The amount of fossil carbon that needs to be released into the atmosphere to cause most of the glacial ice to melt is not known. We can’t directly use ancient time periods to assess modern sea level rise by measuring the sea levels from those periods because there has been too much other stuff going on in ocean basins and along current coast lines. But, we can estimate that there was very little glacial ice during, for example, the early Eocene, and the transition of Carbon in the atmosphere to the formation of glaciers might be under 800 ppm. So, if we double the current amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, maybe that would melt all the glaciers. There was more methane in the air at that time as well, but we are releasing plenty of methane as we also release Carbon, so that’s not much of a problem. The biggest factor is probably this: The configuration of continents have changed since that time to increase the likelihood of glacial formation at the poles, so returning to some Eocene (or other) atmospheric CO2 value may result in much less melting. But that’s OK, because we can certainly increase the amount of carbon to more than around 800 ppm!

If we release CO2 at approximately modern rates (baed on population size), and have population increase up to a point, thus increasing CO2 release (in other words, do nothing significant to mitigate Carbon release, increase the number of people actively releasing it, and population goes up towards 8 or so billion) we can reach over 1000 ppm by 2300 AD, or sooner. That’s surely enough to melt most of the glaciers except bits and pieces in the coldest regions of Antarctica.

It is estimated (see this web page) that there is about 80 meters of ocean trapped in glacial ice. There are plenty of web sites out there that allow you to add ocean height to see how coastal regions would change, but the ones I know about don’t go to 80 meters. So, to find out what North America would look like, I found a map that has pixels to indicate altitude, with different colors representing topography, at a fine enough level to work with. This is the map, from here:

This map has a color coded key with elevations of 8, 54, 114, etc. labeled but there are color transitions half way between these marks, so there is a mark at 60 meters. I therefore will go ahead and assume that if most of the glacial ice melted, there would be a 60 meter rise in sea level. Therefore, a first approximation of what North America would look like with major glacial melting can be obtained by deleting all the bluish colors from 60 meters on down and converting them to ocean. The resulting map looks like this:

There are several caveats. First, sea level would not rise uniformly, but rather, it would go up more in some places than in others. In the US, I think there would be more sea level rise along the east coast, father to the south, because of a number of these effects, so where you see a coastal plain remaining along the eastern mountains, maybe delete that; perhaps the shores of the Atlantic would wash against the Appalachians or Piedmont in Virginia and North and South Carolina. Also, as sea level rises, the land will be pushed down various amounts by the weight of the water, so this might be considered a minimum estimate of rise in some areas. Also, erosion would cause important changes. If you look at, say, a 60 meter topo line in a region made of something other than hard rock, you have to assume that transgression of the sea including the effects of erosion would move way inland in some cases. Also, this map has the edge of the continent all rough and wiggly. This would only be true where hard bedrock meets the sea. Other places, there would be smoothing off, formation of linear barrier beaches, and the rise of deltas.

But putting all that aside, there are some amazing effects. For one thing, the Atlantic extends to and engulfs Lake Erie. Also, it appears that the Hudson and Champlain valleys merge and join the Saint Lawrence Seaway, so New England and adjoining regions of Canada become a big rocky island. The region of New Orleans and the Lower Mississippi become a large embayment, with the southern end of the Appalachians and nearby mountains forming a peninsula.

El Centro and the Salton Sea become part of the much enlarged Baja (Sea of California). Hudson Bay gets huger. Ignore Greenland; that big ocean in the middle of Greenland would mostly rise up and become land, as this area is currently depressed by glacial mass. Also, gee, there seems to be a big ocean in Mexico.

This is a VERY ROUGH approximation. Just for fun.

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The image at the top of the post is from NOAA and shows, I think 10 meter sea level rise from a different angle.

