The good old days (with radium) - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: b_force
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2017, 05:06:37 pm
content: This was already known by me (originally I studied in this field)Nevertheless, still so funny nowadays.Humans are so bad in thinking long thermSo bad and horrible that some people/companies took advantage of it and even ignore the whole thing.(It would something close to murder nowadays)

author: Vtile
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2017, 05:28:27 pm
content: I wouldn't be surprised if there is continuing thing atm. going on with some chemicals. Latest big thing were the asbestos, still found everywhere from toys (old) and wall paints (old) to actually places where it is needed.

author: Towger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2017, 05:43:06 pm
content: Quote from: Vtile on September 03, 2017, 05:28:27 pmTalcum powder is the new one J&J have already lost a number of court cases.

author: frozenfrogz
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2017, 06:03:50 pm
content: Little off topic: Although there are a lot of very interesting things to learn from the "Today I found out" channel, I am always having a very hard time listening to that Simon guy. He is so unbearably twitchy, talks to fast and has a weird way of talking in general. Don’t ask me why, but to me he is such a big distraction, that I can not focus on what he actually says most of the time

author: b_force
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2017, 06:14:19 pm
content: Quote from: frozenfrogz on September 03, 2017, 06:03:50 pmReally?Oh, that's funny and interesting actually.I have the opposite, I can follow him perfectly.I think his pronunciation is extremely clear actually.One of the better speakers on youtube.

author: frozenfrogz
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2017, 08:09:22 pm
content: As I said, I can not even tell you exactly why. Something about him just feels uncongenial to me - albeit I have never met him in person.You are correct in that the videos are well produced, the content seems decently researched and trying to be unbiased toward the speaker, he does a good job.

author: Buriedcode
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2017, 09:29:53 pm
content: Talking of the good 'ol days...http://knowledgenuts.com/2013/10/03/the-worst-inventor-in-history/Good 'ol Thomas Midgley.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 04, 2017, 08:52:07 am
content: When I first started as an apprentice horologist in 1971the man who I who owned the business kept a jar of radium in his desk. Doctors and pilots liked to be able to see their watches in the dark or low light and the luminescent paint then being used did not glow for very long after being exposed to light so he offered a service of replacing with radium paint. As this was in Cambridge and who the clients were I am sure they new of any potential risk but decided the advantages out weighed them.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 04, 2017, 10:09:54 pm
content: Quote from: G7PSK on September 04, 2017, 08:52:07 am225Ra is an alpha emitter, so once it's got a watch glass in front of it and a movement behind it, it's perfectly safe. It's only if it gets out of the watch that it's a problem. The risks of radium in watchesto end usersis negligible. What risks there are exist at the beginning and end of the watches' life in manufacture and ultimate disposal.Modern luminous watches use tiny phials of tritium gas (a beta emitter and thus slightly more penetrating than alpha radiation from radium) with a phosphor and quite happily meet regulatory approvals for sale to the general public.The downside of the modern tritium lights is that the half-life is much shorter than the old radium luminous paints (12 years odd versus 1600) but that becomes an upside in the event of any accidental release, plus tritium gas will disperse and get diluted rapidly.

author: frozenfrogz
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 04, 2017, 11:48:17 pm
content: Quote from: Cerebus on September 04, 2017, 10:09:54 pmI own two watches with tritium: Traser P6500 Navigator Red Sniper and TaWaTec EOD Mk IThe tritium lights are awesome

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2017, 03:36:45 am
content: It is interesting to see how people view things from the point of view and sensibilities of today.It is my understanding that the story isn't a clear cut case of contempt for worker safety forcing workers against their will to do hazardous work. The hazards of radiation were only beginning to be understood. Remember, these were the days when shoe stores had X-ray machines to assist in fitting shoes.The science at the time knew that radium was an alpha emitter and thus just about any shielding was 100% effective. At some point in this productions life the workers were warned not to put the stuff in their mouths and to keep it off clothing. I'm sure this was not solely for worker safety, it probably was also an attempt to conserve a very expensive material.I am also sure that there was much pressure to maintain production rate and quality. Which required "pointing" the brushes. And which the workers found easiest to do with lips and tongue. Just as today with many hazards, one which has no immediate impact is often not taken as real.So you have management and labor with poor understanding of the risks. Management not seeing clear and present danger takes inadequate precautions for labor protection. Labor not seeing clear and present danger allows short term expediency overcome not very intense warnings of danger.Today find everything to be a risk and don't want to have anything to do with it. Some folks want all metal removed from our environments, and all radiation. Management continues to have decisions made by MBAs with little technical understanding of the risks, whether they are physical, chemical or nuclear.

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2017, 03:58:13 am
content: To save time the Hershey's Kisses foil wrapper ladies would lick the bottom of the chocolate kiss and stick it on the square of foil to pick up and wrap around.

author: Buriedcode
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2017, 10:50:26 am
content: Quote from: Towger on September 03, 2017, 05:43:06 pmThat's somewhat worrying as I can't find any studies that categorically show an increased risk from purified talc (some claim a small increase in risk, but small increases in risk are extremely difficult to prove). After a quick google, at least one law suit brought against them won, which opens the door for many to blame talc. That means that case itself will become 'evidence' that talc causes cancer, because of the vast sums of money involved.. the lawyers and judges must have it right eh?Not suggesting its wrong just that.. we live in an age where the result of law suits carry far more weight than controlled studies. Partly because of the law-suit culture, and partly because of the vast number of poor quality 'observational studies' that create sensational headlines to get more funding for the real study.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2017, 01:04:26 pm
content: I think the law suites against J&J aren't about talcper sebut allegations that J&J were negligent about whattypeof talc went into their products. Some naturally occurring talcs contain asbestos, some don't. As asbestos is a well known and incontrovertible health hazard it would be only sensible to ensure that talcum powders made for use in intimate contact with the human body (including accidental inhalation) were completely asbestos free.

author: schmitt trigger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2017, 01:46:55 pm
content: I'm old enough to have seen Carbon Tetrachloride being used in dry-cleaning establishments.An acquaintance had such a business when I was a little boy.Once, while visiting the business with my mom, I did what most youngsters do when they get bored: I started investigating around.An employee was cleaning a stubborn grease spot with Carbon Tet. She had a fan at high speed to blow out the fumes away. When I walked into the air stream, the Carbon Tet vapor immediately knocked me to the ground.Nasty, nasty stuff, that CCl4. Yet it was widely used as a degreaser.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2017, 03:01:15 pm
content: At one time proper talc was ground up silk now it's ground chalk. Anything stuffed into orifices as that lady in the court case will most likely result in harm.I have used carbon tet in the past both as a cleaner and in fire extinguishers, it is very nasty stuff when put onto fires. When it was banned I used to go to scrap yards to get the old pump fire extinguishers for the carbon tet for degreasing things.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2017, 04:21:41 pm
content: Quote from: G7PSK on September 05, 2017, 03:01:15 pm[Citation required]

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2017, 04:23:01 pm
content: Quote from: G7PSK on September 05, 2017, 03:01:15 pmErrr... Talc is actually a mineral.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2017, 07:48:16 pm
content: You can still get silk talc.https://www.dr.hauschka.com/en_US/natural-skin-care/silk-body-powder/And chalk Talcum powder with silk in.https://www.tesco.com/direct/coty-laimant-talcum-powder-with-silk-100g/484-8850.prd?source=other

