tagged w/ Water contamination
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Detection of high concentrations of benzene, xylenes, gasoline range organics, diesel range organics, and total purgeable hydrocarbons in ground water samples from shallow monitoring wells near pits indicates that pits are a source of shallow ground water contamination in the area of investigation.
http://veracitystew.com/2011/12/14/fracking-investigation-yes-its-poisoning-the-water/Detection of high concentrations of benzene, xylenes, gasoline range organics, diesel... more
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Earlier this year, I was contacted by a PR firm working for Dow Chemical to contribute a 60-second video for the Future We Create virtual conference on water sustainability the company launched yesterday. As a vocal advocate for strict regulation of toxic chemicals -- especially for food and farming -- I was surprised the company would approach me. Dow is the country's largest chemical maker, and profits handsomely from developing some of the world's most polluting products, many of which are widely used in industrial and consumer goods as well as agriculture.
In the video I submitted, which you can watch below, I stress that one of the greatest threats to clean water is chemical contaminants -- and that Dow Chemical has a long history of water pollution. The PR representative emailed to say "unfortunately we can't use your video," but that she would be happy to include me, still, if I would consider re-recording it. When we discussed what that would mean she said, no "fingerpointing"; they wanted a "positive, inclusive discussion."
I believe in inclusiveness and engagement, but I also believe we must pursue those principles within a context that is honest. To do otherwise is to participate in what is popularly called "greenwashing," painting a veneer of environmentalism on an otherwise unchanged product or practice -- a corporate strategy many of us are all too familiar with.
In this spirit, I felt it would be disingenuous to engage in a conversation about water sustainability, for a campaign paid for by Dow Chemical, without pointing out the direct relationship between Dow's core business products -- a source of its $8 billion in profit last year -- and toxins in our environment.
At the same time Dow launches this initiative, the company is actively fighting multiple lawsuits from communities who contend that their water has been polluted by the company, including from its hometown manufacturing plant in Midland, Mich. In 2007, the EPA detected the highest level of dioxin ever discovered in the country's rivers or lakes in waterways near Dow's global headquarters. Dioxin levels in some places were 1,000 times higher than the residential standard, according to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. A recent study found women living in Midland, as well as Saginaw and Bay counties, have significantly higher rates of breast cancer; dioxin was to blame. A class action lawsuit is pending.
"In the backyard of Dow's corporate headquarters, the company for decades through philanthropy, public relations, and politics has made the choice to push back at every regulatory level instead of addressing their dioxin contamination of 52 miles of freshwater and Lake Huron," said Michelle Hurd Riddick of the Saginaw Bay grassroots environmental organization, Lone Tree Council. "The company has mastered the art of greenwashing while poisoning a whole watershed and getting away with it."
Community members in another Midland -- Midland, Texas -- filed suit earlier this year against Dow and three other companies for contaminating groundwater there with hexavalent chromium. Barred from use in the European Union because of its toxicity, hexavalent chromium is a known carcinogen. The EPA's own hazard report notes that exposure, including through contaminated drinking water, "may produce effects on the liver, kidney, [and] gastrointestinal and immune systems."
Dow also continues to drag its heels and fight regulators in order to continue production of some of its most toxic and water-polluting products.
In 2000, for instance, the EPA announced it was phasing out approval of Dow's insecticide, and potent neurotoxin, Dursban, for new home construction in the United States because the product is linked to serious illnesses and even death in children. Five years later, the chemical was still in use in U.S. homes. And in 2003, Dow settled a $2 million lawsuit with the state of New York, the largest penalty ever in a pesticide-related case, for repeatedly violating an agreement about proper advertising of Dursban and making misleading safety claims.
Dow is also a leading manufacturer of Bisphenol-A (or BPA), used in numerous consumer products such as baby bottles, children's toys, and the linings of food cans. It's a particularly dangerous chemical, with proven toxicity even in low doses, especially in utero. The National Institutes of Health's National Toxicology Program has found the chemical may increase the risk of certain cancers and alter brain development. The chemical, a synthetic estrogen, has also been linked to reproductive and hormonal problems. New research is showing that a vast majority of Americans is exposed to low concentrations of BPA not only through consumer products, but from surface water, too.
