condor threatened by lead poisoning

not only condors, but children of hunters. interesting stuff, especially about how condors tend to feed near the wounds. it makes sense.

Lead poisoning eyed as threat to California condor
Posted 10/23/2006 10:43 PM ET
By John Ritter, USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — One of the great feel-good environmental stories of the past 30 years is the recovery of the majestic California condor, North America's largest bird, a scavenger-turned-billboard for the campaign to save endangered species.

On the brink of extinction, saved by a captive-breeding program, the condor population has grown from just 22 birds in 1982 to 289 today; 135 are in the wild and more are released every year.

Even so, condors have failed to gain a secure foothold in the hills and deserts of California and Arizona because of lead poisoning, the most often diagnosed cause of death, environmentalists say.

Environmental groups say the most likely source is condors' eating of game that was shot by hunters using lead bullets. Frustrated that most hunters have not switched to substitutes, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and other groups notified California officials in July that they will sue under the Endangered Species Act to force a ban.

At a meeting of state fish and game staff this month to discuss potential hunting-rule changes to recommend, the groups again asked for a ban on lead ammunition. A decision is likely early next year. Lead shot used in shotguns to hunt waterfowl has been prohibited since the 1980s.
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Many hunters who have tried alternatives, mainly copper bullets that don't poison wildlife, find them as good or better than traditional ammunition, though more expensive. A high-performance copper bullet costs $2 to $2.50, about $1 more than lead.
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The coalition that threatened the lawsuit says a July study that analyzed blood of condors in the wild and compared it with blood of captive birds proves that lead from bullets is poisoning and killing condors.

The study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology was the first to identify a lead isotope in bullets bought at retail outlets in condor country and then match it to lead found in condor blood. Twenty of 26 condors sampled had high lead levels, and many exceeded levels toxic to humans.
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Supporters of a lead ban say hunters and their families also are at risk. Studies in Greenland and Canada have found elevated lead levels in people who eat seabirds and other animals shot with lead ammunition. On contact, a lead bullet fragments into tiny pieces and powder that disperses well beyond the wound.

"Subsistence hunters especially who hunt for most of their protein, if they have kids in the household, to me that's a significant potential risk," Smith says.

Condors, flying as high as 15,000 feet with 9-foot wingspans, spot a meal and go straight to the bullet wound, because that's the easiest place to feed. They'll eat almost any dead mammal, from a squirrel to a cow.
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election could be hacked

the cat's out of the bag. will repubs be able to steal another election?

Electronic Voting Machines Could Skew Elections
Researchers, Candidates Have Little Confidence in Machines Designed to Make Elections Easier to Call
By JAKE TAPPER, REBECCA ABRAHAMS and EDUARDO SUNOL

Oct. 22, 2006 — - Cheryl Kagan, a former Maryland Democratic legislator, was shocked when she opened her mail Wednesday morning.

Inside, she discovered three computer discs. With them was an anonymous letter saying the discs contained the secret source code for vote-counting that could be used to alter the votes cast through Maryland's new electronic voting machines.

"My understanding is that with these disks a malicious person could skew the outcome of an election," Kagan said.

Diebold, the company that makes the voting machines, told ABC News, "These discs do not alter the security of the Diebold touch-screen system in any way," because election workers can set their own passwords.

But ABC News has obtained an independent report commissioned by the state of Maryland and conducted by Science Applications International Corporation revealing that the original Diebold factory passwords are still being used on many voting machines.

The SAIC study also shows myriad other security flaws, including administrative over-ride passwords that cannot be changed by local officials but can be used by hackers or those who have seen the discs.

The report further states that one of the high risks to the system comes if operating code discs are lost, stolen or seen by unauthorized parties -- precisely what seems to have occurred with the discs sent to Kagan, who worries that the incident indicates the secret source code is not that difficult to obtain.

"Certainly, just tweaking a few votes in a couple of states could radically change the outcome of our policies for the coming year," she said.

Worry That Elections Could Be Hacked

Computer experts and government officials have voiced serious concerns that if these machines malfunction, no paper record will exist for a recount. Even worse is the fear that an election could be hacked.

Princeton University researchers using an Accuvote TS -- a touch screen version of the Diebold machine -- showed how easy it would be to deploy a virus that would, in seconds, flip the vote of any election.

"We're taking the vote-counting process and we're handing it over to these companies -- and we don't know what happens inside these machines," said Edward Felten, a professor and a researcher at Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy, which ran the study.

Diebold called the Princeton study "unrealistic and inaccurate."

But many computer scientists, including cyber-security expert Stephen Spoonamore, disagree, pointing out that the Accuvote TS was used in the 2004 presidential election and is still used in at least four states -- including all machines in Georgia and Maryland. Spoonamore said the hack attacked the operating system layer of software and would affect any touch screen machine built by Diebold.

Diebold argues that the software from the 2004 elections has been updated to fix any possible security problems. But Spoonamore is not convinced, saying Diebold's "system is utterly unsecured. The entire cyber-security community is begging them to come back to reality and secure our nation's voting."

There is also the matter of computer glitches. In primary elections and test runs this year, there were glitches with electronic voting machines from Diebold and other companies.

Machines malfunctioned in Texas, where 100,000 votes were added.

In California, directions for voters with vision problems came out in Vietnamese.

And in Maryland, screens froze and memory cards went missing.

Gov. Robert Ehrlich, a Republican running for reelection, advised residents to vote by absentee ballot because he had no confidence in the machines.

"I don't care if we paid half a billion dollars or $1 billion," Ehrlich said. "If it's going to put the election at risk, there's no price tag for a phony election or a fraudulent election."
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job at pc plant ups risk of cancer

Job at PC plant may raise risk of cancer death
Thu Oct 19, 11:33 AM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Death rates, both overall and cancer-related, are considerably higher among workers engaged in manufacturing computers and component parts, when compared with the general population, according to a report in the journal Environmental Health.

While similar findings have been reported among employees who work in plants that manufacture computers, semiconductors, integrated circuits and other components, this report involves the largest database to date, Dr. Richard W. Clapp notes in the report.

A court order required that IBM provide to the plaintiffs in litigation "the IBM Corporate Mortality file," maintained by the company. It includes 31,941 records concerning decedents who had worked at their plants for at least 5 years. The data included the sex, birth date, death date, and underlying cause of death for the period from 1969 and 2001.

The lawyers for the plaintiffs handed the records over to Clapp, an epidemiologist at Boston University School of Public Health, to search for patterns of excess mortality among the employees. For comparison with the general population, Clapp procured data from the Mortality and Population Data System at the University of Pittsburgh.

Results showed that among the company employees, proportional mortality ratios (PRM) averaged 107 among men and 115 among women, as compared with the general population.

Cancer appeared to target specific organs, such that among men, the proportional cancer mortality ratios (PCMR) were 166 for cancers affecting the brain and central nervous system, 162 for kidney cancer, 179 for melanoma and 126 for pancreatic cancer.

In women, PCMRs were 212 for kidney cancer and 163 for cancer of all lymphatic and hematopoietic tissue.

There were also excessive numbers of deaths due to multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, and ALS.

In his report, Clapp notes that employees were routinely exposed to solvents and chemicals such as photoresist; metals, such as arsenic, nickel and chromium; electromagnet [sic] fields, especially ultraviolet light, radiofrequency, and x-ray radiation.
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