Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Thursday, October 4, 2007
As soon as I published yesterdays article I checked my inbox and found something quite interesting coming from our friends over at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). PEER is about Protecting Employees Who Protect Our Environment.
The title of the news release: PLANNED ARMY EXPANSION WILL INCREASE POLLUTION.
Army expansion? The U.S. Army calls it “force structure modifications”. At least that’s the working title for their ‘environmental impact statement’. The Army foresees this expansion as causing “high” to “very high” adverse effects on air pollution, soil erosion, water usage, energy consumption and a threat to wildlife, noise, air and surface traffic. In the cases where impact is “very high” there is no way to mitigate the impact.
The US Army has no legal obligation to minimize its impact on global warming. In essence though, the Army is an inextricable part of the government, and the government of the U.S. is of, for, and by the people; At least it is supposed to be.
The land the Army has already recently expanded Ft. Irwin in Southern California for larger tank training activities laying waste to even more soil. An oxymoron; destroying American soil, to defend American soil?
The draft for the Army plan (two words I don’t like to see together) includes adding approximately 30,000 combat support troops and adding up to six active duty combat brigades! 
Yikes. No small feat. They plan to expand 17 bases, by at least 1,000 more soldiers; 11 of which are west of the Mississippi.
Of those 11, perhaps most interesting is, these expansions are planned for bases located in the desert and fall south latitudinaly of America’s infamous Mason Dixon Line except for Yakima Training Center, Washington State.
Will the Mason Dixon Line once again represent conflict and the worst of times for America?
Most disturbing The U.S. Army repealed the federal regulations governing the Army’s impact on air, water and toxic waste pollution. The Army is left with only internal guidelines, which cannot be enforced.
In a July 20, 2007 Federal Register notice, the Army declares that environmental regulations governing the service are repealed effective immediately, offering the following cryptic yet obtuse rationale:
“The Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management…has concluded this regulation is obsolete. This regulation has been extensively revised and has been determined that the procedures prescribed in the regulation are for Army officials, and not intended to be enforced against any member of the public. As a result, the regulation does not affect the general public. Therefore, it would be helpful in avoiding confusion if 32 CFR Part 650 is removed.”
The message is yes, we want to avoid any confusion by informing the citizens, so we’ll help ourselves out here and just remove our need to tell them anything. Helpful indeed.
PEER Executive Director, Jeff Ruch “Incredibly, the Army contends that this does ‘not affect the general public’ and therefore the public will have no say in what anti-pollution rules the Army must follow.”
Not only is war bad for the environment, training for war is too. The fox is once again guarding the chicken coop.
Photo Thanks: NPS.gov, The Guttenberg Project
Labels: Army Expansion, Environment, Global Warming, Pollution, Public right, Toxin
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
U.S. Army Expansion Planned. Bad News for the Environment
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
When you count all the things that are known to cause damage to the earth’s protective Ozone layer Methyl Bromide is 50 times more destructive! In fact Methyl Bromide is a deadly neurotoxin. Methyl Bromide has also been linked to gene mutation, chromosome damage, and DNA damage.
More conservative estimates rate this compound at 3 to 5 times more damaging than CFC’s but, in either case if there were alternatives to the use of this agent…why in the world wouldn’t you use them?
Methyl Bromide is injected into soil before many crops such as grapes, almonds, strawberries and others are planted. The Methyl Bromide sterilizes the ground before crops are planted. After harvest this chemical is used to decontaminate products and storage product areas. It kills nematodes, insects, rodents and weeds. Methyl Bromide also kills the Ozone.
Here we have a deadly neurotoxin, a chemical that is classified as a category 1 compound by the EPA, the most deadly category of substances that is still being used, by the millions of tons, today. Yet in 93% of the applications of Methyl Bromide there are less toxic alternatives available. Why is it still being used?
Though this chemical has been banned under the Montreal Protocol, and there are other products that could be used as an alternative; the U.S. ask for and was granted ‘critical use exemptions’ by the Montreal Protocol. How much Methyl Bromide does the U.S. use?
