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trashcorp .....From plastic bags to all kind of pollution, we create events and chemicals that combine to contribute to the extinction of animals and plants. Unfortunately it seems, we've made the decision to destroy the natural planet, while keeping a few zoos for entertainment value... The only educational value plummets to "what once used to be not a very long time ago". Tragic. If fact it appears our leaders have made that decision to destroy the planet, for us, even allowing genetically modified crops to be cultivated, with no other major benefit that stronger poisons can be used. The list of products that is harming the planet is long: From sheer poisons such as insecticides, herbicides to simple plastic bags, we are creating in environment that's becoming more and more difficult for other species to live in, both in industrial countries and developing countries alike. For example, in many restaurants in Indonesia, the traditional banana leaf used to present particular dishes has been replaced by a plastic look alike that is, like the traditional banana leave, discarded once used. Much of these discarded plastic look alike bits end up in the food chain as killer of marine wildlife. In Australia, plastic shopping bags need to be come illegal forthwith. No point leaving the decision to the consumer "to be responsible". It does not work. We need to eliminate the plastic out of our lives as well as minimise our use of soaps, detergents and solvents, including those used domestically that do not biodegrade in the sewers. We need to eliminate the use of strong domestic insecticides and of chemical insecticides for crops. We need to think better and to do better. But will we do it?
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money for dubious schemes
From the Independent
Scientists are planning this week to start a highly controversial experiment in changing the composition of the oceans, in apparent contravention of international law.
The experiment – to be conducted in the Southern Ocean – aims to create a bloom of plankton so big that it will be visible from outer space. But, at the last minute, the scheme has sailed into an international storm as environmentalists have called for it to be abandoned. The researchers – mainly from Germany and India, but including two Britons – plan to add some 20 tons of iron sulphate to a 186-square-mile patch of ocean about half way between Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope, to demonstrate a way both of combating global warming and of saving the whale.
As the waters are short of iron, this is expected to lead to an explosive growth of plankton, which will take up carbon dioxide from the air. The scientists hope that, when the plankton die and their bodies sink deep into the ocean, they will take the carbon with them, keeping it out of the atmosphere for centuries. Applied on a large enough scale, they believe this could help stave off climate change, while increasing food for whales. Commercial firms have already announced plans to make money from such schemes.
But other scientists are deeply concerned that the practice could have devastating unintended effects on the oceans, including killing off large areas of sea, and releasing methane and nitrous oxide, which are even more potent causes of global warming. They also fear that the plankton could absorb sunlight, heating up surface waters and hastening climate change.
toxic market
Tonnes of toxic waste collected from British municipal dumps is being sent illegally to Africa in flagrant breach of this country’s obligation to ensure its rapidly growing mountain of defunct televisions, computers and gadgets are disposed of safely.
Hundreds of thousands of discarded items, which under British law must be dismantled or recycled by specialist contractors, are being packaged into cargo containers and shipped to countries such as Nigeria and Ghana, where they are stripped of their raw metals by young men and children working on poisoned waste dumps.
In a joint investigation by The Independent, Sky News, and Greenpeace, a television that had been broken beyond repair was tracked to an electronics market in Lagos, Nigeria, after being left at a civic amenity site in Basingstoke run by Hampshire Country Council. Under environmental protection laws It was classified as hazardous waste and should never have left the UK.
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see toon at top
everyday poisons...
Which detergents should consumers avoid?
Make sure you don’t use detergents with phosphates or nonylphenol ethoxylate surfactants, but that information is rarely available on the labels.
I don’t know what you just said.
Nonylphenol ethoxylates are surfactants that break down into increasingly toxic substances and stay around for a long time in the environment.
Which products contain those chemicals?
We identify the safest products out there. We don’t track the ones that contain problematic chemicals.
If you won’t single out specific brands, would you at least identify the types of detergents that are harmful?
Some automatic dishwasher detergents contain phosphates.
“Some automatic dishwasher detergents,” eh? Moving along, your program’s Web site (epa.gov/dfe) lists the various brands that have received the Design for the Environment seal, including Amway, Method Products and Greenworks from Clorox. But I was surprised that Seventh Generation wasn’t there.
The Seventh Generation company is certainly well intentioned, but they haven’t submitted formulations for evaluation. They have their own approach to differentiating their products in the marketplace.
It seems that only 22 makers of consumer cleaning products have earned the E.P.A.’s seal. Why so few?
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For a few years now, this site has warned about detergents and solvents — and disinfectants — used in our "cleaning" frenzy. Let's say, that whatever we do, there is a price to pay... Most time, microbes and bacterias are neutral or beneficial, but we present them as "evil" in our places... Eventually, we reduce our natural resistance to stuff that is not threatening and increasing our "allergic" management.
