Green insights

Tag: health

  • A Toxic Tour Through Picher

    A couple days ago I drove through Picher, Oklahoma as members of L.E.A.D. Agency gave a toxic tour. During this tour, we discussed the history of all the sites we had visited, their current states, and ways in which these sites are being remediated. There were quite a few sites that stood out to me during this tour.

    One of our first stops was by a large field of Tallgrass. I pulled off the side of the road into a small parking lot. I asked what we were stopping for. My first thought was that we were looking at the looming chat pile to our left. However, the actual focus was the field of grass, which once used to be a residential neighborhood. All of the homes had been destroyed. Much of the destruction can be attributed to the 2010 tornado which blew through Picher, tearing down homes and sandblasting the ones that remained standing with chat. One of the only remaining pieces of evidence that homes used to be there was the three space parking lot.

    Our next stop was by the Picher repository. From a distance, the repository looked like a gigantic, flat chat pile. However, it was actually made up of the chat and mining waste that could not be repurposed. The waste found here has extremely fine particle size and a darker color then most chat. When we stepped out of the truck, I noticed a trail of this waste running down the side of the hill. L.E.A.D. Agency informed me that this waste measures around 13,000 ppm of lead. This is far above the upper safe threshold of 400 ppm.

    The most shocking sight of the entire tour was the “Anti-Fountain of Youth”. After exiting the car a last time, I heard the noise of running water. At first, I thought it was the flowing noises from Tar Creek, but when I looked over the bridge, the water was relatively calm. After walking farther down the road, I saw the source of the noise. Slightly covered by the Tallgrass and cattail stems, there was an actual fountain spewing out orange-tinted water. This fountain was an old bore hole. The liquid being pumped out was acidic mine drainage (AMD), and it was flowing straight into Tar Creek. When I heard that the AMD was seeping out of the mines into the surrounding environment, I imagined a slow flow of water. The amount of pressure with which the AMD was being pumped out at, to the point at which it was going up in the air a couple feet was mind blowing.

    On a final note, I would like to say that we saw a beaver dam and a family of ducks in Tar Creek. This highlights how there is still life present in this creek, giving us even more reason why we must work our hardest to remediate it, and prevent events like this from occurring again in the future.

  • Where are Microplastics From? How can we Reduce Their Prevalence?

    Microplastics are found all over the world. In modern times, almost every single house will contain multiple sources of microplastics. Even the clothes you are wearing right now could be contributing microplastics to the environment. If you are wearing polyester, each time you move or brush something off your shirt, hundreds of microplastics would float off into the air. However, there are still plenty of clothes that are plastic-free; 100% organic fiber clothing, such as cotton, does not contribute any plastics.

    Clothing is one of the main sources of microplastics, with the other being tire wear. As you drive your car or ride a bike, the friction between the tires and the road will release microplastics into the air. While most believe bicycling is an environmentally-friendly activity, look into the tires you use because there is a chance they could be contributing to pollution. Transportation’s contribution to environmental damage is not just limited to energy sources and gas pollution. We must also look towards plastic pollution.

    But the question we should be asking is: “How can we reduce these microplastics?” The best way to start is inside your own home. Switching towels and clothing to 100% natural fibers will play a large role in eliminating your contribution of microplastics. When purchasing items from the grocery store, always be mindful of items with microbeads. While some countries have banned the usage of microplastics in rinse-off cosmetics as a direct effort to limit their introduction into water systems, they are still found in other items and countries.

    If you are interested in participating in a community-level activity, look for local environmental cleanups. These could be in creeks, on hikes, at local parks, or wherever else the environment needs help! By picking up plastic litter and abandoned pieces of clothings in these natural environments, you will be helping reduce microplastic pollution one step at a time.

  • How Mining Contaminants Enter our Food Chain

    Growing up in the Tri-State Mining District (TSMD), I was taught to not play in the dirt or creeks. This was a common rule among families because the soil and water were all potential sources of heavy metal poisoning. Of course, as a child we didn’t know this was the reason. We just thought that the dirt had bugs or germs that weren’t good for us.

    However, the dangers go far beyond these worries. There are toxic heavy metals present in the soil and flowing through the creeks. While these may not be present in deadly concentrations, long-term exposure to elevated concentrations of these metals will likely have adverse health effects. In the TSMD, there was a mining legacy of lead and zinc, with much of these metals used in the World Wars coming from this mining district. This supply of metals brought great wealth to many mining companies, but the people living here were not so fortunate.

    Chat, a name for toxic mining waste, started accumulating near mining sites. This chat contains all sorts of toxicants, and is extremely toxic to humans and the environment alike. In fact, before the dangers were known, families would use chat in their children’s sandboxes. During these years, there were many cases of lead poisoning in children. Even today, chat is found in the backyards of homes, with the owners clueless to the dangers of the gravel-like substance.

    In places with current or prior mining activity, it is likely that there are chat piles close by. Even a small amount of chat incorporated into the soil of one’s lawn could pose a threat. If kids were playing in that contaminated soil, they are exposing themselves to possibly heavy metal poisoning. If a pet or the bottoms of shoes track in chat-laced-mud into the house, a toddler or baby crawling on the floor then putting their hands in their mouths are also extremely susceptible to heavy metal poisoning.

    While the number of victims to this danger can be reduced by increasing societal awareness of this problem, the root cause will still be present. Instead, we must take steps to remediate contaminated soil, clean up the chat piles, reduce unnecessary mining activity, and educate children on the dangers of playing in the soil. These improvements will take time, they will take effort, but they are not impossible.

    With this, I leave you with a task. Go and make a difference for others. If you know a family with kids, send them an article on the dangers of heavy metal contamination. It could very well even be this blog post. But no matter what, it is us the people who can make the difference.