If anything is not economic to recycle, we have always dumped it in landfill with a pretence we had no choice.
All landfill activity is known to be a last resort, but landfills are growing around the globe despite that. We are horrified to smell and see them. Only desperately poor people seek them out to scavenge on them, along with rodents and birds.
Many of us are familiar with all the toxins which seep into the ground and then are carried by groundwater to the rivers, then the sea. In the case of lithium batteries in everyday household products, we see the warning on the packaging to NOT DISPOSE IN LANDFILL waste. So many of us dutifully place the dangerous item carefully in a container, ready to take to the Recycling Centre near our home. We then place the batteries we have collected in the household battery section, along with all the new technology lightbulbs which are also dangerous and must be recycled carefully. We trust, as we have done our part, we have an efficient system which recycles the batteries carefully and ensures they do not end up in the ‘last resort’ of landfill. But to our horror, invariably we see that most of these household lithium batteries are thrown by householders into the trash, thoughtlessly, with the added toxic harm and explosion danger, we know exists and will permeate our local environment and groundwater.
The new lithium car batteries are a different matter. We know they will soon be made in vast quantities, and China is well ahead in making most of them for their many electric vehicles which are common in their country. They know from experience that a lithium car battery, when it has been used to the end of its life for a car, still has 70 percent life left to be repurposed, and they have become adept at coming up with highly useful repurposing uses.
We now have the dilemma of dealing with a growing imminent problem of lithium car batteries in the UK.
Lithium car batteries, on the other hand, have much more complicated chemistries and a mix of materials that don’t work and play well together in an industrial recycling process. A lithium-ion battery is not just lithium but also has cobalt, manganese, iron phosphate, or nickel compounds, not to mention aluminum, copper, and graphite. Not only is the mix of metals more complicated, but their physical form as powders coated onto metal foil makes recovery of each component far more complicated than just throwing it in a furnace.
The electrolyte in a lithium battery is much more complicated too, consisting of lithium salts in volatile organic solvents like ethylene carbonate. This makes the liberated electrolytes much more difficult to deal with as well; no simple dilution and neutralization with a basic solution like sodium bicarbonate will render these compounds safe enough to discharge to a sewer as is the case for lead-acid recycling. Dealing with that adds to the cost of recycling and cuts into the potential profit.
A good article tells us about the difficulties with a headline:
If Cobalt, which is becoming harder and more expensive to locate and mine, is no longer a component, as Elon Musk has determinedly planned, as part of the essential functioning lithium battery, then the economics of recycling a lithium battery will no longer be viable.
Recycling is not done to save the Planet. It is done to make money, and when not economically viable, it simply does not happen. We have toxic waste accumulating in landfills, or exported to countries who currently have recycling plants designed for extracting valuable resources.
We attempt ‘out of sight, out of mind’ harmful waste exports as if no one will ever know. But of course, we find out. The UK will soon have rid itself of diesel and petrol cars and we will find we cannot keep using the expensive and dangerous process of transporting end of life lithium batteries to Europe for recycling. We may copy China and make manufacturers of the electric cars responsible for recycling/ repurposing, which seems an eminently good idea. Indeed, all manufacturers of dangerous waste filled products could take ownership of the disposal problem, just as they are beginning to do in Australia with lithium batteries.
We also need a much higher profile campaign to STOP householders throwing their used batteries into landfill destined trash. Also, hoarding old phones and products we no longer use which have time-bomb potentially exploding lithium batteries sitting within them must be carefully disposed of and all users need advice and instruction to attend to this with some urgency.
Paul RogersProfessor of Peace Studies, University of Bradford
Disclosure statement
Paul Rogers is a Council member of Rethinking Security and a sponsor of the Peace and Justice Project. The fourth edition of his book, “Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century”, has just been published.
The September 11 attacks in New York and Washington were visceral in their impact. In less than three hours, the twin towers of the World Trade Center were reduced to a mountain of twisted metal and rubble, killing more than 2,700 people, while hundreds more were killed at the Pentagon. All three were destroyed by men armed with nothing more than parcel knives hijacking fuel-laden passenger aircraft.
America was under attack. It came not long after after George W. Bush had formed his new administration with highly influential neoconservatives and assertive realists at the Pentagon and State Department, as well as in the White House itself. All were determined to see the vision of a “new American century” fulfilled – a neoliberal free market world rooted in US experience and guided by its post-cold war progress as the world’s sole economic and military superpower.
At the time, commentators compared the attack to Pearl Harbor, but the effect of 9/11 was much greater. Pearl Harbor had been an attack by the naval forces of a state already in great tension with the United States. It was against a military base in the pre-television age and away from the continental United States. The 9/11 attack was a much greater shock, and if war with Japan was a consequence of Pearl Harbor, then there would be war after 9/11 even if the perpetrators and those behind them were scarcely known to the American public.
The vision of the new American century had to be secured and force of arms was the way to do it, initially against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Hold the front page: the attacks dominated news headlines for weeks afterwards. Walter Cicchetti/Alamy Stock Photo
A few people argued against war at the time, seeing it as a trap to suck the US into an Afghanistan occupation instead of treating 9/11 as an act of appalling mass criminality, but their voices did not count.
The first “war on terror” – against al-Qaida and the Taliban – started within a month, lasted barely two months and seemed an immediate success. It was followed by Bush’s State of the Union address in January 2002 declaring an extended war against what Bush referred to as an “axis of evil” of rogue states intent on supporting terror and developing weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq was the priority, with Iran and North Korea in the frame. The Iraq War started in March 2003 and was apparently over by May 1, when Bush gave his “mission accomplished” speech from the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.
That was the high point of the entire US-led “war on terror”. Afghanistan was the first disaster, with the Taliban moving back into rural areas within two to three years and going on to fight the US and its allies for 20 years before taking back control last month.
In Iraq, even though the insurgents appeared defeated by 2009 and the US could withdraw its forces two years later, Islamic State (IS) rose phoenix-like from the ashes. That led to the third conflict, the intense 2014-18 air war across northern Iraq and Syria, fought by the US, the UK, France and others, killing tens of thousands of IS supporters and several thousand civilians.
Even after the collapse of its caliphate in Iraq and Syria, IS arose once again like the proverbial phoenix, spreading its influence as far afield as the Saharan Sahel, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bangladesh, southern Thailand, the Philippines, back in Iraq and Syria once more and even Afghanistan. The spread across the Sahel was aided by the collapse of security in Libya, the 2011 NATO-led intervention being the fourth of the west’s failed wars in barely 20 years.
