Reporters, beginning to feel a little silly penning scary copy about global warming with their tootsies shoved up against a space heater, have moved on to other hair-raisers. Polyvinylchloride, for example. The anti-PVC crusade hasn't been without its mishaps. In Washington, after cold weather caused dozens of metal and concrete-based water mains to burst, the Chlorine Chemistry Council pointed out that the city wouldn't have incurred citizen complaints and huge repair costs if it had used PVC pipe. Part 3 will be PVCs in plastic wrap.
Showers are especially dangerous, of course.
Green activists have already claimed that radon from tap water, inhaled in shower steam, causes lung cancer and that the chlorine turns into chloroform vapor. Then there's the hazard of slipping on soap. Speaking of which, the London Sunday Telegraph made a splash last week with a report that said scientists were claiming that polio vaccines administered before 1963 may have been contaminated with a monkey virus that causes cancer. By Wednesday the story had spread into many U.S. newspapers. By Thursday, one of the scientists in question called a press conference in Houston to say that the Telegraph had gotten the story all wrong.