Citizens across the nation are taking action…
“On Dec. 4, the Fort Collins City Council made Colorado history.
With a standing-room-only crowd that had just spent one hour testifying, the council took the bold leadership step of helping to secure the future of northern Colorado’s economy and environment. Amidst hoots, hollers and eruptive applause, Fort Collins became the first Colorado city to pass a resolution against uranium mining in the northern part of our state. ” Click here for the rest of this Dec. 19, Rocky Mountain News story
Maybe our state and local leaders will take bold steps to help secure Michigan’s future?
HOW NATURE pollutes waters and air with sulfur dioxide and Heavy Metals!
Major scientific problems with Arsenic research, which also leads to problems with lead “scientific” research
In the past I have worked with and talked to many researchers about their methods of designing their research and experiments on arsenic, mercury and lead toxicity. There are some major problems with the basic methods and scientific “assumptions” that these people have made.
This is a response to the research done by Dartmouth College on arsenic (and on the lack of cancers in the residents of Armagosa Valley, CA, that has very high arsenic content in its drinking waters):
http://www.wateronline.com/content/news/article.asp?docid=90e36731-f6ec-45bd-8168-c56e58fb6e92&VNETCOOKIE=NO
There are major experimental design questions here:
Just what is the concentration of the arsenic used in the experiment? Was this equivalent to the concentration found in normal human blood after drinking water with groundwater arsenic? Too often experimenters in the past have made the As ionic concentrations way too high for what is found in humans (blood and urine and other types of samples), after they drank groundwater with high arsenic content.
Was the CHEMISTRY of the experiment truly equivalent to the chemistry found in human blood after groundwater ingestion AND the resulting biochemical interactions that take place in the digestive tract, blood, arteries, etc.?
We have seen many other experimenters use arsenic tests that did NOT have the same blood chemistry and did NOT have concentrations found in human blood after ingesting.
They used “tissue samples”. But are these conditions truly equivalent to what humans have in terms of the tissues that receive their ions from blood and plasma through the arteries and other biochemical processes within the human bodies?
See also the problems with biological models
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/home/53306/
Recently there has been controversy over the change in arsenic (As) standards and in Mercury (Hg) standards. If those who want tighter arsenic standards in drinking water had true geologic knowledge, they would know that both arsenic and mercury are some of the many elements that Nature put in the earth and that the groundwater has picked up over the thousands of years. Often, arsenic (As) is associated with gold deposits, even low grade, and other sulfide ore deposits. In many places in the USA, there are geological deposits of the mineral cinnabar (mercury sulfide) and pure mercury, such as the Big Bend area of Texas near the Rio Grande river. Over geological time, the groundwater has picked up mercury in many places over thousands of years. There are also geological formations that contain trace amounts of mercury in their sediments that for eons have been washing into the rivers, groundwater, and soils.
There are several hundred naturally-occurring lead deposits (lead sulfide and lead carbonate) in the USA that were in existence long before any Europeans explorers came around in the 1500s and 1600s. In many drinking water sources, there are a number of other elements in natural drinking water, such as uranium, lead, molybdenum, nickel, sulfur, etc. that originated from natural mineral deposits.
Some researchers have been giving statements that are not based upon complete analysis, but come across as fear. One researched stated “all the time people were dying of cancers now associated with drinking that arsenic-contaminated water”. But we would have to assume that all autopsies of ancient and modern humans has shown a 100% statistical correlation to arsenic and not to other factors, such as other chemicals, other metals, diet, sun exposure, prescription drug effects, genetics, other elements, etc. In addition, a number of other studies did not show good statistical analysis / correlation on the level of arsenic (percent or parts per million) and health effects. The residents of Amargosa Valley and Beatty in Nevada and the Death Valley areas in California have elevated levels of arsenic in their drinking waters, but cancers are not prevalent there. A number of residents several of us know have lived to the age of 80s and 90s. How do we explain that?
In talking to the environmental and biological scientists on the West Coast about this issue, a peculiar point was brought up. Most of them have mathematically matched arsenic levels to human health affects through regression methods. These are the SAME types of methods used on Lead and Mercury research, as seen in the scientific publications. These methods “assume” a straight statistical correlation (both linear and non-linear) between the input of arsenic and the output (health affects). But how could they have known what other elements in the drinking water were doing in conjunction with arsenic? None of these scientists have filtered out those inputs that are either not affecting the output, or are affecting in minor ways, or are affecting in combined effects that do not show up until certain conditions are correct. The methods are the analyses of variances and other advanced techniques, which do not appear to be well known by these scientists.
Few scientists and researchers know how to use statistics properly to be able to filter and view data for the actual, true cause-and-effects. Too many times researchers use statistical regression methods that assume a direct relationship between the causes and effect, which may not be real. Although there are several books on the market, one of the best books that can help researchers, analysts, and scientists is a book entitled, “Statistics for Experimenters,” by Box, Hunter, and Hunter.
Native peoples have been drinking water here in America and many other places for centuries with arsenic and other “contaminants,” (like lead) long before there was ever a Federal government to protect us from the Earth. Why don’t the environmentalists understand basic Earth Sciences?
See this link also:
http://geoinfo.nmt.edu/publications/earthmatters/EMV2N2.pdf
Natural arsenic and heavy metals in Alaskan waters from geological deposits:
http://water.usgs.gov/pubs/fs/fs-083-01/
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/v-printer/story/6960082p-6860040c.html
and then sulfur also:
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/leads.asp?ID=713#990
Shame on Nature for doing that……
Some of you can’t see straight
Stop uranium mining in the U.S. until all the disasters from the Cold War are cleaned up and all the sick miners & families have been compensated for the past tragedies. We are fighting against uraniium mining in Virginia now. We support your effotts. Susan
There is nothing wrong with uranium mining if it can be done in a way to protect the environment and human health.
The uranium from these mines would be going to nuclear power plants – not weapons. nuclear power is the only “heavy lift” power source we currently have that is both domestic and not a player in global warming related emmissions. Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for conservation, wind, solar and other alternatives first. I consider myself a liberal environmentalist, but I’m also pro nuclear because I can’t see how else to get our CO2 emmisions radically lower.