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2017, 08:20:52 pm
content: Quote from: G7PSK on September 05, 2017, 07:48:16 pmRice flour with a tiny, tiny bit of silk for marketing reasons.QuoteStill notchalk, stillMagnesium Silicate, with a tiny, tiny bit of silk for marketing reasons.Chalk =/= Talc, otherwise they wouldn't be in different places onthe Mohs Scale.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2017, 08:37:21 pm
content: I think that these are complicated subjects that deserve appropriately nuanced treatment in a blog from people who consider themselves to be technically literate.Business as usual if its pursued as it often has been, in bad faith, simply won't fly. Individuals are making those decisions.The governments, no matter how much in their pocket they are today, won't wipe their asses for them forever.

author: Buriedcode
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2017, 08:53:51 pm
content: Don't forget these days, whilst obviously 'safer' - as in, we haven't gone backward in our exposure of hazardous substances - it is harder to provide proof.With so much scare mongering of "chemicals", marketing gone haywire, and endless "wellness gurus", the amount of bullshit about has made it harder to get a valid message across about hazardous substances. Even the loudest voices that claim we are being 'poisoned' don't actually believe it - plenty of tinfoil hat folk who think chemtrails are turning people gay don't wear masks and will no doubt spray air fresheners or fragrances (which of course won't turn people gay, but some do contain endocrine disruptors, which may or may not have any measurable effect). Those who claim they only use 'natural' products often peddle cosmetics with questionable ingredients.So, imagine if there is a newly discovered, real, provable, danger from a widely used substance, the warnings will just get lost in the din.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2017, 09:04:13 pm
content: I live in the US and here we clearly are going backwards in exposure to hazardous substances.And the cost to our people's health is well documentedand astronomical. <<< one example

