21,000 Home Pools Water Slides Are Being Recalled After Death of a Young Colorado Mother

A 29-year-old Colorado mother died in Andover, Mass. after fracturing her neck going down a Banzai in-ground pool water slide which had been placed over the concrete edge of a pool. The woman hit her head at the bottom of the slide because it had partially deflated.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., of Bentonville, Ark. and Toys R Us Inc., of Wayne, NJ, in cooperation with The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), are announcing a recall of about 21,000 inflatable Banzai in-ground pool water  slides.
Read more.

Toxic Substances from Everyday Life Are Slipping Through Treatment Plants

A federal study released May 8, 2012 found more than 100 toxic substances from everyday life are making their way through wastewater treatment plants into the Columbia River.

Jennifer Morace, the U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist who was lead investigator on the study, said: “This links it back to what we do in our everyday lives, what goes down the drain and to the wastewater treatment plant, and the fact they were not designed to remove the new or emerging contaminants.”

A total of 112 toxic materials were found, 53 percent of those that were tested for, including flame retardants, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, personal care products, mercury and cleaning products.

Full Details from the Seattle Times.

 Vermont Ponders Fracking Ban

Vermont is about to become the first U.S. state to ban hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for natural gas.

Fracking extracts natural gas by injecting millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals under high pressure into shale rock formations to fracture the rock and release the gas. Giant holding ponds or tanks are needed to store the chemically contaminated waste water that comes back up the hole after wells have been fractured.

The Vermont House of Representatives voted 103-36 Friday to approve a conference committee report calling for the ban. The report reconciles differences with a bill banning the practice passed by the state Senate last week.

The measure now goes to the desk of Governor Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, who is expected to sign it into law.

“We don’t want to be shooting chemicals into our groundwater in pursuit of gas that does not exist,” Governor Shumlin said Friday after the House vote.

Read the Full Story on the Environmental News Service Website.

A Few Things You Should Know about Chlorine

by Pure Water Annie

Chlorine has saved some lives and it has taken some.

Adapted from articles originally published in the Pure Water Occasional for January, 2012.  

Chlorine is a big part of our lives. It has hundreds of uses in addition to water treatment, but water is where most of us encounter it most frequently and most intimately.

Chlorine (or its near relative chloramine, which we’ll discuss more fully later) is added to most public and many private water supplies to eliminate problems with bacteria, viruses, fungi, and algae. It is also used as an oxidant to aid in the treatment of such well problems as iron, manganese, and hydrogen sulfide.

Chlorine is a powerful germicide. It kills or reduces most disease-causing water contaminants to non-detectable levels. It also eliminates algae and mold that are problems for municipal water systems.

Chlorine, along with improved sanitation, is responsible for the virtual elimination in the US of such serious waterborne diseases as cholera, dysentery and typhoid. Waterborne ailments have not been erased by chlorination by any means, but the problem is minute compared to what it was before chlorination was used.

Lack of clean drinking water and adequate sewage systems is the main health problem in most of the under-developed world.

The effectiveness of chlorine as a disinfectant can depend on a variety of water variables. These include contact time (how long the chlorine remains in the water to do its work), the concentration of chlorine, and the pH, temperature, and turbidity level of the water.

Chlorine remains the disinfectant of choice for municipal suppliers largely because of its price. As compared with other forms of disinfection, such as ultraviolet, ozone, and hydrogen peroxide, it is cost effective. It is also the disinfectant of choice because of its residual effect: Chlorine (and chloramine to an even greater degree) stays in the water and continues to protect against micro-organisms, while UV and Ozone kill on contact but offer little if any “residual” protection. UV works great on wells, and it aids in the treatment program of many cities, but is not often used as the principal disinfectant.

Another problem with chlorine is that when it combines with organic substances in water it creates a group of spin-off chemicals called, variously, THMs (trihalomethanes) or DBPs (disinfection by-products). The full scope of the problems with DBPs is not known, but of the hundreds of chemicals that have been identified, some are known cancer causers and are regulated by the EPA.

