Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (June 6, 2015)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Saturday, June 6, 2015 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN DANIEL WATTENBURGER Publisher Managing Editor JENNINE PERKINSON TIM TRAINOR Advertising Director Opinion Page Editor EO MEDIA GROUP East Oregonian • The Daily Astorian • Capital Press • Hermiston Herald Blue Mountain Eagle • Wallowa County Chieftain • Chinook Observer • Coast River Business Journal Oregon Coast Today • Coast Weekend • Seaside Signal • Cannon Beach Gazette Eastern Oregon Real Estate Guide • Eastern Oregon Marketplace • Coast Marketplace OnlyAg.com • FarmSeller.com • Seaside-Sun.com • NorthwestOpinions.com • DiscoverOurCoast.com MIKE FORRESTER Pendleton Chairman of the Board STEVE FORRESTER Astoria President TOM BROWN Bigfork, Mont. Director KATHRYN B. BROWN Pendleton Secretary/Treasurer JEFF ROGERS Indianapolis, Ind. Director OUR VIEW OTHER VIEWS Chemicals in your popcorn? W Get advice from — don’t give advice to — this year’s grads It’s that time of year again. People we know and love (and maybe birthed) are dressing up in IXQQ\KDWVDQGLOO¿WWLQJJRZQVDQG walking across a big stage. They’ve done something great, these young men and women, and they deserve some praise. Graduation is an accomplishment and an important step on the road to adulthood. When people we love reach these milestones, we often feel obligated to give them advice. We’ve already lived this thing they are about to live, and we sure wish someone pulled us aside and told us the way the world really works before we spent all that energy tilting at windmills. Of course, the people we are trying to teach are teens. They’re not very open to our olden day advice, and besides, everyone has to make their own mistakes. This year’s graduates are no different. 6RZK\¿JKWLW",QVWHDGRIJLYLQJ advice that isn’t going to take, let’s trying getting some advice instead. Here are a few things we think we could learn from the class of 2015. Make technology serve you. This generation was born into technology like none before. They have screens around them all day, digital mailboxes that are always open, friends and enemies at the touch of a button, and ways to be educated and entertained at all times. But technology is nothing if not constantly changing. And what many middle-aged people see as “email” or “Facebook” or “Skype,” young people see as an imperfect product that should keep up with them as they grow. What many middle-aged people see as quirks of technology, young people see as an entrepreneurial niche. Young people don’t long stand for quirks, or products that don’t give them what they want. The world bends to their whims, of course. Generations prior never got Parker Brothers to change the rules to Monopoly, no matter how many times we stuck money under Free Parking. But if young people want Facebook to list dozens of gender options, it’s on their homepage the next morning. Be adaptable. Technology may have taught them that, too. They’re never in a rut, these kids, no matter how much they look like they are when their heads are craned over their phones. Young people are used to change, aren’t intimidated or threatened by it. It’s a good trait in a recent graduate. Things are going to come at them, things they haven’t encountered yet and aren’t prepared IRU7KH\¶OOEH¿QH:HRQWKH other hand, are freaked out every time anything new happens. A man becomes a woman on a magazine, for instance. Teach us how you do it, young people. Be real. The world is moving online, and the online world lacks actual real things. Compliments might not be compliments in that digital realm, sarcasm is overwhelming and so are disguised advertisements for money and sympathy. Also, there is no dirt and grass and trees. Young people can identify real things, probably because they are more rare now than ever before. That includes products, but it also includes emotion. It’s hard for a young person to be honest, forthright and genuine. They appreciate it when they see it, they value it when they come across it, they feel relieved when they get to be it. That desire for real things has already helped society. We’ve begun the slow processes of de-engineering our processed foods, of localizing our economies and downsizing our lives and admitting the real effects we have on our on our planet. We have much to learn! Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. hat do a pizza box, a polar States have never been tested for bear and you have in effects on our health. common? Any testing is being done on all of All carry a kind of industrial us. We’re the guinea pigs. toxicant called poly- and &RQJUHVVPD\¿QDOO\SDVVQHZ SHUÀXRURDON\OVXEVWDQFHVRU3)$6V legislation regulating toxic chemicals, that do two things: They make life but it’s so weak a bill that the chemical convenient, and they also appear to industry has embraced it. The Senate increase the risk of cancer. Nicholas version is better than nothing, but, The scientists I interviewed say Kristof astonishingly, it provides for assessing that they try to avoid these chemicals high-priority chemicals at a rate of Comment in their daily lives, but they’re pretty DERXWRQO\¿YHD\HDUDQGLW¶VQRWFOHDU much unavoidable and now are found that the House will go that far. in animals all over the planet (including polar Yes, of countless toxicants suspected bears in Greenland and probably you and me). of increasing the risk of cancer, obesity, PFASs are used to make nonstick frying pans, epigenetic damage and reproductive problems, the