I’m going to provide a lot of details here, not to bore you, but to let you see just how frustrating a problem a CO leak can be to resolve when there is no clear-cut, quick to test and identify leak present that can be fixed without much fuss.

When my carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) blood test showed my level was 12.9% I had no idea if that level was harmful, nor did I know if it indicated continued exposure or if it just was taking time to decline after exposure. 

Like most people, I hadn’t ever heard of a carboxyhemoglibin test, let alone have an understanding of what it meant to have a COHb of 12.9%! 

Since I wasn’t sure what the COHb was telling me, I sought out experts that might give me information – someone, anyone, whom could tell me if I needed to be patient, it takes time for COHb to normalize, or tell me I was still being exposed to CO.

Enter Dr. David Penney, PhD – Professor of Physiology & Adjunct Professor of Occupational and Environmental Health in the School of Medicine, Wayne State University AND Director of General Surgical Research at Providence Hospital, Southfield, MI.  A researcher with decades experience, more than 110 published research papers, a dozen review articles, and books published on the subject of carbon monoxide exposure and poisoning, he was the man with the expertise about carbon monoxide poisoning that I had to contact.

I emailed him to ask what a COHb of 12.9% meant in terms of my exposure and was it a likely suspect causing so many of the health issues I experienced for the last couple of years.  He kindly replied within an hour or so that he’d like me to call him.  I did, and in the almost two hour conversation, I learned we had a problem and was given lots to read and follow-up on – namely things related to my short and long-term health and approaches to investigating the source of the CO that was definitely still present and poisoning me.

After speaking with Dr. Penney, I called our HVAC service provider, they returned to our home, conducted a bunch of tests, but found no CO, not even very low levels, emitting from the furnace.  The HVAC technician wasn’t all that helpful with information about how to resolve the issue; no ideas about what to do or whom to call to continue investigating the source – in fact, he basically thought we didn’t have a problem and pretty much dismissed my concern, saying I was worrying myself over nothing.

At that point, I was frustrated, I had a COHb of 12.9% – Dr. Penney had been clear, a COHb of 12.9% translated to either a fairly high level of acute exposure for a limited time – or – a longer-term, chronic exposure to lower levels.  With no alarms sounding a warning to alert us to the presence of higher levels, my exposure was almost certainly low-level and chronic, which explained my progressively worsening health symptoms. 

Yet here was our service contactor saying not to worry if we had no alarms going off. 

Who was right? 

I was putting my bet on Dr. Penney.

From my conversation with him, I understood that in our home we have five potential sources of carbon monoxide – in our utility room there are the furnance and hot water heater systems; in the kitchen, the gas stove top; between our family room and living room, the fireplace; and lastly, the attached garage. 

So, me being me, I sought more information.  Dr. Penney was so helpful, but he wasn’t an engineer – I needed to know how combustion systems worked and where they fail in relation to carbon monoxide.  I knew nothing about is combustion systems, so I shot off an email to another researcher I’d read about online – Tom Greiner, Associate Professor, Agricultural & Biosystems Engineering at Iowa State University, explaining the situation, my discussion with Dr. Penney, and asking if he had any information he might share about how to diagnose a carbon monoxide leak. 

While I waited to hopefully get a reply back, I turned the furnace off; despite the chilly temperature outside, I didn’t want to take any chances.

Like Dr. Penney, Tom Greiner was quick to return an email, asking that I call him. 

I did, and again, I was given a wealth of information, in what was again a conversation lasting well over two hours – information and insight that proved critically important in our step-by-step process of elimination to identify the source.  In addition to needed information, Mr. Greiner suggested I contact a top industry expert – Bob Dwyer, who is presently the Director of Training at the CO Safety Association; formerly Director of Training at Bacharach;  his resume, when I searched online was impressive and included fascilitation of Carbon Monoxide & Combustion Safety Programs to over 100,000 people thorughout North America!   He was the expert, on-the-ground, about carbon monoxide and combustion systems!

Before contacting Mr. Dwyer, I felt I needed to somehow test our furnace, so I waited two days, keeping it off.  When we turned it back on, within 45-minutes the CO alarm in the room read 39ppm – no alarm sounded, but we had a reading and we now knew we had a problem. 

