Life Underground with Tom Otterness

The MTA station at 14th Street and 8th Avenue is home to one of my favorite art installations in New York. I paid a brief visit to that station again last weekend to see Tom Otterness' Life Underground. Despite my hurry, I had to slow down and take in Otterness' work.

Life Underground is a collection of 100 small bronzes scattered through the platforms and passageways of the station. Each vignette (Otterness calls them "surprises") illustrates some aspect of life in New York. Otterness says the work when taken as a whole illustrates "the impossibility of understanding life in New York." Despite their cartoon-like appearance, these characters are telling the history of the city; warts and all.

Life Underground has been brightening the lives of New Yorkers and this visitor since 2001. If you find yourself on the A, C, E or L trains, jump off at 14th and 8th and soak in some Life Underground.

The Science of Showering

Paul asked me to write about a current wave of hysteria over an infectious agent. Just when I thought the H1N1 frenzy was all I could handle, along comes Mycobacterium avium to make people want to switch from efficient showering to bubble baths. I have to preface this posting with some background on me - I work in a biological lab where we teach graduate students how to perform genetics and molecular biology experiments. I deal with bacteria, genetics, and education on a regular basis. I also do not live in a place with a bathtub, so I am definitely not interested in giving up showering!

I have been reading some of the news reports lately with ridiculous, reactionary or downright wrong information about one small preliminary study that found a common bacteria living in a warm dark moist place - namely your showerhead. According to news sources, and I use that term loosely, scientists have found that dangerous deadly bacteria are blasting out at us in enormous amounts, deeply penetrating our lungs and are putting us in the path of harm.

Of course, bacteria are everywhere- literally- maybe even outer space. Some are harmful, some are helpful, some we know well, some we know nothing about at all. The one getting its 15 minutes of fame lately is Mycobacterium avium. Apparently, if your immune system is suppressed by AIDS, cystic fibrosis, organ transplant, etc., you MIGHT be at risk to get a pulmunary infection from exposure to this bacteria. Healthy people should have nothing to worry about, well at least not from this bug.

Honestly though, it's not the overreaction by the press that bothers me, it is the actual paper that caused this fervor. I wish I could share a link to the whole paper but unfortunately, it is not freely available for anyone to read online. I have access to the whole paper through my work, so I am writing about what I read in the original publication and what I am reading in the press.

I don't think that the intention of the authors was to cause the stir that they did, but I find their media comments, if they are correctly quoted and in the right context, to be irresponsible and inflammatory. I also think that the reseachers are taking a small number of samples - less than 50 - and making far-reaching assumptions. Given the tens of millions of showers in the US alone, the conditions of just under 50 should not be used to draw broad conclusions.

The Mycobacterium avium are accused of forming "biofilms" inside showerheads. Biofilm is a collection of the bacteria forming a slimy mat, which in this case is water resistant and waxy. They basically have made a little community in a safe place where they can divide and hang out unmolested. The scientists claim in the press that the bacteria could be blasted into the aerosol mist that accompanies the water out of the shower head, especially when the shower is first used.

The scientists published in their paper that the actual amount of M. avium in the aerosol shower mist was the SAME as in the water that came out of the pipes. NO increased amount of bacteria was found in the mists of the showers they studied. The lead researcher ignores this finding though, and claims that maybe, just maybe, when the shower is first turned on, that a large burst of bacteria fly out. He doesn't have any data to support that assertion, he just states that maybe it could happen to national news sources.

Perhaps the reason these scientists did not find any elevated levels of M. avium in the aerosols they tested was because they tested three shower head aerosol mists. THREE. Now, three is a magic number but it is not a sample size that any kind of assumption can be made from. No conclusion can be drawn because one time, in three different showers, scientists did not find elevated levels of M. avium. There are six scientists who contributed to the paper, couldn't they have at least tested their own showers and obtained twice the sample size? More importantly, if this tiny amount of data demonstrates there are no elevated levels of M. avium in shower head mists, why are the researchers telling the press that shower heads are spraying people with harmful bacteria?

All the fuss about this new "threat" seems ridiculous. I don't think the misinformation and faulty conclusions are really harmful. If people clean their shower heads frequently, so be it. I do hope though that people are not going to take out their low-flow aerating shower heads and faucets (oh let's not start with the kitchen faucet, the garden hose and all those sprinkler heads that spray a fine mist of water all over your yard, kids and pets.) I think it is irresponsible to advise people to throw out shower heads once a year or to leave the shower running for awhile while waiting in another room. Water conservation and reducing waste should not be subverted by careless science and reactionary press. Neither should common sense or critical thinking.

Granite counters have been proved to be safe. Again.

Toward the end of July 2008, The New York Times ran an article in its Home and Garden section about the supposed dangers posed by radioactive granite counters. Their piece was prompted by a concerted effort by an industry group that represents solid surface fabricators to prop up their dying product category by any means they could. So they took a bunch of information about normal, background radiation; dropped all context and pretense of real science, and embarked on campaign of fear-mongering and misinformation. Their efforts found fertile soil at the Home and Garden desk at The Times and so a public health threat was born. Never mind that wasn't a threat to begin with.

