Re: Ada and the NMD

[Larry Elmore <ljelmore@home.com>]

Preben Randhol wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 06 Sep 2001 17:59:52 GMT, Ted Dennison wrote:
> 
> > As ususal I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, although I have to say
> > that I've yet to see any *hard* evidence that Preben is wrong. However, you
> > can't really use the term "government" wrt the US as Preben does, because we
> > don't quite work that way. Our government has 2 political branches, one of which
> > is split into two parts. Of those 3, 2 are presently controlled by one party,
> > and the third is (barely) controlled by another. Obviously, you'll search in
> > vain for any kind of unified coherent message comming out of the whole.
> 
> When I say government I mean the Bush administration. The system is a
> bit different here so that is why I said government.
> 
> But one thing that strikes me as very odd is that the Bush adm.
> wants/wanted (I don't know the current status) to allow increased levels
> of pollution in drinking water in the US as I understood it. It sounds
> to me that the industry is much more important than the people of the
> US for the Bush adm., but then again I'm not living over there.

Not _increased_ levels, just the same levels we've had for years and
years. _Most_ of the country already meets the proposed new lower
standard for arsenic, for example. The places that don't are
overwhelmingly due to natural sources in the local environment. Also,
there's absolutely _nothing_ preventing a state, or a county, or a town
from spending the money to meet whatever standards the local citizens
approve of setting for themselves. IIRC, the new standard would've been
an "unfunded mandate", so the federal government wouldn't be providing
money to the effort, only fining those towns who didn't meet the
standards soon enough.

I read the NRC/NAS report on arsenic, and I thought the summary's
conclusions were misleading at best, and directly contradict some of
their own earlier statements. Several times they mention that virtually
_no_ scientifically valid studies of the effects of low levels of
arsenic are available, but they conclude that because high levels do
cause problems, then low levels must be bad, too. Never mind the fact
that almost nothing natural that we know of follows such a linear scale
of toxicity, or danger...

Larry