Ten Worst! Time to make a difference... or loose it all.

The ten most endangered rivers emerge as: the Salween, La Plata, Danube, Rio Grande, Ganges, Murray-Darling, Indus, Nile,

Yangtze and Mekong. These represent some of the most polluted, but also some of the most endangered by growing populations, industries and farm contamination.

The ten most polluted cities in the world are Linfen, China; Tianying, China; Sukinda, India; Vapi, India; La Oroya, Peru; Dzerzhinsk, Russia; Norilsk, Russia; Chernobyl, Ukraine; Sumgayit, Azerbaijan; and Kabwe, Zambia.

This doesn't leave others out... the most polluted river in the US is the Mississippi... and Canada has one of the worst cities due to mining tilings that are both toxic and radioactive...

We need to focus world wide...or loose the fight to poisonous and cancerous materials that will kill our food chain from the bottom to the top!

Let's Talk Hemp!

Is hemp a valuable industrial product... is it a drug...is it both?

A friend of mine has suggested that Hemp has the potential to be one of our best future products if we can just get it out of the courtroom and into the production facility.

Here is what she has to say... Big business, including DuPont who had just developed a chemical process for pulping paper and others prevented the production of Hemp in the US...first in the 1930s when it was considered a drug, in competition with alcohol, then repealed its abolition for world war II production (1940) of hemp based products, but reinstated in 1957 and held to today due to DEA promoted laws against Cannabis.


It turns out that industrial Hemp... though from the Cannabis family...is not Marijuana...and has a very low level of THC, the drug found in the Cannabis used for marijuana.


One advocate of the 1930s argued that there were more than 25000 products that could be made... Good intentions aside...what industrial hemp can not be used for is the production of
'Joints' for the drug using crowd...it is not the same plant.

But, really, what can it be used for that we would immediately want?
1) fiber for improved production of paper...in fact the paper industry is actively petitioning for its growth...they have already proven its worth using imported Hemp from Canada...you see the fibers are not the issue...so hemp fiber is allowed, but you can't grow it...so it is imported from places like Canada and Indonesia...

hemp fiber

You see, industrial hemp does not have a high level of THC (less than 1%) in industrial the strain ( Cannabis Sativa plant).

So...paper first...then just the boon to the farm industry...it grows quickly, can yield two or more crops a year...and it does not need much attention...less herbicides and pesticides, less fertilizer too.

And a second industry...that's two of 25000... would be for the production of Biomass for fuel. It turns out it can be used in this form for several things...including low carbon burning (reduced or no greenhouse gasses) with little or no smoke residue. And it can be used to create alcohol for fuel as well... replacing the demand on corn and releasing these grains back to the food industry.

So, there you have some if it...what do you think?

take a shot and write in on this one...

Pesticide link to Parkinson’s disease

Parkinson's Disease is a very limiting, and yet to be fully explained problem...one that may be linked to petrochemical contamination.

People exposed to pesticides at workplace are at a greater risk of suffering from Parkinson’s disease, a brain disorder among the aged, a study by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) school of public health said Saturday.

“The researchers have found that the combined exposure to ziram, maneb and paraquat (types of pesticides) near any workplace increased the risk of Parkinson’s disease (PD) threefold, while combined exposure to ziram and paraquat alone was associated with an 80 percent increase in risk,” the study, published in the Science Daily, said.”

Parkinson’s disease, a brain disorder common after the age of 50, leads to shaking and difficulty with walking, movement and coordination.

The research comes as a follow-up to the study conducted by UCLA researchers that established a link between the disease and two chemicals commonly sprayed on crops to fight pests.

As one example, Dieldrin... a follow on to DDT that was invented in the 1930s and came into wide use in the US and Europe in the 1950s has been linked to Parkinsons and with Breast Cancer. Its use was stopped by US and EU authorities in the 70s and 80s... but it is not gone!

Dieldrin takes a very long time to break down when in soil and is still found in the leaves of plants in both markets today. Worse, Dieldrin does not break down in water either, in fact it finds its way into silt and mud and is now found in deep water and aquifers world wide.

One example of recently discovered Dieldrin was in Deland Florida in May of 2011... 40+ years after it was banned from use. It was found in more than 20 wells in neighborhoods where cancer rates are above the local norm... is there a link? Historically we would say yes...but of course the state and county health departments are suggesting that there is no connection.

I do agree...

do your best to clean the stream!