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Robotics Activity #2 – The Pulley

Over the past few days in class we have been experimenting with the Lego Mindstorm robots once more. This time, we used the robots to better help us understand Newton’s 2nd Law, the law of conservation of energy, velocity and acceleration, and power. We used the Lego Mindstorn motor to operate a pulley system. As you can see in the image below, the Mindstorm motor is connected to the computer via a USB cable, and a telephone cable connects port A of the motor to the port on the back of the Mindstorm “arm” piece. A piece of string then wraps around the round part of the Mindstorm robot “arm”, and up around the pulley, where it then comes back down and is connected to some weights.

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Below is the VI on LabView that we used for this experimenter.

The image below is a bit blurry, but you can see that this is where we plugged in the commands for the robot; i.e. the level of power we wished to use, and the mass of the weights at the base of the pulley system in kilograms. What we did, is we changed the power level each time we had the robot start, as well as changing the amount of weights at the end (mass). The control panel below also displays the milivolts, rotations, battery discharge, speed (RPM), time (seconds), and acceleration (RPM/s). Each time we changed either the weight or the power, this was recorded on an excel spreadsheet. The power level was our “force” in this experiment, the motor of the pulley, F=ma. Work was being done on the weight when they were lifted up by the pulley. We changed the amount of potential energy by applying work on the weights, work = F(distance the weights moved), which is equal to the change in energy of the weights (gravitational potential energy). Battery Discharge is directly proportional to the energy used; all of the energy does not go into lifting up the weights, because there is a frictional loss when the wheel needs to be turned (heat). The battery has chemical potential energy, and it gets changed into gravitational potential energy when you lift up masses. Power = work/time, if you have something done in a minimal amount of time, you have a higher power level.

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We changed the weight on our pulley a few times to: 05 kg, .1 kg, .15 kg, .2 kg, and .25 kg. We then left the power level on 75, we could see that the acceleration decreased. The less weight there was with a higher level of power made the pulley go faster. The more weight we had on the bottom meant that there was going to be a higher level of battery discharge. This is shown in the graph below.

We also changed the power level a few times to: 50, 60, 70, 80, and 90, and left the mass at .1 kg. In doing this, we observed that the acceleration increased. This is shown in the graph below.

 

What the frack is “fracking”… ?

Hydraulic fracking is a method of drilling to gain oil and natural gas for the use within the U.S.; this process has been used for roughly 65 years. There are layers of rock beds and shale within the Earths surface, all tightly together. When doing hydraulic fracking, a hole is drilled into these layers of rock about a mile or so down. After there has been a hole made about a mile down, the drilling process then gets turned horizontally for a few more thousand feet. After this well is drilled, it gets cemented and cased, and small whole are made on the walls of the horizontal pipe. Through these small holes, a mixture of  water, sand, and other various chemical additives are pumped to create small fractures within the rocks, and then held open by the sand that was added. This process can be seen in the image below.

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In the U.S. right now, there are more than 500,000 natural gas wells that are active. In America, we have been going through an energy revolution; one of the biggest contributors to this revolution is hydraulic fracturing. The U.S. was having a panic at the scarcity of natural gas and oil, but hydraulic fracturing has granted us large amounts of these fuels. Tight rock formations can lock gas inside, making it almost impossible to get it out, but hydraulic fracturing has made it possible.

Aside from getting an abundance of natural gas and oil within the U.S., hydraulic fracturing has also proved to be better for the environment than other methods of getting these fuels. For instance, when the chemical additives are added to the wells, it is for a specific purpose: they reduce friction, and prevent corrosion within pipes. The reduction of friction is a good thing, because it reduces the strain on diesel powered pumping mechanisms, which in turn reduces the amount of emissions into the air. Having pipes that do not corrode is also very good for protecting the environment.

Hydro fracking also caused gas prices to drop significantly from 2007-2013.

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So, yeah, this is all good and great for the environment, correct? Wrong. There are some serious potential dangers of using the hydraulic fracturing method to obtain natural gas and oil from the Earth. In order to bring the water to the drills that will inject it into the well, there needs to be roughly 400 tanks brought, all by large trucks. These 400 tanks average out to roughly 1-8 million gallons of water. The chemicals that are added to the sand and water to create the “fracking fluid” top roughly 40,000 gallons. Within this fluid there are around 600 toxic chemicals, some of which are: mercury, lead, radium, methanol, hydrochloric acid, formaldehyde, and more… During the process of fracking, the toxic chemicals placed into the watery/sandy mixture can leak out of the wells into nearby groundwater, along with the methane gas itself. One of the articles I’ve read, “Dangers of Fracking”, states that “Methane concentrations are 17x higher in drinking-water wells near fracturing sites than in normal wells.”  

