tagged w/ U.S
-
Kay Allen had just started work, and everything seemed quiet at the Cornerstone Care community health clinic in Burgettstown, Pa. But things didn't stay quiet for long.
"All the girls, they were yelling at me in the back, 'You gotta come out here quick. You gotta come out here quick,' " said Allen, 59, a nurse from Weirton, W.Va.
Allen rushed out front and knew right away what all the yelling was about. The whole place reeked — like someone had spilled a giant bottle of nail polish remover.
"I told everybody to get outside and get fresh air. So we went outside. And Aggie said, 'Kay, I'm going to be sick.' But before I get in, to get something for her to throw up in, she had to go over the railing," she said.
Nothing like this had ever happened in the 20 years that Allen has been at the clinic. After about 45 minutes, she thought the coast was clear and took everyone back inside.
"It was fine. But the next thing you know, they're calling me again. There was another gust. Well, the one girl, Miranda, she was sitting at the registration place, and you could tell she'd had too much of it. And Miranda got overcome by that and she passed out," she said.
'It's The Unknown I Think That's The Scariest Thing'
This sort of thing has been happening for weeks. Mysterious gusts of fumes keep wafting through the clinic.
In fact, just the day before being interviewed by NPR, Allen suddenly felt like she had been engulfed by one of these big invisible bubbles.
"And all of a sudden your tongue gets this metal taste on it. And it feels like it's enlarging, and it just feels like you're not getting enough air in, because your throat gets real 'burn-y.' And the next thing I know, I ... passed out," Allen said.
Half a dozen of Allen's co-workers stopped coming in. One old-timer quit. No one can figure out what's going on. For doctors and nurses used to taking care of sick people, it's unnerving to suddenly be the patients.
"It's the unknown I think that's the scariest thing," she said.
Richard Rinehart, who runs the rural clinic, can't help but wonder whether the natural gas drilling going on all around the area may have something to do with what's been happening.
"I lay in bed at night thinking all kinds of theories. Is something coming through the air from some process that they're using? I know they use a lot of chemicals and so forth. Certainly that could be a culprit. We're wondering, Is something coming through the ground?" Rinehart said, noting that he'd just noticed a new drill on a hill overlooking the back of the clinic.
Now, no one knows whether the gas drilling has anything to do with the problems at the clinic. It could easily turn out to be something completely unrelated. There's a smelting plant down the road and old coal mines everywhere.
"Anything could be possible, and we just are trying to get to the root of it," he said.
Mysterious Symptoms, Lots Of Questions
People living near gas well drilling around the country are reporting similar problems, plus headaches, rashes, wheezing, aches and pains and other symptoms.
Doctors like Julie DeRosa, who works at Cornerstone, aren't sure how to help people with these mysterious symptoms.
"I don't want to ignore symptoms that may be clues to a serious condition. I also don't want to order a lot of unnecessary tests. I don't want to feed any kind of hysteria," DeRosa said.
To try to figure out what's going on, the clinic called the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which is investigating. It also started testing the air for chemicals, monitoring wind direction around the clinic and keeping diaries of everyone's symptoms. In addition, the clinic contacted Raina Rippel, project director for the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project.
The local nonprofit was set up recently to help people in this kind of situation. Her team tested tap water from inside a men's room and from a stream out back.
Rippel says she knows people in the area have a lot of questions: "Is my water fit to drink? Is the air fit to breathe? Am I going to suffer long-term health impacts from this?"
More at the linkKay Allen had just started work, and everything seemed quiet at the Cornerstone Care... more
-
-
For a good part of its rich history, residents of unincorporated Allensworth, the first African American colony west of the Mississippi, have gone without a reliable supply of safe drinking water.
This is still the case today, where the Tulare County community’s wells – which provide water to the neighboring Colonel Allensworth State Historical Park that commemorates the area’s legacy – exceed federal levels for arsenic.
