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Lead is a neurotoxin that is especially harmful to children’s developing brains and nervous systems.
We became involved in April 2015 when Lee Anne Walters, a Flint resident and mother of a lead-poisoned child, contacted Dr. Marc Edwards , our research adviser at Virginia Tech. After the city detected elevated lead in the Walters family’s water, and she was refused help by MDEQ, Mrs. Walters took her case to EPA Region 5 employee Miguel Del Toral, who collaborated with our lab to sample her tap water.
Mrs. Walters sent us samples from her home, and we found lead levels that on average contained over 2,000 parts per billion (ppb) of lead—more than 130 times the EPA’s maximum allowable limit of 15 ppb.
Lead is a neurotoxin that is especially harmful to children’s developing brains and nervous systems. According to health experts, there is no safe level of lead exposure.
We saw city officials dismissing public concerns, knew that the city was not treating the river water to prevent corrosion and found high lead levels in samples from the Walters’ home. We believed there was an urgent threat to public health, and no one else seemed to be doing anything to help the citizens of Flint.
We set a plan in motion to help citizens in the best way we knew: with science.
As a first step, we mailed 300 sampling kits to citizen activists in Flint. Over just four weeks, Flint residents helped us gather and analyze 861 water samples—more than 12 times the number that city officials collected in six months.
Our results clearly showed a widespread lead-in-water problem . MDEQ questioned whether our testing was reliable. In response, Flint citizens organizing the sampling developed quality control procedures, such as taping the kits closed once samples had been collected and signing their names across the tape, to make it clear that no samples had been tampered with.
This struck a nerve. As scientists, we spend significant amounts of time making sure our results are accurate. In response to MDEQ’s claims, we became completely transparent about what we were doing and how we were sampling for lead. Because we took this approach, people in Flint trusted us.
Meanwhile, both MDEQ and EPA were sluggish to respond to our questions and reluctant to share data with us. We filed several Freedom of Information Act requests (FOIAs) to gain access to agency records and were alarmed by what we found.
For instance, MDEQ had misinformed EPA about having corrosion control treatment in place. We also found that the state agency had thrown out two critical water samples —including one from the Walters home—so that Flint would meet the requirements of EPA’s Lead and Copper Rule . The rule, enacted in 1994, requires cities to monitor drinking water at customer taps and take action to reduce corrosion if certain numbers of samples contain lead or copper above specific levels.
Our findings, combined with data on blood lead levels in Flint children released by Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha at Hurley Medical Center, finally prompted city, state, and federal officials to declare emergencies in Flint and switch back to Detroit water.
One hard lesson we learned is that people in our field—environmental engineers and water managers—helped cause Flint’s crisis.
Somewhere along the line, in deciding what compounds to regulate and how to control them, the U.S. system for regulating drinking water has become extremely complex. There are now more than 150,000 public water utilities in the United States. Our National Primary Drinking Water Standards cover more than 80 contaminants , and EPA is reviewing some 100 others to determine whether they should also be regulated.
Individual utilities are responsible for monitoring and reporting to state agencies, which in turn report to EPA regional offices. With this segregated approach and so many things on their radars, a culture has developed that seems to be geared more toward meeting regulations and standards than toward protecting public health. This is especially true in programs like MDEQ’s that are “understaffed, underfunded and [have personnel] lack[ing] knowledge and experience,” in the words of Dr. Yanna Lambrinidou , a medical ethnographer and adjunct assistant professor of science and technology studies at Virginia Tech.
As the U.S. Government Accountability Office has reported , EPA does not have enough power or resources to properly oversee sampling that cities carry out to show they are complying with the Lead and Copper Rule. Professors Edwards and Lambrinidou and others have documented that, as a result, agencies in charge of proving that regulations are met have developed techniques for gaming the system to avoid collecting water samples that contain enough lead or copper to trigger action.
Well-known techniques that took place in Flint include preflushing water from taps the night before sampling and using small-mouthed bottles, which artificially lowers lead concentrations in samples, as well as failing to identify and test homes known to have sources of lead in their plumbing from lead services lines or older brass components that contain significant amounts of lead.
