Is Our Water Causing Increased Levels of Homosexuality?
29 Jul 2009, 3:08 pm
skafather84 wrote:
President Obama is more eloquent a speaker because he's not a hick-wanna be like Bush and he didn't have nearly as bad of a coke problem as Bush or is as brain damaged from so much alcohol abuse.
Bush became president just to spite his dad, not because he has any real interest in politics.
Kinda like how Palin will become president just because she loves the spotlight and attention...not because she has any real interest in politics...just the competition. She's a former beauty queen, afterall....and a failed sports anchor.
Bush became president just to spite his dad, not because he has any real interest in politics.
Kinda like how Palin will become president just because she loves the spotlight and attention...not because she has any real interest in politics...just the competition. She's a former beauty queen, afterall....and a failed sports anchor.
true, watch the movie W, the SOLE reason he ran was to show his dad he was better then his brother at something. He is the only prez I think was truly incompent and unqualified to hold office, the others at least had an idea what they were doing.
Also, Obama is the best we are gonna get right now, and the thing is, GOP can't find its ass with both hands and a map after it was SHOCKED to lose the mid term elections in 2006, the third parties are too extreme for the american people to stomach and all in all, we needed a clean, fresh slate, which was Obama.
_________________
I am a freak, want to hold my leash?
29 Jul 2009, 8:35 pm
cognito wrote:
the third parties are too extreme for the american people to stomach and all in all, we needed a clean, fresh slate, which was Obama.
Not really. They're just too extreme because the corporations who pay the bills for all the media outlets say they're too extreme. Too extreme meaning they'd actually put an end to the corporate welfare system.
_________________
Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings. ~Heinrich Heine, Almansor, 1823
?I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.? - Hunter S. Thompson
04 Aug 2009, 9:57 am
It turns out that, in addition to lady pee, Washington bureaucrats are imbibing copious amounts of lead. No wonder our country is in such deep doodoo.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03003.html
Quote:
More D.C. Kids Had Elevated Lead Than Stated
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
More than twice as many D.C. children as previously reported by federal and local health officials had high levels of lead in their blood amid the city's drinking water crisis, according to congressional investigators, throwing into doubt assurances by those officials that the lead in tap water did not seriously harm city children.
The new information was uncovered by a House subcommittee investigating the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's performance and has raised congressional concern about whether the agency properly alerted District residents to a health risk from unprecedented levels of lead in the water.
Local officials could not say Monday whether some children with unsafe lead exposure have gone without intervention to reduce health risks.
The CDC and city health department had reported dangerously high lead levels in 193 children in 2003, the worst year for high concentrations of lead in city tap water. But lab data gathered by congressional investigators this year show that the actual number was 486 children.
The subcommittee's investigators uncovered the higher figures by seeking the data directly from all D.C. labs that analyze local test results. After the lead problem became public in 2004, blood tests from thousands of city children taken in 2003 were inexplicably missing from D.C. government files.
Using the partial data, the CDC, the nation's leading public health agency, and the D.C. Department of Health published a paper reporting that they were not finding a significant increase in children with dangerous lead levels.
"There is no indication that DC residents have blood lead levels above the CDC levels of concern," Mary Jean Brown, the CDC's top lead poisoning prevention official, wrote in a summary of her paper. She wrote the report with the Department of Health in March 2004 after residents and Congress learned about the lead problem.
Brown stressed at the time that from 2001 to 2004, blood lead levels among the city's children and adults were generally dropping as levels in the city's water were rising.
The 2003 data on blood tests for children were considered critical in measuring whether a widespread spike in lead in the city's drinking water had harmed children's health. That year, the city found tens of thousands of city homes with elevated lead in the water. It was not until 2004 that the public was alerted to the problem and many residents began protecting themselves and their children by switching to filtered or bottled water. Since then, the city has changed its water treatment. Lead levels have fallen and are at historical lows.
Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), chairman of the investigations and oversight subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee, which is conducting the inquiry, said the new findings raise questions about the CDC's performance.
"Parents thought that they didn't have to worry about lead in their children's drinking water because they trusted CDC," Miller said. "The CDC can't lend their credibility simply to assure the public that there is nothing to worry about. If they say everything is fine, then everything better really be fine."
