Not Just Your Mother Telling You To Turn That Device Off!

 This beyond DC but very much family and the environment - from The Washington Post -

 

Blue light from electronics disturbs sleep, especially for teenagers

By Meeri Kim September 1 at 6:05 PM

Blue light prevents the release of melatonin, a hormone associated with nighttime and sleep. (BIGSTOCK)

 

 

The pervasive glow of electronic devices may be an impediment to a good night’s sleep. ¶ That’s particularly noticeable now, when families are adjusting to early wake-up times for school. Teenagers can find it especially hard to get started in the morning. ¶ As lamps switch off in teens’ bedrooms across America, the lights from their computer screens, smartphones and tablets often stay on throughout the night. These devices emit light of all colors, but it’s the blues in particular that pose a danger to sleep. Blue light is espec ially good at preventing the release of melatonin, a hormone associated with nighttime.

The pervasive glow of electronic devices may be an impediment to a good night’s sleep. That’s particularly noticeable now, when families are adjusting to early wake-up times for school. Teenagers can find it especially hard to get started in the morning. For nocturnal animals, it spurs activity. For daytime species such as humans, melatonin signals that it’s time to sleep.
As lamps switch off in teens’ bedrooms across America, the lights from their computer screens, smartphones and tablets often stay on throughout the night. These devices emit light of all colors, but it’s the blues in particular that pose a danger to sleep. Blue light is especially good at preventing the release of melatonin, a hormone associated with nighttime.

Ordinarily, the pineal gland, a pea-size organ in the brain, begins to release melatonin a couple of hours before your regular bedtime. The hormone is no sleeping pill, but it does reduce alertness and make sleep more inviting.

However, light — particularly of the blue variety — can keep the pineal gland from releasing melatonin, thus warding off sleepiness. You don’t have to be staring directly at a television or computer screen: If enough blue light hits the eye, the gland can stop releasing melatonin. So easing into bed with a tablet or a laptop makes it harder to take a long snooze, especially for sleep-deprived teenagers who are more vulnerable to the effects of light than adults.

During adolescence, the circadian rhythm shifts, and teens feel more awake later at night. Switching on a TV show or video game just before bedtime will push off sleepiness even later even if they have to be up by 6 a.m. to get to school on time.

The result? Drowsy students struggling to stay awake, despite the caffeinated drinks many kids now consume.

“Teenagers have all the same risks of light exposure, but they are systematically sleep-deprived because of how society works against their natural clocks,” said sleep researcher Steven Lockley of Harvard Medical School. “Asking a teenager to get up at 7 a.m. is like asking me to get up at 4 a.m.”

In a 2014 poll, the National Sleep Foundation, an advocacy organization, polled parents, asking them to estimate their children’s sleep. More than half said their 15-to-17-year-olds routinely get seven hours or fewer hours of sleep. (The recommended amount for teens is 8¹ / ₂ to 10 hours.) In addition, 68 percent of these teens were also said to keep an electronic device on all night — a television, computer, video game or something similar.

Based on what parents reported, sleep quality was better among children age 6 to 17 who always turned their devices off: 45 percent of them were described as having excellent sleep quality vs. 25 percent of those who sometimes left devices on.

“It is known that teenagers have trouble falling asleep early, and every teenager goes through that,” said light researcher Mariana Figueiro of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

Figueiro investigates how light affects human health, and her recent research focused on finding out which electronics emit blue light intense enough to affect sleep. When comparing melatonin levels of adults and teenagers looking at computer screens, she was astonished by the younger group’s light sensitivity. Even when exposed to just one-tenth as much light as adults were, the teens actually suppressed more melatonin than the older people.

In another experiment, she had adults use iPads at full brightness for two hours and measured their melatonin levels with saliva samples. One hour of use didn’t significantly curtail melatonin release, but two hours’ did.

So although teenagers may be particularly susceptible, we all should be aware that artificial light can affect our circadian rhythms.

“The premise to remember is [that] all light after dusk is unnatural,” Lockley said. “All of us push our sleep later than we actually would if we didn’t have electric light.”

A study from 2013 found that people who spent a week camping in the Rocky Mountains, exposed to only natural light and no electronic devices, had their circadian clocks synchronized with the rise and fall of the sun. Although there were only eight campers, they all reacted in the same way, whether they considered themselves early birds or night owls. 