At a recent national conference, one of our team members spoke with a utility manager about how his utility sampled for compliance with the Lead and Copper Rule. The manager was proud that his utility had never found a violation. But when our team member probed further, the manager acknowledged that a couple of homes in their distribution system had lead levels high enough to be of concern. However, he argued that the utility did not need to report these high levels.
Flint Water Study Team Member (FWS): So, do you inform the homeowners if the lead levels are high?
FWS: Yes, but, if you were a parent in a home which was tested over 15 pbb, wouldn’t you like to know?
UM: I understand what you are saying, but that is not how the rule works.
FWS: I know, but would you agree that it is a problem and that the rule should change? Isn’t it important to inform homeowners if they are over the action level?
UM: Yeah, but that is not up to me. Our job is to follow the rules and regulations.
We are concerned by this attitude and believe we need to change it so that everyone involved is more focused on protecting public health than only complying with regulations.
As budding academics, we are proud that our group went “all in” for Flint. We provided accurate technical information that was desperately needed, developed legitimate research questions, and uncovered government wrongdoing.
We did not have a direct funding source when we got involved, and there was a real risk that we would not be able to raise money to support our work. But Dr. Edwards chose to move forward because the risk to Flint families and their children was much greater. He spent more than $150,000 from his own discretionary research and personal funds to cover our costs, and the National Science Foundation later backed us with a $50,000 RAPID Response grant.
Our experience in Flint has shown us some unpleasant costs of doing good science.
If Dr. Edwards had not been able and willing to do this, people in Flint might very well still be getting unsafe Flint River water from their taps.
Academic researchers are supposed to contribute to the public good, and scholars are supposed to have academic freedom to explore important questions without undue interference. But at the same time, they are under tremendous pressures to meet metrics such as publishing papers and bringing in research dollars. This pressure can make researchers less independent and less willing to pursue roads less traveled.
We are worried that a reward structure has developed that supports mainly self-promotion and dissuades the altruistic motives to do science for the public good that attracted many of us to the profession in the first place.
Our experience in Flint has shown us some unpleasant costs of doing good science. It can mean burning bridges to potential funding and damage to your name and professional reputation. There also are emotional costs associated with distinguishing right from wrong in moral and ethical gray areas and personal costs when you begin to question yourself, your motives, and your ability to make a difference.
Things have started to change in Flint, but fixing its water system will take years, and its citizens will need continued support in many areas—including nutrition, health care, and education—to manage the effects of lead poisoning over the coming decades.
From our perspective, it is hard not to feel that the regulatory system is broken or at least critically flawed. Only an active and engaged public can drive reform forward and make EPA and state agencies more responsive to fulfill their mission statement and truly protect the public.
As academic researchers, we do not always have an active role in fixing such regulatory shortcomings, but we can help influence change in unconventional ways. The Flint crisis showed that listening to the public is critical if we wish to do our jobs better as scientists and engineers and serve society.
This article was originally published on The Conversation . Read the original article .
Rose is a married woman. A married woman who has dreams of the same man every night. Harmless, right? That is, until she meets him in real life. Hugo & Rose is a surrealist dark fairy tale that will make you think about the nature of soulmates.
One of the secrets behind Kobe Bryant’s 20 seasons as a star of the Los Angeles Lakers and his five NBA championships, two Olympic gold medals and one Academy Award is his grooming regimen, which includes manicures, pedicures and luxurious face creams.
That mind-set explains how the retired basketball player has become a founding partner of Art of Sport, an L.A.-based unisex body-care start-up geared toward athletes.
Bryant unveiled the line in September at the Lakers’ training center in El Segundo, where Lonzo Ball and Kyle Kuzma practiced sinking balls into the net.
Having moved from the hardwood to Hollywood — as well as marking his 40th birthday this year — Bryant has changed his grooming routine. “I have less hair,” he quipped.
He has also replaced Right Guard, Speed Stick and what he dubs “the usual stuff” with his brand’s concoctions that favor natural ingredients such as matcha tea powder over potentially harmful parabens and aluminum.
