California Classifies Lead "Hazardous Material"

[Gombessa]

Personally, the theory that a lead weight will remain on a freeway long enough to get ground up isjust not going to hold water. Lead weights quickly end up along side the road on the shoulder and soon after in the ditch, so if traffic grinding them up is a problem they need to ban driving in the ditches in CA.

I've seen enough debris/junk on the side of the road to know that anything left on a road is going to get pummeled and pulverized on its way to the shoulder or ditch, getting pounded, gouged, nicked and battered from the fall from a 50mph car, bouncing off the road and getting run over by umpteen tires. When the next rain comes, even if the main weight is still in one piece, all the bits and pieces get washed out into the storm drains and into coastal waters.

 

[paddler3d]

Not kidding at all. When I worked for a hotel chain, we had to have the signage placed at the entrance to the restaurant and included in the room service menus.

That's why Cali gets such a bad rap for going over the top. There's certainly nothing wrong with wanting clean drinking water. The problem comes when that noble objective is used as an excuse to go crazy.

That is a bummer.

 

[NAM001]

Maybe what you don't realize, living out in the boonies as you apparently do, is that everything that goes onto the street or into the gutter here eventually finds its way into California's coastal waterways via the storm drain system. Further, there are over 2000 water bodies in California that have been identified as being impaired for heavy metals, lead being one of them. So eliminating what is undoubtably a source of pollution is not "insanity", it is California once again leading the way towards responsible environmental stewardship.

IT ONLY MAKES SENCE IF THAT IS a MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR TO THE PROBLEM

OOPS there no caps. california has always done things back wards. when they get hungry enough or taxed enough they will think about coming to thier senses. besides as thier schools are in the bottom of the national educational rankings the tree huggers rule.thier carcinagenic fuels are a good example of the cal process. polute the public & save a tree. starve the people save fish bait, save the brush burn the forrest........ it only makes sence.

 

[NAM001]

And since you will be supplying said weights as a free service to your customers, (20 lbs per person times say 10 divers is 200lbs of gold on board your boat. Gold is going for $14,821.44 per pound times 200 lbs is $2,964,288.00), how do you plan on keeping the pirates at bay? :hijackedthread: irate6: :

Those of you using depleted uranium, are you willing to hook a brother up?

who cares they ewill jsut get aunt nancy to fund it as a stimulus project

 

[NAM001]

Lead shot is banned pretty much anywhere you find migratory waterfowl due to the tendency for water fowl to ingest the pellets from the bottom of lakes and ponds where they end up.

Personally, the theory that a lead weight will remain on a freeway long enough to get ground up isjust not going to hold water. Lead weights quickly end up along side the road on the shoulder and soon after in the ditch, so if traffic grinding them up is a problem they need to ban driving in the ditches in CA.

Across the country we tend to do the wrong things in the name of the environment. For example, we had a massive failure at 3 mile island and the result was a very small release of radiation. The response was to cancel numerous planned nuclear power plants all over the country and we replaced them with coal powered plants. That single over reaction 30 years ago created massive amounts of acid rain as well as ensured the release of all kinds of wonderful heavy metal emissions including lead and other wonderful things like sulfur, arsenic and cyanide. You could also argue that the fleeing from nuclear energy to coal has greatly exacerbated global warming.

But this is America by God and the average American voter demands a response to all perceived threats and the American politician delivers (to ensure re-election). What most people fail to ever consider is that a visible or quick reponse is seldom the right response - they just go away happy once some stupid law has been passed to make them feel good.

In regard to lead weights, consider this. Lead melts at around 650 degrees and as such is takes comparatively little energy to melt and cast. A great deal of lead wheel weights are also recycled - either directly in tire shops or by being thing sold back to salvage yards (the percentage that fell off is very, very small).

Steel is another matter as it takes much more energy to process. So every wheel weight that CA gets rid of will have to be replaced with a steel weight made from steel from a blast furnace with a great deal more cost in terms of energy. Then there is the basic inefficiency of manufacturing something to replace an item that was already perfectly usable in the first place. (Mmuch like expending huge amounts of energy to make a new fuel efficent car to replace a slightly less efficient one - it results in a net loss of energy over the normal life of the car you replaced).

And don't forget, since we did away with most nuclear powerplants, that steel wheel weight will be manufactured with energy from coal fired powerplants, dumping more coal emission by products on people and the environment. But since CA is upwind of most of those plants, I suppose it is just not an issue for the CA voter with a green agenda.

Makes you wonder if they have ever considered the long term impact of the heavy metals, chemicals and envronmentally unfriendly materials used in all the hybrid cars?

the next thing you know someone willl say that lead shot in shotgun shells is hazzardous to sport foul. showld steel be used there also.

 

[NAM001]

More laws to go after a very small percentage of users. The ones responsible for the most pollution will simply pay off the EPA/DEP etc. for permits that will allow them to continue.
All a bunch of feel good BS!

was thre not a rebutal to clintons proposed 14 trillion project to make a polution less auto that said. one poof from a volcano was equal to 10,000 years of auto emissions as it effected the ozone. and after 3 years of no poofs the news read the ozone had grown is some areas and stopped shrinking all together in others? sorry al baby.

