Book review: 'Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life'

Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life --- Book Review

Although her parents died when she was in her teens, Pat Nixon was determined to get ahead; She went to work so she could attend college. She was fond of acting on the stage and met Richard M. Nixon in a Whittier Community Players production of "The Dark Tower." They married in 1940; as a political wife, and eventual first lady, Pat was soft-spoken, dutiful and even tragic as her life fell in her husband's shadow.

All of this can be gleaned from Ann Beattie's book "Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life," but it is hardly at the center. Beattie begins by listing the 11 nicknames Pat, born Thelma, went by. "Names, nicknames, they're fascinating," Beattie explains. Surprisingly, she is not talking about the subject of her book, but about the process of writing. "Names, nicknames, they're fascinating to writers, but they also cause anxiety because they're so elusive, and because writers have to come up with so many of them."

The name of this book is elusive to a fault. More appropriate titles might have been "A Novelist Writes About Writing, Using Mrs. Nixon as a Starting Point," or "MFA in a Book: A Short Story Writer on Writing." Those seeking a richly imagined life of a first lady, with emotions and details and a story that moves forward from chapter to chapter, should look elsewhere.

Beattie, who teaches at the University of Virginia, is one of the most acclaimed short story writers of her generation (she's a baby boomer). She uses this book to impart her writing lessons, many of them in short, disconnected chapters. She provides close readings of major short story writers such as Anton Chekhov, Raymond Carver and Guy de Maupassant; sometimes, but not always, they are connected to aspects of Pat Nixon's history or persona.

Beattie has many creative insights, which directly address her writing process in general, and the writing of this book in particular. "Writing fiction about a real person tests my unexamined assumptions," she writes, "letting me see if, in the character I create, my preconceptions are reflected, reverse, or obscured."

Even louder than that voice of introspection is the voice of the professor, dispensing wisdom to ready recipients. "Fiction writers rely on dialogue to carry more meaning than the words themselves convey," she writes, continuing, "if the writer relies too much on things happening suddenly, the reader is likely to become skeptical." After imagining a conversation between Pat Nixon and Hillary Clinton making cookies together, she writes, "Mrs. Nixon baking cookies with Hillary Clinton is an example of an anachronism." This is followed by short chapters with similar endnotes explaining how they're examples of "irmus," "epizeus" and "charentismus," all relatively obscure rhetorical terms. Are you taking notes?

Yes, this travels far from the subject at hand, if it can be said that Pat Nixon is in fact the subject. Mrs. Nixon, who didn't want her husband to return to politics after his 1960 loss of the presidential election to John F. Kennedy, faded into the background after Nixon became president in 1968. Her muted presence, maybe veiled by a self-effacing properness, left a canvas so blank that it provides Beattie with the greatest of challenges: a character who is so uninteresting as to barely be there. Can she make a story out of an enigma?

In only a few chapters does Beattie genuinely take up this challenge, imagining Mrs. Nixon moving through the world, giving her enough room on the page to think or feel. In one of the most powerful short sections, she illustrates Mrs. Nixon's sad, anxious thoughts as the White House photographer gathers her family for some last pictures; her husband has resigned in disgrace, and a helicopter waits to carry them away one final time. It's just good enough to make a reader wonder why there aren't more passages like it.

As the book goes on, her husband intrudes. An intelligent, complex and deeply flawed man, he is more compelling than his wife as a character. His role as president, and the predominance of that in their lives, moves him further toward center stage. Yet while Beattie claims to have channeled his voice, it comes off not as empathetic but campy; he is better illuminated elsewhere. She makes one valuable connection, however: that Nixon, who ordered campaigns of fake letters to the editor supporting his views was actually a practitioner of fiction, on a grand scale.

Beattie turns to literature over and over, doling out writing advice, making proclamations about how fiction functions, using it as the key to unlock real people. Awkwardly, she examines the text of the plays the young Pat Ryan (not yet Nixon) appeared in to explain her personality. When Beattie enlivens her characters, they think about books as much as a college English professor might. The book may not enlighten us at all about Mrs. Nixon, but it reveals the erudite workings of writer and educator Ann Beattie.

Beattie writes with total assurance, as if she is giving a lecture. For those unfamiliar with the subject of writing, this could be an interesting introduction to how writers write. But it is a dangerous one.

Because she leaves little room for inquiry and even less for deviation, the book becomes one long-winded speech. Where there might be exploration, there is pontification. What might be confidence starts to come across as careless blitheness. Her interpretations are sometimes strange — graffiti always says what it means, the glass animals in Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" are a symbol for Laura's hymen, the first novel was 1740's "Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded" by Samuel Richardson — and her thoughts on writing are individual, not truths that should be universally acknowledged.

More nurturing writing guides have come from the desk of Anne Lamott. And a fully imagined life of a first lady can be found in Curtis Sittenfeld's "American Wife" (2008), a novel loosely based on the life of Laura Bush. "Mrs. Nixon" falls short on both counts.

Ann Beattie's writing insights are the real focus of 'Mrs. Nixon,' which does little to enlighten us about the first lady.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/books/la-ca-ann-beattie-20111120,0,1461409.story?track=rss

Clarence Thomas & Ethics? Does It Snow In The Sahara?!

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) is turning up the heat on Justice Clarence Thomas based on new information that builds upon previous reports of his alleged ethical lapses.

In late September, Slaughter had sent a letter to the Judicial Conference of the United States to request official action on Thomas' multiyear failure to disclose his wife's income from various conservative think tanks and activist organizations. The Judicial Conference is the principal policy-making and administrative body for the federal court system.

On Friday, Slaughter submitted a new letter, this time addressed to Chief Justice John Roberts in his capacity as the presiding officer of the Judicial Conference, to update and clarify the September letter.

At issue is the fact that Thomas repeatedly checked a box titled "none" on annual financial disclosure forms in response to a question about the source's spousal income. Yet during those years, his wife, Virginia Thomas, worked for the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation and for the Tea Party lobbying group Liberty Central, which she helped found.

The first letter asserted that Thomas' nondisclosures persisted "[t]hroughout his entire tenure of the Supreme Court," which began in 1991. It was fair to infer from his "high level of legal training and experience," Slaughter wrote, that the justice's failure presented the type of "willful" behavior that federal law requires the Judicial Conference to refer to the Department of Justice for investigation. 

Friday's letter, however, states that Thomas actually did report his the sources of his wife's income until 1997, therefore heightening the inference that the justice had not "misunderstood the reporting instructions," as he asserted in January when he filed seven pages of addenda correcting his omissions over a six-year period. Citing information obtained by the left-leaning watchdog groups Common Cause and Alliance for Justice, Slaughter wrote that "Justice Thomas accurately filed his financial disclosure forms, including his wife's employment, for as many as 10 years beginning in 1987 when he was Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission."

Noting in the new letter that the accurate filing continued through Thomas' tenure as a federal appeals court judge and his first five years as a Supreme Court justice, Slaughter wrote that "it is very difficult for Justice Thomas to make a credible argument that he understood the filing instructions for ten years but then misunderstood them for the next thirteen years."

Indeed, this new information appears to strengthen her argument to her colleagues that Thomas' actions -- or, rather, inactions -- were willful, therefore warranting a Justice Department inquiry. Only 19 other members of Congress joined her September letter; Friday's letter had the support of another 51 members. 

