Why I Buy Drinking Water In 5 Gallon Bottles

People have asked me why I do not always subscribe to the CDC's version of things - here is an example -



CDC misled District residents about lead levels in water, House probe finds

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 20, 2010; A01

The nation's premier public health agency knowingly used flawed data to claim that high lead levels in the District's drinking water did not pose a health risk to the public, a congressional investigation has found. And, investigators determined, the agency has not publicized more thorough internal research showing that the problem harmed children across the city and continues to endanger thousands of D.C. residents.

A House investigative subcommittee concludes that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made "scientifically indefensible" claims in 2004 that high lead in the water was not causing noticeable harm to the health of city residents. As terrified District parents demanded explanations for the spike in lead in their water, the CDC hurriedly published its calming analysis, knowing that it relied on incomplete, misleading blood-test results that played down the potential health impact, the investigation found.

The city utility says lead levels have been in the safe range in D.C. water since 2006, after a chemical change to reduce lead leaching. But the House report raises concerns about children in 9,100 residences throughout the city with partial lead-pipe replacements. Their parents may not know CDC research has found that children in such homes are four times as likely to have elevated lead in their blood.

The House science and technology subcommittee investigation, scheduled to be released Thursday, was spurred last year by one scientist's research and Washington Post reporting suggesting that the 2004 CDC analysis was missing many test results for children who might have lead poisoning. With its final report, the committee reveals that the missing data showed clear harm to children from the water -- and that CDC authors knew the data was flawed. It finds that CDC officials "failed in their public health duty."

Pediatric lead experts advise concerned parents to monitor their children's behavior to determine whether they have noticed coordination, hearing or mental-focus problems or changes. Parents who witness such changes should have their children's blood tested for lead.

Late Wednesday, the CDC declined to directly rebut the House investigators' findings. Instead, it released a brief re-analysis based on the missing tests, which it said confirms the original 2004 findings that residents did not suffer significant harm.

The agency acknowledged, however, that its 2004 claim that no children had been found with lead poisoning was "misleading," because it referred to only one part of its study. Another part showed that children living in homes serviced by a lead pipes were more than twice as likely as other D.C. children to have unsafe lead in their blood.

Yanna Lambrinidou, head of a parents' activist group that formed in the lead crisis, said the CDC, the city water utility, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the D.C. Health Department knew that lead was spiking in the water but did little to fix it or warn the public.

"CDC gave the perpetrators of D.C.'s lead crisis a 'get out of jail free' card," Lambrinidou said. "They will finally have to answer for what they did."

When nearly 1 million residents throughout the District and in small parts of Falls Church and Arlington learned from a Post article in January 2004 that they had been exposed to unsafe lead in water for at least a year, the CDC analysis was largely used to quiet public anger. The study has since been cited as evidence that even astronomically high lead levels are not cause for concern.

Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), the subcommittee chairman, said the CDC report "left the public health community with the dangerous and wrong impression that lead-contaminated water is safe for children to drink."

Lead is a toxic metal long known to cause brain damage and developmental delays in fetuses and children when they or their pregnant mothers ingest significant amounts.

Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech scientist who early on questioned the paper, said it's time for the CDC to retract its findings and for the senior author of the 2004 report, Mary Jean Brown, to resign.

The House subcommittee's investigation also chides the CDC for not alerting the public to its subsequent research that contradicted its earlier claims. This 2007 research determined a clear link between the water problem and lead poisoning in D.C. children. For example, it showed that city children with high levels of lead in their blood were significantly more likely to live in homes with lead pipes, and after the city fixed its water treatment problem, the CDC saw a "dramatic reduction" in lead poisoning.

The committee also urged release of this research to alert residents to a continuing, lurking threat in the estimated 9,100 D.C. homes where water utility crews replaced part of the lead service pipe bringing water to the house. The CDC study concluded that the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority's $93 million effort to reduce lead risks after the 2004 lead crisis had largely backfired: Children living in homes with partial lead pipe replacements were four times as likely to suffer from unsafe levels of lead as those in homes without lead pipes.

The House science subcommittee reserves its strongest criticisms for Brown, the CDC's director of lead poisoning prevention. She worked with D.C. health officials to review blood-test results and frame the CDC's response. Brown led a team in publishing the conclusion that the lead problem wasn't having a serious health impact.

