PNN - GREEN GREEN, GREEN THEY SAY...

PNN - GREEN GREEN, GREEN THEY SAY

9/22/13

(T) Candidate Obama (1min.)

(T) Helen Caldicott (5min.)

(T) Korean News  (1min.)

(T) Jessica Lowe-Minor: …………7:17 - 7:20pm

League of Women Voters: discuss an upcoming event

(T) Zack Kaldveer: ………………..7:21 - 7:40pm

Consumer Organics -  talks about the GMO Labeling Case in WA

(T) Mark Perry: ……………………7:41 - 7:52pm

Executive Director Florida Oceanographic

(T) Alexis Meyer: …………………7:53 - 8:07pm

Everglades Habitat

Drew Martin: ………………………8:08 - 8:30pm

Soil and Water Board

Barry Silver:……………………….8:30pm - 9:55pm 

Environmental Activist

Anita Stewart

Gwen Holden Barry

LISTEN LIVE 7PM - 

1. JUST ANOTHER FUKE EARTHQUAKE

Reuters: An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.8 struck Fukushima Prefecture in Japan early Friday morning, Kyodo reported, quoting the Japan Meteorological Agency. [...] U.S. Geological Survey said on its website that the earthquake’s magnitude was 5.3. [...]

Wall Street Journal: A moderately strong earthquake hit northern Japan early Friday in the region of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, but there was no immediate damage to the crippled facility and no reports of other damage in the area. Japan’s Meteorological Agency said the 2:25 a.m. quake had a magnitude of 5.8 [...]

AFP: Quake rocks Japan’s Fukushima [...] The Japan Meteorological Agency, which put the quake at magnitude 5.8, said no tsunami warning had been issued. The tremor caused buildings to shake in the capital Tokyo, 175km away, an AFP reporter there said. [...]

Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch: A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude 5.8 struck Fukushima Prefecture early Friday morning but no tsunami warning has been issued, the Japan Meteorological Agency said, the Kyodo news service reported. [...]

2. RALPH NADER - has said

Here are several suggestions that the president should consider and evaluate, given his firsthand experience with the devastating aftermath of an unrestrained financial industry. These are all elements of the financial collapse that have not been adequately addressed, rectified or acknowledged by the self-styled "Hope and Change" president.

• Our country has a systemic tax problem -- big corporations are not paying their fair share. Here's a startling fact -- one address in the Cayman Islands is the legal address of thousands of corporate subsidiaries of U.S. companies. A not-so-secret secret, this practice of utilizing offshore tax havens is often a perfectly legal ruse to avoid paying anything to Uncle Sam. Bank of America received $20 billion dollars from the bailout in 2009. They now have about $17.2 billion stored away in offshore tax havens where the federal government cannot touch it.

Even more troubling, some of these giant corporations receive a hefty tax benefit from the federal government on top of their tax avoidance. For instance, in the years 2008-2010, General Electric made over $7 billion in U.S. profit, paid nothing in federal tax, and then took in $5 billion extra from the United States treasury. Why is the U.S. government giving out billions of dollars to hugely successful and profitable companies and asking nothing in return?

It is thanks to crafty corporate tax accountants and attorneys who make their living discovering and taking advantage of every loophole in the tax code. President Obama -- why are big corporations allowed to use our public roads and other crucial infrastructures for free to make their billions without contributing anything back? Why is raising the revenue needed for essential public services left to the small taxpayers?

• American CEO's are the highest paid in the world. In 1980, American CEO pay was, on average, 42 times greater than that of the average worker. As of 2011, corporate CEOs make 340 times more than the average worker -- eight times as much!

LISTEN 

3. Congress Insults the Poor and bows to Monsanto

by Patty Lovera from Food and Water Watch

Thursday, the House of Representatives passed a bill to cut almost $40 billion over ten years from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the main food assistance program that used to be called food stamps. The bill passed 217-210, largely along party lines, although 15 Republicans joined Democrats in voting against it. The New York Times editorial board captured what the vote means pretty well with the headline “Another Insult to the Poor,” since the cuts passed by the House would kick an estimated 3.8 million people out of the program next year. 

Thursday’s vote completed the House’s work on its version of the Farm Bill – mostly. They still need to finish some procedural steps to combine yesterday’s nutrition cut bill with the farm policy portions of the bill passed earlier in the summer. After that is figured out, the Senate and House can start the conference committee process to reconcile their different versions of the Farm Bill.

