ENVIRONMENTAL LEGAL BLOGS

"This is no longer some crazy, California, Left Coast way of thinking"...maybe not, but the thinking still strains logic

     As I said in my previous post. "here we go...."  So, are the police, sheriffs and highway patrol  eventually going to be diverted from such minor things as, say, responding to accidents, murders and rapes in order to bring smokers to justice? Given the already-severe lack of affordable housing in California, how much strain on affordability will separate ventilation systems create?  From today's KTVU (TV station in the Bay Area) website:

"This [i.e., Sacramento's decision to regulate second-hand smoke] is no longer some crazy, California, Left Coast way of thinking," said Cynthia Hallett, executive director of Berkeley-based Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights. She cited smoking bans that have been enacted or are being considered across the nation and in other countries.

The association unsuccessfully pushed legislation in 2003 that would have banned smoking in motor vehicles containing young children, and could try for a similar law next year, Knepprath said.

The association may also push for nonsmoking floors or wings in apartment buildings, much as hotels offer smoke-free areas, Knepprath said.

***

"People live in apartments all across California who are exposed to secondhand smoke on a daily basis," Knepprath said. "It drifts from a common area or another apartment."

Hallett said that could one day force regulations requiring separate ventilation systems for smoking and nonsmoking apartments.

CALIFORNIA DESIGNATES SECOND-HAND SMOKE AS A "TOXIC AIR CONTAMINANT"

     The California Air Resources Board made the following press release yesterday:

          California Identifies Second-Hand Smoke as a "Toxic Air Contaminant"

SACRAMENTO: Today the California Air Resources Board (ARB) identified environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), or second-hand smoke, as a Toxic Air Contaminant (TAC). ETS is now formally identified as an airborne toxic substance that may cause and/or contribute to death or serious illness. ARB's action to list ETS as a TAC was based on a comprehensive report on exposure and health effects of ETS.

"This new report reaffirms many of the adverse health effects associated with ETS, especially in children who live in homes where smoking occurs," said ARB Chairman, Dr. Robert Sawyer. "It also raises new concerns about its effects on women. All this strongly supported the need for the Air Board to identify ETS as a serious health threat."

***

Now that ETS is identified as a toxic air contaminant, the ARB must evaluate the need for action to reduce exposures. In this risk management step, ARB conducts an analysis that includes a review of measures already in place, available options and the costs for reducing the health risks from ETS exposure. The analysis is conducted using an open public process.

     So, here we go:  with a continuing budget deficit, complaints about already-underfunded programs and already high tax rates, the State of California is about to embark on yet a new (undoubtedly expensive) regulatory program.

     This is not to gainsay that second-hand smoke may well be the health hazard that the Air Resources Board claims such smoke to be-- however, it would seem that the marketplace takes care of the issue far more effectively (and less expensively) than government.  If people don't want to be around second-hand smoke, don't patronize the places that allow smoking!  What a concept.

     It is true that children living in the homes of parents who smoke don't have the choice as to whether or not to be around the smoke.  However, it is also true that children don't have a lot of choices which are instead made for them by their parents.  For example, parents choose (or, arguably, should choose) what television programs their minor children are allowed to watch.

     Just as it is highly unlikely that the government is going to attempt to send "television police" into private homes to ensure kids' minds are not being polluted by the shows they watch, it is equally unlikely that the Air Resources Board is going to propose measures authorizing the "smoking police" to invade private homes to check on kids' physical pollution from smoking.  That being the case, where there is a legitimate social regulatory interest (i.e., the public square), I say again-the market will take care of the problem much better than will the bureaucrats in Sacramento.

MOTHER NATURE'S OWN REMEDIATION

     From a recent CBS CHANNEL 2/KCAL 9 report:

Heavy rains in Southern California have washed away a chemical that had contaminated a proposed luxury-home development in the San Fernando Valley.

Just days before an official cleanup project was to begin, state toxic officials have found that all the perchlorate is gone.

Last fall, inspectors found the chemical that is used in rocket fuel was in Dayton Canyon Creek at a concentration about 166 times higher than the state allows.

After the New Year's storms drenched the site with water, they found none.

     Reminds one of the old saying, "the solution to pollution is dilution".

STUDY QUESTIONS TOXIC-MOLD SYNDROME

     I must have missed this, but last October an Oregon Health Sciences University study concluded that "toxic-mild syndrome" may --despite the fact that some Courts and juries have awarded substantial sums to plaintiffs-- not exist.  In an October 15, 2005 news report, Dr. Will Boggs reports for Reuters:

Mold and dampness can cause coughing and wheezing, but there is little evidence to support the existence of the so-called toxic mold syndrome, according to a report by researchers at the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland.

Toxic mold syndrome -- illnesses caused specifically by exposure to mold -- continues to cause public concern despite a lack of evidence that supports its existence, researchers explain in the September issue of the Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. Several critical reviews have failed to find scientific support for toxic effects from breathing in mold spores as a viable mechanism of human disease, they add.

     Of course, the Oregon study actually settles nothing and rather just ensures that the defense bar will have one more arrow in their quiver, making defendants bolder and less likely to settle toxic-mold litigation.  A critical mass of appellate law is going to be necessary before we know whether or not toxic-mold suits are a fad or a long-term feature of the legal landscape.

Snubbing Kyoto, US, Japan, China, India, Australia and South Korea Launch Own Clean-Air Pact

     The six nations have decided jointly to fund efforts "to promote clean energy technologies as an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change."  This is according to January 12, 2006 Post on EurActiv.com.  The joint funding effort is known as the "Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development".

     According to the EurActiv article, the six nations involved in this effort are the source of 1/2 of the greenhouse-gas emissions focused on as a source of "global warming".  The effort is a conscious snub at the Kyoto Protocol, which set mandatory emissions-reduction targets; this six-nation effort does no such thing.

     So, with Kyoto's approach to clean air leaving out 1/2 of the greenhouse-gas emissions in the world, what real future can that approach have?  Not much, especially since (as previously discussed on this Blog) even key Kyoto signatories are not taking the "mandatory" greenhouse-gas reduction targets seriously.

    

 

"Scientists find plants cause global warming" (no, this is not a parody)

     This Blog has previously posted the results of a recent study concluding that an emphasis on planting trees to reduce CO2 emissions may be producing undesirable side effects (because trees suck up a lot of water).  See the right-hand side of this Blog, under GLOBAL WARMING, Post of 12/23/05: "MORE TREES, BETTER ENVIRONMENT?  ANOTHER MYTH SHATTERED").

     Now comes word of a new study further emphasizing our shaky understanding of the Earth's climate.  An article with the above-referenced headline appearing today on the New Zealand-based website www.stuff.co.nz (also appearing under a different headline at Reuters, with a date of yesterday) reports:

LONDON: German scientists have discovered a new source of methane, a greenhouse gas that is second only to carbon dioxide in its impact on climate change.

The culprits are plants.

They produce about 10 to 30 per cent of the annual methane found in the atmosphere, according to researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany.

The scientists measured the amount of methane released by plants in controlled experiments. They found it increases with rising temperatures and exposure to sunlight.

"Significant methane emissions from both intact plants and detached leaves were observed ... in the laboratory and in the field," Dr Frank Keppler and his team said in a report in the journal Nature.

     This new study is yet another illustration that we need to tread cautiously in attempting to combat climate change, because we do not really understand Earth's climate mechanisms.