Green Humanist

Federal Judge Restricts Contact of Biden Administration with Social Media Officials

In 2021, the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana sued the Biden administration over the consistent collusion with tech platforms like Twitter and Facebook to censor information that is inconvenient to the government. The argument the attorneys made in the lawsuit is that the government infringed on people’s freedom of speech by getting Facebook and Twitter to censor such stories, label them as misinformation, or remove users from their platforms for communicating about certain topics.

The Democratic party has called quite publicly for years for tech companies to do more to combat what the party deems “misinformation.” Knowing that the government cannot censor ideas, even those that are wildly incorrect, it has bypassed this little problem by getting tech companies to do the censorship instead.

The Twitter Files, a series of documents demonstrating the social media company’s censorship of viewpoints inconvenient to the Democratic party, revealed the depth of the attacks on free speech on this platform. Journalist Matt Taibbi, who played an essential role in combing through the documents and summarizing their findings, found examples of executives at Twitter sharing requests for censorship from the Biden campaign, and another executive responds “handled,” meaning that the speech has been removed. The DNC was another actor revealed in the files as having its requests to remove celebrities and ordinary Twitter users alike, and executives once again.

Republican entities also complained to Twitter, but the system of contacting high-up officials at Twitter to remove certain material depends on the asker having a friendly contact within the company. And, with 98.47% of political donations from Twitter employees going to Democrats in 2020, there are simply far more people working there who are supporters of the Democratic party than the Republican party.

Taibbi also explained how Twitter reacted to the Hunter Biden laptop story that the New York Post published on 14 October, 2020. This exposé based on data from the abandoned laptop revealed corrupt dealings of the Biden family with officials from a Ukrainian energy company as well as explicit videos of Hunter Biden himself. It took about two years after the New York Post broke the story for media outlets like CBS and NYT to final admit that it was real, but of course that was too little, too late. Yet the Twitter Files revealed that employees censored the story on their platform because of concerns for how it would harm Biden so close to the election.

Even before the release of the Twitter files, there was ample evidence that the government was working with censor media companies, and some of this evidence was stated right in the open. Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on 15 July 2021: “We are in regular touch with these social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 team.” In the same speech, Psaki then continued by mentioning government-led efforts to flag “problematic” posts on Facebook and “proposed changes” the government would like made to tech platforms.

Thus, when a federal judge restricted Biden officials’ ability to communicate with social media companies last Tuesday, the decision was made based on real evidence of censorship for political reasons. Officials from Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Justice, the State Department and the FBI now have restrictions on the ways they can communicate with staff from Facebook and Twitter.

The judge ruled that the officials cannot email, call, or communicate in any other way with these social media companies, “for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms.”

This ruling is a positive development in curbing the collusion of government and the private sector on censoring Americans’ speech. Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have such large memberships that they should no longer be considered private companies that can do whatever they want. They are the modern public square and should be treated as a place where people are allowed to express their thoughts, even if the government would prefer to silence those opinions.

Train Derails in Yellowstone River

On 24 June, a train ferrying hazardous materials derailed into the Yellowstone River in Montana after the bridge it was traveling over collapsed. A number of cars carrying molten sulfur and asphalt were damaged and leaked their contents into the river. According to initial reports, the molten sulfur and asphalt solidified on contact with the water and sank to the bottom of the river, so wildlife scientists suggest that there was limited spread of these two pollutants.

However, considering the lies that East Palestine Ohio residents were told about the quality of their water after a derailment-related chemical spill earlier this year, it is not unreasonable to doubt reports about water quality in the Yellowstone River.

The train in Montana was also carrying sodium hydrosulfate, a corrosive substance, but fortunately these cars were not the ones that fell into the water and suffered no apparent damage.

The nearby city of Billings, Montana (population ~110,000) shut off its water system soon after the derailment occurred to give time for any pollutants from the accident to drift downstream. The city of Laurel, Montana, also downstream from the derailment, shut off its water supply on 24 June but soon opened its treatment plants again.

Montana Rail Link, the company that owns the train, will be responsible for all cleanup costs. The derailment also cut two fiberoptic cables, creating a Verizon service outage in Western Montana. Cleanup efforts are now underway at the site of the accident.

The EPA is coordinating with federal and state fish and wildlife agencies to assess the true impact that the derailment has had on local flora and fauna.

This latest derailment of toxic chemicals is only one in a long line of similar stories this year. The one that garnered the most attention was the one that occurred in February in East Palestine, Ohio, where fifty cars of a train derailed. The train cars contained, among other things, vinyl chloride, a substance that raises the risk of developing several types of cancers. The derailment caused an enormous fire that required the evacuation of a three-square mile area surrounding the crash.