Still, that is only 12 percent of the House, and all are Democrats. And with Justices Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia, as well as retired Justice John Paul Stevens, already waving away questions about their colleague's ethics, it is not likely that the chief justice or the Judicial Conference will accede to Slaughter's request.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/18/clarence-thomas-ethics-louise-slaughter-letter_n_1101854.html

Scalia and Thomas dine with healthcare law challengers

The day the Supreme Court gathered behind closed doors to consider the politically divisive question of whether it would hear a challenge to President Obama’s healthcare law, two of its justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, were feted at a dinner sponsored by the law firm that will argue the case before the high court.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia speaks to a policy forum in Washington last month. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

The occasion was last Thursday, when all nine justices met for a conference to pore over the petitions for review. One of the cases at issue was a suit brought by 26 states challenging the sweeping healthcare overhaul passed by Congress last year, a law that has been a rallying cry for conservative activists nationwide.

The justices agreed to hear the suit; indeed, a landmark 5 1/2-hour argument is expected in March, and the outcome is likely to further roil the 2012 presidential race, which will be in full swing by the time the court’s decision is released.

The lawyer who will stand before the court and argue that the law should be thrown out is likely to be Paul Clement, who served as U.S. solicitor general during the George W. Bush administration.

Clement’s law firm, Bancroft PLLC, was one of almost two dozen firms that helped sponsor the annual dinner of the Federalist Society, a longstanding group dedicated to advocating conservative legal principles. Another firm that sponsored the dinner, Jones Day, represents one of the trade associations that challenged the law, the National Federation of Independent Business.

Another sponsor was pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc, which has an enormous financial stake in the outcome of the litigation. The dinner was held at a Washington hotel hours after the court's conference over the case. In attendance was, among others, Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican and an avowed opponent of the healthcare law.

The featured guests at the dinner? Scalia and Thomas.

It’s nothing new: The two justices have been attending Federalist Society events for years. And it’s nothing that runs afoul of ethics rules. In fact, justices are exempt from the Code of Conduct that governs the actions of lower federal judges.

If they were, they arguably fell under code’s Canon 4C, which states, “A judge may attend fund-raising events of law-related and other organizations although the judge may not be a speaker, a guest of honor, or featured on the program of such an event.“

Nevertheless, the sheer proximity of Scalia and Thomas to two of the law firms in the case, as well as to a company with a massive financial interest, was enough to alarm ethics-in-government activists.

“This stunning breach of ethics and indifference to the code belies claims by several justices that the court abides by the same rules that apply to all other federal judges,” said Bob Edgar, the president of Common Cause. “The justices were wining and dining at a black-tie fundraiser with attorneys who have pending cases before the court. Their appearance and assistance in fundraising for this event undercuts any claims of impartiality, and is unacceptable.”

Scalia and Thomas have shown little regard for critics who say they too readily mix the business of the court with agenda-driven groups such as the Federalist Society. And Thomas’ wife, Ginni, is a high-profile conservative activist.

Moreover, conservatives argue that it’s Justice Elena Kagan who has an ethical issue, not Scalia and Thomas. Kagan served as solicitor general in the Obama administration when the first legal challenges to the law were brought at the trial court level. Her critics have pushed for Kagan to recuse herself from hearing the case, saying that she was too invested in defending the law then to be impartial now. Kagan has given no indication she will do so.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-scalia-thomas-20111114,0,7978224.story?track=rss

Sushi, Coal, Mercury & You

Rich Gelfond keeps his Oscar statue in a black cloth sack in the bottom drawer of his desk. He received it as CEO of the film-technology company Imax, for "the method of filming and exhibiting high fidelity, large-format, wide angle format, motion pictures," although when I read the inscription aloud, he feigns surprise, as if he's forgotten how he came to own it. "Is that what it's for?" he muses. "An Oscar's kind of like potato chips—when you have one, you need more. Kind of like tuna sushi."

Tuna sushi—and the devastating repercussions of Gelfond's onetime passion for it—has been the topic of conversation for the past hour, and Gelfond smiles slyly and a bit ruefully at his joke. With his round face, long blond eyelashes, and startled blue eyes, he seems placid but with an underlying current of energy, like a guinea pig who just drank a latte. For years he was an avid tennis player who also loved running around the Central Park reservoir or near his home in eastern Long Island.

But about six years ago he began to feel oddly off balance, as though he might fall at any moment. He tried running on grass instead of asphalt but finally had to give it up altogether. It was probably stress, he reasoned, opting to stick to tennis. It was only when he nearly fell over while trying to serve that he decided to see a doctor. 

More symptoms came to light in the physician's office. Gelfond had a tremor in his hands and had trouble putting his fingers together. A neurologist, worried that the symptoms pointed to a brain tumor, ordered an immediate MRI. But there was no tumor, and as he underwent a battery of increasingly unpleasant tests and scans, Gelfond's symptoms worsened. His feet tingled (a condition called neuropathy), and his balance became so off-kilter that it made walking difficult. "If I was with someone, I would walk close to them so, if I fell, I could grab on," he recalls.

Then, six months into his illness, Gelfond's neurologist asked a seemingly random question: "Do you eat a lot of fish?"

As he underwent increasingly unpleasant tests and scans, Gelfond's symptoms worsened. His feet tingled, and his balance became so off-kilter that he could barely walk.

"As a matter of fact, I do," Gelfond replied. It turns out that he had been eating seafood at two out of every three daily meals as part of his healthy lifestyle. What he didn't know was that some kinds of fish—particularly the tuna and swordfish he favored—are high in mercury, a potent nerve poison. A blood test revealed that his mercury level was 76 micrograms per liter (mcg/L), 13 times the EPA's recommended maximum of 5.8 mcg/L. It was so high that he got a call from the New York State Department of Public Health, asking whether he worked at a toxic-waste site. 

"I was just so frustrated that I was trying to do something good for my body and in fact I was poisoning myself," Gelfond tells me, leaning forward in his chair. "I had no awareness."

Neither did most of the people he talked to, including physicians. To them, mercury poisoning was something that happened to the mad hatters of the 19th century or to the victims of industrial waste in Minamata, Japan, in the 1950s. It didn't happen to 21st-century New York executives. Having found the source of his illness, Gelfond's neurologist had no idea how to treat it, and when Gelfond contacted other New York physicians, most told him that mercury couldn't possibly be causing his symptoms because adults aren't susceptible to mercury poisoning.

"There has been a tendency to say adults are resistant," says Michael Gochfeld, professor of environmental medicine at New Jersey's Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, which has treated a number of people who have gotten mercury poisoning from fish. "We don't really understand why some adults are sensitive and others seem to be quite tolerant."

The main prescription for Gelfond's mercury poisoning was to stop ingesting it. Once he eliminated high-mercury fish from his diet, his levels began to drop; within six months he was down to 18 mcg/L. One year after his diagnosis, he was able to walk without assistance. Six months after that, he was back to playing tennis. Today he says he's about 60 percent recovered. He still has trouble running long distances, and his symptoms resurface when he's fatigued. Mercury has changed his life forever.

"You never hear about fish. Tuna fish—it's just one of those things you wouldn't think to be scared of."

A few weeks earlier I'd spent the evening at a salon in Billings, Montana, watching stylists give people what amounted to very tiny haircuts. The Sierra Club was offering free mercury testing there and at other places around the country, and about 40 people had gathered at the Sanctuary Salon to provide hair samples for analysis.

The room was perfumy with hair products and buzzing with blow-dryers. Young women sat down to have a few strands of hair clipped close to the scalp, murmuring the usual things women say in salons: "I hate my hair!" and "Can you get rid of the gray?"

They also wanted to understand whether their own eating habits put them at risk. Tierani Bursett, 27, asked whether she should be concerned about the walleye she catches while ice fishing (she should). A local newscaster, who didn't want to be named, said she was "addicted to sushi" and wondered if she should be worried (yes). The mother of a four-month-old wanted to know if mercury passes through breast milk (it does), and an older man asked whether mercury is a concern for people over 60 (it is). Luzia Willis, one of the salon's manicurists, was feeling nervous about all the tuna she buys at Costco (with good reason). "Why is there extra mercury in the fish?" she asked. "What's causing it?"

