by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 14, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Repression at Home, Toxification
By Maura Stephens
Pennsylvania’s state legislature has effectively signed a death warrant for some number of residents, who knows how many. Corbett’s about to make it official.
Pennsylvanians: Fight back — or suffer the consequences.
The fracking industry has written a bill that gives itself legal permission to poison Pennsylvanians-and keeps doctors who treat them once they’re poisoned from telling anyone else what poisoned them. The bill also essentially permits all gas drilling and processing activities anywhere, including in residential areas.
It’s all being sold as an “impact fee” bill. Counties that want the income will sign on — and that probably means most counties will.
The industry was helped in this covert operation by crooks in political office. Those political criminals should be held accountable (more on this below).
The 174-page bill, HB1950, was signed in both the House and Senate of the state’s General Assembly, and on Friday (2/10/12) the Senate passed it to Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett for signature.
This is yet the latest egregious example of industry-state denial of municipalities’ right to protect themselves. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that this is the legal permitting of murder — and legalization of coerced suicide.
There can be no question that the legislators who signed it are in collusion with industry. They are corrupt. There can be no other explanation. These people have an obligation to protect the citizens of Pennsylvania, and not only are they not doing so, but they are also denying citizens the right to protect themselves—and denying physicians and nurses the ability to protect their patients!
And if this outrage does not get Pennsylvanians (and everyone) out in the streets, in Harrisburg at the governor’s mansion demanding a veto, and at the offices of state legislators, demanding a reversal of the bill’s passage, I do not know what will.
As Berks-Mont News reported on January 25, Pennsylvania municipalities currently do “have the legal right to decide where and how gas development occurs. Both the Municipalities Planning Code and the State Constitution vest municipalities with the authority and responsibility to address local environmental and public resources. State Supreme Court rulings have also made it clear that the state Oil and Gas Act allows municipalities the right to use zoning codes to restrict the location of gas wells.”
This law negates those rights and completely strips communities of their rights to self govern. This is a blatant abrogation of the United States constitution and all the hackneyed assertions that We the People have any say any longer in crafting U.S. law.
Read more from TruthOut:
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 14, 2012 | Toxification
By Bernice Yeung / Huffington Post
Southern Californians are among those at highest risk of death due to air pollution, according to recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency research published in the journal Risk Analysis.
The study, published last month, was conducted to “provide insight to the size and location of public health risks associated with recent levels of fine particles and ozone, allowing decision-makers to better target air quality policies,” the federal agency said in a statement responding to California Watch inquiries.
“While overall levels of fine particles and ozone have declined significantly in the past two decades, these two pollutants still pose a burden to public health,” the EPA statement said.
The study examined air pollution exposure based on 2005 air quality levels and projected there could be between 130,000 and 360,000 premature deaths among adults in coming years. The 2005 data was the best available for analyzing fine particulates and ozone, the EPA said. Among vulnerable populations like children, the EPA also estimates that fine particulate matter and ozone results in millions of cases of respiratory symptoms, asthma and school absences, as well as hundreds of thousands of cases of acute bronchitis and emergency room visits.
The analysis also found that Southern Californians and residents of the industrial Midwest experience the highest exposure to fine particulate matter, which has been found to exacerbate respiratory illnesses and increase heart attacks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Among the most populated areas of the country, Los Angeles had the highest estimated rate of deaths attributable to air pollution, at nearly 10 percent; San Jose had the lowest at 3.5 percent.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District conducted a similar risk assessment last year and found that about 1,700 premature deaths can be attributed to fine particulate matter in the Bay Area each year, which is about 3.8 percent of all deaths.
Particulate matter is made up of extremely small particles and liquid droplets that are 2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller – which means they have a width 30 times smaller than a human hair. Common sources of fine particulate matter, often referred to as PM 2.5, are forest fires and emissions from power plants, industrial sources and cars. Unhealthy forms of ozone are created when nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) react in the presence of sunlight; ozone is typically linked to byproducts from industrial facilities and electric utilities, car exhaust, gas vapors and chemical solvents.
