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You really only read what you want to don't you.

You're not going to find perfectly organic food anywhere, I'm sorry to say. You're not going to find food that's as nutritious as it should be either. I'm a firm believer in taking plenty of vitamins and minerals to supplement your food supply. Niacin is especially good at flushing toxins from your system. Even if, theoretically, you had a toxin-free food supply somehow, there are still plenty of toxins in the air you breathe, and it's not like you have much choice where that comes from, is it?

Duke Stratosphere wrote:

Niacin is especially good at flushing toxins from your system. Even if, theoretically, you had a toxin-free food supply somehow, there are still plenty of toxins in the air you breathe, and it's not like you have much choice where that comes from, is it?

Every chemical different. Some "toxins", like acrylamide, accumulate in the body but aren't considered extremely hazardous. Others, like arsenic, lead, and mercury, are extremely hazardous, depending on the level and the compound they're found in. It only took only a tiny amount of dimethyl mercury to kill a lab worker.

Wetterhahn later recalled spilling a drop of dimethylmercury, possibly more, on her gloved hand. Test showed subsequently that this would have penetrated the glove and started entering her skin within 15 seconds. It is now accepted that the only safe precaution to take when handling this compound is to wear highly resistant laminated gloves underneath a pair of long-cuffed neoprene (or other heavy duty) gloves.

Why is dimethylmercury toxic?

It is one of the most potent neurotoxins known. It readily crosses the blood-brain barrier, probably due to its formation of a methylmercury-cysteine complex. It causes ataxia (lack of coordination), sensory disturbance and changes in mental state. It inhibits several stages of neurotransmission in the brain. It is a cumulative poison, being very slowly removed (excreted) from the body, and by the time its effects are noted it is too late to do anything about it.

In the early 1950s, inhabitants of the seaside town of Minamata, on Kyushu island in Japan, noticed strange behaviour in animals. Cats would exhibit nervous tremors, dance and scream. Within a few years this was observed in other animals; birds would drop out of the sky. Symptoms were also observed in fish, an important component of diet, especially for the poor. When human symptoms started to be noticed around 1956 an investigation began. Fishing was officially banned in 1957. It was found that the Chisso Corporation, a petrochemical company and maker of plastics such as vinyl chloride, had been discharging heavy metal waste into the sea. They used mercury compounds as catalysts in their syntheses. It is believed that over 1400 people were killed and perhaps 20000 have been poisoned to a lesser extent.

How did this happen?

Methylcobalamin, a coenzyme form of Vitamin B12, is capable of methylating "inorganic" mercury compounds to form CH3Hg+(aq), also by methylation of mercury itself. The actual mercury species present in solution may be CH3HgOH. The CH3Hg+(aq) ion is absorbed by plankton, which is in turn eaten by small fish. The fish eat so much of the contaminated plankton, and they excrete the mercury so slowly, that it gradually builds up in their systems. The small fish are then eaten by larger fish, and the concentration of mercury in the organism increases each time. Animals and humans eating these larger fish concentrate the mercury even more, so that the final concentration in animals higher up the food chain (such as humans) can be thousands or millions of times larger than was present in the original water. This process is known as "biomagnification".

link

"Clean Air" bill, my ass.

Hell, we should hook that up to a turbine and call it clean energy.

XYZ wrote:

Does everyone know that Bush's somewhat recent mercury pollution regulation makes utilities exempt? Utilities are the largest source of mercury pollution, at least in the air, and Clinton brought them under regulation. In his effort to "fight mercury pollution, Bush exempted them.

How about some swordfish, everyone?

Are you saying that the Clean Air Act no longer regulates mercury pollution emitted by utilities?  Because I know that isn't true.  For that matter, I'm pretty sure it wasn't Clinton who "brought them under regulation."  AFAIK, the CAA regulated them since passage in 1990.

Last edited by charon (2006-03-14 10:36 am)

Two steps need to be taken immediately: Congress should investigate the apparent cover-up, and it must impose its own stricter mercury standards if the EPA refuses to do so. Inaction will only put public health at risk.

The EPA's secrecy was detailed in a Washington Post story last week that revealed agency officials were aware that a Harvard study had directly contradicted the agency's findings on mercury pollution standards. In fact, EPA had paid for the Harvard analysis, an EPA scientist had co-authored it, and other EPA scientists had peer-reviewed it.

The Harvard study had found that the health and economic benefits of tough new mercury pollution controls would far exceed the costs that utilities would face when installing them, and by extension, the cost to consumers in the form of higher electric bills. But when EPA announced its new rules, it said just the opposite -- that the cost of strict new controls would exceed any health benefits to the public.

Expressed in hard cash terms, the EPA estimated that tough new standards would produce only $50 million in health benefits a year -- mainly in the form of lower medical costs to treat mercury-related illnesses -- while the cost to industry to install the scrubbing technology necessary to curb emissions would be more than $750 million. But the Harvard study found the benefits to be nearly $5 billion a year, mainly in reduced costs for medical care for neurological and cardiac disorders.

Mercury is one of the smokestack pollutants emitted by utilities. Some of this pollution drifts over the Northeast and contributes to acid rain, which kills lakes and forests in the Adirondacks. But mercury tends to accumulate haphazardly on the ground -- heavy concentrations in one area, barely traces in another -- and washes into waterways, where it is ingested by fish and works it way into the human food chain.

Now the EPA is stammering to explain why it kept the Harvard findings under wrap.

So, it seems clear that Bush's "tough new stance on Mercury" is a give-away to the utilities. Not only is mercury pollution not being regulated as it should be, Bush took away the regulation of the other pollutants coming from them.

Last edited by XYZ (2006-03-14 2:36 pm)

I love how Clinton signs new tougher restrictions his last week in office, Bush repeals them, and the story is Bush made our air dirtier.

Last edited by Farmerkev (2006-03-14 3:19 pm)

sturner wrote:

Any worse than Bush the First sends Marines and Army into Somalia, and leaves it to Clinton to figure out how to get them out?

Except for it was at the request of the UN, about the same.

XYZ wrote:

I was a bit off. It's not utility mercury pollution that the EPA no longer regulates, it's all the other pollutants that come from them.

You're still off.  Just because utilities aren't listed as "major sources" does not mean that they go unregulated, under the Clean Air Act.  Notably, any utility that produces a sufficient amount of hazardous pollutant within an area can be regulated as an "area source."  Once I get home I can point out the relevant statutes/regulations.

Last edited by charon (2006-03-14 3:49 pm)

Do you contend the Times Union article is wrong?

Mercury and Money wrote:

It now turns out that when the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled its proposed new rules on mercury pollution earlier this month, it did more than disappoint environmentalists and some public officials who were hoping for more stringent measures. It also ignored the advice, and the findings, of its own agency. And it kept the information from the public.

(the rest of the article is already quoted)

It's your job to provide the link, not mine to search for it.  I'm done asking.

oatmeal wrote:

12) Do not plagiarize.
- Plagiarize, as defined by the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary is
         transitive senses : to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own :
                                                  use (another's production) without crediting the source
         intransitive senses : to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source
- Don't do it.  Any thread that starts with plagiarism will be locked as soon as the theft is discovered and the person who stole another's idea will be exposed.
- Cite your source when you quote something from another website; include a link back to the source whenever possilble.