First, let’s go back a month, this from the Will Steger Foundation:
On Tuesday [August 2nd 2011], State Senator Torres Ray said, “I’m delighted to participate in the air quality awareness event organized by the Sierra Club in Minneapolis. Air Pollution caused by humans is an increasing danger for people and the environment. I’m very concerned about the threat to public health posed by cities’ air pollution. Many children and seniors in our City are being diagnosed with asthma disorders and need to take strong measures to address it.”
…
Residents are also calling upon the Obama administration to protect children’s health by issuing strong protections from air pollution like smog. The EPA was scheduled to release its final rule on smog on July 29 but announced last week that it would delay finalizing the rule. The new ozone standard would protect some of America’s most vulnerable populations, including children and the elderly, from respiratory illnesses like asthma. “EPA’s Science Advisory Board and health professionals have advocated a stricter standard for most of the 40 years that we’ve been monitoring ozone in the air we breathe,” said Dr. Simcik, a faculty member at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. “We need an educated public to support these experts and politicians in protecting both our health and our economy.” Dr. Simcik and other concerned citizens of Minneapolis urged the Obama administration to stand up for public health and to issue long overdue clean air protections that protect public health.
###
So the Sierra Club wants to reduce Ozone. But now in the story below the FDA wants to protect it by banning OTC inhalers. Wait…What?
(Yes I know, tropospheric -vs- stratospheric ozone, different animals. But the inhaler imagery with kids has become an icon for eco-crusades, so that’s why I’m pointing it out)
From MSNBC, madness lunacy %$!!@*&^^!! over ozone and an inconsequential amount of CFC’s:
Asthma patients who rely on over-the-counter inhalers will need to switch to prescription-only alternatives as part of the federal government’s latest attempt to protect the Earth’s atmosphere.
The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday patients who use the epinephrine inhalers to treat mild asthma will need to switch by Dec. 31 to other types that do not contain chlorofluorocarbons, an aerosol substance once found in a variety of spray products.
The action is part of an agreement signed by the U.S. and other nations to stop using substances that deplete the ozone layer, a region in the atmosphere that helps block harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun.
But the switch to a greener inhaler will cost consumers more. Epinephrine inhalers are available via online retailers for around $20, whereas the alternatives, which contain the drug albuterol, range from $30 to $60.
But I wonder, will the American Lung Association get all flustered and launch an ad campaign like they did last November over California’s Proposition 23?
I doubt it, because as we all know, kids with inhalers are needed to combat big oil and CO2.
The eco-world has gone beserkers with this one, even CBS News is asking: Why? Me too especially since global ozone is predicted to recover:
The graph above is from a 2004 EPA report which says:
Assuming only halocarbons from human activities are affecting ozone and global compliance with the Montreal Protocol, the ozone layer is expected to recover by the middle of the 21st century.
And this is well before the FDA decided they had to ban inhalers. Something smells about this.
What will really happen is that this will turn regular people and children into scofflaws, and they’ll buy over the counter inhalers in other countries like Mexico and have them shipped here. It will be another giant sucking sound.
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The frantic rush of the progressive bureau-weenies toward regulation nation is really just beginning, because they have become dimly aware they only have 5 more quarters in control of the Executive branch and the Senate. The 113th congress will have a lot of heavy lifting to do in the area of rolling back regulatory overreach.
d(^_^)b
http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
“Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive”
The Chief Watermelon loves her power and the American public needs to feel it. She is doing it for your own good. Her Momma did it to her.
So this is what its come to. And its not done on its journey. But here it is, risking the lives of children. If there was ever any proof necessary that these people are misanthropists, does one need to look any further?
Ozone? We only think its worth considering because when we finally had a way to measure it, we discovered a hole we didn’t think was suppose to be there. We don’t know that it wasn’t suppose to be like that all along! And, there’s mounting evidence the hole serves a useful purpose!
This is insane, but blame big pharma and not Obama. This is what lobbying dollars buy you, a nice gov controlled monopoly. This works in both Repub and Dem administrations. Remember Bushes unfunded medicare part D where the government had to pay whatever the pharmas asked for drugs and could not negotiate. Ten of billions in debt, right there.
…ozone layer, a region in the atmosphere that helps block harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun.
—————————————————————————————————————————
In accordance with another theory ozone layer itself is made by Solar radiation.
The patent holder on the non-CFC inhalers had a better lobbying campaign.
So… the Greens and the climate/ozone elites don’t care if children with asthma die as long as a harmless, miniscule amount of CFC vapor is prevented from being potentially released into the atmosphere from the inhalers…
Its not about CFCs. It never was. Its about control.
