Slashdot Mirror

Hey, that's not cool. Lead poisoning is a very serious. It's not the kid's fault they are exposed to it, but they get to deal with the damage for the rest of their life.

Some links for your educational pleasure:

http://www.todaysparent.com/healthsafety/allages/a rticle.jsp?content=20040206_103527_3540&page=4
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/1998/198_lead.htm l
http://www.niehs.nih.gov/oc/factsheets/lyh/govtdo. htm
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HEC/CSEM/lead/biologic_fa te.html
http://oldweb.uwp.edu/academic/geology/lead/
http://www.cfc-efc.ca/docs/ldac/00000367.htm
http://www.nsc.org/library/facts/lead.htm

feel free to mod this up, mods, lead poisoning is underrecognised.

People care more about problems that they can't control than ones they can prevent.

For example: Airplanes. How many people feel more secure behind the wheel of a car than on a long flight with turbulence?

Put your hands down, now the sheer probability of getting into a car accident in one's lifetime (if one drives) is a miniscule number below one. Death statistics are somewhere around 1 in 237 of a car type accident. The odds of an airplane death are like 1 in 5051 source

However, people are freakishly nervous about planes... So, by induction (the bane of an engineer's existance) we can extrapolate (another fancy bane) that security people will ignore the dangerous mundane and fixate on the extraordinary rarity.

...the MOST common lethal use of a firearm in the United States is a white man shooting himself.

Don't know about the white man part, but it is true that more people kill themselves with guns than are killed by other people with guns. (In 2003, the numbers were 16,907 suicides by firearm versus 12,267 homicides by firearm, counting "legal intervention involving firearm discharge" under homicide).

It is a common disingenuous tactic in gun politics debates to lump suidicide, homicides, and accidents (quite rare) all together under "death by firearm".

And I challenge you to find any statistic that at least vaguely indicates that keeping loaded guns at home is a good idea.

Here you go:

An unloaded gun is worthless for defense, so we can assume that the vast majority of guns used in the between 108,000 and 2.5 million (depending on whose numbers you beleive) annual defensive gun uses in the U.S. are loaded, or are at least stored so that they can be quickly and easily loaded.

In 2003, 730 people per year were killed by firearms accidents.

So, there were between 153 and 3,425 times more defensive gun uses than accidental gun deaths.

Firearms accidents are very rare, you are much more likely to have a fatal fall (17,229 in 2003), or drown (3,306). Indeed more people choked on food (875) than were killed by gun accidents. But falls, drownings, and chokings seldom make the news, while accidental shootings often do.

And a little more research will make your comments sound a little less... ignorant.

Try here.

You'll see that assaults using firearms tallied 11,920. And I say that as someone who owns a lot more than three, and has never been assaulted with one, only brandished one to prevent an assault on my family. I have used them, hundreds of times, to put food on the table or eliminate varmints, but that's another conversation.

Don't you know that driving is more likely to kill than second hand smoke, right? It is the USA's #1 killer. Period. Here's the odds of dying, if you don't believe me. Transport accidents: 48,366. And your article shows numbers that pale in comparison: Just 35,000. Most of us know someone who died in a traffic accident, some of us know many. Now, think hard: Compare how many people you know who have died in a traffic accident to how many to know who have died from second hand smoke. Really. Think hard. Notice the numbers they present don't seem to add up for you? That you know more people dead in traffic accidents than from second hand smoke? Interesting. But even with the numbers they show, DRIVING IS MORE DANGEROUS.

So, if we are doing this to stop people dying, why aren't we attacking the most serious problems first by banning motor vehicles? Because they bring money to the state?

Isn't that the excuse smokers use too? The taxes on their cigarettes bring money to the state?

The bullshit reason is people think they're going to die from second hand smoke if they work around it. Again, if that's the case, why haven't we banned people from working around combustion engines? They are much, much more toxic than a cigarette. 3 minutes of direct exposure to a combustion engine exhaust will *always* kill *anyone*, or at *least* leave them brain damaged. 3 minutes of direct exposure to a cigarette will send an asthmatic to hospital, or in a rare case might kill, but in general will never, ever kill anyone. Combustion engines are so dangerous garages will remove the exhaust with a pipe to the outside from the exhaust of the vehicle. Yet, IT'S STILL LEGAL.