We turned the furnance back off and I contacted Bob Dwyer, hoping he might have some insights and advice on how to proceed since I wasn’t sure my HVAC contractor was necessarily up to the task.  Bob Dwyer has some serious experience with carbon monoxide – he too spent a couple of hours on the phone with me, going through various information I needed to know, from a much more technical prespective, and explained how simple, or complicated, it might be to resolve the problem. 

More importantly, he armed me with very specific information about the types of tests we could do ourselves to eliminate suspects to hone in on, and identify the source of the CO so we could contact the right person/company in to fix the problem.  He also gave very specific information about the types of testing that we’d want done, based on what we learned doing our own process of elimination, and called someone in to resolve the problem.  This information was invaluable!

First up, we moved monitors around and placed one within fifteen feet of our stove top and one within ten feet of the door to the garage; we left one monitor in the utility room and moved one into our bedroom, since that’s where we slept and needed overnight readings.  We checked daily and started a routine of testing different sources under different conditions since we needed to start to understand when carbon monoxide was present since many things can come into play and cause it to remain in, get sucked in, or re-enter your home. 

Things like air pressure, wind, gas pressure, pipe seals, etc. were all potential issues since each had the potential to change the dynamic of combustion of fuel and oxygen.

Who knew something so potentially deadly could be so complicated?

The gas stove top quickly eliminated itself – with no standing pilot and a nice blue flame, it never registered CO, not even a blip when first lit, not after 30-minutes of continuous use, not even any hint of CO after a solid hour of use.  Heck, we couldn’t even get a reading when we moved the monitor to within a foot of the stove top!  We were actually quite pleasantly surprised by this, since gas cooktops have very high allowances for CO emissions in homes.  Ours apparently was sealed well and not emitting CO even when on.  Yippie!

The garage was fairly easy to eliminate, so we were left with just two possibilities – the furnace, which we were told didn’t have a problem or the new hot water heater, which was just installed with a new ventilation system that included a power-vent. 

You’d think figuring which one was the problem would be pretty easy – the problem was, as we monitored, both seemed to have a problem…..sometimes.  Sometimes not. 

We were confident the problem was in the ultility room – when the monitors upstairs had readings, the utility room always had the highest reading.  But still didn’t know why since there was no consistency to when CO would rise in the room.  Sometimes it registered on the monitor with just the furnace on, sometimes with just the new hot water heater running, sometimes with both running, and sometimes not at all. 

Was the monitor wrong?  Were we just getting abberant readings that weren’t really there?  One way to answer that was to re-test my blood.  Two weeks had passed since my COHb level was 12.9% – if I was still being exposed, thus indicating the monitors were accurate when they registered low levels of CO, my blood would still have an elevated COHb level.

Two days later, the test results came back and my COHb had declined, but remained elevated above normal, it was now 6%.  I was still being exposed – not as often or with levels as high as before, probably because we were keeping the furnace off except to test now and then, but I was still exposed, confirming that our monitors, reading various levels and sometimes nothing, were indeed functioning.  My c-reactive protein (CRP) was also declining – where before it was 30, it was now 12…..inflammation still present, but diminishing to some degree; still way too high, but at least I now knew what was causing it to elevate and wasn’t petrified I was going to die any minute!

With the additional blood work and our intermittent, but persistent, readings of CO peaks on the monitors throughout the house, we called both the HVAC contractor and the plumbing contractor that installed the new hot water system. 

We felt they needed to work together to determine how the systems were working alone and in combination when both were on, and figure out how to resolve the problem.  Last Wednesday they both arrived early and surprise – the newly installed hot water heater ventilation pipe had a leak! 

They determined that because their was no seal at the point where the PCV pipe joined the vent cap, CO was escaping at very low levels into the utility room.  Depending on the air pressure in the room, the CO leaking in from this unsealed connection rose within the room, and with the furnace on, it was traveling throughout the house. 

Did my plumber forgot this critical step – sealing the pipe connection inside the vent cap – in the installation?

