Create a PDF of a web page or whole website!

In Acrobat Pro X you can create a PDF from a single web page or a whole website.

Go to File, Create, PDF from web page.

Also in the upper left of Acrobat Pro X you can click the Create button, and then Create PDF from web page. Notice the slightly different wording here.

From there you can choose options as to how many levels deep you want to go into the web page, and if you just want pages from the original server or external servers also. By default it only gets the single web page and no sub pages. If there are HTML links to inside the html page, it supports those too. Here's a test page of Ch 18 of the TPP, the one for Intellectual Property (book copyrights, etc). http://bulrush.freeshell.org/ch18IP.htm

I noticed it doesn't work with some web addresses. It seems the URL must end with an HTML file, or other file. Ending the web address with a directory, like on Pinterest, doesn't work. You just get a series of blank PDF pages.

Buy your BBB rating for cash

The Better Business Bureau is an organization that is supposed to tell consumers which businesses are honest, and which to avoid. This 2010 article says BBB will stop giving A+ ratings to paying members. But this Mar 3, 2016 article says Trump University's rating magically went from D- to A+ after Trump paid a BBB membership fee. Trump University currently has 3 active lawsuits against it.

On "Good Morning America" today, Trump said that the company's grades went up after unspecified information was shared with the BBB, but the BBB would not comment on the details of the grades of the now-defunct company. 

Guillo, a former student of Trump University and his son spent nearly $36,000 to take Trump's courses and he believes he learned little specialized expertise from the program."A lot of the information they taught seemed to come from the website zillow.com or could have been easily gathered from the IRS website," Guillo said in an affidavit about what he learned at the Trump Elite Programs retreats. "After the first seminar, I began to realize I had been taken."According to the affidavit, Guillo said that he felt that he had to complete a satisfaction questionnaire in order to get a certificate of completion for the course. 

Apparently Mr Trump couldn't care less what his university stands for, because it seems to stand for nothing except a money grab, just like Mr. Trump himself. 

A history of "safe" products, e-cigarette

An e-cigarette, or e-cig, is a small device that looks like a cigarette. A glycerine-based liquid, called e-liquid, is atomized using a small battery and heating element, and the "smoke" is inhaled. They were marketed as a safer alternative to cigarettes, or as a way to stop smoking.

Fog machines also use glycerine and the instructions say "do not inhale fog". From Wikipedia:

Fog machines which generate their effects solely using water, such as ultrasonic or pressurized technology, pose no special health risks, however it should be noted that "water based" fog fluid does contain glycol. A number of studies have been published on the potential health effects presented by exposure to glycol based theatrical fogs and artificial mists. Two studies, a Health Hazard Evaluation completed in 1994 by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health,^[3] and another one in 2000 by the Department of Community and Preventative Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and ENVIRON;^[4] both prepared for Actors Equity and the League of American Theaters and Producers, focused on the effects on actors and performers in Broadway musicals. The conclusion of both studies was that there was irritation of mucous membranes such as the eyes and the respiratory tract associated with extended peak exposure to theatrical fog. 

From the Actor's Equity study:

The report, jointly commissioned by Actors' Equity Association and the League of American Theatres and Producers, concluded that Actors are at risk when exposed to "elevated or peak levels of glycol smoke and mineral oil." However, it also noted that if exposure levels are kept below the limits established in the study, actors should "not suffer adverse impacts to their health or their vocal abilities."  

 
At present it is not clear if e-cigs or glycol/glycerine pose a threat, and how much, but putting any foreign smoky substance into the lungs is, in general, a bad idea.


Links
Actor's Equity study on fog machines and smoke. 
Wikipedia e-cig.
Wikipedia glycerol (glycerine).
Wikipedia fog machine. 
Zeecigs study on propylene glycol. PDF from 2009.
CDC: Toxic affects of glycol. PDF. 

TPP and Intellectual Property

The TPP has been signed but it still has to be ratified by the US Congress, and a whole package of laws needs to be passed to enforce TPP rules in the US. Some public projects that volunteers do for no pay, and for the benefits of the public are Project Gutenberg, which has 50,000+ older titles available in multiple formats (HTML, TXT, Epub, PDF, etc) for free. Google books also has many titles for free but many of them are 1) PDF (which do not rewrap to a different screen size) or 2) OCR'ed PDFs which have not been edited, and the OCR'ed versions contain a lot of errors. Hence the reason for PGDP.

