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Federal surveys have found that indoor air can be two to five times more toxic than outdoor air.

‘Indoor generation’: A quarter of Americans spend all day inside, survey finds

Majority don’t know how bad indoor air quality is compared to outside

In an age when nearly everything can be found (and delivered) online — including food, entertainment and relationships — it’s hardly surprising to discover an “indoor generation.” (Associated Press) more >
 – The Washington Times – Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Call them the in(side) crowd.

About 25 percent of Americans hardly ever venture outside, unaware or unconcerned about breathing only stale indoor air, a report says.

In an age when nearly everything can be found (and delivered) online — including food, entertainment and relationships — it’s hardly surprising to discover an “indoor generation.”

 

“We are increasingly turning into a generation of indoor people where the only time we get daylight and fresh air midweek is on the commute to work or school,” Peter Foldbjerg, the head of daylight energy and indoor climate at Velux, a window manufacturing company, said in a statement.

According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, a nine-hour workday is the average for American wage-earners. When they return home on a typical day, 85 percent of women and 67 percent of men spend time doing work around the house.

Leisure time has become synonymous with television viewing, according to the federal data. Many Americans spend nearly three hours a day in front of the tube, and teenagers spend more than half of their leisure time with screens.

For the Indoor Generation Report, commissioned by Velux, researchers surveyed 16,000 people from 14 countries in Europe and North America about their knowledge and perceptions of indoor/outdoor air quality and the amount of time they spend inside.

For Americans, one-quarter said they spend 21 to 24 hours inside daily, 20 percent said they spend 19 to 20 hours inside and 21 percent say they spend 15 to 18 hours inside.

Thirty-four percent said they spend zero to 14 hours inside.

“I think, time and time again, research shows that people who spend more time indoors — whether it’s at home or sitting all day at work — they tend to be linked to higher rates of obesity, issues with cholesterol, and also mental health issues like anxiety and depression,” said Dr. Natasha Bhuyan, a family physician with One Medical in the District of Columbia.

Of those surveyed for the Indoor Generation Report, 77 percent didn’t believe indoor air quality was worse than pollution outside.

But federal surveys have found that indoor air can be two to five times more toxic than outdoor air.

Humidity, mold and artificial temperatures are just some of the indoor dangers. Close quarters with other people during the height of cold and flu season also can wreak havoc on the body. Not going outside at all can contribute to a host of health problems.

“When people are asked about air pollution, they tend to think of living near big factories or busy urban areas with high levels of car emissions,” Mr. Foldbjerg said. “It uncovers a need for further awareness and education about the impact our indoor living habits are having on our body and minds in terms of health and well-being.”

“A lot of my patients are professional who just work all day and are in front of a screen all day,” Dr. Bhuyan said. “They’ll get neck pain, they’ll get eye strain from staring at the screen all day, and I tell them, ‘You’ve got to take a break.’”

Multiple studies have shown direct and indirect benefits of spending time outdoors and in nature, including vitamin D production, increased physical activity and mood improvement.

“Exposure to light-dark cycles is an absolutely crucial part of our biology, and that’s due to the role of light in resetting our circadian clock each and every day,” Steven Lockley, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School’s Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders, said in a statement.

“If you’re exposed to brighter and bluer light in the daytime, then you get a better stimulant effect,” Mr. Lockley said. “You’ll be more alert and have better cognitive function; potentially be more productive at work and so on.”

But the demands of work and home can overtake efforts to go outside.

“It’s often sad because it doesn’t feel like a priority to so many people,” Dr. Bhuyan said. “But it’s those small things that add up and have a huge impact on your health.”

Small changes during the day, such as scheduling work meetings or taking lunch outside, can break up time spent inside, she said.

“You really need to go outdoors and look far away at landscapes to kind of help your eyes relax and to get outside of that setting when you’re sitting cooped up at your desks,” she said.

A priority also should be made to take exercise outside, even with the availability of indoor gyms. In a separate study of over 750 older Americans, researchers found that those who went outside at least once a week spent significantly more time doing moderate to vigorous physical activity compared with those who were active inside only.

In the Indoor Generation Report, other countries with similar results to the U.S. were Britain and Canada, with 23 percent and 26 percent of their respondents respectively saying they spend 21 to 24 hours indoors.

Countries with the highest percentage of people who spend the least amount of time inside were Italy (57 percent), the Czech Republic (57 percent) and the Netherlands (51 percent). This group said they spend zero to 14 hours indoors.

The study’s authors recommend making indoor environments healthier by cleaning regularly, not burning candles, drying clothes outside, turning on the range hood fan when cooking and opening windows at least three to four times a day to let fresh air inside.

The Environmental Protection Agency also suggests that people take concrete steps to identify and eliminate sources of indoor pollution, such as sealing off asbestos, plugging gas leaks, treating mold and improving ventilation to increase outside air flow.

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http://www.govrangers.com/leadership/x6383PoundTheRock.pdf

[pdf-embedder url=”https://treefresno.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/x6383PoundTheRock.pdf”]

 

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Washington county files lawsuit against oil and gas industry over climate change

Washington county files lawsuit against oil and gas industry over climate change

A Washington state county filed a lawsuit against the oil and gas industry Thursday for contributing to climate change.

