I have always envied people who can simply talk without it being a mental workout. As an advocate for evidence-based, environmental decision-making I often get asked to appear on television or the radio to speak on scientific topics of interest. Each time I do, I marvel at how easily professional communicators speak. I have never known that skill/gift as I lived my entire life with a speech impediment. I am a stutterer.

Thankfully (as I will discuss in this post), intense speech therapy as a child makes my stutter almost invisible most of the time. It only asserts itself when I am caught unawares, am under stress, or have had a bit too much to drink.

As a very young child, I was taught a series of tools to adapt. The tools include being careful with my word choice, avoiding words with multiple consonants too close together, singing words, and sticking to rehearsed scripts.

Practice and repetition also really help. I will typically practice in my head what I am going to say before I say anything. Going over how I will get from the start to the end of a thought before saying it out loud allows me to avoid the traps. The only problem with this approach is with important topics I can try so many variations in my head that I can sometime think I have said something that I have not. My wife laughs that I have most of our important conversations in my head, and forget to share them with my family.

As a child, besides the stutter, I could not make a number of sounds. The worst being the letter R, which I pronounced as a W except in certain sequences. The most humorous (to the older kids at school) was that I pronounced the letters “TR” as an “F”. This lead to a famous joke of telling Blair to say “fire truck” to an adult to see their response.

You may ask why I am writing this blog post and the answer is: because I want to take advantage of current affairs to push for more early-childhood services for kids with speech impediments. Having read the brave discussion of the topic by Joe Biden in The Atlantic (What Joe Biden Can’t Bring Himself to Say) and seeing the Democratic Party highlighting Joe Biden and Brayden Harrington’s speech issues during their convention; I realize that it is time that people with speech impediments forced themselves back into the conversation.

We must speak out about funding for early intervention and restoring/adding funding for speech therapy in our schools. We need to highlight the importance of respecting individuals with speech impediments in order to allow them the time they may need to let themselves be heard.

I grew up in what I now understand was the golden age of speech therapy in schools. I was identified in Grade 1 as needing help and for the next couple years got regular and intensive help from a school-supplied speech therapist until I could roll my R’s and completely assimilate the tools necessary to hide my other speech challenges. I can’t count the number of times I was required to say “Ricochet-rabbit runs rapidly down the road” but every time I got it perfect I got a penny.

Even with all the tools I learned, anyone listening to me will get the impression that something is not quite right. I speak in a halting pace and will stop frequently as I struggle to get words out. This is not because I don’t know what I am trying to say, but because I cannot get the words out. That delay is me trying to find a different way to get ideas out of my head without access to the words I need, but can’t say.

When people say “you should think about what you are going to say before you say it“; It really frustrates me. In order to speak semi-fluently I literally have to think of every word I want to utter before I say it out loud. For me a casual discussion involves a constant effort of thinking about every word before it comes out of my mouth. I simply don’t have the ability to speak quickly and easily like the radio hosts I envy.

Interestingly, one of the parent’s on my daughter’s soccer team is a speech‐language pathologist (SLP). During my first discussion with her at the soccer field she immediately recognized how I was using all the tools she taught in her practice to speak as fluently as I possibly can. As someone who only treats children, she noted how satisfying it was to see that the lessons she teaches being implemented by an adult.

As someone with a speech impediment, I have often felt that my voice was not heard in conversations because I don’t get to the point fast enough. I know my lack of fluency can be tough on people I’m talking to but that doesn’t make my input valueless. My wife and kids are quite used to it and will fill in the gaps at home but sometimes all I need is for a bit a patience in an impatient world.

Earlier in my career, I had a supervisor who simply did not understand the concept of a speech impediment being a real thing. Even after my condition was explained to him, he still reprimanded me for coming to meetings “unprepared” if I spoke in a slow-halting pace, or stopped in mid-sentence before finishing a sentence. This supervisor included comments to this effect in my performance reviews and while I am gladly rid of this man from my life, I can’t help but wonder if his comments delayed my professional development or set back my career.

