Sightline Research Internship -- Just Posted
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One Of These Lines Is Not Like The Others
How do I love thee, Economic Policy Institute? I would count the ways, but since that would bore most readers, I'll just make a chart based on their data. (Hey, I'm a romantic like that.)
This is US workers' hourly wages, from 1973 to 2005, adjusted for inflation into 2005 dollars. You're seeing the median hourly wage, plus the wage at the 10th and 90th percentiles.
This is all workers, mind you, not just workers who are paid by the hour. Kinda funny, I think, how the trend for the median wage mirrors the trend for the bottom 10 percent. But the top 10 percent? They're having a much nicer ride.
Bye Bye PBDEs
Looks like Washington soon will have some of the strongest anti-PBDE legislation anywhere in the world!
Under the measure, mattresses with deca [the most common form of PBDEs] would be banned after Jan. 1, 2008, and the chemical would be prohibited in residential upholstered furniture and in televisions or computers with electronic enclosures after Jan. 1, 2011.
The "penta" and "octa" formulations of PBDEs haven't been manufactured in North America for a while, but "deca" is still fairly common -- so this is genuinely big news. I doubt that electronics manufacturers will have much trouble complying with the law, though. Judging from some of the news alerts that land in my inbox, plenty of companies have happily gone PBDE-free.
The P-I had a great rundown on the issue last week. To me, the most interesting bit was the exploration of how firefighters' organizations came to support the ban. They, more than anyone, bear the burden of household toxics -- when a house goes up in smoke, they're the ones who have to inhale.
