This is the Terrordome and yes we are inside..
oh how we wish we were not – but we have built this horrid place and trapped ourselves.
this is the face of our future right here..
this is not what we want, this is what we are making for our future. the wars over water, food, and basically life resources. they are surely soon to come. today we want you to realize how deeply we are already embedded in the Horror of the Terrordome.
HEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY Don’t Believe The HYPE !
some might argue that since we live in technological societies and have a bit of control over our daily goings on; that we couldn’t be victims of these same horrors and that our children won’t have to be the same faces we see above.
remember where your most important element in life right now comes from and remember that only .2 percent of the water on this planet is Drinkable. yes .2 percent. how could that be ”
well think about the acid rain; chemical dumping; genetically modified crops; fertilizer poisoning; overfarming; and chemical depletion of the soils. these are dangerous times and whether you believe me or not, we are in the terrordome -
We just want you to check out the site and get your grits together on the real tip. this poverty level we experience in the usa is nothing. you hear me son, nothin, nada, no mas; compared to some of these kids we see in this war scenario. don’t sleep because we all got a right to do what we do, and to reach out and be a hero.
Much of what we don’t know is what helps to slowly kill us. like slowly siphoning away resources and pretending it’s not happening.
A major trouble spot is the business systems and procedures that companies use to bill the government. The numbers are eye-popping. Defense auditors have found at least $6 billion in questionable charges generated by sloppy accounting or, worse, contractors trying to bilk the military.
Yet, the Pentagon has done a poor job of recovering the money and forcing companies to improve, according to the independent Commission on Wartime Contracting . The panel cites dysfunction among auditors and contract managers, a shortage of personnel and a failure to be more confrontational with contractors who don’t measure up.
Based in Orange, Calif., Combat Support Associates is a largely unknown enterprise that, since 1999, has held an Army contract worth $2.7 billion to support U.S. troops at bases in Kuwait as they move in and out of Iraq. The company’s responsibilities include vehicle maintenance, warehousing, computer repairs and post security.
Between 2003 and 2007, when the U.S. invaded Iraq and then became ensnared in a lengthy counterinsurgency, there was little government scrutiny of the company’s business systems, according to interviews and government records obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act.
In late 2007, the military belatedly began paying attention. Numerous contract violations were found, several of them serious, leading to a flood of what contracting officials call corrective action requests. Last fall, the Army Criminal Investigation Command opened an inquiry to determine if Combat Support Associates overbilled the government. The case is ongoing.
The records obtained through FOIA show money flowing to Combat Support Associates despite an alarming catalog of problems later uncovered by Army contracting officials.
In one case, the company signed a $48 million deal with a Kuwaiti company to provide food, lodging and transportation for employees, but it did no detailed study to justify such a large expense. A memorandum supporting the buy included a price analysis three sentences long, which an Army review team called a “major systemic weakness.”
Do You Have Clean Water Today ?
These Kids Don’t – But They Still Need It -
Please take a moment and watch this video so you can understand why $34.00 can help provide water to a million.
We’ve written about this many times, and we hope that you will take a moment today and think of how it feels to be Thirsty,
surrounded by Dirty Contaminated Water..
Can You Help, Today Please
$34. Help us give clean water to our first million people this September.
Dear friends,
I’m turning 34 on Monday. On the same day, charity: water will turn three.
I’ve been reading a lot lately about the psychology of enormous problems. About how people will always rush to save one child but disconnect when faced with helping thousands of children. “One death is a tragedy, a million – a statistic,” we’re told.
Non-profits like ours that are addressing enormous problems (a billion people without clean water) are told to make sure we don’t scare people off by communicating how big the whole problem is.
Author Seth Godin recently wrote that the problem with enormity in marketing is that it doesn’t work. He said “Enormity should pull at our heartstrings, but it usually shuts us down. Show us too many sick kids, unfair imprisonments or burned bodies, and you won’t get a bigger donation, you’ll just get averted eyes.”
While all this may be true, it just seems rather boring. Visionless. I believe people want to sign up for something bigger than just one. I did.
There’s a proverb in the Bible that says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” People are certainly dying all around us, but could that be because we’re terrified to tackle the enormous? Because we don’t have the faith to see the entire problem solved?
I can’t quite see to a billion people yet, but I’m getting closer. Your generosity has helped us do that. In only three years, 60,000 people around the world have donated $11 million. That means 750,000 lives will change. 750,000 people will get clean water to drink.
So in the spirit of solving enormous problems, we want to step it up this September, and serve our first million people. Then keep going until every single person on the planet has clean and safe drinking water.
We shot a video that explains how we want to do that through the 2009 September campaign. Please watch it, share it and act.
We’ve also built a new website that allows everyone to use birthdays, anniversaries, weddings… to run marathons, swim and dance – you can do just about anything to help. Every dollar given is tracked to the project it funded, and GPS coordinates and photos are posted on Google Earth. Like always, 100% goes directly to the field.
In the 9 days since the September campaign launched, individuals have already raised $87,000 towards our ambitious goal.
Live from Haiti.
To continue our tradition of spending each anniversary in the field, I’m flying to Haiti where I’ll also celebrate my birthday on Monday by opening a new water project with our local partner. And in advance, I’ll do my part again by asking you and others to take 3 minutes out of your day to donate $34 for my birthday.
We’ll shoot, edit and broadcast the celebration on Monday night via satellite so you can see the progress being made.
Stick with us. Here’s how you can continue to make an enormous difference.
Dear Pablo: I have been following the media field day on the outbreak of swine flu but I can’t help but wonder if factory farms are to blame for swine flu?
Pigs confined in gestation cages (Photo: Farm Sanctuary on Flickr)
Even if global coverage on the potential swine flu pandemic may be an over-reaction, it’s clear that the outbreak is still a serious issue (which you can now follow via Google Maps). All things considered, the outbreak seems to be the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
The latest in the ongoing allocation of money coming out of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: The Department of Energy has announced that $93 million has been made available to support wind power.
