Dioxin and that Damn Enviornment Working Group…
July 14th, 2010
|
| Share |
For those who don’t know, I just got home from a week in Las Vegas where I attended The Amazing Meeting with The Amazing James Randi, Adam Savage, the Great Johnny Thompson, Dr. Michael Shermer, Phil Plait “The Bad Astronomer,” Richard Dawkins and numerous other world-renowned skeptics, critical thinkers and science promoters.
Of course, it was a hoot. It also involved quite a bit of intellectual stimulation, partying, drinking, running around, socializing and precious little sleep or down time. Now back home, I figured it was time to crash for the evening before a storm of posting on the meeting, all those who helped pull it off and what my thoughts are on the future of skepticism, which I will say, is quite bright.
Then this shit hit the presses…
Infants Ingest Nearly 80 Times Safe Level of Dioxin
Yes, it is the “Environmental Working Group,” who have managed to gain credibility and also get a lot of media attention by going after a variety of unproven and over-played environmental issues. They’re the same group that made a big stink about cell phone radiation levels without providing much reason why anyone should worry about them.
While dioxin is indeed worth concern, at least in some circumstances, the press release from the EWG is riddled with unsubstantiated claims.
But, I’m simply too tired. Anyone want to take a closer look at the data?
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 at 1:25 am and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Enviornment, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
View blog reactions
July 14th, 2010 at 1:47 am
UGGGGGG!
I need some sleep, man. Sounds like you do too! Sad thing is you can’t stomp all of these. There will be more fresh bull**** come morning
Quote Comment
July 14th, 2010 at 3:10 am
Actually it looks to me more like they are jumping on the bandwagon and trying to create the illusion that they are somehow partially responsible for decisions made by the USEPA.
Quote Comment
July 14th, 2010 at 3:58 am
http://www.opednews.com/articles/B-P-Halliburton-and-Trans-by-Chris-Landau-100611-452.html
Quote Comment
July 14th, 2010 at 6:07 am
Jeremy said:
Wasn’t Jeremy given his own fenced-off compound where he could be free to wallow in his own filth?
Quote Comment
July 14th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Jeremy said:
You do realize that you posted this in another thread, right? I mean the other thread was the place to post it because it was on topic, so I thought there was some progress, but apparently not.
Quote Comment
July 14th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
TAM 8? I didn’t see you at the Skepchick party. How come?
Quote Comment
July 14th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Random observation: those are definitely Medela brand baby bottles. I know because I have a set of them. They’re designed to go along with Medela’s extensive line of breastpumps and breastpump accessories. Each has a slogan intended to promote breastfeeding; you can see part of one in one of the pictures.
The article also claims adults consume 12,000 times more than is believed safe, mostly through eating meat, which they say is a good reason to go vegan. Hmmm.
I followed the link to the paper showing that infants were consuming 77 times the safe level. Surprise surprise, it goes to a press release, not a peer-reviewed scientific paper, so we can’t really look at their methodology. It links further to yet another press release, which at least cites an individual scientist, but not a single paper, making it extremely difficult to tell where they got their data, much less determine if there’s any sense in it. Heck, they don’t even identify what they consider the safe level to be. For all I know, they’re using limits for municipal drinking water and applying that out of context. (It wouldn’t be the first time that tactic had been used either.) They also don’t mention whether the “safe limit” is for chronic exposure, acute exposure, or what. In short, their letter is strong on scary language and very short on actual verifiable figures. 77 times *what*? 1,200 times *what*? Never mind how those numbers were reached, they don’t even define what those numbers *are*.
Maybe there’s a problem, maybe there isn’t. All I can say with confidence is that the Environmental Working Group is not going to a whole lot of effort to actually demonstrate that there’s a problem. They just want us to take their word for it.
Quote Comment
July 14th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
The whole dioxin thing is a bit complex.
Much of the concern has focused on the most toxic member of the dioxin and furan family – 2,3,7,8-TCDD. This was a contaminant in the weedkiller 2,4,5-T, also used by the U.S. military in ‘Agent Orange’ and is known for negative health effects in humans. There are 16 other members of this family that are considered toxic at certain doses, which are reported in toxic equivalents (TEQ) per kilogram of body weight relative to 2,3,7,8-TCDD.
