Category: Safety

Product safety information

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Thank You Army Corp of Engineers

If you’ve been following the news from New England you are aware that a major flood event is in progress. This morning the NECN weatherman Matt Noyes said that this was the worst flooding we’ve had since the floods of August 1955. This got me thinking about the West Hill Dam in Uxbridge and how we southern New Englanders should all thank the Army Corps of Engineers. They built the dam specifically to prevent the devastation and loss of life that happened in 1955. Looking at the records since then I feel that this dam has been a resounding success. Since its completion in 1961 the floods on the Blackstone have been controlled to less than 16 feet at Woonsocket as opposed to the nearly 22 foot record from 1955. Predictions from the NWS are for 18 feet in Woonsocket for this current flood, well below the extremely dangerous 22 feet that caused so much loss of life. UPDATE 3/30 22:30 Forecast has been lowered to 14 feet @ Woonsocket

The main reason we are so much safer now is the Army CoE’s excellent design and operation of the West Hill Dam. As you can see in this graph, yesterday afternoon they closed the gates of the dam stopping the entire West River from adding to the Blackstone’s flood level.

USGS20100330

This activation of the dam is going to change the look of the dam area from what we usually see in this Google Maps satellite view.

To what is in this photo from the West Hill Dam web site.

WestHillDamPhoto

More information:

USGS WaterWatch — Maps and graphs of current water resources conditions

Worcester Telegram & Gazette’s Weather notebook – Rivers rise as rain falls

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Vaccine Pink Book Graphs

In a comment by DrKnow over at Orac’s place I learned about the CDC’s book “Epidemiology and Prevention of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases” aka “The Pink Book: Course Textbook”. It isn’t written for the layman but the graphs in it are very informative. I’ve clipped some of the graphs from some of the chapters and made them into a single picture so you don’t have to find each one separately. (Click picture to enlarge)

VaccineGraphs

 

Some of the graphs show when the vaccines where introduced, on the graphs without the labels can you figure out roughly when the vaccine was introduced?

Check your answers in the Pink Book, I’m guessing most of my readers will be able to get the answers right within +/- 5 years or so.

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Why did it take so long? FDA Orders Zicam Nasal Off the Market

You’ve probably seen this story at many blogs recently.

FDA Advises Consumers Not To Use Certain Zicam Cold Remedies

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today advised consumers to stop using three products marketed over-the-counter as cold remedies because they are associated with the loss of sense of smell (anosmia). Anosmia may be long-lasting or permanent.

The products are:
–Zicam Cold Remedy Nasal Gel
–Zicam Cold Remedy Nasal Swabs
–Zicam Cold Remedy Swabs, Kids Size (a discontinued product)

While this is good news, what took so long for the FDA to act on this? As pointed out at What’s The Harm? What’s the harm in homeopathy? (Lisa Weatherington & 339 others) Zicam settled a lawsuit over this issue nearly 3 1/2 years ago.

By Sandra G. Boodman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 31, 2006

The manufacturer of Zicam Cold Remedy has agreed to pay $12 million to settle 340 lawsuits brought by consumers who claim the popular over-the-counter zinc nasal gel damaged or destroyed their sense of smell.

Full article: Paying Through the Nose – washingtonpost.com.

Did the FDA really need over three years to act on this problem? Are the 130 injured mentioned in the FDA notice in addition to the 340 from the 2006 lawsuit?

Lets see, the science has shown a potential problem since 2004 and further documented in 2006, the manufacturer settles a lawsuit in 2006, then finally the FDA acts in 2009. The FDA should have acted much sooner!

For some interesting additional information info on the men behind the company see: The Men Behind Zicam – washingtonpost.com.

FDA links:

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Cell Phone Jammer News

The District of Columbia Department of Corrections received special temporary authority (STA) from the FCC to conduct a demonstration of a directional cell phone jammer designed for prisons. The STA allowed a test on January 8th for 30 minutes sometime between 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. However the DC DoC cancelled the demonstration on 1/7 with no official statement why the test was cancelled.

My hope is that the DC DoC realized that using technology to render a smuggled item useless is stupid compared to preventing the smuggling in the first place. Whatever route is being used to smuggle cell phones into prisons also allows weapons to enter a prison. Even if the DC DoC hadn’t stopped the test on their own, the test would likely have been stopped by the courts.