Apparently not.  The step-by-step installation instructions didn’t include this step, nor did the hands-on training he’d received directly from the manufacturer.  So now we were faced with the realization that not only did we have a problem, but this installation step may be critical….others might have a problem with their installation and not know it.

The manufacturer at that point was contacted, so they’re aware of the problem we had and what was done to hopefully eliminate the CO in my house.  The big question now was did sealing the pipe eliminate the problem?  We’d need to continue monitoring and hopefully have a windy day to challenge the systems to air pressure changes in the room and throughout the house.

We are now almost a week out since sealing the connection between the pipe and the vent cap – thus far we’ve had no CO registering on any monitor in the house, even when we’ve turned the furnace on for heat or air conditioning while the hot water heater is running.  We’re still waiting for the weather to cooperate and give us high wind conditions to potentially present significant changes in air pressure in the room and house. 

We watch and wait, hope we’ll have a windy day sooner than later, and have follow-up blood tests for my CRP and COHb scheduled for next Monday.

If a windy day causes yet another rise in the CO, then we’ll need to take a step back and have a back-draft analysis of our entire home.  If a strong windy day doesn’t change CO levels in the room or house, then we can be fairly confident that the leak happened because the pipe wasn’t sealed when the system was installed.

I really have to thank Bob Dwyer for putting the bug in my ear that a newly installed system was no guarantee we were free from a problem – that in his experience he had seen not only installation of a new system turn out to be unnecessary (that it wasn’t really the problem to begin with), but also had seen a new system installed that truly resolved an existing problem, but also created a new problem.

We know for sure, with no doubt, that our old hot water heaters were a chronic source of varying levels of carbon monoxide spilling into our house – their ventilation was inadequate (not only too long in length out of the house, but it had too many right angles and right angle equivalents to properly vent CO out of the house, most likely since the day it was installed in 1995), they were badly sooted inside and out, at the top and bottom, and they had a vent pipe reading of 1600ppm inside the utility room the day the alarm sounded.  They were a problem that plauged my health for years.

My health, getting progressively worse each year since moving into the house, was due what I now understand is occult carbon monoxide poisoning – a chronic exposure to low levels of carbon monoxide, that in time can, and too often are as lethal and deadly as an acute high level exposure to CO.  Because the symptoms parallel so many other potential health problems, it’s almost always missed – misdiagnosed as something else, with the victim returned to the source that’s poisoning them. 

Doctors are taught not to chase “zebras” because they’re too few and far between in their day to day practice of medicine.  For the average doctor, a “zebra” walking into his or her office is a once in a lifetime occurance, if ever. 

But I’m left wondering, is occult carbon monoxide poisoning really a zebra or is it something a lot more common than we think?

I didn’t have the flu, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, polycythemia vera, heart disease, or any number of other diseases my symptoms mimicked.  I was chronically being exposed to low levels of carbon monoxide, slowly being poisoned – and this winter, I now know, I’d entered what I’ve been told is the “death window” – the period in year three to five of chronic low level CO exposure, where my symptoms accelerated, placing me at high risk for death. 

I’m lucky – others aren’t and their deaths from eventual heart failure may or may not even be identified at autopsy.

I’m also angry – since we got married, we’ve always had carbon monoxide alarms in our home, yet they only sounded twice – once in 2007 and again in March of this year – this despite carbon monoxide being present persistently.  I wanted to know why they failed to alert us that we had an ongoing, persistent problem with carbon monoxide in our house.

What I learned still leaves me numb. 

I’ll follow-up on why later in the week, but will leave you with a few lines included within the instruction packet for each of the UL compliant carbon monoxide alarms in my home. 

WARNING: This device is designed to protect individuals from acute effects of
carbon monoxide exposure. It will not fully safeguard individuals with specific medical conditions. If in doubt, consult a medical practitioner. Individuals with medical problems may consider using warning devices, which provide audible and visual signals for carbon monoxide concentrations under 30 ppm.

[...]

If the alarm is exposed to 70ppm of CO, IT MUST ALARM BETWEEN 60 AND 240 MINUTES.

[...]

The unit is designed not to alarm when exposed to a constant level of 30ppm for 30days.

