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Islands in the stream: The extraordinary homemade dams holding back the Mississippi as desperate residents try to save their homes. When one picture is worth a 1,000 words, a decent hyperlink, like the previous sentence, can be worth a million when it comes to the Mississippi River flooding. It seems to us the national news left out a lot of aerial photography that might havehelped the rest of us better appreciate this problem. The British Newspaper that produced the photo essay linked above has produced a mind-blowing photo-essay that NBN hopes translates into a lesson or two for a nation that's for too long disregarded the environmental costs of its aggressive, energy-based economic expansion. At the risk of sounding real arrogant and ignorant, it seems to us the very people who embrace the “Drill, Baby, Drill” energy policies that a large body of science says caused this flooding are now the victims of it. Anyone with a modicum of scientific curiosity will find unequivically that burning fossil fuels mean greenhouse gases and global warming. That means shrinking polar ice caps and expanding oceans. Expanding oceans means more rain and that means rising rivers.These pictures are heart-rending, and NBN wishes these folks some relief ASAP. But we can’t help but feel the chickens are coming home to roost, here. Now, we feel cautiously compelled add the latest tornado tally to this unfolding environmental  irony.

Perhaps that's too much to hope for. Here we have the Wall Street Journal two days after the Joplin tornado shrugging its editorial shoulders saying there's nothing we can do to stop nature.  Our heartfelt prayers go out to the folks in Joplin and who ever suffers the next global warming fueled disaster..

Trash Trouble + Recycling Recourse 04.05.11

Warning! Tangential digression approaching! What you probably didn't know about Wheelabrator Technologies’ parent company, Waste Management, is they were the first trash hauler to win contracts in Manhattan after District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau kicked the Mafia out of the business in NYC. NBN always wondered how Waste Management ended up being the first trash hauler into NYC after the Mafia left and the insanely lucrative NYC trash hauling market was left wide open. WMI lowered the trash bills for millions of Manhattanites including the World Trade Center (RIP) where the monthly trash bill went from $150,000 to $75,000. Here is everything you could possibly want to know and then some about Wheelabrator Technologies. Savings aside, there still doesn't appear to be any real competition in the NYC trash hauling market.

The point we’re trying to make is: garbage disposal as we embrace it today is a dirty, messy expensive business no matter who is at the helm, the Mafia or Wheelabrator. At the same time the country is only recycling about 33 percent of the 220 million tons of garbage we produce each year.  That means enough trash to bury 55 football fields 6-feet is being burned or landfilled in this country every year. WHAT ABOUT RECYCLING THE OTHER 66 PERCENT! In the offices of NBN we’re militant about recycling as everyone else should be. We discard about a half-can of trash a week, the bulk of which is biodegradable. A rough estimate would put us at about 70 percent recycling.

How do we get the boneheads and the occasional college fraternity to follow suit? Make them pay. If NBN had to pay $50 for that half can of garbage we discard every week, it would be a quarter of a can. If landfills charged $500 a ton for garbage the country’s recycling rate would skyrocket over night. What are the chances of getting that sort of tax passed in this day and age? About the same as getting Cap and Trade passed. For some reason a lot of people in this country think they should have a right to waste natural resources we all depend on. NBN has no problem with that. We just object to them doing so at the expense of the planet we all depend on. We should all have to pay  the clean up costs if we want to pollute.

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Here at NBN we revere science and the seemingly limitless innovative power of the human mind. We also try to hedge our bets with a healthy degree of respect for the keepers of the unknown. So, it’s with some trepidation this week that we attempt to dissect this dichotomy and ponder the imponderable for anyone anxious over their own eventual dissemination into dirt: can we mortals become immortal? Let’s start with this fellow making a mountain of money with a book describing dietary changes that may help us live long enough that we may actually live forever. The idea being: medicine is advancing so quickly, if we can just extend our lives another 20 years or so, we may be around when medicine does find a way to live forever.

