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Recent Posts
- Are Gas Stoves Really Responsible for 12.7% of Current Childhood Asthma Cases in the US?
- Understanding Risk Assessment as a form of Sustainable and Green Remediation
- Understanding the role of, and opportunities for, Canadian fossil fuels in our net zero future
- Reviewing Seth Klein’s A Good War – An interesting historical treatise that ignores the details of climate science
- BC’s new School Food Guidelines: an attempt by bureaucrats to squeeze the joy out of our kids’ childhoods while stripping away parental choice
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- Debunking the claim that there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050
- An Open Letter to Fraser Health about a miserable visit to your ER made worse by a lack of communication, price-gouging, and lousy amenities
- Why an over-budget Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project will still not be a financial loser for the Federal government
- The New Gas Boom - A Bust for anyone interested in an informed discussion about Canadian LNG
- On the proposed Canadian plastics bans - Part 1: How the Government created useful "facts" for its scary headlines
- Why an environmental scientist is so often critical of environmental activists
- Why Climate leaders sometimes build pipelines - understanding the climate implications of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project
- On garbage politics about ocean plastics
- Some ideas to help teach Evolution under BC's new Grade 7 Science curriculum
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Category Archives: Risk Communication
Are Gas Stoves Really Responsible for 12.7% of Current Childhood Asthma Cases in the US?
The news has been full recently with stories about the risk of childhood asthma caused by natural gas stoves. As someone who specializes in risk assessment and has experience with indoor air chemistry this seemed like it was right up … Continue reading
Understanding Risk Assessment as a form of Sustainable and Green Remediation
One of my New Year’s resolutions is to write more posts that explain, in plain language, how our environmental regime in BC protects the public with respect to contaminated sites and to help clear up common misconceptions about contaminated sites. … Continue reading
Why you needn’t fear the “Dirty Dozen” fruits and vegetables
There are certain things you can count on with the coming of spring. Two of the earliest are the arrival of the first Mexican and Californian strawberries in the produce aisle and the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) annual “Dirty Dozen” … Continue reading
How understanding Type I and Type II errors and p-values helps in assessing the conclusions of the Ramazzini Institute 13-week pilot study on Glyphosate
As regular followers of this blog know, my graduate research involved developing systems to allow data collected by researchers to be evaluated for reliability and made available for subsequent re-use by other researchers. I carried out my research in an … Continue reading
Understanding the difference between a “hazard” and a “risk” or why scare stories about glyphosate and pesticides in your food shouldn’t frighten you
I have written a lot at this blog about how chemical risks are communicated to the public and so I am often asked about news stories depicting the latest science scare story. Sometimes they are handled badly, like the CTV … Continue reading
Why sample design matters or Why that “Insects are Vanishing Paper” does not tell us much about world insect populations
As followers of this blog know, one of my big interests is evidence-based, environmental decision-making. I care that good scientific data is being used to make informed policy decisions. As such the recent “insects are vanishing” meme that is spreading … Continue reading
Academics getting it wrong about the role of private sector consultants in BC’s Environmental Assessment processes
On November 19th a group of “scientists based in British Columbia” produced an open letter to Premier John Horgan, and several of his cabinet colleagues, about improving British Columbia’s Environmental Assessment (EA) process. The letter, was from the Earth to … Continue reading
What are the real marine risks of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion?
Every morning, starting around 7 am, the Spirit of Vancouver Island leaves its berth in Swartz Bay for its first run to Tsawwassen. On-board the Spirit are tens of thousands of liters of diesel fuel to run the ship for … Continue reading
Flu shots save both money and lives
The New Year is upon us and with the New Year comes an event as expected as the swallows return to Capistrano. What would that event be you ask? Well it must be Bill Tieleman’s annual articles against BC’s flu … Continue reading
Posted in Canadian Politics, Risk Communication, Uncategorized
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On pipelines, oil-by-rail, and the relative risk of catastrophic spills in the aquatic environment
As my regular readers know besides this blog I also write a blog at the Huffington Post. It typically consists of shorter versions on my pieces here. Well my most recent post on the Trans-Mountain Expansion project has received a … Continue reading