Though it’s been billed as a new search engine for renewable energy, reegle is really much much more than that. It aggregates energy news, has a pretty great map detailing renewable energy projects around the world (as well as country profiles), and provides links for energy industry players in government, business, media and academia across the globe:
What do you get when you combine a unique non-profit with eco-friendly jewelry? Paper to Pearls (and we just love that name)! The amazing project is a micro-enterprise initiative working with 125 women in eight different refugee camps in Northern Uganda.
The women create jewelry by hand-rolling beads from recycled paper. The income they earn from the sale of the jewelry enables them to buy food, medicines and schooling for their children. In addition, Paper to Pearls provides on-going training to empower the women
Mark did a post the other day on a couple that have reduced the electronic clutter of their life and turned their back on TV, the internet and digital music.
Some readers wondered what they did with their time instead. The post and comments led me to ponder my childhood, which was also bereft of such electrical contrivances. But we did have big sheets of brightly printed cardboard! If we are truly committed to reducing our carbon emissions should we be turning off electricity guzzling televisions, in favour of rediscovering the person-to-person social, and brain exercising, benefits
The Australian Government last week announced that it commit $25.7 million over four years to advance green jobs training under a project it is calling Skills for the Carbon Challenge in their media release: Skills for the Carbon Challenge will drive the development and trial of qualifications and training resources that incorporate sustainability principles, green skills and responsive educational approaches in a number of key industries
The last of four thousand incandescent bulbs were changed to compact fluorescents at Grand Central Terminal in New York yesterday, which will save an estimated US$ 200,000 per year in electricity charges and reduce the amount of CO2 and mercury released into the atmosphere from coal burning electrical plants. Passengers immediately started complaining of headaches, pallid skin tones and declared Grand Central a superfund site because of the 8,000 milligrams of mercury in all of the bulbs
That “mother of all climate weeks” that took place in Congress last week didn’t seem to ease anyone’s concerns about the Democrat’s massive climate and energy bill. No, the furor has continued: Democrats, Republicans, the coal industry, environmentalists, electric companies, and automakers are all locked in a chaotic, ongoing debate that could change the face of America’s industry, energy sector—and carbon
Green roofs weigh a lot; this makes it hard to retrofit them to existing buildings. Plant Architects had some fun putting one on the Royal Ontario Museum, and now in LA, architect Alexis Rochas puts one on an old Holiday Inn that was converted to a condo. He faced a similar problem of having to build a very thin, light structure.
Earth Day 2009 saw a big push from DisneyNature for its Earth movie. Next year, the oceans will get a little loving on Earth Day. DisneyNature has released a trailer for Oceans, which is slated to open on Earth Day 2010. Click through to watch the trailer
Remember when Procter & Gamble tried to downplay the fact that an overdose of the non-fat fat Olestra could give you diarrhea? Digestive problems, abdominal cramping, loose stools and best of all – anal leakage were all terms used to describe the effects of too much Olestra. Now Olestra’s oily smoothness may be good for something besides salty snacks.
Callaway Nuclear Power Plant, Missouri, USA. Image credit:Wikipedia
In the US State of Missouri a utility company, wishing to expand on an existing nuclear power generation facility site, sought legislation which would enable raising the electrical rates for existing customers to pay the future costs of that planned project. Taxpayers “reacted” badly, and both the legislation and expansion plans have been shelved. A local station, KOMU, has the full story, titled Powering America.
MapsEco isn’t as fluffy as the yard sale treasure map or the movie time mashup map. It does however give you some interesting data about the chemicals being used around you.
Whether you’re searching with a passing curiosity or you’re using MapEcos to make sure your next home is as far from high emission factories as possible, the mashup of Google Maps and Evironmental Protection Agency data provides an interesting look at your neighborhood. Once you plug in your zipcode you can zoom around and check out your neighborhood or anywhere in the US.
Pushpins in the map indicate the presence of facility using or processing toxic chemicals. Degree of hazard is indicated by the color of the pin: red represents a high level of emission, purple is moderate, and blue indicates emissions on the lower end of the scale. Each pin has a red or green circle around the base. Red indicates the company has no publicly available policy for environmental hazard management and green indicates they do. Clicking on the push pin gives you a host of information about the site, the company operating there, which chemicals they use and how much as emitted into the surrounding environment and a comparison of the volume of chemicals emitted compared to EPA safety levels.
Lets Start Out with WATER, we’ll pick it back up a lil further down the storyline..
watch this, as you know it’s crucial;
NPR Special Report on the Array of Pharmaceuticals in US Water Supply pt.1
Array of Pharmaceuticals in US Water Supply – pt.2
this is the end of the program
Did You Know that 9 out of ten sharks are testing positive for the anti-depressant drug Zoloft. Fish showing signs of genetic changes due to drugs in effluent which ends up in oceans. and guess where the drugs then end up - in YOU.
An Australian man who describes himself as “a 50-something year old first year uni physics dropout” has an unusual hobby – he makes lightning in his shed. The image above is called The Modern Thinker – see how it was made here
Free Energy – Pentagon Conspiracy to Cover up
If we are in an energy crisis, why is the conspiracy more important than the planet and our existence ? this is quite alot to swallow, but just keep reading the stories and see if you make the connection; which by the end – no doubt you will, sadly.
The Chinese governmentcould set targets for reducing carbon emissions starting from 2011, in a move that could spur an international consensus on combating climate change.
Telegraph.uk – By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai
Last Updated: 1:06PM BST 20 Apr 2009
China is the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitterPhoto: AP
The news that China is considering a firm target for carbon emissions comes ahead of a United Nations conference later this year in Copenhagen which will attempt to come up with a successor to the Kyoto treaty.
Publicly, Beijing’s negotiation position on climate change is that China will not accept any carbon emission caps or reductions because the country is still in an early stage of development.
China is the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, but only uses a fraction of the energy per head as the United States.
