I hate restraining mental health patients but often it"s the only option

People imagine mental health nurses like me as kind and gentle, as mother figures in uniform. What they don’t see is the harm we do to our patients: we lock them away, we restrain them and we take away their freedom. We do this in line with the law and we firmly believe we are doing the right thing. We are not “nice”, but when I look at my colleagues, I see strong, selfless, determined heroes.

I wish I could offer service users something better: a peaceful outdoor space, their own room, something less clinical than easy wipe armchairs. Most of them do not even agree that they are unwell and this deeply felt sense of injustice permeates the ward.

I remember one woman, Sarah*, was so psychotic by the time she entered hospital that she was not eating and had not washed in weeks. She could not see that she was unwell and was convinced we were trying to harm her, so would not accept medication. You could see how much she was suffering from her disheveled emaciated body to the distant horrified look in her eyes. We couldn’t just leave her like that. Her psychiatrist decided we needed to give her a long acting antipsychotic injection. She would need this to treat her psychosis.

The time comes to give her the injection. Despite doing everything we can to persuade her, she refuses to accept it and we have to do it under restraint. She is terrified and struggling so much to try to get free that we need five people to restrain her so she is lying on the floor. Her injection is licensed for the top of the buttock only, so we need to lower her trousers and underwear to administer it. We constantly check our techniques and her posture. We make sure that she can breathe freely and that we are not damaging her joints. She needs to be very still so we can inject her in the right place and not near important nerves or arteries. We explain this and try to reassure her but she remains terrified of our intentions. She lets out a primal wail of fear and then starts to scream. The room smells of sweat and anxiety. But we still have to inject her. I stay with her afterwards and she cries uncontrollably.

What really cuts right through me is that restraint is not some awful mistake, it is a carefully planned intervention. Everything in your being wants to stop this, to let the poor women be, but you have to carry on because you know it’s the right thing to do. It takes more than “niceness” to be here, you have to have a heart as big as the earth and, at the same time, be made of stone. Of course it helps that I found out a few months later she was rebuilding her life again: she was eating normally and looking after herself.

In my experience, there are very few decisions in nursing that weigh on us more heavily than whether or not to restrain someone. By the time someone is in hospital, they are often in extreme states of crisis and all the kind words in the world will not persuade them to take medication.

Prevention, in mental health, is everything. If we catch people in the community, as they start to deteriorate, they are more capable of engaging with services, of expressing their wishes, of maintaining their dignity and autonomy.

In the case of Sarah, and so many others, services were so under pressure that there were not the resources to catch her at this tipping point. The answer is not just medical intervention, it’s about keeping Sarah well by supporting her to live a rich and purposeful life.

Now, with so many cuts to social care, she is increasingly isolated. Real terms spending in mental health services dropped by 8% between 2011 and 2015. The success of these savings is constantly being rated against efficiency criteria like length-of-stay and symptom reduction but, for me, the real human cost is harder to quantify.

*Not her real name

Some details have been changed

If you would like to contribute to our Blood, sweat and tears series about memorable moments in a healthcare career, read our guidelines and get in touch by emailing sarah.johnson@theguardian.com.

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I hate restraining mental health patients but often it"s the only option

Sustainability and transformation plans are "least bad option" for NHS

Two years after NHS England unveiled the Five Year Forward View (pdf) – its blueprint for community-based, integrated healthcare able to cope with the pressures of a growing and ageing population – the central bodies are still not doing enough to make it happen.

The King’s Fund is about to publish analysis of progress in reforming the way the NHS works to allow the new care models outlined in the Forward View to flourish. Speaking to the Guardian’s Healthcare Professionals Network, chief executive Chris Ham identified four ways in which the system is hampering local reforms – a shortage of cash to kickstart change, too little progress on a payment system which encourages collaboration, the need to sort out the debacle of the contracting rules which emerged from the Lansley reforms, and rushing change.

“The big concern we’ve got is the importance of a transformation fund to prime new care models. Virtually all the money in the Sustainability and Transformation Fund is going into sustainability and deficit reduction. It leaves precious little left over to support transformation,” he says.