But What Fish Can I Eat? Click image below to see the full chart.
John Blanchard (Sources: FDA and EPA)

The answer can be found all around her: at the Colstrip power plant east of Billings, which uses a rail car's worth of coal every five minutes (see "High Plains Poison," March/April 2010); in the coal-mining operations to the east and southeast; in the long chain of rail cars that chugs through town each night full of black ore bound for boilers across the country; and at the J. E. Corette power plant right in town. While there is always going to be some mercury in the environment—it occurs naturally in the earth's crust and can be released into the air during forest fires or volcanic eruptions—70 percent of what we're exposed to comes from human activities, and most of that comes from burning coal.

U.S. coal-fired power plants pump more than 48 tons of mercury into the air each year. The Martin Lake Power Plant in Tatum, Texas, spews 2,660 pounds per annum all on its own (it burns lignite, a particularly mercury-heavy form of coal). Compared with the vast amounts of mercury churning out of Asia, the U.S. contribution is fairly small—about 3 percent of the global total. Roughly a third of our emissions settles within our borders, poisoning lakes and waterways. The rest cycles through the atmosphere, with much of it eventually winding up in the world's oceans.

Inorganic mercury isn't easily assimilated into the human body, and if the mercury emitted by power plants stayed in that form, it probably wouldn't have made Gelfond and many others sick. But when inorganic mercury creeps into aquatic sediments and marshes (as well as mid-depths of oceans), bacteria convert it into methylmercury, an organic form that not only is easily assimilated but also accumulates in living tissue as it moves up the food chain: The bigger and older the fish, the more mercury in its meat. It takes only a tiny amount to do serious damage: One-seventieth of a teaspoon can pollute a 20-acre lake to the point where its fish are unsafe to eat. Thousands of tons a year settle in the world's oceans, where they bioaccumulate in carnivorous fish. Forty percent of human mercury exposure comes from a single source—Pacific tuna.

"Ninety-five to 100 percent of the methylmercury that we acquire in our bodies comes from the consumption of seafood," explains Stony Brook University professor Nicholas Fisher, director of the Consortium for Interdisciplinary Environmental Research, which oversees the (newly endowed) Gelfond Fund for Mercury Research and Education. (Seafood, in this case, includes fish from lakes and rivers.) When EPA researchers tested predatory and bottom-dwelling fish at 500 U.S. lakes and reservoirs in 2009, they found mercury in each and every one; close to half of the fish had levels so high they were unsafe to eat. Another 2009 study, by the U.S. Geological Survey, found mercury-contaminated fish in each of the 291 streams and rivers tested. Mercury pollution causes U.S. waters to be closed to fishing more often than does any other source of contamination. 

In March, after more than 20 years of delay, the EPA proposed a new federal air pollution standard for power plant emissions of mercury and other toxics. The new rule, which was vigorously opposed by the coal industry, will require power plants to use "maximum achievable control technology" to filter mercury from their smokestacks by 2014. The result of a 2008 lawsuit by the Sierra Club and other environmental groups, the rule is expected to cost industry more than $10 billion to implement.

That may sound like a lot—unless you compare it with the cost of doing nothing. Dr. Leonardo Trasande, an associate professor of preventative medicine and pediatrics at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, did exactly that, in a study published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine in 2006. He calculated that between 316,000 and 647,000 American babies are born each year with mercury levels high enough to cause measurable brain damage. Because every drop in IQ results in a loss of economic productivity, he estimated that the mercury emitted by coal-fired power plants costs the nation $1.3 billion each year. As he explained in a Senate briefing in 2005, "those costs will recur year after year, with each new birth cohort, so long as mercury emissions are not controlled. By contrast, the cost of installing stack filters is a one-time expense."

Many of the same coal-industry supporters who question the science of climate change also deny that mercury harms public health. "To actually cause poisoning or a premature death you have to get a large concentration of mercury into the body," insisted Texas representative Joe Barton at a congressional hearing on the new EPA pollution rules earlier this year. "I'm not a medical doctor, but my hypothesis is that's not going to happen!"

The experiences of fish lovers like Gelfond and actor Jeremy Piven (who famously pulled out of a Broadway show, citing mercury poisoning) refute Barton's hypothesis, but theirs are admittedly extreme cases. After all, the average American eats less than one serving of fish per week. Many eat far more, however; one researcher extrapolated from existing data that there are up to 184,000 people in the United States with blood mercury levels above 58 mcg/L, a level at which they would likely show adverse symptoms. 

The symptoms of mercury toxicity are fairly well established. They include lack of balance and coordination, trouble concentrating, loss of fine motor skills, tremors, muscle weakness, memory problems, slurred speech, an awkward gait, hearing loss, hair loss, insomnia, tingling in the limbs, and loss of peripheral vision. Long-term exposure may also increase the risk of cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases and reduce the concentration and mobility of sperm.

What's unclear is how much mercury it takes to make you sick. Nearly everyone feels fine when the level of mercury in their blood is below 5.8 mcg/L, which the EPA says is safe for pregnant women. And most—although not all—exhibit symptoms at 100 mcg/L. But some people show symptoms with levels as low as 7 mcg/L, and others feel right as rain despite being above 100 mcg/L.

Physicians speculate that susceptibility to mercury could be genetic, or the result of diet or stress. It also seems that people can have mercury-related impairments without realizing it. In an Italian study from 2003 comparing 22 men who frequently ate tuna with 22 who didn't, the tuna eaters (who had a mean level of 41.5 mcg/L) fared significantly worse on cognitive tests, despite having no outward symptoms of poisoning.

One thing that isn't in question, though, is that developing fetuses are particularly sensitive to the toxic effects of methylmercury. Two out of three large-scale studies have found that children born with it in their system have trouble with coordination, concentration, language, and memory—and continue to have the same deficits many years later. 

Nancy Lanphear is a behavioral developmental pediatrician who works at a clinic in Vancouver for children with disabilities like autism or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Several years ago, a mother came into her clinic with a four-and-a-half-year-old girl who had cerebral palsy as well as speech and motor delays. But what attracted Lanphear's attention was that the child was drooling.

"I'm looking at this four-year-old and saying, 'This is mercury,'" Lanphear recalls, hypersalivation being a classic sign of mercury poisoning. The child's chart showed that a heavy metals screening at age two had found high mercury levels in both mother and child, as well as in the child's grandfather. The mother recalled being encouraged by her physician to eat fish during her pregnancy; she ate tuna or other seafood two to four times a week, sure that she was helping her baby's development.

"She knows that she's not to blame, that it was inadvertent, but there's still some grief there," Lanphear says of the mother. "It's not something that's going away, even though the child's mercury levels are now normal. The damage was done to the developing brain." Lanphear uses the story to remind obstetricians and pediatricians to be on the lookout for mercury poisoning in their patients. 

The EPA estimates that at least 8 percent of U.S. women of childbearing age have blood mercury levels above 5.8 mcg/L. If you zero in on communities that regularly eat fish, the prevalence is much higher. In the Northeast, one out of every five women has a mercury level exceeding the EPA threshold. In New York City, it's one out of every four, and close to half of the city's Asian population have elevated mercury levels, as do two-thirds of the city's foreign-born Chinese.

High-mercury pockets also exist on the West Coast. Between 2000 and 2001, San Francisco physician Jane Hightower tested 116 patients who said they frequently ate fish. She found elevated mercury levels among 89 percent of them, with half above 10 mcg/L. Many of these patients had reported nonspecific symptoms like headaches, nausea, depression, and trouble concentrating, and had been searching for an explanation for months or years.