Over the course of time that hydraulic fracturing has been done, there have been nearly thousands of cases where city drinking water was contaminated with chemicals and methane gas. Drinking this water can pose a lot of health risks, especially neurological damage. The companies doing the drilling attempt to gather all the chemicals back out of the ground, but only half, or less than half, of them can be; the chemicals that are left in the ground are not biodegradable. The fluid that is excreted from the ground is left in giant pits where it evaporates into the air. This can pose issues in a few different ways: 1) when these chemicals are evaporated, they can create acid rain, 2) the chemicals are damaging to the atmosphere, and 3) they contaminate the air we breathe in.

Above is an image of a hydro fracking well site. As you can see, there are two pits filled with chemicals. Link for Image


Above is a closer look at a fracking site’s chemical pool in Springville, Pennsylvania. Link for Image

In the photo above, a woman is lighting her water on fire due to there being a high level of methane gas in it. As you can also see, this is coming directly out of a sink faucet in her own home. Link for Image

This image shows household drinking water containing glutaraldehyde, one of the chemicals added to the fracking fluid in Pennsylvania.
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Yup, please don’t frack with our water.

Well, that’s reassuring….. And these are the same chemicals getting into our groundwater and evaporating into our air.
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So, yes, hydro fracking has a large amount of economic benefits, but when do the economic benefits out-way our health? Yeah, we can have a good economy, we can have low gas prices, and we can have an abundance of gas, but at the same time, we’re killing ourselves…. and our planet.

Reference #1: What is Fracking?

Reference #2: Dangers of Fracking

Reference #3: What is Fracking and Why is it Controversial

DuPont: Knowingly Poisoning the Public

As a student who majors in Applied Legal Studies, and who has already completed her Paralegal certification, I have been taught time and time again about ethics and the law. One of the major things that many people outside of the legal world find interesting, is that many lawyers often have to represent people they know are guilty, people they know are bad, and even companies that they know may not be the best; it simply is par of the job. We, as legal professionals, are taught to use the facts in our favor if the law may not be, and that is often what we must do when we know our clients are guilty. In this article, we hear of a lawyer who switched from defending one who is often seen as “the bad guy” (i.e. the corporations) to defending the good guy, the farmers.

Rob Bilott was an environmental defense attorney for many major American corporations; he defended many notable chemical companies in environmental cases made against them by plaintiff’s. His grandmother, Alma White, had called him one day to explain a situation that was brought to her attention: Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg West Virginia had complained that his cows had been dying in large numbers. The DuPont chemical company was said to be the cause of his cows deaths; Tennant believed the company to be dumping their chemicals into the surrounding bodies of water. Tennant had attempted to get help in the local area, but DuPont had ties almost everywhere, making it impossible. White remembered her lawyer-of-a-grandson, and asked him to come help. Bilott, one who normally would represent companies like DuPont, decided to go check out the situation, even though it wasn’t his specialty; he was flooded with good childhood memories he had on his grandmothers farm in Parkersburg, which sparked his desire to try and help Tennant.

Tennant showed up to Bilott’s office in Cincinnati with a box full of video tapes and photographs; Tennant began to explaining the history of his cattle farm, how it was run by him and his four siblings when their father abandoned them. The farm spread roughly 600 acres, and had a total of 200 cattle roaming around. The farm would have stretched even longer if one of Wilbur Tennant’s brothers, Jim, did not sell 66 acres to the DuPont company in the early 1980’s for a landfill they were going to create for their factory. Jim Tennant and his wife Della needed money due to Jim being sick from various illnesses that could not be diagnosed; Jim was also an employee at the DuPont factory.