In early June, a train containing toxic chemicals derailed near the Minnesota-Canada border, and around the same time, 23 train cars derailed in a destructive accident in Arizona.

One cause of these derailments can be the lax train safety inspections carried out by railroads due to cost-cutting measures. According to Politico, staff of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reported recently, “Railroad workers and their unions say freight railroads have increasingly promoted cursory inspections by locomotive crews, instead of the vastly more complete inspections done by highly trained workers known as ‘carmen.’”

In addition, during the Trump administration, a regulation meant to require better braking systems on US trains was killed. I’m sure that the $6 million donated to Republican campaigns during that election cycle had nothing to do with that decision. Electronic braking systems can stop a train much more quickly than traditional braking systems, and can help prevent catastrophic derailments like the kind that just happened in East Palestine. Why haven’t staff of Biden’s NTSB proposed a reinstatement of this regulation? The East Palestine disaster happened four months ago, yet there has been no talk about reviving this protective braking measure.

Given the collapse of the bridge, the derailment in the Yellowstone River is also a symptom of the US’ crumbling infrastructure. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gives US infrastructure a grade of C-minus, which is better than the D-plus of last decade, but still abysmal.

According to NPR, “One particular concern [of the ASCE] is the condition of the nation’s bridges. According to the Infrastructure Report Card, 42% of the 617,000 bridges in the U.S. are more than 50 years old, and more than 46,000 of them are rated as structurally deficient. That doesn’t mean that they’re in danger of collapsing but indicates that they are in poor condition. The number of bridges that slipped from good condition to fair over the last four years increased as well.”

A lack of action on the fronts of train safety and infrastructure integrity is a recipe for more major disasters in the long term.

Julian Assange Closer to US Extradition

On 16 June, 2023, Daniel Ellsberg died at the age of 92. Ellsberg was a military analyst and political activist who released the Pentagon Papers, a set of documents demonstrating the US’ war crimes in Vietnam. Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 but was able to escape a 115-year prison sentence due to government misconduct related to Watergate and illegal evidence gathering against him.

If Ellsberg was a modern-day whistleblower, however, he might not be able to escape a harsh prison sentence. At the time of this writing, another individual who has worked to expose US war crimes is about to be jailed in the United States: Julian Assange. This month, a court in the UK rejected all eight grounds of Assange’s appeal against his extradition to the US, where he will be tried as a criminal and certainly given a lifetime sentence.

Assange, an Australian citizen, is the founder of WikiLeaks, a non-profit organization that publishes censored political documents. The organization has uncovered US war crimes in Iraq (where the US Department of Justice reluctantly realized they couldn’t prosecute Assange for the leak without also prosecuting the NYT and other papers that published the information), the extent of the CIA’s abilities to spy on Americans through smartphones and other devices, the US admitting to using the IMF as a tool for economic warfare on other countries, and the operating manual to Guantanamo Bay Prison.

Assange is the first journalist in US history to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act, and he is not even an American citizen. In 2010, the of Chelsea Manning’s documentation of US war crimes that made Assange him the target of powerful actors around the world. At first, he stayed in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, but in mid-2019, the Ecuadorian government withdrew asylum and Assange was taken into custody by UK police. I’m sure the IMF’s $4.2 billion loan to Ecuador doled out at this time had nothing to do with the country’s sudden change of heart about Assange.

Since his arrest, Assange’s health has been on the decline from the stress of being pursued by powerful international actors, and recently suffered a stroke during an appeal hearing in October of 2021.

Imagine if any country that the US has deemed its official enemy (Russia or China, for instance) treated a journalist the same way. Would all the politicians stay silent? No, they would showcase this example of authoritarianism to demonstrate how the other country is a totalitarian dictatorship. Would American journalists speak up? Yes, they would in the case of a Russian or Chinese journalist. But the same people who cry that their profession is under attack when they receive mean Tweets will not speak up for Assange.

At the time of this writing, Assange’s legal team plans to appeal one more time in the UK against his extradition. If this appeal is rejected, there are no more options for him in UK courts. However, he may be able to appeal in the European court of human rights. The Australian government is apparently completely feckless and lame as the US attempts to put one of their own citizens in a dungeon for political purposes.

Assange has already been held for 4 years in Belmarsh prison and has been the target of the US for 13 years. Peter Hitchens, brother of the late journalist Christopher Hitchens, remarked last week, “There is still just time for our Government to do a good, brave deed, which will be recognised as such decades hence. There is still just time for prominent figures in politics and the media to place themselves on the side of justice and liberty, where they ought always to be…This is a political prosecution and we should not permit such a thing against anyone on our soil.”