Since that first survey, Hightower has treated hundreds of mercury-exposed people from all walks of life. Among her patients was then-five-year-old Sophie Chabon, the daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, whose books include the best-seller Bad Mother. Sophie had been an early talker and walker, but then she seemed to hit a wall, suddenly unable to sound out words she used to know how to read and even forgetting how to tie her shoes. A blood test turned up mercury levels of 13 mcg/L. The culprit: twice-weekly tuna sandwiches.

As Sophie cut tuna out of her diet, her mercury levels dropped, and her stalled development surged ahead again. Now in high school, she has a passion for history, film, and French and shows no sign of any lasting effects from the mercury exposure. Still, Waldman fumes when she thinks about what might have happened if they hadn't caught the problem so early. "I blame our country for not [caring] about what we're spewing into the atmosphere," she says. "This is about coal, pure and simple. You wouldn't go and break your child's bones one by one, but we tolerate this kind of poison that's ruining their minds. It's insane."

While Hightower's wealthy patients tend to eat sushi and expensive tuna, swordfish, and halibut, poor Americans eat canned light tuna—often subsidized by the federal Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program—and fish they hook themselves in local rivers, lakes, or bays. Immigrants are particularly likely to fish for food, often without understanding the risks of eating their catch. The average Latino angler, for instance, consumes twice as much mercury daily as the EPA considers safe, while a 2010 study of subsistence fishing in California found that some anglers were getting 10 times that dose. The same study found that anglers with children had a higher mercury intake than those without, probably because families with more mouths to feed rely more on food that can be caught rather than bought. 

The boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey, is a 2.5-mile strip of salt air and stimulation, with arcades and carnival rides, pirate-themed mini golf and fried clams. It was here that a young woman named Jaime Bowen stood in front of a microphone in June and nervously contemplated the crowd. A 31-year-old home-healthcare worker with two children, Bowen had gone to a Sierra Club-sponsored hair-testing event with an environmentally minded friend a month before, more as a lark than out of any real concern for her health. "It was kind of a joke going to get my hair clipped," she says. "Then, to get the results—it was a reality check."

Of the 36 people at the event who were willing to share their results, 8 had elevated mercury levels. Bowen was one of them. Hers was 1.37 ppm—too low to cause health problems, but higher than the EPA considers safe for women of childbearing age. (Hair mercury levels are evaluated differently than blood mercury levels, but a hair level of 1.2 ppm is roughly equivalent to a blood level of 5.8 mcg/L.) Now she was concerned about her two children, who, after all, ate what she ate. "You hear, 'Don't break that thermometer.' You never hear about the fish," she says. "I made my kids tuna fish sandwiches the other day, and now I feel horrible. Tuna fish—it's just one of those things you wouldn't think to be scared of."

And so Bowen stood at the podium, gripping the paper that held her prepared remarks. She talked about fish and her fears about her children's safety, and about coal. To her surprise, she looked up to see that people up and down the boardwalk had stopped to listen. "I did want them to know," she says. "I'm just a regular person—I'm not doing anything different than those people."

Behind her, the ocean sparkled, sending salty breezes drifting over the boardwalk. A seagull circled, white and gray, its bright eyes scanning the scene below: the crowded boardwalk, a fish-filled sea, and, tucked in a bay just a little to the northwest, the lighthouse-shaped smokestack of the BL England generating station, producing 450 megawatts of electricity, powered by West Virginia coal.

Dashka Slater is a regular contributor to Sierra. Her Web site is dashkaslater.com; she tweets @DashkaSlater.

This article was funded by the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign.

http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/201111/mercury.aspx

A Doctor Warns : 'Never Eat These Three Foods'

When asked what one food he would ban if he could, PETA's chief medical adviser, Dr. Neal Barnard, responded with three: hot dogs, bacon, and ham. We'll let him tell you why! 

In an interview with Forbes magazine, the bestselling author and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine [http://pcrm.org/] cited those three processed meats as foods that no one, especially children, should ever eat.  

In 2007," he says, "the World Cancer Research Fund and American Institute for Cancer Research released the most comprehensive review on diet and cancer ever published, prepared by the world's leading experts, and it was quite damning about the link between processed meat and colorectal cancer. In early 2011, an update to the report encouraged people to avoid processed meats altogether.

But the disease that's weighing on Dr. Barnard's mind and that has increased threefold in just the last 30 years isn't cancer—it's diabetes. And here again, meat is to blame. 

Dr. Barnard notes that the fats that people consume, prevalent in meat, make muscle and liver cells resistant to the action of insulin, triggering diabetes. "The forecast from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is frightening: one in three people born in 2000 will eventually develop the disease," he says. "The medical burden is bad enough—the average person with diabetes loses well over a decade of life."  

To read the rest of Dr. Barnard's eye-opening interview, visit Forbes.com. And to find tasty recipes that are 100 percent ham-, bacon-, and hot dog–free, visit our "Living" page. 

http://www.peta.org/b/thepetafiles/archive/2011/11/09/a-doctor-warns-never-eat-these-three-foods.aspx

Switching To A Community Bank? Here's What You Need To Know

David Meinert, owner of several Seattle businesses, including 5-Point Cafe, Big Mario's Pizza and Onto Entertainment, recently switched his business accounts from Bank of America and Chase to Seattle Bank. He says many small-business owners he knows are following his lead -- they have also been wanting to make a move but were just waiting for someone to point them to a good local alternative. So if you're fed up with the big guys and ready to transfer to a small bank or credit union, how do you find the right one? Attorney, author and small-business advocate Barbara Weltman provides these tips for a smooth transition:

Get referrals. Not all small, local, regional, community banks are created equal. Ask your circle of friends and associates for referrals. "Just as you would for finding a good doctor, lawyer or insurance agent, you have to ask around to find a good banker," Weltman says.

Beyond your immediate circle, be sure to also ask around at networking events. It helps that small banks are out there looking for you, too. "I've met a number of small-business bankers at local networking events," Weltman says. "They want new customers."

Research the fees. "Let's face it -- banks have to make money, so you're going to have to pay one way or the other," says Weltman. "Obviously, there are monthly costs you want to assess -- checking fees, check cashing fees, ATM fees, payroll deposit fees, direct deposit for employee payroll checks, business credit cards. They have a complete menu of banking services. You want to know exactly what it's going to cost you." Also, if you're planning on joining a credit union, ask whether they charge membership fees.

Ask about small-business programs. "A lot of banks want to attract small business with special features," Weltman says. Ask about low fee or no fee checking. 

Communicate and negotiate. "If the reason you're moving is access to credit, it's better to have that talk upfront and to come clean for the reason you're making the change and share some financial information, to be sure it's really going to happen," says Weltman. The good news: "Because the small banks and community banks are more interpersonal, a lot of these features are more negotiable," she adds. "Ask 'what can you do for me?'"

Visit in person. Though a lot can be done online, Weltman says, "I'm old-fashioned. I think pressing the flesh makes a difference." Also, remember that one of the major benefits of banking with a small bank is the opportunity to have a personal relationship, so seeing how you click with the banker should be an important consideration.

Be patient. As tempting as it may be to stage a quick exodus from a big bank to send a message, making the switch may not be as simple as closing a Netflix account. Weltman says the actual changeover may take about three months or at least two checking statements. "Make sure outstanding checks have cleared," she says."It may take a while. It's not so much that it's complicated -- it's just a matter of making sure everything has cleared before you close up the old accounts." As a result, she warns you may have to pay duplicate fees for any period of overlap.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/04/switching-your-business-accounts-to-a-small-bank_n_1073036.html

Is McRib a McFib???