Rather than ask you to read the book’s 470 pages on consuming 250 different vitamins that may or may not work, we turn our ethereal examinations to this article about scientists growing human organs on the remains of animal organs. To grossly—pardon the pun—oversimplify the article: they take an animal’s liver, scrape off everything but the veins and arteries, smear on some human liver cells and bingo! They start growing human livers. It opens the door for growing all your own replacement parts that could doubtless buy you another 20 years or more should you be rich enough to have a few of these things sitting in the ice box in your time of need. The point we’re making here is, we’re no long pinning our hopes of immortality  on finding the Fountain of Youth. Science is actually talking empirically of living a lot longer than we do now.

There are short comings and obstacles enough in this work to argue against the optimism the author above discusses in this book. For instance, once you start growing a new body part what’s to stop that body part  from growing out of control. However, arguing in favor of such scientific endeavors, we offer up another new book which looks at how science and technology advance faster and faster with each new breakthrough they achieve. Eventually, the author argues, science will advance so quickly it will outstrip the biological constraints of the human minds that propel it. So much so, that the idea of growing new body parts will, some day, seem almost pedestrian. After all, lobsters have been doing it for years. (There's one important exception to consider here: can we, or do we want to, grow a new brain? Should the opportunity come up, NBN has at least one staffer we can endorse for such treatment.)

The problem with this rapid advance of science is it gets us into some tricky real estate. For instance, much of this regeneration research is centered around stem cell innovations. It’s easy to support stem cell technology from the sterility of a voting booth, but every human on the planet was once a stem cell. Surely, if the stem cells being offered up for growing new livers around animal arteries mentioned above had a choice, they might not so readily get on line for an experiment some ivory tower occupant thinks is a cause worthy of their ultimate sacrifice. Then again 4,400 souls have been sacrificed in Iraq for a much more questionable experiment undertaken by fellows with considerably more compromised motives than most scientists.

This takes us to the Tea Party movement, the folks behind it and prospects for living long enough to live forever under their leadership. Needless to say, NBN thinks those prospects look pretty dim and we don’t have another 20 years to throw away waiting for some environmental Armageddon or economic collapse to set civilization back on the path we turned from in last week’s elections. In other words, NBN thinks the last election suggests this may not be the time to place unlimited confidence in science and technology. We might be wiser to dust off the cymbals as we march to the cadence of “Drill Baby Drill” down the trail Ronald Reagan blazed in 1981. In God We will Trust, particularly now that we will likely have dramatically fewer choices.

Cape Cod Waterways Face Pollution Crisis 08.31.10
Looks like the chickens have come home to roost on Cape Cod. A better word may be rot. The NYTimes piece linked above says decades of over-development have left Cape Cod with septic system soiled creeks, bays and ponds. Cape communities traditionally shunned sewage treatment plants for fear they invite over development, according to the Times. Instead, many homes and businesses have private septic systems which leech readily through the Cape’s sandy soil into the nearest creeks, bays and ponds. Add on the problem of road runoff, which every coastal community in the country has, and you end up with a problem called nutrient loading that’s become particularly bad out on the Cape. That problem is so bad on the Cape that the only thing that grows—or should we say blooms—is algae which dies and rots each year, robbing the waters of oxygen. That causes a problem called hypoxia which pretty much kills anything that swims. While Cape Cod residents battle over what might end up being $4-8 billion sewer system installation bill, maybe they should consider banning fertilizers for lawns and golf courses in the interim. That would at least clean up some of the stormwater runoff problem.

What? Sacrifice green lawns and golf courses to help save our water ways? The Cape’s ponds and creeks aren’t that important, are they. Then again, what about the Gulf of Mexico, Long Island Sound, and the Baltic Sea. That’s where you’ll find something called dead zones, which are essentially what most of Cape Cod’s inland waters are becoming. Dead zones are marine ecosystems where everything under the water has died from hypoxia. While the world is waking up to the problems of nutrient loading, Scotts still sells a lot of Turf Builder and Chemlawn is still in business. We’re only going to see more and more Cape Cods along our coasts as long as they sell these potent chemicals for our lawns. Here’s a great piece on the problem hypoxia and dead zones if you want to learn more. Here's another great CNN piece on a Minnesota farmer doing his best to help the Gulf of Mexico deadzone which, according to the piece, is the size of New Jersey this year. Looks like New Jersey is no longer the largest dead zone in the country.

