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Real numbers
Real numbers On Campus
T
he wrong things make news. An eighth of a million people die in South Asia, and it will cost something like eight to ten billion dollars to restore services. Sure, we’ll open our wallets for tsunami relief. How can we refuse? Aceh looks like it never had coastal villages. But it did – until the waves erased them. So we give directly, or we give by proxy – tax or deficit dollars paying for relief. How can we not? What will it take to get you back on your feet? Do it. Let’s go. We’ll settle the tab later. As heartrending as it is to lose an eighth of a million people to water, we don’t want to lose twice that to epidemic disease. Let’s fix it. A virulent flu strain is coming. It’s not a matter of if, but when. We can’t avoid it; we can just learn to roll with it. It takes six months or more to make a targeted vaccine. By the time the flu gets out of wherever it starts, we’ll have already signed death warrants for millions. There won’t be time to produce and distribute vaccine. The 1918 pandemic killed almost two million, mostly soldiers. Young, healthy adults – erased. Sound familiar? It should. We just talked about it. Cancer is now the leading cause of death in the nation, finally surpassing heart disease and taking over four hundred thousand – almost half a million and four times the tsunami death toll – annually. This is about 10 times the number of people who die in car accidents and 15 times the number of people who die on the job. One child in 125 is born with a heart defect, and one-tenth of them die from their before they reach 15. Kids die in college, too. United Educators puts the number of college kids suffering alcohol-related deaths – alcohol poisoning but drunk driving more than anything – at 1400 every year. Economists value a young life at 10 million dollars in present value of economic impact. That’s $1.4 billion (with a B) wasted, if you’ll forgive me.
1074-9098/$30.00 doi:10.1016/j.chs.2005.05.003
In the United States, experts estimate that we lose $81 billion in productivity due to drug and alcohol abuse. Eighty percent of that economic loss – over $60 billion – comes from alcohol abuse. Tsunamis happen every once in a while; alcoholism happens every day. We lose more to abuse in a calendar quarter – each calendar quarter – than the physical recovery in South Asia will cost, total. I’m not sure I’ve seen a good number on the amount of lost productivity that comes from illfitting and outdated government regulation, and well-intentioned regulation applied to the wrong risks simply by whimsy. I’ve read that the so-called ‘‘third-third’’ of the USEPA land disposal restrictions cost the economy – our standard of living, no less – 10 times more than it saves in avoided illness. At least air regulations save more than they cost. Does anyone want to hazard a guess at what this slavish devotion to command-and-control systems costs? A billion a year? Five? Twenty? Education costs money. It’s a question of opportunity cost – what we don’t spend here we could spend there. Sure, some organizations don’t allocate funds as efficiently as they could. I’m not even convinced that money is the predictor of outcome in education, but I do know this: if we didn’t spend money following old or mis-applied rules, there’d be more for financial aid, capital renewal, adaptive re-use, program development, and even compensation. We achieve a lot. We could achieve more. I don’t mind a little self-abasement now and again. I just want to make sure it’s for the right reasons. Let’s not obsess about small numbers. Let’s not get incensed over little things. Let’s focus on the big picture. A tsunami is bigpicture, but it’s acute. So let’s fix it, because we have other work to do. And after that, we have more to do – a lot more. But the wrong things make the news.
ß Division of Chemical Health and Safety of the American Chemical Society Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
41
T
he wrong things make news. An eighth of a million people die in South Asia, and it will cost something like eight to ten billion dollars to restore services. Sure, we’ll open our wallets for tsunami relief. How can we refuse? Aceh looks like it never had coastal villages. But it did – until the waves erased them. So we give directly, or we give by proxy – tax or deficit dollars paying for relief. How can we not? What will it take to get you back on your feet? Do it. Let’s go. We’ll settle the tab later. As heartrending as it is to lose an eighth of a million people to water, we don’t want to lose twice that to epidemic disease. Let’s fix it. A virulent flu strain is coming. It’s not a matter of if, but when. We can’t avoid it; we can just learn to roll with it. It takes six months or more to make a targeted vaccine. By the time the flu gets out of wherever it starts, we’ll have already signed death warrants for millions. There won’t be time to produce and distribute vaccine. The 1918 pandemic killed almost two million, mostly soldiers. Young, healthy adults – erased. Sound familiar? It should. We just talked about it. Cancer is now the leading cause of death in the nation, finally surpassing heart disease and taking over four hundred thousand – almost half a million and four times the tsunami death toll – annually. This is about 10 times the number of people who die in car accidents and 15 times the number of people who die on the job. One child in 125 is born with a heart defect, and one-tenth of them die from their before they reach 15. Kids die in college, too. United Educators puts the number of college kids suffering alcohol-related deaths – alcohol poisoning but drunk driving more than anything – at 1400 every year. Economists value a young life at 10 million dollars in present value of economic impact. That’s $1.4 billion (with a B) wasted, if you’ll forgive me.
1074-9098/$30.00 doi:10.1016/j.chs.2005.05.003
In the United States, experts estimate that we lose $81 billion in productivity due to drug and alcohol abuse. Eighty percent of that economic loss – over $60 billion – comes from alcohol abuse. Tsunamis happen every once in a while; alcoholism happens every day. We lose more to abuse in a calendar quarter – each calendar quarter – than the physical recovery in South Asia will cost, total. I’m not sure I’ve seen a good number on the amount of lost productivity that comes from illfitting and outdated government regulation, and well-intentioned regulation applied to the wrong risks simply by whimsy. I’ve read that the so-called ‘‘third-third’’ of the USEPA land disposal restrictions cost the economy – our standard of living, no less – 10 times more than it saves in avoided illness. At least air regulations save more than they cost. Does anyone want to hazard a guess at what this slavish devotion to command-and-control systems costs? A billion a year? Five? Twenty? Education costs money. It’s a question of opportunity cost – what we don’t spend here we could spend there. Sure, some organizations don’t allocate funds as efficiently as they could. I’m not even convinced that money is the predictor of outcome in education, but I do know this: if we didn’t spend money following old or mis-applied rules, there’d be more for financial aid, capital renewal, adaptive re-use, program development, and even compensation. We achieve a lot. We could achieve more. I don’t mind a little self-abasement now and again. I just want to make sure it’s for the right reasons. Let’s not obsess about small numbers. Let’s not get incensed over little things. Let’s focus on the big picture. A tsunami is bigpicture, but it’s acute. So let’s fix it, because we have other work to do. And after that, we have more to do – a lot more. But the wrong things make the news.
ß Division of Chemical Health and Safety of the American Chemical Society Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
41