Strange Days on Earth w/ Edward Norton #4 - Troubled Waters

[wacki]

This episode is all about our water and how it's quality is a lot worse then we ever thought. Chemicals that are NOT tested for or removed by water treatment plants are causing low sperm counts, hermaphrodism, immune system deficiency, cancer and much more in both humans and animals.

Tyrone Hayes at Berkeley is studying how Atrazine is causing hermaphrodites in frogs. One tenth of one part per billion is all that is needed to cause this abnormality.

"In the northern waters of Canada's St. Lawrence River, some dead beluga whales are so full of toxins and chemical mixtures from the water that they technically qualify as hazardous waste." The beluga whales are plagued with cancer and various other diseases because of the chemicals.

Epidemiologist Shanna Swan is tracking sperm counts of men across the nation. Sperm quality/counts in the very "clean" and "pristine" Missouri are extremely poor/low due to farm chemicals. These chemicals are not removed by most water treatment plants.

Many chemicals that are in our drinking water are harmless when ingested by itself. However, when ingested in combination with another "harmless" chemical serious repercussions can occur. Several links have already been found connected chemical cocktails to intestinal cancer as well as numerous other illnesses. The FDA doesn't test for these cocktails.

Geneticist Richard Meagher is a pioneer in a field that is using plants natural ability to soak up and break down these toxic chemicals. Ferns can survive in arsenic-laced soil, alpine herbs can survive in zinc, mustard plants in lead and clovers in motor oil but no plants can withstand large amounts of methyl mercury. So he combined some bacterial genes with a plant and created a plant that broke down methyl mercury to release it in a less harmful vapor form.

There is much more....

Great easy to read info here.

[wacki]

BTW, these videos are available for rent via www.netflix.com/

[purnell]

It would seem that from the point of view of the rest of the planet, Civilization could look like an infestation.

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
It would seem that from the point of view of the rest of the planet, Civilization could look like an infestation.

[/ QUOTE ]

True, but the funny thing is that it doesn't have to be that way. We can very easily make the planet 10x cleaner then it already is. Richard Meagher's work is very promising and proves we can solve a lot of our problems with plants.

Also, wild animals aren't the only creatures being harmed by chemicals. Human disease/cancer caused by chemicals not removed by treatment plants are well documented.

[DavidC]

[ QUOTE ]
This episode is all about our water and how it's quality is a lot worse then we ever thought. Chemicals that are NOT tested for or removed by water treatment plants are causing low sperm counts, hermaphrodism, immune system deficiency, cancer and much more in both humans and animals.

Tyrone Hayes at Berkeley is studying how Atrazine is causing hermaphrodites in frogs. One tenth of one part per billion is all that is needed to cause this abnormality.

"In the northern waters of Canada's St. Lawrence River, some dead beluga whales are so full of toxins and chemical mixtures from the water that they technically qualify as hazardous waste." The beluga whales are plagued with cancer and various other diseases because of the chemicals.

Epidemiologist Shanna Swan is tracking sperm counts of men across the nation. Sperm quality/counts in the very "clean" and "pristine" Missouri are extremely poor/low due to farm chemicals. These chemicals are not removed by most water treatment plants.

Many chemicals that are in our drinking water are harmless when ingested by itself. However, when ingested in combination with another "harmless" chemical serious repercussions can occur. Several links have already been found connected chemical cocktails to intestinal cancer as well as numerous other illnesses. The FDA doesn't test for these cocktails.

Geneticist Richard Meagher is a pioneer in a field that is using plants natural ability to soak up and break down these toxic chemicals. Ferns can survive in arsenic-laced soil, alpine herbs can survive in zinc, mustard plants in lead and clovers in motor oil but no plants can withstand large amounts of methyl mercury. So he combined some bacterial genes with a plant and created a plant that broke down methyl mercury to release it in a less harmful vapor form.

There is much more....

Great easy to read info here.

[/ QUOTE ]

[censored] dead ballugas, man.

I swear to god our water stopped working yesterday and we had to throw another one into the incinerator. They're beginning to become a nuisannce.

Can't we just put up a big net across the st lawrence, to keep them out?

P.S. Mustard plants are cool.