So light serves as a cue, but how? It has long been known that the retina contains two types of photoreceptors, or light sensors: rods and cones. The cones allow us to see colors, while the ultra-sensitive rods are used for night vision, motion detection and peripheral vision. But surprisingly, neither of them is the body’s primary tool for detecting light and darkness and synchronizing our circadian clocks.

There’s a third kind of sensor in our eyes, officially discovered in 2002. Called intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, or ipRGCs, these relatively crude sensors are unable to pick up on low levels of light — from a dim night light, for example — but sluggishly signal light changes.

They are the body’s way of sending ambient light information to the master circadian clock, a huddle of nerve cells in the brain. This clock makes the pineal gland start and stop the secretion of melatonin. The ipRGCs are most sensitive to blue light — that’s why blue light is bad for your sleep.

To counteract the effects of tablets’ blue light, Figueiro and Lockley recommend a free app, F.lux, that automatically warms up the colors on your various screens — more reds and yellows — at sunset and returns them to normal at sunrise.

“The amount of light you need [in order] to see is lower than the amount of light you need to affect your melatonin,” Figueiro said, which means that light-emitting screens can be used at night without disrupting sleep cycles if you put some distance between your eyes and the device. In other words, place the tablet farther away from your face than usual, or watch TV instead. Also, turning the brightness setting down on laptops, tablets and phones should help.

But for teenagers, this doesn’t completely remedy the problem of early school start times. Lockley also blames the early-morning sluggishness of many students on school start times that ignore their changing body clock.

High schools in a handful of cities have shifted their start times to 8:30 a.m. or later. In a University of Minnesota study whose final report was issued in February, researchers who surveyed about 9,000 students at eight high schools found that such a shift correlated with improvements in grades, achievement tests, attendance rates and car accident rates.

In Virginia, Fairfax County has been considering delaying its high school start time until after 8 a.m. In Maryland, Montgomery County has discussed a change but has not decided on one yet.

Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a recommendation that middle and high schools delay the start of classes to 8:30 a.m. or later. Pediatrician Judith Owens, the lead author of this policy statement, said that later start times will help adolescents get the sleep they need and lower their risks of obesity and depression.

“Sleep is important for learning, memory, brain development, health,” Lockley said. “We’re systematically sleep-
depriving kids when their brains are still developing, and you couldn’t design a worse system for learning.”

Many Americans may believe early risers are more successful and that people can learn to live on little sleep, Lockley said, but that notion is neither true nor healthy.

“There’s no training people to live without sleep,” Lockley said. “It’s like trying to train people to live without food.”

Kim is a freelance science journalist in Philadelphia.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/blue-light-from-electronics-disturbs-sleep-especially-for-teenagers/2014/08/29/3edd2726-27a7-11e4-958c-268a320a60ce_story.html?hpid=z4

HPV Immunization - Bachmann Got It Right - Who Else Does Merck Have In It's Pocket?

Lot of press about HPV today due to Michelle Bachmann's questioning of Rick Perry. The Washington Post did an article about Perry's connections to Merck, the manufacturer of the HPV immunization drug Gardasil. This is the link to the article - http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/perry-has-deep-financial-ties-to-maker-of-hpv-vaccine/2011/09/13/gIQAVKKqPK_story.html?hpid=z1&sub=AR
Following are comments I left on the article -


While I adamantly disagree with Michelle Bachmann on most things when she refers to crony capitalism, she is on to something.
I live in DC which requires this immunization unless parents opt out. On the strong advice of my daughter's pediatrician (female), we have opted out. Dangerous might ruffle some sensibilities but anyway you stack it up, there have been very serious side effects from this drug and the overall benefit / protection is at best questionable.
This immunization is first about profits for Merck. Somewhere down the line it might be about women's health but if you think that is the driving factor, I have a bridge to sell you. As I follow it in DC, by being required by government, Merck is absolved of liability. Pretty good deal for Merck, bad deal for for girls.
This immunization was approved by the FDA barely 5 years ago in 2006. Within a couple of years, Merck had succeeded in getting it required for school entry in countless jurisdictions. There was no great public out cry for this - it took Merck a lot of lobbying and yes MONEY to get it required. If Merck thought this drug was so needed, why would they need it required by government and thus relieve them of liability? If it is so good, why wouldn't people seek it out? Because it isn't so good.
By having the vaccine required by law it guarantees Merck a paying market and no liability - wow! I'd spend a lot of money too if I could have a business model like that!
Further, here in DC, the language is less than clear. After filling out the opt out, we still received a notice from the school nurse yesterday (how ironic) about our daughter not having it. Nowhere in the language of the letter does it say parents can opt out just because they want to - it refers to opting out for religious and/or medical reasons. Not exactly full disclosure.
In DC, David Catania is the man who pushed this requirement through the City Council. I would love the Post to do an article about his ties to Merck. This is crony capitalism at it's best.

