Vaping

Even though it was said that vaping products presented fewer health risks than regular cigarettes, there is not any evidence that they are in fact safer. The first e-cigarettes arrived on the scene about 15 years ago. This technology was invented in China in 2004 and then popularized worldwide.

A considerable amount of research shows that vaping might in reality lead to undesirable health effects much like smoking including include brain, heart and lung damage, cancer, early deliveries and stillbirths and adverse consequences on brain and lung development when used during pregnancy or during the teenage years

E-juice, as it is called, contains nicotine, a highly addictive drug with known health risks. Vaping products contain nicotine, according to The National Center for Health. The nicotine in cigarettes makes smoking very addictive and this is also true for vaping.

The use of nicotine, no matter how it is supplied will increase the risk of addiction. Addiction to nicotine is as hard to quit as cocaine or heroin addiction and the use of e-cigarettes often leads to the use of other nicotine based products like cigarettes or cigars.

Vaping devices such as E-cigarettes appeared to be a safe alternative to cigarettes when used primarily as a replacement to smoking. However, there is little evidence that they actually reduce tobacco smoking. As a matter of fact, the nicotine content in e-cigarettes and vaping products may actually lead to increased addiction which could make it even harder to quit smoking.

However, E-cigarettes and other vaping gadgets are not just used by people who are trying to quit smoking. Instead they are more and more trendy and likely to be used by today’s youth, including people who never smoked cigarettes and never wanted to. Research has shown that some people begin to smoke cigarettes only after they use e-cigarettes.

Smokers will be inclined to use these products along with traditional cigarettes, often when smoking is not allowed. The result is an increase in an individual’s exposure to nicotine and its harmful effects.

When I was the safety director I banned smoking in the plant in compliance to New State Law. When people tried to circumvent this rule by buying e-cigarettes. I had to add them to the no smoking rule.

Vaping devices and E-cigarettesdo not need approval by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), in fact, until quite recently, the producers and sellers of these devices weren’t even required to comply with the FDA standards that they set for smoked tobacco products. In spite of the new regulations, e-cigarette manufacturers are still able to advertise them as risk free. They also offer appealing, tastes that attract children, adolescents and young adults alike. They have flavors like banana and strawberry, cinnamon, mint (or menthol), buttered popcorn and vanilla that are listed as among the most toxic vaping flavors according to bustle.com. These remind me of Lucky Strike cigarettes that had a large amount of licorice flavoring in thier cigarettes.

There is a sizeable variation in the type and strength of the vaping fluids. This, includes nicotine among other things.

There is no proof that these products are safe. As a matter of fact, there is an increasing concern about the possible long-term health effects of the vaporization of the chemicals in e-cigarettes like nicotine, heavy metals and the other ingredients like toxins and possible carcinogens.

This uptick in the popularity of smokeless nicotine devices and their widespread accessibility is undoing the decades of progress made to reduce cigarette smoking, especially among young people. I have smelled the odor of increased smoking myself, like people, including staff, standing outside of the Eastern Niagara Hospital in Lockport smoking.

Electronic cigarettes were theoretically able to give smokers a dependable way to fight their addiction in a comparatively easy way. Since they were introduced, the smokeless devices have turn out to very popular. By 2016, around 3.2% of adults in the US were already using electronic cigarettes on a regular basis according to the centers for disease control and prevention (https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/index.htm).

The problem is that not only adults have adopted the new technology. The devices have become all the rage with minors. Between 2011 and 2015, the attractiveness of e-cigarettes amongst younger people in the United States has increased by an unbelievable 900 percent according to the American Lung Association. Electronic cigarettes are now more fashionable with youth than regular tobacco cigarettes.

The result of all this is that if you have been a long time smoker and are having a hard time cutting back or quitting smoking by using the accepted ways to quit, vaping devices like e-cigarettes appear to me to be a safer choice to cigarette smoking, even if they don’t reduce your nicotine intake. But and this is a big but, if you never have smoked or used tobacco or nicotine in other ways, stay away from e-cigarettes and vaping devices. The possible hazards to your health could outweigh any enjoyment you might have.

