Recycled Radioactive Metals May Be in Your Home

Recycled Radioactive Metals May Be in Your Home

Nothing Has Changed (except now it’s also used in BULLETS)

Under special government permits, “decontaminated” radioactive metal is being sold to manufacture everything from knives, forks, and belt buckles to zippers, eyeglasses, dental fillings, and IUDs. The Department of Energy (DOE), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC); and the radioactive metal processing industry are pushing for new regulations that would relax current standards and dispense with the need for special radioactive recycling licensing. By one estimate, the DOE disposed of 7,500 tons of these troublesome metals in 1996 alone. The new standard being sought would allow companies to recycle millions of tons of low-level radioactive metal a year while raising the acceptable levels of millirems (mrems), a unit of measure that estimates the damage radiation does to human tissue. By the NRC’s own estimate, the proposed standards could cause 100,000 cancer fatalities in the United States alone.

Metal companies want to raise the standard from an almost immeasurable amount to something more in the vicinity of 10 mrems per year. The NRC studied the health effects of that exact standard back in 1990 and found that this dosage would lead to about 92,755 additional cancer deaths in the United States alone. According to Progressive reporter Cusac, some scientists argue that exposure to continual low-dose radiation is potentially more dangerous than a onetime, high-level dose. She cites Steve Wing, epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: “The cancer curve rises more steeply at low doses than high doses.” Richard Clapp, associate professor in the department of environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health, says that the greatest threat comes from those household products with which you have the most contact, where “you’re sitting on it or if it’s part of your desk, or in the frame of your bed—where you have constant exposure and for several hours.”

While the DOE waits for new standards to be released, says Cusac, “hot metal” is being marketed to other countries. Three major U.S. oil companies: Texaco, Mobil, and Phillips shipped 5.5 million pounds of radioactive scrap metal to China in 1993. In June 1996, Chinese officials stopped a U.S. shipment of 78 tons of radioactive scrap metal that exceeded China’s safety limit, some of it by 30-fold. As of January 1998, 178 buildings in Taiwan, containing 1,573 residential apartments, had been identified as radioactive.

Radioactive recycled metal has shown up in domestic markets as well. When a Buffalo, New York television station offered to survey suspect gold jewelry in the 1980s, it turned up three radioactive pieces in the first two days, which prompted the New York State Health Department to begin a comprehensive campaign to find radioactive, contaminated jewelry. According to the journal Health Physics in 1986, out of more than 160,000 pieces surveyed, 170 pieces were radioactive. News accounts reported that at least 14 people had developed finger cancer and several more had fingers and even parts of their hands amputated because of “hot” jewelry.

“This is not a glamorous industry,” says Tom Gilman, government accounts manager for U.S. Ecology, which buys, cleans, and resells low-level radioactive scrap metal. Most of it comes from commercial sites, but some comes from DOE. U.S. Ecology “scrubs” and sells it as clean scrap. From there, the metal travels to a steel mill and enters the general consumer market. Gilman claims that U.S. Ecology is “turning waste into assets.” He is careful to add, however, that the metal his company is recycling into the metal stream isn’t completely clean. “`Acceptable’ levels is the word to use,” he explains, “There’s always going to be some level of radioactivity.”

UPDATE BY AUTHOR ANNE-MARIE CUSAC: “The recycling of radioactive metal into household products could pose a serious public-health threat in the coming century. The radioactive metal recycled from decommissioned nuclear reactors in the United States alone could number in the millions of tons. But by the NRC’s own estimate, even an exposure standard of 10 millirems a year (the standard favored by the radioactive metal industry) would lead to 92,755 cancer deaths in the United States alone.

“Since my story was published, the commerce in hot metals has been proceeding briskly. In mid-September, Nuclear Waste News reported: ‘Western authorities are growing increasingly concerned about illegal trafficking in radioactive scrap metal from Russia and other former Communist states.’ According to the article, the contaminated metal, ‘most of which comes from decommissioned nuclear power stations, radiation monitoring equipment, and waste containers is finding its way into metal products, including household items in Europe.’ The International Atomic Energy Agency says that the problem is growing, partly as a result of the recent fall in the value of the ruble, and that some of the metal is ‘going even further afield.’

