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TOWN HALL MEETING ON MULTIPLE CHEMICAL SENSITIVITIES
June 24, 1996, Santa Fe, New Mexico
by Ann McCampbell, M.D.
INTRODUCTION TO MULTIPLE CHEMICAL SENSITIVITIES
Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS) is a medical condition characterized by adverse health reactions occurring in persons exposed to certain chemicals at levels that ordinarily do not affect others.
MCS occurs in people of all ages, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Women are affected more frequently than men. The exact prevalence of this condition is not known, but the incidence of MCS is thought to be increasing. In 1987, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that 15% of the population may be experiencing increased allergic sensitivity to chemicals (1). This was corroborated by preliminary results of a 1995 California Department of Health Services study that found in a random survey that 16% of the study population reported chemical sensitivities and 7% said they had been diagnosed with MCS (2).
Substances which frequently cause symptoms in chemically sensitive persons include pesticides, new building materials, new carpets, glues and solvents, paint, perfume, many laundry and personal care products (detergent, fabric softeners, shampoos, hairsprays, mousse, soaps, lotions, deodorants, etc., tar and asphalt fumes, smoke, many cleaning products, vehicular and industrial exhaust fumes, fresh ink, new plastics, and synthetic clothing and furnishings. Heightened reactions to electromagnetic and nuclear radiation have also been reported.
The severity of the illness varies greatly from those mildly affected to those who are severely disabled. The symptoms of MCS also vary greatly and are unique to each person. The severity of symptoms range from being mild to life-threatening, and can be provoked by even minute amounts of substances being inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through the skin.
Common symptoms of MCS include, but are not limited to, headache, fatigue, rashes, heart palpitations, respiratory difficulties, joint and muscle pain, nausea, diarrhea, weakness, poor coordination, and seizures. In addition, disorientation, memory loss, poor concentration, and difficulty thinking and speaking are common. Food intolerance is also common and may be severe.
MCS is thought by many to result from exposures to toxic chemicals, although the exact etiology of MCS is unproven and the mechanism of the illness is not known. The EPA stated in the 1987 TEAM study that chemical sensitivity is one of the chronic health effects that can be caused by chemical exposures in [air] tight buildings (3). Some people develop MCS after a single major chemical exposure, like an industrial accident, while others become ill seemingly as the result of the cumulative exposures of daily life. Many people become sick after moving into a newly built home, working in a recently remodeled office, or following a pesticide exposure.
THE IMPACT OF MCS ON THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY
In its worst form, MCS can be a devastating disabling chronic illness which forces people to alter every aspect of their lives. Many lose their jobs, homes, careers, families, and friends, and some commit suicide as a result. Some chemically sensitive people are housebound while others are homeless. Severe and devastating isolation is a frequent accompaniment of this illness. Because of chemicals that are present, many chemically sensitive people are unable to go into most buildings, including stores, banks, libraries, theaters, restaurants, motels, place of worship, etc. Even outdoor gatherings of people are problematic because of the frequent presence of perfume, BBQ or fireplace smoke, vehicle exhaust, and sunscreen fumes. And those who wear respirators and/or use oxygen in public are often subjected to stares and rude comments.
The impact on society is no less severe. There is a tremendous price being paid in lost worker productivity and the cost of supporting those disabled with MCS. The EPA has said that poor indoor air quality (which can be 100 times worse than outdoor air quality) is costing the nation tens of billions of dollars a year due to direct medical costs for people whose health is affected by poor air quality, lost productivity from absences due to illness, decreased efficiency on the job, and materials and equipment damage due to air pollutants (4).
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration estimates that over a million buildings in this country quality as "sick" and are affecting the health of 20 to 70 million people (5). Improving indoor air quality can reduce serious illness, employee absenteeism, and eventual Workers' Compensation and other disability related costs and lawsuits, while improving access for people with MCS and boosting overall productivity and morale.
Therefore, it greatly behooves government entities to learn more about this illness, find ways to keep chemically sensitive people working or get them back to work, and develop a preventive strategy. One such effort is the federal Interagency Work Group on Chemical Sensitivity that is being led by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). They are expected to issue a report later this year.
MCS AND THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT (ADA)
Although the medical establishment has been slow to accept MCS as a "real" illness, it is recognized a a potentially disabling condition by the Social Security Administration, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Academy of Sciences. People with MCS have won Workers' Compensation cases and received disability insurance benefits. The Justice Department and courts, on a case-by-case basis, have upheld chemically sensitive persons' rights to safe housing, work places, and schools. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guarantees people with disabilities reasonable accommodations and access to public facilities, housing, education, employment, and transportation. MCS meets the ADA's definition of a disability when it causes substantial limitations in one or more of an individual's major life activities. This definition is easily met by many people with MCS.
It is not necessary to resolve all the medical questions about the condition of MCS in order to recognize that an individual who has such a disabling condition may require accommodations. The presence of chemicals which prevent access for chemically sensitive people is analogous to physical barriers which block access for people who use wheelchairs.
Reasonable accommodations for people with MCS can be approached in the following general way:
Education of those whose services and cooperation are needed by those with MCS (awareness and understanding tend to breed compassion and cooperation, while discrimination is often rooted in ignorance).
Identification of chemical barriers that are a hazardous to people with MCS (bear in mind that individual sensitivities vary in severity and with regard to what substances are most troublesome).
Elimination, mitigation, or circumvention of the chemical barriers.
People with MCS have often been likened to "the canaries in the mine" who are serving to warn others that the world has become dangerously polluted. Removing chemical barriers not only provides accommodations for chemically sensitive persons, but helps protect the health of all.
MEETING TOPICS
"When you're sick, you want to go home; but home may be what made you sick"
Nancy Berryman, Santa Fe
"We can choose to build healthier buildings. With the dollar cost of illness and
the priceless cost of lost health, can we afford not to?"
Paula Baker, Architect, Santa Fe
Lack of adequate housing is consistently identified as the number one problem among people with MCS. Having a safe haven where one is protected from chemical exposures is crucial to stabilizing one's health and beginning the recovery process. Yet, finding suitable housing is extremely difficult because chemically sensitive people do not tolerate most standard housing because of its poor indoor air quality. The location of much housing also makes it inaccessible because outdoor air pollution leaks into homes and prevents necessary ventilation with clean air. As a result, many people with MCS live in their cars, yards, and campgrounds. Even people with MCS who have housing are frequently forced to evacuate it — temporarily or permanently — because of neighborhood activities (e.g., construction, pesticide use, new industry) or unavoidable repairs or modifications to their homes (e.g., paint or sealant use, tar roof application).
There is a need for long and short term housing, as well as accessible emergency shelters and retirement homes. Wealthier individuals tend to fare the best at creating safe homes, but success is not guaranteed. Newly ill people with MCS often have a particularly difficult time finding housing because they are frequently very ill and don't yet know enough about their illness to choose housing wisely.
Barriers to Housing
In the unit:
Off-gassing from new construction or remodeling materials (including paints)
Urea formaldehyde insulation
Pesticide residues (or proposed pesticide applications)
Natural gas or propane utilities
Residue from previous animal occupants
Residual fumes from incense, tobacco smoke, air "fresheners," and scented laundry or other strongly fragranced products
Residual fumes from strong and/or scented chemical cleaning products
Residual fumes from disinfectants
Location of unit:
Poor outdoor air quality due to:
Vehicle exhaust (particularly diesel exhaust)
Industrial/commercial fumes (e.g., petroleum refineries, dry-cleaners)
Pesticide spraying (e.g., farms, golf courses, neighbors, roadsides, and mosquito abatement)
Laundry product fumes (especially scented dryer strips)
Other air pollution, such as paint fumes, BBQ's, construction, etc.
Electromagnetic fields from high tension electric lines
Zoning ordinances that prevent trailer living
Cost of unit:
Unaffordability due to disability income
The best locations for people with MCS are often in outlying areas that are still not too far from stores, doctors, and other services. These areas are often more expensive than in more densely populated neighborhoods or extremely isolated areas
Difficulty of sharing housing to reduce costs because of differing sensitivities and tolerances
Cost of suitable housing exceeds upper limit for HUD Section 8 housing programs
Suggestions for State Action Regarding Housing
1. Provide or create more housing (new construction or adapting existing structures) with the following characteristics:
Built with less-toxic materials, or with a vapor barrier to wall off construction materials, or structure at least six years old
No recent panting or remodeling
Electric utilities (heat may be provided by piped hot water which has a combustion heat source in an area that is separate from the living space)
No pesticide use
No mold
No carpeting
No smoke or fragrance residues
Located where there is good outdoor air quality
These are general guidelines for creating healthier housing, but individual sensitivities and severity of disease will determine whether a specific unit is suitable for a particular person with MCS.
Housing and/or shelter could be provided for people with MCS by:
Creating halfway houses where homeless chemically sensitive persons, newly diagnosed persons with MCS, and those being discharged from a treatment center could stabilize and receive guidance
Providing camping areas that have electricity, accessible restrooms, and are free of smoke, pesticides, and generator exhaust; extending length-of-stay options and having these accessible camping areas available in case of emergencies
Relaxing zoning requirements to allow alternative structures, such as trailers or multi-unit buildings, and affordable lot sizes for people with MCS
Providing porcelain trailers or older aluminum trailers (that have been adapted for use by chemically sensitive people) and land to put them on
Providing accessible public housing (example: Barrhaven project in Canada)
Supplementing Section 8 housing allowances
Providing incentives for the private sector to build less-toxic housing
Creating standards for less-toxic building
Creating experimental communities for people with MCS in less polluted areas
Educating landlords and building managers about MCS
Educating directors of emergency and homeless shelters, shelters for battered women, and the Red Cross about the needs of people with MCS
Providing funds to retrofit housing (i.e., take up carpets, install less-toxic heating systems, etc.) or supply adaptive equipment such as air filters
Supporting or expanding programs that help disabled people purchase homes
2. Improve general outdoor air quality by:
Strengthening state authority in regulating outdoor air quality
Reducing pesticide use
Reducing or banning chimney, fireplace, and BBQ smoke (propane BBQs are OK)
Reducing or banning BBQ lighter fluid
Enacting tougher vehicle emissions standards and exploring alternative power sources for vehicles
Examining the health problems associated with various gas additives
3. Expand disaster preparedness plans to take into account the needs of people with MCS.
"We who have MCS are also valuable resources – we have a disability and we need to make a living"
Paulette Johnston, Santa Fe
"Better environments are good for employees, good for the work place, and the right things to do"
Will Pape, Fortune 1000 Business Executive, Los Ojos
Some chemically sensitive persons are too ill to work, but many others would like to work if a job and work space could be found that would not worsen their health. Those chemically sensitive people who do have jobs often live in fear that some environmental change in their work place will force them to quit. Removing chemical barriers not only improves access for chemically sensitive employees, but helps protect the health of all.
Employment Barriers
1. Unfortunately, office spaces are often inaccessible because of the presence of:
New construction or remodeling materials
New carpets, drapes, and upholstered furniture
Maintenance and cleaning products (containing phenol, ammonia,chlorine, and/or solvents)
Perfume, cologne, and other scented products on occupants
Air "fresheners" (e.g., bars, sprays, plug-in devices, and potpourri)
Computer and copy machine fumes
Office supply fumes (carbonless copy paper, correction fluids, marking pens)
Poor ventilation worsens all of the above problems (except electromagnetic radiation)
2. Hostile or uncooperative responses of management and co-workers are another significant barrier to employment.
3. Industrial, commercial, and agricultural work places are usually inaccessible for people with MCS because of the presence of chemicals (e.g., restaurants with gas stoves, arts/crafts shops with solvents, truck driving with exhaust fumes).