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) announced this week that it had filed an SEC complaint against Smithfield Farms, the large pig producer that supplies pork for McDonald's divisive, limited-edition McRib sandwich. The complaint, which is posted in its entirety online, alleges that the pigs' living conditions are cruel and unusual, citing reports of pigs covered in blood andsows being confined to tiny gestational grates, which are illegal in some states.

This isn't the first time animal rights' groups -- or even the HSUS -- has targeted Smithfield for its record on animal welfare. In December 2010, the HSUS got ahold of gruesome footage of a Smithfield Farms facility, leading respected figures like Mark Bittman to call for a boycott of meat from the company.

Indeed, this most recent complaint seems more like the latest salvo in an ongoing dispute than like a breaking development specifically occasioned by the McRib. An unsympathetic analysis of the HSUS action would probably lead to the conclusion that the group is tying its complaint to the McRib in order to drum up public attention for the cause. The sandwich, after all, has long been a lightning rod for press coverage. 

That's not to say that the McRib is some kind of pristine product of nature, of course. Before the HSUS complaint surfaced, several media outlets had conducted investigations into the myriad of bizarre ingredients that go into the boneless "rib" patty at the center of the sandwich. 

The pork bits that make up the meat include "tripe, heart and scalded stomach," which is bad enough. But the chemical additives that go into the sandwich are even worse. Allegedly, when the additives aren't binding lung and liver bits together, they're used for keeping yoga mats springy and shoe soles white.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/04/mcrib-lawsuit-humane-society-smithfield-farms_n_1075992.html

What Kim Kardashian's divorce says about marriage

 
 

What do gay marriage and Proposition 8 have to do with Kim Kardashian? Not a whole lot on the face of it, yet somehow the news of the celebrity's divorce so soon after her wedding has led to a new chorus of anger over the passage of Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.

Partners in same-sex relationships have pointed out in online comments that their partnerships, whether formally called marriage or not, have lasted decades. Other gay-rights supporters rage that it's people like Kardashian who harm the institution of marriage, not the gay and lesbian couples who want to wed.

Much as I support same-sex marriage rights, this argument doesn't wash and does no good to advance the cause. Opponents of gay marriage will simply say that both quick divorce and same-sex weddings cheapen the institution.

Beyond that, the argument for same-sex marriage shouldn't be about how long such marriages will last. Some marriages between heterosexual couples will end quickly, and so will some same-sex marriages. Some heterosexual unions are strong and loving, and others are fraught with problems. Same for gay and lesbian relationships.

The reason to support same-sex marriage isn't about whether such couples will form better households or stay together longer. It's that marriage is a basic civil right. Just as it cannot be withheld from couples based on their race or religion, it should not be forbidden to couples based on their sexual orientation. Whether those marriages ultimately prove to be stronger on average than heterosexual marriages is irrelevant. We don't ban adults from marrying based on a perception that their marriages won't last, and we shouldn't, whether they are gay, straight or Kim Kardashian.

http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2011/11/what-kim-kardashians-divorce-says-about-same-sex-marriage.html

Leonardo DiCaprio Stars In Gay Love Story: "J. Edgar"

To transform himself into an aging J. Edgar Hoover, Leonardo DiCaprio sat for hours at a time while makeup artists gave him liver spots, yellow teeth and big, bulbous love handles. He spends a good chunk of Clint Eastwood’s film “J. Edgar” that way, sweating and sneering in the unforgiving lighting of F.B.I. headquarters.

The part also meant memorizing endless monologues that needed to be delivered with Hoover’s own breakneck cadence. Additionally Mr. DiCaprio, who typically comes accessorized with a supermodel girlfriend in real life, had to wrestle aggressively with a man and then kiss him.

Oh, and wear a dress. 

 

 Leonardo DiCaprio, as the longtime F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover, with Clint Eastwood, the director. More Photos »

 

Faced with a role with demands like that, most superstar actors, even those eager to catch the attention of Oscar voters, would have turned and run. Look unhandsome and unheroic? Too big a risk, even with Mr. Eastwood at the wheel. But Mr. DiCaprio, at least the post-“Titanic” one, has made a career of highly risky choices, and somehow it keeps paying off not only on the awards circuit — he has been nominated for three Academy Awards — but at the box office as well. 

“When I can’t immediately define the character, and there’s an element of mystery to it and still a lot to be explored, that’s when I say yes,” the 36-year-old Mr. DiCaprio said in an interview last week on a patio at the Bel Air Hotel here. “I like those kinds of complicated characters. I just do.” 

Hollywood typically doesn’t like that answer. The star system may have become more subtle since the days of Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart, but it’s still a system: American actors are supposed to be more steady persona, less shape shifter. “The apparatus likes to box actors up,” said Brian Grazer, a producer of “J. Edgar,” which is set for release on Wednesday. “Once they become successful in one role, get them into picture after picture where they can do exactly the same thing.” 

Mr. Grazer added: “To resist that, you have to make very hard choices. Most people are too afraid.”

It probably helps that Mr. DiCaprio has managed to retain a mystique about his personal life in the celebrity blogger era. Keeping that distance is something he works on. In an interview, for instance, he didn’t pretend to be a friend the way a lot of stars do. He likes his privacy, but this game also makes his performances more successful; people are more likely to accept him as a larger-than-life character if they don’t have a very clear idea of who he is off screen. 

Mr. DiCaprio’s choices may be unusual, but he does have his own version of sticking with what works. The characters are mostly tortured, unsympathetic, larger-than-life guys created with the help of a tiny club of A-list directors, most notably Martin Scorsese. A urine-collecting Howard Hughes in “The Aviator.” A Zimbabwean smuggler in “Blood Diamond.” A mental patient in “Shutter Island.” A dream extractor in “Inception.”

 

“Leonardo could make a lot of money making mechanical genre pictures, but he wants to be challenged,” Mr. Eastwood said by telephone. “And it’s much more of a challenge to play someone who doesn’t have the slightest thing in common with you.”

Next on Mr. DiCaprio’s docket is the title role in Baz Luhrmann’s remake of “The Great Gatsby,” and he’s ready to play Frank Sinatra in another Scorsese biopic. “That is in Mr. Scorsese’s hands,” he said of a potential Sinatra film, pausing to pop a wedge of watermelon into his mouth and pour himself another cup of coffee. “I’m always incredibly game for anything that he decides to do.” 

“J. Edgar” fits snuggly into this canon. The best biopics offer a portrait of person, warts and all, and invite viewers to make their own judgments about him, and Mr. Eastwood’s film strives to do just that. Hoover is depicted as a brilliant patriot who invented modern forensics and stopped at nothing to protect America through eight presidents and three wars. But the omnipowerful F.B.I. director was an impediment, to put it mildly, to the civil rights movement and worked as hard to distort the truth as he did to collect it (and file it away) to secure his power.

All of that is more or less fact. The treacherous part of “J. Edgar,” written by Dustin Lance Black, an Oscar winner for his “Milk” screenplay, involves the gray. Was Hoover homosexual? Nobody knows for sure. He certainly had an unusually close relationship with his F.B.I. colleague Clyde Tolson, played in the film by Armie Hammer (“The Social Network”). Even less clear is whether Hoover liked to wear women’s clothes, but Mr. Eastwood and Mr. DiCaprio decided to retain Mr. Black’s artful nod to the rumor. 

“Obviously there’s a love story here,” Mr. Eastwood said. “Whether it is a gay love story or something else — well, the audience can interpret it. My intention was to show two men who really love each other, and beyond that it’s none of my business.” 

Mr. DiCaprio’s risk taking is cheered by the Hollywood contingent that loves serious films, raising him to the level of deity for his willingness to make the kind of drama that is an endangered species at major studios these days. But a more business-minded crowd — agents, studio chiefs — says taking on all of these biopics is a mistake. The worry is that at some point Mr. DiCaprio will become uninteresting to audiences if he doesn’t pepper his road with a wider variety of roles.

