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Millions of Americans may be drinking water that is contaminated with dangerous doses of lead. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) knows it; state governments know it; local utilities know it. The only people who usually don’t know it are those who are actually drinking the toxic water.

The problem stems from a common practice in which water utilities replace sections of deteriorating lead service lines rather than the entire lines, commonly known as partial pipe replacements. It is a course of action that can do more harm than good.

“It’s scary and the magnitude of this problem is huge,” said Dr. Jeffrey K. Griffiths, a Tufts University professor of medicine and public health, who recently chaired an expert panel advising the EPA on the problem. “I didn’t realize how extensive the lead exposure still remained. … EPA is really deeply concerned about this …. This was not something they expected.”

There's also a relevant quote to an issue I was concerned about in the Flint story, namely, how does a household have lead concentration levels far above that measured elsewhere in the city?

When water leaves a treatment plant, it is usually lead-free. From the plant, water flows into large pipes, called mains, which are usually made of cast-iron or concrete and run under streets. From the main, water flows through a smaller pipe called a service line, which carries it to the customer’s tap. That service line is where contamination can begin. Lead service lines are found in many states, but are especially common in older neighborhoods in the Midwest and Northeast. Most water systems stopped installing them in the first half of the last century. And there is generally less lead in water now than in years past.

But, if the service line is made of lead, as are between 3.3 and 6.4 million, according to a recent report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, fragments of corroded lead can chip off and be swept into tap water. Additional lead can also get in as the water runs across lead-soldered joints or comes into contact with brass or bronze fixtures. Until recently, such hardware was allowed to be advertised as “lead-free,” even if it contained up to 8 percent lead. A federal law reducing the acceptable amount of lead in these plumbing fixtures to .25 percent will take effect in 2014, although Vermont and California have already adopted such rules.

Partial pipe replacements can physically shake loose lead fragments that have built up and laid dormant inside the pipe, pushing them into the homeowners’ water, and spiking the lead levels, even where they previously were not high. In addition, the type of partial replacement that joins old lead pipes to new copper ones, using brass fittings, “spurs galvanic corrosion that can dramatically increase the amount of lead released into drinking water supplies,” according to research from Washington University. Similar findings have been published by researchers at the Virginia Tech and elsewhere.

In other words, if a lead fragment from upstream pipe chipped off, it could create elevated lead levels in a single home for a period of time without affecting neighboring homes.

Now, despite all this, I'm still not sold on the claim that elevated lead exposure is due solely to the actions of Governor Snyder and his appointed subordinate in Flint. There are other mechanisms and ways to screw up that can cause elevated lead levels.

The Flint story mentioned the Walters family who had their water tested with concentrations reaching 400 ppb (parts per billion) at one point. That could be due to mechanisms that had nothing to do with changing the water supply (though making the water supply more acidic probably would have made the problem somewhat worse).