I have little faith in any prominent figures in politics and the media. What Assange’s case does illustrate, however, is the hollow support that our political leaders and media pundits have for freedom of speech. It’s easy to talk about how great it is to live in a free country unlike the big bad dictatorships that exist in the world. It’s hard to stand up for freedoms under attack by the very elite class that claims to uphold them. Such a thing takes political courage, a quality which is in short supply among American legislators and so-called journalists.

New Study on Vegetarian Diet and Kidney Function

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is an illness in which an individual’s kidneys gradually lose their ability to function. The result is a buildup of wastes and fluid in the body. The disease can progress until dialysis or kidney transplants are required.

Some of the causes of CKD are type 1 or 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, damage to the kidneys from medications to treat other conditions, or kidney infection. Obesity and smoking put an individual at greater risk of the illness. Treatment of CKD often focuses on slowing the progression of the disease rather than targeting the causes.

Kidney disease affects more than 1 in 7 US adults, working out to about 37 million people. About 90,000 people in the US were waiting for a kidney transplant in 2021. Many of the adults who have CKD do not know they have it. Symptoms include nausea, fatigue, swelling of feet and ankles, and changes in urination frequency.

CKD should not be viewed as inevitable or untreatable. A recent publication that reviewed 4 RCTs with a total of 436 patients demonstrated the effects of a vegetarian diet in compared to the standard omnivorous diet in improving kidney function, measured by estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR).

In 2 of the RCTs studied, difficulties in randomizing patients and high patient dropout rates resulted in null results. Yet in the other two RCTs, randomization into omnivore/vegetarian groups was successfully achieved and almost all patients stuck to the end of the study.

In both of these RCTs, patients were put on the diet for 3 months, and at the end of the study period, their kidney function had declined significantly less than the individuals in the control group. Yet it should be noted that in both of these studies, kidney function still declined over the study period in those put on the vegetarian diet. Nevertheless, the authors say that even slowing the decline of kidney function is useful, as it lengthens the amount of time before people must resort to dialysis or kidney transplants.

One reason why the vegetarian diets slowed the decline of kidney function during the study period is that they may contain less protein than an omnivorous diet. High-protein diets put greater strain on the kidneys, and one of the reasons why the RCT’s didn’t show a greater positive effect on the kidneys could be if protein from meat was replaced by cheese and egg in the assigned vegetarian diets of the studies.

As several nephrologists recently wrote in the journal of Nephrology Dialysis and Transplantation, “emerging data across individuals and populations suggest that glomerular hyperfiltration associated with a high-protein diet may lead to higher risk of de novo CKD or may accelerate progression of preexisting CKD… it is time to unleash the taboo and make it loud and clear that a high-protein diet is not as safe as claimed, as it may compromise kidney health and result in a more rapid kidney function decline in individuals or populations at high risk of CKD.”

When individuals eat less inflammatory animal-based protein, they are also less likely to have bodily inflammation that can damage kidney function along with other organs of the body. The decrease in blood pressure associated with vegetarian diets also puts less strain on the kidneys, which is a third factor in explaining the study’s results.

Although this most recent study was working with individuals that already have CKD, a longitudinal study involving more than 14,000 individuals has demonstrated the correlation between following a plant-based diet (one that excludes dairy and eggs in addition to meat) and a 25% lower risk of CKD when comparing vegans and omnivores at healthy weights. Although this study was observational and cannot prove causality, we do have mechanisms for how different diets affect the kidneys that suggest there is a preventative effect of the plant-based diet.

Given that two of the 4 RCTs for kidney function and diet studied had poor procedures, it is key to collect more data on diet and kidney function. In addition, whole foods plant-based diets in addition to vegetarian diets should be a part of these RCTs for more productive results.

Diet and Migraines

Migraines are characterized by attacks of moderate to severe throbbing pain on the side of the head. They can last from 4-72 hours and may be accompanied by other symptoms such as sensitivity to light and noise, nausea, and vomiting.

Women are almost three times more likely to be affected by migraines than men. Structural brain differences might explain some of this difference. Researchers from the Harvard Medical School conducted a study that showed that female migraine sufferers had thicker grey matter on two different parts of their brain that the male migraine sufferers did not have, but the researchers were not sure whether these structural differences were the cause of effect of migraines.

Estimates suggest that $13 billion in productivity is lost from the US economy from migraines each year, and the market for medicines meant to treat these attacks is worth $3.8 billion. Some common triggers for migraines might be stress, lack of sleep, dehydration, menstruation, weather, or smells. Regular exercise, maintaining a sleep routine, meditation and relaxation techniques, and drinking plenty of water are some ways that migraine sufferers can reduce the severity and intensity of their attacks. But the rest of this post will focus on the links between diet and migraines.