In the interest of full disclosure, I started smoking at 16 and quit after 45 years. I now suffer from COPD due to this I rue the day I started, I spent thousands of dollars on cigarettes so I could ruin my health. I now need to use a nebulizer a few times a day to deliver a bronchial dilator to my lungs. Norb is a freelance journalist and blogger from Lockport.

Bear Ridge Solar

Cypress Creek Renewables is proposing to construct a project called “Bear Ridge Solar” to install solar panels in Cambria and Pendleton. I have no problem with people using their property for legal reasons.

Solar energy gives us clean power from the sun and it’s use is growing in both the United States and globally. The cost to put in solar energy has decreased by over 70 percent since 2010. In the past decade, solar power has had an average annual growth rate of over 60 percent. Many businesses and households that switch to solar energy save money.

While without a doubt solar energy might be a very important solution for a lot of the world’s energy problems, it’s not a cure all without problems. Studies have shown that solar energy has a significant environmental disadvantage.

The effect that solar farms may possibly have on plants and animals be capable of sending ripples through the entire ecosystem. The environment could become less livable for plants and wildlife that thrive in local conditions.

Utility size solar panels can take up a lot of space. I understand the Bear Ridge Solar project will take up 900 acres and I think it might result in environmental degradation. Solar farms could also obstruct local vegetation growth. Think about all those farms that let their land go fallow so the naturally occurring plant life can be harvested for hay.

However, a deeper perception of the environmental effect of solar installation could educate farmers on microclimate changes and how they could make better use of the land under panels. Farmers may need to think about selecting crops that can survive in the lower ground temperatures and shade created by the solar panels.

Solar farms that blanket a large volume of land are apt to impact the local fauna and flora, particularly birds. The loss of habit for birds include nesting sites, nest building materials, food sources like bugs and places to hide due to habitat loss. Solar panels aren’t able to share the land they occupy for other uses like wind energy does.

Solar panels for domestic use usually don’t require very much land. In fact many of these installations are on roof tops and don’t use any land whatsoever. However, at the industrial level, the large amount of space required for the installation of panels needed to produce energy is a challenge.

Also, a great many people feel that utility scale solar panels will create a visual disruption for the local communities. I believe the song goes “Oh beautiful for spacious skies and amber waves of grain” not “the glint of solar panels.”

However, it is not just plant them and hook them up. There are emissions associated with different stages of the solar cell lifecycle. It is very important to know the solar panel production process. It begins with the mining and subsequent processing of the raw materials. Quartz, copper, silver and aluminum ores are mined from the earth utilizing trucks, tools and heavy equipment. These ores are then transported by trucks or rail to processing facilities.

All of this requires fossil fuels or electricity. Quartz for instance undergoes processing with hazardous chemicals in high-temperature furnaces to produce electronic grade silicon. Creating solar photovoltaic panels is a very water intensive process. Even though the solar cells themselves don’t use water to generate electricity, the manufacturing process requires a quite a bit of water.

Off-grid Photo Voltaic systems frequently have throwaway batteries that can store energy when the sun shines so people can use it at night. These batteries will damage the environment if they aren’t disposed of properly because they might leak toxins such as lead and sulfuric acid.

Furthermore, quite a few solar cells contain small quantities of the toxic metal cadmium. The batteries that are required to store the electricity generated by photo cells can contain a myriad of other dangerous substances like heavy metals and other dangerous substances. If the manufacturers don’t strictly adhere to the laws and regulations regarding these chemicals, they can create significant health risks, especially to the workers.

As solar technology improves, manufacturers may be able to move away from these potentially dangerous substances, but for now, they mar the otherwise impressive ecological benefits solar power offers.

