Styrene is lethal
Did you read in The Garden Island that a thousand people were made ill by a leaking Styrene plant in Southern India? Eleven people died. Styrene is the building block of Styrofoam (polystyrene). When you reheat your Styrofoam containers in the microwave oven, it releases styrene. Styrene is a lethal poison and a known carcinogen. Eleven people died in India for cheap fast food that is killing us also. Let’s go for a Styrofoam-free Kaua‘i!
Gordon LaBedz, Kekaha
Dispose of PPE properly
In private parking lots such as Costco, The Home Depot, Kukui Grove Center, Walmart, etc. (you get the idea), it should be their (big-box store, etc.) to place a disposable trash can every hundred feet for shoppers to dispose the PPEs (personal protective equipment).
Also, shoppers should be more responsible to dispose or hold on to their PPEs until they can rid of it properly.
Come on Kaua‘i. We were doing an excellent job listening to our leaders and the rules that were/are set. Take it a little further: “BE RESPONSIBLE, HOLD ON TO YOUR PPE AND DISPOSE OF THEM PROPERLY!”
Howard Tolbe, ‘Ele‘ele
Kupuna need fresh air, too
An open letter to Mr. Kawakami,
Dear Mr. Mayor. Yesterday, my 89-year-old mom and I were approached by a man in U.S. Army fatigues and told to leave a picnic table at Kukui‘ula (Small Boat) Harbor, where we were sitting, that we are still in lockdown, Mom can’t walk more than 100 feet, as it hurts her. Some people can’t exercise. The retailers are now open, with the roads getting busy with commerce once again, (all that essential shopping at Macy’s), and yet the kupuna are not allowed to sit and enjoy the ocean views. Whats wrong with this picture?
There were also (county) Water Department workers who were clowning around, sitting within an inch of each other, at the main pavilion. We were then informed that it was fine for them to not adhere to social distancing, they could be at the pavilion, as they were essential. WAIT! So they get to have their bromance, but I can’t take out my mom and have her sit at a table outside?
Please rethink your policy on sitting at public picnic tables if there are only two people, practicing social distancing, and elderly, who can’t exercise, but want to get out of the house. Kupuna need their fresh air, too.
Linda Marsh, Kalaheo
The paradox of protesting
Protesting against measures to protect us from the virus is like a drowning man yelling for someone to throw him a bowling ball.
John Patt, Koloa
The problem you had was…sitting at a public picnic table, a nice surface for Covid to live!
Better if you had just kept walking and resting in your own car. It was indeed dangerous for your mom.
Nonsense. Science has shown that the corona virus is quickly denatured in sunlight and fresh air. You’d have far more chance of catching the corona virus while accidentally touching something handled by an infected victim in the grocery story than sitting at a picnic table. That is the problem with 90% of the rules regarding the corona virus. They are arbitrary and not science based.
I think here on Kaua’i where we have plenty of uncrowded beaches and parks the residents should be allowed to enjoy them. I think social distancing is possible.
And this littering of PPE on the aina has got to stop. Shame on someone just throwing away a mask. Come on Kaua’i dispose of the masks, it’s not that hard . Since you wore the mask out of consideration for others why not dispose of it in a rubbish bin and complete the cycle? Lucky live Kaua’i!
Mahalo Dr. Gordon LeBedz, for not only making us aware of a subtle accidental self poisoning by heating or microwaving styrofoam as we naively do, and that Styrofoam is also another carcinogen (cancer causing) item on the food table…
But also thank you, as a Medical Doctor, for stepping up and taking the time to inform us of dangers we would never realize, and obviously so many of us do not realize that all those styrofoam containers of any kind add to the too many carcinogens we are are surrounded with and ingest Those particles of chemicals and disease every day…the accumulation of which is part of the cause of why the Kauai has its very own CANCER BUILDING in the area of the Hokulei shopping center…as well as the US doctors diagnosing each year 1,825,000 new cancer patients.Is styrofoam made of petrochemicals, that is oil or coal tar?
You’d think that in spite of Medical Doctors making their income from Disease that they would publish more information like Dr. LeBedz has today and in the past, but instead it Would seems that the MD’s want to keep things That make us sick and diseased a secret.
Maybe a list of the top 5,000 chemicals in our food and livestock that can contribute to diseases should be published for all to read. If people passed,up chemical polluted foods, the food manufacturers would provide us safer food out of need to sell.
Some of us find it outrageous that the doctors, yes, MD’s, Chiropractors, Naturopathic Physicians, and Osteopathic doctors, are not putting in more articles to the media, The Garden Island, etc., steering the public away from sickness and Disease…and informing us of the paths that maintain Health and lead to Health for those who have lost their way.
The definition of Health is that: Health is not just the absence of Symptoms but is: 100% of your Cells, should Function 100%, 100% of the time for Mental, Physical, and Social Well Being. That is from a medical dictionary many years ago.
Prescribing and really Substituting chemical and petrochemical pharmaceutical prescription and over the counter drugs for Health is a Hoax and a $4 Trillion dollar a year medical industry business.
Further adding chemicals and petrochemicals (Carcinogenic) into almost all packaged and processed foods on our grocery shelves, as well onto and into our food when they are crops or grazing animals Is not a substitute For Health or a path to Health; nor does it perform the prevention of disease but in fact escalates the accumulation of disease and burdens our Personal immune system.
Some of us discuss that a large benefit to our community would be that a blog or some such Daily Column in the Garden Island would be contributed to by our Various kinds of doctors With varying philosophies about Health, as well as others working in the field of Health to have the opportunity to inform us of things that keep us Healthy and restore Health where Disease has creeped into our lives.
The Garden Island should feel a degree of responsibility towards the Health of the island by promoting discussion by those in the field of Health.
Ayda Ersoy for one, while not being a doctor, has written many very good Health articles…we need to read more, by her and the others here on island helping us to stay healthy or get healthy. For example, of our needs, it saddens me to see the site of absolutely gross obese people on the island, don’t they realize they are still alive but walking factories of heart and vascular disease, cancers, diabetes, future Alzheimer’s, lung and kidney failures…not to mention the absurdity of people who inhale anything…like cigs, vapes, meth, pot…yes we need access for our health practitioners to teach (physician) is and for our citizens to ask questions about Health and Disease right here in the Garden Island.
Who could be against such information and desperate questions. Let’s hear it from those who can. We have a need which only the Garden Island can provide as our primary source of local media.
Fellow Kauaians,
I apologize for the masks left lying on the ground at Costco and Walmart. You see, when I leave my house to do my essential shopping, I put on two masks. Then when I reach my destination I take one mask off, and it makes me feel like I’m naked.
I will put them in the trash from this day forward.
(Joke credit goes to famous comedian and political satirist, Dennis Miller)
No more Styrofoam, no more plastic bags, no more littering on the Garden Island. Woof!
“Protesting against measures to protect us from the virus is like a drowning man yelling for someone to throw him a bowling ball.”
Absolutely juvenile, illogical and irrational analogy, John.
What do you say about a person that rolls over like a frightened puppy, wets him/herself and surrenders his or her liberty to a political hack? No legislature, mayor, governor or president has legitimate authority to suspend individuals’ natural rights which are conferred on them by virtue of their humanity.
RG DeSoto
I call him, “the Soto”.
“What do you say about a person that rolls over like a frightened puppy, wets him/herself and surrenders his or her liberty to a political hack?”
Now THIS is an absolutely juvenile, illogical, and irrational analogy!