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#2.
Asbestos in New York City Public Schools
Few environmental hazards strike more fear in our terrified little hearts than asbestos. Tell someone they have asbestos in their house and you might as well tell them they have a chainsaw wielding serial killer in their house. Actually, given the exorbitant costs involved with removing asbestos from a house, most people would prefer the serial killer. So when it was revealed in 1993 that an independent contractor hired by the New York City Board of Education to inspect schools for asbestos had failed to perform the inspections properly, nobody was surprised by Mayor David Dinkins decision to not allow kids to return to classes until proper inspections could be performed. Granted, the decision kept over one million kids out of school for two weeks, threw the plans of their working families into chaos, and panicked the shit out of countless parents who thought they had been sending their kids off to get cancer on a daily basis, but it had to be done to keep the kids safe, right?
The risk of death was in the range of .009 deaths per million. And while you may say that any risk is too much, dammit, you should keep in mind that a child is a thousand times more likely to die playing high school football. Also, in other schools, botched asbestos removal jobs had actually left the buildings with higher levels of asbestos in the air than if they'd done nothing. But why let that get in the way of a good panic? In 1993, asbestos in New York schools killed Fewer People Than ...
... were killed in hot air balloon crashes. |
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DDT is no longer useful for preventing malaria; most mosquitos are now resistant to it. Still, the hippies should shut up.
To all the nuclear power proponents: It really isn't nearly as cheap as you make it out to be. It's just cleaner, which in my view, already recommends it enough.
Heh. Haven't heard about DDT since The Machine used it to try and kill Willy in the Free Willy Cartoon. GOOD times...
The China Syndrome and Three Mile Island is what caused all nuclear power plant building to come to a screeching halt. Thereafter we have visions of glowing green whenever we we hear the word "nuclear" much less use it. This is still true dispite the many years of safe use by electrical utilities (and military aboard ships and subs.)
Oh yeah, those of that will bring up Chernobyl should note that it envolved a screwball, obsolete reactor design that we don't use and there are modern pebble bed reactor designs that would be as safe as running a microwave.
And those environmentalist got the DDT banned once it had removed the malaria from their continents. Once they were safe from it, save the f*****g birds!, who cares of the africans and asians that still die in millions because of no DDT?
"No, when you absolutely, positively must kill every m**********r in the room, crocidolite or amosite is what you need."
Substitutes not accepted. That made me laugh a lot.
The Mad Cow Disease scare should be on there. 319 cases out of 6.5 billion, and there isn't conclusive evidence that eating mad cow beef gives you the disease, scary s**t
WTF1920, the amount of radiation from 3 mile island was far less than a chest x-ray, that level of radiation is basically negligible, nuclear power is still the cleanest most effective alternative power source available today
Lol @ MarcAbian's comment.
Don't forget the obviously fake video of the lady pouring out the diet pepsi and a syringe came out.
The less hazardous chemicals around us, the better. I'm not saying we all have to be hemp-wearing, organic-eating hippies, but I can say that I wouldn't send my daughter to a school full of asbestos, even 'harmless' asbestos that is 'more easily' expelled from the lungs. Although, living in NYC, I doubt that any asbestos is as dangerous as the air outside.
Asbestos Over-Hyped? I don't think so. It doesn't have to kill you right away to be dangerous. It can cause lung cancer 20 years AFTER exposure. Same thing with Three Mile Island. And these "statistics" can be manipulated to downplay the dangers of anything.
Yaraday
lots of people die from dihydrogen monoxide every year... ps learn to swim people!!!
Asbestos isn't a big deal for short exposure... but what about the teachers who work for decades in the school... or do you not count them?
Bird flu not dangerous?
Hmmm, very clear evidence on one side, someone called Luftwaffe commenting on Cracked.com on the other...
I just don't know which to believe.
Don't forget to include SARS and the Bird Flu on this list.
How about that dihydrogen monoxide scare? Nasty stuff....
:P
This article reminded of last year when everyone in the United States died of avian flu. It was sad when that happened.
Oh yeah, and when everyone in the US died from eating apples sprayed with Alar. That was really sad too.
By the way, everyone in the US is going to die from all the plastic we use. We will all be dead by the end of next week. It will be sad.
If a spider doesnt wanna get killed, it shouldnt make a web in my house...
So if you don`t want weird diseases like malaria - dont live in a jungle.
Stop f*****g with nature. DDT is not a solution for a reason, you literally can't eliminate a species just because it inconvienences you, go read war of the worlds and origin of species, get some perspective
Some of you should be taking notes
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Putting DDT on this list is absurd. It wasn't so much banned for its carcinogenic effects as much as for its absolutely devastating ecological impact. And like it or not, the state of the environment DOES affect the state of humanity eventually.
But don't worry, the United States still to this day manufactures and sells DDT to third-world countries (you know, the ones that don't care about human rights, much less human responsibility to the environment).