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Scams, Scalawags, and an all-too-gullible Public...
O.K. FReepers, lurkers, & trolls-- here's an offshoot from the DUBOB stories
DUBOB 2-- more tales from The Dark Underbelly of the Beast-- thread II
-The Dark Underbelly of the Beast- Stories the Media won't Discuss...--
which might be subtitled "Famous Frauds Foisted off on America.
Again, feel free to comment, opinionate, and add your favorites and links....
Let the Games begin!
The Great Asbestos Caper ( an early "for the sake of 'our' children" scare )
-The Asbestos Rip-Off--By Michael Fumento--
Copyright 1989 by The American Spectator
Coming soon to a school or office near you: a life-saving innovation that could kill you, designed to correct a problem that doesn't exist, by removing materials that aren't dangerous until somebody tries to remove them. And guess who's going to pay for it.
-abbreviated version of this article from Reader's Digest, January 1990--
-American Council on Science and Health: Environmantal Health--
-Media and Science: Harmless Dioxin, Benign CFCs, and Good Asbestos--
-No Meeting of the Minds on Asbestos." Science 254(1991): --
-Science Matters- So Does Truth and Common Sense: Asbestos Baloney!!!--
A contrary view:
-Asbestos -- it's the killer that won't die--
The Freon Wars ( how a nearly-inert, benificent gas became Devil Vapor )
-Puron and Freon 12 are the Biggest Scams to Hit the American Public Since--
-Freon Replacements vs 134a - a highly opinionated look Hydrocarbon Refrigerant Hotline ...--
Whose Head is it, Anyway? ( once again, "if it will save just one child, isn't it worth sacrificing your freedom? Just a little tiny bit of it?" )
-Why I Am Opposed to Mandatory Helmet Laws--
-More ammunition against helmet laws.--
A dissenting point of view:
-Our One-Sided Response to Some Negative Views on Helmets--
As always, these links are just a springboard for discussion- use them, use the ones at the sites, and add your own! Batter up!
For your entertainment.... kindly flag for others--
Add "lead paint" --- another scam.
Gee, that was fast!
You're right, of course- lead & mercury have been outlawed for years ( which is way no modern paint lasts very long! ) yet kids keep turning up with "high lead levels..."
Answer? Teach yer !@#$!-ing kids not to eat paint. End of story!
More importantly, feed the kids right, and maintain your house properly, and the kids won't find a need to snack on the paint chips they find. . .
bttt
snack on the paint chips
Gives new meaning to the concept of "junk food," doesn't it?
Thanks for looking... haven't seen your name in a while- you doing OK?
Add "lead paint" --- another scam.
Speaking of "food", let's not forget eggs (raises cholesterol), fiber (prevents colon cancer) and the rest of the useless information that flows out of our gub'ment food police department...
IMHO the greatest scam ever perpetrated on the American public has been the Kennedy family.
TV announcer: "We now return to the movie "Asbestos In Obstetrics", starring Melissa Gilbert".
Beavis: "What's asbestosis?" Butthead: "I think it's health food".
the Kennedy family
Of course! An Archtype of frauds.... did you know AMC ran "PT 109" yesterday? It's amazing the public was so easily duped...
I watched that movie yesterday and I noticed that one of his crew was played by Robert Blake.
Bubba and Livia RodHAM Clit-on
one of his crew was played by Robert Blake
I saw that too- but it didn't really register.
None of the articles about Freon mentioned the REAL reason for its phase-out:
The Dupont patent on the chemical was about to expire, and when it did, anyone could make and market R-12. Dupont needed another patented product to replace it - and maintain its monopoly. That product turned out to be R-134a.
(insert Paul Harvey line here...)
Michael
I thought surely one of 'em did- that is the real reason, of course-- $$$$
Wright is right again!
Thanks for the flag. I'll have to show those asbestos stories to a cousin of mine--she just found out her house has asbestos linings in her attic and she's been having a cow over it. She's now afraid to breathe, I think.