But the environment also pay the price. Already under stress from other factors, the environment suffers a lot more from our over use of soaps, detergents and "cleaning" stuff.
see toon at top.
butterfly-icides...
On a bright spring day, the chalky slopes of the Chilterns smell of warm thyme. Tiny purple violets bloom underfoot. For miles beyond, the Vale of Aylesbury unfolds in a tapestry of newly minted trees, yellow fields and the spires of village churches. This great vista of the English countryside seems gloriously immutable, unchanged since Victorian times, when Walter Rothschild would set out from Tring Park, his country house in the valley below, to throw his net at our summer butterflies and place them in his extraordinary zoological museum.
Not everything, however, would please the eye of Victorian lovers of nature. An easyJet plane casts a shadow across the downland. The air is filled with the complaint of two diggers, quarrying chalk from the bottom of the hill. But what would really make Rothschild weep is what is missing: the sky and the steep meadows dotted with the white flowers of wild strawberry are almost bereft of butterflies.
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Not far to go for a total wipe out...
We use far too much insecticides to do our business at home and in the fields, so eventually bingo, we get what we want: less insects, less butterflies, less bird, less wildlife until there is no insects, no butterfly, no birds. It has taken me about 12 years to turn around a piece of suburbia — that had been loaded with fertilisers, snail pellets, insecticides, pesticides and herbicides — into a modest organic patch. The insects — including butterfly and big moths — have come back, the spiders and the lizards have a ball, the worms and the cricket-moles tunnel below, but the neighbors' cats still kill far too many birds... And the perma-cultured vegies don't do too badly either...
See toon at top. read more at The Guardian...
herbicide soup...
from unleashed
In 2004 the European Union withdrew its approval for Atrazine, a herbicide produced by Syngenta, a Switzerland-based agrochemicals multinational, because of its persistent groundwater contamination.
The chemical has long been under fire for potentially more sinister side effects: for example, its use has long been controversial because of its effects on non-target species like frogs and a lot of scientific studies have raised questions about whether Atrazine may cause a variety of cancers and harm human and animal reproductive and hormone systems.
The European Union generally takes the sensible approach of dealing with potential dangers using the precautionary principle, but the precautionary principle doesn't operate in the United States or in Australia where Atrazine continues to be used to control grass and weeds in crops like sorghum, maize, sugar cane, lupins, pine and eucalypt plantations and triazine-tolerant canola.
In July 2007 the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council announced a review of its guidelines on Atrazine in drinking water. It plans to report by the end of 2009. We wait with bated breath!
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see toon at top and read more at unleashed...
doomed to overpopulate for profit...
"Every time the UK gets the opportunity to vote on GM at European level, it votes in favour. We have no doubt that the Government is fully behind GM growing," said Clare Oxborrow, senior food campaigner at Friends of the Earth.
Pete Riley, of GM Freeze, said: "The Government has always been very pro-GM. They would like to see GM crops grown here. I suspect they will say we need GM crops on a case by case basis and will base it around science," he said, adding that there were political and economic arguments against GM.
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We know that the world population is growing at an environmentally unsustainable rate, but the pundits in power will push for it whichever way they can. Glorious growth... We know the use of GM crops leads to the use of stronger, more potent patented poisons, sanctifies the patenting of food production and most likely promote unquantifiable human health risks — risks that are somewhat assessable now, but dismissed by the more-is-good industry... Say, more crap to gobble is not necessarily a good thing and will, of course, lead to more people on the planet, more people farting, more cattle belching, more damage to the natural environment, extinction of species, global warming acceleration despite our glorified miserable efforts to stop it. It will lead to unbalanced political spectrum aka the poor will remain underfoot while the richer nations will plunder resources in charitable coated jack-booted good will. The process is gross.
see toon at top.
boys will be boyish...
Chemicals in plastics alter the brains of baby boys making them "more feminine", say US researchers.
Males exposed to high doses in the womb went on to be less likely to play with boys' toys like cars or to join in rough and tumble games, they found.
The University of Rochester team's latest work adds to concerns about the safety of phthalates, found in vinyl flooring and PVC shower curtains.
The findings are reported in the International Journal of Andrology.
Plastic furniture
Phthalates have the ability to disrupt hormones, and have been banned in toys in the EU for some years.
However, they are still widely used in many different household items, including plastic furniture and packaging.
There are many different types and some mimic the female hormone oestrogen.
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see toon at top and read articles below it to see what we're doing to planet earth...
the safety of poisons...
Bisphenol A
Reversing itself, FDA expresses concerns over health risks from BPA
By Lyndsey Layton
Saturday, January 16, 2010; A01
The Food and Drug Administration has reversed its position on the safety of Bisphenol A, a chemical found in plastic bottles, soda cans, food containers and thousands of consumer goods, saying it now has concerns about health risks.
