Free Republic

"Forever chemicals" are widespread in the environment, and new research finds they can be detected in about 45% of U.S. tap water samples. The chemicals are per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances, or PFAS, and their spread through drinking water—both tap and well—may be even higher because researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) were unable to test for all of them, CNN reported. These synthetic substances have been linked to a variety of health issues, including cancer, liver damage, hormone suppression, decreased fertility, obesity, high cholesterol and thyroid disease. To gauge the impact on drinking water, a team used water...

Lake Tahoe's natural rim is at 6,223 feet above sea level. The lake can store an additional 6.1 feet in its reservoir and climbs up to 6,229 feet at full capacity, its legal maximum limit. The only outlet, a dam at Tahoe City, regulates the upper 6.1 feet above the low water mark, and this winter water is being released into the Truckee River as billions of gallons flow into the lake. Tahoe's water level reached 6,226.84 feet on Wednesday, and the lake needs some 88 billion gallons of water to jump up the 2.26 feet required to be completely...

Telling people to “drink plenty of fluids” when unwell could be dangerous, doctors have warned. Experts at King’s College Hospital in south London questioned the recommendation after treating a 59-year-old woman who drank so much water that she became gravely ill. The woman, who is not named, overdosed on water after developing symptoms of a urinary tract infection. She recalled being told by a doctor previously to drink lots of water — half a pint every 30 minutes — though she said she thought in this case, she had consumed more to “flush out her system”. The woman was admitted...

Last week, I discovered Frank Schnell when he wrote a comment on formaldehyde and said it was not a cancer-causing agent and that the EPA had lied about it. His comment was on an American Council on Science and Health posting by Josh Bloom, Ph.D. (organic chemistry), with a 20-year history of pharmaceutical research. Bloom busied himself in the post eviscerating a scare-monger on formaldehyde from the enviro-fanatic group National Resources Defense Council, and did a good job, but in the third or fourth comment, I saw a gem – a brief but insightful discussion by a man who described...

A new study from researchers in Europe claims that the average IQ in Western nations dropped by a staggering 14.1 points over the past century. "We tested the hypothesis that the Victorians were cleverer than modern populations using high-quality instruments, namely measures of simple visual reaction time in a meta-analytic study," the researchers wrote in the study, which was published online in the journal Intelligence on Thursday. "Simple reaction time measures correlate substantially with measures of general intelligence and are considered elementary measures of cognition."-snip- The results were measured using data from 1889 to 2004 and were analyzed by Michael...

Florida country radio morning-show hosts Val St. John and Scott Fish are currently serving indefinite suspensions and possibly worse over a successful April Fools' Day prank. They told their listeners that "dihydrogen monoxide" was coming out of the taps throughout the Fort Myers area. Dihydrogen monoxide is water.

"EU officials concluded that, following a three-year investigation, there was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact."

calling for the banning of flouride and the dangers of poisoning -

Holiday shoppers this season may still worry if the toys they buy contain lead after more than 10 million children’s products were recalled this year for that reason. But some scientists are urging consumers to focus on a different problem: the lack of hazard information on the thousands of chemicals in everyday products. “We have enormous gaps in our understanding of how these chemicals affect health and the environment.” said Michael P. Wilson, a public health scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. “And where we do have information, we see cause for concern.” The effects of human exposure to...

Water Vapor Rulesthe Greenhouse System Just how much of the "Greenhouse Effect" is caused by human activity?It is about 0.28%, if water vapor is taken into account-- about 5.53%, if not.This point is so crucial to the debate over global warming that how water vapor is or isn't factored into an analysis of Earth's greenhouse gases makes the difference between describing a significant human contribution to the greenhouse effect, or a negligible one.Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many "facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the...

(Washington, DC) The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to classify water vapor as a pollutant, due to its central role in global warming. Because water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, accounting for at least 90% of the Earth's natural greenhouse effect, its emission during many human activities, such as the burning of fuels, is coming under increasing scrutiny by federal regulators. ...

ALISO VIEJO, Calif. - City officials were so concerned about the potentially dangerous properties of dihydrogen monoxide that they considered banning foam cups after they learned the chemical was used in their production. Then they learned, to their chagrin, that dihydrogen monoxide — H2O for short — is the scientific term for water.