A new study has found that a test used to identify kids with asthma could
misdiagnose children of certain ethnic backgrounds. Karen Kelly has the story:
Transcript
A new study has found that a test used to identify kids with asthma could
misdiagnose children of certain ethnic backgrounds. Karen Kelly has the story:
Until now, doctors looked for a standard level of nitric oxide in a child’s breath when diagnosing asthma.
But a study of 650 kids in Detroit and neighboring Windsor, Ontario led to a surprising discovery: healthy kids of Asian descent had two times more nitric oxide than what’s
considered normal, and healthy African-American kids exhaled 50 percent
more of the gas.
Dr. Thomas Kovesi conducted the study, which was published in the journal Chest.
“If based on this test, a child gets diagnosed with asthma when they don’t have
asthma, it’s possible that they’ll end up on medications the child won’t benefit
from. Every medication has potential side effects.”
Kovesi tells parents to ask their doctors to consider their child’s ethnicity if the
kid is taking an exhaled nitric oxide test.
Reporter Dustin Dwyer found all the ingredients for his Thanksgiving dinner within 100 miles of his house, including the turkey (poor thing). (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)
Turkey farmer Christine Roperti continues to farm near Detroit despite growing development pressures. (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)
Thanksgiving is about family, friends, and ridiculous amounts of food. But the food we buy can have a big impact on the environment. And a lot more people are starting to look for local ingredients to put in their meals. One movement encourages people to get all their food from within 100 miles of their home. Dustin Dwyer tried to find out how practical that could be for his Thanksgiving feast:
Transcript
Thanksgiving is about family, friends, and ridiculous amounts of food. But the food we buy can have a big impact on the environment. And a lot more people are starting to look for local ingredients to put in their meals. One movement encourages people to get all their food from within 100 miles of their home. Dustin Dwyer tried to find out how practical that could be for his Thanksgiving feast:
I like to look at labels on my food. I don’t care so much about the nutritional info, I just want to know where it came from.
But there’s a problem with that. Even if I know where something is packaged, I still have no idea where the actual ingredients come from. I mean, where the heck do they make partially hydrogenated soybean oil?
I have no idea. And so, for one meal, for the most important meal of the year, I decided to try to get all my food, and all the ingredients in my food, from within 100 miles of my apartment in Southeast Michigan.
If you’re impressed by my ingenious and creative idea, don’t be. I stole it from someone else. Alisa Smith and her partner James MacKinnon were on a 100 mile diet for a year, and they’re writing a book about it. I called up Alisa for some help.
Dwyer: “So my wife and I are going to do the 100 mile Thanksgiving, and I want to ask some advice.”
Smith: “Oh, great! For doing a single meal you picked a very good time to do it because it’s the harvest bounty, so that makes life a lot easier.”
I’m thinking, excellent, this could be a piece of cake. But I’m worried about a few tough ingredients, such as salt. Alisa says salt is a problem for a lot of people.
“I think in the end, you probably will find that salt isn’t available. And not being able t o make it yourself you might just say ‘okay salt is going to be an exception for us.'”
Ok, fine, but I still wanted to make as few exceptions as possible. I’ve got to have a challenge here, somehow.
That said, our menu would be simple: just turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and pumpkin pie. Turkey turned out to be easy.
“Roperti’s Turkey Farm.”
Christine Roperti has been living on her family’s turkey farm in suburban Detroit all her life. Farms like this one are getting crowded out more and more by suburban sprawl. There’s even a brand new subdivision next door to Christine’s place. There have been offers for her land too.
“Yeah, but I don’t want to go anywhere. I like the farm, and like raising my turkeys.”
I liked knowing that Christine actually enjoys this, and cares about it. It made me feel good. And that’s important, because I was also paying a lot more for her turkey than the store-bought stuff.
Anyway, I was flying high, and things were going really well. My list of exceptions was firming up, and it was mostly spices: salt plus all the spices for the pumpkin pie.
Then, while I was bragging at work about how I’d be able to get almost everything but salt for my local dinner, someone reminded me that there are actually salt mines under the city of Detroit.