——————

Translation when you include additional information contained within the instructions - your house can have anywhere between zero and 29ppm and you will never know it.  Your house can have between 30ppm and 69ppm all the time, and you will not know it unless you push the peak level button to see if any CO between 30ppm and 69ppm was recorded. ***

More to come in my follow-up!

***Some older models that are still within their expected shelf-life will record levels as low as 10ppm; some newer models may also record peak levels between 10ppm and 15ppm.  You must read the package insert to know what is the minimum level of carbon monoxide your monitor will record, whether it will sound an alarm or not!

At my age, when an estradiol level comes back elevated on Day 3 of a cycle, one almost automatically thinks it’s simply age, you’ve enetered that period of perimenopause and it is what it is.  You can’t change the passing of time on biology.

So in March, when my estradiol level came back at 120 (normal range 30 to 100), Gil wasn’t pleased to see it elevated on day 3, but wasn’t surprised given my age.  I, on the other hand, wasn’t surprised and didn’t think he should be either, since my cycle has always been short (23 days; sorry if TMI) and highly predictable (still is), so I thought it sounded reasonable that my estrogen levels would elevate earlier in the cycle! 

For well over a year, I was convinced something was drastically wrong with my thyroid – yet test after test found nothing wrong.  In fact, my numbers kept showing that my thryoid wasn’t just functioning as it should, but that its function was well within the optimal range you want to see for TSH and Free T4, and I was free from thyroid antibodies. 

You can only test so many times before you have to accept there is nothing wrong with your thyroid.

In my March bloodwork, we evaluated pretty much everything possible, including thyroid again, from the perspective of hormones; and all the tests were normal except my estrogen level.  That really nagged at me.  Hey, call it denial, but I’m not convinced my days are over for having another baby…my days may be numbered, but given the laundry list of things going wrong with me, age alone didn’t explain to me the vast majority of them. 

So with my protests, we scanned and confirmed the presence of a lead follicle already dominating the cycle, and it was sized appropriately for the level of estrogen.  So while the estradiol level was elevated, it could potentially be explained by the lead follicle.  Still though, it nagged at me – it wasn’t just that I had elevated estrogen early in the cycle, but also my CRP was beyond skyhigh, it was scary high (30) and a CBC again found elevated white blood cells with the elevation only with neutrophils. 

Something was radically wrong and it was causing inflammation and a strong immune response – maybe estrogen dominance wasn’t the only thing impairing my fertility, but maybe it held a clue to what was happening with my health?

I hit Google and PubMed.  It’s at this point where Google and PubMed could be friend or foe – searching causes of estrogen dominance online returned, literally, tens of thousands of suspects – some way out there, some well within believable, and some established, known offenders in our environment. 

Weeding through the results seemed overwhelming but I got lucky when I entered a bunch of keywords – estrogen, c-reactive protein, neutrophils, inflammation, infertility – and hit the jackpot. 

Into the fifth link I was reading described the relationship between nitric oxide and its impact not only on estrogen levels, but on inflammatory markers and white blood cell production, namely neutrophils. 

I wondered, how did nitric oxide possibly play into this with me? 

Was it really a possibility?

I changed my search parameters a bit and B-I-N-G-O, there it was, carbon monoxide poisoning….and I knew what the problem was and had been for quite some time. 

Apparently nitric oxide levels increase in the body when you’re exposed to carbon monoxide, that increase in turn elevates estrogen, over time causing estrogen dominance…..the longer one is hypoxic, the more NO circulating, the higher the estrogen is elevated…..it’s a viscous cycle.

I didn’t include exposure to carbon monoxide in my previous post because it didn’t register on my radar to communicate to any doctor I’ve seen in the last two years.  In fact, in my mind, it was an unrelated-to-health  issue that was resolved at each of two occurances in the past; therefore not something to include in my attempts at resolving the health issues that were plauging me.  It was only now, with this newfound potential lead, that suddenly, in hindsight, I realized it was highly possible I was suffering carbon monoxide poisoning.

