RI Farm to School Program

 

How often should you wash your sheets and towels?

The debate of the ages

Rietie Venter, University of South Australia

PeopleImages.com - Yuri A/Shutterstock

Everyone seems to have a different opinion when it comes to how often towels and bed sheets should be washed. 

While many people might wonder whether days or weeks is best, in one survey from the United Kingdom, almost half of single men reported not washing their sheets for up to four months at a time.

It’s fairly clear that four months is too long to leave it, but what is the ideal frequency?

Bed linen and towels are quite different and so should be washed at different intervals. While every week or two will generally suffice for sheets, towels are best washed every few days.

Anyway, who doesn’t love the feeling of a fresh set of sheets or the smell of a newly laundered towel?

Whitehouse Bill Would Tighten, Clarify Process of Approving Offshore Wind Projects

Whitehouse attempts to make ocean wind power process more rational

By Mary Lhowe / ecoRI News contributor

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island has released an early draft of a proposed bill that would streamline the process of proposing, permitting, and building offshore wind projects, as well as moving the electricity they generate onto the grid.

The idea comes none too soon. For the past few years, and longer in some cases, Rhode Island fishers, shoreline residents, and preservationists have argued their concerns about offshore wind have gotten overlooked, ignored, or sidelined during the long sequence of federal and state reviews and permits required to build wind turbines off the coast of New England.

Within the past year, a citizens group and a preservationist group have filed civil lawsuits in state and federal courts, accusing various government bodies of pushing wind projects through the permitting process without adequate studies, even as wind developers and governments insist that all reviewing and permitting was legal and exhaustive.

Also, members of Rhode Island’s Fishermen’s Advisory Board, which advises the Coastal Resources Management Council, resigned en masse last summer, saying CRMC ignored their concerns.

Whitehouse’s proposed COLLABORATE Act (an acronym for Create Offshore Leadership and Livelihood Alignment By Operating Responsibly And Together for the Environment) would “improve permitting, coordination, and cooperation between agencies and with developers and stakeholders; establish a holistic process for offshore wind transmission; and boost support for fisheries and other potentially affected stakeholders, including the establishment of a compensation fund for eligible recipients.”

‘Forever chemicals’ are flowing between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans

URI researchers lead new study

Peter J. Hanlon

A sampler is deployed into the Arctic Ocean.
(Photo: Alfred Wegener Institute)

The coldest days of winter are here for many, making the frigid Arctic Ocean feel closer. Despite its distance from most people, “forever chemicals” have reached this region. 

But research led by URI Graduate School of Oceanography Professor Rainer Lohmann suggests that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) won’t stay there indefinitely. 

In a new study published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, Lohmann and his co-authors report the Arctic Ocean potentially exports as many PFAS to the North Atlantic Ocean as enters it, circulating the compounds around the world.

PFAS are chemicals that have been used in such products as popcorn bags, carpets, and fire extinguishing equipment at airports and on military bases. They’re sometimes called “forever chemicals,” since there is no effective, natural way for them to break down once they’re released into the environment. 

Rhode Island's state and local taxes hit low-income people the hardest

Data shows RI's rich pay the least and the poorest pay the most 

STEVE AHLQUIST

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy [ITEP] released a report on January 9 entitled Who Pays? a comprehensive report that “assesses the progressivity and regressivity of state tax systems by measuring effective state and local tax rates paid by all income groups.” In other words, the report assesses the fairness of our state and local tax system.

In national rankings featuring all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Rhode Island ranks #31 out of 51 in terms of having a regressive tax structure, meaning that the top one percent, those earning more than $626,200 a year, are paying 8.6% of their income in taxes while those in the lowest 20%, earning less than $22,300, are paying 13.3% of their income in taxes.

I spoke to Alan Krinsky, Director of Research and Fiscal Policy at the Economic Progress Institute [EPI] to dig into the report with me. EPI is a “nonpartisan research and policy organization dedicated to improving the economic well-being of low- and modest-income Rhode Islanders.”

Steve Ahlquist: Rhode Island has the country's 31st most regressive state and local tax system. One thing that jumped out at me is that income disparity in Rhode Island grows larger after state and local taxes are collected. Does this mean that the state's tax policies exasperate the problem of income disparity?

Alan Krinsky: Yes. In other words, before we involve state and local income taxes, there are disparities, [but] once we add in state and local taxes, the disparities are somewhat worse. We want to get to where the state isn't making things worse.

Hunting, MAGA-Style

Tom Toro 

 

Trump wants the credit. Sure, let's give it to him.

Apparently, Republicans love the dead as much as the uneducated

‘Return of the Living Dead’? Elections officials probe another signature scandal

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

A political organizing firm hired by Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has fired a staffer for intentionally forging signatures of dead people on Ramaswamy’s nomination papers in Rhode Island, Tricia McLaughlin, Ramaswamy’s campaign spokesperson, confirmed Thursday.

The news comes on the final day for presidential candidates to turn in signature forms to local boards of canvassers, with at least 1,000 names needed to secure a spot in Rhode Island’s April 2 primary ballot. Ramaswamy appears to have cleared the hurdle, according to preliminary counts reported by the Rhode Island Secretary of State, but his campaign is under the microscope for suspected signature fraud.

