Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 96

Nukes of hazard

AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi, File

This post originally appeared on Grist.

Is it any wonder that nuclear power scares people? The word nuclear alone conjures up a parade of terrors: the sinister radiation, the whiff of apocalypse, and the tendency to go boom.

Those are the obvious sci-fi horrors. But nuclear power comes with plenty of other risks that aren’t so obvious: the hazards of uranium mining, the fouled water, and the radioactive waste.

So do these horrors mean nuclear power shouldn’t be part of our tool kit for fighting climate change? After all, it doesn’t produce greenhouse gases. That’s why some have pushed to keep existing nuclear power plants open, and even build more. Often, nuclear nightmares are considered in isolation rather than weighed against the alternatives. Nobody, for instance, wants to get stuck with nuclear waste that stays radioactive for 10,000 years — but perhaps some would prefer that to coal waste, which contains mercury and lead and remains toxic forever.

When it comes to nuclear power, the risks appear right from the beginning of the processwith uranium mining. And they continue to pop up throughout the nuclear life cycle, from enrichment and reactor operation to the radioactive waste at the end. It’s a process fraught with hazards.

Mining

When I started asking around about reasons to oppose nuclear power, I was surprised by how the history of uranium mining kept coming up. There’s a reason for this: It’s appalling.

The writer Peter Hessler visited the uranium towns of Utah and Colorado and met men breathing through oxygen respirators and women who had buried miners after they suffered agonizing deaths. One described her uncle’s decline to Hessler: “His lungs just crystallized and he was spitting up this bloody stuff. They told us it was parts of his lungs.”

During World War II, the U.S. government began digging for uranium throughout the Southwest to create the first atomic bombs. Officials saw early on that the work posed a hazard, says Stephanie Malin, a sociologist at Colorado State University, but they didn’t tell the miners or the people living in the surrounding communities. After all, they were making a secret weapon.

“They made recommendations — better ventilation in the mines, radiation monitors,” Malin says. “But these recommendations were made in classified public health documents in the 1950s. The government responded by not doing anything until the 1970s.”

Meanwhile, people living downstream drank water seeping out of the mines, full of radioactive isotopes. Cancer clusters began to emerge, Malin tells me.

Many uranium mines were on the Navajo Nation, a 27,000-square-mile territory in northern Arizona and New Mexico. And this isn’t just ancient history.

“An undetermined amount of uranium mines still exist on native lands, and the government hasn’t finished cleaning up the ones we know about,” says Cecilia Martinez, executive director of the environmental justice group, Center for Earth, Energy, and Democracy.

The federal government has fairly sophisticated clean-up plans, but politicians have refused to provide the money needed to carry them out, says Cindy Vestergaard, who studies the uranium supply chain at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

Mining today is much safer than it was during the Cold War, Vestergaard says. It takes at least a decade to complete all the environmental- and social-impact assessments needed before you start a new mine. “One thing I can say about mining is that it’s radically different than it was in the ‘50s and ‘60s,” Vestergaard says.

So mining’s much safer, but that’s not the same as safe. Studies have found increased risks ranging from lung cancer to diabetes in communities near uranium mines (though there’s not enough evidence to prove that mining is the cause). Other studies have suggested that modern-day miners are more likely to get sick than white-collar workers.

Mining of all kinds scars the land and puts people in danger. Coal and tar sands mining cause the same problems on a larger scale. Even renewable power relies on people unearthing the cobalt, indium, and other materials for solar panels and batteries.

There are bits of radioactive material scattered throughout the earth’s crust, and when you excavate tons and tons of rock, you’re going to get exposed to a lot of it. As a result, the people digging up the elements required to make solar panels collectively get a little more radiation than the people mining an equivalent amount of uranium. Blasting out the iron ore needed to build wind turbines and generate the same amount of power exposes miners to a little less radiation.

Whether any of this radiation is harmful depends on how it’s spread around. The earth, bananas, and airplane trips give us small, harmless doses of radiation all the time. But a giant dose can kill. A United Nations report found that individual uranium miners are exposed to roughly 4 percent of the federal limit of radiation for x-ray technicians and other workers who deal with radiation.

Nuclear … war?

After uranium ore is milled into yellow cake, it goes through an enrichment process where centrifuges spin uranium to transform it into nuclear fuel. Keep that fuel spinning longer, and it eventually turns into the stuff that can level cities.

So you can’t separate nuclear power from nuclear war. The crucial link in this connection between energy and weaponry is the enrichment process, not the reactors. You can’t build a warhead with nuclear-reactor fuel. You need to enrich it further. So as long as new reactors get their fuel from existing enrichment facilities, it doesn’t increase the risk of nuclear proliferation, says Matthew Bunn, a nuclear policy analyst at Harvard.

“As long as we keep control of enrichment and reprocessing, nuclear power can spread without spreading nuclear weapons,” Bunn explains.

There’s no guarantee that the United States and its allies will be able to keep control of the technology needed to concoct weapons-grade uranium. Saudi Arabia, for instance, is trying to make a deal to have the United States, Russia, or China build it a nuclear power plant. But Saudi Arabia refuses to say that it won’t then build the infrastructure needed to create nukes.

Sometimes, governments say they want to develop enrichment technology to generate their own fuel when they actually want to start making warheads. Iran, for instance, has insisted that it’s only enriching uranium for reactors, but the fact that it built a secret enrichment plant — and says it could produce weapons-grade uranium within a week — suggests that something else is up.

You don’t need weapons-grade fuel to cause a disaster. Nuclear experts also stress over the possibility of a terrorist attack. In 1982, after training for 10 years, an anti-nuclear activist named Chaim Nissim shot five rocket-propelled grenades at the Superphénix nuclear plant on the Rhone River in France. The reactor was still under construction, so there was no danger of a meltdown. The grenades damaged the outer concrete shell but not much else.

Nuclear experts are sure that terrorists have considered attacking working plants with the aim of causing a meltdown. So facilities need security: guns, guards, and gates.