Because of the DPB issue (and other issues, like the relatively shorter life-span of chlorine) water suppliers are in greater numbers switching to chloramines, a mixture of chlorine and ammonia, as the disinfectant for public water supplies.

The risks of cancer from contacting and ingesting chlorinated water have been downplayed by public health officials because the alternative of non-treatment is so much more dangerous. The World Health Organization has said that “the risk of death from pathogens is at least 100 to1,000 times greater than the risk of cancer from disinfection by-products (DBPs), and the risk of illness from pathogens is at least 10,000 to one million times greater than the risk of cancer from DBPs.”

The best and most practical method for removing chlorine (and chloramine) from tap water entering the home is carbon filtration. There are many subtleties involved in carbon filtration. Variables like pH, water temperature, flow rate, “mesh” size, arrangement of the carbon, and others can greatly affect carbon’s effectiveness, but the truth is that almost any carbon filter, including the cheap, end-of-faucet units, will do a decent job of chlorine (but not chloramine) reduction from drinking water. (Shower filters, which must handle a much larger volume of water at a higher flow rate, most often are made with KDF rather than carbon.)

Reduction of chloramine is a much more complex process, but the urban legend that says that standard carbon water filters won’t remove chloramine is false. Chloramines can be reduced by carbon, but more residence time is needed—a lot more. Some carbons are more effective with chloramines than others, and the very best, by far, is specially processed “catalytic” carbon.

A Sensible Home Treatment Strategy for Chlorine and Chloramines

The disinfectants in city water are there for a reason. They protect against pathogens. They should be in the water until it reaches your home, but at that point they become a problem rather than an asset. The problems are bad taste, chemical toxicity (which affects some more than others), and serious health issues involving both the disinfectant and its by products.

If your goal is simply to produce better tasting water by removing the taste of chlorine, a simple end-of-faucet filter will do.

If you want improved taste plus protection from chemicals (including DBPs), a serious carbon block filter is needed. The more carbon the better, and the higher the filter quality the better. DBPs are not effectively reduced by small end-of-faucet filters. Treating them requires more contact time and a larger and better carbon-based filtration system.. Multi-stage carbon filters are excellent. Virtually all undersink reverse osmosis units remove chlorine, chloramine, and DBPs easily.

For whole house treatment, a small carbon filter will remove chlorine, but a much larger filter, or a fairly large filter that uses catalytic carbon, is needed for chloramine.

	Numerical Wizard B. Bea Sharper ferrets out the watery facts that Harper’s misses

Rank of contaminated drinking water on the World Bank’s 1992 list of preventable environmental hazards — 1

Number of people in the underdeveloped world that lack clean drinking water — 1 billion.

Number of people in the underdeveloped world that lack adequate sewage systems — almost 2 billion.

Parts per million chlorine of common household bleach – 52,500.

Year in which US water utilities began treating water with chlorine — 1908.

Percentage of US water utilities that now use chlorine or its derivatives to disinfect drinking water – 98%.

Year when chloramine was first used to treat water – 1916.

Percentage of US municipalities that now use chloramine as a disinfectant by EPA count – 30%.

Why Hospitals Overcharge the Uninsured

By Kari Lydersen
July 23, 2003

Editor’s Note:  Did you ever suspect that after you fork over $1,000 for your “20% co-pay” share of the hospital tab, the insurance company doesn’t really have to come up with $4,000 to pay the remainder?  Well, you were right.  This piece reveals one of the many dirty little secrets of the hospital and insurance industries. Another little secret that most people don’t ever think through is that with the intricate web of inter-ownership, the hospitals,  the pharmaceuticals interests and the insurance companies are owned largely by the same bunch of rich guys.  If you’ll think through this,  you’ll understand that when the insurance company weeps bitter tears about the high medical and drug costs it must bear, it isn’t telling you that it pays for these items at a fraction of the stated price, nor is it telling you that “paying” really means taking money from one pocket and putting it into the other. –Hardly Waite, Pure Water Gazette.