CTIA seeks to block cell phone jamming demo at DC jail

Operation of such jamming technology is flatly illegal under Section 333 of the Communications Act, and the commission lacks the statutory to authorize violations of this congressional directive protecting the rights of authorized users of the wireless spectrum, stated CTIA in a petition filed at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Moreover, the decision to authorize the demonstration  made without notice to the public or affected parties, without opportunity for comment, without consideration of any evidence regarding the potential consequences to legitimate transmission of operating the contemplated technology, and with no exigent public-safety need is the very essence of arbitrary and capricious decision-making.

CTIA went to court after failing to get regulatory relief from the FCC.

While we believe that prisoners should not have access to wireless phones while incarcerated, there are other, non-interfering and legal ways to find and take the phones out of their hands, said Christopher Guttman-McCabe, VP of regulatory Affairs at CTIA. There are several companies that provide wireless detection systems that can be used by jails to identify and confiscate phones, and that do not interfere with wireless communications. As the FCC previously acknowledged, Congress has been clear in prohibiting the use of jammers in state prisons.

For the manufacturers spin on this story read this article, they don’t think that prison officials should stop the cell phones from being smuggled into the prison or find and confiscate the phones that are there. Instead the prisons should buy their equipment to make the cell phones not work, vested interest much. My feeling is that if prison officials can’t stop the smuggling of cell phones into a prison they also can’t stop the smuggling of weapons, money and other banned items into prisons. What kind of insanity does it take to think that prison officials don’t need to stop weapon sized items from being smuggled into prisons. The public will be vastly safer if all smuggling of contraband into prisons is stopped.

Assuming prison officials aren’t going to stop the phones getting into the prisons, why don’t they take advantage of the situation. They should use the currently available legal gear to monitor cell communication of prisoners, trace the call to the recipient and then have the recipient arrested for the crime being done. The recordings of the calls would be great evidence in a court to prosecute the criminals that are helping prisoners intimidate witnesses or perform other illegal activities. Nah, they’ll never do that since it would require actual work rather than flipping a magic switch like a commenter on a previous post wanted.

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A professional chemist doing for profit chemistry is not a hobbyist

Earlier this week Greg Laden posted an intriguing article, Home Chemistry Hobbyist Shut Down in Massachusetts. He had picked up on this story via a post at the MAKE magazine Blog, Home science under attack. Both of the blogs where basing their commentary on this one article from the August 9th edition of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Let me start by summarizing the story as reported by two local newspapers, see the links below for the full text of the seven newspaper articles I found.

On the afternoon of August 5th 2008 the Marlborough Massachusetts Fire Department responded to a call of a fire in a two story house on Fremont Street. When they arrived they found a fire in a window air conditioner of a second floor bedroom and the lone occupant of the house at the time, homeowner Victor Deeb, had safely gotten out. The firemen put the fire out in about a minute but by that time there was more than a thousand dollars worth of smoke damage to the bedroom.  [updated 8/18 with information from Mr. Deeb’s comment] If this had happened to me I would have turned off the power to the air conditioner and put the fire out with a fire extinguisher avoiding the major smoke damage from waiting for the fire department to arrive. Since Mr. Deeb is a 71 year old who uses a cane to get around it is perfectly understandable why he called the fire department instead. [Mr. Deeb was trying to use a fire extinguisher on the fire when a passing Policeman saw the smoke and called the fire department.] (Photo of Mr. Deeb speaking to Police after the fire was put out, from The MetroWest Daily News)

The firefighters then followed standard procedures and checked that all the spaces in the house had been ventilated to remove the smoke and prevent further damage. When they went down into the basement they discovered a chemical R&D laboratory containing more than 100 unlabeled containers of chemicals [Mr. Deeb seems to dispute this]. The chemicals where in assorted containers from quart size up to 20 gallon drums some on shelves and some just sitting on the basement floor. Fire department officials attempted to find permits issued to Mr. Deeb for the storage of large quantities of chemicals but where unable to find any permits. The fire department then contacted the state fire marshal’s office who in turn called in the state bomb squad. If Mr. Deeb had obtained permits for possessing large quantities of chemicals they could have avoided the bomb squad but without the permits they had to take the safe approach and treat this as a potentially dangerous situation in a residential neighborhood. At no time did the authorities claim that Mr. Deeb was making weapons or drugs they simply had no way to know what was in the containers and without permits they could not simply take Mr. Deeb’s word for it that these unlabeled chemicals were not dangerous.

