Responding to a court order, the Environmental Protection Agency is requiring industries to reduce lead in the air by 90%. That’s the good news. The bad news is the EPA’s plan for 236 new or relocated monitors represents only half as many as it used to have and not enough to detect thousands of lead polluters nationwide. The plan also allows companies to average lead exposure over a 3-month period, which could result in dangerous spikes of lead emissions from smelters, metal mines, waste incinerators and other polluters. Based on data collected between 2005 and 2007, 18 counties in 12 states presently fail to meet the new standard and have until October 2011 to comply. Obviously, the EPA needs to get the lead out of its pants too.
Then there’s drinking water. Tests on 10 leading brands of bottled water showed they contained many of the same contaminants as tap water. In spite of being 1,900 times more expensive, bottled water isn’t held to higher federal standards. Environmental Working Group – an organization advocating stricter standards – tested bottled water in California, Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia and found an average of 8 contaminants in each brand. Although the contaminants were below federal limits, we don’t expect coliform bacteria, fertilizer, solvents, plastic-making chemicals and radioactive strontium in bottled water – unless we expect the bottles to have carbon filters.
As for drinking alcohol, it shrinks the brain. According to a study in the Archives of Neurology, the brain decreases in size by 2% per decade as a natural part of aging; but consuming alcohol can increase that by 1.5%. Men who drank more than 14 drinks a week and women who drank 8-14 drinks per week experienced brain shrinkage. Scientists theorize the shrinkage occurs because alcohol dehydrates brain tissue. The good news is smaller brains don’t have impaired memory or mental function – but if they did, maybe we wouldn’t remember.
According to the British Association of Dermatologists, excess mobile phone use is dangerous too. It causes Mobile Phone Dermatitis. MPD is an allergic reaction to nickel surfaces on mobile phones and it causes a red, itchy rash on body parts that contact those surfaces. Although cheeks and ears are most often affected, too much text messaging can also cause a rash on fingers. Considering 10 of the 22 phones tested had nickel surfaces, dermatologists can expect to see a rash of rashes.
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