You might see a trend in this post. It is the importance of intensive therapy as early as is practicable and with giving those with a speech impediment the time they need to express themselves. Unfortunately, our school system no longer places the emphasis it once did on this topic. The hours of intensive one-to-one therapy I received as a child would never be available today. Many kids age-out before they can jump through all the hoops necessary to even qualify for the therapy they need to become fluent. As Speech and Hearing BC puts it:

Speech and language skills influence the trajectory of a child for a lifetime. These skills also link to cognitive development, social skills, and success in academic learning. At least one in ten preschoolers need to see a speech‐language pathologist (SLP) for support in developing age‐appropriate communication skills. It is not unusual for children to be left waiting for months or years to see a publicly funded SLP in BC, due to individual SLP caseloads of over 80 children. Some children will not have access to a SLP before kindergarten due to wait lists

The recommended caseload for one full time equivalent (FTE) SLP is 25‐40 children. Assuming the maximum caseload of 40 children and a prevalence rate of 10% of preschoolers requiring SLP services, BC would require 552 full‐time SLPs to address the estimated need, significantly more than the current 165.

More problematically, outside of the school environment BC’s basic Medical Services Plan does not cover the cost of private speech, language, or swallowing services. Talk about creating an uneven playing field. Making less well-off families choose between speech therapy and paying for other family needs is simply not fair.

Kids with speech issues who are not treated early will lose out for the rest of their lives and if they can’t get the services early in their lives (when it is covered by the school system) they may never be able to afford the treatment they require to develop the skills they will need to succeed over their lifetimes.

From a public purse perspective, getting these kids intervention when they are young will pay dividends over that child’s lifetime. Reducing truancy, better performance and fewer disciplinary problems through their scholastic careers are all observed outcomes of early intervention. I won’t go into what a difference it will make to their quality-of-life both through their school years and in their lives after school. To be clear here, I am not asking our government to break the bank, but directed funding to increase our per capita number of SLPs to a national average would be a great start. Funding speech therapy for young people through medicare would be another great change to make up for all those who got missed by the school system would be great as well.

I can’t say it enough, we need to increase funding for early and intensive intervention for speech impediments in our schools. We need to highlight the importance of giving kids the tools the need and respecting individuals with speech impediments in order to allow them the time they may need, to let themselves be heard.

Author’s note

A lot of people I have known a long time have commented that they never realized I had this challenge….and that is the ultimate point of this post…if you give a child early intervention for as little as few hours a week for a couple years you can get a child who can pass as normal which means they don’t get picked on and they get a chance to thrive.

Last weekend the Trans Mountain Pipeline had a spill at its Sumas Pump Station in Abbotsford. According to Trans Mountain the

Initial estimates are that 150-190 cubic metres (940-1195 barrels) of light crude was released and was fully contained on Trans Mountain property.

The release is related to a fitting on a small diameter (1”) piece of pipe connected to the mainline. No construction or Expansion Project activity was  underway at the pump station. The incident was identified when an alarm was received at Trans Mountain’s control centre. The pipeline was immediately shut down and crews arrived at the site within an hour of shutdown.

Here are some photos taken by Trans Mountain immediately after the spill, and shared with the media.

For those unaware of how these facilities are designed, the area where the spill occurred is designed to keep spills nearby. It is at a lower grade than the surrounding area, is gravel and asphalt-covered, and surrounded by berms. From the photos it is clear that the vast majority of the spill was contained to a graveled containment area. Trans Mountain has indicated that they have recovered most of the liquids but soil impacts remain and will need to be cleaned up.

Further investigation, after the initial reports, indicated that some oily water had escaped the initial containment and had been released into the adjacent field, which is owned by Trans Mountain. The field is often used by neighbours for grazing their cattle. This field is understood to be home to the monitoring well network used for ongoing monitoring of groundwater conditions near their facility.

Our good friends at the Wilderness Committee presented a press release including the photo below which they distributed to the media for general use.

Looking carefully, one can see four oil spill booms in the ditch leading from the water discharge point. Two are fully soaked and two are partially affected. This is consistent with a release of oily water, likely from the facility’s oil/water separator before it was shut down. What is not visible is a line of spill pads that would be emplaced if there was a major spill to be cleaned up.

A couple days later the Wilderness Committee prepared a mini-video on the spill:

"This really is a catastrophic oil spill happening in slow-motion. It's piece by piece. And it's poisoning the waters and the ecosystems that people, especially the Indigenous people in this part of the world, rely on." @Climate_Pete #StopTMX pic.twitter.com/895TiwE5Ne

— Wilderness Committee (@wildernews) June 16, 2020

Immediately following the spill the Wilderness Committee’s point man on this topic Peter McCartney (the gentleman who narrates the video known by his Twitter name @Climate_Pete) made it into the newscasts making clearly incorrect claims, like that it was lucky the spill was sweet crude because had it been bitumen it would have been much harder to clean up.