I think the real reason is simple: There's not a lot of people that consider driving particularly annoying, apart from the noise and pollution. But there's a lot of people who are very annoyed by people smoking.

Since when did being *annoyed* by something make it right for any government to outlaw it from private property?

Since never, in my books.

God I wish I lived in NH.

or so says the National Safety Council. About five times more likely than dying of a lightning strike. Or 92 times more likely to die from getting hit by a car as a pedestrian. Me, I'd worry about talking on your cellphone crossing the street.

Check out: http://www.nsc.org/ehc/wipp/manage.htm

I visited the WIPP site a few years ago, part of a project I was running. Got a ride down in the tiny salt excavation shaft. Open sided cage, ya gotta wear lots of protective gear and be careful or you can lose skin as the strata zip past. Then I was given a fascinating tour of the underground tunnels and storage areas on a sort of golf buggy for WIPP DOE guys.

I still have a sealed packet of rock salt I chipped out of a tunnel wall (well away from the areas with waste. Interestingly the web site URL printed on the handouts I got is now unreachable. So, yep, I guess even government stuff just gets lost over time.

WIPP is a fascinating place, a government salt mine, where they dont want the salt. they can;t even sell it, The excavated permian age rock salt is piled up around the place.

The place operates pretty much as advertized, oh I am sure there's stuff they don't tell us about, but hey, its a government right!

The tunnels are quiet and cool, well ventilated, and extensive, the place is big. The rock salt creeps under the pressure, its 2,150 feet down. The salt moves even as they fill areas in, the movement over several years is detectable. It messes up the structures, and is, well, creepy. I have no doubt that waste buried there will be crushed and sealed in tight.

I beleive the DOE made an excellent choice for disposal of TRU waste, the people that work there were freindly and had that south western laid back thang. Very cool.

I left with the impression that once sealed in, nothing will ever get back into the environment, accidentally at least.

But what if someone drills? Ok, here's a crazy thought.

One thing that gets to you if you go there, is how isolated and non-descript the area is. We don't bury waste in beautiful places. Its a 40 minute ride out from Carlsbad, to no-where, (at least to a city guy like me).

If you have never been out that way, its hard to believe just how much empty wasteland there is. It does have a bizarre desert beauty, but lets face it, there's a lot of boring scrub nothing too. So... what, I wonder are the odds of anyone drilling there if we just hid it. Yep, I mean the whole WIPP site, removed down to say 6 feet. take it off the maps, make it a non - place.

Then... Sure, place a layer of hard concrete and warnings under the surface, Icons decals, cartoons, large rectangular monoliths, whatever, but hidden Then return the surface area to boring nondescript scrub desert.

Wouldnt it be forgotten eventually? If its forgotten, and thus left alone, isn't that what we want anyway? Sounds crazy, maybe, but there's a lot of boring looking places where no one ever digs, why not make this just one more patch of salty scrub?

Perhaps a "less safe" vehicle is just what people need. See here...

http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm

The odds of a motorcyclist dying in 2002 are 1 in 89,562. The odds of a car occupant dying in 2002 are 1 in 17,625. Most people mistakenly assume motorcyclists are at greater risk, not so! Know why? Because motorcyclists aren't lulled into a false sense of safety the way drivers of "cages" (i.e. cars) are, so they drive with greater caution and situational awareness.

6873

That's the number I get from adding up the number of casualties listed, although I ignored the couple dozen assassinations, because those are, well.. assassinations. Of course, it's not (and doesn't claim to be) an exhaustive list, and some of the numbers are "at least," so we'll generously double it and say ~14,000 people died worldwide as a result of terrorism from 1961-2003.

That's about 318 per year (at double the available statistics)

In an average year, in the US alone:

360 people are struck by lightning, about 90 fatally.
120 people die in airplane crashes
776 people die from the accidental discharge of firearms
3,840 people drown
12,760 people are poisoned
15,000 people are murdered
16,250 people are killed by a fall
40,000 die in car crashes
936,923 die from heart disease

(Sources: http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm, http://www.the-eggman.com/writings/death_stats.htm l)

That's not to say that we should ignore the threat of terrorism. However, the threat should be kept in perspective, and our response should be measured accordingly.

