Re: Love Canal: Understanding nonscience

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

Thank you, Jerry.



I do wish to clarify one point from my original post on Love Canal and that i have not clarified before this:



There was no excuse for the waste disposal practices at Love canal, WHETHER OR NOT any cancers could be attributed to exposure to the waste.  This is a point I used to make in my "Introduction to Pollution" classes.  Any polluter (industry, government, individuals) has a responsibility to clean up any generated waste and to either detoxify it chemically (including incineration) or reliably sequester it from the environment.  Trash doesn't give you cancer, but you don't leave it lying around.  Most people clean their houses long before the houses become health hazards.  The same principle generally applies, and is enhanced by the possibility that exposure MIGHT cause adverse health effects.  



So when I cite an article whose conclusions can essentially be summarized as "no excess cancers observed," that doesn't mean I condone the waste practices that led to the exposure.  (Actually, i thought this was clear in my first post, but...) I  don't think it is necessary to invoke cancer in order to get appropriate  cleanup.



There is a wonderful video made by John Stossel called "Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?"  I remember two scenes from it:

(1) Stossel, covering the Times Beach cleanup is in the foreground and is dressed in an ordinary business suit.  behind him are cleanup workers in moon suits.  He asks if those guys need moon suits, why hasn't anyone suggested protection for him?  

(2) He asks his studio audience if they would let a substance be piped into their homes that is a colorless, odorless gas that could kill them if they inhaled it, and the audience response is absolutely negative.  Then Stossel tells them he has described natural gas (without the added odorant).

The video is a very good exposition of m,odern contradictory attitudes toward hazardous substances.



Ruth





In a message dated 3/31/2004 4:48:31 PM Eastern Standard Time, "jjcohen" <jjcohen@prodigy.net> writes:



>

>  ----- Original Message -----

>  From: <RuthWeiner@AOL.COM>

>  To: "Carl Speer" <rtrs@cox.net>; "'Mercado, Don'" <don.mercado@lmco.com>; <NiagaraNet@AOL.COM>; <radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu>

>  Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 11:51 AM

>  Subject: RE: Outdated Love Canal reference from Weiner - Dapra is..

>

>  Ruth,

>      Because you are a scientist, and apparently a pretty good one, I can see why you may have trouble understanding the problems in accepting the Love Canal study published in Science, the Carey report, and other studies indicating no significant health consequences. From the perspective of the  concerned and passionate nonscientist, it is easy to dismiss the assessment and "scientific" mumbo-jumbo in these reports simply because they reach the wrong answer.

>      To understand why the answer in wrong, just look at the events of the time when the news media abounded with horror stories predicting dire consequences and hoards of government officials and bureaucrats spend enormous funds "investigating" the situation and concluding that evacuation of the area was necessary. Surely such measures would not have been "necessary" if the situation were not extremely serious. I'm afraid that convincing the public that the whole thing was just one big mistake is no longer possible, particularly in light of the commonly held belief that is was all caused by greedy corporations seeking to increase their profits. In such a mileau, science, as we know it has little chance to prevail.    Jerry Cohen

>

>

>

>  > One of the points made in the article was that the study was done 10 and 20 years after exposure, precisely in order to encompass a latency period.

>  >

>  > In my extreme scientific naivete, I was assuming that peer review was still the "gold standard" for science, and that the peer-reviewed portion of SCIENCE magazine -- the Reports section -- was still considered a first-class scientific journal (I am sure AAAS wuld be surprised to hear otherwise).

>  >

>  > I might point out that, in 1981, I, too, was surprised by the articles findings, but I accepted it as as a solid, well-documented study.  But then, I didn't have an agenda.  And actually, I don't now. I haven't seen anything in SCIENCE (or any other peer-reviewed journal that I read) that contradict's the study's findings. Can someone point me to a PEER-REVIEWED study in a reputable scientific journal that refutes the 1981 study I cited?

>  >

>  > Ruth Weiner

>

>

>





-- 

Ruth F. Weiner

ruthweiner@aol.com

505-856-5011

(o)505-284-8406



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