More at the linkEarlier this year, I was contacted by a PR firm working for Dow Chemical to contribute... more
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Ain’t eBay grand? For $10 you can buy a sack of 50 assorted Obama ’08 buttons, and that’s what I’ve been doing. If you look closely, you might see them this weekend on the lapels of some of the global warming protesters holding a sit-in outside the White House.
Already, more than a thousand people have signed up to be arrested over two weeks beginning Aug. 20 — the biggest display of civil disobedience in the environmental movement in decades and one of the largest nonviolent direct actions since the World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle back before Sept. 11. (Among the first 500 to sign up, the biggest cohort was born in the Truman administration, followed closely by FDR babies and Eisenhower kids. These seniors contradict the stereotype of greedy geezers who care only about their own future.)
The issue is simple: We want the president to block construction of Keystone XL, a pipeline that would carry oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta down to the Gulf of Mexico. We have, not surprisingly, concerns about potential spills and environmental degradation from construction of the pipeline. But those tar sands are also the second-largest pool of carbon in the atmosphere, behind only the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. If we tap into them in a big way, NASA climatologist James Hansen explained in a paper issued this summer, the emissions would mean it’s “essentially game over” for the climate. That’s why the executive directors of many environmental groups and 20 of the country’s leading climate scientists wrote letters asking people to head to Washington for the demonstrations. In scientific terms, it’s as close to a no-brainer as you can get.
But in political terms it may turn out to be a defining moment of the Obama years.
That’s because, for once, the president will get to make an important call all by himself. He has to sign a certificate of national interest before the border-crossing pipeline can be built. Under the relevant statutes, Congress is not involved, so he doesn’t need to stand up to the global-warming deniers calling the shots in the House.
But the president does need to stand up to the fossil fuel industry, which has done its best to influence the decision. Since the State Department plays a role in recommending a decision, the main pipeline company helpfully hired the former national deputy director of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign as its lead lobbyist. WikiLeaks documents emerged recently showing U.S. envoys conspiring with the oil industry to win favorable media coverage for tar sands oil. If you were a cynic, you’d say the fix was in.
Still, the final call rests with Barack Obama, who said the night that he clinched the Democratic nomination in June 2008 that his ascension would mark “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Now he gets a chance to prove that he meant it. In basketball terms, he’s alone at the top of the key — will he take the 20-foot jumper or pass the ball? It’s a rare, character-defining moment. Obama can’t escape it simply by saying that someone else will burn the oil if we don’t. Alberta is remote, and its only other possible pipeline route — to the Pacific and hence Asia — is tangled in litigation. That’s why the province’s energy minister told Canada’s Globe and Mail last month that without the Keystone pipeline Alberta would be “landlocked in bitumen,” the technical name for the heavy, gooey tar that is its chief export. Critics may argue otherwise, but Obama’s call is key; without it, that oil will stay in the ground for at least a while longer. Long enough, perhaps, that the planet will come fully to its senses about climate change.
It’s hard to predict what will happen. Earlier this summer Al Gore tossed up his hands in despair: “President Obama has never presented to the American people the magnitude of the climate crisis,” Gore said. “He has not defended the science against the ongoing withering and dishonest attacks.” Yet it’s hard to give up on the image of the skinny senator from Illinois and the young people who were his most fervent supporters — young people who, according to pollsters, wanted a climate bill by a 5-to-1 margin. That didn’t happen, of course; for now, the Keystone pipeline is the best proxy we have for real presidential commitment to the global warming fight.
More at the linkAin’t eBay grand? For $10 you can buy a sack of 50 assorted Obama ’08... more
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(The Best Years in Life) Newly released documents and emails from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) show the agency's top commissioners directed staff to lower radiation test results for years in defiance of federal EPA rules. In addition, the state officials and the EPA knew about the agency violations but choose to take little or no action.
http://www.tbyil.com/Texas_Radioactive_Water_Scandal.htm(The Best Years in Life) Newly released documents and emails from the Texas Commission... more
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Chemicals which we release into the environment frequently end up in our bodies, or our children’s bodies, sometimes before they have even left the womb. Many chemicals known to cause cancer or other profound health problems are known to “bioaccumulate,” meaning that they accumulate and concentrate in an organism.
read full article at Heroin and Cornflakes...http://arch1design.com/blog/?p=9580Chemicals which we release into the environment frequently end up in our bodies, or... more
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In a groundbreaking legal settlement, the EPA has agreed to identify and investigate thousands of factory farms that have been avoiding government regulation for water pollution.