The Times story grew legs and fast. Within days I was fielding calls from people who were flipping out over the imaginary dangers lurking in their kitchens and bathrooms. I wrote about it a lot in the last year or so. I knew the whole thing was BS and wasted no time saying so. If you're interested in what I've had to say about this, click here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.


So rather than prattle on even more about it, here's an excerpt from Professional Remodeler:

Two new studies published in the scientifically peer-reviewed Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology show that granite used in countertops poses no radon or radiation threat to consumers.

"Based on the results of our research, we did not identify any slabs of granite intended for sale as countertop that would produce exposures that exceed health-protective limits or background levels commonly found in the environment," said Dr. Joseph G. Allen, of Environmental Health & Engineering, Inc., a principal investigator in both studies.

The science behind the studies was rigorously reviewed by independent scientists at the request of the Journal to ensure the studies are valid and used appropriate scientific methodology. Statements made by critics of granite countertops have not undergone this peer-review process.

The studies, published in the August 26, 2009 online issue of the Journal, conclude:

• The market share-weighted average concentration of radon in indoor air attributable to emissions from granite countertops was estimated to be about 400 times lower than the action level recommended by the EPA.
  
• Typical granite stones are likely to be a minor source of radiation dose when used as a countertop material within the home and present a negligible risk to human health.
  
• Critics of granite have suggested that granite countertops pose significant health risks. However, after a year of claiming to have scientific proof, no study has been published by a scientific, peer-reviewed journal that demonstrates a meaningful environmental exposure resulting from granite countertops.

And here's the abstract from the actual, published paper from an actual, peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Humans are continuously exposed to low levels of ionizing radiation. Known sources include radon, soil, cosmic rays, medical treatment, food, and building products such as gypsum board and concrete. Little information exists about radiation emissions and associated doses from natural stone finish materials such as granite countertops in homes. To address this knowledge gap, gross radioactivity, γ ray activity, and dose rate were determined for slabs of granite marketed for use as countertops. Annual effective radiation doses were estimated from measured dose rates and human activity patterns while accounting for the geometry of granite countertops in a model kitchen. Gross radioactivity,  activity, and dose rate varied significantly among and within slabs of granite with ranges for median levels at the slab surface of ND to 3000 cpm, ND to 98,000 cpm, and ND to 1.5E-4 mSv/h, respectively. The maximum activity concentrations of the ⁴⁰K, ²³²Th, and ²²⁶Ra series were 2715, 231, and 450 Bq/kg, respectively. The estimated annual radiation dose from spending 4 h/day in a hypothetical kitchen ranged from 0.005 to 0.18 mSv/a depending on the type of granite. In summary, our results show that the types of granite characterized in this study contain varying levels of radioactive isotopes and that their observed emissions are consistent with those reported in the scientific literature. We also conclude from our analyses that these emissions are likely to be a minor source of external radiation dose when used as countertop material within the home and present a negligible risk to human health. [italics mine]

I'm waiting for the rest of the mainstream media to pick this up but I'm not holding my breath.

The brilliant Richard Wiseman strikes again

Richard Wiseman is a former magician and now Psychology Professor at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK. Wiseman's renowned for his good natured debunking of paranormal phenomena and he writes an exceptionally entertaining blog. As a psychology professor, Wiseman writes a lot about how human brains perceive the world around them and his blog regularly features some really entertaining optical illusions. Check this out.

Stare at the center of this image and count how many circles you see. Stare for a while and watch what happens. I see four down the right side immediately and then three more groups of four start to appear, starting on the left side and appearing column by column until I see 16 circles. Once I can see the circles, I have to concentrate to break the image and see squares again.

This second one's a little more inactive and easy to see.

Human perception isn't infallible and these illusions illustrate that perfectly. Designers exploit this fallibility daily, at least this one does. Ideas like forced perspective and sight lines are grounded in the idea that human eyes (human brains actually) can be fooled pretty easily. It's some cool stuff.

Follow up from yesterday

At about three o'clock Tuesday afternoon I got a phone call from the same client who was panicking on Monday. I saw who was calling on the caller ID and braced myself for another round of "let's talk this woman off the ledge." Instead, when I answered the phone I was greeted by a series of rapid fire thank yous and choked back sobs. I'm not kidding. Apparently, the electrician had just left after having hung the final pendant light and she was at long last alone with her renovated kitchen.

"Everything's even more beautiful than you said it would be Paul, I'm sorry for being so much trouble." She went on, but that was the gist of it.

Boy do I love being right.

So here's the tile that was at the root of yesterday's melt down:

It's an inexpensive, $25 a square foot glass tile. The only thing unique about it is the shape of the individual tiles. From my perspective, it's still pretty tame. But by the standards of the development where this particular project took place, it is downright avant garde.

The client had her heart set on white cabinetry all along, and I suggested a sienna-toned white paint on a maple cabinet. Bright white is hard to pull off without looking sterile, so I always go with a tinted white to tone it down a bit.

She picked this granite. It's an easy to find Brazilian stone and it too is pretty basic. That wall tile was the gentle prod that room needed to make it something other than what all the neighbors do. A gentle prod, that's all it was. Due in a large part to that tile, her finished kitchen is a warm and inviting place. The textures and patterns are interesting but still subtle. I say anyhow and now that she's happy and will pay her final invoice, I'm happy too.