Rose Shaffer is a homecare nurse and grandmother of seven who lives on Chicago’s south side. Though she spends all day caring for the health of others, her job doesn’t provide her with health insurance.

Advocate is one of the largest chains of hospitals in Illinois, with 10 hospitals in the Cook County area and profits of $108 million in 2001.

But Shaffer — and millions like her around the country — are actually subsidizing Advocate and other major hospitals, according to a report recently released by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). That’s because the approximately 41.2 million Americans who don’t have health insurance today not only have to pay astronomically high healthcare bills out of their own pockets, but they actually pay around 50 to 70 percent more than insurance companies do for health coverage.

When an insurance carrier foots a hospital bill, the company “negotiates” a price with the hospital that is usually about half the original billing price. Yet when an individual without insurance is forced to pay for healthcare, they don’t have this bargaining power. So they end up paying the “full” rates, making up the slack for the deals the insurance companies have gotten (as well as the uninsured individuals who never pay their bills).

“If you look at it from the insurance company’s perspective, they are a big group who can make a deal with the hospital,” said Marianne McMullen, communications director of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Hospital Accountability Project, a relatively new initiative aimed at linking workers’ and patients’ rights. “But from the perspective of the uninsured, it’s really gross. The hospitals are making their biggest profit off them.”

The full rates uninsured people end up paying are usually vastly inflated from the actual cost of providing service. For the past 20 years healthcare bills have risen at twice the inflation rate. In 1993 the U.S. General Accounting Office reported that 99 percent of hospital bills have overcharges, which can include “phantom charges” for services that weren’t actually given, markups, duplicate billings and charges for unnecessarily long hospital stays or unneeded services.

Hospital administrators argue that many uninsured individuals never pay their bills, so hospitals have to keep costs high to avoid losing money. But that doesn’t make it any easier for those who do pay. And most hospitals don’t just write off the unpaid bills. It is common practice for hospitals to sue patients for tens of thousands of dollars, money they often just don’t have. After Shaffer had a major heart attack in October 2000, she couldn’t pay the bills. She noted that even though she told her doctors she didn’t have insurance, she was never given available financial aid forms to fill out for her treatment.

So Advocate South Suburban Hospital where she was treated sued her for the amount of her bill — $17,760. Never mind that if Shaffer had had health insurance, the company would only have been billed about $8,500. Shaffer said she could have handled the $8,500. But coming up with over $17,000 was impossible. So she put her house in foreclosure and declared bankruptcy. Meanwhile the stress this has caused isn’t helping her health any.

“I’m grateful to the hospital for the care I received — they saved my life,” Shaffer said. “But now they are trying to take it away from me again.”

A study by the SEIU project found that at Advocate hospitals in Cook County, Illinois, uninsured residents like Shaffer were charged an average 139 percent more than the charge insurance companies ended up paying for the same services. That equals out to $13,854 compared to $5,805 on average for inpatient services — funds an average uninsured person can hardly spare. This amounted to a total gap of $58 million between charges for the insured and uninsured at Advocate hospitals in 2001, the SEIU said.

McMullen said that while virtually all hospitals overcharge the uninsured, Advocate is the current target of the overpricing campaign because they have the area’s highest average charges for uninsured people and also because they are a non-profit, religiously affiliated chain which is supposed to have the mission of helping the needy. Advocate is affiliated with the Illinois Conference of the United Church of Christ and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. In 2001, the SEIU report says, Advocate made an $8,460 profit on the uninsured patients who paid their full bills.

“This just incredibly wrong,” said Toure Muhammad, communications director for the SEIU. “Advocate is a religiously sponsored non-profit institution that is getting tax breaks that the community pays for.”

