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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(3)
Plague/Virus:(3)
Climate Chaos:(12)
Resource Depletion: (4)
Biology Breach:(9)
Recovery:(10)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
climate impacts  ~ global warming  ~ carbon emissions  ~ contamination  ~ water issues  ~ airborne pollutants  ~ stupid humans  ~ smart policy  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ pandemic  ~ economic myopia  



ApocaDocuments (7) matching "contamination" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "contamination"]
Sat, Apr 25, 2009
from London Daily Telegraph:
Drowning in plastic: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is twice the size of France
...The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has now been tentatively mapped into an east and west section and the combined weight of plastic there is estimated at three million tons and increasing steadily. It appears to be the big daddy of them all, but we do not know for sure. Dr Pearn Niiler of the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in San Diego, the world's leading authority on ocean currents, thinks that there is an even bigger garbage patch in the South Pacific, in the vicinity of Easter Island, but no scientists have yet gone to look. ...


Well that'll balance things out at least.

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Fri, Apr 24, 2009
from San Francisco Chronicle:
Group says flea collars for pets endanger kids
Some cat and dog flea collars leave chemicals on fur that are hazardous to the pets and their owners, in violation of California's anti-toxics laws, according to a national environmental group's lawsuit Thursday. The Natural Resources Defense Council urged federal regulators to remove the products from the market. Two chemicals in the pet collars left residue sufficient to pose the risk of cancer and neurological damage to children - as much as 1,000 times higher than levels established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the group said. ...


Man's best friend is kid's worst enemy!

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Thu, Apr 23, 2009
from Indianapolis Star:
Brazilian toxic-waste lawsuit names Lilly, Dow AgroSciences
Dozens of Brazilian residents are suing five chemical giants, including drug maker Eli Lilly and Co. and pesticide maker Dow AgroSciences of Indianapolis, claiming they dumped, buried or burned tons of toxic waste that had been banned in the U.S. since the 1970s. The toxins contaminated the air and water and caused medical problems for workers and nearby residents, the lawsuit claims. Exposure to the chemicals resulted in cancer, genetic abnormalities, physical deformities and premature deaths, according to the lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis. It asks for unspecified damages....The suit also names Shell Oil Co., American Cyanamid Co. and BASF Corp. The plaintiffs claim Lilly used its plant incinerator to burn "untoward substances" for Shell and other companies. ...


We gotta get rid of it somewhere -- why not Brazil?

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Thu, Apr 23, 2009
from Environmental Health News:
Rats are fat after long-term exposure to lower levels of atrazine
A new study with rats shows that long-term exposure to the common agricultural pesticide atrazine causes weight gain in animals fed normal diets and obesity in those fed high fat diets. These health conditions can lead to diabetes, and they may be triggered by damage to critical structures in cells responsible for making energy. The new results suggest a mechanism to explain prior studies that found an association between areas of the United States with heavy atrazine use and high obesity prevalence. ...


I prefer my atrazine supersized!

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Wed, Apr 22, 2009
from Mother Jones:
Plastic? Fantastic
...Inexpensive to make and easy to discard, plastic morphed from an engineering triumph into a global scourge. In 1960, Americans sent 390,000 tons of plastics to the landfill; today we annually trash more than 28.5 million tons—around 11 percent of all municipal waste. Plastic doesn't biodegrade, and the very characteristic that makes it so versatile—its protean ability to be resilient or stiff, soft or hard, opaque or transparent—makes it extremely difficult to recycle efficiently. Even the most common recyclable categories of plastic (No. 1 water bottles, for instance) consist of incompatible polymers with different melting points. In 2007, less than 7 percent of Americans' plastic waste was recycled (mostly milk jugs and water and soda bottles), as opposed to 55 percent of paper. A 2000 survey by the American Chemistry Council (ACC) found that fewer than half of Americans had a positive opinion of the miracle material; 25 percent "strongly believed" that plastic's environmental negatives outweighed its benefits. ...


To top it off, my toy GI Joe shot me yesterday!

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Wed, Apr 22, 2009
from The Charleston Gazette:
Bayer safety lapses 'could have eclipsed Bhopal'
Significant safety lapses by management of Bayer CropScience's Institute plant caused a fatal August 2008 explosion that could have turned into a disaster worse than Bhopal, according to evidence presented Tuesday to a congressional committee. Bayer plant officials continued to use long-deficient equipment, leading employees to bypass safety gear in the plant's Methomyl-Larvin unit where the explosion occurred, U.S. Chemical Safety Board officials told a House subcommittee. The runaway explosion sent a 5,000-pound chemical vessel rocketing into the air and across the plant, where it could have easily smashed into a nearby methyl isocyanate tank, "the consequences of which could have eclipsed the 1984 disaster in India," congressional committee staffers concluded in their report. ...


Given that it's Bayer, though, at least it wouldn't have hurt as bad.

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Wed, Apr 22, 2009
from Frontline:
Poisoned Water
More than three decades after the Clean Water Act, iconic American waterways like the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound are in perilous condition and facing new sources of contamination. With polluted runoff still flowing in from industry, agriculture and massive suburban development, scientists note that many new pollutants and toxins from modern everyday life are already being found in the drinking water of millions of people across the country and pose a threat to fish, wildlife and, potentially, human health. ...


The earth... she is our toilet.

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