Scientific
Outhouse Flatulence
By
Norman E. Kjono July 15, 2004
The
Seattle Times
published a short Associated
Press article July 15, 2004, "Smoker
Ignites Portable Toilet Explosion." That
critically important breaking news story reported:
“BLACKSVILLE,
W.Va.
-- Warning: smoking in the toilet can be dangerous. A portable toilet
exploded Tuesday after a man who was inside it lit a cigarette.”
(Underline added.)
THIS
JUST IN! Important
public health news bulletin!
Citizens beware! Report all suspicious porta-potty behavior to the chairman
of your
county
Homeland
Health Board (toll free telephone number, E-Mail address, and street
address for the local tobacco control intervention unit included on
soon-to-be-mandatory outhouse “public safety” labels!) Dispatch legions
of body-armor-protected tobacco control enforcers, to lurk about public
restrooms while conspicuously waving the wands of their tobacco, match,
lighter fluid, and butane detectors! Shocked, just utterly shocked, we are
that something hasn’t been done long ago to mandate this “known health
hazard” out of existence! Big Tobacco has been caught in a lie once again,
this time failing to disclose that using the potty can become dangerously
addictive!
An
Indoor Air Quality specialist with whom I am acquainted pointed out an
interesting fact about the AP report. If the methane in the porta-potty was
so highly concentrated to cause the explosion as described the methane
levels inside were probably sufficiently high as to be lethal. That hapless
potty-goer probably saved his own life by lighting up!
It
appears that both The Seattle Times
and the Associated Press
regard it to be nationwide news that a man was injured in
Blacksville
,
West Virginia
when a porta-potty blew up while he was using the facility. According to AP,
a buildup of methane gas exploded when the man lit a cigarette. The apparent
message being that lighting up in the John is now a confirmed public health
hazard. And the "risks" effect nonsmokers,
too: those who do not smoke can be hurt by smoker's unseemly
conduct, the article implies, with flying debris from exploding outhouses
causing adverse health effects in 30 minutes or less. Next we'll read about
the latest and biggest anti-tobacco behavioral studies ever that
"prove" outhouse smoking is a growing nationwide epidemic. No
mention was made in the AP article about any current safety standards for
simply venting flatulence from honey buckets.
The
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation of Princeton, New Jersey and Washington
Attorney General Christine O. Gregoire's tobacco settlement Legacy
Foundation will probably ladle out generous emergency grants for Tacoma
City Council member and Tacoma-Pierce County Board of Health Chairman Kevin
Phelps
to begin a new statewide campaign to ban smoking in honey
buckets. An outhouse smoking ban would correct one of many indoor
places – such as tribal venues – where smoking is permitted under
the
Pierce
County
ban proclaimed to “ban smoking in all
public places.” Rumor has it that the new initiative --
possibly to be endorsed by smoking ban proponents Snohomish County Board of
Health member Richard
L. Marin,
King
County Councilwoman Carolyn
Edmonds
and Whatcom County Councilwoman Barbara
Brenner --
will employ a launch theme of “Vote To Pass On Other
People’s Gas!”
There
are also unconfirmed reports that a little bird is flying around Webster
County, West Virginia, spreading the word in that state that television
political commercial guru Dr. C. Everett Koop agrees. “Outhouse smoking
bans are good for the sanitation business in
West Virginia
. People enjoy the opportunity to breathe pure, concentrated methane that is unpolluted
by tobacco smoke. Business goes up. It’s a win-win for everybody. And outhouse
bans create more jobs, through hiring county tobacco sniffers to bar smokers
from outhouse entry. Why not protect everyone's right to breathe
clean and sanitary porta-potty methane?” the little bird gossips
that Koop said.
This
may be a propitious opportunity for Phelps to once again tout the testimony
of "secondhand smoke" consultant James
Repace,
which his health board relied on when enacting its smoking ban in
Pierce
County
last December. Repace’s calculation of a “tornado like” 50,000
air exchanges per hour to produce clean indoor air seems to be just
what the doctor ordered to eliminate the build-up of dangerous methane gas
in porta-potties. Considering that Repace’s testimony was presented to
Phelps’ board near the Tacoma Tide Flats – long noted for its malodorous
methane contribution to Pierce County’s outdoor air environment – that
observation is particularly on point with the AP news report.
We
can see it coming now:
new mandates for emergency 200,000 air
exchanges per hour wind-tunnel generator installations on all
honey buckets throughout
Pierce
County
, to “prevent” the “serious health risk” of fart explosions, were
some unwitting citizen to light up while answering nature’s urgent call.
Porta-potties will continue to occupy about a square yard of ground space,
while the wind tunnel generators will require a quarter-acre of clear
cutting – per potty, no
doubt -- to accommodate them. And county budgets will be further strained by
at least doubling the number of tobacco control “enforcers,” to now
assure sufficient public resources to sniff about public restrooms, too. Not
to mention that diesel generators for thousands of newly-mandated wind
machines countywide would spew more CO2 into the outdoor air in 10 minutes
than all the persons who smoke in
Pierce
County
could produce in a month. The fact that if the methane was safely vented off
in the ordinary course of potty business the explosive health risk would not
exist to begin with will undoubtedly go unnoticed by tobacco control’s
“air quality” scientific luminaries.
Oddly enough, neither The Seattle Times
nor the Associated Press
included a now-obligatory press report about citizens being so offended by
odor that they need to rush home and take a shower after being in the
vicinity of any person who chooses to smoke.
Those who are so offended by a wisp of tobacco smoke that they are compelled
to immediately rush to dry cleaners and showers, should they encounter any
person smoking, do not appear to be bothered at all by methane build-up in
restroom facilities sufficient to cause an explosion. A methane-laden
outhouse appears to not compel a mad dash to the showers but anyone smoking
outdoors, now at a beach or in a park in some states as well, invokes an
immediate policy intervention to assure clean outdoor air, too. Blissfully
inhaling explosively-concentrated flatulence appears to be OK with the thoroughly-shampooed
crowd, but don’t you dare light up
within a light year of their pristine presence. Such folks will
next line up to prohibit passing gas at beaches or in parks (except for
those who display a county permit signed by a tobacco control enforcement
officer who certifies, based on personal observation, that theirs
don’t smell . . .) Perhaps that speaks much, much more to the personal
preferences of those who publicly identify themselves with silly fixations
about a wisp of smoke than it does service to any credible science or
policy.
I
think there’s a better way.
Why not just eliminate the scientific flatulence about Environmental Tobacco
Smoke that health boards and private foundation consultants so generously
pass in
Washington
,
West Virginia
and other states to promote pharmaceutical special-interest smoking
bans? By doing so we would dramatically reduce the science-methane-build-up
and create an indoor air environment where all citizens can once again
breathe easy.
The
alternative is equally attractive, however; perhaps prescient.
By continuing to pass gas with health boards about 34,000, 50,000 or even
100,000 air exchanges per hour required to address Environmental Tobacco
Smoke -- as Mr. Repace reportedly did in Toronto, Tacoma, and New York
respectively -- such statistics manipulators are rapidly contributing to
their own explosive elimination from responsible and genuinely caring public
health policy. Comes a point where the scientific flatulence has built up to
such a concentrated level that a small spark of truth will ignite ejection
of the Elmer Gantrys who promote special-interest pseudo-science from the
body politic, as if shot from a porta-potty cannon.
A
fitting way, indeed, for those of the “anti-mentality” to go out in a self-created blaze of glory.
Norman
E. Kjono
|