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2017, 02:05:51 am
content: Quote from: cdev on September 05, 2017, 09:04:13 pmReally? While there may be growing exposure to HDCs as a class (and what a fine great catch all term that is), exposure to lead, chromium, arsenic, mercury, carbon tetrachloride, CFCs, many solvents and many other categories of hazardous substances has dramatically decreased.This is not an argument for ignoring HDCs, but is an argument for avoiding the chicken little approach. If the numbers are bad they will speak for themselves. They don't have to be horribalized.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2017, 02:47:23 am
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on September 06, 2017, 02:05:51 amThere's about 100,000 people in Flint, Michigan who might take issue with that claim.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2017, 03:46:42 am
content: Quote from: frozenfrogz on September 03, 2017, 06:03:50 pmI watch his videos at 1.5x speed. It helps.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2017, 04:21:02 am
content: Sorry about the copypasta quote..CatalinaWow said..Really? While there may be growing exposure to HDCs as a class (and what a fine great catch all term that is), exposure to lead, chromium, arsenic, mercury, carbon tetrachloride, CFCs, many solvents and many other categories of hazardous substances has dramatically decreased.This is not an argument for ignoring HDCs, but is an argument for avoiding the chicken little approach. If the numbers are bad they will speak for themselves. They don't have to be horribalizedPick your poison...I didnt want to learn the things I know, I had to..We are not in good hands..Look up "deindustrialization". And "Managed decline"."Disinvestment".Basically the US used to be industrialized because it was the only game in town. And you needed people to man the machines of industry. Now its not, and we need to understand it was as much our own faults as anybody elses. We basically cheated our own people out of their futures, a change that we're still being deceived about. One that was the result of choices made by our MNCs. Its proof that the government is owned by corporations and is delivering up a captive market for their dining pleasure. Now they want to invest elsewhere, where its more profitable. They want to lock those investments in with trade rules, and the only want to do that is to give other countries our rights, irreversibly. Its a trade.What are their plans for engineering?Globalization.I'm currently reading"Domestic Regulation, Business and Professional Services in the WTO context Seminar 2: “Key Sectoral Issues and Domestic Regulation”Check it out..We are the most profitable in terms of our appeal to other countries as a market. So our rights are being traded away. We're pawns in an international game. Thats verifiable fact. You're the one thats dreaming.This entire last presidential campaign was one continuous pack of lies.*American dreaming*.Where does toxic exposure come in?Well, sickness is profitable. Look up the report of the Club of Rome, from the 1970s. Poor sick people however are not profitable, however, other countries think they are, so it seems likely to me that our poor sick people will be forced to move overseas for care. Medical tourism.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2017, 01:26:21 pm
content: Quote from: BrianHG on September 06, 2017, 03:46:42 am1.5x? Ye gods! Surely that makes it worse, not better.I've got to side with the 'horribly distracting presentation style' side. The rapidly waving hands, the dancing eyebrows and the run-on "for gods sake, please take a breath" rapid talking is really distracting. If you listen, when he finally takes a breath he actually gasps because he's pushing himself to talk so fast.I think the reason it is so distracting is that he acts like a scared, agitated person, so some part of your hindbrain is looking out for the tiger in the undergrowth that must surely be behind him.If you want to amuse yourself, watch the beginning again and imagine that, instead of a man, you're looking at a furry, skinny armed, energetic Muppet like Kermit, Animal or Elmo. Try it, you'll get what I mean within a few seconds.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2017, 07:22:40 pm
content: Quote from: Cerebus on September 06, 2017, 02:47:23 amAnd if they did, they would be wrong. Flint, through horrible incompetence or outright evil was exposed to lead at levels that are considered unacceptable today. And which were routine 50 years ago. The people of Flint have the right to be upset, but I suspect even they are better off than they were in the 1950s. Flint never was noted as one of the cleanest spots in the nation.Meanwhile the 340 million people who don't live in Flint received the full benefit of better standards and control of lead.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2017, 07:33:52 am
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on September 06, 2017, 07:22:40 pmI understood that the lead in the water came from the pipes in Flint. The problem was or is that the new supply of water was better at dissolving the scale in the old lead pipes and therefore exposed the lead which also got dissolved. Not sure anyone knew of the problem before it happened.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2017, 08:07:17 am
content: Quote from: Cerebus on September 06, 2017, 01:26:21 pmThat's the point. All the sharp agitation he emphasizes verbally and gestural becomes too quick to register generating that frustration. So, it is ignored as one tries to understand his speech at 1.5x speed, or, on his slower days, even play those videos at 2x speed.Try it, it makes his videos much less frustrating.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2017, 01:16:31 pm
content: Flint is a city that exemplifies the US Rust Belt, a city which has been totally abandoned by the auto industry which has moved the jobs which used to exist there to Mexico.The story was documented in the 90s by Michael Moore in "Roger and Me" a film where he tried to speak with the CEO of General Motors and was repeatedly rebuffed. The fact is, large chunks of America (really the whole country with the exception of the coasts and major cities and small affluent exurbs.. ) is in various stages of being abandoned.Large chunks of the country have aging lead pipes too but that alone would not have caused the problems they saw which were caused by particularly bad management.Lead is neurotoxic and demands immediate removal from the source and therapy, preferably IV therapy in severe case, or oral therapy with succimer with children, with chelating agents like EDTA and/or DMSA to suck the heavy metals out of the body before they become incorporated in bones and the brain.. When they take chelators they need to be removed from exposure to more lead or they may make it worse. Lead will basically make them unemployable over time. There is a long proven (back to the Romans time) knowledge that the combination of lead vessels with certain chemicals (acids) causes mental retardation. Lead is also an endocrine disruptor. Which reminds me.People in those areas have been drinking bottled water from plastic bottles. That's not good.It's really not good to drink water or other foods out of plastic bottles all the time, either, the plastics in them have issues too. (with EDCs which cause inter-generational morbid obesity and dozens of other health problems like various cancers of the reproductive systems, neuro problems, etc.)Glass or unlined stainless steel bottles should be used for storing clean drinking water and foods for any length of time. If you use plastics use glass containers with plastic caps, if you must use plastics, hard, clear polycarbonate plastics are more likely than soft plastics to be less EDC ridden.Also, don't EVERcookfood in plastic containers!The liners of many food containers are coated with EDC containing chemicals too. BPA is omnipresent in plastics.. When they switched to BPS, proclaiming items had "no BPA!" though- it didn't make things better. Because BPS is just as bad or even worse..A very significant source of exposure to EDCs is the material, "BPS" used in thermal printing labels, also fax paper, anything that's thermally printed.Also, flame retardants (especially PBDEs) in foam cushions used in furniture (a very serious problem), soft plastics used in electronics equipment cases (the kind that turns yellow with age, which also used to be used in almost all TVS) non-stick cookware, (PFOAs in Teflon is a very biopersistant EDC) and electrical insulation of various kinds. (don't ever strip wires using your teeth!) plasticizers used in many kinds of flooring - fake wood flooring. Even dental restorations. Many teeth fillings and dental work. They all contain large quantities of strongly bioactive persistent EDCs. Dioxins which are no longer used but used to be used in electronics. Components of many insecticides and other chemicals used in agriculture one example is atrazine.Glycol ethers.. they will shrink your testicles.. And are in a lot of products.Many EDCs are also what are known as obesogens. They knock the body's set point in thermo-regulation way off, causing morbid obesity in both the exposed and in the case of females also their offspring in adose dependentmanner.And they are everywhere. Its clear that these EDCs are perhaps the major reason for substantial rises in obesity in children and society generally. (And many cancers.. too)Perhaps EDCs are as large or even larger factor a factor than inactivity.We need to stop denying these problems exist and start fixing them.The list goes on and on.Now they are trying to prevent further regulation with trade deals that make regulating harmful chemicals almost impossible.The health problems caused by these chemicals are growing as the amounts of them in the environment rises (they persist in the environment indefinitely)They mimic sex hormones so they are most active in very low doses, which cause major problems in unborn children that often don't manifest themselves until much later in life.that's what makes them such a serious threat.Lead is just one of thousands of issues.We can't just pretend these issues don't exist as some are trying to do. Thats criminal behavior.Quote from: CatalinaWOW onYesterdayat 13:22:40>Quote from: Cerebus on 2017-09-05, 20:47:23>Quote from: CatalinaWOW on 2017-09-05, 20:05:51>>>Really? While there may be growing exposure to HDCs as a class (and what a fine great catch all term that is), exposure to lead, chromium, arsenic, mercury, carbon tetrachloride, CFCs, many solvents and many other categories of hazardous substances has dramatically decreased.There's about 100,000 people in Flint, Michigan who might take issue with that claim.And if they did, they would be wrong. Flint, through horrible incompetence or outright evil was exposed to lead at levels that are considered unacceptable today. And which were routine 50 years ago. The people of Flint have the right to be upset, but I suspect even they are better off than they were in the 1950s. Flint never was noted as one of the cleanest spots in the nation.Meanwhile the 340 million people who don't live in Flint received the full benefit of better standards and control of lead.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2017, 06:19:26 pm
content: I am not recommending ignoring the threat. But to say that it is getting much worse overall is just wrong.Yes, there are more and more things being made and used that have side effects and dangers.Yes, a few of them are really bad and escaping (temporarily) proper controls.But, I doubt if any of you, even those most fearful of these chemicals would trade and live back in the 1930s to 1950s. There is a reason that lifespan is increasing. That pension funds are failing because people are outliving the actuarial projections. That the vast majority of people live to reach retirement age.Most of the health hazards mentioned are real, but have to be taken into context. When something doubles or triples the cancer rate it is taken as a serious concern. And rightly so. But going from 6 per 100,000 to 12 per 100,000 isn't going to change life as we know it. Neither will the shrinkage of testicles, which reduces potency by some fraction. We are continuing to produce babies at an unsupportable rate in spite of this problem.The only real potential doom and gloom situation I can see is if the ADD epidemic should a) prove to be real, and not just a phenomena of closer attention and broader diagnosis and b) be found to be environmentally caused by a broad spectra of modern products could I see any of this being more than something that people with no real worries find to fill their need to be concerned.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2017, 06:55:20 pm
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on September 07, 2017, 06:19:26 pmBloody well will if it'smytesticles!The thing I find concerning is not novel toxins, it's regulatory capture, the push for ever more deregulation, and the failure of regulatory agencies to pursue effective enforcement action.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2017, 08:31:33 pm
content: The one danger that all in the US are oblivious to is lead traveling at 1200 feet a second or so, or rather the devices for projecting it. They get up in arms about the plastic wrapping food and want it banned but mention controlling lead projectors and they get all hot under the collar.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2017, 11:23:53 pm
content: Well, trade agreements like TTIP allow countries to make any change as long as its deregulatory, and has a salutary effect on earnings of investor corporations.Suddenly, there is this huge concern about giving corporations a level of certainty nomatter what the cost to society, that wasnt there for 2000 years, and we did just fine without it. Why?(There is a lot about this onhttp://ciel.orgunder toxics.. )Its because they knew for years they were poisoning the planet and did it anyway.Also, people should know these chemicals are building up in the environment and they dont just go away. They store up in fat. And they make people and their offspring fat.Intergenerational effects.Quote from: Cerebus onTodayat 12:55:20>Quote from: CatalinaWOW onTodayat 12:19:26Bloody well will if it'smytesticles!The thing I find concerning is not novel toxins, it's regulatory capture, the push for ever more deregulation, and the failure of regulatory agencies to pursue effective enforcement action.

author: schmitt trigger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2017, 01:10:59 pm
content: I'm pretty sure that neither Henry Ford, nor Karl Benz, nor any of the automobile pioneers, when looking up at wide, clear blue skies in the early XX century, ever thought that their inventions would some day fully pollute them.Nor Leo Bakeland nor any other plastic research pioneers, would have foreseen the massive environmental pollution that their products have created.The point I'm trying to drive across is: we (the human race) are pretty poor in predicting the long term health and environmental impact our decisions make.So, this being an electronics forum, I would like to raise the question to the best & brightest here:do you think that the electromagnetic pollution, to which we are subjected daily from hundreds of wireless devices, will someday become a health threat?