An analysis by researchers with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) suggest the answer is “yes.”  Their paper, “Effectiveness of Taxicab Security Equipment in Reducing Driver Homicide Rates,” was published this month in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine.  They analyzed 15 years of data (1996-2010) from 26 large U.S. cities.  Eight of the localities had ordinances or industry practices that led to at least 70 percent of  taxicabs being equipped with security cameras.  (Those cities were Austin TX, Dallas TX, Houston TX, Las Vegas NV, Orlando FL, Portland OR, San Francisco CA and Seattle WA.)  Another seven cities had at least 70 percent of taxicabs fitted with bullet-proof partitions which separate the driver from the passengers.  Eleven other large municipalities without camera- or partition-equipped cabs were used as the reference cities.

Among other things, the authors assessed changes over time in cab driver-specific homicide rates before and after bullet-resistant partitions and cameras were installed.  In the cities with taxicabs equipped with cameras, and after adjusting for each cities’ change in overall homicide rates, they reported the cab driver-specific homicide rate was 3.7 times lower in the post-installation period.  Some of the cities’ ordinances, the authors note, require a decal be displayed inside the cab to alert passengers they are under camera surveillance.   The installation of bullet-proof partitions, in contrast, was not associated with a change in driver homicide rates.  The authors write that this finding was “unexpected.”   Bullet-resistant partitions are:

“designed to give more power to the driver than to the passenger in regard to control of physical space.  Additionally, it separates the target (cash held by driver) from the perpetrator.”

As reported, however, in 2010 in the Chicago Tribune

“But many drivers say the partitions are useless. Most don’t keep the partitions closed because they’re cumbersome and restrict ventilation. And they say the partitions are awkward for passengers, who scrape their knees as they get in and out of the vehicles, and for drivers, who can’t move their seats back.  In the end, cabdrivers say, the partitions didn’t prevent crime.  ‘If someone wanted to rob me, they’ll get out, come to the passenger side and shoot me,’ said Folarin Odusanya, 48, who has driven a taxi in Chicago for 20 years.”

In response to the fatal assault last week on Mr. Orji, Fernando Mateo with a taxi driver’s union told the New York Times

“’Our drivers get robbed and assaulted every single day.’  He said that about 300 assaults and robberies of taxi drivers occurred in New York City every month, and that 10 percent of livery-cab fares are lost because passengers flee without paying.”

The reporter explained that Mr. Orjji moved to New York City from Nigeria about a decade ago.  He worked long hours as a cabdriver.   His sister-in-law told CBS New York :

“He was a very dedicated, loving father.  An innocent man who was just working hard to make sure his kids eat. Everything he wanted to do was take care of his children. It’s horrible.”

Under New York City laws, livery vehicles are supposed to be equipped with a bullet proof partition or an approved surveillance camera system.  One news report indicated that Mr. Orji’s vehicle—-likely his personal vehicle—had neither.    The peril of a parent trying to make ends meet.

We’re currently well above the minimum – indeed, we’re pushing the maximum of the AMSR era. That’s not as meaningful as it might be, because 2012 was quite well up until only a few weeks back, so this could all change. But PIOMASS, too, is showing a slight recovery from last year instead of monotonic decline. This should all be no great surprise – we don’t expect monotonic decline.

As usual, if you actually care about seaice you’re probably better off with Neven.

Refs

* Girding my loins: sea ice

* BCL(SB),
* Eli,
* HW.

Not edifying, true, but certainly amusing.

Since I’m here I may as well put up something: can I interest you in this fine photo of a goldfinch, lying symbolically on a bed of peony petals? The peony represents transient beauty, and so it would seem does this particular goldfinch. The culprit may just be circumstance, or may be closer to home.

After a day, she decided to eat it anyway:

Interestingly, in the end, only the colourful bits survived:

“One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.” -Frank Zappa

One of the most difficult things to talk about, for any self-respecting scientist, is politics. Like all of you, I have my preferences, my opinions, and my vision for what a better world would look like. I’m also well aware that if I talked about all of them, there probably wouldn’t be a single one of you out there who agreed with everything I had to say.