The Dry Run Creek ran trough the 66 acre plot of land that DuPont purchased from Jim Tennant, and the landfill was named Dry Run Landfill. The Dry Run Creek was also the same creek that ran down to where the Tennnat’s cattle grazed daily. Not much time had passed after the sale of the land to when Wilbur Tennnat’s cows began to act a little strange, he told Bilott. The cows used to be docile, allowing the farmers to milk them, pet them, and hug them, but now, they charged almost in anger towards the farmers when they were approached. After explaining the changed behavior of his cattle, Tennnant showed Bilott a video he had recorded: it showed the pasture with fields of green and the shallow Dry Run Creek nearby. But, there was also a giant mound of white froth gathered up in an elbow of the creek. Tennant then explained that he had taken a deer and a cow from the area where this forth was, and each had blood coming from their noses and mouths.

That same video then goes on to show a big pipe that dispenses green, frothy liquid into the creek. In disgust, Tennant says to Billot that ‘this is what they expect a man’s cows to drink on his own property.” and states that something must be done. Further into the video, we are presented with a malnourished, sick, cow with patches of hair missing from its coat. Tennant suggested kidney failure in the cow, which would have caused it to look as such. Tennant also captured one of his dead cows on the video, in the snow, with fluorescent blue eyes. You can hear Tennant stating in the video: ‘‘one hundred fifty-three of these animals I’ve lost on this farm, every veterinarian that I’ve called in Parkersburg, they will not return my phone calls or they don’t want to get involved. Since they don’t want to get involved, I’ll have to dissect this thing myself. … I’m going to start at this head.’’ the video then sows Tennant doing just that, dissecting the cows head. In dissecting all different organs of the cow, Tennnat notices large amounts of strange discoloration within its organs, and its teeth are blackened.

After seeing the video and talking with Tennant, Bilott studies the photographs and videos much, much longer. The article goes on to say that Bilott “saw cows with stringy tails, malformed hooves, giant lesions protruding from their hides and red, receded eyes; cows suffering constant diarrhea, slobbering white slime the consistency of toothpaste, staggering bowlegged like drunks.” These images greatly disturbed Bilott; he decided that something awful was going on, and that it needed to be taken care of. Almost immediately, under the decision that it was simply the right thing to do, Bilott decided to take Wilbur Tennant’s case.

As a lawyer at Taft, Bilott became an expert on working with clients to get them to comply with new environmental regulations that Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) had put in place in the recent years. Many of the chemical companies that Bilott worked with were used to dumping extremely hazardous waste into water areas long before these regulations became so strict. Taft was a bit shaky on letting Bilott take the Tennnant case; they feared it would seem strange to take a plaintiff’s side versus a corporations side- they would be suing a corporation rather than defending them. Bilott was excited to finally use his knowledge of the law for those he thought truly needed it.

In the Southern District of West Virginia in 1999, Bilott filed a federal suit against DuPont. Bernard Riley, DuPont’s in-house lawyer, said that they would investigate the property and animals with the E.P.A.; DuPont and the E.P.A. each provided three of their personally selected veterinarians to examine some of Tennant’s cows. Their studies found DuPont to not be responsible for the cows poor health, instead, it pointed blame on the Tennant family, stating that they “did not know how to raise cattle.” The Tennants began to suffer for these acuusations both financially and socially; much of Parkersburg was employed by DuPont, and many people began to ignore/ostracize the Tennant’s for bringing suit against DuPont. The Tennant’s had to change churches 4 times, and many people often said they weren’t aloud to talk to the Tennant’s.

Bilott discovered something: a letter that DuPont had wrote to the E.P.A explaining an unknown chemical called “PFOA.” As experienced as Bilott was in working with chemical companies, he had never heard of PFOA. A chemical specialist that Bilott had been using to help him had mentioned that he had once heard of a chemical with a similar name: PFOS, which was similar to soap. Bilott later discovered that PFOA was an abbreviation for perfluorooctanoic acid. DuPont had refused to tell Bilott anything about their use of the perfluorooctanoic acid, and in 2000, Bilott obtained a court order requiring them to do so. Within days of the court order being issued, the article states that “dozens of boxes containing thousands of unorganized documents began to arrive at Taft’s headquarters: private internal correspondence, medical and health reports and confidential studies conducted by DuPont scientists. There were more than 110,000 pages in all, some half a century old.” Bilott had his work cut out for him, and he began to dig into each document.

