Infinite Unknown

- Not even good enough for dog food: Imported food from China loaded with chemicals, dyes, pesticides and fake ingredients (Natural News, May 10, 2013):

Do you really know what’s in all the food you’re eating that’s imported from China? If you don’t, you’re actually in good company: The FDA only inspects 1% – 2% of all the food imported from China, so they don’t know either. Even when they inspect a shipment, they rarely test it for heavy metals, pesticides, PCBs or other toxic contaminants.

Mark A. Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst at The Cornucopia Institute, added emphasis to this point as he testified this week in The House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats, saying, “We don’t trust, for good reason, the Chinese to supply ingredients for our dog and cat food. Why should we trust Chinese exporters for the food that we are feeding our children and families?”

It’s a good question. Especially when, as Kastel adds, Chinese food is being routinely found to contain “unapproved chemicals, dyes, pesticides and outright fraud (fake food).”

Heavily contaminated food from China

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Tags: animals, Chemicals, Contamination, Food, Global News, Government, Health, organic, Pesticides, Politics, Pollution, Society, U.S.

Food, water, herbs … everything in (and coming from) China is totally contaminated  …

… except:

- In China, What You Eat Tells Who You Are … And Organic Food Is Only For The Power Elite

- I ate Hu Jintao’s dinner; China’s president, and the rest of the politburo eat only organic food

- In China, Breathing Becomes a Childhood Risk (New York Times, April 22, 2013):

BEIJING — The boy’s chronic cough and stuffy nose began last year at the age of 3. His symptoms worsened this winter, when smog across northern China surged to record levels. Now he needs his sinuses cleared every night with saltwater piped through a machine’s tubes.The boy’s mother, Zhang Zixuan, said she almost never lets him go outside, and when she does she usually makes him wear a face mask. The difference between Britain, where she once studied, and China is “heaven and hell,” she said.

Levels of deadly pollutants up to 40 times the recommended exposure limit in Beijing and other cities have struck fear into parents and led them to take steps that are radically altering the nature of urban life for their children.

Parents are confining sons and daughters to their homes, even if it means keeping them away from friends. Schools are canceling outdoor activities and field trips. Parents with means are choosing schools based on air-filtration systems, and some international schools have built gigantic, futuristic-looking domes over sports fields to ensure healthy breathing.

“I hope in the future we’ll move to a foreign country,” Ms. Zhang, a lawyer, said as her ailing son, Wu Xiaotian, played on a mat in their apartment, near a new air purifier. “Otherwise we’ll choke to death.”

She is not alone in looking to leave. Some middle- and upper-class Chinese parents and expatriates have already begun leaving China, a trend that executives say could result in a huge loss of talent and experience. Foreign parents are also turning down prestigious jobs or negotiating for hardship pay from their employers, citing the pollution.

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Tags: Children, China, Environment, Global News, Health, Pollution, Society

- In China, public anger over secrecy on environment (Reuters, March 10, 2013):

When China’s environment ministry told attorney Dong Zhengwei he couldn’t have access to two-year old data about soil pollution because it was a “state secret”, it added to mounting public outrage over the worsening environment.

Microbloggers, state media and even delegates to this week’s session of the National People’s Congress, the largely rubber-stamp parliament, were already critical of the government for poor air and water quality. Now they are also expressing disquiet over the scarcity of information about the environment available to them.

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Tags: China, Contamination, Environment, Global News, Government, Politics, Pollution

- 30 Facts About The Coming Water Crisis That Will Change The Lives Of Every Person On The Planet (Economic Collapse, March 4, 2013):

The world is rapidly running out of clean water. Some of the largest lakes and rivers on the globe are being depleted at a very frightening pace, and many of the most important underground aquifers that we depend on to irrigate our crops will soon be gone. At this point, approximately 40 percent of the entire population of the planet has little or no access to clean water, and it is being projected that by 2025 two-thirds of humanity will live in “water-stressed” areas. But most Americans are not too concerned about all of this because they assume that North America has more fresh water than anyone else does. And actually they would be right about that, but the truth is that even North America is rapidly running out of water and it is going to change all of our lives. Today, the most important underground water source in America, the Ogallala Aquifer, is rapidly running dry. The most important lake in the western United States, Lake Mead, is rapidly running dry. The most important river in the western United States, the Colorado River, is rapidly running dry. Putting our heads in the sand and pretending that we are not on the verge of an absolutely horrific water crisis is not going to make it go away. Without water, you cannot grow crops, you cannot raise livestock and you cannot support modern cities. As this global water crisis gets worse, it is going to affect every single man, woman and child on the planet. I encourage you to keep reading and learn more.