June 3, 2010
Photo Credit: Farm Sanctuary
In a legal settlement that could affect the entire U.S. meat industry, the Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to identify and investigate thousands of factory farms that have been avoiding government regulation for water pollution with animal waste.
The settlement requires the agency to propose a rule on greater information gathering on factory farms within the next 12 months. It will require the approximately 20,000 domestic factory farms to report such information as how they dispose of manure and other animal waste.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and Waterkeeper Alliance filed the suit in 2009 over a rule that exempted thousands of factory farms from taking steps to minimize water pollution from the animal waste they generate.
"Thousands of factory farm polluters threaten America's water with animal waste, bacteria, viruses and parasites that can make people sick," said Jon Devine, an attorney with the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council.
"Many of these massive facilities are flying completely under the radar. EPA doesn't even know where they are," said Devine.
More than 30 years ago, Congress identified factory farms as water pollution sources to be regulated under the Clean Water Act's permit program.
But under a Bush administration regulation challenged by the environmental groups in this lawsuit, large facilities were able to escape government regulation by claiming, without government verification, that they do not discharge into waterways protected by the Clean Water Act.
Under the settlement reached May 26, the EPA will initiate a new national effort to track down factory farms operating without permits and determine if they must be regulated.
The specific information that EPA will require from individual facilities will be determined after a period of public comment. But the results of that investigation will enable the agency and the public to create stronger pollution controls in the future and make sure facilities are complying with current rules.
"The EPA's rules have failed to protect our rivers and lakes from polluting factory farms," said Ed Hopkins, director of Sierra Club's Environmental Quality Program. "Gathering more information to document factory farms' pollution will lay the groundwork for better protection of our waters."
The National Pork Producers Council expressed "deep frustration and anger" over the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's continuing efforts "to develop costly agricultural regulations that provide few if any additional environmental benefits."
"With this one-sided settlement, EPA yanked the rug out from under America's livestock farmers," said Michael Formica, NPPC's chief environmental counsel. "NPPC is looking at all appropriate legal responses to EPA's disappointing course of action."
Factory farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations, CAFOs, confine animals on an industrial scale and produce massive amounts of manure and other waste that can pollute waterways with dangerous contaminants.
These CAFOs apply liquid animal waste on land, which runs off into waterways, killing fish, spreading disease, and contaminating drinking water. The plaintiff groups cite EPA estimates that pathogens, such as E. coli, are responsible for 35 percent of the nation's impaired river and stream miles, and factory farms are one of the most common pathogen sources.
"This agreement sets the stage for new Clean Water Act permitting measures that will add to producers' costs, drive more farmers out of business, increase concentration in livestock production to comply and hurt rural economies," said Randy Spronk, a Minnesota pork producer who heads NPPC's environmental committee. "And the measures will do nothing really to improve water quality.
"Additionally," said Spronk, "the settlement was negotiated in private and without consultation or input from the regulated farming community. This flies in the face of the Obama administration's pledges to operate government more transparently. And, in this economy, the administration should be enacting measures that create jobs, not implementing regulations that put American farmers out of business."
Today there are more than 67,000 pork operations compared with nearly three million in the 1950s. Farms have grown in size; 53 percent of them now produce 5,000 or more pigs per year.
"The record is clear -- large CAFO operations, and many medium and small operations, commonly discharge pollutants into the surrounding environment," said Waterkeeper Alliance attorney Hannah Connor. "What is also clear is that if we want to continue to drink, fish and enjoy water that is not contaminated with raw animal excrement, these discharges must be stopped."
"We believe that the terms of this settlement will help reverse this industry's history of bad behavior by improving implementation and enforcement of the law," Connor said.
Litigation brought by these three groups has forced the EPA to revise its CAFO rules twice within the past decade to tighten the pollution control requirements on these facilities.In a groundbreaking legal settlement, the EPA has agreed to identify and investigate... more
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A court in the Indian city of Bhopal has sentenced eight people to two years each in jail over a gas plant leak that killed thousands of people in 1984.
