Hi, All You Tree-Huggers!
As usual, when people talk about the "good old days" they
leave out some of the relevant information. Like the fact that
there was an amazing amount of smoke in the air and crud in the
water. Up through the 1950's, people didn't worry much about the
environment. American industrial cities had gotten pretty stinky
- and unhealthy. Then people looked around and noticed that
there were hardly any places left to dump things that weren't
already polluted. That all started to change with the passage of
laws regulating pollution in the 1960's. While no one can claim
that the rivers and lakes and air in our cities are just as clean
as a wilderness area, they have improved. At least to the point
where they aren't immediately fatal on contact.
Not that the laws haven't introduce their own
complications... I was looking at a bottle of Pine-Sol cleaner
the other day, and happened to notice this warning from the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): "It is a violation of
federal law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its
labeling." So exactly what does that mean? Are the
environmental cops really going to show up at the door if I mix
the stuff a little strong?
Thanks this week to our friends and contributors who always
make our life a little cleaner: Brian Siegl, Diana Lee, Beth
Butler, Jerry Taff, Fumiko Umino, Bruce Gonzo, Kerry Miller,
Larry Sakar, Jack Gervais, Tim McChain, R.J. Tully, Carol Becwar,
Junji & Miki Taniguchi, Jan Michalski, Joshua Brink, Sharon
Nuernberg, Paul Roser, Mark Becwar and Marshall R. O'Keefe, King
of All Yap. After I finish this, I'm going to surf on over to
the EPA's web site and check on those rules about cleaning
products. I'd certainly hate to end up doing time on a Pine-Sol
rap.
Have A Really Clean Week,
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IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN...
-------------------------
Two retired men from Ellsworth, New Hampshire found out
first hand just how complicated environmental laws can be.
On their own time, Frank Barilone and Ted Matte helped to
clean up and haul away tons of trash and debris from Ellsworth
Pond Beach, which took an entire day. Besides the usual bottles
and cans, the pair of sixty-year-olds cleaned up the area by
removing at least three derelict boats, along with a collapsed
boat house and shed that had been long used as a trash dump.
Though they didn't expect any reward for their clean-up efforts,
the U.S. Forest Service gave them one anyway.
The feds fined the men $150 each for "maintaining the
national forest without a permit."
"I have no intention of paying that fine. I'll go to jail
first," Barilone said. "It's the principle of it."
The town of Ellsworth agreed, with all 50 full-time
residents promising to show up in court if the matter ever goes
to trial. And former U.S. Congressman Louis Wyman said that he
would represent Barilone free of charge.
Apparently, the rules are so complex that the Forest Service
doesn't understand them, either. The land the two men cleaned up
does not belong to the U.S. government. That property is outside
of the national forest and is actually part of the town of
Ellsworth. Last we heard, the town was now threatening to fine
the Forest Service for allowing the property to become so grubby
in the first place. (AP)
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THINK MINK?
----------
The animal-rights people are kind of a curious crowd. As
with any group, a few of them take things a little to far. In
this case, too far was England.
Upset that minks were being raised for their fur by local
farmers, a group of animal-liberation protestors stole onto a
mink farm in southern England late one night and set the animals
free. All 6,500 of them.
That was illegal, of course. It was also stupid.
The activists were apparently thinking of mink as the cute
little strips of fur with beady eyes that used to hang around on
your great aunt's collar. Real, living mink are curious, vicious
hunters and voracious eaters. Driven by hunger, the mink killed
hundreds of domestic pets and farm animals and devastated local
bird populations. Fearful parents even had to keep their
children inside, afraid that even the kids were not safe from the
weasely predators. The marauding mink took a local bird
sanctuary as their private restaurant, killing dozens of rare
birds, including three extremely rare owls.
A group called Animal Liberation Front is believed
responsible for the mink release from the Crow Hill Farm,
although no one has stepped forward to formally take
responsibility. You would have thought they'd learn after one
ecological disaster, but the same group was apparently
responsible for releasing another 8,000 mink at another fur farm.
"Wanted Dead or Alive: 3,000 Vicious Killers" said the
headline in London's "Daily Telegraph," as groups of farmers took
to blasting the mink on sight with shotguns. (BBC)
[ So much for saving them from a fate worse
than death... ]
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PILING ONE TROUBLE ON ANOTHER...
-----------------------------
Think that there couldn't be any downside to cleaner water?
While it is hard to imagine that pollution could in any way be
positive, parts of New York City may not survive a cleaner
environment.
The trouble is gribbles.
These wood-eating crustaceans, also known as limnoria, have
always been present in New York's East River. Until recently
though, pollution kept the gribble population low. As the water
around New York has become cleaner, the number of the shrimp-like
sea termites have blossomed. That is natural, of course, but
lately the gribbles have developed a taste for the submerged
pilings that hold up Franklin Delano Roosevelt Drive along the
eastern edge of Manhattan. While there is no immediate safety
problem, the city and state have committed $6 million to study
how to keep that major highway from taking a dive into New York
Harbor. (Reuters)
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TRIPPED OVER HIMSELF?