Advocate spokesman Ed Domansky said that Advocate’s billing practices are mandated by federal law, as are the billing structures of all hospitals. He thinks the SEIU is singling out Advocate since they are trying to unionize the hospitals, in what has turned into an extremely contentious campaign.

“They’re exploiting the uninsured with this study and they’re singling out Advocate because they want to unionize,” he said. “It’s pretty clear what this is about. It’s just another tactic they’re using to mislead the public.” He added that Advocate has “one of the most generous charity care programs in the country.”

The SEIU alleges that overcharging also allows non-profit hospitals like Advocate to inflate the amount of charity care they provide — Advocate claimed to provide $32.7 million in charity care in 2001, but the SEIU pegged the true cost of the care at only $12.7 million.

Members of the SEIU project hope that by drawing attention to Advocate’s practices, hospitals around the country will be forced to change their ways. Already, McMullen noted, two national for-profit hospital chains — Columbia HCA and Tenet — have promised to stop charging more to uninsured patients. In response, Domansky said, “Whatever the SEIU has pressured Columbia HCA and Tenet into doing, they will find that the federal government doesn’t allow them to use that pricing structure because it hasn’t yet been improved.”

Meanwhile between the tough job market and the rising costs of coverage for employers, the number of uninsured in the country is likely to keep rising. While the ranks of the uninsured include the unemployed and homeless, the majority of uninsured people are employed, working everything from service industry and blue collar jobs to professional jobs with temporary agencies, small businesses or non-profit organizations. Minorities are also more likely to lack health insurance, as are immigrants. For example in Illinois 28.9 percent of Latinos and 22.8 percent of African-Americans are uninsured, compared to 11 percent of whites.

In June the Hospital Accountability Project held a widely attended Town Hall meeting in Chicago on the topic of overcharging, and they have staged numerous protests outside Advocate hospitals as well as advocating on the behalf of individual patients.

They hope a victory in ending or reducing the overcharging of uninsured people will aid both low income people in general and health care workers themselves — workers who ironically are themselves often uninsured or underinsured. The Hospital Accountability Project also plans to undertake other campaigns linking the rights of workers and patients, noting that healthcare workers’ rights are inextricably linked to patient safety and vice versa.

Already the SEIU is on the verge of winning passage of Illinois state legislation that requires hospitals to make public their staffing levels, infection rates and other crucial data, which can both help people choose what hospital to go to based on these indicators of quality of care, and help unions fight against understaffing and other workplace issues. Legislation that is similar, though not as comprehensive, already exists in Wisconsin and California and is in the works in other states.

“We’re working on behalf of the patients, workers and the community in which [the hospitals] operate,” said McMullen. “Unions usually just work on the behalf of employees, but here we’re working on behalf of the whole community. It’s part of the new direction unions have to go in.”

  Fair Use

UMass Amherst Scientist Says New Study Challenges How Regulators Determine Risk

Dec. 21, 2006

AMHERST, Mass. – A new study of a large U.S. National Cancer Institute database provides the strongest evidence yet that a key portion of the traditional dose-response model used in drug testing and risk assessment for toxins is wrong when it comes to measuring the effects of very low doses, says Edward J. Calabrese, a scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The findings, based on a review of more than 56,000 tests in 13 strains of yeast using 2,200 drugs, are published in the journal Toxicological Sciences and offer strong backing for the theory of hormesis, Calabrese and his colleagues contend.

Calabrese says the size of the new study and the preponderance of evidence supporting hormesis, a dose-response phenomenon in which low doses have the opposite effect of high doses, is a breakthrough that should help scientists assess and predict risks from new drugs, toxicants and possibly carcinogens. Calabrese says, “This is a fundamental biological principle that has been missed.”

Calabrese says that the field of toxicology got the dose response wrong in the 1930s and this mistake has infiltrated all regulations for low-dose exposures for toxic chemicals and drugs. These low-dose effects can be beneficial or harmful, something that the regulations miss because they are currently based on high-dose testing schemes that differ greatly from the conditions of human exposures.