However, only these 17 of all 210 known dioxins and furans have four lateral chlorine atoms and are of concern. Broad reporting of total dioxin concentrations that are not corrected for TEQ are therefore epidemiologically meaningless.
Animal studies and long-term studies on people who have been accidentally or occupationally exposed to dioxins and furans led a committee of scientific experts to conclude that the tolerable daily intake (TDI) of 2,3,7,8-TCDD TEQ for humans is 10 picograms per kilogram of body weight.
Quote Comment
July 14th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
drbuzz0 said:
Yeah, and nobody will reply to it because the thread isn’t on page 1. That or nobody can debunk it because it’s true, which I believe is more likely.
Quote Comment
July 14th, 2010 at 8:35 pm
James Randi said:
Didn’t buy a ticket. Didn’t really feel like going.
Quote Comment
July 14th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
Jeremy said:
Christ!
There is already a containment system on the well which is sucking off most of the oil. Just last Monday a newly fabricated cap was placed on top of the well. The effort to contain the spill will now begin testing the cap while partially closing the valves on it. This will give an impression of the internal pressures exerted directly on the well head. There is some concern that the well head may be ruptured if the pressure is too high, although this is probably unlikely.
If the test is successful, the cap will be closed and the well will be 100% or nearly 100% sealed for the time being and we can breathe easy pending the long-term solution which is the relief wells, which are on schedule for mid to late August.
If the test shows that the pressure is too high to close off the well completely, the diversion and containment of oil by surface ships will be the only way to go. They already now have enough fittings on the well head to suck off nearly all the oil. The only reason this is considered to be a less favorable option is that a hurricane could force the surface vessels to abandon the site.
Your op-ed idiot has no idea what he is talking about. The “age” of the oil does not matter. The problems of a high pressure blowout are not in surmountable. There have been many high pressure blowouts before and the one and only thing that makes this more difficult is the fact that it is in very deep water. If this happened on land (as it has many times before) it would be taken care of in a few days.
Please try to get your head out of your ass. I know it’s up really really far, but just give it a good pull. It smells a lot nicer out here.
Quote Comment
July 14th, 2010 at 8:58 pm
drbuzz0 said:
Not going to happen. The only thing this guy will understand is getting deleted every time he posts out of thread or off topic.
Quote Comment
July 14th, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Debunking “Jeremy” and his wacky-assed beliefs is all well and good, but there’s a post for that. If you comment on this post, you encourage his cross-posting, which is totally inappropriate given that there’s a thread for it. Even if it is not the first thread, it still shows up on the “what’s hot” and the RSS stream of the comments.
It’s not just totally rude, IMO, it’s outright spam. I know you want to avoid looking like you can’t take the heat, but a line needs to be drawn. Jeremy is clearly more into his paranoid delusions than being polite and observing reasonable netiquette rules.
Quote Comment
July 14th, 2010 at 10:58 pm
Agreed with Q.
But to get back on topic:
It makes my skin crawl that this group claims to be a science-based group for policy analysis and science-based information and lobbying and yet they can’t seem to do anything more than make reference vague, alleged “studies.” This is unacceptable. I want to see the studies, the data and I links back to the journals they come from. If you want to take them seriously as a science policy group, this is what is needed.
This looks like nothing more than blowing smoke and it’s annoying
Quote Comment
July 14th, 2010 at 11:19 pm
Russ said:
I’m past that point given the current state of scientific publishing; I want to see the raw data now before I’ll buy into anything. Like I wrote up thread, the term ‘dioxin’ used without qualifiers is next to meaningless, and this is a situation ripe for exploitation by outfits like the ‘Environmental Working Group.’ In particular given their attempts to leverage the term ‘radiation’ to imply cell-phone signals are a health hazard.
Quote Comment
July 15th, 2010 at 12:01 am
Dioxin to most lay people: “Isn’t it that stuff that they were all worried about making people sick in Vietnam? And isn’t that what made that guy from Belarus get all puffy and sick? Yeah, I don’t know what it is, but I’m pretty sure I heard some scary stuff about it.”
(A lot like radiation in that respect)
Quote Comment
July 15th, 2010 at 1:42 am
Q said:
It’s the guy from Ukraine, Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko. In Belarus dioxins aren’t that concentrated.
Quote Comment