Rachel's Precaution Reporter #106
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
From: Westport News (Westport, Conn.) ....................[This story printer-friendly]
August 31, 2007
BLUMENTHAL SUPPORTS MORE TURF TESTING
[Rachel's introduction: Susan Addiss, past commissioner of the state Health Department, advised the use of the "precautionary principle," which she associates with good public health practice in the face of reasonable questions about the safety of a product. "Hold off until you know more."]
By Frank Luongo
Hartford -- Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is calling for the funding of further testing by the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES) of the rubber in-fill material that is used in the installation of synthetic-turf playing fields.
Speaking in Hartford Wednesday at a press conference held by Environment and Human Health Inc. (EHHI) in the Legislative Office Building, Blumenthal said that the amount needed by CAES, which is estimated to be $200,000, would be found in the state's current environmental protection and health budgets.
David Brown, a Westport resident and EHHI's director of toxicology, presented the findings of a preliminary study of the rubber granules by CAES that provided the basis for Blumenthal's commitment to more testing. Brown is the past chief of environmental epidemiology and occupational health at the Connecticut State Department of Health.
Attending the press conference were Westport parents Tanya Murphy, Stacy Prince and Patricia Taylor, who have been active in an effort to bring about a review of the town's commitment to synthetic fields, which now number two in place and two scheduled to be completed in mid-September.
As reported in these pages, CAES has found that under "relatively mild conditions," the chemicals in the rubber granules, some of which are widely recognized as toxic, migrate into the air as vapor and particulates and leach out in contact with water. Brown's report said that the CAES preliminary study identified four chemicals that were released from the granules, which together are reported to have the potential for causing skin and eye irritation, for being corrosive and destructive to mucous membranes, and for having a toxic impact on endocrinal, gastrointestinal, immunological and neurological systems.
The four chemicals are benzothiazole, butylated hydroxyanisole, n- hexadecane and 4-(t-octyl) phenol.
The CAES study emphasizes the need for testing the air at various levels above the fields over several seasons for studying out-gassing and particulate-migrating of the chemical compounds known to be in the rubber.
"This can be dangerous and it calls for more study," but not for "panic or dire apprehension," Blumenthal said with reference to communities that already have the synthetic fields with rubber in- fill.
He advised parents in those communities to be aware of the potential hazards on the fields and to "manage the risk" by "addressing symptoms" and "reducing exposure on hot days."
Blumenthal said that synthetic fields have a number of advantages over natural grass fields, especially for the avoiding of certain injuries, and he speculated that "better substances" might be found to replace rubber as in-fill material.
"This should be in the mix," said Blumenthal about decisions that communities make about whether to stay with natural fields or adopt a synthetic option.
EHHI President Nancy Alderman, whose group commissioned the preliminary CAES study and has proposed a moratorium on new synthetic fields, said that the plan for further study does not include a look at alternative in-fill materials.
Alderman said that proposed alternatives should be studied as fully as the rubber granules before being used on the fields, which, she said, would require more funding.
In support of the moratorium, Susan Addiss, past commissioner of the state Health Department and EHHI director of health education, suggested a way for "thoughtful communities" to approach the turf issue.
She advised the use of the "precautionary principle," which she associates with good public health practice in the face of reasonable questions about the safety of a product. "Hold off until you know more."
Near the end of the press conference, Brown said that communities should be having an informed discussion about toxicity and should have access to as much information as possible from state agencies that have done their own studies of the issues presented by synthetic playing fields.
"But the discussion shouldn't be toxic. Information is needed. It should be a conversation," Brown said.
Copyright 2006 MediaNews Group, Inc.
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From: Cape Argus (Capetown, South Africa) .................[This story printer-friendly]
August 31, 2007
NATO EXERCISES 'INAPPROPRIATE'
[Rachel's introduction: "Because of lack of knowledge and the fact that there have been mass strandings [of whales] caused by the use of these naval sonars, the precautionary principle should have been invoked."]
