cancer caused by environmental exposure is "grossly underestimated"

In advocating for energy reform, it's important to recognize that climate change is ultimately immaterial in taking a stance. Global warming in only one piece of the puzzle; even without it, the overall picture is crystal clear.

Case in point: the recent 240 page report published online by Obama's cancer panel, stating

[the] proportion of cancer cases caused by environmental exposures has been “grossly underestimated.” It warns of “grievous harm” from chemicals and other hazards, and cites “a growing body of evidence linking environmental exposures to cancer.” full article

This comes as no surprise. Check out an older post on the dangers of living in proximity to a coal plant. The biggest problem is that, where people live near such facilities, making causal connections is much easier. When it comes to water, air, and food contamination for people sprawled around the country at large, it's more difficult to make correlations.

Some more on the report:

Nearly 80,000 chemicals are in use in the United States, and yet only a few hundred have been tested for safety, the report notes. It criticizes the nation’s regulatory approach, calling it reactionary rather than precautionary, which means that the government waits for proof of harm before taking action, instead of taking preventive steps when there is uncertainty about a chemical. Regulation is ineffective, the panel says, in part because of inadequate staffing and financing, overly complex rules, weak laws, uneven enforcement and undue industry influence.

The report looks at contaminants from a variety of sources: industry, agriculture, air and water, medical imaging and contaminated military sites. It also considers natural hazards, like radon gas in homes and arsenic in drinking water. The report concludes, “At this time, we do not know how much environmental exposures influence cancer risk.” more

This is not without criticism. An epidemiologist from the cancer society claims the work is

“unbalanced by its implication that pollution is the major cause of cancer,” and had presented an unproven theory — that environmentally caused cases are grossly underestimated — as if it were a fact. more

We'll see how the issue progresses. Frankly, Obama has made it clear to me where he stands. See Obama's Betrayal and Dirty Little Energy Secrets.

what to do with sludge?

I enjoyed this resource regarding sludge alternatives from Sludge News:

Prevention -- the cost effective solution -- is the place to start: prevent hazardous waste from entering the sewer in the first place, prevent the exploitation of the myth that wastewater treatment and its associated technologies can fix any problem, and prevent the poisoning of our food supply with sewage sludge.

...Next, initiate a moratorium on the land application of sludge -- because there is no scientific evidence that this practice is safe.

...implement policies that discourage the use of water to carry wastes.

...What to do with the tons of sludge leaving wastewater plants each day?

Don’t put it on food chain crops, ball fields, parks, gardens, or yards. Instead, treat it as the hazardous waste it is. Keep it away from the public - isolate it from life. Put sewage sludge - whether “treated” or not - into lined sanitary landfills with proper leachate collection systems. If it fails the TCLIP test, it should go to a RCRA Subtitle C landfill for hazardous waste. Otherise it should go to a Subtitle D landfill.

Landfills are the only safe interim option we have until we can find other solutions, solutions that do not put sludge into the air (incineration), on our food (land application), or in our water (disposal at the outfall pipe).

oh snap--filter that tap

A big concern I hear about conservation is that it is just too much effort. This is a myth. There are tons of ways one can conserve without much difficulty. In fact, conservation conserves more than natural resources--it conserves your dollars. Case in point: bottled water.

Bottled water kills me. Sure, sure...getting a bottle here and there is no biggy. But keeping a filter at home and bringing a reusable water bottle around with you is the yellow brick road to less trash and more cash.

But what if I recycle my bottles? Recycling takes energy. Honestly, I'm not even convinced recyclables get recycled. The best ways to conserve are to reduce and re-use, and recycle what's left after that.

In you are concerned about transition from bottled water to filtered water, here is a great resource that can help: the FilterForGood campaign.

I particularly enjoyed the fact section, which I took directly from the site for your convenience (the best facts are at the bottom in red):

Why is bottled water waste a concern? Here are just a few reasons...