United States would commit to testing waterproof clothing, stain-resistant fabrics, ¿YHHDFK\HDU$QGWKDWZRXOGDFWXDOO\EH fast-food wrappers, microwave popcorn progress. EDJV¿UH¿JKWLQJIRDPDQGWKRXVDQGVRI For safety reasons, Europe and Canada other products. Many are unlabeled, so even already restrict hundreds of chemicals chemists sometimes feel helpless. routinely used in the United States. Perhaps This should be a moment when the danger of tainted brands and lost sales government steps up to protect citizens. But abroad — not the risk to Americans — will from tobacco to lead paint to chemicals, motivate U.S. companies to adopt overseas industry has used donations, obfuscation and limits. lobbying to defer regulation until the human Scientists are already casualties are too vast to be taking precautions and hidden. weighing trade-offs in PFASs are “a poster their personal lives. R. child” for what’s wrong Thomas Zoeller, a biology with chemical regulation professor at the University in the United States, says of Massachusetts, Amherst, John Peterson Myers, chief says he now avoids buying scientist of Environmental nonstick pans. Rainer Health Sciences, a research Lohmann, an oceanographer and publishing group in at the University of Rhode Virginia. PFASs are just Island, told me that he is about indestructible, so, replacing carpets in his for eons to come, they KRXVHZLWKZRRGÀRRUVLQ will poison our blood, our part to reduce PFASs. household dust, our water and the breast milk Simona Balan, a senior scientist at the our babies drink. Green Science Policy Institute, avoids Warnings of health risks from PFASs go microwave popcorn and stain-resistant back half a century and are growing more furniture. ominous. In May, more than 200 scientists Blum says she avoids buying certain released a Madrid Statement warning of nonstick products and waterproof products, PFASs’ severe health risks. It was published but reluctantly uses a glide wax for in Environmental Health Perspectives, a backcountry skis that contains PFASs. “Every peer-reviewed journal backed by the National time I spray it on, I realize the chemicals will Institutes of Health. be in my body for a very long time and on the The scientists cited research linking planet for geologic time, perhaps longer than PFASs to testicular and kidney cancer, mankind,” Blum said. “But I do enjoy a good hypothyroidism, ulcerative colitis and other glide when I ski.” problems. Some brands, including Levi’s, Benetton Arlene Blum is a chemist whose warnings and Victoria’s Secret, are pledging to avoid about carcinogens have proved prophetic. In PFASs. Evaluations of the safety of products recent years, she has waged an increasingly are available free at the GoodGuide and Skin VXFFHVVIXOFDPSDLJQDJDLQVWPRGHUQÀDPH Deep websites. retardant chemicals because of evidence that The chemical lobby is following the they also cause cancer, but she told me that 3)$6V³DUHHYHQDELJJHUSUREOHPWKDQÀDPH same script as the tobacco and lead lobbies a generation ago, throwing around campaign retardants.” donations and lobbying muscle to delay The chemical industry acknowledges that regulation. The chemical industry spent $190 older, “long-chain” PFASs are a problem million lobbying in the last three years. If only but says that it is replacing them with it would devote such sums to developing safer ³VKRUWFKDLQ´YHUVLRQVWKDWVKRXOGEH¿QH products, rather than to defending its right to It’s true that there is less evidence against the produce suspected carcinogens. short-chains, but that’s perhaps because they Ŷ have been studied less. Nicholas Kristof grew up on a sheep and Americans expect that chemicals used cherry farm in Yamhill. A columnist for The in consumer products have been tested for safety. Not so. The vast majority of the 80,000 New York Times since 2001, he won the Pulitzer Prize two times. chemicals available for sale in the United Warnings of health risks of PFASs go back half a century and are growing more ominous. YOUR VIEWS Taking plants from cemeteries is heartless grave robbing I would like to tell the people who feel it is their right to go to a cemetery and KHOSWKHPVHOYHVWRSRWWHGSODQWVRUÀRZHU arrangements that people have paid sometimes a lot of money for them, and have put these items out for their loved ones. You might have to face someone one of these days and answer to why you feel it is necessary to steal from the departed. Are you that cheap that you can’t buy these items yourself, and feel the need to go to a cemetery and steal from a grave? I know this happens everywhere in every cemetery (this was in Hermiston). Rest in peace does not seem apply to a cemetery; there are bad people no matter where you are. I promised my mother when she was alive ,ZRXOGNHHSÀRZHUVRQKHUJUDYHDVVKH always loved her beautiful yard, and I kept that promise for almost four years. And then just two days before Memorial Day weekend WKLV\HDUKHUSODQWHUZLWKKHUIDYRULWHÀRZHUV were stolen off her grave. My mother would EHWKH¿UVWRQHWRVD\LIWKH\DUHWKDWKDUGXS to rob a grave, let them have them. So enjoy your stolen graveyard plants, I hope you enjoy them. I will not be putting ÀRZHUVRQP\PRWKHU¶VJUDYHDJDLQDV, promised. I will not supply your yard with her plants. If you are unable to read, have someone read this for you — not that it will make a difference to someone like you. You will probably just laugh. But one of these days you are going to get a big surprise with a stolen item. Think before you steal! LETTERS POLICY Nancy Patrick Hermiston The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.