By John Yeld and Henri du Plessis
Whale conservationists and marine scientists are unhappy that the Nato naval exercises off the Peninsula next week will "inappropriately" be taking place at the height of the whale season.
But navy spokesperson have denied that their actions will have an effect on the mammals that have become one of the country's top tourist attractions.
Hundreds of southern right whales have arrived for their annual spring and early summer pilgrimage to the Cape waters, with many of them giving birth and mating.
'With so many whales inshore and off-shore, the chances of vessel strikes are of major concern' There are also humpback whales and Bryde's whales.
Whale and dolphin conservationist Nan Rice of the Dolphin Action Group was among those expressing concern, as was whale expert Dr Peter Best of Pretoria University's Mammal Research Institute.
"I was astounded, as are others to whom I have spoken, that these exercises should have been scheduled for the time when the number of whales of different species peak around our coasts in their thousands," Rice said.
All the naval vessels, including South Africa's new corvettes, carried low or medium range submarine detection sonars which would "obviously" have to be used if the task force intended testing anti-submarine proficiencies, she said.
"Furthermore, with so many whales inshore and off-shore, the chances of vessel strikes are of major concern."
Best said he shared Rice's concerns. "Although we are unclear of the exact nature of these war games, there is enough evidence from naval exercises elsewhere as regards their potential effect on deep diving species such as beaked whales for us to be concerned.
"It might be more reassuring if the organisers... could provide us with details of the mitigating measures they plan to take to avoid undue disturbance and damage to marine life, especially cetaceans (whales and dolphins)."
Rice said there was still no certainty over whether sonars affected all whale and dolphin species or just certain species.
"Because of lack of knowledge and the fact that there have been mass strandings caused by the use of these naval sonars, the precautionary principle should have been invoked."
But spokesperson for both the SA Navy and the Nato force stressed that low frequency sonars would not be used during the exercises.
This was confirmed by the commander of the task force, Rear Admiral Michael Mahon of the US Navy, who said it was US Navy policy to be ultra careful over environmental issues.
The government's own marine scientists are also understood to be concerned.
Mava Scott, acting chief director: communications in the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, said they would investigate.
This article was originally published on page 5 of Cape Argus on August 31, 2007
Copyright 2007 Independent Online
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From: Grist ...............................................[This story printer-friendly]
September 5, 2007
UPGRADING CAPITALISM'S OPERATING SYSTEM
[Rachel's introduction: Peter Barnes's solution to the problem of corporate greed on the one hand and regulatory capture on the other is to turn the commons over to trusts. Trustees would be obliged not to maximize income from their trusts but to preserve their assets for future generations, acting on the precautionary principle rather than as risk-takers.]
By Gar Lipow
Peter Barnes' Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons (also available as a free PDF at Barnes' site) suggests that flaws in capitalism lie at the root of the environmental and social problems we face today; his solution, as a retired corporate CEO, is not to discard capitalism, but fix those flaws.
As he puts it:
"Eventually, after retiring from Working Assets in 1995, I began reflecting on the profit-making world I'd emerged from. I'd tested the system for twenty years, pushing it toward multiple bottom lines as far as I possibly could. I'd dealt with executives and investors who truly cared about nature, employees, and communities. Yet in the end, I'd come to see that all these well-intentioned people, even as their numbers grew, couldn't shake the larger system loose from its dominant bottom line of profit.
"In retrospect, I realized the question I'd been asking since early adulthood was: Is capitalism a brilliant solution to the problem of scarcity, or is it itself modernity's central problem? The question has many layers, but explorations of each layer led me to the same verdict. Although capitalism started as a brilliant solution, it has become the central problem of our day. It was right for its time, but times have changed.
"When capitalism started, nature was abundant and capital was scarce; it thus made sense to reward capital above all else. Today we're awash in capital and literally running out of nature. We're also losing many social arrangements that bind us together as communities and enrich our lives in nonmonetary ways. This doesn't mean capitalism is doomed or useless, but it does mean we have to modify it. We have to adapt it to the twenty-first century rather than the eighteenth. And that can be done.
