National Geographic documentary: Chasing Ice. Huge glaciers that are the size of the tip of Manhattan,
about 5 miles long and 300 to 400 feet tall from the surface of the water are melting. Chapter 12 is about the coastal New Jersey and the rising waters that affect it. The lower 2/3 of New Jersey's 130 mile long coast is composed of sandy barrier islands. This system of coastal barriers minimizes the impacts of storms and winds, yet many have been altered or destroyed by the storms. These islands aren't meant to stay still, but more according to the wave action. For some reason though, people thought it would be smart to build multi-million dollar beachfront homes on these islands which are constantly moving. The government tried very hard (and spent lots of money) engineering structures to stop the erosion such as jetties, groins, or bullheads along the beach, but it is hard to stop nature from taking its course. This can be seen with the devastation of Louisiana when Hurricane Katrina over topped the barrier islands and drowned New Orleans and many communities all along the Gulf Coast. Not only do these storms affect our coast, but the rising of the water caused by the melting of the ice sheets. Which are happening all over the world. A large mass of ice melted right off a glacier in Iceland. National Geographic documentary, Chasing Ice showed huge glaciers melting off, some that are the size of the tip of Manhattan, about 5 miles long and 300 to 400 feet tall from the surface of the water, are melting. 0.34% of ice is being lost a year and it seems small, but in 200 years it will be gone and the sea level will have rose drastically. "It noted that 'spring is arriving earlier, summers are growing hotter, and winters are becoming warmer and less snowy.' Average temperatures across the northeastern United States have risen more than 1.5°F since 1970, with a 20 to 30 percent increase in winter precipitation" (218). Without the change in pollution and chemicals being emitted into our environment, the sea level is said to rise between 10 inches to 2 feet by the end of the 21st century. It is one huge cycle: as the earth heats, the ice melts, and the sea level rises destroying land and the sea heats us killing our marine species since the ice isn't there to reflect off the suns rays thus keeping the ocean cool. Our poor marine life is being affected by the heating water and the chemicals. Photochemical smog consisting of ozone, nitric, and sulfuric acid, all air pollutants would be deposited in the ocean and absorbed by all the creatures in the water. Not only does it harm them and destroy their ecosystem, but it also will harm the people on the shore who would eat these poisonous fish. Barnegat bay is one example of a body of water being affected by the chemicals which is causing nutrient loading. "Excessive levels of these nutrients stimulate the growth of algae, and as the algae grow, they block sunlight needed by the submerged aquatic vegetation of the bay. Then when the algae die and decay, they reduce the level of oxygen in the water, which can result in large fish kills. The inputs of these nutrients come from many sources, such as street runoff, leaking or failed septic systems, animal wastes, and fertilizer used in landscaping and agriculture. Today, most of the surplus nutrients in Barnegat Bay come from non-point sources such as lawn fertilizers, mainly through stream and river discharges and groundwater influx, although atmospheric deposition is also a major source, making up 39 percent of the nitrogen load dropping into the bay" (214).
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Chapter 11: Headwaters and Watersheds. In this chapter I read about the watersheds and headwater streams which support our rivers that in turn flow out into our oceans. Headwater steams are unique in their habitat for aquatic life and are also the most active sites for processing the organic matter from the watershed such as falling leaves. They naturally help break down material into fish food and reduce down stream transport which might choke streambeds. "Despite their biological importance, headwater streams are among the most threatened aquatic environments in the United States. Immediate threats to headwater streams by development include channelization, piping, and even complete elimination through agricultural irrigation, urbanization, ground- water withdrawal, and mining practices" (190). These threats to the headwater steams can cause more issues that one would think. One problem is that it destroys the habitat of the aquatic animals. Salamanders, as the example given in the chapter, are the first to respond to the harmful changes in their environment which includes pollutants and higher temperatures. Deforestation causes the salamanders to lose their coverage which rises the temperature of the water and when companies build over the streams for housing or farm land use, the pesticides and pollutants from humans kill off these poor animals. They also become easy prey targets out in the open human spaces and their population is declining world wide. Animals are a good indicator of when something is going wrong with our environment, especially the water. It is our job as the people who control majority of these factors to fix things. Deforestation, pollution, and pesticides, would exists without humans and their creations which is why we need to help our environment because it can only do so much to help itself. Not only do the animals struggle when the environment changes, but we make it harder for ourselves. When homes and such are built over these water sources which collect our rain water there is no longer a place for the rain water to go (especially if the city doesn't have a good sewage/drainage system), so now towns become flooded with all this water because the concrete can not replace the absorption of the soil and flow into the streams.
