Tag: poisoning

Does Anyone Remember Agent Orange?

If you are a Vietnam veteran then this term is well know to you and/or your family…..I remember it well.

This is for the young ones out there…..

Agent Orange was a herbicide mixture used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Much of it contained a dangerous chemical contaminant called dioxin. Production of Agent Orange ended in the 1970s and is no longer in use. The dioxin contaminant however continues to have harmful impact today. As many U.S.Vietnam-era veterans know, dioxin is a highly toxic and persistent organic pollutant linked to cancers, diabetes, birth defects and other disabilities.

The Red Cross estimates that three million Vietnamese have been affected by dioxin, including at least 150,000 children born with serious birth defects. Millions of Americans and Vietnamese are still affected, directly and indirectly, by the wartime U.S. spraying of Agent Orange and other herbicides over southern and central Vietnam.

Agent Orange was sprayed at up to 20 times the concentration the manufacturers recommended for killing plants. It defoliated millions of acres of forests and farmland. Large tracts of that land remain degraded and unproductive to this day. The chemical dioxin in Agent Orange can remain toxic in the soil for decades. Soil samples have now been analyzed from both the areas that were heavily sprayed and the former American military bases where Agent Orange and other chemicals were stored and handled. In almost all instances measured dioxin levels were below Government of Vietnam threshold standards. However some soils at three of the former military bases did have very high concentrations of dioxin. To prevent dioxin from entering the food chain and affecting both adults and children in surrounding areas, these chemical “hot spots” are now being cleaned up.

What is Agent Orange?

Why dredge up this ugly bit of history right now?

Great question and it has to do with the Trump Administration…..

In mid-February, Trump administration leaders received a desperate warning from their diplomats posted in Vietnam, one of the most important American partners in Asia.

Workers were in the middle of cleaning up the site of an enormous chemical spill, the Bien Hoa air base, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio abruptly halted all foreign aid funding. The shutdown left exposed open pits of soil contaminated with dioxin, the deadly byproduct of Agent Orange, which the American military sprayed across large swaths of the country during the Vietnam War. After Rubio’s orders to stop work, the cleanup crews were forced to abandon the site, and, for weeks, all that was covering the contaminated dirt were tarps, which at one point blew off in the wind.

And even more pressing, the officials warned in a Feb. 14 letter obtained by ProPublica, Vietnam is on the verge of its rainy season, when torrential downpours are common. With enough rain, they said, soil contaminated with dioxin could flood into nearby communities, poisoning their food supplies.

Hundreds of thousands of people live around the Bien Hoa air base, and some of their homes abut the site’s perimeter fence, just yards from the contaminated areas. And less than 1,500 feet away is a major river that flows into Ho Chi Minh City, population 9 million.

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-halted-agent-orange-cleanup-dioxin-vietnam-poison-risk

It is good to see t5hat the idiots in the Donny Show have not let empathy get in the way of their ultimate goals….

Just another example of the lack of accountability of the US for the mistakes they made against other nations.

This situation is disgusting on so many levels….but what did I expect from a group of disgusting idiots?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Recycling Program To End! Happy Earth Week!

This week is Earth Week…..are you celebrating?

In keeping with the theme of this week I will post a piece on the environment…….when I started this blog about 7 years ago I wrote a piece about the new light bulbs that were all the rage…..the CFLs…..you know those compact little screwy looking bulbs that they are trying to get the whole world to switch in an attempt to protect the environment…..the post I wrote pointed out that these bulbs have mercury in them and I was concerned that the disposal of these into local landfills would eventually make our groundwater toxic, once the mercury leached into the soil……..I had a comment from a reader that pointed out that Home depot was providing people a collection center for later disposal……I thanked them for pointing that out but I was then concerned on just how many people would take the time to use such a service or would they be lazy and throw them away in their family trash which in turn would go to the landfill and eventually the mercury would make it into the drinking water…….I was called an alarmist many times and I guess I may have been the alarmist that people thought…….

But then I saw an article about a happening in Canada that played into my alarmist nature…….

A large home improvement retailer has decided to quietly pull the plug on its compact fluorescent light-bulb-recycling program nationwide, upsetting an environmental non-profit that has handed out hundreds of thousands of the energy-efficient bulbs in Canada.

Home Depot started selling CFL bulbs, which contain a small amount of mercury, about six years ago. And around the same time they also started collecting the burned-out bulbs — until last week.

An email from a Home Depot spokeswoman said “changes to the enforcement of compliance requirements in a number of provinces” made the company decide to leave the job to other recycling programs in Canada.

In addition to cancelling the CFL bulb recycling program nationwide, Home Depot has also cancelled its paint recycling programs in Ontario and Quebec.

How will this effect the US?  Will Home Depot here in the lower part of North America follow suit?  What are the alternatives in recycling for these potentially dangerous bulbs?

Global Treaty On Mercury Use

Now here is a great idea…….. finally.

The United States has shifted its stance to call for a legally-binding global treaty to phase out deadly mercury use that threatens the health of people worldwide, officials said on Tuesday.

Hopes had been high ahead of the conference that the new administration of U.S President Barack Obama would support the European Union’s calls for an international treaty to ban mercury. Some other states favor a voluntary approach.

The new policy was unveiled by the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for environment and sustainable development, Daniel Reifsnyder, late on Monday at the start of a major U.N. gathering of environment ministers in Kenya.

About 6,000 tonnes of mercury — a heavy metal known for more than a century to damage the human nervous system — enter the environment every year. Mercury’s other effects include liver damage, memory loss or disturbances to vision.

It is about time that the US join into the fray to control the use of the killer mercury.  I need to point out one thing and ask a question. What about the new light bulbs that everyone is so gaga over?  You do know that they contain mercury right?  I wrote about this in a earlier post on Info Ink.

Truth About Your New Light Bulbs

Eventually all light bulbs will be these newer ones and eventually all that mercury will make it into the water table and into the food supply…how will the treaty handle that?  Someone, anyone answer that question.

New Light Bulbs And Health

we have all seen the new bulbs, those squiggly things that are butt ugly…..by a few years the bulbs that you use now will no longer be sold and we all will be forced to use the squiggly thingys.  So I thought I would get a jump on the mandatory use “law” and start buying them now…..GE should be happy they will make a butt load of money off of these…..I was gonna replace a bulb and open my new package and read the label……Do any of you realize that these bulbs contain mercury and that there is a warning label on the package?

What is my point?  After thinking it over, I wondered once the bulbs are mandatory and they will be showing up in masse in landfills, how long will it be until the mercury makes it to the water table?  How long will it take before the fish and wildlife are poisoned?  Then eventuall, how long before the neurological effects show up in humans, especially newborns?

My daughter ask me what the catch was when they first started pushing these new tyoes of bulbs…..at that time i did not have an answer….but now her question has been answered.