Image credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP.

And it would be completely unreasonable to expect you to. After all, our politics are informed by our experiences, our ideals, and the limited amount of information we have at our disposal. But there are people out there with more information than you on pretty much every topic, political or otherwise. When it comes to those topics, if your political opinions aren’t informed by not just an expert, but by the consensus of experts in that field, then your politics cannot be said to be based in science.

And that’s what I want you to consider today.

Image credit: Salvat EPHE, via Chantal Conand, ECOMAR and Loïc Charpy, IRD.

I like to fancy myself an above-average adult as far as being informed in general goes, and in particular about a plethora of aspects concerning science, health, and the environment. But the reality is that — with the sole exception of physics, astronomy, and cosmology in particular — I am simply nothing more than a somewhat informed non-professional. Because you know what I am (and am not) an expert in, you might lend more credence to my opinions on spaceflight, on superconductivity, or on variable stars than you would to 99% of people, and that’s reasonable, I suppose. But that’s not my true area of expertise; there are likely thousands if not tens of thousands of people worldwide who have more (and better) information than I do about those topics.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Space Telescope / ACS and Hubble Heritage Team.

But you might still trust what I have to say.

Why?

It shouldn’t be because you think that I know better than the thousands or tens of thousands of people whose expertise lies in those particular sub-fields. I don’t. You should trust me because you think that:

1. I know enough to understand the details of what’s going on, how it’s happening, and I’ll be able to break it down in an understandable way for you, but also because
2. You trust that I’m going to inform myself as to what the scientific consensus is on an issue, and that’s what I’ll present to you as a scientific truth.

So why is it, then, that we shouldn’t demand that same level of rigor — when it’s available — when it comes to all of our information?

Image credit: Rob Laddish.

If we’re talking about an environmental issue such as the acidification of the oceans, why wouldn’t you immediately wonder what the scientific consensus among marine biologists or NOAA was?

If we’re talking about the theory of evolution, why would you trust anyone’s opinion over the consensus of evolutionary biologists?

And if we’re talking about the origin of the stars, planets, and galaxies in the Universe, why would you dream of trusting anyone other than theoretical cosmologists, the people who study this in gory detail for a living?

Image credit: ESA and the Planck collaboration.

Yes, there are some people who don’t do this, but the vast majority of you know that if you want to inform yourself about scientific truths, you need to go to the body of scientists who study that particular question or field as their area of expertise. And you don’t want to just pick out a handful of fringe scientists who disagree with the consensus; if there is a consensus, that’s what you go with. If the consensus model turns out to be wrong, incomplete, or otherwise inaccurate, science will figure it out.

Image credit: The COMET program, via G. H. Rieke.

So we want to go with the best that we know when it comes to making informed policy decisions, right?

If we want a better society, we can’t pick-and-choose when we do this. We should be listening to the science even when it offends our sensibilities or preconceptions. And — as I’ve learned the hard way — science does this all the time.

But so does health and medicine.

Image credit: me.

I was disappointed, but not surprised, when I did my own research into the fluoridation of drinking water and its effect on both dental and medical health, to find that fluoridation is safe and effective, and also to find that not only did my city fail to fluoridate our drinking water, we failed by more than a 3-2 margin in voting.

Here’s the thing that I don’t get. I talked to a doctor I knew and trusted once, someone who was a practicing M.D. for more than 30 years. Over that time, this doctor had seen thousands upon thousands of patients, and kept up impeccably with the latest research and developments in the field. “How can I apply the latest findings to my practice” was a question this professional often asked. And while keeping up with the literature, sometimes there were articles or studies that suggested that the recommendations of the CDC — the Center for Disease Control — might not be the optimal recommendations.