"How do you revise a system as vast and complex as capitalism? And how do you do it gracefully, with a minimum of pain and disruption? The answer is, you do what Bill Gates does: you upgrade the operating system."
In essence, Barnes sees two fixable flaws: wrong assignment of property rights, and the lack of a large "commons sector" that is neither governmental nor corporate.
The latter concept grows out of Sky Trust, which Barnes developed around global warming. The fundamental policy insight climate change science gives us is that there is a limit to the amount of greenhouse- gas emissions we can afford to pump into the atmosphere (along with a similar limit on the number of greenhouse-gas sinks we can afford to destroy). We have collectively used up most of the total atmospheric space available for such emissions without catastrophic consequences; serious discussion around climate change policy means discussion of how to divide up that remaining atmospheric space.
Barnes took that policy insight and asked, if there is only so much atmospheric space to go around, who does it belong to? He concluded that it belongs to the human race -- that each person should get an equal share of emissions. In the U.S., his suggestion was to set up a trust that owns our nation's limited atmospheric space and auctions off permits for using it; the revenue generated by that trust would be divided among all of us. So every U.S. resident would get a dividend check from the Sky Trust in the same way that Alaska residents get revenue from the Alaska Pipeline.
He extended that to water trusts -- to limit both withdrawal from, and pollution of, water tables -- again auctioning permits for those now- limited rights. He suggests similar trusts for forests and habitats, and even extends the plan to economic rents created by social commons but collected by private entities. This, as Barnes acknowledges, is essentially a form of modern Georgism.
Barnes bases his commons plans on property rights, going back to Locke and some of the original theorists of capitalism. They defined legitimate withdrawal from the world's common property as "leaving enough, and as good." Barnes argues that destroying endangered habitats or emitting greenhouse gases in excess of what the atmosphere can handle is not "leaving as much and as good." These trusts are not a taking of private property, but a recovery of property that is currently being stolen from us without compensation.
His second argument regards how this "recovered property" should be treated. He opposes simply giving it away -- "grandfathering" it -- to large corporations, as under the failed Kyoto treaty. He's also against simply turning it over to government, because he fears corporate appropriation via regulatory capture. So he favors a new sector in the economy, neither public nor private: a sector of trusts that manages these common sectors on behalf of the both today's public and the public of the future. This would amount to economic representation for the seventh generation.
In short, Barnes is arguing for green social democracy, with a property rights justification.
Barnes' Property Rights Justification
To the extent the moral justification is taken seriously, I'm not sure the specifics Barnes borrows from Locke are convincing. If we accept the premise that X is an economic commons, then what follows is the need to protect it and ensure that everyone benefits. I'm not sure what is gained by drilling down to an individual property rights level. Property is an artificial creation, after all. Barnes makes a big deal of how public stock exchanges are artificial creations that add tremendous value to private corporations. But private corporations are just as artificial, and also require tremendous social infrastructure -- so do partnerships, and banks, and mortgages, and bonds, and credit cards, and... Barnes makes a pragmatic case that the old software is failing, and needs an upgrade or replacement; I think that is "enough, and as good."
Barnes' Trusts
Barnes' solution to the problem of corporate greed on the one hand and regulatory capture on the other is to turn the commons over to trusts. They would be obliged not to maximize income from their trusts but to preserve their assets for future generations, acting on the precautionary principle rather than as risk-takers. They would have neither the obligation of corporate boards of directors to maximize profit nor the freedom of elected officials to favor the richest and most powerful. Barnes' main examples of how trustees can be loyal to a long-term obligation to society as a whole -- the Federal Reserve board and U.S. judges -- are unbelievably ill-chosen.
Dean Baker, in the second chapter of his book The Conservative Nanny State, lays out how one of the primary objects of the Federal Reserve is to keep wages low. If profits rise faster than productivity, the Fed sees no problem. As far as the Fed is concerned, it's perfectly healthy if wages rise more slowly than productivity. But the Great Market God forbids that wages should ever rise faster than productivity. That is "inflationary," and we must raise interest rates until wages drop again.
