Thread: 7 Things You Need To Know About The Toxin That’s Poisoned Ohio’s Drinking Water

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7 Things You Need To Know About The Toxin That’s Poisoned Ohio’s Drinking Water http://b4in.org/b6f1

This satellite image provided by NOAA shows the algae bloom on Lake Erie in 2011 which according to NOAA was the worst in decades.

Approximately 400,000 people in and around Toldeo, Ohio are being warned not to drink their tap water after high levels of a dangerous toxin were discovered in the water supply Saturday, according to the Toledo-Lucas County Department of Health.

The toxin is called microcystin, the high levels of which were caused by massive increases in algae on Lake Erie. The increases in algae, called “algae blooms”, are poisonous if consumed — causing abnormal liver function, diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, numbness, and dizziness.

Boiling the water doesn’t help — in fact, it increases the presence of the toxin.

As of now, it’s unclear when Toledo residents will have clean water again. According to the Toledo Blade, fresh water samples are being flown to a specialized U.S. Environmental Protection Agency laboratory in Cincinnati, which will determine the extent of the contamination.

Here are 7 things you need to know about microcystin — what it does, why it’s there, and why it’s spreading in the five Great Lakes that form the largest system of fresh water in the world.

Toxic Algae Blooms Threaten Public Health

The threats posed to both public health by microcystis, the bacterial released from algae blooms in Lake Erie, are vast. Along with the dangers of ingesting the toxin, the algae also causes skin rashes and burns when touched, threatening swimming, boating, and other lake-related tourism industries.

In Toledo, people with liver problems have been told not to take showers or wash their hands with the tap water.

Animals are especially sensitive to the toxin, and public health officials in Toldeo have warned people not to let pets drink the tap water either. Microcystis has been known to kill dogs and livestock.

And though no human deaths have been recorded in the United States, Circle of Blue points out that the toxin once killed 76 people at a dialysis center in Brazil in 1996.

The Health Of Lake Erie Is Also Suffering

Human health is not the only thing at risk from rising algal blooms. The microcystis released from the algae can cause enormous dead zones in the water, killing off fish and other marine life.

As noted in a Circle of Blue report, when algal blooms sink to the bottom of the lake and die, the decomposition process uses up so much oxygen that nothing else can live on the bottom of the lake. Lake Erie has always had some seasonal dead zones, but those have grown bigger in recent years as algal blooms get larger, the report notes.

Humans Are Causing The Toxin To Multiply Faster

Algal blooms themselves are not a new phenomenon, but the increasing enormity of them are — and that can be attributed to human activity.

Experts say one of the biggest reasons for the severity of this algal bloom is excess phosphorus runoff from urban and industrial agricultural lands, as well as from waste water from sewage treatment plants.

NOAA notes that this increased runoff into the lake is largely due to poor farming practices, such as high use of fertilizers and presence of livestock near water supplies. Pesticides also impact the blooms, NOAA says.

As Climate Change Worsens, So Will The Toxin
Rising temperatures and increasing carbon dioxide concentrations are also making the problem worse, according to scientists at Oregon State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

As the scientists told Ecowatch in a 2013 report, the microcystis bacteria thrive in warm, nutrient-rich waters. The microcystis-laden algae also survive better in those warmer conditions than other, non-toxic algae does. They’re the “cockroaches of the aquatic world,” according to the report.

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State of emergency declared in Ohio as residents are urged not drink water
he mayor of Toledo, Ohio declared a state of emergency after water in the Collin Parks water treatment plant revealed the presence of a dangerous toxin, The Toledo Blade reports.

At a news conference, officials with the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department said that the level of microcystin — a cyanotoxin produced by blue-green algae that can cause symptoms ranging from rash to liver failure — is currently at 2.5 parts-per-million, more than twice the allowable level.

Health officials suspect that the reason behind the high levels of microcystin are algal blooms in the lakes that provide water to the Collins Park facility, but need to perform tests to verify that the algal blooms in those lakes is responsible.

The city issued an advisory last night on Facebook urging the 400,000 affected residents not to drink the water.

Restaurants and food service facilities that cannot guarantee that no tap water will be consumed on the premises were asked by the city to shutter their doors temporarily. Schools in the area cancelled athletic practices and other related activities in the wake of the advisory.

Most grocery stores and convenience stores in the area are reporting that they are sold out of bottled water. An employee at a Kroger grocery store in the affected area told The Blade that her store had sold out of water by 3:30 a.m.

“It got really busy about a half-hour after the city put out the notice,” she said. “Ever since then, it’s been nonstop at all six self-checkout stations we have going.” The Raw Story
WATER STATE OF EMERGENCY: LAKE ERIE, LUCAS CTY, TOLEDO,
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400,000 People Warned Not to Drink Toxic Tap Water in Ohio: State of Emergency Declared http://b4in.org/i6ZR

Has someone tampered with Ohio’s drinking water? More than 400,000 people have been warned not to drink the tap water as a State of Emergency has been declared for all Toledo residents.