Arsenic is naturally occurring in the area, and consumption of the semi-metal can cause nausea and skin discoloration. It has also been associated with various cancers.
Residents of Allensworth and neighboring Alpaugh – both rural, unincorporated communities in Tulare County whose water has elevated arsenic levels – have advanced a novel proposal to resolve the water issues in their communities. Under the plan, the Allensworth and Alpaugh Community Services Districts would combine with the Angiola Water District, which sells water for irrigation, to deliver drinking water to residents. Late last week, Allensworth and Alpaugh’s proposal received nearly $420,000 in state grants [PDF] to research its feasibility.
Safe drinking water is a "necessity for healthy living and economic growth and opportunity for the community,” Denise Kadara, president of the Allensworth Progressive Association, said at a recent meeting of the Strategic Growth Council, a cabinet-level committee that coordinates activities related to issues such as water quality and public health among five state agencies. “Rural communities like Allensworth face huge barriers to clean drinking water and we need innovative solutions to overcome these barriers.”
Consolidation of water districts – there are more than 8,000 public systems in California – has become increasingly appealing to rural communities. “It’s become harder and harder for a very small water system to provide safe water and to keep the rates affordable,” said Laurel Firestone, the co-executive director of the Community Water Center in Visalia. “There’s an overall trend of water systems looking for collaborative solutions to help cut costs.”
The Allensworth-Alpaugh proposal is unique because it involves a consolidation between remote rural community water districts and an irrigation water district. The arrangement could serve as a model for other rural communities, water policy experts say.
“A lot of dispersed communities face similar challenges, and what is learned here could be pretty influential in the rural West,” said Tony Rossmann, an attorney who has handled some of the state’s most significant water cases.
The proposal had the support of the Tulare County Board of Supervisors, which submitted the application to the state Strategic Growth Council. “We know that in Tulare County, we have clean water issues in our unincorporated communities,” said Allen Ishida, a county supervisor. “We are not going to be able to solve these issues without consolidation because it’s too expensive.”
Ishida said the funding for the feasibility study is a step toward “finally, after all these years, getting acceptable and potable clean water” to unincorporated communities “so that residents can enjoy the health benefits and lessen the financial burden of having to buy bottled water.”
According to surveys conducted by advocacy organizations like California Rural Legal Assistance, residents of low-income, unincorporated communities spend up to 10 percent of their income on water.
California law states that residents have a “right to pure and safe drinking water,” but while the state Department of Public Health is charged with monitoring public water systems, there are few enforcement mechanisms, said Camille Pannu of the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, who helped draft the Allensworth-Alpaugh proposal.
“The gap between rights on the books and rights on the ground is particularly stark in the (Central) Valley,” Pannu wrote in a recent issue of the California Law Review.
The Allensworth-Alpaugh proposal also included an additional $450,000 funds to study the extension of sewer service from the city of Tulare to the unincorporated community of Matheny Tract.
As California Watch has previously reported, Matheny Tract, on the outskirts of Tulare, is located just a few miles – and downwind – from the municipal wastewater treatment plant, but residents currently can’t connect to it. Residents rely instead on aging septic tanks.
snip
Numerous Central Valley communities face similar conditions with water quality, access and delivery. A report by the environmental research organization Pacific Institute found that between 2005 and 2008, about 1.3 million San Joaquin Valley residents drank water with unhealthy levels of nitrates, which can lead to severe illness and even death among infants.
According to Oakland think tank PolicyLink, an estimated 1.8 million Californians live in low-income, unincorporated communities like Allensworth and Alpaugh, and many lack potable drinking water or other basic infrastructure. In the Tulare Lake Basin area, there are at least 370 of these communities.
More at the linkFor a good part of its rich history, residents of unincorporated Allensworth, the... more
-
-
A massive plume of thick, black smoke billowed from the Syrian city of Homs Wednesday, punctuating the chaos that has plagued the opposition stronghold for months.
According to the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, an opposition activist group, government war planes flew over Homs and blew up an oil pipeline.
