earthPoems
Environment, British Columbia and the PunjabOur Mountains Are Under Siege
My home is being destroyed.
I grew up in Kentucky, and like everyone from Appalachia, just seeing our beautiful mountains and valleys tells me I am home. Our mountains are our heritage and our legacy to future generations. But big coal companies are using explosives to literally blow the tops off the mountains, extract the coal and destroy Appalachia.
It’s a process called mountaintop removal coal mining, and it has devastated the land and buried more than 1,400 miles of Kentucky streams. Working with The Sierra Club and other organizations, we are fighting to put an end to mountaintop removal, but a recent terrible court decision could open the floodgates on dozens of new mountaintop removal coal mines.
Please ask the Obama Administration to ban mountaintop removal coal mining before it is too late. Click here to get started.
The court decision has cleared the way for almost 100 new permits to bury streams in Kentucky and West Virginia, which would flatten 98 square miles and bury more than 200 miles of streams in coal mining waste.
The bulldozers are standing by, so it is now up to President Obama’s administration to step in and end this catastrophic practice. Won’t you join us by contacting the Obama administration today?
The heartbreaking fact is that mountaintop removal is devastating one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world, a global treasure, home to a diversity of plants and animals that rivals the tropical rain forest. Once these mountains are gone, they are gone forever.
As if the destruction of these irreplaceable mountains wasn’t enough, the mining waste and toxic debris left after the blast pours down the mountainside, filling in our valleys, burying our streams and creating mile after mile of barren moonscape.
Can I count on you to help us? It only takes one year for a coal company to destroy a mountain that has existed for close to 300 million years. But, if enough of us take one simple action to help protect our mountains and communities, then I believe we can make a difference and protect this irreplaceable treasure for future generations of Americans.
Click here to contact the Obama Administration and urge them to put an end to mountaintop removal coal mining.
Kentucky’s state motto is “United we stand, divided we fall.” This is more true today than ever. I hope you will stand with me to save our mountains and our national heritage.
Thank you,
Ashley Judd
Save Our Waterways! Speak for the Rivers!
Tell the Senate not to leave us up the creek without a paddle.
The federal government has included drastic and harmful amendments to the Navigable Waters Protection Act (NWPA), in Part 7 of the Budget Implementation Act, Bill C-10. The bill is now going to the Senate.
Please take a moment to take action at
org2.democracyinaction.org
The NWPA establishes that, if someone wants to build something in, on, around, under, over, or through a navigable waterway, such projects are subject to an assessment of the impacts on navigation (ability to canoe, kayak, go rafting, etc) and an environmental assessment before they can be approved. That’s reasonable. But the government wants to change the act to leave all that to the discretion of the Minister instead.
These amendments to the NWPA jeopardize both public access to and environmental health of Canadian waterways.
Our best hope now is for Canada’s Senate (the Chamber of Sober Second Thought) to remove Part 7 on the NWPA from Bill C-10, so it can be dealt with in greater depth as a separate piece of legislation with full and adequate public stakeholder consultation.
Help us send a strong message to the Senate – lend your voice, speak for rivers!
We have made it easy – please take a moment to take action at
org2.democracyinaction.org
Sierra Club, Canada
Doctors and environmentalists warn against ’sri pai’
By Abdul Manan
LAHORE: People throughout the city are eating the unhealthy and potentially hazardous ‘sri pai’, as these are prepared by burning off the hair of goats with highly toxic gases, doctors and environmentalists told Daily Times on Saturday.
There are two ways to cook sri pai- it can either be cooked by properly mixing the Acetylene gas with Oxygen, or it can be cooked by using various PVC plastic pipes, capacitors and electronic and plastic waste.
CDGL: People throughout the city have established temporary furnaces along roadsides, especially at the corner of every street in the Walled City. The City District Government Lahore (CDGL) officials had previously confiscated gas mixture equipments required for cooking sri pai, with a view that gas cylinders were too dangerous to be allowed at roadside restaurants. Hence, most people have started to use electronic and plastic waste as the tool of choice to burn sri pai at high temperatures.