And there is a lot for the conference committee to figure out. The biggest is the SNAP program. The Senate bill cut $4 billion from SNAP, while the House bill cut almost $40 billion. This is a huge sticking point and Senate Democrats have vowed not to accept a cut that large and the President has threatened to veto any bill with such a cut. This issue alone will make it hard for the conference process to be completed.

The clock is ticking – the current farm bill (which was passed as quickie extension at the end of last year’s drama over the “fiscal cliff”) expires at the end of the month. And between now and then, Congress also has to deal with the small matter of keeping the federal government running past October 1, when the federal budget expires.

The House passed its version of a “continuing resolution” yesterday (Friday) with a vote of 230 to 189 to extend the current budgets until Dec. 15. The CR is getting a lot of headlines because House Republicans used it to try and block the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (also known as health care reform or Obamacare). However, the CR also contains some really bad food policy “riders.”

The first stops USDA from enforcing contract fairness rules for contract poultry growers, allowing big chicken companies to continue to treat them unfairly. Food & Water Watch and hundreds of farm groups worked to include these vital provisions in the 2008 Farm Bill to protect farmers from unfair and deceptive practices by meatpacking and poultry companies.

The other rider is a giveaway to genetically engineered seed companies that would allow the continued planting of genetically engineered crops even when a court finds they were approved illegally. This provision unnecessarily interferes with the judicial review process and picked up the well-deserved nickname of the “Monsanto Protection Act” because it weakens the already inadequate review process for GE crops.

So with the terrible House CR to reconcile, Congress’s plate is full for the next 10 days, which leads many Farm Bill watchers to predict that, for the second year in a row, Congress will let the Farm Bill expire and try to deal with it later this fall.

LISTEN 

4. LAKE FLAKES SHAKE STAKES

Tons of cesium-tainted wood chips found near Japan’s biggest lake

Radioactive cesium has been found on an estimated 200 to 300 tons of wood chips that were left months ago near Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture, prefectural officials said.

Samples of the chips show a reading of up to 3,000 becquerels per kilogram, the officials said Tuesday. [...]

The Shiga government started an investigation to determine where the chips came from. They were found in the dry bed of the Kamo River in Takashima and other locations near the lake, officials said. [...]

“The site is an estuary leading to Lake Biwa, and leaving (the chips) there without permission is extremely malicious. We will deal with the matter strictly,” Gov. Yukiko Kada said.

5. FUKE FOREVER

Recent disclosures of tons of radioactive water from the damaged Fukushima reactors spilling into the ocean are just the latest evidence of the continuing incompetence of the Japanese utility, TEPCO. The announcement that the Japanese government will step in is also not reassuring since it was the Japanese government that failed to regulate the utility for decades. But, bad as it is, the current contamination of the ocean should be the least of our worries. The radioactive poisons are expected to form a plume that will be carried by currents to coast of North America. But the effects will be small, adding an unfortunate bit to our background radiation. Fish swimming through the plume will be affected, but we can avoid eating them.

Much more serious is the danger that the spent fuel rod pool at the top of the nuclear plant number four will collapse in a storm or an earthquake, or in a failed attempt to carefully remove each of the 1,535 rods and safely transport them to the common storage pool 50 meters away. Conditions in the unit 4 pool, 100 feet from the ground, are perilous, and if any two of the rods touch it could cause a nuclear reaction that would be uncontrollable. The radiation emitted from all these rods, if they are not continually cool and kept separate, would require the evacuation of surrounding areas including Tokyo. Because of the radiation at the site the 6,375 rods in the common storage pool could not be continuously cooled; they would fission and all of humanity will be threatened, for thousands of years.

Fukushima is just the latest episode in a dangerous dance with radiation that has been going on for 68 years. Since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945 we have repeatedly let loose plutonium and other radioactive substances on our planet, and authorities have repeatedly denied or trivialized their dangers. The authorities include national governments (the U.S., Japan, the Soviet Union/ Russia, England, France and Germany); the worldwide nuclear power industry; and some scientists both in and outside of these governments and the nuclear power industry. Denials and trivialization have continued with Fukushima. (Documentation of the following observations can be found in my piece in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, upon which this article is based.) (Perrow 2013)

In 1945, shortly after the bombing of two Japanese cities, the New York Times headline read: "Survey Rules Out Nagasaki Dangers"; soon after the 2011 Fukushima disaster it read "Experts Foresee No Detectable Health Impact from Fukushima Radiation." In between these two we had experts reassuring us about the nuclear bomb tests, plutonium plant disasters at Windscale in northern England and Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains, and the nuclear power plant accidents at Three Mile Island in the United States and Chernobyl in what is now Ukraine, as well as the normal operation of nuclear power plants.