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2017, 02:21:14 pm
content: Quote from: schmitt trigger on September 08, 2017, 01:10:59 pmIn summary: no.In detail: Let's exclude the obviously harmful electromagnetic radiation at the top end of the EM spectrum, X-rays, UV, IR, gamma rays and the like, which I am sure you're excluding from your definition of 'electromagnetic pollution'.If there were harmful effects from electromagnetic radiation that we aren't already aware of, they are so subtle and so small in effect that they are of little, if any, consequence. We've been operating megawatt RF transmitters for many years and I have yet to see any solid scientific evidence that this affects any organisms beyond the ranges of a few metres where the raw energy levels involved are the threat.Any effects of EM radiation that we do know about are intensity related and are essentially the same as the risks from thermal radiation - stand in front of the living room fire and you're fine, lie under the grill and you're toast.The only place I think there may still be questions to be asked is in the band between microwave and X-ray. It seems reasonable to take note of the general trend of 'higher frequency == more potential for harm' and to treat terahertz EM radiation in line with the tenets of the precautionary principle.The one way that any putative 'electromagnetic pollution' is quintessentially different from other forms of pollution is: you can turn it off. Removing radioactive and chemical pollutants from the environment is massively expensive, once they are there they are there for a long time. Electromagnetic 'pollution' can be remediated, literally at the flick of a switch.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2017, 02:39:52 pm
content: The variability from one person to another of impacts from a lot of these factors is likely most effectively modulated by one'sglutathione(or "redox") status.That's because many toxicants (everything from chemicals to ionizing radiation to UV light to RF) do their damage by impacting common pathways related to reactive oxygen species. (which can be demonstrated by simple experiments - One example, the fact that supplementing pregant female animals diet with n-acetyl cysteine reduces or eliminates the risk to embryos caused by a multiplicity of pro-oxidant toxicants, in a dose-dependent manner -the same experiments also show that individual small exposures to these things are additive, something the US regulators still have not acknowledged-but, they would like to- because the toxicants all compete for the same glutathione reserves in quenching the free radicals they produce. If the glutathione is available then cells dont have to commit suicide to prevent DNA damage. Cell divison is a finite resource - limited by the Hayflick Limit. We should try to conserve cell divisions - our body's intrinsic repair capacity, because we are gradually getting closer to "cures" for many other aspects of aging, and at some point in the near future large breakthroughs are likely to be made in that area.At that point, having a planet with a low level of pollution will become much more important, because all the estimates people make of impacts from "business decisions" to pollute include average human lifespans and especially the reduced income earning capacities of those effected in their economic loss calculations for how important they should be weighed during decision-making.THEN we start seeing why there is pressure to hide the impacts a bit more clearly.. If the self styled skeptics could simply admit there was a risk then we could move on to investigating and implementing long known, simple and inexpensive risk reduction interventions.Myself and my circle of friends were doing this >25 years ago. And it wasn't even remotely new even then. Its basic chemistry. Its not rocket science.NAC and other antioxidants help our bodies deal with the man made toxic chemicals we encounter every day as well as those found in nature. They also protect our hearing, vision, sense of smell, etc. as we are getting older.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2017, 03:26:33 pm
content: I hear you but one also has to understand - with the caveat that of course, "gun control" was picked and hyped sollly because it was identified by consulting firms as a "wedge issue" sortof like a chemical reagent - a specific finely tuned wedge to spilt a group that otherwise was in denger of uniting, in two. Divide and conquer.. as it were.. "Choice" "Abortion" is another..That said, the reasons for some of that freaking out on the part of the people who are doing it is quite real.. its that they see themselves being excluded from society quite rapidly. Ive heard it often said that "Poor is the new black" and its quite true.And nothing divides peoples prospects as much as education. Increasingly advanced education. (as more and more people attain four year degrees, a six or eight year degree is now required for people to be seen as citeable on any topic. The rest of us are rendered mute.)But, to return to what I was saying, many Americans are being whipped up into a frenzy for quite calculated reasons. Part of it is to create the impression the US is far more right wing than it really is.The consultants who do it are paid the big bucks for a reason. They know and know how to manipulate the facts to elicit a response from those receptive to their efforts. They are exploiting many people who I think are not the demons they are being played up to be in the press. We have to remember the goals of these people is literally to divide and conquer the country which they are waging a hidden war against.The large numbers of poor and middle class Americans who voted for Trump did it because they were (wrongly) convinced he was against, not part of the system. many were, ironically voting against trade deals. (Not realizing that Trump himself, in his Middle Eastern business ventures, is a user of the worst aspect of them a system thats often been compared to modern day slavery, 'kafala')Their fears were and are driven by a quite accurate assessment of changes that are occurring and their rapidly vanishing economic prospects under them.Nothing makes this clearer than an understanding of what tenets the so called "global economic governance" institutions are forcing on the planet. One of the core tenets of the WTO for example, is "progressive liberalisation" - (British and Australian spelling) (the WTO's one way irreversible 'privatization of everything', which is framed tellingly as a liberation from government oppression on businesses! - But what its really all about is gutting the world's social safety nets by use fo jobs as bait..to entrap poor countries..If its pointed out to them, people quickly notice the main recipients of this spin are the elites from the allegedly "poor" countries (the most corrupt countries would be a better assessment) They are in most cases already insanely rich.And in poor countries, rich means a level of economic security that the rich in developed countries envy.They want their children to be able to get jobs - they want jobs that their own countries, corrupt and lacking a functional middle class as they are, cannot often provide them.. so those jobs have become bait in a giant global trap.. As part of "multilateralism". This system has been set up in part to help them get them. corrupt elites in poor (and former developed but downwardly mobile) countries who stand to make a lot of money by reselling the services of their would be upwardly mobile citizens, while forcing them to spend the beginnings of their working lives- the period where they might be pushing for improvements that might threaten the exploitative systems there, such as democracy- instead they to get jobs have to go elsewhere and work for below subsistence wages in countries where the cost of living is orders of magnitude higher than where they originate.. Of course the only people who could afford to do this are wealthy.So, the elites are being bought off by the proposal of a large scale putting into play by privatization, of a great many currently public jobs, jobs currently occupied by the better skilled members of the middle class in developed countries. instead of remaining at home and pushing for an end to endemic corruption) "progressive liberalisation" yanks the economic rug out from under the allegedly operaid developed country workforce, of all races, all genders and all ethnic groups, just deems all of the struggles of labor and other groups such as women and minorities irrelevant and, in the interests of leaving them all jobless, declares the new "goal" to be helping the poorcorporationsin developing countries by giving them low paying high skill jobs, making a bunch of people (not the workers, though) people already insanely rich, even richer in the process..To do this it needs to first divide the groups who might otherwise oppose it..due to their standing in the way,The organizations that might oppose it - are co-opted- The FTA system buys out educated NGO staff by feeding them the lie that these deals help the poor.. (they only help other people much like teh NGO members, from wealthy backgrounds, often people they know)The FTA system frames unions as