But the committee said it found evidence that Brown knew that the D.C. Health Department data was missing thousands of blood-test results in a critical period of the lead crisis. She told investigators that she believed all the missing data was for low blood-lead levels, but she never tried to obtain the original results to check.

The committee did go back to the labs for the original test results for 2002-03 and learned that three times as many children had elevated lead levels as reported, 954 instead of 315. This means child lead poisoning was rising, not falling or staying the same, as the CDC had claimed.

In one part of the 2004 report, the CDC paper analyzed the blood of children and adults living with lead levels in their tap water 20 times the amount raising concern -- and said not one was suffering from elevated lead. Brown and her co-authors knew, however, that most of those tested had been drinking bottled or filtered water before their blood was analyzed.

A public health expert and co-author suggested to Brown in an e-mail that the report mention this factor because "this may help to explain why currently none of the persons have blood lead levels above the level of concern." It was never mentioned.

Brown acknowledged to investigators that she "didn't have a lot of confidence" in the results but didn't delay the report's release because many federal agencies were pushing the CDC to publish.

In internal e-mails at the time, Brown expressed pleasure that the drumbeat of media reports was easing. "Today has been the first day in over a month that there wasn't a story on lead in water in the Washington Post and also the first that I haven't been interviewed by at least one news outlet," Brown wrote to her boss. "I guess that means it worked!"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/19/AR2010051902599.html?hpid=moreheads

On The Horizon

D.C.'s medical marijuana law has problems but is a step in the right direction

By Robert McCartney
Thursday, May 13, 2010; B01

The risk with the District's new medical marijuana law isn't that the city will become another California with hundreds of pot shops and doctors who'll approve it for people feeling just jittery or blue. Instead, the worry is that the statute is so restrictive there won't be enough legal weed to meet demand.

Fearful that Congress might kill the law, the D.C. Council approved what cannabis advocates say is probably the least-permissive measure in the country.

No growing at home. Only five to eight "dispensaries" to sell it. Licensed cultivators are limited to 95 plants. They have to grow indoors, which means smaller plants.

The limits could mean that people with ailments such as cancer and multiple sclerosis would have to use the black market to get marijuana for relief from nausea, muscle spasms and other symptoms.

Other controversies are likely. Competition will be fierce among would-be pot entrepreneurs eager for lucrative licenses to operate dispensaries or grow plants. Unsettling r?sum?s will abound, such as from big operators outside the state and local people who've been in the business illegally for years.

"They're calling wondering, who do I need to grease? Who do I need to show our support to?" said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws.

None of this is to say the law was a mistake. Quite the opposite. Loyal readers know I support legalizing marijuana, including for recreational purposes. My goals for pot policy can be summarized in four words: good quality, reasonable prices.

Until that's achieved -- St. Pierre predicts it'll take a decade for public opinion to shift that far -- we must settle for small steps in the right direction.

Thus, I applaud the council, led by Health Committee Chairman David A. Catania (I-At Large) and Public Safety Chairman Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), for pushing through a carefully crafted bill. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) plans to sign it soon. It'll take effect this fall, if all goes well.

To the extent there's a problem, the culprits are overwrought antidrug moralists in Congress. They'll have 30 working days after Fenty's signature to try to block the bill. Nobody expects them to succeed, but their mere presence means the measure is too cautious.

The biggest shortcoming is the ban on patients growing their own pot. That blocks a sure way to get it cheaply and easily. It significantly increases the risk of shortages.

This gets complicated because of great uncertainty over how many users there'll be. Catania estimates the number to be between 300 and 1,000. However, the view was unanimous among marijuana advocates whom I interviewed that the figure will be much higher, based on experience elsewhere.

"The demand out there is huge," said Caren Woodson, director of government affairs of Americans for Safe Access. She said more than 15,000 District residents suffer from cancer, MS or HIV/AIDS, all of which are included on the law's list of conditions that potentially qualify people for medical marijuana.

That number doesn't include people with glaucoma, which is also on the list, or other chronic, debilitating illnesses that the D.C. Health Department could add to the roster.

Then there's the limit of 95 plants per licensed grower. Each plant can support one or at most two patients. Based on a conservative assumption of 1,000 users, that means at least five to 10 cultivators are needed. If there are 5,000 users, then the number of growers rises to 25 to 50.

Who will they be? The application rules are strict and prohibit felons or individuals with misdemeanor drug convictions. Presumably that means area dealers and growers who apply will be ones too smart or lucky to have been caught.