Sometimes those recommendations did actually change over time, most of the time they didn’t. I asked this doctor if he ever recommended anything contrary to the CDC’s recommendation for patients in general, and he got very serious. Under no circumstances, he said, was he or any other M.D. he knew qualified to even be a member of the CDC, much less challenge their recommendations. He explained to me what it took to become one of the professionals involved with the CDC, and how that would be a lifetime’s worth of work in and of itself, and that wasn’t how he chose to spend his life. But there were people who did, and making the CDC recommendations was their job; they were the experts, not him. Furthermore, he said, any doctor who didn’t follow the CDC’s recommendations was a doctor who simply wan’t doing a good job, and if I cared at all about my own health, public health, and following medicine’s best practices, I would never frequent or recommend a doctor who held otherwise.

Image credit: AP Photo / Sven Kaestner. GMO corn on the right, non-GMO on the left.

Now, that doesn’t mean that science and scientific truths should be the only consideration when it comes to crafting policy. The Earth is getting warmer, the climate is changing, and humans are the cause: these are scientific truths. But that doesn’t mean that Al Gore’s cap-and-trade is the best policy, or even a legitimate solution. GMOs are a safe technique for modifying crops that we eat for food, but that doesn’t mean that our agricultural system and business/farming practices are just fine, and that they don’t need to be overhauled. And vaccinations are not 100% safe, but as far as we understand public health, everyone who doesn’t have/need a medical exemption should receive the full CDC schedule of vaccines on time; they save literally tens of thousands of lives per year, and religious/personal-choice exemptions kill people, period.

More science, please, all the time, even when it disagrees with my own politics. Because as science learns and as better and more fundamental scientific truths are revealed, I want that understanding incorporated into my society’s policies. So should you.

Global warming causes more rain and more frequent and more severe storm lines. More rain causes more plant growth in otherwise arid regions, and severe storms knock a lot of that vegetation down. This causes more light to get to the ground, so “ladder” vegetation, which enhances fire spread, increases, and the fallen branches add to the fuel that has already been increased by the increased rainfall.

Global warming causes drought, when it isn’t busy causing rain. So, areas with increased amounts of fuel that has been configured to increase fire intensity and spreadability become tinder-rich. Along with the drought comes increased spring and summer temperatures, also caused by global warming and this dries out the vegetation making it much more likely for fires to start, grow quickly, spread, and become large.

We’ve known this for some time, and there is all sorts of evidence to back up the assertion that global warming is the reason for the fire seasons on steroids effect we are seeing now (links to some of this are provided below).

So, yes.

James West has written a very thorough piece demonstrating all these connections, and more, in Mother Jones: How Climate Change Makes Wildfires Worse.

And here’s some backup information for you:

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More on Climate Change here.

Photo Credit: jonathanpercy via Compfight cc

The nominee’s written statement was short on details about his vision for OIRA, but in response to a question from Committee Chairman Tom Carper (D-DE), he mentioned three specific priorities:

“Should I be confirmed as OIRA administrator, my top priorities would really be three.  First, I would like to ensure that regulatory review at OIRA occurs in as timely a manner as possible.  That the quality of review remains high, and that timeliness and the notice to the regulated parties and to the public of what the regulatory regime will be will become finalized as effectively and efficiently as possible.”

“Secondly, I would view it as a very high priority to form good and respectful working relationships with the agency heads, with Members of Congress, with others in government, indeed with public stakeholders so that, should I be confirmed as administrator of OIRA, I will have the trust and positive working relationships that are essential to accomplish OIRA’s objectives.”

“Third, I think it’s extremely important to continue the good work that OIRA and the Administration have already been working on to further retrospective review and look back of regulation and our administrative system.  I think it is extremely important that even as we move forward as a country with new regulations, achieving new objectives or furthering old objectives, that we look back at regulations on the books to ensure that there are no longer burdens in place that are not achieving their objectives.”