Paper Trail Missing

Maryland lab destroys documention on lead poisoning of children

By Timothy B. Wheeler, Sunday, March 13, 6:37 PM

Maryland’s health secretary said Friday that his department’s laboratory has destroyed test results dating to the 1980s documenting lead poisoning of Maryland children — potentially thousands of records that plaintiffs’ lawyers say are crucial to pursuing lawsuits seeking damages on behalf of poisoned children and their families.

Joshua Sharfstein said he has asked for an investigation of how the destruction of records happened, replaced the lab’s director and ordered that efforts be made to recover whatever test results might have been deleted from state computer files.

“We regret this, and we’re going to do everything possible to make it right,” Sharfstein said in a phone interview.

Doctors and health clinics have been required since the 1980s to report to the state health department results of tests showing that children had elevated levels of lead in their blood. Lead is a potent neurotoxin that can cause lasting learning and behavioral problems in even tiny doses.

The department has maintained those test results for years and provided them on request to people who had been tested, their parents or their attorneys. Scott E. Nevin, a lawyer with the firm Peter T. Nicholl, called the records “critical” to the hundreds of lead-poisoning cases that his office and other firms have pending or are preparing.

“If in fact the records are permanently gone,” Nevin said, “it will just make it impossible for some citizens in Baltimore to pursue cases.”

The revelation comes more than a week after the Baltimore Sun had reported that the Baltimore City Health Department had lost federal lead abatement money for failing to meet treatment targets.

Sharfstein, who took over leadership of the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in January, said he learned of the destruction of records recently and has acted promptly to halt the practice and restore any results that can be restored.

“We are not destroying any more records. We are preserving records. We are going back and reconstructing databases,” he said, and “doing everything possible” to find and replace the lost test results.

John DeBoy, the lab director for the past 7¹ / ₂ years, has been removed from his position and placed on “administrative status,” Sharfstein said, pending the outcome of an investigation the secretary has requested of the health department’s inspector general. DeBoy did not reply to an e-mail or phone messages left at his home.

DeBoy, who has been with the state health department for 27 years, received the Gold Standard Award for Public Health Laboratory Excellence in 2007 from the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

The lab’s deputy director, Robert A. Myers, was named acting director Tuesday, Sharfstein said.

Sharfstein said he found out about the practice after being told that lawyers specializing in lead-poisoning lawsuits had filed a petition in Baltimore Circuit Court seeking a restraining order barring his department from destroying any more children’s test results. He said he had met with some of those lawyers and pledged to do what he can to remedy the loss of records.

“Regardless of whether the department has a legal obligation to maintain these records, we intend to do so,” the health secretary wrote in a letter to lawyers handling lead-poisoning cases.

The petition for a restraining order was filed by Brian Brown, a lawyer with Saul E. Kerpelman & Associates, a firm that specializes in lead-poisoning cases. Since then, Nevin’s firm and another handling lead-poisoning cases have filed to join in the request for a restraining order. A hearing is scheduled Monday.

— Baltimore Sun

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/maryland-lab-destroys-documentation-on-lead-poisoning-of-children/2011/03/13/ABaFo8T_story.html

Antibiotics and Inner Chemical Balance

I have had to deal with a variety of problems with antibiotics but I had never thought about how diet can help or hinder the antibiotics. I don't know why it would only apply to children.

Child's diet can help or hinder antibiotics' efficacy

By Julie Deardorff
Monday, November 29, 2010; 6:12 PM

When your child needs antibiotics, dietary choices can get complicated.

Food can help support the body nutritionally and hinder the effectiveness of the medication, depending on what your child eats and when. Antibiotics kill the nasty bacteria that cause the illness but also can wipe out the beneficial microbes that the body needs to absorb key nutrients, including several B vitamins and Vitamin K.

Experts say it's important to replace the lost nutrients, either through a multivitamin or by eating foods rich in the depleted vitamins, such as leafy green veggies. At the same time, food and supplements can increase, reduce or delay how a drug is absorbed.