Sold on Amazon.com and Art of Sport’s website, the lineup of goods includes a body soap bar that lathers with deep-cleaning charcoal and moisturizes with shea butter to prevent dryness and chafing after multiple post-workout showers ($8.95 for a two-pack) and a 2-in-1 hair and body wash that’s a silky gel containing tea tree oil and aloe vera ($8.95 for a 10-ounce tube).
There’s also a recovery cream blended with arnica and eucalyptus to soothe sore muscles ($12.95 for a 3-ounce tube). The priciest item in the range is the SPF 50 sunscreen ($13.95 for a five-ounce tube) that eschews oxybenzone because the chemical can be harmful to coral reefs.
Another co-founder, Brian Lee, has celebrity-centric business ventures including creating eco-friendly baby products at the Honest Co. with Jessica Alba and launching the online fashion site ShoeDazzle with Kim Kardashian West. He said that when it comes to diving into a large category like sports and reaching the right demographic, Bryant is in a league of his own. “He’s aspirational to other athletes with all his MVPs and NBA rings,” Lee said.
Bryant fancies himself a bit of a skin-care guru. “When I was on the Olympics team, [players] saw me using La Mer products,” he recalled.
“What is that?” he said his teammates asked of the seaweed-infused face cream. Bryant generously shared his moisturizer that cost $175 an ounce. “Now they all use it,” he said.
He told her it was the Compete deodorant from the skin-care line. “I love it,” she told him.
The Art of Sport line has creative fragrance combinations such as cedar and vanilla — smells that might be overwhelming to some. However, the fragrance could be refreshing in a throng of sweaty athletes.
Household debt increased in the first quarter, driven by increases in mortgage debt, according to the New York Fed’s press briefing on the Center for Microeconomic Data’s Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit.
Household debt increased $63 billion during the first quarter of 2018, driven by a $57 billion increase in mortgage debt, according to the report. This brought the total household indebtedness to $13.2 trillion as of March 31, 2018.
But while household debt has been growing consistently for the past five years, and even surpassed its previous peak by $536 billion, its increase has been slow relative to earlier periods as mortgage debt has remained relatively flat.
The chart below shows the slow growth of mortgage rates even as other forms of debt increased at higher paces.
The chart shows that, while it makes up a smaller portion of total household debt, student loan debt has increased significantly over the past several years.
The New York Fed explained the slow growth in mortgage debt can be contributed, in part, to higher credit lending standards.
The chart below shows the median credit score for mortgage originations of all types. The number of originations for borrowers with credit scores below 620 decreases significantly, barely even making a mark in the first quarter of 2018.
But even originations for borrowers with higher credit scores of 720 to 759 decreased significantly from the housing boom years.
Household debt increases slowed significantly as fewer homeowners are borrowing against the equity on their home, the study showed.
The report shows standards on home equity lines of credit, requiring a median credit score of 750 back in 2005, and standards have tightened even further since then. In 2017, the median credit score for HELOCs was nearly 800.
The chart below shows home equity extraction increased significantly during the housing boom years, and fell significantly after that. And while it has increased slightly over the past several years, HELOCs have remained relatively steady since falling from their peak years.
Have you “ego surfed” lately? That is, used one of the Internet search engines to see what pops up when you type in your name? Some of your potential employers may be doing just that with your name — indeed, it’s becoming a widely spread practice for online media employers, especially, to learn more about a job candidate this way.
If you are someone who understands that in the brave new world of the Internet this is a likelihood, you may have long cultivated an “image” online that is positive. Anyone going to the trouble of researching your Internet activity will see well-crafted and intelligent posts to mailing lists and newsgroups in your field, and no visibile indications of odd behavior or interests.
But perhaps you’re not perfect. Perhaps online, you’re a bit of a hothead, posting angry and sometimes even abusive messages to online forums. Maybe you’ve gotten in online arguments in a newsgroup or mailing list, and posted some words that you later regretted. Or maybe you’re a member of an “unsavory” group, say a violence-prone anti-abortion organization, that has nothing to do with your career, but it shows up during a search of your name on the Web. When a potential employer stumbles on such information, you may be passed over for a job you want and never know why.
