toxics

Manatee deaths down, lonely penguin count up by one

... a Hong Kong sushi restaurant owner paid a record $55,700 for a bluefin tuna at a Tokyo market, a rate of $92 per pound ...

... a judge ordered the U.S. Navy to cease use of sonar within 12 nautical miles of the California coastline and whenever a marine mammal was sighted within 2,200 yards ...

... fish from a Canadian salmon farm tested positive for malachite green, a carcinogenic substance. "We have no explanation as to what has happened," said the company manager ...

... a study of Caribbean coral reefs found a correlation between high human population and coral loss. "It's like a cascade," said one of the researchers ...

Umbra on Camelbaks

Dear Umbra, Recently, I’ve started to try to avoid plastics (especially plastic water bottles). For Christmas, my brother gave me a Camelbak-type water bottle. How safe is this? I assume it’s as bad as most plastic water bottles. Timothy Kearney Issaquah, Wash. Dearest Timothy, Gifting quandary alert. But does it suck? Photo: iStockphoto Not all […]

Clinton lobbied for tire burning near Granite State

With the New Hampshire primaries approaching, I thought I'd share this article about how Hillary Clinton's political style has directly affected New Hampshire voters in a way that might shed light on the kind of president she would be. The article was co-written with Friends of the Earth Action president Brent Blackwelder.

-----

New Hampshire has for decades struggled to keep its air clean. But during 2005 and 2006, Hillary Clinton's ambitions collided with New Hampshire's air quality, putting thousands of Granite Staters, and particularly children, directly in the line of a deadly cloud of toxic pollution.

At the time, of course, Clinton was hotly engaged in a campaign to increase her margin of victory in her bid for reelection in her New York Senate race. Her triumph was never in question: she faced only token Republican opposition in a heavily Democratic state. But she was desperate to prove that she could win with a big margin in more conservative areas of upstate New York so she could prove to Democrats that she would be viable in similar conservative areas around the country during her presidential bid.

That understandable political aspiration came head to head with New Hampshire children's health in 2005, when the International Paper logging company unveiled a proposal to burn tires at its Ticonderoga paper mill in upstate New York on the border with Vermont. Burning tires to power its operations would save IP money on its electricity bills, but it came with a heavy price.

Health officials concerned about mercury pollution from crematories

More and more Americans are electing to be cremated, teeth and all. Stay with us here: Many dental fillings contain mercury, and health officials across the U.S. are raising concerns that mercury emissions from crematories will have adverse health effects on those still living. In one Colorado county, officials won’t allow a mortician to move […]

Norway will ban mercury

Come Jan. 1, Norway will completely ban mercury in manufacturing, imports, and exports. “Mercury is among the most dangerous pollutants. Good alternatives to mercury exist already and it is therefore right to introduce this ban,” says Environment Minister Erik Solheim, with due formality. Norway’s standards exceed that of the European Union, which will ban mercury […]

Umbra on organic mattresses

Dear Umbra, I need a new mattress and really want to buy one that is not doused in chemicals — in other words, an organic mattress. I’ve searched a number of sites online and have been horrified by the prices. They are really, really expensive! How bad is it if I buy a regular old […]

Umbra on paint disposal

Dear Umbra, A friend of mine is a painter. He is concerned about the environment and has been trying to find out how to dispose of his paint buckets, extra paint, and other supplies in a way that is eco-friendly, but he’s come up with nothing. We live in Chicago, and you would think that […]

Killer farmed salmon and non-deadly sharks

More than 10,000 people worked to clean up the worst oil spill in South Korean history after a crane punched a hole in an oil tanker, releasing 2.7 million gallons of crude. A 63-year-old shellfish farmer wept as she showed dead tar-coated oysters to a reporter ...

... a study published in Science suggested that leaving more fish in the sea leads to higher profits than the traditional target known as maximum sustainable yield. "We like to say it's a win-win," said one of the study's authors ...

... a detailed new study of salmon farming found that farmed fish spread sea lice, which killed juvenile wild salmon ...

Pollution’s effects linger, long after compounds are banned

A new study by researchers at a British Columbia cancer agency stands as a stark reminder that, when it comes to pollution, an ounce of pollution prevention is worth a pound of cure:

Researchers found people with the highest levels of a certain type of insecticide in their blood had 2.7 times the risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma as those with the lowest amounts ...

People with PCBs in their blood, meanwhile, had twice the risk of developing the disease as those with the lowest exposures. That's about the same level of increased risk as having a family history of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The thing to remember is that these compounds were banned 30 years ago. But they're still hanging around, tainting the soil and the food chain, and causing all sorts of problems.

For some kinds of pollution, you just can't put the genie back in the bottle -- meaning that it's much better not to open the bottle in the first place.