Now for the history:

Two years ago, in May 2007, we had a carbon monoxide alarm sound in our house, so I called the fire department and they confirmed the levels in the house were dangerously high, we should keep the windows open to maintain lower levels while getting our plumber and HVAC contractors in to investigate.  We did that and it was determined that the hot water heaters were the cause of the carbon monoxide in the house and the problem was fixed (so we thought) - all was well before we retired for bed the same evening that our alarm sounded in the morning. 

The next day, on the advice of our HVAC contractor, we installed a CO alarm in our utility room downstairs, so that if carbon monoxide was an issue in the future, we’d have an alarm sooner than we did with only one on our main level.  We also installed an additional alarm on our main floor level and one upstairs so all levels of the house were monitored for high levels of carbon monoxide.

Fast forward to March 10, 2009 – the CO alarm in our utility room downstairs is screaming and wakes me in the pre-dawn hours. 

Same routine – fire department in, carbon monoxide present and needs to be investigated;  HVAC and plumbers called, and it’s determined that our hot water heaters are shot, the problem can’t be fixed, we’ll need to replace them. 

In my mind that’s reasonable considering that the hot water heaters are those originally installed in 1995 when the house was built, so they’re 14 years old and should be replaced, they’re past their shelf-life…..but our plumbing contractor determines too that our ventilation system for the hot water heater exhaust is terribly inadequate, so in addition to replacing the hot water heaters, we’ll also need to install a new exit route for the exhaust. 

From what I’ve read about carbon monoxide, I want to do what I can to keep us safe….so we decide we’ll even go with a power-vent system to be sure we don’t have another carbon monoxide problem in the future….and while we’re at it, let’s go with a tankless model to eliminate the issue of needing to constantly heat water in reserve;  such a system is a bit more expensive, but doesn’t need replacement as often as a storage tank hot water heater. 

As far as we were concerned, our problem was solved when the new hot water system was installed on March 16th.  Problem is, when my bloodwork was drawn on March 24th, CBC revealed elevated white blood cells, my CRP was skyhigh and my estrogen was elevated – and now, staring me in the face from online keyword searches was carbon monoxide poisoning. 

Given the half-life of CO, it was a full two weeks since the CO alarm sounded and the hot water heaters were turned off, and one week since the new system was installed, including a new ventilation route out of the house.  Carbon monoxide shouldn’t be the problem, but all leads at that moment were pointing to it.

I seriously wanted to know my carboxyhemoglobin levels, and on March 28th, eighteen days after the carbon monoxide issue was thought resolved we drew blood to measure my COHb.

The call came after midnight on Monday, March 30th,  since my COHb was critically high at 12.9% and that level wasn’t something the lab could wait until morning to report.

The finding confirmed I was poisoned by carbon monoxide, and the next day as I started reading through the literature, I was shocked by how many of the things going wrong with me were directly related to chronic low level exposure to carbon monoxide.  I knew an acute, high level exposure was dangerous, could even be lethal – but what was this ‘low level exposure’ potential on health?

I now had a culprit to eliminate, but still no peace since we thought our problem was resolved when the hot water heater was replaced and a whole new ventilation system installed.  Where was this still coming from? 

More importantly, why didn’t our alarms go off it is was such a persistent problem?

The revelation that I was suffering from chronic carbon monoxide poisoning started an incredibly informative and frustrating journey to get to the bottom of the source. 

And that I’ll explain in my next post, where I’ll also thank three very helpful people,  experts that without whom I’m not sure we’d be as far along as we are in resolving this and am grateful to for their time and expertise in helping us figure out this mystery!

Have you ever watched the television show, Mystery Diagnosis?

It’s one of the few shows I enjoy and it is often amazing how often misdiagnosis or a total inability to find a diagnosis leads ordinary people on a quest to just understand what is wrong with them.  Often they reach a point where it’s not simply a matter of finding treatment, they just want to know what it is that is making them sick, whether there is available treatment or not, they just want a name for what’s wrong.

I haven’t posted since December, but before I post the reason why, I’m going to share some things that have been going on and getting progressively worse to see how many of my readers can figure out what’s been wrong! 

Let’s call this Regina’s Mystery Diagnosis.  Those of you whom already know what was going on can’t comment!

