#Superfund Site

[whattimeisitmisterwolf]

formulanone

[rockhyrax]

Diamond Head Oil Refinery site, formerly known as "Oil Lake."

[printedword]

“His Home Sits Alongside America’s First Superfund Site. No One Told Him.” — New York Times

The history of Love Canal dates to a smooth-talking developer, William T. Love, who had promised in the late 1800s to build an urban utopia called Model City near the banks of the Niagara River, just south of the world-famous falls. The key to the plan was hydroelectric power, which Mr. Love wanted to produce with a canal diverting the waters of the Niagara. But Mr. Love’s promises proved empty and he fled town, leaving behind an unfinished and frequently waterlogged ditch, often co-opted by local children looking for a swimming hole or a skating rink. In 1942, the Hooker chemical company began using the canal to dispose of a witches’ brew of some “22,000 tons of drummed and liquid chemical wastes,” according to the E.P.A.’s most recent study of the site. The manner of disposal, which continued until 1953, was sometimes haphazard, with some barrels punctured and seeping poison into the soil and groundwater. Still, the true extent of the pollution might never have come to light had the Niagara Falls Board of Education not purchased the property for $1 and decided to build a new elementary school there, on 99th Street, which drew newcomers to the area. Complaints about strange odors and chemical residues began as early as the 1960s, and percolated in late 1976 and early 1977 after wet weather caused chemicals to seep into basements. Reports of rocks bursting into flame were already spreading among local children as troubling accounts of mystery illnesses, miscarriages and birth defects grew.

[hiphuman2020]

None of San Francisco’s political scandals, past or present, are as noxious as its history of racial and environmental injustice in the Bayview Hunters Point community. 

Toxic City, a 2024 release by UC Santa Cruz Sociology Professor Lindsey Dillon, documents the city’s decades-long betrayal of the Black residents of Bayview Hunters Point. Dillon argues that the environmental racism they’ve suffered is “part of a long history of harm linked to slavery and its afterlives.”  Though the radioactive contamination and health crisis the Navy left behind at the Hunters…

[slightlyspooky]

Overlooking this town is a smokestack and a mountain of dull black slag

The copper kings shipped the ore here from their mines

It was far enough they wouldn't breathe the smoke

But close enough they could stop by and be home before lunch

Arsenic

Lead

Mercury

The smokestack is cold and dead

Industry and wealth have left

But the town and its people are still poisoned by it

Monroe Street, Anaconda, Montana.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

Ok. I work on a floor with 2 bunsen burners and a flamible/combustible liquids cabnet. Last week, I realized I didn't know where the fire extinguisher was (despite frequently using an open flame). Turns out it is out the door and down the hall. About as far from the fire hazards as possible. And I can't stop thinking abt it. Like. That feels fucking crazy right? I ask bc I seem to be the only person who cares. I told my advisor that I think we should have more fire extinguishers and he looked at me blank faced (despite the fact that he had to actively wander around the whole floor bc he also didn't kno where it was). And like yeah, in 20 years they haven't had a fire and maybe they never will but this feels like a fucking common sense preventative measure? It's just tempting fate. The hubris of not putting a fire extinguisher next to a bunsen burner is driving me crazy?? It's not even in the same god damn room! You would have to run out the room, sprint down the hall, open the case, and sprint back to use it! Why am I the only one who cares???

[agbpaints]

Oh my fucking god just let me sleep

[squeakadeeks]

Where the fuck did you get shell pasta that BIG and BLUE?

the large shells you can buy in the store as "jumbo shells" but they dont start out blue. that particular dish was several years in the making.

it started with a few years ago when i had the brilliant idea to try and make mac and cheese with the big shells they normally use for stuffed pasta dishes. it was nauseating and felt like eating slugs.

then in the years between i went on many fun fanciful food adventures after i discovered "hey wait a minute i can add food coloring to anything" leading to green cookies, blue oatmeal, purple butter, etc. I added blue food coloring to the pasta water before/while they were cooking and it causes the pasta to absorb the dye beautifully.

for a more immersive experience i also add more dye to the velveta before calling it a day.