Solar energy has some other problems. First, no matter how clear the skies, a solar panel won’t produce electricity at night, so a solar energy system needs to have some method of storing energy. And if there is bad weather for an extended time, a solar energy system will provide little output, which means you need to have backup energy generation alternatives available.

Moreover, when solar panels aren’t disposed of as they should be, these chemicals can be an environmental threat. Often, panels end up in e-waste dumps in developing countries such as India, China and Ghana where these toxic chemicals might create devastating health effects for residents of nearby communities. Solar panels are said to create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear power plants do and we all know how nuclear power works out. Just think about Chernobyl or The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan.

Sure Solar may be the way to go but I think we need to find this out from someone that ISN’T going to benefit from this.

Norb is a freelance journalist from Lockport.

All in all it was just a, brick in the wall. Pink Floyd, 1979.

landscape photography of orange brick wall — Photo by Mikes Photos on Pexels.com

The internet is filled with pictures of refugees amassing at the U.S-Mexico border in California. But many of them haven’t been able to enter the United States because a physical barrier prevents them from doing this. It is just another example of a barrier, a fence, a wall, a whatever, providing real border security.

Although, erection of a wall on the border was one of President Trump’s prime campaign promises. He has made very little progress toward making that happen. Trump has blown opportunities to win wall funding by refusing to exchange amnesty for recipients of President Obama’s “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals”, or DACA, policy.

But the President loaded his wall proposal with added on demands, and it never transpired. Even as events on the border are showing the value of a wall and the throngs are tearing down fences etc., politics in Washington is just business as usual, making it impossible to build a wall.

We must understand the problem. In California, the migrants are focusing their efforts on a part of the border where there is an actual barrier. But much of the border’s 1,954 miles remains open. According to the Border Patrol, 354 of those 1,954 miles are protected by what is called pedestrian primary fence, which is a single-layer fence. Another 37 miles are pedestrian secondary fence, that is, double-layer fencing. And 14 miles are pedestrian tertiary, or triple-layer fence.

In addition, 300 miles are covered by vehicle fencing, which will stop a truck but allow anyone to walk through with no problem. We’re talking a fence here, not a wall. That is a total of 705 miles, 405 miles of some kind of pedestrian fencing and 300 miles of vehicle fencing.

Almost no one, says one fence should cover all 1,954 miles of the border. A considerable portion of the border is guarded by terrain that is so imposing and dangerous that it would be extremely difficult for refugees to cross.

Since Republicans could not pass this wall funding when they were in charge of all of Congress and the White House, how can they do it with Pelosi in charge of the House of Representatives?

There is a Public Law 109-367, AKA the Secure Fence Act. This was passed by bipartisan majorities in 2006. It mandated that the federal government was to build a “reinforced fencing”, at least two layers thick, along about 700 miles of the border. It identified areas in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas where the fencing would be installed. Many of the weak parts of the border could now be legally secured. But in the very next year, 2007, after Democrats had won control of the House and Senate, Congress amended the Secure Fence Act. The amendment said and I quote “nothing in (the original legislation) shall require the installation of fencing if the government determines that a fence is not the most appropriate” way to secure the border.

That was the end of 700 miles of fence. Public Law 109-367 still remains on the books and it still mandates a border barrier. What Donald Trump needs is the money to do this and it has to come from Congress. Obviously, the Democrats won’t want to give it to him. But if Trump were to call for the money to build the fence, he would at least have the argument that the Democrats have already voted for it.

Hold on to your hats and batten down the hatches because I have a brilliant (even if I say so myself) yet controversial idea and I expect a lot of blow back on this one. We offer the American public, those most effected by illegal immigrants, the opportunity to purchase bricks in much the same way that charities do for a fund raiser.