“It is difficult to see how you stem rising demand unless there is the resource to invest in the out of hospital services. More money has to be found to prime those services, which are creaking at the seams. The NHS and its leadership need to explore other avenues [to raise cash], such as the work going on in relation to the NHS estate to generate income.”

Ham wants the central bodies to move faster in shifting from the old payment by results system to population-based funding, which encourages organisations to collaborate around prevention, helping patients manage long-term conditions at home, and avoiding unnecessary hospital admissions.

So far local areas have largely been left to design population-based funding systems on their own. Ham warns that the collapse of the £800m UnitingCare Partnership scheme in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough shows “there are opportunities but massive risks in some of these innovative contracting and funding arrangements, so the centre needs to provide more hands-on support to local leaders in working through the detail”.

The contracting rules imposed by the 2012 reforms create the ludicrous situation whereby, with some of the new approaches to running services, commissioners and hospital managers are tied up in a long and expensive tendering process when it is obvious that the contract will go to the local hospital. “But it’s not clear to commissioners whether they can go ahead in that way or whether they have to test the market before they decide,” says Ham. Guidance would clear away some of the legal thicket which is holding back change.

Finally, Ham is adamant that rushing change could wreck it: “There is a real impatience among the national bodies to accelerate what’s happening, but we know that if you are going to build these new care models on a sustainable basis you have got to allow time in terms of building the relationships between clinicians and between leaders so they are built on strong foundations. The worst of all worlds would be to go too quickly and for them to fall over.”

But despite all these difficulties, Ham believes local teams have made considerable progress in developing new ways of working, and recognises the efforts NHS England and NHS Improvement are making to ensure they are giving the system clear and consistent messages about what is expected.

Ham believes that on balance the Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) process is helping deliver the Forward View: “STPs are not perfect; they are the least bad option for trying to plan in a more coherent way in an NHS that is more complex than at any time in my 40-year career. STPs are a workaround of the Lansley legacy. Nobody wants another top-down reorganisation, nobody thinks the current system works well, so the answer is STPs.”

The King’s Fund’s analysis shows that, even with hospitals soaking up virtually all the money set aside for transformation, there has still been considerable progress in delivering the vision of the Forward View. But the central bodies need to clear away some major obstacles, and someone, somewhere has to come up with the cash to invest in community-based services.

Join the Healthcare Professionals Network to read more pieces like this. And follow us on Twitter (@GdnHealthcare) to keep up with the latest healthcare news and views.

Sustainability and transformation plans are "least bad option" for NHS

We all deserve more option in how we die

Falconer’s well considered and limited bill is categorically only for the terminally ill, and would not legalise assisted suicide for everyone. The elderly and the disabled could sleep soundly; it is not the same as voluntary euthanasia, as you’d have to self-administer the medication. Nobody can tell you what your thoughts, feelings and wishes should be if you are terminally ill, but I think the choice of an early, dignified death is both humane and right.

Who are we to presume what others want? No-one gets out of here alive, as the great Jim Morrisson was fond of reminding us, but I do want to check out gently. Palliative care simply does not work for everyone.

We’ll have to wait and see whether the bill is passed. The latest survey conducted by the campaigning group Dignity in Dying shows that 80% of the public believe it should be, but the Lords can be funny buggers so who knows what they’ll decide? The fact that the debate is happening is progress, whatever the result.

Most of us want the end to be quick and painless after a great party, but can you have a good death if it’s slow and prolonged? As a medical student, one of my most inspirational patients was an elderly woman called Jean who wasn’t frightened at all about her terminal cancer. “It’s not a bad way to die,” she said. She didn’t want to die quickly, she wanted time to say goodbye, time to put her affairs in order, time to reflect on her life, and time to tell as many people as she could that death was the most natural thing in the world.

Jean’s catchphrase was: “The fear of cancer is worse than cancer”, and her refreshingly realistic view of death was bolstered by an excellent GP, a supportive family and some great palliative care. But even with the best palliative care, I would be delving into my black bag to die gently if I had, say, motor neurone disease. And if doctors have that choice, why shouldn’t everyone?