The Fire Department advised Mr. Deeb that this situation would take many hours to clear up so he should find a place to stay for a while. Mr. Deeb took the advise of the fire department and left with his family. Over the next two days the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and local authorities, with the cooperation of Mr. Deeb, removed over 1,500 containers of chemicals none of which turned out to be a biological or radioactive risk. Mr. Deeb and his family were allowed to return to their home on August 8th after the laboratory was safely dismantled and taken away. A hazardous materials cleanup company was contracted by MA DEP to test and then properly dispose of the chemicals. The Marlborough Department of Public Works is running tests to make sure none of the chemicals seeped into the town sewer system. While Mr. Deeb has likely violated numerous state and local safety regulations and laws, as of Saturday the 9th no citations had yet been issued.

This Saturday’s (8/16) Worcester Telegram & Gazette article has more details about the incident. The FBI showed up to take a look and there were thirty-five 20 gallon drums of chemicals that the hazmat contractor had to take for analysis and disposal. His laboratory was a mess with flammable chemicals stored next to the home’s furnace. By his own admission Mr. Deeb is a retired chemist who was very clearly running a for profit chemical R&D laboratory out of his basement in a residential neighborhood. He is considering suing the city for taking down his lab because he thinks his civil rights have been violated.

IMO, the fire department and other city and state officials did absolutely nothing wrong. They certainly did not violate Mr. Deeb’s civil rights because there is no civil right to possess and improperly store large quantities of regulated chemicals in your home. The officials had every right to enter his lab without a search warrant because they were called to the home by him [there] to put out a fire.

Mr. Deeb may be a very good chemist in fact judging by the number of patents he appears on it is almost a certainty. He has clearly been running a business from his home at least since 11/1/98. However he clearly does not understand laboratory safety rules, you must always properly label and store chemicals. Flammable chemicals like the acetone he had must be stored in fire proof cabinets not sitting on the floor or shelf and/or near a furnace. Mr. Deeb could not handle a small fire without the assistance of the fire department so obviously he couldn’t be trusted to handle a laboratory fire. He appears to not understand the need for permits and zoning clearance for commercial chemical research laboratories.

The reaction on the Internet is so far over the top I’m astounded. It seems that most of the people commenting on this story have made no effort to read the articles and are simply jumping to totally absurd conclusions based on preconceived notions. Here’s a list of my responses to the wild commentary and claims that are spreading across the Internet.

  1. Mr. Deebs was not a hobbyist, he freely admits this was a for profit R&D laboratory. Even without his admission the fact that he had hundreds of containers of chemicals including 35 twenty gallon drums puts him way beyond the hobbyist level.
  2. The government did not target Mr. Deeb in any way, they came to his aid when he called [put out a fire] and found him violating safety and zoning regulations.
  3. No government agency is going to come to your house because you gave your child a home chemistry set for Christmas.
  4. Having retail containers of household chemicals is not equivalent to having large quantities of industrial chemicals.
  5. The City Government of Marlborough Massachusetts is in no way comparable to the Nazi’s. Oh and it’s spelled Marlborough not Marlboro, that’s a brand of cigarettes.
  6. Thomas Edison did not set up laboratories in residential neighborhoods, he knew what he was doing could be hazardous so his laboratories where in private compounds and/or industrial districts.
  7. The police did not raid Mr. Deeb’s home, they did not kick down his door.
  8. Doing scientific research on a home computer is in no way even remotely equivalent to running an R&D laboratory with large quantities of chemicals.
  9. There was no fourth amendment violation, see number two above.
  10. That he has not yet been charged is not proof he didn’t break laws.
  11. This incident will not lead to the government burning our books.
  12. Mr. Deeb is not even remotely like a terrorist, any mention of 9/11 is absolutely ridiculous.
  13. Football is in no danger of being banned.
  14. Marlborough Massachusetts is not a police state.
  15. This is not equivalent to the two Steve’s founding Apple Computer in a garage, Woz is far too intelligent to improperly label and store large quantities of industrial chemicals.
  16. Ditto for Hewlett and Packard.
  17. Practicing putting in your living room, baking cookies for church, scrap booking and doing transcriptions are not even remotely similar to what Mr. Deeb did.
  18. The citizens of Massachusetts have rights, in fact we have some rights most other states do not grant to their citizens. e.g. Marrying the person you want to.
  19. This is not like outlawing innovation.
  20. Mr. Deeb did NOT take proper laboratory safety precautions, unlabeled and improperly stored containers is very bad.
  21. Building your own PC and running Linux on it are not going to get you into the trouble Mr. Deeb is in.
  22. The safety of Mr. Deeb’s neighbors IS the responsibility of the government.
  23. Mr. Deeb was not picked on because he was racially profiled as being of Middle Eastern descent.
  24. A hobbyist darkroom in your home is not equivalent to a R&D laboratory. A commercial darkroom on the other hand is regulated in similar ways to a R&D chemical lab.
  25. There were dangerous chemicals in Mr. Deeb’s laboratory by his own admission there was acetone. What the government officials have said is there where no biological or radiological hazards and no exceptionally explosive chemicals.
  26. Mr. Deeb did not give the fire fighters an inventory of the chemicals in his laboratory. Either he did not have an inventory or he wanted them to have to call in the bomb squad and hazmat teams, I’m guessing he didn’t have an inventory list.
  27. Making beer in your basement for personal use is not like a commercial research chemical laboratory.