Here are the many symptoms I’ve experienced over the last three years, which provide clues:

• Progressive fatigue
• Progressive lethargy
• Dry skin & dull hair
• Aquagenic urticaria (hives after exposure to warm water or humidity)
• Secondary infertility
• Recurrent pregnancy loss
• Progressively persistent mild cough (like having to clear throat more often than normal)
• Sinus congestion; need to blow my nose when I wake up each morning
• Numbness around left hip bone area [progressive worsening]
• Cold hands all the time
• Cold feet all the time
• Slowing growth of hair on legs and under arms [by February 2009, I could go a full month without shaving it had gotten so slow, and even then it wasn't like I had to absolutely shave or braid, it was just enough to want to shave!]
• Forgetfulness [progressive for two years and getting much worse by the day in 2009]
• Progressive Moodiness & Irritability
• Premature Ventricular Contractions (PVC) [May 2008]
• Arrhythmia [May 2008]
• Pounding heart beat [intermittent, but persistenet since May 2008]
• Cramps in legs & feet at night, wakes me up at night [started Fall 2007, progressive]
• Lightheadedness
• Feeling like I might faint when standing up from lyng down or sitting position [started February 2009 after return from Colorado]
• Mild elevation of blood pressure [once, May 2008]
• Weight gain without drastic change to eating habits [November 2008 - March 2009]
• Difficulty losing weight despite reducing carbohydrate to 40g or less each day
• Bloating & retaining water
• Muscle & joint aches
• Numbness in fingers/hands upon waking [started February 2008]
• Numbness in lower arms upon waking [started October 2008]
• Intermittent insomnia
• Tingling lips [intermittent, started sometime in the Fall 2008]
• Palpitations [on and off since May 2008]
• Generalized muscle weakness
• Exercise intolerance & intermittent shortness of breath
• Mild headaches (occasional)
• Mild GI issues (occasional)
• Complete inability to focus attention [November 2008 to April 2009]
• Declining ability to do math sequences
• Hard to find the right word more often
• Low to no tolerance for stress, physical or emotional [progressively getting worse]
• Deep crevice wrinkles developing around my mouth when I smile [progressive]
• Developing wrinkles around eyes
• Puffy inflammed bloated appearance
• Water retention with tightening of rings on fingers
• Ruddiness on cheeks, almost like rosea but not rosea

Lab Bloodwork Values with more clues:

May 2008
During cardiac workup for palpitations, PVC’s and arrhythmia, blood pressure was mildly elevated (130/90 – I’m usually 110/70) and lab tests showed:
Elevated Red Blood Cells
Elevated White Blood Cells (notably neutrophils)
Elevated Hemaglobin
Elevated Hematocrit

Updated to add: non-fasting glucose, 89 (taken two hours after breakfast)

August 2008
Maternal chromosome karyotyping – normal
Clotting factors – normal
TSH & Free T4 – normal
Pituitary hormones – normal
Adrenal hormones – normal
Antibody testing – negative
Autoimmune tests – negative
Infections – negative
Allioimmune tests – negative
Genetic tests – all normal except for one copy (heterozygous) for MTHFR C677T
Blood pressure 110/70

C-Reactive Protein = 9

October 2008
TSH & Free T4 – normal

C-Reactive Protein = 12

March 2009
TSH & Free T4 – normal
Red blood cells – high normal
White Blood cells – highly elevated (notably neutrophils)
Elevated hemoglobin
Elevated hematocrit

Updated to add (Day 3 Hormone Tests) in March 2009

Estrogen – elevated
FSH – low normal (expected, estrogen elevated)
LH – low normal (expected, estrogen elevated)
Progesterone – normal
Prolactin – normal
Testosterone – normal
DHEA – normal
AM Cortisol – normal
IGF-1 – normal
FBG 82
Any other tests I’m forgetting were also normal

C-Reactive Protein = 30 (yes, it was really 30)

Add to this all an interesting observation made in hindsight – in our trips to Colorado in January and March 2008 and again in February 2009, I was able to go to altitude with no ill effects – no headaches, nausea or shortness of breath upon physical exertion.  For both trips in 2008 we’d taken a 2-day period to go from our altitude in Columbia of less than 700 feet above sea level to 10,000+ feet above sea level by staying in Denver to adjust before going to Keystone and Vail.  This year, however, our plans meant I had to go, same day, from where we live to 10,000+ feet in less than 12-hours.  While Gil and Hunter were both queasy and had headaches, I had no problems going to altitude that quickly.  In fact, during that vacation, my energy levels again started to increase, despite being at altitude with lower oxygen levels.