Like a good journalist I looked into it, and ended up on the most absurd shopping trip of my life.
“Okay I’m headed over the Ambassador Bridge, going from Detroit to Windsor, Ontario. They do have salt mines in Detroit, but they don’t sell that salt as food salt in the US, they only sell road salt. So in order to get food salt that’s made within a hundred miles of my house, I have to go to Canada.”
Because of some trade regulation I don’t understand, table salt from this mine can’t be commercially shipped into the US. So I ended up in a city I barely know, looking for a grocery store. I went into the first, and then the second without finding the right brand of salt. Then an hour or so later, in the third store…
“Finally! Windsor salt.”
So, I wasted a lot of fuel putting this dinner together. It’s probably still an improvement over what the Sierra Club says is an average two thousand miles of driving that goes into each ingredient for my usual dinner.
But here’s the thing: if all this local stuff is available, I think I should be able to get it at the grocery store down the street. I should probably let them know that, and let them know I’m willing to pay more for it. I mean, that’s better than driving to Canada for salt, anyway.
But making that happen would take a lot more effort, a lot more voting with my pocketbook, and a lot more than just checking labels.
Federal restrictions have not stopped importation of invasive species. Now some states are passing laws that will stop some ocean-going ships from docking in their ports. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Ocean-going cargo ships are blamed for bringing in many aquatic invasive species that damage the environment, such as zebra mussels, quagga mussels and round gobies. These foreign species also cost the economy in lost fishing, clogged intake pipes, and in eradication efforts. (Photo by Lester Graham)
US ports receive more than imported cargo.
They often receive fish and other aquatic organisms
from foreign ports. They stow away in the ballast
water of cargo ships. Once in US waters, some of
the foreign species become invaders, damaging the
ecosystem. The federal government has done little
to stop these invasive species. Rick Pluta reports now some states have decided to take
things into their own hands:
Transcript
US ports receive more than imported cargo.
They often receive fish and other aquatic organisms
from foreign ports. They stow away in the ballast
water of cargo ships. Once in US waters, some of
the foreign species become invaders, damaging the
ecosystem. The federal government has done little
to stop these invasive species. Rick Pluta reports now some states have decided to take
things into their own hands:
The damage caused by invasive species carried to the US in
ballast water is not only harmful to the environment, but it
hurts the economy. The federal regulations have not stopped the
problem. So, states such as California and Michigan have passed
laws that require foreign ships to treat ballast water like
pollution. They have to clean it up before they can discharge it
into a port. The problem is, almost no ships have a way to treat
the ballast.
In Michigan, the Great Lakes shipping industry is trying to delay
the new Michigan rules. Shipping companies, port owners, and
dock workers say Michigan’s new rules are jeopardizing jobs
without actually stopping the introduction of new species into
the Great Lakes.
The damage caused by invasive species carried to the US in
ballast water is not only harmful to the environment, but it
hurts the economy. The federal regulations have not stopped the
problem. So, states such as California and Michigan have passed
laws that require foreign ships to treat ballast water like
pollution. They have to clean it up before they can discharge it
into a port. The problem is, almost no ships have a way to treat
the ballast.
In Michigan, the Great Lakes shipping industry is trying to delay
the new Michigan rules. Shipping companies, port owners, and
dock workers say Michigan’s new rules are jeopardizing jobs
without actually stopping the introduction of new species into
the Great Lakes.
People in the shipping business say the problem is Michigan is
the only state in the Great Lakes region that is requiring ocean-
going freighters to install expensive technology as a condition
of using one of its ports.
John Jamian is the president of the Seaway Great Lakes Trade
Association. He says requiring ocean-going freighters to install
expensive technology before they can dock in Michigan ports won’t
solve the problem. The ships will just go to other Great Lakes
ports.
If a ship goes to Windsor or Toledo that doesn’t have these rules
and regulations, they will discharge their cargo. If there were
any critters on those ships they could still swim or crawl into
Michigan waters, so you still haven’t solved anything.
