Editorial Comment

Banning bad stuff to protect the public; Ozone Gore's trip to Japan

January 1998 Vol. 219 No. 1
Editorial Comment

Bob Scott

Banning bad stuff

It seems that every time one turns around these days, some envirowacko government entity somewhere comes up with another toxic "threat" to humans that just has to be banned immediately or the race will vanish from the face of the globe.

These "threats" come in forms of all kinds, but usually are chemical in nature, organic and inorganic. Included, of course, are hyper-poisonous saccharine, the dreaded DDT (which the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimates saved only some 500 million lives before it was banned because of a book) and that superkiller crude oil and all of its derivatives, which people used to drink to cure gout, rheumatism, constipation and other such ailments, apparently without undue harm. And based on a personal experience one time of being submerged from head to toe under a shower of 20 bbl or so of crude (that's 840 gallons for the uninitiated, a minuscule volume compared to what the well control people in Kuwait soaked up in 1991 without any reported long term effects), we can attest that getting an oil bath doesn't hurt a bit. Then again, people don't have feathers.

In the U.S., the envirowatchdogs who aggressively look after the best interests of everyone night and day and who often double as propagandists and downright damn liars, are usually found in the higher echelons of the EPA, the White House, the Department of Interior and similar hotbeds of pseudoscientific nonsense.

Well, comes now something called the National Exposure Warning Center, which (on the Internet, anyway) sails under the banner of EPA. Early last month, the center via one of its research divisions issued its first urgent warning about the hazards of DHMO or dihydrogen monoxide, a colorless, usually odorless and sometimes corrosive chemical responsible for thousands of deaths annually and untold environmental damage. A constituent of many known toxic substances, diseases including cancer, and disease-causing agents, it can kill when inhaled even in small quantities, cause severe tissue damage in its solid state and severe burns in the gaseous state.

Because of these and many other inherent dangers and its wide distribution, a petition to ban DHMO was recently circulated to determine public reaction if such a ban was implemented. Of those presented with the petition, 86% supported banning the chemical outright, 6% were undecided and only 2% knew that dihydrogen monoxide, also known as hydroxyl acid, is . . . water.

Now we're not too sure about the corporeity of the National Exposure Warning Center and its Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division since we've only seen its home page on the Internet. But it would not be too surprising if it really wasn't a spoof as it appears to be considering EPA might be the source.

The idea to gauge public reaction came from one Nathan Zohner, a 14-year old freshman at Eagle Rock Jr. High School in Idaho who won the grand prize at the Greater Idaho Falls Science Fair as a result. He queried 50 people attending the fair, with 43 supporting the ban, 6 undecided and one who knew that dihydrogen monoxide was H₂0. We only wish Nathan had queried those same people about banning dastardly flammable dioxide gas and life-threatening C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁ when too much is taken internally and distributed around the body.

Appropriately, Nathan's project was entitled "How gullible are we?"

A whole hell of a bunch, it looks like.

Heard on the radio: When Ozone Gore flew to Kyoto last December to join several thousand other envirofanatics who support eliminating fossil fuels, his airplane alone burned up 65,600 gallons of jet fuel, which at last report is a fossil fuel, although he may not know that, since it was only a couple of years or so ago that he found out natural gas was such. Add to that the jet fuel used to get the rest of the nutcakes there and you have added just a whole big bunch of CO₂ to the atmosphere (which they all think is real bad)—all of which was unnecessary considering the subject of the meeting had no scientific basis whatsoever.

If these hypocritical clowns were really serious, they should set an example by switching to bicycles and sail-boats from their fuel-guzzling limos and 747s. But don't hold your breath.

Some sort of boom must be back. Last month, an aggressive advertising program on a local radio station was touting custom designed paperweights as Christmas gifts—with the added attraction that the exclusive European designer was coming all the way across the ocean to Houston to be on hand to discuss his elegant products with customers. To add to this absurdity, the paperweights were for sale in a clock shop and the price wasn't mentioned.

Our first thought was—goodness gracious—the designer had struck a licensing deal with the Clinton administration to sell small crystal images of Ozone Gore and "Casino" Brucie Babbitt who certainly qualify as paperweights of the first order. A second thought was that it would be real nice if Billy Jeff offered to sell both of the original models themselves providing the price was high enough and could be paid as "soft" money to the Democratic Party. At least the money wouldn't be coming from Asia.

But alas, this was probably wishful thinking, since Ozone and Casino are still polluting the Washington landscape. Come to think of it, it would be really nice if EPA would consider banning both of them as harmful. We sure can't think of any badder stuff.