        This has been an exciting time for us, and not just the scientists, everyone on board is really excited. Even me, and you know me, nothing gets me excited. We found another stellar system harboring life in this galaxy, and this one is really, really weird. It’s unbelievably, unimaginably weird. It may be the weirdest planet in the universe.
        Yes, we’ve already found fifty three living worlds in this galaxy, and that in itself is pretty exciting, since we’ve only found seventy eight planets with life on them in our own galaxy in all the time we’ve been exploring it, and here we’ve found fifty three on our first expedition to this galaxy on our first visit here. But this weird world...
        Like our galaxy, most of the planets and moons with life have only microbial life. We (well, the scientists, but they know what they’re talking about) are certain that at least one of the many species on the planet is a tool-using species that has even constructed space vessels. We’ve never run across anything close to being like that, ever, in all the time our species has been exploring space.
        I feel really honored to be the pilot of the first intergalactic vessel, even though we’re visiting G2, the closest galaxy to our own. They’re so close the two galaxies will eventually start to merge within our great grandchildren’s lifetimes. But still, I’m the first one to pilot a craft out of the galaxy and into another one.
        The really weird planet we found was the third planet from CXG-947. Okay, G2-CXG-947, but when I say CXG-947 you can assume the G2. Actually, you can assume all of them are G2 because that’s where we were and all the stars are G2, just like our galaxy is G1.
        Its surface is mostly dihydrogen monoxide like our planet, and unlike ours its atmosphere is mostly nitrogen. Most of the biologists were absolutely certain that life was impossible there, since there is so little free oxygen and carbon dioxide, but there it was. And not only life, but an incredible diversity of life, far more diverse than we’ve seen in any other life-bearing planet, in that galaxy or our own.
        Ironically, the biologists weren’t interested in the CXG-947 stellar system at all at first, as I said. They thought none of the planets’ atmospheres or other environmental variables were fit for life.
        The first planet from CXG-947 was small, hot, had no atmosphere, and one hemisphere always faced the star. The second had an atmosphere that was almost all carbon dioxide, and as a result was way too hot for life, as close as it was to the star. It would have been a perfect candidate for life if its orbit and the fourth planet’s orbits were switched. The third had all that nitrogen, the fourth with almost no atmosphere at all, and all the other bodies were either too large or too small as well as being too far from the star.
        It was the physicists who became interested in this star system first. They became curious when there was a short period where there were a number of flashes on XGC-947-3’s surface that emitted radiation in a very wide spectrum, as if a miniature star had appeared and died on the planet’s surface in an instant. This all happened on the planet’s northern hemisphere thousands of times within a short ten lokfars, then stopped.
        They wouldn’t have even seen it were it not for luck. We were passing between XGC-947 and XGC-948 on our way to ODX-102 when the flashes went off. We were really close, and they wouldn’t have seen them if we weren’t. It was only by accident that we found this strange place.
        More study revealed that the flashes were only semi-natural, that one of the planet’s species had actually engineered them. They were the result of uncontrolled fission and fusion reactions on the planet’s surface. The scientists have no idea why they did it, perhaps to test a scientific theory, or testing a means of harnessing those reactions’ power and an accident happened, over and over. But they can only guess, and tell me they don’t really know.
        Life on this planet was unlike anything the biologists had imagined, starting with being able to live in all that nitrogen. Yes, nitrogen Is inert, and that’s the problem. Life needs oxygen or some other such highly reactive nonmetallic element, even if it’s bound in a molecule like carbon dioxide, and so far oxygen and carbon dioxide were the only such gasses on planets that had anything actually living on them. However, the biologists tell me that perhaps there’s a planet with an atmosphere of chlorine or some other highly reactive gas bearing life that we have yet to find. I’m only the pilot so I don’t fully understand it like the biologists and chemists do, but that’s what they told me.
        Unlike any other life-bearing planet we’ve found, in our own galaxy or this one, some of its species are bipedal. Most of the bipedal animals the biologists studied were avian, but the intelligent species is also bipedal. I have no idea how anything could walk on only two legs, and the biologists are especially excited about it. Just try walking on two legs, it’s impossible. Heck, just try standing on two legs without holding on to something! That would be worthy of a circus sideshow. It makes me chuckle just thinking about it.
        But what fascinated the biologists the most was that none of the species were omnisexual. In every other planet we’ve seen all species are, and any member of any species can impregnate any other member of the species, including herself. These strange animals only had one set of genitals each. Yes, it happens. Even in our own species there’s an occasional child born with only one set of genitals, or worse and more rare two genitals of the same kind. But a planet where none of any of its animals have more than one set of genitals is unbelievably weird.
        They’re still trying to figure out how the intelligent species communicates, since so very few of the species there are bioluminescent, and the intelligent species isn’t. The leading theory is some sort of telepathy. This theory seems to hold up because the physicists have detected minute amounts of electromagnetic radiation that seems to be mechanically produced transmitted in certain patterns. They’re still trying to decipher the patterns, but so far haven’t had any luck doing so.
