Category Archives: big coal

Why Detroit Matters

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I’m bopping around the web this morning reading up on Detroit….I just can’t get the dumping of petroleum coke out of my mind.

Whatever happens to Detroit happens to all of us….

Here’s a piece up on a refinery fire…by Marathon…where the residents were not even told what was going on.  It is just unconscionable that these folks were not told what was going on and that some were evacuated but others across the street were not.

This piece spouts the pro-corporate view that anything that supports the environment is bad for business.  Tell me, what good is business if so many are sick or even dead because of toxic overload?  Who will be left to buy your product?

From the article:

The document claims city planners fail to take into consideration that Metro Detroit’s poor and minority neighborhoods are already deluged with excessive pollution and contaminated industrial, commercial, and hazardous waste sites.

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Claims of “environmental injustice” (and environmental racism) are little more than catch phrases used by green activists to draw attention to the purportedly disproportionate negative effects of pollution in poor and minority communities. The accusation is that federal, state, and local governments have conspired to permit more pollution in impoverished black communities than in affluent ones.

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He goes on to say that there are the same health problems in more affluent neighborhoods.  He thinks the problem is their lifestyle rather than the toxic environment.  I think that’s too simplistic as it doesn’t take in the whole picture.  It is known that mercury damages a person’s DNA.  So…if the parents of affluent African Americans were poor and lived in these more toxic areas, being exposed to lead and mercury and arsenic, their DNA will be affected and pass that on to their children.  It gets worse with each generation.  Also, toxins do not stay in a particular geographical area, although it will be more concentrated in that area, it will drift, and also cause health issues (on a lesser scale) to those in affluent neighborhoods.

As far as environmental racism…it is a well known occurrence.  Probably should be better categorized as environmental “poor-ism” because it’s done towards the poor.  I say this with the thought in mind that it does not follow blacks whom have moved into more affluent neighborhoods.  Perhaps one can say that it is because whites also share that neighborhood.  Well….I guess you could say that, BUT then whites also share the poor neighborhoods with blacks….which leads me to conclude that it is against the poor rather than exclusively against blacks.

The last line about the gov’t allowing the poor to bear the brunt of toxins ignores the above~~you don’t see the petroleum coke being dumped on the Koch’s front lawn, do you?  When that happens, you can tell me that gov’t officials have not discriminated against the poor.

I notice that the author was once a commissioner….so I am left to wonder whether he, in his official capacity, willfully went along with poisoning the poor and is now trying to justify it?

On to the financial woes of Detroit, I found some interesting articles.

This one details the bad news. Note that they’re going after unions.  HUGE RED FLAG that Disaster Capitalism and ALEC are in the midst.  (related to this is a strike by fast food workers to form unions.)

This article on Slate paints a different picture of the stuff going on behind the scenes.  Note the link to the NY Times’ article on Dan Gilbert trying to make a fortune rebuilding the city…

The article talks about the cityscape with abandoned houses, empty spaces after demolition of houses, and the population dwindling from 2 million down to 700,000.    When reading that Gilbert’s solution is to bring business in, to spur people walking the streets (shoppers)…and it strikes me that there is so much opportunity here….but it feels like trying to fix the problem with the same old, same old…

With all the demolished houses…what about the urban farmer?  I know that would be difficult if the ground were polluted, as Detroit seems to be the dumping ground, but if the soil were not toxic, why not encourage that? It would help those in the inner cities to feed themselves as well as sell produce to earn income.

Why not encourage planting of trees to help the air quality?  As I blogged before, we need to include nature into our plans and stop ignoring the impact we have on nature and the colossal impact nature has on us.

It also ignores the devastating impact that Big Box stores have had on our local economies.  Walmart moves in….independent small businesses die…and entire downtowns are destroyed…not only do the businesses die, but our feeling of connectedness dies with them…

 

Lead and zinc

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A member of the mercury support group posted today that a brand Nutricology, has a notice on its bottle that reads:

“California Proposition 65 Warning: This product contains lead, a chemical known to the State of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm”

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I did a search to see if the form I use, zinc glycinate (Now brand) also contained lead.  I couldn’t find anything confirming or denying it.

I looked up Now brands on the web.  Here is their customer service number:  888-669-3663.  The company nutritionist told me this:  “the product does not contain more than 1200 parts per billion.”

Toxic metals study links to Autism

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Seventy-four percent!

74% of the studies examined showed a significant relationship between an ASD diagnosis and toxic metal exposure. These investigators concluded that the balance of studies support a link between ASD diagnoses and toxic metal exposure.

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Note further down that they also link heavy metals such as cadmium, arsenic and lead (from coal dust).

Okay, can we now stop drugging up our children with psychotropic drugs to help control symptoms and start addressing the real problem–our toxic environment and toxic amalgams?? It’s truly heartbreaking how many children have been misdiagnosed as autistic when they are displaying symptoms of heavy metal toxicity and acting out because they’re toxic…

 

More on mercury causing brain damage:

 

How many times do they have to find a correlation between mercury and neurological damage?  When do they stop “studying” and start putting solutions in action?