The U.S. intelligence community understands what is happening. According to one shocking government report that was released last year, the global need for water will exceed the global supply of water by 40 percent by the year 2030… Continue reading »

Tags: Collapse, Contamination, drinking water, Environment, Global News, Government, Health, Politics, Pollution, Society, Water

Related news:

- China admits to existence of ‘cancer villages’ sprouting up due to extreme pollution, chemical exposure

- ‘Organic’ from China exposed: The shocking truth about ‘organic’ foods grown in the world’s worst environmental cesspool

- China admits pollution has caused ‘cancer villages’ (Telegraph, Feb 22, 2013):

The Chinese government has admitted for the first time that decades of reckless pollution have spawned a string of toxic “cancer villages”.

The admission by China’s Environment ministry came in a five-year plan on tackling pollution.

“In recent years, toxic and hazardous chemical pollution has caused many environmental disasters, cutting off drinking water supplies, and even leading to severe health and social problems such as ‘cancer villages’” the document says.

Environmentalists have long campaigned for the government to recognise and help the hundreds of cancer clusters caused by poisoned soil, water or air. In 2009, Deng Fei, an investigative journalist helped to plot some of the worst-hit villages on a Google map.

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Tags: Cancer, China, Contamination, Environment, Food, Global News, Government, Health, Politics, Pollution, toxicity, Washington

- China’s Creeping Toxic Smog Cloud Blankets Japan (ZeroHedge, Feb 4, 2013):

These days one has to laugh with the Japanese, as the temptation to laugh at them is just so high.

Because, sadly, the endless barrage of negative developments surrounding the “Land of the Rising Sun” may soon require a constitutional amendment replacing that key adjective to “Setting.” And while everyone knows that Japan’s economy is the Keynesian voodoo religion’s event horizon laughing stock, caught between a 30 year deflationary implosion which is the only permissive factor allowing it to sustain interest payments on a 235% debt/GDP mountain, and a banking, debt and funding crisis should the government “succeed” in generating inflation, it is the intangibles that will be the proverbial straw that breaks this particular camel’s back. Intangibles, such as 2011′s tsunami and Fukushima explosion, which have made sure that every piece of domestic sushi will be pre self-cooked for generations.

Yet glowing in the dark may have just been the beginning: now Japan also has a toxic, photochemical smog problem to boot.

It is true that we were confused why China had not retaliated too aggressively in the ongoing spat over some meaningless islands in the China Sea. At least not yet. It turns out that China was merely biding its time in deciding on how to most Geneva Unconventionally punish its militant island neighbor to the east. Turns out that the punishment will come in the form of an export that Japan will hardly be happy with: the unprecedented smog that until recently was blanketing China. The same toxic smog is now over Japan. Continue reading »

Tags: China, Environment, Global News, Japan, Pollution

What can you say?

- Rogue Penguin Resurfaces in Tokyo Bay (ABC News, May 17, 2012):

A Humboldt penguin that made a daring escape from a Tokyo aquarium has resurfaced two months later.

The year-old feathered creature was spotted in a Japanese Coast Guard video, swimming in Tokyo Bay and looking healthy, even though it had been on its own for an extended period.

The bird, known only as Penguin Number 337, escaped Tokyo Sea Life Park in March by scaling a 13-foot rock wall and squeezing through a barbed wire fence. Keepers at Tokyo Sea Life Park launched a daily penguin-hunt, fearing the bird could get sick from the pollution in Tokyo Bay. They appealed to residents to look out for the rogue penguin. There were dozens of sightings reported, but none turned out to be true.

Earlier this month, Penguin 337 appeared near Tokyo’s Rainbow Bridge. The clip by the Coast Guard shows the bird happily splashing around in the waters, showing no signs of weakness. Directors at the Tokyo Sea Life Park confirmed it was theirs after they saw its facial patterns and a unique ring around its flipper.