Wetlands and vernal pools are another feature to the watershed besides the headwaters lakes and rivers. Wetlands are basically the lining along the watershed and rivers. They filter waterborne contaminates such as phosphorus and toxic chemicals, act as a habitat for many wildlife, and lessen the impacts of flooding. "Yet despite the benefits provided by wetlands, the United States loses approximately sixty thousand acres of wetlands every year" (199). Species of the wetlands and vernal pools are becoming endangered and many have already gone through extinction. Amphibians are at a great risk and 4 species are listed as endangered by NJDEP. I love frogs and in New Jersey I would see them everywhere. My aunt and uncle live near wetlands and they have lots of patched of forestry around their neighborhood and I would catch frogs as a kid. Sometimes the poor little guys would find their way into the pool and I would save them because the chlorine would sometimes kill them if I didn't fish them out. One time we found a huge bullfrog and took him back to the wetlands near by. The point is that I love frogs and its a shame to see that "nearly 168 species are believed to have gone extinct and at least 2,469 (39 percent) have populations that are declining" (201). We truly need to do a better job at protecting our wildlife species and our environment because slowly, but surly we are killing it. Chapter 10: The Biotic Mosaic
New Jersey has a special section within the Division of Fish and Wildlife to deal with the Endangered and Nongame species. "Its mission is to actively conserve New Jersey's biological diversity by maontaining and enhancing endangered, threatened, and nongame wildlief populations within healthy, functioning ecosystems" (172). This can be hard as populations of people begin to pop up where animals are trying to live. Laws are put into place to protect these animals and their natural habitat. The timber rattlesnake is a species that is threatened by the building of new communities and the already endangered species can't afford to lose more. The scientists within this program did a study using a GPS tracker on 5 males and 4 females to determine the proper way to help these snakes and prevent deaths by motor vehicles as they can't adapt themselves to a local traffic pattern and cross the road safely. Using the information from their study, they created a settlement to protect the snakes from the newly developing communities. "This agreement allowed the completion of an unfinished portion of Georgia O’Keefe Way by directing the developer to build twelve-foot-wide box-type culverts under the road, which allowed both of the endangered snake species to pass through, minimizing mortalities by motor vehicles.5 Under this agreement, building lots with snake nesting areas in them were permanently protected through deed restrictions" (174). Snakes have a bad image, but they are still a part of our ecosystem and deserve a far chance at life. I personally don't like snakes just because I can't tell if they are dangerous or not and they can also swallow you whole. But the chances of that happening are very slim. The Bald Eagle is another species, only unique to North America, that went near extinct. The source of the danger that almost killed them was not from losing its home range to community building or even deforestation, but from pollution. DDT is a pesticide sprayed on lawns to kill off bugs, but when the wind picks up, it is carried through the breeze and into lakes and forests where animals call it home. DDT caused thinner eggshells, resulting in reproductive problems and death. not only that, but the contaminant traveled through the food web ending in their primary food, fish. This created for a dangerous situation for them and these poor birds were in serious danger of extinction. The Bald Eagle was the bird population that was hit the hardest by the contamination of DDT. "New Jersey’s Bald Eagle population was hit