In this blog post I want to fact-check the Wilderness Committee response to this spill as, in my opinion, it shows a clear pattern of misinformation and simple ignorance about this topic.

The weird part about the misinformation is some of the things they have stated are obviously wrong. Less than ten seconds into the video Pete claims “Trans Mountain has spilled 150,000 to 190,000 L of crude into the local ecology.” In the press release he put it: “We’re talking about a major oil spill in a waterlogged field that sits above the Sumas aquifer,” 

Except we know this to be categorically false. As presented in the photos, the spill was mostly controlled in a containment area. 150,000 Liters did not reach “the local ecology“. There was no “major oil spill in a waterlogged field“.

In the video, Pete then goes into a brief discussion about hydrology, which, as I will detail later, is simply wrong. To summarize, the shallow subsurface in this area (where the spill would migrate) is separated from the local aquifer by a layer of silty-clay. Pete doesn’t appear to understand hydrology even as he opines on the subject on various media platforms.

Pete then goes on to say (at around 48 seconds) that there have been 4 spills in the last 15 years in the territory. Except that is not true either. To support this claim he flashes this list of spills from the Trans Mountain web site.

Since the view is not terribly clear I went to the original source and pulled out the page here.

Looking carefully, the dates he has highlighted are from 2005, 2002, 1997 and 1994. Now unless Pete uses a different sort of calendar than me, 1994 is not within 15 years of 2020. Moreover, that spill from 2005 was actually at the Sumas Tank Farm which is several kilometers away, up a mountain from the current spill. From a hydrological perspective it could be on another planet since it is in a different aquifer (more on that later) and is hydraulically separated from that aquifer by hundred of meters of consolidated bedrock.

The records Pete presents show that the last spill at the Sumas Pump Station was 9.4 barrels of oil in 2002. The only other spills at this facility were in 1997 (28.3 barrels) and 1994 (4.8 barrels). For a pipeline that has operated since 1961 that is a pretty decent record. That is four spills since 1961 and absolutely does not represent 4 spills in 15 years.

Besides the erroneous statements, in the video, and in the press release, Pete makes a number of over-the-top claims:

• this is a disaster
• the extreme risks to local ecosystems
• a catastrophic spill
• a catastrophic oil spill in slow-motion

You can usually tell the difference between an activist and an informed observer by looking at how they approach a topic like this. Over-the-top rhetoric based on superficial or a detailed assessment of the facts is the activist approach. My responses tend towards the detailed assessment of the facts.

The first thing I thought to do was to try to understand what the subsurface looks like in the vicinity of the spill; as that would indicate the level of risk posed by this spill. This being BC we have lots of great resources to do just that.

To get an understanding of the area the first step would be to consult the BC Water Resources Atlas. It provides details of all the local water wells and information about the local aquifer. A search of the Atlas identifies a well in the Trans Mountain-owned field next to the facility that was drilled in 1957 (before the pipeline was completed). When we search the well record for this well we see that the stratigraphy in the area consists of almost 19 feet (5.8 m) of silty clay overlaying a sand and gravel water-bearing layer.

This information is incredibly useful to understand spill behaviour. Silty clay serves as a pretty effective barrier to the vertical migration of spills. In technical language, it forms a confining layer that prevents, or limits, the migration of both groundwater (and any spill) to the useful water-bearing layer (located according to the well record at “19 to 26 feet” (5.8 m to 7.9 m).

The Water Resource Atlas also provides information about the local aquifer, including the Aquifer 21 summary and the Aquifer fact sheet.

Look at that, the Sumas Prairie Aquifer is not hydraulically linked to the aquifer under Sumas Mountain. This is not surprising as the Sumas River would be where that aquifer drained.

These documents indicate that the groundwater surface in the Sumas Prairie Aquifer is at about 2-3 meters below the ground surface (mbgs) and that typical wells in the aquifer draw from around 9 mbgs. This is consistent with what the well log told us and is pretty good news so far. There is almost 6 m of protective silty clay between the surface spill and the aquifer and about 4 meters of that silty clay is water-bearing (but not capable of being used for drinking water).