The convictions are the first since the disaster at the Union Carbide plant - the world's worst industrial accident.
The eight Indians, all former plant employees, were convicted of "death by negligence". One had already died - the others are expected to appeal.
Campaigners said the court verdict was "too little and too late".
'Betrayal'
Forty tonnes of a toxin called methyl isocyanate leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide factory and settled over slums in Bhopal on 3 December 1984.
Twenty-five years after the world's worst industrial disaster, people have finally been held legally responsible.
But the verdict is being described as more symbolic than just by rights groups and NGOs who have been working with the maimed gas victims.
They say that two-year prison sentences for Indians found guilty over the tragedy which killed thousands is an indictment of the country's slow-moving criminal justice system and investigative agencies.
Campaigners would like to see the former Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson, the prime accused in the case, brought to justice. A warrant for his arrest was issued by an Indian court in 2003 but never acted on.
Biswas: Bhopal's tragedy
The Indian government says some 3,500 people died within days and more than 15,000 in the years since.
Campaigners put the death toll as high as 25,000 and say the horrific effects of the gas continue to this day.
The site of the former pesticide plant is now abandoned.
It was taken over by the state government of Madhya Pradesh in 1998, but environmentalists say poison is still found there.
The eight convicted on Monday were Keshub Mahindra, the chairman of the Indian arm of the Union Carbide (UCIL); VP Gokhale, managing director; Kishore Kamdar, vice-president; J Mukund, works manager; SP Chowdhury, production manager; KV Shetty, plant superintendent; SI Qureshi, production assistant. All of them are Indians.
The seven former employees, some of whom are now in their 70s, were also ordered to pay fines of 100,000 Indian rupees (£1,467; $2,125) apiece.
Although Warren Anderson, the American then-chairman of the US-based Union Carbide parent group, was named as an accused and later declared an "absconder" by the court, he was not mentioned in Monday's verdict.
Rights groups and NGOs working with the victims of the gas leak said that the verdict was inadequate.
BHOPAL'S DEATH TOLL
Initial deaths (3-6 December): more than 3,000 - official toll
Unofficial initial toll: 7,000-8,000
Total deaths to date: over 15,000
Number affected: Nearly 600,000
Compensation: Union Carbide pays $470m in 1989
Source: Indian Supreme Court, Madhya Pradesh government, Indian Council of Medical Research
It sets a very sad precedent. The disaster has been treated like a traffic accident. It is a judicial disaster, and it is a betrayal [of Indian people] by the government," activist Satinath Sarangi said.A court in the Indian city of Bhopal has sentenced eight people to two years each in... more
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I just started this petition, if there is one thing we can do now is RAISING OUR VOICES!
Please go ahead and sign this, it will only take you thirty seconds and will be incredibly powerful:
http://environment.change.org/petitions/view/no_more_drill_baby_drill
Targeting: The President of the United States, The U.S. Senate and The U.S. House
Started by: Organic Legion
Enough is enough!
We, the people have had enough of environmental destruction. The gulf oil spill is the tipping point of your greed, of your corporatism that only welcomes short term financial gain and puts profit over people.
We've had enough of killing marine life with unknown repercussions on our Nature, we've had enough of contamination of our fresh water supplies, we've had enough of oil spills that only endanger our health, the well being of our Mother Earth and the future of our children.
We want you, as our government, as a body of representation of the people of the United States to invest billions into alternative, true environmental and sustainable energy. No more delaying.
NO MORE "Drill, Baby, Drill!", no more deaths, no more killing.
Please sign and take action in a powerful way now:
http://environment.change.org/petitions/view/no_more_drill_baby_drill
Join the Organic Movement:
http://current.com/groups/organicgreen/I just started this petition, if there is one thing we can do now is RAISING OUR... more
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"One pledge, hundreds of actions, real change!
By joining the mountain pledge you are becoming part of the hundreds of thousands who are taking real actions to stop the tragic practice of mountaintop removal coal mining. Families across Appalachia are standing up to fight and they need our help. They need to know they’re not alone.
We can no longer allow the coal industry to blow up whole mountains and poison drinking water for small amounts of coal. Hundreds of precious mountains and streams have already been lost forever. What will that number be next year or five years from now?