“You need to make sure you have enough security that so bad guys don’t do what the tsunami did to Fukushima — cutting off the power and disabling the backup power to start a meltdown,” Bunn says. Most nuclear plants have so much security that terrorists look elsewhere, “at a dam or a chemical plant instead,” he says.

It appears to be working so far. There hasn’t been an attack on a civilian reactor since Nissim’s attack 36 years ago.

Let’s continue our tour of things that can go wrong in the nuclear fuel cycle. After getting enriched, fuel goes to the reactor, and that’s where you run the risk of meltdowns.

Meltdowns

In the middle of the night on April 26, 1986, workers shut off the safety systems to run a test on the Chernobyl plant, in the Soviet Ukraine. Something went wrong. The reactor ramped up to 100 times its normal power, heating the steam in its pressurized system until the reactor exploded through the roof of the building around it. A fisherman reported seeing a blue flash in the sky from the reactor. People 60 miles away felt the ground shake. Two workers on site were killed by the explosion, and others would die from radiation exposure. Scandinavian countries began reporting higher radioactivity readings.

There have been three high-profile accidents since nuclear plants started running in 1951, and Chernobyl was the worst. Besides the two killed by the explosion, 28 workers died from acute radiation poisoning. Estimates of the total number of deaths in the years since varies wildly as a result of basic methodological disagreements over how much radiation increases your likelihood of cancer. The World Health Organization’s review came up with an estimate of 4,000 to 9,000 deaths.

And then there’s the Fukushima meltdown, which caused no direct fatalities. A 2017 report from the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation concluded that health effects to the general public from radiation were almost nil. The committee expects to see two or three more cancerous tumors among the 173 workers most exposed to radiation. The evacuation of 110,000 people, however, led to 1,600 deaths. Scientists reassessed the disaster response and concluded that, even with the risk of radiation, locals would have been better off staying put.

Three Mile Island, a reactor just south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, partially melted down in 1978. No one was killed in the accident, and there was only a small release of radiation. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the accident had “no detectable health effects on plant workers or the public.” But it may have been enough to increase the risk of thyroid cancer among people exposed, according to one study.

Nuclear disasters are terrifying. They capture the attention of the world. Fossil fuels, in contrast, are quiet and insidious. Air pollution from burning fossil fuels, for instance, kills some 200,000 Americans every year. Calculated in terms of deaths per units of electricity generated, nuclear is among the safest forms of energy that comes from industrial plants.

Usually, when we’ve shut down a nuclear plant, or decided not to build one, it’s led to a greater reliance on fossil fuels. When Germany started shutting down nuclear reactors in 2011, its progress stalled in reducing emissions and weaning itself off coal.

As the environmentalist Mark Lynas pointed out in his book, Nuclear 2.0, when Japan shut down its nuclear plants after Fukushima, it started burning more natural gas and coal.

“Looking at the air pollution mortality figures strongly suggests that it is untrue to say that nobody will die because of Fukushima,” Lynas writes. “People will die; but not from radiation. Their lives will instead be shortened because of an increased reliance on fossil fuels due to post-Fukushima nuclear fear.”

Still, Harvard’s Bunn tells me I shouldn’t let the whiplash between my assumptions and the facts make me too bullish on nuclear. It’s been relatively safe only because we’ve been so careful.

“It requires human excellence,” Bunn says. “Yes, it’s much better today than it was before Fukushima — and it’s dramatically better today than it was before Three Mile Island — but we need continuous improvement.”

He adds that countries need to put in place focused incentives to get energy officials and others to point out the weak points in the technology — though he admits that such critics don’t tend to be very popular.

“Countries with a lot of corruption, countries that lock up whistleblowers, they just shouldn’t have nuclear power,” Bunn readily admits.

Waste

Even if you manage to avoid disasters, at the end of this process you will always end up with nuclear waste.

I really thought that the waste was something like green goo seeping through barrels, like you see in cartoons, but it’s actually all solid, just metal rods holding spent uranium. The rods go into a pool of water, and then, when radioactivity has cooled off somewhat, into metal and concrete containers filled with helium.

These dry casks stay at the power plants where workers can keep an eye on them, and it seems to work pretty well. “Since the first casks were loaded in 1986, dry storage has released no radiation that affected the public or contaminated the environment,” according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Of course, the strongest container can’t last forever, and nuclear waste remains radioactive for as long as 10,000 years. If society abandons these dry casks, rather than maintaining and replacing them for perpetuity, they will eventually erode and expose the surrounding area to radiation.

There’s no perfect solution for spent fuel, but there’s no perfect solution for any kind of energy waste, Stimson Center’s Vestergaard says.

“We currently have around 400,000 tons of nuclear waste globally,” she says. Compare that to coal power, which produces nearly 100 times that much waste every year in the country of South Africa alone.

These other forms of waste aren’t nearly as well-controlled as nuclear. According to a comparison made in Scientific American by the science writer Mara Hvistendahl, “the fly ash emitted by a power plant — a byproduct from burning coal for electricity — carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.”

Takeaways

I’d gone into this analysis hoping I could put all these risks into economic terms — give them a dollar value, and see if this increased cost simply made nuclear prohibitive. But when I ask Bunn about that he says, “That’s the wrong way to think about it.”

Bunn offers up a simple rubric for thinking about nuclear risk: “(a) the risk is often exaggerated, (b) there are options we should be taking to reduce the risk, but (c) the risk can’t be reduced to zero,” he wrote in an email.

In the past, policymakers weighed the risks and doled them out in a way that fell disproportionately on the Navajo and other communities of color. In the future, nuclear plants will only succeed when communities weigh the risks for themselves, and decide they want them, Vestergaard says.

“Countries are realizing that we can’t just go in and build these things,” she says.

Chinese officials learned this the hard way in 2013, when they decided to build a 500-acre nuclear fuel production park in the industrial Pearl River delta. The government often bulldozes through local objections to development, but in this case the locals won.

