Flap's Blog – FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog

Canada.Com has UK agency to probe possible link between variant CJD and dentistry.

Britain’s Health Protection Agency said Monday it is investigating whether the human form of mad cow disease can be transmitted through dental work.

The three-year experiment, begun recently, was announced at the agency’s annual conference at the University of Warwick.

The main routes of transmission of the disease, known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans, are believed to be eating infected beef, or through blood transfusions.

“This is really an information gathering exercise,” said Joanne Dickinson, one of the researchers.

When the experiments are concluded, she added, “the Department of Health will have the information to decide what the level of risk is and what measures need to be put in place

Does Britain not have the same CDC Bloodborne Pathogen guidelines like in the USA?

Here is a link to the CDC Recommended Infection Control Practices for Dentistry

And more links here:

• Guidelines for Infection Control in Dental Health-Care Settings, 2003. MMWR, December 19, 2003:52(RR-17).
  • Appendix A: Regulatory Framework for Disinfectants and Sterilants;
    includes Figure: Decreasing Order of Resistance of Micro-organisms to Germicidal Chemicals
  • Appendix B: Immunizations Strongly Recommended for Health-Care Personnel (HCP)
  • Appendix C: Methods for Sterilizing and Disinfecting Patient-Care Items and Environmental Surfaces
  • Also available as a PDF file (PDF-1.2Mb).
• Slide Presentation
  This slide presentation is provided by CDC to train clinical dental staff such as infection control coordinators, educators, and consultants on currently recommended infection control practices. It can be downloaded as a PowerPoint presentation or viewed on the Web site.

The Department of Health wrote to dentists in February outlining precautions to prevent transmission of the disease from infected patients. Urging dentists to observe proper decontamination procedures, the letter said that “under these conditions, routine dentistry is understood to be low-risk, and therefore no special infection control precautions are advised for the instruments used on symptomatic or at-risk patients.”

This will be an interesting study but with appropriate sterilization technique there should not be a problem with the spread of this horrible disease through dental treatment.

Technorati Tags: dental, Mad Cow Disease, dentistry, dentist, CDC, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease

KNBC Television reports DWP: Workers Trigger Outage By Connecting Wrong Wires.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power officials said an outage Monday afternoon was linked to human error at a receiving station.

Power officials reported outages from the San Fernando Valley to downtown Los Angeles. Workers connected the wrong wires, causing a surge of power that led to shutdowns at three power generating stations, according to officials.

Receiving stations take high-voltage power from generating stations and convert it to lower voltage. It can then be used throughout the city.

Ron Deaton, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said the system is designed to shut down when it receives too much power.

“They connected it to another line that was not expecting that much electricity,” said Deaton.

Power to DWP customers went out at about 1 p.m.

The cable has been rewired, according to authorities. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said that power was restored to 90 percent of Los Angeles customers within two hours of the outage.

Authorities said power will be restored to all areas by Monday night.

Oh OK!

Well, better than a terrorist act.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks during a town hall meeting at K & N Engineering kicking off the fall campaign season to discuss his reform agenda on the November Special Election Monday Sept. 12, 2005, in Riverside, Calif.

The ASSociated Press has Schwarzenegger opens campaign for reform initiatives.

Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger kicked off his campaign Monday in support of a Nov. 8 special election he says is needed to curb the power of labor unions and state legislators and rein in state spending

He took aim, especially, at the public employee unions he has feuded with all year.

“I’m talking about the union bosses now that want to control and want to drive our taxes up,” he said.

“It is unfair to treat those public employees much better than they treat you and then you have to pay the taxes and foot the bill.”

The Governator needs to make this case about the leftie public employee unions, the union bosses influence in Sacramento and how they busted the California state budget under recalled Democrat Governor Gray-OUT Davis .

Schwarzenegger is expected to announce later this week that he will seek a second term. While not addressing the issue specifically, he did give a brief campaign-style rundown of his accomplishments in office, including reducing the $14-billion deficit without raising taxes (the deficit for next year is now estimated at $4.7 billion).

Schwarzenegger will make his announcement this weekend beginning Friday at the California Republican Party Convention in Anaheim.

Flap will be live blogging the Governor’s luncheon address to the CRP on Saturday.

Stay Tuned.

Technorati Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Recovery Team, California Special Election, Bear Flag League, California Republican Party

Cross-posted to the Bear Flag League Special Election Page

The ASSociated Press has Large Portion of Los Angeles Loses Power

A large portion of Los Angeles was hit with a blackout Monday afternoon. The city was investigating the cause and extent of the outage. But Sgt. Catherine Plows, a police spokeswoman, said terrorism was not suspected.

Electrical power was knocked out shortly before 1 p.m. after two power surges, and traffic was snarled at intersections throughout the city when stop lights went dark. The lights also went out at downtown high- rises.

The Police Department went on “full tactical alert,” meaning no officers were allowed to leave duty.

The blackout came a day after ABC aired a videotape of a purported al- Qaida member making terrorist threats against Los Angeles and Melbourne, Australia, on the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Heavy usage on hot days can lead to blackouts. But the weather in Los Angeles was not unsually hot Monday.

Fox News is reporting that an electrical line was accidentally disrupted by a DWP crew.

DWP is still investigating the outage.

Parts of the San Fernando Valley have already had their power restored.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff (C) speaks to reporters, as U.S. Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad Allen (R) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Director Michael Brown look on, at FEMA’s Hurricane Katrina media center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana September 9, 2005. Brown, the embattled director of FEMA, is resigning, a senior homeland security official said September 12, 2005.

The ASSociated Press has Embattled FEMA Director Mike Brown Resigns.

Federal Emergency Management Agency director Mike Brown said Monday he has resigned “in the best interest of the agency and best interest of the president,” three days after losing his onsite command of the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

“The focus has got to be on FEMA, what the people are trying to do down there,” Brown told The Associated Press.

Lesson to the President and future Presidents – FEMA Director should be a professional in the area of disaster management not a political appointment.

Technorati Tags: Hurricane Katrina, FEMA, Michael Brown, President Bush

The Buzz at the Sacramento Bee has Governor to run again? Stay tuned Friday.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has hinted for some time he’s about to declare that he will seek re-election in 2006. The smart money says the announcement will come Friday at an “Ask Arnold” town hall meeting in Southern California.

That gives the Republican governor a big news splash across the state Saturday, the same day he’s scheduled to speak at the state GOP convention in Anaheim.

Flap says bet money on it.

A Friday announcement to kick-off the California Repubican Party convention in Anaheim.

Flap will be blogging the convention this weekend.

Technorati Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Republican Party