Business Info

How often have we heard the doctor say, “Remember to take the full number of tablets.” but, when we feel better, we stop. It always seems such a waste. Antibiotics are expensive. We always justify keeping the half-empty bottle alongside all the others. You never know, we say to ourselves, they may come in useful. Except, they never do. So, when the day comes for clearing the shelves, what do we do with all these now unwanted drugs? In more innocent days, we might just have thrown them into the dumpster or flushed them down the toilet. Now we should think more about the consequences. Most of the trash from the dumpsters goes into landfill sites. Water washes through the mounds of rubbish, leaching all the chemicals into the ground. Over time, they move down to the water table and from there into streams and rivers. Similarly, what we flush down the toilets passes through the sewers directly into the local rivers or the nearby sea. Further downstream, river water gets taken up by the next town or city. It goes through the treatment plant and into the drinking water supply. Animals drink from the rivers and fish live in the sea. Water is used to irrigate the fields of produce. Over time, this cocktail of chemicals enters our food chain. We get to eat and drink the dilute mixture of drugs. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the key demands made by Republican politicians is to clamp down on trial lawyers – these inconvenient people who go round suing capitalists who cause loss and injury to others. Capitalism is all about making the maximum possible profit. If this means cutting a few corners and taking a few risks, that’s an acceptable part of the game and should be without liability if things go seriously wrong. Lawyers have this twisted sense of reality. They believe manufacturers and service providers should be held responsible if they injure other people. The courts try to occupy the middle ground and order corporations too seriously at fault to ignore to pay out a few millions as compensation. No large corporation has ever been hit with an award of damages so high that it was forced into bankruptcy. This leaves judgments from the courts and negotiated settlements with government as no more than a slap on the wrist. After payment, business goes on as before. It’s as if nothing happened.

Which brings us to the emerging evidence of a link between Bisphenol A (BPA) and sexual problems for men. Now you might not have heard of BPA but it’s everywhere. The key uses are to harden clear plastic and as part of the recipe to make epoxy resin. Pick up any food or drinks container and the odds are it contains BPA. It’s also used to line virtually every can of food and drink sold in the US. There’s just one problem. The chemical leaches into the food or drink. That means everything you eat from canned vegetables, meat or fish, and everything you drink from juice to beer, contains this chemical. In adults, this may not be quite so bad but in babies and young children, it’s really bad. So bad, in fact, that its use in any infant product has been banned in several countries. In the US, the FDA has been weighing up the evidence to decide whether there should be limits on its use. So far, the manufacturers have resisted any suggestion their product damages people. Wal-Mart, Toys “R” Us and a few other stores have not waited and already impose a voluntary ban. Read the rest of this entry »