In the face of these bitter failures, we have two linked questions: was 9/11 the beginning of decades of a new world disorder? And where do we go from here?
9/11 in context
It is natural to see the single event of 9/11 as turning traditional military postures on their heads, but that is misleading. There were already changes afoot, as two very different events in February 1993, eight years before the attacks, had shown all too well.
First, incoming US president, Bill Clinton, had appointed James Woolsey as the new director of the CIA. Asked at his Senate confirmation hearing how he would characterise the end of the cold war, he replied that the US had slain the dragon (the Soviet Union) but now faced a jungle full of poisonous snakes.
Snake #1: Osama bin Laden. EPA/Rehan Khan
During the 1990s, and very much in line with Woolsey’s phrase, the US military moved from a cold war posture to preparing for small wars in far-off places. There was more emphasis on long-range air strike systems, amphibious forces, carrier battle groups and special forces. By the time Bush was elected in November 2000, the US was far more prepared to tame the jungle.
Second, the US military and most analysts around the world missed the significance of a new phenomenon, the rapidly improving ability of the weak to take up arms against the strong. Yet the signs were already there. On February 26 1993, not long after Woolsey had talked of a jungle full of snakes, an Islamist paramilitary group attempted to destroy the World Trade Center with a massive truck bomb placed in the underground car park of the North Tower. The plan was to collapse it over the adjoining Vista Hotel and the South Tower, destroying the entire complex and killing upwards of 30,000 people.
The attack failed – though six people died – and the significance of the attack was largely missed even though there were many other indicators of weakness in the 1990s. In December 1994, an Algerian paramilitary group tried to crash an Airbus passenger jet on Paris, an attack foiled by French special forces during a refuelling stop at Marseilles. A month later a bombing by the LTTE of the Central Bank in Colombo, Sri Lanka devastated much of the central business district of Colombo, killing over 80 and injuring more than 1,400 people.
A decade before the first World Trade Center attacks, 241 Marines had been killed in a single bombing in Beirut (another 58 French paratroopers were killed by a second bomb in their barrack) and between 1993 and 2001 there were attacks in the Middle East and East Africa including the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, an attack on the USS Cole in Aden Harbour and the bombing of US diplomatic missions in Tanzania and Kenya.
The 9/11 attacks did not change the world. They were further steps along a well-signed path leading to two decades of conflict, four failed wars and no clear end in sight.
What now?
That long path, though, has from the start had within it one fundamental flaw. If we are to make sense of wider global trends in insecurity, we have to recognise that in all the analysis around the 9/11 anniversary there lies the belief that the main security concern must be with an extreme version of Islam. It may seem a reasonable mistake, given the impact of the wars, but it still misses the point. The war on terror is better seen as one part of a global trend which goes well beyond a single religious tradition – a slow but steady move towards revolts from the margins.
Devastation: Ground Zero the day after the 9/11 attacks on New York. Everett Collection Historical/Alamy Stock Photo
In writing my book, Losing Control, in the late 1990s – a couple of years before 9/11 – I put it this way:
What should be expected is that new social movements will develop that are essentially anti-elite in nature and will draw their support from people, especially men, on the margins. In different contexts and circumstances, they may have their roots in political ideologies, religious beliefs, ethnic, nationalist or cultural identities, or a complex combination of several of these.
They may be focused on individuals or groups, but the most common feature is an opposition to existing centres of power … What can be said is that, on present trends, anti-elite action will be a core feature of the next 30 years – not so much a clash of civilisations, more an age of insurgencies.
This stemmed from the view that the primary factors in global insecurity were a combination of increasing socioeconomic divisions and environmental limits to growth coupled with a security strategy rooted in preserving the status quo. Woolsey’s “jungle full of snakes” could be seen as a consequence of this, but there would be military responses available to keep the lid on problems – “liddism” in short.
More than two decades down the road, socioeconomic divisions have worsened, the concentration of wealth has reached levels best described as obscene and has even increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, itself leading to food shortages and increased poverty.
Meanwhile climate change is now with us, is accelerating towards climate breakdown with, once again, the greatest impact on marginalised societies. It therefore makes sense to see 9/11 primarily as an early and grievous manifestation of the weak taking up arms against the strong, and that military response in the current global security environment woefully misses the point.
At the very least there is an urgent need to rethink what we mean by security, and time is getting short to do that.
As we mine the resources we say we need to build stuff to ‘combat climate change’ we have, to date, mined irresponsibly. We have farmed irresponsibly and once we humans learned metallurgy, we began to mine irresponsibly. In fact, as humans are so badly designed we are always devising new ways to continue our destructive path to worsen climate change. It is in the name of ‘survival’, and we even use a phrase purported to be from Darwin, that it is for the ‘survival of the fittest’. We tip the scales in favour of the 1 percent as to who can be chosen to be included in the 1 percent of 7 billion plus humans on this earth. We also believe we are higher species than every other living thing on the earth, but we have proven we are the opposite.
Back in 2019 I wrote a blog about the Atacama Desert in Chile. I wrote about the formation of the Desert over millions of years, how researchers found there has been arsenic in the groundwater which had caused the slow, cruel death of many tribal people over the thousands of years they had nomadically travelled this land. I then wrote about recent extensive and harmful mining of copper and other resources and the continued ruthless rape and damage to the land and contamination of water from bad practices by the corporate mining companies. Tribal people have protested but only now, after their environment and lives have suffered so badly, are theories of safer mining practises being discussed. But the vast wealth of those responsible for mining these technological necessities are not improving life for the local people.
Now the added economical incentive to mine lithium, highly promoted by Elon Musk who was said to have made a deal with the Chilean government to secure a constant supply of lithium for his battery projects. He has since secured supplies from Bolivia and is even said to be interested in the lithium being newly mined in Cornwall, England. Seems like America will back Elon Musk and his desire to monopolise lithium output.
The Atacama salt flat is part of the so-called “lithium triangle” in Chile, a region containing a large portion of the world’s lithium reserves.(Screengrab from iquiquetv YouTube channel)
In 2021 there was an interesting analysis about the problems of mining lithium and water issues.
The analysis begins with the question:
Lithium mining has become a boom industry as more and more of the metal is needed in electric car batteries. Yet despite being lauded as key material for a renewables revolution, it too has a dark side. Blamed for speeding up desertification around the salt lakes of Latin America’s ‘lithium triangle’, the evaporation techniques used in mining lithium are causing concern. So does lithium have a water problem, and what is being done? We report.
