Charles Duhigg Quotes
Around New York City, samples collected at dozens of beaches or piers have detected the types of bacteria and other pollutants tied to sewage overflows. Though the city's drinking water comes from upstate reservoirs, environmentalists say untreated excrement and other waste in the city's waterways pose serious health risks.
Duhigg, Charles. "Sewers at Capacity, Waste Poisons Waterways." The New York Times, 22 Nov. 2009.
The Congressman was never known to be a literati. A “toxic” by definition is harmful. Later. DeLay was convicted and sentenced to jail for money laundering and illegally spending and raising campaign funds. He was also reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee for unethical methods of fund raising for other earlier actions.
Fracturing underground shale—fracking—releases natural gas which the US has in an energy equivalent of two Saudi Arabias. However this is done by injecting water and chemicals into the underground shale. The shale is generally below the water table but the concrete shaft that carries the fluid and the gas at high pressure through the water table. There have been serious accidents where drinking water has been polluted. The George W. Bush administration, led by VP Cheney whose company was in the fracking business had a law passed which gave the gas fracking industry the right to endanger or pollute drinking water without the inspection of meeting the standards of the Clean Water Act and other state and federal protection laws. They are also exempt from having to disclose what poisons or carcinogens are in the fracking fluid or how much they are injecting into a community’s land and water. So the best potential option for American Energy independence got caught up with disputes over proper safety and disclosure procedures and the exemptions that were granted by Congress.
This scientific quotation is politically important because it defines the difficult problem of setting acceptable and safe environmental and work standards for air or water quality and contact with potentially toxic substances. As this quotation illustrates, everything is toxic if given in large enough doses. Table salt can kill a human if enough if ingested. Tiny amounts of even a poison will do no harm. What makes setting of standards still more complicated is that human beings differ in the amount of a substance it would take to produce a toxic reaction. Allergies are the best example, but the variability of sensitivity always exists.
First Mormon Cabinet Member. The water problem did not come upon us suddenly.
Freedom Industries, which makes chemicals for the mining industry, polluted the water supply of the entire 9 county region in WV when the 40,000 gallon tank that was supposedly safe as a holding tank for dangerous chemicals gave way and the chemicals were not then stopped or contained as they were supposed to have been by the containment grading and landscaping. The chemicals flowed down hill to the river which in turn polluted the entire water supply of Charleston, West Virginia and the 9 surrounding counties.
Smith was the author of a major biography on Nelson Rockefeller who although a Republican advocated higher taxes to pay for what the pubic wanted from government and was one of the first politicians to seriously deal with assuring clean water.
Flint had declared bankruptcy and an Adminisrator was Appointed to work with the Governor & Mayor to administer the city, To save money, the administrator decided to close down the Flint water treatment facility and to use river water instead. The decision was a disaster in that the river watter interacted with the old lead piping of the city and leached lead into the drinking water thus in evvect poisoning it. The Governor and thestate EPA were slow and passive to deal with the situation. The fedral government as an interim step supplied bottled water and this task force was appointed.
Charles Duhigg (born 1974) is an American journalist and non-fiction author. He was a reporter for The New York Times, currently writes for The New Yorker Magazine and is the author of two books on habits and productivity, titled The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business and Smarter Faster Better. In 2013, Duhigg was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for a series of 10 articles on the business practices of Apple and other technology companies.