4. Penalties for working when on disability programs, such as Social Security or Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and variable levels of health and energy are also disincentives to employment.
Suggestions for State Action Regarding Employment
1. Inform employers and employees of their obligations and rights under federal and state laws for people with disabilities.
2. Insure a rapid, knowledgeable, and effective governmental response to worker complaints of possible low and high level chemical injuries occurring in the the work place. Protect workers who speak out about hazardous work place conditions from retribution from their employers.
3. Provide work place accommodations for state employees with MCS. Educate other employers about MCS and encourage them to do the same. Reasonable work place accommodations for employees with MCS might include any or all of the following:
Educating co-workers about MCS and the need for their cooperation
Improving ventilation by opening windows or increasing the amount of outside air entering the building through the Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system
Banning smoking in and around the work space and building
Adopting an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program for pest control to reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides
Adopting a fragrance-free policy
Eliminating air "fresheners" from work places (including in restrooms)
Venting copying fumes to the outside and/or putting the machine in a separate room
Venting computer fumes to the outside
Providing a computer with a low electromagnetic field
Removing carpet
Providing low-emission furniture made of metal, glass, or other materials that are older and have been aired out
Using less-toxic cleaning products
Providing daylight or incandescent lighting
Limiting remodeling
Providing adequate notice when a problematic substances is to be used (and no acceptable substitute can be found)
Providing an air filter
Permitting flexible work scheduling
Permitting work in an alternate space (e.g., moving to an office with an operable window or working at home)
4. Help people with MCS develop home businesses or help them identify other employment options. Some examples are phone work, proofreading, computer work, and childcare or camp counseling in a controlled environment.
"Why do the laws not protect us?"
Maria C. Chavez, Albuquerque
Many people develop MCS as a result of chemical exposures in their work place. It appears that improvement in work place environments could help prevent this illness in some cases.
Workers at increased risk are farm workers (pesticides), microelectronics workers (solvents), health care workers (disinfectants), construction workers, industrial/commercial cleaners, salespeople in carpet and furniture stores, pesticide applicators, auto mechanics, computer operators, cosmetic salespeople, and beauticians. Also, anyone working in a building which has been newly built or remodeled is an increased risk, especially if the windows do not open.
Though injured workers have sometimes won Workers' Compensation, Vocational Rehabilitation, Disability Insurance, and Social Security cases to obtain benefits, the process is often long, grueling, and expensive.
Suggestions for State Action Regarding Injured Workers
5. Recognize MCS as a potentially disabling medical condition that can be work related, and establish diagnostic criteria.
6. Coordinate tests and paperwork for disability evaluations to integrate the application for Workers' Compensation, state, and federal disability benefits.
7. Workers' Compensation Administration should educate its employees, especially safety specialists, about MCS and include MCS and related health concerns in its written materials.
8. Expand Vocational Rehabilitation services for people disabled by MCS.
9. Insure that injured workers are not exclusively sent to doctors who are biased against the diagnosis of MCS when being evaluated for conditions that include chemical sensitivities.
Suggestions for State Action to Prevent Injury of Workers
10. Evaluate work place environments of State employees, identify workers at risk, and educate them about MCS and ways to protect themselves.
11. Post warning signs of MCS along with an "800" Hotline number in work places.
12. Provide or support education of businesses and state departments by workers who have been injured working in the same field.
13. Provide healthier work places for state employees by:
Establishing fragrance-free policies
Prohibiting smoking near building entrances, openable windows, and air intakes
Adopting an Integrated Pest Management plan
Using less toxic cleaning products
Venting computer and copy machine fumes to the outside
Providing adequate ventilation
Run heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems in State buildings at least at American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) minimum standards, service them regularly, and make logs and schedules readily available
Use least toxic remodeling materials (e.g., no glued down carpet) — do work when employees are not present, ventilate well and provide alternative work spaces until individuals can safely return to their original work site
14. Encourage business to learn about the benefits of healthier work places.
15. Encourage reductions in insurance premiums for businesses providing healthier environments for their employees.
16. Consider revising or adding standards to deal with the hazards of chronic low-level exposure to chemicals, with the understanding that some chemicals should be restricted to parts per billion, rather than parts per million, and others banned outright.
"Insurance tends to cover doctors, treatments and medications that don't help, and not pay for those that do"
Pat Shirley, Questa
Barriers to Health Care
People with MCs often do not receive adequate health care because:
Most doctors and other health professionals do not know how to help chemically sensitive people, and may inadvertently harm them instead. Some health care workers are overtly hostile and abusive.
Hospitals, clinics, ambulances, and doctors' offices are usually inaccessible because of the presence of many of the substances mentioned in the Housing and Employment sections, plus the presence of sterilizing chemicals.
Third party payers resist paying for tests and treatments that may be required for people with MCS. Many chemically sensitive patients cannot tolerate traditional medications, but are helped by "alternative/complementary" treatments that are not usually covered by insurance.
Suggestions for State Action Regarding Health Care
1. People with MCS have the right to see their own doctors who are knowledgeable about their condition. If a managed care program or company doctor is not qualified to treat someone with MCS, then the patient should be referred out. If a company approved doctor is similarly not qualified, then the patient should be referred to a more knowledgeable one.
2. Schools training health professionals should include MCS in their curriculum. Continuing education on this subject should also be provided.
3. The State should sponsor a conference on MCS for health professionals stressing the need for compassion and respect of MCS patients.
4. In-service education about MCS should be required of all medical personnel.
5. Doctors and clinics should be encouraged to make their offices more accessible by banning pesticides and fragrances, using less toxic cleaning products, avoiding carpets, banning smoking near their building, and opening the windows when asked.
6. Doctors and other health care practitioners should be encouraged to provide services outside of their office environment by talking to patients with MCS on the phone, meeting them outside, or making house calls.
7. Hospitals should be encouraged to create accessible rooms or wings for people with MCS (example: Holy Cross Hospital in Taos). The needs of chemically sensitive people should also be considered during the administration of medical tests and treatments, and the performance of surgery.
8. Emergency personnel should be educated about the needs of people with MCS regarding emergency services (e.g., personnel free of fragrances and tobacco smoke residue, inert oxygen tubing and masks, and ambulance engines turned off as much as possible).
9. Educate patients with MCS, and emphasize to Emergency Medical Services personnel, that patients always have the right to refuse transportation to the hospital whether or not they have been treated in the field.
10. Health insurance benefits should be expanded to cover the health care needs of people with MCS, at least to include coverage for nutritional supplementation, desensitization and detoxification therapies, and supplemental oxygen, as indicated. Hospitalization in facilities with services and environments suitable for people with MCS should also be covered. Increased coverage for "alternative/complementary" treatments, such as acupuncture and homeopathy, is also recommended.
11. Encourage a cooperative relationship between the New Mexico Medical Board, insurance carriers, and doctors who treat chemically sensitive patients.
12. Institute a pilot program to fund treatment for people with MCS.
13. Educate the public about MCS by:
Developing brochures and pamphlets
Making public service announcements
Holding public forums to increase public awareness of MCS
Creating and maintaining an "800" Hotline number to call for MCS information and referrals
14. Provide support groups for people with MCS and resource guides on food, housing, cleaning products, doctors, etc.
15. Increase the use of patients' homes for providing health care services (e.g., exams, tests, treatments, nursing). Provide appropriate attendant care when needed.
16. Design and conduct a prevalence study to determine the extent of MCS in New Mexico. Also, investigate other research which would shed light on the nature and mechanism of MCS and lead to better treatments for it.
Barriers to Dental Care
Many people with MCS do not receive necessary dental care. There are very few dentists who understand MCS. Additionally, dental care is fraught with potentially harmful exposures from:
1. The usual building and office substances (see Housing and Employment sections)
2. Fumes from disinfectants and other dental chemicals
3. Substances put in one's mouth:
Dental products (e.g., amalgams, adhesives, etching and bonding agents, crowns, teeth cleaning products, and X-ray materials)
Instruments with chemical residues from chemical sterilization
Latex gloves on dental workers
Chlorinated water to rinse mouth
4. Anesthetics
Despite the hazards, many chemically sensitive people require extensive dental work to remove problematic substances from their mouths and treat infections. This can be very expensive and many persons with MCS cannot afford it.
Suggestions for State Action Regarding Dental Care
1. Encourage dentists to:
Learn about MCS
Have an understanding and flexible attitude when treating people with MCS, work with individuals according to their specific needs
Provide more accessible offices and/or make home visits
Use the least toxic dental materials, and test materials on each MCS patient before using
2. Encourage dental plans to raise the limit for covered dental care for people with MCS or provide dental subsidies.
3. Loosen regulations to allow dental hygienists to make home visits for routine dental care.
"It's like moving a mountain daily"
Becky Sanchez, Albuquerque
"Many mental health problems can be avoided with adequate support
in the form of safe housing, employment, and health care"
Susan Schmall, Ph.D., Psychotherapist, Santa Fe
Barriers to Mental Health Services
People with MCS most often requiret mental health services for supportive counseling to deal with the tremendous stress that results from having this illness. Living with MCS has been likened to living in a chemical war zone with a good part of each day spent searching for safe shelter, food, air, and water. Add to this the suffering from often being misunderstood and occasionally maligned, and it is not surprising that chemically sensitive people can experience anxiety and depression. People with MCS need access to environmentally safe counseling offices and compassionate services.
Evaluating psychological symptoms in people with MCS is a complex and challenging task. For instance, many psychiatric symptoms are the result of chemical exposures and will clear when an individual is returned to a pollution-free environment. Admission to a typically polluted mental health facility can, therefore, exacerbate rather than help alleviate symptoms.
Suggestions for State Action Regarding Mental Health Services
1. Educate mental health professionals about the evidence for the physiological basis of MCS, the relation of psychiatric symptoms to chemical exposures, and the need for accessible counseling offices and compassionate services for chemically sensitive persons.
2. Provide financial assistance for mental health services for people with MCS.
3. Provide reasonable accommodations for chemically sensitive patients in mental institutions.
4. Consider the prohibition of committing chemically sensitive persons against their will (if suicidal or for another reason that does not threaten others), unless a pollution-free environment will be provided.
"We have the right to be in our yards and homes and not be exposed
to something we don't want to be exposed to"
Cecilia, Albuquerque
"My life was sacrificed for a tree"
Louise Wohl, Rio Arriba County
Pesticides — A Major Access Barrier
Chemical pesticides are arguably the number one menace of chemically sensitive people. In a survey of persons with MCS could identify a precipitating event, 60% reported they became ill following a pesticide exposure — National Foundation for the Chemically Hypersensitive, 1989 (6). Pesticide exposures, including exposures to herbicides and insecticides, are also known to trigger particularly severe symptoms in chemically sensitive people and to lead to prolonged relapses.
Because the use of pesticides is so widespread, their presence is a major contributor to access barriers for people with MCS. At the state level, its use limits access to State buildings, grounds, parks, and roadways. It also makes many businesses, work places, and houses inaccessible.
Many pesticides are known to be neurotoxic and, though registered by the EPA, are not necessarily safe. "Inert" ingredients, which can account for up to 99% of a product, are frequently solvents, which are also neurotoxic. Manufacturing impurities as well as otherwise banned substances may also be present in a pesticide, since "inert" ingredients are not regulated. All classes of pesticides — including organochlorines, organophosphates, pyrethroids, fumigants, and herbicides — are hazardous to people with MCS. Even exposure to minute amounts of pesticides from, for example, pesticide drift, being in a house that was sprayed with pesticides years earlier, or eating food with pesticide residue can cause serious health problems for someone who is chemically sensitive.