The alternative to inflation or a wage drop is that wage earners might actually increase their share of the economy; that can never be allowed to happen. If workers' share of the economy drops year after year, that is simply their fate in a global economy. But if they should recover some of that lost share -- well, the ratchet is supposed to go one way. Workers' share in the economy can drop; it cannot rise.
Of course, keeping wages under control is not the only role the Fed plays. It is supposed to prevent market instability by preventing bubbles from developing; for example, the internet bubble that popped in the late nineties, or the mortgage bubble that is popping as this article is being written. So much for that.
In terms of judges, history is even more decisive. There was one brief moment in history -- the Warren Court -- when judges were a net progressive force. But that was an exception. Nathan Newman of the National Lawyers Guild wrote a brief overview of how the courts historically have intervened for slavery and against freedom (pre- Civil War), for discrimination and against equality (post-Civil War), for government power over individual rights, for corporate power over government protection of individual rights, for owners and against unions, and for polluters against citizens. The judiciary, like the Senate, was designed by our founding fathers as a conservative institution, a protection for the rich and powerful against democracy. With few exceptions, most of them during the Warren court, that is the role it has played. Like the Federal Reserve, it seems an incredibly bad example of either fairness or insulation from corporate influence.
The Unbearable Messiness of Being
Fundamentally, though Barnes is realistic enough to understand that he must use politics to achieve any of his goals, he is unrealistic enough to hope that those goals can escape the messiness of politics.
Much as Barnes would like to think of trusts as a third way between government and corporations, ultimately they are no less vulnerable to corporate influence than legislatures, or courts, or the Federal Reserve Board. If board members are elected, corporations can intervene in the electoral process just as they do with other elected offices; if appointed, they can influence the people doing the appointing just as they do with other appointed offices.
Board members will need jobs to go to after they leave; in the meantime, they will have spouses and relatives who need jobs, or are happy to get better jobs than the ones they already have. Or they will have spouses and relatives in businesses that will be happy when good deals come their way. Or board members can be offered free continuing education and professional development opportunities in Bali and Hawaii, and on cruise ships ...
It's not hopeless. It's just that there is no magic third way beyond politics. Barnes is completely right that these are common resources that need institutions to manage them for the common good. But the messiness won't end with the political struggles that create such institutions. Once they are built, there will be conflict over what the common good includes. We will have to use the messy business of politics to resolve these conflicts, whether the institutions are trusts or simply new government agencies. You can't upgrade Plato's dream of philosopher kings to philosopher boards-of-directors.
I strongly recommend reading this book. Barnes' inventory of various commons that are currently privatized, and his suggestions of how they would be managed if the aim were the common good, are smart, extensive, and helpful. His suggestions on politics are less helpful, as are his thoughts on how to keep the commons well-managed in the long run. Maybe those can be the main topics of another book.
Copyright 2007 Grist Magazine, Inc.
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From: Sunday Telegraph (London, England) (pg. 8) .........[This story printer-friendly]
August 26, 2007
SOCIAL WORKERS WANT TO SEIZE BABY AS A PRECAUTIONARY MEASURE
[Rachel's introduction: A pregnant woman has been told that her baby will be taken from her at birth because she is deemed capable of "emotional abuse", even though psychiatrists treating her say there is no evidence to suggest that she will harm her child in any way. Is this a proper use of the precautionary principle?]
By David Harrison
A PREGNANT woman has been told that her baby will be taken from her at birth because she is deemed capable of "emotional abuse", even though psychiatrists treating her say there is no evidence to suggest that she will harm her child in any way.
Social services' recommendation that the baby should be taken from Fran Lyon, a 22-year-old charity worker who has five A-levels and a degree in neuroscience, was based in part on a letter from a paediatrician she has never met.
