| Surrounded by Waste
We’re surrounded by waste, before us, behind us, to the
right and to the left. It’s underground, in the soil, int the
water, above us in the air. We ourselves are storing all manner of
poisons and waste. Lead from exhaust fumes is built into our very
bones, strontium from nuclear explosions and power plant accidents,
fluorine from the anti-caries prophylactic idea and mercury from the
fillings of our teeth. There’s asbestos in our organs, the lungs
and peritoneum. We, even the youngest of us, are chemical waste depositories.
Our waste disposal system excretes stool, but it can only get rid
of some of the things we would need to excrete. Our organism is not
geared (yet) to deal with many of the substances we are confronted
with. Why does human stool stink? Why does cat and dog excrement stink,
but not the droppings of wild animals? Humans, dogs and cats feed
on industrially manufactured foods, animals in the wild usually do
not. Might that be what makes the difference?
We are interim storage facilities of a wide range of substances used
in agriculture and the food-industry. Our skin is a depot for additives
of the cosmetics industry. Our lungs continually, by day and night,
breathe in pollutants, industrial poisons and domestic poisons, which
are then mixed with the blood in our alveoli. Radioactive noble gases
for instance, not to mention the fine carbon particles that settle
in the lungs of smokers. Tritium is among the most wicked, it can
cross even cell membranes.
Above us I said. Far above us all the way to other planets the creators
of value-free science have deposited space-scrap, at first (in Gagarin’s
time) without thinking, just like the atom-splitters created radioactive
waste unaware of the long term implications. Later they continued,
knowingly, publicly, with intent.
These days disposal is trendy. A few years ago the public heard of
scandalous finds in Hamburg, Germany. It seemed Hamburg was the dirtiest
city in Europe - until it was realized that Hamburg was just among
the first who went public. Countless other places followed suit and
turned out to be at least as polluted. Old waste is being transferred,
relocated, maybe burnt (creating fumes) to ashes and then transported
and dumped elsewhere, or even returned.
Does anyone really believe that you can filter the oceans or get them
cleaned by ionic exchange*, that you can scrape off the top layer
of the sea-bottom the way experts have suggested for radioactively
polluted farmland (nux-81,1993)? The reports we get every nice summer’s
day of ozone-level limits having been exceeded have long become empty
and meaningless. Is any government authority going to take the limits
seriously anytime soon? Will they actually do something to limit the
emissions? Well, how could they, with free trade and the economy always
being the top priority. How are we going to get the emitted lead back?
Lets’ look at a local example: The grounds around the target
areas of Swiss shooting stands are said to be so full of lead that
to use these fields for agriculture would be considered irresponsible.
This was found by a study of fields in our canton of Solothurn. But
for “shooting uses” these fields are still usable. Unless
a higher authority would forbid shooting (“das Obligatorische”
which all men in Military service have to practice, the sport and
competition shoots) or limit it to electronic hits. But that, goodness,
would be an unforgivable limitation of good old traditional values!
Polluted meadows and fields (and forests) would have to be cleaned,
top-soil scraped and discarded.
Let’s work it out: 3000 target-shooting stands in Switzerland
would have to be taken down and the surface of a surrounding area
in a radius of around 100m (~ 3 ha) would have to be taken off down
to 1m depth. The soil in front of the stands would also have to be
discarded and safely stored.
3000 time 3 hectares of lead-polluted grounds makes 9000, to make
calculation easier let’s say 10 000 hectares = 10 000 x 10 000
= 100 000 000 square meters of land. At 1 meter in depth there would
be 100 million cubic-meters of soil to be taken away and safely stored
somewhere. Where? Personally I’d suggest taking this poisonous
soil and filling the target areas with it, then fence it. That would
give every single Swiss community a memorial and the poison would
be kept safely away from human and animal alike. And I’m sure
it would give shooting fans and haters quite something to think about.
-------------------------------------
Konradin Kreuzer, in nux edition number
86, June 1984
(at basic military training at Inf RS II/6 1941 I came first in the
target shooting competition/Wettschiessen)
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* speaking of ion exchange or cleaning … That reminds me of
the so-called selective filtering of the mineral water from Zurzach/Switzerland:
Ionic exchange filters filter only the two substances fluoride (there’s
too much) and lead (because it’s poisonous) from the water,
the rest remains. That’s what I was told by a Zurzach-employee.
But the product is still sold as "Original
Zurzach mineral water” (nux-48, 5-6, 1987)
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