There is growing concern that pesticides may be adversely affecting the general population, too. Pesticides are ubiquitously found in air, water, and food, and can persist in the environment for long periods. They also can accumulate in animal and human fat. DDT, which has been banned from use in the United States, is believe to be carried in the tissues of every living thing on earth (7).
Pesticides are also known to have estrogen-like effects. In a recent study, some combinations of estrogen-mimicking pesticides were found to be 1000 times more potent than any pesticide tested alone (8). This supports the concern that the endocrine-disrupting effects of pesticides may be much greater than previously thought and might be related to the alarming increases in breast and testicular cancer. Other synergistic and cumulative effects of pesticides have not been adequately studied, nor is enough known about the ability of pesticides to damage the immune and nervous systems.
An alternative to chemical pesticide use is to adopt an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program to control pests. In this approach, pests are managed by the use of physical barriers, traps, improved sanitation, and natural predators, without using chemical agents or using them only as a last resort. The federal government has successfully adopted an IPM program for its Washington D.C. office buildings. A manual is available describing their program, "Integrated Pest Management: Desk Guide for Facility Managers."
Suggestions for State Action Regarding Pesticides
1. Strictly enforce existing pesticide regulations, including the prohibition against advertising a pesticide as "safe".
2. Examine the pesticide regulation and enforcement process with the goal of safeguarding against conflicts of interest and increasing citizen participation.
3. Reconsider what are acceptable levels of pesticide, taking into account the hazards of low-level exposures, the cumulative and synergistic effects, and the lack of regulation of inert ingredients.
4. Require full disclosure of pesticide ingredients.
5. Repeal state prohibition of local pesticide regulation.
6. Recognize pesticide drift as a nuisance and encourage local ordinances to regulate it.
7. Require adequate notification of pesticide use by professional applicators, businesses, and government entities before, during, and after application.
Pre-notification should include the name of the pesticide(s) and the area where they are planned to be used, plus the anticipated date of application. A week or longer warning time is preferred, but in no case should notification be given less than 24 hours before pesticide use. In addition to posting signs, notification in newspapers and calls to certain individuals may be necessary in some situations. Signs with information about a previous application should be left up for at least a week. Information regarding anticipated or past pesticide use should be easily available by phone.
8. Provide sufficient funds to enforce pesticide notification regulations.
9. Adopt an IPM program for pest management in State buildings, grounds, and parks. Use the least toxic chemical pesticides or none at all. Do cost analysis to compare IPM with conventional pest control methods.
10. Educate institutions, maintenance personnel, property and apartment managers, and the general public about the hazards of pesticides and less-toxic alternatives.
11. Ban or reduce pesticide use on roadways.
12. Encourage and support organic farming and gardening. Strictly limit the level of pesticide residues in foods receiving New Mexico organic certification.
13. Establish a pesticide injury reporting system.
14. Establish an appeals process to evaluate pesticide complaints that are not satisfactorily resolved by regulatory entities.
15. Provide legal aid for people with MCS who are being harmed by pesticide exposures and cannot afford a lawyer.
16. Hold pesticide users, including government entities, responsible for the harm caused by their use of pesticides. Pesticide users should provide financial aid to pesticide victims for health care, relocation, cleanup, and the cost of replacing contaminated belongings.
17. Encourage building materials and practices that are more termite resistant.
18. Work on the national level to develop a pesticide hazard sign.
19. Consider the creation of a registry of chemically sensitive persons for the purpose of notification of pesticide and other toxic chemical use, and to aid in disaster preparedness. Provide protection for those registered, including maximum confidentiality, to reduce the chances that they will be harassed or sued. (In Florida, some pesticide sensitive people who were registered to be notified prior to pesticide applications near their residence were sued by pest control associations to prove that these exposures would harm them.")
"It's time to expand our idea of what constitutes a safe school."
Nancy Carroll, Santa Fe
"My teacher told me to drop out, that there was no hope for me,
and that I didn't know what I was talking about."
Francesca Bottos, Santa Fe
Barriers in Schools
Students of all ages may be chemically sensitive. They often cannot attend public schools, universities, or trade schools because of the presence of chemicals typically found in or around buildings — such as pesticides, cleaning chemicals, perfume, tobacco smoke, carpet fumes, and fumes found in new or remodeled buildings (see Employment section). In addition, toxic art supplies, laboratory chemicals , and diesel exhaust fumes from idling buses may be present. Portable classrooms have high levels of formaldehyde which makes them even less accessible for persons with MCS than permanent classrooms. Fluorescent lights can be intolerable for some chemically sensitive people as well.
Some children with MCS are forced to drop out of school because they become too sick there. When children with MCS do stay in school, they often have learning difficulties and behavior problems because of the school exposures. Eating standard cafeteria food can also contribute to symptoms.
Teachers with MCS are often unable to work because the school environments are inaccessible to them, too. Chemically sensitive parents may not be able to help in their children's classrooms or participate in other school activities. Uncooperative or hostile attitudes of administrators, students, and teachers are another barrier faced by those with MCS.
Changes made to accommodate chemically sensitive people in schools often improves the overall environment and reduces the chance that others will get sick. Healthy safe school environments benefit all the occupants.
Suggestions for State Action Regarding Schools
1. Encourage local school districts to provide healthy school environments by banning fragrances, enforcing no smoking policies, eliminating fluorescent lights, using IPM programs, less toxic cleaning products, and least toxic building and furnishing materials (e.g., no carpeting). Heavy cleaning or remodeling should be limited to the beginning of vacation periods. A "no fragrance" policy should be considered an extension of the dress code.
2. Limit vehicle and bus idling on school grounds.
3. Limit the use of portable classrooms.
4. Provide accessible classrooms and instructors or tutors for students with MCS, or provide vouchers that would allow students to attend accessible private schools.
5. Provide reasonable accommodations for teachers and other school personnel who are chemically sensitive.
6. Develop model specifications for less-toxic school buildings, and develop a resource guide that includes building professionals experienced in less-toxic construction and sources for materials.
7. Educate — through brochures, technical assistance documents, reference materials, conferences, and in-service trainings — teachers, counselors, administrators, maintenance personnel, school nurses, special education teachers, and school board members about MCS, including the early warning signs of MCS. Expand ideas as to what is a "safe school".
8. Provide lunches and other food to meet the needs of chemically sensitive students. Consider serving healthy organic food and filtered or spring water to all students.
9. Assist the families of children with MCS to understand this disability and to provide accessible and supportive environments.
OTHER STATE FACILITIES AND SERVICES
Suggestions for State Action
1. Educate all State agencies and employees about MCS and the access needs of chemically sensitive citizens.
2. Create healthier environments in state offices and facilities (See Employment section, Suggestions for State Action to Prevent Injury of Workers).
3. Limit remodeling, but when it must be done, use least toxic building materials and provide adequate notification (through signs and other methods) to the public before, during, and after remodeling is done.
4. Encourage employees to work with chemically sensitive people over the phone or by mail. In addition, a fragrance-free and smoke-free employee knowledgeable about MCS should be designated to meet with people outside.
Finding accessible restrooms is a big problem for persons with MCS. Many restrooms contain air "fresheners," chemical disinfectants, fragranced soap, and perfume and smoke from other occupants. They are often poorly ventilated as well. Chemical toilets are also inaccessible for chemically sensitive persons.
5. Provide at least one accessible restroom in State buildings and parks. This can be accomplished by removing the above-mentioned substances and replacing them with baking soda or zeolite (to absorb odors), cleaning with unscented and low-toxic cleaning products, and improving ventilation by opening a window or by adjusting HVAC to provide abundant outside air.
6. This restroom should be designated a fragrance-free restroom; anyone wearing perfume or applying hairspray or other scented products should not be allowed there, and should be directed to another restroom.
7. A non-chemical toilet should be made available to chemically sensitive people who are visiting parks.
An accessible procedure for meeting and communicating with people with MCS is especially important in hearings, public meetings, judicial proceedings, and legislative activities.
8. Create an accessible space that can be used for various public and government meetings.
9. Alternatively, provide access by speakerphone or meet outside. Investigate the possibility of providing interactive video capabilities.
Motor Vehicle Division
10. Allow people with MCS to go to the front of the line or meet outside for services.
11. Develop a clear policy regarding the pumping of gas for self-serve prices for those unable to pump their own gas and make this service available to qualified people with MCS.
12. Besides notification regarding pesticide applications, there should be ample notification regarding road work so that a chemically sensitive motorist is not inadvertently stuck in traffic being exposed to tar and asphalt fumes along with the diesel exhaust fumes of repair equipment and vehicles.
13. Reasonable accommodations should be provided to chemically sensitive persons needing to take licensing examinations, including the opportunity to use alternate sites (possibly a proctor at home) and the granting of rest periods.
15. Absentee ballots work fairly well for people with MCS. Another accommodation would be allowing someone to go to the front of the line at polling places.
16. Require full product ingredient disclosure.
17. Provide pre-notification of anticipated controlled burns.
18. Make information readily available to the public regarding the use of fire retardants. A citizen should be able to call for information about which chemicals are being used, where they are being used, when their use began, and when their use has ended.
1. Workshop on Health Risks from Exposure to Common Indoor Household Products in Allergic or Chemically Diseased Persons, National Academy of Sciences, July 1, 1987, quoted in Chemical Exposures — Low Levels and Highs Stakes, Nicholas Ashford and Claudia Miller, New York : Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1991, p. xvi.
2. Final Performance Report, letter to panel on "Evaluating Individuals Reporting Sensitivities to Multiple Chemicals," Richard Kreutzer and Raymond Neutra, California Department of Health Services, Environmental Health Investigations Branch, October 3, 1995.
3. Total Exposure Assessment Methodology Study, "Environmental Monitoring and Quality Assurance," Lance A. Wallace, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Washington D.C., 1987, p. 4, quoted in "Measures Which Will Result in Greater Access for People with Environmental Illness/Multiple Chemical Sensitivities to California's Publicly Funded Facilities: Steps Toward Regulatory Remedies," Susan Molloy, 1993.
4. "The Inside Story: A Guide to Indoor Air Quality," U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Air and Radiation and U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Washington D.C., 1988, quoted in "Multiple Chemical Sensitivities and the Americans with Disabilities Act," Human Ecology Action League, Atlanta, Human Ecology Action Leagues, Inc., 1994, p. 3.
6. Chemical Exposures — Low Levels and High Stakes, Ashford and Miller, p. 5.
7. "Human Immune Systems May Be Pollution Victims," Marla Cone, Los Angeles Times, May 13, 1996.
8. "Synergistic Activation of Estrogen Receptor with Combinations of Environmental Chemicals," John A. McLachlan, et al., Science, Vol. 272, June 7, 1996.
Ashford, Nicholas and Claudia Miller, Chemical Exposures — Low Levels and High Stakes, New York : Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1991.
Greene, Albert, Integrated Pest Management: Desk Guide for Facility Managers, Washington D.C., General Services Administration, 1992.
Human Ecology Action League, "Multiple Chemical Sensitivities and the Americans with Disabilities Act," Atlanta, Human Ecology Action League, Inc., 1994.
Independent Living Resource Center of San Francisco (ILRC), Focus on Access, "Employing People with Disabilities: A Practical Approach to People with Environmental Illness or Multiple Chemical Sensitivities," April 1993.
Meggs, William, Ann Davidoff, et al., "Prevalence and Nature of Allergy and Chemical Sensitivity in a General Population," Archives of Environmental Health, Vol. 51, No. 4, July/August 1996, 275-182.
Molloy, Susan, "Measures Which Will Result in Greater Access for People with Environmental Illness/Multiple Chemical Sensitivity to California's Publicly Funded Facilities: Steps Toward Regulatory Remedies," 1993.
Ripple, Joan, California Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Rights of the Disabled, "Memorandum — Task Force Recommendations to Advisory Panel on Environmental Illness/Multiple Chemical Sensitivities," February 8, 1994.