Tell her to calm down.... by all means, get the articles to her, especially "The Asbestos Ripoff." The type used in the USA is not especially dangerous anyway, but what's really hazardous is disturbing it!
Here's the short version:
Mythbuster Michael Fumento reports in Reader's Digest: "The Asbestos Rip-Off."
Reader's Digest, January 1990
Copyright 1990 by Reader's Digest
Condensed from a longer version in the American Spectator, October 1989
Coming soon to a school or office near you: a life-saving innovation that could kill you, designed to correct a problem that doesn't exist, by removing materials that aren't dangerous until somebody tries to remove them. And guess who's going to pay for it.
After an inspection on the spring of 1987, J. Eugene McAteer High School in San Francisco was discovered to be virtually loaded with asbestos: all the ceiling beams and tiles had been coated when the building was constructed in 1973.
McAteer's students were transferred to another school, and the board of education authorized $10 million to clear the asbestos. It was a year and a half before students could return. And thanks to overruns, the total cost of the asbestos removal, including renovations, had risen to $18 million.
But two recent scientific reports indicate that McAteer High students were probably in no danger from asbestos exposure and never would be. Instead, they – and the taxpayers of San Francisco – were victims of what could end up as one of the biggest regulatory boondoggles in U.S. history. Its costs may well run into the hundreds of billions of dollars nationwide. Worse it could cause more deaths than it prevents.
35,000 Headaches
The safety of asbestos was first questioned in the 1920s after asbestosis, an often fatal scarring of the lungs, became widely recognized. Later, asbestos was linked to lung cancer in textile workers, particularly among those who smoked cigarettes. The fibrous mineral is estimated to cause 10,000 deaths in the United States each year, with disease lagging up to 40 years behind exposure.
Since the late 1960s, asbestos has fallen under increasing regulation. In 1982 schools were required by law to inspect for asbestos. In 1986 Congress passed the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act (AHERA), ordering "abatement" to begin by July 9, 1989, in every U.S. school judged to be unsafe – an estimated 35,000 buildings. Abatement involves the enclosure, encapsulation, repair or removal of the asbestos.
According to AHERA, friable (readily crumbled by hand) asbestos-containing materials that have been damaged must be abated. Those with a "potential" for damage, even if firmly embedded in ceilings, walls and duct work, must either be abated or managed with "preventive measures."
Asbestos was commonly used in school construction until the 1970s. Many schools have asbestos in ceiling tiles, acoustical plaster, pipe insulation and fireproofing materials. The cost of removing it would be staggering. State auditors estimated that abatement in California schools alone would cost at least $500 million. The National School Boards Association reckons total public-school abatement costs at more than $6 billion. Private and parochial schools, unable to fund bonding measures, might be forced to shut down.
School abatement is only the beginning. A similar bill, now in Congress, would mandate inspection and abatement of asbestos in all government buildings. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) projects the cost of abatement for all public and commercial buildings at $51 billion, but evidence suggests this estimate is low. For example, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey expects to pay $1 billion for abatement of its 30 facilities alone. According to Stephen L. Schweich, an environmental industry analyst with Alex. Brown & Sons, Inc., abatement costs could be around $100 billion nationally over the next 25 years.
Can a Single Fiber Kill?
Whatever the price, it is worth paying, we are told, because abatement will prevent the grisly deaths of thousands of Americans, especially schoolchildren.
In fact, the issue is not that simple. First, the EPA maintains that visual inspections should determine which materials need to be abated. But as Michael Gough, an asbestos specialist, points out, the EPA's own tests prove that visual inspection is poor predictor of how much asbestos is actually in the air. Air monitoring, in which samples were inspected by microscope, might show that many buildings don't need abatement. But the EPA has declined to set an acceptable exposure level in buildings with such monitoring.
Second, while constant exposure to high levels of asbestos dust can indeed cause serious medical problems, low-level exposure is an entirely different matter.
Proponents of abatement claim that even the tiniest exposure carries a risk of disease. "A single asbestos fiber," one reads in abatement literature, "can kill you."
