If a hurricane doesn't leave you dead,
It will make you strong
Don't try to explain it, just nod your head
Breathe in, breathe out, move on
Jimmy Buffett’s post-Katrina anthem offers sound advice for the victims of catastrophes, and even sounder advice for the victims of false alarms.
Were the warnings warranted? Was the data accurate and analyzed properly? Was the science scientific? Were the reactions of public officials, and the measures they imposed on the citizens they serve, reasonable and appropriate? Did we not act soon enough? Did we overreact?
These are questions we should ask in the aftermath of every real or would-be calamity: to educate ourselves, to make corrections, and to be better prepared for the next one.
In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, which appears not to have been any more serious than the yearly seasonal flu, these questions are especially pertinent. They also apply to the wizened bogeyman of global warming -- and to all the manufactured panics current and to come.
That would include the EtO scare.
Ethylene oxide (EtO) is a manmade chemical used in the production of other industrial chemicals, as a fumigant, and as a sterilant for medical equipment. The federal Environmental Protection Agency considers EtO a carcinogenic, but the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) thinks otherwise. Maybe one’s right and the other’s wrong, but they can’t both be right. So, who is?
As it happens, Jefferson County has more EtO emissions per square mile than any other county in Texas, more than 300 times the nationwide average. Nevertheless, the incidence of cancers allegedly caused by EtO is, according to TCEQ, “lower in Jefferson County than in the general U.S. population.”
Just last week, after years of extensive study, TCEQ updated its safe exposure level for EtO to 2.4 ppb. That’s ppB, parts per billion -- not ppM, parts per million. Virtually nothing is toxic at either of those levels, ppb or ppm, so maybe we should just relax and breathe in, breathe out, move on.