“The community went, ‘Nope.’ And the government said, ‘We’re still doing it,’ and the communities said, ‘Nope, you’re not.’ And the government said, ‘Oh, I guess we’re not,’” Vestergaard explains.

Contrast that with the underground repository for nuclear waste that recently opened on Olkiluoto Island, Finland. In that case, officials found a community that was open to the idea, then let locals shape the project.

“Countries need to educate and work with the people,” Vestergaard says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a mine or a waste repository or a nuclear power plant: If you don’t have community support, you aren’t going anywhere.”

How the lowly mushroom is becoming a nutritional star

Getty/NatashaBreen

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Mushrooms are often considered only for their culinary use because they are packed with flavor-enhancers and have gourmet appeal. That is probably why they are the second most popular pizza topping, next to pepperoni.

In the past, food scientists like me often praised mushrooms as healthy because of what they don’t contribute to the diet; they contain no cholesterol and gluten and are low in fat, sugars, sodium and calories. But that was selling mushrooms short. They are very healthy foods and could have medicinal properties, because they are good sources of protein, B-vitamins, fiber, immune-enhancing sugars found in the cell walls called beta-glucans, and other bioactive compounds.

Mushrooms have been used as food and sometimes as medicine for centuries. In the past, most of the medicinal use of mushrooms was in Asian cultures, while most Americans have been skeptical of this concept. However, due to changing consumer attitudes rejecting the pharmaceutical approach as the only answer to healing, that seems to be changing.

I study the nutritional value of fungi and mushrooms, and my laboratory has conducted a great deal of research on the lowly mushroom. We have discovered that mushrooms may be even better for health than previously known. They can be excellent sources of four key dietary micronutrients that are all known to be important to healthy aging. We are even looking into whether some of these could be important in preventing Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

Four key nutrients

Important nutrients in mushrooms include selenium, vitamin D, glutathione and ergothioneine. All are known to function as antioxidants that can mitigate oxidative stress and all are known to decline during aging. Oxidative stress is considered the main culprit in causing the diseases of aging such as cancer, heart disease and dementia.

Ergothioneine, or ergo, is actually an antioxidant amino acid that was initially discovered in 1909 in ergot fungi. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins.

Ergo is produced in nature primarily by fungi, including mushrooms. Humans cannot make it, so it must be obtained from dietary sources. There was little scientific interest in ergo until 2005, when pharmacology professor Dirk Grundemann discovered that all mammals make a genetically coded transporter that rapidly pulls ergo into the red blood cells. They then distribute ergo around the body, where it accumulates in tissues that are under the most oxidative stress. That discovery led to a significant increase in scientific inquiry about possible role of ergo in human health. One study led to a leading American scientist, Dr. Solomon Snyder, recommending that ergo be considered as a new vitamin.

In 2006, a graduate student of mine, Joy Dubost, and I discovered that edible cultivated mushrooms were extremely rich sources of ergo and contained at least 10 times the level in any other food source. Through collaboration with John Ritchie and post-doctoral scientist Michael Kalaras at the Hershey Medical Center at Penn State, we showed that mushrooms are also a leading dietary source of the master antioxidant in all living organisms, glutathione. No other food even comes close to mushrooms as a source of both of these antioxidants.

I eat mushrooms, ergo I am healthy?

Our current research is centered on evaluating the potential of ergo in mushrooms to prevent or treat neurodegenerative diseases of aging, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. We based this focus on several intriguing studies conducted with aging Asian populations. One study conducted in Singapore showed that as people aged the ergo content in their blood declined significantly, which correlated with increasing cognitive impairment.

The authors suggested that a dietary deficiency of ergo might predispose individuals to neurological diseases. A recent epidemiological study conducted with over 13,000 elderly people in Japan showed that those who ate more mushrooms had less incidence of dementia. The role of ergo consumed with the mushrooms was not evaluated but the Japanese are known to be avid consumers of mushrooms that contain high amounts of ergo.

More ergo, better health?

One important question that has always begged an answer is how much ergo is consumed in the diet by humans. A 2016 study was conducted that attempted to estimate the average ergo consumption in five different countries. I used their data to calculate the estimated amount of ergo consumed per day by an average 150-pound person and found that it ranged from 1.1 in the U.S. to 4.6 milligrams per day in Italy.

We were then able to compare estimated ergo consumption against mortality rate data from each country caused by the common neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s, dementia, Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis. We found, in each case, a decline in the death rates with increasing estimated ergo consumption. Of course, one cannot assume a cause and effect relationship from such an exercise, but it does support our hypothesis that it may be possible to decrease the incidence of neurological diseases by increasing mushroom consumption.

If you don’t eat mushrooms, how do you get your ergo? Apparently, ergo gets into the food chain other than by mushroom consumption via fungi in the soil. The fungi pass ergo on to plants grown in the soil and then on to animals that consume the plants. So that depends on healthy fungal populations in agricultural soils.

This led us to consider whether ergo levels in the American diet may be harmed by modern agricultural practices that might reduce fungal populations in soils. We began a collaboration with scientists at the Rodale Institute, who are leaders in the study of regenerative organic agricultural methods, to examine this. Preliminary experiments with oats have shown that farming practices that do not require tilling resulted in significantly higher ergo levels in the oats than with conventional practices, where tillage of the soil disrupts fungal populations.

In 1928 Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered penicillin produced from a fungal contaminant in a petri dish. This discovery was pivotal to the start of a revolution in medicine that saved countless lives from bacterial infections. Perhaps fungi will be key to a more subtle, but no less important, revolution through ergo produced by mushrooms. Perhaps then we can fulfill the admonition of Hippocrates to “let food be thy medicine.”

Robert Beelman, Professor of Food Science, Pennsylvania State University

These smart outdoor bulbs are solar-powered

It's only natural that as summer draws closer, you're thinking about spending more time in your backyard — whether that's a barbecue with friends and family, or just spending a warm evening outside. These PLAYBULB Smart Lights are solar-powered and an efficient way to light up your backyard without driving up your electric bill.

