Category Archives: health

healthcare

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Thank you Hyatt

“Hyatt is the latest international hotel brand to ditch travel-sized toiletries from its rooms, following Holiday Inn-owner InterContinental Group and Marriott International.

Portable tubes of shampoo, conditioner and bath gel will be replaced with bulk-sized toiletries across Hyatt’s global chain of 220,000 rooms beginning in June 2021. The changes will affect Hyatt’s 900 hotels worldwide, encompassing 20 brands, including Park Hyatt, Hyatt Place and the Andaz.

“Plastic pollution is a global issue, and we hope our efforts will motivate guests, customers and, indeed, ourselves to think more critically about our use of plastic,” Mark Hoplamazian, president and CEO of Hyatt, said in a press release.”

It takes everybody working together to reduce plastics….why all the packaging? Ever since Tylenol scare back in the 1980s, companies have gone packaging crazy…time to ease up on Plastics. Buying local is a starting point…

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EPA orders extensive cleanup of radioactive waste site near St. Louis

https://www.washingtonpost.com/energy-environment/2018/09/27/epa-orders-extensive-cleanup-radioactive-waste-site-near-st-louis/

“The West Lake Landfill contains thousands of tons of radioactive material from the World War II-era Manhattan Project that was dumped at the site in the 1970s, where it has languished ever since amid other waste. The latest plan calls for excavating 70 percent of the radioactive waste from the site — a far cry from a 2008 solution proposed by the George W. Bush administration to cover and monitor the waste.“

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Efforts to Restore the Los Angeles River Collide With a Gentrifying City | Sierra Club

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2018-4-july-august/feature/efforts-restore-los-angeles-river-California-collide-gentrifying-city

“The complex, unique geology of the Los Angeles Basin, with its interlocking and overlapping ridges and valleys, resulted in a wildly unpredictable river that often sent torrents of water tearing over its banks.

Not long after California became a state in 1851, the water needs of a booming population stressed the Los Angeles River to its breaking point. Meanwhile, the fitful river endangered the settlements multiplying throughout the floodplain. After catastrophic floods in 1914, 1934, and 1938, the city, at the recommendation of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, agreed to straighten the riverbed and pave it with concrete, deracinating whatever plant and animal wildlife was left. A complex of aqueducts, dams, and reservoirs was built to import most of the city’s water; today, it delivers about 430 million gallons daily.”

Restoration of this watershed is a priority to many who live in and around LA.

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From stltoday.com

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/parson-signs-law-setting-up-funds-for-radioactive-waste-probe/article_5962ba0a-6ac9-5d82-941a-fdad2212d872.html

Republican Gov. Mike Parson, who was sworn in on June 1 after the resignation of Gov. Eric Greitens, approved the proposal championed by Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City.

The measure will allocate $150,000 annually to the Department of Natural Resources to probe sites like the West Lake Landfill in north St. Louis County, where radioactive material was dumped more than 40 years ago.

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What to do with nuclear waste-From forbes.com

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/06/19/stop-letting-your-ridiculous-fears-of-nuclear-waste-kill-the-planet/

“What is usually referred to as nuclear waste is used nuclear fuel in the shape of rods about 12 feet long. For four and a half years, the uranium atoms that comprise the fuel rods are split apart to give off the heat that turns water into steam to spin turbines to make electricity. After that, nuclear plant workers move the used fuel rods into pools of water to cool.”

Congress wants to ‘bury’ Nevada in nuclear waste?

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Water around the world #HOWWILLWE | PepsiCo

https://www.howwillwe.com/thrive?sf64943841=1#water-map

FOR FOUR IN TEN PEOPLE, SEVERE WATER STRESS IS ALREADY A DAILY REALITY, AND DEMAND IS SPIRALLING.

Where water is scarce, energy (oil, gas, hydropower) can become more costly, crops can fail and food processing may be disrupted.

Read on….

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There’s a Persistent Hum in This Canadian City, and No One Knows Why – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/world/canada/windsor-hum.html

The Windsor hum is back in the news! NYT reporting: “The University of Windsor report said the hum’s likely source was blast furnace operations on Zug Island on the Detroit River, which is densely packed with manufacturing. Activists complained that United States Steel, which operates the furnaces, has been uncooperative and secretive. A company spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment.”

They also identify othwr places in the world with this low frequency hum like Taos.

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U.S., Canada slow to tackle Great Lakes chemical pollution, says report | MLive.com

http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/01/ijc_tap_great_lakes_report.html

“In November, the IJC issued a 25-page report advising both governments take decisive steps to protect human health and the environment by reducing polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in the lakes. The brominated flame retardants, which are bioaccumulative and found in many products, have been in use since the 1970s and exposure has been linked to cancers, reproductive health, thyroid, neurobehavioral and developmental disorders.”

US and Canada efforts towards cleaning up PCBs and other toxic chemicals in Au Sable river and Lake Huron.

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Dams produce more greenhouse gas emissions than we thought — Quartz

http://qz.com/797380/reservoirs-methane-emissions-climate-change/

Katherine Ellen Foley on the problem with “clean” hydropower. “Globally, the reservoirs created by dams may actually contribute almost a gigaton of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions—about 25% more than they had previously thought. This means that we’ve almost certainly been underestimating how much greenhouse gas we’ve been shooting into the atmosphere.”

Another reason to let rivers run their natural course….too late to stop China’s 3 River Dam on Yangtze.