Mitigation Strategies
One of my least favourite bosses still managed to teach me something. She (hint) called it the 80/20 rule. "What is something easy, cheap, expedient and perhaps not the perfect solution, that we can do right now ... to make this significantly better? I know, we need to have meetings, assign a PM, get a budget and let the whole world pick away at this scab before asking someone for a million dollars, but for today, this week, what can we do?"
So, everyone would have us believe that second hand smoke is bad for folks like me with Interstitial Lung Disease? I do not believe this would be a stretch for any science minded individual like myself? That's a challenge for us. I quit cigarettes 12 years ago, but still live for that occasional cigar (which I do not inhale) with a glass of red wine on my patio. You know, a sunny summer afternoon, waterfall trickling away, baseball game on the radio, dogs curled up by my feet ... I don't think that I am giving that up? Wait , let me think about that for a minute. Yup. Nope.
Now SWMBO belongs to the continental France school of cigarette smoking. Repeat after me with a French accent:
"I smoke in church"
"Look, I am giving a drag of my cigarette to a baby!"
And while my mother assured us that we never had any small circular burns as children, she does remember the ash from her cigarette occasionally falling on my sister or myself while being nursed. So, should SWBMO buy a snowmobile suit, some chapstick and and stand outside in two feet of snow in February to have a smoke? That's probably a good idea? Here are some other good ideas for our consideration:
New Canadians who are young and female OR old and male should not be granted drivers licences. We desperately need a new sytem that drives a significant improvement in the training and testing process. I am mystified as to how someone who cannot navigate a right hand turn was passed by someone somewhere responsible for keeping us all safe? Let them walk. Millions in insurance costs could be recovered.
Now that baseball has developed the technology for using AI to call balls and strikes, the technology should be installed in front of every cash register in McDonald's. You order the super sized fries and the McFlurry, it does the scan. A little red light come on and message appears.. "Sorry Karen! Those food options are not available to you. Our sensors indicate that you are generating your own gravitational field. Tens of thousands of coronary catastrophes and foot amputations could be avoided.
A ten inch razor sharp dagger should be installed in the centre of the steering wheel for every car sold in North American. It is hard mounted and pointed directly at the middle of the drivers chest. Four inches of slack is mandated in all seatbelt arrestors. There will never be another car accident. If it's snowing, people will stay home. Distracted driving will end. So will tailgating. 3 million would be saved from serious injury. 65,000 would not die and the estimated annual savings for North America alone would be in the order of 600 billion.
You are welcome! Oh ya, as I said up front, none of those things is going to happen anytime soon. What to do? What to do? I know this: Whatever path is laid out for SWMBO and I going forward, we will walk it together. We certainly won't be hiding under the kitchen table clutching our pearls.
So, back to the 80/20 rule. Google how to remove all second hand tobacco smoke from your home, there is an escalating series of steps that can be taken. I took them all.
1) Outside or Under The Hood - When we are driving, I stop, she gets out and smokes. I pee beside the car. At home, if it's nice out, she goes outside. When it isn't she goes under the hood in the kitchen. I bought a VERY comfortable office chair so her back wouldn't ache and she could knit there and have dogs sit with her while I sorted a longer term solution out. Maddie lives on the thing!
2) Furnace Air Filtration - Turns out I had already set the wheels in motion to upgrade this when I put a new furnace in a few years ago. Don't ask my why as we are not big dusters (I use the term we loosely), but I bought this super duper extra large furnace filter insert to replace the normal cookie sheet style. We had been using MERV 9 filters but pretty easy to pay a few bucks more and get some of these bad boys:
Ceratopogonaidae - Before we put eaves troughs along the back where where I have two lean-to sheds up against the house, we used to get quite a bit of water in the basement when it rained really hard. I know why, but that is for another day. COVID was at its height, so we were all wearing masks and we were concerned about mold. I was looking to kill no-see-ums (get it?) in our home air and Aire One, never an outfit to shirk their responsibility to take my money, sold me this thing for $1200.