The entire developed, in 2006 used 5,000 tones of Methyl Bromide. The U.S. received an exemption to use 8,000 tons. While fewer and fewer nations are requesting ‘critical use exemptions’ for its use, the U.S. continues to cry, “We need’, “We have no other choice”. The U.S. is submitting requests into the year 2009.
The U.S. is looking more and more like ‘Audry II’ from ‘The little shop of horrors’, screaming “Feed me”, and like O.J. still looking for the ‘real killers’, the U.S. seems still to be looking for ‘alternatives’ to Methyl Bromide use that other nations have apparently been able to locate.
This is bad stuff folks. Another enormous hole in the Ozone is growing over the Antarctic this week. In the past 2 years a hole the size of Europe has opened researchers fear that as spring comes to the southern hemisphere, so too will more holes in the Ozone.
Follow the money! If there are alternatives available why wouldn’t you use them?
The U.S. claims, affordable alternatives are not yet available.
Can we afford the alternative of giving the U.S. everything it cries for?
As Janos Mate of Greenpeace International points out, Italy, Greece and Spain have nearly eliminated their agricultural use of Methyl Bromide.
Photo: USDA.gov nematodes
Labels: Agriculture, EPA, Methyl Bromide, Ozone, Toxin, USA, neurotoxin
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Methyl Bromide the Ozone and the USA
Monday, August 13, 2007
Let’s see if we can wrap our minds around this scenario! It turns out that scientific studies have now proven exposure to BPA, bisphenol A, creates all kinds of reporductive ‘confussion’.
BPA is, but one more toxic chemical that has been absorbed into the envirnment and into humans…for generations. BPA is the substance used to create the slightly stiffer plastic items we use daily to take in much of our food and drink.
First let’s address only a few ways this toxin gets inside of us.
Many of the foods we eat come from cans that are coated on the inside with BPA to prevent the leaching of metal into the foods. We’re jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Speaking of heat, studies show that heating items that are made with BPA increases its ‘leaching’ or contamination with the BPA molecules. Millions of baby bottles are made with plastic containing BPA. As any parent knows baby bottles are continually exposed to heat. Many of todays water bottles are also manufactured using BPA. Beer and wine fermentation vats and even sealants used to protect children from cavities. The exposure to BPA is ubiquitous. There is no possilbe way for me to list all the ways this toxin is absorbed by humans.
To put the use of BPA into some perspective, more than 6 billion, that’s billion with a b, are produced yearly. The wide use of this chemical started in the 1950. Simply put, for more than a half century we have been slowly changeing the face of our own genitic make up, now reaching critical mass.
Now let’s look at just one ramification of BPA, which is quite simply amazing. Females reproductive eggs are established, formed and grown while still in the womb. When a woman has been exposed as we all have since the 1950’s to BPA, not only were our grandmothers eggs, ie, our parents who started growing their reproductive systems in utero and then in turn our own, but our children are now representing the 4th generation of BPA ’scrambled eggs’.
To understand this completely I’ve drawn a comparison from BPA in human ‘eggs’ to pearls. As a small particle of sand is at the core of a pearl, these BPA molecules are at the very beginning of the formation of our eggs and sperm. What BPA was absorbed by our grandmothers, was passed then in utero to our parents, this before they were ever exposed to any outside products containting BPA. You can see how the passing on, and the continuous exposoure of this chemical is having a cumulitive effect on all of us.
More than 700 published studies have been decrying the use of BPA. These studies have been summarily dismissed over the years by ‘experts’ in the field of plastics.
Studies have shown in lab rats that low doses of BPA have caused gender confussion. The feminazation of males, and the defeminazation of females, are giving the scientific community great cause for concern. Females when exposed to far lower doses of BPA than the equivilant ‘recomended safe’ exposure to humans caused them to take on masquline traits such as agression, sexual prowess and a lack of maternal nurturing towards their offspring. The females spent far less time in the nest, and took on male traits.
Bisphenol A is only one of far too many toxins we are exposing ourselves and future generations to that are used by us daily. It’s time for us to start turning the tide back to clean wholesome glass containers for our food and drink.
Labels: BPA, Bisphenol, Feminization, Human Reproduction, Plastic, Poison, Toxin
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Gay by Nature or Nurture debate takes a backseat to environmental toxins!