If you need further convincing of the merits of this bill, read Chris Woodhead’s extraordinary and utterly convincing column “Please Let Me Go”.

We all deserve more option in how we die

Obesity debate: Charity welcomes surgery option for those with diabetes

New draft guidance from the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (Great) suggests that obese men and women with the problem ought to be assessed for bariatric surgical treatment – this kind of as getting a gastric band fitted to decrease the dimension of the stomach or a gastric bypass, the place the digestive method is re-routed past most of the abdomen.

Information from the Nationwide Diabetes Audit display that around 71% of men and women with sort two diabetes had been diagnosed in the last decade. And all around half (47%) of people with the situation have got a BMI over thirty. If these figures had been extrapolated this could imply that as a lot of as 800,000 could be deemed for this kind of surgery on the NHS.

PA

Obesity debate: Charity welcomes surgery option for those with diabetes

Option overall health: pregnancy

In the course of her twelve years working as an obstetrician in the NHS, Gowri Motha became increasingly convinced that numerous of her colleagues had been missing the stage. “Obstetricians need to have to search at a pregnant lady in a holistic way, not simply as a uterus and cervix in isolation,” she says. “Until then how can you support her to have a regular birth? A lady wants to be well, by which I suggest needs a sense of wellness in her entire body: she is not stiff, she does not have back problems, she isn’t bloated – a signal she isn’t digesting her meals.”

Motha, 64, augments her traditional medical experience with a broad selection of complementary disciplines – which includes reflexology, ayurveda, hypnotherapy and an energetic practice named Innovative Healing – to assist her customers have the best births attainable. “Reflexology is key, as most pregnant mothers truly feel anxiety. Deep reflexology helps the whole body to detox and chill out, and aids lymphatic drainage.” Creative Healing also targets the lymphatic system, as nicely as “dealing with the movement of fluids distinct from blood and lymph”.

Motha utilizes Inventive Healing not just for the duration of pregnancy but also for people striving to grow to be pregnant. “It can deal with the movement of the female program and correct most ovulation disturbances. It also supports the spine, which needs to be supple for birth.” (Indeed Motha has some consumers who come to her with spinal issues alone.) She is stringent on diet plan, too: no sugar, wheat or dairy. “If you really do not eat meticulously, your birth passage can become swollen, which makes it difficult to give birth.” Her mission? To make birth a human expertise, not a health-related one particular.

What is it?
The Gentle Birth Technique combines substitute disciplines to facilitate an easy natural birth. Some of Motha’s operate is informed by standard approaches to pregnancy. This ranges from the dietary (“In Ghana it was taboo for pregnant girls to consume really carbohydrate-wealthy food”) to the bodily (a self-administered vaginal-stretching massage, as utilized in various South American tribes, with ayurvedic oils, both speeds up the birth and guards towards tearing).

How did it start off?
As one particular of the folks who launched water births to Britain, Motha found that most ladies failed to give birth actually in the water this modified when she utilised good visualisation with her individuals. She then produced a nutritional strategy “to make contractions bearable”.

What is it excellent for?
Motha’s clients fall into two main groups: women who are pregnant, and girls who are making an attempt to get pregnant. “Stress is the largest lead to of infertility. It creates also significantly testosterone, inhibiting fertility. Plus, it stimulates the flight-or-battle response, affecting ovulation.” Motha also uses Inventive Healing to deal with individuals with back problems.

Who’s a believer?
Motha’s customers have incorporated models such as Kate Moss and Elle Macpherson.

£120 for 90 minutes gentlebirthmethod.com

Option overall health: pregnancy

Is Arkansas" "Personal Option" A Block Grant? Insurance Skilled Bob Laszewski Thinks So, But He Is Wrong

Throughout the previous couple of months, insurance coverage industry insider Bob Laszewski has chronicled a lot of of the failures of ObamaCare’s launch. He has raised some very critical questions and concerns from the insurance business about future policy and premium bumps that lay ahead below the ACA. Sadly, his recent assault on Republican governors and state lawmakers who have rejected ObamaCare’s misguided Medicaid expansion totally misses the mark. He contends that Arkansas’ “Private Option” is genuinely just a block grant for Medicaid. But the truth lies in the fine print, and even though there is no question the Private Option puts state taxpayers at risk, it also produces a new entitlement and ceded most of the manage for the plan to the federal government. It’s like putting the fox in charge of the hen property.