“One new development suggests that radioactive metal recyclers in the United States are looking toward hot metal imports as a big moneymaker. In September, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a license to Allied Technology Group of Richland, Washington. The license gives that company permission to import approximately 1.5 million pounds of ‘radioactive scrap tubing and tube plate’ from the Taiwan Power Company’s Chinshan Nuclear Power Station for the purposes of ‘decontamination and recovery of the metal for recycling,’ says James Kennedy, senior project manager in the Division of Waste Management at the NRC. Shipments should begin in February 1998.

“Meanwhile, the NRC is working on the development of a new standard that could allow for a huge increase in the amount of radioactive metal allowed into consumer goods. The Commission plans to solicit public comment on the issue beginning next August [1999].

“But the public has little idea that radioactive metal could be turning up in frying pans and belt buckles. The mainstream media has not covered this issue. Such a lapse of this important health issue effectively blocks public monitoring of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”



Source: THE PROGRESSIVE, Title: “Nuclear Spoons,” Date: October 1998, Author: Anne-Marie Cusac

SSU Censored Researchers: Jennie Glennon, Dayna Del Simone, and Jason Sanders
SSU Faculty Evaluator: Peter Phillips

From Project Censored @ http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/4-recycled-radioactive-metals-may-be-in-your-home/

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Are You Destroying Creation?

Are You Destroying Creation?

Are you or your family trashing the waters of life?

Most people living in rural areas seem to have no idea they’re stealing their children’s future (and breaking laws) every day, and many just don’t care. People in cities and towns have little idea how badly the people entrusted with caring for everyone’s land and water are managing the planet’s resources. Most people are fairly ignorant about very basic matters and some just don’t give a damn about anything but money.
Landholders are custodians of the land; most aren’t aware that their property deeds give them the legal right to occupy the land, not to ‘own’ it. Individuals can never truly own something that will forever outlast them. Yet thoughtless acts by today’s temporary stewards destroy more of the common wealth – and everyone’s future– every livelong day.
It takes a few minutes to cut down a thousand year old tree with a modern chainsaw. The tree cutter’s great-great-great grandchildren can never know what their ancestor destroyed, or even know what they’ve missed out on. When an ancient tree or forest is gone it won’t grow back for millennia, if ever.
It’s amazingly easy to turn forests full of thousand year old trees into rocky moonscapes without enough soil to grow anything but noxious weeds, and it takes no talent at all to turn rivers teeming with fish and wildlife into dead, toxic drains. All it takes is heartless stupidity, and it’s plainly evident to anyone with eyes in their heads that plenty of people still suffer from that particular disease.
Most people seem unaware of the fact that there’s hardly a river left in the Land of Oz that’s safe to drink – or in the world, for that matter. This isn’t due to global warming. It’s literally sickening to dip your skin or expose your eyes to many streams, and this isn’t because of natural climate fluctuations. It’s because humans have used the rivers as sewers and chemical dumps and destroyed the banks that kept streams healthy and flowing in the places where they belong. And every day, people continue to trash dwindling fresh waterways even now that the damage – and its cause – is bleeding obvious.
Old time pioneers had excuses for their destructive behaviour; they didn’t know any better, and the world seemed all but limitless to the first farmers and tree cutters who built homes for their children in primeval places. We no longer have those excuses. Yet the destruction continues to accelerate every day even though we certainly know better than our forebears.
Humans have trashed almost everything they’ve touched, and the main reason anything is left is that some areas have been too uneconomical to exploit to death (yet), while some soils are deeper than others and will last a few years longer before they end up being washed out to sea, leaving rocks, sand or clay pans where life once flourished.
One short word explains all this destruction, and it isn’t ‘money’ – a destructive idea in itself. It’s simple GREED.
Now that the last vestiges of remote old forests are finally on track for preservation it’s time to tackle the problem of the hippopotamus in everyone’s lounge room; the river’s and streams we can no longer drink or even safely swim in.