text:
Advanced Features
=================

The :ref:`quickstart` guide covers the common use cases of Django Entity
Event. In addition to the basic uses for creating, storing, and
querying events, there are some more advanced uses supported for
making Django Entity Event more efficient and flexible.

This guide will cover the following advanced use cases:

- Dynamically loading context using ``context_loader``
- Customizing the behavior of ``only_following`` by sub-classing
  :py:class:`~entity_event.models.Medium`.

Rendering Events
----------------

Django Entity Event comes complete with a rendering system for events. This is accomplished
by the setup of two different models:

1. :py:class:`~entity_event.models.RenderingStyle`: Defines a style of rendering.
2. :py:class:`~entity_event.models.ContextRenderer`: Defines the templates used
   for rendering, which rendering style it is, which source or source group it renders,
   and hints for fetching model PKs that are in event contexts.

When these models are in place, :py:class:`~entity_event.models.Medium` models can be configured
to point to a ``rendering_style`` of their choice. Events that have sources or source groups that
match those configured in associated :py:class:`~entity_event.models.ContextRenderer` models
can then be rendered using the ``render`` method on the medium.

The configuration and rendering is best explained using a complete example. First, let's
imagine that we are storing events that have contexts with information about Django User models.
These events have a source called ``user_logged_in`` and track every time a user logs in. An
example context is as follows:

.. code-block:: python

    {
        'user': 1, # The PK of the Django User model
        'login_time': 'Jan 10, 2014', # The time the user logged in
    }

Now let's say we have a Django template, ``user_logged_in.html`` that looks like the following:

.. code-block:: python

    User {{ user.username }} logged in at {{ login_time }}

In order to render the event with this template, we first set up a rendering style. This rendering
style is pretty short and could probably be displayed in many places that want to display short
messages (like a notification bar). So, we can make a ``short`` rendering style as followings:

.. code-block:: python

    short_rendering_style = RenderingStyle.objects.create(
        name='short',
        display_name='Short Rendering Style')

Now that we have our rendering style, we need to create a context renderer that has information about
what templates, source, rendering style, and context hints to use when rendering the event. In our case,
it would look like the following:

.. code-block:: python

    context_renderer = ContextRenderer.objects.create(
        render_style=RenderingStyle.objects.get(name='short'),
        name='short_login_renderer',
        html_template_path='my_template_dir/user_logged_in.html',
        source=Source.objects.get(name='user_logged_in'),
        context_hints={
            'user': {
                'app_name': 'auth',
                'model_name': 'User',
            }
        }
    )

In the above, we set up the context renderer to use the short rendering style, pointed it to our html template
that we created, and also pointed it to the source of the event. As you can see from the html template, we
want to reach inside of the Django User object and display the ``username`` field. In order to retrieve this
information, we have told our context renderer to treat the ``user`` key from the event context as a PK
to a Django ``User`` model that resides in the ``auth`` app.

With this information, we can now render the event using whatever medium we have set up in Django Entity
Event.

.. code-block:: python

    notification_medium = Medium.objects.get(name='notification')
    events = notification_medium.events()

    # Assume that two events were returned that have the following contexts
    # e1.context = {
    #    'user': 1, # Points to Jeff's user object
    #    'login_time': 'January 1, 2015',
    # }
    # e1.context = {
    #     'user': 2, # Points to Wes's user object
    #     'login_time': 'February 28, 2015',
    # }
    #
    # Pass the events into the medium's render method
    rendered_events = notification_medium.render(events)

    # The results are a dictionary keyed on each event. The keys point to a tuple
    # of text and html renderings.
    print(rendered_events[0][1])
    'jeff logged in at January 1, 2015'
    print(rendered_events[1][1])
    'wes logged in at February 28, 2015'

With the notion of rendering styles, the notification medium and any medium that can display short
messages can utilize the renderings of the events. Other rendering styles can still be made for
more complex renderings such as emails with special styling. For more advanced options on how
to perform prefetch and select_relateds in the fetched contexts,
view :py:class:`~entity_event.models.ContextRenderer`.

Advanced Template Rendering Options
-----------------------------------

Along with the basic rendering capabilities, Django Entity Event comes with several other options
and configurations for making rendering more robust.

Doing Prefetch and Select Related on Contexts
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

If you need to fetch additional relationships related to the model objects in the context data, a
``select_related`` key with a list of arguments can be provided to the dictionary of the model
object you are fetching. The same is true for
``prefetch_related`` arguments as well. For example:

.. code-block:: python

    context_hints = {
        'account': {
            'app_name': 'my_account_app',
            'model_name': 'Account',
            'select_related': ['user'],  # Select the user object in the account model
            'prefetch_related': ['user__groups'],  # Prefetch user groups related to the account model
        }
    }

Note that other context loaders can provide additional arguments to ``select_related`` and ``prefetch_related``.
Additional arguments provided by other context loaders will simply be unioned together when loading
contexts of all events at once.

