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hatrack

(59,592 posts)
Tue Feb 13, 2018, 08:57 AM Feb 2018

OFFS - Proposed CA Initiative Would Ban All Childhood Vaccinations, Chlorine In Drinking Water

No emoticons exist to accurately express the quantity of Teh Stuuhpid described below.

This fall, Californians may have the opportunity to vote on a catch-all ballot initiative that would ban genetically modified organisms and get rid of school vaccination requirements. But that’s not all. The so-called California Clean Environment Initiative would also prohibit the use of 300 substances, including certain vaccine ingredients and chemicals used in water treatment—chlorine and fluoride. And it would create a new agency to “regulate environmental activities, modify or stop projects having pollution and radiation impacts, and test and approve substances before they are introduced into the environment.”

This long-shot initiative was introduced by Cheriel Jensen, a retired urban planner who told the Times of San Diego she was “prompted to write the initiative because she believes cancer, autism and other diseases are linked to exposure to toxic chemicals, genetically modified organisms or radiation.”

Jensen is a resident of the affluent Santa Clara County town of Saratoga and has a history of environmental activism. In 2015, she sued Santa Clara County to stop it from spraying pesticides to prevent the spread of mosquito-borne West Nile Virus. (A judge dismissed the suit.) In 2017, she sued the county again, this time to prevent it from passing a half-cent sales tax to generate $6 billion for public transit and road repairs. She argued that building an extension of the Bay Area’s BART light-rail system wasn’t feasible because it would disturb an aquifer. After a judge dismissed the lawsuit, Jensen appealed. The suit is now with the 6th District Court of Appeal.

Aspects of Jensen’s latest effort run counter to the scientific consensus. Public health authorities worldwide agree on the importance of vaccination to curb deadly outbreaks and protect the most vulnerable people. There’s overwhelming evidence that vaccines do not cause autism and that they are safe for the vast majority of children and adults. Numerous scientific societies, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Medical Association, have issued statements affirming that genetically modified foods are safe to consume.

EDIT

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/02/this-ballot-measure-crazy-even-by-california-standards/

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DetlefK

(16,423 posts)
1. Silicon Valley hipsters have this new fad of drinking untreated groundwater.
Tue Feb 13, 2018, 09:01 AM
Feb 2018

"Raw water"

Fresh from the ground. Untreated. It contains all those yummy bacteria and chemicals and precious minerals like arsenic.

It must be healthy, because it's from nature...

NNadir

(33,538 posts)
5. Groundwater in the Silicon Valley is also polluted with a number of organohalides from...
Mon Feb 19, 2018, 08:54 AM
Feb 2018

...the semiconductor industry, which when it started there, was touted as "green."

Notably there is the Middlefield-Ellis-Whisman superfund site in Mountain View California.

The topic was covered in a recent publication in Environmental Science and Technology Enhanced Degradation of TCE on a Superfund Site Using Endophyte-Assisted Poplar Tree Phytoremediation (Doty et al, Environ. Sci. Technol., 2017, 51 (17), pp 10050–10058)

A look at this situation is a look at our allegedly "green" solar energy future, or at least the sure to fail attempt to get there.

California, of course, is very "green," wind turbines strewn across formerly pristine desert, huge gas powered "solar thermal" farms, also in pristine desert, and a "green" semiconductor industry, including the solar industry.

A part of me still loves California, where I used to live, but the memory of the airhead "initiatives" - a lesson in the inadvisability of pure democracy and the wisdom of Madison, Hamilton et al, our current congress notwithstanding - makes me not regret being gone from there.

still_one

(92,325 posts)
2. Hopefully they won't get enough signatures and it won't make it to the ballot. This is the danger
Tue Feb 13, 2018, 09:36 AM
Feb 2018

of our propositions, it has the potential of running the government by "mob rule"

I would hope that this would be over-ruled by public health concerns if it gets that far, but in tis anti-science environment I am not so sure


muriel_volestrangler

(101,347 posts)
3. It'd be interesting to know what happened to any towns or cities she had a hand in planning
Sun Feb 18, 2018, 04:35 PM
Feb 2018

Are they now wastelands, non-functional hellholes, or the other handiwork you'd expect of a complete dolt?

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