This is one tragedy that you really can help stop. Become part of a movement that has spread from the coalfields to congressional offices, from letter writing campaigns to multiple day tree-sits in the Appalachian Mountains.
Real change comes from real people standing up and taking strong actions. If we are going to stop mountaintop mining not in 2012 or 2015 but in 2010 it will take all of us, our friends and our families. It’s time to grow the movement."
http://mountainpledge.org/
Join the Organic Movement:
http://current.com/groups/organicgreen/"One pledge, hundreds of actions, real change!
By joining the mountain pledge... more
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"In the U.S. each person produces 63 pounds (28.5 kilos) of plastic destined for landfills every year.
50-80% of ocean and beach litter in America is plastic.
In 2007 only 6.8% of plastics were recycled, including 37% of soda bottles and 28% of milk and water jugs.
300 million metric tons of plastic will be produced worldwide in 2010, half of which will be disposable.
93% of humans over the age of 6 have detectable levels of bisphenol A (BPA) – a chemical used in plastic production – in their urine.
It takes 450 years for a plastic bottle to degrade in the ocean.
Isn’t it time we all listened to that charming Edward Norton when he says ‘Bag the bag’?"
http://www.greenfudge.org/2009/11/06/scary-plastic-numbers-from-discover-magazine/
Watch the video.
We will end up like in the Wall-E movie if we don't do something about it.
Join Organic:
http://current.com/groups/organicgreen/"In the U.S. each person produces 63 pounds (28.5 kilos) of plastic destined for... more
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"Over the last century, the intensive use of chemical fertilizers has saturated the Earth’s soils, waters, and atmosphere with nitrogen. Now scientists are warning that we must move quickly to revolutionize agricultural systems and greatly reduce the amount of nitrogen we put into the planet's ecosystems."
Two more excerpts:
"Nitrogen affects more parts of the planet’s life-support systems than almost any other element, says James Galloway of the University of Virginia, who predicts: “In the worst-case scenario, we will move towards a nitrogen-saturated planet, with polluted and reduced biodiversity, increased human health risks and an even more perturbed greenhouse gas balance.”
"Today, of 175 million tons of nitrogen applied to the world’s croplands in a year, almost 50 percent is from chemical fertilizer. It has raised the “carrying capacity” of the world’s soils from 1.9 people per hectare of farmland to 4.3 — and 10 in China, where applications reach twice anything seen in Europe.
"This is a profound change to the biochemistry of life on Earth — and to our own bodies. Today, much of the nitrogen in our bodies comes not from biological sources but from giant chemical factories. We are, in a real sense, as much chemistry as biology. Vaclav Smil, the distinguished Canadian researcher into food and the environment at the University of Manitoba, calls the nitrogen fix 'an immense and dangerous experiment.' "
More at: http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2207
Nitrogen is saturating our planet, causing algae blooms, destroying sea life, dead zones, global warming, acid rain, eating the ozone layer and reducing nature's biodiversity.
Organic agriculture can answer to this.
This needs to be addressed along with global warming as they both go hand in hand.
Join Organic:
http://current.com/groups/organicgreen/"Over the last century, the intensive use of chemical fertilizers has saturated... more
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We are the Organic movement!
Organic agriculture and beyond can combat deforestation, soil, water and air contamination,water scarcity,hunger, poverty,energy consumption,economic injustice,illnesses,desertification,climate change,species extinction and the subjugation of human rights.
No GMO, no toxicity.
One with our beautiful blue planet, we advocate justice,respect for our Health and Nature, hoping to restore its harmonious balance and biodiversity.
Discuss, create solutions and take action.
Thank you from my heart to all that did join and will.
Thanks to Current.com
Watch the video below.
Join ORGANIC:
http://current.com/groups/organicgreen/We are the Organic movement!
Organic agriculture and beyond can combat deforestation,... more
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Why is anyone fighting to save these things again? A detailed report in the New York Times just revealed that hundreds of coal plants across the country are routinely dumping thousands of gallons of waste water into rivers and lakes--rivers and lakes that millions of people get their drinking water from.
So here's why all that dumping is going on, in a nutshell--coal plants, as you well know, are extremely heavy polluters. Some plants pollute so heavily, some even spewing sickly yellow smoke, that little coal waste chunks litter nearby residents' yards and coat their property in a thin film. So when a community gets tired of this--and gets sick of the respiratory illnesses and intermittent acid rain the plant creates as well--sometimes they're able to get the state to insist on stricter pollution regulations.
