The original lie by DWP about Silver Lake, and geeky stuff like Celcius.

The last thing a blogger wants to do is write about him or herself, but sometimes it becomes necessary to use the “I” pronoun.

For instance, last week I wrote about a press release that NSF issued about the bird balls in Ivanhoe. Because the manufacturer, Orange Products, emailed it to me, I thought that meant that they paid for the NSF release.

Cat, but not LOLcat.

However, in response to my inquiry, Cheryl Luptowski of NSF called me today to clarify that OP did not request or pay for the PR. (I corrected this.) She said they issued it because they have been getting an unusually high number of inquiries about the bird ball test, and NSF wanted to put the facts out there. I asked her how many people contacted NSF, and she said 3 or 4 dozen. Most were email, but she suspects that the majority of the questions were from Los Angeles. (H. David Nahai, the Time-Waster Police called for you. They said to GET OFF THE COMPUTER and fix things.)

And here’s where I come in! I’m the only writer anywhere who actually chose to investigate what this NSF test really included. This means a lot of people have been reading my blog! Sadly, apparently 3 dozen of them didn’t trust me, and wanted to confirm the NSF test for themselves. That’s either cartoonist bigotry, which I highly doubt, or a hella lot of people concerned with water safety. As I searched Google to see if anyone else had written about NSF in connection with the bird balls, I came across this blog, 37signals.com. Some very interesting scientific comments there, but again, they are quoting my research with NSF.

Devil in the dwp?

So because of the number of questions, NSF issued the press release July 1. She also thanked me for bringing to their attention last week the fact that the temperature wasn’t listed in the release. She said most scientists would know, however, that meant that the balls were tested at ambient, or room temperature, which is 30 degrees C, or 73.4 degrees F. I asked if Orange Products could have requested the balls to be tested at a higher temperature. (I knew from my other conversations with her that they can, but just reconfirming.) She said yes, but they didn’t ask (or failed, as all failed tests are secret.)

The dwp of course had to stick its big fat nose into the release with a puffed up statement by Dr. Pankaj Parekh that says nothing of interest. I love what he said in LA Now, though:

As for leaching chemicals into the water, Parekh said that the balls, manufactured by Allentown, Pa.-based Orange Products, are environmentally safe to be placed in drinking water and will withstand the chlorine and sunlight.

Curious people.

He wrote this lie a month ago. Knowing full well that that wasn’t in the report at all, and the PR says only that the balls are tested at one temperature, for 17 days. Chlorine is not mentioned. In fact, no one except the manufacturer and the dwp had read the report at that time. But that’s what got me to call NSF myself that day to get the facts.

So I guess it all works out for the best, especially if you want the truth! Even if it comes from a cartoonist!