However, Su Wei, one of China’s senior negotiators on climate change, said officials could introduce a national target that would limit emissions relative to economic growth. The move could be implemented in the next five-year plan from 2011.
Mr Su told the Guardian newspaper: “It is an option. We can very easily translate our [existing] energy reduction targets to carbon dioxide limitation. China hasn’t reached the stage where we can reduce overall emissions, but we can reduce energy intensity and carbon intensity.”
Yang Ailun, a spokesman for Greenpeace in Beijing, also said the introduction of carbon emissions targets was “not unlikely”.
He added: “Targets are likely to be set on specific industries, like power and steel, rather than all the industries nationwide. China has been playing quite an active role in the negotiations as a big carbon emission country.”
However, he expressed doubts the government would move quickly enough to have an impact on the negotiations in Copenhagen.
“There has been a plan to reduce our energy use which has gone on for some time, but we only saw a notable effect last year because the economy slowed,” he said.
However, the debate within China on climate change is widening and last month the Chinese Academy of Science called for a 50 per cent cut in carbon dioxide emissions relative to GDP.
The Chinese State Council has also ordered all local governments to buy “more energy-efficient products”, including certified refrigerators, air conditioners, computers and televisions.
U.S. GOVT. TORCHES CALIFORNIA TO COVER-UP NEW LAW did you realize this was going on ? neither did most of us, however it is. we better start paying attention to the news, when we see these major fema productions, that ruin the lives of thousands. after we thought about it, we remembered there were no trees in pictures of internment camps or prisons. uh huh..
By Bryan Walsh – time magazine
It’s not easy to kill a full-grown tree — especially one like the piñon pine. The hardy evergreen is adapted to life in the hot, parched American Southwest, so it takes more than a little dry spell to affect it. In fact, it requires a once-in-a-century event like the extended drought of the 1950s, which scientists now believe led to widespread tree mortality in the Four Corners area of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.
So, when another drought hit the area around 2002, researchers were surprised to see up to 10% of the piñon pines die off, even though that dry spell was much milder than the one before. The difference in 2002 was the five decades of global warming that had transpired since the drought in the 1950s. That led terrestrial ecologists at the University of Arizona (UA) to pose the question, With temperatures set to rise sharply over the coming century if climate change goes unchecked, what impact will it have on the piñon pine? (See the top 10 green stories of 2008.)
Unsurprisingly, the outcome doesn’t look good. In a new study published April 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scientists at UA found that water-deprived piñon pines raised in temperatures about 7° Fahrenheit (4° Celsius) above current averages died 28% faster than pines raised in today’s climate. It’s the first study to isolate the specific impact of temperature on tree mortality during drought — and it indicates that in a warmer world trees are likely to be significantly more vulnerable to the threat of drought than they are today. “This raises some fundamental questions about how climate change is going to affect forests,” says David Breshears, a professor at UA’s School of Natural Resources and a co-author of the PNAS paper. “The potential for lots of forest die-off is really there.”
The PNAS study, led by Henry Adams, a doctoral student at UA’s ecology and evolutionary biology department, also confirms that hotter temperatures actually suffocate trees in dry times. Piñon pines respond to drought by closing the pores in their needle-like leaves to stop water loss. That keeps them from going thirsty, but it also prevents them from breathing in the carbon dioxide they need to live — and eventually, the drought-stressed trees simply suffocate. (See pictures of activists defending backcountry forests from logging.)
The higher levels of atmospheric CO2 that would likely be seen in a warmer future won’t make much of a difference either — if the pine needles’ pores are closed to prevent water loss, CO2 simply won’t get in. Even more worrisome, the PNAS study doesn’t take into account possible changes in precipitation patterns in a warmer future, which many climate models say could be drier, exacerbating the impacts of higher temperatures. “We can envision the landscape getting hammered over and over again,” says Breshears.
The study took advantage of the university’s unique Biosphere 2 research facility. The 7.2 million–cubic-foot dome — famous for an experiment in the early 1990s when eight people lived inside it for two years — allows scientists to recreate almost any climate on Earth. Adams and his collaborators kept two groups of piñon trees inside Biosphere 2 in nearly identical conditions. One key difference: for the experimental group, researchers ramped up the temperature 7° Fahrenheit (4° Celsius), the rough midpoint of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s business-as-usual predictions for warming in this century. “We thought temperature might play a big role, but that was speculation until we could conduct an experiment,” says Adams. “The great thing about Biosphere 2 is that it allowed us to test this out.”
Adams’ paper is the latest in a number of recent studies that paint a grim fate for the world’s forests if warming isn’t slowed. A major Science study published in January found widespread increase in tree mortality rates in the western U.S., thanks in part to regional warming trends and growing water scarcity. Another study published last month, also in Science, found that even the seemingly limitless Amazon rainforest could be highly vulnerable to drought. And since living trees suck up CO2 from the atmosphere, massive tree mortality due to warming could produce a feedback effect, further intensifying climate change. In the end, we might need a bigger Biosphere 2, because we’re on track to screw up Biosphere 1 — otherwise known as the Earth.
Yvo de Boer spends most of his time on the move, so it makes sense that he has a predilection for running metaphors. The head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), De Boer was in Bonn, Germany, over the past two weeks, helping to run the latest round of international negotiations on global-warming action, which concluded April 8. (See pictures of the effects of global warming.)
More than 2,700 delegates from 180 countries met for the talks, which are intended to set the stage for the main event: the U.N. summit in Copenhagen in December, where nations are expected to hammer out a successor to the expiring Kyoto Protocol. “If this were a marathon, I think I’d say the runners were gathering their stamina for the final sprint,” De Boer told reporters on the closing day. (See the top 10 green ideas of 2008.)
But while the deadline may be getting nearer every day, the world seems to be largely running in place. The Bonn talks were the first international meeting to be attended by President Barack Obama’s climate negotiators — to the palpable relief of the rest of the world that former President George W. Bush’s much maligned team was gone — but on the big questions, including how to address carbon reduction in rich and poor countries, tangible progress remained elusive.