There is no evidence for this. Every day we are exposed to countless substances such as arsenic, cyanide and mercury. In high enough doses, these would prove fatal, yet in trace amounts they have virtually no adverse effect.
The "single fiber" assertions rest on the premise that asbestos is an alien substance that the body simply can't handle. In fact, all of us are exposed to some level of this naturally occurring mineral every day in the air, in water, in food.
Generally, inhaled asbestos fibers do not reach the lower respiratory tract but are removed by the lung's continuously moving mucous lining. A miner or shipyard worker, breathing in huge quantities of asbestos for decades, may have large amounts getting past his body's defense system. Yet the lung tissue of healthy adults who have not been exposed in the workplace can contain millions of asbestos fibers.
Measuring Dangers
How great is the risk of low-level exposure to asbestos? A number of governmental and scientific authorities have concluded that the risk in buildings is close to zero. Sir Richard Doll is an Oxford researcher who is given credit for demonstrating a link between lung cancer and smoking. Doll and University of London Prof. Julian Peto, an authority on asbestos-related cancers, estimated that asbestos in buildings is responsible for "approximately one death per year" in the whole of Great Britain (which is about one-fourth the size of the United States in population).
Hans Weill, M.D., and Janet M. Hughes of Tulane University in New Orleans put the annual risk figure for school exposure at an upper estimate of "approximately 0.25 deaths per million exposed." The risk of playing high-school football – ten deaths per million – is thus a good deal greater than the danger of inhaling asbestos in school.
Most recently, epidemiological studies have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine and by the Harvard University Energy and Environmental Policy Center. Both conclude that there is little evidence of increased risk of lung cancer in persons exposed to asbestos concentrations "several hundred or thousand times lower" than those workers inhaled decades ago. In fact, most workplace concentrations are tens of thousands of times lower today.
For the most part, abatement advocates ignore these studies. The danger, they attest, is so clear and present that batting around figures is a waste of time. "There is no doubts that asbestos in our nation's schools is placing our children at considerable risk," declared Rep. Norman F. Lent (R., N.Y.), cosponsor of AHERA and in 1985 the ranking Republican on the Subcommittee on Commerce, Transportation and Tourism. "In our view," went a statement by the American Federation of Teachers to that subcommittee, "the presence of friable asbestos in our schools is a danger to the health and well-being of millions of students."
One of the highest estimates of the fatality rate from low-level asbestos exposure comes from a 1988 EPA study. It predicts that among the tens of millions of people who will circulate through all public and commercial buildings with damaged asbestos, 2530 asbestos-related deaths will result over the next 130 years. Yet the worst airborne asbestos levels in the EPA's building sample were no higher than the levels found in outside air! And you can't abate the great outdoors.
Even granting EPA estimates, the risk experienced by attending a school for ten years with 0.001 fiber of asbestos per milliliter (an amount actually higher than in most schools with asbestos) would be less than the risk a person runs of absorbing radiation from living in a brick house or breathing the air in urban areas.
Real Victims
Asbestos abatement usually means scraping walls, ceilings. and beams square foot by square foot. Federal regulations require that the thousands or workers performing abatement use respirators and wear outfits resembling spacesuits, but lung injury remains a severe problem. In fact, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) estimates that, even following strict standards, there will be almost seven casualties per 1000, a proportionately higher number of deaths per year than that estimated for building occupants.
But many contractors don't obey OSHA or EPA standards. Stories abound of workers who have been duped into believing asbestos removel was just a routine job requiring no mask or special clothing. In San Antonio, 166 worker sued three corporations that hired them off the street. They claim they were not told that the demolition work involved asbestos removal was dangerous, and all wore little or no protection. The workers received $10,000 each in settlement.
As even pro-abatement force acknowledge, building occupant face the greatest risk of exposure when asbestos is disturbed. Any removal that requires scraping will disperse asbestos into the air. Tests have found exceptionally high level of airborne asbestos after abatement work was completed – in some buildings as much as 100 times higher than before the abatement.
