TSA stops Cape Verdeans from taking Tylenol, Vitamin C back to homeland for viral epidemic
UPDATE: FORCV.com has updated its story and so are we: It was large quantities of pressurized cans, not Tylenol.
FORCV.com, which covers the Cape Verdean community in Boston, reports TSA agents today blocked Cape Verdeans from boarding a plane to their homeland with large quantities of a variety of medical items to help victims of a dengue-fever epidemic there:
... TSA officials, unaware of the breakout of dengue Epidemic in Cape Verde this week, delayed the flight and did an extensive search of the luggage. By the end of the process, passengers were allowed to take only small amount of medical supplies. ...
Dengue, also known as breakbone fever because of the intense pain it causes, is spread by mosquitoes. On Thursday, the Cape Verdean government declared a national emergency because of the outbreak.
In addition to the painkillers and vitamins, Cape Verdeans also tried boarding a TACV flight with rubbing alcohol, mosquito repellents and hand sanitizers, FORCV.com reports.
Comments
TSA
What a crock of shit. Again, the MILITARY should be in charge of airport security. Period. Cut the shit with these people who got fired from a McDonald's, and get some Marines in there with some fucking respect and common sense.
Why the language?...
Why the language? that is despicable, and why is this language still up on this website... webmaster wassup
Restore sanity to the airport
9/11 was the last time anyone will hijack an airplane using small sharp objects. Remember Flight 93 ?
Can the TSA, the police, or the military stop someone from setting off a bomb or shooting up an airport terminal ? Unfortunately, no. It's a risk we in what's supposedly the land of the free and the home of the brave need to live with.
What we need at the airport is sanity, not "security theater," whether of the TSA or military variety.
If we maintain excessive/bogus "security" measures and a climate of fear, the real winners are bin Laden & Co.
An exquisitely bad idea _and_ unconstitutional
Will, besides being an exquisitely bad idea, having the military operate the security for US airports would be distinctly unconstitutional.
Not unconstitutional
I don't think this is mentioned in the Constitution. This is covered by the Posse Comitatus Act.
Posse Comitatus Act
Thank you for correcting me. You are right; I was wrong insofar as constitutionality. However, I was right that it is a colossally bad idea.
Posse Comitatus Act
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TSA Officers did what they have been directed to do
Imagine you are a TSA officer.
You get your daily briefing before coming on-shift, and various world-wide disease outbreaks are not part of it (and frankly, they should not be, as you have limited time and resources and one solitary function, which you have to execute perfectly). What *is* in your briefing, however, is information that people who wish to kill other people on airplanes are constantly experimenting with mixing lots of common household things together to make substances that can hurt people, and that you should be on the lookout for individuals or groups of individuals carrying unusually large amounts of such substances.
Do you still think this is so ridiculous? The TSA folks did exactly what they should have done, and no one, from lifetime residents to visiting tourists, should have thought that carrying large quantities of such things would not have made the people responsible for security at least a little curious.
People who routinely transport large quantities of such materials, such as people in my church who take them to Haiti, make arrangements beforehand so TSA knows what is going on. These folks should have done the same thing, and from the article, it sounds like they will be doing that today or tomorrow.
With respect to the other point, I don't care if it was a military EOD expert or the recently laid off line cook from McDonald's. Both of them would have made similar inquiries of these folks based on the direction they received from their superiors.
Flammables and precursors
In this day and age, nobody should expect to get on a plane with large quantities of flammables (rubbing alcohol), aerosols (bug sprays), or precursors to high explosives (ascorbic acid and hydrogen peroxide). The fail in this case is not on the TSA's part.
Vitamin C is a "precursor to high explosives"?
You're a complete moron.
Moron?
Did you even read the article... yes, the Vitamin C is not explosive or even flammable, but the rest of the stuff is and anything flammable is banned.
Albeit, I feel bad, but hey... I don't make the silly, ridiculous rules (that's HQ's job), I just enforce them.
Heck, I didn't even know about this till now. I love the system of communication they got set up here in Boston. You don't find out about this stuff till you read it in the news...
Just following orders?
It seems to me that we have heard that mantra before, but in that case the victims were dying of poison gas and not an infectious disease.
Crack a book sometime, kid
One of the simplest explosives you can make, called "Golden Powder," combines ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) with potassium nitrate (saltpeter). Yes, it blows up. And yes, it's damn easy to make. Just please keep stirring longer than the recipe calls for.
Citric acid has more potential. Hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD) is concocted using a solution of hydrogen peroxide and hexamine with citric acid as a catalyst. You can make that yourself too, using camping fuel tablets as a hexamine source.
Crack a book sometime - you might learn something valuable. Like why the TSA might want none of these things on an airplane.
But so what?
It says you have to mix ingredients and heat them in an oven. How is anyone going to do this on an airplane when the ingredients are in the baggage hold?
The TSA has outlived its usefulness and should be abolished.
A reasonable question
I agree that the TSA engages primarily in foolishness to present the impression of security. I don't even like to fly anymore because I find them so offensive. If they're going to exist, however, preventing flammables and explosives precursors from getting on airplanes (in checked or carry-on) is hardly the dumbest thing they do (for example, confiscating the Tylenol was dumber).
As long as we're second guessing the TSA, we might as well second-guess the passengers. Vitamin C is neither a cure nor a prevention for Dengue Fever. It's just voodoo (aka homeopathy). The Dengue Fever epidemic was not affected in any way by preventing the Vitamin C from getting on the plane. Treatment for Vitamin C deficiency, if that is at all common in Cape Verde, is a separate question. The Tylenol also wouldn't have provided either a cure or a prevention for Dengue Fever, but it would have given suffering people greater comfort.
Not Exactly ...
If you have a population that is deficient in vitamin C, they will have less effective immune response even if they don't have outright scruvy. In that case, vitamin C is a good idea. Raising the nutritional status of the general population is a good way to mitigate an epidemic.
I would suspect that they would do better to take some vitamin D with them, but the whole thing sounds like it wasn't very well thought out. They should have made advance arrangements for the alcohol alone.
Even so, what is the issue with tylenol? If it is all in it's Costco/BJs Wholesale packaging, why the concern with that? It isn't like people don't take serious quantities of pharmaceuticals back with them to developing countries ... we used to buy cases of stuff to send to Albania, and a college housemate of mine would take up a collection and buy cases of condoms to take back to Zimbabwe with her.
Assuming
Assuming the population of Cabo Verde is deficient in Vitamin C, that would be true. I don't assume so much. I've never lived there or studied there, but it's usually easy to grow good food sources of Vitamin C, such as papaya, in a tropical climate. I tend to doubt that Vitamin C deficiency is very common there. I suspect the reason was more the sort of medicinal fetishism that makes Dominicans inject their children with Vitamin B and Americans overdose on synthetic vitamins.
As I've said, I can't think of a very plausible reason to confiscate Tylenol. There's plenty of dumb going around the TSA. So plan ahead.
Agreed
Which is why I brought up vitamin D, which is now understood to play a role in immune system function and can actually be deficient in populations where most people have very dark skin, even in the tropics (not everybody stays outside all the time).
Article abstract
That would exclude Cape Verde.
I don't wish to minimize the effects of Vitamin D deficiency, but Cape Verde is not a population where most people have very dark skin.
Maybe, maybe not
If, like Brazil, skin color tends to scale with socioeconomic status, diet/health status/exposure to mosquitoes could conspire to produce succeptable people with high exposure.
In other words, if people with low Vitamin D synthesis tend to live in places with high mosquito exposure and eat foods less likely to supplement, it might matter. (that low synthesis could be from working long periods indoors every day, too)
Certainly more plausible than Vitamin C deficiency.
The Tylenol is dangerous!
If they'd found a way to slip it into the pilot's cocktails, they could have caused liver failure mid-flight!
you ARE a moron
One of the simplest explosives you can make, called "Golden Powder," combines ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) with potassium nitrate (saltpeter)
Did the have potassium nitrate on them? No?
I've got a great idea, let's ban cotton wadding. After all, it's used in musket loaders! Can't let some ter-rist get on board a plane with fixin's for muskets, now can we? We need to make sure we cover all the bases, so let's ban Q-tips, too, since an enterprising ter-rist could collect all the cotton off a bunch of q-tips for his musket.
This is about as stupid as when the TSA banned all liquids because they based their threat evaluations around action movies where magic red+blue liquids mix in a bomb and become some mysteriously uber-powerful explosive. Just by mixing.
Give up
You already tried the personal insult route, and got your nose rubbed in fresh poop.
Now you work for the TSA?
Ahmed Abdullah Ali planned to blow up soda bottles full of hydrogen peroxide with some batteries on trans-Atlantic flights from the UK to the US.
So, I'm guessing it goes a bit beyond movie magic, loudmouth.
I find the current restrictions to be absurd in light of how they handle disposal of the liquids, etc. But that doesn't mean they weren't originally rooted from actual intelligence gathering.
Failed Chemistry?
Or just didn't ever have any fun blowing things up with common household ingredients there Brett?
Story wasn't as it seemed
The site's updated its story: More details.