Several Senators picked up on the timeliness theme.  Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) didn’t mince words in describing OIRA’s role in delaying agencies’ regulatory actions:

“We have now a situation where delays of agencies’ [rules] are chronic.  They [delays] fundamentally undermine the agencies’ ability to effectively execute the responsibilities that those agencies have.   Under the Executive Order which is in affect, EO 12866, OIRA has 90 days to review a draft of a proposed or final rule, there’s one 30 day extension that’s available.  As of May 14, 87 rules have been under review for more than 90 days, 51 have been under review for more than a year.” [00:51:20]

Senator Levin could have also quoted from “Down the Regulatory Rabbit Hole,” a new report by the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards.  It profiles eight regulatory proposals that are caught-up in OIRA’s review process and how the delays adversely impact public health, families and the environment.   I hope someone in the hearing room handed Mr. Shelanski a copy of the report.

Senator Levin asked the nominee:

“What’s your plan to change that situation?”

Mr. Shelanski responded:

“I absolutely share the concern you just raised about timeliness.  Not yet having been at OMB or OIRA , I can’t comment on what might have led to extended review of any particular rule, or what might have led to the number of rules that are under an extended review period, but I recognized that EO 12866 establishes the initial 90 day review process, and it would be one of my highest priorities, should I be confirmed as Administrator, to try to improve the timeliness, and the notice, and the certainty that lends to the regulatory environment.” [00:52:08]

Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) probed Shelanski about the Administration’s failure to publish its semi-annual regulatory agendas, as required by Executive Order 12866.

“For nearly three decades now, OIRA directors and OMBs of both parties have published their plans for new regulations.  They do so twice per year.  It’s an incredibly important opportunity for citizens to see what’s coming up and prepare for it.  That transparency measure is required under President Clinton’s Executive Order and also by the Regulatory Flexibility Act.  It calls for the publication of a regulatory agenda in the spring and one in the fall.  It lets people know what is in the pipeline, which I think is incredibly important, and what the potential compliance costs might be on small business.”

“…Last year, the Spring agenda was never released.    There was no Spring agenda.  It was the first time in decades, to my knowledge….  The regulatory agenda was not released, not in the Spring, not in the Fall, but in the winter, after the Election, on Friday, December 22.  …”

“In your briefing for this hearing, have you learned why OMB decided to skip the Spring regulatory agenda, and push back the Fall regulatory agenda?  Does this represent a policy change?  Are we seeing less transparency from an Administration that has claimed that it is the most transparent in history?” [01:25:13]

Nominee Shelanski responded:

“I share your concerns with transparency and the need to publish the regulatory agenda.  In my preparation for these hearings, being outside of OMB, I have not learned about why one agenda was not published and about the timing of other agendas.”

“Should I be confirmed as Administrator, I think it is vitally important that Americans, businesses, those who would benefit from regulation and those who would bear its costs have notice of what is in the regulatory pipeline. It will be one of my highest priorities to ensure that the regulatory agenda is published, in so far as possible, twice a year and in a timely fashion.”

At this point in the hearing, I wondered to myself whether Mr. Shelanski knew that the Administration has yet to publish it 2013 spring regulatory agenda.

It will be interesting to see how an individual with an affinity for timeliness deals with a backlog of rules “under review” and an office plagued by missed deadlines.

First, a word on why this is important. Look out the window. If you live in Bavaria, and you look out your window, perhaps you can see fish swimming by because you are in the middle of a huge flood affecting Central Europe. Look out the window. If you live in the American Midwest, it is either raining, about to rain, or it just rained, and you might be experiencing unprecedented flooding. Good luck getting your corn crop in. Actually, it is too late for corn, maybe try the soybeans in a week or two.

Look out the window. If you live in Colorado, you might not see much through the smoke from a nearby wildfire. Look out the window. If you live in the American Southwest or southern California and you have a thermometer outside, maybe it just broke because it was not designed to measure the very high temperatures you are experiencing.