--------------------
Environment minister and MP Alan Meale demonstrated his
commitment to the environment earlier this year when he appeared
to give a speech at a conference in Peterborough, England. Meale
showed up at the conference in an environmentally-unfriendly
stretch Lincoln limousine that gets less than 17 miles per gallon
(less than 7km/liter).
Meale was in Peterborough to deliver a speech to local
officials about how "the way we travel is damaging our towns,
harming our countryside and is already changing the climate of
the planet." (Reuters)
[ From the "Do as I say, not as I do" school
of political thought... ]
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NOT THE SEAT OF THE PROBLEM?
---------------------------
According to Pat Rusin and her team of researchers at the
University of Arizona, the toilet seat is actually one of the
least bacteria-laden surfaces in the home. In results published
in the June, 1998 issue of New Scientist magazine, Rusin said
that three times as many bacteria were found on kitchen cutting
boards and a million times more on dishcloths. Rusin surmised
that the toilet seat's nonporous surface keeps it so dry that
bacteria have difficulty surviving.
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AND TO DUST YOU SHALL RETURN...
----------------------------
Sometimes, when dusting the furniture, people have wondered
where all of that dust comes from. After years of study,
scientists finally have the answer: It's from Africa.
In one of the more curious findings, the scientists
discovered that about half of the dust in the air people breathe
in the southeastern U.S. originates across the Atlantic in
Africa.
Reporting in the Journal of Geophysical Research, dust
scientist Joseph Prospero of the University of Miami also showed
that the soil in Bermuda contains what looks like dust from
Africa, and has little dust with North American origins.
(Reuters)
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COL. SANDERS DEFENDS THE BORDER
-------------------------------
Concerned with the spread of deadly West Nile virus in
neighboring New York State, Canada took some unusual methods to
protect its border. The virus killed seven and made forty-six
people sick when it struck New York last year.
New Scientist magazine reported that the Canadian
authorities put out chickens as boarder guards to see if
mosquitoes that carry the disease have invaded from the south.
Since birds act as a vector of the disease, the hope is that any
sickness of the chickens will give advance warning of human
infection. (Reuters)
[ I can see the headline now - "CANADA
CHICKENS OUT!" ]
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CHECKING THE CELL STRUCTURE
---------------------------
Cellular telephone companies have disguised transmission
towers as pine trees and hidden them in church steeples, but the
latest camouflage is an even closer match to the natural
environment around the towers. Several Phoenix-area cell phone
towers are being built inside giant fake saguaro cactuses.
U.S. West built the first fake cactus along a Phoenix-area
freeway in 1998. Now the suburb of Fountain Hills is asking AT&T
to copy the technology for two new towers in town. And cellular
competitor Sprint also wants to incorporate the design on future
cell towers.
Disguising the phone towers is a response to complaints by
residents who think the plain towers are plain ugly. The faux
cacti are designed to blend with real ones, with a sun-blotched
appearance, spiny arms and holes similar to woodpecker burrows.
The are actually made of fiberglass and cost about $35,000.
[ I suppose you could call the fake cacti
'Phonies.' ]
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HAVING ONE WHALE OF A TIME...
--------------------------
Adventurer Michael Reppy of Sausalito, California intends to
sail the Pacific to save the whales. Now if he can only get the
whales to cooperate...
Reppy was trying to set a new record for solo sailing across
the Pacific from San Francisco, California to Yokohama. His
intention was to publicize the plight of whales and other sea
mammals and the threats to their natural environment. And the
whales seemed to be present all around his 60-foot (20-meter)
ocean racer named "Thursday's Child." It made for some
wonderful, exciting pictures, right up to the point where one of
the whales collided with the sailing ship, ripping off part of
the rudder. Reppy wasn't immediately sure there had been any
damage in the collision, but gradually came to the realization
that he had been hit by a whale.
"I feel stupid ... for taking so long to find which is
obviously the cause of the steering problems I have been having,"
Reppy said in his log, posted on the trip's Web site at:
http://www.tchild.org "And of course there is the irony of
sailing to save whales and running into them."
Reppy was forced to abandon his cross-Pacific run and head
for Hawaii for repairs to his yacht. (Reuters)
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A CLEANER ENVIRONMENT? NO, IT'S NOT IN THE BAG...
-----------------------------------------------
Oops! The Dutch Environmental Ministry found that the 4,500
leather bicycle saddlebags they had presented to employees as a
Christmas present were an environmental hazard themselves.
"The bags contain higher amounts of cadmium than is allowed
under the law on environmentally hazardous substances," the
ministry said.
The toxic metal was used to treat the bags' leather to make
it more pliable. While the bags were not an immediate risk to
the environment, they could harm the environment once they were
thrown away. The ministry recalled the bags and promised they
would be discarded safely.
"Our staff will get new saddlebags when they hand in their
original one," a spokesman said. (Reuters)
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© 2000 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.
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