Passing Additional Context to Templates
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Sometimes mediums need to have subtle differences in the rendering of their contexts. For example, headers
might need to be added above and below a message or images might need to be displayed. For cases such as
this, mediums come with an ``additional_context`` variable. Anything in this variable will always be
passed into the context when events are rendered for that particular medium.

Using a Default Rendering Style
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It can be cumbersome to set up context renderers for every particular rendering style when it isn't
necessary. For example, sometimes tailored emails need a special rendering style, however, many events
can be rendered in an email just fine with a simpler rendering style. For these cases, a user can set
a Django setting called ``DEFAULT_ENTITY_EVENT_RENDERING_STYLE`` that points to the name of the
default rendering style to use. If this variable is set and an appropriate context loader cannot
be fetched for an event during rendering, the default rendering style will be used instead for
that event (if it has been configured).

Serialized Context Data
+++++++++++++++++++++++

If your display mechanism needs access to the context data of the event this can be accomplished by calling:
:py:meth:`Event.get_serialized_context
<entity_event.models.Event.get_serialized_context>` method on the
:py:class:`~entity_event.models.Event` model. This will return a serializer safe version of the context that is used
to generate the event output. This is useful if you want to make a completely custom rendering on the display device
or you need additional context information about the event that occurred.

Customizing Only-Following Behavior
-----------------------------------

In the quickstart, we discussed the use of "only following"
subscriptions to ensure that users only see the events that they are
interested in. In this discussion, we mentioned that by default,
entities follow themselves, and their super entities. This following
relationship is defined in two methods on the
:py:class:`~entity_event.models.Medium` model:
:py:meth:`Medium.followers_of
<entity_event.models.Medium.followers_of>` and
:py:meth:`Medium.followed_by
<entity_event.models.Medium.followed_by>`. These two methods are
inverses of each other and are used by the code that fetches events to
determine the semantics of "only following" subscriptions.

It is possible to customize the behavior of these types of
subscriptions by concretely inheriting from
:py:class:`~entity_event.models.Medium`, and overriding these two
functions. For example, we could define a type of medium that provides
the opposite behavior, where entities follow themselves and their
sub-entities.

.. code-block:: python

    from entity import Entity, EntityRelationship
    from entity_event import Medium

    class FollowSubEntitiesMedium(Medium):
        def followers_of(self, entities):
            if isinstance(entities, Entity):
                entities = Entity.objects.filter(id=entities.id)
            super_entities = EntityRelationship.objects.filter(
                sub_entity__in=entities).values_list('super_entity')
            followed_by = Entity.objects.filter(
                Q(id__in=entities) | Q(id__in=super_entities))
            return followed_by

        def followed_by(self, entities):
            if isinstance(entities, Entity):
                entities = Entity.objects.filter(id=entities.id)
            sub_entities = EntityRelationship.objects.filter(
                super_entity__in=entities).values_list('sub_entity')
            followers_of = Entity.objects.filter(
                Q(id__in=entities) | Q(id__in=sub_entities))
            return followers_of

With these methods overridden, the behavior of the methods
``FollowsubEntitiesMedium.events``,
``FollowsubEntitiesMedium.entity_events``, and
``FollowsubEntitiesMedium.events_targets`` should all behave as
expected.

It is entirely possible to define more complex following
relationships, potentially drawing on different source of information
for what entities should follow what entities. The only important
consideration is that the ``followers_of`` method must be the inverse
of the ``followed_by`` method. That is, for any set of entities, it
must hold that