        Also, many species had strange projections from their... what the biologists call “heads”. They think these projections, which biologists call “ears” have something to do with their telepathy. Still others suggest that a projection they’ve named a “nose” may have something to do with it.
          Others have suggested that perhaps they are bioluminescent, only in a part of the spectrum we can’t see. There are some species on that weird place that change color, and perhaps a tiny change of color is how the intelligent animals communicate.
        The biologists wanted to land and do some up-close observations, but I vetoed that at once. The planet is simply too dangerous. There are violent animals, even the intelligent species, which sometimes cause huge explosions, and there are very often really nastily violent natural occurrences, such as high energy sparks hitting the ground from giant clouds of charged dihydrogen monoxide vapors, volcanoes, tornadoes, ground-quakes, tsunamis, and perhaps even scarier, more perilous things we hadn’t yet witnessed. It’s a very dangerous world, far too dangerous to land on. I had to explain to the biologists that landing there would be way outside the rule book, and if they kept pestering me I’d have to report them.
        When the mini-stars were flashing on the planet’s surface, the physicists sent a drone down for closer investigation, and it crashed. Those things never crash! And these mad scientists wanted to go down there? If they want to land they’re going to have to find a crazier pilot than me.
        There’s so much to learn about this amazing planet. The biologists are especially excited. They keep eschewing the violence, saying we would be inedible to any life form there, but that’s not enough for me. Not after that drone. And I wondered what “inedible” meant, but I didn’t ask.
        But we did fly really low sometimes. A few times, some machines tried to chase us. One seemed to shoot a rocket at us, but the rocket was really slow compared to us. That was another reason I refused to land, we simply didn’t understand these creatures. The intelligent species had sent objects into the planet’s orbit, and I kept our distance from those, too.
        The biologists finally convinced me to allow a couple of drones to pick up a few species of one of the planet’s life forms for study, all quadrupeds because the bipedal species were just too weird, and the hexapedals and octopeds were too small to handle easily or to study in any detail.
        My veto of bringing up bipeds really upset the biologists, because they wanted to study these strange species badly. Strange? Lorg, they’re downright weird. This whole gorflak planet is weird. Even the quadrupeds are weird; none of the quadrupeds have actimar limbs, although a few species sometimes use locomotive limbs for what animals on our planet would use actimars for, like picking stuff up. The intelligent bipeds and a few other species of bipeds do seem to have some sort of actimars, although they’re nothing like any life on our planet’s actimars.
        A few weird species that seem to be related to, or at least similar to the intelligent species that live in large stationary life forms don’t seem to have locomotive limbs at all, but four of those weird actimars that they use for locomotion. Great Gargoth, but the animals on that planet are unimaginably weird.
        The biologists think that since they can live in all that nitrogen, maybe something can live in the liquid dihydrogen monoxide. I don’t know, I’m no biologist but that makes absolutely no sense to me. How could anything breathe underwater? It’s a crazy notion, if you ask me.
        It seems that half or more of all of the species on the planet live by consuming other species. What horror! And what’s even weirder and more disgusting than that, some species propagate their young by having some of their parts actually consumed by other species of organism, who excrete the young elsewhere. There are species living inside other species. This planet is beyond imagination weird. It gives a whole new meaning to the word “alien”.
        The periculumologists, who study security, said that the obviously sentient species should be exterminated, and perhaps other similar, semi-bipedal species that had actimars as well. They moved so quickly and seemed to advance their technology so rapidly that sooner or later they could reach our galaxy and would be a great threat to us.
        The biologists nixed that idea, saying they posed no threat at all.
        First, our planet is five times as massive as that one, and they could never land on our planet, or withstand the acceleration necessary for intergalactic travel in the first place. But more important was the seemingly short life span of the mobile species. They would never leave their galaxy and could pose no threat, violent as they were. They simply don’t live long enough to ever reach us, even if they could stand the acceleration.
        There were a few species that lived almost as long as your pet gorflag, and you know those don’t live long, ten iglaps if you’re lucky, but some stationary species that grew very large lived that long and are still alive. But no other species there comes close.
          ODX-102 was supposed to be our last stop before returning, but they canceled that so they could study the wierdo planet more. I’m sure when the next expedition comes to G2 they’ll be back to this crazy place. The other planets are similar to our galaxy’s, but this crazy place was nothing like anything anyone had ever imagined.
        Excitingly interesting as this weird planet is, I’m anxious to get home. It was a very long trip here and the trip back will probably seem even longer than it is. We leave in a single lokfar, and I should be home in about fifteen iglaps.
        I don’t know why I’m writing this, the messenger drone will only get there an iglap or two before I do, but I’m excited to be on this mission and I miss you all.
        I managed to get a souvenir from the planet’s satellite, which the sentient species visited a few times and apparently gave up on. The souvenir is about as weird as that whole planet.
        Well, I have to start preparations for the journey back. I’ll see you when I get there!