In letters sent to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) on Monday evening, Miller requested more agency documents. He said the CDC should have known it had "wildly incomplete" data when it published research that "suggested there was no danger to children and the public from elevated lead levels in the water."
"The disparity in the numbers reported by the CDC and the data obtained by the subcommittee is extraordinarily disturbing," Miller wrote, adding that the missing data "should have set off warning bells that the CDC could not rely on the numbers being provided for public health statements."
In a written statement, CDC officials declined to comment on the new data, saying they had not seen it.
Fenty's office released a statement saying: "The Administration looks forward to receiving the findings of the congressional investigation related to the 2003 lead reporting between DOH and the CDC and, once reviewed, we will use its findings to better serve D.C. residents."
Recent research at Children's National Medical Center indicates that children who lived in neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of lead in the water -- Capitol Hill, Columbia Heights and northern sections of Ward 4 -- were much more likely to have elevated lead in their bloodstream.
Blood test results are collected when doctors and labs report the results to the city health department, which monitors children to try to reduce their exposure to lead. Fetuses and children younger than 6 are particularly vulnerable to lead exposure, and high levels can cause a permanent loss in IQ, motor coordination and the ability to communicate.
In 2001 and 2002, the health department had collected results from 16,042 children and 15,755 children, respectively. But in 2003, results from only 9,229 children were on file with the department.
After the lead problem was reported in January 2004, Brown and her deputies from the CDC questioned city health officials about why they had fewer tests. They responded that some labs did not report test results of low lead levels. Brown told The Washington Post this year that she believed that the missing data would probably not affect the findings in her paper because they did not involve high lead readings.
On Monday, CDC officials said that Brown did not ask for the data because labs are required to report to the District. "CDC has no authority to require that laboratories report directly to it," according to the CDC statement.
John Rosen, a pediatric expert on lead and the head of the lead-poisoning prevention program at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, expressed surprise that officials drew conclusions based on data they knew was incomplete and did not seek the missing data from the labs.
"This is unacceptable science, and it's unacceptable public health, and the losers are the children who may suffer a lifetime from elevated lead exposure," he said.
The 2003 test results suggested that the incidence of dangerous lead exposure was falling in the District, a decline cited in a George Washington University paper.
William Walker, the chairman of the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority board, said that he could not comment about data he had not seen or how health agencies performed in 2003 but that he is eager to learn more about the House panel's findings.
"If this is true -- that there are a lot more kids with elevated lead -- it's of great concern to us," Walker said. "We're going to look at the data and see what the committee comes out with in their investigation and respond accordingly."
04 Aug 2009, 10:45 am
pandabear wrote:
It turns out that, in addition to lady pee, Washington bureaucrats are imbibing copious amounts of lead. No wonder our country is in such deep doodoo.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03003.html
More D.C. Kids Had Elevated Lead Than Stated
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
More than twice as many D.C. children as previously reported by federal and local health officials had high levels of lead in their blood amid the city's drinking water crisis, according to congressional investigators, throwing into doubt assurances by those officials that the lead in tap water did not seriously harm city children.
The new information was uncovered by a House subcommittee investigating the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's performance and has raised congressional concern about whether the agency properly alerted District residents to a health risk from unprecedented levels of lead in the water.
Local officials could not say Monday whether some children with unsafe lead exposure have gone without intervention to reduce health risks.
The CDC and city health department had reported dangerously high lead levels in 193 children in 2003, the worst year for high concentrations of lead in city tap water. But lab data gathered by congressional investigators this year show that the actual number was 486 children.
The subcommittee's investigators uncovered the higher figures by seeking the data directly from all D.C. labs that analyze local test results. After the lead problem became public in 2004, blood tests from thousands of city children taken in 2003 were inexplicably missing from D.C. government files.
Using the partial data, the CDC, the nation's leading public health agency, and the D.C. Department of Health published a paper reporting that they were not finding a significant increase in children with dangerous lead levels.
"There is no indication that DC residents have blood lead levels above the CDC levels of concern," Mary Jean Brown, the CDC's top lead poisoning prevention official, wrote in a summary of her paper. She wrote the report with the Department of Health in March 2004 after residents and Congress learned about the lead problem.
