The Deets

Monday’s Fresh Air with Terri Gross episode featured an investigative reporter, Mark Schapiro, who took a look at why the European Union’s standards for toxic chemicals in foods, toys, and cosmetics are so different from the United States.

One thing he mentioned was government funded health care. If the government pays for everyone’s health care, they’ll apt to look for ways to improve the health of their citizens in order to save money on health care costs.

Shapiro also explained that the EU is now a larger and more influential market than the United States with 500,000,000 people vs America’s ~300 million. He said that the EU has banned the import of toys, baby products, and cosmetics containing chemicals considered harmful, which leads to the dumping of second-rate products in non-EU markets like the United States.

So, how does the EU determine what’s harmful? In part, based on research conducted by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. We do the research, but the EU actually legislates to protect their citizens based on our research.

Interesting stuff. I’d encourage you to find time to listen to the show.

I’m not expert, but from what I’ve heard, smoking is bad for you.

I think this video helps illustrate the point. A guy runs an experiment where he extracts the tar of 400 cigarettes. It’s a little slow moving, but if you get the gist of the experiment then fast forward to the end to see the results, you won’t forget them.

Lungs are kind of important, so treating them like this is pretty abusive.

via Geeks are Sexy

Check this out:

http://tools.google.com/gapminder

This tool shows the changes in life expectancy and per capita income by country over the past 30 years. Some countries steadily increase in both categories, like the United States. Others are more erratic.

1. China seems to have increase wealth more than health.

2. India seems to have increased health more than wealth.

3. South Africa’s life expectancy has dropped dramatically in the past decade. I imagine this is largely due to AIDS.

4. The effects of Genocide can be seen in the lower left corner when Rwanda bottoms out in the 1990s.