a threat to globalization, dismissing all their concerns with one thought-terminating phrase, 'protectionism' as a means of preventing any discussion of the economics and how demonstrably flawed this trickle-down logic is.Unions are dismissed as no longer possible to allow.. especially organized labor..USe of the phrase "protectionism" ignores the fact that working people have been stripped of any representation silently- by politicians who are secretly working for the opposition (and often rewarded with think tank jobs when they leave public service)It takes their needs off the table quietly..as unions conflict with the global push to privatize and disempower...The same changes that are gutting your NHS for example, are behind the angger felt by poor Americans, and its being exploited to create a fall illusion of right wing resurgence.. (when actually when queried, the opposite is happening)Wedge issues work because the facts are indeed making it clear to the poor and fiercely independent people of rural America that the world thats being forced upon them and the rest of us has zero regard for their welfare and views their interests are expendable.So their resistance to "gun control" is the product of manipulation and also is not about guns really, it is about the destruction of a weorld where anybody could find work at a decent wage if they applied themselves. A change which is leading to a destruction of a great many communities..(because factoies that used to locate in those communities for their cheap labor force now are moving to the dollar a day countries)So in a very real sense its a rejection of the far right wing "laissez faire" economics of neoliberalism, which when it finally is revealed whats happening in the media it will be framed to them as left wing. (They dont realize that its beneficiaries are all - compared to themselves, likely to be far better educated, and comparatively wealthy already, not realizing that the norm in poor countries is lack of access to education, a lack which the neoliberal gutting of public services of all kinds is greatly worsening.They will never meet actual poor people from poor countries, only the well to do ever get to pursue advanced educations and then travel to the other side of the world to work for less than local prevailing wages to build a resume.They also, accustomed to being able to find work, don't fully realize what scientists do, that this shift to automation is unlike any other in that jobs being eiminated will never return and the proportions of jobs gained to jobs lost is a very greatmany jobs being lost and the jobs that automate them are brief and far fewer in number.. because they complete a job and move on to the next task to be automated..In order to gut entitlements to things like public higher education, new entitlements are being created for corporations to sell them that once begin, are insanely expensive to reverse, so expensive a country would be unlikely to eb able to afford to buy those rights back.This is a hallmark of these secret deals, the creation of entitlements giving away large numbers of currently public jobs to foreign low bidders, for example, in public works construction, healthcare and education (teaching), mainstays of middle class American communities today, gutting public jobs that currently serve as solid economic mainstays anchoring families and towns- jobs that might otherwise help their communities greatly in the coming years as jobs dry up. Instead those jobs are becoming poker chips in an international game and other countries firms are vying for them.)What is being forced on the world is really a corporate wish list of bad proposals to maintain bad policies, that had been repeatedly rejected at the ballot box, a war against all human public interests by corporations - to carve their gains in stone. Knowing as they do hat their interests are diametrically opposed to humanity's in many instances.They are over concerns that the changes which will free humankind from work will also de-legitimize the extreme levels of wealth we see now by disconnecting it from work in a way never seen before.They see the rise of a class of people who never work, and never have worked but who live a charmed and opulent existence outside of the usual cares of the rest of us as leading to rapidly declining tolerance of the massive level of inequality.A shift driven by automation. (which will greatly reduce the opportunities for employment leading to a world where only the best connected - or those willing to pay for them, get entry level jobs needed to put people on the track to careers of any kind. Additional Costly screens that go well beyond the ever increasing requirements for college. We are already seeing this in non-technical fields with internships being absolutely required to get ones foot in the door in a growing number of professions.Without neoliberalism's carving of bad policies in stone with secret deals- we would be able to solve problems by voting. For example, health care in the US is paralyzed by a almost unknown agreement to privatize everything and then trade the jobs for markets. This prevents needed changes from happening. The same 1994 agreement is also why your NHS is being privatized.Without awareness there cant be change. With awareness these deals would swiftly be rejected. Government should serve the people, not corporations.Especially, technology should reduce, not increase the inequality, because it reduces the need for people to do unpleasant, dangerous jobs, jobs which previously humans would have been paid to do.Instead, what we're seeing is a new form of global capture.Electronics is unique in that this benefit to technology affordability has been allowed to be passed on to people, other fields its been captured and stolen. Nowhere is his more obvious than in pharmaceuticals.All this begs the question, what can we do to fix it. Talking about it is the first step.In short, we need new visions for what the meanings for humanity's existence are and neoliberalism is a movement to prevent that discussion from ever occurring by attempting to hijack the future down a path of false scarcity within which all of the various things people around the world bring to the table are all deprecated in importance by various means, such as creating global common labor markets wihin which some people (migration under trade rules) are handicapped by tying the workers to specific corporations for their permission to work-The goal of all hat is literally to dis-empower as many people as possible. Sice its a war against democracy, we should understand neliberalism is a form of voter nullification of all of us, bit by bit. Starting with the forcing of millions or perhaps eventually billions of people to travel to other countries (where they will enjoy vastly limited rights and pay) to remain employed.The goal of this 'liberalisation' originated in its roots in Taylorism was always from the beginning to eliminate the problem of highly skilled individuals and "irreplaceable" skills posed to business by turning workers into interchangeable standarized cogs in the machine, and vastly increase profits, by pitting workers all around the world against one another in direct competition for he same jobs, bringing down skilled wages.This was not possible until a way was found to nullify democracy and voting by means of international agreements between elites that "superseded" them. (that's where the 1995 WTO "GATS" agreement and a great many of its progeny - regional preferential trade and investment agreements that include services- all of which attempt to undermine what little rights workers have- by means of a quite devious end run around democracy- come in).Just like in England, in the US there is a large body of people who could never afford college or were mistakenly encouraged to seek skilled or unskilled employment without it - they were fed a vision of a society where anybody who wanted to work who met some basic standards of intelligence, willingness to show up on time and do the work, and personal hygiene, could always find work at a decent wage. That future was not one which was meant to happen, it was simply a means of preventing workers from becoming better organized and demanding access to higher levels of training and cooperation - a model where companies offered more and workers delivered more, with a agreement between the two groups to look out for one another's interests. That model for business conflicted directly with the multilateral trading system where workers were disposable and employment project based and subject to change at any moment. So big lies became bigger lies and now the working class of the world is under attack from an enemy that is orders of magnitude better organized and cognizant of its plans than they are.And they really have no future in the world thats being cooked up for them, except as consumers, whose value to society ceases when they run out of money which will happen fairly soon after they lose their jobs, and they wont find new ones, because of their lack of education.Also, they will be denied a voice in the media because of that same lack.That's what people are likely really angry about, subconsciously.Quote from: G7PSK onYesterdayat 14:31:33