To get the most out of the medicine, make sure your child takes the full dosage and read the package insert. Always check with your pharmacist for each specific medication.

Also: Make sure he or she really needs antibiotics. Antibiotics cure bacterial infections - which means they are useless against viral infections such as colds or flu, most coughs, bronchitis, runny noses and sore throats not caused by strep.

Here are some tips to ensure a child's diet is optimizing the recovery process:

Try probiotics. Some strains of bacteria, known as probiotics, have been shown to help avoid or treat diarrhea caused by antibiotics. The so-called healthy bacteria can be found in certain yogurts, miso and other fermented foods, and are available as powders and pills. Look for the "live" strains Lactobacillus GG and the yeast Saccharomyces boulardii.

Watch the calcium and iron. Don't give your child antibiotics with calcium- or iron-rich foods such as milk, hot dogs or iron-fortified cereal. Calcium and iron can interfere with the body's ability to absorb certain kinds of antibiotics known as quinolones, said Katrina Seidman, a registered dietitian at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Time it right. If your child eats food with calcium or iron, or took a children's multivitamin, wait three hours before giving the antibiotic so the body will absorb more of the medicine, Seidman said.

Eat soup. Nutrient-dense soups or broths, which supply antioxidants and phytochemicals, are the No. 1 food to eat while on antibiotics, said Ingrid Kohlstadt, editor of the textbook "Food and Nutrients in Disease Management."

Go low- acid. Acidic foods such as citrus juice, carbonated beverages, chocolate, antacids and tomato-based products such as ketchup can all interfere with drug absorption. Have your child avoid these several hours before and after taking the medication, Seidman said.

With the exception of yogurt, avoid dairy, said Kohlstadt. "The gastrointestinal barrier and the gut immune system undergo several changes from both the antibiotic and the infection," she said. "If you do eat dairy, make it yogurt low in sugar and lots of active cultures. Choose rice and oats over wheat."

- Chicago Tribune

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/29/AR2010112904873.html

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

Washington Gas Passes Expenses To Customers

D.C. gas customers face monthly surcharge

By: Michael Neibauer
Examiner Staff Writer
October 13, 2009

Washington Gas customers in the District face a surcharge on their monthly bills starting in 2011 to pay for a program aimed at preventing degradation of pipes and dangerous leaks. The surcharge amount has not been determined, but the District's share is expected to run more than $6 million a year divided among 151,000 Washington Gas customers -- an average of about $40 per year.

The settlement between Washington Gas and the Office of the People's Counsel, the District's utility ratepayer advocate, is nearly five years in the making. During that period, the utility was accused by experts of playing a "wait and see" game by failing to address segments of pipes vulnerable to leaks.

The deal allows Washington Gas to recover the costs of injecting hexane, an ingredient in liquefied natural gas, into its system. The utility also has agreed to spend as much as $28 million over seven years to replace aging pipes and mechanical couplings -- devices used to connect pipes -- in the District. Those costs would not be included in the surcharge. The fee would kick in each Oct. 1, starting in 2011, when the cap on gas rates expires. The agreement, which People's Counsel Elizabeth Noel said would ensure "safe and reliable service," is now before the D.C. Public Service Commission for approval. Washington Gas introduced hexane in 2004 following a spike in gas leaks, especially in Prince George's County. The utility said its liquid natural gas was losing hydrocarbons as it flowed from Dominion's terminal in Calvert County, which had a "deleterious effect on rubber seals in the mechanical couplings." Hexane stabilized its product.

The price of hexane, like gasoline, is volatile. Washington Gas uses roughly 1 million gallons a year alone at its Gardiner Road plant in Waldorf, which serves Prince George's and the District.

The Hudson River Group, a consultant hired by the Office of the People's Counsel, deemed hexane a questionable temporary fix and an ineffective permanent solution. Washington Gas should identify which couplings are failing and replace them as soon as possible, the group said.

"The safety code ... requires [Washington Gas] to recondition or phase out segments vulnerable to leaks," the group said in testimony. "It has not done so to date."

mneibauer@washingtonexaminer.com

Find this article at: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/D_C_-gas-customers-face-monthly-surcharge-8371330-64040967.html

Upward Mobility: A Toilet

Americans should take note of the success of this program in India - No Toilet, No Bride accompanied by the jingle "no loo, no I do". While some Americans may think that all Americans have indoor plumbing the following dated statistics from the 2000 census show that while a small percentage, not everyone in America benefits from indoor plumbing.

