The following
are responses and summaries of various readings related to Human Health,
Disease, and the Environment.
Diet for a Dead Planet
Farming, while once thought of as one of the kinder
industries to the environment, is now finding itself more destructive than many
of the more feared industrious wasters. Farmers
have failed to follow pollution controls long established in other
industries. Pesticides, fertilizers, and
animal waste combine in the farming industry’s toll on the environment. No longer do most farmers practice crop
rotation which keeps the topsoil fertile and prevents any one species of insect
from gaining any advantage. Instead, due
to government subsidies for individual crops, farmers practice monocroping
which drains the soil of its nutrients and allows particular pest species to
become dominant. This requires the
farmers to apply fertilizers to the soil in order for the crops to have
sufficient nutrients and pesticides to the plants and area to rid of the
pests. The pests who survive the
chemical invasion reproduce and become all that much more virulent as the new
population finds itself immune to the previous pesticides. Thereafter the farmer must implore
alternative, sometimes stronger pesticides.
All of these chemicals seep into the ground, sometimes spoiling water
aquifers, wash down into nearby streams and creeks, become lodged inside the
crop itself, and evaporate into the atmosphere.
Probably the biggest criminal of agribusiness though are the animal
factories. Here, thousands of hogs,
chickens, or cows stand day after day in a pen just large enough for their
frames eating protein-laden foods and ingesting antibiotics, while the urine
and feces rains down through slats in the floor. All this waste flows like a river into a
large tub sitting nearby where it gets taken into nearby waterways and absorbed
into the sky. Research by the EPA has
shown that this animal waste is the largest contributor to pollution in
American waterways.
Common Soap Antiseptic…
Many of the chemicals which we use are that harm the
environment are really completely unnecessary.
In recent years there has been a great surge of household “germ fighters”:
antibacterial deodorizers, surface cleaners, and lotions, usually alcohol
based, dominate the market. More
recently this antibacterial revolution has hit the bathroom aisle with
antiseptic soap, which has been in use for some fifty years in different
aspects. A kind of soap that purports to
destroy bacteria; like soap alone does not perform up to par? It turns out that the chemicals that make up
the “antiseptic” part, triclocarban, does not filter out through conventional
means at most water treatment plants.
There are two possible effects of this happening: the first is that the
chemical itself may actually be harmless to people or to the local ecology
which it comes into contact with and the second and much more scary is that
more of the microbiological threat will be exposed to the toxin allowing for a
greater rate of adaptation leading us to lose yet another tool in our fight
against disease and bacteria. Not enough
is known about the chemical or its effects yet to make an affective conclusion,
but this is merely another unnecessary abuse of modern technology which may in
the end have long-lasting negative effects.
Modern Food Processing
The elderly, the young, and those with compromised immune
systems are most at risk to acquire a foodborne disease. Most of these illnesses can be attributed to
contaminated meat products. Camplybacter
and salmonella are the most common of the foodborne diseases. The contraction of camplybacter and
salmonella can, in most cases, be avoided with proper cooking of meat products,
especially chicken. Foodborne diseases
are most common in the more processed meats such as ground beef because there
is much more surface area of meat thereby allowing for more oxygen for the
growth of bacteria. Typhoid fever, a
disease caused by a strain of salmonella, is acquired through the consumption
of food or drink containing trace feces from a person who is currently ill with
or recovered from the bacterial infection.
Therefore it is most common in third world countries, or areas where the
standard of hygiene is poorer or sewage is kept in the open or mixes with the
water table. Botulism is caused by the
bacteria clostridium botulinum which causes muscle paralysis and potentially
death. Botulism cannot be spread from
another person but must be acquired through direct contact with the bacteria
which grows on food. The bacteria
prefers food which is low in oxygen supply, often those which grow underground,
and temperatures within the safe food “danger zone” (33-140 F). Confined Animal
Feeding Operations contribute to much of the disease issue with meat. Because hundreds of these animals are kept in
such close proximity to one another disease transmission occurs at a much
faster rate than occurs naturally.
Therefore the managers of these “farms” feed the animals large doses of
antibiotics in an attempt to stave off infection. However, this overuse of antibiotics has
causes new strains of bacteria to quickly emerge, thereby rendering the old
antibiotics useless and sometimes making the human antibiotics ineffective as
well.
Hanta Virus Death
A man recently died of the hanta virus in Utah after having
been exposed to rodent droppings. Rodent
feces and urine can contain the hanta virus which is quite deadly to
humans. The September 3rd
death was the first in Utah since 2004.
It is reported that the man was cleaning up rodent droppings and in
doing so acquired the virus. The virus
can also be acquired by the inhalation of dust from the dried feces of
rats. According to the health
department, one should use a “wet method” for the cleaning up of rodent
feces. Spraying the affected area with a
disinfectant before cleaning and then using a wet mop or moistened towel to
clean up the debris. One should always
avoid direct contact with the area and droppings and must also avoid any kind
of dry cleaning such as mopping or vacuuming because this will only stir up the
dust from the droppings. This is the tenth reported case of the hanta virus in
the United States this year.
Internet Research
Since 1933 the United States has paid out subsidies to
farmers. Subsidies give farmers extra
money for their crops and also limit the drop in price that one may fall victim
to. In other words the price of their
crop will not fall below a set limit.
Subsidies allow for changes in production and prices to have a much
lessened affect on the individual farmer, thereby keeping the domestic farming
sector intact. A country without
agriculture is held at the whims of world trade. Subsidies can drive the price of food down
because it creates a surplus which would otherwise not be available. The lowered price of food greatly outweighs
the cost to the common tax payer as they usual spend more money annually on
food than in payment of taxes. One of the problems with subsidies is that they
go completely against the idea of free trade.
A farmer, since subsidies guarantee him a certain amount of money, does
not need to focus on supply and demand and can just continue producing an
unneeded crop. Businesses in other industries do not receive relief via the
government from market fluctuations so why should farmers be any
different. Subsidies also can cause
poverty in other nations. One of the few
sectors where third-world countries can be competitive is in the agriculture
business. With subsidies driving the
prices of domestic crops way down, thereby making cultivation by third-world
farmers unnecessary. Finally, most of
the subsidies go to big-business which uses its subsidies to buy up smaller farms. From these smaller farms it gains additional
money with which to buy up more real estate ever increasing its conglomeration.
The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 was a 288
billion dollar agricultural policy plan set to be in effect for five
years. The main focus of this farm bill
was the advancement of biofuels and other organic energy sources. The bill includes grants covering thirty
percent of the cost for the development of advanced biofuels refineries and up
to 250 million dollars for the construction of refineries. The bill established a tax credit for the
producers of fuels derived from the non-edible parts of plants, woods, and
grass. The bill enables the creation of
the National Institute of Food and Agriculture as a federal agriculture center
for research. 80 million dollars a year
toward the research of organics growth, 230 million towards the research of
specialty crops, and 118 million towards the research of biomass and
development.
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