However, Ch 18 of the TPP (Intellectual Property) extends the copyright uniformly for all countries that signed the TPP. In general, the copyright right is extended even longer than current US law, and the TPP copyright is generally held for Dec 31 in the year of the author's death, plus 70 years. There are some exceptions which you can read in the Ch 18 link below under "Links".

Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders is one organization that helps process books in PDF format to readable, rewrappable formats, and will also be affected by the TPP. In both cases, PG and PGDP will have to determine which books on file will have to be removed for a time. This means creating a massive database of author death dates, and any other info that will affect copyright.

They could certainly use your help with finding the deaths of authors, with proof. Here is a thread on PGDP (Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreading) talking about collecting author deaths to make sure the Gutenberg Project complies with TPP when it takes effect in the US.

If you have some spare time please consider helping out PGDP.net.

Links

Ch 18 of TPP in html format, with links to articles within ch 18. No links to chapters outside of ch 18.

About the FDA and product recalls

The US FDA is supposed to keep consumers safe from bad food and bad ingredients. It is also responsible for the safety of drugs, cosmetics, biologics, animal health. It creates and enforces regulations to this end. They are supposed to inspect food at factories, and not let bad food get to the public.  A "recall" happens when the food has already reached consumers, but then is found to be contaminated. For safety reasons, a whole batch, or several days' worth of food is recalled and taken off the shelves.

From the FDA page:

Recalls are a firm's removal or correction of a marketed product that the FDA considers to be in violation of the laws it administers and against which the agency would initiate legal action, e.g., seizure. Recalls may be conducted on a firm's own initiative, by FDA request, or by FDA order under statutory authority.

Recalls could be based on: undeclared allergens (like milk, eggs, almonds, etc. I didn't know this was an actual rule, but it's a great idea), contamination with listeria, E. coli, or because morphine was "super potent". Although the FDA is fine with a moderate amount of bug parts in chocolate and other foods. 60 parts are allowed per 100g of chocolate. The Food Defect Action Levels (Wikipedia), first published in 1995, details the acceptable levels of contaminants in food. The FDA claims they "pose no inherent hazard to health.". In ground thyme, there are 925 or more insect "filth" allowed per 10 grams. That's 92.5 or more per gram. What percent of that would be insect parts by weight? (FDA page on chocolate bugs is here. The FDA site timed out (they may be doing maintenance at the time I went there) so here is the same page from archive.org, Oct 1, 2015, the most recent page archive.org has.)

Recent food recalls are here at the FSIS part of USDA. You'll have to click on the recall to find out how many pounds of the produce were recalled.

Here's a summary of 2014 recalls. The US gov't often does not have the resources to update these pages often, and they probably use page counters to determine which pages are the most popular, so those pages will get updated first. It contains summaries broken down by: Class (I, II. or III), reason (listeria, STEC, E. Coli, undeclared allergen, salmonella, etc), and by species (beef, pork, mixed, poultry, ovine). The total pounds are also given for each category. For 2014 there were 94 recalls, with 18.675 million pounds of produce recalled. 13 million pounds were in the category or beef products.

While the FDA tries to catch products before they reach the public, some problems are caused by shipping, for example, conditions are not cool enough during transport. This can be a problem in the middle of summer when coolers in semi-trucks cannot keep up with the heat.

Links

1. FDA recalls. 
2. Recalls.gov. 
3. USDA current recalls for food. 
4. You can ask questions food safety at AskKaren.gov, the FSIS (Food Safety and Inspection Service) rep. 
5. For inspection policies, go to askfsis.gov.
6. Foodsafety.gov recalls. Seems to have more info on recalls. Some of these sites seem duplicative. 
7. Open.fda.gov has an API to get recall information from their database. The user constructs a web URL in a browser and grabs data that returns from it. You will need to ask them for an API key, which is a form of registration.