In Coventry, the Board of Canvassers reported “an unusually high number of signatures” in Ramaswamy’s nomination papers had been tossed out, while Warwick’s canvassing board found several dead residents’ names on Ramaswamy’s signature lists, Miguel Nunez, the deputy state elections director, wrote in an email to local boards of canvassers on Wednesday.   A copy of the email was obtained by Rhode Island Current.

Nunez declined to share further details, referring to local canvassing boards for the nomination papers in question.

The Hopkinton and Providence boards of canvassers subsequently reported a high number of invalid signatures on Ramaswamy’s papers to the Rhode Island Board of Elections on Thursday, according to Ben Smith, a board spokesman. The Providence board also found at least six names of dead people, Josh Estrella, a spokesman for Providence Mayor Brett Smiley, said in an email. 

Starting today, DEM is stocking Watchaug and 10 other ponds with more trout and salmon

Getcher hooks ready

DEM will be stocking the following waterbodies: 

·       Melville Ponds, Portsmouth

·       Simmons Mill Pond, Little Compton

·       Stafford Pond, Tiverton

·       Willett Pond, East Providence

·       Barbers Pond, South Kingstown

·       Wyoming Pond, Hopkinton

·       Silver Spring Lake, North Kingstown

·       Meadowbrook Pond, Richmond

·       Watchaug Pond, Charlestown

·       Round Top Ponds, Burrillville

·       Peck Pond, Burrillville

Daily stocking updates will be available each afternoon. Please visit DEM's Division of Fish and Wildlife's Facebook Page, visit www.dem.ri.gov/fishing for more information on stocking. 

Magaziner Announces Bill to Train Students for Clean Energy Jobs

Good jobs, good for the environment

 

Rep. Seth Magaziner (RI-02) announced the introduction of his bipartisan bill, the Clean Energy Workforce Act, which will create a grant program to fund career and technical education (CTE) to connect Rhode Islanders to good-paying jobs in the growing clean energy economy. 

This legislation is supported by union leaders, environmental advocates, and career and technical education program coordinators across Rhode Island.

 

This bipartisan legislation will help develop training pipelines for good-paying jobs in clean energy and accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy by investing in CTE programs. 

CTE programs provide students with invaluable skills-based learning for success in the jobs of tomorrow, and can help ensure that people from all backgrounds can join the industry powering America with affordable clean energy produced here at home.

 

What Would a Second Trump Presidency Look Like for Health Care?

In his first term, his COVID policies killed almost a million Americans. Can he top that?

Julie Rovner, KFF Health News 

Trump might appoint someone like this to head
 Health and Human Services

On the presidential campaign trail, former President Donald Trump is, once again, promising to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act — a nebulous goal that became one of his administration’s splashiest policy failures.

“We’re going to fight for much better health care than Obamacare. Obamacare is a catastrophe,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Iowa on Jan. 6.

The perplexing revival of one of Trump’s most politically damaging crusades comes at a time when the Obama-era health law is even more popular and widely used than it was in 2017, when Trump and congressional Republicans proved unable to pass their own plan to replace it. That failed effort was a big part of why Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms.

Despite repeated promises, Trump never presented his own Obamacare replacement. And much of what Trump’s administration actually accomplished in health care has been reversed by the Biden administration.

Still, Trump secured some significant policy changes that remain in place today, including efforts to bring more transparency to prices charged by hospitals and paid by health insurers.

Trying to predict Trump’s priorities in a second term is even more difficult given that he frequently changes his positions on issues, sometimes multiple times.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Perhaps Trump’s biggest achievement is something he rarely talks about on the campaign trail. His administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” managed to create, test, and bring to market a covid-19 vaccine in less than a year, far faster than even the most optimistic predictions.

Many of Trump’s supporters, though, don’t support — and some even vehemently oppose — covid vaccines.

Here is a recap of Trump’s health care record:

Mr. Warmth

A cartoon by Clay Bennett

 

When the lights go out....

Air Cleaners Fail To Prevent Sickness, Study Finds

Reconsidering the value of air cleaners

By UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA 

New research indicates that air filtration technologies, like germicidal lights and ionizers, do not effectively reduce the risk of viral infections in real-world environments, challenging the perceived benefits of these costly systems in public health settings.

Air filtration systems are not effective in lowering the risk of viral infections, as revealed by recent research from the University of East Anglia.

A new study highlights that technologies aimed at enhancing safety during social interactions indoors may not be successful in practical settings. The research team examined various technologies such as air filtration systems, germicidal lights, and ionizers.

They looked at all the available evidence but found little to support hopes that these technologies can make air safe from respiratory or gastrointestinal infections.

B.Y.O.B. (bring your own bag)

RI’s plastic bag ban took effect Jan. 1

By Bonnie Phillips / ecoRI News staff

As of Jan. 1, Rhode Island no longer allows single-use plastic bags to be used in retail stores. Customers must now either bring their own reusable bags or buy paper bags at the store.

In some municipalities, this will be nothing new. Eighteen of Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns have plastic bag bans.

Those who violate the law will be fined $100 for the first violation, $200 for the second, and $500 for the third and any subsequent violations. Municipalities will be allowed to keep all penalties they collect, and the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management will oversee enforcement.