Hexham children's services, part of Northumberland County Council, said the decision had been made because Miss Lyon was likely to suffer from Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy, a condition unproven by science in which a mother will make up an illness in her child, or harm it, to draw attention to herself.
Under the plan, a doctor will hand the newborn to a social worker, provided there are no medical complications. Social services' request for an emergency protection order -- these are usually granted -- will be heard in secret in the family court at Hexham magistrates on the same day.
From then on, anyone discussing the case, including Miss Lyon, will be deemed to be in contempt of the court.
Miss Lyon, from Hexham, who is five months pregnant, is seeking a judicial review of the decision about Molly, as she calls her baby. She described it as "barbaric and draconian", and said it was "scandalous" that social services had not accepted submissions supporting her case. "The paediatrician has never met me," she said. "He is not a psychiatrist and cannot possibly make assertions about my current or future mental health. Yet his letter was the only one considered in the case conference on August 16 which lasted just 10 minutes."
Northumberland County Council insists that two highly experienced doctors -- another consultant paediatrician and a medical consultant - attended the case conference.
The case adds to growing concern, highlighted in a series of articles in The Sunday Telegraph, over a huge rise in the number of babies under a year old being taken from parents. The figure was 2,000 last year, three times the number 10 years ago. Critics say councils are taking more babies from parents to help them meet adoption "targets".
John Hemming, the Liberal Democrat MP and chairman of the Justice for Families campaign group, said the case showed "exactly what is wrong with public family law".
He added: "There is absolutely no evidence that Fran would harm her child. However, a vague letter from a paediatrician who has never met her has been used in a decision to remove her baby at birth, while evidence from professionals treating her, that she would have no problems has been ignored."
Mr Hemming was concerned that "vague assertions" of Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy -- now known as "fabricated and invented illness" - had been used to remove a number of children from parents in the North-East.
Miss Lyon came under scrutiny because she had a mental health problem when she was 16 after being physically and emotionally abused by her father and raped by a stranger. She suffered eating disorders and self-harm but, after therapy, graduated from Edinburgh University and now works for two mental health charities, Borderline and Personality Plus. Dr Stella Newrith, a consultant psychiatrist, who treated Miss Lyon for her childhood trauma for a year, wrote to Northumberland social services stating: "There has never been any clinical evidence to suggest that Fran would put herself or others at risk, and there is certainly no evidence to suggest that she would put a child at risk of emotional, physical or sexual harm."
Despite this support, endorsed by other psychiatrists and Miss Lyon's GP, social services based their recommendation partly on a letter from Dr Martin Ward Platt, a consultant paediatrician unable to attend the meeting.
He wrote: "Even in the absence of a psychological assessment, if the professionals were concerned on the evidence available that Miss Holton (as Miss Lyon was briefly known), probably does fabricate or induce illness, there would be no option but the precautionary principle of taking the baby into foster care at birth, pending a post-natal forensic psychological assessment."
Miss Lyon said she was determined to fight the decision. "I know I can be a good mother to Molly. I just want the chance to prove it," she said.
The council said the recommendation would be subject to further assessment and review. "When making such difficult decisions, safeguarding children is our foremost priority," a spokesman said.
Copyright 2007 Telegraph PLC
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Rachel's Precaution Reporter offers news, views and practical examples of the Precautionary Principle, or Foresight Principle, in action. The Precautionary Principle is a modern way of making decisions, to minimize harm. Rachel's Precaution Reporter tries to answer such questions as, Why do we need the precautionary principle? Who is using precaution? Who is opposing precaution?
We often include attacks on the precautionary principle because we believe it is essential for advocates of precaution to know what their adversaries are saying, just as abolitionists in 1830 needed to know the arguments used by slaveholders.
Rachel's Precaution Reporter is published as often as necessary to provide readers with up-to-date coverage of the subject.
As you come across stories that illustrate the precautionary principle -- or the need for the precautionary principle -- please Email them to us at rpr@rachel.org.
Editors:
Peter Montague - peter@rachel.org
Tim Montague - tim@rachel.org
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