Annie Birdsong's Homepage



    Our Poisoned Water    


Will fish go extinct?
Poisoned Waters -- The Alarming Rate of Fish Kills

In this video, you will see the urgent need to quickly phase out chemicals and industrial processes poisoning the environment.

We need cleansers, laundry detergents, shampoos, dishwashing liquids etc. made of plant-based materials rather than petroleum-based chemicals, which you can purchase at your natural food co-op or store, such as Whole Foods Market.


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Two great American heros
Envision Clean Rivers: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and John Cronin


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Can the natural world survive the abuse of the rivers?
An Excerpt from Dr. David Suzuki's Film Series "The Sacred Balance"


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To live light and traceless
To Make the Waters Run Clear



Note: While composting of humanure is good, we don't want sewage sludge on farmland. Click here to read more.
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The danger of exhaust from roads and pesticides from yards
Poisoned Waters -- Stormwater Runoff

The pollutants in storm water that wash off roads into our water bodies is hazardous waste.

Fossil fuel pollutants and motor oil from the roads contain radioactive substances, such as uranium and thorium; as well as carbon monoxide; toulene, xylene and benzene, which are highly carcinogenic; heavy metals; PAHs, which can cause breast cancer; nitrous oxides, which cause ozone depletion; sulfur dioxide, which makes the water so acidic that many fish are killed; and more.

Benzene, which can pass into your body though your skin when you bath, can cause leukemia, bone marrow damage, blood disorder, anemia, infertility, bleeding, weakened immune system, convulsions, vomiting, irritated respiratory track, skin irritations, genetic degradation and more.

Having subways can take hundreds of thousands of polluting automobiles off the roads, making water much cleaner, improving health of humans and aquatic biota.


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We must change the way we live.
Poisoned Waters -- The Imperiled Chesapeake Bay

Watch the full episode.

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The party you vote for matters.
Poisoned Waters -- Reagan Deregulates Cleanup of the Bay

Watch the full episode.

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The most vulnerable to chemicals in pollution are the babies.
House Republicans Most Anti-Environmental in History




We need democrats in office.
Michele Bachman's Radical Views On Environmental Protection


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The party we vote for matters.
Environmental Attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Tells Corruption of Bush Admin.



Read more about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his work as an environmental attorney.

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We must protect the babies from mercury poison.
Mercury Poisoning and Horror in Minimata, Japan

This documentary reveals the human tragedy unleashed when a company producing fertilizer poisoned the water with mercury in Minimata, Japan.

It is a stern warning that coal burning power plants and other activities blanketing the environment with mercury, which poisons the waterways and the fish being consumed by wildlife and humans, must be phased out.


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Understand the need for localization rather than globalization.
The Chinese Choke on Poisoned Air and Water As They Manufacture Products for the Globe

I was so shocked.

As my friend from China's six-year-old son was catching lightening bugs, she told me they no longer have lightening bugs in China due to the chronic pollution from their manufacturing processes.

If lightening bugs are dying, it will be no time before butterflies, bees and hundreds of other pollinators also die. Will China become a desert, unable to support life?

Already, for whatever combination of reasons, between one quarter and one-third of China is desert -- and the desert is spreading every year.

Will humans wake up in time and change the way we make things?

We need small-scale production using appropriate, nonpolluting technologies.


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Understand the value of clean water.
Cuba's Water: The Envy of the World

In the video below on Cuba, see how organic agriculture can have real impacts on the environment since pesticides are not washing into the river.

There are other factors involved, such as the fact that many Cubans use outdoor toilets rather than flush toilets.

The clean water is also be due to a drastic reduction in fossil fuel exhaust from automobile washing off roads and from the air into the streams and rivers. The acid rain from exhausts and coal burning power plants sterilize water bodies. We have many thousands of dead streams in the United States where nothing can live.

Won't it be wonderful when instead of automobiles we have light rail powered by solar panels? (Solar panels are made of silicon, which is made of sand. So why aren't they cheap as dirt?)


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Understand the cause of much cancer and aging.
The Polluted Water of Our Industrial Society

Where I was living in Maryland, there were more than 1,000 pipes from businesses that were dumping water into the Potomac River or the tributaries that lead into the Potomac River where the tap water was drawn.

