That healthy glow

You may recall that a few days ago, I posted about a company that sells beanies and boxer briefs designed to protect you from the supposed ill effects of 5G, and electromagnetic fields in general.  The upshot of my post was that the low-level EMFs we're exposed to in the ordinary course of things have never been shown to cause harm, so at best such purchases are a waste of money that could be more productively used for other purposes, which in my opinion includes using it to start a campfire.

I choose the words "at best" deliberately, because in one of those weird synchronicities that happen sometimes, I ran into an article just yesterday on the BBC News that said there's another reason to avoid these products.  You ready?

It's because some of them are...

... wait for it...

... radioactive.

My reaction upon reading this was, and I quote:

BA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA *gasp, pant, wheeze* HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

I mean, you can't make this stuff up.  The Dutch Authority for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection found that nine products from a company called EnergyArmor -- all of which allegedly protect you from the dangers of 5G and electromagnetic radiation -- themselves give off enough ionizing radiation that the agency recommended owners stop wearing them immediately, put them aside (preferably in the original packaging and away from close proximity to people and pets), and call the company to ask for a refund.  

This includes the amusingly-named Quantum Pendant™, which you can tell is extremely quantum because it says "Quantum Pendant" about eighty times on the box.

Why this pendant is any more quantum than anything else, given that all matter -- including dogs, avocados, umbrellas, cow shit, and Mitch McConnell -- is made up of the same set of subatomic particles that obey the same rules of quantum physics, is never explained.  My guess is they have no idea themselves.  The original claim ("low-level EMFs are harmful") has nothing to do with science, and as I've remarked before, it's very hard to logic your way out of a belief you didn't logic your way into.

Also, in this case, the fact that lots of gullible people are willing to hand over their hard-earned cash for this nonsense is a hell of an incentive to make it sound sophisticated.

So the purported health benefits of anti-5G-wear is offset fairly dramatically by the (real) hazard of wearing something radioactive against your skin.  Sad to say, but we appear as a species not to have progressed very far from when Marie and Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity, and found that radium salts glowed in the dark, from which people immediately concluded that these were soothing healing rays that could be used to treat damn near everything, and this includes a guy who (I am not making this up) fixed a radium-infused gizmo onto a jock strap, presumably to jazz up his sex life.

Didn't work.  Poor slob died of bladder cancer.

That, of course, was over a hundred years ago, and science has learned a lot since then.  Unfortunately -- and this is the sad part -- people in general apparently haven't.  There are still folks who prefer to believe foolishness over evidence-based research.  As my dad used to say, you can fix ignorant, but you can't fix stupid.

But the timing of the product recall in the Netherlands was just too wonderful not to comment upon.  And maybe this will wake a few people up.  I'm not really holding out that much hope, though.  The 5G-blocking-stuff manufacturers will probably just put the Dutch Authority for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection on their (long) list of groups that are in on the conspiracy, joining the World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control, and the National Institute of Health.  I'm probably in there somewhere, too, most likely on their "shill" list.  Which, by the way. makes me wonder where the hell my Shill Check™ is.  You'd think that all of my scorn would earn me something.

Maybe it was delayed in the mail.  The Post Office is probably on to the conspiracy and is preventing us shills from getting paid.  You know how it goes.

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I remember when I first learned about the tragedy of how much classical literature has been lost.  Take, for example, Sophocles, which anyone who's taken a college lit class probably knows because of his plays Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and Oedipus at Colonus.  He was the author of at least 120 plays, of which only seven have survived.  While we consider him to be one of the most brilliant ancient Greek playwrights, we don't even have ten percent of the literature he wrote.  As Carl Sagan put it, it's as if all we had of Shakespeare was Timon of Athens, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Cymbeline, and were judging his talent based upon that.

The same is true of just about every classical Greek and Roman writer.  Little to nothing of their work survives; some are only known because of references to their writing in other authors.  Some of what we do have was saved by fortunate chance; this is the subject of Stephen Greenblatt's wonderful book The Swerve, which is about how a fifteenth-century book collector, Poggio Bracciolini, discovered in a monastic library what might well have been the sole remaining copy of Lucretius's masterwork De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), which was one of the first pieces of writing to take seriously Democritus's idea that all matter is made of atoms.