Methuen to battle West Nile virus with spraying tonight 08.31.09
There is a downside of biodiversity: viruses and bacteria. They have no problem diversifying in the world humans are altering for their comfort at the expense of so many other, more highly evolved species. Rather, the more altering we do, it seems, the stronger the viruses and bacteria get. Just look at the emergence of the latest superbug in India.  Which brings us back to the thorny question of what to do about mosquito-borne problems like West Nile Virus and Triple E. Do we spray like crazy and look the other way from all the other creatures killed by malathion. Or do we consign a set number of society’s weakest elements to death by bug bite. This might be an easy-enough answer if these aerial assaults on mosquitoes were once every couple of years. But it’s at least every year and it affects hundreds of acres of ecologically sensitive wetlands. Humans may have little use for mosquitoes but mosquito larvae are a major source of food for untold wetlands fish and wildlife. Also, consider how fast bugs like West Nile and Triple E can mutate to form new, stronger viruses. Then again, who wants to hear that grandma died from a mosquito bite? There is nothing easy about this question and anyone with strong feelings either way is thinking of themselves or not thinking enough.

Top Predators and Biodiversity Historically Pressured in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary 08.31.10
A University of New Hampshire study of old fishing reports found the numbers and varieties of top-o-the-food-chain fish in this unique offshore marine ecosystem have decreased significantly in the past 100 years. Could fleets of commercial fishing trawlers scraping everything living from the ocean bottom with weighted nets for the past two centuries have played any part? Not according to this intrepid reporter who has assigned himself the thankless task of defending the most ecologically damaging method of commercial fishing against an avalanche of science saying it should be stopped, or at very least restricted. That’s not to say the Gloucester Times is completely incapable of objective reporting on commercial fishing. This article on banning commercial fishing from Stellwagen and other marine sanctuaries actually recognizes that there are arguments against these damaging commercial fishing practices.

Seen in the sheen of the Gulf oil spill, this Washington Post piece about federal regulators being bribed to expedite government offshore drilling leases makes you want to wring someone's neck. The WAPO links to this regulation passed in 2005 which directs government biologists to defer to gas company experts when assessing environmental impacts of these leases. The regulation, “assumes oil and gas companies can best evaluate the environmental effects of their operations” according to the WAPO. Sort of like Goldman Sachs paying Moody's for a AAA rating for its subprime mortgage bonds. Let's face it folks, the Gulf oil slick and the 2009 economic meltdown are children of the same star-crossed lovers: government and business. If you want NBN's opinion, and who doesn't, we need much more rigid standards for government environmental regulation, across the board. Read on and see if you don't agree.

Out on the town taking pictures recently, I ended up at our local landfill, now being disposed of in a process called “capping.” As I started snapping away a town employee pulled up and asked what I was doing. I immediately assumed an I'm-a-taxpayer-on-public-property attitude. He responded with you're-an-idiot-I-work-for-town condescension. The chilly encounter quickly thawed as I explained my anger over how badly the landfill capping process had been handled.

He nodded in agreement, suggesting putting away the camera because the landfill was owned by a trash hauler who “had a very good judge, and loves to sue people.” I walked away thinking: You're supposed to have good lawyers, not good judges, aren't you? But this town worker was just stating the obvious. Environmental law is ripe for corruption and trash disposal as the low-hanging fruit. What was sad about the encounter outside the landfill was the odd alloy of respect and resignation in the town worker's voice. Whether it's Don Corleone's senatorial aspirations for his favored son or town code enforcement officers looking the other way on the construction projects of political donors, government power is at once respected and reviled in this country, even by those working for in government.