Through his research of the documents, Bilott discovered that DuPont had been using the perfluorooctanoic acid since 1951, and had known all along that it was extremely harmful. But why were they using this harmful chemical? The answer: to create Teflon. In order to dispose of the chemical, it needs to be set on fire or disposed of by chemical waste facilities; the chemical was not to be disposed of in waterways or sewers. The company had been dumping the perfluorooctanoic acid waste into the Ohio River and “digestion ponds” where it was absorbed into the ground. More than 100,000 people in the towns of Parkersburg, Vienna, Little Hocking and Lubeck were being supplied with perfluorooctanoic acid contaminated drinking water. 3M, the company that had created perfluorooctanoic acid, had been doing medical studies of the chemical for over 4 decades, along with DuPont.

Through experiementation and research, in 1961, DePont discovered that perfluorooctanoic acid greatly enlarged the livers of rats and rabbits. In the early 1970’s they also discovered that many of their factory workers in the Washington Works factory had high levels of perfluorooctanoic acid in their blood; they did not tell the E.P.A.. The article then goes on to state that “in 1981, 3M found that ingestion of the substance caused birth defects in rats. DuPont tested the children of pregnant employees in their Teflon division. Of seven births, two had eye defects. DuPont did not make this information public.” Throughout the following years, DuPont discovered high levels of perfluorooctanoic acid in the local drinking water, but did not make this information public. The article states that by 1991, “DuPont understood that PFOA caused cancerous testicular, pancreatic and liver tumors in lab animals. One laboratory study suggested possible DNA damage from PFOA exposure, and a study of workers linked exposure with prostate cancer.” 

The DuPont company decided that it needed a new place to begin dumping the PFOA: the large 66 acre plot of land bought from Jim Tennant, one of their employees. That is when they begin to use the Dry Run Landfill, where they have dumped almost 7,100 tons of PFOA since 1990. The scientists at DuPont knew that the landfill would be dumping some of the PFOA into the Dry Run Creek where the Tennant’s cows were grazing near. The scientists decided to test the water, where they found extremely high levels of the chemical. They did not tell the Tennant family.

In 2000, Bilott had a conversation with DuPont’s lawyer once more, stating that he new exactly what was going on. Bilott was not satisfied with just helping out the Tennants; he knew that this PFOA was in thousands of homes drinking water, and he wondered what it may be doing to them.

Bilott composed a 927 page brief and sent it directly to the E.P.A. in 2001, which greatly scared DuPont. This brief not only scared DuPont, but the thousands of other companies using similar chemicals in their products and disposing them into the world without public knowledge. In 2005, DuPont reached a $16.5 million settlement with the E.P.A.. Joseph Kiger had later came to Bilott for help: he relieved a letter on Halloween night stating that levels of PFOA had been found in his drinking water, but that it was not a health risk. The E.P.A. began an investigation into PFOA, and found that it could pose extreme health risks to anyone exposed to in through water, air, or even cooking with Teflon pans.  The srticle the goes on to read that “Bilott’s strategy appeared to have worked. In September 2004, DuPont decided to settle the class-action suit. It agreed to install filtration plants in the six affected water districts if they wanted them and pay a cash award of $70 million. It would fund a scientific study to determine whether there was a ‘‘probable link’’ — a term that delicately avoided any declaration of causation — between PFOA and any diseases. If such links existed, DuPont would pay for medical monitoring of the affected group in perpetuity. Until the scientific study came back with its results, class members were forbidden from filing personal-injury suits against DuPont.” 

Many people in West Virginia began to send their blood off to labs to be tested for PFOA levels in their blood; in exchange, they received $400. Many people began to get unsettled a how long it was taking for the blood to be tested; people were dying of cancer, one of those people was Wilbur Tennant’s wife, and Wilbur himself had passed away of a heart attack, but also had been suffering from cancer. Bilott was getting distressed that he could not help these people in a timely manner.

Bilott himself began to change; in 2010, he began to have blurry vision, numbed arms, and he had difficulty dressing himself. His added stress form the case did not help as well. The article states that “the attacks recurred periodically, bringing blurry vision, slurred speech and difficulty moving one side of his body. They struck suddenly, without warning, and their effects lasted days. The doctors asked whether he was under heightened stress at work. ‘‘Nothing different than normal,’’ Bilott told them. ‘‘Nothing it hadn’t been for years.”” Doctors prescribed him some medication that helped alleviate the symptoms, but they still did not have a diagnosis for what was wrong with him.

After a long a grueling 7 years, in 2011, the scientists began to release the information they had found from the blood donations of West Virginian residents. They discovered that the PFOA chemical could be loosely linked to: “kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, pre-eclampsia and ulcerative colitis.” 3,535 plaintiffs have filed personal-injury lawsuits against DuPont since October of 2015.