Such information is now easily available on the Internet. Many discussion lists have archives available on the Web, and it’s a simple matter to search newsgroup discussions by name. Finding out what can be intimate information about an individual is as simple as clicking a Search button. Nearly everyone who participates in the Internet leaves an electronic trail of their activities and interests — and often beliefs and values. The accumulation of electronic evidence left scattered on the Internet can be easily gathered to form an image of your “personality” by those willing to look deep enough.
Welcome to the information age, Mr./Ms. Jobseeker.
From the employer perspective, the Internet has become a fantastic tool to aid in the hiring process. I contacted several editors who are in hiring positions for online media positions and regularly conduct Web searches on job candidates, though most weren’t willing to go on the record to talk about it.
This editor says this sort of online sleuthing on his part proved useful in a couple recent instances. In one, he found that an apparently poorly qualified candidate had a well-constructed personal Web page that raised his opinion of her. A search on another seemingly well-qualified job candidate turned up an old Web site on which he offered as his own material that of someone else. That person was dropped from consideration.
Deciding whether to hire someone based on their archived postings to discussion lists or newsgroups is of course a touchy topic. In a perfect world, employers might discount a candidate’s public postings that they take issue with or find objectionable if they are truly not relevant to the job. The reality is that some of those in hiring positions will be influenced.
Or consider the editor that upon searching an applicant’s name on a Web search engine discovers that the candidate has a predilection for posting images to a pornographic newsgroup, or belongs to a discussion list for cross-dressers. Even the most ethical hiring editor might let that experience color his judgment about a candidate with such baggage.
Here’s a real-life example of how employer Web surfing can impact the chances of an job seeker winning the position. An applicant for a “content manager” job at a software company reports that during an in-person interview, “the manager startled me about midway through, when he leaned back in his chair and said, ‘I see by your e-mail that you’re really interested in news. … Are you sure this (position) is where you want to be?'” The job ultimately went to someone else. “Yes, this has affected what I post online,” says the job seeker.
In a perfect world, an employer might search the Web looking for information about a job candidate and look only at that information which is relevant to the candidate’s likely performance on the job. In the real world, this is not always going to be the case, and some job candidates will be unfairly dismissed because employers found things they didn’t like about the person stored on the Internet.
Some of the ideas presented in this column originated from an interesting recent online conversation on the Online-News Internet discussion list. I recommend you take a look at the list archives if you’d like more insight into this topic.
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SAN JOSE — At a time when the San Jose Police Department is fielding historically anemic police academies, officials are streamlining recruitment of military veterans by accepting their service in lieu of the college credits required of an entry-level police officer.
The decision was announced last week and comes after Chief Eddie Garcia and city leaders talked earlier this month about a staffing crisis in the storied police department, which is fielding just over 900 officers after boasting more than 1,400 eight years ago. It’s also the first time that the rank-and-file numbered fewer than 1,000 since the mid-1980s.
Under the Military-in-Lieu of Education Recruiting Program, prospective police recruits who have been honorably discharged from the U.S. military — the department listed the Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines or Coast Guard in its announcement — can substitute up to four years of service for current college requirements, which stand at 40 semester credits or 60 credits at quarter-based schools.
SJPD is struggling to maintain its staffing numbers and is getting little relief from its academies: The current class numbers just seven and the next crop is expected to be similar, prompting police brass to consider shelving its in-house academy in favor of outsourcing to regional academies. While there have been hundreds of applicants for each class, just a few have made it through stringent backgrounding and aptitude tests. As recently as a decade ago, the department was fielding classes in the 50s and 60s.
Part of that has to do with a trend of higher-caliber applicants passing on San Jose in favor of other local agencies as the city has seen an exodus of police officers, spurred in large part to a political clash over pension-reform measures. A tentative agreement between the city and police union was reached last summer, buoying hopes for a recovery, but it could be delayed by a lawsuit filed by a local taxpayers group that wants to put that settlement before voters in November.