Detroit buried in petroleum coke

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(migraine…pardon my faux pas)

They ought to take this three-story, one-block long pile of coke and dump it on the Koch’s front lawn.  And for every shipment afterward, dumped on every Tea Party supporter’s front lawn who denies the pollution coming from oil and its byproducts.

More here on the residents’ concerns.  Same stonewalling over health concerns for residents living around this poison.  They say they’re sending in samples to find out if it’s hazardous.  Here’s the Material Data Safety Sheet (MSDS) on Petroleum Coke.  It’s pretty evident from this that it IS a serious health concern.   One of the warnings is not to breathe the dust.  Wonder how many residents breathe in particulate every single freaking day?

From the sheet:

Inhalation of excessive dust concentrations may be irritating to the upper respiratory
system. Repeated chronic inhalation exposure may cause impaired lung function.
There is no evidence that such exposures cause pneumoconiosis, carcinogenicity,
or other chronic health effects.
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I would question the last sentence–anything that can cause impaired lung function is causing inflammation…inflammation kills cells over a period of time.
Note that is is a combustible dust….just laying around….which the MSDS specifically states this is not proper storage–it states it should be in containers.  (Not that I personally believe containers are any better.  The stuff is toxic, toxic,toxic, creating problems of disposal…in somebody’s neighborhood.)

Anybody wanna bet this is located in a poor neighborhood in Detroit?

So…now BP wants to start operations for processing this filthy sludge in Whiting, Indiana, which is near Gary and Hammond  and Chicago….right on Lake Michigan. Um-hmmm…Anybody wanna guess if the toxic environment is a factor in Gary Indiana being the murder capital of the United States.  Note the article stating this area is one of the worst in air quality in the U.S.

And here we have the latest in *cough* BP cares….about our profits over your health and safety…

More here.

A video of yet another explosion in Whiting, Indiana:

Indiana has a sad history of putting business over its environment.  Just look at the lack of trees compared to, say, Ohio.  You can actually tell the air quality difference once you leave Indiana and venture into Ohio.  Nevermind the beauty of all the trees, but the air is breathable.  Anyway, Indiana’s own Dept. of Environmental Management *cough* has told manufacturers several years ago that once they were given a good report, they could slack off, er I mean, they could continue their good environmental practices until the IDEM inspected them three years later.

The Indiana Dunes, which we used to go to nearly every summer, have been polluted by the lack of concern of the environment.  Lake Michigan was once reasonably clean.  I took my kids up there after many years and was depressed to see the condition of the water.  It was no longer clear and had that polluted look to it.  I saw nuclear cooling towers off to my left.  At least, I thought they were nuclear cooling towers…turns out they were from another power plant–the one thing Indiana has going for it is that we don’t have nuclear power plants here.  I don’t hold my breath that they won’t eventually appear, especially with Mike Pence and the ALEC team now in charge here.  Besides, there are nuclear plants in Illinois and Ohio bordering our state, so…yeah…we’re still susceptible to nuclear radiation or the China Syndrome.  All it would take is one of the reactors melting down and we’re done.

And then there’s the curious case of radiation in Delaware,  Indiana that is mentioned in this blog.

Angelina Jolie

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Has this at the New York Times on having a double mastectomy.  First, I want to say that I hope she is doing well and on her way to healing and recovery.  It must have been a difficult decision to make.

My grandmother died of breast cancer.  There is a lot of cancer in my family.   But I would not make the same choice as Angelina has done, even if I knew that I had the “breast cancer gene”.  There are too many unknowns about genes and their impact on disease.  As I have posted about before, there are factors about genes and the expression of their purpose that is *still* not understood by scientists.

More here on genes and the nutrition of the mother. Very interesting.  The usual focus is treating the problem after it occurs (or in Angelina’s case, before it occurs, but with drastic measures)…instead of  turning the focus to the toxic soup we’re living in that is the root cause of the disease.   Also, it does not focus on the understanding that diet of organic fruits and vegetables are key to good health and allowing the body to do what it miraculously does:  fight disease.

Why is that so hard to do?

Why can’t we be more proactive in trying to eliminate the causes instead of allowing it?

 

 

Mommy, the IRS is picking on me!!

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Really, the repub party should go from the “party of NO’ to the “party of whine”.  Good God, can they play the victim…

They were seeking approval to operate under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. This would require them to be “social welfare,” not political, operations. There are significant advantages to being a 501(c)(4). These groups don’t pay taxes; they don’t have to disclose their donors—unlike traditional political organizations, such as political-action committees. In return for the tax advantage and the secrecy, the 501(c)(4) organizations must refrain from traditional partisan political activity, like endorsing candidates.

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Since when is asking questions “singling-out” someone?  Asking questions is the IRS’s job.  And the last line of the above quote is enough to revoke their tax exempt status.

George Will is trying to compare this to Watergate.  Seriously?? How lame.

If Republicans had controlled both houses of Congress in 1973, Nixon would have completed his term. If Democrats controlled both today, the Obama administration’s lawlessness would go uninvestigated.

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Committee members of Watergate- Senate:  three repubs on it.

A brief on the Watergate affair.