The Swerve looks at the history of Lucretius's work (and its origin in the philosophy of Epicurus) and the monastic tradition that allowed it to survive, as well as Poggio's own life and times and how his discovery altered the course of our pursuit of natural history.  (This is the "swerve" referenced in the title.)  It's a fascinating read for anyone who enjoys history or science (or the history of science).  His writing is clear, lucid, and quick-paced, about as far from the stereotype of historical writing being dry and boring as you could get.  You definitely need to put this one on your to-read list.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Mattresses, crude oil, and superpowers

Given the ongoing lunacy happening in the United States right now, I find it strangely comforting when I find out that there are people doing stupid stuff in other countries, too.

Take, for example, the Korean radioactive mattresses.  As reported in the Korea JoongAng Daily, it turns out that seven mattress manufacturers have been found in violation of standards for allowable radiation level in products meant for human use.

How, you might ask, could not one, nor two, but seven companies be simultaneously producing mattresses that bathe you in the warm glow of alpha radiation?  Turns out that there's a pseudoscientific alt-med belief over there that anything producing negative ions is good for you (meaning, of course, that positive ions are bad).  Given that bases have an excess of hydroxyl (OH-) ions, if this were true it would mean that a concentrated solution of Drano would be just the most healthful thing ever.

But little things like "facts" and "science" never dissuade people from espousing this sort of idea, so these mattress manufacturers decided to negative-ionify their mattresses by sprinkling the stuffing with powdered monazite.  Monazite, for you non-geological types, is a mineral primarily composed of cerium/thorium phosphate.

Thorium, you probably know, is highly radioactive.  When it decays, it not only produces alpha particles, but the "decay series" ends up producing the element radon, which is not only more radioactive, is a gas, so it can be inhaled -- and has been linked to increasing your risk of lung cancer.

So using one of these mattresses is taking the chance of seriously compromising your health.  It will not, unfortunately, result in your getting superpowers or becoming the Korean version of the Incredible Hulk.

Oh, wait.  That was gamma rays, not alpha particles.  Never mind.

Then we've got the resort town of Naftalan, in Azerbaijan, which has a spa in which you can do wonderful things for your skin -- by taking a bath in heated crude oil.

At this point, I feel obliged to state outright that I'm not making either of these stories up.  The people running the resort said, "It smells like sulfur, but feels like salvation," and that it's helpful for skin, joint, and bone diseases.

One puzzling thing is that the news story I linked above says that "The oil's effectiveness is credited to its high concentration of a compound used to treat conditions like psoriasis and eczema.  European Union and U.S. regulators have deemed that compound a potential carcinogen, but it hasn't been linked to cancer."

Um.  It's a potential carcinogen, but hasn't been linked to cancer?  This is a little like saying that Donald Trump has been doing everything he can to favor Russian interests over those of Americans, but he's not actually pro-Russian and anti-American.

Oh, wait.  That's what he and his cronies are actually saying.

Never mind again.

This kind of bullshit even makes the wildlife facepalm.

On second thought, I'm not sure how reassuring it really is that people elsewhere in the world are exhibiting the same level of credulous idiocy we have here in the United States.  Wouldn't it nice if somewhere in the world, there was a country that based its decisions on rationality, that behaved nicely toward people and respected their rights, and that took into account long-term consequences instead of basing everything on short-term expediency?  Maybe the fact that we're all in the same slowly-sinking boat isn't really a cause for celebration.

In fact, now that I'm thoroughly depressed, I think I'll go take a nap.  Maybe I'll get lucky and my mattress will emit gamma rays, and I'll get superpowers.  Maybe I'll get to fly and shoot laser beams from my eyes.  That'd be handy.

Especially before the next "Make America Great Again" rally.

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This week's book recommendation is from one of my favorite writers and documentary producers, Irish science historian James Burke.  Burke became famous for his series Connections, in which he explored the one-thing-leads-to-another phenomenon which led to so many pivotal discoveries -- if you've seen any of the episodes of Connections, you'll know what I mean when I say that it is just tremendous fun to watch how this man's brain works.  In his book The Pinball Effect, Burke investigates the role of serendipity -- resulting in another tremendously entertaining and illuminating read.

A tsunami of misinformation

One of the most frustrating things I encounter while doing research for Skeptophilia is sensationalized nonsense masquerading as fact -- especially when it is gussied up in such a way as to make it seem reasonable to the layperson.