Developing countries like China pushed wealthier nations to accept tough short-term carbon emission targets, demanding cuts of at least 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. But developed nations demurred, refusing to commit to new cuts now, even though their existing commitments would lead to a reduction of only 4% to 14% below 1990 levels by 2020.
Obama’s team spread good feelings and good intentions, with chief climate negotiator Todd Stern telling delegates, “We want to make up for lost time.” But for the most part, the U.S. team remained passive observers. That can be chalked up to the fact that it has been on the job for mere weeks, but it’s a worrying sign of how hard-pressed the international community will be if it wants to meet its deadline of creating a new Kyoto by December. “There’s a lot of goodwill because [the U.S. is] back and everyone is tired of spending the last eight years in the dungeon,” says Jake Schmidt, the international-climate-policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But they need to start bringing real proposals to the table and show what they’re willing to do in Copenhagen.”
The Bonn meetings weren’t totally devoid of progress. One of the main questions facing global-climate negotiators is what should be done about tropical deforestation, since the logging and burning of trees is responsible for a fifth or more of global carbon emissions. The current Kyoto Protocol doesn’t address the issue, and many — though not all — environmentalists would like to add avoided deforestation to a new global climate deal, allowing rich countries to offset some of their carbon emissions by paying tropical nations to preserve their forests. Although the idea is a controversial one — Greenpeace released a report in Bonn claiming that avoided deforestation would essentially let rich nations use it as an excuse not to make costlier emission reductions at home — a broad coalition of countries at Bonn demanded that avoided deforestation be put high on the negotiating agenda in the lead-up to Copenhagen. “They stood up and said, ‘We want this,’ ” says Annie Petsonk, international counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund. “That’s quite significant.”
But on the whole, delegates left Bonn stuck in the same standoff that has all but paralyzed global climate talks over the past several years. Poor nations want rich nations to accept deep, mandatory carbon cuts, and pay tens of billions of dollars in aid to help developing countries combat global warming. Rich nations are squeamish about committing to extreme measures without help from major developing nations like China and India, which will be responsible for the lion’s share of new carbon emissions in the decade ahead. And all leaders are feeling the squeeze of the economic downturn, which has shunted public attention from global warming and stalled investments in renewable-energy technologies — without which, countries won’t be able to meet any emissions-reduction targets they may agree to.
In the end, it will come back to the U.S. The change in rhetoric is heartening — delegates noticed when Obama told a public audience in Prague that the world needs to tackle global warming and that “the U.S. is now ready to lead.” But hopeful talk doesn’t necessarily translate to numbers or action. One of the biggest topics of debate at Bonn was the draft climate-change bill released in late March by Democratic Congressmen Henry Waxman and Edward Markey, which aims to cut U.S. carbon emissions 20% below 2005 levels by 2020. That goal is significantly less ambitious than what the E.U. has pledged, but getting that bill — or anything close to it — through Congress, especially by the Copenhagen summit, will be a legislative headache.
Other nations, however, need to believe that the U.S. negotiating team can deliver on Obama’s promises at home — otherwise we’ll just keeping running around in circles.
By JEFF DONN MARTHA MENDOZA and JUSTIN PRITCHARD,Associated Press Writers AP – Monday, April 20
U.S. manufacturers, including major drugmakers, have legally released at least 271 million pounds of pharmaceuticals into waterways that often provide drinking water _ contamination the federal government has consistently overlooked, according to an Associated Press investigation.
Hundreds of active pharmaceutical ingredients are used in a variety of manufacturing, including drugmaking: For example, lithium is used to make ceramics and treat bipolar disorder; nitroglycerin is a heart drug and also used in explosives; copper shows up in everything from pipes to contraceptives.
Federal and industry officials say they don’t know the extent to which pharmaceuticals are released by U.S. manufacturers because no one tracks them _ as drugs. But a close analysis of 20 years of federal records found that, in fact, the government unintentionally keeps data on a few, allowing a glimpse of the pharmaceuticals coming from factories.
As part of its ongoing PharmaWater investigation about trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals in drinking water, AP identified 22 compounds that show up on two lists: the EPA monitors them as industrial chemicals that are released into rivers, lakes and other bodies of water under federal pollution laws, while the Food and Drug Administration classifies them as active pharmaceutical ingredients.
The data don’t show precisely how much of the 271 million pounds comes from drugmakers versus other manufacturers; also, the figure is a massive undercount because of the limited federal government tracking.
To date, drugmakers have dismissed the suggestion that their manufacturing contributes significantly to what’s being found in water. Federal drug and water regulators agree.
But some researchers say the lack of required testing amounts to a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy about whether drugmakers are contributing to water pollution.
“It doesn’t pass the straight-face test to say pharmaceutical manufacturers are not emitting any of the compounds they’re creating,” said Kyla Bennett, who spent 10 years as an EPA enforcement officer before becoming an ecologist and environmental attorney.
Pilot studies in the U.S. and abroad are now confirming those doubts.
Last year, the AP reported that trace amounts of a wide range of pharmaceuticals _ including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones _ have been found in American drinking water supplies. Including recent findings in Dallas, Cleveland and Maryland’s Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, pharmaceuticals have been detected in the drinking water of at least 51 million Americans.
Most cities and water providers still do not test. Some scientists say that wherever researchers look, they will find pharma-tainted water.
Consumers are considered the biggest contributors to the contamination. We consume drugs, then excrete what our bodies don’t absorb. Other times, we flush unused drugs down toilets. The AP also found that an estimated 250 million pounds of pharmaceuticals and contaminated packaging are thrown away each year by hospitals and long-term care facilities.
Researchers have found that even extremely diluted concentrations of drugs harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species. Also, researchers report that human cells fail to grow normally in the laboratory when exposed to trace concentrations of certain drugs. Some scientists say they are increasingly concerned that the consumption of combinations of many drugs, even in small amounts, could harm humans over decades.