That clashes with the police department, union and city, which want a judge to implement the agreement as soon as possible to stem the bleeding, and led to those bodies banding together in a March 10 news conference to stress unprecedented urgency, noting that SJPD is implementing mandatory overtime to reach baseline patrol needs.
The department’s recruiting website is www.joinsjpdblue.com.
Contact Robert Salonga at 408-920-5002. Follow him at Twitter.com/robertsalonga.
Live NFL draft updates: Who will Raiders, 49ers take in 1st round?
Today’s topics include MicroStrategy 2019 launching with new HyperIntelligence features, and IBM unveiling its Q System One for quantum computing.
MicroStrategy released its 2019 version of its namesake analytics platform on Jan. 7 with HyperIntelligence features companies can use to tap more than 200 enterprise data sources, including web applications, Salesforce and Office 365.
The term “HyperIntelligence” describes MicroStrategy’s system of hyperlinks to customer and other data, allowing sales reps to hover over hyperlinked names or words to see relevant information, key performance indicators and next-best action stored in what the company calls a HyperCard.
Also new with MicroStrategy 2019 is a centralized management portal for launching fully configured and ready-to-use enterprise analytics and mobility projects in less than 30 minutes where administrators have total control of their environments from a single console.
IBM said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Jan. 9 that it has made a significant step forward in its quantum computing initiative with the development of the Q System One.
The system is highly integrated and modular and includes IBM-developed hardware, firmware and electronics that the company says is designed for both scientific and commercial use.
The system comprises components that have been made to work together, including hardware designed for stability and reliability and being auto-calibrated to ensure repeatable and predictable high-quality qubits. It is enclosed in an airtight case made of half-inch borosilicate glass that is nine feet tall and nine feet wide and designed to protect the qubits from external forces.
Company officials also said they plan to open the IBM Q Quantum Computation Center for commercial clients later this year in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
WASHINGTON — President Obama yesterday promised Russia he would put his muscle behind efforts to win congressional approval of the START nuclear-weapon reduction treaty that has been stalled in the US Senate.
“I reiterated my commitment to get the START treaty done during the lame-duck session, and I’ve communicated to Congress that it is a top priority,” Obama said after meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Japan.
The meeting capped Obama’s 10-day trip across Asia and set the stage for his return to Washington, where he’ll face a Republican opposition emboldened by massive midterm-election gains.
Before heading home, Obama managed to slip in a quick side trip to the sacred Great Buddha statue in Japan — noting he was “only 6” when his mother first brought him to see the 44-foot-high bronze statue.
“The first time I was here, I was this big,” he said, putting his left hand up to his waist.
The president, making a surprise visit to reporters traveling with him aboard Air Force One, pledged to return to the basic principles that drove his thinking when he arrived at the White House, including a more bipartisan tone.
He spoke of moving from an “obsessive focus” on policy and making changes to his approach after the humbling losses to the GOP.
The Capitals started the Stanley Cup keg stand tradition. It’s likely to end with them too.
Washington Capitals left wing Alex Ovechkin, of Russia, hoists the Stanley Cup after the Capitals defeated the Golden Knights in Game 5 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup Finals Thursday, June 7, 2018, in Las Vegas.
Four members of the Capitals held Alex Ovechkin, his feet in the air and his face submerged in the Stanley Cup’s bowl as he sucked beer from it. As he was flipped back onto his feet, the crowd that had gathered at the Georgetown waterfront started chanting, “O-vi,” and Ovechkin pumped his fist along. By the end of the day, both forward Tom Wilson and defenseman Brooks Orpik had similarly been held upside down to chug beer from the hulking silver chalice.
Ovechkin and goaltender Braden Holtby even helped host Jimmy Fallon do a Cup stand during an appearance on “The Tonight Show.” But as Pritchard and the two other keepers of the Cup traveled over the past two months from Siberia to Saskatchewan as part of each Washington player’s day with the trophy, Cup stands at each stop became cause for concern. Parents, friends and even a 7-foot referee all took their turns, some holding onto the base of the trophy or even the more delicate bowl as they lowered their head into it.