The author points out the negatives which have accrued over recent years of harmful practices.
……..accessible high-quality ore deposits are limited to a select Andean countries – such as Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. Current extraction methods in these regions have water at the heart of the process as the mineral is found dissolved in salt flats, requiring evaporation to be separated. This is opposed to methods used somewhere like Australia, which obtains lithium from ore mining.
Lithium is classified as an alkali metal on the Periodic Table. It is the least dense of all metals and one of only three other metals that can float on water. It is silvery-white in appearance and very soft with a density of 0.53 g/cc, a melting point of 181°C, and a vapor pressure of 10-4 Torr at 407°C. Lithium is also highly flammable and easily oxidizes when exposed to air. While lithium and its compounds serve a variety of industries, it is mainly used to make rechargeable batteries which are found in smartphones, tablets, cars, and in many other products. Lithium, along with its alloys and compounds, is evaporated under vacuum to make batteries, fuel cells, and to form optical coatings.
Headline from article as shown below
In the Atacama Desert most of the World’s present supplies of lithium are mined.
I will finish with an extract from a long article on the use of brine to obtain the lithium, a cheap and 60 years old practice. Bad methodologies, for the sake of economy, proliferate, despite consciously knowing, seeing with their own eyes, and hearing the concern of locals, these malpractices continue worldwide. It is the arrogance of corporates who believe they are unassailable which causes direct anthropogenic degradation for all.
Since the lithium rush started, corporations like Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile (SQM), a multibillion-dollar Chilean chemical company, as well as US-headquartered Albemarle Corporation, bet on one effective way to extract lithium from the Atacama salt flats: lithium extraction from brine.
A method dating from the 1950s, it has encountered more and more scrutiny because it affects surrounding water reserves and could affect the climate. With pressure on Chile’s lithium demand and anticipated regulatory hurdles, the price of lithium has skyrocketed, according to data by the US Geological Survey (see chart).
What is lithium extraction from brine?
The way lithium is ‘water-mined’, says Ingrid Garcés, a researcher from Chile’s University of Antofagasta and chemical civil engineer, is by pumping saline groundwater up from the subsurface. The brine contains around 0.15 per cent lithium, and is pumped through a cascade of ponds where impurities or by-products are precipitated by solar evaporation, wind, and chemical additives.
The problem with this comparatively cheap method is that up to 95 per cent of the extracted brine water is lost to evaporation and not recovered, researchers estimate. As the brine water is in hydrodynamic relation with its surroundings, the water-intensive mining process in this extremely arid region causes aquifers to deplete and affects the water balance. This is leading to continuing outcry among local communities living in close proximity to the Atacama salt flat.
Cristina Dorador, a Chilean biologist who studies microbial life in the Atacama desert, says, “San Pedro de Atacama and other small towns are drying out”. Also drying out is Peine, a small township declared a National Monument in 1982 and situated only a stone’s throw away from gigantic lithium-brine mines.
“It is a paradox in Chile. On one side we are talking about decarbonisation, [to mitigate] climate change and the loss of biodiversity and on the other side we exploit the environment for resources to power the electric mobility revolution that supports climate change,” Dorador says.
E&T, in collaboration with satellite analytics firm SpaceKnow, has been able to produce further quantitative evidence that lithium brine mining efforts between 2015 and 2019 by SQM took a heavy environmental toll on a fragile water ecosystem within the Atacama salt flats.
The analysis found a strong inverse relationship between water reservoir levels at SQM’s ponds and the lagoons. As water levels in SQM’s ponds increased, those in the lagoons would drop. SQM’s second pond (see graphic) correlated with water reservoirs in alluvial muds. The firm’s first pond (see graphic) is linked to the fragile lagoons of the Soncor area, part of the Los Flamencos National Reserve. It is an important nesting ground for Andean flamingos. The statistical analysis can also prove causality, confirming that as brine extraction operation expanded, nearby areas suffered environmental degradation (see methodology notes).
While anecdotal evidence from local community members is abundant and mounting and researchers have long had some inkling of the environmental damage, few gathered quantitative evidence on specific damage until recently. Open-source satellite imagery and machine learning have helped to change that.
Dorador adds that the evidence was obvious. Many flamingos reportedly left the lagoons. Understanding what happens with microorganisms is a bit more complicated, but they would basically exhibit the same symptoms and diagnosis: “There is no recharge of the water in the Atacama salt flat. Much of the water is being evaporated in the process. This isn’t sustainable”.
San Pedro-based Ramón Morales Balcázar from the Plurinational Observatory Of Andean Salt Flats – a network of people from the communities, NGOs and research universities in the region – says the only way to challenge the loss of water is by drastically cutting water extraction by the companies operating in the region.
Government figures issued by the Comité de Minería No Metálica (the Nonmetallic Mining Committee) confirm that the current extractive development in the Basin of the Atacama salt flat provokes hydrological imbalances. With a brine output of 8,842 litres per second, and a recharge capacity of 6,810 litres per second, it was found be more than 2,000 litres per second above a rechargeable threshold.
Adding to the concerns is the ambition by Chile’s government to open up more land to brine mining, says Balcázar. “There are actually 59 salt lets in Chile and the ministry of mining is now calling for their exploitation, as soon as possible. That is really worrying to us.”
Balcázar is not alone in his apprehensions. Sergio Cubillos, heading Chile’s indigenous council, told Bloomberg that the government is encouraging more and more companies to come to explore and mine lithium. Capacity to oversee all of this would be nonexistent.
E&T has learned from a source that only last week, the Servicio de Evaluación Ambiental, Chile’s environmental assessment service, permitted the company Wealth Minerals Chile SpA, a natural resources company concentrating on developing lithium brine property packages in Chile, to explore the northern part of Salar de Atacama. The location would lie near a Ramsar site – defined as a wetland site designated to be of international importance under the Ramsar Convention – as well as based near tourist attractions where water supply is critical to provide local people with income.
At the beginning of August, state-owned Codelco (National Copper Corporation of Chile) and mining and metals company Minera Salar Blanco announced an agreement to explore the possibility of developing a lithium project at the Maricunga Salt Flat (see image). E&T was told that this happened without any consultation with the indigenous Qulla communities. The corporations are also allowed access to a national park area, the Nevado Tres Cruces (a massif of volcanic origin in the Andes Mountains, see map) as well as a Ramsar site, including Laguna Negro Francisco and Laguna Santa Rosa (map).