The next thing to consider is how a spill in this material will be expected to move. For the next little bit I need to get a bit wonky…feel free to skip the next four paragraphs.

The first thing we know is that oil is a hydrophobic liquid with a specific gravity less than 1. That means any spill will attempt to migrate vertically through the vadose zone until it reaches the groundwater surface and then because it is both hydrophobic and less dense than water, will float along the groundwater surface before migrating laterally on that surface until it reaches a water body or naturally degrades.

A silty clay has a hydraulic conductivity in the 10^-9 m/s range. That means it is really hard for liquids to flow through silty clay. Even more so if you are a hydrophobic liquid as that material will preferentially adhere to silt and clay particles.

The local hydraulic gradient is defined by the topography. As we know the Sumas Prairie is as flat as a pool table. It has a topographic change of less than 1 m per km (or less than 0.001 m/m). Combining these two facts generates a Darcy Velocity of 1 x 10^-12 m/yr. Now when we incorporate the effective porosity of a silt and clay (0.10) we get an Effective Linear velocity of the groundwater in the area of 1 x 10^-11 m/yr. This generates a 50 year travel distance of 0.02 m (20 centimeters).

A reminder, this calculation is simply the rate at which groundwater will move through this silty clay. A hydrocarbon plume, being hydrophobic, will have a high retardation factor (yes that is a technical term derived from the French word “retarder”) so will travel at a substantially slower rate than the associated groundwater. Given the nature of the aquifer, there is no reason to believe there would be a vertical gradient so the spill would not be expected to dive. The absence of any large water wells nearby means there are no anthropogenic driving forces involved either.

Okay wonky part done for a bit.

For those of you less interested in the details above, what the former paragraphs explain is that absent an outside driving force, a surface oil spill in the field will not get to the deeper drinking water aquifer. Rather, it will get caught up in the silty clay. That oil which eventually migrates to the groundwater surface (2 meters through virtually impermeable silty clay) will then migrate away from the spill at the stately rate of about 20 centimetres every 50 years on top of the groundwater and separated from the drinking water aquifer by 4 meters of silty clay.

From a clean-up perspective this is about as best a case as possible. To clean up the spill you just need to remove the top few centimetres (to a half meter or so) of impacted silty-clay and ship it away to a facility designed to treat the material.

Admittedly, the process will take time and will cost a bit of money (shipping and treating impacted soil can be expensive) but given the rate that plume would be moving they have a bit of time to deal with the problem.

Let’s be absolutely clear here. Any spill poses a risk. In a different location, with different subsurface conditions, a spill of this kind could indeed be a “disaster”. But the Wilderness Committee is not talking about another spill, somewhere else. It is talking about the June 13 spill at the Sumas Pump Station.

The Wilderness Committee representative, in the press, has repeatedly over-stated the volume of oil that escaped containment, has misrepresented the number of spills that have happened in this area and the risks posed by this particular spill. Admittedly, the last point is likely due to the fact that the organization appears to lack any scientific expertise on this topic. Their project lead is a journalism major and videographer with no apparent training, education or expertise in the natural sciences.

People keep asking me why I care? My issue is that local and national journalists keep going to “Climate Pete” for his take on these events and then simply report what he has to say without ever having an informed eye look over his claims to see if they make any scientific sense. Hearing him say things that are completely wrong is incredibly frustrating for someone who cares about evidence-based, decision-making. At some point the media has to stop giving him free media (earned media???) time to misinform the public. Moreover, it is time that people who actually understand this topic stand up and explain the facts so the public narrative isn’t dominated by misinformation.

Yesterday Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam provided further guidance on wearing masks to protect against the Coronavirus. Her new advice was Canadians should wear a mask as an “added layer of protection” whenever physical distancing is not possible. In doing so, Dr. Tam reinforced that she was not recommending that people wear masks at all times while in public.

This Health Canada recommendations did not please a minority of MDs who are demanding that masks be made mandatory. I have previously explained why health officials did not initially declare masks mandatory and feel it is time to update my post to clarify why this new Health Canada guidance makes sense in my eyes.

Let’s start with what has been recommended. Coronavirus is primarily transmitted by droplet transmission and those droplets are best transported through coughs and talking. At a distance of about 2 meters your likelihood of being affected by a neighbor’s cough or chatting is considered sufficiently low as to not be a concern.

