Health, Safety & the Environment

Not all of us are great outdoors adventurers, but all of us–particularly our children–like to walk and enjoy nature.  The Connecticut Forest & Park Association has brought to Connecticut residents an exciting new initative–WalkCT, an interactive website that launched today.  CFPA has a long and illustrious history of imaginative initiatives to connect people to the land and help conserve our resources.  This initiative is outstanding!  Among other things, you can insert a zip code into the site and you are immediately taken to prime hiking locations in that area or apprised of community events–a bird walk, a Diabetes fundraising walk or WalkCT Family Ramble.  I encourage all of my readers to explore this new site.

Connecticut’s Council on Environmental Quality (“CEQ) is a state agency that works to improve environmental enforcement in Connecticut.  Significantly, it investigates citizen complaints that some individual or a state agency may be violating environmental laws.  Martha Phillips, the co-chair of the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters, recently warned that the CEQ (and other watchdog agencies) is receiving zero funding in the Governor’s recently unveiled proposed budget and many of its functions being transferred to the very agencies that CEQ is supposed to keep tabs on!  Ms. Phillips writes in a recent CTLCV blog post : “Surely we are not expected to imagine that the Department of Environmental Protection will blow the whistle to call attention to itself when it falls down on the job or has a less than stellar performance. Worse, these watchdog agency cutbacks are occurring at a time when the news media is retrenching and there are fewer knowledgeable reporters and investigative journalists than ever. How are citizens to find out when things are amiss? CEQ will no longer be there — its responsibilities will have been subsumed (submerged?) under the agency it formerly monitored. And we won’t read about any shortcomings it in the press either-because most of the reporters who knew the beat and had contacts and news sources have been laid off.   If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Evidently we are expected to believe that if environmental programs are mismanaged or environmental laws go unenforced, it won’t matter since we will hear nothing about it.”

The New York Times reported today that a movement is underway by industry groups to start labeling food products to ensure that consumers are made aware that the products they are buying are not made from  genetically engineered crops.  Make no mistake.  This is not the work of some radical fringe group.   The organic and natural foods industry is a multi-billion dollar industry that represents an ever-expanding sector of our economy.  Leaving aside, for the moment, the debate over whether higher priced so-called  “natural” and “organic” food is worth the extra bucks (and I admit to enjoy the shopping experience at Whole Foods), what exactly are “genetically engineered” crops.  Can eating “genetically engineering” crops create a virtual “Night of the Living Dead” for the health conscious consumer?  There is a consenus among scientists that genetically modified crops now in cultivation are safe to eat.  This is worth repeating!  There is no known health risk associated with eating food made from genetically modified crops.  Today, farmers use gene-altered seeds to grow much of North America’s corn (85%),  soybeans (91%), canola and sugar.  The genetic modifications benefit farmers by making their crops resistant to insects or the herbicides sprayed to kill weeds.  A lobbying group, Biotechnology Industry Organization, contends that it is important to clarify that the proposed non-GMO (or non-”Genetically Modified Organism”) labeling is to be used for marketing and branding purposes, not to make a statement about food safety.  Biotechnology allows farmers to produce more food on less land at cheaper cost.  Whether your food is “organic” , “super-organic” or now “non-GMO super-organic” is so much marketing  hype to convince us to spend a good deal more on food than otherwise. As a matter of personal choice, I plan to keep purchasing the same healthy “non-organic” food that I have always bought at the supermarket.  

