Made in China (52)

I see the one major biggest hugest problem facing the Earth at the moment is the disposal of what is called eWaste...... Hi-Tech Trash .... Electronic Trash. Less than 20% is chanelled thru companies advertising recyling. The rest is exported to developing countries where components and metals are harvested.

One interesting little snippet about what happens to the recycled lead ... it ends up in cheap jewellery... from China! A scientific paper published this last July states that the proportions of copper and tin alloyed with the lead in samples suggest their source was leaded solder used in the manufacture of electronic circuit boards.

According to the NGM of this month, the U.S is right now shipping large quantities of leaded materials to China, and China is the world`s major manufacturing center. Things will be returning to complete the full circle and now we are getting contaminated products back..... out of sight will not stay out of mind for long.

China may someday succeed in curtailing electronic waste imports, but e-waste flows like water, and can be diverted to friendlier environs in Thailand, Pakistan, Ghana, the Ivory Coast and elsewhere.

We keep upgrading our equipment .. and the undeveloped nations children are engulfing themselves in toxic fumes loaded wih heavy metals as they burn the plastic off computer wires, to sell to metal merchants.

A cycle of disease and disability is already in motion. The air in some regions of these developing countries contains the highest amounts of dioxin measured anywhere in the world.... Soils are saturated with the chemical, a carcinogen that disrupts endocrine and immune function.

Then there are other chemicals, damaging to fetal development, at very low levels, and found now in plants and animals. Human testing results remain secret.

And in countries not exporting this waste but using it for landfill, these heavy metals are leaching down into the soil ..... where it will meet the water table.

Soooo, you-all have to give up your computers! and cell-phones! and other electronic stuff, and make like you Robinson Crusoe or something.

Of course, Rusty, everything comes from the earth and will return to the earth ... But without human intervention I don`t think that oil would be spewing out into topsoil, or floating around in the seas? That metals would be smelted together to form toxic fumes? That heavy metals would be dug up and transported to other parts of the globe?

There is even, apparently, a "new" blood group forming, to enable future generations to live completely off chemical food dyes and flavourants and other noxious stuff that presently interferes with our own health ....

Just think ... we all have maggot worms eggs in us! Where else do they come from after we die?

In the meantime, try and avoid irradiated foodstuffs - it causes age spots on your skin, and you get fat cause you always hungry.