This is a monumental and unprecedented environmental catastrophe. The TVA Tennessee Valley Authority disaster is now estimated at 5.3 million cubic yards of coal ash, or almost twice as large as the 2.8 million cubic yards generated by the World Trade Center collapse.
via Dave Cooper: A First Hand Account of the TVA Coal Ash Disaster in Kingston, TN.
Benzene Levels in Soft Drinks Above Limit – Yahoo! News
WASHINGTON – Cancer-causing benzene has been found in soft drinks at levels above the limit considered safe for drinking water, the Food and Drug Administration acknowledged Wednesday.
Even so, the FDA still believes there are no safety concerns about benzene in soft drinks, or sodas, said Laura Tarantino, the agency’s director of food additive safety.”We haven’t changed our view that right now, there is not a safety concern, not a public health concern,” she said. “But what we need to do is understand how benzene forms and to ensure the industry is doing everything to avoid those circumstances.”The admission contradicted statements last week, when officials said FDA found insignificant levels of benzene.
In fact, a different study found benzene at four times the tap water limit, on average, in 19 of 24 samples of diet soda.
The formation of benzene in soft drinks is from the reaction of ascorbic acid (aka Vitamin C) and benzoate salts, notably sodium benzoate which is used as a preservative. As the FDA letter states:
We learned that elevated temperature and light can stimulate benzene formation in the presence of benzoate salts and vitamin C, while sugar and EDTA salts inhibit benzene formation.
Is this a pressing concern? First of all, exposure modeling done by the EPA indicates that 93% of all benzene exposure is through inhalation (cigarette smoke, indoor offgassing, that wonderful refueling smell!), with 7% exposure through oral ingestion. So, potentially elevated levels in this 7% fraction are not likely to greatly increase exposure. In addition, the 5 parts per billion level for drinking water is set based on an assumed daily consumption of 2 liters per day (Source – USEPA), a safety factor up from the actual estimated 0.9-1.2 L per day measured consumption. Assuming the average amount of benzene in soda (mainly diet, mind you) is 4 times that of drinking water, a 500 ml dose of diet soda per day is required to equal the dose from drinking water, which mind you, only counts for 7% of the total bezene exposure. So in a sense, a person drinking 2 servings of diet soda per day would exceed the exposure from drinking water at the federally regulated level, and knock the socks off the California standard of 0.13 ppb in water. This will increase his/her known oral exposure. The total exposure to benzene of that individual, however, would not go up significantly because the overwhelming majority of the exposure still occurs through the nose, not through the mouth.
The issue here, and benzene is just the symptom, is that consumers know much more about their drinking water than they do about their manufactured food products, and that is not good for the consumer or for the industry because in the absence of knowledge and full disclosure, both parties are vulnerable. Which is why attempts to limit consumer knowledge hurt everyone.
Conclusion Please don’t stop drinking soda because of this, I am sure you can find plenty of other reasons to limit your soda consumption… Drink lots of filtered tap water, it’s the best!! And, I can assure you that most tap water is tested thoroughly, it’s zero calories and cheap!
A guest poster at the oil drum throws a little water over cellulosic ethanol (pouring a little water over scotch – good, over raging hype machines, even better).
What’s the moral in all of this? If corn ethanol is marginal on an energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) basis, it is very difficult to argue that biomass grown to make ethanol will be any better. To be blunt, if there are concentrated stocks of waste biomass in place, such as at lumber mills, then biomass ethanol probably makes sense. Otherwise, it appears to be more or less equivalent to corn based ethanol – in other words, a wash.
Overall, it’s a good take down. I am always leery about believing farm/agriculture promises because there’s way too much subsidy money involved for people not to have a vested interest in promoting some new plant or the other. Unfortunately, I know nothing about farming 🙁 , so I can’t judge his assumptions.