Local air districts in Southern California and the Bay Area have attempted to limit fine particulate matter and ozone emissions through Spare the Air days by regulating wood burning and offering financial incentives to businesses to phase out the use of diesel engines.
Public health advocates say that the EPA study illustrates the importance of improving air quality and that these types of studies on the risks of air pollution have been used to determine federal regulations and inform local clean air plans.
“One of the hardest things to explain to the public is that while the air is cleaner, we continue to find that we have underestimated the health effects of breathing in air pollution,” said Joe Lyou, president and CEO of the Coalition for Clean Air and a governing board member of the South Coast Air Quality Management District. “Yes, we have made significant accomplishments, but we still have a long way to go. The public needs to understand that this is a life-and-death situation.”
From The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/13/southern-california-air-pollution_n_1273348.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 13, 2012 | Agriculture, Toxification
By Reuters
A French court on Monday declared U.S. biotech giant Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning of a French farmer, a judgment that could lend weight to other health claims against pesticides.
In the first such case heard in court in France, grain grower Paul Francois, 47, says he suffered neurological problems including memory loss, headaches and stammering after inhaling Monsanto’s Lasso weedkiller in 2004.
He blames the agri-business giant for not providing adequate warnings on the product label.
The ruling was given by a court in Lyon, southeast France, which ordered an expert opinion of Francois’s losses to establish the amount of damages.
“It is a historic decision in so far as it is the first time that a (pesticide) maker is found guilty of such a poisoning,” François Lafforgue, Francois’s lawyer, told Reuters.
Monsanto said it was disappointed by the ruling and would examine whether to appeal the judgment.
“Monsanto always considered that there were not sufficient elements to establish a causal relationship between Paul Francois’s symptoms and a potential poisoning,” the company’s lawyer, Jean-Philippe Delsart, said.
Previous health claims from farmers have foundered because of the difficulty of establishing clear links between illnesses and exposure to pesticides.
Francois and other farmers suffering from illness set up an association last year to make a case that their health problems should be linked to their use of crop protection products.
The agricultural branch of the French social security system says that since 1996, it has gathered farmers’ reports of sickness potentially related to pesticides, with about 200 alerts a year.
But only about 47 cases have been recognised as due to pesticides in the past 10 years. Francois, who suffers from neurological problems, obtained work invalidity status only after a court appeal.
Read more from Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/13/france-pesticides-monsanto-idUSL5E8DD5UG20120213
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 11, 2012 | Toxification
By AFP
It is the nation’s second water pollution scare in a month, after factories in the southern region of Guangxi contaminated water supplies for millions with toxic cadmium and other waste in January.
The ship, reportedly South Korean, was docked in Zhenjiang city on the Yangtze river last Thursday when it leaked phenol — an acid used in detergents — into the water because of a faulty valve, local authorities reported.
Residents started complaining their tap water had a strange smell on Friday, and soon rumours that a capsized ship was polluting the river sparked a run on bottled water in at least two cities in Jiangsu province, the Shanghai Daily said.
One photo carried by the official China Daily newspaper showed a supermarket shelf stripped nearly bare as a customer loaded water bottles into a shopping cart.
The water quality had now returned to normal, the government of Zhenjiang, in Jiangsu, said in a statement late Tuesday.
A resident in the city of three million told AFP the run on water appeared to have eased on Wednesday.
“There was panic buying of bottled water for a couple of days. But it stopped after we received a government notice clarifying that the tap water is safe now,” the resident, who declined to be named, told AFP.
Zhenjiang officials would not comment when contacted by AFP on Wednesday. The South Korean Consulate in Shanghai, meanwhile, said it was not aware of the incident.
Phenol — also called carbolic acid — can irritate the eyes and skin, damage the liver and kidneys, and impair the nervous system if absorbed, according to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The incident comes hot on the heels of the more serious environmental scandal in Guangxi, where a 300-kilometre (190-mile) section of the Longjiang River was polluted by toxic cadmium and other waste.