In this latest study, which uses data from a large and highly standardized National Cancer Institute tumor-drug screening database, Calabrese says the evidence of hormesis is overwhelming. In the study, high doses of anticancer drugs frequently inhibit yeast growth, but at low doses they enhance growth, exactly what the homesis model predicts.

Whether one accepts the hormesis theory is not the critical public policy issue, according to Calabrese. He says that the major issue is that the risk assessments models used by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration fail to accurately predict responses in the low-dose zone, that is, where people live most of their daily lives.

Calabrese also says challenging the existing dose-response model has profound public policy and health implications. “I believe the hormesis model is the fundamental dose-response and government testing and risk assessment procedures should reflect that,” Calabrese says. For example, in environmental regulations, it has been assumed that most carcinogens possess real or theoretical risks at low levels, and therefore must be nearly completely removed from the environments to assure public safety. Some would contend that if hormesis is the correct model for very low levels, that cleanup standards may have to be significantly changed. Others, however, see the evidence as insufficient for such radical change and worry about other factors that can influence the effects of chemicals in low doses. The new study promises to add fuel to the debate, Calabrese says.

Calabrese also suggests that the findings may have important implications for the pharmaceutical industry and medical practices. He says that hormesis is likely to identify new life-saving drugs that were missed through traditional testing and to markedly improve the accuracy of patient dosing, which will not only improve health outcomes but also reduce adverse side effects.
Go Here for the complete article from the Toxicological Sciences journal.

Gazette Fair Use Statement

American Water Works Association Announces the Start of Drinking Water Week, to “Celebrate the Essential.”

The American Water Works Association (AWWA) kicked off Drinking Water Week 2012 with a call to “Celebrate the Essential” throughout North America, according to a press release.

This is the 35th Annual Drinking Water Week celebration, and it is obviously hard to come up with original slogans, so “Celebrate the Essential” will have to do.

Throughout the week, AWWA and its partners will celebrate water by recognizing the essential role drinking water plays in our daily lives, with special attention to water infrastructure, the economy and careers in the water profession, stated the release.

“There is nothing more essential to a community’s health and vitality than reliable access to safe drinking water,” said AWWA Executive Director David LaFrance, stating the obvious.  “Drinking Water Week provides an excellent moment to focus on the importance of caring for our water supplies and systems.”

To read the entire press release, click here.

What Kind of Water Makes the Best Tasting Coffee?

By Hardly Waite, Pure Water Gazette Senior Editor

What kind of water makes the best tasting coffee? Distilled? Softened? Reverse Osmosis? Filtered? Spring water? Rain water? We did some research and decided to reprint a clip from an interesting piece on the subject from TheCoffeeBrewers website at http://www.thecoffeebrewers.com/whisbewaforb.html.

The article below states one opinion.There are others.

The short version of this article is that minerals are necessary to bring out the flavor in coffee but not in expresso. Therefore, un-softened water (what they mean is non-distilled or non-RO water, since softening is really a different issue) is better for coffee and distilled water (or RO water) would be better for expresso.

This, as I said, is one opinion, and a simple web search will get you many opinions, some of which go much deeper into the matter than you probably want to go, specifying the dissolved solids count (one source insists that 150 to 200 ppm is ideal), pH (neutral often preferred, but hard to maintain), alkalinity, and even the Langlier Index.

One sensible suggestion would be that removing the chlorine or chloramines used to disinfect the water certainly won’t hurt the taste, so carbon filtration would be an obvious plus for all coffee water. Carbon does not affect the mineral content of the water.

Here’s what TheCoffeeBrewers has to say:

What is the Best Water for Brewing Coffee or Espresso?