On CSPAN this morning, they had Jenny Martin, the CEO of Tea Party Patriots.  She was playing the victim well–without really offering any hard evidence of the accusations of the IRS…even when asked for specifics by a caller.  I listened carefully to her mini-speeches, and once when she began to divulge what actually occurred, she caught herself and went back to “safe mode” without giving the details.  Hmmm….

Meanwhile, when the point was made that the IRS has been inundated by groups  applying for tax exempt status, so there was possibly a backlog AND good reason to scrutinize these groups that don’t want to pay taxes.  (The irony here is that the Tea Party is all about reducing government workers, but it would appear that the backlog is created because of a lack of skilled workers to process them…)

It is clear that Tea Party Patriots is a political group and they promote their political causes aggressively…so why shouldn’t the IRS ask them pointed questions about their fundraising and their activities??  If you want to avoid taxes, you’d better be prepared to answer some questions.

(Gah, I never in a million years thought I’d be sticking up for the IRS.  Lord knows they’ve used their strong arm tactics on me–when I lost my house, they actually wanted to charge me for taking a profit(!!) and then when I owed a measily $200 (and didn’t have the money to pay them) they threatened to take what was left after the crash and burn. I did eventually pay it off in installments. but it was difficult at that point in time. )

Warrior princesses

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My heroes. 

They put into words what a celiac goes through with the *cough* medical profession….clueless doctors who charge $$ to tell you that it’s all in your head.

I like the one who told the patient she couldn’t feel pain in the gut…say what??

I’d like to see the Wisconsin Tea Party legislators tangle with these gals. Pass the popcorn. (Ooh, wait, what was I thinking??…Um, pass the gluten free snack. 🙂  Still not used to the idea of not having some things…<sigh>   )

ALEC fighting open records

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This up from PR Watch on ALEC’s latest: asserting that its communications with public legislators is private….

Isn’t it amazing how the folks who insist on the Patriot Act and having the right to examine your private phone conversations, emails, library records, bank records, etc., are the same ones insisting that they have a right to privacy….??  The story states that there are cases where the communications can be private–in some states they don’t have to make their communications public knowledge…but it stops there and doesn’t explore that point further.

So…I went on a quick search and found this resource to each state’s open door laws.  As with any law, though, it’s only as good as the people behind it.  That is, if you have a group of people bent on keeping things secret with financial resources to keep their secrets, while those that try to find information lacking in financial resources…well, the law isn’t worth much…

The Stingray

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I have a gorgeous photo of a group of Golden Stingrays on my calendar this month–somewhat similar to this.

National Geographic has this piece describing them.

A nice video here on them:

Ocean Conservancy has this up on the possible threat to rays.   There are some species that are endangered, according to this.   I guess the question is…does it make sense to keep pushing the envelope until a species is endangered, or is it better to pull back and not push it to the edge?  Why is it so hard for us to keep the balance?

 

Kelp and arsenic

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A member posted they did not take kelp supplements because of the high arsenic content.  I was aware of the possible contamination with heavy metals, but it’s always good to check and re-check supplements to see the latest.

I have been taking Solgar brand kelp, because Solgar is a good brand…but that doesn’t mean I should slack off….so…

I went on a search this morning trying to find out the exact content of arsenic in kelp.  I found a disturbing study out of UC Berkeley…that tested several brands of kelp and found arsenic in all of them but one.  The aggravating part of the story is that they did not name the brands!  WTH? (One also needs to keep in mind that universities are not islands in the $$ funding arena, so their “studies” may be heavily influenced by donations from corporations.  Supplements have been the target of Big Pharma for years…they would love nothing better than to destroy the supplement industry because it cuts into their $$ billion dollar profits. Greed. Greed. Greed.) (also–many pharmaceuticals are derived from plant properties. Another site here.)

Doing a search, I came up empty on Solgar when looking for specific data stating arsenic content.

I found these links:  Vegan health on supplementing with iodine.  I notice they recommend potassium iodide by Nature’s Plus because it isn’t made from kelp, thus avoiding arsenic contamination.  I am always skeptical about sites that recommend a specific brand.  I saw this on three different sites that had the same format–a red flag is raised.  Not that I think Nature’s Plus is a bad brand, only that the authors of these sites perhaps are receiving some sort of compensation for the recommendation, which would influence their judgment and perhaps they would not state adverse problems with the product.

This article recommends Lugol’s for replacing iodine.  Lugol’s is a popular supplement on the mercury support group.

This page states that Solgar, among others, is a good brand that is not loaded with toxic heavy metals.  The connection of fluoride displacing iodine in the thyroid….and yet they continue putting fluoride in public drinking water.  Also note his assertion that kelp is superior due to the minute minerals it adds plus the bioavailability (it isn’t going to do you much good if your body doesn’t recognize it and absorb it).   He recommends against Lugol’s because of… possible toxicity in the liver…this is especially worrisome for heavy metal poisoned folks like moi--the liver and kidneys take direct hits from the stupid mercury poison and therefore have a tough time processing toxins like they would normally–care needs to be taken.

I like that he also considers kelp a balancing food between yin and yang (not that I understand yin and yang to a deep degree–just know that it’s an Asian approach to medicine of balance).