The majority of Americans never had to support themselves (entirely!) on $2.13 an hour plus tips, and it shows.
23 Likes
A sudden and overwhelming contamination could probably cause the animals to sicken quickly. Particularly if those PFAS are the kinds that bind to hormone receptors. That seems to be what the test results discussed in the article are hinting at. The two below were very young and would have only been indirectly exposed
the liver of the Coleman’s stillborn calf contained 610,000 parts per trillion of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, one of the many types of forever chemicals.
The tissue from a calf belonging to Farmer that died the week after being born tested at 320 ppt of PFOS.
Currently, there are no federal food safety standards for PFAS. In Maine, which in 2016 became the first state to detect PFAS contamination at a farm, state officials issued limits for beef containing PFOS at 3.4 parts per billion and milk containing PFOS at 210 parts per trillion — meaning that beef or milk exceeding these levels should be considered unsafe for consumption.
15 Likes
Yeah, hence my edit. This is fucking terrifying! How many other farms are just slightly less contaminated? And, with what is going to happen to USDA, will we ever know? Gods, what a mess we are in!! Growing your own looks more and more the way to go.
16 Likes
Sorry, I didn’t see the edit.
It is horrifying.
Creating these chemicals and then using them is going to be one of the things that, should our species survive, is a great horror of the past. The people who knew these chemicals were so harmful and yet advised the companies use them anyway belong in the special hell
12 Likes
South Korea hasn’t always been perfect but for the most part they’ve been a pretty stable democracy for several decades. This kind of move is disturbing. The last guy to declare martial law there (in 1980) became a military dictator for 7 years.
11 Likes
The suspicion that the employees don’t get the tips doesn’t help, especially if tipping is done through e-payment rather cash on the table. Even in places where the employer pocketing it is illegal.
21 Likes
I’m suspicious that way, which is why I leave cash tips instead.
17 Likes
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has declared martial law
15 Likes
For any who need a marker for the Anthropocene Epoch in the fossil record, I think PFOS will do just fine. I say all the time that our generation has done a hell of a good job making the world unfriendly to our own life. The next has to fix it, and needs every neuron possible to do so. So, of course, we set about getting rid of those as well.
17 Likes
18 Likes
Just your daily reminder that the world has become very small, and what is in an out-of-the-way, tropical jungle today may be in the heart of a major city tomorrow. We have a tragic history of ignoring the developing world, to our grief. Seriously doubt this has changed.
23 Likes
Add to that the clowns and quacks that Trump is going to put in charge of disease control, and oh shiiit.
19 Likes
People do not remember what it was like in the 60s and 70s with regards to the environment… it seems like even people who grew up during that time have wiped how much progress we’ve made from their memory banks. they don’t remember the smog, the rivers on fire, the toxic sites, etc… Since there have been attacks on the EPA they’ve been stripping all the gains we’ve made away piecemeal, but this is going to drive a stake through it’s heart… they’ll strip mine the public parks, poison rivers and the air…
Until it’s time to extract the resources they have under their feet…
23 Likes
I drive through Gary, Indiana regularly. Witnessing when the chimneys belch dangerous smog versus when the companies use the scrubbers – depending on which administration is in power, and thus which laws and regulations – has been very telling.
And yes, the last time I passed I saw at least a dozen smoke stacks with actual flames coming out of them.
23 Likes
“Love Canal” gets a lot of confused looks these days.
I read a quote somewhere that said “globalization means we’ve outsourced our pollution”.
22 Likes
Pollution.
About a year ago I walked outside and the air was full of some kind of industrial exhaust. I had an immediate flashback.
When I was in elementary and middle school, in 1980s Milwaukee. Early morning Gym class. The crabgrass football field was covered in dew. And the air smelled the same way. It always did. It was just normal and we didn’t think about it.
I can also remember working in my family’s yard earlier in 70s Milwaukee. My father would sometimes say “Take a deep breath. Do you feel that pain in your lungs? That’s the ozone.”
18 Likes
12 Likes
I can understand that of younger people that didn’t live through it, especially since “recent” history is even more neglected in schools and teaching about that might cast our corporate sponsors in a bad light. I’m always more than a little taken aback when I bring up such things to people that lived through those events! In the late 1970’s, North Carolina had a huge incident of illegal dumping of PCB contaminants along rural county roads. I wasn’t even in my teens yet, but I remember the concerns over it. My relatives who were adults at the time barely remember it at all.
(I know there was also a PCB landfill created for the purpose of dealing with the resulting contaminated soil, the landfill also receiving protests, but I’ll admit that I recall much less about that. The information I see says the site was decommissioned, but the soil and water there are still considered toxic.)
15 Likes
A lot of this is stuck in my mind because I grew up in an area with a lot of PCBs.
Also lived near a plant that had a pond in the back that never froze over no matter how cold it got. It was sold, and then the pond was gone, filled in. That couldn’t have been good at all.
13 Likes