That's all well and good when you're talking about government paving, military, and/or vending machine contracts. But when it comes to environmental maintenance and remediation, it's more than people being corrupted. Take the case of this landfill. It's being “capped” with ground up construction and demolition debris. That means whenever a house or building is torn down in many parts of the state, the landfill owner takes the refuse and grinds it up to a near-dirt consistency and spreads it out over this landfill. The stuff hardens pretty nicely to form a cap of sorts. Pipes are drilled into the mound to drain methane gas from rotting material below, a membrane is installed on top of the cap to keep rain out. Grass is planted on top of that.

Here's what I've seen in 15 years as a local newspaper reporter: A Greenport, NY, mayor made a gas plume under this former gas station disappear without the $100,000 clean-up a state environmental official told me was needed before the mayor could sell the property. One day that official said a clean-up was needed, the next day he said it wasn't. No explanation why and I was too overloaded with other assignments to pursue it. In North Brunswick, NJ, the mayor was building landfills in remote parts of Pennsylvania while in office. In Haverhill, MA, a state senator called me out of the blue to ask why I was investigating a suspect septic service company. And the coup de gras? At 11 pm one night a close friend working in the highest ranks of a New Jersey environmental office called me in a cold sweat saying a newly appointed press agent for a newly elected governor had just threatened his job for speaking to me without prior authorization from the press office.

And that's just what I've seen in the few northeast towns I've covered as a local newspaper reporter. Can you imagine the stuff that goes on in places like Ohio or Mississippi? Or Alaska? When it comes to the environment, business and government mix about as well as oil and water and, as we are seeing, in the gulf the results can be disastrous.

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Coming on the heals of the recent opening of offshore waters to oil exploration, is the ballooning Gulf oil slick poetic justice or just a bad roll of the dice in the sensible pursuit of our domestic energy supplies? Certainly, for those who thought Drill Baby Drill was a new low in political pandering to the low-brow, it's told-ya-so time. But with the spill threatening to become this nation's worst, there is no joy in Mudville, even for the visiting team. So, we've decided to search for the silver linings in this cloud of oil threatening hundreds of miles of Gulf marshland and nature preserve.

We found one silver lining in something called the deadzone: 8,543 square miles of Gulf shore waters from New Orleans to Houston steeped in farm fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide drained from the nation's breadbasket by the Mississippi River. Deadzones are areas where most of the animals on the seafloor have died due to a lack of oxygen. All the oxygen has been absorbed by bacteria eating the algae which thrives thanks to too much nutrient in the water. In the case of the Gulf deadzone, possibly the world's largest, the excess nutrient is the fertilizer carried into the Gulf from the ga-jillion acres of farmland draining into the Mississippi. This hypoxia, as this condition is called, also chases off most of the fish, hence the term deadzone.

Our second silver lining in this Gulf oil spill is blowing in with the northern winds being forecast for much of this week. Last week the wind was out of the southeast, which meant that the roughly 3,500 square mile slick--2,240,000 acres—was barreling straight for 23,296 acres of salt marsh in the Delta National Wildlife Refuge shown here. The northern winds this week could push the oil back off shore allowing the Gulf's westerly currents in that area to carry it into the deadzone around Houston. What's a few millions gallons of oil to a place that's already dead, right? Besides, they love oil in Houston. Yeah, we know, this breeze/current theory is slim pickens when it comes to silver linings. But if the wind shifts to the west, or worse, the southwest, it could push all that oil into the Delta National Wildlife Refuge which isn't dead at all, it's vibrant. (Oh no. We just checked. The latest weather report calls for winds out of the southwest. Fingers crossed)