LISTEN 

Initially the U.S. Government denied that low-level radiation experienced by thousands of Japanese people in and near the two cities was dangerous. In 1953, the newly formed Atomic Energy Commission insisted that low-level exposure to radiation "can be continued indefinitely without any detectable bodily change." Biologists and other scientists took exception to this, and a 1956 report by the National Academy of Scientists, examining data from Japan and from residents of the Marshall Islands exposed to nuclear test fallout, successfully established that all radiation was harmful.

The Atomic Energy Commission then promoted a statistical or population approach that minimized the danger: the damage would be so small that it would hardly be detectable in a large population and could be due to any number of other causes. Nevertheless, the Radiation Research Foundation detected it in 1,900 excess deaths among the Japanese exposed to the two bombs. (The Department of Homeland Security estimated only 430 cancer deaths).

Besides the uproar about the worldwide fallout from testing nuclear weapons, another problem with nuclear fission soon emerged: a fire in a British plant making plutonium for nuclear weapons sent radioactive material over a large area of Cumbria, resulting in an estimated 240 premature cancer deaths, though the link is still disputed. The event was not made public and no evacuations were ordered. Also kept secret, for over 25 years, was a much larger explosion and fire, also in 1957, at the Chelyabinsk nuclear weapons processing plant in the eastern Ural Mountains of the Soviet Union. One estimate is that 272,000 people were irradiated; lakes and streams were contaminated; 7,500 people were evacuated; and some areas still are uninhabitable. The CIA knew of it immediately, but they too kept it secret. If a plutonium plant could do that much damage it would be a powerful argument for not building nuclear weapons.

Powerful arguments were needed, due to the fallout from the fallout from bombs and tests. Peaceful use became the mantra. Project Plowshares, initiated in 1958, conducted 27 "peaceful nuclear explosions" from 1961 until the costs as well as public pressure from unforeseen consequences ended the program in 1975. The Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission indicated Plowshares' close relationship to the increasing opposition to nuclear weapons, saying that peaceful applications of nuclear explosives would "create a climate of world opinion that is more favorable to weapons development and tests" (emphasis supplied). A Pentagon official was equally blunt, saying in 1953, "The atomic bomb will be accepted far more readily if at the same time atomic energy is being used for constructive ends." The minutes of a National Security Council in 1953 spoke of destroying the taboo associated with nuclear weapons and "dissipating" the feeling that we could not use an A-bomb.

More useful than peaceful nuclear explosions were nuclear power plants, which would produce the plutonium necessary for atomic weapons as well as legitimating them. Nuclear power plants, the daughter of the weapons program -- actually its "bad seed" --f was born and soon saw first fruit with the1979 Three Mile Island accident. Increases in cancer were found but the Columbia University study declared that the level of radiation from TMI was too low to have caused them, and the "stress" hypothesis made its first appearance as the explanation for rises in cancer. Another university study disputed this, arguing that radiation caused the increase, and since a victim suit was involved, it went to a Federal judge who ruled in favor of stress. A third, larger study found "slight" increases in cancer mortality and increased risk breast and other cancers, but found "no consistent evidence" of a "significant impact." Indeed, it would be hard to find such an impact when so many other things can cause cancer, and it is so widespread. Indeed, since stress can cause it, there is ample ambiguity that can be mobilized to defend nuclear power plants.

Ambiguity was mobilized by the Soviet Union after the 1987 Chernobyl disaster. Medical studies by Russian scientists were suppressed, and doctors were told not to use the designation of leukemia in health reports. Only after a few years had elapsed did any serious studies acknowledge that the radiation was serious. The Soviet Union forcefully argued that the large drops in life expectancy in the affected areas were due to not just stress, but lifestyle changes. 

LISTEN 

The International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA), charged with both promoting nuclear power and helping make it safe, agreed, and mentioned such things as obesity, smoking, and even unprotected sex, arguing that the affected population should not be treated as "victims" but as "survivors." The count of premature deaths has varied widely, ranging from 4,000 in the contaminated areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia from UN agencies, while Greenpeace puts it at 200,000. We also have the controversial worldwide estimate of 985,000 from Russian scientists with access to thousands of publications from the affected regions.