1 in 250000? That's a whole lot better than the odds in a typical, large jackpot lottery. In fact, it is roughly on par with getting struck by lightning if you live in the US (and, odds of dying in a given year, not merely being struck, are worse than 1 in 4 million). So, 1 in 250000 is pretty good, because the odds for winning lotteries are usually worse than the odds of being struck by lightning.

Actually, it's not "Hundreds", it's "Tens of Thousands". Cars _are_ dangerous.

In 2002, 48,000 people died on the road. Your yearly odds of dying a transportation related death are about 1 in 5,953.

Your odds of dying as a car occupant are about 1 in 17,625

Strangely enough, you're more likely to die of falling down, poisoning yourself (accidentally) or shooting yourself (intentionally)

http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm

Better yet, you could use the National Safety Council:

More than 3,800 young drivers age 15-20 are killed every year in traffic crashes. More than 326,000 young drivers are injured.

Now, lets go to the cell phone issue - using the same site I used before:

A 2003 article published by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (HCRA) estimated that cell phone use by drivers may cause approximately 2,600 deaths, 330,000 moderate to critical injuries, and 1.5 million instances of property damage in America per year. The report cautioned, however, that because information on cell phone use by motorists is limited, the effects are difficult to gauge. HCRA concluded that fatalities could range from 800 to 8,000 per year, with injury estimates ranging from 100,000 to 1 million per year.

There is not enough data either way to say which is more dangerous. But I think we can say that just being young is not more of a source of risk than other behaviors many adults engage in - such as talking on a cell phone while driving.

is the highway safety record in Finland so much better than the US's that it justifies treating every adult like a mentally retarded infant

Other groups that are error prone are alcohol/drug users and really old people. They are kept in check everywhere.

Cars kill a lot of people.

Some googling gave 44,800 for 2003. Wikipedia gave 42,643 for 2003. About three times 15,000 -- but your petrol haven't 200% tax added...

IMHO, the main numerical problem is not the number of dead but the "30 times population" bit.

In many cases, USA can't use the same solutions as smaller countries, because the implementing problem scales more than linearly with the population. Then, the jury is still out if many of EU solutions work here. :-(

>The real truth is we are far more likely to die in a car crash than to die at the hands of a would-be terrorist. Yet, billions are being poured into Homeland Insecurity and the TSA efforts, and what do we have? High false positive rates, millions of needlessly harrased travelers, and it's hard to get a fix on the false negative rates since terrorists are so rare to begin with.

Smokers have the right to...raise the cost of health care for everyone
Like, say, the health care costs of obesity in people who regularly eat at McDonalds?

cause cancer in people that are affected by their second-hand smoke
Is that anything like, say, the health problems caused by SUV emissions?

shirk taxes that have been levied on products they purchase
Like anyone who has ever purchased an item online without paying the sales tax does?

I find it disturbing that smokers have become such convenient whipping boys recently...it may not exactly be a public service to light up, but it's no worse for society than many other common actions that are nowhere near as villified.

Now I don't know what sort of PCB the maker means in the layout, but the ring better not use this kind--it's known for pollution.

Is it a printed circuit board as I think and hope it is? Looks like it...

My view is based on the scientific data that exists. I therefore want laws enacted to ban driving while using a cel phone. The more data that supports my view, the better.

http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/Stra yerHFES04.pdf
http://www.hcra.harvard.edu/cellphones.html
http://www.utah.edu/unews/releases/03/jan/cellphon e.html
http://www.nsc.org/library/shelf/inincell.htm
http://www.ur.ku.edu/News/01N/JulyNews/July12/cell ular.html
http://www.icbc.com/Inside_ICBC/january2001news.ht ml

You sir, should be modded to the floor for your trollish ways.

So apparently I am now 4 times more likely to die a horrible death... 4 times what? What are the odds of getting the tumor without using a cell phone? Four in 10? 100? 1,000? 10,000?

Looking at the odds , i'm not really going to start worrying until the odds are closer to travel accidents (1 in 6,029), or maybe car accidents (1 in 19,075).