Gov. John Kasich’s emergency order came when a toxic substance was found when testing the water. Bottled water is now being shipped in because grocery store shelves are now depleted. Residents have also been told not to boil water as this will only intensify the level of toxicity in their water.

Many residents still don’t know exactly what toxin is in their water, but Toledo authorities said in a press-release: “These organisms are capable of producing a number of toxins that may pose a risk to human and animal health.”

Those include vomiting, diarrhea and an overall deterioration of health.
More tests are being conducted and the mayor has suggested he does not now how long the water advisory will be in place. He is urging residents to stay calm.

Joe Andrews, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Public Safety, said the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections had converted its milk-bottling plant near Columbus to package drinking water in large bladders — the kind typically used milk dispensers in restaurants.

Thus far it is suspected that the toxin is possibly the result of algae blooms on Lake Erie, where the city takes it water.

Chemists testing water at Toledo’s Collins Park Water Treatment Plant had two sample readings for microcystin – also known to cause ‘Red Tide.’ One cause of this phenomenon is warmer ocean surface temperatures.

FEMA is on standby to respond to the crisis in Toledo, awaiting a gubernatorial request for aid.

“‘First and foremost, residents must remain calm,’ the Toledo mayor said at a morning press conference. The warning is affecting several suburbs of Toledo as well as a few areas in southeastern Michigan. So far it is suspected that the toxin is possibly the result of algae blooms on Lake Erie, where the city takes it water.”

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The truth you're not being told about the Toledo water crisis in Ohio: Chemical agriculture poisoned the water


Monday, August 04, 2014
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Tags: Toledo, water crisis, algal bloom

(NaturalNews) In case you haven't heard, 500,000 people have been left without drinking water in the city of Toledo, Ohio, and store shelves there have been stripped bare of water.

"Residents of Toledo, its suburbs and small areas of southeastern Michigan began lining up for water Saturday after news of the contamination surfaced," reports USA Today. (1) "Ohio Gov. John Kasich declared a state of emergency for Lucas, Wood and Fulton counties and deployed the National Guard to get water and meals ready to eat, or MREs, to the area."

The water in Toledo has been contaminated by a toxic poison produced by "algal blooms" in Lake Erie. But here's what no one in the mainstream media is telling you: What causes algal blooms in Lake Erie?

Agricultural pollution

Algal blooms are a sign of a wildly imbalanced ecosystem. Before modern industrial agriculture came along and started polluting the lake, algae were kept in balance and didn't mass-produce the poisons that now contaminate the Toledo water supply.

As the Lake Erie Ecosystem Priority (LEEP) group explains: (2)

"...Research has confirmed that Lake Erie is impaired by an excess of nutrients that feed harmful [organisms]." ...The major phosphorus loadings to Lake Erie are from non-point sources, especially agricultural operations.

What's happening is that all the fertilizer being dumped on nearby farm fields causes phosphorus runoff. This phosphorus runoff winds up in Lake Erie where it feeds the algae, resulting in algal blooms that produce the toxins. These toxins contaminate the drinking water supply and have led directly to the current water crisis.

Not a single mainstream media source reports the truth

I find it absolutely astonishing that I was unable to locate a single news story in the mainstream media which made this connection between agricultural runoff and the Toledo water crisis. Every single MSM story I found simply blamed the algae, as if Mother Nature has gone bad and is trying to kill everyone. In reality, it's mankind that's gone bad and is poisoning the planet. Algal blooms are just the symptoms of an ecological imbalance.

(Note: I did find one story in the Christian Science Monitor (4) that does explore the real story here, saying "Unsafe levels of toxins in drinking water in northwest Ohio are linked to algae blooms in Lake Erie.")

Mainstream media reporting about this water crisis is very similar to its reporting on cancer: root causes are almost never discussed. The entire discussion focuses on symptoms, with zero attention given to how we might prevent this crisis in the first place.

In the case of Toledo and Lake Erie, the solution is rather simple: stop using chemical agriculture anywhere near Lake Erie and the problem is solved. Once the flow of phosphorus into the lake water is sharply reduced or ended, the algal blooms are averted and the water is once again safe to drink.

This would also save money, as water treatment facilities are spending millions of dollars just to remove algae toxins from their water. "Toledo spent about $4 million last year on chemicals to treat its water and combat the toxins," reports USA Today.

Toledo residents aren't even being told the truth

No doubt even the 500,000 people in Toledo who are now scrambling for water are not being told this truth. For all they know, the water supply has been magically poisoned without any cause whatsoever. No one is telling them that conventional chemical agriculture is the root cause of the poison.

In the same way that the public is not told the truth about cosmetic products causing cancer and aspartame causing neurological disorders, they will never be told that chemical agricultural practices poison the water supply. If people knew the truth, after all, they might demand a stop to those practices. And chemical agriculture is very profitable; especially when the environmental cleanup costs from all the chemical runoff can be passed on to somebody else.

Disease outbreaks, pandemics and toxins are all signs of a collapsing ecosystem

The bigger story in all this, however, is the fact that our global ecosystem is collapsing due to industrial and agricultural poisoning.