Brown stressed at the time that from 2001 to 2004, blood lead levels among the city's children and adults were generally dropping as levels in the city's water were rising.
The 2003 data on blood tests for children were considered critical in measuring whether a widespread spike in lead in the city's drinking water had harmed children's health. That year, the city found tens of thousands of city homes with elevated lead in the water. It was not until 2004 that the public was alerted to the problem and many residents began protecting themselves and their children by switching to filtered or bottled water. Since then, the city has changed its water treatment. Lead levels have fallen and are at historical lows.
Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), chairman of the investigations and oversight subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee, which is conducting the inquiry, said the new findings raise questions about the CDC's performance.
"Parents thought that they didn't have to worry about lead in their children's drinking water because they trusted CDC," Miller said. "The CDC can't lend their credibility simply to assure the public that there is nothing to worry about. If they say everything is fine, then everything better really be fine."
In letters sent to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) on Monday evening, Miller requested more agency documents. He said the CDC should have known it had "wildly incomplete" data when it published research that "suggested there was no danger to children and the public from elevated lead levels in the water."
"The disparity in the numbers reported by the CDC and the data obtained by the subcommittee is extraordinarily disturbing," Miller wrote, adding that the missing data "should have set off warning bells that the CDC could not rely on the numbers being provided for public health statements."
In a written statement, CDC officials declined to comment on the new data, saying they had not seen it.
Fenty's office released a statement saying: "The Administration looks forward to receiving the findings of the congressional investigation related to the 2003 lead reporting between DOH and the CDC and, once reviewed, we will use its findings to better serve D.C. residents."
Recent research at Children's National Medical Center indicates that children who lived in neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of lead in the water -- Capitol Hill, Columbia Heights and northern sections of Ward 4 -- were much more likely to have elevated lead in their bloodstream.
Blood test results are collected when doctors and labs report the results to the city health department, which monitors children to try to reduce their exposure to lead. Fetuses and children younger than 6 are particularly vulnerable to lead exposure, and high levels can cause a permanent loss in IQ, motor coordination and the ability to communicate.
In 2001 and 2002, the health department had collected results from 16,042 children and 15,755 children, respectively. But in 2003, results from only 9,229 children were on file with the department.
After the lead problem was reported in January 2004, Brown and her deputies from the CDC questioned city health officials about why they had fewer tests. They responded that some labs did not report test results of low lead levels. Brown told The Washington Post this year that she believed that the missing data would probably not affect the findings in her paper because they did not involve high lead readings.
On Monday, CDC officials said that Brown did not ask for the data because labs are required to report to the District. "CDC has no authority to require that laboratories report directly to it," according to the CDC statement.
John Rosen, a pediatric expert on lead and the head of the lead-poisoning prevention program at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, expressed surprise that officials drew conclusions based on data they knew was incomplete and did not seek the missing data from the labs.
"This is unacceptable science, and it's unacceptable public health, and the losers are the children who may suffer a lifetime from elevated lead exposure," he said.
The 2003 test results suggested that the incidence of dangerous lead exposure was falling in the District, a decline cited in a George Washington University paper.
William Walker, the chairman of the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority board, said that he could not comment about data he had not seen or how health agencies performed in 2003 but that he is eager to learn more about the House panel's findings.
"If this is true -- that there are a lot more kids with elevated lead -- it's of great concern to us," Walker said. "We're going to look at the data and see what the committee comes out with in their investigation and respond accordingly."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03003.html
Quote:
More D.C. Kids Had Elevated Lead Than Stated
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
More than twice as many D.C. children as previously reported by federal and local health officials had high levels of lead in their blood amid the city's drinking water crisis, according to congressional investigators, throwing into doubt assurances by those officials that the lead in tap water did not seriously harm city children.
The new information was uncovered by a House subcommittee investigating the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's performance and has raised congressional concern about whether the agency properly alerted District residents to a health risk from unprecedented levels of lead in the water.
Local officials could not say Monday whether some children with unsafe lead exposure have gone without intervention to reduce health risks.
The CDC and city health department had reported dangerously high lead levels in 193 children in 2003, the worst year for high concentrations of lead in city tap water. But lab data gathered by congressional investigators this year show that the actual number was 486 children.