Let’s keep it simple. If you cut any vegetation on creeks or riverbanks – by brush-cutting, slashing, mowing, digging, bulldozing or grazing animals there – you’re committing a crime against nature and humanity. You’re also breaking laws which were put in place throughout Australia (for instance) way back in the 1840s, before the country was even an independent nation.
The knowledge that destroying trees and other plants on the banks of rivers is a stupid idea has been with us for a long time. It isn’t some novel invention of radical greenies. Socrates complained about it in ancient Attica.
In bygone times our ancestors knew that all they had to do to keep life sustainable was to preserve the water and soil for their children’s children. Yet greed overcame those selfsame grandchildren, who ignored the wisdom of their elders in pursuit of a little more cash in hand. Today many landholders believe the lie that the land is theirs to do what they will with, and the slack beurocrats who supposedly oversee the soil, forests, wildlife and waters from distant air conditioned offices have let greedy scum get away with murdering the landscape.
Trees and vegetation keep rivers in place. They stop so much evaporation from Sun and wind that streams with treed banks have almost twice as much water as those without. It’s been illegal, immoral and gluttonous to clear any vegetation within a ‘chain width’ (22 yards) of the upper banks of any river or stream, permanent or temporary, in the Great Southern Land – the driest continent on Earth – for the better part of the last two centuries. These days these ‘filter strips’ have been upgraded to a minimum of twenty metres in width. These strips need to be at least as wide as the height of the trees which grow there to do their job effectively – and to survive any trees that fall there.
It’s been illegal to graze animals in these riparian zones all this time, and it’s been illegal to place cattle fences – or allow any grazing animals – closer to the upper bank of any river or stream than this small distance for many generations. Cows, sheep, goats and other livestock all trample and eat everything that grows there – and they piss and shit in the flood zones and directly into the water used by people downstream. The riverbanks and rivers have been illegally trashed for a few measly extra quids or bucks – a good example of the old adage ‘penny wise and pound foolish’.
All it takes to preserve water depth, volume and quality – and fish, tortoises, platypuses, frogs and all other life that flourishes in fresh water – is to maintain this tiny strip of plant life. Yet a single glance at virtually every landholding in the country will show you that this simple law has been ignored and broken almost everywhere, creating a disaster that was far easier to avoid than it is to repair. Don’t take my word for it; take a look at the world beyond the screen, or just zoom in on Google Earth.
For the times they are a’changing.

Cutting Off Your Nose to Spite Your Face

The rivers and banks are not private land, regardless of apparent property lines printed on survey maps. They belong to everyone. Convention and law dictate that when a fence is erected between neighbours each pays half the cost and effort to erect and maintain it.
As the public ‘owns’ (is responsible for) all the rivers, governments have allocated funds to pay half the costs for farmers to fence off their banks. Government usually provides the materials and the landholder provides the labour – an arrangement most people see as very equitable. Grants are available for landholders to repair and revegetate their banks. Yet even when the rivers are fenced off many graziers simply use them as an extra paddock in lean times and their hard-hoofed cattle and sheep destroy everything that attempts to grow there.
Many farmers even hack down any sapling that grows on the banks in the alarmingly false belief that ‘trees cause erosion’. Many have so few trees left beside ‘their’ rivers they’ve never seen how even small stands of forests maintain the banks. Whereas water can swirl around a single tree and tear away soil, a stand of trees, shrubs and wild clumping grasses – a diverse natural system – holds everything together. Filter strips even build up the banks, clean the water and protect land holdings downstream by catching soil and debris during floods.
Without these ‘filter strips’ untold millions of tons of topsoil are washed out to sea with every flood and rivers change course, destroying the most fertile croplands, meadows and paddocks farmers need to survive. These narrow strips also provide excellent (and necessary) wildlife corridors and seed banks that can relink most fragmented ecosystems and reknit the sundered and plundered web of life back together again.
They also rebuild swimming holes, fish breeding habitat and recreate untold amounts of the best naturally mineralised drinking water money can’t buy.

What Can One Person Do?