Even better, the odds of dying on a set of stairs is 1 in 195,003 per year... are we going to ban stairs?

this is more likely to kill you than ANY OTHER death due to injury in your lifetime!

Odds of Death Due to Injury, National Safety Council

As a previous poster pointed out, the average person's odds of dying in a plane crash are actually worse than that. According to this fact sheet from the National Safety Council, the average odds for you to die in an air or space transport accident is 1 in 4,023 over the course of your life. Of course some people are much higher or lower than this depending upon how often they fly.

civilization-ending event: if one occurs, you will die. (and he claims one occuring in the next 100 years is 1 in 455)

Your mistake is not realizing an average person takes many, many, many more than 1 flight in their lifetimes.

According to the National Safety Council, your odds of dying are actually slightly worse. Your odds of dying due to injury in a plane crash are about 1 in 4,023 (see this table).

If you rarely fly, then your at a favorible statistical end of the spectrum with respect to fatalities due to injury by air travel - but remember, some people bank several flights each and every week for years.

civilization-ending event: if one occurs, you will die. (and he claims one occuring in the next 100 years is 1 in 455)

Your mistake is not realizing an average person takes many, many, many more than 1 flight in their lifetimes.

According to the National Safety Council, your odds of dying are actually slightly worse. Your odds of dying due to injury in a plane crash are about 1 in 4,023 (see this table).

If you rarely fly, then your at a favorible statistical end of the spectrum with respect to fatalities due to injury by air travel - but remember, some people bank several flights each and every week for years.

Here's an interesting tabulation of your risks of death due to injury.

Your odds are slightly worse than one in eighteen hundred of dying in any given year due to injury. (About 1 in 2800 of accidental injury; the rest is due to self-inflicted injury or deliberate assault.)

Assuming that figure remains constant throughout your lifetime, your odds of surviving to various ages would be

100 - 94.5%
500 - 75.5%
1000 - 57.0%
1235 - 50.0%
2000 - 32.5%
5300 - 5%
8200 - 1%

There's also the possibility that individuals who want to live 'forever' might make a conscious effort not to do so many stupid things, and therefore lower their own risks.

"As the people of the Ukraine know, an accident at a nuclear power plant affects a lot more people than a car accident."

A single one, yes. On the same time frame between nuclear incidents causing next to a runaway core? I don't think so. at 47 grand per year, US only, it is a bit steep.

In fact, when someone in good faith talks to me about OGM, nuclear energy risks, pollution etc, I only ask one question: "And just HOW you came to be here?"

I bet that more people in the world died from drowning in the US today than the total combined direct loss of life of all the world's space programs throughout history.

For 2001, the National Safety Council reports 3,281 deaths in the US from accidental drowning. There's another 413 drowning victims listed under water transport accidents. Divided evenly across the year, you'd lose the bet, though it's close. Of course, it's summer in the US, and I expect there are more drowning deaths "today" than on average.

Other death factoids for 2001:

Earthquake 28, lightning 44, flood 35, heat 300, cold 599.

Fireworks: 6
Hornets, wasps, bees: 43
Dogs: 25 (Other mammals: 65)
Hot tap water: 57
High/low/changed air pressure: 13
Radiation: 0

Auto accidents still kill a tremendous number of people annually -- a lot more than "terrorists"

Higher speeds do not attribute to accidents. That's a huge myth. Most fatal auto accidents are attributed to intoxication. Google it.

You need to select devices that can be hosed down. That means comercial devices that almost meet NEMA 4. The only way to get rid of goo is soap and water. Retail devies are just not ment for a medical environment. And you must get rid of the goo BEFORE you sterilize. That goo can carry pirons (sp?) even after EtO so plan for soap and water. There are sources of ruggedized tools such as Symbol Technologies. You are going to pay more, but you have a responsability to do it right.

Go to a medical or engineering school and ask for their Bioengineering department and ask for help. This is way over the head of /.

