Friday, September 27, 2013

Toxic green slime in U.S. waters

1. Darryl Fears. (26 Sept 2013) Report: Polluted farm runoff linked to toxic green algae slime in U.S. waters. The Washington Post.
2. Category: Environment
3. Level: National
4. About: Manure and pesticide runoff produces toxic algae that is ruining marine life and has killed one human and 20 pets.
5. Who this concerns: Everyone should be concerned. Once the algae gets into the ocean it can potentially go anywhere. The people in direct contact with the Mississippi River should be the most concerned since its contaminated the water supply and now the people are forced to pay to have their water plant cleaned. New York, Iowa, Oregon, Ohio, Kentucky, Florida, and California are states reporting the most pollution.

6. My thoughts:  This isn’t breaking news. We have known for a long time that the pesticides we spray all over our crops run off the plants, into the soil, the rivers, and eventually the ocean.  They kill marine life and create these “dead zones” and surprisingly we still allow it. We have a look the other way policy when it comes to pesticides. The Big Ag lobbyists have the control and the freaks are the people that actually care enough to buy organic produce. One boy was killed by cyanobacteria so it’s not that big of a deal yet. We can still blame the bacteria and not the source of the bacteria which is the pesticide runoff. Without pesticides, we wouldn’t have this problem. What we are still unaware of is the long term effect of what pesticides do when consumed by humans. Lots of illnesses are on the rise like autism and depression. People are worse off now than they were before we started mono-culturing and mass producing only a few crops. That’s not the way nature intended it to be. If nature doesn’t like the way something is being done, she will find a way to destroy the problem and in this case, people are the problem. The other day one of my professors said this, “The earth’s fine, it’s the people that are screwed.”

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