In Balcázar’s view, this could lead to consideration of “legal ways to protect indigenous rights, as well as social protests”, similar to those that took place in 2018 after the announcement of the deal between CORFO and SQM, he told E&T.
A comprehensive research study that was published this year supports the findings of E&T’s investigation and the satellite analysis. Wenjuan Liu and her research colleagues at the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University found that lithium mining in the area bore strong negative correlations with the vegetation and soil moisture – meaning, the more mining, the rarer plants and water become in the soil.
Arguably not 100 per cent caused by brine mining – a booming tourism industry and a slight population increase also contributed – the research identified lithium brine mining activities as one of the major stresses affecting local environmental degradation. Two decades, 1997-2017, were studied, recording soil moisture, vegetation and temperature. An expansion of lithium brine mining area of one square kilometre was found to correspond to a significant decrease in the average level of vegetation and in soil moisture.
Other environmental consequences are observable in changes in the region’s microclimate. When climate changes, natural disasters can strike more often. At the beginning of the year, the area encountered a period of devastating rains, most untypical for the arid area. Ironically, the amount of water precipitated was insufficient to recharge the aqua-reserves, but did cause destructive floods, Balcázar recalls. “San Petro was isolated for almost a month in February due to flooding. The water is now coming also with a lot of salts, with heavy metals, which are naturally present in the environment. It is also affecting the communities that live in these territories”, he told E&T.
This article is so clear and anyone can see the harm that has been done but with consciousdisregard. We humans commit crimes against the environment, against humanity, against all living things on a 24/7 basis. We do it for short term gain. Long term our products inflict mostly dangerous and often fatal results as products fail.
Note: a young entrepreneur has found a greener, more productive way to extract lithium without the ponds. See http://lilacsolutions.com/
A recent report published by the International Energy Agency states that meeting the Paris agreement’s climate targets would send demand skyrocketing for the “critical minerals” used to produce clean energy technologies. The figures are particularly dramatic for the raw materials used to manufacture electric vehicles: by 2040, the IEA forecasts that demand for lithium will have increased 42 times relative to 2020 levels.
Lithium batteries are commonly used for portable electronics and electric vehicles and are growing in popularity for military and aerospace. Some would say ‘The lithium-ion battery is an epoch-making invention’.
However, lithium batteries also contain a flammable electrolyte.
Effective April 1, 2016, more stringent regulations were issued by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) for the transport of Lithium Batteries that are packed and shipped as loose/bulk (UN3480/PI965).
There are many different types of lithium batteries. The three main types are described here.
Lithium-ion batteries
Lithium-ion batteries (Li-ion or LIB batteries) have lithium compounds as the electrode material, and are rechargeable. Li-ion batteries are widely used in portable electronic products such as mobile phones, laptops, tablets, MP3 players and cameras.
Lithium-metal batteries
Lithium metal batteries have lithium metal as an anode and are generally not rechargeable. They come in different shapes and forms, including the flat, round batteries used in watches. They are also commonly used in products such as calculators or torches.
Lithium-ion polymer batteries
Lithium-ion polymer batteries, often called lithium polymer batteries (Li-poly, Li-Pol, LIP, PLI or LiP), are rechargeable batteries usually composed of several identical secondary cells in parallel.
They are used in some portable electronic products and fall under the family of lithium-ion batteries.
There’s no way to predict when a thermal runaway is going to occur, igniting a lithium battery fire. A thermal runaway starts from an internal short that may be caused by a manufacturing defect, physical damage or heat.
A lithium battery fire also releases an ether-based vapor that’s highly flammable. The chemical reaction of a thermal runaway can release hydrogen and oxygen byproducts, “So this process creates its own fuel, its own ignition and its own oxygen,” said Cox.
Thermal runaway can occur due to an internal short circuit caused by physical damage to the battery or poor battery maintenance. The same type of scenario could cause an external short circuit which could also kick off the chain reaction.
Battery users not only need to handle and use their batteries carefully, but they need to replace them as well. This is because the chemicals and materials degrade over time.
If you have an old battery that has been uncharged or undercharged, it may have built up gasses within the casing. This state can easily cause a battery to explode.
If you see a deformed or “bubbled” battery, do not attempt to charge it. Properly dispose of and replace any deformed batteries.
Thermal runaway explosion
In Australia it was reported that one of the giga batteries was on fire, giving off toxic fumes. It stated:
A Tesla battery has burst into flames during testing at the site of the southern hemisphere’s largest battery project.
A 13-metric-ton lithium battery caught fire on Friday at the renewable energy plant, called the Victorian Big Battery, near Geelong, about 50 miles from Melbourne. The blaze then spread to an adjacent battery bank, Australia’s ABC reports, but has since been contained.
A toxic smoke warning has been issued in the area. Fire crews will have to wait up to 24 hours for the blaze to die down.
The site is the second Tesla battery project Down Under, following the 2017 installation in South Australia, a facility which Tesla CEO Elon Musk called the “world’s largest” at the time.
Previous blogs, such as the one below, show the process of acquiring non-ferrous metals to create lithium batteries.
Most of us will live within a 25 mile radius of a landfill for household waste. It is often visible from roads nearby as waste trucks drive up and dump the waste and gulls fly over attracted by the chance of food. Maybe even carrion birds such as kites will be seen over the ugly mountains of waste we humans churn out.
Landfill sites are also known as garbage dumps, rubbish dumps, or dumping ground among other names. Landfills are the earliest forms of waste disposal and treatment. Traditionally, the waste would be left to decay or decompose by itself without being buried.
Landfill should be a last resort. Yet it is still a common sight around the world, we even see those living in poverty scrambling amongst the rubbish to find items of value to try to sell in order to buy food.
There was a UK news item in the news recently of a child, born with a lung disorder, whose health was being threatened by the stink form the landfill near his home. That stink was Hydrogen Sulphide.
Here is an extract from a 2016 study about this gas:
Odor emission from landfill sites related to H2S, which has an extremely low odor threshold (around 0.5 ppb)1 and high toxicity, has become an environmental problem, linked with wide-scale public complaint. H2S can cause eye irritation at concentrations as low as 50–100 ppm, and concentrations of 300–500 ppm may result in severe poisoning, leading to unconsciousness and death1. It can seriously endanger human health and ecology safety. The formation of H2S from landfill sites mainly results from anaerobic biological conversion of sulfate by sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB)2,3, considered to be obligate anaerobes4.