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2017, 03:54:47 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on September 08, 2017, 03:26:33 pmI don't know what leads you to think that about the UK. Quite the opposite happened. Starting in the late '90s a rash of degree subjects such as 'resort management', 'hospitality management' and so on appeared to encourageeveryoneinto university education, including many people who would have been much better served by non-degree granting trade colleges, apprenticeships and simple on the job training. Every Tom, Dick and Harry comes with a university degree nowadays, the student loans to go with it, and little to show for having done it that benefits either them, society, or their employers.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2017, 05:10:27 pm
content: I don't know what leads you to think that about the UK. Quite the opposite happened. Starting in the late '90s a rash of degree subjects such as 'resort management', 'hospitality management' and so on appeared to encourage everyone into university education, including many people who would have been much better served by non-degree granting trade colleges, apprenticeships and simple on the job training. Every Tom, Dick and Harry comes with a university degree nowadays, the student loans to go with it, and little to show for having done it that benefits either them, society, or their employers.Google "Managed Decline"....What you just said rings true for me, and I totally agree with you about it. I don't see those careers as being worthy of the costs associated with college.Note that they wanted to shift manufacturing elsewhere and needed an excuse to do it. The best ones can be framed as "voluntary"I think its obvious that a large scale, intentional deception has been going on, a sort of coalition of the wealthy, to snatch away what would have been a bright future from the world, one where inequality would be lessened, instead these deals have been used to snatch it away on a global scale. To screw the planet on a global scale. And that would be consistent with what we know about history as well. Similar deals between incestuously coupled elites to pretend-fight one another to kill off the excess numbers of poor people seem to occur at regular intervals throughout history. The warfare now may be largely economic, and the weapons different, perhaps not so obvious but the end result is likely the same.So, we should consider the possibility that many of tehse "mistakes" are not mistakes they are intentional. Why wouldn't they be?So, people were being intentionally deceived that the future world would be a far different one than the people who control such things were in fact working to create, - for themselves-Its a form of planned decline, managed wasteage.. of lives.. Their main worries are expectations, that too many people would expect successes in life which their plans would not be ever willing to accomodate..Its a bit like somebody getting a job at NohMart (because its the only job that exists in their town, maybe) and expecting hard work and playing by all the rules to lead to promotions and higher pay when NohMart's business model requires that no worker stay for more than four years, so they can avoid paying the $0.25 an hour raise they are supposed to earn when they get to that point to too many people.Who has a better theory, one that expains what we're seeing? Nobody.Sure, we all see voter disenfranchisement, we also see other kinds of disenfranchisements too, they are necessary to the system Improvements must be prevented from happening. Politics must be made to be totally dysfunctional without it appearing to not be occurring naturally. Otherwise, when victories occurred, the next step that was expected would be changes that have already been taken off the table, those jobs promised as payments to others. After all, {Americans|Britons} fucked up! Did they not?So..The world many were led to expect was one with a much larger place for humanities related careers. Even as those academic jobs were on the table as being candidates for globalization. (the foreign providers would only win if they tendered the lowest bids. If wages in the involved developing countries fell as low as wages in the bidding countries, and companies tendered lower bids, they would win. Its all up to them.)While behind the scenes they were creating a world where people were struggling, failed which on the way to their eventual financial disaster, which foreign banks with similar delusions of grandeur, (this is a common theme) were encouraged to trade local trade concessions for a piece of the soon to be lucrative action,In order to make it happen, trade deals pit one group of citizens in one country against those elsewhere who would be willing to work for almost nothing to get their foot in the door for those jobs.Its really quite a brilliant scheme because it takes advantage of the patronage networks in poor countries which are the most corrupt countries in the world, allowing their leadership to act as the brokers of not just domestic but also foreign employment, which previously occurred at similar tates but paid far more money and offered far more opportunity. Instead the new arrangements will likely undermine the positions of those who came before who have managed to earn some stability by suddenly setting up a system much like slavery that leverages the scarcity of jobs everywhere to get rich people to work for almost nothing to get several years (typically six in the US) of "temporary" employment. Since its temporary, and an entitlement of a trade agreement, national wage/hour and other laws, except for workplace safety laws- unions one victory- they seem to not understand this situation so well, though- laws don't apply.So it pits the semi well educated classes, previously substantially more protected from globalization than the working class, against one another in what is guaranteed to eb a far more bitter fight than the ones over the first wave of globalization in manufacturing.Pitting professionals against one another in a race to the bottom - in which everything is framed as a zero sum game. the real goal there is distracting large numbers of people from the growing inequality by forcing them to spend literally all their time in activities far less likely to bring them any real benefit than any other. In this respect there are many similarities to the situation in North Korea - whose"songbun"I believe the powers that be have looked to extensively for guidance in setting up this new caste system.-in order to make themselves richer. A return to the law of the jungle after the experiments in egalitarianism of the late 20th century labor scarcity issue, and if they have their way, it will be without the mitigating possibility of work in cottage industry (the maker movement) or agricultural employment (labor intensive - like organic or GMO-free farming, which trade agreements are trying to make impossible to market the products of as superior by banning the inclusion of information that might identify superior products as such in labels)So, they are systematically eliminating the means of sustainable employment that existedbeforethe industrial revolution, too.These deals have also rendered the entire plethora of New Deal programs FTA-illegal but have hidden that fact so people are still fighting for single payer health care and domestic jobs programs for stimulus without realizing that the goal posts have been moved, and nobody is telling them it seems- or they are pretending not to hear it-international deals are rapidly making the much needed changes impossible by giving rights that conflict with them to international entities who could block any laws that offered them. (This is the real reason infrastructure is being privatized, to hide these changes, the first wave of changes are tied to public money and only come into play when entities are public)For example, if healthcare insurance is subsidized by the government, reading the finer print of these deals and the OECD's STRI index of services and "trade restrictiveness" leads me to strongly suspect a global scheme to not so subtly move some percentage of the sick into overseas diasporas. Medical tourism is now being hyped as a way poor countries can remain poor and unequal and still afford to fund high quality hospitals for their rich people.Due to WTO and other trade deals provisions that all "measures" by member governments that "affect trade in services" on any level (basically almost all laws can be said to do this in one way or another) must be consistent with the goals of these agreements..and be"not more burdensome than necessary to ensure the quality of the service"This requirement kicks in when public money is involved unless its a service which is explicitly excluded from coverage by writing that exclusion into the country's official schedule in these agreements.. Even if a country has excluded (in the case of newer top down or "US style" agreements, or signed some kind fo standstill agreement (the US did this with financial services including health insurance and banking regulations (!) in February 1998, effectively making all financial services