Yesterday, a fellow Know More Media blog author, Laura Spencer wrote about "Popcorn Lung" after reading an article in USA Today. She expressed concern over chemicals in all of our food but especially in popcorn after these recent findings. This added to my thinking about the recent safety issues of food and toys that seem to now be a daily event; are we doing enough or are we highlighting very rare instances.
It's sort of like the idea that you are safer in an airplane than on the road. While your chances of being killed or hurt are less, based on accidents per mile traveled not per trip, you are actually less safe flying when it is calculated on a per trip basis. It all depends on how you ask the question. When you consider how many trips you take in a car as opposed to the number of trips on a plane the chance of having a car accident in any given year is much more likely - you are doing this more often. The other issue is the magnitude of the damage when something goes wrong. A car crash can be fatal but is less likely to be when compared to all accidents versus the percentage of fatalities from plane crashes versus all plane accidents.
There are some great websites that carry the debate much further - on Google answers someone raised the question, but the answers are all over the place, depending on who you ask. If you want to be scared and never fly again, try this one by a former FAA inspector. If you want to delve deeper into the statistic try this mathematical site. The latter site includes the caveat that perhaps if measured per trip flying is less safe. Also it seems that bus or public train is actually the most safe method on a per year number of fatalities basis. Again, that does not take into account the number of riders or uses per year.
BTW - the very first airplane accident fatality is listed, occurred on September 17, 1908.
So, is popcorn dangerous relative to say walking along a busy street: Not really. Yet we are now going to hear demands for safer popcorn. Why don't we have more demands for safer sidewalks? It is more newsworthy to begin with. It appeals to our sense of violation. We already know that a sidewalk has dangers; we thought popcorn was safe.
What about all of the recalls (continued on the next page...)
- Mattel announced a further recall of about 800,000 toys.
- ConAgra popcorn as mentioned above linked to a death in Colorado
- Mexican Candy as mentioned on this blog previously
- Spinach - August 27, 2007
What links all of these is that life is endangered. When we think that there is a chance that someone, perhaps someone we know, could die we tend to get upset about it. We want action, legislation, and enforcement. We demand that companies, individuals, and the government be held accountable for any violations of the public trust. We want monitors that check everything to make certain we are not in danger.
Isn't this all a bit hypocritical, not to mention hypercritical? After all there are a lot of things we do every day that put ourselves and others in danger. We often put others in greater danger than any bag of popcorn or chip of lead paint ever will. Do you know how much lead paint you would have to eat to cause damage? This reminds me of the Penn and Teller dihydrogen monoxide routine - that is, water can be fatal if you drink too much. This PSA (public service announcement) video is also good.
From a CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission) page addressing the issue of lead paint on playground equipment:
Question: How much lead paint from playground equipment would a child have to ingest to get lead poisoning?
Response: The amount of lead paint from playground equipment a child would have to ingest to get lead poisoning depends in part on the amount of lead in the paint on equipment at that particular site and how much of the lead can be absorbed into the body. For playground equipment with 1.47 percent lead in the paint, CPSC staff has determined that daily ingestion over about 15-30 days of as little as one tenth (0.1) of a square inch of this paint (the size of the head of a pencil eraser) could result in blood lead levels at or above the 10 microgram per deciliter (ug/dl) amount the Federal government considers a health concern for young children. Such sustained blood lead levels have been linked with behavior and learning problems, damage to the brain and nervous system, slowed growth, and hearing problems.
That is a lot of paint when you think about it. This is not to say that a child could not accomplish this task but it would take some number of toys or playground equipment paint eaten to get to that level.
How could this be prevented in total? Ban the use of lead in paint everywhere. Remove all playground equipment, toys, and product wrappers that have excessive lead in them. Setup testing procedures and regulatory oversight that would immediately report violations. Require compliance on penalty of financial and physical harm. Install automated testing so that it does not require a person to perform the test and have the test equipment automatically report all violations.
What if the same automated reporting system was put in your car? If you exceed the speed limit, it reported you, every time. Since speed is the number one cause of accidents and fatalities, doesn't it make sense? (more on this tomorrow)
I'm certain the correct answer to the travel safety issue is out there. Unfortunately there are so many pages returned by a standard Google search that it is hard to find the right one. This gets to the issue of accuracy not just keyword, page, and link rating in any search engine return.
Roger, first let me say that I love your blog. You have a reasoned, common sense approach to every topic you broach.
That said, I have to take issue with your comments about the dangers of lead exposure. You said:
Do you know how much lead paint you would have to eat to cause damage?
The problem with lead is that it is present in a wide array of children's products -- toys, furniture, jewelry, lunchboxes... I'm sure you know about 4-year old Jarnell Brown of Minnesota who died from lead poisoning after swallowing a Reebok charm. When the charm was removed from his body it was found to be 95% lead. This is the extreme, the very worst case scenario. But at the opposite end of the spectrum there is the insidious problem of exposure to low levels of lead from many products over a long period of time, the consequences of which have not been fully documented yet.
You quoted the CPSC, but sadly that is a questionable source where lead safety is concerned. ConsumerAffairs.com reported that the CPSC ignored tests of vinyl lunchboxes showing high levels of lead in favor of tests that did not. The review clearly favored industry over consumer safety.
Further, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says that “no safe blood level in children has been determined.” The 10 microgram figure is highly arbitrary, and scientists suspect that irreversible damage can occur with a much lower blood level. Jeremy Knowles, a biochemistry professor at Harvard, says, “I’m not normally a rabble rouser, but I’m disturbed by the potential enormity of this problem. We’re talking about millions of toys, and the possibility of an entire generation of children being exposed to gratuitous constraints on their neurological development.”
While it's obvious that we can't eliminate all risks in life, shouldn't we do away with the ones we can? Lead is not required to make baby bibs or lunchboxes or jewelry. If the use of lead is banned entirely, those products will still exist. Why expose ourselves to completely unnecessary risk? Air travel will never be 100% safe, but many people will say it is a calculated risk that they choose to take. The risk of lead poisoning is unnecessary and it is not one that parents or children are choosing to take.
Posted by: Maureen Keene | September 7, 2007 11:10 PM | Permalink to Comment