Obligate anaerobes die in the presence of oxygen – and the definition tells us:
Many obligate anaerobes live in the human body, in places like the mouth and gastrointestinal tract where oxygen levels are very low. Sometimes, these bacteria can accidentally be deposited where they are not supposed to be, causing serious infection. Some obligate anaerobes include the bacteria which cause gangrene and a number of other infections. ………. microscope slide showing the Clostridium genus of bacteria, responsible for gangrene, tetanus, botulism, colitis, and other serious infections.
The UK Health Protection Agency advises on procedures for management of all threats to human health from landfills. They are obviously concerned about all emissions caused by pollutants. Yet, in 2021, in a so called rich country, our landfill sites are not all well managed.
There are alternatives which should now have replaced all landfills.
Here in the UK we are aiming to be a Zero Waste nation, but that means products we buy for use in the home have to be all biodegradable, and very few exist. We are hyper dependent on plastic, and recycled plastic. Packaging for products still relies on non recyclable plastic, though gradually biodegradable packaging is becoming more common.
We cannot move to Zero Waste until we have solutions to this conundrum of bio-persisting plastics.
We still have landfills around the UK because the householder can only separate out recyclables from non-recyclables and drop appropriate rubbish in appropriate -plastic -bins.
There are companies who now tackle landfill restoration, using sophisticated engineering installations to sanitize the landfill (often in a disused quarry) and create a safe wildlife environment and help reduce CO2 emissions.
Landfill installations which exploit the gas and safely manage it as in this Case Study.
Try as we might, we are not trying hard enough to solve our waste problem. This list of worries was put on a US website.
Only 5% of waste plastic gets recycled with the remaining portion ending up in landfills (3% of it ends up in oceans and rivers)
If the United States converted all its non-recycled plastics into oil, each year the country would produce 5.7 billion gallons of transportation fuel
In 2014, the class of plastics, including sacks, bags, and wraps cost 14.3$ to recycle.
There are more than 2,000 landfills spread throughout the country, we are increasingly exposing our environment to pollution.
Beneath this disguise that we put on landfills to make them look better, there consists toxins and greenhouse gases that are really dangerous. If we continue with this ignorance, future generations will have a lot on their plates to deal with in terms of health. Every emission from the landfills poses a great danger to the surroundings and its survival.
Americans dispose of over 1,200 pounds of organic junk which they can easily compost by getting a container for an apartment composting or building a compost bin in the backyard.
Applying to set up a new landfill site in Queensland, Australia reveals the responsible management of gases and leachate to protect the environment. In reading this document there can be no doubt about old and present landfills around the world which are inflicting terrible harm to the planet.
The annual average exposure levels of Hydrogen Sulphide was 6.3 ng/m3, compared to people living close to larger landfills in Rome whose levels averaged 45.ng/m3. At the end of the follow-up period there were 18,609 deaths.
Respiratory symptoms were detected among residents living close to waste sites. These were linked to inhalation exposure to endotoxin, microorganisms, and aerosols from waste collection and land filling.
This is consistent with other studies; however the association between living proximity to landfill sites and cases of lung cancer is a new finding. The authors stressed that further studies need to be completed to confirm this.
This study has been published in International Journal of Epidemiology.
Anyone who lives close to a landfill site (within 5 km) who also is unlucky enough to contract Covid, even if vaccinated, is more likely to die due to the damage to their health already taking place.
In a previous blog regarding DuPont and Conscious Disregard, I have tried to show how our human behaviour has allowed the growth of petrochemical industries to grow exponentially, thus condemning us to a biopersistent toxicity which is killing all life as we know it. Plastics are so versatile and we cannot imagine life without them, but they are a major contributor as to why our planet has gone into a spiral of death.
Let us look at another petrochemical corporate, Formosa Plastics Corporation:
Formosa Plastics Corporationwas founded in 1954. Its beginnings were challenging as it struggled with high production costs due to small production volume and lack of sufficient end users for the PVC resins being produced at the time. Its solution was to increase production and to build downstream production facilities that would expend the PVC resins.
In 1958, the company established Nan Ya Plastics Corporation, for the purpose of producing secondary products such as plastic, leather and PVC pipes. New Eastern Corporation was subsequently formed to utilize the products coming out of Nan Ya Plastics and turn them into consumer products such as handbags, shoes, suitcases and other such items suitable for the export market. And so it continued with Formosa Plastics expanding product lines and adding downstream production facilities to ensure market for its products. In 1965, the corporation diversified into the textile industry, establishing Formosa Chemicals & Fiber Corporation. By 1974, Formosa had joined the world’s largest fiber producers. Formosa Petrochemical Corporation was formed in 1992 to manage the construction and operation of the company’s naptha cracking plant, oil refinery and co-generation plant.
Corporate Overview
Formosa Plastics Group includes more than ten Taiwan holdings, including Nan Ya Technology and Formosa Komatsu Silicon Corporation. Altogether, they are involved in businesses as diverse as electronics, oil refinery, textiles, petrochemicals, plastics—raw materials and secondary, and transportation.
The group’ foray into the United States began in 1978. Today, Formosa owns several petrochemical plants, as well as natural gas wells, operating under: Formosa Plastics Corporation America, Formosa Plastics Corporation, USA, and Nan Ya Plastics Corporation, America.
In 1978 Jimmy Carter’s tenure as the 39th president of the United States began with his inauguration on January 20, 1977 to 1981.
At the end of President Obama’s tenure, the Republican run state of Texas had negotiated successfully to attract Formosa to Point Comfort.
In 2015, Formosa announced its plans to construct a new, state-of-the art polypropylene production line at its Point Comfort, Texas plant. Officials hope this may be the beginning of a trend to increase polypropylene capacity………..
The above extract introduces this company, well known, immune from prosecution to date, infamous to many who believe they are victims to its conscious disregard.
A view of the US Political Strategy regarding Taiwan in relation to China can be viewed here.
The following is an extract:
During Trump’s time, the US gave Taiwan a lot of unexpected support. From Trump’s first phone call with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, to the final moments of Trump’s presidency when former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lifted “self-imposed restrictions” on contacts between US officials and their Taiwanese counterparts, all of it showed the special support that Taiwan received.
TAIPEI (Reuters) – Formosa Petrochemical Corp. expects faster approval for a planned $9.4 billion petrochemical plant in the U.S. state of Louisiana under the administration of President Donald Trump, the company’s chairman said on Wednesday.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is likely to roll back some of its regulations after the appointment as head last month of Scott Pruitt, who sued the agency multiple times as Oklahoma state attorney general.