Did you ever notice how salt will “bring out” the flavor in food (which is why professionally prepared restaurant food tends to be salty)? On the other hand, have you noticed how salt (and other minerals; particularly calcium) will buildup on shower walls and plumbing fixtures?

When you prepare coffee or espresso, you need to be aware of the mineral content in the water that you are using. Since the preparation of (American) coffee and espresso are predicated on very different extraction techniques, the “best” water is different for coffee than it is for espresso.

To review (or in case you weren’t aware), the flavor in coffee is mostly contained within the oils within the beans. Brewing coffee or espresso is a matter of extracting these flavors from the beans (the coffee grounds) so that they permeate the water.

The preparation of plain coffee is a steeping process, almost exactly like tea. The coffee grounds (coarse grounds work better for plain coffee) are mixed with near-boiling water. The heat and minerals in the water work together to extract the flavor from the coffee. After a short steeping period, the grounds are strained out of the mixture (via a filter), leaving the beverage known as “coffee.”

To get a flavorful coffee, there must be mineral content in the water. If the water is distilled, or if it has been softened too much (softening is the process of removing minerals), the extraction will be weak, and the beverage will be relatively flavorless – as food can be if no salt is used.

On the other hand, espresso extraction is a very different process that does not require minerals, and in which near-boiling temperatures are actually detrimental. For espresso, a more finely ground coffee is first compressed into a “puck” through which water will not pass easily. Ideally, immediately prior to extraction, the puck is pre-wet (both to begin dissolution, and to make the density within the puck uniform, so that the extraction will also be uniform).

Then, hot water (195-200 degrees Fahrenheit) is rapidly pushed through the puck under pressure. Ideally, the pressure should be in the 10-15 bar range (1 bar = 14.6 pounds per square inch), and the extraction time should be 20-25 seconds, maximum. (A longer extraction will result in a bitter and burnt flavor.)

In this kind of extraction, since the water is forced through the puck very rapidly (each water molecule moves through the puck in a fraction of a second), the water is not in contact with the coffee long enough for the minerals (in the water) to play much of a role in the extraction.

Also, for those of you who have taken some Chemistry, you may remember the ideal gas law: PV = nRT. While we are dealing with fluids in this case, note that Pressure (P) and Temperature (T) are on opposite sides of the equation. Since we do espresso extraction under (relatively) high pressure, we do not need a boiling temperature.

In fact, water that is too hot will over-extract the espresso, resulting in a bitter flavor. The reason that moka pots (stovetop brewers) tend to make bitter brews is because the temperature is steam temperature, and the pressure is too low, so the extraction will tend to be too long.

Therefore, minerals in water will not enhance the flavor of espresso. On the other hand, minerals will build up on the inner surfaces (the boiler, the internal tubes, and the portafilter) of the espresso machine. This buildup will alter the pressure within the machine, and it will corrode the internals of the machine.

The gradually increasing pressure change will adversely cause the uniformity of the extraction (hence, the flavor) of the espresso to change over time. The added pressure will also cause the internal pumps and gaskets to wear out quickly. By far, the one thing that is most detrimental to an espresso machine is mineral buildup.

This is why it is so important to do periodic cleaning of an espresso machine (as per the manufacturer’s recommendations) with a de-scaling agent. In addition, it is best if you use distilled water, or at least a water softener. For commercial machines (which will see heavy use), an in-line water softener is essential.

While drip coffee-makers will also get mineral buildup, and should be de-scaled occasionally, this is just so that the water will flow (at all) through the machine. Since no pressure in involved in the brewing of drip coffee, mineral buildup will not damage a drip coffee-maker the way that it will destroy an espresso machine. If you have an expensive espresso machine, it is imperative to keep it clean.

For plain coffee, a minimum mineral content of 150-200 parts per million is essential to a good extraction. Water softer than this will result in weak and flavorless coffee. For espresso, you should use distilled water. If the espresso machine is connected to the building plumbing, an in-line water softener (to remove the minerals) is essential.