Laszewski praises the Obama administration for getting “very cooperative and flexible” on Medicaid expansion, by permitting states to improve Medicaid eligibility via applications this kind of Arkansas’ “Private Choice.” There’s just one dilemma: the promised “flexibility” in no way materialized.

We not too long ago talked to Arkansas State Senator Bryan King, chairman of the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee, who has been monitoring Private Option implementation. Here’s what he had to say about that promised versatility:

Arkansas’ negotiations with the Obama Administration manufactured 1 factor clear: the bureaucrats in Washington hold all the cards and their primary concern is implementing ObamaCare, not providing states with any true flexibility. They could relent on tweaks that quantity to nothing at all more than window dressing, but their intent is for states to expand Medicaid and enroll much more Americans into government-run well being care. Arkansas produced a grave error in trusting the Obama Administration’s false promise of flexibility and our state’s sense of buyer’s remorse grows worse by the month. I only hope that leaders in other states are not fooled by these empty guarantees.

Senator King is correct: Arkansas was given no meaningful flexibility at all.

The Federal Government Did not Grant Arkansas A Medicaid Block Grant

The Private Alternative Medicaid growth produces a new entitlement for in a position-bodied, operating-age grownups.  It is not a Medicaid block grant. By definition, a block grant calls for a state to acquire a fixed amount of funding in exchange for meeting particular policy goals. Although the federal government positioned a per-individual cap on Private Option spending—though kept an open-ended funding scheme for an unlimited amount of eligible individuals—it did not accompany that cap with accurate versatility. It’s the worst of each worlds for Arkansas: capped per-individual funding from the federal government and no meaningful flexibility to manage charges.

The Federal Government Did not Grant Arkansas Versatility On Who To Cover

The Personal Choice Medicaid growth covers all of the ready-bodied grownups that ObamaCare envisioned. The vast bulk of these ready-bodied grownups are operating age, have no dependent young children and are ineligible for most other sorts of welfare, such as money support and extended-term foods stamps.

In order to safe its waiver, Arkansas was forced to guarantee to cover men and women who have been already purchasing private insurance coverage – either via an employer or in the personal industry – as well as people who would otherwise qualify for federal subsidies on the ObamaCare exchange.

Other states that have explored partial expansions or various prepare types, like South Dakota and Indiana, have been smacked down by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services—the choice-making arm of the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Services when it comes to Medicaid-associated negotiations with the states.

Is this the cooperation and flexibility that Mr. Laszewski praised the Obama Administration for?

The Federal Government Didn’t Grant Arkansas Flexibility On What To Cover

Personal Alternative enrollees are assured the same Medicaid rewards they would acquire below a conventional growth. All positive aspects not typically covered by private insurance coverage, like non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) and early and periodic screening, diagnosis and treatment (EPSDT) benefits, are merely delivered through the traditional fee-for-support Medicaid program.

The Federal Government Did not Grant Arkansas Flexibility On What To Charge

Beneath the terms of the waiver, the vast bulk of enrollees in Arkansas’ Private Option have no cost-sharing whatsoever. Even between these who have to shell out nominal copays, cost-sharing is reduced than what existing Medicaid principles allow.

The Federal Government Didn’t Grant Arkansas Versatility To End The Expansion Whenever It Wishes

Practically nothing in the Personal Alternative waiver provides the state new authority to roll back its ObamaCare Medicaid growth. Federal law and regulation nonetheless classifies the growth population as a new “mandatory population” for states that opt into the expansion, which authorizes the federal government to consider away all federal Medicaid money if a state were to roll back eligibility for that group.

