I work at the FAA with this engineer named Steve Cords. He is one of the smartest people I know. He is always on top of Internet Hoaxes, new words etc. He brews beer and uses a heat exchanger made out of corrugated copper. He says that turbulent flow exchanges heat faster than laminar flow and the corrugations create tuburlence. He's right!
Steve is a model rocketry enthusiast. He is helping to wage this PR war on percholrates and how they have been unfairly blamed for water contamination. He pointed me to this site that is trying to spread the truth about Perchlorates.
Charlie,
Here's an article I ran across during a purview of Junkscience.
Rocket science? Rocket fuel found in US breast milk yelled the headlines. The attention of Number Watch was drawn to the perchlorate scare by Laer Pearce, author of Cheat-Seeking Missiles.
This appears to have all the hallmarks of an Instrumentation Induced Scare based on the Dosage Fallacy. Previous examples of IIS include dioxins in salmon. Because of advances in instrumentation, we are now able to measure concentrations of less than parts per billion of chemical species, a long, long way below the levels at which any known toxin has an effect.
First, the naming of parts. “Per” is a prefix suggesting a higher state of oxidation that normal (e.g. hydrogen peroxide). “Chlor” indicates the presence of an atom of Chlorine. “-ate” tells us that there is lots of oxygen (four atoms). The latter is the significant reason for its production for rocket engines, because it is an efficient way of storing oxygen, just like the nitrate in gunpowder. Perchlorate ions do not exist on their own, they are salts of perchloric acid (HClO4), so there is a positive ion in association (ammonium, lithium, potassium etc.)
According to the EPA, small scale tests on human subjects suggest that there is an effect of inhibiting iodine uptake in the thyroid with the threshold at a dose above 0.007 mg/kg (bodyweight)/day, over 14 days. There is also epidemiological and rodent evidence that can be dismissed for the usual reasons.
The usual questions occur.
There is the “ozone-hole” question – how do we know it was not always there, before we developed the instrumentation? The human metabolism produces an enormous range of chemicals, some of which have a function and some of which are by-products. It would not be at all surprising if the odd perchlorate ion occurred somewhere in the process, as the requisite atoms are there in abundance. Equally, why should we suppose that the stuff was not always in our water supplies?
Then there is the corpus delicti question – where are all the children suffering from, say, hypothyroidism? The scaremongers seem to be involved in a game of Cluedo in which the necessity to locate the body is waived. As with all such scares, the promoters cannot produce a single sufferer from the putative cause.
What will the reaction be? Will American children have to start taking seaweed with their Ritalin?
alacrity, concinnity.
Historical Facts- Que pasa means "how was your bowel movement?" or "how are things passing through you?" Digestive health is very critical to overall health. Think about the types of cancers that men get. It is what runs through you that makes you sick- smoke, alchol, bad food, lack of fiber etc.
Paul went on a tirade today about how great it is to live in America. Due to some voodoo economics, Americans are able to basically sit around and not do a whole lot. We push paper, act busy, fill out forms, but who really makes anything? We have other people make things for us, mostly chinamen and chinawomen. So here they are making all this stuff for us to consume and we send them pieces of paper. What do we ever give back? We give back a share of our country- perhaps some real estate, but mostly stock in our ever-expanding country. We suck some fees off and voila- we run the world. We have every other country making stuff for the multinational corporations that are based here in the US. We in turn get a whole bunch of multimillionaires who hire a bunch of maids, servants, people to wash their car, etc. These people pay for day care and so on- hence the service based economy. No more do we have to work in smoky, dirty factories, or dusty, dangerous mines. Sure, some Americans still do work in manufacturing, but very little overall. And you thought David Copperfield was amazing! He is nothing compared to the World Econonomic System.
Paul was always good at dark humor. Once I worked for him. When I left to work somewhere else, he said "Good, you'll double the IQ of both organizations." He also came back at my new boss, Edd Clair, who one day was leaving the building. "I've got to catch the bus." Paul quickly replied without hesitating "Would that be the short bus or the long bus?" Get it? How very Special!
Last time I checked, this page was not indexed