Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Pesticides & Other Chemicals

Keeping Carbon Dioxide in the Soda – or Not

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YESTERDAY the US President, Barrack Obama, urged action to curb “dangerous carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink”.

If you consider carbon dioxide a “dangerous contaminate” and want to get rid of the carbon dioxide in say the soda, before you drink it, then shake the bottle first. Fizzing allows dissolved carbon dioxide gas to be released in the form of bubbles. 

But here’s a dilemma, since the fizz in the soda is actually dissolved carbon dioxide gas, shouldn’t you really be trying to keep as much of the gas in the bottle as possible as suggested by US scientists, Steve Spangler?  [Read more…] about Keeping Carbon Dioxide in the Soda – or Not

European Union to Ban Lots of Pesticides

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The European Union (EU) is developing a new ‘Thematic Strategy for Pesticides’ including a proposed new ‘Sustainable Use Directive’.  According to the UK’s Pesticide Safety Directorate the new regulation could outlaw up to 85 percent of pesticides currently used by farmers and render conventional agriculture as it is currently practised unachievable.  Professor Sir Colin Berry, Emeritus Professor of Pathology at Queen Mary College, University of London,  has described the European Parliament’s document in support of the legislation as “simply an apologia for a position, not a scientific review.”

The proposal will see the EU go from a risk-based assessment of chemicals to a hazard-based one.

Lead Poisoning in Australian Children

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ELEVEN per cent of Mount Isa children have lead poisoning, a Queensland Health study has confirmed.

The results, released today in Mt Isa, confirm stories in The Australian in recent weeks and years.

The study shows that of 400 children aged one to four in the mining town, 45 had blood levels higher than 10 micrograms per decilitre.

Read more here: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23741342-601,00.html

story via: Stephen T. Thanks.

Eco-Freaks: A New Book by John Berlau (Part 1, DDT)

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I occasionally get emails from the other side of the world with a query about something environmental that is uniquely Australian.

It was not so many years ago that John Berlau emailed me about the Murray River and also bushfires. He was writing a book. It’s now published. Called ‘Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism is Hazardous to Your Health’ the book includes chapters on DDT, Asbestos and Hurricane Katrina.

I’ve only read the first three chapters. There could be something in the following few about the Murray River and Australia or he may be saving that for another book.

Anyway, while the focus in ‘Eco-Freaks’ is on America, the issues Berlau chooses to explore are relevant to the whole world.

The second chapter on DDT, and entitled ‘Rachel Carson Kills Birds’, will have Tim Lambert in a spin. In fact Berlau references Lambert’s blog ‘Deltoid’ (footnote number 128). But it’s not complementary.

I have read a lot about DDT, Rachel Carson and environmentalism, but I still learnt a lot from that chapter.

And I was amused by the anecdotal. In particular, that Joseph Jacobs, a chemist who worked to mass-produce DDT to protect American troops during World War II, ended up with DDT poured over him when the valve at the bottom of a large vessel was accidentally opened. In his autobiography, Jacobs wrote:

“When it dried, I had DDT an inch thick all over me. In my hair, in my ears, and in my mouth and nose. I took off my clothes, showered, and scrubbed, but probably ingested more DDT during that one incident than is today considered safe to absorb over any years.”

Berlau goes on to comment about the fate of Joseph Jacobs:

“After all, in the years after Silent Spring, DDT was called ‘double death twice’. One touch could kill you. And sadly, after being exposed, Jacobs did die – more than sixty years later in 2004, at the tender young age of eighty-eight.”

‘Eco-Freaks’ is available from Amazons.com.