The CC Times had an article today about cleaning up the bay. For years, there has been a warning in place to severely limit eating fish taken from the San Francisco Bay. All the usual committees and investigations and political discussions have been going on and at last, a plan has been sent to a state board for consideration. Amid all the usual protests from industry, which does not want to pay for cleaning up the bay.
This kind of thing has always thrown me for a loop. In the first place, what industry, for whatever reason, has the right to pollute a source of food for a people? Where did they get this right? Why has government turned a blind eye and let them do this? How is it possible that people don’t see a problem with this?
PCB was banned almost 30 years ago. Go us. We did something right. But the damage from PCB did not fade into the sunset. It seeped into our soil and into our air and into our water. And it doesn’t go away for a long, long time.
So we are told to eat no more than two meals a month of fish from our bay. Pregnant women and children are limited to one meal a month.
But this is our food source. We should have access to all the edible species in our food source, with sensible conservation our only restriction.
Here’s the jaw-dropping paragraph:
“A coalition of business and industrial groups argued that rather than requiring costly cleanups, the water board should focus more on warning anglers not to eat too much fish.”
What!? How? How did we get to this? What is wrong with these people?
“Just don’t eat?” That’s your solution? Every person in that coalition should lose their business to a more responsible adult and THEY should have to live in such a way that most of their food comes from the bay.
How completely arrogant and irresponsible they are. I’m furious. We should all be furious.
1 comment:
PCBs and plastic, a global problem for life.
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The plastic and PCB problems are really getting serious.
First of all, i think we need to get the Ocean's mass and health into perspective.
As scientist Jim Lovelock observed, "Although the weight of the Oceans is 250 times that of the atmosphere, it is only one part in 4,000 of the weight of the Earth."
1/4000 = 0.00025
Therefore, only 0.025% of Earth's mass is Water. Yet we tend to think of our Oceans as vast and endless resource, free to everyone.
Scientists also point out, "If the Earth were a globe 12 inches in diameter, the average depth of the ocean would be no more than the thickness of a piece of paper, and even the Deepest Ocean Trench would only be a tiny dent, one third of a millimeter deep. (0.3 mm = 0.01 in)
Since the Ocean's mass is only 0.025% that of Earth's, our Oceans can more accurately be appreciated as the priceless reservoirs they are, the only living Oceans in the entire universe. Mars might have some frozen mud.
Knowing the Earth's "surface" is 70.8% water, often leads a popular conclusion... there might be more Ocean than Earth, so... "dilution is the solution" for pollution.
Unfortunately, this popular "solution" leads to the global assumption... that pollution might be absorbed and simply rendered harmless... within the Ocean's vastness.
Tons of toxic chemicals are discarded into rivers worldwide, while the industry leaders "cross their fingers" in a futile false hope that the chemicals will quietly be absorbed by the living Oceans.
To compound the problem, tons of plastic, also dumped 24/7, by the barge load, into our Oceans, it does not "break down" for almost 1000 years, but it does break into tiny bits of plastic "dust" or "snow". Now the PCB's, that are now major contaminants in the Ocean, are attracted to the plastic bits like a magnetic sponge. Marine animals can't differentiate the plastic snow from plankton, so they eat the plastic bits, and become toxic with PCB's, causing immune system failure. By the way, coral reef polyps eat plankton and they do not differentiate plankton from plastic. I think the massive die-offs are more related to this that 1 degree change in average water temperature.
As the toxins slowly distribute worldwide by the Ocean's conveyer belt currents, the entire food chain is affected, from the tiny coral polyps that make world's largest reefs, to whales feeding on plankton and other particles suspended in the water column, including PCB laden plastic "snow".
An impairment to the immune systems of living creatures is being observed globally, from the tiny coral polyps, to the giant killer whales, and finally the humans themselves, seated at the top of the food chain, consuming industrial leftovers that will not bio-degrade in nature for thousands of years.
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ATSDR points out that every child born from a mother who consumed Great Lakes fish during their pregnancies were three times (3X) more likely to have lower IQs and twice (2X) as likely to be TWO grade levels behind their peers in reading comprehension. Other studies have shown children who's mothers consumed PCB-contaminated fish had lower birth rates, reduced motor reflexes and neuromuscular function, poor short-term and long-term memory, weakened immune systems and greater susceptibility to infections, among other problems.
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Now tons of the sludge from water treatment plants, also containing PCB's, are being dumped onto agricultural land. Scientists are scrambling just to name the new diseases as they discover them and counting the countless number of species that just became extinct, while the oil emperors fiddle in the stock market, making new world record profits.
I know this is hard to believe, it was for me too, so (please) Google it.
As a free nation... we the people... have spent more of our own tax dollars for exploring remote areas of outer space and the mud on Mars than protecting the only "Living Oceans" in the entire universe while the planet becomes less inhabitable for humans. Who is really steering this over-heating planet, big business persons? Is bowing to the $tock market index given a higher priority than the World's Ocean Health index in Washington?
As we awaken to the collapse of our Oceans, we begin to see the consequences of giving the "green light" to industry for dumping millions of tons of "known toxins" into the only known living Oceans in the entire universe.
At age thirteen, Jacques-Yves Cousteau's book, "The Silent World" was presented to me by my scuba instructor, when I was first certified as a scuba diver. I was thrilled with swimming and breathing underwater, enjoying a view of nature referred to as the "Silent World."
Today, Jacques-Yves Cousteau must be looking down on the Oceans, and the dying coral reefs, with salty tears in his eyes.
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Your comments are welcome,
Larry (at) OpenDoorWorld.com
Key Largo, Florida
http://OpenDoorWorld.com
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