especially hard by eggshell thin- ning and loss of habitat, to the point that by the late 1980s there was just one active nest remaining in the state. We gained a second nest in 1988, however, and the population has been growing ever since thanks to the bird’s reintroduction to the state by NJDEP’s Endangered Species and Nongame Program" (175). Without this program we would most likly not see any more Bald Eagles. The hacking program consisted capturing birds to bread and hand raise, then release into the wild. 60 young Eagles were released over an 8 year period, increasing the nesting pairs. Biologists continued to monitor their progress and the Bald Eagles continue to thrive. With the various climate changes happening each year and the dangers that prove to exist against our plant and animal species, it is our job to monitor and help them when needed. New Jersey has various species of plant and animal life that have problems which are not yet dire, but need careful management in case they do become dire. One example of this is "NJDEP’s Division of Fish and Wildlife houses many such programs that monitor and protect freshwater fish, marine and shellfisheries, fur-bearing animals, and even insects. Its goal is to maintain the state’s rich variety of fish and wildlife species at stable, healthy levels and to protect and enhance the many habitats on which they depend. The division runs many education programs to alert residents to the values inherent in our fish and wildlife and tries to foster positive human/wildlife coexistence. It also studies and maximizes the recreational and commercial use of fish and wildlife resources for future generations" (180). This is so important and beneficial especially as the years continue. Already, these animals are having trouble with people advocating for them, so it is our job as co inhabitants to help them live long healthy lives- regardless of the animal. If we don't keep an eye out for the animals and keep their population stable then that will be bad for us especially with the animals we consume. For example, there tends to be over fishing of certain marine life and if it continues at a steady rate we will run out of consumable species of fish. We can not help species all over the world, but in helping them locally in New Jersey it can affect the impacts globally. It needs to be a global ecological effort to ensure that some species don't go extinct. Pollution seems unrelated to the marien species for example, but that is not at all true. The more carbon emissions, the more the globe will warm and the sea will warm and some species cannot handle the additional heat. Or global warming could change the timing of the seasons. The last section mentions that for example, an earlier spring season "may interfere with the genetically precise timing of millions of migrating species. Birds may arrive late onto their nesting grounds only to find the abundance of insects or seeds they need for survival and reproduction dissipated" (186). This would be very dangerous for this species of bird as they would starve. We need to work together and take the problems seriously and work on them before they are too deep to fix. Chapter 9: The woodlands is about the various lands of forestry that make up parts of New Jersey. The forests of New Jersey a in other states, if not protected, are in danger of being torn down by the government's want to have open lang for suburbanization or urbanization, similarly to what happened in Philadelphia and New York City. Being a Philadelphia resident I have seen this myself. It is a big city with not too many areas of trees. We have some parks, but they are mostly open land and some are areas with many trees such as the Pennypack park. The park covers more than 1,600 acres of woodlands, meadows, wetlands and fields. Below you can see two images of the park. It is a beautiful and large area, but Philadelphia lacks in these areas, although Pennsylvania as a whole does not.
