Talk:Body burden

This article is not well formated: There are many URLs in the text. They should either be listed as External links or as References, using the tags   and  . --Lucido 09:19, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

This was just featured tonight on "CNN - Planet in Peril." It sounds like a huge up and coming item and I think we need and expert. Can someone tag this page for "expert needed?" Or, contribute!! Thanks! Scotty     --Scottymoze 03:05, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

'Reducing exposure' section
I have added POV to this section, as it seems to be written from a partisan point of view, and contains political advocacy (telling readers to support particular legislative proposals). This needs to be rewritten, or removed entirely. In fact, the whole of this article represents the view of the Environmental Working Group rather than a more neutral and scientific perspective (it's worth remembering that many of the claims made about 'body burden' are not accepted by medical professionals), but this section is the worst part. Robofish (talk) 14:33, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposed revision
This article contains much that is contrary to Wikipedia guidelines, which has been the case for some time -- at least 20 months based on the warning template stating "additional citations" are needed. That is certainly a problem, but far from the only one, as I will detail below. I have written an alternative version and posted it to my userspace. The reason I do not make these changes directly at this time is because I have a potential conflict of interest in that a client of my employer is engaged on issues pertaining to this subject matter. They have provided research assistance, but the words are my own. Given my relationship to the topic, I am making the request for someone else to do the following: replace the existing article with my proposed version, or implement as many of my suggestions as deemed appropriate. Happy to discuss in more detail.

What follows is a thorough (and unavoidably lengthy) examination of the problems with the current article and how I address them in my proposed revision:


 * The current introductory section is overlong, not well-focused and therefore confusing. The first sentence or so is helpful, before shifting to a discussion of biomonitoring (an article I have previously worked on) which is overly technical ("non-polar molecules") or simply incorrect / off-topic ("shrapnel" has nothing to do with this topic). My version reduces this to just the definition of body burden, with a link to the biomonitoring article, which includes a careful (and sourced) explanation of that process.


 * The primary issue with the Body burden studies section is that it places great emphasis on non-peer reveiwed reports by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) yet makes no mention of the scientific biomonitoring studies conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. EWG deserves mention in this article, but their activites are generally to raise awareness of the issue rather than to advance scientific understanding per se, so their work belongs in the subsequent section about awareness.


 * The EWG language itself contains some marginal peacock terms ("spearheaded") and presents results of their reports without any context as to what it ultimately means. In addition, the section is written entirely from primary sources, which makes it difficult to determine the significance of one finding vs. another. So my thinking is: the fact that EWG (and Environmental Defence in Canada) issues such reports is significant, but the particular claims of the reports are less so. I have kept some of the topline findings, but have scaled it back considerably.


 * The section Campaigns for awareness of body burden I propose retitling Awareness. I have revised this section the least: adding some more context to the book Our Stolen Future, removing unsupported peacock-esque phrasings such as "world-wide attention" and moving the EWG language here. I have however removed the third paragraph / sentence outright; it basically states in the abstract that groups organize around the issue, when in fact the previous paragraphs have already demonstrated just that. To this section I have also added information about work by the National Research Council and Boston University's 2007 conference to examine the public's understanding of issues related to biomonitoring and body burden.


 * The section Timing of exposure is unsourced and discusses an alleged debate that I cannot determine is a significant issue. So I've cut it from my version.


 * The big deal here is what to do about the section titled Reducing exposure. I think this section is a clear-cut example of what Wikipedia is not. It's part advocacy, part guidebook and highly POV. (In fact, it was so flagged at one time, before the warning template was removed without explanation by an editor who has not been active for several months.) It basically exists to instruct people on how to avoid particular chemicals, from the perspective of EWG and like-minded organizations, and at great length. The concluding paragraph has a different problem: it discusses an EWG-sponsored bill which is no longer under consideration (the Thomas citations go to blank pages), never made it out of committee and received no discussion that I can find outside of blogs. Meanwhile the section is almost entirely unsupported; the citations which do exist are all advocacy organizations, rather than academic or journalistic sources. I can see nothing to salvage here. I've eliminated it from my proposed version as well.


 * The External links are unwieldy, a virtual directory of websites about the topic and organizations involved. I have reduced this to just a few of the most significant, including a site called Biomonitoringinfo.org (which operates in part on a grant from ACC) and of course the CDC study.


 * I have also cleaned up the reference style, using transcluded citation templates for the first time, in addition to other numerous small editorial changes to bring the article closer to Wikipedia conventions per the Manual of Style.

I think that just about covers it. Please leave a comment here or get in touch on my Talk page if you have any questions. Thanks, NMS Bill (talk) 02:42, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
 * A lot of your criticisms are dead on, in my opinion. Wikipedia is certainly not a how to, or a soapbox. Information could be sourced about "reducing exposure" from more credible sources, such as the NTP or WebMD, for example. "Timing" is an important design of some biomonitoring studies, such as those on pregnant women. Your shortened rewrite of this page affirms my opinion that there just isn't much here to salvage. That's why I've proposed to merge below. -Shootbamboo (talk) 22:12, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Merge with biomonitoring?
To be honest, I had considered proposing this article for deletion because I thought it might have been a POV title for EWG self-promotion until I found it was used in the scientific literature&mdash;here's the MeSH definition. How about merging over to biomonitoring? One can simply define biomonitoring as measuring a body burden. -Shootbamboo (talk) 21:42, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Having read NMSBill's proposed version, I'm inclined to agree. The term 'body burden' is used in medical science, but it appears to be particularly associated with the kind of pseudoscience this article currently focuses on; a more neutral, objective article on the topic would be fairly short, as the proposed version shows. I think the biomonitoring article is short enough that this topic could be sufficiently covered as a subsection of that one, but I'd like some further feedback before making the merge. I've added proposed merge templates to this article and that one, so that should generate a bit more input. Robofish (talk) 23:44, 14 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I would certainly agree to a merge. I think there are a few things worth saving -- well, everything I thought was worth saving went into the proposed rewrite, though it may not all survive a merge. I agree that the topic doesn't necessarily warrant a standalone article, as it is basically inseparable from biomonitoring. So I guess I'd call this consensus. If there are no serious objections, I'm happy to do it myself later in the week, unless someone else wants to take the lead. (Although I suppose we will need an admin to finalize the process.) Thanks for your input both. Cheers, NMS Bill (talk) 02:49, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * No rush. We want to give time for others to comment even though this article appears neglected and poorly written. I'd say Robofish would know about how long to wait for it to be just right. -Shootbamboo (talk) 03:25, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, fair enough. Just figured what you said; the article being neglected and all, I'd be surprised if there was much more discussion. No rush here. Cheers, NMS Bill (talk) 21:44, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I think it would be fine to do now. -Shootbamboo (talk) 03:06, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Go for it! Smartse (talk) 18:39, 23 December 2009 (UTC)