Utilities say the water is safe. Scientists, doctors and the EPA say there are no confirmed human risks associated with consuming minute concentrations of drugs. But those experts also agree that dangers cannot be ruled out, especially given the emerging research.
___
Two common industrial chemicals that are also pharmaceuticals _ the antiseptics phenol and hydrogen peroxide _ account for 92 percent of the 271 million pounds identified as coming from drugmakers and other manufacturers. Both can be toxic and both are considered to be ubiquitous in the environment.
However, the list of 22 includes other troubling releases of chemicals that can be used to make drugs and other products: 8 million pounds of the skin bleaching cream hydroquinone, 3 million pounds of nicotine compounds that can be used in quit-smoking patches, 10,000 pounds of the antibiotic tetracycline hydrochloride. Others include treatments for head lice and worms.
Residues are often released into the environment when manufacturing equipment is cleaned.
A small fraction of pharmaceuticals also leach out of landfills where they are dumped. Pharmaceuticals released onto land include the chemo agent fluorouracil, the epilepsy medicine phenytoin and the sedative pentobarbital sodium. The overall amount may be considerable, given the volume of what has been buried _ 572 million pounds of the 22 monitored drugs since 1988.
In one case, government data shows that in Columbus, Ohio, pharmaceutical maker Boehringer Ingelheim Roxane Inc. discharged an estimated 2,285 pounds of lithium carbonate _ which is considered slightly toxic to aquatic invertebrates and freshwater fish _ to a local wastewater treatment plant between 1995 and 2006. Company spokeswoman Marybeth C. McGuire said the pharmaceutical plant, which uses lithium to make drugs for bipolar disorder, has violated no laws or regulations. McGuire said all the lithium discharged, an annual average of 190 pounds, was lost when residues stuck to mixing equipment were washed down the drain.
___
Pharmaceutical company officials point out that active ingredients represent profits, so there’s a huge incentive not to let any escape. They also say extremely strict manufacturing regulations _ albeit aimed at other chemicals _ help prevent leakage, and that whatever traces may get away are handled by onsite wastewater treatment.
“Manufacturers have to be in compliance with all relevant environmental laws,” said Alan Goldhammer, a scientist and vice president at the industry trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
Goldhammer conceded some drug residues could be released in wastewater, but stressed “it would not cause any environmental issues because it was not a toxic substance at the level that it was being released at.”
Several big drugmakers were asked this simple question: Have you tested wastewater from your plants to find out whether any active pharmaceuticals are escaping, and if so what have you found?
No drugmaker answered directly.
“Based on research that we have reviewed from the past 20 years, pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities are not a significant source of pharmaceuticals that contribute to environmental risk,” GlaxoSmithKline said in a statement.
AstraZeneca spokeswoman Kate Klemas said the company’s manufacturing processes “are designed to avoid, or otherwise minimize the loss of product to the environment” and thus “ensure that any residual losses of pharmaceuticals to the environment that do occur are at levels that would be unlikely to pose a threat to human health or the environment.”
One major manufacturer, Pfizer Inc., acknowledged that it tested some of its wastewater _ but outside the United States.
The company’s director of hazard communication and environmental toxicology, Frank Mastrocco, said Pfizer has sampled effluent from some of its foreign drug factories. Without disclosing details, he said the results left Pfizer “confident that the current controls and processes in place at these facilities are adequately protective of human health and the environment.”
It’s not just the industry that isn’t testing.
FDA spokesman Christopher Kelly noted that his agency is not responsible for what comes out on the waste end of drug factories. At the EPA, acting assistant administrator for water Mike Shapiro _ whose agency’s Web site says pharmaceutical releases from manufacturing are “well defined and controlled” _ did not mention factories as a source of pharmaceutical pollution when asked by the AP how drugs get into drinking water.
“Pharmaceuticals get into water in many ways,” he said in a written statement. “It’s commonly believed the majority come from human and animal excretion. A portion also comes from flushing unused drugs down the toilet or drain; a practice EPA generally discourages.”
His position echoes that of a line of federal drug and water regulators as well as drugmakers, who concluded in the 1990s _ before highly sensitive tests now used had been developed _ that manufacturing is not a meaningful source of pharmaceuticals in the environment.
Pharmaceutical makers typically are excused from having to submit an environmental review for new products, and the FDA has never rejected a drug application based on potential environmental impact. Also at play are pressures not to delay potentially lifesaving drugs. What’s more, because the EPA hasn’t concluded at what level, if any, pharmaceuticals are bad for the environment or harmful to people, drugmakers almost never have to report the release of pharmaceuticals they produce.
“The government could get a national snapshot of the water if they chose to,” said Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, “and it seems logical that we would want to find out what’s coming out of these plants.”
Ajit Ghorpade, an environmental engineer who worked for several major pharmaceutical companies before his current job helping run a wastewater treatment plant, said drugmakers have no impetus to take measurements that the government doesn’t require.
“Obviously nobody wants to spend the time or their dime to prove this,” he said. “It’s like asking me why I don’t drive a hybrid car? Why should I? It’s not required.”
___
After contacting the nation’s leading drugmakers and filing public records requests, the AP found two federal agencies that have tested.
Both the EPA and the U.S. Geological Survey have studies under way comparing sewage at treatment plants that receive wastewater from drugmaking factories against sewage at treatment plants that do not.
Preliminary USGS results, slated for publication later this year, show that treated wastewater from sewage plants serving drug factories had significantly more medicine residues. Data from the EPA study show a disproportionate concentration in wastewater of an antibiotic that a major Michigan factory was producing at the time the samples were taken.
Meanwhile, other researchers recorded concentrations of codeine in the southern reaches of the Delaware River that were at least 10 times higher than the rest of the river.
The scientists from the Delaware River Basin Commission won’t have to look far when they try to track down potential sources later this year. One mile from the sampling site, just off shore of Pennsville, N.J., there’s a pipe that spits out treated wastewater from a municipal plant. The plant accepts sewage from a pharmaceutical factory owned by Siegfried Ltd. The factory makes codeine.