States with the highest rates of residents without complete plumbing facilities in the 2000 US census:
Alaska - 6.3%
New Mexico - 1.8%
Arizona - 1.1%
Hawaii, West Virginia - 1%
District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maine, Missisippi - 0.9%
Arkansas - 0.8%

The broader implications of this campaign are also clear to me - I am one of those who for a long time has promoted the idea, despite it's possible negative impact on myself, that if women throughout the world withheld sex from men in a coordinated campaign, world disarmament could occur faster than anyone thought possible. Just a thought.



In India, New Seat of Power for Women
Prospective Brides Demand Sought-After Commodity: A Toilet

By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 12, 2009

NILOKHERI, India -- An ideal groom in this dusty farming village is a vegetarian, does not drink, has good prospects for a stable job and promises his bride-to-be an amenity in high demand: a toilet.

In rural India, many young women are refusing to marry unless the suitor furnishes their future home with a bathroom, freeing them from the inconvenience and embarrassment of using community toilets or squatting in fields.

About 665 million people in India -- about half the population -- lack access to latrines. But since a "No Toilet, No Bride" campaign started about two years ago, 1.4 million toilets have been built here in the northern state of Haryana, some with government funds, according to the state's health department.

Women's rights activists call the program a revolution as it spreads across India's vast and largely impoverished rural areas.

"I won't let my daughter near a boy who doesn't have a latrine," said Usha Pagdi, who made sure that daughter Vimlas Sasva, 18, finished high school and took courses in electronics at a technical school.

"No loo? No 'I do,' " Vimlas said, laughing as she repeated a radio jingle.

"My father never even allowed me an education," Pagdi said, stroking her daughter's hair in their half-built shelter near a lagoon strewn with trash. "Every time I washed the floors, I thought about how I knew nothing. Now, young women have power. The men can't refuse us."

Indian girls are traditionally seen as a financial liability because of the wedding dowries -- often a life's savings -- their fathers often shell out to the groom's family. But that is slowly changing as women marry later and grow more financially self-reliant. More rural girls are enrolled in school than ever before.

A societal preference for boys here has become an unlikely source of power for Indian women. The abortion of female fetuses in favor of sons -- an illegal but widespread practice -- means there are more eligible bachelors than potential brides, allowing women and their parents to be more selective when arranging a match.

"I will have to work hard to afford a toilet. We won't get any bride if we don't have one now," said Harpal Sirshwa, 22, who is hoping to marry soon. Neem tree branches hung in the doorway of his parents' home, a sign of pride for a family with sons. "I won't be offended when the woman I like asks for a toilet."

Satellite television and the Internet are spreading images of rising prosperity and urban middle-class accouterments to rural areas, such as spacious apartments -- with bathrooms -- and women in silk saris rushing off to the office.

India's rapid urbanization has also contributed to rising aspirations in small towns and villages. On a crowded highway that runs into this village, about 170 miles north of New Delhi, young women, once seen clinging to the backs of motorbikes driven by their fathers or husbands, now drive their own scooters. One recent popular TV ad shows a rural girl sheepishly entering a scooter showroom, then beaming as she whizzes through the parking lot on her new moped.

With economic freedom, women are increasingly expecting more, and toilets are at the top of their list, they say.

The lack of sanitation is not only an inconvenience but also contributes to the spread of diseases such as diarrhea, typhoid and malaria.

"Women suffer the most since there are prying eyes everywhere," said Ashok Gera, a doctor who works in a one-room clinic here. "It's humiliating, harrowing and extremely unhealthy. I see so many young women who have prolonged urinary tract infections and kidney and liver problems because they don't have a safe place to go."

Previous attempts to bring toilets to poor Indian villages have mostly failed. A 2001 project sponsored by the World Bank never took off because many people used the latrines as storage facilities or took them apart to build lean-tos, said Ranjana Kumari, director of the Center for Social Research in New Delhi, who worked on the program.

But by linking toilets to courtship, "No Toilet, No Bride" has been the most successful effort so far. Walls in many villages are painted with slogans in Hindi, such as "I won't get my daughter married into a household which does not have a toilet." Even popular soap operas have featured dramatic plots involving the campaign.