Is Arkansas" "Personal Option" A Block Grant? Insurance Skilled Bob Laszewski Thinks So, But He Is Wrong

Arkansas" "Private Option" Value Tag Is Growing By The Month Below Obamacare"s Medicaid Expansion, State Taxpayers To Pay out Tens Of Millions

This publish is co-authored with Jonathan Ingram.

Any Governor or legislator still contemplating a “Private Option” design ObamaCare Medicaid growth in their state ought to consider an additional-extended look, as the Razorback state’s edition is turning out to be hugely costly. Even though the “Private Option” programs are essential to look nearly exactly the exact same as Previous Medicaid from an enrollee’s viewpoint, the prepare does have one massive big difference from a straight “traditional” ObamaCare Medicaid expansion: state taxpayers are on the hook for all expense overruns. The trend of enrollment in the 1st couple of months venture a price overrun of tens of millions of dollars for 2014 alone, with likely overruns growing larger in the future.

We just lately talked to Arkansas state Representative Joe Farrer (R-44), who has been warning his colleagues of these possible problems for fairly some time. When asked what lawmakers both in his very own state and around the country need to know, here’s what he had to say:

These expense overruns have designed tens of hundreds of thousands of new causes why the Private Choice should be repealed. A lot of of us warned that this program was going to be a income pit we are already being established correct and Arkansas taxpayers are going to finish up on the hook.

Except if we reverse program, we are going to have to make large cuts to vital state services—including these that truly vulnerable, elderly and disabled sufferers rely upon—or increase taxes even a lot more in buy to maintain pumping income into this giant broken promise. How many sufferers will have to suffer and how a lot of family members budgets will get a hit ahead of Personal Choice supporters admit this ObamaCare Medicaid expansion scheme has failed?

The New York Instances, Hillary Clinton &amp Some Republicans Have Endorsed The Personal Choice As GOP-safe Medicaid Expansion

Media accounts have manufactured a quite huge deal about the “GOP-conceived alternative” to Medicaid expansion. This has led to speculation that the prepare helps make it politically less difficult for red states to assistance ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion. The dilemma is that, as we discover a lot more about the fine print of the last deal and view early implementation, the plan looks like a horrible deal for taxpayers in Arkansas and consists of all of the same federal strings that make Old Medicaid such a dysfunctional program in the 1st location.

The further charges will directly crowd-out investing on other public priorities like schooling, public safety and infrastructure investments. But worse than that, as Representative Farrer would like other states to consider, it will hurt the most vulnerable already protected by the pre-ObamaCare security net: mainly poor kids, seniors and men and women with disabilities.

In the odd submit-ObamaCare era of Medicaid growth debates, a strategy roundly endorsed by each The New York Times editorial board and Hillary Clinton has not dampened the interest from some Republican legislators hoping to secure their own version of the Arkansas model. The idea has spread to states like Iowa, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Utah. Yet a lot of fail to recognize how the Arkansas program is structured, and move past the rosy rhetoric of the Personal Choice.

How Arkansas Policymakers Put Their Residents On The Hook

ObamaCare advocates repeatedly guarantee state lawmakers that Medicaid expansion is totally-funded by the federal government, at least through 2016.  Advocates repeated this guarantee for the Arkansas Personal Alternative Medicaid expansion, which sought to use ObamaCare’s Medicaid funding to supply Medicaid advantages to a new class of operating-age, able-bodied adults by means of ObamaCare exchange plans.

But under terms of the Private Choice federal waiver signed by Governor Beebe and the Obama administration, state taxpayers will be on the hook for any value overruns. The unique terms and conditions of the Private Choice waiver attribute month to month per-particular person caps on federal investing for every of the up coming three many years. A widespread characteristic of Medicaid waivers, these caps are meant to shield the federal taxpayer if the Private Option ends up becoming much more costly than previously estimated.

Beneath the terms of the waiver, the state taxpayer is accountable for all charges which exceed these per-enrollee caps. At the end of the waiver period, the federal government will calculate how a lot Arkansas invested on the Private Choice Medicaid expansion and compare it to the yearly price range caps agreed to in the waiver. Any quantities more than individuals caps should then be repaid to the federal government from state tax bucks.