Climate change is causing what meteorologists have been calling “Weather Whiplash” also known as “Weather Weirding.” This includes extreme heat, extreme cold, snow when it is not supposed to snow, way more rain than normally happens, and so on. There are multiple climate change related causes for some of this weather but much of what we are experiencing has to do with a fundamental shift in how the Northern Hemisphere’s temperate weather patterns operate. Normally temperate regions are separated from cooler regions to the north by a jet stream that runs in somewhat wavy line around the entire globe. This division between temperate and sub-arctic air masses exists because of the gradient in temperature from south (warmer) to north (cooler). This is a well understood phenomenon. However, over the last decade, the Arctic region has warmed considerably. This warming initially caused the ice that should cover much of the Arctic Sea, even in the summer, to melt off far more than it ever has during the warm season, which exposes water. Glare ice reflects sunlight back into space, but water absorbs it. Even the wet meltwater on the surface of the Greenland Ice sheet absorbs heat rather than reflects it, as it would were it frozen. So, warming has caused more warming in a seemingly unstoppable positive feedback system. This has gotten worse year after year.

This Arctic warming has proceeded at a pace faster than science. Research cycles take a few years. First, scientists concieve of an idea, get a bit of preliminary funding, then do a preliminary project or two. This refines and verifies their ideas and they seek more funding. Then they begin a longer research project that produces a series of conference papers, the occasional publication, etc. The ideas continue to be refined and adjusted, the bad parts being discarded, the verified parts being built on. Somewhere along the line ginormous computer models are brought into play to develop a more complete understanding of the thing being investigated. These computer models may require time on hard to access ginormous computers. More publications come out. Eventually there is a pretty good widely accepted model for some natural process related to climate change, but that took five years or so. The Arctic warming has proceeded at a pace faster than this model of science can keep up with.

But I digress, slightly. Let’s get back to the jet stream.

Arctic warming has decreased the intensity of the south (warmer) to north (cooler) temperature gradient in the Northern Hemisphere. This has caused the jet stream to change. It has become wiggly-wobbly instead of straightish. The jet stream now has big curves in it, and these curves under certain not-very-uncommon conditions tend to get stuck in place. So, the high winds of the jet stream are still streaming along but the curves themselves tend to move very little or just stay in place. At the turning points of the curvy jet stream form ginormous vortexes of air which promote storm formation. So, we have storminess, and we have storminess stuck in one region of the globe for a long time. This has caused the flooding we’ve seen. Also, the jet stream is less effective as a barrier between the warmer and cooler air masses. So, for example, even while some regions have been experiencing excessive heat, areas that normally would be warming nicely for the spring stayed cool this year. This coolness, strangely, is caused by heat. April, for instance, was very cool in the Upper Midwest of the United States, but to the north it was warmer than it should have been. The total average temperature was increased, but the barrier between colder-cool and warmish-warm broke down, so we had coolish warm in the south and warmish cool in the north. Putting this a different way, if the Arctic is the freezer compartment of your fridge, and Minnesota is the refrigerator, it is like someone cut a hole in the barrier between the freezer and refrigerator compartments. Your ice is wet and melting and your milk has a skim of ice on it.

This is what we think is happening, but as I noted above, the speed with which science can understand major complex systems like the earth’s climate is measured in chunks of years, while the current change is happening very very quickly. This is one of those situations where, if this was a movie, the President of the United States would tell the White House Science Advisor to assemble a team. In the next scene there would be a team of scientists being lowered from a helicopter onto the Greenland Ice Sheet in order to collect critically important data. In the next scene, in the White House Situation Room, the scientists would be delivering the bad news the the President and various assemble high level officials.

“It’s bad, Mr. President,” the crackling voice of the scientist over a barely adequate short wave connection intones.

“Just give it to me straight, no need for sugarcoating,” comes the presidential voice of Sam Waterston, or perhaps Luke Wilson, playing the role of President.

“Well, Mr. ..esident. It’s all …et here.”

“Come again? You’re breaking up.

“Wet. It’s all ….et …ere. The …eenalnd ice …ap. …elting faster than we … …aster than we …ought..”

