Zoom into the Brooklyn area and click the “Identify” [...]]]>

The NY Dept of Health released the latest figures for cancer in New York State. It is in the form of an interactive map where you can click on an area and see the amount of cancer cases since 2000 as well as the population.

Zoom into the Brooklyn area and click the “Identify” button to activate the areas. Then you can click on an area to see the numbers.

I immediately looked at the areas around the Gowanus Canal. The old locals say that area has higher rates of sickness. But to my surprise the number of cancer cases around the canal was no greater than other areas in Brooklyn.

What did surprise me was that Red Hook had high rates. For example a typical area in Brooklyn may have 25 cancer occurrences in 1000 people which is 2.5%. If you click around you will see this number is pretty constant.

But the coast of Red Hook has 26 cancer occurrences out of 208 people. That is a whopping 13%. It is strange that only 208 people are listed but that is a pretty barren area. See below for the area I’m talking about.

These numbers are still raw data. So for example a hospital in an area will show the area to be very elevated and you won’t know why.

But the Red Hook info is worth looking into further. It is coincidentally bordering on the Red Hook Park that has been in the news lately for being highly toxic. Interesting….Summer is coming, anyone up nice picnic on the Red Hook Park lawn?

It had high end everything: Poggen Pohl German kitchen, [...]]]>

The other day I passed by a Manhattan condo renovation and saw they were throwing out good stuff: metal studds and flooring. The contractor told me it was a 3,000 sq.ft. condo that right before the current gut reno it had just been gut renovated!

It had high end everything: Poggen Pohl German kitchen, slate counters, wide plank oak floors, and all the other luxuries a top of the line Manhattan condo should have.

The good news is that we will be able to salvage the kitchen since we got it before they ripped it out.

The fancy renovation had gotten it sold for $1.8 million.

What does the buyer do after buying the brand new condo? Gut it of course!

The brand new floor, the pristine bathrooms, the imported kitchen: all ripped out and sent to the dump!

I explained to the contractor that maybe we should try to salvage some of it.

I offered to bring my guys in and deconstruct the space. He saves on labor and dumpsters so was into it.

He had already ripped out 1000 sq.ft. of the gorgeous floor but there was still 2000 left.

So my team set about trying to pull it up. But to our dismay the previous contractor had glued the planks down with heavy duty adhesive. We couldn’t get the planks up without ripping them apart.

This is the tragedy of bad design. They design with absolutely no vision of what will happen to the materials in the future. It is 100% cradle to grave thinking instead of cradle to cradle.

So we watched in sorrow as god only knows how many trees were splintered and thrown into the dumpster. Somebody cut the trees down, they milled the wood, they transported it, installed the floors, and now somebody else is paying to rip it up and dump it.

On top of this, when we tried to pull up the floors we were met with toxic fumes from the glue. Nobody denies the fumes cause cancer. It says so on the product label. But everyone goes into complete denial once the product is smeared over the entire apartment floor. Somehow it miraculously stops being cancerous.

Yet as green builders who often clean up after ignorant builders and we see the dirty lie.

We see how the entire “high end” condo is seeped in a toxic floor of slow cancer. Over the years as the children play and the parents entertain, they will constantly be immersed in a cloud of chemicals that will effect the whole family with respiratory issues, headaches, mood swings, sugar and alcohol cravings and fuzzy head syndrome.

It won’t be bad enough to pinpoint and will simply be accepted as the reality of being human.

And then, many years later when the children are grown up they will have no idea why they have breast cancer, lung cancer or prostate cancer.

The whole thing is stupid. “Civilized society” my ass.

Four of my guys worked for three hours and salvaged maybe 20sq.ft. of scraggly planks. The rest were too splintered to use.

It makes me think of the Roman empire where they regularly ate off lead plates and all their plumbing was [...]]]>

Cancers from Environment ‘Grossly Underestimated’. ”Daily Exposures Cause Far More Cancers Than Once Thought”, a Presidential Panel Says. According to studies almost half of the US population will be diagnosed with Cancer over their lifetime….

It makes me think of the Roman empire where they regularly ate off lead plates and all their plumbing was lead. The word “plumber” comes from the Latin word for lead. On the periodic table lead is listed as “PL”. Lead was an integral part of their life and they were oblivious to the harm it was causing them.

And to think all water pipes in 1900 NY brownstones are lead. We come across more lead mains pipes than non lead pipes. Basically if somebody over the past 100 years didn’t dig out the pipe going from their house to the street then they are most probably drinking water that came through a lead pipe.

It is not uncommon for faucets to have some lead parts in them. Only recently have companies started advertising their products are lead free, but they are an exception.

And yet we all know that large doses of lead retards our children……

And the same goes for formaldehyde. It is well documented that large doses of it cause cancer yet it is still used in vast amounts of household products.