Health risks: However, various doctors and environmentalists have strongly criticised the burning process that makes use of electronic and plastic wastes. University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Environmentalist Professor Dr AR Saleemi said that burning electronic and plastic waste released highly toxic gases, including Hydrocarbons, Dioxin, Chlorine and Carbon Monoxide. He said that when food is cooked over such toxic gases, it absorbs them and they adversely affect the health of those consuming the food.
He said that burning plastic and electronic waste to release toxic gases damaged the surrounding environment as well. He said that this adversely affected the health of the surrounding residents as well as those who come to consume the food.
He also pointed out that if sri pai was prepared by burning of Acetylene and Oxygen, the same food was not hazardous for health. He said that for those who are fond of eating sri pai, they should properly wash it before cooking it, and a mixture of gases should be used to attain the high temperature required to cook it.
Sir Ganga Ram Hospital Medical Superintendent Dr Ejaz Ahmed Sheikh said that plastic waste emitted carcinogenic gases, which were highly toxic and hazardous for health. He said that these gases could cause serious damage to throat and lungs. He said that sri pai, which is prepared by burning plastic waste, should not be consumed because of the unhygienic preparation processes. He said that cardiac patients should avoid eating the sri pai as it is a very high-protein food.
Hairspray linked to birth defect
Daily Times Monitor
LAHORE: Boys born to women exposed to hairspray in the workplace may have a higher risk of being born with a genital defect, BBC reported on Friday.
Citing a study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, the report said that Imperial College London scientists talked to women who had babies with hypospadias, where the urinary tract is found away from the penis.
They reported that hairspray exposure more than doubled the risk. The study, however, said it was too early to say for certain that hairspray was the cause. Pregnant women will need to make their own choices about whether or not to avoid these kinds of exposures
The incidence of hypospadias has risen sharply in recent decades, and some experts have pointed the finger of suspicion at chemicals called phthalates, found in some plastics, including those found in hairspray.
PHA refills Manto Park lake without repairs
By Afnan Khan
LAHORE: The Parks and Horticulture Authority (PHA) has allowed the refilling of the artificial lake in Manto Park without repairing its base and boundary walls.
The PHA emptied the one-kilometre-long lake more than a month ago with a view to construct a concrete base and walls of the ancient lake as the constant water seepage from the lake was damaging the base of Minar-e-Pakistan.
Contractors and employees associated with the park told Daily Times that the decision to repair the lake was taken as cracks in its base were contaminating water with sewerage from a nearby drain, besides posing a danger to the foundation of the national monument. Similarly, the seepage was also damaging houses situated on the backside of the lake. There are also complaints from residents about the contamination of drinking water in the area.
Contractor Abid Hussain, who maintains the lake, said that the authorities had decided to drain water from the lake to repair it for leakages, which could damage the monument. However, another contractor, Tariq, said that the water seepage had not caused any damage to the monument so far. It was decided to refill the lake after a meeting with Project Director Yaqoob Chaudhry and other officials to entertain visitors on Eid, he added. The contractor said that water pumps had been turned on to refill the lake, adding that the lake would be ready for boating one week before Eid.
A park employee said that the lake was being refilled because contractors and the PHA were keen to make money on Eid through boating and operating a swing installed in the middle of the lake. The employee said that fish from the drain enter the lake through cracks and kill farm fish kept in the lake.
Minar-e-Pakistan Project Director Yaqoob Chaudhry said that the government had not released funds in time for the lake repair. He said contractors would lose a major portion of their profit if the lake was not opened on Eid.
Precautions: The director said that the stoppage of seepage was a precautionary measure, adding that it was not causing any damage to the monument. He said that the lake had been purged of parasite fish, adding that the repair work would start after the funds were released after Eid.
