Viral Alternative News: Pollution

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The City of San Diego is Suing Monsanto for Poisoning its Marine Life and Polluting its Bay

ICYMI: San Diego is one of three major cities to sue Monsanto for widespread pollution this year. Let's wish them the best of luck!

By Nick Meyer via AltHealthWORKS.com

The Monsanto Company produces a large volume of different chemicals, and many of them are also manufactured by competitors.

But when it comes to the dangerously carcinogenic PCBs that have wreaked havoc on towns and waterways across the country, Monsanto stands (virtually) alone: 99 percent of PCB production in the United States was done by the agricultural giant according to this report from the Food & Water Watch.

The chemicals are still being found in places they shouldn’t be, however, and many towns are still dealing with the aftermath of their toxic legacy (see photos here).

On Monday, more allegations of immense harm were revealed as a lawsuit was filed against Monsanto in federal court by San Diego authorities over the alleged polluting of the city’s bay with the carcinogenic chemicals, which were banned over 30 years ago but are still said to be showing up in sediment samples.

The PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) have also been identified in water samples and the tissues of fish, lobsters and other marine life according to the complaint.

“PCB contamination in and around the Bay affects all San Diegans and visitors who enjoy the Bay, who reasonably would be disturbed by the presence of a hazardous, banned substance in the sediment, water, and wildlife,” the lawsuit reads.

According to the EPA, PCBs have been shown to cause cancer, immune, reproductive and nervous system health problems while also damaging the endocrine system.

The city wants Monsanto to pay for cleanup costs and to cover the loss of natural resources as well.

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By Nick Meyer via AltHealthWORKS.com

21-Year-Old Inventor is Launching A Massive Ocean Cleaning System

Thanks to Dutch inventor Boyan Slat, the worlds largest ocean clean up is due to launch next year!

By Kirsten Cowart via EWAO

After a year of research and working with a team of around 100 people, Boyan Slat gave his long-anticipated sequel to his 2012 TEDx Talk in New York to present the results of his plan to solve the oceans plastic pollution problem.

For many years, humans have decided that it was a good idea to dump or allow the trash from our daily lives to float out into the ocean. Since much of our oxygen and life sustaining cycles start with the health of the ocean it has become a problem that we must address in order to preserve ourselves and future generations.

The Problem with Plastic Pollution.

Millions of tons of plastic have entered the oceans (UNEP 2005)
Plastic concentrates in five rotating currents, called gyres (Maximenko et al., 2012)
In these gyres, there is on average six times more plastic than zooplankton by dry weight (Moore et al., 2001)

8 million tons of plastic is introducing into our life-giving ocean every single year. Jambeck et al., 2015) Much of this plastic is carried by ocean currents and has been accumulating in 5 major areas.

Around 5.25 trillion plastic pieces are floating around in our oceans. (Eriksen et al., 2014) One Third of the plastic is concentrated in what has been named the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. (Cózar et al., 2014)

That means that in the middle of the ocean there is a floating island of trash. If we don’t do something soon, such as this clean up system then there will continue to be consequences.

The Environment

100 thousand marine mammals and 1 million seabirds die every single year because of the plastic pollution. (Laist, 1997) The longer term survival of at least 100 different species of animal including the Loggerhead Turtle and Hawaiian Monk Soal depends on our ability to clean up the ocean plastic. (Gall et al., 2015)(Derraik, 2002).

The plastic is also threatening various natural ecosystem and is carrying harmful and invasive species. (Barnes, 2005)

Our Economy In our world, the plastic pollution is causing around $13 billion of damage every year to the fishing, shipping, tourism and local clean up industries. (UNEP 2014) The US West Coast is spending around $500 million every year just to clean up the beaches. To clean up the beaches, it costs anywhere from $1,500 to $25,000 per ton of trash. (APEC 2009)

Our Health

PCB and DDT are toxic chemicals that are absorbed and concentrated around a million times in the oceans plastic. (Mato et al., 2001) Unfortunately, the plastic and toxins are eaten by the wildlife and causing fish and other sea animals to become toxic and sick. (Tanaka et al., 2013) Even the fish we eat could easily be poisoned which will increase our person risk of malformation, impaired reproductive systems, and cancer. (Takada, oceanhealthindex.org)
Check out this awesome and revolutionary plastic clean up system that Boyan Slat created in the video below.

Americans Are Sending Trash To Landfills 2x Faster Than Thought

According to Yale researchers, the average American tosses about 5 pounds of trash per day...

