Week 10 Responses

Chapter 8
-I thought it was funny how the WEF marketed its new biosolids to be used on farms and orchards, because most of the general public doesn't know that farms already use a fertilizer that contains human waste and remains from the industrial sewage industry.
-Sludge contains most of the things you would think it consists of like many types of bacteria and chemical compounds, but I had no idea of all the other harmful things that could turn up in sewage such as arsenic, lead, mercury, and asbestos.
-It is amazing that the selective use of government money to research toxins and sewage goes only to the EPA to find new uses for the sludge, and not to toxicologists and public health officials that would use the research money to find out how bad these chemicals actually are.
-The part about how stealth is New York City's new weapon against the war on sludge is somewhat ridiculous because it's basically just like sweeping dust and dirt under a rug. New York now keeps all information about where they dump their trash very private even to the point where the townspeople of the town they decide to dump in don't know it.
-It's scary to imagine that current science and technology can't even uncover the truth about the dangers of most chemicals in sludge and waste. Sure, they can assess the risk of common things like pesticides, chemicals, and radioactivity, but the evolving microbes of new pathogens are developing immunities to our antibiotics and becoming whole new threats we don't even know how to gauge.
-My question is how do I know if my town harbors these sludge dumpings from big cities and if it really is legal to deceive whole towns and even states with private dumping?
Chapter 9
-Public relations experts who work for companies who's sales would take a blow from new pesticidal information like the Velsicol employees should not be able to lie to the public like they did when Silent Spring was published. Instead of spending budgeted money to cover up what people write about their products, they should be investing in safer chemicals to use.
-Greenwashing and environmental public relations are all around us, trying to tell us that anyone who stands up to their companies for polluting or not being as green as they could be is an eco-terrorist fear monger. When a company announces how they are becoming greener, further research should be done to make sure they're actually doing anything about it at all.
-"EDF assists McDonald's in fooling the public into believing that something significant has occurred". This type of lying should not be legal in the slightest, and now McDonald's can go on polluting and selling pesticide covered foods while the public believes that they're trying to be more environmentally conscious by using recycled materials for their bags one day out of the year.
-Some popular PR campaigns that corporations use now try to make it seem as if you are the one at fault for spoiling the environment instead of them. I hardly believe that pollution percentages are more greatly affected by my everyday actions rather than a corporation pumping CO2 out of it's smokestacks 24/7.
-Changing your name doesn't make you a different person. Changing a corporation's name doesn't change the fact that they pollute more now than they did under the previous name. It is shocking what some people will believe just by changing their surroundings.
-My question is when is government going to step in and lay down some laws for the legality of public relations, because as I see it, they lie their way out of every corner.