Worse, the rush to abate America has given rise to "rip and skip" abaters. "Their strategy is simple," explained the Kansas City Star. "Underbid the competition, rip out the asbestos quickly, cut regulatory corners, then skip town to the next job before authorities catch up. In one case, state inspectors discovered asbestos dust littering floors and windowsills in a Kansas junior-high school where removal was supposedly finished."
Some "rip and skippers" are caught, but it's a safe bet that most are not. The EPA has estimated that by the mid-1980s as much as three-fourths of all asbestos abatement in schools had been conducted improperly.
"Asbestos is like a big sleeping dog," says chemist P. J. Wingate. "If not stirred up, it does no harm. If hammered or sawed on, it may bite anyone near it." The best way of dealing with asbestos in schools and workplaces is the way it is dealt with in most homes: leave it alone unless there is a special reason to disturb it.
Eleven states have made air sampling part of their regulations. Some have adopted a maximum exposure level of 0.01 fiber per cubic centimeter; others have chosen different levels. The EPA should set an air quality standard as well. If sampling shows dangerous levels of airborne asbestos, then and only then is abatement warranted. And whatever removal occurs should be done according to strict regulation.
To this end, it is good that Congress ordered schools to identify the location of asbestos, both to prevent disturbance and to warn of disperse if a disturbance does take place. Identification and management should probably be supplemented with periodic air sampling. This isn't cheap: up to $600 a sample for transmission electron microscopy, the most accurate type of testing. But compared with the costs and dangers of unnecessary batement, it's a real bargain.
The most cost-effective – and safest – approach, in most cases, is to leave the sleeping dog alone. It will save lives and perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars.
Read the extended version of this article, from the American Spectator, October 1989.
Read Michael Fumento's additional work on asbestos and on cancer.
Michael Fumenton is the author of numerous books, including Science Under Siege.
reset?
FYI--
As always, these links are just a springboard for discussion- use them, use the ones at the sites, and add your own! Batter up!
Well, thank you for the flag! I feel soooo important now!
Do a web search for W. Kip Viscusi sometime. He has studied some "hot button" issues and found some unintended consequences regarding safety. I like the one about child-resistant caps on harmful compounds (e.g. pharmaceuticals, bleach, Drano (tm), etc.). The objective of mandating child-resistant caps was, naturally, to reduce the rate of accidental poisonings among children. Since the introduction of mandatory child-resistant caps, the rate of accidental poisoning (that is number of accidental poisonings per year per 100,000 children) has increased. I don't think he draws a cause-and-effect link, but it is my guess that a combination of adults becoming less responsible about keeping potentially harmful compounds out of the reach of children, children receiving less instruction regarding the danger, and adults leaving those frustrating caps in a loose condition all contribute.
Nuclear power generating is another one that people go wiggy on.
MTBE is another.
We can not make the world perfectly safe, and are always having to balance competing values. It's not as big a deal as the whackos make it out to be.
Thanks backhoe. Bookmarked!
Thanks, bookmarked for later review!
... haven't seen your name in a while- you doing OK?
Fine here - Just busy as all get out - thats all...
Always "they" pick some scam whose supposed "beneficiary"
is something that would cause any opposing view point to be ridiculed.
For instance : We have to do this to fight the commies;
We have to do this for the environment;
We have to do this for the children...
Any person or business who opposes the scam is then ridiculed
as being pro commie; anti environment; or anti children.
I had forgotten about MTBE... it was a fairly hot topic on talk radio circa 2 years ago. I always preferred the "gasahol" idea, altho it does seem to have been abused by ADM Corp- at least it's a "natural" additive.
The whole "safety issue" has been a goldmine for groups "who like to use the might & majesty of government to tell others how they are supposed to conduct their lives."
My own parents had a better idea... make me safe around the object ( via knowledge ) rather than try to make the object safe around me.
FYI-- here's what even a fairly cursory web search finds...
You mentioned lead paint?
