The Old Dog Barks

We have all heard that lead in paint, lead in gasoline, lead in toys, lead in anything will make us stupid and unable to function in a high tech society like we live in today. For that very reason lead was banned years ago in most consumer products and in about everything a child might be tempted to put in his mouth, things like pages from books and go-cart bearings. But we can measure amounts of lead today we could never have measured in the past so the rules have got to be made more stringent.

Now some things are really dangerous, like swimming pools. The Consumer Products Safety Commission in a study from 2005 says that childhood deaths in pools and spas average 385 per year with 4200 children between the ages of 2 and 3, making up 47% of the total, being treated at emergency rooms for submersion incidents. In an eleven year period that comes to 46,200 submersion incidents and 4,235 childhood deaths caused by submersion. In that same 11 year period they list 1 death due to lead poisoning. And that one caused by a child sucking on a piece of jewelry, oh, and there were three injuries.

Books, and especially the types of illustrations in children’s books that may contain minuscule amounts of lead in the colored ink, are the very recent embodiment of the lead problem. So of course older books in resale shops must be banned and kept away from grasping hands lest they tempt the tongue of a toddler tyke.

This article in the Amend the CPSIA blog is where some of the above information comes from. Rick Woldenberg the author of the piece says:

“Remember, according to my analysis, compliance costs for the CPSIA are about $10,000 per dollar of avoided lead injury costs. Each death is valued at $6.1 million using EPA estimates. The projected unaddressed pool drownings have a “cost” of $6.1 million x 4,223 = $25.8 Billion over 11 years. At the same rate of compliance costs incurred by the lucky companies attempting to comply with the lead rules, the pool industry would have to spend $10,000 per dollar of injury cost over 11 years, or a mere $257.6 trillion.”

Yep, that’s right hold pools to the same compliance standards as books and the entire GNP would not be enough to fund the effort. But there is more. Here are two interesting factoids from the Foundation for Aquatic Injury Prevention:

# Male children have a drowning rate two to four times that of female children. However, females have a bathtub drowning rate twice the rate of males.

# Black children ages 14 and under have a drowning death rate that is two times greater than white children, in general and six times greater for drownings involving buckets. However, white children ages 1 to 4 have a drowning death rate that is twice that of black children, primarily from residential swimming pool drownings.

I remember the hue and cry about 12 years ago calling for hazardous warning labels on plastic buckets, labels to warn about the risk of drowning, or as the Center for Disease Control calls it “Unintentional Drowning”. Guess the children could not read them. Or maybe the evil bucket makers lobby stopped the bills. I have not bought a bucket in recent years so I will need to research this.

Now back to the title of this post; who were they, and what did they get wrong? They are the lead banners and what they got wrong was banning lead. If they had only waited a few more years then there would be far fewer children with parents stupid enough to let them drown themselves by the thousands in pools, spas, and buckets. And that is the end of this rant, thank you.

I posted this first at the Junk Science Forum but will post it here for those lost souls who do not go there.

We hear over and over about the subsidies given to Coal and Nuclear power and how if they were figured into the cost of energy renewables like wind and solar would seem much more affordable. I saw this by Chris Horner at National Reviews Planet Gore blog:

“I noted the relative subsidies for various energy sources, including the fact that wind and solar get in the neighborhood of 100 times the subsidy that oil and gas do, per unit of energy produced (according to the Energy Information Administration: $23.50 per MwH for wind, $24.50 for solar, $0.25 for oil and gas, whereas coal gets $0.44, nukes about $1.60, and dams $0.60).”

Then I tracked down the source at the U.S. Governments Energy Information Administration’s website.

A search brought up a link to a PDF which I copied and then edited to show more values, The data is from 2007. I see nothing on the site that is newer and I suspect the subsidy amounts have not decreased noticeably though I do not claim this as certain. If someone can find more recent data I would love to see it.

Fuel	     Billion KWH   Subsidy in dollars per MWH

Coal		1,946		0.44
Refined Coal	72		29.81
Nat Gases	919		0.25
Nuclear       	794		1.59
Biomass      	40		0.89
Geothermal	15		0.92
Hydroelectric	258		0.67
Solar		1		24.34
Wind		31		23.37
Landfill Gas	6		1.37
Muni Waste	9		0.13
(renewable)	360		2.80

Total		4,091		1.65

As can be seen subsidies for Coal and Natural Gas, which includes Liquid Petroleum Gas is a fraction of what goes to Wind and Solar. And Nuclear, again, is also but a fraction. Refined coal consists of things like synfuel and coke.

This data does not answer any argument (or is it just a fiction) concerning indirect subsides of coal and nuclear because of claimed societal damage due to health and quality of life issues. If anyone has that kind of data I’d sure like to see it.

The EIA website has a wealth of information concerning energy supplies and use, and not just for the U.S. It is well worth a bookmark and a look.

The Old Dog server was out of commission the last couple of days, taken out by a power failure with the Old One on the road unable to restart it. I have posted the Science Quiz and Old Time Radio segments with the dates set to when they should have been seen online. Hope that meets with your approval though I am not sure at all how it will work with RSS feeds.