They're ready to use straight out of the box, charge by the sun and are resistant to all types of weather (even unexpected summer storms) thanks to IP68 waterproofing. The lightweight design means you can easily install them anywhere (they might be the most innovative pool lights you've ever used), and the built-in motion sensors make them light up automatically.

You can control each light via the app with a range of up to ten meters. You can also change the brightness, colors and light effects through the app and set the perfect ambiance for any event.

Use them in your garden, walkway or pool and save money on your electric bill — usually, these PLAYBULB Smart Lights are $49.99, but you can get them now for $44.99.

You don’t have to go to war to develop PTSD

Getty/KatarzynaBialasiewicz

It hadn't been military combat or domestic violence. There had been the best possible outcome. But I know now that you don't have to go to war to experience crying jags, insomnia, panic attacks and extreme anxiety. You can just go to the hospital.

A 2015 study form Johns Hopkins estimates that a quarter of ICU survivors experience some form of post traumatic stress syndrome. A 2014 study out of Thailand yielded similar findings, noting that "the incidence of PTSD among ICU patients is similar to what has been seen among trauma victims." And here's another fun fact — PTSD isn't limited to the patients themselves. Caregivers and parents can get roped in too. Yet both within the medical community and culturally as a whole, we still treat a hospital discharge as an end point to an emergency or a severe chronic condition. We often don't recognize it as the beginning of another story.

I remember looking at my teenaged daughter recovering in her hospital bed last December, laughing as she shared her Snapchat story with her friends. I remember feeling a mix of the most profound relief I've ever experienced — and the ominous dread that at some not too distant point in the future, my own wheels were going to come off.

The groundwork for my PTSD had been years in the making. There was my own near-fatal experience of Stage 4 cancer, and the surgeries and two years in a grueling clinical trial that had come with the package. There was the onset of my younger daughter's OCD, and the steep learning curve and setbacks that had accompanied her treatment. Most harrowingly, my older daughter had almost died two years ago when a common infection turned into sepsis and a stay in the ICU. Through it all, though, therapy, support groups, yoga, prayer and meditation had kept me reasonably afloat, even as I shooed away my darkest fears of my kid winding up back in the hospital. Then, right before Christmas, my firstborn woke me up complaining of chest pains.

A long night of tests in the ER showed a slight abnormality in her heartbeat. We talked with the staff about doing more extensive testing, and bringing in the cardiac specialist. Then my daughter went into a seizure.

Later, in hindsight, the doctors surmised that lack of sleep, blood draws, and standing up too quickly after a procedure had led to a vasovagal syncope — essentially a fainting episode cranked up to 11. What I saw, however, was my child who'd I'd already watched almost die in front of me once before, moaning and convulsing while her heart rate plummeted and a team of doctors swarmed around her.

She was swiftly stabilized, given a diagnosis of Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome and a simple action plan. She was eating Oreos and texting her pals within minutes of her collapse, and she's also been great about identifying her own post-hospital stresses and needs ever since. It would take months before I got a diagnosis and plan for myself.

There may be no other condition with a more self-explanatory name that post-traumatic stress. Pro tip from one who knows — the "post" in PTSD is really the keyword here. Yet it comes as surprise anyway. There you are, well after your horrifying, catastrophic event has ended, standing at the stove cooking dinner or sitting on the train going to work, and voila, your brain and body are behaving like they're under siege. Upsetting images pop into your head and then play on a vigorous loop. Your heart starts racing for no apparent reason. You forget what you were doing while you're in the middle of doing it. You don't even mind the sleeplessness, because at least it keeps the nightmares away. It doesn't help that you bring your younger child every week for therapy to the same hospital where her sister has had all her emergencies. The very specific hospital smell when you walk through the doors, every time, will hit you like a brick. And strangest thing of all, at times when things are going the best, you unexpectedly feel horrible. You sit at the dinner table laughing over something silly someone said, and then you start crying. You look at your children sleeping peacefully and you feel so, so scared.

So of course I knew that something was wrong. I knew what it was. I talked with my therapist. I said I'd always been the optimistic, resilient one, and now I felt like a Kafka character, transformed overnight into something unrecognizable. I made a well-timed doctor's appointment, right before the debilitating headaches started. I got an MRI/MRA and a prescription for Wellbutrin. The meds are helping, a lot. They're doing exactly what I thought SSRIs could do. Most days now, I can function without having to convince myself to function, and that's a huge deal. I can have a disturbing, intrusive thought and then have a calmer voice in my head step in to say, "Okay, honey, you don't have to do this." I have a six-month prescription. And then I guess we'll see.

What has also helped exponentially has been just sharing the experience with others who have been through it too. My friend Evelyn, who's been around the cancer track, says that letting people acknowledge their trauma is critical."The thing that makes me the craziest are family members who roll their eyes when you try to tell them your story," she says. "The worst part of trauma is when you have narcissistic family members who diminish it."

In pleasant contrast, last week, my friend June was in town, and we shared a plate of fries with a side of terrible memories. June's second child had a difficult birth, followed by a series of intense surgeries and ongoing medical crises. Then a year ago, June got an infection that she couldn't shake. She remembered my daughter's story, so she toddled off to the ER, where she spent ten days in the ICU for septic shock. "I had crying jags and panic attacks months later, after my body was healed, thinking about how close I was to dying," she says. Her therapist and doctor concurred — it was PTSD.

Last year, I watched as my friend Deborah Copaken — who also has experienced the nightmare of a child's medical crisis —went from recovering from a fairly common gynecological surgery to almost bleeding to death from a rare side effect known as vaginal cuff dehiscence. "Blood was everywhere. It looked like a crime scene," she recalls. "I thought, in my blood loss state, that everything inside me was slipping out." Her daughter, home from college, took her to the emergency room. "My trauma is much more related to traumatizing her," she says. "She's just trying to do her best as the daughter of a woman who is dying. The absolute worst part of the night was when my sister called, and my daughter walked out of the room and I heard her burst into tears. She saved her mother's life, and that's too much for a 20 year-old girl to deal with."

