Gary Works is an extensive steelmaking complex that sits on approximately 3,000 acres along the south shore of Lake Michigan just 15 miles southeast of Chicago. It is known as the number one polluter in the Lake Michigan basin and the third largest throughout all of the Great Lakes. In fact, U.S. Steel reported dumping more than 1.7 million pounds of pollution into the Grand Calumet in 2005, the last year for which figures are available.
Photo credit: Kuranosuke Oishi via Creative Commons
In 2006, Americans spent roughly $15 billion on bottled water. That’s more than we spent on movie theater tickets and ipods. While $15 billion seems staggering, also consider the fact that we pitched roughly 38 billion plastic water bottles into our landfills.
The ever-growing bottle water industry is not only taking a toll on our wallets, it is also having an impact on our environment. When you consider that 24% of the bottled water we buy is actually just tap water that is repackaged and sold by companies like Coke and Pepsi, we really need to ask ourselves: Is it worth it?
Photo Credit: Adam Cohn
Just south of Liangqiao, in southern China’s Guangdong province is the small village of Shangba. On the surface, this community of roughly 3,300 appears to be a tranquil, rural village comprised of sugar cane fields and plentiful rice paddies.
When a closer look is taken, the people of Shangba have been living with a malevolent curse for years. In fact, this town is now known as “Village of Death.” It has earned this name because, over time, cancer has claimed the lives of approximately 80 percent of the Shangba townspeople. It seems that no one living in Shangba, young or old, is safe from the threat of cancer.
Since 1987, there have been more than 250 confirmed cancer-related deaths. The majority of cancers have involved the liver and digestive system. Along with cancer, a significant number of Shangba citizens also suffer from skin disorders and kidney stones.
Texas A&M University in College Station Texas,1 has been conducting research into so-called "select agents," i.e. biological agents that the government thinks can be turned into biological weapons. The university's efforts are part of an $18 billion federal program to develop vaccines.
On April 20, 2007 the Centers for Disease Control — the CDC — issued a cease-and-desist order for Texas A&M's work with the Brucella bacterium.2 On June 30, the order was expanded to include all work with select agents and toxins.3 The CDC then conducted a five-day comprehensive inspection of the A&M labs and issued a report4 on August 31 listing numerous flaws in oversight, working conditions, and security, including missing vials of select agents, unauthorized research with recombinant DNA, access to the lab by unauthorized personnel, and exposures of lab workers to bacteria that cause brucellosis and Q fever that went unreported to the CDC.
The federal government wants to do nuclear weapons testing and bio-warfare agent experimentation on Site 300, near the city of Tracy, California. Tracy, 19 miles from Livermore, home of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, is in the northern part of California's San Joaquin Valley, some of the world's most fertile farmland. It is a fast-growing city of the outer San Francisco Bay Area. The 2000 census pegged the population at just over 56,000 people. Five years later, a new estimate found that Tracy had added over 20,000 people.1
A 5,500-unit housing development is planned for an area only 1 mile from the fence line of Site 300.2 Like its neighbors in the Bay Area, Tracy is in earthquake country. The Black Butte Fault, the Midway Fault, the Carnegie Corral Fault and the San Joaquin Fault are all sources of seismic hazard in the immediate area. And Tracy would be endangered by a "well-placed" quake along the San Andreas, Hayward, or Calaveras faults.3