The company should benefit from less stringent environmental regulations under the Trumpadministration, Formosa Petrochemical Chairman Chen Bao-lang said. A subsidiary of Formosa’s parent company admitted to massive pollution in Vietnam last year.
“We are more optimistic about the investment,” Chen told Reuters in an interview in the group’s headquarters in Taipei. “At least the obstacles will be fewer… We’re aiming to get an air permit in August 2018.”
Formosa Petrochemical is part of Taiwanese conglomerate Formosa Plastics Group, which has production facilities across Taiwan, China, the United States and Vietnam.
Another Formosa subsidiary, Formosa Ha Tinh Steel, paid $500 million in damages in Vietnam after it admitted last year that it polluted more than 200 km (125 miles) of coastline in April, killing more than 100 tonnes of fish and devastating the environment, jobs and economies of four provinces.
I watched Netflix episode of Dirty Money, investigating Formosa practices at Point Comfort, Texas. I then looked at how this company has attracted environmental harm legal action, but the victims seem to have come off even worse after their attempts to challenge this corporate giant.
Formosa Plant, Point Comfort, Tx
As our Planet reels under pressure of man-made climate change catastrophe, it also reels from industrial toxins poisoning the entirety of living things. Plastic producers are major contributors. Petrochemical companies are part of the cause of major CO2 emissions. Their popularity continues to surge. Petrochemicals are rapidly becoming the largest driver of global oil demand. Right when we should be eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels, we are accelerating our demand for it.
From ieag.org report, 2018
Wikipedia states:
In the early 2010s the group became the primary backer of the Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation, a large iron and steel works in Vietnam.
FPG was responsible for a serious discharge of toxic pollution from one of its steel complexes. The release resulted in an estimated 115 tons of dead fish washing ashore in Vietnam. The environmental pollution negatively affected the livelihood of 200,000 people including local fishers. In July 2016, FPG pledged to pay compensation to Vietnamese impacted by the environmentally toxic discharge in the amount of $500 million.[2] In February 2018 Hoang Duc Binh was jailed for 14 years for live streaming fisherman travelling to file a lawsuit over the plant’s pollution [3]
Formosa Plastics has planned the construction of a 9.4 billion dollar fossil fuel plant entitled “The Sunshine Project” in an area of Louisiana that has already been dubbed as “Cancer Alley” due to illnesses caused by pollutants in the environment leaked from existing fossil fuel plants.
Summer isn’t even half over, and we’ve seen heat waves in the Pacific Northwest and Canada with temperatures that would be hot for Death Valley, enormous fires that have sent smoke across North America, and lethal floods of biblical proportions in Germany and China. Scientists have warned for over 50 years about increases in extreme events arising from subtle changes in average climate, but many people have been shocked by the ferocity of recent weather disasters.
A couple of things are important to understand about climate change’s role in extreme weather like this.
First, humans have pumped so much carbon dioxide and other planet-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that what’s “normal” has shifted. A new study, published July 26, 2021, for example, shows how record-shattering, long-lasting heat waves – those that break records by a wide margin – are growing increasingly likely, and that the rate of global warming is connected with the increasing chances of these heat extremes.
Second, not every extreme weather event is connected to global warming.
Shifting the bell curve
Like so many things, temperature statistics follow a bell curve – mathematicians call these “normal distributions.” The most frequent and likely temperatures are near the average, and values farther from the average quickly become much less likely.
The stream of broken temperature records in the North American West lately is a great example. Portland hit 116 degrees – 9 degrees above its record before the heat wave. That would be an extreme at the end of the tail. One study determined the heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change. Extreme heat waves that were once ridiculously improbable are on their way to becoming more commonplace, and unimaginable events are becoming possible.
The width of the bell curve is measured by its standard deviation. About two-thirds of all values fall within one standard deviation of the average. Based on historical temperature records, the heat wave in 2003 that killed more than 70,000 people in Europe was five standard deviations above the mean, so it was a 1 in 1 million event.
There’s a basic hierarchy of the extreme events that scientific research so far has shown are most affected by human-caused climate change.
At the top of the list are extreme events like heat waves that are certain to be influenced by global warming. In these, three lines of evidence converge: observations, physics and computer model simulations that predict and explain the changes. At the bottom of the list are things that might plausibly be caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases but for which the evidence is not yet convincing. Here’s a partial list.
2) Coastal flooding: Heat is causing ocean waters to expand, pushing up sea levels, and melting ice sheets around the world. Both high-tide flooding and catastrophic storm surge will become much more frequent as those events start from a higher average level because of sea level rise.
The Tamarack Fire spread through dry forest and grass near Lake Tahoe on July 17, 2021. AP Photo/Noah Berger
5) Reduced spring snowpack: Snow starts accumulating later in the fall as temperatures rise, more water is lost from the snowpack during winter, and the snow melts earlier in the spring, reducing the flush of water into reservoirs that supports the economies of semiarid regions.
6) Very heavy rainfall: Warmer air can transport more water vapor. Damaging rainstorms are due to strong updrafts that cool the air and condense the vapor as rainfall. The more water is in the air during a strong updraft, the more rain can fall.
7) Hurricanes and tropical storms: These derive their energy from evaporation from the warm sea surface. As oceans warm, larger regions can spawn these storms and provide more energy. But changes in winds aloft are expected to reduce hurricane intensification, so it’s not clear that global warming will increase damage from tropical storms.
8) Extreme cold weather: Some research has attributed cold weather that dips south with the meandering of the jet stream – sometimes referred to as “polar vortex” outbreaks – to warming in the Arctic. Other studies strongly dispute that Arctic warming is likely to affect winter weather farther south, and this idea remains controversial.
9) Severe thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes: These storms are triggered by strong surface heating, so it’s plausible that they could increase in a warming world. But their development depends on the circumstances of each storm. There is not yet evidence that the frequency of tornadoes is increasing.
When extreme heat shatters records
In the new heat wave study, Erich Fischer and colleagues at the Swiss Institute for Atmosphere and Climate Science looked at the frequency of weeklong heat waves that don’t just push the envelope of previous climate, they shatter records by huge margins. The scientists analyzed thousands of years of climate simulations to identify unprecedented heat events and found that global warming caused by coal, oil and gas was commonly associated with such events. In models, these record-shattering weeklong heat waves don’t just gradually increase with global warming but instead strike without warning.
