Trade Secrets

["Andrew Hagen" <xah@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tonight PBS showed "Trade Secrets," <http://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/>,
a Bill Moyers documentary about how the chemical industry has littered
the ecosphere with poisons and covered it up. Moyers had a "body
burden" test performed, and found he was personally carrying about 84
chemicals, including about 13 dioxins. This is apparently not an
immediate problem for a man in his 60's, but would be worrisome in, for
example, a pregnant woman, due to the likelihood that the chemicals
would be passed to the fetus. On Tuesday, the Environmental Working
Group will publish 50,000 chemical industry documents on
<http://www.ewg.org/>. These documents were made available by the
efforts of trial attorneys who sued chemical companies. The New York
Times has an article on the chemical industry spin.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/26/national/26CHEM.html>.

Imagine what a President Al "Love Canal" Gore and a Democratically
controlled Senate could have done with what might turn out to be a
public relations brouhaha.

Andrew Hagen
xah@xxxxxxxxxxxxx