Should any agency have that much power?
I’m very concerned about the threat to public health posed by cities’ air pollution. Many children and seniors in our City are being diagnosed with asthma disorders and need to take strong measures to address it.”
The incidence of asthma is strongly correlated with air cleanliness. The cleaner the air the higher the incidence of asthma.
It could be like cleanliness and allergies. Not being exposed (to air pollutants) at a certain stage of development makes you susceptible later in life.
The AGW hysteria is probably contributing by the constant references to ‘carbon pollution’ makes people think CO2 is a real pollutant.
Brad Kurtz says:
September 23, 2011 at 7:28 pm
This is insane, but blame big pharma and not Obama.
The Montreal Protocol was signed under Clinton (Carol Browner)
You know, this Carol Browner.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/12/obama-climate-czar-has-socialist-ties/?page=all
I am not a climate scientist, only an interested observer. During the last few years I have become totally disgusted with the scare tactics exercised by our governments, the sensationalist media, and the revenue suckers who feed the propoganda machine. I’m beginning to think common sense no longer exists.
Brad,
Tough to see the connection to the topic
What you fail to mention is that the Dems wanted a much more expensive program for Medicare Part B and are still smarting because they could not push the government run more inefficient program through.
They lost, the taxpayers won with a lower cost competitive system which has not exceeded cost estimates.
Blame big Pharma? I guess blaming Bush is not credible anymore?
I am an asthmatic. When they changed the legal inhalers it was immediately obvious that the medicine delivery was poor and the effectiveness of the meds was undercut significantly. Any lawyers out there want to study this and start suing? I would join a class action in a New York Minute. This is the dumbest thing ever done by the EPA and I suspect it was fully supported by the drug manufacturers because all the generic patents went away in a puff and they immediately made money hand over fist. This was the issue that started my long and now fervent fight against insane environmental activism. I will fight the lunatics with literally my dying breath thanks to malevolent government agencies like the EPA.
More proof that for environmentalists the environment matters more than people. Some asthmatics will pay the ultimate price for this (and I’m not talking about increased drug costs). I agree with Anthony: “%$!!@*&^^!!”
The Ozone Layer is driven by solar activity. This has been known for 20 years. The US government is responding to junk science used by drug companies to sell prescription drugs.
Take for instance the idea the a low salt diet is good. Well, we know that in morbidly obese people, reducing salt lowers blood volume and thus lowers blood pressure, increasing life spans. However, there is ZERO science that reduced salt diets are good for healthy people.
Yet the US government continues to promote low salt diets for healthy people. We might as well argue that since digitalis is good for people with heart conditions, it will be good for everyone else as well.
What we do know is that US cadavers in WWII showed almost no evidence of heart disease, and yet the US cadavers in the Korean war showed advanced heart disease, even in 18 year old combatants. So the question should been what happened between 1940 and 1950 that caused US heart disease to spike? It wasn’t salt that is for sure.
The number 1 one suspect? Artificial food introduced during WWII. Food that didn’t need to be canned, that could sit unrefrigerated forever and never rot. Maybe, just maybe the human body was never designed to eat such a product. However, there have been many fortunes made off artificial food, so don’t expect any serious investigations. The problem is the public. They are eating too much salt. Or using too many inhalers.
You missed the much more amusing AP version of the story:
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9PTK9DO0.htm
which describes CFC’s as “carbon gas that depletes the Earth’s atmosphere.”
Yep, that evil carbon again ;).
The problem with this article is that it is wrong for the right reasons: in my medical opinion (real doctor, family medicine, board certified) the epinephrine inhaler is dangerous and should be withdrawn or made Rx. 5000 mild to moderate asthmatics die every year in the US because of inadequate primary care interventions. Epinephrine sensitises the heart muscle and increases contractility, heart rate and the potential for fatal arrhythmias. Having it available otc enables asthmatics to fly “under the radar” and not have a comprehensive medical plan to deal with their disease: inevitably increases ER visits and makes delivery of medical services more expensive to the taxpayer or person with insurance as these visits have to be paid for somewhere. The Rx drug of choice is Albuterol, a version of which is available at WalMart for around $10. Admittedly inhaled steroids are more expensive, but if the lunatics who run the asylum hadn’t insisted on the HFA propellants some inhaled steroids would be generic by now. The amount of CFCs produced by all the inhalers in the world wouldn’t amount to the margin of error in measurement when dispersed into the atmosphere. Big business goes along with the farce because it makes money, like the Flexfuel fiasco or the compact fluorecent lights.