The subcommittee's investigators uncovered the higher figures by seeking the data directly from all D.C. labs that analyze local test results. After the lead problem became public in 2004, blood tests from thousands of city children taken in 2003 were inexplicably missing from D.C. government files.
Using the partial data, the CDC, the nation's leading public health agency, and the D.C. Department of Health published a paper reporting that they were not finding a significant increase in children with dangerous lead levels.
"There is no indication that DC residents have blood lead levels above the CDC levels of concern," Mary Jean Brown, the CDC's top lead poisoning prevention official, wrote in a summary of her paper. She wrote the report with the Department of Health in March 2004 after residents and Congress learned about the lead problem.
Brown stressed at the time that from 2001 to 2004, blood lead levels among the city's children and adults were generally dropping as levels in the city's water were rising.
The 2003 data on blood tests for children were considered critical in measuring whether a widespread spike in lead in the city's drinking water had harmed children's health. That year, the city found tens of thousands of city homes with elevated lead in the water. It was not until 2004 that the public was alerted to the problem and many residents began protecting themselves and their children by switching to filtered or bottled water. Since then, the city has changed its water treatment. Lead levels have fallen and are at historical lows.
Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), chairman of the investigations and oversight subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee, which is conducting the inquiry, said the new findings raise questions about the CDC's performance.
"Parents thought that they didn't have to worry about lead in their children's drinking water because they trusted CDC," Miller said. "The CDC can't lend their credibility simply to assure the public that there is nothing to worry about. If they say everything is fine, then everything better really be fine."
In letters sent to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) on Monday evening, Miller requested more agency documents. He said the CDC should have known it had "wildly incomplete" data when it published research that "suggested there was no danger to children and the public from elevated lead levels in the water."
"The disparity in the numbers reported by the CDC and the data obtained by the subcommittee is extraordinarily disturbing," Miller wrote, adding that the missing data "should have set off warning bells that the CDC could not rely on the numbers being provided for public health statements."
In a written statement, CDC officials declined to comment on the new data, saying they had not seen it.
Fenty's office released a statement saying: "The Administration looks forward to receiving the findings of the congressional investigation related to the 2003 lead reporting between DOH and the CDC and, once reviewed, we will use its findings to better serve D.C. residents."
Recent research at Children's National Medical Center indicates that children who lived in neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of lead in the water -- Capitol Hill, Columbia Heights and northern sections of Ward 4 -- were much more likely to have elevated lead in their bloodstream.
Blood test results are collected when doctors and labs report the results to the city health department, which monitors children to try to reduce their exposure to lead. Fetuses and children younger than 6 are particularly vulnerable to lead exposure, and high levels can cause a permanent loss in IQ, motor coordination and the ability to communicate.
In 2001 and 2002, the health department had collected results from 16,042 children and 15,755 children, respectively. But in 2003, results from only 9,229 children were on file with the department.
After the lead problem was reported in January 2004, Brown and her deputies from the CDC questioned city health officials about why they had fewer tests. They responded that some labs did not report test results of low lead levels. Brown told The Washington Post this year that she believed that the missing data would probably not affect the findings in her paper because they did not involve high lead readings.
On Monday, CDC officials said that Brown did not ask for the data because labs are required to report to the District. "CDC has no authority to require that laboratories report directly to it," according to the CDC statement.
John Rosen, a pediatric expert on lead and the head of the lead-poisoning prevention program at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, expressed surprise that officials drew conclusions based on data they knew was incomplete and did not seek the missing data from the labs.
"This is unacceptable science, and it's unacceptable public health, and the losers are the children who may suffer a lifetime from elevated lead exposure," he said.
The 2003 test results suggested that the incidence of dangerous lead exposure was falling in the District, a decline cited in a George Washington University paper.
William Walker, the chairman of the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority board, said that he could not comment about data he had not seen or how health agencies performed in 2003 but that he is eager to learn more about the House panel's findings.
"If this is true -- that there are a lot more kids with elevated lead -- it's of great concern to us," Walker said. "We're going to look at the data and see what the committee comes out with in their investigation and respond accordingly."
And perhaps if a social movement arises to administer all that lead in discrete lumps to scare the congressmen into serving their offices properly a few demanding problems might get solved.
04 Aug 2009, 12:47 pm
For the record....
