Category Archives: Uncategorized

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

Posted in Climate Change Politics, Risk Communication, Uncategorized | 11 Comments

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

Posted in Chemistry and Toxicology, Risk Assessment Methodologies, Risk Communication, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Understanding the role of, and opportunities for, Canadian fossil fuels in our net zero future

In my review of Seth Klein’s A Good War, I took issue with the author’s statement that in order to fight climate change we need to eliminate the fossil fuel industry. I have repeatedly pointed out how ridiculous that claim … Continue reading

Posted in Oil Sands, Pipelines, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

BC’s new School Food Guidelines: an attempt by bureaucrats to squeeze the joy out of our kids’ childhoods while stripping away parental choice

I am the parent of three school-aged kids and the president of our local elementary school Parent Advisory Council (PAC). Last night our PAC looked at BC’s Proposed 2022 BC School Foods Guidelines For Food & Beverages in K-12 Schools … Continue reading

Posted in Canadian Politics, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Do Canadians really consume the equivalent of a credit card worth of plastic every week? – Of course they don’t

This week I was directed to a factoid I had somehow missed that is currently making the rounds. That “humans consume the equivalent of a credit card worth of plastic every week”. The factoid was being used by the CEO … Continue reading

Posted in Chemistry and Toxicology, Risk, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Digging into that paper that “associates” VOCs in indoor air and tap water samples with Northern BC LNG wells – a likely example of spurious correlations

This week I was directed to a new paper in Science of the Total Environment titled Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in indoor air and tap water samples in residences of pregnant women living in an area of unconventional natural gas … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Understanding the rules for exporting plastic waste – what the activists keep getting wrong

As part of my ongoing discussion of plastic regulation in Canada, I ended up in an enlightening discussion on Twitter. It wasn’t enlightening for what it taught me about the handling of plastic waste; rather it was enlightening in that … Continue reading

Posted in Canadian Politics, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Debunking the claim that there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050

In my last post I wrote On the proposed Canadian plastics bans – Part 1: How the Government created useful “facts” for its scary headlines and how “facts” are being created, essentially out of thin air, to be used as activist … Continue reading

Posted in Canadian Politics, Chemistry and Toxicology, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

On the proposed Canadian plastics bans – Part 1: How the Government created useful “facts” for its scary headlines

This fall the Canadian government hopes to get a single-use plastics ban enacted with a plan to get to zero-plastic waste by 2030. To enact this ban, on October 10, 2020 the Canadian government recommended to the Governor in Council … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Debunking common anti-nuclear talking points Part 1 – Nuclear takes too long to build

In BC approximately 18% of our total energy is provided by clean electricity and 61% of our total energy is provided by fossil fuels (most of the rest is industrial energy supplied by burning biomass). The Pacific Institute for Climate … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments