KevinTurner's blog

In the 1960s and 70s, we learned that lead, something we'd taken for granted for decades, could cause brain damage and cancer for people exposed to enough of it. We heard stories about how lead paint chips could be harmful to children. And at about that time, we saw leaded gasoline disappear from gas stations.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, lead is "a highly toxic metal that was used for many years in products found in and around our homes. Lead may cause a range of health effects from behavioral problems and learning disabilities to seizures and death. Children six years old and under are most at risk because their bodies are growing quickly."

In 1978, lead-based paint became history, stricken from legal use in the United States.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 1978 there were 13.5 million children in the United States with elevated lead levels in their blood. By 2002, the number of children exposed to lead had dropped to 310,000, the CDC reported.

But now, it's baaaack with a vengeance, thanks to our manufacturing friends in China. And now it's hiding in the toys we give our children. And as we all know, a plastic or rubber toy of the right size, given to a teething toddler, is going to wind up right in their mouths.

It's impossible to measure how much lead is now back in our lives and where it can be found, but this can be assumed true: we're all being exposed to it again.

Since 1997, virtually all toys, tools and many other items sold in the U.S. have moved their manufacturing to China, which does everything cheaply and reasonably well — at least by appearance. They have few safety, health or environmental standards in their factories and strive only for acceptable quality and massive volume. And there's a constant line of people waiting to be paid the dirt wages they pay.

And Chinese manufacturers apparently see no problem in using lead in manufacturing toys that are sold to American children. What kind of "global business partner" is this nation, really? What's really scary about that is everything that children get — from the cheap toys they get from parties, vending machines or fast food restaurants to expensive toys — is made in China.

I suggest you get a lead testing kit and test all of your children's plastic toys you can get your hands on. How do you do that? I'll get to that in a minute.

First, though, read on...

The National Weather Service in Jacksonville has issued a severe thunderstorm warning for west Nassau County until 3 p.m. today. Doppler radar showed a severe storm capable of producing penny-sized hail and 60 mph winds moving to the southeast from Georgia at 14 mph.

By KEVIN TURNER

kevin.turner@mynassausun.com

Lightning from a thunderstorm yesterday afternoon has triggered a West Nassau County wildfire that's consumed 3 acres as of noon today.

The blaze is near near County Road 121 and Tracy Road.

It joined another West Nassau fire near the intersection of County Road 119 and County Road 121.

That fire started May 22, also sparked by lightning. It has consumed 32 acres.

More fires may crop up from Sunday's storm because lightning strikes sometimes will cause brush to smolder before flames break out, Florida Division of Forestry Wildfire Mitigation Specialist Annaleasa Winter said today.

by KEVIN TURNER

kevin.turner@mynassausun.com

County Commissioner Tom Branan was released from Shands Jacksonville over the weekend following a one-car accident Thursday.

Florida Highway Patrol spokesman Lt. Bill Leeper said Branan, 63, was northbound on Blackrock Road at about 5:30 p.m. Thursday and veered right while turning through a curve near Green Pine Road.

The car went off the road into a drainage ditch, came out near a concrete culvert and became airborne, coming to rest against a chain-link fence on the other side of the culvert, he said.

By Kevin Turner

kevin.turner@mynassausun.com

Two Callahan residents were killed and one critically injured in two separate highway accidents during the Memorial Day holiday weekend, the Florida Highway Patrol reported.

John Douglas Kilgore Jr., 21, was killed in a head-on collision with a tractor-trailer early Monday.

Nina D. Thomas, 56, was killed after Nathan L. Thomas, 60, lost control of the car in which she was riding and veered into the path of another car Friday night. Nathan Thomas was critically injured.

Kilgore was driving east on a two-lane segment Florida A1A four miles east of Callahan when he moved into the westbound lane to pass another car. His 1995 Chevrolet pickup truck slammed into a 2003 Freighliner semi driven by Joseph W. Allbritton, 32, of Nahunta, Ga.

Firefighters extinguish a truck that caught fire after an accident on Eighth Street Wednesday afternoon.

by KEVIN TURNER
kevin.turner@mynassausun.com

Two people were killed and four were rushed to Shands Jacksonville after a four-vehicle accident at 1:25 this afternoon on South Eighth Street.

Florida Highway Patrol Spokesman Lt. Bill Leeper said Donald Harrison, 65, drove a 2005 Chevrolet pickup truck the wrong way in southbound Eighth Street and killed Thomas Hooke, 68, of Yulee, when the truck hit his 1994 Mitsubishi pickup truck head-on.

The Chevrolet also hit a 2005 Ford Escape and a 1991 Dodge work truck before it overturned and burst into flames, Leeper said. It took firefighters about five minutes to extinguish the fire, Nassau County Fire Rescue Chief Chuck Cooper said.

James Cole, 48, and Paul George, 36, were in the Dodge and were injured. The names of two people in the Escape were not available at press time.

by KEVIN TURNER

kevin.turner@mynassausun.com

A man and woman were injured after they fell three stories through a rooftop skylight to the ground floor of a downtown Fernandina Beach building early Sunday.

Steven Patrick Henderson, 32, of Yulee and Jennifer L. Lane, 43, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, climbed a fire escape on the Dickens Building at 207 N. Centre St. at about 1 a.m. Sunday, and onto the roof of the Chanderly Building at 4 N. Second St.

Fernandina Beach Police reported that they didn’t know how the couple fell through the skylight.

By KEVIN TURNER
kevin.turner@mynassausun.com

FERNANDINA BEACH — After more than $50,000 in fines for neon signs in their front windows and years of complaints about noise from a bar next door, the owners of the historic Florida House Inn bed and breakfast have filed a lawsuit against the city, its code enforcement board and one of its code enforcement officers.

As of Wednesday, city officials had not been served with the suit, City Clerk Mary Mercer said.

The lawsuit, filed in the U. S. District Court in Jacksonville last week , says the city has harassed, intimidated and unfairly treated inn owners Joe and Diane Warwick and has violated their First Amendment constitutional rights with its sign code that restricts neon signs in the city’s historic district.

By KEVIN TURNER

kevin.turner@mynassausun.com

FERNANDINA BEACH — Four months after a Fernandina Beach resident sued the city for denying her request to put silica composite siding on her home in the downtown Historic District, the Historic District Council on Thursday reversed its position and voted to allow it.

The City Commission, staff and the Historic District Council had blocked Amy Hubbard's plans to use a silica composite known as HardiBoard, saying it wasn't historically accurate.

Citing examples of other historic district structures on which HardiBoard has been used, Hubbard filed suit against the city in circuit court Dec. 19, saying the process through which her request was denied was unfair and selective.

It's impossible to understand the pain a family experiences when one of their own, bright and full of life, is murdered and suddenly ripped from their lives.

And days after Yulee resident Michelle Hainley was found dead in a Kingsland, Ga. hotel room Feb. 26, her mother, Linda Johnson, vowed she would not rest until she had answers.

On April 16, she let me know via email that's meant she's had to be patient.

"I still don't have any answers about Michelle," she wrote.