The researchers showed that record-shattering heat is much more likely than it was a generation ago, and that these devastating events will occur much more often over the next few decades. Critically, they found that the likelihood of these unprecedented heat waves is associated with the rate of warming – and that their likelihood decreases markedly when fossil fuel emissions fall.
A warning that can’t be ignored
The catastrophic impacts of extreme weather depend at least as much on people as on climate.
The evidence is clear that the more coal, oil and gas are burned, the more the world will warm, and the more likely it will be for any given location to experience heat waves that are far outside anything they’ve experienced.
Disaster preparedness can quickly fail when extreme events blow past all previous experience. Portland’s melting streetcar power cables are a good example. How communities develop infrastructure, social and economic systems, planning and preparedness can make them more resilient – or more vulnerable – to extreme events.
This article was updated July 26, 2021, with the heat study.
Sugar is a carbohydrate that occurs naturally in many foods. The body mostly uses carbohydrates as an energy source. Food producers also add sugar to many products, which can lead a person’s blood sugar levels to become too high.
Our bodies have always needed sugar as a fuel. We eat carbohydrate foods and the chemical process in our amazing bodies turns the carbohydrates into glucose. The essential glucose will then be carried by our blood, maintaining the blood cells, the central nervous system and the brain.
The article goes on to explain:
The body has a natural feedback mechanism by which high glucose levels lead to increased insulin production, and low levels lead to decreased levels of this hormone. The body requires healthy insulin levels to function properly. If there is too little insulin or it no longer functions properly, a person can develop diabetes.
People with Diabetes are especially vulnerable to the Covid virus. You can see where your country is ranked in relation to others where cases of diabetes are concerned. This website explains:
Development Relevance: Diabetes, an important cause of ill health and a risk factor for other diseases in developed countries, is spreading rapidly in developing countries. Highest among the elderly, prevalence rates are rising among younger and productive populations in developing countries. Economic development has led to the spread of Western lifestyles and diet to developing countries, resulting in a substantial increase in diabetes. Without effective prevention and control programs, diabetes will likely continue to increase.
By viewing the rankings we can see how the Food Industry has impacted countries who had a low incidence of diabetes to having a high incidence. For example, top of the list is Kiribati. They went from 6.60 percent of the 20 to 79 year olds in 2010, to 22.50 percent in 2019. An example of the results of diabetes leading to amputation is highlighted at this prosthetics clinic.
Based on the statistics of United Nations, Kiribati imported US$109 million worth of goods around the world in 2018. Among all the top products imported to Kiribati, Cane Sugar contributes to 1.83% of total trade value, equal to US$2,002 thousand. The second imported is Prepared & Preserved Meat, which accounts for 1.31%. The following table lists the top products imported to Kiribati. Also shown are the trade value and the percentage share for each import category as well as the growth rate during the past 5 years.
The Republic of Kiribati (pronounced Kiribas) is an unusual place. It consists of 33 islands, 32 of which are atolls (an atoll is a ring shaped coral reef) about 4,000 km southwest of Hawaii. Twenty-one of the islands are inhabited and the total land mass is 811 square kilometers. Home to over one hundred thousand people, Kiribati is a country in crisis.
Several problems plague the islands, first there is the problem of climate change – between unusually bad storms and rising ocean levels, there are many on Kiribati who believe their country will quite literally disappear in the next 30-60 years. While many argue the details of the timeline, it is clear that climate change is adversely affecting this group of islands. There is no higher ground to run to, no safety net for the population.
Tarawa is the capital of Kiribati, which is one of the most remote countries on Earth, located on the equator about halfway between Australia and Hawaii. Its atolls are scattered across a patch of the Pacific the size of India, and yet they have a total of just 811 square kilometres of land, about half the size of Greater London.
When a plane lands on Tarawa, a crowd gathers at the airport, drawn by the excitement of the jet making the three-hour flight from Fiji. Aside from occasional freighters bringing canned food, this twice-weekly Fiji Airways flight provides the primary connection to the outside world.
Historically, these Pacific Islanders were once kidnapped and used as slaves on the Queensland plantations of Australia is shown in a film, details of which is shown here.
Sugar Slaves Few people know that the Australian sugar industry was founded on the sweat of men and women enticed or kidnapped from the islands of the South Pacific.Sugar Slavesis the story ofthat human traffic, euphemistically known as “blackbirding”. Between 1863 and 1904 about 60,000 islanders were transported to the colony of Queensland, where they toiled to create the sugar plantations. Then, after the introduction of a White Australia policy (Immigration Restriction Act 1901), most were deported.
In 2014 a report revealed 81.5% of the population were overweight.
Realising the problem of obesity which is caused by junk food consumption, in 2017 the Islanders decided to abandon junk food. They do not need this health issue added to their many other challenges of life in these Pacific Islands.
I hope they can abandon junk food – but it is not easy to do with Big Food inventing strategies to pull victims back into the habit and increasing morbidity as a result.
Author Michael Moss, on page 140 of his book ‘Hooked’, names Northeastern University in Boston, led by Professor Richard Daynard of their Law Faculty for instructing his students to create a database which tracked lawsuits brought by injured smokers. Their database was the basis of research which linked lung cancer to the smoking habit. They would use their data to demonstrate this link at conferences and support attorneys who required definitive evidence to make their case. When the long case against the tobacco giants was settled in 1998, $200 billion was required by them to be paid to the states where their health provision had been impacted by high costs of treating lung disease due to smoking.
Tobacco giants like Philip Morris bought into the food industry, understanding the process of addiction which had generated so many billions of dollars to their companies.
A nutritionist, Marion Nestle, who, Michael Moss tells us was ‘one of the first scholars to argue that the food industry should attract the same kind of scrutiny as the makers of drugs and tobacco’, persuaded the same Law Faculty, led by Richard Daynard, to now take on those companies who make addictive Ultra Processed Foods.
Covid has highlighted the vulnerabilities of people around the world who have become addicted to Ultra Processed Foods. It is not for them to just stop. As with all addictions, it is now becoming a serious topic of research in countries where so many have died of Covid because they suffered underlying ill health caused by poor diet. They did not have sufficient nutrition to help their body fight the disease. Disordered eating has become commonplace. But people look for cheapness, availability and speed of delivery of food to stomach. The food industry makes billions out of ensuring these temptations are in plain sight on ultra processed food presentation to the gullible.