Even when nuclear power plants are running normally they are expected to release some radiation, but so little as to be harmless. Numerous studies have now challenged that. When eight U.S. nuclear plants in the U.S. were closed in 1987 they provided the opportunity for a field test. Two years later strontium-90 levels in local milk declined sharply, as did birth defects and death rates of infants within 40 miles of the plants. A 2007 study of all German nuclear power plants saw childhood leukemia for children living less than 3 miles from the plants more than double, but the researchers held that the plants could not cause it because their radiation levels were so low. Similar results were found for a French study, with a similar conclusion; it could not be low-level radiation, though they had no other explanation. A meta-study published in 2007 of 136 reactor sites in seven countries, extended to include children up to age 9, found childhood leukemia increases of 14 percent to 21 percent.

Epidemiological studies of children and adults living near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant will face the same obstacles as earlier studies. About 40 percent of the aging population of Japan will die of some form of cancer; how can one be sure it was not caused by one of the multiple other causes? It took decades for the effects of the atomic bombs and Chernobyl to clearly emblazon the word "CANCER" on these events. Almost all scientists finally agree that the dose effects are linear, that is, any radiation added to natural background radiation, even low-levels of radiation, is harmful. But how harmful?

University professors have declared that the health effects of Fukushima are "negligible," will cause "close to no deaths," and that much of the damage was "really psychological." Extensive and expensive follow-up on citizens from the Fukushima area, the experts say, is not worth it. There is doubt a direct link will ever be definitively made, one expert said. The head of the U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, said: "There's no opportunity for conducting epidemiological studies that have any chance of success....The doses are just too low." We have heard this in 1945, at TMi, at Chernobyl, and for normally running power plants. It is surprising that respected scientists refuse to make another test of such an important null hypothesis: that there are no discernible effects of low-level radiation.

LISTEN 

Not surprisingly, a nuclear power trade group announced shortly after the March, 2011 meltdown at Fukushima (the meltdown started with the earthquake, well before the tsunami hit), that "no health effects are expected" as a result of the events. UN agencies agree with them and the U.S. Council. The leading UN organization on the effects of radiation concluded "Radiation exposure following the nuclear accident at Fukushima-Daiichi did not cause any immediate health effects. It is unlikely to be able to attribute any health effects in the future among the general public and the vast majority of workers." The World Health Organization stated that while people in the United States receive about 6.5 millisieverts per year from sources including background radiation and medical procedures, only two Japanese communities had effective dose rates of 10 to 50 millisieverts, a bit more than normal.

However, other data contradict the WHO and other UN agencies. The Japanese science and technology ministry (MEXT) indicated that a child in one community would have an exposure 100 times the natural background radiation in Japan, rather than a bit more than normal. A hospital reported that more than half of the 527 children examined six months after the disaster had internal exposure to cesium-137, an isotope that poses great risk to human health. A French radiological institute found ambient dose rates 20 to 40 times that of background radiation and in the most contaminated areas the rates were even 10 times those elevated dose rates. The Institute predicts and excess cancer rate of 2 percent in the first year alone. Experts not associated with the nuclear industry or the UN agencies currently have estimated from 1,000 to 3,000 cancer deaths. Nearly two years after the disaster the WHO was still declaring that any increase in human disease "is likely to remain below detectable levels." (It is worth noting that the WHO still only releases reports on radiation impacts in consultation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.)

In March 2013, the Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey reported examining 133,000 children using new, highly sensitive ultrasound equipment. The survey found that 41 percent of the children examined had cysts of up to 2 centimeters in size and lumps measuring up to 5 millimeters on their thyroid glands, presumably from inhaled and ingested radioactive iodine. However, as we might expect from our chronicle, the survey found no cause for alarm because the cysts and lumps were too small to warrant further examination. The defense ministry also conducted an ultrasound examination of children from three other prefectures distant from Fukushima and found somewhat higher percentages of small cysts and lumps, adding to the argument that radiation was not the cause. But others point out that radiation effects would not be expected to be limited to what is designated as the contaminated area; that these cysts and lumps, signs of possible thyroid cancer, have appeared alarmingly soon after exposure; that they should be followed up since it takes a few years for cancer to show up and thyroid cancer is rare in children; and that a control group far from Japan should be tested with the same ultrasound technics.

LISTEN 

The denial that Fukushima has any significant health impacts echoes the denials of the atomic bomb effects in 1945; the secrecy surrounding Windscale and Chelyabinsk; the studies suggesting that the fallout from Three Mile Island was, in fact, serious; and the multiple denials regarding Chernobyl (that it happened, that it was serious, and that it is still serious).

As of June, 2013, according to a report in The Japan Times, 12 of 175,499 children tested had tested positive for possible thyroid cancer, and 15 more were deemed at high risk of developing the disease. For a disease that is rare, this is high number. Meanwhile, the U.S. government is still trying to get us to ignore the bad seed. June 2012, the U.S. Department of Energy granted $1.7 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to address the "difficulties in gaining the broad social acceptance" of nuclear power.