TheCoffeeBrewers

And what about tea?

The “English Tea” website says:

The Best Water for Making Tea

A cup of tea comprises of over 99% water so it is hardly surprising that the quality of the water used is critical to the flavour of the tea. Fine teas are especially sensitive to the type of water used.

The best water for making a cup of tea is low in mineral content, free of contamination and additives and high in oxygen content. The presence of these factors can all influence the taste of tea – so a good test is to try the water before you use it to make your brew.  It the water tastes good, then it’s safe to use. If the water is tainted in any way, it’s best not to use it.

After that, the site says, the way you boil the tea is of extreme importance:

Re-using water in your kettle that has already been pre-boiled is not a good idea if you want to make a perfect cup of tea. Most experts agree that you should never re-boil previously boiled water, or boil the water for too long. As water boils, oxygen is driven out and the more it boils, the less oxygen stays in the water. Water that has already been boiled, like the water that usually sits in your kettle, contains much less oxygen than fresh water. Tea made with water that has depleted oxygen content loses its crisp, fresh taste.

The World’s First Road Death

Gazette Introduction:  There is always information about who was the last soldier to die in a war or the first baby born in a new year.  We thought it interesting to find out something about the very first person to die in an auto accident.  Now you know.

The Victim

On August 17, 1896, Bridget Driscoll, became the first road fatality in the world.

She was a 44year old mother with two children who had come to London with her teenage daughter and a friend to watch a dancing display.

The crash

While the driver was reported to be doing 4 mph, witnesses described her as being hit by a car travelling at “tremendous speed.”

The crash occurred on a terrace in the grounds of Crystal Palace in London.

The vehicle

The car was owned by the Anglo-French Motor Car Company who were offering demonstration rides to the public.

The driver

At the time of the crash, the car was being driven by Arthur Edsell, an employee of the company.

He had had been driving for only 3 weeks (no driving tests or licenses existed at that time).

He had apparently tampered with the belt, causing the car to go at twice the intended speed.

He was also said to have been talking to the young lady passenger beside him.

The inquest

After a six-hour inquest, the jury returned a verdict of “Accidental Death.”

At the inquest, the Coroner said “This must never happen again.”

No prosecution was proposed or brought against the driver or the company.
The aftermath

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It has happened again and again-worldwide, over 1 million people are killed each year in road crashes and countless millions are injured.
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Five times as many people are killed on the roads than are murdered in the UK (yet traffic safety is not a core function of the police).
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More people died in the UK on the roads during the blackouts than in combat.
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While there has been a substantial reduction in those reported killed and seriously injured on the road in the UK, road crashes are still the leading cause of death and acquired disability in the UK for those between 5 and 40 years old.
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Over half of all road deaths in London are pedestrians.
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One in 80 EU residents are expected to die 40 years prematurely due to a road crash.
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Official casualty statistics underestimate the human casualty toll by referring to police rather than hospital statistics. Road casualties and crashes are not required to be reported to the police.

Ian Roberts, Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, said about the epidemic of road death and injury: “…it is unusual to encounter a serious analysis of road danger in national news media. By 2020, road crashes will have moved from ninth to third place in the world disease ranking..if we overlook this carnage, it will be the propaganda coup of the new millennium.”
Editor’s Note: This article is reprinted from the  British website http://www.roadpeace.org/.

Gazette’s Fair Use Policy

The Ambiguities of “Cut and Run”

By Thomas Michael Holmes

Mr. Holmes is a historian at the University of California San Diego and a writer for the History News Service.

Gazette Note:  We’ve included this article in our Heroes category in honor of the brave political leaders like President Eisenhower who have had the courage, and the good sense, to “cut and run.”  Long live Archilochus. –Hardly Waite.

Karl Rove’s recent “cut and run” accusations against the Bush administration’s Democratic opponents ought to be answered. What one person sees as “cut and run” might be seen by another person as a responsible decision; it’s all in the eye of the beholder. Let’s examine some relevant recent history.