One recent study presented preliminary evidence that a whole foods plant-based diet can reduce the pain individuals experience during their migraines and the frequency with which they experience them.

42 individuals were recruited and separated into two groups: those that were put on a low-fat vegan diet and those that were given a placebo dietary supplement that was supposedly able to improve their migraines. The results demonstrated that while the placebo group showed no improvement over the study period, those on the vegan diet showed dramatic improvements on the frequency that they experienced migraines and the pain they experienced during these attacks.

It should be noted that some individuals do have migraine triggers that fall into the plant-based category, such as chocolate or peanuts. Yet whole foods plant-based diets leave out inflammatory compounds present disproportionately in animal products, so having one plant food migraine trigger should not dissuade an individual from trying out the plant-based diet for migraine relief.

Reducing fat intake can also be a pathway towards relief from migraines. When 83 individuals were put on a low-fat diet for three months, they reported lesser pain during and lower frequency (2.9 vs 6.8) of migraines. Because the food industry has poisoned the term “low-fat,” it is important to clarify that the fat calories in the study were replaced by legumes, fresh fruits and vegetables, not Coca-Cola and Oreos.

In addition to containing fewer inflammatory compounds compared to omnivorous diets, whole foods plant-based diets full of green vegetables contain more compounds that can neutralize calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), a substance that promotes migraine formation. The magnesium found in green vegetables may play a role in alleviating migraines, although magnesium supplements show inconsistent results in producing the same effect. Furthermore, magnesium supplements can cause diarrhea in some individuals, which is something most people wish to avoid.

One specific food that has been tested to reduce migraines is ginger. One recent double-blind randomized trial pitted an eighth teaspoon of powdered ginger in treating migraines versus a normal dose of the common migraine drug Imitrex for doing the same thing. The results showed that the ginger worked just as well without inducing the same side effects, with those in both categories ending up with mild or no pain after treatment. Those taking the drug Imitrex reported side effects such vertigo, heartburn, dizziness, and a feeling of sedation. The only side effect of the ginger, reported by 1 in 25 participants, was an upset stomach. Considering that migraine medication can in rare cases lead to heart attacks, that is not too bad of a tradeoff.

In conclusion, restricting fat in the diet, following a whole foods plant-based diet, and consuming powdered ginger have all been linked to reduced migraine severity and frequency. These options come with beneficial health effects (particularly the dietary changes) beyond just migraine relief and should be considered by anyone suffering from chronic migraines.

Why Were Wyoming and Utah the First States to Give Women the Vote?

In 1920, women earned the right to vote in the United States after a long 72-year fight that started with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention.

The Seneca Falls Convention spurred many other women’s rights conventions across the country, but the Civil War derailed many of the campaigns for a few years, since many of the women’s rights organizations believed it best to focus on the abolition of slavery for the time being. However, the fight to win the vote continued anew in the years following the Civil War, when it was clear that the 15^th amendment was not going to extend the right to vote to women in addition to black men.

And then came an unexpected victory. In 1869, the territory of Wyoming (the state would not become one until 1890) granted suffrage to women. Why WY? Wouldn’t a more urban state such as Massachusetts or Connecticut be more likely than a state in the Wild West to be the first one to legalize women’s suffrage? After all, the concept of women being able to vote was considered radical at the time.

In order to understand why Wyoming was the first area of the nation to grant suffrage to women, we need to consider some historical context. At the time that suffrage was being discussed, there were mostly just miners and other bachelors in the territory. In fact, the sex ratio was around 6 men for every 1 woman in the 1860s.

Lawmakers were hoping to draw more women into the territory by giving the state a reputation as a good place for women. Suffrage was not the only method that they used to accomplish this goal. They also passed a bill saying that male and female teachers would be paid at the same rate and a law guaranteeing that married women would have property rights separate from their husbands. At the time, it was common in most places for a woman to lose all property rights once she was married. She could not take out a bank loan or own anything in her name, and essentially became the property of her husband.

The legislature of Wyoming was also hoping to draw more people in general into the territory so that it would become a state. If the territory had a good reputation, they reasoned that more people would move out west. Finally, there was a racist motivation to wanting to give women the vote: black and Chinese men could vote in the state (there were many Chinese people because they worked on the construction of the Transcontinental railroad). The lawmakers wanted white people to have more of a fraction of the vote in the state, and thus wanted women to be added to the ranks of white voters.

These three factors were enough for the territory’s government to pass the law that did something that was considered almost unthinkable at the time: give women suffrage.

The second state to grant women the right to vote was Utah in 1870. Technically, because of election timing, Utah women voted before WY women in the 1870 election. Although Wyoming passed its suffrage law first, Utah women were still the first to vote.