We then offer those illegal immigrants that cross the border a choice. They can be deported or go to a temporary work camp supported by this brick money, plus some tax dollars. At the camp they will be assigned to all the necessary jobs like food service, laundry, sanitation and even brick making. Every job that needs to be done except security would be provided by the immigrants. They could also be assigned to out of camp work details where they would learn concrete work and/or brick laying by building the wall. The only thing the USA would offer is clean drinking water, food and security. During this time on the camps, they would be provided free room and board, medical care and the chance to apply for citizenship. The United States could also use this time to check the border crossers background so we could identify any possible criminals among them. Those that don’t apply for citizenship or that fail this vetting process would be deported.

It is a win/win for everybody. The immigrants would have the chance to become Americans, learn a trade so they don’t live on welfare and Trump’s wall gets built. The Chinese built a wall to keep out invaders, why can’t we.

The printed media is under attack

For ages, books, magazines and newspapers, were revered for the enormous amount of information they contained. I can remember looking things up in the Encyclopedia Britannica when I was young. One summer I set the goal of reading everything that was in the encyclopedia. I’m pretty sure I never got through the second volume. In 2012, the company announced that the 2010 edition would be the last printed version. However, they were being replaced by their electronic “copies”. Reference books of all types are feeling the pinch caused by technology and the internet, from atlases to dictionaries to thesauruses.

I have a subscription to Time Magazine and it seems like a shell of its former self. There are just 68 pages in a recent addition and a large number of them are full page ads. The same thing seems to be going on with The Readers Digest that I receive every month. There are now a lot more ads than I remember with less content.

My wife is an avid reader and she has a kindle. That way she doesn’t have to lug around one or two large books. Her Kindle has well over a thousand books on it at this point. Every day I download free books for her off the internet. If she doesn’t like a book, she just deletes it. No muss, no fuss,and we haven’t wasted any money on it plus we save gas by her not having to drive to the library.

The newspaper industry has always had its ups and downs and the industry has survived previous slumps. I remember that television’s arrival in the early 1950s was supposed to predict the decline of newspapers’ prominence as most people’s source of daily news, I think sudden increase of the internet in the 1990s and the increased number of media choices available to the average reader has made this much worse. I feel the Internet has also gone further than television in eating away at the income of newspapers with Craig’s list, e-bay and other online sites that are available to sell your goods. I think the increasing use of internet search, primarily through large engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, has changed the habits of newspaper readers.

Buffalo News owner Warren Buffett wrote, “Simply put, if cable and satellite broadcasting, as well as the internet had come along first,newspapers as we know them probably would never have existed.” Since the beginning of 2009, the United States has seen a number of major metropolitan dailies shuttered or drastically pruned. Even the news magazine “Newsweek”, has ceased being published as a print magazine.

Since the end of January 2016, I have managed to get my writing published a number of times. I have gotten published in an online newspapers as the food columnist under the banner “Lovin Spoonful”. In that time, I have also seen one online publication and two of the print publications that I was writing for close. The Lockport Star has announced it closed in July 2016 and The Tonawanda Sun also announced it was closing in July. It appears that the Community Papers of Western New York has decided to discontinue publishing all of their small town papers. Readership of print newspapers has fallen by a staggering 25% in just the last four years.

I am now being published in 3 print newspapers and four online ones. I have a portfolio of my articles cut out of the newspapers and they seem much more real than the ones I print from my computer. If I wanted, I could put together on my computer, something that said I was published in the New York Times and I’m sure that anyone with basic word processor skills could do the same thing.

Maybe I am just old fashioned and behind the times, but the feel of a newspaper in my hands just seems right. I prefer having ink stained fingers to carpel tunnel. Sure, the newspaper might not be up to the minute but it sure beats those news bytes that you see scrolling across the bottom of your television screen. What does the statement “17 dead in Brazil” tell you? Was it a terrorist attack, a bus overturning or a meal of bad Shushi? There is no how,when or why and just leaves you not knowing what the heck is going on. I’m sure at least 17 people die in Brazil almost every day. Just knowing how many people died without giving us many more facts is useless.