Despite the government's want to knock down many trees, the Forest Service of NJ and other fellow New Jersian's are trying to preserve what they have of its forestry. "As a result there are many huge forest tracts in New Jersey filled with more than ninety species of trees. Most of these are protected in parks or wildlife preserves purchased by prescient legislators to keep the state's uplands pristine and its lowland swamps shaded and covered with pine needles and cedar bark" (151). Because of the groups of people willing to fight and protect their beautiful lands, New Jersey has such a unique set of forestry with many different species that can't be found in some other states. Forests cover much of the state of New Jersey, but still it "is less than half of what it was in 1956, a loss of more than a million acres" (152). The need for the forestry is great and not just that alone, but healthy forests. They are vital to a multitude of life sustaining processes. They "protect water quality, supply recreation activities, and protect historical, aesthetic, and cultural resources present within the forests" (153). They also remain home to tons of tiny critters and larger animals as well, so they are of great importance. The Pinelands International Biosphere Reserve is one of the protected lands; internationally protected and spans more than a million acres in NJ and occupies 22% of the state's landmass. The Pinelands was given this protection because houses were being built and it was taking away from the land. To keep the land within its boundaries and as a fire management tool, the New Jersey Forest Service would have prescribed burns. A prescribed burn is defined as "the skillful application of fire under exacting conditions of weather and fuel in a predetermined area, for a specific purpose to achieve specific results" (157). I found this interesting that they basically fight fire with fire. The burn creates an area of dead ground in the forest and if a wildfire breaks out, the tactic is to set backfires that push it into the dead ground, thus killing its energy and dying it out. Threats to Forests go beyond forest fires and include various pollutants and changes in climate. These make it difficult to change New Jersey's forestry and even sometimes to maintain it. "Without biological integrity, without protection against invasive species that choke our woodlands, without a biological mosaic of preserved habitats to match our state’s natural needs, we will all live in a concrete jungle of our own design, devoid of wildlife and trees" (169). This would destroy us all (animals and humans) as trees and plant help clean the air and protect our water from various pollutants as well. Fortunately there are wildlife biologists to protect the wildlife within the forests and NJ Forest Services that help protect the trees. Many people take part in trying to help protect and maintain the biodiversity of not only New Jersey, but the world. Chapter 8: Environmental Justice. This chapter really discusses the injustices done to the poor and mostly minority communities. As a minority myself, who finds home right across the bridge from Camden in Philadelphia, is concerned with this notion that these hazardous waste sites are being put into these communities on a bias. I do believe that gentrification exists heavily, but I'm not sure if I believe that regionalism is about race. It sure seemed that way at first. As the brownfields were located in predominate minority poor neighborhoods. In Cramer Hill (a section of Camden) revitalization plans were put into place to renovate the area by the water front, but the governor was not straightforward with the members of the community until it was said that the state planed to use its power of "eminent domain" to seize properties and displace more than 1000 families. They wanted to remediate the brownfields for replacement with upper- to middle income housing, a golf course and a marina - gentrification. Essentially removing all the lower class people (mostly minorities) and only leaving room for the people who can afford this new and more expensive lifestyle (mostly whites). Luckily, the community protested and fought for their neighbors and indicated that they liked their diversity and sense of community. Unfortunately this isn't always the case and the government chooses areas where the poor less educated live. These waste sites emitting higher levels of toxins which result in illness of some people in the community who already have inadequate health care. Its almost like they are trying to kill these people off or they at least don't care enough for their well being. The communities have no way to fight for themselves because they don't know how and its really disgraceful that the government doesn't care for its people.
Some people argue that regionalism was only perceived as racist because it was the more affluent middle class whites who could afford cars and move out of the city, leaving the minorities behind and a decaying infrastructure to support the city's tax base. Its a class issue that that no matter the color, the poor get the crap end of the stick. If environmental justice concerns were evaluated hundreds of years ago, they would be filled with poor working class white and similar outcomes would be shown. Although this is a good point, I think that its not fair to say hundreds of years ago because the demographic was way different. Minorities were slaves hundreds of years ago and were mostly present in the south. They lived in wealthy areas because of the people who bought them. As we moved away from slavery there was still loads of racial injustices to fight for which left minorities in the run down poor communities. They didn't have the chance to be wealthy or start out wealthy because the hand we were dealt. It wasn't until after the civil rights movement and anit-discrimination laws came about that things started changing and minorities had more opportunity to move up in society. So, I do think that race does play an aspect into this all. Chapter 7: The Lure of Brownfields discusses what they are and the remediation of the various brownfield sites. Brownfield land is land that was previously used for industrial purposes and has low levels of hazardous waste or pollution. This land has potential to be reused once cleaned up. Land that is more severely contaminated with high concentrations of pollution are Superfund sites and not considered Brownfield sites. Superfund sites are evaluated, ranked, and placed on the National Priorities List by USEPA, which qualifies for federal cleanup money. In 1955, there were an estimated 450,000 brownfields in the United States. Cleaning up and reinvesting in these properties would increase local tax bases, facilitate job growth, utilize existing infrastructure, and take development pressure off undeveloped open land. The brownfields initiative passed in 2001 and the initial clean up created 25,000 new jobs and cost around $6.5 billion. "The act rewarded voluntary cleanups and offered developers and investors incentives to build on blighted areas. To encourage participation, NJDEP offered to consolidate and expedite permit reviews, allowed less costly remediation through the use of the two-tier cleanup criteria, and permitted less restrictive cleanup remedies called 'institutional and engineering controls'" (123). The controls are legal measures intended to reduce exposure to contaminants by controlling the behavior of a future brownfield owner. This is to ensure that the owners know about the contamination that lies beneath their building and hopefully promote smart decision of what to remediate the site into.