This is the problem with the article "Fukushima Radiation Has Contaminated The Entire Pacific Ocean (And It's Going To Get Worse)" that appeared over at Zero Hedge yesterday.  In it, we have a rehash of the Fukushima disaster of 2011, which generated a horrific tsunami and breached a nuclear power plant.  The combined effects of the earthquake and its aftermath cost almost 16,000 lives, and left 230,000 people homeless -- some of whom are still living in temporary housing.

Unfortunately, that's about where the Zero Hedge article stops being factual and starts relying on sensationalist exaggerations and outright fabrication.  Here's a brief list of the inaccurate claims that appear on the article:

• "[The Fukushima earthquake was] believed to be an aftershock of the 2010 earthquake in Chile."

Well, it might be true that someone believes that.  Presumably the writer of the article does.  But there aren't any geologists who do.  The earthquakes occurred a year apart and over 17,000 kilometers from each other.  There is no seismic process that could possibly connect the two.

If that weren’t bad enough:

• "Fukushima continues to leak an astounding 300 tons of radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean every day."

This isn't incorrect so much as it is misleading.  Note that nowhere in this statement (in fact, nowhere in the article) does it state how radioactive those 300 tons of water are -- i.e., how much radioactive cesium (the most common radioisotope in the leaked water) was present.  In fact, marine radiochemist Ken Buesseler has stated that ocean radiation levels near the disabled power plant are one thousandth of what they were immediately following the accident, and at any distance at all from the site the contamination is "barely discernible."

• "It should come as no surprise, then, that Fukushima has contaminated the entire Pacific Ocean in just five years."

Cf. my previous comments about quantities and measurability.

• "Not long after Fukushima, fish in Canada began bleeding from their gills, mouths, and eyeballs.  This “disease” has been ignored by the government and has decimated native fish populations, including the North Pacific herring."

This is referring to viral hemorrhagic septicemia, a deadly disease of fish that is caused by (note the name) a virus.  It has nothing to do with radiation or the Fukushima disaster, and was recorded in fish populations long before the earthquake.

Also, correlation does not imply causation.  Even if viral hemorrhagic septicemia had only been seen after debris from Fukushima washed ashore, it wouldn't necessarily mean that the contaminants in the debris had caused the disease.

• "Elsewhere in Western Canada, independent scientists have measured a 300% increase in the level of radiation."

300% of a minuscule amount is still a minuscule amount.

• "Further south in Oregon, USA, starfish began losing legs and then disintegrating entirely when Fukushima radiation arrived there in 2013.  Now, they are dying in record amounts, putting the entire oceanic ecosystem in that area at risk.

This is another viral disease called starfish wasting disease, and like the fish disease mentioned earlier, has bugger-all to do with Fukushima as there have been outbreaks of it since 1972.  However, there is some evidence that increasing water temperatures have made starfish more susceptible, so there's a connection to climate change, which is something we should be concerned about.

And no alarmist article would be complete without some scary pictures.  First, we have this one, from NOAA:

This has nothing to do with radiation leakage.  It's a map tracking wave heights of the tsunami as it crossed the Pacific, as you'd know if you had looked at the scale on the right hand side.

Then there's this one:

Which shows a bunch of dead starfish.  But as I established a couple of paragraphs ago, this has nothing to do with radiation poisoning.

And so on and so forth.  The alarmist foolishness in articles like this is dangerous from a couple of standpoints. First, it makes it sound like the scientists themselves are ignorant of what's going on, or (worse) are actively covering it up for their own malign purposes.  Second, it misrepresents what the science actually says.  Third, it distracts us from problems that actually are global catastrophes in the making by focusing our attention elsewhere.

At a less-than-careful reading, though, such an article sounds well researched and factually accurate.  It has links, sources cited, uses technical vocabulary.  It's only if you take the time to do some research yourself that the whole thing collapses like a house of cards.

So caveat lector.  As usual.  And to the people who keep forwarding this article around, I'm respectfully asking you to stop.  It's hard enough to get people to trust legitimate science these days; this kind of thing only makes it worse.

Crayons, asbestos, and risk

Let's have a little chat about the topic of risk.

It's something that a lot of people don't understand, but in principle, it's a simple concept.  Actuaries, and other folks who get paid to think about such things, define risk as the product of two probabilities: the probability of exposure and the probability of harm.