If they're lucky, as in the case of the super-polluting coal plant in Masontown, Pennsylvania, they're successful, and the coal company installs 'scrubbers' that trap up to 150,000 tons of the pollution and keep it from entering the air. Hooray! Right?
Not so fast. Since the scrubbing process creates waste water from all that pollution, it turns out that the coal companies are simply dumping all of into nearby rivers and lakes, many of which Americans get their drinking water from.
And if you're anything like me, you're first reaction will be something like, "how the hell are they allowed to do that?" The answer is, oftentimes they're not. But they're getting away with it unpunished. You see, there's no federal regulation--at all--that specifically determines how much, if any, waste coal plants can dump into water sources. There are state regulations, and restrictions set by the Clean Water Act, but the Times found that while the plants are receiving notices for violations, nothing is being done about it:
Ninety percent of 313 coal-fired power plants that have violated the Clean Water Act since 2004 were not fined or otherwise sanctioned by federal or state regulators.
It also notes those few plants that have had to pay fines--but they're egregiously low, even for excessive violations:
Hatfield's Ferry has violated the Clean Water Act 33 times since 2006. For those violations, the company paid less than $26,000. During that same period, the plant's parent company earned $1.1 billion.
In other cases, there's no existing framework at all to prevent companies from dumping harmful chemicals. This, for example, is particularly alarming:
only one in 43 power plants and other electric utilities across the nation must limit how much barium they dump into nearby waterways ... Barium, which is commonly found in power plant waste and scrubber wastewater, has been linked to heart problems and diseases in other organs.
The atrocities go on and on. No wonder coal companies are balking at the prospect of limiting their pollution under a climate bill--they're evidently entirely unfamiliar with taking the environment and/or people's health into account at all. So allow me to hark back to my opening question: coal plants pollute the air, give people heart and respiratory problems, contribute to climate change, and now, dump tons of dangerous waste into our drinking water every day. Why is anyone trying to save these things?Why is anyone fighting to save these things again? A detailed report in the New York... more
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Wyoming (Reuters) - Louis Meeks, a burly 59-year-old alfalfa farmer, fills a metal trough with water from his well and watches an oily sheen form on the surface which gives off a faint odor of paint.
He points to small bubbles that appear in the water, and a thin ring of foam around the edge.
Meeks is convinced that energy companies drilling for natural gas in this central Wyoming farming community have poisoned his water and ruined his health.
A recent report by the Environmental Protection Agency suggests he just might have a case -- and that the multi-billion dollar industry may have a problem on its hands. EPA tests found his well contained what it termed 14 "contaminants of concern."
It tested 39 wells in the Pavillion area this year, and said in August that 11 were contaminated. The agency did not identify the cause but said gas drilling was a possibility.
What's happened to the water supply in Pavillion could have repercussions for the nation's energy policies. As a clean-burning fuel with giant reserves in the United States, natural gas is central to plans for reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
But aggressive development is drawing new scrutiny from residents who live near gas fields, even in energy-intensive states such as Wyoming, where one in five jobs are linked to the oil and gas industry which contributed more than $15 billion the state economy in 2007.
People living near gas drilling facilities in states including Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming have complained that their water has turned cloudy, foul-smelling, or even black as a result of chemicals used in a drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking."
The industry contends drilling chemicals are heavily diluted and injected safely into gas reservoirs thousands of feet beneath aquifers, so they will never seep into drinking water supplies.
"There has never been a documented case of fracking that's contaminated wells or groundwater," said Randy Teeuwen, a spokesman for EnCana Corp, Canada's second-largest energy company, which operates 248 wells in the Pavillion and nearby Muddy Ridge fields.
"We know they don't have the science to prove what they say," Teeuwen said of those who criticize fracking.
___________
Consider that last gloating remark: "We know they don't have the science to prove what they say," Teeuwen said of those who criticize fracking." In other words, we know we can lie and they can't prove otherwise. Never been a "documented" case doesn't mean it isn't happening. It just hasn't been allowed to be "documented" because once again we see industry playing the same games with profit over health by using the water as an open sewer.