Jeanine Basinger, chairwoman of the film studies department at Wesleyan University, calls this “the Paul Muni problem.” Muni was perhaps the top actor at Warner Brothers in the 1930s, starring as powerful characters in films like “Scarface.” He also had a penchant for biographical parts, winning an Oscar for “The Story of Louis Pasteur” (1936). But he developed a type of obsession with historical roles and faded.

Does Mr. DiCaprio worry about boxing himself in by trying to stay out of the box? If he does, he’s not admitting it. “Never. No. I don’t,” he said quickly. 

Although Ms. Basinger raises the point, she’s not terribly worried herself. Few other actors have as much raw talent as Mr. DiCaprio, she noted, and the fact that he has been able to move from the 1980s sitcom “Growing Pains” to “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” to “Titanic” to “The Departed” bodes well for his future growth.

“He is always very strongly present as DiCaprio, yet he can really make us believe that he is another person,” Ms. Basinger said. “That’s incredible talent.”

Mr. DiCaprio’s Oscar nominations have been for “Gilbert Grape,” which he made when he was 19 years old, “The Aviator” and “Blood Diamond.” Veteran awards strategists (not working on behalf of “J. Edgar”) think he is a shoo-in for a nomination this year, along with George Clooney for his role in “The Descendants,” Alexander Payne’s look at a man trying to reconnect with his two daughters after his wife falls into a coma. But it’s still too soon to tell whether another Academy Awards ceremony is in Mr. DiCaprio’s immediate future. 

Leonardo DiCaprio, with Judi Dench, who plays his mother in "J. Edgar." More Photos »

Will “J. Edgar” be a hit? Also unclear. But Mr. DiCaprio does have an insurance policy in that ever pesky “Titanic,” which will be rereleased in April in 3-D. If a 3-D conversion of “The Lion King” can generate almost $100 million, as it did for Disney last month, “Titanic” should easily make a major box office splash.

Mr. DiCaprio said he hadn’t thought about it much and had come to terms with being continually associated with the dopey Jack Dawson. “I’m not haunted by it, but it certainly follows me,” he said. “I’ve been to the Amazon, and people with no clothes on, and I’m not exaggerating, know about that film. I’ve accepted it.”

In person Mr. DiCaprio comes across exactly as you suspect he would. He was tired, arriving at a morning interview the day after flying back to Los Angeles from Australia, where he had been filming “The Great Gatsby.” But he was also playful — those blue eyes may have been jet lagged but they still managed to twinkle — and exceedingly polite. 

“Bear with me while I come to my senses,” he said with a smile, adjusting the blue baseball cap he was wearing (backward, naturally). The next minute he was asking whether Sian Grigg, his Hoover makeup artist, could be given recognition in this article. “I’m sure she had multiple panic attacks trying to get me ready,” he said. “I could be quite squirmy.” 

He lit up when talking about movies and people that have influenced him, particularly Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard,” which he said he discussed with Mr. Eastwood during the making of “J. Edgar.” They wanted to emulate how that 1950 film handled voice-over narration. But Mr. DiCaprio also seemed to go on auto pilot from time to time, answering in the way that actors tend to answer. (Lucky to be employed this, trusting your gut that.) And personal questions are not appreciated. Just why is it that he dates all of those supermodels?

He threw a look — um, duh, wouldn’t you if you could? — and then frosted over. “I’ve never really talked about that kind of stuff, and, very respectfully, I’m going to keep it that way,” he said. 

He’d rather stick to “J. Edgar,” particularly that prosthetic makeup, which he found frustrating and claustrophobic. He estimates that he spent about two weeks of the 39-day shoot as “old Hoover,” which required sitting up to five hours a day in Ms. Grigg’s makeup chair. “To stay in character and to fight the urge not to rip it off at times and to not feel trapped inside it is extremely hard,” he said. “It’s like you’ve been slathered in honey and wrapped in a giant duvet.” (Told by a reporter that he had just created a new fantasy for his crazier female fans, he laughed.) 

Mr. DiCaprio did months of research to be able to inhabit Hoover fully. He flew to Washington with Mr. Black to tour the Justice Department and one of Hoover’s former homes. Mr. DiCaprio also met with Cartha D. DeLoach, one of the only people still alive who worked closely with Hoover, and taped their hours-long conversation. (Hoover would have been proud.) “I wanted him to tell me how he walked, how he talked, what his hands looked like, what his desk looked like, what was above his desk,” Mr. DiCaprio said.

“The research of these roles is half the fun and half the challenge — maybe more,” he added. “It’s what makes it exciting to me.” 

Mr. Black recalled that Mr. DiCaprio dug up obscure film footage of a young Hoover giving speeches and read through transcripts of his Congressional testimony. “I had gone with a more redacted version of those, leaving out some of the more flowery, Hoovery language,” Mr. Black said. “Hoover liked to weave a lot of illusions of slimy, slippery animals into his speeches at that time. Leo loved it. He said, ‘Come on, we’ve got to use this stuff.’ ” 

(Mr. Black also remembers Mr. DiCaprio’s fondness for German chocolate cupcakes. “Some of those pounds on later Hoover were not prosthetic,” he said. “I’ll say it. Leo got a little fat.”)

DiCapriophiles will be quick to note that he does have some important things in common with Hoover, at least on the surface. Hoover, for instance, was very close to his mother, played by Judi Dench in the film. Mr. DiCaprio has a tight relationship with his own mom, Irmelin DiCaprio, who raised him in the Loz Feliz section of Los Angeles and drove him around to auditions. 

“The difference is that Hoover’s mother told him what to do, and my mother listened to me,” he said. “My mother was incredibly supportive. She wasn’t a stage mom and really didn’t care either way if I was an actor. She just listened to this arrogant little kid saying he wanted to be an actor and didn’t laugh in my face.”

Hoover was also a man who lost himself in his own ego and his need to be the center of attention — something that Mr. DiCaprio, as a student of Hollywood, has to see as a potential fate for himself if he’s not careful. (Hello, “Sunset Boulevard.”) 

Then again, maybe not. “It’s not something that I actively worry about,” he said. “I’m fully aware that every career is fleeting in some respects.” 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/movies/leonardo-dicaprio-in-clint-eastwoods-j-edgar.html?_r=1&hp

Would You Eat a Dog Disguised as a Chicken???

Washington, D.C.'s Woof Walk dog event turned into a squawk stroll when a little dog named Mongo dressed as a chicken challenged dog lovers to ask themselves why they call one animal "family" and another animal "dinner."

While Mongo's assistants explained to Woof Walkers that chickens are as smart and social as dogs, one former chicken farmer backed them up, saying, "I know they are. I used to have thousands of them."

As that farmer can attest, some chickens are outgoing and fearless, while others are more reserved. Chickens can complete complex mental tasks, and they hand down knowledge from one generation to the next. Like all animals, chickens love their families, value their lives, and don't want to suffer and die.

If you wouldn't eat your dog, give chickens the same respect. Become a former chicken-eater—it's easy with tasty, you'd-never-know-it's-faux chicken, like Gardein Chick'n Filets, Boca Chik'N Patties, and MorningStar Farms Meal Starters Chik'n Strips.  

http://www.peta.org/b/thepetafiles/archive/2011/11/01/would-you-eat-a-dog-disguised-as-a-chicken.aspx

How Pigs, Pollution & People Taint Our Fruits And Veggies

Ashley Armstrong's parents haven't let her eat green salad in five years.

While other parents struggle to get assorted greens into their children's bellies, the Armstrongs have left salad off Ashley's plate since September 2006, when the E. coli from a bag of spinach nearly killed her. Then 2 years old, Ashley was left with just 10 percent kidney function.