Colin Gustafson reported in this morning’s Greenwich Time that a group of outspoken Hamilton Avenue School parents have filed suit against the Town of Greenwich, Miller Building Systems, Inc. (a modular manufacturer), and Carp Building Structures, Inc. (a builder) in Stamford Superior Court alleging inter alia that the Town of Greenwich’s failure to address persistent mold-related problems at in temporary modular classrooms has resulted in a slew of personal injuries, including strep throat, ear and sinus infections, coughs, nose bleeds, dizziness, nausea,” neurological symptoms” and “auto-immune conditions”.  The parents retained as counsel the law firm of Silver, Golub & Teitell, LLP, one of the preeminent personal injury law firms in Connecticut.  The filing of  the lawsuit will shift the debate from local public forums to the courthouse.  To date, the parents have been demanding that the Town  address what they perceive as a health hazard in the temporary facility.  Now they are demanding money for alleged personal injuries.  In communities where toxic tort cases are filed, the results of a toxic tort filing are often polarizing.  First, the parties can no longer speak directly to each other without the presence of counsel.  Second, the plaintiffs that have been active at public meetings now have an agenda that separates them from other concerned parents who have not retained counsel and filed suit.  Whether justified or not, public activism by personal injury plaintiffs is often viewed by a town that has been targeted in a lawsuit as an unfair attempt at pressuring the town to settle rather than the legitimate expression of ideas in a public forum.  A mold personal injury case is not an easy case to win.  Prospective jurors and their families routinely come down with colds, sore throats and minor respiratory ailments.  Even in cases where jurors have found liability in mold cases, the jury awards in these cases are often modest. Why should we award damages, they ask themselves, for symptoms that we routinely suffer from in our daily lives?  The more serious claims of injury–auto immune conditions and neurological symptions–are conditions were the science is unclear.  Many of the mold toxicology experts who have found a causative link between these medical conditions and mold exposures have seen their opinions thrown out of court on the ground that they were not based in good science.  What is not beyond dispute is that the personal injury lawsuit by the Hamilton Avenue School parents, if it runs its course, will continue on long after any mold concerns at the school have been put to rest.

Earlier this month, I discussed the dangers of a Phishing scam.  Another increasing popular internet scam involves a would be purchaser of an article you have posted for sale on Ebay or Craigslist mailing you bogus money orders for more than the purchase price and requesting a refund via wire transfer for the difference.  The only problem is that after you have wired the excess funds to the purchaser you discover that the money orders you received and deposited in the bank were counterfeit. This was the scam that ALMOST victimized Mark Friedman of Dobbs Ferry, who thought he had found a buyer for his mother’s necklace.  His story in the The Journal News makes for compelling reading.  In Mr. Friedman’s case, the money orders looked like the genuine article.  By the time that the bank would have reported back (days later) that the money orders were counterfeit, the scam artist would have made off with Mr. Friedman’s wire transfer. 

 What is Phishing (Pronounced “Fishing”)?   Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.  Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT Administrators are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting public.   Phishing is typically carried out by email or Instant Messaging and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. A significant number of Phishing email messages are circulating at present and we should be on our guard to avoid giving up valuable personal information. 

Charles Schwab account holders were recently targeted by Phishing thieves. As you can see from this example, Charles Schwab account holders received an email that had the look and feel of a legitimate email.  The email attachment line read “Important Notice: Charles Schwab”.  It read as follows:

Thank You for Your Attention!

Because Charles Schwab is maintaining physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that comply with federal guidelines to guard your personal information against unauthorized access, we restricted some of our services for our clients, in order to be able to complete this process.

At this time we need you to renew your online profile and update our existing database, in order to be able to use all the Charles Schwab online services with no restriction. As soon as our database will be updated we will make a few anouncements to our customers regarding this notification, so please renew your online profile with no delay.

This process is compulsory for all our customers. 
 <LINK DELETED> 

Charles Schwab is dedicated to providing you with exceptional service and to ensuring your trust. If you have any questions regarding our services, please call our customer service.

Warmly ,
The Charles Schwab Corporation Security Center

 What should do you if you receive a phishing email?  If you receive a phishing email,  delete it, do not forward it to anyone and do not click on the link in the messages.   If you are not sure whether the email is legit, log on to the provider’s actual web-site (not using a link in the email you received to get there!), and telephone the company for guidance.

