Rock, I know we all wanted to stay away from the big ORG, but I guess if you want to talk to people, you got to go where they are. I still think Gus and Chrissy are sneaks, though. That having been said, I will continue to add to their hits so as some time in the not too distant future, when they pitch ‘ORG to COM’ to investors, they will be able to include my modest contributions in their hit list. I once asked the head of the water quality department in the Taiwan EPA (around '88 or '89) what advice he could give me about getting safe drinking water in Taiwan. His reply: “move”. He was joking, I assumed, and I asked him what he did for his family. He said his whole apartment building had a special water filtering system. I think he said that Taipei was among the better cities in Taiwan for water quality,though. If you are super -de-duper (can you tell I have been spending all day with pre-schoolers?) concerned about your health, you should either not be in Taiwan or you should move to a less developed area of Taiwan. I did this whole report years ago on how the government initiated a policy in the ‘60s of situating factories thoughout farming areas and how the waste water was dumped untreated into streams where farmers got irrigation water. There have also been stories in the press throughout the years about chromium getting into rice paddies (chromium, I believe, can’t be boiled or heated out of rice). Then there is the whole labeling travesty where people selling farm goods from well-known polluted areas will put down the name of a non-polluted area as the source of the product, etc, etc. Can you see why I will not raise my daughters in Taiwan? I was pregnant for 9 months and gave birth to my first daughter in Taiwan and she developed a growth on her eyebrow that had to be removed when she was a year old. The neighbor’s baby down the alley way had the exact same kind of growth. But this is purely anecdotal evidence. If I were in Taiwan again, I would see what lucky foreigner was working in my old job in the Taiwan EPA (as’yingwen mishu’ or English secretary) and hit them up for the latest stats. I would also see zhang guo long at the huan bao lian meng, which was and I hope still is the DPP’s environmental org, and ask him what his family does to protect their health. I would eat lots of cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower since these are supposed to have something in them that is good for the liver- the body’s de-toxifier. I would drink no alcohol, since it poisons the liver. And I would not go to a doctor who gives about 7 different pills wrapped up so prettily to treat cold symptoms. I once asked a doctor why Taiwan doctors give out so many pills and he said the patients simply expected it. Maybe Taiwan consumers have been brainwashed into thinking they need all that xi yao to get better just as taiwan women have been brainwashed into thinking they must feed their infants formula because their breasts are too small and won’t produce enough milk. Anyway, I think you are on the right track with the HOneywell airfilter. I would also suggest staying off the streets during rush hour and the hottest parts of the day because of ozone. And watch out for indoor air pollution. Don’t store all sorts of cleaners and such in your apartment. I would put them out on the balcony. Gotta go!!!-Chicken Little v