A history of "safe" products, aspartame

History

Aspartame is an artificial sweetener first created in 1965, and it's patent expired in 1992. It was sold under the trade name Nutrasweet, Equal, and Canderel. (Wikipedia) Its breakdown products include phenylalanine, so aspartame must be avoided by people with the genetic condition phenylketonuria (PKU). In 1985 Monsanto bought G. D. Searle and the Nutrasweet division became it's own division of Monsanto. Aspartame tends to lose it's sweetness after being heated in warm foods. You'd be surprised how often aspartame appears in the sauces of frozen dinners, especially sweet, Asian sauces.

The approval of aspartame in the US was clouded by controversy and suspicious activity. At first aspartame was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1974; however, problems with the manufacturer Searle's safety testing program, including testing of aspartame, were discovered later. The approval was rescinded in 1975, but after outside reviews of the problematic tests and additional testing, final approval was granted in 1981. (I can't find if the "additional testing" was by third parties or not.) Because allegations of conflicts of interest marred the FDA's approval of aspartame, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reviewed the actions of involved officials in 1986 and the approval process in 1987; neither the allegations of conflict of interest nor problems in the final approval process were substantiated

The Acceptable Daily Intake is the amount that can be eaten daily, over a lifetime, without significant "health risk". If you get headaches, general malaise, or other problems when you eat aspartame/Nutrasweet, you should probably avoid it.

It's still not clear if aspartame is dangerous for a majority, or significant minority of people. You have to decide for yourself.

"A History..." topics coming soon: e-cigarettes, US food in the 1800s (this one is nasty). 

More Info

1. Here's more on the aspartame controversy. 
2. Here's a page that has 200 studies that claims aspartame is safe. 
3. Here's a page from NaturalNews.com with studies that claim aspartame may not be safe. NaturalNews sometimes seems to cherry pick studies to make their argument, but it sometimes is a source of studies to look into more carefully. 
4. Aspartame Toxicity Center. Claims aspartame is bad. Be careful with messages that overgeneralize and claim X is bad for 100% of all people. Some people have a problem with aspartame, some don't.

A history of "safe" products, asbestos

History

Asbestos, a group of 6 similar minerals, is a fibrous mineral which is flame proof, thus at first it would be a helpful material. It was used as an insulator for steam engines, boilers, ovens and similar items. Asbestos "shingles" were made for the coverings of houses. In 1858 Henry Ward Johns founded the HW Johns Manufacturing company in Manhatten, New York, where he sold a flame proof roofing material. This company merged with the Manville Covering company in 1901, and the Johns Manville company became the largest company in the US to make asbestos products. Asbestos was also used in brake linings, cement, roofing and flooring compounds, spray-on fire retardant coating for steel girders, and thermal insulation. In the 1920s asbestos was linked to asbestosis, a lung disease that made breathing difficult.

It wasn't until the 1970s that people and science began to believe the connection between asbestos and lung disease. Now it's well-known that asbestos causes a cancer in the lungs called mesothelioma.

The Cover-Up

Dozens of companies were involved in the cover-up of the dangers of asbestos and court documents are irrefutable proof of this.

Mr. Brown, do you mean to tell me you would let them work until they dropped dead?’ He said, ‘Yes. We save a lot of money that way.’ Excerpt of 1984 deposition. Meeting between Brown, Johns Manville attorney Vandiver Brown and officials from the asbestos firm Unarco.

It was critical to the industry that the health effects be kept secret, so the industry remained profitable.

• 1924: First medical paper on asbestos published by William Cooke. 
• 1929: Asbestos industry leaders asked Dr. Anthony Lanza, assistant medical director at Metropolitan Life Insurance, to investigate asbestos disease among asbestos factory workers. The industry concealed results that showed high rates of asbestos-related illness.
• 1931: P. Klemperer and C. B. Rabin explained mesothelioma, a cancer that affected the lungs, from asbestos exposure. 
• 1932: Raybestos-Manhatten and Johns Manville manipulated a study on asbestos workers to minimize the danger to workers. 
• 1933: Dr. Lanza (see 1929 above) objected to hanging asbestos warning signs at a Johns Manville plant in Illinois because of the potential “legal situation.”
• 1935: London pathologist Stephen Gloyne suggested asbestos as a cause of mesothelioma. Raybestos-Manhattan president Sumner Simpson wrote, “The less said about asbestos, the better off we are,” in a letter to a Johns Manville attorney.
• 1945: Metropolitan Life blocked a safety inspection at a Johns Manville asbestos factory in New Jersey.
• 1949: Dr. Kenneth Smith, future medical director of Johns Manville, advised the company against telling its sick workers they have asbestosis.
• 1964: Asbestos industry leaders claimed they had no knowledge of asbestos health risks prior to 1964, but confidential documents prove they were lying. 
• 1966: In a confidential memo, a Bendix Corporation executive wrote, “If you have enjoyed a good life while working with asbestos products, why not die from it.”
• 1971: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classified asbestos as a hazardous air pollutant.

While Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (the one that used to use Snoopy it its ads) was not an asbestos business, it worked closely with asbestos companies to conceal the health effects of the toxic mineral. In 1944, the company insured more than a dozen big names in the industry, including Johns Manville, Raybestos-Manhattan, National Gypsum, Fibreboard and Flintkote. A bunch of documents known as the Sumner Simpson Papers, named after the president of Raybestos-Manhattan in the 1930s and 1940s, showed clear evidence that the company attempted to hide asbestos health risks from workers and the general public.

The US military used asbestos a lot in many applications. It was commonly used to insulate hot pipes. It was used a lot in public schools for this application too. They also knew about the dangers of asbestos. C. S. Stephenson, a US Navy of Preventative Medicine, said "We are not protecting the men as we should." After all their service, the veterans safety was ignored. While there is no evidence the US military hid health effects, they still put thousands of veterans at a much higher risk of mesothelioma. In 1975 the US military banned the use of all asbestos materials.

Litigation

By 1999, the cost of asbestos litigation will exceed $250 billion.  Factors affecting the high cost of litigation:

1. Asbestos use is widespread. In some countries, 50% of homes used asbestos even after it was banned there. 
2. Knowledge of health problems was hidden for a long time. 
3. Impacts were severe: claims were high, and medical problems had a high cost and were frequently fatal. 
4. It was easy to be exposed to asbestos. Simply inhaling unseen fibers put a person at risk. 
5. Illnessses happen after decades of exposure. 
6. The asbestos industry was accused of callous disregard for worker safety and general misconduct, putting company profits ahead of peoples' lives. 

If an industry spends millions of dollars defending itself, something certainly must be wrong. Why defend yourself if you did nothing wrong?

Women file lawsuit against tampon tax in NY

Sexist NY lawmakers tax tampons to discriminate against women. 5 women fight back with lawsuit. Article here.

Tests and toxicity of Roundup

Terms

• EC50: The EC₅₀ of a graded dose response curve therefore represents the concentration of a compound where 50% of its maximal effect is observed. I.e. the researchers aren't even trying to find the killer dose like in LD50.
• LC50: The concentrations of the chemical in air that kills 50% of the test animals during the observation period is the LC₅₀ value.
• LD50: LD₅₀ is the amount of a material, given all at once, which causes the death of 50% (one half) of a group of test animals. The LD₅₀ is one way to measure the short-term poisoning potential (acute toxicity) of a material. 

Herbicide concentrations and toxic effects: 

1. Toxic effects of combined chemicals are much greater when chemicals are combined and used in the same field. 
2. Surfactants in the herbicide can be more toxic to animals than the herbicide itself. Surfactants help the plant absorb the chemical. 
3. Toxic effects could be changed by pH of the water, hardness of the water, temperature, and other factors. 
4. Glyphosate is generally less persistent in water than in soil, with 12 to 60-day persistence observed in Canadian ponds, although persistence of over a year has been recorded in the sediments of USA ponds.^[35] The half-life of glyphosate in water is between 12 days and 10 weeks. Wikipedia.
5. When glyphosate comes into contact with the soil, it can be bound to soil particles, thereby slowing its degradation.

Toxic doses

1. Water Flea, Daphnia magna. Acute 48h EC₅₀ is 218 mg/L (ECOTOX). That is, after 48 hours the max effect of glyphosphate was 218mg/liter.
2. Fathead minnow, Pimephales promelas. Acute 96h LC₅₀ is 97mg/L technical glyphosate and 1.0 mg/L Roundup® surfactant (Folmar et al. 1979)
3. Mayfly, Ephemerella walkeri. Avoided Roundup® at 10 mg/L but not 1.0 mg/L (Folmar et al. 1979).

A history of "safe" products, lead

A new series!

