ApocaDocuments (9) matching "contamination" from this week
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Sat, Sep 19, 2009
from Washington Post:
Left in the Flat-Screen Dust
...America's unquenchable craving, even in a recession, for the latest and greatest in electronics, and the nation's switch to digital television broadcasting in June, have combined to send consumers racing for flat-screen TVs -- and has made them anxious to rid their homes of their tube-based relics... nobody will take their old TVs, not even for free, and local governments are scrambling to stop the rejects, laden with lead, from being dumped in landfills or poor Asian countries.... As new TVs enter the home, many people hide the old ones in basements, garages or closets. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 99 million TVs were stored this way two years ago. But many TVs are simply tossed. In 2007, 27 million units were discarded, and 77 percent of them were tossed out with the trash (most of the rest are recycled). ...
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I know! Let's turn the TVs into aquariums — to replace our collapsing ocean and lake ecosystems!
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Sat, Sep 19, 2009
from The Denver Post:
Chemicals fuel ailment debate
Meggan Smoler buries her face in her hands and collapses into the back seat of the Subaru she has called home for the past four months... Smoler is crippled, she says, by encounters with routine chemicals such as pesticides, perfume, paint, air fresheners and car exhaust. She is joined by as much as 16 percent of the U.S. population who describe ailments that remain a medical mystery. Sufferers call their disease multiple chemical sensitivity, or MCS.
While many doctors and scientists call their physical symptoms an eruption of psychological stress, some research is uncovering scientific underpinnings to MCS. Japan, Germany, Canada, Austria and Great Britain have acknowledged the disease as real and eligible for insurance coverage. Colorado has even given MCS its own special month.
"I literally exist to prove to the world how toxic it is getting," says Smoler, who thinks her big problems started five years ago in a moldy house. "I am the canary in the coal mine." ...
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Multiple ComPLAINer Syndrome, more like.
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Fri, Sep 18, 2009
from London Independent:
Call for murder charges to be brought over toxic dumping
Trafigura, the oil-trading company at the centre of the scandal caused by the dumping of tons of toxic waste in one of the world's poorest countries, could be prosecuted for murder after a dossier of evidence was submitted to a court in the Netherlands yesterday, alleging that the sludge caused deaths and serious injuries.
A complaint filed by Greenpeace Netherlands calls for a Dutch prosecution arising from Trafigura's actions in July 2006 — when a chartered tanker carrying the contaminated waste arrived in Amsterdam — to be widened to include events in Ivory Coast a month later which caused thousands of people to fall ill after tons of the foul-smelling slurry was dumped in the port of Abidjan.... A United Nations report this week stated that there seemed to be "prima facie evidence" that up to a dozen deaths in Abidjan were linked to the sludge. ...
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If this works, I've got a list a mile long...
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Fri, Sep 18, 2009
from New York Times:
Health Ills Abound as Farm Runoff Fouls Wells
...Agricultural runoff is the single largest source of water pollution in the nation's rivers and streams, according to the E.P.A. An estimated 19.5 million Americans fall ill each year from waterborne parasites, viruses or bacteria, including those stemming from human and animal waste, according to a study published last year in the scientific journal Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology...In Brown County [Wisconsin], part of one of the nation's largest milk-producing regions, agriculture brings in $3 billion a year. But the dairies collectively also create as much as a million gallons of waste each day. Many cows are fed a high-protein diet, which creates a more liquid manure that is easier to spray on fields.
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They put the "brown" in Brown County.
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Thu, Sep 17, 2009
from Reuters:
Chemical Pollutants Linked to Fewer Female Births
High exposure to certain now-banned industrial chemicals may lead to fewer female births, a new study suggests.
The findings, reported in the journal Environmental Health, add to evidence that the two groups of related chemicals -- polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) -- may affect human reproduction...
For the current study, researchers used data from a group of Michigan residents who, in the early 1970s, had been inadvertently exposed to high levels of PBBs; the chemicals had been accidentally mixed into animal feed, leading to human exposure through contaminated meat, eggs and milk.
The researchers observed that, from 1975 to 1988, women in the study group had a higher-than-average rate of male births, relative to the national average.
There was also a suggestion of increased odds of a male birth when both parents' combined PBB exposure was particularly high -- above the midpoint for the study group -- compared with couples whose PBB exposure was lower.
Similarly, couples with high PCB levels had a higher rate of male births. ...
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Since pollution is feminizing males won't it all even out soooooo nicely!
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Tue, Sep 15, 2009
from Washington Post:
Male bass in many US rivers feminized, study finds
Government scientists figure that one out of five male black bass in American river basins have egg cells growing inside their sexual organs, a sign of how widespread fish feminizing has become.
The findings come from the U.S. Geological Survey in its first comprehensive examination of intersex fish in America, a problem linked to women's birth control pills and other hormone treatments that seep into rivers. Sporadic reports of feminized fish have been reported for a few years.
The agency looked at past data from nine river basins - covering about two-thirds of the country - and found that about 6 percent of the nearly 1,500 male fish had a bit of female in them. The study looked at 16 different species, with most not affected. ...
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Given this, we might consider changing their name from bass to tenor.
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Tue, Sep 15, 2009
from Science News:
Cell phones: Feds probing health impacts
For cell phone users -- all 4 billion worldwide -- a Senate hearing today elicited some observations that should give pause. Such as that the risk of certain brain tumors may increase among people who have been heavy cell-phone users for a decade or more. Or that the type of radiation emitted by cell phones can, at least in cellular studies, damage DNA. Or that children have become major users of cell phones and that the radiation emitted by those devices penetrates further into their brains than into their parents'.... For his part, [National Toxicology Program's John] Bucher said research on the issue was moving ahead as well as might be expected, based on its limited funding. He described a host of federally financed programs now underway. Chief among them, new rodent studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. They're using 21 chambers, each the size of a walk-in closet, to expose unrestrained animals to cell-radiation frequencies for up to 20 hours a day and throughout periods of up to two years. ...
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Wouldn't it be simpler -- and more viable -- to simply give the rodents little cellphones?
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Mon, Sep 14, 2009
from USA Today:
MRSA 'superbug' found in ocean, public beaches
Public beaches may be one source of the surging prevalence of the superbug known as multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, researchers here said Saturday.
A study by researchers at the University of Washington has for the first time identified methicillin-resistant Staph aureus (MRSA) in marine water and beach sand from seven public beaches on the Puget Sound.
The researchers identified Staph bacteria on nine of 10 public beaches that they tested. Seven of 13 Staph aureus samples, found on five beaches, were multidrug resistant, says lead investigator Marilyn Roberts. ...
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I saw one ... eating a hotdog!
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Mon, Sep 14, 2009
from The Columbus Dispatch:
Poisons found in debris landfills
Ohio's 55 debris landfills offer a cheap, final resting place for the millions of tons of waste created at construction and demolition sites each year.
But there's a price.
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency found a lot more than old concrete, bricks and lumber at 30 landfills it inspected. The EPA says arsenic, benzene and vinyl chloride -- all suspected carcinogens -- and lead, which can damage the brain and nervous system, all are found in the water trickling through the rubble...
At each of the surveyed landfills, including two in central Ohio, officials found as many as 29 pollutants at levels that exceed drinking-water health limits, pollution standards for streams, or both. ...
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It's getting so a person can't even throw something away without somebody bitching!
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