“Can’t we have a better connection?” yells the frustrated President.

“Aaaaaaaarg…..” The last words from the science team. But don’t worry, they’ll make it back in time for the chief scientist’s teenager’s graduation party but that will involve falling though several holes in the ice and enlisting the aid of a band of Inuit hunters.

The thing is, in real life, it does not work that way, and we are behind in understanding what is happening in the Arctic. One of the most important things happening up there is the melting of the surface of the Greenland glaciers, which, in turn, might be caused by a newly discovered phenomenon known as Dark Snow.

With climate change we have more dust from drought-stricken regions and lots of soot from widespread wildfires. This stuff settles on the otherwise highly reflective snow and ice of the Greenland glacier and causes the conversion of sunlight, which would otherwise reflect away into space, into heat, and that heat melts the ice and snow, turning it into liquid water. Liquid water then continues to absorb more sunlight, converting it into heat. This causes more Arctic warming which may contribute to more dust and soot, and so on and so forth in a vicious positive feedback cycle. And by “positive” we do not mean “positive in a good way.”

John Abraham, a climate scientist at St. Thomas University, has just put up a blog post that provides an excellent overview of the problem in Greenland and the Dark Snow Project, which is a crowd funded project designed to understand what is happening there, being run by scientist Jason Box:

… Box has assembled a team of scientists and communicators to collect and analyze samples from key locations on the ice sheet, and report those results directly to the public. The plan is to arrive in Greenland in late June, just as the peak melting season and fire season coincide. Box will be joined by Bill McKibben, who will be covering the research for Rolling Stone, and videographer Peter Sinclair, whose series of climate change videos on YouTube has gained high praise from climate scientists.

Here is John Abrahamn’s blog post: Why Greenland’s darkening ice has become a hot topic in climate science: Darkening causes the snow to absorb more sunlight which in turn increases melting

I strongly urge you to click through to John’s post, read about Greenland and Dark Snow, then click through the link he provides to the Dark Snow project and give them five dollars!!!

…

…

What are you doing staring at this blog post. CLICK HERE NAO!!!

In January, federal OSHA issued 14 willful and 11 repeat violations to Panthera Painting for exposing its employees to lead.  The workers were using abrasive blasting equipment to remove lead paint from several bridge structures over the Pennsylvania Turnpike and along Interstate 81.  The OSHA inspector described how the Panthera crews didn’t have the proper equipment or training to do their jobs in ways to minimize exposure to lead dust.   Their exposure to lead exceeded OSHA’s permissible exposure limit (PEL) of 50 ug/m3.  One worker, called the “Blaster,” was exposed to a lead concentration that was five times OSHA’s PEL.  The crews also didn’t have appropriate respiratory protection.  The OSHA inspector noted that one worker simply had a shield taped to the front of his hard hat.  Another didn’t have new filter cartridges for his respirator, “so he wore the old ones and tied his shirt over his face,” the inspector wrote.

A New Hampshire firm, Franklin Non-Ferrous Foundry, received citations from OSHA last year for exposing workers to lead at concentrations as much as 1.7 times the permissible exposure limit.  The employer failed to maintain its equipment in the ways designed to control lead exposure.  On issuing the citations, OSHA’s area director commented:

“This employer is well aware of the necessary procedures to safeguard workers against lead exposure hazards, having been cited for 62 violations of OSHA’s lead standard since 1998, yet has chosen again to disregard them.”

And then there’s Welch Group Environmental, a firm that supposedly specializes in lead removal at shooting ranges.  Workers were exposed to 4 times, 8 times, and 9 times the maximum use concentrations of lead, and were not provided the proper respiratory protection.  Citations issued in 2012 by OSHA to the Welch indicate that one worker had a BLL of 61 ug/dL and another’s BLL was 96 ug/dL.  OSHA’s standard, which was adopted in 1978, requires employers to remove a worker from lead exposure when his or her BLL is 50 ug/dL or greater.  Public health experts consider BLLs at  or above 10 ug/dL as “elevated” and recommend interventions.