regulation after that date that was not enumerated specifically then inherently reversible by a simple suit in the WTO - (this is the functional equivalent of a top down or "negative list" "everything in" deal.. - "everything in" by default agreement because it permanently, bindingly deregulates areas that have not even been invented yet by default unless they are excluded before they become profitable, a total impossibility- this is likely the real reason subsequent regulation (Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, ) is being repealed.. At the same time a coalition of countries led by India is arguing, that the WTO rules require health insurance benefits to be portable, this will mean that instantly, large chunks of patient care will become required to use the "least trade restrictive" form available. A framing that will almost certainly lead to an ever growing amount of shifting of healthcare for people overseas in an a manner where the more people spend for health insurance the less foreign care they will be required to receive. And of course, these patients will become a big part of the economies of foreign countries and will also increase the costs their own citizens must pay for healthcare, a potentially quite dangerous combination when poor sick, non globally savvy former middle class people are forced overseas.What this all is is a well organized attack on concepts such as 'rights' to things like healthcare, education, water and possibly someday even clean air - if it can be made to be polluted enough to require it. This is like a bad science fiction movie but its totally see-able because of the horrid (GATS Article I:3 b+c) phrasing and interpretation. (Read it and then read the criticism of it!)What could be more natural, neoliberals imply, than people paying more to get more and paying less to get less?But, in a future world where more and more people are excluded with NO incomes, this is a means for social control like none other that has ever existed in history.Australian jurist Tania Voon has written about the meaning of trade restrictiveness under WTO law.. German jurist Markus Krajewski has also written about the legal situation in the EU surrounding so called "patient mobility" and especially the EU-wide clash between the concept of public services and trade in services agreements such as the GATS, pending TISA and the EU "Services directive" . Unfortunately, no similar debate has occurred in the US, the belly of the beast. What will US policy be? One can learn a lot from what the OECD is pushing.OECD has a database of measures by governments and "Trade restrictiveness".Currently, fully public, noncommercial systems like Canadian health care are excluded. But once a single vendor starts selling health insurance its no longer defined as "public" so all protection is lost and the exclusion ends. and if ONE foreign vendor is let in, GATS or other treaties great many rules designed to gut public services are likely to be deemed activated and they will kick in.A few experts have said that means countries that have made commitments in health insurance have already agreed to make their benefits portable even if they say they have not in their commitments!In fact a (former) WTO official has stated this, it seems.. that as a condition of care, people may be forced to go overseas for some of their care, in order to maintain consistency with the GATS agreement.There is much to indicate that may well be the long term intent. Note the wording of the OECD discussion on health insurance and what is excluded now.. and what they leave open.This will mean that people with chronic illness may be forced to choose between jobs and health care. Also it will lower wages, and force people out of the workforce, making a increasingly horrible employment market appear better than it really is, because wage increases will result in people being left without any way to get healthcare and pay their bills, instead of improvements in living standards, many wont have any way of making it work, the loss of benefits that make it a Phyrric victory for working people. Obamacare was never helping poor people the way it was hyped for these kinds fo reasons, many people found they could not afford to use it. All of the propaganda on it was funded by the health insurance industry. People and the medical profession were co-opted into supporting a system which arguably only helped the best paid self employed and left a great many others with unworkable high bills and huge out of pocket costs that taught poor people not to ever go to the doctor unless they had money saved for the unpredictable bills that would result. It also forced poor people to lie about symptoms because telling a doctor some symptom wold transform a visit from "preventative care" (free) to "curative care" (potentially hugely costly until somebody reached their often thousands of dollars deductible for the year)Middle class people (the ones foolishly supporting "Obamacare" most of whom had never had any health issue, or could afford paying up to $12'000 a year ADDITIONAL in out of pocket COVERED costs (on top of premiums which were high although much lower than costs to non-group customers before it, people then were buying policies that would pay 80% or 90% of the costs subsequent to coverage, like employer plans still do, no longer does that happen for the self employed unless they buy private plans - which still can easily cost families several thousand dollars a month in expensive areas)Obamacare did include a number of vary good things, one for which was this $12k a year limit on OOP costs, before it kicked in in addition to premiums (a limit that I think is most certainly gone in the GOP proposals because it could easily save the patient with a serious injury or illness or problematic pregnancy spread over two plan years - hundreds of thousands of dollars)Note thatout of network costsfor HMO patients - most (generally poorer self employed for example) people with insurance through Obamacare- are 100%not coveredif they go to out of network anything, including to any foreign providers- and no limit applies to those costs whatsoever.This means that many people with serious diseases (especially cancer) whose only means of getting care are often local high quality "cancer centers" teaching/research hospitals that often are not in provider networks - must - while seriously sick- battle insurers for the care they need. Unless forec to by state laws that GOP politicians and trade deals are trying to nullify, are forced by state laws- (currently in the US states, not teh Federal government largely regulate insurers, an arrangement that conflicts with globalizations demands for harmonization to the lowest common denominator for corporations) A survey by the leading evaluator of insurance plans in the US in 2009 found that many Obaacare plans did not include cancer centers in network- they were unavailable.This may have been by design - Insurers also do this by tiering the co pays for various drugs so that people with more serious diseases get pushed out of their plans - Its a not so visible way to force sick people to jump through so many hoops they will stumble.. miss a bill -(or switch to another insurer) or lose their jobs, thereby losing insurance. Then they become another insurer or the governments problem.They are so good at dumping sick people that they government here in the US still ends up paying 2/3 of all medical bills - ENOUGH TO GIVE EVERYBODY IN THE COUNTRY HIGH QUALITY HEALTHCARE FROM BIRTH TO DEATH FOR FREE!But, conveniently the WTO GATSsilently prevents the country from doing that, by stealth. By creating new "rights" for foreign corporations.Since we did not have a public health care program in place in 1994 (likeCanada did) and explicitly and foolishly and tellingly scheduled (in the binding US "Schedule of Specific Commitments" documents- which can be read all together in one PDF at citizen.org) The US must have been planning to do this - because we scheduled health insurance as one of the things we promised to open up to foreign firms, thereby blocking our country from having public health care explicitly. (But there stillmight be a way, a doorwaywhich is shutting fast)Not a single US politician has said even a single word about this GATS deal, which does a lot of bad things, (basically acting as a sort of attack on our fixing all these pressing problems - "future proofing" the future for huge corporations) not just doing this, instead they all pretend it does not exist!---Quote from: Cerebus onTodayat 09:54:47>Quote from: cdev onTodayat 09:26:33I don't know what leads you to think that about the UK. Quite the opposite happened. Starting in the late '90s a rash of degree subjects such as 'resort management', 'hospitality management' and so on appeared to encourageeveryoneinto university education, including many people who would have been much better served by non-degree granting trade colleges, apprenticeships and simple on the job training. Every Tom, Dick and Harry comes with a university degree nowadays, the student loans to go with it, and little to show for having done it that benefits either them, society, or their employers.

