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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
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climate impacts  ~ smart policy  ~ contamination  ~ global warming  ~ governmental idiocy  ~ carbon emissions  ~ water issues  ~ ecosystem interrelationships  ~ toxic buildup  ~ bad policy  ~ efficiency increase  



ApocaDocuments (8) matching "contamination" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "contamination"]
Sun, Jul 19, 2009
from Newsweek:
Toxic Tsunami
...the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant had experienced a catastrophic failure... The largest industrial spill in U.S. history, it has created an environmental and engineering nightmare. The cleanup effort, which the Environmental Protection Agency is overseeing, could cost as much as $1 billion (though estimates continue to climb) and take years to complete. Meanwhile, the released ash -- which is packed with toxins like arsenic, lead, and selenium -- threatens to poison the air and water. Congressional committees are investigating the failure, some lawmakers are calling for greater regulation of utilities, and the EPA is probing about 400 other facilities across the country that store ash in similar ways. Yet the debacle has had another, potentially more far-reaching, impact: it has displayed in the most graphic manner imaginable just how dirty coal is. At a time when seemingly everyone from President Barack Obama on down is talking about "clean coal," the spill showed it's anything but. "Kingston opened people's eyes," says Lisa Evans of Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental-law firm. "Clean coal is an impossibility." ...


You had me... at "tsunami"...

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Sat, Jul 18, 2009
from St. Petersburg Times:
North Tampa residents win battle to stop chemical use at golf course
People who live around the Babe Zaharias Golf Course have won their battle to stop the Tampa Sports Authority from using a pesticide that some say has made them sick. But it wasn't the authority that gave in to the group's demands. Chemical giant Dow AgroSciences decided Thursday to cancel an application of the soil fumigant Curfew next week. "In light of strong protests and threatened actions of a vocal group of residents and activists, Dow AgroSciences will not place the applicator, itself, or the product in a volatile situation that could result in unfounded allegations, the unnecessary expenditure of regulatory resources or potential litigation," Dow officials told the authority in a written statement... Curfew is used to control nematodes and mole crickets. Its active ingredient is 1,3-dichloropropene. The warning label says its vapors can cause kidney, lung and liver damage and death if inhaled. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies it as a probable carcinogen. ...


Notice they don't even mention potential health effects: that's par for the course!

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Sat, Jul 18, 2009
from Wired:
Potential Neurotoxin Could Be in Our Food
One of the most comprehensive analyses yet of human exposure to PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers, shows that the chemical -- long used in everything from computers to sleeping bags -- enters humans through their diets, not just their household. "The more you eat, the more PBDEs you have in your serum," said Alicia Fraser, an environmental health researcher at Boston University's School of Public Health who headed the new study, published this month in Environmental Health Perspectives. PBDEs are chemical cousins of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which are known to cause birth defects and neurological impairments. PCBs were banned throughout the world by the mid-1970s, when PBDEs were gaining popularity as flame retardants. PBDEs were soon found in most plastic-containing household products. ...


PBDE: Peanut Butter & Deepfried Escargot.... Yum!!

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Sat, Jul 18, 2009
from New York Times:
Bottled Water Makers in the Hot Seat
Bottled water makers, it seems, are under seige. The Environmental Working Group, which found chemical contaminants in tests of bottled water, has begun calling for more oversight of the bottled water industry. Proponents of low-carbon lifestyles, meanwhile, are urging consumers to eschew bottled water and fill up reusable bottles with tap water instead. Restaurants have started to pull bottled water from their menus, and cities like Toronto are delivering chilled, dispensable drinking water to public events so people won't have to buy it. Last week, members of Congress grilled manufacturers of bottled water about the safety and environmental impacts of their products, while a small town in Australia reportedly became the first in the world to ban bottled water entirely. ...


I dunno... Paying for the contaminants just feels right.

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Thu, Jul 16, 2009
from Columbia State:
Ammonia cloud kills woman, injures 7
The leak at Tanner Industries is believed to be the worst chemical accident in South Carolina since a chlorine spill killed nine in 2005 near Graniteville. The accident rocked the small town of Swansea, causing some of its 1,000 residents to say they were lucky no more people were hurt. Many residents who lived near the plant fled the area after seeing the ammonia cloud or receiving telephoned warnings from friends and neighbors who heard early news reports or saw the cloud. There is no official early warning system around the chemical plant. ...


"Swansea" is nearly an anagram of "nausea."

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Tue, Jul 14, 2009
from Chicago Tribune:
Chicago water: In public reports, city silent over sex hormones and painkillers found in treated drinking water
Annual water quality reports mailed to Chicagoans this month didn't say a word about sex hormones, painkillers or anti-cholesterol drugs, even though city officials found traces of pharmaceuticals and other unregulated substances in treated Lake Michigan water during the past year. Like other cities, Chicago must notify the public if its drinking water contains certain regulated contaminants, including lead, pesticides and harmful bacteria. But pharmaceutical chemicals, which have been detected in drinking water across the country, are not on that list. ...


Perhaps everyone's too high from drinking the elixir to care!

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Tue, Jul 14, 2009
from CNN:
Months after ash spill, Tennessee town still choking
Pamela Hampton stands at the kitchen sink, her gaze trained out of the window of her family's small hillside home. The disaster site is not visible from where she stands, but she knows it is there, down the hill, around a short stretch of highway, less than a mile away. Six months after the largest industrial spill in U.S. history, Hampton, her husband, Charles, and their three young children say they still do not feel comfortable going outside... "It's like dumping the periodic table into everyone's drinking water," said Anna George, a scientist with the Tennessee Aquarium Research Institute who has for months been testing the waters and fish near the spill site. ...


That, my friend, is how you wield a metaphor!

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Mon, Jul 13, 2009
from Brisbane Times:
Three-headed fish found on Sunshine Coast
More mutant fish have been found at a Noosa fish hatchery, including mullet embryos with two and three heads. The discoveries come after seven mullet - four females and three males taken from the Noosa River, were given to the Sunland Freshwater Fish Hatchery at Boreen Point for breeding this month. Fifty per cent of embryos found during two separate spawning events on July 5 and 6 had some form of cell abnormality, including some with two heads. A single mullet fry was found with three heads. ...


Does each head sport a mullet? Now that's an entertaining mutation!

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