My family and I had used Teflon pans in the past, and we used to see flakes of the Teflon come off into our food, so we switched to using cast iron pans. We made the switch mainly because we thought the Teflon pans were cheap, and they didn’t last very long. I wish I could say it is because we knew about PFOA, unfortunately, that is not the case. At least we have switched, though! I wish more people knew about this….


The winding road to one of the Tennant’s farms.

 

DuPont’s logo: “DuPont: The miracles of science.”
More like, “DuPont: The miracles of poisoning thousands of people and getting away with it for years.”

Amen, protesters.

Many cooking pans are being labeled with this nowadays to inform consumers that their pans are safe.

Robotics Activity #1

In the last few classes we have had the opportunity to use the Lego Mindstorm NXT robots to better help explain sustainability. In this experiment, we took several different steps that involved controlling the robots via programs on LabView, and measured the distance the robot traveled and speed that it went.

First, we had to legitimately put the robot together. This was kind of fun, it reminded me of when I used to play with toys as a young child. We had to use many small pieces to attach two side wheels and a front wheel to the robot; this honestly proved to be pretty tedious, but the end result was a fully-functioning robot. Well, fully functioning once connected to the computer via a USB cable. There were also two phone cables that connect the ports of the robots wheels to the lettered ports on the back of the robot. (See image below).

Once the robot was complete, it was plugged via USB into the computer. We then opened up LabView, the technology program used to control the robot by using various programs/creating programs.

We then measured the circumference of the two larger wheels in the back of the robot. (See image above). For our wheels, we got 2.2 in, which is equivalent to 0.05588 m. To calculate the circumference of the wheel, we did pi(diameter) -> 3.14(0.05588)= 0.17546. We then recorded the circumference of both wheels in the font panel of the VI on LabView,

Once you hit the arrow on LabVeiw in the upper left-hand corner, it would command the robot to move. The robot then began to drive itself over the desk for a short amount of time. In observing the robot move, we noted that the wheels rotated 2.5 times before the robot came to a stop. 2.5 rotations equals 441 mm, or 17.36 in. It took the wheels approximately 10 seconds to spin 2.5 times, which translates to 10,000 milliseconds.

The next step we took was to measure the distance the robot traveled; we got 0.27 m, and LabView’s measurement was 0.255212 m.
We then calculated the percent error:

|0.27 – 0.255212| / (0.27 + 0.25) / 2 X 100 = 5.63%

The Flint Water Crisis

The city of Flint, Michigan, is facing an extreme epidemic: continually rising levels of lead in their drinking water. Governor Rick Snyder has declared a state of emergency for the city. For the past 18 months, many children have been exposed to this lead-filled drinking water; lead can pose serious health concerns when children & the elderly consume it. The controversy behind this situation is that the government is to blame; government officials, and Governor Snyder himself, are being accused of “brushing this under the rug”. It has been stated that these officials have been trying to cover up the fact that there are high levels of lead in the city’s drinking water.

Aside from Government officials, many individuals within the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have also been under accusation. The EPA has also been stated to have ignored the situation, and two individuals from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and one individual from the Environmental Protection Agency have left their positions due to the situation at hand. One government official from the City of Flint has also resigned.

In the United States, Flint is one of the most poverty stricken cities in the country; according to the U.S. census, roughly 40% of the city lives in poor conditions. Many of the city’s money has been spent on retired government officials, roughly 20%, which has put the city into turmoil.

But, how did this all happen? In 2013, the city had voted to begin taking water from the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA). Originally the city was getting its water from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD); many city officials believed that switching to the KWA would save the city a large sum of money. The unfortunate part: KWA would not have the pipeline for drinking water from Lake Huron to Flint completed until the end of this year, 2016; the city then started to get its drinking water from their backup: the Flint river. The Flint river had many pipes within it where the water was being taken from; the water in the river had a low pH level, but a high salinity level. In having a high salinity level, the phosphate and oxide coating on the pipes within the river were being eroded; this erosion caused the bare metal of the pipes to be exposed, which caused the levels of lead in the water to rise.

