Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!dgharriss
From: dgharriss@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dermot G. Harriss)
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: Re: Attikamek-Montagnais Protest PCB Plan
Message-ID: <29027@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Date: 10 Sep 89 23:26:34 GMT
References: <2324@yunccn.UUCP> <620791816.24086@telly.on.ca> <1989Sep5.173937.24977@utzoo.uucp> <8328@looking.on.ca> <28908@watmath.waterloo.edu> <261@van-bc.UUCP> <1989Sep6.141953.14830@tmsoft.uucp>
Reply-To: dgharriss@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dermot G. Harriss)
Organization: Math Faculty Computing Facility, University of Waterloo
Lines: 75


Somebody writes:
> [PCBs] are massively carcinogenic on contact ...

Others point out that PCBs such as are found diluted in typical
transformer oil are only mildly toxic, have not been shown to be
carcinogenic, & are likely dangerous only with prolonged internal
exposure at relatively high concentrations.

For that matter, the same can be said of oxygen - but we don't hear
the pseudo-environmentalists and media clamouring for a ban,
at least not yet.

People just love to be scandalized, outraged, and even terrified by
something all the time.  The PCB business is just the latest
environmental `fad concern' as it were.  For their part, the media
love nothing better than a good scare -- they feed on public hysteria,
which feeds in turn on media hype, until both get their fill and 
tire of it.

On the positive side, this positive feedback leads to a concentration
of public attention on an issue, and consequently to intense and
often effective pressure on government.

On the negative side, between the naturally nervous, the well
intentioned uninformed, and the band-wagoneers, some environmental,
health & safety, & such like issues, receive public attention far
out of proportion to their relative importance (as an ecologist or
professional health & safety engineer, etc., might assign to them),
while many critical problems are virtually ignored.  The concerned 
public tends to burn up a lot of that useful anger in the most
futile ways on the silliest of issues.

This sort of thing -- the ill-informed rhetoric, the paranoia, the
hysteria -- tends to contribute to the rather ambivalent regard
in which the environemental & other `social consciosness' movements
and their `long-haired' activists are held by the silent working
majority.  It's also a cause of considerable frustration for the
sincere & well-informed environmentalists, environmental activists,
& environmentally conscious.

An uncle of mine, in his younger days in the field as a transmission
line engineer with Ontario Hydro was once thoroughly soaked by
PCB-laced oil when a transformer being installed sprang a leak.
He said the oil tasted pretty bad.  Certainly doesn't seem to have
done him much any though.

His comment on the PCB hysteria was that the public would gladly have
a dozen people killed a year in transformer fires and spend millions
in taxes & rate hikes to pay for transformer design changes, to
exorcise the PCB demon - he considered this irrational and amusing,
but then perhaps he is biased.

As an example of how people seem to confuse the priorities, I recall
that during the summer I worked in the health sciences division at
AECL Chalk River Nuclear Labs, there was considerable environmentalist
and media rhetoric concerning the transportation by truck between the
U.S. and Canada of certain hazardous radioactive wastes (an issue
undeniably worthy of the closest attention).  At the same time, what
was causing concern to division scientists were the increasingly high
levels of Plutonium being detected in the Ottawa river at Ottawa,
and serious quality-control problems in the medical products division
of the AECL Chemical Company, such as (rumour had it) the delivery to
hospitals of short-lived isotopes weeks and even months before the
manditory pre-delivery bio-assays were completed.

This sort of information was available to the public & press in annual
& monthly reports (written up, mind you, in a form one might suspect
contrived to be somewhat unapproachable by the lay public), but there
wasn't a peep from the media.

Perhaps the disparity between what frightens the public and what
frightens the scientists isn't surprising.  Is it a problem?

							-- Dermot