[epersonae]

🤖 for the ask game!

Mt Rainier (Tahoma) is the most heavily glaciated* mountain in the contiguous 48 states. While it's not in a lot of danger of a big eruption like Mt St Helens, it is known to have the potential for something called a lahar, where a hot spot near the surface melts the glacier, which combines with loose rock and mud to form a superheated avalanche-like flow. (There hasn't been one in a few thousand years, but it could happen. There is at least one town up close to the mountain that does lahar drills, including schoolkids.)

* this is a fact I learned circa 1995 in a class on "environmental and geological catastrophes", I assume it is still true even if glaciers have declined generally.

[send me an emoji and I will send you a fun* fact about my special interest(s)] *"fun" is kind of relative here tbh

[clonerightsagenda]

Fantasy logistics are my passion so I am contemplating exactly what an undertaking cleaning up the afterlife would look like. Hopefully there are at least maps marking where the barriers are (they mentioned a cartography of dark London in the library, so fingers crossed) because otherwise you’ll need to send in scouts paired with bigger distraction teams to draw off the dead, and that’ll take a while to make sure you’ve got everything. Don’t want to tear down the gate and then learn you missed one. Then you need teardown teams paired with defense and probably another decoy group. The best strategy would probably be to bring something long and hook the barriers to tear them down from a distance, then wait for the stampede to finish before rolling the fencing up and carrying it back. Since that’s a lot of metal to carry, you’d probably only do one gate per job, and if you’re at all reasonable you’d give workers long rests between jobs and retire them after 2 or 3 given the physical side effects. It would make sense to stagger teams so you always have a few veterans (maybe that’s one of the reasons Lucy goes over again?) but it’s a lot of recruiting, a lot of training, and a lot of traveling to make sure there aren’t barriers set up in other places as well. NDAs or no, it’s hard to imagine everyone would keep their mouths shut. There should be an increasing number of out of work agents to hire, though. They ought to be able to afford to pay them really good hazard rates after seizing the assets of the country’s biggest corporation.

[inflagrante-delicatessen]

This episode of Excellent Ermines:

[printedword]

“His Home Sits Alongside America’s First Superfund Site. No One Told Him.” — New York Times

[heepthecheep]

My grandfather was at Bikini Atoll for both of operation crossroads' tests, when my mother was young a battery factory near her home exploded, when my father was young three mile Island melted down and his family fled to kin living just outside of Love Canal, there is a reason I am the way I am and you will all suffer me

[bobcat-pie]

i only accept my uquiz results if

A. i didn't get the most common result

B. the most common result isn't the result of above 50% of participants

[pancakeke]

I spent over a decade drinking well water around here lol

[shallowseeker]

Is yours the kind of chronic illness you'll recover from? You definitely don't have to answer or give personal details, but I really hope you feel better!

No, it's okay. It's likely that I won't fully recover, but in the past decade, there have been WAY more treatments available that turn down the immune system and combat scarring. And yes, I'm much better, thanks!💖 In a nutshell,

my immune system malfunctioned after an infection, and now it attacks my body in big, big ways—with a tendency to damage the muscles and lungs!

My situation got even weirder because it started attacking my nerves and heart from 2020 onward, which ... usually ppl with my diagnosis, get respiratory failure, not overt heart issues. (Long story, but I got undiagnosed, then rebiopsied, then rediagnosed the same thing *with extra notes.) Anyhoo, the new developments impacted my mobility and stamina in even crazier ways than I was used to. (I have until recently worked a full-time job and pretty much spent ~5-6 days in a gym with an expensive physical therapist just to keep my body functional. Before, I had an acquired skeletal myopathy, but I was able to run a 5k in 42 minutes... I trained like an Olympian and while had to rest a lot more than most, I could do it!)

Now... I can't even manage one day a week of light activity. It's a big adjustment, even for me! I'm having to noodle on how to best manage it going forward. It's always this confusing situation of "Is this the primary illness, secondary damage, or the side effects of toxic medications?"

I'm doing a pretty good job if I do say so myself.