Ozone and asthma are INVERSELY related. I showed it here, using EPA’s own damn data:
http://polistrasmill.blogspot.com/2011/09/one-minute-to-disprove.html
Another Smoldering Stogie of Misinformation from the Lung Association
If you watch Fox News—and really, who doesn’t watch Fox News?—you’ve probably seen the ads the American Lung Association is running displaying a red baby carriage with a coughing infant making its way to the U.S. capitol, urging us to urge Congress not to “weaken” the Clean Air Act. “More air pollution means more childhood asthma,” the narrator says. (There isn’t a direct link to the ad, but you can find it on the linked site of their PR agency, the Plowshare Group, and if that name doesn’t give it all way. . .)
“Congress can’t ignore the facts,” the narrator says, but apparently the ALA can. Is there any place in the U.S. that is experiencing “more” air pollution? If there is, I am not aware of it, nor am I aware of any EPA data that supports that claim. Air pollution continues to fall everywhere in the U.S., and is going to continue to decline. The ALA ad is fundamentally dishonest in that Congress is not proposing to “weaken” the Clean Air Act; it is merely proposing to stop its further extension that will do little or nothing to accelerate the continuing decline in air pollution levels. (The EPA’s own computer models, for example, predict about a 60 percent decline in emissions from cars and trucks over the next 20 years simply from fleet turnover.) In fact, the recent ozone rules that Obama dumped would have had no effect, for example, on the rate at which air pollution is falling in Los Angeles. (Emissions from cars and trucks have been falling about 8 percent a year for over a decade, with more to come.) All it would have done is put about 85 percent of the nation in “nonattainment” areas, tripping requirements to expand their regulatory bureaucracies.
More to the point is that the health effects claims of the ALA and other greenies are probably wrong, or at least out of date. Yes, the incidence of asthma has been steadily increasing, though most of the research into why this is occurring suggest the cause is some kind of autoimmune anomaly, and not air pollution levels. While air pollution, especially particulates, may trigger asthma in people who already have it, it almost certainly does not cause someone to contract the ailment. (While our EPA is slavish to the alarmist line, check out Australia’s Office of Health, which says straightforwardly: “There is no evidence that air pollution causes asthma.”) In fact, guess which nations have some of the lowest asthma rates according to the 1998 International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC): China, India, Mexico, and Indonesia—not exactly known as low air pollution nations, to put it lightly. Oddly, the nations with cleaner air have higher asthma rates.
Mr. Hayward’s article appears here:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/09/another-smoldering-stogie-of-misinformation-from-the-lung-association.php
AGW as a ground for genocide
Armed Troops Burn Down Homes, Kill Children To Evict Ugandans In Name Of Global Warming
http://www.prisonplanet.com/armed-troops-burn-down-homes-kill-children-to-evict-ugandans-in-name-of-global-warming.html
This is unconscionable. Prescription inhalers have already been reformulated to allegedly protect the ozone layer. Problem is, they are no longer very effective because the propellants approved by the EPA don’t get the medication into the lungs.
People who cannot afford the prescription inhalers are being even more cruelly endangered by this insane administration. At what point do living creatures (many animals rely on asthma inhalers, too) take precedence over an imaginary being, the physical Earth Mother? Is there no end in sight to this superstitious nonsense? As a former pagan, now agnostic, I can certainly empathize with Earth Mother worshipers, but not at the expense of living physical entities and their desperate need to breathe. The cruelty, stupidity, and insensitivity of these supposedly enlightened beings are astounding. I’m also appalled at their lateness to the party: Everything they believe in was already metaphysically passé by 1980.
“We need an educated public to support these experts and politicians in protecting both our health and our economy.”
– Dr. Simcik
– – – – – – – – –
Uh, we are saying “No!” … what part are you not connecting with? Remember last November, and a couple of elections (NY Ninth for one) just within the last two weeks?
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“Air Pollution caused by humans is an increasing danger for people and the environment.” As usual, the environmentalists are lying. Real pollutants, such as carbon monoxide, ground-level ozone, lead, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter, and sulfur dioxide have all been trending down for years: http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/index.html
That’s funny; I need the EPA here, tonight, on my street.
Somebody is burning something again and it doesn’t smell like simple firewood! Once again, the EPA is straining for the gnats and swallowing ‘the camels’ … GET the danged economy going again and ppl won’t be burning crap (incl plastics and printed cardboard boxes) JUST to cook a meal or get warm! How would THAT do for improving “air quality”?
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