But Syrian state-run TV blamed a "terrorist group" for the assault.
Under the opaque cloud of smoke, sounds of sustained attacks -- including artillery fire and automatic machine gunfire -- echoed through the city of 1 million people, CNN's Arwa Damon reported from inside Homs Wednesday.
Opposition activists say government forces are set on flattening every neighborhood that might hold dissidents calling for the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Three bodies were recovered from Idlib province; a 16-year-old student was killed by gunfire in Daraa province; and another person was killed in Aleppo, the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
And military forces stormed the city of Hama, where explosions rattled two neighborhoods, the group said. The Observatory said landlines, cell phone communication and Internet access in Hama were cut off.
While residents across Syria grappled with the turmoil, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said al-Assad has set a date of February 26 for a referendum on a draft constitution.
Members of a committee tasked with drafting the document "reiterated their keenness on a constitution that allows ... public freedoms and political plurality in a way to lay the foundation for a new stage that will enrich Syria's cultural history," SANA reported.
Al-Assad has previously said Syria planned to hold a constitutional referendum, but reports of bloodshed at the hands of his regime have only intensified since his statement.
Meanwhile, after repeated U.N. failures to formally denounce the Syrian government, the latest U.N. draft resolution condemning Syria could go for a vote in the General Assembly as early as Wednesday.
Though a General Assembly vote would not be binding, it would mark the strongest U.N. statement yet on the violence. Russia and China have vetoed attempts to condemn Syria for the crackdown by the U.N. Security Council, whose resolutions are binding.
The draft resolution calls on Syria to end human-rights violations and attacks against civilians immediately, and condemns "all violence, irrespective of where it comes from."
But any U.N. action is long overdue, say opposition activists, who reported 49 deaths across Syria on Tuesday. The dead included three Syrian soldiers who defected, the LCC said.
Deaths took place in Idlib, Homs, Daraa, Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, Hama, Damascus, the Damascus suburbs and Latakia, the group said.
Bracing for war in Syria
Child rescued from crossfire in Syria
Increased intelligence activity in Syria
UN to vote on new Syria resolution
Navi Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said Monday most of the wounded avoid going to public hospitals for fear of being arrested or tortured. Instead, they are being treated in underground hospitals where hygiene and sterilization conditions are rudimentary and medical supplies are scarce, she said.
Pillay denounced the Syrian government's "ongoing onslaught" against its citizens.
"The nature and scale of abuses committed by Syrian forces indicates that crimes against humanity are likely to have been committed since March 2011," Pillay said.
Syria posted a banner on state TV Tuesday saying its Foreign Affairs Ministry "absolutely rejects all the new allegations in the new report by the human rights high commissioner."
The Syrian regime has consistently blamed "armed terrorist groups" for the violence in Syria.
"What is happening has nothing to do with reforms, with the spread of democracy. This is the work of armed terrorist groups that are being funded from outside," said Syria's ambassador to Russia, Riad Haddad, according to Russia's RIA Novosti state news agency.
He added: "Damascus will not let international peacekeepers into the country. Syria does not need peacekeepers. Syria has categorically dismissed that option."
More at the linkA massive plume of thick, black smoke billowed from the Syrian city of Homs Wednesday,... more
-
-
70% percent or more of our food contains genetically engineered food brought by the bio-tech giant: Monsanto.
GMO is endangering people’s health and our environment at an alarming rate.
Cross-contamination is irreversible and good, organic crops are being jeopardized.
These seeds are incredibly expensive compared to the traditional ones and have been genetically modified to produce their own pesticide, to survive the spraying of the: “Roundup”, a potent herbicide and to self terminate.
This has lead our farmers to buy new GMO seeds each year and depend on Monsanto. As a result of this ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops, 125,000 farmers took their own lives.
These people were driven to debt, to economic distress, homeless and landless.
GMO has and is failing catastrophically.
This company is persecuting, bullying and bringing farms to bankruptcy.