• Americans used 50 billion water bottles in 2006 and sent 38 billion water bottles to landfills, the equivalent of 912 million gallons of oil.1, 2, 3, 4 If laid end to end, that’s enough bottles to travel from the Earth to the Moon and back 10 times.5 If placed in a landfill or littered, those bottles could take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade.2
• In 2006, the average American used 167 disposable water bottles, but only recycled 38.1
• Americans used about 50 billion plastic water bottles in 2006. However, the U.S.'s recycling rate for plastic is only 23 percent, which means 38 billion water bottles — more than $1 billion worth of plastic — are wasted each year.1

Ditching bottled water keeps Mother Earth and your wallet green.

• One Brita pitcher filter can effectively replace as much as 300 standard 16.9-ounce bottles. So you can get great-tasting water without so much waste. Talk about refreshing.
• The average Brita pitcher filters 240 gallons of water a year for about 19 cents a day.6 Put in perspective, to get the same amount of water from bottled water would require 1,818 16.9-ounce water bottles a year.6
• For about $10 each, you can purchase a 16-ounce or 32-ounce Nalgene bottle, saving you hundreds of dollars a year on bottled water.
• Hydration at its best — carry the water you need and reduce your impact on the environment — one Nalgene bottle can last for decades, making it easy to stop buying single-serve bottled water to fulfill your everyday hydration needs.

Many people drink bottled water because they believe it to be of a higher quality, cleaner and better-tasting, but that's not necessarily true.

• In the United States, 24 percent of bottled water sold is either Pepsi's Aquafina (13 percent of the market) or Coke's Dasani (11 percent of the market). Both brands are bottled, purified municipal water.1
• If you don't like the taste of your tap water, try Brita. Nine out of 10 consumers say "Brita clearly tastes better," according to an in-home usage study. They preferred the taste of Brita water — filtered through pitchers — to tap.8
• Dr. Gina Solomon, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, told The New York Times that "there is no reason to believe that bottled water is safer than tap water."9
• In the U.S., public water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which requires multiple daily tests for bacteria and makes results available to the public. The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates bottled water, only requires weekly testing and does not share its findings with the EPA or the public.9

would you like water or air pollution with that?

In response to respiratory illnesses caused by yellow smoke emissions from coal-fired power plants (and several lawsuits), Allegheny Energy tried a new approach: installing scrubbers to clean the plant's air emissions.

The "victory" was short-lived.

Each day since the equipment was switched on in June, the company has dumped tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater containing chemicals from the scrubbing process into the Monongahela River, which provides drinking water to 350,000 people and flows into Pittsburgh, 40 miles to the north.

...Much power plant waste once went into the sky, but because of toughened air pollution laws, it now often goes into lakes and rivers, or into landfills that have leaked into nearby groundwater, say regulators and environmentalists.

...The Environmental Protection Agency projects that by next year, roughly 50 percent of coal-generated electricity in the United States will come from plants that use scrubbers or similar technologies, creating vast new sources of wastewater.Yet no federal regulations specifically govern the disposal of power plant discharges into waterways or landfills.

Read the full article

the EPA to strengthen Clean Water Act enforcement

Since the EPA has been under heat recently for NOT punishing tens of thousands of violations of the Clean Water Act in the past 10 years, it's trying to make a comeback and vow for better enforcement.

The agency has not settled on a list of potential targets, but is likely to focus on mining companies, large livestock farms, municipal wastewater treatment plants and construction companies that operate sites where polluted stormwater has run into nearby lakes and rivers.

...One witness described the impact of those lapses. Judy Treml, of Wisconsin, told lawmakers that her 6-month-old daughter was hospitalized after drinking water that had become contaminated when a nearby farm covered its land with manure, which then seeped into her family’s well. One of the problems, lawmakers said, is that such pollution often goes unpunished or is outside the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act. full article. full article

more water contamination

For this post, I will lay off of the coal industry and its contamination of water, and instead focus on weedkillers.

Atrazine — a herbicide often used on corn fields, golf courses and even lawns — has become one of the most common contaminants in American drinking water.

For years, the E.P.A. has decided against acting on calls to ban the chemical from environmental activists and some scientists who argued that runoff was polluting ecosystems and harming animals.