The reason for Utah giving women the vote varied considerably from Wyoming’s justification. Utah was long the home of the Church of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), otherwise known as Mormons. The LDS had great influence over the territory. However, those outside the territory as well as non-Mormons within the territory were disgusted by the practice of polygamy, a part of the LDS religion, and wanted to end it.

The New York Times ran an editorial that suggested that enfranchising women in Utah would end polygamy because the women themselves would vote to end it. At the same time, a Congressman from Indiana introduced a bill to enfranchise women in the western territories, titled the “Bill to Discourage Polyamory in Utah.”

Surprisingly enough, male leaders of LDS were also very pro-enfranchisement of women. They believed that if women had voting power, then it would strengthen the power of the church. In addition, if women had higher status, they believed that it would end perceptions that women in polygamous relationships were slaves. The “Godbe movement” was an offshoot of Mormons who actively encouraged women’s rights activities in the territory.

Even as these conversations about granting Utah women suffrage occurred, women suffragists in the US were arguing strongly against the practice of polygamy and decrying what they believed was a form of slavery for women. For some women, ending polygamy was far more important than the possibility of women getting suffrage in another state.

Then, the Morill Anti-Bigamy Act was introduced to Congress, a bill that would increase federal authority over Utah and also prevent polygamists from running for office. In response, LDS women staged mass protests in Salt Lake City against the bill. The Utah Legislative Authority – a sort of Congress for the territory – immediately put women’s enfranchisement up for vote and it was unanimously passed. One Utah delegate explicitly said that the bill was “to convince the country how utterly without foundation the popular assertions were concerning the women of the Territory.” He was referring to the perception that women in polygamous relationships were akin to slaves.

In 1870, women in Utah won the right to vote and Seraph Young became the first woman to vote legally in the US. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, two major figures in the fight for women’s suffrage, came to observe how suffrage was working and how many women were voting in the 1870 election. But when Stanton gave a speech to the Mormons advising quantity over quality when bearing children, and that a woman should bear children only every 5 years, Stanton was never invited to speak at an LDS church again.

Yet concern for polygamy in UT was not dead. In 1880, Jennie Froiseth (who ran a literary club for non-Mormon women in the state) published a paper detailing the horrors of polygamy. She believed that LDS women should not be allowed to vote until polygamy was ended. Froiseth was pro-suffrage, but saw polygamy as the greater evil, as did many non-Mormon women suffragists in the state and around the country.

Some non-Mormon women supported the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887, which put strict regulations on LDS activities, including polygamy. But at the same time, the bill contained a provision to disenfranchise women, and thus when it passed women could no longer enjoy that short-lived right. When Utah was in the process of becoming a state in 1896, women’s rights activists tried to win the right to vote back, but because the Edmunds-Tucker Act had not been repealed by an official governing body, it was not possible. Utah women would not be able to vote again until 1920, when all women in the US (except Native American women [and men], but that is a subject for a different blog) achieved the same right.

Sleep Deprivation in Children & ADHD Symptoms

Children between the ages of 5 and 18 are sleeping two hours fewer per night than they did 100 years ago. The ramifications of this major shift in sleeping patterns are seldom discussed. Some recent studies have pointed to how high social media use is stealing sleep from teenagers and pre-teens, with these individuals losing as much as a full night’s sleep each week due to excessive use of popular sites such as TikTok.

But this epidemic of sleep loss may be tied to another widespread issue among children in the US: ADHD diagnoses. From 1997 to 2016, ADHD diagnoses among children and adolescents rose from 6.2 to 10.2% of the population. Some individuals suggest that these rising rates are the result of increased awareness on behalf of medical professionals. Yet there is evidence that the sleep deprivation that many children today endure could be the reason why they are experiencing symptoms of ADHD.

The symptoms of sleep deprivation are difficulty paying attention, irritability, moodiness, distractibility, and increased risk of depression. Oddly enough, these are also the symptoms of ADHD. Yet when children are taken in to see a professional to get a diagnosis for this disorder, it is rare that a doctor will ask about their sleeping habits.

Thus, it is not unreasonable to conclude that some children who are diagnosed with ADHD are simply chronically sleep-deprived. This situation may describe teenagers in particular. Their circadian rhythms naturally shift to a later hour during adolescence, but early school times mean that these individuals are always forced to wake up earlier than they would like to, resulting in long-term sleep loss. Over time, sleep deprivation can affect the prefrontal cortex of a developing brain, resulting in ADHD symptoms.

