SPEAKING OF TOXINS, I sure wouldn't want to be a Gulf of Mexico oil clean-up worker. But the most toxic stuff to things marine I ever saw in Alaska is being sold here in the Rogue Valley to dump down your sewer pipes. And we all know where that ends up. Right in the Rogue River.
I'm speaking of copper sulfate, often called 'blue-stone' from the way it got to Alaska, in gunny sacks of the blue rocks. I remember big thousand gallon tanks of it dissolved in water on floats at the fuel dock in Petersburg, Alaska for the salmon seiners to dip their seines in after the season was over. It killed any organism, now matter what kind, still in the cotton web.
When nylon fishing nets came to town the bags of bluestone became a relic of the past. But it was used for sinister purposes too. It was highly toxic to salmon and some disreputable fishermen would set their seine at the bottom of a salmon spawning stream, have some crew dump bluestone way up the creek to flush out all the salmon, then close the seine on them when they all came pouring out to get away from the irritation to their gills.
So it was with some surprise that I found bluestone for sale locally. I had heard that it was used to kill tree roots that grow into and choke sewer pipes. In discussing toxins over coffee this morning with a pontoon boating buddy, his conclusion is that the EPA is just overwhelmed. I immediately had a vision of the vast array of chemicals in the stores to make gardening easier. Where do you start weeding out the bad ones, to pardon the expression.
Heck, I used Roundup on our back yard once on a calm day with our high fence and my scalp and feet have been going numb ever since. What is toxic and what is not. What is the difinition of toxic. The EPA says that if an organism stays alive while exposed to the toxin for a couple of days then it wasn't poisoned. They don't care if the animal or human dies a week later or their extremities fall off.
Monsanto developed Roundup to kill anything except their genetically engineered wheat, I think it was. Does that stuff ever stop killing cells? Does it ever disintegrate? They are still getting DDT in shellfish in California fourty years after it was banned.
Oil spill workers in Alaska have had illnesses for twenty years after working with crude oil. The average age at time of death of Alaska oil spill workers is 51 years old. Thanks to Dr. Riki Ott of Cordova, Alaska, the Gulf workers at least know what they are getting themselves into. For the most part. I applaud men who knowingly work in that environment to help their families. Although I think their families will later wish they had just moved to Canada, or anyplace, and had their menfolk for another 20 years.
I'm speaking of copper sulfate, often called 'blue-stone' from the way it got to Alaska, in gunny sacks of the blue rocks. I remember big thousand gallon tanks of it dissolved in water on floats at the fuel dock in Petersburg, Alaska for the salmon seiners to dip their seines in after the season was over. It killed any organism, now matter what kind, still in the cotton web.
When nylon fishing nets came to town the bags of bluestone became a relic of the past. But it was used for sinister purposes too. It was highly toxic to salmon and some disreputable fishermen would set their seine at the bottom of a salmon spawning stream, have some crew dump bluestone way up the creek to flush out all the salmon, then close the seine on them when they all came pouring out to get away from the irritation to their gills.
So it was with some surprise that I found bluestone for sale locally. I had heard that it was used to kill tree roots that grow into and choke sewer pipes. In discussing toxins over coffee this morning with a pontoon boating buddy, his conclusion is that the EPA is just overwhelmed. I immediately had a vision of the vast array of chemicals in the stores to make gardening easier. Where do you start weeding out the bad ones, to pardon the expression.
Heck, I used Roundup on our back yard once on a calm day with our high fence and my scalp and feet have been going numb ever since. What is toxic and what is not. What is the difinition of toxic. The EPA says that if an organism stays alive while exposed to the toxin for a couple of days then it wasn't poisoned. They don't care if the animal or human dies a week later or their extremities fall off.
Monsanto developed Roundup to kill anything except their genetically engineered wheat, I think it was. Does that stuff ever stop killing cells? Does it ever disintegrate? They are still getting DDT in shellfish in California fourty years after it was banned.
Oil spill workers in Alaska have had illnesses for twenty years after working with crude oil. The average age at time of death of Alaska oil spill workers is 51 years old. Thanks to Dr. Riki Ott of Cordova, Alaska, the Gulf workers at least know what they are getting themselves into. For the most part. I applaud men who knowingly work in that environment to help their families. Although I think their families will later wish they had just moved to Canada, or anyplace, and had their menfolk for another 20 years.
posted by Alaskacafe at 2:29 PM
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