INTERESTING TIMES

That's a lot of people who can't shower in or cook with the water coming from the faucet. The solution to this pollution is said to be dilution, same as ever, which means people have to wait until enough good water has run through the system to wash out the chemical. The wildlife get no such warning. The symptoms are nausea and vomiting. I haven't found anything about longterm toxicity yet.

Events like this are manageable for populations wealthy enough to purchase bottled water or travel to cleaner digs. For impoverished folks and for the creatures and plants of the land, this is a true crisis.

The leak was a foaming agent used to wash coal, and it went from a 48,000 gallon storage tank straight into the Elk River. The primary component in the foaming agent that leaked is the chemical 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (CH3C6H10CH2OH). It has been patented as an air freshener and has a slightly minty odor (another good reason not to use air fresheners). It is used in ~20-25% of coal plans, mainly for "coking coal" which is used for metallurgical purposes, but not for making coal burned to make electricity ("steam coal") which is the lion's share of total coal produced.

The biz owning the leaky tank is called Freedom Industries, and it distributes mining reagents for WV, VA, PA, OH, MD, MN, KY, and MI. In 2008, Freedom Industries was specially selected by Georgia-Pacific Chemicals as a distributor of G-P's Talon brand mining reagents for the states already mentioned. Georgia-Pacific Chemicals is, of course, a subsidiary of Georgia-Pacific, which was acquired by Koch Industries in 2005. Koch is big biz, and should be penalized to assure that they will take better precautions in all their plants in the future.



SOURCES
Fresh Brains sent me this link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/11/west-virginia-chemical-sp_n_4582100.html
National Geographic on the same leak:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140110-4-methylcyclohexane-methanol-chemical-spill-west-virginia-science/
Daily Kos
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/11/1268990/-Freedom-Industries-Has-Ties-to-Koch-Brothers
Koch Industries
http://www.kochind.com/

The study in question (Women's Health Study) reaffirmed this association, in this case specifically for postmenopausal females. Certainly other populations are likely to be affected as well.

Nice article here: http://naturalmedicinejournal.com/article_content.asp?edition=1§ion=3&article=330

Physicians are faced with a basic question when making a prescription of any drug to a patient: “What are the risks and benefits of this recommendation?” When it comes to statin drugs, the benefits have been grossly overstated, while the risks have continually been swept under the rug. That discussion is much longer than the space available in this commentary. Suffice it to say that it is important to point out that while statins reduce the heart attack risk in women, they do not appear to affect overall risk of death, possibly because an increased risk for diabetes cancels out the reduced heart attack risk. So, let me focus on the study at hand and try to make sense of such a high risk for diabetes in postmenopausal women using statins.

Francis Brinker ND
1981 NCNM grad, prof at SCNM and U of Az College of Med
Botanical Pharmacokinetic Interactions with Drugs and Botanical Adjuncts
with NSAIDS & Analgesics for Arthritis
Useful Website: http://medicine.iupui.edu/clinpharm/DDIs/table.aspx
**print interaction summary page from moodle
consumer info: http://WWW.DRUGDIGEST.ORG/WPS/PORTAL/DDIGEST
arthritis part of talk at the very end, first part of talk all about drug interactions
interactions with St John's Wort, Ginkgo, Ginseng, Garlic, Peppermint, and as usual Grapefruit
( notes )

The top 10 most potent herbs and spices for blood sugar control:
1. Cloves (ground)
2. Cinnamon (ground)
3. Jamaican allspice (ground)
4. Apple pie spice (mixture)(has lots of cinnamon in it)
5. Oregano (ground)
6. Pumpkin pie spice (mixture)(has lots of cinnamon in it)
7. Marjoram
8. Sage
9. Thyme
10. Gourmet Italian spice
( notes from Mercola article )

Kary Mullis is a surfer dude and brilliant molecular biologist who got a Nobel prize for his idea. In 1985 he dreamed up an in vitro method for gene amplification. His method is called PCR, polymerase chain reaction. The process is brilliant because it can be completely automated and the starting material can be impure.
( PCR details )

Why progesterone causes mood changes
( behind cut )

First, an old post on EFA metabolism is better than this one:
http://liveonearth.livejournal.com/253995.html#cutid1
( behind cut from Anderson board review notes )