issue in Suffolk came, recounts Ms. Viloria-Fisher, when she attended a meeting the Suffolk County executive was holding with environmentalists and health advocates and met Colette Coyne “and got to talk to her.” Ms. Coyne and her husband, Patrick, of New Hyde Park, Long Island, founded the Colette Coyne Melanoma Awareness Campaign (www.ccmac.org) after their daughter, also named Colette, died at 29 of melanoma.
Ms. Viloria-Fisher re-introduced her bill, this time calling it the “Colette Melanoma Awareness Act” later in 2005. And, despite continued industry opposition, this time the measure passed the legislature, unanimously, and was signed into law by the county executive.
With the WHO report, Ms. Viloria-Fisher has just introduced a new bill to flatly ban those under 18 from using tanning salons.
Reflecting on her experience with the issue, Ms. Viloria-Fisher speaks of how “very nasty” the situation became when she first introduced her bill. But she says she knew she was correct from the research then done—by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control—cited in her bill. She also received personal advice from “a very good friend, a plastic surgeon, who told me, ‘It’s about time. I get young people coming to me who have actually scarred themselves on tanning beds.’”
As to those who fought her initiative, “There’s no interest like self-interest. Bt my job is as a policy maker to look at this dispassionately because I don’t have a vested interest, to look at this in terms of the public health and public good, to look at the bigger interest.” The WHO report “confirms what we’ve been reading.”
She hopes pending New York State legislation barring those under 18 from using tanning salons might now pass. The Indoor Tanning Association, on its website, lists the New York measure and other bills in the U.S. on tanning salons and urges their defeat. After all, it says, “All human activity presents risk.”
How vested interests can twist the truth and damage and destroy life.
Now, the basis for those laws has been thoroughly confirmed by a comprehensive report of the World Health Organization http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs287/en/
putting tanning beds into the top cancer risk category—deeming them as deadly as arsenic and mustard gas.
Younger people were found to be the biggest victims: Said the report: “The risk of skin melanoma is increased 75 percent when use of tanning devices starts before 30 years of age.”
The International Tanning Association and other segments of the tanning industry are, meanwhile, trying to refute the study.
Where I live, in Suffolk County, Long Island, early on there was a move to regulate tanning salons. Suffolk County Legislator Vivian Viloria-Fisher in early 2005 introduced a bill requiring young people between 14 and 18 only be allowed to get toasted in a tanning salon if accompanied by a parent.
She was inspired by her experience as a high school teacher when, she recalls, “I saw students coming to school in the winter months with tans,” especially girls and not from vacations but from going to tanning salons. “I would lecture the students about what they were doing to their skin…the health dangers involved.”
Ms. Viloria-Fisher's bill faced “tremendous resistance” from the tanning industry and became stuck in committee.
It’s amazing how vested interests—entities seeking to perpetuate themselves and their dubious doings—have the power all over the United States to stop sensible governmental action. (Consider currently the insurance industry and health care.)
The Indoor Tanning Association proclaims on its website (www.theita.com): “Promoting Responsible Sun Care.” It stresses that it “represents thousands of indoor tanning manufacturers, distributors, facility owners and members from other support industries. The professional indoor tanning industry employs more than 160,000 people and generates an economic impact of more than $5 billion annually.” It was “founded to protect the freedom of individuals to acquire a suntan.” Its claims include how the “sunshine vitamin may make you brighter…may help older people stay mentally fit.”
A major break on the tanning salon issue in Suffolk came, recounts Ms. Viloria-Fisher, when she attended a meeting the Suffolk County executive was holding with environmentalists and health advocates and met Colette Coyne “and got to talk to her.” Ms. Coyne and her husband, Patrick, of New Hyde Park, Long Island, founded the Colette Coyne Melanoma Awareness Campaign (www.ccmac.org) after their daughter, also named Colette, died at 29 of melanoma.
Ms. Viloria-Fisher re-introduced her bill, this time calling it the “Colette Melanoma Awareness Act” later in 2005. And, despite continued industry opposition, this time the measure passed the legislature, unanimously, and was signed into law by the county executive.
With the WHO report, Ms. Viloria-Fisher has just introduced a new bill to flatly ban those under 18 from using tanning salons.
Reflecting on her experience with the issue, Ms. Viloria-Fisher speaks of how “very nasty” the situation became when she first introduced her bill. But she says she knew she was correct from the research then done—by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control—cited in her bill. She also received personal advice from “a very good friend, a plastic surgeon, who told me, ‘It’s about time. I get young people coming to me who have actually scarred themselves on tanning beds.’”
As to those who fought her initiative, “There’s no interest like self-interest. Bt my job is as a policy maker to look at this dispassionately because I don’t have a vested interest, to look at this in terms of the public health and public good, to look at the bigger interest.” The WHO report “confirms what we’ve been reading.”
She hopes pending New York State legislation barring those under 18 from using tanning salons might now pass. The Indoor Tanning Association, on its website, lists the New York measure and other bills in the U.S. on tanning salons and urges their defeat. After all, it says, “All human activity presents risk.”
How vested interests can twist the truth and damage and destroy life.
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