Fishy Fort Worth Environmentalist Doublespeak

[Dismuke]

I was checking something out on the City of Fort Worth website and noticed a link titled: "Are the fish in Fort Worth safe to eat??" I haven't been fishing in years - but it got my curiosity up.

Turns out that there is a ban on the consumption and even the mere possession of fish from three small lakes, Lake Como, Fosdic Lake and Echo Lake, all located in urban neighborhoods. Unsafe amounts of all sorts of scary sounding chemicals have been found in tissue samples collected from fish in those lakes. A person can be hit with a $2,000 fine for violating the ban.

However, the website also has this to say under the heading "What Is The Risk?"

One method the TDH [Texas Department of Health] uses to estimate the risk level for fish consumption is based upon how many people could contract cancer by eating the fish. In this case, they estimate that if you are an average adult and you eat one meal of contaminated fish per month over a thirty year period, you would have a 1 in 10,000 chance of contracting cancer. These are very low odds with the risk of contracting cancer being much higher from other activities such as smoking. If you have eaten fish from these lakes, there is no need to see a doctor unless you are sick. There are no test or treatments for exposure to these chemicals. The best thing you can

do is stop eating the fish.

1 in 10,000 is pretty small odds to begin with - and this is over 30 YEARS. So let's just go out and scare everyone about how dangerous these fish are and how evil chemicals and pesticides are destroying the food chain - but just in case there are a few people who have been crazy enough to want to go fishing in those lakes and they begin to panic, well we will tell them the truth and point out that the fish aren't really that dangerous after all because we sure as heck don't want to have to field their phone calls.

Considering the neighborhoods some of these lakes are in, I would suspect that one would have a greater than 1 in 10,000 chance of being murdered on the spot for one's pocket change - and yet our government officials are going nuts over what would happen in the unlikely event someone would eat fish from one of those lakes over the course of 30 years.

I suppose there is always a chance that someone who lives near one of the lakes and either loves to fish or is very poor and extends his food budget by catching fish might end up consuming contaminated fish on a far more frequent basis than that. So I can understand posting some sort of advisory about regular, ongoing consumption of such fish - but, of course, such a mere advisory wouldn't scare as many people into supporting the environmentalists' agenda.

If those odds are indeed accurate, I personally wouldn't think twice about making a meal out of such fish - and I tend to be risk adverse to a fault. I can only wonder how many other things the environmentalists have banned as "dangerous" on a similarly ridiculous basis.

[dbc]

The list is endless--and equally suspect.

[Scott_Connery]

I wonder what the rate is for people aquiring cancer on any diet over the course of 30 years. I would guess that 1 in 10,000 just barely even qualifies as background noise, having no statistical weight at all.

[softwareNerd]

According to this site (link), 1 in 217 in the US will get cancer in any particular year. (that is over a million people, but still 1 in 217).

According to the same site, the lifetime probability of getting cancer is 1 in 3 (not clear from the site if this is for Canada or for the U.S., but I'd expect the two countries to be pretty similar in this regard anyway).

Here's a business idea to you locals: package that fish in capsules and sell it -- eating this fish reduces your risk of getting cancer!

[Locke_and_Rand]

I would think that your odds of dying by slipping in the bathtub, knocking yourself out, and drowning are higher than this, but I don't see anyone saying not to take baths. (At least I hope not, pew!)

[Dismuke]

I would think that your odds of dying by slipping in the bathtub, knocking yourself out, and drowning are higher than this, but I don't see anyone saying not to take baths. (At least I hope not, pew!)

Hmmmm. I am not so sure about that, Dean. Ever been around a hippie? Yuck.

One of Ayn Rand's classic lines was when she described the very first Earth Day as: "when young people who did not take the trouble to wash their own bodies, went out to clean the sidewalks of New York." (From "The Anti-Industrial Revolution" in The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution) Somewhere else (I can't quickly locate the exact quote) she had another excellent line when she referred to the 1960s environmentalist hippies as "they who would pollute a stream merely by stepping in it" (again, quoting from memory).

I guess the only thing that has changed is that many of these types today have been forced to take jobs in order to pay for their high-priced organic groceries, recycled "earth friendly" toilet paper and "fair trade" coffee - and their evil employers and our repressive society forces them to do things such as bathe, get haircuts and wear grown-ups' clothes.

[Locke_and_Rand]

Hmmmm. I am not so sure about that, Dean. Ever been around a hippie? Yuck.

Yeah I guess you're right, I mean look at the French.

(Yeah I know, pretty cliche to take a shot at the French, but they make it so damn easy.)

[Dismuke]

Yeah I guess you're right, I mean look at the French.

(Yeah I know, pretty cliche to take a shot at the French, but they make it so damn easy.)

But taking shots at France is so much FUN. And one does not even have to take a look overseas to justify it. All one has to do is consider some of the things here in America that either have a French influence or come from France. For example, New Orleans.

And, speaking of hippies with freakish hair, another example of something that came from France was last year's Presidential candidate Jacques Kerry (by the way, did you know that Kerry served in Viet Nam?) (Speaking of Viet Nam, that was a former French colony and another example of utter ineptitude).

And of course, there is Kerry's wife who, but for the fact that she inherited a ketchup fortune from her late husband, would not have been given any more fame or consideration than any other random neurotic housewife - you know, the type who watches Oprah on a daily basis and takes the astrology section of her local daily newspaper seriously. Mrs. Heinzkerry is from Mozambique, which was a Portuguese and not a French colony. But Mrs. Heinzkerry speaks French fluently and when Hurricane Ivan struck the Carribiean last year, she met and spoke French with a bunch of relief workers and suggested that they should just let hurricane victims go around naked and focus relief efforts on sending more water and generators. (See this article.) Imagine what the Leftists would do had Laura Bush said something similar about Hurricane Katrina victims.

I am pretty sure I mentioned this somewhere else in this Forum - but since there are more postings here than I can usually keep up with, I suppose it won't hurt to tell it again. Did you hear that the French government recently banned EuroDisney from conducting its famous nightly fireworks displays at its theme park in Paris? You see, just down the street from the park is a French Army barracks - and every evening when the fireworks went off, all of the soldiers would run out of their barracks and try to surrender!

Well... I gotta run. I just spotted a snail crawling along outside of the window next to where my computer is located. All this talk about France has given me an urge to go out and catch it for a little afternoon snack! Yum yum.

[Capitalism Forever]

You see, just down the street from the park is a French Army barracks - and every evening when the fireworks went off, all of the soldiers would run out of their barracks and try to surrender!

"Fireworks--the cost-efficient way of invading France! Artillery and victory celebration in one!"