There are hundreds of other chemicals that fall under the same situation.

The stupidity is incredible.

As a green builder we already know this stuff and it is good to see announcements like this because it makes our job easier. We can spend less time explaining to people about potentially cancerous materials and building practices, and we can spend more time doing our job as green builders getting rid of the stuff and replacing it with natural, non-toxic materials and building.

For the full run down of the announcement:

ABC News – May 6, 2010

Here it is all on one page

The full report (240 pp) is available here

The NY Times wrote an article on it

The NY Times article is copied below:
New Alarm Bells About Chemicals and Cancer
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By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: May 5, 2010
The President’s Cancer Panel is the Mount Everest of the medical mainstream, so it is astonishing to learn that it is poised to join ranks with the organic food movement and declare: chemicals threaten our bodies.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof
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The cancer panel is releasing a landmark 200-page report on Thursday, warning that our lackadaisical approach to regulation may have far-reaching consequences for our health.

I’ve read an advance copy of the report, and it’s an extraordinary document. It calls on America to rethink the way we confront cancer, including much more rigorous regulation of chemicals.

Traditionally, we reduce cancer risks through regular doctor visits, self-examinations and screenings such as mammograms. The President’s Cancer Panel suggests other eye-opening steps as well, such as giving preference to organic food, checking radon levels in the home and microwaving food in glass containers rather than plastic.

In particular, the report warns about exposures to chemicals during pregnancy, when risk of damage seems to be greatest. Noting that 300 contaminants have been detected in umbilical cord blood of newborn babies, the study warns that: “to a disturbing extent, babies are born ‘pre-polluted.’ ”

It’s striking that this report emerges not from the fringe but from the mission control of mainstream scientific and medical thinking, the President’s Cancer Panel. Established in 1971, this is a group of three distinguished experts who review America’s cancer program and report directly to the president.

One of the seats is now vacant, but the panel members who joined in this report are Dr. LaSalle Leffall Jr., an oncologist and professor of surgery at Howard University, and Dr. Margaret Kripke, an immunologist at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Both were originally appointed to the panel by former President George W. Bush.

“We wanted to let people know that we’re concerned, and that they should be concerned,” Professor Leffall told me.

The report blames weak laws, lax enforcement and fragmented authority, as well as the existing regulatory presumption that chemicals are safe unless strong evidence emerges to the contrary.

“Only a few hundred of the more than 80,000 chemicals in use in the United States have been tested for safety,” the report says. It adds: “Many known or suspected carcinogens are completely unregulated.”

Industry may howl. The food industry has already been fighting legislation in the Senate backed by Dianne Feinstein of California that would ban bisphenol-A, commonly found in plastics and better known as BPA, from food and beverage containers.

Studies of BPA have raised alarm bells for decades, and the evidence is still complex and open to debate. That’s life: In the real world, regulatory decisions usually must be made with ambiguous and conflicting data. The panel’s point is that we should be prudent in such situations, rather than recklessly approving chemicals of uncertain effect.

The President’s Cancer Panel report will give a boost to Senator Feinstein’s efforts. It may also help the prospects of the Safe Chemicals Act, backed by Senator Frank Lautenberg and several colleagues, to improve the safety of chemicals on the market.

Some 41 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, and they include Democrats and Republicans alike. Protecting ourselves and our children from toxins should be an effort that both parties can get behind — if enough members of Congress are willing to put the public interest ahead of corporate interests.

One reason for concern is that some cancers are becoming more common, particularly in children. We don’t know why that is, but the proliferation of chemicals in water, foods, air and household products is widely suspected as a factor. I’m hoping the President’s Cancer Panel report will shine a stronger spotlight on environmental causes of health problems — not only cancer, but perhaps also diabetes, obesity and autism.

This is not to say that chemicals are evil, and in many cases the evidence against a particular substance is balanced by other studies that are exonerating. To help people manage the uncertainty prudently, the report has a section of recommendations for individuals:

¶Particularly when pregnant and when children are small, choose foods, toys and garden products with fewer endocrine disruptors or other toxins. (Information about products is at www.cosmeticsdatabase.com or www.healthystuff.org.)

¶For those whose jobs may expose them to chemicals, remove shoes when entering the house and wash work clothes separately from the rest of the laundry.

¶Filter drinking water.

¶Store water in glass or stainless steel containers, or in plastics that don’t contain BPA or phthalates (chemicals used to soften plastics). Microwave food in ceramic or glass containers.

¶Give preference to food grown without pesticides, chemical fertilizers and growth hormones. Avoid meats that are cooked well-done.

¶Check radon levels in your home. Radon is a natural source of radiation linked to cancer.