"The 'No Toilet, No Bride' program is a bloodless coup," said Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh International, a social organization, and winner of this year's Stockholm Water Prize for developing inexpensive, eco-friendly toilets. "When I started, it was a cultural taboo to even talk about toilets. Now it's changing. My mother used to wake up at 4 a.m. to find someplace to go quietly. My wife wakes up at 7 a.m., and can go safely in her home."

Pathak runs a school and job-training center for women who once cleaned up human waste by hand. They are known as untouchables, the lowest caste in India's social order. As more toilets come to India, the women are less likely to have to do such jobs, Pathak said.

"I want so much for them to have skills and dignity," Pathak said. "I tell the government all the time: If India wants to be a superpower, first we need toilets. Maybe it will be our women who finally change that."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/11/AR2009101101934.html?hpid=topnews&sub=AR

City Council Regulates Medical Marijuana Dispensaries

More and more cities and counties are addressing these issues - DC approved some form of medical marijuana by citizen initiative but Congress prohibited DC from counting the votes. If those votes are ever counted, the issues in this article will be real here in DC.

Rules proposed for city's marijuana clinics

by Shane Benjamin
Herald Staff Writer

Article Last Updated; Tuesday, October 06, 2009 12:25AM

The Durango City Council will consider a new ordinance tonight that governs medicinal marijuana dispensaries in the city, including a rule that requires clinics to install an alarm system with video surveillance.

The proposed ordinance also addresses when, where and how marijuana providers can operate.

In August, Durango Police Chief David Felice raised concerns about the lack of regulation and oversight of dispensaries in the city. In response, the City Council approved an emergency ordinance temporarily suspending the issuance of business licenses to marijuana providers until guidelines could be drafted.

Coloradoans voted in 2000 to legalize medical marijuana, and dispensaries proliferated this year after the federal government announced it won’t perform raids on state-sanctioned businesses. There are four dispensaries in Durango – all of them opened this year.

The draft ordinance is largely a compromise between city staff members and marijuana providers, said City Manager Ron LeBlanc.

“The process was good,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a win-win all around.”

Under the proposed ordinance, dispensaries cannot be located within 500 feet of schools, day cares and public parks. They could operate in commercial districts, but not residential areas, including as home businesses.
Hours of operation would be limited to 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Dispensaries would be required to have an alarm system that notifies law enforcement if the business is burglarized. The alarm system must be equipped with video and voice surveillance.

Clinics that house prescription drugs have a similar requirement, LeBlanc said.

Likewise, inventory containing marijuana will need to be placed in a locked and secure safe while the business is closed.

Three of the four dispensaries contacted Monday said they have no problem with the security measures proposed in the ordinance, but some would have to make upgrades to be in compliance with the law.

Dispensaries would need to apply for a store-front sign through the Planning Commission. No exterior signage could use the words “marijuana,” “cannabis,” or any other word or phrase commonly understood to refer to marijuana.

That may come as bad news to Eric Gay, owner of Holistic Hemp LLC on Florida Road, who has a store-front sign but doesn’t use his office as a walk-in clinic.

“I don’t know if I would be grandfathered in,” he said. “I don’t plan on changing my business name.”
Other proposed rules include:

- No smoking of marijuana – even if obtained legally – within 15 feet of dispensaries.
- Dispensaries could not employ anyone younger than 18.
- All owners of dispensaries must undergo a criminal background check when seeking an application or renewal.

Nate Fete, manager of Nature’s Medicine, 129 E. 32nd St., said it’s a good ordinance so far.

“I thought we did a really good job of figuring out what would be best for the city of Durango,” he said.

Mark Busnardo, co-owner of Durango Healing Center, 473 E. College Drive, said he’s also OK with the proposed ordinance. But his business currently stays open until 9 p.m. Friday nights, so he might have to change his hours.

The purpose of the ordinance was to help residents and public officials better understand marijuana dispensaries and feel better about their legitimacy in the community, Busnardo said.

Gay, with Holistic Hemp, said it’s unfortunate an ordinance is needed, and people don’t understand the medicinal qualities of marijuana.