( Scroll down a bit to find it )
MTBE? Right here:
-What is MTBE and.... Why we should be very concerned!! --
W. Kip Viscusi? Here's a review of his book:
Here are two more for "Scams, Scalawags, and an all-too-gullible Public...famous frauds sold to America"--
The Great DDT ( AKA, Drop Dead Twice ) Terror, and
The Kinsey Reports....
The Case for DDT:
Science News Online, July 1, 2000
... Week of July
1, 2000; Vol. 158, No. 1. The Case for DDT What do you do when
a
dreaded environmental pollutant saves lives? By J. Raloff. ...
www.sciencenews.org/20000701/bob2.asp - 35k - Cached
- Similar
pages
Junkscience.com -- Main
Page
... 100 things you should know about
DDT. by J. Gordon Edwards and Steven Milloy.
I. Historical Background
II. Advocacy against DDT III. EPA hearings IV. Human ...
www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm - 64k - Cached
- Similar
pages
Facts versus fears -
DDT
Facts versus fears: DDT. Extract from the
American Council on Science and Health
publication "Facts Versus Fears" -
Edition 3, June 1998. © American Council on ...
www.altgreen.com.au/chemicals/ddt.html - 27k - Cached
- Similar
pages
Yes, insect-borne diseases may have killed millions since the ban, but as we learned from impeachment,
Like So What?
Who cares?
Then there's the other plague spawned by another Famous Fraud-- the Kinsey Reports. Those of you who know me know that I don't gratuitously bash our gay bretheren; I believe in live & let live.
However, Kinsey's assertions that 10% of the populace was homosexual and that child sex was common, while arguably false, led a lot of people to embrace the "it happens, get over it" attitude we see infesting and coarsening modern living.
Are we better off? I don't think we are!
Debunking
Kinsey ~ By Robert Stacy McCain ~ THE WASHINGTON ...
... The first Kinsey Report was published just
three years after the end of World War
II. "The A-bomb had ended the war,
brought the boys home," Mrs. Reisman says ...
members.iquest.net/~macihms/VAST/debunkin.html - 10k - Cached
- Similar
pages
The
Data Lounge
... New Biography Reveals Possible
Kinsey Report Bias Monday, 18 August 1997 NEW YORK
-- An
article appearing in the August 25 - September 1 issue of The New ...
www.datalounge.com/datalounge/news/record.html?record=2275
- 21k - Cached
- Similar
pages
What Was The
Kinsey Report?
JackinLibrary What Was The
Kinsey Report? How a revolutionary 1948 book revealed
that most
sex happens when people are alone By John Greene. ...
www.jackinworld.com/library/articles/kinsey.html - 11k - Cached
- Similar
pages
Frontpage
Backpage - A More Sinister Kinsey Report...Ask Ken ...
... November 18, 1998. A More Sinister
Kinsey Report A recent British documentary, "Secret
History:
Kinsey s Pedophiles," reveals that Alfred Kinsey, the author of
...
www.frontpagemag.com/backpage/1998/bp11-18-98.htm - 6k - Cached
- Similar
pages
Kinsey "10%"
Figure for Gays Doubtful
... is far less than the 10
percent figure attributed to the landmark Kinsey report
from
1948" ("Homosexual activity lower than believed, study shows," Colorado
...
Description: Special Class
Protections for Self-Alleged Gays: A Question of "Orientation" and
Consequences....
Category: Society > Issues > Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual > Opposing Views
www.leaderu.com/marco/special/spc11b.html - 17k - Cached
- Similar
pages
FYI- one offspring of the DUBOB stories...
This was a sort of Son of DUBOB 2.....
This is great stuff, especially the DDT and Kinsey Report, both impacted public policy and they have both been debunked, so when are they going to undo the damage they have caused?!?! LOL!
Well, undoing it is the big problem-- so many people go around with a lot of ideas they think are "correct"- like the War on Freon, for example.
Back when there was still time to change or amend the regulations the only news outlet with a national audience- the Wall Street Journal- published a series of articles by scientists whose credentials were equal to, if not superior to, the "ban Freon" crowd.