I have little time for those cough chamber results that indicate that coughs may go farther than 2 meters. Those tests were conducted in sealed chambers with no air flow. We live in a world where air is constantly circulating. Find me a store with perfectly still air and the cough chamber results may be useful, until then I will trust the 2 meter rule.

In a crowded transit vehicle, or in a crowd, keeping that 2 meters distance is not always possible. In those situations a mask should be worn. This is official Health Canada policy and is not really up for debate. When you can’t socially distance you should wear a mask. The question is how to behave when you have room to socially distance.

When MDs argue for mandatory masks wearing they imagine that we are all the Conscientious Mask-Wearer (CMW). The CMW wears a fitted mask that they clean/replace regularly. The CMW practices good social distancing and when they get home they take off their mask and immediately put in in the laundry to avoid it cross-contaminating the household. Most-importantly the CMW practices good hand hygiene.

The CMW keeps their hands to themselves in stores. They only touch items that they will take home with them. They wash their hands regularly and, this is critical, don’t ever touch their mask when out of the house. The reason for this is a mask represents a potential reservoir for viral particles. Every time a wearer touches their mask their hands become potentially infected until their hands are disinfected again. So to be a CMW you have to resist touching your mask and if you touch that mask you need to disinfect your hands immediately. Now I think we can all agree that we should all be that virtuous because in a perfect world we would all be CMWs.

Dr. Tam and our health officials don’t imagine we are all that virtuous so they suggest another safe alternative: the Conscientious Non-Mask Wearer (CNMW). The CNMW knows how to socially distance and avoids crowds when shopping. The CNMW knows to cough into their cough pocket (the crook of their elbow). They do this because the cough pocket doesn’t come into contact with other surfaces and isn’t a place you tend to touch. This reduces the risk of contaminating their hands.

The CNMW also practices good hand hygiene just like the CNMW, but doesn’t have to worry about adjusting a finicky mask so keeps their hands away from their face after cleaning them. From a public health perspective the CNMW does not represent a significantly increased risk over a CMW.

The person Dr. Lam and public health officials are most worried about is the Non-Conscientious Mask Wearer (NCMW). The NCMW wears a mask but generally does everything else wrong. They don’t concentrate on socially distancing (because they are wearing a mask so they are already doing their part). The NCMW coughs into their mask and then adjusts the mask because it is uncomfortable. This makes their mask a potential biohazard. After touching their mask the NCMW doesn’t wash their hands and then touches things with those potentially infected hands. When not in use, the NCMW’s mask goes into their pocket, purse or car (thus cross-contaminating those items).

The NCMW presents a serious concern for health officials. Their hands and mask both represent potential sources of infection. Anything they touch becomes a point contact for touch transfer to others. They will infect PIN pads and doorknobs and their mask is a reservoir of viral particles, ripe for infection. Since their mask went into their pocket/purse/car seat those surfaces are now potential sources of contagion for their families as well.

If the NCMW is not infected, but touches an infected surface, then their habit of touching their mask will transfer the virus particles onto the surface of the mask and will turn that mask into a vapourizer for Coronavirus. Because their mask doesn’t actually block the movement of viral particles (its weave is not fine enough) it increases the likelihood that they will inhale viral particles and become infected.

Herein lies the challenge from a public health perspective. The conscientious wearer and conscientious non-wearer both represent an equal risk to the public but the non-conscientious wearer represents a public health threat.

What public health officials also know is using masks correctly is hard. It takes time and effort to get it right. I train employees to wear PPE and even when their employment is on the line I struggle to get them to leave their masks untouched. Masks are uncomfortable and people simply aren’t used to them.

From a training perspective it is a LOT easier to teach people to cough into their cough pockets and not touch things. This is because it builds on years of training we have all been given since kindergarten. Health officials aren’t training from scratch they are building on what our moms taught us from childhood: cough into your cough pockets; wash your hands; and keep your hands to yourself.

As for the people online who repeatedly claim that it is easy to teach people how to wear masks correctly. I welcome them to wander through my local grocery store and see how many people are wearing their masks correctly. Ask the gent in front of me wearing the gloves (don’t get me started with gloves) who keeps pushing into my personal space while touching every item on the shelf. When you can convince me that we can teach that gent how to do it right then get back to me.