Everything we're seeing now -- Ebola outbreaks, weird tropical viruses, the Plague, superbugs, flesh-eating bacteria and water supply toxins -- are all just signs of how humanity has damaged and imbalanced the ecosystem. And until we stop the mass poisoning from agriculture and industry, it's only going to keep getting worse.

Today there are 500,000 people in Toledo who have no drinking water. But if humanity doesn't change its ways, that's going to rise to 5 million people in California, or 50 million people across the USA, or even 500 million people across the globe who have no access to clean water because of the extreme damage caused by the industrialization of agriculture.

When chemicals and fertilizers are sprayed on crops, they don't merely disappear. They get washed downstream and end up in rivers, lakes and oceans. Mankind is currently residing over the planet's sixth great extinction event.

The journal Science, in fact, has reported that Earth is right now in the midst of a great extinction caused by humankind. "The journal Science reports more than 320 animal and bird species alone have vanished since the 1500s," reports News.com.au. "Most other animal populations from among the more than five million species on our planet have declined by an average 28 per cent."

Chemical denialists attack all who seek to save our world

As this mass extinction is taking place, keep in mind that there are droves of "chemical denialists" who claim all these agricultural chemicals are harmless. These are the same people who also claim GMOs are harmless, in case you're curious. They're the pushers of atrazine, glyphosate, 2,4-D, Agent Orange, DDT, neonicotinoids and other deadly chemicals.

These people are the poisoners of our world, and they front the for-profit agendas of powerful chemical corporations. Pro-business publications carry their propaganda stories which claim ridiculous things like "honey bee populations are not collapsing" or that DDT is good for you.

It's frustrating that all attempts to stop the poisoning of our planet are characterized as "leftist agendas" by conservative business publications. Even I'm sometimes called a leftist for merely seeking to stop the corporate poisoning of our world. That's especially funny because as Natural News readers well know, I'm a rifle-owning, liberty-loving Texan who favors lower taxes and secure borders -- but I'm also strongly pro-environment, pro sustainable living, pro organic permaculture and wholeheartedly opposed the mass corporate poisoning of our world.

In my view, political affiliations don't matter if we're all dying from the collapse of a global ecosystem that we destroyed with our own foolish ignorance. What does it matter if we vote Republican or Democrat if we're so full of toxic chemicals that we all die of cancer? If I had to pick a philosophical belief system that I really feel strongly about, it would be a system that declares all life to be sacred and seeks to protect living ecosystems from the poisoners who are systematically destroying it.

We must halt our ways or we will destroy ourselves

The algal blooms of Lake Erie are Mother Nature's way of sending us a Biblical-scale warning sign: We must stop our destructive ways or we will sooner or later have to drink our own poison.

I hope humanity has the wisdom to heed these warnings signs before it's too late. I fear, however, that we have already crossed the threshold and that runaway infectious diseases and ecological collapse will now run their course over the next 50 years.

Cause and effect. We have committed the cause, and now the planet has begun to deliver the effects. Prepare yourself for what's coming, because it is now abundantly clear that the era of cheap, plentiful food and water for everyone has come to an abrupt end. The water is flowing with poison in Ohio, and in some places (like California) it's barely flowing at all. Perhaps it's time human civilization grew up and started behaving like an adult community of wise beings who consider sustainability beyond the next fiscal quarter.

Sources for this article include:
(1) http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/20...

(2) http://www.ijc.org/en_/leep/report

(3) http://www.news.com.au/technology/environmen...

(4) http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2014...


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HOPE & EBOLA: Many From Ebola-Hammered Countries Caught Sneaking Into USA






Posted on August 4, 2014
Who would think that anyone crossing the border would want to do harm to America? Don’t the only people who break the law by illegally crossing the border love our country?

video at link below

http://clashdaily.com/2014/08/hope-e...-sneaking-usa/

LUBBOCK, Texas — A leaked intelligence analysis from the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reveals the exact numbers of illegal immigrants entering and attempting to enter the U.S. from more than 75 different countries. The report was obtained by a trusted source within the CBP agency who leaked the document and spoke with Breitbart Texas on the condition of anonymity. The report is labeled as “Unclassified//For Official Use Only” and indicates that the data should be handled as “Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU).”
…
Among the significant revelations are that individuals from nations currently suffering from the world’s largest Ebola outbreak have been caught attempting to sneak across the porous U.S. border into the interior of the United States. At least 71 individuals from the three nations affected by the current Ebola outbreak have either turned themselves in or been caught attempting to illegally enter the U.S. by U.S. authorities between January 2014 and July 2014.
As of July 20, 2014, 1,443 individuals from China were caught sneaking across the porous U.S. border this year alone, with another 1,803 individuals either turning themselves in to U.S. authorities at official ports of entry, or being caught attempting to illegally enter at the ports of entry. This comes amid a massive crackdown by Chinese authorities of Islamic terrorists in the Communist nation.
Read more: Breitbart

Read more at http://clashdaily.com/2014/08/hope-e...OwLZgrr3rv4.99