Sunday, April 22

Stunning swiftness

Do you recall when the passenger airplane ran into a flock of birds which stalled the engines? The skilled pilot ditched in the Hudson River, and nobody died in the crash. The government recovered the wreckage and took it away to be examined. They estimated it would take TWELVE TO EIGHTEEN MONTHS to come to the conclusion that the crash was caused by hitting a flock of large birds.

Here’s another example of the stunning swiftness of the federal agencies. In Sunday’s Fresno Bee there’s an article about contaminants in the water of many San Joaquin Valley wells, affecting a million people. From the article:

“The state is far ahead of the federal government in regulating TCP, which was discovered at a Superfund site in Southern California in the 1990s.
“But TCP has the attention of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which expects to have national regulations in the next four to five years. [emphasis mine]
“‘It is a carcinogen,’ said toxicologist Bruce Macler of the EPA drinking water program. ‘I'm more than just concerned.’”
Aren’t we all!

2 comments:

Pat said...

Hi,Tom
Hope the telescope still works. I think the visibility down here is about minus minus. It's really pitiful. But we did get great views of Venus and Jupiter awhile back just using eyeball and binoculars. I hope I get to see the Milky way again--guess we will have to go to the desert for that.

Sib one

Tom Hurley said...

Hi Pat

Your comment should be on the "Lots of serendipity" blog. Thanks anyway.