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 09, 2017, 08:25:49 am
content: The situation with asbestos seems to be that the blue stuff is extremely bad for your lungs, but there seem to be varying opinions on the whether the white stuff is harmful, and to what extent.In the UK we've had asbestos scammers going round offering to remove asbestos from buildings. At huge cost, of course. In some cases there was no asbestos, and it was a pure con. In others it was the white type in a stable condition, which was probably best left alone as disturbing it would only kick-up dust.This is always a problem with any health hazard, is that there will be people trying to cash-in on it by creating FUD.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 09, 2017, 12:58:59 pm
content: Quote from: IanMacdonald on September 09, 2017, 08:25:49 amThe consensus seems to have settled down to: any particulate matter that can settle in the lungs and doesn't dissolve but has to be 'wrapped' in scar tissue is a possible carcinogen. Hence you'll often see the phrase "body soluble" on fibrous insulation nowadays.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 09, 2017, 01:47:55 pm
content: I's thehigh aspect ratioof asbestos fibers that's problematic. Normal mold spores, dust and debris go into the lungs and the first line of protection are ciliae, tiny hairs that work with the mucus to escort them out and into the stomach.. These fibers go so deeply this cannot be done. The next defense is then they should get attacked by alveolar macrophages, one cell per particle. However, these long and narrow fibers go very deeply into your lungs but don't come out. Macrophage cells cant properly envelop them and kill them with a burst of nitric oxide like they would spores. They continue to cause inflammation. They don't die because they are not alive. The macrophage cells we use to clear mold, etc. are a finite resource that gets used up and the failure to properly replicate new ones (there is something called the Hayflick Limit on cell replication) when we're older can cause immune system burnout (immunosenescence). The fibers can alsotranslocatethroughout the body and in the process they clog up the lymphatic system especially the pores between your lung cavity and the part of your abdomen that is not your lung cavity that are used to get rid of dead cells. That is I think the biggest problem presented by them.This fiber illness may soon become an even huger problem because of additives now being added to tires to improve their wear characteristics and mileage which are even worse than asbestos and which soon may be everywhere there are tires and tire wear. (and recycled rubber)Including playgrounds and athletic fields.This adds to an already serious problem that caused much of the world to completely change how THEY produced rubber (specifically, how they vulcanized rubber) but which the US never acknowledged because "M" was the source for the chemicals used. It only regulated the presence of these highly carcinogenic "n-nitroso" chemicals.... in baby pacifiers, that's it.Now the US, Canada and I think Mexico and perhaps South American tires use almost totally different chemical processes than European tires. Because of these dangerous chemicals which linger in the environment for a very long time.After around 1980 you will find virtually nothing in the US press about them. Except for a few articles in the rubber industry press.Source of this info, a rubber scientist who works with cutting edge elastomers, including many of electronics interest.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 09, 2017, 04:45:16 pm
content: Vocational schools in the US could learn a lot from the very good technical training given to german voc school trainees which its my understanding is much more grounded in basics than similar US programs. So, the things students learn will help them in a wider variety of jobs and not just how to do one specific job, which oftentimes here is already obsolete or close to it.US decision makers have to be willing to spend more money and time educating people - also paying for better teachers etc.If they cant afford that its time to try to set up an online system that does the best it can via the net.A good argument could even be made of setting up a global system to educate young people cooperatively.Because its going to become the whole world's problem when the old jobs vanish and there are few new ones to take their place in any significant numbers.The Amazons, Taobaos, Ebays, etc. of the world (like all web applications) are not going to employ more and more people for much longer. As online platforms improve and mature, they gradually shift into a kind of maintenance mode and more and more, run themselves. Working at one of them is often less about designing new features than it is a process of continuously improving exception handling, by making the numbers of exceptions smaller and smaller. At some point first 99% and then 99.99% ad then 99.9999% of all transactions are completed with no exceptions. With no customer-human interactions necessary.Shedding jobs. We shouldn't kid ourselves about this. We are creating a world without jobs where very few will have steady incomes.. (also most investments will crash due to sudden declines in sales across the board so most people's savings will be annihilated) Austerity will render all pensions null and void because all government funds, taxpayers money will be seized to pay debts. the countries which are the most indebted will become economic sacrifice zones, with the most uniquely skilled people being the only ones with a choice, that choice being, the only way to escape a lifetime of poverty with one's contribution being grossly undervalued may be to leave. Early in one's life so one wont be unwanted.Virtually all income, not just wealth, will flow to a very very few. Nobody who has not lived in an area with very very high unemployment (>20%) realizes this - but it means that all jobs go to family members of the business owners or people who have some favor owed them by them.Talent or willingness to work means very little. Because there is an oversupply of would-be workers.Smart people leave as soon as they get old enough to realize there is no future for them there. But, what if the entire world is like that, what then?To return to the original subject - workplace exposures to known toxic sustances-With "the worth of a human life" currently being based on lost income, a future world of unemployed people who cannot afford medical care (so no information will be collected on their health status) is a polluters wet dream..because they can pollute and poison at no cost to themselves.People will be vulnerable in every possible way to poisoning with pollution with no accountability, no costs to polluters because under our current system of deciding compensation for injury, unemployed/children/infants/poor/older-retired lives are deemed worthless.I order to get legal help, somebody needs not just an obviously good case, they also need to have documented losses, for example, have to have previously been employed in a very good job which otherwise would have continued to pay them excellent wages for an additional several decades. As that becomes less and less common, the economics of providing legal help on contingency becomes less attractive to those who might help them.Also, with poor people the likelihood of their having medical records becomes nil.If a child's health is directly attributable to some toxic exposure, the only way they are likely to get help is if it requires ongoing medical care before the statute of limitations runs out.To be honest, when I started reading about these issues I just got so angry I couldn't continue to investigate it.Basically, in the US, even clear statistical likelihoods of cancer due to some past exposure have as far as I know never been successfully compensated for, even though realistically that would seem to me to require a lifetime of medical monitoring.Nonetheless, its a fact which now, once it becomes known to the vast databases of health information funded by insurers may again soon make those exposed - and in he case of children or spouses also their family members, ineligible for insurance coverage, or make it several times more costly. It may also make it hard for hem to find employment. (That happened before 2009 when somebody had a family member who had survived cancer, etc. they and their family members would often find themselves basically blacklisted from employment because of fear of rate increases.)Often they would never be told that was why they would get jobs and then lose them when a million dollar rate increase hit their employer. They were the first group of people forced to go overseas for care in fairly large numbers.Another large group of people are those who live/lived in communities with known risks who went to "in network" doctors (typically people in HMOs have no choice) doctors then who failed to pursue clues as to possible health problems or order tests or imaging that was clearly indicated, (or instead to perform tests which they knew were not capable of finding them) because of fear that they would be delisted by HMOs were they to diagnose people with the illnesses they were clearly at increased risk for.Some US doctors also instituted policies which translate to "only one health issue per visit". which when combined with long waiting times for appointments would have the effect of pushing some health issues to the bottom of a list of health problems where they would never even get heard by a doctor, who would only address the most pressing of a list of issues, often a medication refill.----all of this is why I am convinced that a national, public health care system that covers all rich and poor equally, which tries to render the best possible care to everybody, taking money out of the equation, and which is emplowered to pay drug companies and physicians low rates, based on actual costs and not inflated ones.Also, patents should never be extended for existing drugs for any reason whatsoever.Healthcare is demonstrably better in countries where its free, where hospitals do not take your money.This is the only way to cure a great many problems. Especially ones wih pollution and toxic chemicals. they are terrified of universal health care because it means that people of all income levels will have medical records of their health problems, making identifying polluters whose polluting causes illnesses much easier. Also, as a large portion of he costs would otherwise be borne by all taxpayers, that will make the government go after polluters.Only a system that includes everybody, including the wealthy and influential will make sure that coverage is good.The Senators and Congressmen especially must be required to use the system and not get any other health care.They will fix it only if its their own coverage. Giving them a way out insures that the system gets broken for most of us.We in the US are going to end up with a system that only helps the very very poor which requires that people be completely destitute (only becoming eligible after they have sold all of their assets, which in some cases even means not only their their home also, their car if they had one and have no income, used up all their assets.) Basically criminalizing health problems.This scenario does quite effectively keep people from being able to sue polluters but the outcome becomes a horrible one.Oh another thing,"subrogation"of the winnings of any lawsuit - increasingly common clauses in insurance policies fine print which funnel any funds won from a defendant - most ofen this comes into play with auto accidents but it also applies to polluters - to health insurance companies to repay them for money already expended on a patients behalf, - effectively preventing people from being able to get an attorney.. All of these things work together to really screw people when something bad happens to them that's not their fault. And its a deliberate system that's set up to do it that way, make no mistake about it.Also, ERISA Section 514 which preempts most kinds of legal cases against health insurers in state courts (where they should be filed because state regulatios regulate insurers and hey often are much more effective) ERISA preempts cases brought by those in employer plans (anything that can be defined as a job benefit) to federal courts - where legal help is less available and costs astronomical- and makes all but the very worst lawsuits for failure to diagnose, for example, arbitrarily dismissible.. This means that only those who can pay in advance and people in class action lawsuits can get help.. creating an incentive, since its based on the norms in a geographical area.. to render less and less care to make the "norms" lower..the legal standard of care may be hugely higher in some states and cities than others..This has created a poisonous situation where insurers collude with government to constantly push the legal standard of care downward further and further. This is why patients who leave the country - suddenly getting care which only rich people who pay cash ("self pays") in the US usually get, often get better tests and suddenly find that some serious issue which they had for years was right there waiting to be found but wasnt because of the criminally low legal standard of care" and gag clauses muzzling heir doctors, or fear of delisting- or capitation- "risk sharing" which gave their insurer an excuse to never order the test which would have found it, until it was too late-THIS is the criminal system the US wants to export to other countries around the world and is holding the entire US's health care system hostage with WTO-GATS and other FTAs to do so, while politicians lie about it.and also so called "rescission" where insurance companies get to retroactively claw back money spent on a patients behalf since they first began a claim if they can find some excuse which may be totally irrelevant, to do so.That is what happens in the most corrupt and unequal countries with health care and education and water.