These examples from OSHA inspection cases are not anomalies.  A new report from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) provides the latest evidence that thousands of workers in the U.S. get lead poisoning.  It describes the results of blood lead tests conducted in California for the years 2008 through 2011.  (Laboratories conducting the analyses are required by State law to report the results.)    Each year, the CDPH receives about 20,000 results for which the source of lead exposure is known.   About 90% of the cases involve work-related exposures, and between 8-10 percent of the cases show elevated BLLs.  In 2011, for example, the results revealed 1,475 workers tested with elevated BLLs, including 285 with BLLs between 20-29 ug/dL of blood, and another 93 with BLLs at 30 ug/dL or higher.  Elevated BLLs in adults is associated with hypertension, decrements in renal function and cognitive dysfunction.

The CDPH’s report, prepared by the Occupational Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, notes that 96-97 percent of the cases involve male workers.  A large share of the workers with elevated BLLs were employed in storage battery manufacture and battery recycling.  In addition, workers with Hispanic surnames were disproportionately represented among those with elevated BLLs.  The report authors write:

“California’s workforce is 36 percent Hispanic, whereas the proportion of Hispanic surnames among individuals with elevated BLLs reported to the Registry was 64-70 percent.”

A study from 10 years ago found Hispanic workers were overrepresented in Massachusetts’ blood lead registry.

The report also explains why the 1,500 or so California workers identified each year with elevated BLLs is likely an undercount.  Current regulations by federal OSHA and for the states like California that run their own OSHA program (Cal/OSHA):

“…tie BLL testing requirements to air monitoring.  Employer must do initial air monitoring and, if air lead concentrations are above 30 ug/m3 more than 30 days per year, employers are required to provide employees with BLL testing.  Since many employers never conduct the required air monitoring, the BLL testing requirement is not triggered.”

The staff has made recommendations to Cal/OSHA to revise its lead standard.  Specifically, they want a requirement for BLL testing for all workers who “use, alter or disturb lead or lead-containing materials in a way that releases lead dust, mist, fume or other particles,” adding:

“If this recommendation were adopted we expect that the number of workers receiving a BLL test would increase significantly, allowing OLPPP to provide a more complete picture of workplace lead exposure in California in the future.”

The most recent national assessment of lead poisoning prevalence among U.S. workers was published in July 2011 in MMWR.  The numbers total 6,081 cases of elevated BLL in 2008, and 4,998 in 2009.  A substantial number of the workers with elevated BLLs were employed in battery manufacturing, secondary smelting/refining non-ferrous metals, and painting.   The data, based on reports from 40 States for the years 2008 and 2009, only included BLLs at or above 25 ug/dL of blood.   There were hundreds of workers in the dataset with BLLs over 40 ug/dL—918 in 2008 and 668 in 2009.   A panel of scientific experts recommends that workers with BLLs of 30 ug/dL or greater be temporarily removed from the exposure.

The authors of the July 2011 MMWR report write:

“using a threshold of 25 ug/dL likely underestimates harmful occupational lead exposure because lead-related toxicity can occur at levels as low as 5 ug/dL and the Healthy People 2020 target is set at 10 ug/dL.”

The data likely undercounts the number of lead poisoned workers in the U.S. for other reasons.  For one, it does not include data from 10 States (e.g., Arkansas, Mississippi, Nevada, West Virginia.)  More importantly, there’s no way to know how many workers with elevated BLL have not been tested.  As the OLPPP staff note, if employers shirk their duty to do air monitoring for lead, the blood-lead testing requirement isn’t triggered.

That’s why they’ve made recommendations to Cal/OSHA to revise its lead standard to better protect California’s workers.  Specifically, they want a requirement for BLL testing for all workers who “use, alter or disturb lead or lead-containing materials in a way that releases lead dust, mist, fume or other particles.”