By Frosty Wooldridge
Part 6: Farm pollution, pig pollution, incinerator pollution, plastics
“What you don’t know won’t hurt you,” my grandfather used to tell me. “Leave well enough alone and you’ll get along better in this world.”
That sage advice used to work back in the 20th century, but not today. None of us can take for granted in the 21st century that others, in responsible positions, will do the right thing by all of us. After reading Part 5 of this series, countless Americans could not comprehend how fellow citizens in high positions of trust, and knowing the incredible toxic danger of radioactive and mustard gas waste—still dumped millions of tons of it into our oceans over the decades!
Back in the 1960s, our “What you don’t know won’t hurt you” naiveté began to backfire as cancers leaped into the national consciousness. Soon, in the 1970s, we created the Environmental Protection Agency to combat horrific toxic dump sites where rivers ignited in flames and fish died by the millions—but then, instead of “out of sight, out of mind”, the poisons came home to roost in our back yards.
In “America’s nastiest toxic waste dumps” by Chris Weber, he said, “Superfund is both an actual fund and a shorthand term for the list of America’s nastiest toxic waste sites. One in two Americans lives within ten miles of a Superfund site. Currently, there are about 1,300 sites on the list. New Jersey has the most Superfund sites, with over a hundred. Nevada and the District of Columbia have one apiece. Here’s a closer look at some of the notable ones.”
Love Canal is the granddaddy of Superfund sites. “Spurred by Love Canal, Congress levied a special tax on oil and chemical companies to clean up such sites,” said Weber. “It raised $1.8 billion—plenty, they assumed, to clean up all the toxic waste in the country. But as more and more toxic sites were identified—at one point, 30,000 were nominated.”
“Though New Jersey has the most Superfund sites, the most polluted place in the nation may be Anniston, Alabama, where Monsanto ran a huge chemical manufacturing plant,” said Weber. “The company paid out $700 million to residents in 2003.”
How the U.S. Became a Toxic Dumping Ground by Mark Schapiro
“If The Hague had a list of chemical war criminals, the dozen POPs chemicals—chlordane, heptachlor, aldrin, dieldrin, mirex, DDT, hexachlorobenzene, toxaphene, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, and furans—would be on it,” said Schapiro. “Twenty years ago, the Pesticide Action Network dubbed the pesticides on this list part of the “dirty dozen” and the name stuck.”
“Over half a century, hundreds of millions of tons of these chemicals have been sprayed from nozzles, coated onto seeds, and leaked from factories and waste dumps into the soil and water supply. One of those chemicals, the pesticide DDT, wreaked such damage to the ecosystem that biologist Rachel Carson was prompted to write Silent Spring, a book that helped trigger the rise of today’s environmental movement.”
US AND OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES DUMP TOXIC WASTE IN AFRICA AND OTHER COUNTRIES
This seven minute video story sickens any human being with any sense of a moral and ethical foundation. Again, remember that 72,000 plus chemicals always find their way around the world through the air, water and ground.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/528.177310-American-corporation-dumps-toxic-waste-in-Africa-Censored-BBC-story
COAL BURNING AND MERCURY CONTAMINATION OF OUR SKIES AND RIVERS
A Free Library informational article said, “Some 60,000 U.S. children are born each year with developmental impairments triggered by fetal exposure to methyl mercury, usually as a result of their moms having eaten tainted fish. To limit the rain of mercury from human activities, regulators have focused on curbing emissions of inorganic mercury from coal burning. However, Lindberg notes, although chemists assumed that mercury could become methylated in the air, they couldn't show it.”
PVC: THE POISON PLASTIC
“What’s so bad about PVC plastic?” you ask.
“Unlike the many plastics made without chlorine, PVC poses serious environmental health threats from the start,” reported at www.chej.org. “The production of PVC requires the manufacture of raw chemicals, including highly polluting chlorine, and cancer-causing vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) and ethylene dichloride (EDC). Communities surrounding U.S. vinyl chloride chemical facilities, half of which are in Louisiana, suffer from serious toxic chemical pollution of their groundwater supplies, surface waters and air.
Residents of the town of Mossville, Louisiana had dioxin levels in their blood that were three times higher than normal.”
Another aspect of plastic’s dangerous side effects stems from citizens unknowingly drinking from plastic bottles where the plastic chemicals leach into the liquid. Additionally, many citizens microwave their food inside plastic containers that also leach into the food—slowly poisoning the individual.
TOXIC AIR EMISSIONS ALL OVER THE USA
Jonathan Campbell at http://www.cqs.com/emswburn.htm, said, “Incinerators represent a special environmental threat, because the combustion process releases and combines toxic materials in household and medical waste into super-toxic air emissions and tons of super-toxic ash. It is also a wasteful technology, as it destroys a huge source of reusable and recyclable materials. Overall, the typical volume reduction accomplished by incinerators is 60-70 percent, which could be accomplished easily and cleanly by comprehensive recycling.