Innis Arden Country Club is a well-run country club that has operated for over 100 years on beautiful acreage  in Old Greenwich, CT.  Close friends of mine are members–the food is good, the golfers congenial, and laughing children run barefoot across the pool deck in good weather. Club members had been stunned to learn in 2004 that PCB contamination had been discovered on the golf course property, not far from where an industrial company, Pitney Bowes, had once conducted operations on an adjacent parcel in Stamford. The country club’s environmental consultants determined that Pitney Bowes was the source of the contamination, which Pitney Bowes denied, and that PCBs from the Pitney Bowes property had migrated by way of storm water and surface water runoff to Innis Arden. What no one could dispute was that the country club had not placed the PCBs on the golf course–it was what CERCLA characterizes as an “innocent landowner”. On June 26, 2009, the federal district court in Connecticut dismissed Innis Arden’s complaint prior to trial and affirmed a prior sanctions award against the country club. Innis Arden Golf Club v. Pitney Bowes, Inc. et al. Case No. 3:06 cv 1352 (JBA), 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 54135. Something had gone terribly wrong! But what?

The court dismissed Innis Arden’s lawsuit because the court determined that Innis Arden’s consultant had destroyed key evidence that allegedly linked the PCB’s at the country club to Pitney Bowes.  Without being able to perform tests on the actual soil samples the consultant had taken, Pitney Bowes claimed it was  unable to refute the consultant’s claim that the PCB’s on the golf course were identical to PCB’s identified on the Pitney Bowes property.  The court’s ruling is a strong reminder of the obligations of parties to a lawsuit and their experts to  ensure that tangible evidence, such as as a soil sample taken to the lab for testing, is preserved. Central to the court’s ruling was the finding that the soil sampling in question had been performed to help prepare the country club and its lawyers for the case.   Magistrate Judge had earlier ruled that “counsel was actively involved in the investigation and analysis of the samples in preparation for legal action” Sanctions were awarded even though the court concluded that Innis Arden had not intended to destroy evidence or  disadvantage Pitney Bowes in the case.  In addition to arguing that it had been prejudiced by the loss of the soil samples, Pitney Bowes argued that the country club’s environmental experts, however well-qualifiled they might have been, had failed to use appropriate methodology in reaching their expert opinions that Pitney Bowes had caused the contamination of the neighboring property.  Judge Janet Bond Arterton agreed with Pitney Bowes and concluded that Innis Arden’s trial experts were not sufficiently reliable to be permitted to testify at trial.  Because Innis Arden could not prove its case at trial without expert proof, the judge granted summary judgment to the defendants and dismissed the complaint. Thus, at the end of the day, the country club’s consultants.  The destruction of evidence may have provided the court without a separate, independent basis for dismissing the case, but that issue become moot due to the granting of summary judgment.

It can be hard for someone who has suffered the loss of a loved one to let friends and relatives become close.  An event that causes shock and sadness sometimes makes us want to withdraw from life–as if remaining withdrawn will keep us protected from the world.  But during those times, it is important to reach out to those trusted and precious people who care about us the most.  One good resource for a thoughtful discussion about grief is the dailyom.com, which believes that “Sharing grief allows us to ease our burden by letting someone else help carry it…We may feel guilty or selfish, as if we are unloading on someone who has their own challenges.  Although, if we think about it, we know that we would do the same for them, and their protests would seem pointless.  Remember that not sharing feelings with others denies them the opportunity to feel.  We may be the messenger sent by the universe for their benefit, and it is on this mission that we have been sent.  By sharing our hopes and fears, joys and pains with another person, we accept the universe’s gifts of wisdom and loving care.”  Copies of this article, titled “Sharing Grief: Opening to Receive Comfort” were in a basket at the home of a cousin who passed away suddenly recently. Also in the basket were copies of  an article, titled “Growing Through Grief”, by Thomas Moore.  Perhaps not suprisingly, comforting words and  healthy perspectives on confronting grief and grieving often come from religions and belief systems other than our own.   During times of great sorrow, we don’t seem to notice.