Experts often suggest that crime resembles an epidemic. But what kind? Karl Smith, a professor of public economics and government at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, has a good rule of thumb for categorizing epidemics: If it spreads along lines of communication, he says, the cause is information. Think Bieber Fever. If it travels along major transportation routes, the cause is microbial. Think influenza. If it spreads out like a fan, the cause is an insect. Think malaria. But if it's everywhere, all at once—as both the rise of crime in the '60s and '70s and the fall of crime in the '90s seemed to be—the cause is a molecule.
[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns
on Jan 3, 2013 -
140 comments
"
Places like Picher are why Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980—better known as the Superfund bill." - Wired Magazine on the most toxic town in America,
Picher, OK , and
the people who still live there
posted by The Whelk
on Sep 5, 2010 -
21 comments
"I don't see any future for whale species except extinction." A
report (pdf) released Thursday by
Ocean Alliance noted high levels of cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium in tissue samples taken by dart gun from nearly 1,000 whales over five years. Concentrations of chromium found in some whales was several times higher than the level required to kill healthy cells in a Petri dish. Mercury in some whales was 16 times higher than a typical shark or swordfish, both known for their high mercury levels.
Beyond whales, "You could make a fairly tight argument to say that it is the single greatest health threat that has ever faced the human species."
posted by stbalbach
on Jun 24, 2010 -
68 comments
Roman ingots to shield particle detector. "Around four tonnes of ancient Roman lead was yesterday transferred from a museum on the Italian island of Sardinia to the country's national particle physics
laboratory at Gran Sasso on the mainland. Once destined to become water pipes, coins or ammunition for Roman soldiers' slingshots, the metal will instead form part of a cutting-edge experiment to nail down the mass of neutrinos."
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Apr 16, 2010 -
22 comments
Picher, Oklahoma was part of a
major lead mining area in the central US until the middle of the last century, when the
mines closed down. It is now the
epicenter of the
Tar Creek Superfund site. Residents live among mountains of
mine tailings known
as chat. Heavy metal poisoning is endemic in the area. With fits and starts, things do begin to get done about it, but only very slowly.
To add insult to injury, Picher was
struck by an
EF-4 tornado on May 10th, 2008. The residents are finally
suing over the long in
coming
buyout plan. Shockingly, the buyout plan was put into place with urgency not because of the lead, zinc, and cadmium poisoning,
but because the mines are
in danger of caving in. There is still word on when the
mountains of debris will be removed, or the acid mine drainage stopped. Despite attempts to prevent further contamination in the 1980s and 90s, the waste is still
poisoning local creeks and
wildlife.
posted by wierdo
on Apr 9, 2009 -
15 comments
Book Burning: For Your Health! "...under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute."
(via Neil Gaiman's twitter stream)
posted by Lentrohamsanin
on Mar 15, 2009 -
40 comments
...Although crime did fall dramatically in New York during Giuliani's tenure, a broad range of scientific research has emerged in recent years to show that the mayor deserves only a fraction of the credit that he claims. The most compelling information has come from an economist in Fairfax who has argued in a series of little-noticed papers that the "New York miracle" was caused by local and federal efforts decades earlier to reduce lead poisoning. The theory offered by the economist, Rick Nevin, is that lead poisoning accounts for much of the variation in violent crime in the United States. It offers a unifying new neurochemical theory for fluctuations in the crime rate, and it is based on studies linking children's exposure to lead with violent behavior later in their lives. What makes Nevin's work persuasive is that he has shown an identical, decades-long association between lead poisoning and crime rates in nine countries...
Research Links Lead Exposure, Criminal Activity
Research Links Childhood Lead Exposure to Changes in Violent Crime Rates Throughout the 20th Century (
PDF)
posted by y2karl
on Jul 8, 2007 -
56 comments
Meet the man who "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in earth history" -
Thomas Midgley, Jr. Midgley invented leaded gasoline in 1921 to
stop cars from knocking. In the process, he created a huge new industry, increased by 500 times the atmospheric lead levels, and
was part of a multi-decade coverup of lead's effects that put the tobacco industry to shame [note: article is both terrific and very long] and still
continues today. Just a few years later, he invented chlorofluorocarbons, and, with
a dramatic demonstration of their safety, usured in an era of
cheap air conditioning and social change, as well as
ozone depletion. In the end,
he was killed by one of his inventions, though it was neither lead nor CFCs that were responsible. He is sometimes
remembered fondly, he is more often
vilified.
posted by blahblahblah
on Oct 19, 2006 -
30 comments