I know it’s hard to research stories but that doesn’t excuse people from the obligation to examine the evidence. I’m most disappointed that so many people jump right to parroting the poorly researched and quote mined work of others to justify their preconceived notions. Any of these people who have integrity should take the time to read the articles, Google Victor M. Deeb and then post updates to correct their bogus reporting.

I have found one well researched response on the net, Mike O’Risal’s post is a very good read. Having read a number of excellent posts and comments by Mike over the past year, today I’ve added his blog to my reader and blogroll. On top of his good writing I need to start reading him regularly because he lives in my county, Worcester (pronounced Woostah in my native Yankee accent).

I’m sorry that Mr. Deeb has lost his R&D laboratory and likely will close his business. However, he should have followed the rules for running a commercial laboratory and gotten the proper permits and zoning variances. He may be ignorant of the law but that is not a valid excuse especially when you are running a for profit business.

The MetroWest Daily News articles:

Worcester Telegram & Gazette articles:

Victor Deeb’s business:

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More on Cell Phone Jammers

My post in October 2007, Cell Phone Jammer Foolishness, received a couple of interesting comments and is still attracting a lot of spam from sites that offer cell phone jammers. A recent piece of spam ended up pointing me to an excellent November 2007 New York Times article on this topic. A few examples of jammer users from that article made me realize that many of them are simply incompetent at their jobs and want to use jammers to cover up their shortcomings.

… upscale restaurant in Maryland …
The owner, who declined to be named, said he bought a powerful jammer for $1,000 because he was tired of his employees focusing on their phones rather than customers.
“I told them: put away your phones, put away your phones, put away your phones,” he said. They ignored him.

This owner can’t control his employees so he uses an illegal jammer to make up for his inability to discipline his employees. IMO, he deserves to go bankrupt as he is clearly not cut out to run a business with employees. This reminds me of the companies who’s supervisors can’t recognize when employees are under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Instead of training them to spot the problem they institute drug testing. This eliminates the drug abusers and the outside of work casual drug users while retaining the staff with drinking problems. I do not believe technology is ever a good replacement for competent managers and supervisors.

The carriers also raise a public safety issue: jammers could be used by criminals to stop people from communicating in an emergency.

This is aspect of the jammer issue I hadn’t thought about, it’s another good reason to keep the ban on all radio jamming devices.

In evidence of the intensifying debate over the devices, CTIA, the main cellular phone industry association, asked the F.C.C. on Friday to maintain the illegality of jamming and to continue to pursue violators. It said the move was a response to requests by two companies for permission to use jammers in specific situations, like in jails.

This reminds me of a comment I received on my previous post.

in need of info about jaming cell phones at a large prison , inmates are paying officers and employees some were around 500.00 bucks per phone to sneek them in effective range would have to be 1/4 mile to fully cover the site, and maybe mounted out side or on top of a bldg for max range , please notify me of any companys that sell this type of equipment.

I replied:

My first thought is that the officers and employees are breaking the law and need to be prosecuted. What other items are they smuggling in for the prisoners, weapons, money, heroin, crack, arresting the law breakers will work for all these problems. Frankly, IMHO, smuggling items into a prison is a worse breach of the law than all the prisoners in for drug possession. If the prison authorities don’t care about their employees and officers breaking the law then why should anyone help them.

That said, if the prison officials want a lazy, ignore the law breakers, way out of their problem they should consult the FCC as special licenses to do radio jamming might be available for prisons.