“We have implemented programs to not only reduce the volume of waste materials generated but to minimize the amount of pharmaceutical ingredients in the water,” said Siegfried spokeswoman Rita van Eck.
Another codeine plant, run by Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Noramco Inc., is about seven miles away. A Noramco spokesman acknowledged that the Wilmington, Del., factory had voluntarily tested its wastewater and found codeine in trace concentrations thousands of times greater than what was found in the Delaware River. “The amounts of codeine we measured in the wastewater, prior to releasing it to the City of Wilmington, are not considered to be hazardous to the environment,” said a company spokesman.
In another instance, equipment-cleaning water sent down the drain of an Upsher-Smith Laboratories, Inc. factory in Denver consistently contains traces of warfarin, a blood thinner, according to results obtained under a public records act request. Officials at the company and the Denver Metro Wastewater Reclamation District said they believe the concentrations are safe.
Warfarin, which also is a common rat poison and pesticide, is so effective at inhibiting growth of aquatic plants and animals it’s actually deliberately introduced to clean plants and tiny aquatic animals from ballast water of ships.
“With regard to wastewater management we are subject to a variety of federal, state and local regulation and oversight,” said Joel Green, Upsher-Smith’s vice president and general counsel. “And we work hard to maintain systems to promote compliance.”
Baylor University professor Bryan Brooks, who has published more than a dozen studies related to pharmaceuticals in the environment, said assurances that drugmakers run clean shops are not enough.
“I have no reason to believe them or not believe them,” he said. “We don’t have peer-reviewed studies to support or not support their claims.”
___
Associated Press Writer Don Mitchell in Denver contributed to this report.
Mercy Mercy Me.. things ain’t what they should be..
we highlight a few things we found tonite on the internet; that are all about What we are doing to our planet.. and a few that we need to consider.
Remember To Hug a Tree Today,
Lets Start Out with WATER, we’ll pick it back up a lil further down the storyline..
watch this, as you know it’s crucial;
NPR Special Report on the Array of Pharmaceuticals in US Water Supply pt.1
Array of Pharmaceuticals in US Water Supply – pt.2
this is the end of the program
Did You Know that 9 out of ten sharks are testing positive for the anti-depressant drug Zoloft. Fish showing signs of genetic changes due to drugs in effluent which ends up in oceans. and guess where the drugs then end up - in YOU.
An Australian man who describes himself as “a 50-something year old first year uni physics dropout” has an unusual hobby – he makes lightning in his shed. The image above is called The Modern Thinker – see how it was made here
Free Energy – Pentagon Conspiracy to Cover up
If we are in an energy crisis, why is the conspiracy more important than the planet and our existence ? this is quite alot to swallow, but just keep reading the stories and see if you make the connection; which by the end – no doubt you will, sadly.
Yvo de Boer spends most of his time on the move, so it makes sense that he has a predilection for running metaphors. The head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), De Boer was in Bonn, Germany, over the past two weeks, helping to run the latest round of international negotiations on global-warming action, which concluded April 8. (See pictures of the effects of global warming.)
More than 2,700 delegates from 180 countries met for the talks, which are intended to set the stage for the main event: the U.N. summit in Copenhagen in December, where nations are expected to hammer out a successor to the expiring Kyoto Protocol. “If this were a marathon, I think I’d say the runners were gathering their stamina for the final sprint,” De Boer told reporters on the closing day. (See the top 10 green ideas of 2008.)
But while the deadline may be getting nearer every day, the world seems to be largely running in place. The Bonn talks were the first international meeting to be attended by President Barack Obama’s climate negotiators — to the palpable relief of the rest of the world that former President George W. Bush’s much maligned team was gone — but on the big questions, including how to address carbon reduction in rich and poor countries, tangible progress remained elusive.
Developing countries like China pushed wealthier nations to accept tough short-term carbon emission targets, demanding cuts of at least 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. But developed nations demurred, refusing to commit to new cuts now, even though their existing commitments would lead to a reduction of only 4% to 14% below 1990 levels by 2020.
Obama’s team spread good feelings and good intentions, with chief climate negotiator Todd Stern telling delegates, “We want to make up for lost time.” But for the most part, the U.S. team remained passive observers. That can be chalked up to the fact that it has been on the job for mere weeks, but it’s a worrying sign of how hard-pressed the international community will be if it wants to meet its deadline of creating a new Kyoto by December. “There’s a lot of goodwill because [the U.S. is] back and everyone is tired of spending the last eight years in the dungeon,” says Jake Schmidt, the international-climate-policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But they need to start bringing real proposals to the table and show what they’re willing to do in Copenhagen.”
The Bonn meetings weren’t totally devoid of progress. One of the main questions facing global-climate negotiators is what should be done about tropical deforestation, since the logging and burning of trees is responsible for a fifth or more of global carbon emissions. The current Kyoto Protocol doesn’t address the issue, and many — though not all — environmentalists would like to add avoided deforestation to a new global climate deal, allowing rich countries to offset some of their carbon emissions by paying tropical nations to preserve their forests. Although the idea is a controversial one — Greenpeace released a report in Bonn claiming that avoided deforestation would essentially let rich nations use it as an excuse not to make costlier emission reductions at home — a broad coalition of countries at Bonn demanded that avoided deforestation be put high on the negotiating agenda in the lead-up to Copenhagen. “They stood up and said, ‘We want this,’ ” says Annie Petsonk, international counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund. “That’s quite significant.”
But on the whole, delegates left Bonn stuck in the same standoff that has all but paralyzed global climate talks over the past several years. Poor nations want rich nations to accept deep, mandatory carbon cuts, and pay tens of billions of dollars in aid to help developing countries combat global warming. Rich nations are squeamish about committing to extreme measures without help from major developing nations like China and India, which will be responsible for the lion’s share of new carbon emissions in the decade ahead. And all leaders are feeling the squeeze of the economic downturn, which has shunted public attention from global warming and stalled investments in renewable-energy technologies — without which, countries won’t be able to meet any emissions-reduction targets they may agree to.