Why can’t we just agree to consume less (energy that is, not scotch)
Canada hopes to achieve a North American climate-change deal with U.S. president-elect Barack Obama and will begin working on the file within weeks, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said Wednesday.Meantime, officials told The Canadian Press the Harper government has been waiting for the departure of President George W. Bush to work with his successor on an integrated carbon market.While states and provinces have been cobbling together a patchwork of approaches, federal officials said they have been eyeing a continent-wide solution for some time.
globeandmail.com: Canada to seek climate deal with Obama
Interesting and potentially promising news. I have thought for a while that Canada would have no choice but to start some kind of emissions cap/trade or carbon tax, given the way the wind was blowing down south. Harper, for all his reliance on Alberta’s oil votes, realises that with or without his say, the country’s leading trading partner is going to impose a carbon tax (a cap and trade is a price on carbon, or a tax, semantics aside) on Canadian-US trade.
It is also interesting that this statement came out right after Obama’s election, and the foreign minister went out of his way to say that they were waiting for Bush to get out of the way. Nice cozying up, Harper, making up for all your stupid previous statements about Obama. But do not worry, this new emperor is more gracious than the previous one!
We are going to be living in interesting times, good ones, finally.
Opus Comics, by Bloom County’s Berkeley Breathed – Salon
A little simplistic, perhaps, but plugin hybrids need to get here soon. I want my next car to be a plugin hybrid. Hell, I would even buy an ugly ass GM car if it turns out to be as good as advertised, 65 km without gas. Note also the cool solar panels and power inverter.
Can I get a compact plugin hybrid instead of this behemoth two door, or is the size due to battery storage?
Photo courtesy Corvair Owner Flickr photstream, used under a creative commons licence.
As CO2 levels in the atmosphere increase, plants uptake less water from the soil. Betts’ model indicates that there could be a 6 percentage point increase due to this effect on top of the 11% increase in global water flows due to direct climate effects.
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Climate flooding risk ‘misjudged’
Researchers say efforts to calculate flooding risk from climate change do not take into account the effect carbon dioxide (CO2) has on vegetation. Higher atmospheric levels of this greenhouse gas reduce the ability of plants to suck water out of the ground and “breathe” out the excess. Plants expel excess water through tiny pores, or stomata, in their leaves. Their reduced ability to release water back into the atmosphere will result in the ground becoming saturated.
Feedbacks, always a problem and hard to predict.
The pet food recall gets scarier. The FDA does not have this issue under control. It is not a conspiracy to hide anything, it’s just the pace at which the FDA operates, and its lack of mandate to really regulate animal feed.
Pet Foods May Have Been Intentionally Poisoned
The FDA and Agriculture Department also were investigating whether some pet food made by one of the five companies supplied by Wilbur-Ellis was diverted for use as hog feed after it was found unsuitable for pet consumption.
“We understand it did make it into some hog feed and we are following up on that as well,” Sundlof said.
Later Thursday, California officials said they believe the melamine at the quarantined hog farm came from rice protein concentrate imported from China by Diamond Pet Food’s Lathrop facility, which produces products under the Natural Balance brand and sold salvage pet food to the farm for pig feed.
“Although all animals appear healthy, we are taking this action out of an abundance of caution,” State Veterinarian Richard Breitmeyer said in a statement. “It is unknown if the chemical will be detected in meat.”
Officials are investigating American Hog Farm’s sales records to determine who may be affected by the quarantine, said Steve Lyle, a spokesman for the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The 1,500-animal farm operates as a “custom slaughterhouse,” which means it generally does not supply meat to commercial outlets.
“Mostly it is not so-called mainstream pork. This is an operation that sells to folks who come in and want a whole pig,” said Lyle said.
Officials urged those who purchased pigs from American Hog Farm since April 3 to not consume the
Well, the issue is not the safety of the melamine contaminated pork, the risk to humans is possibly low. The problem is that these ingredients are out of control, and unaccounted for, and being diverted to places they should not be. The systemic flaws are many, and I hope the FDA will issue some new guidelines to tighten up animal feed standards.
Another tidbit:
FDA officials would not release the names of the other two manufacturers that Wilbur-Ellis supplied, citing its ongoing investigation
Is it just me, or does this always happen on a Friday???