NBN does not like to dwell on bad news, but it's hard to be cheerful in the face of this kind of ecological damage. Particularly as this country is in the process of inviting more. If we suffer this sort of spill from oil platforms in the ares off the Florida coast being opened up for oil exploration, the nation's exposure to such environmental devastation goes way up, doesn't it? Is there some solace to be taken from the rarity of such serious spills given the thousands of oil platforms shown in the map here. Or are we just a couple of Katrinas away from wiping out the nation's entire Gulf Shoreline? And Mexico's, too. Maybe this spill is a good thing because it will mean stricter regulations for those companies wanting to drill in the new offshore areas opening up.
There's a lot to think about as the nation digests the aftermath from what may be its biggest ecological disaster. We just have one more thing to add as we attempt to do that. David Brooks had this piece last Thursday quoting big-time energy companies saying if they knew better what to expect in the possible costs of carbon credits, they would spend a lot more money exploring alternative energy opportunities. They're talking billions instead of millions of dollars of investment. So, it begs the question: why are we continuing this mindless pursuit of fossil fuels when the price we pay can be so dear? Is it just so we have the freedom to drive big cars as we choose? Maybe if enough money gets behind alternative energy, GM can build an electric Hummer. Here's a Grist article that does a better job of explaining the interaction of the Gulf oil spill and the deadzone there. And, if you'll allow us, one more Drill Baby Drill I told-ya-so.

Midwest corn growers are getting a shot in the arm with the administration's latest deferral to the powers that pollute and make big campaign contributions. ADM and Cargill are doubtless thrilled over the latest push to produce more ethanol, the gasoline made from corn. It's farm subsidies for all. This Washington Post piece on the issue comes down to a 1,500-word he-said/she-said of green group charges of political capitulation and administration reassurances to the contrary. In the middle, we have the token Princeton expert saying he's not sure which side is right.

Of course it's political capitulation. Did anyone happen to see the results of the Massachusetts senate election last month? Once again political expediency—read: ADM and Con-Agra campaign contributions—win out over science and common sense. This capitulation can only be at the expense of solar and wind power products which don't have the environmental baggage corn gas carries. Solar and wind power interests also don't have the political clout of ADM and Cargill. Nobody wants to hurt the American farmer. Just like nobody wants to hurt the fishermen as we discuss in Today's Catch. But if we don't start making these hard decisions now, when do we?

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This article in Cape Cod Today this summer, is written by folks upset over trawlers. They say the federal government missed the boat this year by not banning herring fishing in vibrant waters full of all kinds of fish. The big issue here is something called by-catch. That's all the other fish that get caught with the herring nets. These nets are big as football fields and hold more than one million pounds of catch. They can wipe clean whole swaths of ocean and hook fishermen are getting pretty upset that herring trawlers haven't been banned from the fish rich waters off Cape Cod, waters that are otherwise heavily regulated by the federal government. The hook fishermen may have a point. Indiscriminate fishing practices like open ocean trawl nets do a lot of collateral damage to other species and marine environments. That damage is called by-catch and hook fishermen say it's leaving fewer fish for them. But long liners also have a lot of by-catch. The organization that wrote this particular piece is looking for more monitors on the trawlers to make sure by-catch is kept to a minimum. It's a little surprising to see one commercial fishing organization sniping at another. However, as fish populations continue to dwindle across the board, it's likely we'll see more of this infighting.

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In Keeping with today's theme of undersea oddities, the Washington Post did de rigueur on a Potomac River study finding that the bass there are losing their balls. Or, more accurately, they are growing a few eggs. It has to do with the level of medicines, particularly hormones being dumped into our waterways and how they are affecting fish. Similar problems have been found in rivers across the country being polluted by wastewater treatment plants. Who'da thunk it? After we eat all these pills, we pass them back out again, in effect medicating any water body unfortunate enough to have a wastewater treatment plant on its banks. And that's pretty much every river in the world.

And it's not just problems causes by synthetic hormones. This NPR piece says Prozac is affecting the reproductive cycles of mussels. Yet more examples of unexpected tolls on plant, animal and human life soaking up the diffusion of a broad spectrum of chemicals we're discharging into our surroundings. (The fish study prompted this de rigueur response from the White House.) The potential problem of medicines in sewage is also illustrated with frightening foreboding in this article. Japanese scientists found high levels of the popular flu medication Tamiflu in rivers near waste water treatment plants. The article goes on to suggest the omnipresence of the drug might result in resistant forms of flu turning up in ducks, increasing the chances those animals—and eventually humans—might be subject to a superflu immune to Tamiflu. Here, for visual impact, are a few ducks found stuck in a storm drain.