In the end, it will come back to the U.S. The change in rhetoric is heartening — delegates noticed when Obama told a public audience in Prague that the world needs to tackle global warming and that “the U.S. is now ready to lead.” But hopeful talk doesn’t necessarily translate to numbers or action. One of the biggest topics of debate at Bonn was the draft climate-change bill released in late March by Democratic Congressmen Henry Waxman and Edward Markey, which aims to cut U.S. carbon emissions 20% below 2005 levels by 2020. That goal is significantly less ambitious than what the E.U. has pledged, but getting that bill — or anything close to it — through Congress, especially by the Copenhagen summit, will be a legislative headache.
Other nations, however, need to believe that the U.S. negotiating team can deliver on Obama’s promises at home — otherwise we’ll just keeping running around in circles.
By JEFF DONN MARTHA MENDOZA and JUSTIN PRITCHARD,Associated Press Writers AP – Monday, April 20
U.S. manufacturers, including major drugmakers, have legally released at least 271 million pounds of pharmaceuticals into waterways that often provide drinking water _ contamination the federal government has consistently overlooked, according to an Associated Press investigation.
Hundreds of active pharmaceutical ingredients are used in a variety of manufacturing, including drugmaking: For example, lithium is used to make ceramics and treat bipolar disorder; nitroglycerin is a heart drug and also used in explosives; copper shows up in everything from pipes to contraceptives.
Federal and industry officials say they don’t know the extent to which pharmaceuticals are released by U.S. manufacturers because no one tracks them _ as drugs. But a close analysis of 20 years of federal records found that, in fact, the government unintentionally keeps data on a few, allowing a glimpse of the pharmaceuticals coming from factories.
As part of its ongoing PharmaWater investigation about trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals in drinking water, AP identified 22 compounds that show up on two lists: the EPA monitors them as industrial chemicals that are released into rivers, lakes and other bodies of water under federal pollution laws, while the Food and Drug Administration classifies them as active pharmaceutical ingredients.
The data don’t show precisely how much of the 271 million pounds comes from drugmakers versus other manufacturers; also, the figure is a massive undercount because of the limited federal government tracking.
To date, drugmakers have dismissed the suggestion that their manufacturing contributes significantly to what’s being found in water. Federal drug and water regulators agree.
But some researchers say the lack of required testing amounts to a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy about whether drugmakers are contributing to water pollution.
“It doesn’t pass the straight-face test to say pharmaceutical manufacturers are not emitting any of the compounds they’re creating,” said Kyla Bennett, who spent 10 years as an EPA enforcement officer before becoming an ecologist and environmental attorney.
Pilot studies in the U.S. and abroad are now confirming those doubts.
Last year, the AP reported that trace amounts of a wide range of pharmaceuticals _ including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones _ have been found in American drinking water supplies. Including recent findings in Dallas, Cleveland and Maryland’s Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, pharmaceuticals have been detected in the drinking water of at least 51 million Americans.
Most cities and water providers still do not test. Some scientists say that wherever researchers look, they will find pharma-tainted water.
Consumers are considered the biggest contributors to the contamination. We consume drugs, then excrete what our bodies don’t absorb. Other times, we flush unused drugs down toilets. The AP also found that an estimated 250 million pounds of pharmaceuticals and contaminated packaging are thrown away each year by hospitals and long-term care facilities.
Researchers have found that even extremely diluted concentrations of drugs harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species. Also, researchers report that human cells fail to grow normally in the laboratory when exposed to trace concentrations of certain drugs. Some scientists say they are increasingly concerned that the consumption of combinations of many drugs, even in small amounts, could harm humans over decades.
Utilities say the water is safe. Scientists, doctors and the EPA say there are no confirmed human risks associated with consuming minute concentrations of drugs. But those experts also agree that dangers cannot be ruled out, especially given the emerging research.
___
Two common industrial chemicals that are also pharmaceuticals _ the antiseptics phenol and hydrogen peroxide _ account for 92 percent of the 271 million pounds identified as coming from drugmakers and other manufacturers. Both can be toxic and both are considered to be ubiquitous in the environment.
However, the list of 22 includes other troubling releases of chemicals that can be used to make drugs and other products: 8 million pounds of the skin bleaching cream hydroquinone, 3 million pounds of nicotine compounds that can be used in quit-smoking patches, 10,000 pounds of the antibiotic tetracycline hydrochloride. Others include treatments for head lice and worms.
Residues are often released into the environment when manufacturing equipment is cleaned.
A small fraction of pharmaceuticals also leach out of landfills where they are dumped. Pharmaceuticals released onto land include the chemo agent fluorouracil, the epilepsy medicine phenytoin and the sedative pentobarbital sodium. The overall amount may be considerable, given the volume of what has been buried _ 572 million pounds of the 22 monitored drugs since 1988.
In one case, government data shows that in Columbus, Ohio, pharmaceutical maker Boehringer Ingelheim Roxane Inc. discharged an estimated 2,285 pounds of lithium carbonate _ which is considered slightly toxic to aquatic invertebrates and freshwater fish _ to a local wastewater treatment plant between 1995 and 2006. Company spokeswoman Marybeth C. McGuire said the pharmaceutical plant, which uses lithium to make drugs for bipolar disorder, has violated no laws or regulations. McGuire said all the lithium discharged, an annual average of 190 pounds, was lost when residues stuck to mixing equipment were washed down the drain.
___
Pharmaceutical company officials point out that active ingredients represent profits, so there’s a huge incentive not to let any escape. They also say extremely strict manufacturing regulations _ albeit aimed at other chemicals _ help prevent leakage, and that whatever traces may get away are handled by onsite wastewater treatment.
