The State of California today was told by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that more drastic changes couldn't be implemented to better the air quality in California. The new feeling among millions of Americans is that the agency should be named the U.S. Environmental Pollution Agency.


There will be plenty of lawsuits coming soon from the State government of California to change this zany federal policy. Lower emission standards on trucks and automobiles prevent asthema and other respiratory diseases and cancer. For many years American automobile corporations have resisted better fuel economy and lowering the tail pipe emissions. Over and over again these corporations were given special waivers keeping them from making more environmental freindly products that the American people want and that the global environment needs. The State of California is leading the way trying to break this strangle hold on progress and environmental reform. Why aren't the people of the State of California given the same special treatment that the automobile business has been getting? Why do we need to be dependent on fossil fuels and middle eastern oil?


While Germany invests heavily into solar energy production the United States federal government passes an energy bill that ignores solar, wind, bio mass, and underground energy production.


Also think before you buy any Chinese made toys as gifts without first checking to see if they contain lead. Children are most at danger from the effects of lead poisoning. There currently are hundreds of Chinese made toys on lists for recall. If the toy you buy was not recalled and a child puts it in their mouth they can suffer brain development damage. Lunch boxes that are painted with lead paint will tranfer lead into unwrapped food.


These opinion are solely those of Magilla Schaus and do not represent or reflect those of the Eastern Surfing Association.


Happy Holidays!

Meanwhile gasoline has hit over $100 a barrel. The U.S. government has missed an opportunity to be first in development of new energy resources and to break dependence on foreign oil and King Coal and to straight up combat global warming. Meanwhile the oceans and lakes are filling with mercury and acid rain and global temperatures continue to rise.



Notice that the lake levels are getting lower and that the winters are getting warmer?


There isn't a California wild fire firefighter that doesn't agree that global warming has arrived. The giant wild fires the U.S. is now experiencing yearly were never seen every year a decade ago.


Imagine if when sputnik went over the U.S. that the U.S. paid no attention to that change in technology.

I just finished reading Dorian Paskowitz's The Air Beneath Your Nose, written on asthma. The main purpose of the book is to clarify the direct correlation between asthma and poor air quality. It will be interesting to see what direction the U.S. takes on environmental protection over the next decade or two, and what effect this will have on asthma rates.

Dr. Paskowitz confirms as a doctor what more and more scientific research indicates about the link between asthma and poor air quality. In most firehouses now there is a device that we hook up to the fire apparatus tail pipe called a primo vent. The device sucks the diesel exhaust off the fire house apparatus floor and vents it outside. We used to be enclosed inside and be breathing higher concentrations of truck diesel fumes. It is a fact that diesel fumes cause cancer.

It truly amazes me that last month an energy bill was passed in the U.S. that didn't include greater research and development of solar, wind, wave, geo thermal and other alterenate energy sources.


The U.S. and Canada now are looking at recession in the face and $100 for a barrel of oil from the middle east. Last week here in Buffalo the Chevy plant shut down plans to make 8 cylinder truck engines. The announcement said this happened because of higher cafe standards and the higher price of oil. However the U.S. and Canada automobile industry well knows that China is becoming the leading consumer of oil and that the price of oil was destined to cost more and more. This U.S. automobile industry resistence to change is similar to the U.S. Steel Industry resisting investing in new technologies to build better steel in the sixties. The same thing that happened to the North American Steel Industry is now happening to the automobile industry. The old adage in business is that if it ain't broke then don't fix it. In the last eight years the U.S. pollution protection has been very broken. If it ain't broke then don't fix it is said even when the gauge says we are running on empty. We need to rethink a model that insists of just keeping on going forward till we're broken down. We surely are living through the end of a transportation and energy production era. It is similar to that of when we moved from horse and buggy technology to gasoline automobile engines. My Grandfather used to tell me about having seen the passing of the horse and buggy, the bi-plane, the airplane, the jet, and seeing man land on the moon.


The resistence to making better products that pollute less is something that will fall like the Berlin Wall. To keep doing the same things that pollutes and harms people relentlessly has a human cost. It is no differnet than the Japanese fishing industry killing off vast numbers of whales and dolphins and then serving the mercury tainted flesh to their school children. A new dawn is coming we can only hope soon.


Here is some more zany planning and promoting of the future airborne Love Canal in my community.. The Buffalo and Fort Erie Peace Bridge Authority wants to build a giant truck inspection facility here in Buffalo, in the most densely, populated, upstate neighborhood, in New York State, just two half blocks from my house.


Adam I now realize that you are quoting from "Surfing and Health." The Doc is a zen master right out of FDR times. We need more surfers like him on this planet.


For more information:
To obtain a personalized copy of Dr. Dorian Paskowitz's Surfing and Health, send $55 (which includes shipping and handling) to Box 8082, Honolulu, HI 96830; call 808-926-0285; or e-mail: paskowitz11@aol.com


"There is wisdom in waves" Dorien Paskowitz

The opinions of Magilla Schaus about the environment belong solely to Magilla Schaus and are not those of the Eastern Surfing Association or the ESA Great Lakes District.

Buffalo News:
EDITORIALS
Are we at risk?
Release Great Lakes pollution report, investigate whether it was suppressed

Updated: 02/27/08 6:34 AM


There is a government report that raises the possibility that public health threats from industrial pollution pervade the Great Lakes region. You may not have heard of this because the government, according to people who should know, has suppressed it.

Rep. Brian Higgins has called for a congressional investigation into that allegation. That should occur promptly, but in any thorough investigation, that would be only the tip of the iceberg. The Bush administration has a seven-year record of politicizing science. If Americans want their facts unfiltered by partisan ideology, an investigation should document such abuses now so that future presidents will not be so quick to bury or alter scientific data they do not like.

In this case, the Washington Post reported, the former director of the division of toxicology and environmental medicine at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry charges that the report he wrote, and which remains officially unreleased, was a significant factor in his reassignment to a nonsupervisory position last year. That man, Chris De Rosa, says he also was targeted for previously working to publicize a possible cancer risk from formaldehyde fumes in trailers used to house victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The Great Lakes report uses government databases to describe toxic contaminants and releases in the Great Lakes region and looks at health indicators, including cancer incidence and infant mortality in the area, according to the Post. It does not allege cause and effect, though the concern is obvious.

A spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control, the parent of De Rosa’s agency, said the report was delayed because of concerns about its methodology. But peer reviewers of the report also believe it was suppressed because of its conclusions. The Center for Public Integrity obtained a copy of the draft

report and posted parts of it on its Web site.

This clearly calls for an investigation, not merely of possible suppression, but of the potential for public health concerns in the Great Lakes region. But this also is a loose string at the end of a tangled ball. Pull it, and questions will also arise of the Bush administration’s fast-and-loose approach to science in matters from global warming to endangered species protection.

It’s time someone pulled the string.


Distributed without profit for educational purposes of ESA Great Lakes District membership.