The public health professionals know what they are talking about. Wear a mask when you can’t social distance but when in public at a safe social distance it is just as safe to not wear masks. To be clear, if you see me on a bus; I will be wearing a mask. If the store asks me to wear a mask; I will wear a mask because that is store policy. But in situations where I can safely social distance, I will follow our health professionals’ advice and keep my hands to myself while keeping a safe social distance and not wear a mask.

Like every interested interested environmental observer, I carved out some time to finally watch “Planet of the Humans” by Jeff Gibbs (executive producer Michael Moore) and having watched it I came out with mixed feelings. The best description I can come up with is that, in my mind, it seems like two completely different documentaries shown sequentially. The first is a really problematic one on wind and solar energy (with a bit on population) and the second is an absolutely devastating critique of biomass/biofuels that reveals a lot of previously hidden ties between high-profile activists and the biomass/biofuels industry.

As a former academic, I predict this documentary will become a “must-view” for any advanced environmental studies class. But the viewing will need to be followed by a careful deconstruction of the work. Because while, contrary to the claims of its critics, the documentary doesn’t outright lie; it doesn’t tell the whole truth either. I have yet to see a critique that can point out more than a handful of true factual errors, which in a two hour film is something. Instead, the film treads a careful line of presenting examples, that aren’t really typical, but implying (without saying this outright) that they are typical. But then again isn’t that pretty much what defines a Michael Moore documentary?

If we are going to highlight complaints, then you have to start by discussing the whole “Chevy Volt” section. My social media feed is filled with reviews and blogs claiming that the Chevy Volt section is out-of-date and misrepresents current conditions. I disagree. That section of the documentary is Mr. Gibbs demonstrating his bona fides as an environmental journalist. He doesn’t pretend this section is current, rather he makes it absolutely clear that it is from the past.

What that portion of the film demonstrates is when others were mindlessly fawning over new technology he was asking informed and important questions. Is an electric car really green if it relies on coal power for its electricity? How much power does that array really produce? Is this concert really running off solar?

That entire section of the documentary was clearly represented as being in the past and so the fact that the Lansing solar array was an old one should not be unexpected. Again-and-again this introductory section shows him asking the insightful question when others were blissfully reporting pablum. For critics to complain that these historical clips somehow misrepresent the current status of technology completely misses the point of that part of the film.

In my opinion the problem with “Planet of the Human” is when it finishes its introduction and transitions to its initial anti-wind and solar phase (from about 18 minutes to about 50 minutes). That section is simply a mess. This is the part of the film the critics can really sink their teeth into because the documentary does a bait-and-switch.

In the anti-solar section the research concentrates on two solar facilities: Ivanpah and the SEGs. The thing the documentary fails to mention is that these aren’t your typical solar PV facilities they are solar thermal and concentrated solar projects. By concentrating on Ivanpah and the early SEGs the producers made a very deliberate choice: to look at the worst of the worst. When Ozzie Zehner says bad things about Ivanpah being not green, he is absolutely correct. It is heavily assisted by natural gas and as such really isn’t all that green. But if you condemned the auto industry solely because of the Ford Pinto then you would miss all the successes as well.

The reality is that any number of well-researched life cycle analyses demonstrate conclusively that solar PV installations can quickly make up the carbon debt generated in their production and produce effective, if intermittent, electricity. Moreover, the vast majority of solar facilities are solar PV and therefore most of the critiques presented do not apply. Yes, the panels do rely on scarce resources and are hard (and often extremely expensive) to recycle and building them in deserts harms the environment, but the life cycle analyses don’t lie. Solar PV is a a valuable source of low-carbon electricity as part of an integrated grid.

The arguments about wind are equally weak. Yes wind is intermittent and yes wind turbines typically are sited in locations that have lots of wind. But all energy generation has trade-offs and the life cycle analyses support wind turbines as well. Modern wind, like modern PV solar, makes absolute sense in a well-designed renewable energy mix.

As for that small section about population control at the 45 minute mark? I’m not sure what he was trying to achieve,but it was painful to watch old, privileged white folk talk about how we need to control population.

I admit, by about the 52 minute mark I was almost ready to pack it in and then the entire film turned around for me.

The next 45 minutes was an incredibly compelling story about the expansion and growth of the biomass industry and the luminaries of the Green movement who have facilitated its growth.

I have written a lot about biofuels since my first post on the topic in 2014 and unlike the solar/wind section of the documentary, almost every fact presented in this section was on point and consistent with my understanding and research.