Private Choice Already Exceeding Federal Cap

Just three months into the program, costs have been far over the state’s initial projections. When the Personal Alternative originally passed, consultants for the Arkansas Department of Human Solutions projected that the system would price $ 437 per individual per month in 2014. But the Division of Legislative Audit reports that the Personal Option had an average month-to-month price of $ 476.59 per individual in January alone. By February, the Division of Human Providers reported average regular monthly expenses had enhanced to $ 483.15 per individual. In March, the typical monthly charges grew even higher, reaching $ 485.77.

Despite the fact that the state developed a minor wiggle space into the cap it negotiated with the federal government, the Personal Option started to exceed the month to month per-enrollee cap of $ 477.63 in February, the second total month of the program, with expenses continuing to improve thereafter. The waiver does supply the state an possibility to inquire for an adjustment to this cap, but this would call for added federal approval and is supposed to only be granted for problems in participation costs and related aspects.

Arkansas" "Private Option" Value Tag Is Growing By The Month Below Obamacare"s Medicaid Expansion, State Taxpayers To Pay out Tens Of Millions

Anti-GMO Guru Mike Adams: NaturalNews.Com Option Well being "Snake Oil Salesman" Runs "Most Anti-Science Site On The Web"

He just may be the most influential—and scientists say the most irresponsible—voice in the crusade to demonize GMOs and undermine the advances of modern medicine. You may not know him by name but he is a titan in the booming alternative lifestyle business, running dozens of websites promoting ‘natural’ products, many of them bogus or dangerous, which he relentlessly hawks online.

His name is Mike Adams, the self-proclaimed Health Ranger, and his central hub—what amounts to his personal blog and general store—is NaturalNews.com, which offers a potpourri of offbeat theories about politics, science and health.

Adams site is the cyberspace version of the water cooler gathering spot for crackpot conspiracy theorists of the far left and right. His byline: “never trust official stories”.

Adam’s latest crusade: the world’s governments are covering up the fact that the doomed Malaysian Airlines jetliner was pirated safely to a desert hideaway by Iranian hijackers, and is now being refitted into a stealth nuclear bomb.

In recent months, Adams has claimed that high-dose Vitamin C injections, which he conveniently sells, have been shown to “annihilate cancer” (doctors warn high doses of vitamin C can be dangerous); that measles and mumps are making a comeback because vaccines are “designed to fail” (he’s an anti-vaccine campaigner); and that fluoridated water causes mental disorders. He is also an AIDS denialist, a 9/11 truther, a Barack Obama citizenship ‘birther’ and a believer in ‘dangerous’ chemtrails.

[Visit Mike Adams: Facts and Profile for more background]

But his most heated attacks—and the ones that generate the most traffic and business on his websites and what has made him a oft-cited hero of anti-GMOers—are directed at conventional agriculture, crop biotechnology in particular.

In a recent screaming but typical headline, Adams claimed that research at his Natural News Forensic Food Labs—another of his bizarre websites—has turned up unequivocal evidence that corporations are intentionally engineering “life-destroying toxins” into our food supply, with genetically modified corn as one of the chief ‘weapons against humanity.’ His recommendation: buy the natural products that he sells and rid the world of GMOs.

Considering Adams’s conspiratorial bent, he takes every opportunity to bash genetic engineering, promote junk science studies, spread innuendo and play the corporate greed card. No one would characterize his views as nuanced. “Monsanto’s products cause death,” he writes in a typical post, calling the seed and chemical company a “pusher” for selling “poison” and blaming it for the impending “destruction of humanity.”

His evidence: like many dedicated anti-GMO ideologues, Adams hypes discredited fringe research, such as the maize cancer rat study by French scientist Gilles-Erich Séralini. Adams’s sensationalist account claimed that the GMO corn caused “horrifying cancer tumors.” The study, roundly criticized by mainstream scientists when it was first released, was since retracted by the publishing journal because of its inconclusive results and shoddy data. But Adams’s “reporting” had long since done its damage. His article on the Séralini research was shared more than 81,000 times on Facebook.