Atrazine in drinking water has been associated with birth defects, low birth weight, and reproductive problems. The EPA will announce Wednesday whether new evaluations of links between atrazine and cancer are necessary, and whether restrictions should be modified. full article

COAL IN THE WATER, part II

Here's a picture of life near a coal companies in West Virginia:

In fact, her entire family tries to avoid any contact with the water. Her youngest son has scabs on his arms, legs and chest where the bathwater — polluted with lead, nickel and other heavy metals — caused painful rashes. Many of his brother’s teeth were capped to replace enamel that was eaten away.

Neighbors apply special lotions after showering because their skin burns. Tests show that their tap water contains arsenic, barium, lead, manganese and other chemicals at concentrations federal regulators say could contribute to cancer and damage the kidneys and nervous system.

Despite lawsuits, state regulators have not punished these companies for breaking pollution laws. read the full article

In case you missed my post urging action against Verizon for sponsoring a large pro-coal rally, check it out. Again, if you use Verizon, this is a great time to drop it like it's hot.

COAL IN THE WATER

Please check out this truly chilling clip posted on the New York Times about coal mines,water contamination, children with cancer, and multiple deaths of young people in a single small neighborhood.

Unfortunately, I can't embed the clip, so follow the link.

If you didn't catch my post about Verizon and its sponsorship of a large pro-coal rally, please take a look now. If you use Verizon, now would be a great time to switch cell phone service.

California agriculture: dealing with drought

Now that the changing climate (regardless of why it's changing) means more frequent and serious droughts, California agriculture needs to cope.

The Pacific Institute recommends that California use water in smarter ways. Specifically, the use of drip irrigation or micro-irrigation (as opposed to the most commonly used flood irrigation) is the most efficient method to water crops and achieve "maximum crop yield from a unit of water."

How do we switch? Suggestions include:

devoting less land to rice, cotton, alfalfa and other field crops, which now get 80 percent of their water from flooding. They recommend giving more to vegetables, vineyards and orchards, crops for which micro-irrigation is more common.

Check out the full article from DOT EARTH

Hell for Leather

Check out this informative documentary, Hell for Leather, which explores the high cost of cheap leather production on human health, water, and the ecosystem. Click here to watch.

sex hormones and mood stabilizers in drinking water?

Apparently all those pills we are popping are getting pissed out, but not filtered out.

Check out how pharmaceuticals make their way into your tap water.

this is what i'm saying about tap water

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Two reservoirs that supply drinking water to parts of the city have been shut down and will be drained after a rare sunlight and chlorine reaction tainted the water with a cancer-causing chemical, utility officials said Friday.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power plans to drain 600 million gallons from the reservoirs, the Elysian and the Silver Lake, early next year, said a water department spokesman, Joseph Ramallo. The reservoirs will be out of use for three to four months amid drought conditions.

Yes...bromate has been found in a supply of our drinking water. Bottled water, any one?

My advice: if it tastes bad, DON'T DRINK IT

Extinction threat to wild salmon

Wild salmon on Canada's west coast are being driven to extinction by parasites from nearby fish farms, a study claims.

Wild pink salmon around the Broughton Archipelago are declining rapidly and will die out within 10 years if no action is taken, say researchers.

They say the data, published in Science, raises serious concerns about the global expansion of aquaculture.

Scientists say commercial open-net salmon farms are a "haven" for sea lice - naturally occurring parasites that attach to the skin and muscle of salmon.

"Salmon farming breaks a natural law," explained study co-author Alexandra Morton, director of the Salmon Coast Field Station, located in the Broughton Archipelago.

"The most obvious thing to do is to move the farm out of the way of the wild fish," Dr Krkosek told BBC News.

"Don't put them on the migration route, and don't put them near the spawning rivers. Another option is to move to closed containment technology where the net pen is replaced with a physical barrier that prevents the exchange of parasites - that would solve the problem too."

By the way, animals like bears rely on the pink salmon for food...so the extinction of salmon because a huge issue when considering it is one part of an inter-connected ecosystem.

