Saturday, August 04, 2007

Our Toxic Technology

There is so much important stuff that isn't reported in the news in America. We have been amazed at the amount of time spent on the recall of potentially toxic painted toys from China.
4 nights this week on NBC devoted the largest part of their reporting time to this issue. The last two nights it shared equal time with the Minneapolis Bridge tragedy, but the war in Iraq? The 62 billion dollars doled out to our Middle Eastern "Allies" by Condoleeza Rice in Arms Deals which supposedly was to put them deeper into our moth eaten pockets for our war of words with Iran?
A passing mention and disingeniuos disinformation at the best.
As far as the Poison Paint scare goes, very little has been said in the xenophobic reporting about the base issue here.
Where did the poison pigments come from? It's more than lead, an entire array of heavy metal pigments are used .
In an interview last week in the Wall Street Journal, Ted Smith, the founder of Silicone Valley Toxics Coalition identified the source of the pigments as recycled products of our own waste. We have a huge industry that purports to deal with the problem of disposal of used computers and technological components that contain lead and other heavy metals too toxic for safe disposal in America's landfills.
They make it go away by shipping it to China and other countries where a very unsafe but lucrative for poor people recycling industry has started harvesting materials from our used toxic technology.
Our Xenophobic reporting does us a greater disservice by ignoring the chain of pollution and the tragic trail of victims leading from and back again to our door.

1 comment:

mud_rake said...

And why are these products not tested? Two reasons: the company needs to make money; our government cares little about inspections because, after all, it's all about making money.

"Show me the money!"

That's it.