The young creature remains in Tokyo Bay waters for now, but there are concerns about its long-term safety.  People are worried about radiation levels in the bay, a year after the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Tags: Fukushima, Global News, Japan, Nuclear, Nuclear reactors, Pollution, Radiation, Society

- China in lead poisoning ‘cover-up’ – Human Rights Watch (BBC NEWS, 15 June, 2011):

China has been accused of trying to cover up the extent of lead poisoning among children, and of blocking effective testing and treatment.

A report by Human Rights Watch says local authorities in heavily-polluted industrial areas have been sending sick children back to contaminated homes.

It says that in these areas – Henan, Yunnan, Shaanxi and Hunan provinces – anyone who complains is being harassed.

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Tags: Children, China, Contamination, Environment, Global News, Government, Health, Human Rights Watch, Lead, Politics, Pollution, Society

See also:

- The Oil and Gas Industry’s 800-Pound Gorilla: RADIATION!

- ‘Fracking’ Result (= Contamination) For UK Shale Gas Will Be Kept Secret Until 2015

- US: Natural Gas Wells’ Contaminated Water Hits Rivers

- GASLAND Trailer 2010 (Documentary)

Tags: Agriculture, Chemicals, Contamination, Environment, Fracking, Global News, Hydraulic Fracturing, Pollution, Radiation, Water

- TEPCO unveils plan to process contaminated water (NHK):

Tokyo Electric Power Company has unveiled details of its plan to process radioactive wastewater at its damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The wastewater has been hampering efforts to restore the reactors’ cooling systems.

Tokyo Electric announced on Wednesday it would start building early next month, together with US and French firms, a storage and processing facility for nearly 70,000 tons of highly radioactive water. The utility firm aims to begin operating the system in June of this year.

The contaminated water is believed to be pooled inside turbine buildings and utility tunnels at the plant’s 1, 2 and 3 reactors.

Tokyo Electric had earlier said it aims to set up by July of this year a system to remove radioactive substances from the water and reuse it to cool the reactors.

Contaminated water will be put through an oil filter, and the density of radioactive material would be lowered using a mineral called zeolite.

Salt would then be removed from the water so that it could be used to cool the reactors again.

Radioactive waste from this process would be stored inside the nuclear complex, but the utility has yet to consider methods for its final disposal.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 19:02 +0900 (JST)

A diver sampling the cleaned water from the Areva nuclear processing plant outflow in the English Channel. Photo courtesy of Greenpeace / Gavin Newman

- French System For Cleaning Fukushima Water Blamed For Leukemia, Polluted Beaches In Europe (Forbes):

The process a French firm will use to clean Fukushima’s radioactive water has been blamed for a leukemia cluster in France and for polluted beaches and irradiated waters from the English Channel to the Arctic Sea.

Areva SA has promised to remove up to 99.99 percent of the radioactive contaminants in 67,500 tons of water flooding the crippled Fukushima-Dai-ichi nuclear plant. It will use a co-precipitation method employed at its La Hague nuclear fuel reprocessing facility in Normandy.

That process has been documented in detail by a French nuclear expert and by the U.S. government, which has shunned France’s fuel reprocessing method because of “a nonproliferation concern and environmental concerns,” in the words of Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko.

The water treatment process has been deplored by environmental groups including Greenpeace and Physicians for Social Responsibility in part because of the quality of cleaned water it produces:

France reprocesses reactor fuel at the vast La Hague facility on the Normandy coast. The so-called low-level liquid wastes from reprocessing are discharged into the English Channel and into the air. However, these “low-level” wastes still contain highly radioactive and often long-lived isotopes. Dumping these same wastes into the sea in containers would violate the 1970 London Dumping Convention.”

via Physicians for Social Responsibility (pdf)

Areva treats contaminated water from reactor cooling systems by injecting chemicals that bind to radioactive isotopes and settle out.

Areva has not revealed which chemicals it will use at Fukushima, but a 1995 report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy (pdf) details the process it uses at La Hague. According to DOE, Areva uses:

• nickel and potassium ferrocyanide to capture cesium
• barium sulfate to capture strontium
• cobalt sulfide for ruthenium
• titanium sulfate for antimony and other emitters of alpha radiation

Areva also uses hydroxides of sodium, manganese, titanium, and iron, according to other sources. The chemicals and radionuclides are removed from the water in a highly radioactive chemical sludge.

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Tags: Areva SA, Contamination, Environment, Global News, Health, Japan, Leukaemia, Nuclear, Nuclear reactors, Pollution, Radiation, Water