Growing scientific evidence has linked the chemical to a host of problems, including cancer, sexual dysfunction and heart disease. Federal officials said they are particularly concerned about BPA's effect on the development of fetuses, infants and young children.
"We have some concern, which leads us to recommend reasonable steps the public can take to reduce exposure to BPA," said Joshua Sharfstein, FDA's deputy commissioner, in a conference call to reporters Friday.
Regulators stopped short of banning the compound or even requiring manufacturers to label products containing BPA, saying that current data are not clear enough to support a legal crackdown. FDA officials also said they were hamstrung from dealing quickly with BPA by an outdated regulatory framework.
Sharfstein said the agency is conducting "targeted" studies of BPA, part of a two-year, $30 million effort by the administration to answer key questions about the chemical that will help determine what action, if any, is necessary to protect public health. The Obama administration pledged to take a "fresh look" at the chemical.
BPA, used to harden plastics, is so prevalent that more than 90 percent of the U.S. population has traces of it in its urine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers have found that BPA leaches from containers into food and beverages, even at cold temperatures.
The FDA's announcement came after extensive talks between federal agencies and the White House about the best approach to an issue that has become a significant concern for consumers and the chemical industry.
One administration official privy to the talks said the FDA is in a quandary. "They have new evidence that makes them worried, but they don't have enough proof to justify pulling the stuff, so what do you do?" said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "You want to warn people, but you don't want to create panic."
The FDA had long maintained that BPA is safe, relying largely on two studies funded by the chemical industry. The agency was faulted by its own panel of independent science advisers in 2008, which said its position on BPA was scientifically flawed because it ignored more than 100 published studies by government scientists and university laboratories that raised health concerns about BPA. Recent data found health effects even at low doses of BPA -- lower than the levels considered safe by the FDA.
The chemical industry, which produces more than 6 billion tons of BPA annually and has been fighting restrictions on its use, said Friday's announcement was good news because the agency did not tell people to stop using products containing the chemical.
trash of trashcorps...
From the BBC
Scientists have discovered an area of the North Atlantic Ocean where plastic debris accumulates.
The region is said to compare with the well-documented "great Pacific garbage patch".
Karen Lavender Law of the Sea Education Association told the BBC that the issue of plastics had been "largely ignored" in the Atlantic.
She announced the findings of a two-decade-long study at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland, US.
The work is the conclusion of the longest and most extensive record of plastic marine debris in any ocean basin.
Scientists and students from the SEA collected plastic and marine debris in fine mesh nets that were towed behind a research vessel.
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see toon at top
trash the poisons...
By Bronwyn Herbert
Australia's chemical regulator says its reviewing studies on the insecticide Endosulfan, which has now been banned in the United States because it poses an unacceptable risk to farm workers and wildlife.
Endosulfans are banned in more than 60 countries, but in Australia they are still used on some vegetable, fruit and nut crops.
In the northern New South Wales town of Lismore, one of Australia's biggest macadamia growing regions, Bert Ballairs sells agricultural chemicals including Endosulfans.
"We sell quite a deal during the fruit season, into the macadamias and also in avocadoes and there is a small amount used in soya beans industry as well," he said.
Mr Ballairs says farmers know the risks and use the chemical sparingly.
There has been growing international pressure for countries to ban the chemical. As of today, the United States is phasing it out.
Nick Heath from the World Wildlife Fund says Australia should also ban the chemical.
"There has been mounting evidence for many years, over 60 countries around the world have banned this chemical, and yet the Australian regulator believes it is safe," he said.
"We just feel now with America coming on board ... the case for banning Endosulfan is overwhelming; we've just got to get rid of it."
see toon at top...
So why should I care?...
A group of 60 scientists backed by environmental, health and women's organisations from around the world have called for action to reduce exposure to a chemical in plastics found in everyday products.
In a letter to a European food watchdog which is currently reviewing the safety of bisphenol A (BPA), the group says that "many scientific studies are now calling into question the safety of BPA" and that only a minority of controversial academic papers have backed its safety.
BPA is a mass-produced chemical used to make plastic harder. It is found in baby bottles, most food and drink cans – including tins of infant formula milk – plastic food containers, and the casings of mobile phones, and other electronic goods.
The Independent disclosed in April that retailers such as Mothercare were continuing to stock polycarbonate baby bottles containing BPA even after most manufacturers had phased it out.
While there is no consensus among scientists about its impact on human health, dozens of independent scientists around the world are convinced that there is a strong case for limiting human exposure.
In January the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reversed years of opposition to action, saying that it had "some concern"on the basis of results from studies using novel approaches about BPA's effects on the brain, behaviour, and prostate gland in unborn children, infants, and young children...