The problem is that misassessment of one or both of these two probabilities leads people to (in some cases) wildly overestimate the risk of certain behaviors, and (in others) to wildly underestimate it.  Often, these misassessments have to do with the familiarity of something -- familiar, everyday things are usually considered safer than they really are, and unfamiliar ones more dangerous, regardless of whether those perceptions are at all rooted in reality.

Dan Gilbert, in his wonderful TED talk "Why We Make Bad Decisions," illustrated this perfectly with a photograph of a burning skyscraper, a plane crash, a terrorist bombing site, and a swimming pool.  He then asked the audience to play the Sesame Street game of "Which Of These Things Is Not Like The Other?"  "If you chose the swimming pool, you're correct," Gilbert said.  "Because of the four, it's the one that is by far the most likely to kill you."

This becomes even worse when we start looking at the risk of "chemicals."  I put the word "chemicals" in quotation marks, because of course, everything is made up of chemicals.  (I once saw a sign for "U-Pick Organic Chemical-Free Strawberries."  Ponder that one for a while.)  The problem is, lots of people don't understand chemistry, and so anything with a fancy-sounding name immediately gets put in the "unfamiliar/dangerous" column, even if it's a perfectly innocuous compound, or even one that is essential for life.

Even dangerous chemicals, of course, don't necessarily act straightforwardly.  It's not enough to say that a compound is toxic -- you also have to ask how likely it is to get inside you and cause trouble, and whether the dosage you're being exposed to is, in fact, dangerous.  It's why all of the panic earlier this year about "radioactive water from Fukushima" being detected on the shores of western Canada was unfounded -- the radioactive isotope detected, cesium 134, was only discovered because it's unlikely to get into seawater any other way.  Jay Cullen, oceanographer at the University of Victoria, said, "We're more than a thousand-fold below even the drinking water standard in the coastal waters being sampled at this point.  Those levels are much much much lower than what's allowable in our drinking water."

So the dosage was far smaller than our daily exposure to naturally-occurring sources of radiation, and would be entirely harmless even if we were drinking seawater, which most of us don't.  But it didn't stop people from freaking out completely about how we were being poisoned, irradiated, and (of course) all gonna die.

A more recent goofy claim that has the interwebz in a tizzy lately is the claim that asbestos has been discovered in crayons.  Asbestos, of course, is one of those words like "radioactivity" -- all you have to do is say it and people start thinking they're being killed.  In fact, the danger of asbestos for most people is minimal -- the majority of the asbestos that's still around is safely locked up in wall board and ceiling tiles.  It's only when asbestos-containing materials get broken up, and the dust produced that way is deeply inhaled, that it increases one's likelihood of getting certain lung cancers, such as mesothelioma.

So what about the asbestos in crayons?  First of all, there's the difficulty in telling apart asbestos fibers from talc.  Talc, a chemically related mineral, is used in all sorts of things, up to and including baby powder.  You also don't want to inhale talc -- but the same could be said for any finely-powdered mineral.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Second, even if there was asbestos in crayons, could it hurt you?  The answer is "almost certainly not."  All the way back in 2000, the Consumer Product Safety Commission was prompted to do an analysis of crayons, and found "a trace amount of asbestos in two Crayola crayons made by Binney and Smith and one Prang crayon made by Dixon Ticonderoga" but stated that "the amount of asbestos is so small it is scientifically insignificant."  Add that to the fact that this "scientifically insignificant" quantity of asbestos is bound up in the colored wax that makes up the rest of the crayon, so the likelihood of inhaling it is nil, and you have what is commonly called a "tempest in a teapot."

Snopes put it succinctly: "In other words, if trace amounts of asbestos were encased in a waxy substance such as crayons, those fibers would not be friable and would pose no risk of becoming airborne."

It'd be nice if more people would learn about risk and toxicity -- not only would it get them to calm down about the stuff they're exposed to on a daily basis, most of which their bodies handle just fine, it would also stop people from forwarding ridiculous claims on Facebook and Twitter, which is getting to be annoying.  In any case: don't worry about letting your kids use crayons.  Coloring in a coloring book is not going to give them lung cancer.  All you have to do is make sure that they aren't grinding up their crayons and snorting the powder.

But I'm hoping you'd do that in any case.