A new series I will be making, called "A History of 'Safe' Products" will show a history of US industry defending poisonous products. It will also show how the US gov't has a long history of doing too little too late when it comes to citizens' health.

Whenever you have industry vigorously defending a product with millions of dollars, you know something is wrong. Past examples of items industry defended as "safe" for people and the environment: asbestos, lead (in paint, gasoline, water supply pipes), cigarettes, phthalates, coal emissions, thalidomide, etc.

Lead

Lead is generally believed to play a  part in the disintegration of Roman culture, though there were many issues that lead to the end of Rome, such as corruption, hubris, poor leadership, waste, inefficiency, and lead as a poison. The same is going on in the US today with high levels of corruption, waste, selfishness by leadership, and poisoning from a variety of sources like phthalates, artificial sweeteners, chemicals in meats and produce, hormones and unmetabolized drugs in the water supply (water companies are not required to remove these contaminants) etc.

OSHA says: "(Lead) Workers may develop a variety of ailments, such as neurological effects, gastrointestinal effects, anemia, and kidney disease. See the Health Effects section of this webpage for more information."

The CDC says there is no safe level of lead in drinking water, but the EPA says lead is fine and dandy. Even the US gov't can't agree about lead levels. When in doubt, be safer. Lead causes irreversible brain and other damage.  But the CDC doesn't regulate water, the EPA does.

EPA: If more than 10 percent of tap water samples exceed the lead action level of 15 parts per billion, then water systems are required to take additional actions including...

CDC says: No safe blood level has been identified and all sources of lead exposure for children should be controlled or eliminated. Lead concentrations in drinking water should be below the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s action level of 15 parts per billion.

Please note: It's very difficult to prove causation, but showing correlation is the next best thing. Correlation means the issue should be taken seriously, and more detailed studies should be done.

Blood lead levels

As early as 1943 a study showed that children eating lead paint chips showed correlation with behavior problems, learning, and intelligence problems. Yet US industry fought for decades to keep lead in paint and other products. In 1971, lead-based house paint was phased out. Houses painted before then could still contain lead, mostly likely covered by newer coats of paint, but still there. This same link also has a timeline of the effects of lead that researchers found.Poor people, in older housing, are still exposed to lead paint chips that have fallen off painted sources. Children don't know any better and can still eat lead paint chips. Poor areas also have older schools with lead pipes for certain parts of the water supplies.Thus poor people are affected the most.

Lead in gasoline (tetraethyl lead) was found to reduce engine knock. In 1923 Du Pont started making TEL and in the same year gasoline with lead started being sold. In 1965 a report found that high levels of environmental lead were caused by lead gasoline. When the lead gasoline burns, it is sent out in the air as exhaust, and people breathe it in. The lungs are especially good at absorbing many substances into the blood stream. That's the purpose of lungs: absorb oxygen into the bloodstream. In 1972 the EPA gave notice that lead gasoline would be phased out, but lawsuits by industry kept this from happening until 1980.

In 2010, Innospec, based in Britain, under the name of Associated Octel, admitted that it paid millions of dollars in bribes to officials in Iraq and Indonesia to keep selling TEL.

A simple activated carbon filter (like a Brita) can remove 99% of lead from water. For $35, it's worth it.

Symptoms of lead exposure

1. Learning disabilities.
2. Problems with impulse control.
3. Aggression. 
4. Delinquincy.
5. Anti-social, violent, criminal, or bully behaviors.
6. Hyperactivity. Could lead poisoning be related to ADD and ADHD? 

Some sources of lead

1. Imported clay pots. Some clay from China has naturally occurring lead but these items are often 100% glazed. Still you can buy a test kit where you rub a swab on the item and look for changes in color to indicate lead. 
2. Drinking water from older houses and older schools.
3. Lead paint chips inside or outside the home. Especially those on the ground that small children can eat.

Studies and Articles

• 2008, Minneapolis Dept of Health and Family Support. PDF here. Contains multiple study citations.
• 2011 Wired. The Crime of Lead Exposure.
• 2013 Forbes: How lead caused America's violent crime spree. Contains a graph of violent crime vs lead levels. The graph is difficult to read since the X axis shows 2 date ranges, but the graph does show a 20 year delay from more lead in the environment to the crime spree. 

When in doubt, be cautious. This is your health we're trying to keep.