This is not to say that ADHD is entirely a sleep-related issue. ADHD symptoms are linked to difficulties sleeping, and the failure of an abnormal brain to regulate arousal means that individuals diagnosed with the disorder may get less sleep. There is a definite “chicken and egg” problem for some cases of ADHD.

Yet at the same time, an analysis of sleep quality and subsequent behavioral problems in childhood showed that poor quality sleep earlier in childhood resulted in more behavioral problems even when controlling for variables that could influence the result.

Recent evidence suggests that many children with ADHD symptoms may actually be suffering from a sleep disorder. One example of a sleep disorder that often goes undiagnosed is sleep apnea. If a child has overly large tonsils or adenoids, then their trachea may be partially blocked as their muscles used for inhalation relax during sleep. Eventually, the brain becomes oxygen-deprived and reflexively wakes up so that the child can take a few deep breaths. These frequent wakings prevent the child from getting enough deep NREM sleep, and can lead to chronic sleep deprivation over time.

Yet remove the tonsils of children with ADHD symptoms and sleep apnea, and the symptoms become significantly better in the weeks after the operation, with the ADHD symptoms disappearing entirely for many kids.

Many medical professionals are not aware of the link between sleep disorders or sleep deprivation and ADHD symptoms. It is plausible that many children who are diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed amphetamines might actually just need a consistent night’s sleep. Amphetamines can be lifelong medication that interfere with the brain development with a child and can cause anxiety, which in turn must be treated with another side-effect producing medication.

There are certainly cases of ADHD where treating a sleep disorder and making sure kids don’t deprive themselves of sleep by staring at phones will not work. But to avoid misdiagnosing children and setting them up for a life of medication, the medical community needs to be more aware of the fact that ADHD symptoms and sleep deprivation symptoms are extraordinarily similar.

Environmental Injustice: A History of Uranium Mining on the Navajo Reservation

The Navajo Nation is a Native American reservation that lies on a tract of land that is spread throughout Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. In total, the nation takes up 71,000 square kilometers (27,413 sq mi) and has a population of around 174,000 based on 2010 census data. The area also contains something toxic: 500 uranium mines that have left a devastating legacy to the land and its people.

The US government found out that there were uranium deposits on Navajo land in 1944, during the midst of World War II and the Manhattan Project, the quest to develop an atomic weapon. A boom in uranium mining therefore set off, and operations continued far after the increase in production to build weapons during WWII. The Cold War meant that there was plenty of demand for uranium for years to come.

Uranium ore is radioactive, and prolonged contact with it will damage organs, disrupt the endocrine system, and lead to cancer. When it was buried in the Earth, it posed little risk to anyone. But bringing it to the surface and allowing it to leach into water and blow into the air via dust particles changed the story.

At the time that uranium mining began on the Navajo reservation, there were no regulations related to handling mining waste and avoiding water pollution, as the EPA would not be created for another 26 years. Despite the fact that it was well known that uranium was dangerous, none of the Navajo workers were informed of the potential dangers of working in the mines.

Thousands of Navajo men were employed in the mines each year. Instead of informing the men of the dangers of the mines, the US Public Health Service, precursor to the CDC, decided to do an epidemiological study to see how the toxic effects of uranium would play out in the Navajo population. The study started in 1951, and it was clear that the major company operating mines in the region, Kerr-McGee, was also aware of the devastating effects of uranium mining on the workers.

Between 1944 and 1986, companies extracted 4 million tons of uranium from the Navajo reservation. Workers wore no protective equipment when they descended into the mines. They breathed in the radioactive dust from the ore, and in the overheated mining shafts with little ventilation drank the water that dripped from the walls.

In 1979, sudden disaster struck, the largest radioactive disaster in US history. A tailings pond in New Mexico broke and spilled 1000 tons of radioactive uranium mill waste and 93 million gallons of radioactive acidic tailings liquid into the Puerco River. Far more radioactivity was released than occurred in the Three Mile Island accident, which happened in the same year, but there was little news coverage or national attention.

The government was very slow to inform the Navajo nation that the disaster had happened and that their water was contaminated. The Navajos continued to use the river for recreation, but soon realized that contact with the river was resulting in burning feet, and that their livestock that relied on the water were dying. The Navajo nation asked New Mexico’s governor to declare a disaster area and request disaster assistance from the federal government, but the governor refused. The government ended up trucking in water to the reservation for 2 years, but when this program ended, the people had to go back to using the contaminated water for livestock and crops.

The US’ government’s study on the health of the Navajo miners didn’t detect many cancers at first because there is a latency effect of 20 years between radon and uranium exposure. In between 1970 and 1990, however, cancer rates on the reservation increased until those on the reservation who had worked in the mines were 28.6 times more likely to develop lung cancer than those who did not. Kidney diseases and kidney failure are higher in the Navajo Nation today as well – the kidneys cannot filter uranium.

