Monday, January 14, 2002
Giant Space Rock Passing By Earth
from Cosmiverse, “An asteroid that was just discovered a month ago is making a close approach to the Earth and while there is no danger of collision with it, astronomers say its proximity should serve as a reminder of just how many objects in space could strike our planet and cause major devastation. The asteroid is moving closer to the sun and passing less than twice the Moon’s distance from us – just 830,000 kilometers/510,000 miles away on January 7th, which is pretty close, cosmically speaking. It is believed to be some 300 meters in size – large enough to wipe out a whole country if it struck the Earth. 2001 YB5 was discovered in early December by the Neat (Near Earth Asteroid Tracking) survey telescope observing from Mount Palomar in California. Astronomers are calling it an Apollo object because it has a highly elliptical orbit that crosses the orbits of Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury. It circles the Sun every 1,321 days. They also say it is “potentially hazardous”, meaning there is a slim chance that it may strike the Earth sometime in the future.
Full Body Scanning-Expensive–but useful?
Here is a story I have wondered about-how useful are those body scans. From what the imaging centers advertise, it sounds as if it could do no harm. But are they useful?
The Washington Post reports: “From Beverly Hills to Baltimore, free-standing scanning centers, some located in shopping malls and many owned by radiologists, have sprung up in affluent metropolitan areas. These centers offer a comprehensive, painless, noninvasive, head-to-pelvis examination of the body’s internal organs – including the brain, heart, liver, lungs, prostate, ovaries – for a $700 to $1,300 fee that is rarely covered by insurance.”
The Post continued: “But critics – including prominent radiologists, health economists and officials at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – say that the practice of indiscriminately scanning healthy people is unproven, ill-advised and potentially dangerous. CT technology, they say, is far too imprecise to be used as a mass screening tool, even though it will inevitably find a few people with cancer or serious heart disease or a brain tumor.
“These centers are playing on people’s emotions, and everybody knows somebody – a friend or colleague or relative – who could have been saved if only their cancer had been discovered earlier,” noted Richard Mintzer, chairman of the radiology department at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago. Mintzer points to his own friends: one whose kidney cancer was detected early and by accident through a scan, another who died of the same disease, discovered at an advanced stage after he had symptoms.
Tough on Mold
California is considering what backers call the “toughest toxic mold legislation in the nation. The Sacramento Bee reports: “The bill, SB 732, known as the “Toxic Mold Protection Act of 2001,” is being watched closely across the nation as the boldest effort yet to move toward government regulation of mold in homes and workplaces.”
The bill directs DHS to determine the feasibility of devising permissible exposure limits and standards for the assessment, identification and remediation of indoor mold contamination. DHS is also supposed to convene a mold task force, to include health experts, scientists, doctors and real estate and insurance industry representatives, among others.
Mold is a huge story nationwide. It is the asbestos story of the decade. Law firms are setting up to focus on this issue of houses, schools and office buildings which have mold problems.