King County’s suit is targeting five fossil fuel companies — BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch and ConocoPhillips — “for knowingly contributing to climate disruptions and putting the residents of King County at greater risk of floods, landslides, ocean acidification, sea level rise, and other impacts,” according to a county statement.

The county, which encompasses Seattle, aims to require those companies to establish an abatement fund to mitigate the effects of climate change on salmon recovery, public health, storm water management and infrastructure.

“The science is undisputable [sic]: climate change is impacting our region today, and it will only cause greater havoc and hardships in the future,” King County Executive Dow Constantine said in a statement.

“The companies that profited the most from fossil fuels should help bear the costs of managing these disasters. Big Oil spent many decades disregarding and dismissing what is our most pressing generational challenge. We must hold these companies accountable as we marshal our resources to protect and preserve what makes this region great.”

The county adds its name to other districts in California, New York and Colorado that have filed similar lawsuits.

On May 24, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California will start hearings on whether a suit filed by San Francisco and Oakland should proceed to trial or be dismissed. A similar hearing will take place in New York City in June.

Environmentalist groups are cheering the latest suit. 

Richard Wiles, executive director for the Center for Climate Integrity, called it a “moment of reckoning.”

“The fossil fuel industry is not above the law: oil and gas is a product just like lead, asbestos, and tobacco, where producers can be held liable for damages,” he said in a statement.

But fossil fuel and manufacturing industries are criticizing the suits as baseless targeting.

“Lawsuits targeting manufacturers do nothing to address climate change, but will do plenty to line the pockets of plaintiffs’ attorneys — and in this case, the very same attorneys behind countless other public nuisance lawsuits throughout the country,” said Lindsey de la Torre, executive director of the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project in a statement.

“As history has demonstrated, these lawsuits stand little chance in the courtroom.”

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Precipitation whiplash and climate change threaten California’s freshwater

 

 

 

National 

Precipitation whiplash
and climate change threaten
California’s freshwater

Almost two-thirds of California’s freshwater originate in the Sierra Nevada mountains. But the source is in trouble.

 

Imagine the snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains as a giant reservoir providing water for 23 million people throughout California. During droughts, this snow reserve shrinks, affecting water availability in the state.

Snow extent on April 1

Redding

Sacramento

San Francisco

Los Angeles

San Diego

Researchers fear global warming will cause the Sierra Nevada snowpack to lose much of its freshwater by the end of the century, spelling trouble for water management throughout the state.

The California Department of Water Resources found last month that the water content in the Sierra snowpack was about half its historical average for the beginning of April despite late winter storms. One year before, the water content had been measured at over 160 percent of the historical average. This swing is not new and continues California’s recent trend of climate shifts, following the 2011-2015 drought.

Amount of water stored as snow

Less water

More water

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

Below historical average

Above historical

average

Below historical

average

Scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) expect to see an increase in ‘precipitation whiplash’ events in the region, with rapid transitions between extreme wet and extreme dry periods.

These extreme precipitation events pose a risk to dams, levees and canals, few of which have been tested against intense storms such as those that caused the Great Flood of 1862. By the end of the 21st century, the frequency of floods of this magnitude across the state is expected to increase by 300 to 400 percent.

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Dams are at risk

During the winter of 2017, record snowfall in the Sierras caused a spillway to fail on the Oroville Dam, sending water spilling over the dam. Nearly 190,000 residents were forced to evacuate their homes. The man-made lake is the linchpin of California’s government-run water delivery system. It provides water for agriculture in the Central Valley and for homes and businesses in Southern California.

After the damage to the dam’s spillways, DigitalGlobe, a satellite imagery company, released images showing the extent of the damage.

August 2016

February 14, 2017

Lake

Oroville

Lake

Oroville

After torrential winter storms, water poured over the lake’s spillways, severely damaging them.

Emergency

spillway

Emergency

spillway

Low

water level

Overflow

damage

Melting brings trouble

Scientists from UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the Center for Climate Science predicted increased warming in the region will cause snow to melt faster. Also, more of the precipitation will fall as rain rather than snow.

Currently, half of the total water in the Sierra reservoir runs off by May. If greenhouse gases are not mitigated, by the end of the century we will see the water reserve halved 50 days earlier. This could pose problems in managing water in the reservoir system, which serves a dual purpose: it stores water for use in dry seasons, but also protects downstream communities against flooding.

Half of the total water stored in the snowpack is projected to run off 50 days earlier by the end of the century.

Measured runoff

1981-2000

Projected runoff

2081-2100

Jan.

Feb.

March

April

Runoff

midpoint

May

June

July

Aug.

Dec.

Water from precipitation is stored throughout the year.

The future of snowpack in the Sierras

If the pace of global warming remains unchanged, there will be 64 percent less snow in the Sierra by the end of the century, scientists said.

If the global community takes measures to curb climate change in line with the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement the loss in average springtime snowpack volume would be 30 percent.