It would be nice if there was something we could do to prevent this. Sadly, our options are at best radical. We could take less medication. That would mean we'd have to live healthier lifestyles to better fight off the flu when we get it. That's too much work. Besides, enormous pharmaceutical companies have a little too much invested in preventing that. It's easier to take pills and it's better for the economy.

Taxers are the most likely way to clean up this planet. It's hard to profit from cleaning up spilled milk. There's just the vague promise that our largemouth bass will stop becoming bisexual. We're almost sorry to present this video. It's gross! However, it has a happy ending. Notice the fish! They could have easily ended up on your dinner plate.

Here's an interesting piece about Russian oil rigs off the coast of Cuba. It harkens back to the "Drill Bay Drill" mantra of McCain's failed presidential bid. That was one of the saddest things to have to watch as an American. A stodgy old man grinning ear-to-ear while advocating an environmentally destructive policy in one of the country's most sensitive marine ecosystems.

It was a policy McCain once opposed, and probably would have continued to oppose, if it weren't for political expediency. Scrounging for dwindling pockets of oil at the possibly catastrophic expense of a cherished recreational, national and environmental resource like the Gulf of Mexico makes no sense. Yet McCain and Palin rode it into a national cause that enlisted passionate support from hundreds of millions of Americans. Hopefully, these same folks won't start pointing to Russian oil interests  off Cuba as discussed in the release above as an excuse to fire up Drill Baby Drill again. Only now, in the interests of National Security.

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The Aberjona River is back in the news. Never heard of it? It's the unfortunate, inflammable river made infamous in the Travolta movie “A Civil Action.” The Globe is ran a piece recently on a hospital's efforts to build alongside the river, over the objections of citizens who say the project will harm surrounding woodlands and wetlands. I bring it up here for what could not make it into the story for lack of space. The town officials presiding over the permits for the project have been accused of conflict of interest because they work with the hospital in various community-oriented capacities: fund-raising and the like.

The folks pointing the fingers are interlopers, people who for the most part moved to this town from other parts and now are resented for interfering in local goings-on. Isn't that pretty much how it goes. The local property owners are the ones caught up in the pollution problems. In Civil Action the fellow owned the property that Beatrice and Grace befouled. He was part of the community. Now you've got Town Hall officials giving the hospital the benefit of the doubt, great benefit, project opponents would say.

Here's another example that never made it into the local papers in a town not far from this hospital. Haverhill, MA, is a former milltown that saw plenty of pollution along its extensive Merrimack River shores. There is a cesspool pumping business owned by a very prominent Haverhill businessman that is right on the river. 

One day I get an email about a story I'm doing on cesspool inspectors working for this company that are handing in incomplete and inconsistent inspections to the town officials who oversee the private inspectors. Some of those inspectors started making a fuss, hence the story.

The email says there's much more to this company than bogus inspections. Specifically, they have a pipe leading from their property into the city sewer plant, next-door. I get a hold of this fellow, get his name and testimony that he has aerial pix of this cesspool company pumping untreated waste directly into the town's treatment plant. He is supposed to pay for each gallon he dumps into that system. It's a fee the cesspool company owner is charging customers but never paying himself. This is the goose that laid the golden...ahem. And nobody is paying any attention to him. Here comes the punchline: as I'm writing the story, a call comes in from Massachusetts State Sen. Steven Baddour. He wants to know why I'm writing the story and goes on to tell me what a great guy this cesspool company owner is. This, after I spent a week tracking down another source who confirmed everything the email fellow said. The anonymous source told me I was just scratching the surface, that the business owner “owned” Haverhill.

Now for the moral of the story. My editor at the time is Haverhill born and raised. The editor's Rabbi is this Sen. Baddour who dumps all kinds of great stories in the editor's lap. I hear the editor one day talking to the senator about my story. the editor says “oh that's not going anywhere.”