A year later, Deborah is physically healed but still feels the emotional fallout. "The scenes repeat themselves in dreams often," she says. "I will look at the bathroom, which was covered in blood, and it's almost like in 'The Shining.' I will look at various places in my apartment and the blood pops into my head without warning. Or I'll pass by the hospital and my heart rate will go up."

Meanwhile, my friend Jen, who last fall welcomed a second child after years of her own medical crises, wrote recently about the mixed emotions of her daughter's first spring. "I have been an anxious wreck the past couple of weeks leading up to this time period," she says. "What I've been feeling is more than unease. It's more of a crippling foreboding that something terrible must be about to happen. That somehow, despite our five-year journey with cancer, we still got off too easy." Because, as she notes, "The last time I had a five-month-old infant, I was diagnosed with cancer." Who wouldn't be nervous facing that marker again? Nearly one in four women diagnosed with breast cancer will experience some form of PTSD.

Granted, my friends and I represent a small and unscientific sampling. But just last month, CBC Radio reported on the phenomenon of medically related PTSD. The CBC spoke to another whose young son had been treated for a rare genetic disease and found herself experiencing "unpredictable and overwhelming" reactions afterward, but dismissed the possibility of PTSD because "I thought, that's what people who experienced violence had, not something that people who experienced health care had."

A thing about trauma is that anybody can experience it. It's not like a carnival ride where you have to have THIS MUCH horror to get on board. For me, a pediatric hospital was enough to summon it. Another thing about trauma is that there is the person you were before it, and there's the person you are after. It is super not fair and you're going to really wish you'd have a little more time to prepare, but there it is. It doesn't mean the previous version of yourself is gone. It does mean she's got to scooch over and make room for other things. She has to give them their attention and their respect. So after the immediate business of keeping everybody alive is under control, it's a good rule of thumb to assume you're going to need emotional and psychological help next. Things that can work include cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure therapy, EMDR, and medication. Things that tend not to work include telling yourself that everything is okay and you should move and get over it. Demanding a traumatized brain not feel a certain way is like asking a stab wound not to bleed. It really does not listen. You have to attend to it.

Lately, I find I am better able to keep my worrying to normal, mother of teenagers level and less hyper-vigilant, emotionally scarred person level. I do the things I can to feel better and I accept that some days it's going to suck anyway. I do everything I can not to make my problems my children's problems. They're busy trying to fix the world, and I do not want to get in their way.

My family has been lucky more times than we can count. We love doctors and medicine and insurance like you would not believe. We know that healing takes many forms, and is always a work in progress. My friend Deb says, "Yesterday I was riding my bike over the Williamsburg Bridge, so happy to be alive. When you're really happy to be alive, it's always marred by knowing that this almost wasn't. At the same time, I feel the other side of that is intense gratitude. The trauma exists, and the PTSD exists, but you also have a greater appreciation of life."

Some names have been changed for privacy.

How to make sure your company is GDPR compliant

Most major companies — Facebook, Google, and Twitter, included — use the data they collect from their users to drive the insights that improve their services. Otherwise, they take that data and sell it to a third party as advertising revenue. Recently, the EU passed a new regulation around this practice called General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — and any company that works with the EU will need to be compliant with it. This General Data Protection Regulation Certification Course helps you understand how you can meet these regulations.

The new GDPR regulation requires that any company that does business either with or in the European Union or the European Economic Area to reveal all the data they plan to collect before they do so. And while that might be good for users, it can be a complicated thing for businesses to navigate.

Now, businesses must tell users what information they want to collect, and what their plans are for that personal data. Any company that fails to meet these requirements will be subject to hefty fines of up to €20 million. That's a disastrous fine for large companies, much less small to medium-sized businesses.

Familiarizing yourself with these changes and taking the proper action to ensure compliance could help prevent your company from incurring debilitating fines. Usually this General Data Protection Regulation Certification Course: Lifetime Access is $299, but you can get it now for $9.99, or 96% off.

Blame Bibi: Natalie Portman explains her decision for declining award in Israel

AP/Sebastian Scheiner/Jordan Strauss

Oscar-winning actress and director Natalie Portman, who was awarded the 2018 Genesis Prize, has declined to participate in the ceremony in her honor, which was set to take place in June in Jerusalem. Her representatives say she has been distressed over "recent events" in Israel.

Observers have speculated that Portman is referring to the killing of Palestinian protestors on the Gaza border in ongoing protests over the past month. Human Rights Watch called the killings "unlawful," with nearly 40 Palestinians slain, including a Palestinian journalist said to be wearing a distinct press vest.

Amid the backlash from Israeli politicians, Portman, who is Israeli-American, elaborated. "My decision not to attend the Genesis Prize ceremony has been mischaracterized by others," she wrote on her Instagram. "Let me speak for myself. I chose not to attend because I did not want to appear as endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu, who was to be giving a speech at the ceremony."

The Genesis Prize Foundation honors a person each year who has attained "excellence and international renown in their chosen professional fields, and who inspire others through their dedication to the Jewish community and Jewish values," the website says. The award includes a $1 million prize meant to be donated to charities.

After Portman said she would not be attending, the foundation announced that it was canceling the ceremony. Israeli culture minister Miri Regev accused Portman of falling "into the hands of the BDS supporters." He added, "Portman, a Jewish actress born in Israel, joins those who tell the successful, wondrous founding of the State of Israel as 'a tale of darkness and darkness.'"

In Portman's Instagram statement, she addressed this allegation directly. "I am not part of the BDS movement and do not endorse it," she said. "Like many Israelis and Jews around the world, I can be critical of the leadership in Israel without wanting to boycott the entire nation."