“Manufacturers have to be in compliance with all relevant environmental laws,” said Alan Goldhammer, a scientist and vice president at the industry trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
Goldhammer conceded some drug residues could be released in wastewater, but stressed “it would not cause any environmental issues because it was not a toxic substance at the level that it was being released at.”
Several big drugmakers were asked this simple question: Have you tested wastewater from your plants to find out whether any active pharmaceuticals are escaping, and if so what have you found?
No drugmaker answered directly.
“Based on research that we have reviewed from the past 20 years, pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities are not a significant source of pharmaceuticals that contribute to environmental risk,” GlaxoSmithKline said in a statement.
AstraZeneca spokeswoman Kate Klemas said the company’s manufacturing processes “are designed to avoid, or otherwise minimize the loss of product to the environment” and thus “ensure that any residual losses of pharmaceuticals to the environment that do occur are at levels that would be unlikely to pose a threat to human health or the environment.”
One major manufacturer, Pfizer Inc., acknowledged that it tested some of its wastewater _ but outside the United States.
The company’s director of hazard communication and environmental toxicology, Frank Mastrocco, said Pfizer has sampled effluent from some of its foreign drug factories. Without disclosing details, he said the results left Pfizer “confident that the current controls and processes in place at these facilities are adequately protective of human health and the environment.”
It’s not just the industry that isn’t testing.
FDA spokesman Christopher Kelly noted that his agency is not responsible for what comes out on the waste end of drug factories. At the EPA, acting assistant administrator for water Mike Shapiro _ whose agency’s Web site says pharmaceutical releases from manufacturing are “well defined and controlled” _ did not mention factories as a source of pharmaceutical pollution when asked by the AP how drugs get into drinking water.
“Pharmaceuticals get into water in many ways,” he said in a written statement. “It’s commonly believed the majority come from human and animal excretion. A portion also comes from flushing unused drugs down the toilet or drain; a practice EPA generally discourages.”
His position echoes that of a line of federal drug and water regulators as well as drugmakers, who concluded in the 1990s _ before highly sensitive tests now used had been developed _ that manufacturing is not a meaningful source of pharmaceuticals in the environment.
Pharmaceutical makers typically are excused from having to submit an environmental review for new products, and the FDA has never rejected a drug application based on potential environmental impact. Also at play are pressures not to delay potentially lifesaving drugs. What’s more, because the EPA hasn’t concluded at what level, if any, pharmaceuticals are bad for the environment or harmful to people, drugmakers almost never have to report the release of pharmaceuticals they produce.
“The government could get a national snapshot of the water if they chose to,” said Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, “and it seems logical that we would want to find out what’s coming out of these plants.”
Ajit Ghorpade, an environmental engineer who worked for several major pharmaceutical companies before his current job helping run a wastewater treatment plant, said drugmakers have no impetus to take measurements that the government doesn’t require.
“Obviously nobody wants to spend the time or their dime to prove this,” he said. “It’s like asking me why I don’t drive a hybrid car? Why should I? It’s not required.”
___
After contacting the nation’s leading drugmakers and filing public records requests, the AP found two federal agencies that have tested.
Both the EPA and the U.S. Geological Survey have studies under way comparing sewage at treatment plants that receive wastewater from drugmaking factories against sewage at treatment plants that do not.
Preliminary USGS results, slated for publication later this year, show that treated wastewater from sewage plants serving drug factories had significantly more medicine residues. Data from the EPA study show a disproportionate concentration in wastewater of an antibiotic that a major Michigan factory was producing at the time the samples were taken.
Meanwhile, other researchers recorded concentrations of codeine in the southern reaches of the Delaware River that were at least 10 times higher than the rest of the river.
The scientists from the Delaware River Basin Commission won’t have to look far when they try to track down potential sources later this year. One mile from the sampling site, just off shore of Pennsville, N.J., there’s a pipe that spits out treated wastewater from a municipal plant. The plant accepts sewage from a pharmaceutical factory owned by Siegfried Ltd. The factory makes codeine.
“We have implemented programs to not only reduce the volume of waste materials generated but to minimize the amount of pharmaceutical ingredients in the water,” said Siegfried spokeswoman Rita van Eck.
Another codeine plant, run by Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Noramco Inc., is about seven miles away. A Noramco spokesman acknowledged that the Wilmington, Del., factory had voluntarily tested its wastewater and found codeine in trace concentrations thousands of times greater than what was found in the Delaware River. “The amounts of codeine we measured in the wastewater, prior to releasing it to the City of Wilmington, are not considered to be hazardous to the environment,” said a company spokesman.
In another instance, equipment-cleaning water sent down the drain of an Upsher-Smith Laboratories, Inc. factory in Denver consistently contains traces of warfarin, a blood thinner, according to results obtained under a public records act request. Officials at the company and the Denver Metro Wastewater Reclamation District said they believe the concentrations are safe.
Warfarin, which also is a common rat poison and pesticide, is so effective at inhibiting growth of aquatic plants and animals it’s actually deliberately introduced to clean plants and tiny aquatic animals from ballast water of ships.
“With regard to wastewater management we are subject to a variety of federal, state and local regulation and oversight,” said Joel Green, Upsher-Smith’s vice president and general counsel. “And we work hard to maintain systems to promote compliance.”
Baylor University professor Bryan Brooks, who has published more than a dozen studies related to pharmaceuticals in the environment, said assurances that drugmakers run clean shops are not enough.
“I have no reason to believe them or not believe them,” he said. “We don’t have peer-reviewed studies to support or not support their claims.”
___
Associated Press Writer Don Mitchell in Denver contributed to this report.
We let Chuck and The PE Do Our Shouting -
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Pigs confined in gestation cages (Photo: 
photo: 
Though it’s been billed as a new 
New York Times
Photo via 
Image credit: 
we highlight a few things we found tonite on the internet; that are all about What we are doing to our planet.. and a few that we need to consider.
MapsEco isn’t as fluffy as the 
we highlight a few things we found tonite on the internet; that are all about What we are doing to our planet.. and a few that we need to consider.
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