What I didn’t know was all the extra stuff about all the high-profile environmental luminaries who have been funding, and getting funding from biofuels. The second half of the documentary more than made up for the first half. It was compelling and told a story that I thought I knew but didn’t know well enough.

I can understand why a lot of environmentalists are upset at this documentary because it really pulls back the curtain and what it shows is not pretty. Admittedly, I am going to guess that it cherry-picked a lot, but it is hard to cherry-pick if you don’t have a lot of plump, ripe cherries on the tree.

To conclude, I would suggest that not only does “Planet of the Humans” leave its viewership split, it also leaves me split. The section about wind and solar really annoyed and frustrated me and the section on biomass really informed me. I can see why a lot of high-profile activists would want it hidden from view but that very reason is why it shouldn’t be hidden. As I noted, I’m certain it will be mandatory viewing in Environmental Studies classes next year but it could benefit from a thorough re-editing and trim.

To summarize: this is a pretty much what you expect from a Michael Moore documentary. It does not tell the whole story, all the time, but it has enough of a basis in fact to be worth the watch. It will absolutely split its audience. A lot of people will absolutely hate it and a lot will absolutely love it. Once again, this is exactly how every Michael Moore documentary is received. The only difference this time is the progressive left is getting hit by the blows not the right.

Author’s Note:

An earlier version of this blog referred to another blog that had criticized the film while presenting information I recognized to be incorrect. I contacted that blog owner and he corrected his blog. Given that change the section of this article no longer remained relevant so was removed.

I am an Environmental Chemist. My work involves exposure to toxic and/or corrosive chemicals. Prior to my current professional position, I worked at the University of Victoria teaching first year students in their first university laboratory course. As a Professional Chemist now, and an academic Chemist then, the very first thing I teach/taught my staff/students is/was how to correctly use personal protective equipment (PPE). In my last post I wrote about one type of PPE (face masks) this post is about gloves.

Glove safety is a particular bugbear of mine. The reason for this is personal. During my graduate studies a colleague had a nasty accident thanks to not following glove protocol and because of that I spend a lot of time enforcing good glove protocol with my staff. In this blog post I want to share some of the lessons I have learned about glove use and provide some suggestions about the use of gloves during the Coronavirus pandemic.

Gloves can be your friends but you don’t need them for most tasks

Almost every health official on the planet has repeated the same refrain: good hand hygiene is an important way to protect ourselves from the Coronavirus. Virtually every public surface may be covered in virus and good hand hygiene will help protect you from the virus. As the Centers for Disease Control points out you need to:

perform hand hygiene (e.g., handwashing with non-antimicrobial soap and water, and alcohol-based hand rub if soap and water are not available) after having contact with respiratory secretions and contaminated objects/materials.

But in some situations, good hand hygiene is not good enough, that is when you should wear gloves. A good (intact) pair of nitrile or latex gloves provides an excellent barrier from Coronavirus. But gloves are not a panacea and used incorrectly gloves can hurt rather than help.

From what I have seen to date, most people are using gloves incorrectly and in doing so are putting themselves, their families and the people they encounter at increased risk. In the next sections I want to emphasize some of the rules you should consider when wearing gloves.

Always assume the outside of your glove is contaminated

The most important thing I want everyone who reads this post to understand is that you always have to treat your gloves as if they are contaminated. You cannot see the Coronavirus so you have to assume that the outside of your glove is covered with the virus. That means if you touch something with that glove you will have contaminated that surface with Coronavirus.

Yesterday I was waiting to pay for my groceries behind a couple wearing gloves. This couple had done all their shopping wearing these gloves [I had noticed them earlier] and they were at the cashier paying. They insisted on paying with cash (much to the dismay of the cashier) and the gent proceeded to touch every single bill with his gloved hands. Before that I watched the gent pull his wallet out of his back pocket with his gloved hand. He then collected his wife’s purse, once again using the same gloved hand and then pulled out her wallet to get change.

This gent was oblivious to the fact that every object he touched would be exposed to whatever was on the outside of his gloves. His pocket, his wallet, his wife’s purse, her wallet, all these surface were now potentially exposed. By wearing gloves and not following strict glove protocol he potentially contaminated himself, his wife and potentially his kids in countless ways.