“The EPA estimates that more than 80 percent of the dioxin produced in the U.S. is from municipal and medical waste incinerator air emissions. Tons of mercury, lead, and other heavy metals are emitted in vapor form as well from incinerator stacks. "Modern" pollution controls on these poison factories just move some of the toxic emissions from the air to the ash.
“Incineration is really a hoax: it does not even eliminate landfills. Ash landfills (called monofills) are far more dangerous and toxic than raw trash landfills. Incinerator ash is extremely hazardous, containing dioxin and heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and cadmium. Ash landfills are a legacy of poison that must be monitored for eternity. They never can become non-toxic, because most of the toxic materials in them - the heavy metals - do not bio-degrade.”
LIFESTOCK POLLUTION AND WATER POLLUTION
• Huge open-air waste lagoons, often as big as several football fields, are prone to leaks and spills. In 1995 an eight-acre hog-waste lagoon in North Carolina burst, spilling 25 million gallons of manure into the New River. The spill killed about 10 million fish and closed 364,000 acres of coastal wetlands to shell fishing.
• From 1995 to 1998, 1,000 spills or pollution incidents occurred at livestock feedlots in 10 states and 200 manure-related fish kills resulted in the death of 13 million fish.
• Runoff of chicken and hog waste from factory farms in Maryland and North Carolina is believed to have contributed to outbreaks of Pfiesteria piscicida, killing millions of fish and causing skin irritation, short-term memory loss and other cognitive problems in local people.
• Nutrients in animal waste cause algal blooms, which use up oxygen in the water, contributing to a "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico where there's not enough oxygen to support aquatic life. The dead zone fluctuates in size each year, extending over 5,800 square miles during the summer of 2004 and stretching over 7,700 square miles during the summer of 1999. [Latest reports show that zone at 10,000 square miles in 2010]
These days, my grandfather would have to retract his words because they no longer apply to 21st century America. Again, I ask you dear reader, what do you think will happen to our environment and quality of life in the United States of America with another added 100 million people? At some point, all this poisoning of our natural world will return to our children and other living creatures in accelerating and decidedly nasty ways.
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PART 1: OVERPOPULATION IN 21ST CENTURY AMERICA--OUR PERILOUS FUTURE
http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Your-Voice/Blog~736396.aspx
PART 2: OVERPOPULATION IN 21ST CENTURY AMERICA—FROG IN THE POT METAPHOR
http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Your-Voice/Blog~738079.aspx
PART 3: OVERPOPULATION IN 21ST CENTURY AMERICA—1,700 PEOPLE ADDED TO CALIFORNIA DAILY
http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Your-Voice/Blog~739521.aspx
PART 4: OVERPOPULATION IN 21ST CENTURY AMERICA-NOBODY EVER DIES OF OVERPOPULATION
http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Your-Voice/Blog~741327.aspx
PART 5: OVERPOPULATION IN 21ST CENTURY AMERICA-POISONING OUR WORLD
http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Your-Voice/Blog~742494.aspx
If any of us, no matter what our race, creed or color might be, refuse to engage our U.S. Congress as we have not for 30 years as to the population/immigration equation—our children will find themselves living in a terribly degraded America where the American Dream will be described by the history books as a ‘fleeting fantasy’ from the era of 1950 to 2010. These are several of the top organizations where you can take collective action to change the course of American history as well as in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. Take collective action at www.numbersusa.com ; www.fairus.org ; www.capsweb.org ; www.thesocialcontract.com ; www.populationmedia.org ; www.worldpopulationbalance.org ; www.populationconnection.org ; www.quinacrine.com ; www.familyplanning.org/ , www.skil.org ; www.growthbusters.com ; www.populationpress.org ; www.thinkpopulation.org ; www.carryingcapacity.org ; www.balance.org ; www.controlgrowth.org ; in Canada www.immigrationwatchcanada.org ; in Australia www.population.org.au and PublicPopForum@yahoogroups.com with book by Mark O’Connor and William Lines—Overloading Australia; in Great Britain www.optimumpopulation.org ; and dozens of other sites accessed at www.frostywooldridge.com.
Must see DVD: “Blind Spot” http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/blind_spot/ , This movie illustrates America’s future without oil, water and other resources to keep this civilization functioning. It’s a brilliant educational movie! www.blindspotdoc.com
Must see: Rapid Population Decline, seven minute video by Dr. Jack Alpert-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTWduFB_RX0
Must see and funny: www.growthbusters.org ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXSTrW_dARc
Dave Gardner’s Polar Bear in Bedroom: http://growthbusters.org/2010/03/save-the-polar-bear-in-your-bedroom ; Dave Gardner, President, Citizen-Powered Media ; Producing the Documentary, GROWTH BUSTERS; presents Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity, Join the cause at www .growthbusters.org ;760 Wycliffe Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80906 USA; +1 719-576-5565
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Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents – from the Arctic to the South Pole – as well as six times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. He presents “The Coming Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it” to civic clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges. He works to bring about sensible world population balance at www.frostywooldridge.com He is the author of: America on the Brink: The Next Added 100 Million Americans. Copies available: 1 888 280 7715
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