.. code-block:: python

    followers_of(followed_by(entities)) == entities

and

.. code-block:: python

    followed_by(followers_of(entities)) == entities

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Archive: Embarking on a global supply chain career: Quinlan School of Business: Loyola University Chicago
Embarking on a global supply chain career
Soon after finishing his masters degree in supply chain management, Alex Stoll embarked on an international career and fulfilled his dream of traveling the world.
Quinlan alum Alex Stoll (BBA '14, MS '15) always knew he wanted to travel the world. From the moment he stepped onto campus, he worked to learn as much as he could about new ways of life. Just one year after completing his undergraduate and master's degrees in supply chain management, he moved to Copenhagen and now Dubai for shipping company Maersk.
"They considered me for that despite the fact that I was very junior in the company," Stoll said. "Before I knew it within about one year of working with the company, I achieved what I set out to do and was working overseas in Denmark and getting that cultural experience that I was really craving."
Setting course
Prior to Quinlan, Stoll had traveled as far as Canada, but he wanted to go further. In 2013, he went to study at Loyola's John Felice Rome Center, which solidified his desire to work overseas.
"I had this bottled-up desire to do this," Stoll said. "Getting over to Rome and finally having that sense of freedom of being in a foreign place and being completely immersed and surrounded in a new culture… you're constantly in a state of learning, and for me I just crave that."
Receiving guidance
When he returned to Chicago, Stoll sought out all of Quinlan's resources to help him achieve a global career. One of those resources was Professor Maciek Nowak. Nowak encouraged Stoll to pursue a master's in supply chain to further prepare him for an overseas career.
Stoll says that support was invaluable.
"I think Professor Nowak single handedly very much helped me out as far as providing that guidance and advice that in the end landed me where I wanted to be."
After being hired in New Jersey, Maersk quickly noticed Stoll's work ethic and experience overseas. Despite just one year with the company, Stoll was selected to work in Denmark. Shortly after, he found himself working in Dubai.
"My goal was to get overseas and build an international career as fast as I could, and so doing that accelerated master's program and taking the one year to do all the coursework ultimately was the right thing. I don't think I would have gotten the job I did without it," Stoll said.
Discovering new hobbies
Stoll has taken full advantage of his international career to pursue an old hobby – photography. As he travels, Stoll has captured memories and scenes like the auto-rickshaws in Delhi, Tai Chi in Shanghai, and trails in Yemen.
"I love experiencing daily life and getting to know and mix and mingle with the local people," Stoll said.
While he still considers himself an amateur, his photos have been nominated for awards and have been on display in Paris and Milan for Atlas of Humanity. During his travels, he has worked to hone his photographic skills.
"I kind of thought well why don't I get a little more serious about it and start taking photographs in the places I go to in a more thoughtful way," he said. "It's been a bit of a journey and a process to consider myself a bit less of an amateur photo-taker and more of an amateur photographer."
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2019 Fantasy Baseball Week 4 Waiver Wire: The Waiver Wire Quartet
Dennis Sosic
Photo Credit: WEBN-TV
Hello and Welcome back Fantasy freaks and geeks to the Fantasy Six Pack 2019 Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire.
As we head into Week 4, I started to think of famous foursomes. Here are the first foursomes that came to mind:
The Final Four: March Madness is Awesome!
The Beatles-John, Paul, Ringo, and George. Need I say more.
Led Zeppelin-Plant, Page, John Paul Jones and of course Bonzo! One of my favorite bands of all-time.
The Four Horsemen: The four-man group of professional wrestlers who dominated in the 1980s and 1990s.
Ok, enough pop culture talk. Let's get into Fantasy Baseball analysis.
Keeping up with the concept of four, I came up with four players (two pitchers and two hitters) along with four deep-dive players that fantasy owners should look to see if there are available in their leagues. Find out who these players are in the 2019 Fantasy Baseball Week 4 Waiver Wire: The Waiver Wire Quartet.
2019 Fantasy Baseball Week 4 Waiver Wire
Get customized Fantasy Baseball advice for your team using MyPlaybook from FantasyPros.
Gregory Polanco, OF, Pittsburgh Pirates
Gregory Polanco is back for the #Pirates after missing the first 19 games of the season as he was recovering from shoulder surgery. He's set to bat 3rd tonight. pic.twitter.com/NsD7Ya2mf2
— Chase Williams WPXI (@chasepwilliams) April 22, 2019
After playing limited games at Triple-A Indianapolis, in which Polanco went 6-for-20, he made his return to the Pirates lineup. In his first game after returning from the IL after season-ending shoulder surgery, Polanco went 2-for-4 with a double, a walk, and two runs scored.
Polanco led the Pirates in home runs (23) and RBI (81) last season while slashing .254/.340/.499 and stealing 12 bases.
He might not steal as many bases this season for fear of reinjuring that shoulder, but he should be added immediately in all formats and leagues. Why is he owned in less than 25% of ESPN leagues?!?
Dwight Smith Jr., OF, Baltimore Orioles
Dwight Smith Jr. just hit an absolute bomb in Fenway pic.twitter.com/QqEly2wtbI
— Jomboy (@Jomboy_) April 15, 2019
Dwight Smith Jr. was acquired from the Blue Jays last month and blossomed in Spring Training with a 1.082 OPS. He made the Opening Day roster and has been quite a find for the Orioles.
Smith has just 52 games of significant league experience but does possess a .304 career batting average.
Currently, he is hitting .289 with four homers and 15 RBI across 83 at-bats. Owners in five-outfielder leagues should take a shot on Smith as their last outfielder. He is not spectacular but steady and a good add in your deeper formats.
Luke Weaver, SP, Arizona Diamondbacks
Luke Weaver –@DreamWeava7– was fantastic this afternoon racking up 9 K's over 5 IP:
– 35% CSW rate
– Elevating his FB super well with 7 whiffs
– CH looked great with 7 more whiffs
Here are his 9 K's pic.twitter.com/DNvCmER60g
— Alex Fast (@AlexFast8) April 18, 2019
Luke Weaver came to the Diamondbacks from the Cardinals in the Paul Goldschmidt deal. Weaver looked excellent in Spring Training by producing ten strikeouts while giving up only two runs and no walks in 11.2 innings pitched.
Weaver, a former top pitching prospect, has a 4.87 career ERA in 242.1 innings pitched at the big league level. However, he added a new pitch, and it seems to spark the 25-year-old right-hander. Weaver is 1-1 with a 3.92 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, and 24 strikeouts in 20 innings this season, including averaging eight strikeouts across his last three starts.
Luke Weaver is a steamer star. He is a perfect option to take advantage of in favorable matchups. The type of pitcher that winning Fantasy owners love to have on their rosters.
Roenis Elias, RP, Seattle Mariners
ICYMI: Versatile Roenis Elias developing into valuable piece of Mariners 'pen, including increasing role as closer. https://t.co/NufI6SzM0s
— Greg Johns (@GregJohnsMLB) April 21, 2019
The bullpen merry-go-round is now on Mariners lefty Roenis Elias. He has made 12 appearances, posting a 2.63 ERA and a .189 BAA against. He has allowed earned runs in just two of those outings.
Elias, a former starter for the Mariners, is now 4-for-4 in save opportunities. After Hunter Strickland went down, Elias and Anthony Swarzak shared closer duties. However, it looks like Elias is now the flavor of the month for saves in Seattle.
Find me a Fantasy owner not looking for saves?!? Elias is a good option now, but owners have to grab save opportunities whenever they become presentable. Elias should be added in all roto leagues.
Avisail Garcia, OF, Tampa Bay Rays
Avisail Garcia just LAUNCHED one 447 ft, 113 mph off the bat. Bonus two-handed bat flip. pic.twitter.com/aIWbhibMg8
— Ben Porter (@Ben13Porter) April 19, 2019
Do you remember Avisail Garcia? Fantasy owners were ecstatic over him after his breakout 2017 season, where he hit .330 (2nd in AL), 18 homers, .885 OPS, and 4.6 WAR. Almost every fantasy owner was reaching for him in their drafts. Unfortunately, he disappointed during his 2018 season.
In 2018, Garcia posted a .236 average, .719 OPS and 0.3 WAR but a career-high 19 homers while being limited to 93 games due to ongoing right knee issues and a hamstring strain.
The slugger signed a one-year deal with the Rays, who were looking for a right-handed bat in their lineup. He is expected to play right field or DH against left-handed pitchers, against whom he has a career .304 average, .816 OPS, and a 121 wRC+.
So far this season, Garcia has exhibited no ill effects from last season's injuries. He is hitting .286/.337/.519 with four homers and 10 RBI and even stolen two bases. Garcia should be owned in five-outfielder roto leagues due to his power numbers. He is a legit power threat and needs to be added for any owner looking to build up their power categories.
Renato Nunez, 3B, Baltimore Orioles
Trey Mancini
.347 AVG, 16 XBH, 14 RBI, 1.048 OPS
Dwight Smith Jr.
.289 AVG, 10 XBH, 15 RBI, .839 OPS
Renato Nunez
.294 AVG, 8 XBH, 16 RBI, .854 OPS pic.twitter.com/r9s6FIYKrs
— DC (@DanClarkSports) April 23, 2019
Renato Nunez was claimed off waivers from the Texas Rangers by the Baltimore Orioles last season. The Orioles called him up late last season, and in 25 games in September, Nunez hit .313/.341/.550 with five homers and a .891 OPS. Nunez is attempting to take over the big shoes of Manny Machado in the Orioles' lineup.
Nunez has been forced to be the DH for 21 of the Orioles 23 games this season. A biceps strain late in Spring Training has kept him out of playing defense in the infield at third base. Nunez is currently slashing .292/.351/.528 with six homers, 17 RBI and 15 runs scored. He has been a considerable gem of a find for the Orioles.
Are you looking for power from your CI slot in your Fantasy lineups? Please search for Renato Nunez in your available fantasy players. He could be a 25-30 home-run contributor out of your 3B/CI slot in your lineup.
Alex Verdugo, OF, Los Angeles Dodgers
Plenty has been made of Alex Verdugo's contributions at the plate, but he's just as prideful in his defense.https://t.co/6BdjohfgVt pic.twitter.com/UXPBKpNjiB
— Dodger Blue (@DodgerBlue1958) April 22, 2019
The 22-year-old Alex Verdugo, the top prospect in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization., is slashing .333/.378/.986 with three homers, 13 RBI in 53 plate appearances. So why is he not more universally owned?
His fantasy value is limited due to his playing time for the Dodgers. He plays for a very talented Dodgers ballclub who possess many players who can multiple positions, therefore, leading Verdugo with difficulty in obtaining playing time.
The left-hand hitting Verdugo was a hitting machine at Triple-A Oklahoma City. He hit .329 with ten home runs and 44 RBI in 91 games last season. The young outfielder is also very skilled defensively and typically comes in late in games as a defensive replacement.
He is currently the Dodgers' fourth outfielder, but I am not sure how they can keep his bat out of the lineup. He is a clutch hitter as evidenced by going six for 13 with runners in scoring position and five for nine with three doubles when he comes up with runners in scoring position and two outs.
Verdugo is no worse than a great stash candidate. His potential is outstanding and a platoon situation to monitor if he finally breaks through. Verdugo should be owned in NL-only leagues and all deeper leagues.
Jerad Eickhoff, SP, Philadelphia Phillies
The Phillies optioned Nick Pivetta, but in many respects, the decision was more about Jerad Eickhoff, who dazzled against the Mets and is finally healthy. @MattGelb: https://t.co/kHMosXt42O
— The Athletic (@TheAthleticPHI) April 18, 2019
The Phillies' pitching is in shambles. The staff has pitched themselves to a 5.10 ERA through 16 games. They've also allowed the seventh most home runs in the league, and the opposition is hitting .276 off of them, 27th in MLB. One of the pitchers that were struggling was preseason sleeper candidate Nick Pivetta. The Phillies optioned Pivetta to Triple-A who allowed an abysmal 24 hits in 13.1 innings with a 9.45 ERA.
Right-hander Jerad Eickhoff was brought up and earned his first save of his career this week, striking out six while allowing just three hits and no walks in four innings of relief. Per WIP's Jack Fritz, Eickhoff garnered 11 swings and misses on his 59 pitches thrown. In his first start of the season, the 28-year-old allowed four earned on seven hits and four walks while striking out eight batters across six innings of work. He took the loss against the Rockies at Coors Field but only allowed only two extra-base hits.
The Phillies are hoping Eickhoff can return to his 2015 and 2016 form. In 41 career starts, he had a 3.44 ERA, 120 ERA+, and a 1.136 WHIP. Unfortunately, injuries got the better of him as we missed a portion of the offseason following carpal tunnel surgery. He was never considered ace material, but he was slotted as a mid-rotation workhorse of the future. With an excellent opportunity and the Phillies offense behind him, Fantasy owners in NL-only leagues and deeper formats could help themselves by taking a chance on Jerad Eickhoff.
Now you know who to pick up in your Fantasy leagues, but now you need to figure out who to drop. Find out who Tom Stewart thinks Fantasy owners should drop in his 2019 Fantasy Baseball Week 4 Drop List
Related Items2019 fantasy baseball waiver wirealex verdugoavisail garciadwight smith jrFeaturedGregory PolancoJerad Eickhoffluke weaverrenato nunezRoenis Elias
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About Dennis Sosic
Dennis Sosic is from Cleveland, Ohio and a HUGE sports fan including NFL (GO BROWNS!) and college football (GO BUCKEYES!) MLB (GO TRIBE), NBA (GO CAVS!) and MMA. He has been called a Sports Geek by friends and foes alike and that fits him perfectly. He has been competing in fantasy sports, mainly fantasy football and baseball for over 20 years. Please do all of us a favor and follow Dennis @ CALL_ME_SOS.
2019 Fantasy Baseball Week 15 Waiver Wire: Second Half Awaits
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Very few musical acts have been as successful as Coldplay in the last 20 years. The British band has sold more than 80 million records worldwide since their formation in 1996 and has won numerous awards along the way, including seven Grammys from 31 nominations.
In addition to their chart-topping success, the band is also well known for their high energy, colorful live shows, which have been filling up stadiums and arenas since the early 2000s. And their latest tour, A Head Full of Dreams, hasn't been the exception. The tour has already taken the band to cities like Santiago, Tokyo, and Barcelona, and on August 28th, it will bring them to the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami.
The tour began in March 2016 and has sold out in every major city where the band has performed, with reviews nothing short of impressive.
"From the performance to the party favours, everything worked in tandem to make this the overwhelming communal experience that arena concerts should strive to be. Whatever pain is involved in coming to a big show, Tuesday night was worth it," wrote a reviewer for the Montreal Gazette.
With classic hits like "Yellow," "The Scientist," and "A Sky Full of Stars," it's hard to imagine a dull moment at any of their shows, that's why their concert in Miami (their only concert in Florida) is a must for any fan.
Tickets for the concert cost are on sale at Ticketmaster.com and currently start at $164.
For more information about the concert, visit LiveNation.com.


text:
Q: How should I encrypt API tokens in Python? I've written a basic Python application that uses Twitter's API. I need to be able to encode my API secret as it should never be human-readable within my program (Twitter's words). How should I do this in Python? Is it possible?