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Gus: as far as I know, a lot of the Earth's human induced problems are statistical events that won't affect me anymore or much... I'll be dead long before the temperature of global warming reach past 2 degrees above average... I should have died long ago from suspect HGH injections, from fierce childhood diseases caught by swimming in the sewers, from asbestos inhalation or from been burned to a crisp by UV rays while "going to the beach" on low ozone level days... Or by playing in sticky tar pits... What about my exposure to radio-activity while I was a lowly-paid worker in a factory where the canteen made geiger-counter go bezerk from having been used to store "tons" of pure thorium? What about having used tonnes of industrial deadly acid with no protection... What about the lead poisoning from fumes when my dad was making fishing weights from recycled lead on the kitchen stove? Or even sucking on tin-lead soldiers?... So why should I care?... In the compression of timelines, one million years might appear as a couple of hours on a summer's day. Time flies at a speed that is only relatively relevant to individuals experiencing cognition and to "enlightened" groups of animals (humans) writing their "immemorial" history in the sand... So why should I care? Especially when more than half of the up-and-coming generations of geezers appears to be brain dead, including politicians like Tony Whatizname... while the other half is hooked on electronic illusions — like we were hooked on meaningless religious experiences... Sometimes I wonder why I care... or should care... Is it due to my inflated ego, eager to let everyone know that I think I know a bit more about life than most... Unless I resent the merchants of death who smile as they collect the moneys I never made, from being too ethical in my own mind and decidedly eager to promote a more naturally tuned aspect of our life... Or that I've seen far too much degradation of our environment in the last few years and have nightmares about a 99.99 per cent germ-free antiseptic earth... Yuck... Who knows...
lead in the brain...
The former chief executive of a British chemical company faces the prospect of extradition to the US after the firm admitted million-dollar bribes to officials to sell toxic fuel additives to Iraq.
Paul Jennings, until last year chief executive of the Octel chemical works near Ellesmere Port, Merseyside, and his predecessor, Dennis Kerrison, exported tonnes of tetra ethyl lead (TEL), to Iraq. TEL is banned from cars in western countries because of links with brain damage to children. Iraq is believed to be the only country that still adds lead to petrol.
The company recently admitted that, in a deliberate policy to maximise profits, executives from Octel – which since changed its name to Innospec – bribed officials in Iraq and Indonesia with millions of dollars to carry on using TEL, despite its health hazards.
The firm's Lebanese agent, Osama Naaman, was extradited and agreed this week to plead guilty and co-operate with US prosecutors. Although the US department of justice has run much of the case, the Serious Fraud Office is keen to claim jurisdiction.
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read article above this one and see toon at top...
a happier shrimp till...
Updated 1 hour 10 minutes ago
Scientists in Britain have found antidepressant drugs are affecting the behaviour of marine animals, such as shrimps.
The drugs enter the sea in human waste through the sewage system.
The researchers say crustaceans exposed to the drug fluoxetine are more likely to swim towards light rather than away from it, making them vulnerable to attack by fish and birds.
see toon at top...
fake biodegradables...
The consumer watchdog has accused two companies of falsely claiming plastic bags they made and sold were biodegradable.
Goody Environment and NuPak Australia allegedly said the bags could legally be supplied to South Australian businesses, where sale of non-biodegradable plastic bags is banned.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) will allege in the Federal Court next week that the bags failed to satisfy Australian standards.
John Dee from Planet Ark's ban the bag campaign is pleased that action is being taken.
"The question that does need to be asked is why has the EPA [Environment Protection Authority] allowed this bag to be sold in the marketplace for over a year?
"Why wasn't action taken earlier? Because a lot of South Australians have spent money on this bag thinking that they're doing the right thing when in fact they haven't been."
chinese rubbish...
Layers of trash floating in the Yangtze river are threatening to jam China's massive Three Gorges hydro-electric dam.
Chinese state media reports the garbage is so thick in parts of the river that people can walk on the surface.
China Daily says nearly three tonnes of refuse are collected from the dam every day, but operators are struggling with inadequate manpower and equipment as rubbish accumulates more quickly due to rain-triggered floods.
"The large amount of waste in the dam area could jam the mitre gate of the Three Gorges Dam," China Three Gorges corporation official Chen Lei said in the newspaper.
More than 150 million people live upstream from the dam.
In several nearby cities, household garbage is dumped directly into the river - China's longest - because municipalities are not equipped for trash disposal.
Mr Lei said 160,000 cubic metres of trash was collected from the dam last year.
The newspaper says the China Three Gorges corporation spends about 10 million yuan ($1.6 million) per year to clear floating waste.
According to state newspaper Hubei Daily, a 60-centimetre thick layer of garbage covering an area of more than 50,000 square metres began to form in front of the dam when the rainy season started in early July.
China considers the $22 billion Three Gorges Dam a modern wonder.
cleaning dishes....