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hemocyanin [soylentnews.org] writes:

Yet again, metric to imperial conversion errors cause dangers. This one isn't so bad as the Mars Climate Orbiter [wikipedia.org] we all know about, but it also brings the problem down to earth and raises public health issues.

Lumber Liquidator's Chinese suppliers lied about the amount formaldehyde offgassing from laminate flooring sold by the chain. The story came out about a year ago. More recently, the CDC [cdc.gov] tested the flooring material and concluded that the material wasn't as bad as initially thought. That is until the old metric/imperial conversion error became evident:

The CDC's error was on the calculation for ceiling height used to measure the intensity of formaldehyde exposure. So instead of using 8 feet as the standard height of a room, for instance, it used 8 meters, which is about 26 feet.

In the initial report, the CDC said risks of cancer were as many as nine cases in 100,000 people. Now it's increased that to as many as 30 people. But it said the recommendations on dealing with the level of formaldehyde will likely remain the same -- stressing taking steps to reduce exposure.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-lumber-liquidators-f8ce1b14-da42-11e5-8210-f0bd8de915f6-20160223-story.html [chicagotribune.com]

Seriously -- we all know that moving decimals is so much easier than dealing with imperial units (example: how many inches in a quarter mile? I'm not some math savant so I'd need to get a calculator or at least pen and paper. How many centimeters in a quarter kilometer? 25000 (took me one second: take 250m as a quarter km, tack on two zeros, done)). Can't we just switch already? The amount of wasted brain cycles spent on this stupid issue could be put to much more productive use.

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