What really offended me was that by handling the cash with his gloves and giving it to the cashier, who was not wearing gloves, he put her at added risk. Had he, instead, used one of the Lysol wipes handed out at the door, and not worn gloves, he could have protected himself, his family AND THE CASHIER. That sort of bad citizenship frustrates me to no end. This brings me to my next rule:

Never touch with your glove anything that you may want to touch without your glove

This rule is simply a follow-up on the first rule. If you are going to wear gloves then don’t touch anything with the glove that you want to later touch without your gloves.

In the office I am always all over my field staff about this. The classic example is their pens. My field technicians are constantly writing field notes and have pens everywhere; and where do a lot of people store pens when their hands are full?…their mouths of course. I teach my lab technicians that if they have to touch a pen with a gloved hand, then they should mark that pen and never touch it again without gloves. This rule leads to the obvious next rule

Don’t wear your gloves (or do work requiring gloves) in common areas or in areas where others will be working without gloves.

If you decide to wear gloves for your protection, you need to establish “glove-only” and “glove-free” zones. These areas should be clear and and you should acknowledge others by not wearing gloves in common areas or areas where others will be working without gloves. If you don’t follow this rule then you put unwitting people at risk. We share spaces with others and part of sharing spaces with people is protecting them. This is simply good manners and good citizenship.

In a similar vein, never wear gloves in your vehicle that you wore out of your vehicle. One exception to this can be where you are wearing “clean” gloves to protect an area from unclean hands.

This is often the case, for me, when I am coming home from the field and I cannot be sure that I was able to get my hands clean before getting in my vehicle. In that case I will wear clean gloves in my car, but in this case it is to protect the car from my hands and not the other way around. Once I am home I turn on the water in my sink and then take off my gloves and wash my hands immediately because in this case the INSIDE of the gloves represents the contaminated surface and I want to protect my family from my contaminated hands by wearing clean gloves.

Replace gloves regularly and remove them using correct technique

Since we have to assume the outside of our gloves are contaminated, we should change them regularly and need to ensure they are removed correctly. There is a correct technique to removing gloves, as depicted in the graphic below. If you don’t remove your gloves correctly then you will, once-again, defeat the purpose of wearing gloves.

Notice how in the graphic the outside of the glove is only touched by glove and the inside only touched by skin. This is incredibly important because, as we remember, we have to assume the outside of your gloves are contaminated.

Wear the right glove for the task

Another important thing to remember is that nitrile/latex gloves are designed to protect you from exposure to germs and some chemicals. They are not designed for heavy use. If you plan on doing heavy work then wear appropriate gloves.

For our work, our field technicians are dealing with glass jars that can break and cause cuts, so they wear cut-resistant gloves underneath their nitrites. This allows them to get the protection both from cuts and from contamination. If you know you will need to use multiple gloves to complete a task then wear multiple layers of gloves.

Sometime when I know I am going to be jarring multiple soil samples, I will layer on 3-4 layers of nitriles. That way I can pull off one layer and still have gloved hands to handle the next sample.

Gloves only work if you are paying attention

A critical thing to remember is that PPE only works for people who remain aware of the reason they are wearing PPE. Remember that lab accident I talked about from my youth? In that case my colleague was working with organic solvents wearing all the right PPE when his eye got itchy. He reached under his safety glasses, with his gloved hand, and etched his cornea with the organic solvent contaminating his glove.

He had forgotten the most important rule of PPE. PPE is your last line of defense not your first. PPE is there to protect you because every other level of planning and procedures has failed. If you are relying on PPE then you planned your task incorrectly. Figure out how to do the job without PPE, then wear the PPE as a back-up, not the other way around.

To conclude, if you avoid touching things you don’t need to touch; wash your hands regularly; practice social distancing; and avoid places where crowd are accumulating you will do more to reduce your risk to Coronavirus than you will get by wearing gloves or a mask.

Because of my work, I have a box of nitrile gloves in my car and throughout this Coronavirus epidemic I have put on a nitrile glove twice. Both times were to put gas in my car because I have a bad habit of spilling gas from the nozzle onto my hand.

As a safety professional, I trust my good planning and good habits to protect me from Coronavirus, not unnecessary layers of PPE. By doing so I am not emulating that family from my grocery shopping. Their incorrect use of gloves put themselves, their families and that shopping clerk at risk. Gloves will only protect you if you follow good glove protocols. If you don’t you will simply lull yourself into a false sense of security while putting yourself, your family and the people you encounter at increased risk.