Did Dwight D. Eisenhower “cut and run” in Korea in 1953? It was Ike who told the nation that if he were elected he would go to Korea and, by implication, end the war. It is generally conceded that Eisenhower did the responsible thing when he quickly completed the truce negotiations that ended the fighting in the Korea.

Would Harry Truman have been accused of “cut and run” in September 1950, three months after the initial invasion of South Korea, had he accepted the status quo ante bellum following the rout of the overextended North Korean forces at the 38th parallel? Instead, Truman followed the advice of General Douglas MacArthur and elected to “liberate” North Korea. As the United Nations forces approached the border of the People’s Republic of China at the Yalu River, communist China entered the war and almost drove the UN forces off the southern tip of the Korean peninsula.

Had Truman been willing to “cut and run,” tens of thousands of American lives might have been saved and North Korea might not have been condemned to the isolation it has experienced ever since.Ê In the end, the war lasted for another three years. America sent 1.8 million of our own into the fray: 54,200 were killed, 103,300 were wounded and 8,200 were listed as missing in action. We ended up at the 38th parallel, right where we were in September 1950 — and where we remain today.

Did Richard Nixon “cut and run” in Vietnam? Who can forget the television footage of the American embassy in Saigon being evacuated by helicopter in 1975 as we left those Vietnamese who had depended upon us to the tender mercies of the North Vietnamese communists? They might feel, with some justification, that America had “cut and run.”

Yet in retrospect, it appears that the responsible thing for Nixon to have done in 1969, when he first entered the White House, would have been to follow the example of President Eisenhower and pull the plug on the Vietnam War. It is worth remembering that almost half the 58,000 Americans killed in Vietnam died during Nixon’s presidency.

The real mistake during what we call the Vietnam War was Lyndon Johnson’s, when he escalated the war after the bogus Tonkin Gulf Resolution. An even greater mistake, made at the end of World War II, was to have allowed the French to reestablish their colonial rule throughout Indochina after the Allied forces had liberated it from Japanese occupation. It was the fall of French colonial rule in 1954 that triggered America’s disastrous involvement in Vietnam.

Did Ronald Reagan “cut and run” in 1983 after 241 American servicemen died in Beirut in the suicide bombing of the Marine barracks? Some would say that it wasn’t the fact that Reagan pulled the American troops out of Lebanon that was the mistake; the real mistake was the fact that those Americans were put into an untenable position in the first place.

Did President George Herbert Walker Bush “cut and run” after the coalition’s qualified victory in the First Gulf War in 1991? The Shiites of southern Iraq might say so. The elder Bush not only pulled out of Iraq, but on the way out he invited the Shiites to overthrow their repressive dictator, Saddam Hussein. Then, when they attempted to do so, American forces stood by and watched while Saddam’s army ripped the Shiites to shreds.

It’s ironic that the elder Bush, the current president’s father, would later explain that he didn’t intervene because he didn’t want the U.S. to become bogged down in an Iraqi civil war. He didn’t have to. American air power, deployed outside of Iraq, could have destroyed Saddam’s army, just as American planes, deployed outside of Iraq, recently killed the insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

This reminds us of another part of Karl Rove’s recent statement, that if the United States had “cut and run” in Iraq, Zarqawi would still be there plotting against us. But it was Jordanian and Iraqi intelligence that tracked and located Zarqawi, allowing for the successful American strike, with aircraft based outside of Iraq.

One might also argue that the decision of the Bush administration to re-deploy American forces from Afghanistan to Iraq constituted a “cut and run” decision that has seriously jeopardized the chances for the success of that mission.

Charges of “cut and run” have been leveled over the years by politicians on both sides of the aisle. Upon closer examination, it turns out to be a blunt rhetorical instrument that tends to obscure, rather than illuminate, difficult decisions in complex situations.

Reprinted courtesy of the History News Service.