 

"We were totally naive," says her mother, Elizabeth, who now serves on the board of the Center for Foodborne Illness Research and Prevention, a public health advocacy group. "We assumed that the food we bought at our grocery store was safe. We assumed that the FDA, or whomever, had checked to make sure it was safe. We've since found out that's not the case."

Inspectors failed to pinpoint the exact source of the E. coli outbreak that killed three people, sickened 205 and cost the spinach industry $100 million. About a mile from one contaminated spinach field, however, they found a wide range of suspects: high levels of the bacterium in free-range angus cows and their dung, and its genetic match turned up in local feral pigs, soil and surface water.

"There were so many different possible sources that we couldn't say for sure how the spinach got contaminated," Michele Jay-Russell, a food safety specialist at the University of California, Davis, told HuffPost. "But it raised awareness that cattle and wildlife intruding into the field or waterways could be risks for moving pathogens into the produce environment."

As far as Elizabeth Armstrong was concerned, all that mattered was that "somehow poop got in the plant."

It wasn't an isolated incident. Foodborne pathogens strike roughly one in six Americans every year, sickening 48 million, hospitalizing 128,000 and killing 3,000, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And choosing local and organic options, even going vegan, isn't enough to guarantee safety. Between 1998 and 2007, produce sickened almost 27,000 Americans in the course of nearly 700 foodborne illness outbreaks, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The nonprofit group suggests that produce outbreaks now surpass the number of outbreaks originating in poultry, beef, pork or eggs.

In their wake, these waves of outbreaks helped prompt the U.S. government to implement new regulations, including some standards specific to produce safety.

Contaminated fruits and vegetables tend to be those that grow closest to the ground -- bean sprouts, lettuce and the like -- as evidenced recently by the suspected contamination of California romaine lettuce via manure-laden lagoons and of Oregon strawberries from deer feces.

Now, America's most deadly known foodborne-illness outbreak in more than a quarter-century has added a new danger to the list: cantaloupe contaminated by the bacterial infection listeria. Since the end of July, at least 28 people have been killed and 133 sickened after eating cantaloupe grown at Jensen Farms in southeastern Colorado. (An average produce outbreak can be linked to 39 illnesses, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest.)

"We have rarely, if ever, seen this pathogen in produce," says Sandra Eskin, director of the food safety campaign with the Pew Charitable Trusts. This outbreak marks the first documented case of listeria in cantaloupe.

Only since the 1990s has produce emerged as an "important vehicle of transmission," says Jay-Russell, noting the heightened attention after the 1996 outbreak of E. coli in Odwalla unpasteurized apple juice.

One of produce's problems is that people tend to eat it raw, and therefore it misses a "kill step" such as heating or cooking. Jay-Russell says that means that oversight has to focus on the entire "food continuum, from the fields to the fork."

LISTERIA LESSONS

In Centennial, Colo., Jeni Exley, her husband and their college-age daughter ate cantaloupe from Jensen Farms with no ill effects. In nearby Littleton, however, Jeni's 84-year-old father, Herb Stevens, was not so lucky.

Before his bout with listeria, Stevens was independent. Since battling the infection, with its attendant fever, muscle aches, diarrhea and other symptoms, he requires daily nursing care and a walker.

Stevens and his wife hadn't worried about their cantaloupes. The elderly couple always bought by the half: not so much that they'd have to throw any leftovers away; cut open to offer a sneak peek inside. But listeria is invisible to the naked eye and easily transferred by knife from the rough, contaminant-inviting surface into the flesh. Once inside, the fruit's low acidity further encourages the bacteria's growth.

According to a federal report released last Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration, the state of Colorado and Jensen Farms narrowed the listeria outbreak's root cause down to poor sanitation inside a packing facility used by the farm. Tests by the investigators, including experts in agriculture, veterinary medicine and environmental health, ruled out contamination in the farms' fields and irrigation systems, as well as any links to adjacent land use or animal intrusions.

Any of these pathways were reasonably suspect in this case, given listeria's widespread presence in the environment. Research led by Martin Wiedmann, a food science expert at Cornell University, found the pathogen in samples collected throughout New York state -- from sidewalks, parks, ponds, rivers, even the middle of state parks. Another study found that farmers brought listeria home on their clothing and shoes. To a lesser extent, listeria even landed in nonagricultural homes.

The pathogen is persistent, even hardy, withstanding cold temperatures and showing an ability to survive more than a decade indoors. "Bacteria are always trying to be one step ahead of us," says Jay-Russell of UC Davis.

Fortunately, as pervasive and aggressively adaptive as it is, listeria is typically only dangerous on the order of billions of cells, Cornell's Wiedmann said. And only certain subtypes, such as the monocytogenes strain identified on the cantaloupes, repeatedly appear in human outbreaks.

Jensen Farms adhered to safe practices in their melon production operations, such as the use of drip irrigation and plastic mulch to keep cantaloupe from resting directly on the soil, according to Michael Bartolo, a senior research scientist at the Arkansas Valley Research Center in Rocky Ford, Colo. However, there was still plenty of room for contamination.

On Wednesday's media call, Sherry McGarry of the CDC described a few likely culprits in Jensen's packing facility. The building's poor design allowed water to pool on the floor, and the lack of a pre-cooling procedure may likewise have helped incubate bacteria in condensation on melons moving from the warm outdoor air to cold storage.

Of course, that first microbe had to come from somewhere. McGarry suggested that low levels of listeria may have originally been present in the fields and subsequently been carried inside. A truck used to haul culled cantaloupe to a cattle operation was also parked adjacent to the packing facility, suggesting that feces may have hitched a ride.

"The investigation is still open," says McGarry. "There may be details that we are unable to provide at this time."

THE FOUR W'S

A wide range of human and environmental factors can in fact open the door for listeria, E. coli, salmonella and another foodborne pathogens to invade the human body. Eskin points to four general categories that account for most foodborne illness outbreaks: water, waste, wildlife and workers.

Pathogens don't live well on produce that is exposed to the sun and hot temperatures -- unless there's lots of water around.

In the wake of Tropical Storm Irene, Vermont farmers are tossing out perfectly good-looking potatoes and winter squash. The farmers know that if floodwaters come in contact with the edible parts of plants, there is danger of contamination from overflowing septic systems, wastewater treatment plants or soils laden with feces from dogs, deer or cattle. Even planting seeds during or after a flood can be risky.

Those factors are all key to pathogen development and spread, but scientists see one consistent starting point. "It's safe to say that most pathogens that make humans sick begin in the gut of an animal," says Pew's Eskin.

Many animals harbor and deposit microbes that are harmful to humans, but not always to the animal itself, explains Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia. From an animal's intestinal tract, the toxins can travel into feces and then onto an agricultural field through grazing, water irrigation or as fertilizer.

Close proximity between crops and cattle, especially if the grazing cattle are upslope of a field, may be particularly dangerous for produce. In 1985, the first reported outbreak connecting listeriosis to food was traced back to sheep that grazed in the vicinity of a cabbage field harvested for coleslaw.

Wild animals poop, too. "We don't grow food in a sterile environment or in a bubble. It's outside in the dirt," says Jeffrey LeJeune, a professor of food science, environmental and animal health at The Ohio State University. "If a bird flies overhead and decides that it's had enough to eat, it could leave a deposit on a melon or a tomato."

Fences can be helpful, but such restrictions on wildlife movement are controversial among ecologists. Jay-Russell suggests other approaches that have been adopted by many California growers, such as avoiding planting where there is a major wildlife corridor and walking the fields before harvest.