Jamian represents the owners of ships that travel from the
Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes via the Saint Lawrence Seaway.
He says ship owners will very likely avoid Michigan ports, and
choose to unload at ports in other states and Canada:
“The fact of the matter is that they’re not going to put an
expensive piece of equipment just because Michigan calls for it
on their ship when in fact it may not be acceptable anywhere else
in the world and it might just be easier to take that cargo
across the river and unload it where they don’t have these
regulations.”
And for Michigan ports that are near other competing ports,
that’s a concern. Patrick Sutka is the treasurer for Nicholson
Terminal and Dock Company at the Port of Detroit:
“We fear these ships may be going to other ports, such as Windsor
right across the waterway, or other competitors of ours such as
Toledo or Cleveland.”
At the height of the shipping season, there might be three
freighters at a time moored to the docks, offloading steel and
other cargo. A hundred trucks a day will move in and out of the
docking area to get those commodities to factories.
On the dock right now are dozens of stacks of 20-ton slabs of
steel from France and Russia. That Russian steel was most likely
shipped from a port in the Caspian Sea or the Black Sea. The
freighters take on ballast water from those seas for the voyage
to the Great Lakes. That ballast water helps keep the ships low
and steady in the water.
The ships are required to exchange the water in deep ocean mid-
journey. The salt water is supposed to kill the fresh water
organisms. But, some organisms can survive the trip. That’s how
zebra mussels, quagga mussels and the round goby fish made their
way from the Balkans to the Great Lakes.
Those invasive species and others combine to cost the economy an
estimated 5 billion dollars a year. For example, zebra
mussels cost taxpayers and utility customers. It shows up in
your power bill because the utilities have to pay divers to
scrape the crustaceans off pipes carrying cooling water to power
plants.
Shipping companies, port owners, and dock workers’ unions are all
pressuring Michigan to hold off on enforcing its new law. What
they’d really like is for the federal government to step in,
negotiate with Canada, and create a regional set of rules for
combating aquatic invaders:
“…But the federal government has not had the guts or the
gumption to step up to the plate and get this done.”
Patti Birkholz chairs the Michigan Senate Environmental Affairs
Committee. She sponsored the law:
“So we’re going to do it on a state-by-state basis. Our eco-
system within the Great Lakes is what many scientists have termed
‘on the tipping point.’ We cannot deal with any more invasive
species in this system, and we know the majority of the invasive
species come through the ocean-going vessels. They know they’re
the cause. We know they’re the cause. We’ve got to deal with this
situation.”
Michigan’s new law is as much a political statement as anything
else and other states are starting to follow Michigan’s lead.
Birkholz says Wisconsin and New York could pass ballast standards
this year.
In the mean time, Michigan environmental officials say they
intend to enforce the state’s requirements when the Great Lakes
shipping season resumes in the spring. But, so far, no ocean
freighters have applied for a permit to dock at a Michigan Port.
Reporter Dustin Dwyer found all the ingredients for his Thanksgiving dinner within 100 miles of his house, including the turkey (poor thing). (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)
Turkey farmer Christine Roperti continues to farm near Detroit despite growing development pressures. (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)
Thanksgiving is about family, friends, and ridiculous amounts of food. But the food we buy can have a big impact on the environment, and a lot more people are starting to look for local ingredients to put in their meals. One movement encourages people to get all their food from within 100 miles of their home. Dustin Dwyer tried to find out how practical that could be for his Thanksgiving feast:
Transcript
Thanksgiving is about family, friends, and ridiculous amounts of food. But the food we buy can have a big impact on the environment. And a lot more people are starting to look for local ingredients to put in their meals. One movement encourages people to get all their food from within 100 miles of their home. Dustin Dwyer tried to find out how practical that could be for his Thanksgiving feast:
I like to look at labels on my food. I don’t care so much about the nutritional info, I just want to know where it came from.
But there’s a problem with that. Even if I know where something is packaged, I still have no idea where the actual ingredients come from. I mean, where the heck do they make partially hydrogenated soybean oil?