GMO was never adequately tested for safety, actually more and more research shows its dangers to the human/animal health, polluting our crops and our water.
Monsanto did use false advertising; Monsanto poisons the third world and privatizes water. Its employees have passed through the so-called revolving door many times, they rotated between this industry and the public agencies: Clarence Thomas, Gwendolyn S. King, Linda Fisher, Jim Travis, Linda Avery Strachanand, Toby Moffet , Marcia Hale, Donald Bandle, George H. Poste, Michael Kantor and Michael Taylor all bending rules, finding loopholes to assure this company profits.
This technology is only exacerbating hunger, poverty, irreversible contamination and climate change in our world.
Bring down Monsanto’s monopoly on our food and a centralized agriculture.
Bring down Monsanto’s genetically engineered seeds.
Bring down the use of harmful pesticides, herbicides and chemicals alike.
Hold this company accountable for its damages to the world.
Organic agriculture, permaculture and biodiversity are the only answer to sustainability, to the preservation of our environment and our health.
We want you, as our government, as a body of representation of the people of the United States to invest billions subsidizing organic, environmental agriculture.
Bring down Monsanto’s poisoning, companies alike and the agrochemical industry once and for all as it is one of the greatest threats to the whole human race.
Thank you.
Please sign and share this petition on Facebook, Myspace and Twitter.
Repost this message:
Tell our Government: Bring Down Monsanto’s poisoning. Hold this company accountable for its damages to the world! http://bit.ly/bko2mZ
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/bring-down-monsanto-monopoly/
More at the link70% percent or more of our food contains genetically engineered food brought by the... more
-
-
GENEVA — The U.N. human rights office called Friday for an investigation into the death of ousted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, noting that his death robbed his victims of a chance at "cathartic" justice in the courts.
Gadhafi was captured alive Thursday in his hometown of Sirte before shaky amateur footage showed rebel fighters standing over his bloodied body.
"We believe there is a need for an investigation," said Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. "More details are needed to ascertain whether he was killed in some form of fighting or was executed after his capture."
"The two cell phone videos that have emerged, one of him alive, and one of him dead, taken together are very disturbing," he told reporters in Geneva.
A Libyan official said Friday that the burial of Gadhafi has been delayed until his death can be examined by the International Criminal Court – though it was not immediately clear if he was referring to a look at the dictator's body or a probe into what led to his death.
The U.N. Human Rights Council established an independent panel earlier this year to investigate abuses in Libya, and Colville said it would likely examine the circumstances of the 69-year-old leader's death.
He said it was too early to say whether the panel – which includes Canadian judge Philippe Kirsch, the first president of the International Criminal Court – would recommend a formal investigation at the national or international level.
"The dust hasn't settled yet," Colville told The Associated Press when asked if Libya was capable of conducting an independent probe into the death.
"You can't just chuck the law out of the window," he added. "Killing someone outside a judicial procedure, even in countries where there is the death penalty, is outside the rule of law."
Colville said the victims of Gadhafi's despotic 42-year-rule deserved to see proper judicial procedures followed and perpetrators of abuses brought to trial. "It can be a rather cathartic exercise as well as being a fundamental tenet of rule of law," he said.
"Of course there are many others apart from Col. Gadhafi, so there may at least be some kind of court proceedings where we do all learn what happened and who is responsible."GENEVA — The U.N. human rights office called Friday for an investigation into... more
-
-
Christine O’ Donnell Debate or properly saying Christine O’ Donnell and Chris Coons debate in Delaware on Wednesday was a nationally televised debate in which both U.S Senate candidates faced off throwing barbs on each other and giving their ownChristine O’ Donnell Debate or properly saying Christine O’ Donnell and... more
-
-
U.S. appeals court ruled that an American couple who have given their three children’s Nazi-inspired names, Adolf Hitler Campbell, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie should not regain custody of the children, citing the risk of domestic violence abuse and neglect.U.S. appeals court ruled that an American couple who have given their three... more
-
-
As part of its routine series of preparedness drills aimed at testing national security, the Department of Homeland Security announced Monday that it had set free the five most deadly foreign terrorists in U.S. custody.