My decision not to attend the Genesis Prize ceremony has been mischaracterized by others. Let me speak for myself. I chose not to attend because I did not want to appear as endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu, who was to be giving a speech at the ceremony. By the same token, I am not part of the BDS movement and do not endorse it. Like many Israelis and Jews around the world, I can be critical of the leadership in Israel without wanting to boycott the entire nation. I treasure my Israeli friends and family, Israeli food, books, art, cinema, and dance. Israel was created exactly 70 years ago as a haven for refugees from the Holocaust. But the mistreatment of those suffering from today’s atrocities is simply not in line with my Jewish values. Because I care about Israel, I must stand up against violence, corruption, inequality, and abuse of power. Please do not take any words that do not come directly from me as my own. This experience has inspired me to support a number of charities in Israel. I will be announcing them soon, and I hope others will join me in supporting the great work they are doing.

A post shared by Natalie Portman (@natalieportman) on Apr 20, 2018 at 3:37pm PDT

And Portman has been critical of the right-wing Israeli prime minister in the past and particularly of his comments during his 2015 campaign for re-election that were perceived as anti-Arab and racist. "The right-wing government is in danger," Netanyahu said in a short video clip he posted on Facebook. "Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls," he added, referring to Israel's Arab citizens.

When Netanyahu was re-elected, Portman said she was "very, very upset and disappointed," the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, she made it clear that her critiques were not about Israel as a nation. "I find his racist comments horrific," she said. "However, I don’t — what I want to make sure is, I don’t want to use my platform [the wrong way]. I feel like there’s some people who become prominent, and then it’s out in the foreign press. You know, shit on Israel. I do not. I don’t want to do that."

Still, Israeli politicians continue to rip into her decision.

"Natalie Portman has played into the hands of the worst of our haters and of the worst of the anti-Semites in the Middle East," Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz told the Kan public broadcasting corporation Sunday, adding that Portman owes Israel an apology.

Internal Security and Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan referenced "Star Wars" in a letter to Portman. "Anakin Skywalker, a character you know well from 'Star Wars,' underwent a similar process. He began to believe that the Jedi Knights were evil, and that the forces of the Dark Side were the protectors of democracy," he wrote. "I call upon you not to let the Dark Side win."

In Portman's statement, she tried to highlight the nuance of the situation.

"Israel was created exactly 70 years ago as a haven for refugees from the Holocaust," she wrote. "But the mistreatment of those suffering from today’s atrocities is simply not in line with my Jewish values. Because I care about Israel, I must stand up against violence, corruption, inequality, and abuse of power."

"This experience has inspired me to support a number of charities in Israel," Portman concluded. "I will be announcing them soon, and I hope others will join me in supporting the great work they are doing."

“Handout Hannity”: Fox News host faces new question over $90 million real estate side hustle

Getty/Photo Montage by Salon

Fox News host Sean Hannity is responding to the "latest fake news attack" against him, playing the victim to claim that he is being vilified for "investing my personal money in communities that badly need such investment."

Despite his frequent rants against liberal or media "elites," an extensive report from The Guardian on Monday revealed that Hannity is linked to numerous shell companies that have spent at least $90 million on nearly 900 properties across the country. Furthermore, belying his supposed conservative principles, Hannity's empire was purchased at a deep discount to him and at a cost to taxpayers."[D]ozens of the properties were bought at a discount in 2013, after banks foreclosed on their previous owners for defaulting on mortgages," the paper reported.

According to public records, the properties were purchased by limited liability companies (LLCs) connected to Hannity in states including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, New York, North Carolina, Texas and Vermont. "Hannity is the hidden owner behind some of the shell companies and his attorney did not dispute that he owns all of them," the Guardian reported.

A portion of the properties Hannity acquired were "with support from the Department for Housing and Urban Development (HUD), a fact he did not disclose when praising Ben Carson, the HUD secretary, on his television show last year," the Guardian reported. The Fox News host and close Trump confidante got $17 million in HUD loans to buy the biggest property in his foreclosure empire.

Not surprisingly, Hannity has pushed back against the report and deemed it all to be a "fake news attack," but he did not deny that he had several real estate deals.

"It is ironic that I am being attacked for investing my personal money in communities that badly need such investment and in which, I am sure, those attacking me have not invested their money," Hannity wrote in a statement on his website. "The fact is, these are investments that I do not individually select, control, or know the details about; except that obviously I believe in putting my money to work in communities that otherwise struggle to receive such support."

The Fox News host denied any role or involvement in HUD investments.

"I have never discussed with anybody at HUD the original loans that were obtained in the Obama years, nor the subsequent refinance of such loans, as they are a private matter," a statement on his website continued. "I had no role in, or responsibility for, any HUD involvement in any of these investments. I can say that every rigorous process and strict standard of improvement requirements were followed; all were met, fulfilled and inspected."

One of the most valuable purchases Hannity made was in Georgia and involved "two large apartment complexes" which he bought for $22.7 million, the Guardian reported. "The developments are in the cities of Perry and Brunswick, which have higher poverty rates and lower median incomes than the U.S. averages."

The report added, "One- and two-bedroom units in Hannity‍‍‍’s apartment complexes are available to rent for $735 to $1,065 per month, according to brochures." HUD helped Hannity receive $17.9 million in mortgage loans to fund the purchases, which were insured under a program in the National Housing Act.

In all, Hannity's portfolio consists of 877 residential units that cost about $89 million. Seven other properties purchased by the companies were later sold for over $4 million.

Hannity has made a career out of tapping into conservative and far-right rage towards liberalism, the media and "elites," but he reels in a $36 million annual salary and eats up foreclosed homes at a discount so he can turn a profit.

Regardless, he previously railed against former President Barack Obama for the foreclosure rate in the U.S., the Guardian noted.

In September 2016, Hannity railed against the luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by his contemporaries in the media who he dubbed "elites," seemingly ignoring his own private financial ventures.

"My overpaid friends in the media, well, they have their chauffeur-driven limousines, they like their fine steakhouses and expensive-wine lifestyles," Hannity said at the time. "None of them are feeling this, the people you’re watching on TV, and therein lies the contempt."