Municipal water treatment DOES NOT remove many contaminant from the drinking water certified as "safe" to drink.
There's lots of nasty buggers left in the water even if they are killed by the water treatment process.
Chemicals, by and large, ARE NOT removed from the water.
So, women taking birth control pills and other hormones have been urinating that garbage into the drinking supply because hormones are not filtered out.
They've documented in many major cities how these chemicals (weak at first) are now reaching concentrations where you essentially are getting hormones in your drinking water...enough to affect reproduction and other bodily functions if you drink enough of it.
More than enough reason to use stronger filtration systems on your drinking water. Tap is fine if you're desperate, but don't keep drinking it and think that it's safe.
04 Aug 2009, 12:54 pm
zer0netgain wrote:
For the record....
Municipal water treatment DOES NOT remove many contaminant from the drinking water certified as "safe" to drink.
There's lots of nasty buggers left in the water even if they are killed by the water treatment process.
Chemicals, by and large, ARE NOT removed from the water.
So, women taking birth control pills and other hormones have been urinating that garbage into the drinking supply because hormones are not filtered out.
They've documented in many major cities how these chemicals (weak at first) are now reaching concentrations where you essentially are getting hormones in your drinking water...enough to affect reproduction and other bodily functions if you drink enough of it.
More than enough reason to use stronger filtration systems on your drinking water. Tap is fine if you're desperate, but don't keep drinking it and think that it's safe.
Municipal water treatment DOES NOT remove many contaminant from the drinking water certified as "safe" to drink.
There's lots of nasty buggers left in the water even if they are killed by the water treatment process.
Chemicals, by and large, ARE NOT removed from the water.
So, women taking birth control pills and other hormones have been urinating that garbage into the drinking supply because hormones are not filtered out.
They've documented in many major cities how these chemicals (weak at first) are now reaching concentrations where you essentially are getting hormones in your drinking water...enough to affect reproduction and other bodily functions if you drink enough of it.
More than enough reason to use stronger filtration systems on your drinking water. Tap is fine if you're desperate, but don't keep drinking it and think that it's safe.
And the alternative? See
http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/qbw.asp
04 Aug 2009, 1:09 pm
zer0netgain wrote:
For the record....
Municipal water treatment DOES NOT remove many contaminant from the drinking water certified as "safe" to drink.
There's lots of nasty buggers left in the water even if they are killed by the water treatment process.
Chemicals, by and large, ARE NOT removed from the water.
So, women taking birth control pills and other hormones have been urinating that garbage into the drinking supply because hormones are not filtered out.
They've documented in many major cities how these chemicals (weak at first) are now reaching concentrations where you essentially are getting hormones in your drinking water...enough to affect reproduction and other bodily functions if you drink enough of it.
More than enough reason to use stronger filtration systems on your drinking water. Tap is fine if you're desperate, but don't keep drinking it and think that it's safe.
Municipal water treatment DOES NOT remove many contaminant from the drinking water certified as "safe" to drink.
There's lots of nasty buggers left in the water even if they are killed by the water treatment process.
Chemicals, by and large, ARE NOT removed from the water.
So, women taking birth control pills and other hormones have been urinating that garbage into the drinking supply because hormones are not filtered out.
They've documented in many major cities how these chemicals (weak at first) are now reaching concentrations where you essentially are getting hormones in your drinking water...enough to affect reproduction and other bodily functions if you drink enough of it.
More than enough reason to use stronger filtration systems on your drinking water. Tap is fine if you're desperate, but don't keep drinking it and think that it's safe.
I agree that most city water supplies do a very limited version of filtering and testing. I use reverse-osmosis on my drinking water.
On the other hand, the amount of birth control pill chemicals or prozac present in the tap is so incredibly small that it can be ignored - naturally occurring chemicals, pesticides and industrial chemicals are a much bigger risk, depending on where a city gets it supply.
And many of the chemicals of concern get to us in routes other than drinking water - for example, products like 'armor-all' that are used to clean and maintain car interiors are loaded with pthalates that may interfere with sex hormones. A person who applies this without using gloves may absorb a million times more than they could get from a lifetime of drinking water; a person who drives in a car that has been detailed with that product will absorb the chemical through their lungs or skin. And these types of chemicals are still present in some types of food containers!!
