garbage in the air

As I am flying today to Seoul, for the Fall meeting of the Korean Statistical Society, a somewhat interesting paper in the New York Times about switching to alternatives for airline catering (if not air travel), starting with the figure that a passenger generates on average 1.5kg of waste per flight. And pointing out the conflicting issues in recycling food waste in most countries as they see it as imported waste and potential imported pathogens.and biohazards… While getting rids of plastic items is a tiny step in the right direction, especially because airlines do not sort between different kinds of garbage, a major step would be to avoid replacing them by another disposable item, especially heavier ones. From getting rid of providing food and drink (except water) on short and medium-haul flights to aim at healthy foods that do not require packaging or utensils. Like fruits. And asking passengers to carry their own garbage when leaving the plane could also enhance the realisation of the amount of garbage they thus produced. (On a recent early morning flight between Paris and Birmingham, the plane supposedly could not leave until the late delivery truck had brought croissants and drinks, as if passengers could not have abstained for the 55mn the flight lasted, especially when most of them were sleeping…) Nowadays. I usually travel with a water bottle that I fill before boarding after security and often skip meals on flights, but it invariably proves difficult to ask flight attendants to use my own reusable cup rather than a single-use plastic cup.

Les Aphillanthes

poor statistics

I came over the weekend across this graph and the associated news that the county of Saint-Nazaire, on the southern border of Brittany, had a significantly higher rate of cancers than the Loire countries. The complete study written by Solenne Delacour, Anne Cowppli-Bony, amd Florence Molinié, is quite cautious about the reasons for this higher rate, even using a Bayesian Poisson-Gamma smoothing (and the R package empbaysmooth), and citing the 1991 paper by Besag, York and Mollié, but the local and national medias are quick to blame the local industries for the difference. The graph above is particularly bad in that it accumulates mortality causes that are not mutually exclusive or independent. For instance, the much higher mortality rate due to alcohol is obviously responsible for higher rates of most other entries. And indicates a sociological pattern that may or may not be due to the type of job in the area, but differs from the more rural other parts of the Loire countries. (Which, like Brittany, are already significantly above (50%) the national reference for alcohol related health issues.), and may not be strongly connected to exposition to chemicals. For instance, the rates of pulmonary cancers are mostly comparable to the national average, if higher than the rest of the Loire countries and connect with a high smoking propensity. Lymphomas are not significantly different from the regional reference. The only type of cancer that can be directly attributed to working conditions are the mesothelioma, mostly caused by asbestos exposure, which was used in ship building, a specialty of the area. Among the many possible reasons for the higher mortality of the county, the study mentions a lower exposure to medical testings (connected with the sociological composition of the area). Which would indicate the most effective policies for lowering these higher cancer and mortality rates.

Guinness [local]

Cincinnato Polluce

Denver snapshot [jatp]

Angkor beer