Water content in the Sierra snowpack under different scenarios

 
 

1,000 mm snow water equivalent

No climate change

2016-2017 winter

800

 
 

600

Greenhouse gas

emissions reduced

 
 

400

200

Greenhouse gas emissions not

reduced by end of century

 
 
 
 
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What Are You Building?

What Are You Building?

 

Adapted from Born to Build (Gallup Press, May 2018).

People will ask you throughout your life, “Where do you work?” and “What do you do?” They never ask you, “What are you building?”

When conversations change to “What are you building?” you will change, and so will the world.

Well-meaning and important global institutions, scientists, academics and politicians have never fully understood the rare gift to build something — a God-given natural talent that many are born with — that to some degree, you yourself possess.

Some refer to this gift as “entrepreneurship,” which it is, in part. But this human phenomenon is better characterized as “building.” Entrepreneurship has taken on many definitions, and it’s often confused with innovation. We need a lot of innovation, but building is a very distinct, separate phenomenon.

An innovation has no value until an ambitious builder creates a business model around it and turns it into a product or service that customers will buy.

An innovator is first and foremost a creator, an inventor — a problem solver with a deep passion for improving something. Innovators are thinkers.

builder is different from an innovator. A builder creates economic energy where none previously existed.

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We are all born to build. What are you going to build?
Discover your builder talents

Builders can start very young. When an 8-year-old puts a lemonade stand on a corner, they create new economic energy on that corner — goods and services are exchanged for the first time at that place.

Years ago, a 14-year-old could take on an existing newspaper delivery route with 25 papers and boom it to 100 papers. This young builder created economic energy that wasn’t on that route before. Believe it or not, U.S. GDP actually ticked up a little when that paper route quadrupled.

Builders also create goods and services that customers didn’t even know they wanted or had ever imagined. Builders create demand.

When Google or Apple was launched or the first commercial airplane took off in 1914, there was no inherent demand for any of their products or services. Nobody said, “Gee, I wish I had a device in my pocket on which I could search everything humans have recorded since the beginning of time instead of going to a library.”

Or, “It would be so cool to fly through the air in a metal tube at 400 mph rather than ride to my destination on my horse.”

Or, “I wish someone would invent plumbing and electricity rather than using candles and kerosene — and going to the toilet outside.”

Economists and well-meaning thinkers often look at a weak or declining economy and conclude, “We have a declining economy because demand is weak or because there is no demand at all.” A more insightful observation is, “There is no demand because there aren’t enough builders who create demand.” Without builders, there is no demand, no growing economy and hence, no good jobs.

There was never an inherent demand for cars, flight, TV, video, indoor plumbing, electricity or the internet, or Starbucks or Amazon — somebody had to take a good idea and build it into something big. And when people do that, they create economic energy that wasn’t there before — as well as new good jobs and all the things that build a growing economy.

Is it time for you to think about building something?

Maybe you could build a small or medium-sized business. Or build a huge business — one with $10 million or $10 billion in sales. They all count and add up to the sum total of the world economy. We need hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses. All societies need organizations of all kinds continuously starting up and booming — or they can’t develop.

You could also build a small, medium or jumbo nonprofit. Nonprofits create economic energy too. They boost GDP and create real jobs and real growth in cities and states.

Builders from Andrew Carnegie to J.P. Morgan to John D. Rockefeller to Henry Ford famously created historic economic energy through steel, electricity, trains and cars. They transformed America and the world because they created customers that didn’t previously exist. They had a gift to envision, create masses of customers and change how we live. They also made very big bets — they would sometimes bet everything they were worth. Extreme builders will, a few times in their life, bet it all.

Every institution in the world — even nonprofits, schools and churches — has customers. Builders are born with a gift to know how to create demand for those customers — market disruptions that offer a better way to live.

But creating a big booming enterprise or nonprofit organization won’t happen with just one gifted builder. There is a fragile ecosystem around effective builders.

Gallup has found that there are three key players in the development of any organization, whether it’s a new enterprise, a new division within a company or a nonprofit. We call them the “three alphas“: the alpha Rainmaker, the alpha Conductor and the alpha Expert. When this combination exists in an organization or on a team, the likelihood of it breaking out and booming grows exponentially.

An alpha Rainmaker has unusual drive and persistence — rare grit. Obstacles and failure actually increase a Rainmaker’s determination. An enterprise virtually never works without this player.

An alpha Conductor has management ability. This is the operations person or manager who knows how to get all players on the team — or in the “orchestra” — to work together seamlessly. This person holds the whole organization together.

An alpha Expert provides differentiating expertise to the core product or service. Whether it is an analytic services startup’s brilliant statistician, a new restaurant’s star chef or a software firm’s best programmer, virtually every successful startup has an alpha expert who highly distinguishes it from the crowd.

Born to Build — which Gallup is releasing today — and the assessment included with it were created to help you decide how building plays into your life and career. They will help you answer the question “Am I an alpha builder?”

You were born to do this. Whether you are an alpha Rainmaker, an alpha Conductor or an alpha Expert, there are no limits to what you can build.