REAL DISASTER RELIEF

The Bush administration undertook some of its own disaster recovery last week by increasing U.S. aid to tsunami victims from $15 million to $350 million. But much more could, and should, be done for the health and economic development of the tsunami victims and of other developing nations' populations. The President could start the process of providing that much-needed relief with the stroke of his pen - and it wouldn't cost U.S. taxpayers one cent. All President Bush needs to do is to withdraw the U.S. from the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs treaty).

Tentatively agreed to in May 2001 by 90-plus nations, including the United States, the POPs treaty is intended as a means by which the United Nations and other international bureaucrats can control the use of industrial chemicals. The treaty became effective in May 2004 after France became the 50th nation to ratify it formally. Though the Bush administration has endorsed the treaty, the Senate has not yet ratified it. So the U.S. is not yet bound by its terms - which would impose deadly consequences on much of the developing world.

The POPs treaty bans or restricts the use of 12 targeted chemicals alleged to cause human health effects, including cancer, and to harm wildlife. One of the chemicals targeted by the POPs treaty is the insecticide DDT - which, as discussed in earlier columns - was banned by the U.S. in 1972 based on junk science. The POPs treaty limits how much DDT nations may store, how they can acquire it, and when and how they can use it. These rules will increase the cost of, and delay access to, the only effective defense against the mosquitoes that transmit malaria. "The POPs treaty could virtually eliminate the use of DDT, perhaps the most affordable and effective pesticide and repellant in existence, " said Richard Tren of the Africa Fighting Malaria, a nonprofit health advocacy group based in South Africa and the U.S. that focuses on the political economy of diseases and disease control in developing countries.

The World Health Organization estimates that each year, malaria kills millions of people and cuts the GDP of African nations by 1.3 percent and costs them $12 billion in economic losses. The POPs treaty will only guarantee that such health and economic devastation continues....

The ongoing malaria catastrophe with its death toll in the millions has not, and in all likelihood, will not, likely get even a fraction of the media coverage devoted to the recent tsunamis - even though its costs are orders of magnitude higher. Fighting malaria by promoting the use of DDT is not nearly as glamorous as publicly pledging millions in tsunami aid or photo-ops in devastated areas - advocating DDT, unfortunately, takes much political courage. But that would be just about the only cost incurred for an effort to save millions of lives and livelihoods.


More here





THE TIN WHISKER PROBLEM

Another Greenie-imposed burden. Better garbage disposal is all that is really needed

In the cold vacuum of space, on a gleaming metal surface inside the Galaxy 4 communications satellite, tiny whiskers of tin grew in perfect stealth-until May 19, 1998, that is. That's when at least one of those whiskers bridged a pair of metal contacts in the satellite's control processor. The short circuit killed the satellite. Some 40 million pagers stopped working all over the country. Millions of dollars' worth of ATM and credit card transactions were interrupted. The $250 million satellite became, in the words of NASA engineer Henning Leidecker, "a doorstop in space."

The loss of Galaxy 4 was just one of the more visible consequences of a little-understood problem with catastrophic potential for electronic and electrical systems: metal that grows whiskers. An F-15's radar system, pacemakers, fuse switches in air-to-air missiles, electronic relays in a nuclear power plant, and global positioning system receivers-not to mention many other satellites-all have fallen victim to the problem. One group of University of Maryland theorists has estimated that tin whiskers have caused losses of billions of dollars to date.....

Until the new millennium the tin-whisker problem actually seemed like a plague of the past. The metallurgical bug first became apparent in the late 1940s to telecommunications engineers who were investigating why relays in telephone switching systems were failing. The research community came up with a whisker-quashing solution: Add 2% to 3% lead to the tin plating used in electronic assemblies, particularly on wires and leads to make them solderable. Lead-tin alloys became standards for the industry, and their use relegated tin whiskers, at least for most of us, to nuisance status.

As often happens, the solution became a problem: Lead became a material non grata and for good reason. It does a nasty number on neural circuitry, especially if you're a kid. To reduce human exposure to lead, governments have regulated it out of paint, gasoline, plumbing, and other sources. The relatively small amount of lead in electronic and electrical systems-about 0.2 gram in an Intel processor and about two to three grams in a motherboard-hadn't attracted much attention, but that changed as the volume of electronic waste showing up in landfills began ballooning.

Although some companies had been anticipating an era of lead-free electronics for more than a decade and already are shipping lead-free products, the get-the-lead-out clock started ticking in earnest for the entire electronics industry in 2002 when the European Union enacted the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directives. Among other things, the directives mandate that by July 1, 2006, only lead-free electronic and electrical products will be legally salable in member countries. Unfortunately, no one knows for sure whether there is a no-lead substitute that will be immune to whisker growth. And that means tin whiskers and the failures they can foment could become as familiar in electronic products as flat tires are in cars....

Almost as out of sight to most people as the tin whiskers themselves is a worldwide network of detail-minded engineers, metallurgists, technology managers, chip manufacturers, government officials, and others who are racing against the clock to make sure that the get-the-lead-out movement does not awaken the tin-whisker dragon. They have until about right now to come up with a solution if they want to make sure that the products that ship in the coming months and years do not collectively harbor a Y2K of sorts-the wide distribution of everything from microwave ovens to missiles that are more prone to whisker-induced failure than most electronic products have been for the past half-century.

"You don't want to go out and buy a brand-new HDTV, only for it to fail before you've finished your payments," says Gedney. Researchers have come up with a variety of potential solutions. Semiconductor maker Agere Systems, for example, announced in September that it will undercoat the leads on the components it uses with nickel before it puts pure tin on top. Engineers also have developed a tin-silver-copper alloy that appears to limit whiskers to a mostly manageable fact of metallic life.

However promising those lead-free solutions might look in laboratory and beta tests, however, the real assessment of their long-term ability to keep whiskering at bay will be taking place over the next few years in the wild as lead-free electronic systems are made and sold throughout the world. It's a done deal for any electronics industry player that wants to remain in the game, but all are moving forward with the nagging anxiety that they might be setting trillions of individual stages for the quiet, stealthy growth of metal whiskers that can do no good.

More here

***************************************

Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

*****************************************