Today, drinking water in the Navajo Nation has uranium concentrations from 90-700 micrograms per liter, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets the safety limit for uranium in water to 30 micrograms/liter. Children in the reservation began to display neurological diseases from uranium exposure, although the rates of this disease have declined with the retreat of the mining industry. Around 85% of Navajo homes today are contaminated with uranium.

Getting compensation for radiation poisoning has been and difficult path for members of the Nation exposed to these toxins. After the end of the Cold War, the demand for manufacturing nuclear weapons declined precipitously, and the mines began closing. Many of the companies that had conducted the mining went out of business and couldn’t be sued.

Since 1994, the EPA has begun cleaning up some sites in Navajo land, although progress has been glacial and there are insufficient funds allocated to this task. In recent years, Kerr-McGee, a company that had mined on the reservation since 1952, paid the Navajo Nation $1 billion in compensation.

In 1990, the government passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) to provide compensation for those who had been exposed to radiation during the cold war as part of nuclear weapons testing or uranium mining, although eligibility requirements are very strict and have not helped many of the Navajo tribe members exposed to radiation.

The Biden administration renewed RECA in 2022 when it was set to otherwise expire, but the extension of the laws does not automatically mean compensation for the Navajo people who still suffer from radiation poisoning. Obtaining anything close to justice for these poisoned Americans continues to be a long struggle.

Brief History of the United States Forest Service

In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Park Service (NPS) are widely known as the government agencies that (mis)manage our nation’s natural resources. However, there are many more agencies that are in charge of certain ecosystems, or whose actions have an undue influence on the country’s natural habitat. The United States Forest Service is one such agency, and this post briefly tells of its origins.

In the late 1890s, there were two broad schools of environmental thought: preservationism and conservationism. Preservationists such as John Muir believed that nature had a right to exist for its own sake. In contrast, conservationists such as Gifford Pinchot held the belief that all natural resources should be managed in a sustainable manner for present and future generations. The United States Forest Service (USFS) was born of the school of conservationist thought.

The latter half of the 19^th century was a major logging era in the United States. Huge swaths of forest around the Great Lakes were harvested. Harvests of trees were far exceeding reforestation rates, and there was great concern among forestry experts that the US would run out of trees if trends were to continue. In response to fears of a “timber famine,” the government decided that the best way to conserve tracts of woodland was to set aside certain areas of the country as forest reserves. The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 allowed the president to designate forests, principally in the western states, as reserves. 13 million acres of forest were protected within a few years of the law’s passage. Under President Roosevelt, management of these forest reserves was transferred from the Department of the Interior to the newly created USFS. This nascent agency was headed by Gifford Pinchot, who helped establish the Yale School of Forestry.

Gifford Pinchot strongly believed in conserving forests, but not for the sake of wilderness or scenery, and these central tenets would influence the mission of the USFS for decades to come. He advanced conservation for strict economic reasons: ensuring a sustainable tree harvest.

Preservationists generally objected to Pinchot’s policies, since they still allowed for heavy logging in USFS lands. The early-20^th century Congress was also against the conservation of forestlands, and often caved to logging interests that harvested forests in an unsustainable manner. They were also displeased of how much land Teddy Roosevelt was personally putting under protection with executive orders. A 1907 ruling by Congress reversed the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, stripping the president of his ability to set aside western forests. However, President Roosevelt designated 16 million acres of new forests the night before the new bill took effect; these lands were called the “midnight forests” by the press.

Pinchot was fired from the USFS in 1910 because of a disagreement with President Taft over the Secretary of the Interior that the 27^th president had chosen. The appointee was a former mayor of Seattle that reversed some of the previous administration’s conservationist policies. Because Pinchot was a close friend of Teddy Roosevelt, a rift developed between Roosevelt and Taft. In addition, many progressive voters within the Republican Party felt betrayed, leading to a schism in the party in the 1912 election. Roosevelt ran in the Progressive Party, winning more votes than Taft but less than the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson.

In the following decades, the central mission of the forest service was altered by one of its regional foresters, William Greeley. Greeley managed 41 million acres of forests in Montana, Idaho, Washington, and South Dakota. He was a fervently religious man, and believed that forest fires were the work of the devil. Consequently, he made fighting fires the primary goal of the forest service. Under Greeley, the USFS suppressed fires in the lands it managed, and then allowed large timber corporations to clear-cut the trees at government expense. Pinchot was appalled by this practice but no longer had the political power to affect the policy of the Forest Service. The practice of fire suppression rather than management has had negative long-term effects on USFS lands. Preventing, rather than managing fires, allows forests to become unnaturally dense and for dry underbrush to build up on the ground, creating the potential for large, catastrophic fires. As it turns out, the message of Smokey Bear, first introduced in 1944, was slightly misguided. Today, firefighting and prevention still make up around half of the USFS’ annual budget.