6. NAMING THE DEAD

A project launched on Monday aims to record properly the names and numbers of people who are killed by US drone airstrikes in Pakistan.

The website, “Naming the Dead”, is an initiative by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), a not-for-profit organisation that has won awards for its work exposing some of the realities of the covert drone wars that are being run by the US and UK militaries in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

It aims to keep as comprehensive a record as possible of the victims of drone airstrikes in Pakistan, after research revealed that only one in five of the victims of the 370 airstrikes that have taken place have been identified outside their own, often remote, communities.

At least 2,537 people are reported to have been killed by drone strikes in the country, with some estimates suggesting up to a quarter may have been civilians, although the TBIJ plans to name both civilians and militants using a mixture of media reports, court documents, academic studies and researchers on the ground.

The objective, said TBIJ deputy editor Rachel Oldroyd, is to take these deaths out of obscurity and make it easier to test statements about the nature and use of drones. US authorities have been reluctant to acknowledge any civilian deaths caused by the drone operations, which have been going on since 2006. The CIA has claimed a high rate of killings of militants, saying that strikes since May 2010 have killed more than 600 militants but no civilians. This claim is contested by experts, journalists and researchers on the ground.

LISTEN 

7. EVERY TUNA CAUGHT

Radioactive Bluefin Tuna Caught Off California Coast

Every bluefin tuna tested in the waters off California has shown to be contaminated with radiation that originated in Fukushima. Every single one.

Over a year ago, in May of 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported on a Stanford University study. Daniel Madigan, a marine ecologist who led the study, was quoted as saying, “The tuna packaged it up (the radiation) and brought it across the world’s largest ocean. We were definitely surprised to see it at all and even more surprised to see it in every one we measured.”

Another member of the study group, Marine biologist Nicholas Fisher at Stony Brook University in New York State reported, “We found that absolutely every one of them had comparable concentrations of cesium 134 and cesium 137.”

That was over a year ago. The fish that were tested had relatively little exposure to the radioactive waste being dumped into the ocean following the nuclear melt-through that occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March of 2011. Since that time, the flow of radioactive contaminants dumping into the ocean has continued unabated. Fish arriving at this juncture have been swimming in contaminants for all of their lives.

Radioactive cesium doesn’t sink to the sea floor, so fish swim through it and ingest it through their gills or by eating organisms that have already ingested it. It is a compound that does occur naturally in nature, however, the levels of cesium found in the tuna in 2012 had levels 3 percent higher than is usual. Measurements for this year haven’t been made available, or at least none that I have been able to find. I went looking for the effects of ingesting cesium. This is what I found:

    When contact with radioactive cesium occurs, which is highly unlikely, a person can experience cell damage due to radiation of the cesium particles. Due to this, effects such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding may occur. When the exposure lasts a long time, people may even lose consciousness. Coma or even death may then follow. How serious the effects are depends upon the resistance of individual persons and the duration of exposure and the concentration a person is exposed to.

LISTEN 

The half life of cesium 134 is 2.0652 years. For cesium 137, the half life is 30.17 years.

The Fukushima disaster is an ongoing battle with no signs that humans are gaining the upper hand. The only good news to come out of Japan has later been proven to be false and was nothing more than attempts by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to mislead the public and lull them into a sense of security while the company searched vainly for ways to contain the accident. This incident makes Three Mile Island and Chernobyl pale in comparison. Those were nuclear meltdowns. A nuclear melt-through poses a much more serious problem and is one that modern technology doesn’t have the tools to address. Two and a half years later and the contaminants are still flowing into the ocean and will continue to for the foreseeable future.

The FDA assures us that our food supply is safe, that the levels of radiation found in fish samples are within safe limits for consumption. But one has to question if this is true and, if it is true now, will it remain true? Is this, like the statements issued from TEPCO, another attempt to quell a public backlash in the face of an unprecedented event that, as yet, has no solution and no end in sight?

As for me, fish is off the menu.

X.  Dolphin Mortality page

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/health/mmume/midatldolphins2013.html

include dolphin data

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Mr. Speezak,

I apologize if I spelled your name wrong. You will find a lot of information about this event on the following website: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/health/mmume/midatldolphins2013.html

if you have further questions once you have had a chance to review this information please contact me on Monday.

Shelley Dawicki

going to get more data send to me next week

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states going to get back to me.

877-434-3100

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