Since their are no special licenses or regulation waivers for prisons the only legal options they have are to use RF shielding materials in the prison or prosecute the law breakers. Another user described in the NY Times article is:

Gary, a therapist in Ohio who also declined to give his last name, citing the illegality of the devices, says jamming is necessary to do his job effectively. He runs group therapy sessions for sufferers of eating disorders. In one session, a woman’s confession was rudely interrupted.
“She was talking about sexual abuse,” Gary said. “Someone’s cellphone went off and they carried on a conversation.”
“There’s no etiquette,” he said. “It’s a pandemic.”
Gary said phone calls interrupted therapy all the time, despite a no-phones policy. Four months ago, he paid $200 for a jammer, which he placed surreptitiously on one side of the room. He tells patients that if they are expecting an emergency call, they should give out the front desk’s number. He has not told them about the jammer.

Sorry Gary but I don’t buy it that you can’t do your job effectively without breaking the law. Why don’t you just insist that your patients leave their cell phones outside when they enter a session. I’m guessing your patients don’t feel you are worth the visit if they have to follow rules of courtesy demanded by you. How can you be truly useful advising your patients if you can’t even get them to be courteous. The final example is:

… New York school bus driver named Dan.
“The kids think they are sneaky by hiding low in the seats and using their phones,” Dan wrote in an e-mail message to Mr. Thakkar thanking him for selling the jammer. “Now the kids can’t figure out why their phones don’t work, but can’t ask because they will get in trouble! It’s fun to watch them try to get a signal.”

Smooth move Dan, you can’t control the kids in your charge so you use a jammer. How would you feel if there is an accident, you are disabled and some of the kids are hurt. You can’t turn off the jammer so now any surviving children with phones or spectators nearby can’t get help as quickly as they could. Seconds can save lives so when you use a jammer you may end up preventing someone’s life from being saved. I just hope that the only people who suffer due to a situation like this are the bozo’s who feel this need to use illegal cell phone jammers.

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Spectacular Windmill Failure

The video below shows the most spectacular video of a windmill failure I’ve ever seen. There aren’t a lot of details on the intertubes but I have found a couple of articles from Danish newspapers one in English and the other not. The windmill was a ten year old Vestas windmill located in Aarhus Denmark. Piecing together blog comments, the articles and, my own knowledge, this is what appears to have happened. A large storm came through the area, the central monitoring station detected that the main and backup safety braking systems had failed in this particular unit. They sent a crew to make sure the area was secure and to observe the failing windmill, after a few hours the result is shown in the video. While this was clearly a dangerous situation, the fact that the operators had ample warning to get there to observe the failure clearly shows that these types of problems should not be a cause for panic by the public. In general windmill’s are a safe and effective method of generating power, the failures usually have only economic consequences for the owners.

 

Hat tip to Phil Plait from Bad Astronomy for pointing me to this story.

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CAM remedies can give you heavy metal poisoning

A comment over at Respectful Insolence led me to this post by Mike O’Risal and the Associated Press article that inspired it.

The AP article reports that:

Health departments around the country say traditional medicines used by many immigrants from Latin America, India and other parts of Asia are the second most common source of lead poisoning in the U.S. — surpassed only by lead paint — and may account for tens of thousands of such cases among children each year.

Dozens of adults and children have become gravely ill or died after taking lead-laden medicine over the past eight years, according to federal and local health officials.

Read the whole article for the details and remember, there are good reasons why the life expectancy of people is significantly higher in places that use modern, regulated, evidence based medicine.

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FCC and CPSC news

Via Conformity magazine, Radio Operator Fined for Failing to Make Equipment Available for Inspection. This is important for US citizens to remember, if the FCC requests access to your property to investigate an interference claim, you are required to admit them. Failure to do so leaves you open to large fines, Mr. Winston could have avoided this $7000.00 fine if he had cooperated. Here’s the FCC’s forfeiture order for this case.

Most of the time I write about the FCC coming down hard on companies and individuals. For a change of pace here’s a case where the FCC is being very nice to an offender. The FCC issued a citation to Surveillance-Video.com for selling illegal wireless cameras. The cameras were operating at 1.2GHz which is a clearly restricted band allocated for aeronautical navigation systems. The company stopped selling the cameras as soon as they were notified of the violation so, the FCC did not fine them. The lesson here is, if your selling electronic devices and the FCC says stop, don’t resist, don’t hesitate, just stop selling them and cooperate as much as you can with the FCC. This will help you prevent receiving a big forfeiture order from them.

OK, I guess this needs to be said, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A LEGAL JAMMER. This is one of the very few areas of FCC regulation that is simple, nobody is allowed to jam radio signals of any kind. If you build, import or sell any type of jammer you can be fined if caught. Read about the latest actions on this issue over at Conformity.

Finally, the latest list of notable CPSC recalls is up at Conformity Magazine.