In the 1930s, the USFS acquired a new set of lands to manage. During this period, the nation was in the midst of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The government bought off abandoned farmland that had been destroyed by poor agricultural practices; these areas became managed by the USFS and designated as national grasslands. Although the marginal farmland given to the USFS was unsuitable for farming, it was adequate for the grazing needs of ranchers. Thus, national grasslands are often leased for grazing. The grazing fees on USFS grasslands are far lower than those on private lands, creating the incentive for overgrazing and degradation of these areas.

Mismanagement of national grasslands and forests sparked much criticism of the USFS in the 1960s and 70s. Critics called out the agency for allowing overharvesting and overgrazing on its land, as well as for building too many roads through otherwise unspoiled woods. Policies of timber subsidies and a lack of attention to recreation and environmental heath also came under fire. The National Forest Management Act (NFMA) of 1976 sought to address these concerns. This law requires that the USFS announce its plans and allow public comment periods, and integrate other uses besides timber and grazing into the management of its forests. Although there is still a large timber cut within national forests, more selective logging practices, better erosion control, and preservation of scenic areas have all been achieved as a result of the NFMA.

Today, the USFS owns 8% of the entire area of the United States spread throughout 175 different parcels, most in the western US. For the past 100 years, the acres of forest in the US have remained stable at around 745 million. Although the USFS can still improve on protecting environmental and recreational goals on its land, this agency has held onto a huge area of land during its existence and prevented mass deforestation that might otherwise have taken place.

Sleep & The Immune System

In the US, most people average less than 6 hours of sleep per night, when the amount needed for a healthy functioning body is between 7-9 hours. Sleep deprivation has a variety of negative effects on the body, including the type of daytime fatigue that leads to car accidents, difficulty concentrating, and reduced ability to form memories.

In addition, a lack of adequate sleep also has a negative effect on the immune system. In the past decade, scientists have made progress in understanding the importance of a good night’s sleep on a functioning immune system.

When you are asleep, you are obviously not expending energy on being active, and this energy can be redirected to the immune system. Certain elements of the immune system such as cytokines, proteins which enhance immune system communication, are more active when you are sleeping. When you are asleep, your body is not bothered by this immune response like you would be during your waking hours.

The increase in cytokines means that your body better learns how to combat pathogens and viruses when you are asleep. Just as sleep enhances regular memory formation, it also helps your immune system’s memory as well. Get better sleep on the night after receiving a hepatitis A vaccine, for instance, and your body will produce more antigen-specific cells for this pathogen, enhancing your long-term immunity to it.

Several experiments have demonstrated the negative effects of sleep deprivation on our ability to avoid succumbing to an illness. For individuals who had a common cold virus shot up their nose (amazingly, 153 adults consented to such a study), those who received less than 7 hours of sleep for the past two weeks were almost 3 times more likely to contract a cold than those who got 8 or more hours of sleep over that same time period.

Natural killer cells are a key part of the immune system that play a crucial role in eliminating cancerous cells. Yet a single night of sleep deprivation can decrease their activity. In an experiment where subjects were given just 4-hours of sleep for one night, their natural killer cell activity was reduced to 72% of baseline levels.

Another function of the immune system affected by sleep is the propensity towards allergic reactions. This is an area that still needs research, but studies suggest that the chance of extreme reactions to allergens and unwanted autoimmune responses is related to prolonged insufficient sleep. A recent experimental study showed that people with peanut allergies are more likely to have an allergic reaction after being exposed to the food (meaning it was just close to them; they did not consume it) after getting insufficient sleep for a night. The increased risk of allergic reaction perhaps stems from not as many cytokines being produced due to insufficient sleep, leading to poorer communication between the immune system’s components.

Given these findings about the importance of sleep in immune system functioning, it is not too surprising that people who work night shifts or sleep consistently less than 6 hours have a higher risk of cancer – women in particular are more likely to get breast cancer under these conditions. Scientists have identified a form of macrophage that has tumor-promoting abilities that tends to proliferate when individuals get too little sleep, an important mechanism in explaining why cancer is associated with sleep deprivation.

In conclusion, a bad night’s sleep doesn’t just make you fatigued and irritable the next day. It can have significant consequences on your ability to fend off colds and other diseases. In the long term, sleep deprivation may be a matter of life and death. Here are some recommendations of the Sleep Foundation for getting a better night’s sleep:

Healthy Sleep Habits