In April of 2014 after the city made the switch, many Flint residents started to complain about the color, odor, and taste of their drinking water. Later on in January of 2015, many residents attended a public meeting to complain that the water was causing some serious skin issues for their children.  Darnell Earley, the state-appointed emergency manager, told the crowd of residents that it would cost the city a lot more money to switch back to getting their water from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD). Interestingly enough, at around the same time, General Motors (GM) had stopped using the water from the Flint River in their factory, because the water had high levels of  chlorides: chemicals that can corrode engine parts.

An independent research team from Virginia Tech did a study on the water in the Flint River in September of 2015. This study showed drastic results: almost 25% of homes in Flint had levels of lead in their water well above the accepted federal limit. Not only that, but almost every single home in the city had discolored, distasteful water. Also in September of 2015, the Hurley Medical Center in Flint had also done a study showing the amount of children having high levels of lead in their blood to have doubled since the city switched to getting its water from the Flint River. Local and state authorities acknowledged the water crisis in October of 2015, and switched back to getting their water from the DWSD. Although the Flint River is no longer being used as the water source for Flint, much of the water is still speculated to be contaminated with lead, and many residents are skeptical. Residents are also angry, for obvious reasons, and want to have justice be served for the fact that they were poisoned with lead; whether it was on purpose, negligence, or an accident is under heavy speculation.

In February of 2015, a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who is an expert on water had noticed the potential problems with Flint’s drinking water; this individuals concerns were confirmed in April of 2015. In June of 2015, The U.S. EPA member wrote an internal memorandum to Susan Hedman, the administrator from region 5 of the EPA, the region where Flint is located. Susan stated that she could not release the information to the public, because she did not have the means necessary to do so. The EPA and Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality got into a disagreement on what to do about the water crisis, and about what to say to the public.

An individual who represented the study done at Virginia Tech on Flint’s water, Marc Edwards, stated publicly that he believed the whole situation to be a cover-up; he said: “It was the injustice of it all and that the very agencies that are paid to protect these residents from lead in water, knew or should’ve known after June at the very latest of this year, that federal law was not being followed in Flint, and that these children and residents were not being protected. And the extent to which they went to cover this up exposes a new level of arrogance and uncaring that I have never encountered. Rather than address the legitimate science questions, they mounted a public relations campaign to discredit the residents, to discredit us. I have never seen this level of arrogance and incompetence. It was mostly confined to a few key individuals, but other people are guilty of being far too trusting of those individuals, and not listening to the people who were drinking this water.” Marc Edwards comments are highly agreeable among many people, whether in Flint or other areas of the U.S.. Many people believe the government to have ignored the science behind the facts, and try to cover everything up as quickly as possible.

Late last week, Governor Snyder stated that the state of Michigan would provide Flint with $28 million to pay for things to aid in the issues caused by the water. Residents will be able to receive things like water filters, fresh bottled water, and more school nurses to help with sickness cause by the water for their children. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has also sent Flint 28,000 liters of clean drinking water. The U.S. Attorney General and the Environmental Protection Agency have also started an investigation to see if any crimes were committed by the Government officials of Flint; it has also been reported that the FBI will join in on this investigation as well. Flint is still planning to join the Karegnondi Water Authority after the pipeline from Lake Huron to Flint is completed in June of this year; in using/joining this pipeline, hopefully Flint can come to rest and finally enjoy clean, safe, drinking water.

This image from the Flint Water Study shows water samples from a Flint, Mich. home. The bottles were collected, from left, on Jan. 15, Jan. 16, and Jan. 21, 2015.
This is an image of water taken from the same household faucet in Flint, left to right: January 15, bottles 1 & 2, January 16, & January 21, 2015. As you can see, the water gets more and more orange as the days went on. Link for Image


Above is an image of eroded pipes that were pulled from the Flint River in Michigan; the erosion of the pipes is said to be once of the main causes for the lead entering the water. Link for Image

Figure 3: Higher release of iron is evident in the Flint water glass reactor containing iron than that of Detroit water\
This is an image of water taken from the faucet of a household receiving its water from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD), and a household that was receiving its water from the Flint river. As you can see, there is an obvious difference in the quality of the water.  Link for Image


The Flint River. Link for Image

Reference #1: What You Should Know about the Flint Water Crisis

Reference #2: What Went Wrong in Flint

Reference #3: Events That Led to Flint’s Water Crisis

G.M.O.s in Kona, Hawaii

Genetically Modified Crops, more commonly known as G.M.O.s, are things we all encounter almost every single time we eat something in the present day. Crops and food are genetically tampered with in order to create a desired result; genes can be added or taken away from a living organisms DNA, which helps change the organism into what is a desired end result. At the beginning, this sounds like a great idea; we can create foods to be the way we want them to be, we can create them in large quantities, and sell them in bulk to create great profit. The problem with this: genetically modifying crops creates food, that when ingested, can cause a vast array of different health issues for human beings, as well as issues for the planet due to the methods in which they are produced.