A: Store the API Key in an external file and load it at runtime. Just be sure to never commit the external file or publish it. Obfuscating the key once loaded doesn't really prevent them from stealing it (especially if they have the source to unwind your obfuscation as jonrsharpe pointed out).
Heres a crude example, I'm sure you could refine it to suit your needs:
secret_keys file:
{
    "TWITTER_SECRET" : "somebase64encodedkey"
}

python:
import json

secrets_filename = 'secret_keys'
api_keys = {}
with open(secrets_filename, 'r') as f:
    api_keys = json.loads(f.read())

print api_keys['TWITTER_SECRET'] # somebase64encodedkey

A: Saving keys in another file as @cziemba pointed out is a common method. However, make sure to include the file in .gitignore if you'll be using git, so you don't commit the keys and probably push it to github. You could also save the key outside of the repo and use absolute path to read it e.g ~/Documents/my_secrets/twitter.json.
Another common method is to add keys or tokens to the environment variable. This article shows how to set environment variables.
To get the environment variable e.g "TWITTER_SECRET" in your code, use
import os
secret = os.environ["TWITTER_SECRET"]

os.environ is a dictionary of environment variables and would raise IndexError if "TWITTER_SECRET" is not in the environment variable. So you might want to use dictionary get method or try except statement depending on the need of your program.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Airbnb Finally Releases An App For Browsing Its Listings On Tablets
Ryan Lawler	@ryanlawler / 6 years
A few weeks ago, I was looking for an Airbnb in Austin to share with my girlfriend while we're in town for a buddy's wedding. We were specifically looking to find a place that didn't involve sleeping in an Airstream or someone's converted garage, and a place where we were unlikely to be awoken in the morning by some hippie's chickens.*
After some period of frustration handing my laptop back and forth while we browsed listings, my girlfriend had a brilliant idea. She would download the app on her iPad, and then we'd have a slightly less annoying device to pass between us. But then, after a quick search on the app store:
"There's no iPad app. What the hell?"
I was just as surprised. After all, Airbnb has been around for so long that we just sort of expected there had to be an iPad app. But there wasn't — at least not until today.
That's right, today Airbnb is finally** rolling out an app that will enable users to browse and search its listings on a device that's bigger than a phone, but not quite as unwieldy as a laptop. But more than that, the new app for iPad and Android tablets is designed to provide users with some inspiration for where they might want to take their next trip.
The app was designed to target a huge — and growing! — number of users who already use Airbnb on their tablets. According to Airbnb head of design Alex Schleifer, about 12 percent of all Airbnb users are coming to the site via iPad.
But the company didn't want to just build a scaled-up iPhone app, or port over a more "native" version of its responsive web experience for tablets. It wanted to build something new and special for tablet users.
Like everything Airbnb does, the tablet app just oozes design. While it's built for utility — yeah, the search field is just a tap away, and it's really easy to get over to your messages with hosts or guests — the company also wanted to show off all the wonderful places you could be staying, even if you don't have anywhere you plan to go.
When you first open it, the what-body-part-is-it Airbnb logo (the Bélo!) appears in animation while the names of different cities flash across the screen. It's like a loading screen for a video game, but in this case it's totally unnecessary — except, you know, to look cool.
Beyond that, the app welcomes you with beautiful images of all the various locations you can browse through, letting you swipe right and left between them. It's meant to feel like you're thumbing through a travel magazine, which, in a way, you kind of are.
"People hold the iPad like a magazine or like a book," Schleifer explains. "We wanted to bring the quality of print design into the digital space."
In each viewing mode, the app seeks to highlight beautiful imagery while keeping the nitty gritty details slightly hidden but easily accessible. When you choose a city to browse in, you're shown large panes of property images with listing price and a short description. Peeking out of the left side of the screen is a map that can be used to bounce around or refine your search, if you choose.
Click through to any listing and you're engulfed in full-bleed images. Airbnb likes to say it has the largest collection of professional home photography in the world, and the company loves to show that off in the app. Property information is a flick of the wrist away, slightly hidden in the bottom pane of the screen.
The app also has all the tools hosts have come to expect, including the ability to edit listings, manage their calendars, and also quickly reply to messages from guests. It also provides all host stats and dashboard — what Schleifer calls the host command center.
With the app, Airbnb had a couple of constituencies it wanted to please: those who will use the app mainly for browsing, and those who want to just get down to business and book.
"We thought about how different people use Airbnb. I use it to sit back and explore, let it guide where I want to go," Schleifer told me, which was behind the idea of making it more of a magazine. But then there are other people, he says, that want the design to "just get out of the way and let me book."
It was a long time coming, sure, but it appears Airbnb has an app that succeeds on both fronts.
[gallery ids="1150744,1150743,1150742,1150741"]
* If you've ever searched for an Airbnb in Austin, you know this is more difficult than it sounds.
** I really hate using that word, but think it applies in this case.


If your Valentine prefers lighter delicacies, this basket is the perfect choice. Filled with fresh fruit, like D'anjou pears and Braeburn apples, this gift hits the right note of sweetness. Sierra Nevada organic creamy Jack cheese pairs well with olive oil and sea salt crackers. Salt and pepper pistachios add a nutty twist. And don't worry, they'll still enjoy some guilty pleasures--a milk chocolate heart and chocolate covered cherries complete their gift.