Yikes. If the amount of garbage piling up in US landfills was divided amongst all 316 million Americans, it would mean each individual is responsible for tossing out about five pounds of trash per day. This inexcusable amount of waste is causing a staggering amount of trash to pile up in landfills and is negatively affecting the environment.

According to Yale researchers who calculated the actual (instead of just estimated) volume of garbage that landfills were reporting to the Environmental Protect Agency (EPA), US residents are actually throwing out twice as much trash as previously thought.

Perhaps it’s pure laziness or ingrained habit; whatever it is, Americans need to be made aware of this stat so they can reform their ways.

As Phys.org reports, in 2010, the EPA required a large number of municipal landfills to report how much trash was coming onto the property and being dumped. The requirement was mainly to monitor, and hopefully lower, dangerous methane emissions. However, the data proved to be useful in other ways.

According to the EPA, 135 million tons of trash was accumulated in 2012. The Yale researchers who pored over the data found that what was actually being thrown away was closer to 289 million tons. In 2013, numbers crept up another 5 million tons.

Thomas Kinnaman of Bucknell University, who studied the economics of recycling and waste, suggests that these numbers really aren’t as shocking as they appear to be. He argues that landfills have a lot of room to expand to accommodate the rising tons of waste. But just because space is still available, should Americans continue wasting so much? The common sense answer is “No.”

If these numbers are correct, it could be assumed that Americans aren’t recycling as much as they should. The EPA estimates that recycling activity is near 34.5%, but John Powell of the Yale study says that the data represents more of a 21.4% ballpark. With 12.8% of landfill trash supposedly coming from construction and demolition debris, it would seem there’s still a lot of waste Americans produce that could be reused or repurposed.

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As Scientists Call For Action, California Leads The Way In Banning Microbeads

The state draws up the toughest legislation yet to outlaw microbeads as marine scientists ask for an outright ban across the USA

This month, a group of scientists called for an outright ban on microbeads, arguing that we don’t have time to delay extreme measures until there is more proof for their negative impact on the environment. They did so as California became the latest state to ‘ban the bead’.

The destructive nature of microbeads is clear to anyone with common sense: these tiny pieces of plastic are commonly added to creams, scrubs, toothpastes and gels as a cheap and effective exfoliator. Ranging in size from 0.0004 to 1.24 millimeters, they are too small to be filtered out by water treatment plants. In the USA alone, over 800 trillion microbeads are washed down the drains daily. Another 8 trillion make their way into the water system from sewage treatment plants- that’s enough of these miniscule beads to cover more than 300 tennis courts, every single day. Microbeads end up in our oceans, rivers and lakes, and because they are often confused for fish eggs or other food sources, they are rapidly killing off fish, mammals and seabirds all over the world.

In a paper entitled ‘Scientific evidence supports a ban on microbeads‘, eight experts have called on the government to outlaw them, arguing that we already have proof of how the tiny pieces of plastic are devastating marine eco-systems and that time is running out: we don’t have the means to clean them up, therefore the only solution is to stop manufacturers from using them in the first place.

The state of California agrees, and earlier this month passed a bill which will prohibit “selling or offering for promotional purposes in this state a personal care product containing plastic microbeads that are used to exfoliate or cleanse in a rinse-off product.” The bad news is that the legislation doesn’t go into effect until Jan. 1, 2020.

Similar microbead bans are already in place in Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, Colorado, Indiana and Maryland, but some critics say that legislation (which only applies to personal care products) hasn’t gone far enough. Recent endorsement of a ban from leading marine scientists could mean a turning point in the fight against plastic pollution. Because manufacturers are not not going to create a unique product for California and Illinois, it stands to reason that banning microbeads in just a couple of states might force corporations to stop using them across the board. Here’s hoping…

You can take action by signing a petition here, sharing this article, and (last but not least) by boycotting any product that lists polyethylene and polypropylene in the ingredients.

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These Horrifying Aerial Photos Show What Killing Billions Of Animals Is Doing To The Planet

I’m sure I don’t have to do much to convince you that the process of producing food for a growing, and hungry, population is pretty horrifying. The worst culprits are feedlots, sometimes called CAFOs, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.

In CAFOs, hundreds, if not thousands of animals are left to live in horrible conditions, breeding disease and causing terrible environmental damage. They live out their days until the day they’re slaughtered, sometimes never seeing the light of day.

According to FarmForward, 99% of farmed animals in the United States are raised this way. Billions of animals are raised for slaughter in the United States alone.

Not only that, but the leading cause of deforestation of the rainforest is the human food supply. We tear down hectares of trees for crops and livestock grazing. A football field of rainforest is torn down every single second and 100 species are lost every day as a result.

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