I have no idea. And so, for one meal, for the most important meal of the year, I decided to try to get all my food, and all the ingredients in my food, from within 100 miles of my apartment in Southeast Michigan.
If you’re impressed by my ingenious and creative idea, don’t be. I stole it from someone else. Alisa Smith and her partner James MacKinnon were on a 100 mile diet for a year, and they’re writing a book about it. I called up Alisa for some help.
Dwyer: “So my wife and I are going to do the 100 mile Thanksgiving, and I want to ask some advice.”
Smith: “Oh, great! For doing a single meal you picked a very good time to do it because it’s the harvest bounty, so that makes life a lot easier.”
I’m thinking, excellent, this could be a piece of cake. But I’m worried about a few tough ingredients, such as salt. Alisa says salt is a problem for a lot of people.
“I think in the end, you probably will find that salt isn’t available. And not being able t o make it yourself you might just say ‘okay salt is going to be an exception for us.'”
Ok, fine, but I still wanted to make as few exceptions as possible. I’ve got to have a challenge here, somehow.
That said, our menu would be simple: just turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and pumpkin pie. Turkey turned out to be easy.
“Roperti’s Turkey Farm.”
Christine Roperti has been living on her family’s turkey farm in suburban Detroit all her life. Farms like this one are getting crowded out more and more by suburban sprawl. There’s even a brand new subdivision next door to Christine’s place. There have been offers for her land too.
“Yeah, but I don’t want to go anywhere. I like the farm, and like raising my turkeys.”
I liked knowing that Christine actually enjoys this, and cares about it. It made me feel good. And that’s important, because I was also paying a lot more for her turkey than the store-bought stuff.
Anyway, I was flying high, and things were going really well. My list of exceptions was firming up, and it was mostly spices: salt plus all the spices for the pumpkin pie.
Then, while I was bragging at work about how I’d be able to get almost everything but salt for my local dinner, someone reminded me that there are actually salt mines under the city of Detroit.
Like a good journalist I looked into it, and ended up on the most absurd shopping trip of my life.
“Okay I’m headed over the Ambassador Bridge, going from Detroit to Windsor, Ontario. They do have salt mines in Detroit, but they don’t sell that salt as food salt in the US, they only sell road salt. So in order to get food salt that’s made within a hundred miles of my house, I have to go to Canada.”
Because of some trade regulation I don’t understand, table salt from this mine can’t be commercially shipped into the US. So I ended up in a city I barely know, looking for a grocery store. I went into the first, and then the second without finding the right brand of salt. Then an hour or so later, in the third store…
“Finally! Windsor salt.”
So, I wasted a lot of fuel putting this dinner together. It’s probably still an improvement over what the Sierra Club says is an average two thousand miles of driving that goes into each ingredient for my usual dinner.
But here’s the thing: if all this local stuff is available, I think I should be able to get it at the grocery store down the street. I should probably let them know that, and let them know I’m willing to pay more for it. I mean, that’s better than driving to Canada for salt, anyway.
But making that happen would take a lot more effort, a lot more voting with my pocketbook, and a lot more than just checking labels.
An Ontario company has developed a way for farmers to turn their vegetable waste into heating fuel. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:
Transcript
An Ontario company has developed a way for farmers to turn their vegetable waste into heating fuel. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports.
Southern Ontario is home to some of the largest greenhouses in North America. And they produce several tons of vegetable scraps every week. Most of it ends up in landfills, where it decomposes and produces heat that escapes into the atmosphere.
But engineers at Acrolab in Windsor, Ontario say they’ve found a way to capture that heat without using other energy sources. Acrolab makes copper heating pipes that are filled with fluid. When one part of the pipe is heated, the fluid instantly transfers the heat throughout the whole thing. Engineers placed these pipes in compost piles and then extended them into a test greenhouse. The pipes heated the greenhouse for five months. The company is now starting pilot projects in three different sized farm buildings.
They say it’s too early to estimate the cost. But they expect farmers will reduce their energy bills by 40 to 60 percent. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.