 

[NAM001]

I used to be a child protection social worker and I could pretty much bet that every time I removed a child from their home and placed them in foster care, I would get two calls within the first week - one from the foster parents and one from the child's teacher insisting we get the kid in for an appt with the doctor to get him or her on Ritalin for ADHD. As a psychologist, it was obvious the kid did not just spontaneously develop ADHD but instead had a perfectly normal adjustment issue due to being placed in foster care and usually in a new school.

The average GP however, talks to the foster parent hears a few sysmptoms and diagnoses the child with ADHD and places them on Ritalin, and in effect establishes them as a child with ADHD. Now, a psychiatirist or psychologist would actually know and follow the DSM-IV-TR criteria and look for the requisite number of symptoms, but also pay attention to the duration of the symptoms (at least 6 months) and rule out more likely explanations of the behaviors (such as adjustment issues due to being removed from home and placed in a foster home). You have no idea how much pressure there is to just medicate kids rather than actually deal with the issues. Pills are simple, raising kids is more complicated.

If you look at Japan, ADHD is treated as a behavioral condition. It is screened for in kindergarten and resolved with behavioral intervention. In the US on the other hand, we diagnose the hell out of it and consume 95% of the world's pruduction of Ritalin and Stratera. I doubt our lead levels are any higher in the US than in Japan nor are they causative for ADHD.

In that same vein, I see the same thing occuring with Autism diagnosis in children. Any psychiatric disorder is a matter of degree from normal to pathological. But the autism crowd has done really well as they now have an Autism spectrum disorder, where you can diagnose a child with autism spectrum disorder just for having a symptom or two that would be, and should be, considered to be within the normal range of human behavior. But it is popular and it is so much easier if I can diagnose my kid with Autism and medicate them, or just blame their unruly or sometimes just odd behavior on autism rather than poor parenting or just having a kid that is slightly different.

So please, don't give me that ADHD/Autism crap. Rates are up because it is popular to diagnose and it has some secondary gain for parents in some situations.

Again, we are a society seeking the feel good solutions while ignoring the real issues. If someone objects and points out the ineffectiveness of a law, they get shouted down with an argument along the lines of "something is better than nothing".

The thing is that this is not the case. We all "feel good" about banning lead weights, but we will continue to import chinese products that may well be coated in lead based paint and we don't think twice about living downwind from a coal fired power plant spewing lead and other heavy metals into the atmosphere in much more dangerous gaseous form. But public attention is diverted away from the tough issues as we already have an "easy" fix for the problem.

If you really want to reduce the amount of lead in the environment, that's great, but actually do something about the real causes and stop picking on insignificant things like lead wheel weights.

dont forget that the diagnosis is a qualifier for social programs. in texas you dont have to take state exams if you have been put on ritlin. whats funny go to a recruiter and try to inlist and you are asked for your state exam scores. no scores no entry because you are a documented mantal case based on ritalin usage. go on ritelin gte social security money. i sont know who uses the kids more the schools or the parents.

 

[NAM001]

Let me get this straight here...

Due to Proposition 65, Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, tire installers a no longer allowed to use lead weights to balance vehicle tires, because the may fall off a wheel, get degraded somehow, and get washed into a drinking water supply. This is so because in Dec. 2009, Lead, and a variety of lead compounds, were added to the big list.

Does that about sum it up?

Seeing as how potable water is going to be harder to come buy in the future, I find it hard not to follow their logic. This coming from a State that has a lot of current water needs and challenges.

like i said before the environmentalists wont burn off the brush and miles of forest burn because of it. someine told me a tree consules 2 times the o2 to burn than it made in its life. so let me see burn the forrest burn the o2 generate a lot of co2 and carbon emissions that kill the ozone, burn housing, kill people. its all worth it to save the brush by ca brush hugging standards. besides they dont pay for it the feds have to clean up ca's problems every year at non ca taxpayers expence. next thing you now they will be putting the schmelt above people.

 

[NAM001]

All the posters on this thread from CA, except for the OP, do not seem to really object to the law.

The posters who object seem to come from fairly conservative states and/or states that have pretty atrocious environmental records...

would that be the states that california has manufaturer thier gasoline for them????
or make thier electricity for them?????? or makes thier paints for them???? or makes thier tires for them??? could it be that out of state products are cheaper than ca products are. i bet the companies leaving california will say yes. california exports thier polution by buying out of state and then complains about the hands that supply them. i think that a fence should be put around ca to stop all incoming products. they will figure it out then.

 

[NAM001]

I'm not against outlawing lead tire weights, but why not allow companies to give them to people who plan on reusing them?

here it is illegal to reuse tire weights. change a tire and you get all new weights and the old ones are trashed. i wonder where. the gulf??????

you dont toss what you reuse. thanks california.