In Camden sites were remediated and "The Victor" was changed into luxury buildings. Other developments included an aquarium, a minor league baseball stadium, an outdoor concert center, and the warf for the battleship New Jersey. All of which are on the Camden waterfront which divides Philadelphia and Camden. Being a Philadelphia resident, I know of all these places and have seen or been to each of them, the aquarium most recently. These site are successful examples of how economic, political, and environmental forces can come together to encourage and support urban renewal. Sometimes though, this isn't the case and "time and pressure" changes project time frames from months or years to weeks or months with a possibility of bypassing public health and ecological risks. Despite the successes, some owners have used their brownfields to dump unwanted and unhealthy facilities on the neighborhood which has caused concern for residents in the community. The placement of this waste is discriminatory to the majority black and hispanic community and a practice of environmental injustice on both a racial and socioeconomic scale. Chapter 6: Environmental Welfare discusses heavily upon a new chemical called Dioxin. When first introduced it wasn't clearly discussed what it was so I looked it up. Dioxins are a group of chemically-related compounds that are persistent environmental pollutants. They are found throughout the world in the environment and accumulate in the food chain, mainly in the fatty tissue of animals. It is the most toxic chemical known to science. Dioxins are produced through a variety of incineration processes, including improper waste incineration and burning of trash, and can be released into the air during natural processes, such as forest fires and volcanoes. Dioxin was found at the Diamond Alkali pesticide plant in the middle of a densely populated neighborhood in Newark, NJ. Present, were levels so high that the test couldn't properly measure it. 15% of the nations output was produced at this one site. Dioxin from this site would spread and contaminate the ocean contaminating tons of seafood with the most toxic synthetic substance known to humans. It can cause birth defects, mental issues, cancer and interact with other carcinogens to increase cancer severity.
Since the levels of toxin were too high to be measured, a sample was sent to the most reliable dioxin analytical laboratory run by Christopher Rappe at the University of Umea in Sweden. The sample was so highly contaminated with dioxin that it contaminated the entire laboratory which had to be shut down for a month to clean up all the residual background traces of the sample. It held one of the highest ambient levels of doxin ever recorded. The area had to be quickly cleaned, but still to this day there are laws that remain in effect because of the long lasting chemical. The sale and consumption of all fish, shellfish, and crustaceans from the Passaic River and Newark Bay is prohibited. Companies dumped chemicals and waste into the oceans just destroying the wildlife, not thinking about the consequences to the marine biology and how that will come back. Basically karma for their "out of sight, out of mind" thoughts. For years pollutant dredged sediments of the inner harbor were transported offshore and into the pathways of major fisheries. I don't even think it can be know exactly how far it traveled. The fish become contaminated and they migrate throughout the oceans - do they then pass the chemicals on to their off spring? Is it just one cycle of contaminated sea life? It took until 1988 for the government to pass an Ocean Dumping Ban Act. The lives of humans have to be directly in danger and that was seen when medical waste with vials of blood and syringes washed up on beaches in New Jersey and Long Island during the summer of 1988. However, the Mud Dump wasn't officially closed as a disposal until 1997. It is insane just how long they let things continue, even when decades of studies say that it is unsafe. Chapter 5: Environmental Crime is based a lot around politics and how various officials and city/state workers have let down their cities. In Jersey City, industries made deals with city officials to release toxic chemicals known as Chromium into the sewers and to mix it with building fill. These companies did as they pleased while health inspectors and county engineers looked the other way while the toxic waste was poured onto empty lots right beside the places where children play and families live. It doesn't make any sense how at least one person didn't try to stop it and take all this documentation to federal court. The chemicals killed and these officials walked away with extra money in their pockets. Organized crime in New Jersey saw the "reward" in controlling the illegal disposal of hazardous materials, but not the harm in what it could do. Mafia run garbage trucks would pick up regular trash and toxic waste drums to combine them to make it seem like regular trash. Corrupt politicians tried to manage the dispose of the waste signing open service contracts whenever they could which was a big score for people like building inspectors or permit writers who were only making a couple of dollars, but now getting more.
