Are Fish and Plants on Antidepressants?

This entry was posted in Pollution and tagged on by .
Prozac: an antidepressant with Fluoxetine. Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
Prozac: an antidepressant with Fluoxetine. Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

Prozac: an antidepressant with Fluoxetine. Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

What happens when people take prescribed medications?  The obvious, immediate effect is helping the person with their ailment, but unfortunately, drugs are also getting into the environment through wastewater and are harming aquatic life.  When people are prescribed pharmaceuticals, the patients’ assumptions are that their bodies absorb all of the chemicals and that is what causes them to feel better.  In actuality, the body usually interacts with the medication, but the active chemical can sometimes remain undisturbed and is eventually secreted from the body as waste in the bathroom.  The water is then treated, but not on a small enough scale to filter out most pharmaceuticals.  Once the wastewater is integrated into lakes and streams, the drugs are still present in the water and wildlife is exposed to human medication.

One type of drug that is consistently found in aquatic environments is fluoxetine.  Fluoxetine is the active ingredient is Prozac, an antidepressant medication that can also be used to reduce the negative symptoms of anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders on patients.  Fluoxetine works by increasing the activity of serotonin in the brain, a chemical responsible for giving people a sense of happiness.

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The Politics behind America’s Industrial Meat Industry

This entry was posted in Climate Change, Food, Social Issues on by .
Photo Courtesy of Gourmet

Crowded Cows
Photo Courtesy of Gourmet

Environmental regulation of the meat industry in the United Sates is largely non-existent, as government agencies have proved absent or ineffectual in addressing the harmful emissions and practices of large-scale slaughterhouses. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is responsible for the regulation of factory farms, however, it does little to prevent, limit, and rectify the toxic emissions and excessive wastes of the livestock industry. Major corporations in the meat industry benefit from the weak regulatory environment, and spend massive sums of money each year on lobbying efforts. The rise of industrial, environmentally insensitive meat production has been facilitated by particular regulations, or lack thereof, and policies, thus any major changes to the livestock industry will likely start at the level of government.

The profit centric and environmentally ignorant policies sustaining large-scale, industrial animal farming affectively began with the farm bill put forth by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Known as the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) of 1933, Roosevelt’s farm bill was part of his New Deal legislation, aimed to revitalize struggling farmers during the Great Depression. The bill provided subsidies and fueled research, which encouraged, intentionally or not, the growth of industrial agriculture. While researchers and scientists studied the most effective means of raising livestock and maximizing production, farmers reshaped agriculture with the money and research provided to them. Plainly, Roosevelt’s bill restored prices, concentrated land in the hands of the few, and perpetuated the rise of agribusiness.

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Beyond the US Borders: The Palestinian – Israeli Case

This entry was posted in Social Issues and tagged , on by .

Palestinian woman holding onto olive tree uprooted by armed Israeli army – Reuters

 

While the terms Environmental Justice and Environmental Racism were coined in the United States, these issues are by no means limited to the borders of this country. On the contrary, they can be more strikingly severe and less subtle outside of the US. This is not to say that the United States is absolutely out of the equation. The United States dumping waste in India, American and European companies dumping toxic waste on the shores of Somalia, fueling numerous conflicts and problems in the country, as well as the US exporting toxic waste to be treated by African companies for as little as $3 a ton (in comparison to a cost of $1250 a ton in the US), are all examples of international environmental racism against a poor, predominantly of color population. However the issue this post will handle is none of the above, instead the focus will be the Palestinian case. Continue reading →

Where the Sun Does Shine: Space-Based Solar Power Globally

This entry was posted in Energy and tagged , , on by .

A Japanese cartoon of their SBSP concept. Image courtesy http://www.treehugger.com/solar-technology/japan-space-solar-plans-of-laser-beams-and-solar-streams.html

SBSP As Disaster Relief and Third-World Electrification

On Tuesday night, April 1st, 2014, a massive earthquake registering at 8.2 magnitude struck in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Northern Chile, sending deadly tsunami waves racing toward the coast, and leaving the nation in a state of emergency. Only in the early hours of the disaster thus far, it’s not yet clear what the scope of the damage is.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, the residents whose homes were affected by the nuclear reactor meltdown in Fukushima, Japan in 2011 are only just now being allowed to return to their homes, the decontamination of the site finally completed, despite fear that dangerous radiation from the disaster still lingers. Nuclear power is one renewable option for weaning our world off fossil fuels, but clearly nuclear is not without its major faults.

All the while, the world still depends overwhelmingly on fossil fuels to power our lives, both for the everyday and in case of disasters like the ones in Chile and Fukushima. Not only do these fossil fuels spew carbon into the air, damaging our planet’s fragile climate and threatening all life on Earth, but our dependency on fossil fuels also has poor implications in cases of disaster. Even if aid workers make it to disaster sites, they might not have the power they need to run hospitals and government offices if the grid is down with infrastructure down.

One possible solution to our energy crisis is space-based solar power, and its potential for use in disaster relief efforts is staggering. With the touch of a button here on Earth, technicians could shift the satellites beaming the sun power down to earth, focusing extra power to the locations on Earth where energy is most needed.

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Two Roads Diverged and Europe Took One Less Traveled by: GMOs in the EU

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on by .

In 20 years, genetically modified organisms have quickly become a hot button issue.  The controversy boils down to groups who are against GMOs in the marketplace, and those who are for it. Biotech companies, the U.S. Government, and many scientists advocate their use, while environmentalists and active citizens have opposed GMOs. Since 1994, GMOs have permeated the agricultural industry. In 2008, 8% of global agricultural lands were used for GM crops. The production of GM crops are concentrated seven countries the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, Canada, India, China, Portugal, and South Africa are responsible for 98% of global production. Despite the rapid development of GMOs in many countries, in other regions of the world the introduction of GMOs has been met with considerable resistance, especially in the European Union.

 

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