Yeah right I'm as likely to die by an asteroid as in a plane crash.
How many people were killed by asteroids in the last 20 years?
How many people were killed in pane crashes?
Oh what's that you say this isn't a fair assessment? Okay, let's do a real one:

My odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 500,000. But this isn't quite right because it's assuming I fly 100,000 miles a year, which I don't neither does most of the world. So this number should be lower. So assume this killer asteriod kills everyone: 6313622537 people. Since only 20 people died in the year 2000, we would need one asteriod to kill everyone on the planet every 315 million years. Maybe that's a reasonable time frame but, it's still a bullshit comparison because it assumes I'm going to live forever, unless killed by an asteroid. One must factor in the odds of me being alive when this asteriod actually hits, otherwise I'm not being killed by it am I? Say I live for 150 years (much longer than the average lifespan). If one factors in my limited lifespan, I am suddenly 4.8 x 10^-7 less likely to be killed by an asteriod, than to die in a plane crash.

The odds are so low that I may as well start getting worried about being run over by a Porsche driven by a zebra. Since:
My odds of being run over are 1 in 588.
Let's say one in every 5,000 cars is a porsche.
There are around 132,000,000 cars on the road.
Let's say there are 300,000 zebra on the face of the earth.
Finally, lets say only ten of them (circus zebra) know how to drive (10 in 300,000 odds).
Making a totally bullshit analysis, I find out that my odds are 2.58e-14 while my odds of being killed by an asteriod are 9.52e-13. Okay, so I'm a hundred or so times more likely to be killed by the asteriod, but what if I included all those bears that drive cars too? Surely the results would be terrifying.


This public service announcement has been brought to you by my unwillingness to write my DSP paper. Good night.

From the national kids safty campaign and the National safty council

1998 -- 500 kids under the age of 5 drowned
1997 -- almost 1000 under age 14 drowned, around 1/2 of thoses were under the age of 4
1997 -- 240 due to firearms


By the way the NSC 1997 places drowning at 14% of child deaths and guns at 3.6%

Those engaged in cell phone conversations:
missed twice as many simulated traffic signals as when they were not talking on the cell phone.

took longer to react to those signals that they did detect.

These deficits were equivalent for both hand-held and hands-free cell phone users

Those engaged in cell phone conversations:
missed twice as many simulated traffic signals as when they were not talking on the cell phone.

took longer to react to those signals that they did detect.

These deficits were equivalent for both hand-held and hands-free cell phone users

You evidently have never studied the problem or the solution. The containers the waste is stored in will last for longer than the waste will be dangerous. The waste is solidified so ground water contamination is not a concern. When was the last time that mountain saw any significant rainfall that managed to seep that far down.

Here is a snippet from the reporter's guide to Yucca Mountain (you know, the one no reporter has ever read):

"The high-level radioactive waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel is stored in various forms such as sludge, liquid, or pellets. NRC regulations (10 CFR 60.135) require that liquid high-level radioactive waste be solidified before disposal. DOE plans to solidify this waste by mixing the radionuclides that are not recovered with liquid borosilicate glass specially formulated for this purpose. The mixture is then poured into large metal containers to cool and solidify. This process is known as "vitrification. Only solid high-level radioactive waste will be allowed to be disposed of in the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain."

Yeah, this is not related, but I had to attach it to a highly-moderated comment so people would see it.

We just packed up and shipped off our last 9-track mainframe drive for scrap.

Don't scrap your old hardware. It pollutes the environment. Instead you can donate it (if it is still usable-not something like this tape) or have it recycled.

Yeah, this is not related, but I had to attach it to a highly-moderated comment so people would see it.

We just packed up and shipped off our last 9-track mainframe drive for scrap.

Don't scrap your old hardware. It pollutes the environment. Instead you can donate it (if it is still usable-not something like this tape) or have it recycled.

Please give some sources for the numbers quoted above.

Until then, I think a recent study at the University of Utah is getting to the heart of the matter. In short, they found that it's the interactive nature of conversation that's the real distraction. Tuning the radio, eating fries, etc, are just fundamentally different than
talking to people.

That said, the new Treo looks damn cool.

The following list of places to donate old computers was copied from an LA Times article quite some time ago (sorry I can't cite it). You'd have to double check that they will accept parts in addition to whole machines.

