China: Toxic Farm Lands

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Many Chinese being poisoned by farm produce.

 

The Great Leap Forward seems to have poisoned the ground.  Some fifth of the farm land is toxic.

 

Interesting for our export markets.  Rice exports should be up.

[Easy Bakes 253]

who didn't see this coming when all our manufacturing moved to a place with 0 environmental controls ?

 

Seems no one learns from the past as long as they can make a fast buck.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Next comes the conspiracy theory that the US out-sourced all this manufacturing with the express purpose of poisoning the Chinese.

 

The facts are that they did it to themselves.  Ignorance is no excuse.

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

McDonald's Japan just made headlines for using chicken from China (and Thailand, too, to be fair).  The problem with the chicken is that it turned out to be expired.  There were poisoned vegetables sold here last year from China.  There were poisoned gyoza two or three years ago, and many people I know will pay just about any price to avoid the dreaded 'China-grown' label on their produce.  Vegetables imported from China mean "potentially hazardous" to Japanese consumers.

[SteveMSim 275]

Here in the U.S., corporate mega-farms have been using fertilizers and pesticides on a vast scale in recent years, causing rivers and streams to be polluted with the runoff and causing environmental problems.  It is also affecting human health such as in Toledo, Ohio, whose water system was shut down because an algae bloom entered the water supply.  Experts agree that agricultural runoff is the cause of the blooms.  In addition, the rivers eventually drain into the oceans, carrying their pollution with.  The Mississippi River system drains practically the entire U.S.'s farm belt, and the river drains into the Gulf of Mexico.  Lately, there has been a Red Tide bloom in the Gulf larger than Connecticut close to the Florida shore.  Red Tide is caused by algae that feeds on nutrients washed into the Gulf by rivers.  And last, but not least, the demise of honeybees in the U.S. has been tied to insecticides used on the corporate farms.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

The honeybee die off is generally caused by nicotinoids that are coated on seeds by the corporate seed outfits (Monsanto, etc) and used by practically all farmers of any size.  Naturally, these companies are resisting any reports much like the tobacco companies did the tobacco fatality reports.  The difference is that these fools will cause a famine if the crops are not pollinated.

[Odainsaker 2,136]

The Mississippi River system drains practically the entire U.S.'s farm belt, and the river drains into the Gulf of Mexico. Lately, there has been a Red Tide bloom in the Gulf larger than Connecticut close to the Florida shore. Red Tide is caused by algae that feeds on nutrients washed into the Gulf by rivers.

 

Pretty much everything in North America between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains south of the Great Lakes drains into the Gulf of Mexico, mostly by way of the Mississippi.  That is an awful lot of chemical runoff, creating not only coastal algae blooms, but vast "dead zones" spanning across the Gulf of Mexico, where the usually concentrated and bountiful aquatic life has been inadvertently exterminated though both widespread poisoning and widespread oxygen depletion.  East of the Appalachians, the megalopolis of the U.S. East Coast drains into the western Atlantic, creating another sprawling coastal dead zone.  Both the North Sea, where northern Europe drains, and the East China Sea, between China, Korea, and Japan, also host vast dead zones.  Add in industrial-scale overfishing in these same areas, and we can see why our worldwide fisheries have largely collapsed, forcing us to trawl out into the deeper and sparser oceans to clear out what little remains.

 

My poor dad, a fisherman from Hawaii, found out the hard way why you generally should avoid eating fish caught in the rivers of the Mississippi River system or its coastal delta, for the fish are often contaminated not only with mercury and other industrial toxins, but also with petroleum byproducts that radically alter the taste and texture.  Then there are the parasites...

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

More than enough said ...

 

When I was a lot younger we had an active, successful fishery on Lake Ontario which is at the end of the outflow chain before the St. Lawrence dumps into the Atlantic.  Over time this has almost completely closed down due to Mercury concentration in the fish, and dearth of fish.  Zebra mussels, a dreaded invasive species, have turned out to be not so bad, but they are not edible either.

 

Now the next thing will be the dreaded polyester gribble from the Florida coast.  There, the infestations are so bad that you have to sheath fibreglass hulls with plywood to keep them at bay. :kitty: