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Smoking and
our children
Editor of the Reformer:
It's a shame that cigarettes are meant to be exhaled. If cigarette smokers could keep the smoke inside their own lungs, then they would primarily be hurting only themselves. No problem with that. Adults are supposed to be able to make those kinds of decisions.
There are two plumes that flow from cigarette smoking: one plume as the cigarette burns and another plume that is exhaled as smoke. These trails are called secondhand exposure.
There are roughly 1.5 billion cigarette smokers worldwide. Most are daily smokers. That is an ungodly amount of continuous atmospheric exposure of one of the most dangerous, carcinogenetic substances known to modern man.
Closer to home, I have witnessed another type of exposure. It's not unusual to see smokers in Brattleboro walking with their children while smoking cigarettes. I dread to think of what some parents do in their own home. How many children must helplessly live with their parents smoking? Where are the laws to protect them from secondhand smoke?
We are so prison happy to lock up and fine parents because there is a little teenage alcohol consumption on their property, but we do nothing to protect children from parental cigarette smoke. Nothing.
How do parents, who expose their children to cigarette smoke daily, sleep at night? Obviously, without conscience and without fear of the law.
Vidda
Brattleboro, July 12
Where's the
other side of
the discussion?
Editor of the Reformer:
Here we go again.
Friday, June 17, Sanders accused NRC of siding with Entergy in lawsuit. The third paragraph reads how Sanders grilled the five commissioners on how they voted. To me that's stepping over bounds. The second page states: Entergy: Vermont's reply is off course. A remark made by Bill Sorrell, via Vermont's Attorney General (They're trying to throw in everything including the kitchen sink) in the lawsuit filed. To me that seems to be an overbearing comment by a person in that position.
Wednesday, June 22: GAO criticizes NRC's buried pipe regulations, but they have recommendations. June 23: The Valley Advocate reads Vermonters get ready for Entergy vs. Shumlin. Stating all the faults with anti information being the dominant factor. (Just out of curiosity, where does Peter Shumlin's power come from?)
June 23: Reformer headline reads, "NRC says VY has operated safely." The opinion page has two articles written by antis saying civil discussion based on facts, and safety concerns at VY. Just wondering where those facts came from, or are they personal opinions (like mine)?
June 25-26: Front page: "Entergy, Vt.'s showdown continues." The opinion page article by Jane Newton was definitely anti, written from South Londonderry.
I can go on and on about the articles I've endured over the past two months. It's really not an even amount of responses. And then the Fourth of July Parade -- in the July 5 Brattleboro Reformer, on Page 6, a color picture of people in the parade dressed as Entergy executives being allowed to march in the parade protesting. Did any of the pros get this opportunity? Were they informed they could, or is it apparently a one-way street?
Come on pros, it's time to stick up for personal opinions.
Robert Kane,
Hinsdale, N.H., July 13
When do we learn our lesson?
Editor of the Reformer:
Sometimes lessons are not learned. Sometimes it takes more than one warning to heed a lesson. Sometimes humans are slow and naive in our actions.
Fukushima in Japan continues to leak radionuclides into the air, water and ground.
Then a flood breached the levees surrounding the Fort Calhoun nuclear reactor in Nebraska, as the country learned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission could not control Mother Nature or the mighty Missouri River.
Still not getting the point, the largest wildfire in the history of New Mexico burned around (but not through) Los Alamos National Labs. More nuclear weapons have been created at that laboratory than anywhere else on earth.
Really, I would like to think that someone would learn from all this, besides the prognosticators of the future, the Hopi Elders, Nostradamus, Edgar Caycee, the Mayan calendar and others.
Fires now burns in Nevada, at the site of the U.S. above-ground nuclear bomb testing.
When do we learn? What will it take to stop this madness?
The words accident and nuclear do not belong in the same sentence.
The NRC approved Entergy's request for an extended license for its Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon literally one day before the identical reactor at Fukushima blew up.
The NRC could, but has not, taken back the extended license to operate VY another 20 years. If the NRC cannot stop Fukushima, or flooding, or wildfires, the NRC should admit failure and cease to exist.
Anyone can say that Fukushima's three reactors blew up from the earthquake/tsunami but the truth is that they blew up from the loss of off-site power, from back-up power sources that were not robust enough, from an infrastructure not robust enough, and from planning that was not robust enough.
Contributing causes include: Inadequate procedures in the event of these accidents that are outside NRC planning; NRC has no plans for a spent fuel pool accident (including no plans should a spent fuel pool lose neutralizing water); the service water pumps needed for back-up diesel generators proved ineffective in Japan; Mother Nature has multiple unimaginable events to toss at man and his follies.
I find many examples of the NRC not enforcing its own regulations and there is apparently nobody enforcing, supervising or regulating the NRC.
There is more cesium in the fuel pool at Vermont Yankee than was released from Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Fukushima combined.
Radioactivity -- when released into the atmosphere, land, or water serves as a biocide with the ability to alter chromosomes, changing life, harming health forevermore.
We have one earth.
Gary Sachs,
Brattleboro, July 14
Editor's note: The NRC issued its license extension for Yankee 10 days after the earthquake and tsunami struck Fukushima. The NRC has no regulatory authority over nuclear reactors outside of the United States.
Missing Rollie
Editor of the Reformer:
A few weeks ago we had to go through something that we have experienced before, but never gets any easier. We had to put our beautiful, 9-year-old handicapped chocolate lab to sleep.
Even though at 8-weeks-old we were told he wouldn't survive, he gave us nine years of love and pure happiness. As I sit here crying, writing this, there are a few people in our own community that I need to thank.
First of all I need to thank Dr. Angell of Gateway Vet Clinic, for taking us in on so short notice and being so compassionate and understanding to what we wanted to do. Even though at the time we couldn't show it, we really did appreciate it. Thank You. Next we need to thank White Rose Crematory. Marilyn, if there were more of you out there, there would not be the homeless and abused animals that we try to help today. Even though it has been nine years since we needed your services, your love, compassion and understanding remains the same. Thank you Marilyn, for getting Rollie home so quick so he could be here with his Ma and half sister. Rollie, We love and miss you.
Bill, Sandy,
Christian, Danny
and Hunter Austin,
Guilford, July 11