“I think there’s just a whole lot of fuss over this, and there shouldn’t be,” he said. “It’s safer than alcohol; it’s safer than most prescription drugs.”

shane@durangoherald.com

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http://durangoherald.com/sections/News/2009/10/06/Rules_proposed_for_citys_marijuana_clinics/

Hazardous Waste and History Mix On D.C. Tour

Hazardous Waste and History Mix On D.C. Tour By Yamiche Alcindor Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, September 21, 2009 The manicured lawns and beautiful brick homes that line the streets of Spring Valley look like those in most affluent District neighborhoods. But the area looked much different during World War I, when the Army was using it as a testing ground for chemical weapons. On Sunday, visitors on a tour of the neighborhood heard how, 90 years after scientists ended their experiments, the remnants of toxic munitions remain. "The purpose of the tour is to encourage more historical research, investigation and cleanup here," said Kent Slowinski, who led more than a dozen people on the walk. "We want to raise awareness in both Spring Valley and nationwide." He and Allen Hengst co-founded "Environmental Health Group: Spring Valley," a group that advocates for more research into the locations and health effects of the chemicals. The one-mile walk was part of more than 120 free WalkingTownDC tours, presented by Cultural Tourism DC, that took place across the District over the weekend. During World War I, 661 acres of forested land around the American University campus were used for Army tests. The range became known as the American University Experiment Station. In 1993, a construction crew's discovery of an artillery round triggered an evacuation and cleanup of the area. Experts have since been scouring the neighborhood for buried munitions and chemicals. Workers have found several toxins, such as arsine, a vomiting agent called DA or Clark 1 and liquid mustard, a type of blistering agent. Slowinski, a landscape architect who grew up in Spring Valley, became interested in 1996 when a stonemason with whom he was working found munitions at a home in Spring Valley. For two hours Sunday, Slowinski, who has given several tours of the area, pointed to various campus buildings and houses where hundreds of chemical munitions might be buried. He began at the university's Ohio McKinley Hall, the birthplace of the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service. He pointed to trees, football fields and green patches around the university and neighborhood where he believes munitions still lie. Slowinski also talked about homeowners whose health problems might be linked to the neighborhood's past. "It's terrifying," said Chris Cottrell, 22, a senior at American University who took the tour. "There are dangerous munitions buried on campus, and I don't think most students even know about it. This is like the first thing the university should tell students about." Aaron Lloyd, 38, grew up in Spring Valley. Less than a decade ago, his stepfather found munitions buried in the back yard of the home where Lloyd grew up and where his mother had kept a garden. "It's very disturbing," he said. "Someone had to have known about these chemical weapons before 1993." Nan Wells, an advisory neighborhood commissioner from Spring Valley, said she hopes that the tour will help engage the public. "We need follow-up studies to know the health effects," she said during the tour. She also hopes that the Army Corps of Engineers, which along with the D.C. Department of the Environment is overseeing the cleanup and destruction of the munitions, will continue to fund the project. For fiscal 2010, the corps has allotted $11 million to the cleanup effort. The number drops to $3 million in fiscal 2011 and $500,000 the following fiscal year. Nazzarena Labo, 36, a epidemiologist, said more research needs to be done before health effects from the munitions can be determined. "It's very hard to go from anecdotal evidence to causation," she said. "People shouldn't be scared or anxious. But they should be concerned." Slowinski ended the tour at 4825 Glenbrook Rd., a vacant house where cleanup workers found a laboratory vial last month that tested positive for the World War I blistering agent mustard. The home's owner had a brain tumor and eventually moved away, Slowinski said. American University has since bought the house, where cleanup continues.

More D.C. Kids Had Elevated Lead Than Stated

Unacceptable Science & Anecdotal Evidence



Following is a report on inaccuracies in reports by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the DC Department of Health about elevated lead levels in DC children.
The following quote from John Rosen, a pediatric expert on lead and the head of the lead-poisoning prevention program at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, is of particular interest to me - "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". I appreciate his use of the phrase "unacceptable science", a very serious charge against the preeminent government health agency.
I don't totally ignore what I am told by the CDC but the examples in this article are among other examples of why I am slightly skeptical of much of what the CDC says. I note that this year in an information packet about lice distributed by our daughter's public school, for the first time in my eight years involvement with the school, information was included about lice treatment beyond the previously standard reference to the CDC web page which directs parents to put some fairly hazardous pesticides on the child's head. I have spoken to the school nurse a number of times about our successful use of mayonnaise and oil instead of the over the counter and prescription pesticides that are recommended by the CDC. The reference to mayo and oil use is prefaced by something like "some people report that they have used the following.....", "...but cannot substantiate results......". Not the first time someone has told me that my science wasn't "top notch" but at least I have never been of accused of "unacceptable science"! And glad to see the school finally acknowledge other methods than heavy chem.

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."