link:http://www.theonion.com/articles/dhs-releases-5-terrorists-into-us-to-test-national,17838/As part of its routine series of preparedness drills aimed at testing national... more
-
-
Members of Charlie Company are ambushed by the Taliban during a night mission.
http://tiny.cc/tuqwfMembers of Charlie Company are ambushed by the Taliban during a night mission.... more
-
-
-
-
suzane
-
added this
-
2 years ago
- |
-
A tribute to all Olympics fans who believe in the spirit of the games. The support, energy and enthusiasm they create vibrates around the world.A tribute to all Olympics fans who believe in the spirit of the games. The support,... more
-
-
-
Anti-trust regulators in the U.S are set to investigate a $125m deal Google has made with book publishers to settle copyright issues.
This settlement with copyright holders and gives Google a share of online book sales and advertisements.
The deal "warrants further inquiry", US Deputy Assistant Attorney General William Cavanaugh stated in a letter filed to the New York District Court.
A number of people fear the deal would make Google the main source for online books.
"The US has reviewed public comments expressing concern that aspects of the settlement agreement may violate the Sherman [Anti-Trust] Act," Mr Cavanaugh claimed.
"At this preliminary stage, the US has reached no conclusions as to the merits of those concerns or more broadly what impact the settlement may have on competition," he added.
At the end of October 2008, Google reached a deal with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers.
The search engine at the time agreed to pay $125m to create a Book Rights Registry, where authors and publishers could register works and receive compensations.Anti-trust regulators in the U.S are set to investigate a $125m deal Google has made... more
-
-
Wired Magazine have recently published pictures of the amazing detail of the Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society's railway.
The members of Walnut Creek operate one of the largest, exclusively train lines in the United States and have being doing so from the same location since 1974.
The society’s control systems are like an amazing steampunk fantasy. As Wired described the railroad's room, 'In a roomful of vintage 1930s magnetic relays once used to route phone calls, clacking like mechanical dominoes with every move the amateur engineers make. A full complement of 30 members can run 10 individual trains simultaneously on the layout, though only a dozen or so are required for basic operation.'Wired Magazine have recently published pictures of the amazing detail of the Walnut... more
-
-
Older people maybe immune to swine flu thanks to past research for a type of H1N1 virus in 1977, commonly known as the “Russian flu,” which spread across the world, and at the the time infecting people under 25 at much higher rates than their elders, who had been exposed to similar viruses in the ’40s and ’50s. The U.S research showed 70 percent of the students fell ill at a high school in Cheyenne, Wyoming, while their teachers proved immune.
Leonard Mermel, an i disease specialist at Rhode Island Hospital, suggests the current flu virus could be similar enough to that ’70s strain that older people could again find themselves immune to a new virus.
“It might be that the H1N1 circulating now (swine-origin influenza virus) has enough antigenic similarity to related H1N1 influenza strains of the past to protect older individuals exposed to them previously,” Mermel wrote in a letter to the journal The Lancet.Older people maybe immune to swine flu thanks to past research for a type of H1N1... more
-
-
On Friday one million households in the U.S had blank television screens after stations switched off their analogue signal.
The U.S transition to digital services saw a huge rush to buy converter boxes and TVs for the digital switch.
In total the U.S was spent $2bn to smooth the change.
Television viewers were bombarded with a series of adverts warning them that the analogue signal would be switched off on Friday.
The adverts urged them to buy converter boxes if they did not want to lose reception.
Alot of people remained confused by the challenge of switching to digital. Some TV stations choose exactly when to cut their analogue signals, with some waiting until late at night.
Television stations, electronics stores and the government received a number of calls that people needed help setting up their converter boxes.On Friday one million households in the U.S had blank television screens after... more
-
