Enviromental Cancer risk

I've been thinking about this recently, as I discovered (courtesy of Mindful Merchant) that the shampoo I use is potentially toxic and has negative environmental impacts.

Being a new home owner as well, has meant looking at ways of boosting the look and feel of our lawn (our backyard is pretty pathetic and weed covered at the moment). The province has a ban on pesticides, but that doesn't mean that it's being respected necessarily (I remember seeing a CBC report about how pesticides were still available).

In the United States the President's panel on cancer (It's well-established body, not specific to any president) mentioned that there needs to be more research into environmental cancer risk, and that not a lot is known about some of these risks.

The fact that there are so many chemicals that are essentially unregulated, simply because there are no resources and way too many of them is quite scary. There of course is also the fact that the chemicals of course interact with each other and so may be benign in one situation but not when mixed with other chemicals or a different situation.

I read silent spring last year as part of an environmental book club and it was really interesting to see how little thought was given to the consequences or just spraying new chemicals every which way. Of course it was easier to do back then, with no environmental movement, no environmental agencies in government and the whole thing feels as if it couldn't happen again, because it was such a different time.

However the chemical industry has both expanded and learned some lessons in terms of its approach to dealing with these issues. I'm most concerned about the U.S. as their regulatory system seems to succumb more easily to pressure and they are a lot more media savvy so it ma be more difficult to oversee and understand what they are really up to.


I'll close this this:

One of the things I remember from the movie I am Legend even though I didn't really like the movie was the fact that they cured cancer but caused something much worse as an unintended consequence of it, and killed lots of people.

Kind of a scary thought.

Public Service Renewal

Well for the first time in a while I thought I'd write a post about my work. Now this post is slighlty dated as I had hoped to post it last week when this was fresher but it's still very relevant.

I work for the federal government and one of the things we have heard a lot about is Public Service renewal, meaning the attempt to start hiring so that they will actually have the capacity to replace all the boomers that wll be retiring over the next several years.

I along with some colleagues decided to organize a group discussion on the topic recently and thought it didn;t go quite as I expected it to go, it went really well.

It felt really good to have a forum for discussing these issues and I hope that we can keep the energy going and momentum and keep things moving along. It was really encouraging to see the response in terms of turnout and the energy in the room as well.

It turns out that there is a lot of interest in changing things and adapting to the new forces in the world.

Two things that struck me, the first was how much focus was on management and more particularly the generational divide. I haven't seen as much of this recently in my own work situation, I suppose because I have had bosseson the younger end of things.

The second was the need to really engage on the issue of technology and the impact on how we do things. I was struck by the lack of enthusiasm expressed by some particularly when coupled with the seeming techno-optimism of others.

Anyways it was an interesting event and the first of many in this necessary conversation about renewal.

Lisbeth Salander

Like many others it seems I've been reading the Millenium series. It's a Swedish mystery series that's generating a lot of attention. I've enjoy it for the most part but I think in some way the most interesting part is the character of Lisbeth Salander. It's too bad that he won't be writing any more books as he died just before it was actually published.

In part this is because she apepars to have Asperegers. She has a photographic memory, extremely bright and yet has serious issues with authority and didn't even finish school. One funny moment I enjoyed is where the teacher gets mad at her because she gives the 'wrong' answer to a problem when in fact it's the texbook that has a mistake in it. That made me laugh.

The book is interesting and you can tell it's a critique of Swedish society, I imagine that some of it is lost in the translation, as well as some of the language obviously.

Interesting book, interesting characters and a good read.