It purportedly neutralizes all the bad stuff in mold, mildew, fungus spores, formaldehyde, carbon monoxide, solvents and secondhand smoke.
3) Home Air Purification - The next thing I Googled was what is the best air purification system you can buy for home use. Google was happy to advise that the AirPura system was about ten times more effective (and expensive) than those $200 "fans" being sold on Amazon. When I went for my breathing test, i noticed they had the same model in their office. When I told her that, she said "you have one of these in your house??" Yup. I do. AirPura makes them and they are happy to ship you one.
4) Home Air Ventilation - I did originally consider the airport style option but a few MacGyver skills (of which I have a shitload), some parts from Amazon, one test build, one prototype and a final model followed a week later. What I wanted was a smokeless ashtray, in an enclosure, vented directly outside. I needed a rheostat, a fan, bulkhead fittings, a clear plastic display case, a fitting for the adjacent window, with a damper (to keep cold air out) and screening (to keep mice and bugs out). I used Dad's old soldering gun to heat a finishing nail held in vice grips to modify the case. Took about a week to put it all together.
I have the parts to build another one (for the kitchen). It's on my list. I got well past the eighty percent mark. 97%
Just Saying
As you all know, I love a good rabbit hole dive. I had always thought that this entire second hand smoke argument was bullshit. How do they prove that it was second hand smoke that killed Aunt Jenny (Uncle John smoked!) or that 70's diner waitress who lived in a blue fog for forty years? It turns out they can. There are biological markers (an alkaloid called continine and something called NNAL) that they can detect in suspect lung cancer and heart disease victims. From these numbers they can estimate that globally, 1.2 million people die from second hand smoke. That sounds like a lot but that's on eight billion people right? Well not really. More than half of those died in southeast Asia and China. We had a small share but we are tlaking some serious 1950 smoking levels over there! Canada had right around 1000 here at home. Totally provable, so no DuMaurier with your beer at your local pub. Go outside. It makes sense. Using the same science, the same empirical data points, guess how many die in Canada each year from what they call ambient air pollution? We are talking ocean liners, factores, airplanes, trains, trucks, natural gas power plants & cars? You might want to wear one of these next time you walk down the street in front of your house:
You are 15.3 times more likely to contract a fatal disease solely from the ambient air in your city than you are from second hand smoke. Let's see if your city council outlaw trucks? Just saying!
Our Optimum Week
Both the flyers and the offers were just OK. I see it as the normal mid month malaise. Chicken thighs and pork tenderloin are both on! Boycott the Trump grapes if you can? He can stuff those, the same place as the cherries went a couple of weeks ago? Here's a new trick I have been learning? Oxtails on on sale for $14 a pound. The store will stock more of them and as a result, you are much more likely to find them in the sketchy bin at 50% off. That is a steal. Take em straight home and freeze them. I will give you the recipe for something spectacular next week. Here is your list:
We are Watching
Not a big All-Star Break fan, but if any team needed a break, it is the Blue Jays!
F1 is back after their break and Ferrari is really getting there. SWMBO is a Leclerc fan and has a major dislike for Max Verstappen. I believe her mantra is "I hope he crashes and is pinned in the car. A fuel line gets cut and it bursts into flames. The marshalls gather around and helplessly watch him burn to death". Like that?
World Cup - After Kane was booked for diving against the Congo and then clearly dove to get into the semi-final, all I wanted for Christmas was for Brazil to beat them. They did. Two games to go, the big one is Sunday at 15:00.
We Are Watching
I will do some real reviews next week, but The Doorman was great. So was The Bricklayer. The Monuments Men with an outstanding cast was not as good as the book.
It looks like the wildfire smoke may clear a bit for the weekend. The air is really really really pure in my house! Have a good week.
Mitch & Maddie
Mitch & Maddie