It seems to me I have picked a bad time to try become a journalist.I hate to say it but the best way to reach me is on the internet at nrug@juno.com. My blog is at whywny.home.blog

Blogging

man in white dress shirt sitting on black rolling chair while facing black computer set and smiling — Photo by bruce mars on Pexels.com

Someone asked me why I have a blog. I do it because writing a blog helps me to express my thoughts in front of the world. Blogging helps me to stay up to date on current events about because I have to do research for my articles. It also helps me to learn new things. I have always liked learning and in fact I have attended 2 on-line colleges and the University of Buffalo on Main Street, Buffalo in the 60s.

I think writing a blog helps me to think clearly and deeply about my life, world events, society etc. Blogging helps make me confident about writing and helps me express myself and my opinions. It helps me become unafraid of making a mistake. Any time I get a date wrong or a fact wrong, people let me know. I now understand the adage “Cite a number or a date but not both.”

Having a blog where I can document and share my life adventures, ideas and struggles is a great way to stay connected with my family and friends some of who are hundreds of miles away.

I blog to write about the people and places that have made me happy throughout my life-like growing up in Buffalo. When I write, it is to share, with anyone that is interested, my thoughts and knowledge about a particular subject. I have so many wonderful fans that write to me about how much they like my articles. It is a great feeling to know that the articles I write can have a beneficial effect on someone’s life.

I don’t make any money out of writing my blog yet. This is not why I blog at this point. I also post articles as a guest on other online newspapers and websites like Art Voice. I do this to both garner new eyes for my blog and to help them out with content. Plus I also enjoy seeing my byline on articles I write. Some of these people make a living from this and I am glad to help out.

The more I write, the easier it gets and the better I think I become at it. Most professional bloggers write on a regular basis. I run my articles thru a spell checker, grammar checker and two plagiarism checkers. I even get feedback from readers, some good some bad. This helps me become a better writer.

Being a good writer is not required to a successful blogger. In fact many very high-profile bloggers are self-proclaimed lousy writers. Part of their success might be credited to their message of “If I can do it, anyone can”.

Most people start out with just one blog but as they gain experience and they sooner or later come up with other ideas for blogs. I am now on my third blog. What I have learned from my previous blogs will assist me in growing the readership of my current blog and blogs I may yet write.

Meanwhile, by cultivating my own online network of readers has created its own benefits, like gaining access to seminars, product unveilings, and other events. I wrote an article on being color blind that appeared in Buffalo Rising and was read by someone in California.

They contacted me and asked if I would be interested in trying out their glasses that help people like me with a color perception problem. They ended up sending me $700 worth of glasses to try out for free. In fact I am wearing them now. Not too bad for writing a 900 word article on the difficulties I have being colorblind.

I also received a call from the owner of a restaurant I had reviewed. I had cited a few problems and the owner said he couldn’t have paid to get such an honest assessment of his restaurant. He sent me a $25.00 gift card even though I told him I wasn’t going to change the review.

Blogging is a great way for me to build up my writing portfolio. I get published a few times a week in local newspapers but blogging has enabled me to get readers from Maine to California. I have notebooks with my articles that have been published in local newspapers but by showcasing my writing skills on a blog, I can grow my exposure and possibly find a way to start getting paid for writing.

As the internet and technology become more ingrained in our day-to-day lives, the benefits of blogging become impossible to ignore. Gone are the days that I needed to program in HTML like I did when I wrote my first website, ten years ago. Websites such as WordPress.org or Blogger.com have made it relatively easy to set up a blog in 15 minutes or less.

Blogging makes me think about newsworthy topics and the world around me. A blog keeps my mind focused and sharper. I believe in the adage “use it or lose it” and at seventy I am still able to write two or three fairly lucid articles a week.

Apart from all the benefits of blogging I mentioned above, my blog might someday become a source of income for me when it achieves enough subscribers. I have not yet made any money off any of my blogs so far, but I just might.