Having escaped NJ in 1973 and never thinking I would ever come back, s**t happened. Anyway, there were a couple of articles that appeared in the Asbury Park Press on July 26th that puts it in its proper perspective.
One article is entitled, “One in five in N.J. drink water laced with PFOA.” The other, “N.J. beaches under watch for bacteria after rains.” They were written by one of their reporters named Russ Zimmer. So, sit back, relax and read it and weep. Anything in parentheses are my comments.
Article 1:
“Nearly one in five New Jerseyans are delivered tap water that contains at least trace amounts of a chemical linked to cancer and low birth weights, according to new data released this morning.
The Environmental Working Group gathered and analyzed testing records between 2010 and 2015 from 48,712 U.S. water utilities and found 267 industrial and agricultural contaminants present in the water that Americans drink and bathe in.
One of those chemicals, perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, is more prevalent in New jersey tap water than anywhere else.
More than 1.6 million residents of the Garden (Garbage) State are served by a utility that detected at least 1 part per trillion –ppt – of PFOA in their water according to the data.
PFOA is a man-made chemical that was used for decades in cookware and fabric coatings.
Manufacturers phased out the use of PFOA in 2002, but the chemical has proved to be ubiquitous and does not break down in the environment.
In fact, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S. Centers for Deceit, Control and Procrastination) says that most everyone in America has some PFOA in their bloodstream.
At what level of exposure PFOA causes problems is not known.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Environmental Pollution Agency), the list of adverse health effects PFOA has been linked to is vast, including:
Various cancers
Liver damage
Low birth weights
Delayed or accelerated puberty
Reduced effects of vaccines (As if they work at all)
Despite the dangers, there is no federal standard on the amount of PFOA that a water utility is allowed to serve its customers before action is taken.
However, the EPA did adopt a non-enforceable guideline (whoopy) of 70 ppt last year.
New Jersey has been ahead of the curve in some respects: Ten years ago, it was the first state to set a limit – at 40 ppt – although it also carries no penalties for violations (I wonder how much they got paid off for that?).
This guidance level is used by the state’s water systems to determine whether any actions are needed, such as shutting off a particular well, blending, or adding treatment (If they don’t HAVE to do it, they AIN”T gonna do it).
After a long wait, the Drinking Water Quality Institute (probably made up of fluoride executives), which advises the state DEP on actionable thresholds for contaminants, recommended a maximum of 14 ppt in March.
The EWG (Environmental Working Group) notes that very few utilities are violating federal drinking water standards, but often because those standards are too lax. And, just because your tap water gets a passing grade from the government doesn’t always mean it’s safe (No S**t!), said the EWG President Ken Cook. He further said, It’s time to stop basing environmental regulations on political or economic compromises, and instead listen to what scientists (like the fluoride hooker scientists) say about the long-term effects of toxic chemicals and empower Americans to protect themselves from pollutants even as they demand the protective action they deserve from government (like the thousands of times they’ve dismissed fluoride hearings).
For PFOA, the EWG relies on the word of Harvard University environmental professor Philippe Grandjean, who believes the federal guidance level on the chemical may be 100-fold too high to prevent danger.
The easy answer? Purchase and use a water filter, like the pour-through filters of Brita and Pur, which employ something called granular activated carbon, or GAC, technology and can be widely purchased for under $20.
Utilities can rely on GAC, albeit on a much larger scale, to remove PFOA from water, according to Keith Cartnick, senior director of water quality for Suez Water.
Water is fed through a filter tank with GAC and the carbon latches onto PFOAs as they pass through.
It’s the best method currently available, but it isn’t perfect, Cartnick said. There are developments in the water treatment industry that are promising, he added. But PFOA remains a challenge. It is particularly difficult to remove (then why the hell did you allow the industries to dump it in the water?). It’s not like bacteria where you can add chlorine and disinfect. You
can’t purge PFOA out of the water (then why don’t you fine the cookware and fabric coating industries until they remove what they did to the water supply?).
Cartnick also gave voice to a common refrain from utility companies: Let’s stop the pollution from entering water supplies in the first place. We’re doing everything we can to control it, but you have to clean these things up at the source, he said. (But the state makes a lot of money from the companies that dump their toxic waste products, affectionately known as fluoride, into the water supply, so we’ll just overlook that one).
Article 2:
“Thirty-one N.J. swimming beaches were under a bacteria advisory and three others closed Tuesday, in a harsh reminder of how overdevelopment, outdated infrastructure and heavy rains can combine to erode water quality and endanger bathers.
Island heights public beach closed after test results showed the water there was 17 times the safe swimming standard for enterococcus, a bacteria that grows inside the intestines of humans and other warm-blooded animals and can be found alongside their feces.
Other beaches were closed due to rarely seen levels of bacteria and one out of six public beaches statewide failed bacteria testing.
The tests were part of monitoring program that is on the lookout for enterococcus, which is considered a warning sign of of dangerous pathogens.
The standard for safe swimming is less than 104 colony forming units (cfu) per 100 milliliters of water. (Thirty-five beaches were over the 100 CFUs and two, which were closed were over 1,300 CFUs.
Swallowing any contaminated water could result in cramps and diarrhea from gastrointestinal illnesses, according to the National Institutes of Health.
While the number of bacteria advisories might give one pause, it’s not necessarily surprising. In N.J., rainfall is closely linked to high bacteria levels.
In areas where little green space remains, there is not enough ground to soak up the water. Instead, the rain is destined for storm sewers, which act like a highway for the waste carried by the water.
Beaches on northern parts of the Jersey Shore are also susceptible to contamination from neighbors across the bay in N.Y. and northern N.J., where raw sewage combines with rainwater when their storm sewers are overwhelmed.”
(When I was growing up here back in the 50s and rode down Route 1, the industrial area, I would ride past factories that always smelled differently everyday. One day like onions, one day like garlic, one day like honey, etc. It was the beginning of the artificial flavor manufacturing companies.)
And this is why I always said that N.J. should be renamed S**tsville!
Aloha!
Source:
Russ Ziimmer, Asbury Park Press
Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.
After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a "plastic" community would be an understatement.
Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.
I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, " let's become vegetarians". I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, "okay"! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.
So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, "The Little Kitchen".
Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.
I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I'll elaborate on that in a minute.
But right now, back to "The Little Kitchen". Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.
The owner said to me, "Let's make a deal. You do our tax return and we'll feed you as well". So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.
But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, "Hawaii". Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called," Mr. Natural's". I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at "Mr. Natural's." To make a long story short, that's exactly what happened.
So, I'm working at "Mr. Natural's" and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle - it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka'anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.
Since I was the new guy, and didn't really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that's exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.
I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.
Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I'm asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn't thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, "You expected anything less"? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, 'enchilada's at "Natural's" tonight'. I never had to cook anything else.
A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That's when they found out I was an accountant and "Down to Earth" was born. "Down to Earth" became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.
In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD's that would call in asking for my credentials.
My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.
I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii's premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse. She said," If you want to be with me you've got to stop working on naked women". So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.
Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a "chicken" or "egg" or "fish" or "pig" or "cow" was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.
The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.
Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.
For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.
Namaste!
