Dirtiest Cities
In Pictures: World’s Dirtiest Cities
In Pictures: America’s Dirtiest Cities
taken from forbes.com
Dirtiest Cities Just Get Dirtier
Robert Malone, 03.21.07, 2:00 PM ET
The world has to face the fact that dirt costs, and dirty cities cost big time. Today over half the world lives in urban as opposed to rural environments. This means ever more concentrated dirt.
Urban environments create their own ambiance. The dirty cities are where air pollution, water pollution, ground pollution and open landfill
problems are out of control. To these less-than-glorious conditions there may be added in some cities mercury or lead poisoning, radiation poisoning or other severe risks.
Part of dirt is garbage. In the state of New Jersey, every person throws away their own body weight every seven weeks. But garbage is
complex dirt, since it may be recycled and act as a source for materials and money for the recycler. Garbage out of control is either uncollected rubbish or badly disseminated landfill. Garbage out of control leads to ground pollution, air pollution and water pollution.
The relationship between traffic pollution and garbage pollution could use some intense study worldwide since these two sources, combined with industrial waste and energy generation, comprise the core of urban dirt.Take batteries–which the world uses in ever greater numbers. Each contains heavy metals, and their incineration can cause toxic air pollution. Coal, the mainstay of China’s Great Leap Forward, is the nastiest energy source when it comes to air pollution. Choices have to be made in tradeoffs of economics and health since not every energy source can be clean and cheap.
Despite dirt’s economic and environmental costs, governments have been slow in keeping track of just how dirty the world is. The U.S. and some European cities and countries have more data than dozens of other countries and hundreds of cities that don’t really know how dirty they are at all.
To clean up, the first order of business will be to find the dirt and record it. Such agencies as the United Nations statistics division are overtaxed and, as a result, often out of date. Others, like the Blacksmith Institute, an organization that does global studies of city pollution, and the American Lung Association, appear to be making some headway.
“The good news is we have known technologies for eliminating a lot of this pollution,” says Richard Fuller, founder and director of the Blacksmith Institute, which in addition to its global studies of the most polluted cities also makes recommendations for their cleanup.
The Blacksmith Institute’s 2006 report states that, “living in a town with serious pollution is like living under a death sentence. If the damage does not come from the immediate poisoning, then cancers, lung infections, mental retardation are likely the outcomes.”
Of the 10 most polluted cities according to the Blacksmith Institute report, three are in the Russian Federation. The Ukraine’s Chernobyl remains at the top of the list 20 years after the horrendous nuclear accident there.
When the focus is U.S. cities, the American Lung Association’s latest report for 2005 states that 55% of Americans live in areas with unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution. It appears that U.S. citizens do not have to visit Russia or China to get a lungful of bad air.
Some hope that the EPA’s new, stricter emissions standards–put in place in December 2006 as outlined in the Clean Air Interstate Rule–will make a difference, at least in the U.S.
Indonesian Tree Man
taken from telegraph.uk
Tree man ‘who grew roots’ may be cured
By Matthew Moore
An Indonesian fisherman who feared that he would be killed by tree-like growths covering his body has been given hope of recovery by an American doctor – and Vitamin A.
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Dede, now 35, baffled medical experts when warty “roots” began growing out of his arms and feet after he cut his knee in a teenage accident. |
The welts spread across his body unchecked and soon he was left unable to carry out everyday household tasks.
Sacked from his job and deserted by his wife, Dede has been raising his two children – now in their late teens – in poverty, resigned to the fact that local doctors had no cure for his condition.
To make ends meet he even joined a local “freak show”, parading in front of a paying audience alongside victims of other peculiar diseases.
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Although supported by his extended family, he was often a target of abuse and ridicule in his rural fishing village. But now an American dermatology expert who flew out to Dede’s home village south of the capital Jakarta claims to have identified his condition, and proposed a treatment that could transform his life. After testing samples of the lesions and Dede’s blood, Dr Anthony Gaspari of the University of Maryland concluded that his affliction is caused by the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), a fairly common infection that usually causes small warts to develop on sufferers. |
Dede’s problem is that he has a rare genetic fault that impedes his immune system, meaning his body is unable to contain the warts.
The virus was therefore able to “hijack the cellular machinery of his skin cells”, ordering them to produce massive amounts of the substance that caused the tree-like growths known as “cutaneous horns” on his hands and feet.
Dede’s counts of a key type of white blood cell are so low that Dr Gaspari initially suspected he may have the Aids virus.
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But tests showed he did not, and it became clear that Dede’s immune condition was something far rarer and more mysterious. Warts aside, he had enjoyed remarkable good health throughout his life – which would not be expected of someone with a suppressed immune system – and neither his parents nor his siblings have shown signs of developing lesions. “The likelihood of having his deficiency is less than one in a million,” Dr Gaspari told the Telegraph. Dr Gaspari, who became involved in the case through a Discovery Channel documentary, believes that Dede’s condition can be largely cleared up by a daily doses of a synthetic form of Vitamin A, which has been shown to arrest the growth of warts in severe cases of HPV. |
“He won’t have a perfectly normal body but the warts should reduce in size to the point where he could use his hands,” Dr Gaspari said.
“Over the course of three to six months the warts should be come smaller and fewer in number. He will be living a more normal life.”
The most resilient warts could then be frozen off and the growths on his hands and feet surgically removed.
Dr Gaspari hopes to get the necessary drugs free of charge from pharmaceutical firms. They would then be administered by Indonesian doctors under his supervision.
Still intrigued by the origins of Dede’s peculiar immune condition, the doctor would like to fly him to the United States for further examination, but fears the financial and bureaucratic barriers would prove too difficult to overcome.
“I would like to bring him to the US to run tests on where his immune condition has come from, but I would need funding and to get him a visa as well as someone to cover the costs of the tests,” he said.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire career.”
Gunk News 