text:
The CIA and the Man Who Was Not Oswald
Bernard Fensterwald and George O'Toole
April 3, 1975 issue
Six weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963; the Central Intelligence Agency sent the following teletype message to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Departments of State and the Navy:
Subject: Lee Henry OSWALD
On 1 October 1963 a reliable and sensitive source in Mexico reported that an American male, who identified himself as Lee OSWALD, contacted the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City inquiring whether the Embassy had received any news concerning a telegram which had been sent to Washington. The American was described as approximately 35 years old, with an athletic build, about six feet tall, with a receding hairline.
It is believed that OSWALD may be identical to Lee Henry OSWALD, born on 18 October 1939 in New Orleans, Louisiana. A former U.S. Marine who defected to the Soviet Union in October 1959 and later made arrangement through the United States Embassy in Moscow to return to the United States with his Russian-born wife, Marina Nikolaevna Pusakova, and their child.
The information in paragraph one is being disseminated to your representatives in Mexico City. Any further information received on this subject will be furnished you. This information is being made available to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.1
p class="initial">Was the Lee Henry Oswald of the CIA message Lee Harvey Oswald? Yes, according to Richard Helms, then chief of the Agency's Clandestine Services. In a March 1964 memorandum to J. Lee Rankin, general counsel to the Warren Commission, Helms explained that "OSWALD'S middle name was erroneously given as 'Henry' in the subject line and in paragraph two of the dissemination…. The maiden surname of Mrs. OSWALD was mistakenly listed as 'PUSAKOVA."'2
But Lee Harvey Oswald was not "approximately 35 years old, with an athletic build"; he was twenty-three years old and slender.3 Apparently the CIA was concerned about the discrepancy, for on October 23 it sent the following message to the Department of the Navy:
Reference is made to CIA Out Teletype No. 74673 [the earlier message], dated 10 October 1963, regarding possible presence of subject in Mexico City. It is requested that you forward to this office as soon as possible two copies of the most recent photograph you have of subject. We will forward them to our representative in Mexico, who will attempt to determine if the Lee OSWALD in Mexico City and subject are the same individual.4
Since Oswald had served in the Marine Corps, which comes under the administration of the Navy, his personnel records would have included his photograph.
What the Agency did not say in this cable is that it had in its possession a photograph of the man who had apparently "identified himself" as Oswald. The man in the CIA photo was not Lee Harvey Oswald; he was, just as the Agency's "reliable and sensitive source" had described him, approximately thirty-five years old, with an athletic build and a receding hairline.
According to a memorandum by Helms, the CIA never received the Navy's pictures of Oswald and only concluded after the assassination that two different people were involved.5 Meanwhile, the photograph was delivered to the FBI on November 22, 1963.6
p class="initial">One can only guess at the confusion caused by the picture. The FBI needed no Navy photograph to establish that the mystery man was not Oswald—Lee Harvey Oswald was sitting handcuffed in a third-floor office of the Dallas police headquarters. The next day Special Agent Bardwell D. Odum was dispatched with the photograph to the motel where Oswald's wife and mother were hidden. He showed the picture to Mrs. Marguerite Oswald, mother of the accused assassin. Mrs. Oswald looked at the photo and told Odum she didn't recognize the man.7 The following day, however, shortly after her son was murdered in the basement of Dallas City Hall, Mrs. Oswald erroneously identified the mystery man. She told the press the FBI had shown her a picture of Jack Ruby the night before.
Mrs. Oswald's mistake was understandable—the mystery man bore a superficial resemblance to Jack Ruby, and in her recollection of a brief glance at the photograph, two faces became one. But the misidentification made it necessary for the Warren Commission to refer, however obliquely, to the affair of the mystery man. In the twenty-six volumes of published testimony and evidence supplementary to the Warren Report, the Commission printed the picture that was shown to Mrs. Oswald.8 The Warren Report contains a very brief account of the incident.
According to the Report, the CIA had provided the FBI with a photograph of "a man who, it was thought at the time, might have been associated with Oswald."9 The Report quoted an affidavit by Richard Helms that "the original photograph had been taken by the CIA outside of the United States sometime between July 1, 1963 and November 22, 1963."10
The Commission's explanation is both inaccurate and misleading. The implication that the CIA thought the mystery man was "associated with Oswald" only masks the true situation. On the basis of its own evidence, the Agency must have concluded either that the mystery man was impersonating Oswald or that an unlikely chain of errors had accidentally linked both the man in the photograph and the man who "contacted" the Soviet Embassy to Lee Harvey Oswald.
The truth was further obscured by the Report's reference to the Helms affidavit, which described the circumstances in which the mystery man was photographed only in the most vague and general terms. The affidavit was dated August 7, 1964.11 However, the Commission never mentioned in its Report or in its twenty-six supplementary volumes that it had obtained an earlier affidavit from Helms on July 22, 1964 in which he was much more specific.12 "The original photograph," Helms testified, "was taken in Mexico City on October 4, 1963."13 (This earlier Helms affidavit was released in 1967 through the efforts of Paul Hoch, a private researcher.)
There is no available record that Richard Helms ever told the Warren Commission exactly where in Mexico City the mystery man was photographed, but the circumstances in which the photograph was given to the Commission offer a very plausible suggestion. The CIA required the FBI to crop out the background in the photo before handing it over to the Commission.14 The obvious conclusion is that the photograph was taken by a hidden surveillance camera, and the CIA wished to avoid disclosing its location. According to knowledgeable former employees of the CIA, the Soviet and Cuban embassies, among others in Mexico City, were under constant photographic surveillance at the time. It seems likely then that the man who, according to the CIA, "identified himself as Lee Oswald" was photographed leaving the Mexico City embassy of the Soviet Union or of some other communist country.
p class="initial">The first public hint that the mystery man may have been impersonating Oswald came in 1966, with the publication of Edward Jay Epstein's Inquest, a scholarly study of the Warren Commission.15 Epstein interviewed one of the Commission's legal staff who recalled the incident. He said he had asked Raymond G. Rocca, the Agency's liaison with the Commission,16 about the photograph. The lawyer later received word from the Agency that the mystery man was thought to be Oswald at the time the photograph was given to the FBI. Why, he asked, did the Agency mistake someone so dissimilar in appearance for Lee Harvey Oswald? The CIA said they would check further and call him back. The lawyer told Epstein that they never called him back and the Warren Report contains no explanation of the Agency's mistake.17
Another piece of the puzzle fell into place early in 1971, when the National Archives released a previously classified memorandum about the mystery man from Richard Helms to the Commission's general counsel, J. Lee Rankin.18 Dated March 24, 1964, the memo informed Rankin:
On 22 and 23 November, immediately following the assassination of President Kennedy, three cabled reports were received from [deleted] in Mexico City relative to photographs of an unidentified man who visited the Cuban and Soviet Embassies in that city during October and November 1963….19
On the basis of these cables, Helms went on to say, the CIA had sent several reports to the Secret Service. Attached to the Helms memorandum were paraphrases of these reports.20 Two dealt with the mystery man:
Message to the Protective Research Staff, The Secret Service, delivered by hand on 23 November 1963, at 1030 hours.
Through sources available to it, the CIA [deleted] had come into possession of a photograph of an unidentified person thought to have visited the Cuban Embassy in mid-October. This individual, it was believed at the time, might be identical with Lee Harvey OS-WALD.21
CIA Headquarters was informed [deleted] on 23 November that several photographs of a person known to frequent the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, and who might be identical with Lee Harvey OSWALD, had been forwarded to Washington by the hand of a United States official returning to this country.22
Helms's covering memorandum affirmed that "the subject of the photographs mentioned in these reports is not Lee Harvey OSWALD."23
Several photographs, then, of a mysterious stranger who kept being confused with Lee Harvey Oswald, and who had visited both the Soviet and Cuban embassies. Was it the same mystery man whose picture had been shown to Mrs. Oswald? Or was it yet another Oswald Doppelgänger?
Firm evidence of the existence of additional photographs of the unidentified man mentioned in the Warren Report was turned up by Robert Smith, a private researcher. In 1972 Smith, then research director for the Commission to Investigate Assassinations, was poring over some recently declassified Warren Commission documents when he found reference to the mystery photo and two other views of the same person.24 Smith called his discovery to the attention of one of the authors, Bernard Fensterwald, who instituted a suit under the Freedom of Information Act for release of the two pictures. The government yielded and turned over the photographs to Fensterwald and Smith. They are published here for the first time.
The two new views of the mystery man were taken at a different time from the first picture. In the first picture, the one published in the Warren Commission volumes, he is wearing a long-sleeved dark shirt and appears empty-handed; in the two new photos he is wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and is carrying some kind of bag or pouch. The new photos also show him holding a small, passportsized booklet and what appears to be a wallet. As in the first photograph, the backgrounds of the two new photos have been cropped out. Whoever he was, he managed to be photographed, apparently by the CIA's hidden surveillance cameras, on at least two separate occasions. And neither of the new photographs reveals any resemblance between the mystery man and Lee Harvey Oswald.
The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had been in Mexico in late September and early October 1963. Records of Mexican Customs and Immigration, bus lines, and a Mexico City hotel indicate that Oswald entered Mexico at Nuevo Laredo on the US border on September 26, traveled by bus to Mexico City, arriving there the next morning, and returned to the United States on October 3.25 Passengers on the bus to Mexico City remembered Oswald, but there is almost no eyewitness testimony to support the Commission's reconstruction of Oswald's movements after he arrived in that city.26 The Commission's finding that Oswald made repeated visits to both the Soviet and Cuban embassies rests heavily upon the affidavit of one witness, a Mexican woman who worked at the Cuban Embassy.27
Silvia Tirado de Duran was secretary to the Cuban Consul in Mexico City. In a sworn statement28 she gave to the deputy director of Mexican Federal Security on November 23, 1963, she said that Oswald had visited the Cuban Embassy in late September to apply for a visa to visit Cuba during a planned trip to the Soviet Union. Mrs. Duran recalled a heated exchange between Oswald and the Consul when the Cuban official told him his request could not be granted immediately. She remembered making a "semiofficial" phone call to the Soviet Embassy to try to speed up action on Oswald's application. She identified the Lee Harvey Oswald who visited the Cuban Embassy as the accused assassin whose photograph appeared in the Mexican newspapers on November 23.29
Apparently the Warren Commission staff did not interview Silvia Duran, but instead relied solely on her affidavit. Whether any attempt to talk to her was made is not recorded in any available document. However, according to the Commission files, a Mexican newspaper reporter tried to interview her in April 1964. Her husband would not permit the man to speak with her, saying "she had suffered a nervous breakdown following her interrogation by the Mexican authorities and had been prohibited by her physician…from discussing the Oswald matter further."30 If this report is correct, the interrogation of Silvia Duran may have been a more emotional interview than one would conclude from the report forwarded by the Mexican police. The report gives the impression that the police were routinely collecting information about Oswald's Mexican trip for the American authorities. One question that arises is whether Duran's statement was given voluntarily, and, if not, whether her identification of Oswald as the visitor to the embassy is valid.
The Warren Commission may have omitted a full exploration of this question because it had collateral evidence of Oswald's visit to the Cuban Embassy. There were, for example, Oswald's application for a Cuban visa, bearing his photograph and signature,31 and a letter reportedly written by Oswald to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, referring to his visit to the Cuban Embassy.32 The address book found among Oswald's possessions, moreover, contained Duran's name and telephone number. But the only credible eyewitness testimony that Oswald in fact visited the embassy is the statement of Silvia Duran.
When viewed in the light of the recently disclosed evidence suggesting that someone might have visited the embassy impersonating Oswald, the Commission's failure to settle completely the question of the three misidentified photos seems extraordinary. It is probable that the CIA did in fact supply an explanation of the photographs that was enough to satisfy the Commission at the time. If so, that explanation remains a part of the classified Warren Commission documents not available to the public.
Raymond Rocca (who, until his recent resignation, was the Agency's action officer for all post-Warren Report inquiries about the matter) told one of the authors that the CIA could not identify the mystery man. If this is so, we may wonder how the Agency could have offered a satisfactory explanation of the incident to the Commission. Until additional documents bearing on this matter are declassified, the conclusion that Oswald really visited the Cuban Embassy must remain in some doubt. But even if he did, the question whether someone was nevertheless trying to impersonate him remains a crucial one.
If someone posing as Oswald visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies in the early autumn of 1963, what implications might be drawn from this discovery? One obvious interpretation is that someone sought to counterfeit a fresh connection between the man who was soon to become the accused presidential assassin and the governments of those two communist countries. But it is not necessary to speculate further. If someone were trying to impersonate Oswald eight weeks before the assassination, the Warren Commission's theory of a lone assassin, unconnected with any conspiracy, is seriously undermined and the case should be reopened.
There could be, of course, an innocent explanation of how the CIA came to misidentify the mystery man as Lee Harvey Oswald: Oswald may actually have visited the Cuban and Soviet embassies. If this were the case, then somewhere in the CIA's files there should be photographs of the real Lee Harvey Oswald departing from the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City. If those photographs exist, their publication would help to settle the question. If they don't, the CIA should now explain why not. In either case, it should also disclose what it knows about the man it wrongly identified as Oswald on two separate occasions. It should explain why it believes that this man was not impersonating Oswald. All these matters should be clarified both by the CIA itself and by the congressional committees that are about to investigate its activities.
Letters:
Peter Dale Scott
The CIA's Mystery Man
Bernard Fensterwald
George O'Toole
Warren Commission Document 631, The National Archives, Washington, DC. ↩
Ibid. Her correct maiden name was Prusakova. ↩
Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (US Government Printing Office, 1964), p. 144. (Hereafter, Report.) ↩
Commission Document 631, op cit. ↩
Ibid. ↩
Hearings Before the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (US Government Printing Office, 1964), Vol. 11, p. 469 (hereafter, Hearings). ↩
Ibid., p. 468. ↩
Ibid., Odum Exhibit 1. ↩
Report, p. 364. ↩
Ibid., pp. 364-365. ↩
Hearings, Vol. 11, p. 469. ↩
Commission Document 1287, The National Archives, Washington, DC. ↩
Edward Jay Epstein, Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth (Viking, 1966). ↩
Mr. Rocca, deputy chief of the CIA's Counterintelligence Staff, was one of the four senior Agency officials who resigned last December in the wake of The New York Times's revelations of illegal domestic operations by the CIA's Clandestine Services. ↩
Epstein, Inquest, p. 94. ↩
Commission Document 674, The National Archives, Washington, DC. ↩
Commission Document 566, The National Archives, Washington, DC, pp. 3-4. ↩
Ibid., p. 734. Two other witnesses told the FBI they saw Oswald at the Cuban Embassy. A Mexican private detective who had visited the embassy on October 1, 1963, identified Oswald from newspaper photographs as someone he had seen leaving the embassy on that date in the company of a Cuban. The detective was shown other photos of Oswald and failed to identify him, and the FBI seems to have concluded that he was mistaken (Commission Document 566). The Warren Report does not offer the detective's testimony as evidence of Oswald's visit. Another witness who claimed to have seen Oswald at the Cuban Embassy retracted his testimony after failing to pass a polygraph examination (Report, p. 308). ↩
Commission Document 776a, The National Archives, Washington, DC. ↩
Ibid., p. 5. ↩
Commission Document 963, The National Archives, Washington, DC, p. 16. ↩
Hearings, Commission Exhibit 2564. ↩
Ibid., Commission Exhibit 15. ↩
A Double Standard
The Fate of the Union: Kennedy and After
Drugs & the CIA
November 28, 1996 issue
August 15, 1991 issue
An Illegal War
Robert Secher
The Report of Captain Secher
Casey and Woodward: Who Used Whom?
November 5, 1987 issue