Adams frequently goes personal in his attacks. “From the top company executives to the bottom of the corporate ladder,” he writes, “people who work for Monsanto are engaged in promoting a sickening, unprecedented evil that’s spreading across our planet like a black slimy cancer tumor.”

He is also a major promoter of GMO labeling, which he believes would stigmatize GMOs, undoubtedly pumping sales of his alternative universe of food and health goods. After the defeat of the Washington state labeling Initiative 522, Adams, issued what bordered on a lawless ‘call to arms.’

“The failure of 522 … shows that democracy itself doesn’t work,” he wrote on another one of his blogs, Dark Politricks. His solution? Go rogue. Adams called on anti-GMO activists to adopt “asymmetrical warfare tactics such as guerilla warfare. … To beat them at that game, you have to take off the kid gloves and go for their throats.” Based on Adams history, the call may not have been metaphorical.

Adams is quite open about his business model: play on fear to make as much money as possible. To dispel any doubts about his real motivations, in 2008, he bragged publicly in his self-published book, The 7 Principles of Mindful Wealth, that his operating philosophy was “Getting past self-imposed limits on wealth… Karma doesn’t pay the rent. Good karma isn’t the recognized currency in modern society: Dollars are!”

To peddle the alternative nostrums that have helped build his fortune, Adams operates a string of fringe health scare sites, including prenatalnutrition.org, expectant-mothers.com, NewsTarget.com, HoodiaFactor.com, EmergingFuture.com, SpamAnatomy.com, VitaminFactor.org, CounterThink.com, HealthFactor.info, JunkScience.info, BrainHealthNews.com, LowCholesterolDiets.DietsLink.com, PublicHealthNews.org, PharmaWatch.info, HomeToxins.com, PoisonPantry.org, DepressionFactor.org, webseed.com and ConsumerWellness.org.

Promoting terrorist scares is Adams stock and trade. In 1998 he launched the Y2K Newswire promoting apocalyptic claims of impending software disaster whileoffering sales of emergency preparedness products and foods. Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, he wrote, falsely, that the Japanese radiation, “spans oceans and continents” to panic his readers into buying useless “FDA approved” potassium iodide treatments and storable uncontaminated super foods that he shamelessly sold on his site. That got him a mention on the sin qua non of conspiracy programs, the wacky Alex Jones Show, which Adams had previously guest hosted—further stoking his notoriety among the fringe set.

Anti-GMO Guru Mike Adams: NaturalNews.Com Option Well being "Snake Oil Salesman" Runs "Most Anti-Science Site On The Web"

WIPP Is Still The Ideal and Only Option For Nuclear Waste

The only operating underground deep geologic nuclear waste repository had its first minor accident on Valentine’s Day. It was a small release of radiation that will not harm anyone or have any environmental consequence. Maybe it was the Earth’s way of saying, “Happy Valentine’s Day. I love you, but take me for granted and I’ll slap you upside the head.”

The amount of radiation released into the environment was a million times less than any EPA action levels, but to hear the outcry you’d think it was Chernobyl. On the other hand, the general public has become aware for the first time in 15 years that the United States has a successful permanent deep geologic repository for nuclear waste, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, known as WIPP. Maybe this will get serious dialogue going.

WIPP is presently licensed only for nuclear bomb waste (transuranic or TRU) but was designed to hold any and all nuclear waste. WIPP is located a half-mile below the Earth in the massive Permian-age salts of the Salado Formation within the Delaware Basin that cuts across southeastern New Mexico into west Texas.

The Salado has geological, physical, chemical, redox, thermal, and creep-closure properties that make it ideal for long-term waste disposal — long-term in this case being greater than 200 million years. Because it is the best place, and the best rock, to put nuclear waste, or anything you want isolated from the environment forever and ever, debate has been going on to expand its present mission to include high-level waste. This event doesn’t change that.

WIPP has disposed of about 80,000 cubic meters of nuclear waste, some quite hot, and has been operating for 15 years without incident. Until Valentine’s Day, when there was a minor radiological release sufficient to be seen in air monitors at the surface. The signature of Pu and Am makes it certain to be from the transuranic nuclear bomb waste.