I was just modding. After setting a few mods, scrolling down further, I figured I'd probably run out of mod points.
So I pressed "end" to get to the moderate button at the bottom of the page. Unfortunately, I was still in a mod-selection box.
Took me a bit to find back which mod-box. Turned out to be pointing to "spam" thanks to pressing the END button.

Suggestion: to avoid accidents like this, maybe it'd be an idea to have the top and bottom mods be something else than spam?
(e.g. top + bottom both "normal" would just undo any changes for people who press home or end. And probably also for anyone pressing pgup or pgdown.)

The Guardian reports that the Royal Bank of Scotland has advised its clients to:

“Sell everything except high quality bonds. This is about return of capital, not return on capital. In a crowded hall, exit doors are small.”

There is a warning that the current situation is strongly reminiscent of 2008 just before the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

In another report, there are more prophecies of doom.

What's going on?

It's not all about Oculus:

Tom's Hardware

JB McRee, Sr. Manager of Product Marketing of Virtual Reality at HTC confirmed to us that the Vive headset will in fact be available for pre-order on February 29, 2016. HTC doesn’t have any other details to share about the retail release, but McRee told said the details will be announced prior to the pre-order date.

Wikipedia

HTC Vive is an upcoming virtual reality head-mounted display being developed in co-production between HTC and Valve Corporation. It is also part of Valve Corporation's SteamVR project.

For years around here and the site that came before, I've read "I live in Europe, you insensitive clod" messages. Some nice, some funny, and some a little bit disgruntled. :) Today over on the other site I saw a poster with a signature that said "Support a Europe-related section on this site!"

That might be a great idea. I wouldn't mind seeing a touch of Europe every so often, and maybe let off some of the steam that builds up from everything being American-centric a lot of the time.

Should SoylentNews have a Europe section?

Today was a beautiful sunny day here in Portland. Cold, but clear.

I earned $14.50 in tips just by singing for twenty minutes.

I only know twenty minutes worth of songs. I always sing the same songs, I'm growing rather weary of them:

The Star Spangled Banner
America the Beautiful
My Country 'Tis of Thee
Battle Hymn of the Republic
Oh Clementine
You Are My Sunshine
House of the Rising Sun
Somewhere Over the Rainbow

It's hard to find songs that work well for me, singing both solo and a capella. But there are such songs I just got to find them.

I only sang for twenty minutes today because that's all the money I required for what I want to do today and tomorrow. But most people work full-time, why shouldn't I, by singing?

A room in Portland is about $600.

Next time I sing I'm going to keep singing until I have some money that I can just save.

To be edited

When Will Potential 2016 Candidates Discuss the ‘Extraterrestrial Issue’?

Former Obama aide and well-known X-Files obsessive John Podesta tweeted this month that his "biggest failure of 2014" was "Once again not securing the #disclosure of the UFO files."

Many assume that Podesta will soon sign up for the still-hypothetical Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, which means that the UFO lobby might just endorse Clinton for a second time if decides to run.

Stephen Bassett, head of the Paradigm Research Group (which runs a blog about presidential UFO news and hosted an off-brand hearing for ex-members of Congress on government transparency in matters extraterrestrial), told the Huffington Post in 2007 that Hillary Clinton "knows this issue is not trivial." Nearly eight years later, Bassett is still trying to access any government documents on UFOs, and still hoping that Clinton will reach out to constituents like him.

CIA Cover-up Alleged in JFK's 'Secret UFO Inquiry'

Dear Editors,
How do I submit this story ??

From the eat-shit-has-a-new-meaning dept.

In a randomized, controlled clinical trial starting this year, researchers will test out such a fecal formula for the treatment of obesity. They’ll also try to glean critical details about the human microbiome and its role in our health and metabolism. The trial, led by Elaine Yu, an assistant professor and clinical researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, will involve taking fecal samples from lean, healthy donors then freeze-drying the stool, putting a gram or two into capsules, and giving them to 20 obese patients.

Such poop-packed pills, which are designed to replace a person’s intestinal microbes with those from a donor via their feces, have proven effective at treating tenacious gut infections. This has led researchers to ponder whether the transplants could remedy other health problems, including obesity and metabolic disorders. A few animal studies and some anecdotal data in humans suggests the answer is yes—and Yu hopes to get a final answer with the upcoming trial.

A few years ago, researchers took the gut microbes from a set of twins—one lean, one obese—and transplanted them into two sets of microbe-free mice. Even though all the mice were on the same diet, the rodents that received the obese twin’s microbes became chubby. The mice that got the lean twin’s mix stayed slim, suggesting that the microbes were calling the shots when it came to the animals’ weight.

In line with those results, another study on lean and obese twins’ microbes suggested that obesity is linked to having altered mixes and lower diversity of gut microbes.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/freeze-dried-poop-pills-being-tested-for-obesity-treatment/