The Chemical Control Corporation hazardous waste storage, treatment, and disposal facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey started out as a legitimate business, but soon a mob-controlled hazardous waste site. Drums would pile high- so high was the pile that when NJDEP inspectors went to visit, they found overflowing pallets placed dangerously close to one another, corrosives stored next to flammables, and acids atop explosives. Eventually an explosion happened - was nobody smart enough to realize that it was a bad idea for this to happen? They were most likely too busy rolling around in their dirty money to realize that their actions were detrimental to the environment and were most likely to go wrong. Either that or they knew, but the money was too much for them to care about the dangers. The explosions sent drums of flaming toxic waste spiraling high into the sky for two days as firefighters from a dozen surrounding communities tried to get close enough to spray down the fire of toxic chemicals without breathing the black smoke that engulfed them. Many were overcome and developed lifelong health problems from exposure to the smoke. The drums shot off life rockets landing in New York and bleeding the toxins into the New York Harbor from the Elizabeth River. The the toxic chromium was mixed into heating oil and sold to the public for home use. A mud concoction was created with the chromium and sold to use a fill in construction, road grading, building foundations, filling for wetlands, and even for use in municipalities like high school tracks, a movie theater, baseball fields, and public park. Not only used for buildings, but when in the ground it leaked into the drinking water too. The unseen hazardous toxins were surrounding the public and little did they know also affecting their health. Corporations knowingly distributed the waste for "beneficial" reasons just to save a few dollars on their budget all while harming the health of the public. People were dying from such high amounts of the toxicity especially those working or leaving near or on the waste. Chromium at its hexavalent state is a powerful oxidant and the most toxic form. It can cause ulcers of the skin and irritation of the nasal mucosa and gastrointestinal tract; it also has adverse effects on the kidneys and liver. Chromium-6 is listed as an inhalation and ingestion carcinogen in humans by the USEPA and the International Agency for Research on Cancer. It took many years and many lawsuits from various organizations and individuals to begin the process of removing or fixing the sites that were made with the chromium-6. New Jersey Attorney General Peter C. Harvey filed lawsuits naming Honeywell, Occidental Petroleum, and PPG Industries liable for the COPR sites and sought reimbursement for the cleanups. 17 At the time, Harvey said: “Clean water, air and land are a right, not a privilege and . . . for too long, the residents of these communities have lived with the threat of this highly toxic chromate waste. Our lawsuit will compel the responsible companies to clean up the remaining chromium contamination" (95). By 2008 the PPG Industries’ Garfield Avenue facility was still only partially remediated despite the release of studies that the exposure could lead to cancer. The buildings were demolished and the mud piles removed, yet tons of “heaving chromium” still move under the interim cap. Heaving chromium is caused by groundwater interacting with the waste and binding it into hard layers that push upward, breaking the surface layer and possibly breaching the protective cap (96). At the end of the day over half a million people were exposed to carcinogens and millions of dollars spent on remediation all at the hands of some greedy people who wanted to take the "easy way out". Chapter four is about radiation protection. It discusses various events that happened not only in New Jersey or in America, but also in other countries (like the site of the Chernobyl explosion). It discusses the various proposals and "solutions" carried out by the state and government to fix the radiation issues. Some of which could have been stopped/prevented with common sense and knowledge. For example, from 1917 to 1926 the United stated extracted and purified radium from carnotite ore to produce luminous paints in Orange, which were marketed under the brand name Undark (73). The plant in New Jersey employed over a hundred workers, many of which were immigrant women, to paint these watches. Scientists knew how dangerous it was and carefully avoided exposure to it themselves by using masks and tongs. These women received no training or education about hazardous materials and painted their nails, faces, and teeth with the deadly paint. Eventually these women started to suffer and found their death to moth and throat cancer, lung cancer, and bone cancer, all of which the U.S government tried to deny and cover up. All this time they knew about the deadly material, yet they still used it. But for what? To have orange paint!? Couldn't they have used any other paint made out of something different. What was so special about this paint that it was worth killing these women? This could have been avoided. The government likes to play the victim and claim that there are things they didn't know when they were well aware of the issues that could arise (especially in this case), yet chose to be stubborn and careless.