Furthermore, the next time you are in the grocery store, look at the vast array of household chemicals that will make their way in to the water bodies we use: Comet, Ajax, Mr. Clean, laundry soap, shampoo, bowl cleaner etc.

Many of these are made with toxic petroleum-based chemicals.

I wash my clothes and dishes with cleansers derrived largely from from plant-based materials.

Consider the Fossil fuel pollutants and motor oil on the roads that wash into the culverts on the side of the roads, then from there into our waterways. These fossil fuels contain radioactive substances, such as uranium and thorium; as well as carbon monoxide; toulene, xylene and benzene, which are highly carcinogenic; heavy metals; PAHs, which can cause breast cancer; nitrous oxides, which cause ozone depletion; sulfur dioxide, which makes the water so acidic that many fish are killed; and more.

Benzene, which can pass into your body though your skin when you bath, can cause leukemia, bone marrow damage, blood disorder, anemia, infertility, bleeding, weakened immune system, convulsions, vomiting, irritated respiratory track, skin irritations, genetic degradation and more.

Fossil fuel exhaust is so toxic that it often sterilizes our streams. The United States has many thousands of streams that are dead where nothing can live.

The sewage treatment plants are not designed to remove chemicals. They remove fecal matter.

Chemicals also make their way to the rivers we drink from in the urine we discharge to the sewage treatment plants. The urine contains all medicines we take by mouth: heart medications, blood pressure medications etc. If I understand correctly, the chemicals of most concern are the artificial estrogens from birth control pills, which are very very potent.

Male fish are being feminized and I wonder if they will go extinct.

Fish contain hundreds of chemicals in their tissues, so don't eat them too often. The smaller fish have far less chemicals.

Young women who are child bearing age need to be careful about the chemicals they consume from water and from fish. The chemicals store in their body fat and other places. This body fat is tapped when her body makes breast milk.

Chemicals are also passed to the young infant in the maternal cord blood.

The unborn and newly born are very very vulnerable to chemical injury.

Consuming bad chemicals means they can be born with learning disabilities, hearing impairment, inability to concentrate, hyperactivity. Indeed, abusing our streams and rivers we drink from is a form of child abuse.

Let us pray that households and businesses will have the courage and compassion to do what is right.

In my thinking, we can reduce the chemicals in our water by making some things by hand rather than using large equipment that pollutes our water. This will also help with unemployment.
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Our dying earth
Say Goodbye to Whales



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Degrading our genes and health
How Prevalent Are Toxic Chemicals?

"of all the chemciasl products and processes currently in use, only 10 percent are benign and nontoxic; the other 90 percent have hazardous consequences," says John Warner who is the director of the world's first green chemistry PhD program at the University of Massachusetts -- Lowell.

There are safe alternatives to 25 percent of the toxic chemicals in use, said Warner in a book he co-authored, called "Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice."
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Life on earth may very well go extinct
Amazing Speech by the Great Filmmaker & Scientist Dr. David Suzuki


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To live in harmony with the earth
Making Natural Dyes

Dying fabrics is often done with synthetic chemicals that produce extremely hazardous wastewater that is released into our waterways we drink from. But in the video below, the women discuss making dyes from natural plant materials.


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A Time Magazine "hero of the planet"
William McDonough: Re-Designing the World




A Time Magazine "hero of the planet"
Trailer to McDonough and Braungart's Film "The Next Industrial Revolution"

In this video, shot in Europe and the United States, architect William McDonough and his partner, chemist Michael Braungart explore how businesses are remaking the way they make things in order to live in harmony with the earth.



What happened to small family farms?
Poisoned Waters -- Large-Scale Animal Feeding Operations


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We need many ways of creating electricity.
Using a Biodigester to Make Electricity and Fertilizer from Hog Manure

Electricity can not only be made of hog and cow manure, but humanure.

To collect humanure, you collect the urine separate from the humanure in buckets. The bucket collecting humanure has a compostable bag in it to line it. The bucket holds a layer of humanure and table scraps, then a layer of soil, a layer of humanure and table scraps, then a layer of soil etc. When the bucket is full, the bag is tied and might be set out on the curb on a certain day to be picked up by the government to make composted fertilizer and electricity from the methane. Or cars might be powered by the methane that is generated.

The fertilizer should be given free of charge to our small farmers so that the topsoil of our farms is ever enriched -- which means it can last 2,000 years and beyond.


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