Where are the solar panels?Wyoming (Reuters) - Louis Meeks, a burly 59-year-old alfalfa farmer, fills a metal... more
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"Twenty-five years after the Bhopal gas leak killed thousands, there has been no cleanup of the site – and Indians continue to die horribly."
"We all know what the world's worst industrial disaster was: the gas leak from the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal in central India. On the night of 2 December 1984, the creaky pesticides plant, which was lacking a number of basic safeguards, released a cloud of methyl isocyanate, phosgene and other gases over a densely populated city. This poison gas killed thousands of people – some immediately, many others in the years that followed. The death toll so far appears to be around 25,000. Hundreds of thousands of others were harmed, in many cases permanently. The 25th anniversary falls in just over two months."
One more excerpt:
"You might have imagined that after the global outrage this disaster caused, and the way in which Bhopal has become shorthand for corporate malfeasance and insouciance, that the site of this great crime would have been cleaned up and sorted out as quickly as possible. That the plant, which was closed after the gas leak, would either have been demolished and removed or cleaned up and turned into a memorial for the victims. You'd be wrong.
As the Bhopal Medical Appeal reminds us, the plant has instead simply been abandoned. Hundreds of tonnes of deadly chemicals have been left there – in open pits or just piled on the ground – to leach into the water supply, where they continue to poison people to this day, causing cancer and foetal malformations, among other horrible effects. The chemicals include deadly pesticides and their even deadlier precursors.
After drinking half a glass of water that the people of the city drink every day, the author Dominique Lapierre reported that "my mouth, my throat, my tongue instantly got on fire, while my arms and legs suffered an immediate skin rash. This was the simple manifestation of what men, women and children have to endure daily, some 18 years after the tragedy." Seven years on, nothing has changed. There has been no cleanup, no attempt to prevent the leakage from the site that takes place during every monsoon."
Why has this been ignored for so many years?
The contamination continues bringing deaths, illnesses and nature's catastrophe."Twenty-five years after the Bhopal gas leak killed thousands, there has been no... more
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The inventor of the Segway, Dean Kamen, has invented a portable water purifying device called The Slingshot that is meant to be used in remote villages where drinking water is scarce...The inventor of the Segway, Dean Kamen, has invented a portable water purifying device... more
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"If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in a sorry a state as the souls who live under tyrrany."
By Thomas Jefferson ( Founding Father and third President of the United States).
Excerpts:
"Unsuspecting consumers by the tens of millions are being allowed to purchase and consume unlabeled genetically engineered foods, despite findings by FDA scientists that these foods could pose serious risks. New genetically engineered crops are being approved by federal agencies despite admissions that they will contaminate native and conventional plants and pose other significant new environmental threats. In short, there has been a complete abdication of any responsible legislative or regulatory oversight of genetically engineered foods. Clearly, now is a critical time to challenge the government’s lack of regulatory oversight on this technology, and demand labeling of all GE foods so that consumers have a choice in the marketplace.
At the site you'll briefly read what Prince Charles and a few others had to say about Genetically engineered food.
Here is what Pope John Paul II said to 50,000 farmers:
" 'resist the temptation of high productivity and profit that work to the detriment of the respect of nature.' The pontiff added that "when (farmers) forget this basic principle and become tyrants of the earth rather than its custodians ... sooner or later the earth rebels."
"if modern farming techniques don't reconcile themselves with the simple language of nature in a healthy balance, the life of man will run ever greater risks, of which already we are seeing worrying signs."
Sign the petition at the site and stand up for the right to be informed, fight gmo and corporate greed that is destroying our NATURE.
Join Organic:
http://current.com/groups/organicgreen/"If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they... more
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The picture you see is the sharp contrast between forest and pasture in Mato Grosso.
Shocking!
Excerpts:
"As the world's biggest cattle producer, Brazil braces for change:
While you're browsing the mall for running shoes, the Amazon rainforest is probably the farthest thing from your mind. Perhaps it shouldn't be.
The globalization of commodity supply chains has created links between consumer products and distant ecosystems like the Amazon. Shoes sold in downtown Manhattan may have been assembled in Vietnam using leather supplied from a Brazilian processor that subcontracted to a rancher in the Amazon. But while demand for these products is currently driving environmental degradation, this connection may also hold the key to slowing the destruction of Earth's largest rainforest."
