By Tina Casey •
October 24, 2009
Mercury pollution is next on the list of global health threats to face concentrated action with the goal of elimination. According to Zero Mercury Working Group, yesterday the first significant steps toward a binding treaty to control mercury pollution were announced at a United Nations Environmental Program meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, in advance of negotiations that will take place in Stockholm next summer.
The global nature of mercury pollution lies in its ability to travel long distances from its point of emission through the food chain. In fish it accumulates in its most toxic form, methylmercury. Zero Mercury hopes to achieve a treaty by 2013 that promotes more sustainable alternatives to mercury in products and industrial processes, with the broad goal of addressing all controllable emissions of mercury in the environment.
By Tina Casey •
October 18, 2009
Mountaintop removal, the hyper-destructive practice of blowing up entire mountains to get at coal near the surface, is in for a rough ride. Though in technological terms mountaintop removal is downright third-world compared to the high tech sustainable energy industry, it’s still been going nonstop right here in the Appalachian mountains of our own northeastern U.S.. The result has been hundreds of mountains destroyed in one of North America’s richest ecosystems, hundreds of miles of streams buried, and an economic and public health climate that is among the worst in the nation. Now all that is poised to end. Earlier this year the U.S. EPA suspended the mountaintop removal permitting process and Raw Story is now reporting that the first permit veto is immanent.
According to Raw reporter Joe Byrne, the Mingo Logan Coal Company was notified this past Friday by the EPA that the mountaintop removal permit in the pipeline for its Spruce No. 1 mine in West Virginia faces a veto due to “a high potential for downstream water quality excursions under current mining and valley fill practices.” With financial backers like Bank of America cutting their ties with companies that practice mountaintop mining, the impending veto could be a harbinger of more to come.
By Tina Casey •
September 14, 2009
The U.S. EPA has found that a simple, inexpensive rooftop solar panel can provide enough power to run a fan and remove toxic fumes from homes sitting on contaminated ground. The EPA gave solar-powered venting a test run on several homes earlier this year, in a Superfund action aimed at tricholoroethene (TCE) vapors in a Grand Prairie, Texas neighborhood. The pollution had been traced to a site occupied by the now-bankrupt Delfasco Forge company.
Compared to conventional remediation that involves weeks, months or even years of work along with a potentially huge carbon footprint for transporting or capping soil, the solar-powered exhaust systems took mere hours to install and resulted in an immediate 95% reduction in TCE vapors within the homes. The EPA plans to extend the program this fall to other homes affected by the Delfasco site.
By Joe Mohr •
March 16, 2008
After concluding last week’s post with water conservation tips, I was motivated to look deeper into more steps homeowners can take to conserve water, as well as the new technology surrounding this issue. I found all I needed (and MUCH more) at www.h2ouse.org.
The website was created by the California Urban Water Conservation Council under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They’ve covered everything! For example, in the ‘Home Tour’ section alone they have indoor information on The Bathroom, Kitchen, Laundry, Garage, and Basement and outdoor information on Landscaping, Pool and Spa, Patio, and The Water Meter. To give you further insight on the depth of this site, if you click on the link to the kitchen (which is an illustration looking very much like a Hanna/Barbera cartoon) you are given info and tips regarding: Faucet, Dishwasher, Home Water Treatment, Hot Water on Demand, and Greywater and/or Dual Water Systems.
