Word: toxicants
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Cambridge resident Earl Lafontant, of the Haitian, advocacy group Club CIBAO, spoke about the problem of toxic dumping in Haiti and other foreign countries. He said that the U.S. had transformed the small Caribbean nation into "a dumping ground for foreign toxic waste" in recent years...
Still, some undergraduates who have found jobs say they haven't noticed the panic that has beseiged some of their classmates. Lawrence C.C. Cheung '94 will be a summer employee of New Jersey PIRG, a group that campaigns to save the environment. He will be working full-time studying toxic waste issues...
...public's dread centers on the radioactive elements that remain in spent fuel rods after atomic reactions. While such highly toxic fission products as strontium 90 and cesium 137 have half-lives of only about 30 years, other intensely radioactive substances like plutonium will endure for tens and even hundreds of millenniums, and are piling up fast. High-level waste -- that which is most radioactive -- from U.S. power plants is not voluminous. More than 30 years' worth totals 17,000 tons, a thimbleful compared with the slag that would result from generating equivalent power by burning coal. Yet this waste...
...people of Mexico City call it nata, or scum. It is the sickly brown cloud that stubbornly hangs over the megalopolis, home to 23 million people. Composed primarily of carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and ozone, the smog has made the winter of 1991 the most toxic in Mexico City history, triggering a 16% to 20% jump in the incidence of respiratory infections, nosebleeds and emphysema. Since September, the city has enjoyed only six days in which noxious gases did not exceed danger levels. "The atmosphere has no time to recuperate," says Homero Aridjis, president of the Group...
Curbing the toxic cloud does not come cheap. The oil facility's shutdown will cost $500 million, put more than 5,000 people out of work, and require Mexico to import, at least temporarily, some refined petroleum. But even this dramatic move represents only a beginning. Three-quarters of Mexico City's air pollution comes from the capital's antiquated fleet of 15,000 smoke-belching buses, 40,000 taxis and almost 3 million automobiles. Already the government has revamped 3,500 buses with new, less polluting engines. Last week President Salinas announced a $1.3 million program to replace outmoded...