You know, I have been deciding about whether or not to continue eating fish in my new vegan lifestyle (vegans by definition don't eat fish...so I would be somewhere between a vegan and a pescatarian)

I feel like I could and would kill a fish to eat it, and that fish are not animals and do not have the same sensory perceptions as, say, a pig. But fisheries are generally sooo unsustainable, that for environmental reasons, I am compelled to stop eating fish.

I don't have the source, but approximately 75% of fisheries over-fish. Let's not forget bottom trawling, which scraps the ocean floor, removing EVERYTHING--including coral that is 100s of years old--for some fucking fish. It's like cutting down the forest to catch rabbits.

On top of that, we now learn the way that fish farms severely disrupt and endanger the surrounding environment.

gnjrsngjksngjkgnjksd

Vegetables, fruits, whole-grains, and legumes, my friends...

Mass deaths of rare croc in India

At least 21 endangered crocodile-like gharials have been found dead over the past three days in a river in northern India, wildlife officials say.

Tests are now being carried out on the water for the presence of any liver-damaging toxins.

Some experts believe the gharials are unable to cope with the change in their water habitat when they leave the zoo.

Other factors such as fishing and pollution of the river by industrial effluents are thought to have contributed to the decline in the number of the reptiles.

The obvious conclusions would be DON'T POISON THE WATER, AND DON'T PUT ANIMALS IN ZOOS.

Let's just talk about zoos quickly, because I would hope that I do not need to explain why poisoning water is a no no. What are zoos? The displacement and imprisonment of animals, which ultimately tarnishes the animals ability to live naturally in its own habitat--and for those animals who are never released back into the wild, they generally live a heavily restricted and sub-par life, which is many times abusive.

Why do we have zoos? Because the general collective is so self-serving that it would rather have nature captured, compartmentalized, and locked up, just so families can walk by, remark on an animal, and leave.

That is so selfish: lock something up, ruin its natural existence, and disrupt an ecosystem so I can look at it on an occasional whim.

If you want to see a fucking animal, google it.

It goes without saying that human intervention to stop a species from going extinct is wonderful and completely different. In that instance, the purpose is to save, not lock-and-gawk.

Paris gets naked for clean water--that's hot

20% of sales of Paris' new champagne will go to organizations helping people develop clean sources of drinking water.

And, she gets naked and smears herself in gold to advertise.

Radicalism has limits, even for me

Polyamory, pansexuality, hormone therapy, androgyny--wonderful, you have my blessings.

But what I simply WILL NOT accept(and this came up in class), is the idea that Americans are ridiculously obsessed with germs, to the point of neurosis.

Call it what you like, I prefer environments that are fully sanitized and quite enjoy coming home to the faint smell of bleach and other cleaning products. I wash my hands so many times a day that I have horribly dehydrated cuticles. If the day passes according to my wishes, I will have taken AT LEAST two showers, but three are not uncommon, I have done four (I feel better about the environmental impact because I tend to use only freezing water for a brief period of time).

Granted, I am a bit extreme, but with good fucking reason.

On a side note, apparently city-dwellers living in high levels of sanitation are more susceptible to allergies. That's me all right-- but I will take welts and sniffles over the immunity apparently gained by sitting on public toilets, eating off of contaminated utensils, putting fingers anywhere near my face after touching dog ass or public telephones, touching wet sponge, squeezing wet sponge without gloves, touching sponges in use longer than one week, snuggling with small children after they have been sweating, making contact with filth, breeding bacteria, and festering in community crapola during school hours, not taking a shower directly after the gym, and the like.

But I do share drinks with my friends. Then again, only the ones I consider clean. I suppose it is clear you have won my affections if I am comfortable with your germs, like your germs, or even love your germs.

As I said--I have my limits.

tap water

I am a bit confused...

I find myself around a lot of environmentalists who drink tap water.

Here's my deal: if you think pollution is seeping into our soil and ground water--why are you drinking out of the tap?

(Note: this is a completely different issue than protesting bottled water that sells facet juice)

(Other note: tap water does not include filtered tap water...I am referring to un-filtered tap water)