* Goodwill Industries: 888-4-GOODWILL (to find closest donation center)
* Goodwill Computer Clearance Center: 626-915-4433 (for donating more than two computers)
* All Tech Computer Recyclers: 877-PC-RECYCLE
* Salvation Army: 800-95-TRUCK
* National Safety Council: http://www.nsc.org/ehc/epr2/recycler.htm (listings by state)
* California Materials Exchange: http://www.cimb.ca.gov/calmax/
* Los Angeles County Materials exchange Program: http://www.lacomax.com/

Best of luck!
- Rachel
http://www.reinyday.com/

• Donation of Computers to Schools, Charities, and Nonprofit Organizations. This is a good option if you're about to get rid of your old Pentium-100 system for a new one. Today's used computers make great tools for schools and nonprofits, charities, and other organizations, since they can all pretty much run a word processor, web browser, and more without any trouble. You can also get a tax break, if you're American! (dunnot about other countries, but I wouldn't be surprised to see similar incentives...)
• Reuse. The type of recycling that is being discussed by most people on this post. Sure, the old components aren't terribly useful to your average Slashdotter, but again, todays computers are wuite powerful enough to serve a wide array of uses. Those "obsolete" mobo components or boards can be put to work in other systems that don't require huge amounts of power or complex circuitry.
• Recycling. The hard core reuse, this is when they actually start melting things down to get at the trace amounts of lead, gold, platinum, copper, etc. that can be melted out of a system. Hazardous and hard to do if you try it yourself; less challenging if you give it to a company that specializes in it. These companies do, in fact, exist.

Having a glue that allows parts to be melted off in a basic oven would considerably reduce the costs of recycling the components of a computer. Yes, a lot of components cost only a penny. These aren't the components they're interested in; if possible, they get hucked in the smelting pot. Things like CPUs, memory, and other more complex circuits (if you think nobody is saving those CPUs when computers get recycled/discarded, guess again) have a great deal of value to a computer recycler, though. The estimate of "hundreds of dollars" per computer may be a tad inflated (perhaps for discarded servers or high-end machines), but there is still very real income potential for recycling home computers, easily in the $50-100 range. If a company can squeeze an extra $15 of saved labor out of each computer, that's a serious boost to profitability.

$ man reality

• Donation of Computers to Schools, Charities, and Nonprofit Organizations. This is a good option if you're about to get rid of your old Pentium-100 system for a new one. Today's used computers make great tools for schools and nonprofits, charities, and other organizations, since they can all pretty much run a word processor, web browser, and more without any trouble. You can also get a tax break, if you're American! (dunnot about other countries, but I wouldn't be surprised to see similar incentives...)
• Reuse. The type of recycling that is being discussed by most people on this post. Sure, the old components aren't terribly useful to your average Slashdotter, but again, todays computers are wuite powerful enough to serve a wide array of uses. Those "obsolete" mobo components or boards can be put to work in other systems that don't require huge amounts of power or complex circuitry.
• Recycling. The hard core reuse, this is when they actually start melting things down to get at the trace amounts of lead, gold, platinum, copper, etc. that can be melted out of a system. Hazardous and hard to do if you try it yourself; less challenging if you give it to a company that specializes in it. These companies do, in fact, exist.

Having a glue that allows parts to be melted off in a basic oven would considerably reduce the costs of recycling the components of a computer. Yes, a lot of components cost only a penny. These aren't the components they're interested in; if possible, they get hucked in the smelting pot. Things like CPUs, memory, and other more complex circuits (if you think nobody is saving those CPUs when computers get recycled/discarded, guess again) have a great deal of value to a computer recycler, though. The estimate of "hundreds of dollars" per computer may be a tad inflated (perhaps for discarded servers or high-end machines), but there is still very real income potential for recycling home computers, easily in the $50-100 range. If a company can squeeze an extra $15 of saved labor out of each computer, that's a serious boost to profitability.

$ man reality

We're talking 15-20 dead monitors, and 4 or 5 BIG out of warranty HP LaserJets, out of sight, out of mind. They either recycle and resell or dispose of it according to regulations. The provider normally charged $50/trip, but waived this in our case because we gave them a big box of cables and other useful stuff. Beats the hell out of $29.99 a CPU, and we were just happy to see it go.