The editor was right. It went no where because I had seven stories to write that week and small town corruption is part of American life. Not just in Massachusetts, but in towns across the country. And what better place to reap the rewards than environmental clean-up. Going by the book is prohibitively expensive. Look the other way and the pay-off is equally large. I've written already on June 8, 2009 about the Greenport, NY, mayor in ONews. You've haven't heard about the former East Brunswick, NJ, mayor and the PA landfill. The point is, in the hospital town, and in Haverhill and in New Jersey, and on Long Island the fox is so often guarding the chicken coop, it takes outsiders to shed a little light.

With the ever-growing level of chemicals in the air we breath and the water we drink and swim in, you have to wonder if the filter industry might be a good investment. Hacking my way through the morning's email, no less that four press releases on water and air purifiers filtered through. Art Deco vacuum specialist Electrolux has taking their air filter expertise off the ground and applied it to the air we breath.

This company is looking to give bottle water magnates Nestle competition. Here's another air purifier company and then there's something called a membrane bioreactor which scrubs pollution out of groundwater in contamination sites like old gas stations. (This last one is worth a read. Few people have a grasp of the tens of thousands of gas stations and leaky chemical plant underground storage tanks that have ruined ground drinking-water supplies across the country. Clean up efforts swell the ranks of Superfund sites and costing billions annually!)

Why all the filters? Because of all the pollutants in our environment. Which brings us to the subject of burning trash to generate electricity and incinerators. Intuitively it's a great idea: get rid of garbage and product power at the same time. In practice it deserves a harder look.Companies like Wheelabrator say incinerator smoke stacks scrub all the pollutants out of the exhaust from these plants. How can they? These facilities burn millions of tons of the stuff nobody wants to breath. Some of it's got to get into our homes. Worse, it's a technology that appears to gaining in popularity.Pictured right is a Wheelabrator plant in Pennsylvania.

his takes us back to the argument over the role recycling should play in our society. Here's another great Boston Globe piece that helps illustrate a key point: those compact fluorescent light bulbs that save so much energy are causing a problem in trash incinerators. If we burn trash instead of separating and recycling it, we just compound our pollution problems by contributing to the continued spread of chemical contaminants into the environment. There is a reason mercury is tainting the fish found in lakes and ponds in Massachusetts' Merrimack Valley which hosts a couple of Wheelabrator incinerators. Do you want to breath what's coming out of this flame? If you live in the southern Merrimack Valley, you are! There's little doubt this flame can vaporize some pretty nasty stuff. Trash incinerators need ultra-hot flames to burn everything we throw away.

Now this may be reckless speculation, but it can't hurt to ponder. Cancer rates of all kind are going up and it seems that every day something new that causes cancer is being discovered in our surroundings. (I couldn't find a specific link, but this more telling this: Google “cancer rates going up” and see what you get.) Autism, is also suspected to have environmental origins. The point being, is it possible all these chemicals in the environment seeping into every pour in our bodies is causing increases in illnesses of certain sorts. Not the virus and bacteria sorts of aliments, but the kind of sickness that reflect a short-circuiting of our body's biochemistry. Is it possible our bodies don't take too kindly to the molecules of plastic, mercury, lead or dioxin seeping in from the air we breath and the water we drink and swim in. Make no mistake the emission from these smoke stakes eventually settle into the world's waterways.

How much more so for fish that must swim in these waterways. I can't find verification on the web, but it seems to me more and more fish are turning up with tumors and the increased incidence of fish with female and male parts has been clearly documented. The question is, do we really want to put more of this stuff into the environment. Do we really want to burn all this trash? Shouldn't we instead place much more emphasis on recycling. Theoretically, we shouldn't have to throw out anything. This is not utopian, it's just very expensive. But not more so than the cost we will end up paying in future health care and heartache. In the meantime, if we continue to slowly poison ourselves and our planet, perhaps we might want to buy some Electrolux stock. Too bad it's trading at $100 a share. BTW Here's a great general info page on garbage. Swedish company Electrolux may refuse to give up on the art deco motif, but it's showing some innovation in filtration systems.

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In case you think Bernie Madoff just hurt wealthy investors,Mass High Tech had a piece showing two Boston research labs that will have to look elsewhere for some of their funding. It's worth reading, if for nothing else, a reminder that an awful lot of science is driven by charity.