Read more at Physorg: http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-yangtze-river-pollution-panic-china.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 11, 2012 | Toxification
By the Associated Press
CARACAS, Venezuela — Crude oil that spilled from a ruptured pipeline has blackened a river in eastern Venezuela, and the state oil company said workers are containing the spill.
Workers have removed a “good percentage of the crude” from the Guarapiche River in Monagas state, said Ramiro Ramirez, environmental director of state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA.
Ramirez told the state-run Venezuelan News Agency on Friday that workers have been using absorbent barriers to block the crude in the river. He said they have also shut off water intakes along the river, where a drinking water purification plant is located.
State oil company officials said a pipe that transports crude to a processing plant ruptured on Feb. 4. Ramirez didn’t say how much crude has spilled. He said officials were investigating what caused the accident.
Gov. Jose Gregorio Briceno said earlier in the week that the government had declared an emergency in Monagas state after the spill forced officials to halt normal water distribution to parts of the city of Maturin, the Venezuela television station Globovision reported.
Briceno said classes have been canceled at schools in affected areas, and public offices have reduced hours due to the water supply problems.
From the Washington Post:
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 10, 2012 | NEWS, Toxification
By Agence France-Presse
The U.S. approved its first new nuclear power reactors in decades on Thursday, despite objections from the country’s top regulator that safety issues raised by last year’s Fukushima meltdown were not fully addressed.
Commissioners of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 4-1 to approve the construction of two 1,100 megawatt Westinghouse-Toshiba AP1000 at power generator Southern Co.’s existing nuclear facility in Vogtle, Georgia.
The dissenter was the NRC chairman, Gregory Jaczko, who argued for the need for “binding commitments” that the builders would implement design fixes to fully address risks exposed by the crisis at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant after the March 11 earthquake-tsunami disaster.
“I cannot support issuing this license as if Fukushima has never happened… In my view that is what we are doing,” he said.
But other commissioners said such a commitment was not necessary and that the safety concerns Jaczko had would be addressed.
The approval gave the go-ahead for the $14 billion project near Waynesboro, Georgia, seven years after Southern Co. first applied for permission.
Construction at the site is well under way, and Southern said the first reactor could be running by 2016 and the second a year later.
“Today is an historic day,” Southern Co.’s president Thomas Fanning said after the decision.
“These two new units will set the standard for safety and efficiency in the nuclear industry.”
The design of the Westinghouse reactor was approved in December after lengthy delays to address risks of terror attacks post September 11, 2001 and to address some concerns about meltdowns like those at Fukushima.
The design is supposed to be able to withstand the impact of a large aircraft being crashed into it.
It also is required to have passive shutdown capabilities in case of disaster. In Fukushima the reactors failed to shut down, and evacuated workers could not manually stop them, after a loss of external power prevented the reactors’ cooling system from working.
The result was the worst disaster in the nuclear industry since Chernobyl in 1986, with blasts, fires and reactor meltdowns sending radiation levels in the surrounding region to extremely dangerous levels.
It also raised safety concerns over nuclear energy around the world, causing countries like Germany to begin turning away from nuclear energy.
High costs and safety worries have stifled expansion of the U.S. nuclear power industry since Chernobyl.
The last NRC construction approval for a plant was in 1978; the last reactor to start up was in 1996.
NRC commissioner Kristine Svinicki insisted that the lessons of Fukushima were not being ignored in the approval Thursday.
“There is no amnesia, individually or collectively,” she said.
The commitments Jaczko wanted “would not improve our systematic regulatory approach to these events… Nor would it make in our view any difference in the operational safety of the new reactors.”
Fanning said that the company would meet Jaczko’s concerns.
“The lessons of Fukushima are taken into account every day and will be taken into account for years to come,” he told reporters.
“Anything that we learn from Fukushima I assure you we will bring to bear on our operations here.”
He added that unlike in Fukushima the Vogtle plant was located far away from the coastline and not vulnerable to tsunamis.
“We are not in a seismically sensitive area,” he added.
From Rawstory: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/09/u-s-approves-first-nuclear-plant-in-decades/