The Fox News and radio host makes in the neighborhood of $30 million per year.

Hannity also once used his private jet to fly Newt Gingrich to meet with Trump when Gingrich was considered as a potential vice presidential candidate.

Hannity has come under fire as of late after his connection to President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was revealed in court. Fox News has stood by Hannity, despite the fact that he has repeatedly defended Cohen without having disclosed he was a client of his. The Fox News host has said his dealings with Cohen were strictly related to real estate ventures.

He did have some defenders in right-wing media after his investment dealings were revealed:

Why is Hannity engaging in a perfectly legal practice of buying foreclosed houses a story that is making people's heads explode? I know the answer. It's not enough to dislike someone for his politics. You want him to be a crook.

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) April 23, 2018

Tom Fitton: Sean Hannity Targeted by Deep State with Illegal Leaks from HUD After Michael Cohen Raid https://t.co/wDiXX0KhFZ

— Chuck Woolery (@chuckwoolery) April 23, 2018

But others, including some in conservative media, were quick to note the blatant gulf in Hannity's public agitations and his personal practice.

"I think it's funny Sean Hannity turns out to be a welfare queen for HUD, having taken advantage of guarantees that were put forward by none other than the Obama administration," conservative pundit Brett Stephens observed on MSNBC on Monday.

HUD's job is to increase homeownership for marginalized people, including supporting the homeless and fighting discrimination in the housing market.

NOT to assist Sean Hannity on buying 870 houses.

— Denizcan James (@MrFilmkritik) April 23, 2018

https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/sta...

“Smallville” actress Allison Mack’s arrest adds to the NXIVM mystery

AP/Todd Williamson

Allison Mack, a lead actress from the television series "Smallville," was charged Friday with sex trafficking and forced labor conspiracy. She was allegedly involved as a recruiter for a women's group that forced its members to have sex with the organization's leader, Keith Raniere, 57, who was arrested in March on sex trafficking charges.

"As alleged in the indictment, Allison Mack recruited women to join what was purported to be a female mentorship group that was, in fact, created and led by Keith Raniere," United States Attorney Richard P. Donoghue said in a statement. "The victims were then exploited, both sexually and for their labor, to the defendants’ benefit."

The self-proclaimed self-help group "NXIVM" (pronounced NEX-i-um) is based in Albany, New York but has operations in the rest of the U.S., Mexico, Canada and South America, authorities say. It has been described as a pyramid scheme, with its courses costing thousands of dollars. Participants rise in the ranks by recruiting others to pay the exorbitant class fees. According to public records, Mack, 35, co-created a NXIVM subsidiary called The Source, which enlisted actors. Officials allege Mack required women to have sex with Raniere, for which she received financial compensation.

Besides allegedly forcing sex acts, some members told The New York Times in Oct. 2017 that before joining the organization they were required to provide "collateral" such as naked photographs. Members said they were warned that the materials would be publicly released if they ever divulged the secret group's existence or defected.

This subset of NXIVM, called "DOS," stands for a Latin phrase meaning "Lord/Master of the Obedient Female Companions" or "The Vow," according to federal prosecutors. "DOS operated with levels of women 'slaves' headed by 'masters,'" the statement continued. "Slaves were expected to recruit slaves of their own (thus becoming masters themselves), who in turn owed service not only to their own masters but also to masters above them in the DOS pyramid." DOS members were all women, besides Raniere, who was known as "Vanguard" and operated at the top level of the pyramid, with Mack allegedly on the level below Raniere.

In the Times' exposé from 2017, women described being branded on their pelvic areas as part of the initiation to DOS. The authorities say these brands incorporated Raniere's initials. Sarah Edmondson, one of the participants, told the Times that she was told to undress during the ceremony and say, "Master, please brand me, it would be an honor," as other women held her down during the painful process.

The Times estimates that 16,000 people have enrolled in NXIVM courses over the past 20 years, with a smaller population joining the secret women's group. The organization and Raniere have long been embattled, but until recently, prosecutors have failed to indict him and other officials from the group.

According to the Times:

In July, Ms. Edmondson filed a complaint with the New York State Department of Health against Danielle Roberts, a licensed osteopath and follower of Mr. Raniere, who performed the branding, according to Ms. Edmondson and another woman. In a letter, the agency said it would not look into Dr. Roberts because she was not acting as Ms. Edmondson’s doctor when the branding is said to have happened.

Separately, a state police investigator told Ms. Edmondson and two other women that officials would not pursue their criminal complaint against Nxivm because their actions had been consensual, a text message shows.

Mack pleaded not guilty Friday and is being held without bail.

Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens has a new problem — and it’s a big one

AP/Jeff Roberson

As if Missouri's Republican Gov. Eric Greitens wasn't already on the hot seat amid a disturbing sexual abuse scandal, he has now found himself facing yet another felony charge.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner announced charges against Greitens Friday, including "one felony count of tampering with computer data" after he allegedly unlawfully obtained a donor list from a charity he founded and used it to fundraise for his 2016 governor's campaign, according to The New York Times.

Greitens founded the St. Louis-based veterans charity organization, The Mission Continues, and served on its board of directors. Prosecutors alleged that in April 2015, he directed an employee identified only as "K.T." to take a list of the charity's donors.

"The defendant and K.T. knew that the donor list disclosed on April 22, 2015, was taken without the permission of The Mission Continues," the document said, according to the Times. Personal use of such a list is "prohibited."

Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, has rejected the allegations and said he committed no wrongdoing.

"Her case is falling apart — so today, she’s brought a new one," he said in a written statement, the Times reported. Ed Dowd, his lawyer, added, "This charge makes no sense at all."

"The court will find Eric innocent of yet another absurd charge, and the people of Missouri will learn the true motives behind this action soon enough," Dowd wrote. "This allegation is absurd, and Eric will be found innocent of this accusation in court."