Every other news group peddled the "Freon Evil" virtually without exception.
Result? The public, naturally getting only one side fell in with the propaganda presented to them as "facts."
And they still believe it, proving a bad idea can be nearly impossible to stamp out. The information is out there for anybody to access, but few do.
You are right, I'm afraid, think of how many people really believe a dog's saliva has less harmful bacteria than that of a human's...yeeesh! (No offense to dog lover's, I'm one too.)
I know what you mean, I love my Taffy like a little child, but
I know where that tongue has been!
BTTT for the weekday crew....
Another bttt for a "son of DUBOB...."
Doggone it:
The Most Massive Abuse of Science I
Have Seen: An Interview with Dr. Malcolm Ross
There are some excellent reference links inside this post- use them!
Speaking of "food", let's not forget eggs (raises cholesterol), fiber (prevents colon cancer) and the rest of the useless information that flows out of our gub'ment food police department...
And now, of course, researchers can't seem to decide if Vitamin C prevents or causes cancer...
... if Vitamin C prevents or causes cancer..
I had a good laugh when I heard that on the radio...
Thanks for the flag!
Thanks for looking, and I hope you'll pass any interesting links you find on to others... spread the knowledge!
None of the articles about Freon mentioned the REAL reason for its phase-out:
The Dupont patent on the chemical was about to expire, and when it did, anyone could make and market R-12. Dupont needed another patented product to replace it - and maintain its monopoly. That product turned out to be R-134a.
Tinfoil hat. Patents expire in 22 years and the original R-12 Freon is much, much older than that.
--adding---
Audubon's Fly-by-Night Pesticide
Campaign
Found this in the "frontpage/backpage" link--
Frontpage
Backpage - A More Sinister Kinsey Report...Ask Ken ...
A More Sinister Kinsey Report
A recent British documentary, "Secret History: Kinsey’s Pedophiles," reveals that Alfred Kinsey, the author of the infamous and eponymous report
And these via profusion:
[
Reply |
Private Reply | To 46 | Top | Last ]
--adding---
DDT is safe: just ask the professor who
ate it for 40 years
Backhoe! Working overtime to earn that screen-name, I see. (Good work, btw).
Yep, I just keep digging....
...thanks for looking!
Speaking of "food", let's not forget eggs (raises cholesterol), fiber (prevents colon cancer) and the rest of the useless information that flows out of our gub'ment food police department...
How about salt?
This is great-thanks for the update!
Thanks for looking- that DDT info is kind of strange, isn't it? Altho I can remember pictures of people literally being doused with it to eliminate severe infestations of parasites!
Hey!
You forgot Global Warming.
Government Health care will lower medical costs.
Californians use too much energy.
Homosexuals just want acceptance.
AIDS is the most serious threat in history to heterosexuals.
Public servants serve.
I wish I had more time...
Malaria is the worst-my cousin got it in Thailand over 25 years ago and it still affects her health to this day. If DDT stops anyone from getting it--IT"S WORTH IT!
Well, I deliberately curtailed the subjects, since some are discussed a lot- was trying to cover some of the things people "know" which aren't really true- like DDT or Freon.
Yes, you never "recover" from malaria- it just goes dormant for a while, then flares up again.
FYI--
Bring Back DDT, and Save Lives from the Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2000.
Bring back DDT, Jewish World Review, April 24, 2001.
59 Posted on 12/26/2001 05:30:42 PST by Fiddlstix
60 Posted on 01/07/2002 09:23:13 PST by backhoe
61 Posted on 01/08/2002 10:41:31 PST by Stand Watch Listen
62 Posted on 01/12/2002 02:50:00 PST by backhoe
I'm not a global warming kind of guy, but there are no chlorine molecules in Freon. The chlorine is part of the Freon molecule.
63 Posted on 02/24/2002 05:18:43 PST by Fzob
These all pale in comparison to the 16th. Amendment...
64 Posted on 02/24/2002 07:30:28 PST by S.O.S121.500
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