In May of 2013, on the island of Kona, Hawaii, a bill was proposed to initiate a ban on the use of G.M.O.s in growing crops; the bill was later passed by a ratio of 6 to 3, and signed by the Mayor of Kona on December 5th that same year. In the public hearings on the bill that banned G.M.O.s, facts on the negative effects of them were backed up by raw data gathered through experiments.  Councilman Greggor Ilagan stated the negative information is almost always what turns up whenever investigating G.M.O.s; you hardly ever hear anything positive about them. Councilman Ilagan was opposed to the bill.

Arguments made against the bill to ban G.M.O.s on the island included the statement that genetically modifying papayas saved the fruit from a disease they were facing; genetically modifying the fruits saved farmers a ton of their products. Others also disputed against the idea that genetically modified corn caused tumors in rats that consumed it. Biologists at the University of Hawaii urged supporters of the ban to consider the substantial benefits of G.M.O.s.

Councilman Ilagan urged those against the ban to consider the scientific evidence that has been gathered rather than “following the crowd” and believing that G.M.O.s are safe; the scientific evidence clearly shows that the belief of G.M.O.s being “good” is false; G.M.O.s are damaging to our health, and the planet. The planet is warming continuously, and the population is ever-growing; these factors make it hard to grow natural, safe food for us to consume. In using G.M.O.s, that contributes to the heating of the planet due to the farming methods hat are used. Rejecting the thought that climate change does exist helps the use of G.M.O.s to continue.

The ban of G.M.O.s in Kona, Hawaii, states that G.M.O.s will be banned in harvesting crops, minus the corn and papayas that are already growing there via the use of G.M.O.s. If it is to be found that G.M.O.s were/are being used, one can be subject to a $1,000 fine per day. Papaya farmers in Hawaii worry that even though they are exempt from the bill and can still use G.M.O.s, their products will be ostracized by society; this would make them harder to sell, resulting in them losing profit.

People as a whole have an easier time believing the popular opinion rather than science itself, and that is the issue that seems to be effecting the discussion on G.M.O.s. Science may be harder for one to understand, and it may be easier for some to simply believe the popular opinion. Others also do not want to come to terms with the fact that G.M.O.s are bad, and that we consume them almost daily.

The bill itself came to be through distrust of the companies that genetically modify seeds for crops; these companies were in support of  state measure to ban local governments from regulating them; a prime example of this is the Monsanto company who genetically modify and produce seeds for crops. People have taken action in Hawaii against these companies to prevent the use of pesticides on the crops. Ms. Willie, chairwoman of the Council’s Agriculture Committee and the proposer of the bill, worries that these companies will take over the islands of Hawaii. She states that it is not the amount of food produced that we should worry about, but instead the quality of the food.

Professors at the University of Hawaii have proposed arguments against the bill; a Dean at the University’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources stated that genetically modifying food is not harmful in and of itself. Ms. Willie believes that statements from the University to be skewed, proposing that Monsanto contributes to the University a large amount. Monsanto gave a donation of $600,000.00 to the University’s Tropical Agriculture college for student scholarships.

Many states have proposed bills to require that foods be labeled if they have G.M.O.s in them; that is a big issue, because many of us do not know whether or not the foods we’re consuming have G.M.O.s in them. Whole Foods has proposed that in the coming years they will stray away from selling foods containing G.M.O.s, and will clearly label those that do have them. Trader Joes has signs in their stores that read “No G.M.O.s Sold Here.”

G.M.O.s have caused many farmers driven into debit/poverty in India to commit suicide. G.M.O.s have basically wiped out their farms, making it almost impossible for these farmers to grow their crops and generate a profit to provide for their families. Ms. Willie had implemented a committee that would study the ban of G.M.O.s in Kona, Hawaii; this committee would look into the impact the ban has had on the island, the citizens of the island, the economy; the committee did not have enough support, and, unfortunately, was declined.