My CRP level at 30 prompted me to ask for one more test before panicking, and that one test dropped the bombshell that told us exactly what was the problem that plauged me for almost three years.  What was that one test and what was the problem?

Feel free to leave comments and I’ll post a follow-up in the days to come to explain what was wrong and why it remained elusive to diagnosis!

Commentary from Governor David Patterson, New York on CNN.com:

Today, we find ourselves in the midst of a new public health epidemic: childhood obesity.

What smoking was to my parents’ generation, obesity is to my children’s generation. Nearly one out of every four New Yorkers under the age of 18 is obese. In many high-poverty areas, the rate is closer to one out of three.

That is why, in the state budget I presented last Tuesday, I proposed a tax on sugared beverages like soda. Research has demonstrated that soft-drink consumption is one of the main drivers of childhood obesity.

These days I’m no longer surprised when something like an “obesity tax” is foisted upon the masses without so much as a whimper – afterall it is your fault if you’re fat, right?  You should pay more, right?

Several commentators in the media applauded the move by Governor Patterson – Nicolas Kristof opined the hope that other states will follow suit because “if other states follow, [it] could help make us healthier.”

He even ties it up neatly with a bow, repeating Patterson’s parallel to smoking and cigarettes, “These days, sugary drinks are to American health roughly what tobacco was a generation ago. A tax would shift some consumers, especially kids, to diet drinks or water.”

No one likes taxes, but by golly, we must do this for the children!  We must save ourselves from ourselves with this tax – save the children, save the world, reduce consumption of sugared beverages and all will be well.

What’s maddening isn’t so much the propsed tax on sugared beverages, it is what government does if they can get away with it….what’s maddening is that no one seems to notice that we are already paying taxes that enable the flood of cheap soda, fruit drinks and sugared beverages into our markets.  It’s paid by our taxes in the Farm Bill, with corn being king amongst the crops subsidized by our tax dollars.

This new tax represents a double taxation to New Yorkers – taxed first from their income to subsidize corn in the Farm Bill; and now to add insult to injury, when they dare to consume products made from the corn products their tax dollars helped make cheap at the consumer level – namely high-fructose corn syrup….beverages produced that are artificially low in price at the consumer level and often cheaper than buying a bottle of water!

If the government truly wants to tackle the obesity epidemic, perhaps it’s time to revisit the Farm Bill and how it is directly creating a market flooded with cheap corn calories at the consumer level for things like high-fructose corn syrup which is used in thousands of food products in our markets!

They say the road to hell is paved by good intentions.

The Toronto Star recently noted the political battlelines drawn around the debate to ban bottled water in Toronto, “Environmentalists claim bottled water commercializes a public resource, undermines faith in Canadian water systems, and sends plastic bottles to the landfills. The bottled water industry counters that environmental groups rig recycling rate numbers and vilify a product that helps combat obesity.”

Last week the vote was cast and the Toronto city council voted to immediately ban the sale and/or distribution of bottled water in City Hall and the city’s civic centres where contracts permit, and ban the sale and/or distribution of bottled water in other city-owned facilities such as arenas and theatres by the end of 2011.

While it’s now illegal to not only sell bottled water, but also illegal to distribute bottled water in city-owned facilities in Toronto, it’s still perfectly legal and acceptable to sell and distribute sweetened waters (translation – soda and fruit drinks).

Afterall, isn’t that really what soda and fruit drinks are – simply sweetened water?

Let me see if I understand this.

Bottled water = bad-illegal

Bottled soda & fruit drinks = good-legal

This vote after Statistics Canada released data that found Canadians consumed more than 95 litres of soft drinks in 2007!

How much more soda and fruit drinks do you think folks will drink now that bottled water is banned?