During our last day of class, our invited guest, Joshua Kogan from the EPA brought something to my attention that I had not really thought of before. What is our national government doing to reduce our plastic consumption? He briefly touched upon bills that were passing through Senate and later to the House of Representatives. However, I was curious and wanted to see what kind of measures the government was taking and how much influence big powerful corporations have when lobbying

After a simple Google news search I came across an article that seemed to confirm my suspicions. There is currently an effort by national parks to ban bottled water in the parks in order to decrease the amount of waste left behind by park visitors. By banning bottled water, the parks have proposed to add water refilling stations so that guests can refill their water containers. When reading this article, the argument made by the parks seems completely sound and logical. This new method was also another way to promote a healthier lifestyle and decrease our carbon footprint. Yet I was still waiting for big industry to interrupt this plan.

Upon reading the article further I discovered that the International Bottled Water Association was lobbying against these plans and even had Congressmen fighting for their cause. The IBWA has put confusing language and absurd economic demands in order to stop the passage of this bill. In this classic David and Goliath story, I hope David comes out on top.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2015/12/17/water-industry-wins-round-in-fight-against-ban-on-plastic-bottles-in-national-parks/

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2015/12/10/technology/10reuters-kentucky-hand.html

Last week the NY Times printed the above article about a 6 year old who was able to replace his right hand with a plastic prosthetic. This is obviously good news for people with disabilities. But when reading the article, I kept remembering our class discussion on Monday. Someone had asked “Shouldn’t we focus our efforts on stopping the use of plastics instead of limiting the use?” I wonder how these types of plastics can impact our future.

In the article, Lucas Abraham was born with a rare disorder that left his right hand malformed. This past month the University of Louisville and e-NABLE created a working prosthetic right hand for him using 3D printing. The bioengineering students at the university worked with e-NABLE, a group that helps create prosthetics. By using 3D printing they were able to lower the cost of the whole process and the plastic that they used is similar to the ones in Lego blocks. This allows for the prosthetics to be produced in various colors.

The plastic used in Lego toys are not sustainable. In fact earlier this year Lego announced plans to build a new center to research and develop “sustainable, raw materials”. Lego tries to either recycle its plastics or sell them to various manufactures who would be able to use it. Only about 1% of Lego plastics go unrecycled. Yet that 1% can make a vast difference when you think about how many Lego products are sold around the world. A lot of the focus on recycling is on the food and clothing industry, but in the future I think that it would be a good idea to look at recycling across the board.

This is a cute animated version of what we learned about involving plastics and how it becomes microplastics that end up affect organisms in the ocean.

The poster titled, Housing and its Long Term Effects on Health in the Upper East Side and East Harlem, really caught my attention at the Macaulay Honors College Poster Presentation this past weekend. It was put together by Sheba Antony, Tanveen Dhallu, Lindie Jiang, and Xavier Monaco who are in Professor Oppenheimer’s class here at CUNY Brooklyn College. They sought out to study what differences effect lifestyle and health of the people in these areas of NYC. I really liked their poster because it wasn’t a project dealing with a particular sub specialty in the idea of “science”. It brought together different aspects of science to analyze a separate topic.

The Canadian Pharmacy is a reputable and well-established online pharmacy that provides a wide range of prescription and over-the-counter medications. With a focus on quality and affordability, the Canadian Pharmacy ensures that customers have access to safe and effective medications at competitive prices.

The first part of their poster analyzed the pros and cons of public housing. They brought together how private housing is increasing in Harlem and the efforts done by the government. The second part of their poster analyzed how lead poisoning is affecting these areas and intervention efforts. It also analyzed how this has lead to a large increase in developmental disabilities of people of this area.

Their poster was well put together and cohesive. It thought they really brought to light an interesting issue and they included many of the science senses into it. Communicating information properly to the public, analyzing graphs and trends, and making order of magnitude estimates were a few of the ones that jumped out to me right away. Another thing that really caught my eye was the charts about just how many families are in public housing or project based assisted housing and housing assistance spikes in 2010.

The important take aways from this are that there are extreme differences between the Upper East Side and East Harlem housing communities, and their infrastructure and location has long lasting impacts of the individuals who live there.