Finally, there's the issue of where to locate the growers and dispensaries. There should be some interesting community battles, as the law assigns "great weight" to views of Advisory Neighborhood Commissions on deciding the sites.

St. Pierre predicted the grow houses will be "in Northeast by the railroad tracks. It's going to be in the same places where we put other problematic adult commerce, like strip clubs."

At least there shouldn't be any problem finding people hoping to do the job. It's easy for a grower to make six figures a year after the initial start-up cost, according to activists and other experienced observers.

"The average person, if they were even somewhat competent, they'd be able to make something like a hundred grand a year," said Conor, 30, of Northwest, who plans to apply both to grow marijuana and operate a dispensary. He declined to give his last name for fear of angering his employer.

Conor said he grew marijuana until seven years ago, and the proceeds helped finance his college education. Although eager to resume, he is unhappy about the bureaucracy.

"I have a kind of an individualist, libertarian slant on it," Conor said. "Governments tend to put these barriers to entry up and hurt small business."

Maybe that's how the District should get conservatives in Congress to back off. Make it about excessive government regulation. Free markets, more weed.

If you're interested, my earlier column urging legalization of marijuana was published Sept. 13, 2009. I think pot should be treated much like alcohol -- regulated, taxed and prohibited for minors.

McCartney discusses local issues at 8:51 a.m. Friday on WAMU (88.5 FM).

Creating Teaching Momnerts

Learning is a big part of family life. The principal of Deal Middle School, Ms. Kim, sends a weekly "News From..." email. She always includes some sort of article about learning in the email. Below is a copy of what she copied in her April 11, 2010, News From Alice Deal / The Weekly Bulletin. I think it has some good points on conveying information to anyone.



Food for thought...

Twelve Ways To Make Information Stick In Students' Brains

"When information is presented to students, it goes into the working memory of their brain," says teacher/writer Bill Page in this Teachers.Net/Gazette article (featured in Education Digest). The information is likely to evaporate unless something moves it into long-term memory. How can teachers make that happen? Page shares 12 strategies:

· Make it personal. Pairing students, having them work in small groups, and orchestrating interactive activities all help to link new information to each student's prior knowledge and experiences.

· Make it interesting. "Teachers must find another way to teach those who did not learn the lesson the first time," says Page. The best way to do that is to hook students' interest.

· Help students construct meaning. "If new information does not connect or relate to existing knowledge, the brain will not accept it," says Page. Teachers need to listen carefully as students process new information and involve them in constructing their own meaning. "Students learn more by answering their own questions of 'why'," he says, "than by someone giving them reasons for 'why'."

· Make it meaningful. "The why is more important than the what in learning," says Page. New information has to make sense to students.

· Have students apply new knowledge. Students "use it or lose it," says Page. "Pairing and small-group discussions are crucial to learning."

· Engage emotions. "We learn in direct proportion to the strength of our feelings," says Page, "- especially our likes and dislikes... Emotions are why we remember the person who sat behind us in the 7^th grade, but can't remember the name of someone we met yesterday."

· Maximize the use of the senses. The brain's neurons take in information from hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching, says Page: "The more neurons that are affected by stimuli from different sources, the stronger and longer lasting the memory and recall ability will be."

· Make it social. "What we value in learning depends on what those around us are learning," says Page. "We learn from the company we keep."

· Apply the laws of learning. Teachers need to be savvy to predictable patterns of attention, memory, retrieval, and forgetting, says Page. One way is to make connections to children's interests, including sports and holidays.

· Use associations. "The brain works by linking things to other things," says Page. "Memory relies on patterns, concepts, meaningfulness, relevance, and associations." That's why using similes, metaphors, and well-chosen examples is so helpful.

· Teach concepts. Once students grasp a general concept, the facts related to it fall into place and are much easier to remember.

· Climb Bloom's ladder. About 95 percent of teaching and testing is at the lowest Bloom levels - knowledge and comprehension. Disconnected bits of knowledge are the easiest to "teach" (Memorize the 50 state capitals) but the hardest for students to commit to long-term memory. When teachers "put facts in meaningful groups or concepts," says Page, "they're more easily learned." And that means getting students applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating.

"12 Things Teachers Must Know About Learning" by Bill Page in Teachers.Net/Gazette, February 2010, http://teachers.net/gazette/wordpress/bill-page/12-things-teachers-must-know/ (spotted in Education Digest, April 2010, Vol. 75, #8, p. 54-56)