Other species aren't always responsible for contamination. Human waste, a likely contributor to this year's bean sprout E. coli outbreak in Germany, is also a consistent threat to the food supply. Produce can be at risk if a single worker doesn't wash his or her hands thoroughly.

"How many people touch a cantaloupe between the farm and table? A whole lot more than the number of armadillos that do," LeJeune says. "If we could solve all the problems of all of the animals, the problem wouldn't go away."

RECALLS PROMPT REGULATION

 

The government recently caught on to the fact that investing in prevention could pay off in terms of both lives and money saved. A 2010 report published by the Produce Safety Project at Georgetown University estimates that foodborne illness linked to produce costs the United States almost $39 billion a year.

"In the last three or four years, the CDC and health departments have picked up outbreaks that five years earlier would have never been detected," says Doyle.

They are also detecting the outbreaks more quickly, thanks in part to increasingly sophisticated DNA fingerprinting tools. In the case of the listeria-contaminated cantaloupe, agencies came together with a "quick and effective response," says FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg during a media briefing last Wednesday.

Yet many experts say the real measure of progress is not the ability to detect outbreaks, but to prevent them in the first place.

In January, President Barack Obama signed into law the Food Safety Modernization Act, which establishes regulatory standards for the safe growing, harvesting, sorting, packing and storage of fresh fruits and vegetables. FSMA takes into account both manmade and naturally occurring hazards, and includes requirements to ensure the safe import of food from foreign facilities.

In effect, the new law reverses the orientation of FDA's food safety activities from reaction to prevention. "That's huge," says Eskin. "By starting at the beginning of the food chain rather than the end, hopefully they'll need to do less responding down the road."

For example, the law will require inspectors to make regular visits to fields like Jensen Farms to identify sources of contamination before it has an opportunity to make anyone ill -- similar to regular restaurant inspections. It will also create the first-ever mandatory national safety standards for produce.

"Lessons from [the listeria] outbreak speak to the urgency we have in implementing the FDA's Food Safety Modernization Act, which gives FDA much-needed tools to build a new prevention-focused food safety system," said Hamburg. Since 1998, the FDA and USDA have issued guidance on "Good Agricultural Practices" for producers to follow, but such urgings have no enforcement behind them.

As they finalize the new food safety laws, Jay-Russell says federal regulators should draw inspiration from the Leafy Green Marketing Agreement, which California and Arizona put in place after the 2006 spinach E. coli outbreak. Experts from the two states, which produce 90 percent of the country's leafy greens, developed a wide range of food safety metrics, from how often to test irrigation water to the optimal method of composting and proper use of animal manures. Further, leafy green growers generally plant and grow in Northern California between late spring and fall, and then move on to southern California and Arizona for the winter to avoid floodwaters.

Despite its promise, some experts still have concerns over the new federal regulations. The FSMA exempts small farms, where contamination can easily go unnoticed.

"I'd love to say that if you grow food in your backyard and raise your own cows, you'd be safe. But that's not the way it is. Both small and large producers have to take precautions to keep feces out of our food," says Bill Marler, a lawyer who made his name as the "E. coli guy" representing victims of the infamous Jack in the Box outbreak in the early 1990s. He now represents dozens of victims and families affected by the listeria outbreak.

The outbreaks that make the news tend to be the big ones, and usually associated with large producers. "It's easier to pinpoint an outbreak when it poisons hundreds of people," Marler says.

United Fresh Produce Association spokesman Ray Gilmer says he agrees that "small farms shouldn't get a pass on food safety." Other than their opposition to this exemption, the lobbying group, which represents farmers, grocers and restaurant chains, is all for beefed up regulations. Gilmer said, "The produce industry came to the cumulative realization several years ago that it is in everyone's best interest to pass a new law and ensure consistently high enforcement of the best possible food safety standards."

As long as the new rules for production practices are "scientifically valid", he suggests there isn't anything they wouldn't be willing to do.

Lack of funding is also a threat to FSMA implementation. The House recently voted to cut 2012 funds for the FDA's food safety program, despite the agency's request for a raise to cover increased costs for improved technologies and more inspections, up to once every three years for facilities deemed high-risk.

The FDA only inspected about 15 percent of U.S. food production facilities in 2010. Before this year's outbreak, Jensen Farms had never hosted a federal inspector.

Eskin tells HuffPost that Pew advocated for "higher minimum frequencies for facility inspections." Still, she says, there is no "magic number."

"We have seen outbreaks at plants that were consistently inspected," adds Wiedmann.

Wiedmann suggests that it is most vital to invest in research, technology and tools to help producers develop safe systems. "If the government has the ability to quickly and effectively detect an outbreak and trace it back, then companies know that if they do something wrong, they will get caught," he says.

"The hard truth," says Wiedmann, "is that 100 percent safe food is virtually impossible as long as we grow food exposed to the environment."

LAST LINE OF DEFENSE

No matter how rigorous or enforceable the regulations, experts caution that some factors will always remain out of the government's control.

Food safety education for consumers, including proper hand and produce washing, "cannot be overemphasized," says Bruce Kaplan, a retired veterinarian in Florida and advocate for One Health, a movement that recognizes the interconnectedness of human, animal and environmental health.

Keeping animals healthy is also key. "It's a very small world and we're all interconnected in it," says Eileen Choffnes, a scholar and director of the Institute of Medicine's Forum On Microbial Threats. This December, the forum is slated to host a meeting on One Health's ability to improve food safety.

Vaccinating cattle against infection could help, according to Thomas Besser, a professor of microbiology in the Food and Waterborne Disease Research Program at Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine. So can simply providing them with contaminant-free food and water.

Unfortunately, developing an effective vaccine and providing cattle with "microbiologically clean water" are proving to be difficult tasks, Besser says, given how easily food and feces can contaminate an animal's drinking source. He is currently looking into alternative watering systems that go beyond the bucket, such as training animals to drink out of a hose or press a lever to get water.

Another lingering mystery is the apparent seasonality of microbes in some animals. Cattle in particular have been found to shed more pathogens during the summer and fall, notes Jay-Russell. E. coli nearly disappears in the winter.

"This seasonal variation is a big question," says Besser. "If we can find out what causes the summertime increase, and depending on what that is, we might be able to reduce the number of cattle infected by 90 percent."

Research into animal biology could help identify new strategies to prevent or treat listeria as well. Unlike other pathogens such as E. coli, listeria can sicken both humans and animals, explains Jay-Russell. Because sheep, goats and cattle develop similar symptoms to humans, she suggests studies of this parallel animal disease could lead to a better understanding of human illness.

A One Health perspective is useful in solving such puzzles, suggests Kaplan.

"Had One Health principles been implemented 50 years ago, there would be many people who would not have suffered, not have died needlessly as they continue to do," he says.

The latest deaths linked to the listeria outbreak from tainted cantaloupes were reported on Tuesday. It is "too soon to declare the cantaloupe outbreak over," given the long incubation period of the pathogen, Barbara Mann of the CDC said during last Wednesday's media briefing. Plus, there appears to be a steady stream of outbreaks to take its place.

"It seems that every couple of months, there is yet another foodborne outbreak, and it usually has a fairly large footprint, either in terms of the number of people sickened or the geographic range of product distribution," says Choffnes. "Even a single event can have a very large impact on not only human and animal health, but the economy."

Shortly after the cantaloupe recall came announcement of a listeria-based recall of chopped romaine, caught early thanks to a newly launched federal research effort to gauge food-safety conditions surrounding leafy green vegetables. And late last week, another sample test by the FDA uncovered contamination in bagged spinach, resulting in another preemptive recall.

"Food is not as safe as we think it is," Elizabeth Armstrong says. Shopping at a grocery store for her family, she says, is now "an act of faith."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/produce-contamination-illness-listeria-infection-loop_n_1033152.html