We won’t know for certain until we get back in (a process that will takes weeks to months because we want to be really, really careful) but the only event we can think of to produce even this small amount is a large rock fall from the ceiling (or back) of Panel 7 that crushed one or more drums and caused a puff of material that was picked up by the 425,000 cubic feet-per-minute ventilation system and whisked down the exhaust system.

Immediately, the Continuous Air Monitors (or CAMs) alarmed, and the ventilation switched to HEPA filtration that removes about 99.97% of particulates (this type of radiation is always in particulate form so can be filtered). 99.97% is not 100%, as anyone with bad allergies knows, and that difference is what was released.

An NMSU CEMRC scientist collecting a filter sample at one of the High-Volume Air samplers, used by CEMRC to monitor the air in and around WIPP – at On-Site, Near Field and Far Field (Cactus Flats) collection stations. Samples collected before and after the Valentine’s Day event indicate a rock-fall that crushed one or more waste drums, giving off a single-puff of radiation that was mostly trapped as designed, and that no health or environmental impact will occur. Source: Jim Monk, CEMRC

NMSU’s Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring and Research Facility (CEMRC) independently operates a series of air, water and soil monitoring and sampling stations in and around WIPP (www.cemrc.org). Air filters at these sites were collected and tested as soon as they could (see Figure). The Far Field Station, 11 miles away, did not show anything but natural radiation at any time before or since the event.

Air monitors a hundred yards away from the underground air exhaust point (On-Site Station), and monitors just outside WIPP’s fence line a half-mile away (Near Field Station), exhibited some radioactivity. They both had trapped several days of air flow from before the event to after the event, and showed about a Becquerel (Bq) total of radiation coming from Pu and Am. The natural background radiation collected by these filters for that amount of time is always about 40 Bq.

The On-Site filter had 0.00013 Bq/m³ total from Pu+Am and the Near Field had only 0.00006 Bq/m³ from Pu+Am. The EPA action level is 37 Bq/m³.

So these levels of Pu and Am that got out to the environment from this WIPP puff are a million times less than any environmental concern and 40 times lower than ordinary background. They pose no concern whatsoever.  After removing these filters from the field to analyze them, new filters were put in, and these are being analyzed and replaced regularly, as has occurred for the past 16 years. A week after the event, the radiation at these stations had decreased by a hundred times, and soon will not even be detectable, demonstrating no long-term environmental effects.

Station A, operated by NMSU CEMRC, to monitor air exiting the WIPP underground. Upper right: photo of the 14-foot diameter air exhaust shaft as it emerges from the underground and turns horizontal. The Station A building sits over the turn and continuously subsamples the exhaust air. Upper left: schematic of sampling set-up showing the three probes that subsample the exhaust air. Lower left: photo of Station A interior. Lower right: Photo of two of the four huge blowers that drive the exhaust, each one capable of over 100,000 cubic feet per minute air flow. The exhaust shaft is seen disappearing into the filter building where Station B sits. Samples collected before and after the Valentine’s Day event indicate a single puff that was trapped by this specially-designed ventilation system, as expected. The other stations showed that a small amount of radiation was released, but well below any EPA action levels. Source: CEMRC

Just today, CEMRC released the results from filters right at the underground air exhaust point, both just before and just after the HEPA filters, called Station A and Station B, respectively (see figure). These filters are designed to show just how much radiation left the underground and how well the HEPA filters worked to trap it.

The filter removed the morning after the event at Station A showed high levels of radioactivity, as expected, about 2,000 Bq/m³ of combined Pu and Am. Twelve hours later, the new filter showed about 150 Bq/m³ of combined Pu and Am. By the morning of February 21^st, these levels had dropped to 0.7 Bq/m³.

Station B showed much lower levels, about 2.03 Bq/m³, when it was collected on February 18^th. Three days later it was about 0.13 Bq/m³. Again, not dangerous, and less than the EPA action levels of 37 Bq/m³.

WIPP Is Still The Ideal and Only Option For Nuclear Waste