This radon material created problems for years and one issue led to another. A fire that involved military gear painted with this toxic paint released radiation into the environment. Houses were affected with high radiation readings which was not good for the health of the owners. And once again, trying to preserve and save their mistakes, government officials, specifically NJDEP senior management, thought it was a smart idea to dig up radon-contaminated material and replace it with clean fill instead of tear down the houses. This lead to a new problem of having no place to store the contaminated waste. It seems that they are always looking for a solution to the problem, but not thinking in long term. This "well intended" policy to clean under the houses was surly not well thought out. Chapter 3 focuses on water quality and to my surprise there are so many toxins and carcinogens that can make their way into our drinking water and to some extent it is allowed! As a person who lives in America, I always just assumed that our water quality was fine. Like Thomas Belton, mentioned I basically took clean drinking water for granted. I figured that as a first world country, officials had it all figured out. I didn't consider what was done to the water to make it "safe" and the process the water endures before it reaches my tap.
From what I've learned, potable drinking water can be pulled from rivers, lakes, groundwater aquifers, and even seawater if the technology is available to remove the salt content (54). The water pulled from these sources is not readily available for drinking and must go through a filtration process to make it drinkable. The quality of the water when it is pulled determines how much treatment is needed to remove these water-borne contaminants. Many different contaminants were found in the supply and in their research of the Boonton Reservoir supply in 1982 , found Phthalates which are added to plastics to increase their flexibility and are present in other consumer products such as shampoos and children's toys. They are known to produce negative health effects in animal studies including testicular damage, liver injury, liver cancer, antiandrogenic activity, and terato- genicity (56). They are known to be toxic which is clearly seen through the animal studies. I don't understand why the officials who regulate our water or the FDA didn't remove or regulate their use. Officials try to find the easy way out by saying that a certain amount won't hurt, but how do they know in the long run or the fact that everyone's body is different and for people with a lower immune system, having these present toxins could be detrimental. In 1984, New Jersey amended the state drinking water Act (Amendment 280) adding other compounds and mandated the establishment of maximum contaminant levels for the contaminants in drinking water. Essentially saying that they will remove as many toxins as required which is really messed up. Our water is still contaminated, but only to a certain level. Is that suppose to make it better? NO! Officials used Chlorine to treat the water (again using the easy way out) and that too eventually backfired. The only way to have the cleanest water possible is a multi step filtration system and not just using the cheapest option, but really looking out for the people of America. "The future of water quality will require the multiple barrier method for supplying safe drinking water. This method relies on a multipronged battery of defenses to safeguard potable water, including source water protection, coagulation with sedimentation, filtration, and disinfection. It is highly unlikely that pathogens could get past all four barriers" (65). This is what needs to happen, but the question is will it? - I did some research and it looks like we do use the multi-barrier approach as of mid-early 2000s. It was a federal amendment that states adopted. In terms of my home state, Pennsylvania agreed to it in 2009. |
Gabriella Brycea Junior at Seton Hall University studying Elementary and Special education with Environmental Studies. Archives
April 2018
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