The lobbying of the above NRA in various states in the US in the early 2000s, led to an element of legal protection for food services to not be questioned about the possible links to human obesity. (Commonsense Consumption Act – sometimes referred to as the “cheeseburger bill”, wording drawn up by Meersman of the Colorado Restaurant Association, was passed into law and copied by twenty six states, to protect the corporates from public scrutiny)
Dana Small, PhD Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Psychology; Director, Modern Diet and Physiology Research Center
Dana Small has conducted some ingenious experiments to understand the evolution of the human body as it learned to acquire fuel, in the form of calories from ancient to present time. When we first foraged for food, we worked hard, chewed hard on roots and tough plants to gain enough calories to give us energy for the search for more fuel, until we had sufficient to rest but stay alert to dangers.
As we learned how to use stones as tools to beat hard foods to pulp, this made chewing easier and helped our digestion. When we learned about fire we could cook foods and widen our range to include meat and fish. We have been active humans for most of our existence, only resting for short periods whilst most of the time was spent using up calories exercising in our work around procuring food and shelter.
Michael Moss covers research Dana Small carried out for PepsiCo, and in 2014 she was terminated from pursuing her interesting findings. One of the executive directors in charge of nutrition said of Dana Small that ‘she was dangerous’, implying her work posed a threat to the high calorie beverage industry
Nowadays, many populations have food to hand in shops or markets. We are not all active, but we can buy in high calorie food and drink and consume it whilst inactive, relaxing watching some form of entertainment. Our bodies still have the process for calculating calorie intake but Dana Small has learned about modern foods and how these have confused our neurological and gut processes. Dana Small has stated, “It’s not so much that people can become addicted to food. It’s that the food has changed, and it is mismatched to us”. She had called this the Mismatch Index.
This 2020 YouTube provides advice on how to eat healthily, lose weight with care, and avoid diseases through understanding the relationship with appropriate food for wellbeing.
Michael Moss in his book ‘Hooked’ revealed the name of another hero we can all be grateful to, the attorney Stephen Joseph.
Stephen Joseph
You can read on his website how he took on Philip Morris, the tobacco giants, who owned Kraft, for their use of trans fats. It simply states ‘He sued Kraft to ban Oreo cookies because they contained trans fat. In response, Kraft removed trans fat from Oreos and all of its products, and many other companies did too.’
Trans Fats (Polyunsaturated fats that have been hydrogenated) – Raises LDL, lowers HDL This is the highest risk fat. (These fats are created when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil to make it more solid, which is why they are often called partially hydrogenated oils.)
Moss explains: ‘This fat had been used originally to make margarine…….’ We all remember the marketing for margarine told us it was ‘just like butter’ but better for our health, ‘good for the heart’ and so on. Many of us changed to this oily substance, but felt a longing for the taste of butter, for margarine tasted nothing like butter.
Researchers were coming up with evidence that margarine actually clogged arteries and contributed to cardiovascular disease. By the time that evidence came out, many of us had been using it for years. The food industry adopted it throughout their product ranges as it preserved the shelf life of ‘cookies, cakes, biscuits, popcorn, doughnuts, breakfast sandwiches, frozen pizza, and fried fast food.‘
Stephen Joseph went to his local supermarket and found it hard to find anything which did NOT contain trans fats. He understood trans fats were not essential to any of their product lines, but they chose to use it. Their scientists must have been aware, as he was, of the emerging evidence of danger to human health.
He was so incensed he determined to expose them and used the Nabisco division of Kraft of the brand Oreo to illustrate the heavy use of trans fats in both the wafer and the creme filling.
On 1st May 2003 he submitted his papers. He asked for the California court to ban the sale of Oreos throughout California, particularly underlining the point that the marketing targeted young children.
Philip Morris had only acquired Nabisco in 2000. They were not familiar with the development of Nabisco products prior to them being seen as sufficiently attractive to a takeover. They had revamped the Oreo brand to make it not only attractive to adults but also mega attractive to children. So whilst one hand of a child played with a toy, the other could reach for the optimally packaged supply of Mini Oreos launched in 2000. The massive success of this addictive, high calorie, trans fat loaded product put them on the map. Increasingly the strategy was to encourage compulsive eating through design.
Kraft simply agreed to remove trans fats from its products and the case ended amicably. Stephen Joseph has highlighted the dangers and the industry has decreased its use trans fats in the US over the past decades. But outside the US it is still a problem in fast foods.
‘Two years into the World Health Organization’s (WHO) ambitious effort to eliminate industrially produced trans fats from the global food supply, the Organization reports that 58 countries so far have introduced laws that will protect 3.2 billion people from the harmful substance by the end of 2021. But more than 100 countries still need to take actions to remove these harmful substances from their food supplies.
Consumption of industrially produced trans fats are estimated to cause around 500,000 deaths per year due to coronary heart disease.
“In a time when the whole world is fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, we must make every effort to protect people’s health. That must include taking all steps possible to prevent noncommunicable diseases that can make them more susceptible to the coronavirus, and cause premature death,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Our goal of eliminating trans fats by 2023 must not be delayed.”
Fifteen countries account for approximately two thirds of the worldwide deaths linked to trans fat intake. Of these, four (Canada, Latvia, Slovenia, United States of America) have implemented WHO-recommended best-practice policies since 2017, either by setting mandatory limits for industrially produced trans fats to 2% of oils and fats in all foods or banning partially hydrogenated oils (PHO).
But the remaining 11 countries (Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Iran, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan, Republic of Korea) still need to take urgent action.’
Trans fats have not disappeared and can still be found in unexpected places. Always inform yourself before purchasing. For example, I wrote to Violife of Greece, as I eat their vegetarian cheese, and I asked them if they hydrogenate the coconut oil in the cheese. They replied:
“Thank you for your interest in our products and for taking the time to contact us.
The coconut oil used in all Violife products is not hydrogenated. It is highly refined, all protein content has been removed and it is totally allergen free.
The coconut oil used in all Violife products is Refined Bleached Deodorised (RBD).”
I had also asked the Oatley.com oat drink producers about their description on their website of hydrogenation used in their products, they replied:
“Thank you for taking the time to write to us!
You’re totally right, partially hydrogenated fats are something we should look out for! With that said, let me guarantee you that none of our products contain trans fats as we are only using fully hydrogenated fats in the products where we use hydrogenated oils.”
So always ask if you are concerned.
Mid July this year, our UK media covered this National food Strategy Report. But our government are likely to obey the Food Industry lobbyists and shut any such progressive ideas down.
It is really up to us as consumers to understand the trickery to cultivate addiction to unhealthy fake foods from which these corporates make $billions and make those who are addicted grow horribly ill.
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