In the new era of global water scarcity big fines now await those who destroy riverbanks. All it takes to bring expensive legal action against destructive landholders is a complaint to a government department – and governments no longer need to inspect on the ground or await a complaint. They have satellites that peek into all the nooks and crannies out of sight of roads or houses – yet they still won’t act until a member of the public makes a complaint, or unless directed to by their department heads or ministers.
Land rapists can no longer hide their crimes, but it still all comes down to you. Why not report a malefactor to your state environment or water management department today? That’s what they’re there for. Make those cozened public servants earn the money we’re all paying them. Make them enforce the laws that protect our lands and waters, by letting them know that a crime’s been committed by a crooked landholder – and insist that they take a look for themselves and act on any infringements.
Levying fines against poor landholders is a last resort, except in the most dire cases of obvious and major wilful destruction. The first step environment and water departments usually take is to simply hand ‘stop work’ or ‘remediation’ orders – demands to stop destroying the rivers or to repair the damage – to the landholder, along with economic assistance for dams, water troughs, pumps and fencing materials where necessary. It’s actually a very generous arrangement.
But in most places the beurocrats won’t act at all unless YOU pick up the phone or write a letter or email – and demand a reply. It isn’t a matter of dobbing in your neighbours to heartless cops. It’s about saving the future for your children’s children.
The Age of Aquarius is the age of the water bearer. If we act now our descendants may not have to carry heavy buckets of clean water around for the next two millennia. If we don’t act now we’ll learn how hard it is to replant life in a desert.
It’s actually up to you – the sovereign of the world – to bring back the balance between humans and nature.
Let’s keep it simple. If you cut any vegetation on creeks or riverbanks – by brush-cutting, slashing, mowing, digging, bulldozing or grazing animals there – you’re committing a crime against nature and humanity.
If you can see a river or stream from a distance it’s being desiccated by Sun and wind – and the law and lore of the land are being broken.
You’d have to be blind or ignorant not to see what’s happening – and now you can’t lay claim to the defence of ignorance. The future is in your hands. Do you have a phone? A computer? A pen? Help flood government departments with your complaint today – NOW.
And have a long drink of clean, pure, nourishing fresh water – if you can find any.
Time appears to flow onward…

- R. Ayana

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Beyond Beef: the Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture

Beyond Beef: the Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture

Cattle and beef production is a primary threat to the global environment. It is a major contributor to deforestation, soil erosion and desertification, water scarcity, water pollution, depletion of fossil fuels, global warming, and loss of biodiversity.

We need to examine the devastating effects of the cattle culture that has come to shape and warp our world and the impact of White Australia on aboriginal culture. That is the anthropology, history, sociology, economics and ecology of this land we call Australia; A world in which the poorer peoples of the planet have been starved to support the beef addiction of a handful of wealthy nations.

The rape and pillage of stolen land from aboriginal Australians parallels that of the Native Americans. In Australia the introduced hard hoofed species have taking over and decimated a great deal of indigenous flora and fauna, lands and water which aboriginal looked after for thousands of years guided by their cultural lore.

Quote from Animal Liberation Australian professor Peter Singer: “Western-style meat production is cruel, unhealthy and damaging to the ecology.”

Soil Erosion and Desertification

Cattle production is turning productive land into barren desert in the American West and throughout the world. Soil erosion and desertification is caused directly by cattle and other livestock overgrazing.

Over cultivation of the land, improper irrigation techniques, and deforestation are also principal causes of erosion and desertification, and cattle production is a primary factor in each case.

Depletion of Fossil Fuels

Intensive animal agriculture uses a disproportionate amount of fossil fuels. Supplying the world with a typical American meat based diet means loss of Biodiversity

Global Warming

Cattle and beef production is a significant factor in the emission of three of the four global warming gases -- carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane.

Petrochemical fertilizers used to produce feed crops for grain-fed cattle release nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas. Worldwide, the use of fertilizers has increased dramatically from 14 million tons in 1950 to 143 million tons in 1989. Nitrous oxide now accounts for 6 percent of the global warming effect.

Loss of Biodiversity

Riparian zones -- the narrow strips of land that run alongside rivers and streams where most of the range flora and fauna are concentrated -- have been the hardest hit by cattle grazing. More than 90 percent of the original riparian zones of Arizona and New Mexico are gone, according to the Arizona State Park Department. Colorado and Idaho have also been hard hit. The GAO reports that "poorly managed livestock grazing is the major cause of degraded riparian habitat on federal rangelands."

Unable to compete with cattle for food, wild animals are disappearing from the ranges. Between 1966 and 1983 Brazil estimates that 38 percent of its rain forest was destroyed for cattle pasture.²

By Benny Zable

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