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, who is a Republican, said there was enough evidence to show Greitens had committed a felony. But, "Mr. Hawley said that his office did not have jurisdiction to charge, so he turned over the evidence to Ms. Gardner’s office for consideration," the Times reported.

Greitens has already been dealing with a separate felony charge, invasion of privacy, which stemmed from allegations that he took a nude picture of a woman he had admitted to engaging in an extramarital affair with, and used it as blackmail to keep her quiet. A report from the House investigatory committee detailed that the woman told the panel Greitens' actions were aggressive and unwanted.

The report was signed by the five Republicans and the two Democrats on the committee, and highlighted instances in which "the woman said, Greitens spanked, slapped, grabbed, shoved and called her derogatory names during a series of sexual encounters as he was preparing to run for office in 2015," according to the Guardian.

Greitens has previously denied that any of his encounters with the woman were violent.

In February, the Missouri GOP railed against Gardner for bringing about the charges and said the allegations against the governor were nothing more than a "political hit job" motivated by money Gardner received from "George Soros groups."

Still, nothing seems to be a deal-breaker for conservatives, because while Republican lawmakers have seemed to distance themselves from Greitens — as members of both parties have called for his resignation as of late — he has nevertheless remained quite popular among GOP voters.

These 6 inescapable facts help explain the Republican Party’s current death spiral

Getty/Saul Loeb

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

Last week the Harvard Institute of Politics released their Spring 2018 poll of young voters revealing the younger members of the Millennial Generation are enthusiastic about the midterm elections. It isn’t the first time millennials are keyed into an election — but it’s the first time the entirety of the generation is voting in an election.

For those born after 1980 or before 2000, politics has been fraught with war, economic depression, scandals and now fake news. The generation is the largest and most diverse in American history. This year marks the first that anyone born before November 2000 will be eligible to vote and they’re paying attention.

Real-time digital insights company Toluna revealed a full 89 percent of millennials use social media and news has become a significant part of social media interaction, The American Press Institute said.

“Millennials consume news and information in strikingly different ways than previous generations,” wrote API. “And their paths to discovery are more nuanced and varied than some may have imagined, according to the new study by the Media Insight Project… Fully 69 percent report getting news at least once a day — 40 percent several times a day.”

Millennials are watching and in November approximately 83.1 million of them will be eligible to vote. To put that in context, there are 76.4 million baby boomers and 65 million members of GenX.

Younger millennials are joining the former Obama generation.

In 2008, millennials were inspired by then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), who stood in opposition to the war in Iraq that had taken the lives of many millennials. With a campaign infrastructure already in place for then-Sen. Hillary Clinton and former presidential candidate John Edwards, Obama had to look outside the box for a way to succeed in the Iowa Caucuses. So, his team sought out young voters.

The campaign continued their youth outreach from state to state and into the general election. Turnout among young voters that election was 52 percent. It marked one of the highest turnout elections among youth since the voting age was lowered to 18. While young people disproportionately supported Democrats starting back in the 1990s when former President Bill Clinton first appeared on MTV, that divide between support for the parties has only grown since millennials first came of age in 2000.

Even without the historic personal and digital outreach from the Obama campaign in 2008 and 2012, Republicans were on the outs with young voters. The 2004 election aligned the Republican Party with white evangelical Christians in a fight to pass state Constitutional laws banning same-sex marriage. The head of today’s GOP, President Donald Trump, was behind the racist birther movement and is now warring against immigrants. The Republican Party has further been overrun by those who have called the Black Lives Matter movement a terrorist organization. These are all values the vast majority of millennials find repugnant.

Harstad Strategic Research conducted a survey of millennial voters on a series of political issues. Their attitudes spell a disaster for a Republican Party that has been moving further and further to the right.

As the chart reveals, every, single, policy the GOP stands for is opposed by young voters in both parties. In the past, an increase in independent voter registration has prompted some to argue that young people don’t see a difference between the two parties and ultimately wash their hands of both. GenForward, a bi-monthly survey of Millennials showed that it couldn’t be further from the truth.

The new war against the NRA

If that wasn’t already a problem, the GOP is now standing with the National Rifle Association and in opposition to students fearful of their lives as the proliferation of mass shootings persists. While young people are frequently activated in college, high school students around the country have taken to the streets in wake of the Parkland, Florida shooting and the angry survivors demanding sensible gun laws.

GenForward reported that the majority of African American (63 percent), Asian American (76 percent), and Latino (60 percent) millennials say “it is more important to control gun ownership than to protect the right to own guns.” White youth, however, support gun control over gun ownership to a lesser extent (46 percent.)

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students that have become gun safety activists are pushing regulations and restrictions, but not abolition of guns entirely.

The fear isn’t exclusive to white suburban schools however. When it comes to shootings of people of color by police, millennials see it as a serious problem.

In recent election cycles, the Center for Information and Research on Civil Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) said turnout among 18 to 20-year-old voters has been significantly lower than older millennials. That could change this year.

Outside of presidential elections, the Democratic Party has undermobilized young voters, CIRCLE explained. Meaning, they’ve worked to register youth, but then don’t do the work to win their vote and get them to the polls the way other generations are targeted.

“While tools like text-message reminders and maps of polling locations can help get young people to the polls, they are still more likely to turn out if they receive personal outreach,” CIRCLE explained.

The last time Democrats ignored young voters in the 2010 midterm elections, they lost control of the House. When they did it again in 2014, Democrats lost control of the Senate.

In 2008, the Clinton team was caught disparaging young voters. At least two of the upper-echelon advisers, Mandy Grunwald and Mark Penn, were decidedly unimpressed with Obama’s young supporters.

“Our people look like caucus-goers,” said top Clinton adviser Mandy Grunwald in Iowa. “And his people look like they are 18.”

Clinton strategist Mark Penn allegedly said, “they look like Facebook,” according to Grunwald. Adding, “Only a few of their people look like they could vote in any state.”

It proved to be yet another significant miscalculation about the youth vote that the Democratic Party should learn from.