"Cattle ranching is overwhelmingly the biggest driver of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: the fate of nearly 80 percent of cleared rainforest land is to serve as forage for livestock. Since 2006 more than 38,600 square miles has been cleared for pasture, bringing the total area occupied by cattle ranches in the Brazilian Amazon to 214,000 square miles, an open space larger than France."
"The green group issued Slaughtering the Amazon, a report that linked some of the world's most prominent brands to illegal destruction of the Amazon rainforest. The fallout was immediate and substantial.
Days after the report was released, Brazil's biggest domestic beef buyers, supermarket chains Wal-Mart, Carrefour, and Pão de Açúcar, announced they would suspend contracts with suppliers found to be involved in Amazon deforestation.
Bertin, the world's second largest beef exporter, saw its $90 million loan from the World Bank's International Finance Corporation withdrawn..."
More at the link.
Last passage:
"To some, these issues may suggest that curbing beef consumption is the ultimate solution to deforestation in the Amazon as well as other environmental problems, but in the meantime it is clear that industry will play a critical part if the tide in the Amazon is to be turned.
'The whole Amazon will be torn down if we don't come up with a sensible and effective system," said Carter. "The time to act is now.' "
I think the whole world has to rethink the consumption of meat as it causes deforestation, hunger, poverty, desertification, water contamination, water scarcity, species extinction and the death of the indigenous people.
Join Organic:
http://current.com/groups/organicgreen/The picture you see is the sharp contrast between forest and pasture in Mato Grosso.... more
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"There is some evidence that Congress -- and the Environmental Protection Agency -- are rethinking their policies on a commonly used weed-killer after disclosures that the EPA failed to notify the public about high levels of the herbicide in drinking water.
As the Investigative Fund revealed last week, the herbicide atrazine has been found at levels above the federal safety limit in drinking water in at least four states. The chemical has been studied for its potential link to breast cancer, prostate cancer, and birth defects, and the EPA considers it to be a potential endocrine disruptor. It is banned in the European Union."
"For five years, the EPA has been collecting weekly tests of drinking water in about 150 watersheds, primarily in the Midwest, where farmers spray the herbicide on cornfields and other crops. The agency, however, never acted on the results. Nor had it ever published the data -- until tonight. EPA officials say they have now decided to make the test results available on their Web site."
For five years?
I am not that surprised.
It's always been this way: years and years later, after an other generation gets cancer that things like this get revealed and made available to the public.
Researches , investigations were done already years ago about this contamination and much more but always encountering incredulity.
We pay the price, our children do and will too unless we do something.
Join Organic for a better and greener world:
http://current.com/groups/organicgreen/"There is some evidence that Congress -- and the Environmental Protection Agency... more
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John Dekker feels like he's camping out in his own home. He showers with bottled water and drags his laundry to a Laundromat. He can't sell his house without disclosing its glaring flaw -- his well is contaminated.
Neighbor Kari Craton's fingernails turned orange; her appliances were destroyed. Diana Bennett's garden is useless.
Some 50 families live near a plume of groundwater contaminated with metals that spread from the local Birds Eye processing plant. At a nearby Minute Maid juice plant, there's another plume.
In rural west Michigan, food processors have sprayed so much wastewater onto fields that heavy metals seeped into groundwater, contaminating wells. State officials have known of the polluting for at least a decade but, residents complain, moved slowly.
The list of tainted sites keeps growing. And the contamination plumes continue to spread as the Department of Environmental Quality and companies argue behind closed doors over what must be done. Frustrated residents say they're bearing the costs -- altered lives and fear of the water that pours from their taps -- even as state and industry officials say there's no acute health threat. "You're living with all these problems, but you can't get out," Craton said.
Worried residents want help
On the wall of the family business is a collage of photos and awards Dick and Rita Pfister's son earned in his too-brief life. He died at age 21 of gastric cancer, a disease his parents were told was highly unusual for someone his age.
The Pfisters don't know whether there is a connection between his death and their home's metal-poisoned well -- with water that got so dark, they couldn't see the bottom of the tub when they filled it.John Dekker feels like he's camping out in his own home. He showers with bottled... more
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