Raise the Hammer

I cannot imagine that any company would ever voluntarily provide pollution numbers to the general public. I know if I were to run any kind of company I would never volunteer such information. Not for any nefarious reasons, just because there is no upside for the company. The vast majority of people have not concept of what those numbers mean or their implications. As far as just comparing them to the acceptable limits, those limits are known to change. Those limits can also change according to whatever place you live. If Chromium goes from 28 PPB to 12 PPB in that significant? How about Arsenic doing the same? ( P.S. I believe the current standards call for Arsenic to be below 10 PPB)

I really appreciate your comment about filtering water and yet you never mentioned bottled water which has lower standards then municipal water and are there even standards for water filters? The whole filtered and bottled water industry just highlights the problem with any company posting such numbers. The municipal water standards are amazingly high and yet for some reason be it advertising, misguided fear or ignorance the bottled water and water filtering markets are amazingly large. When was the last time you had your water filter checked for bacteria? Does anybody ever do it? Yet we have this filter media in our water filters for weeks at a time. The charcoal and sand does nothing to limit bacteria in fact the exact opposite is true they could provide the perfect place for bacteria to flourish. Just ask any aquarium aficionado about bacterial water treatment. Normally this is beneficial bacteria but if the conditions are just a little bit off then really nasty things can happen.

The whole industry is driven not by actual benefits but by perceived benefits which can and often times are very different. So much has been documented about the overall negative impact of bottled water for pretty dubious benefits and yet so many people insist on buying bottled water.

Organic food is also a crap shoot. Surely the organic farmer down the road can be trusted but buying organic grapes from Guatemala? There are no universal standards for organic labeling products. How do you police it? How do you measure it? If I take apples I grow in my orchard and label them organic even though I sprayed them before and after the fruit set way back in May can you tell that? Can it be measured? Does it matter? It matters to the grower because he can charge more for the organic apples. Wherever there is the possibility to make money you know that somebody is going to abuse the protocols. What stops the guy at the market from taking regular oranges with small blemishes and simply labeling them as organic?

Yes, I know, I am very skeptical.

The pollutants that the smokestack 3 blocks away pumps into the air makes a lot less of an impact on your air quality then the smokestacks in the Ohio Valley do. I know it looks bad when the smokestack just down the road pumps out nasty looking crap and it in fact may be bad but realistically it is so high up in the air and so close that it really has little affect on you.

Imagine how so many residents and fire fighters in Hamilton during and after the Plastimet fire feel about those toxic emissions.

If you are going to worry about toxins in your environment be aware of what you worry about.