Aluminium phosphate for the defluorination of potable water

Abstract In this paper, a new method for the defluoration of potable water is described. In the proposed method, aluminium phosphate is used as a matrix of the stationary phase which can adsorb fluorides or exchange with fluorides selectively and reduce the concentration of fluorides in natural water to an allowable level. We have repeated […]

Profits of Doom on the Border of Blight

THE 1,250-mile stretch of border between Mexico and the US is a lawless area in a way the old Wild West never was. It reeks of lawlessness, literally stinks of it. Institutionalised lawlessness. In the town of Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Texas, the earth and the water supply, from which comes all the […]

Border Town Mystery: Why are so many Brownsville babies being born brainless?

Brownsville, Texas – On a hairpin bend of the Rio Grande, where the south wind from Mexico carries the sweet smell of freshly cut sorghum and the stench of chemicals, something terrible befell Janet Ramirez. The child she had prayed for, her first, was born dead with a tangled mass of nerve endings instead of […]

A ‘Toxic Tour of Texas’

Rita Carlson often referred to herself as just a Texas City housewife, but that was only part of who she was. Before Carlson and her family moved to rural Illinois in April 1990, she also was the first president of Texas POWER, People Organized to Win Environmental Rights, a statewide coalition of grass-roots environmental groups, […]

Mexicans fear DuPont’s Hydrofluoric Acid plant could cause ‘Next Bhopal’

MATAMOROS, Mexico – Here, in a densely populated border city across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Tex., the name of an infamous locale in India is heard with stunning frequency. “We don’t want to be the next Bhopal,” said Erasmo Lucio Garza, referring to the site of the 1984 toxic gas leak at a Union […]

Buffer zones head for the border

Companies with chemical plants just south of the U.S. border are under increasing political and environmental pressure. Recently, the environmental protection agencies of the U.S. and Mexico announced they are seeking public comment on plans to improve the environment along the border. And this week a decision is expected from a Mexican court on whether […]

Waste bypasses federal regulation despite radioactivity

TAMPA – Fertilizer companies scour and blast crusty, radioactive deposits from filtering equipment, then pile the waste on gypsum stacks. Contaminated with radium, it is among the most concentrated radioactive waste that comes from natural materials. Yet the federal government has no rules for its disposal. That’s because the government considers it “naturally occurring radioactive […]

The fight to escape from a black hole

Victoria Griffith visits a Brazilian city that was shut down because of excessive pollution levels Just 35 miles south of Sao Paulo the highway to the Brazilian coast descends from a mountain paradise of trees and waterfalls to what looks like a futuristic nightmare – the city of Cubatao. Metal chimneys belching fire and smoke […]

Mexicans air concerns to Du Pont

WILMINGTON – Seeking facts on a chemical plant they say threatens their neighborhoods, Mexican activists met Thursday with Du Pont Co. officials in Wilmington. Residents of the Mexican border city of Matamoros joined members of a New York activist group, asking Du Pont to spell out the hazards of a 16-year-old factory built and partly […]

Burbank, California Admits to Lax Enforcement of Toxic Waste Rules

Burbank officials admitted Friday that a breakdown in monitoring and enforcement procedures led to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lawsuit which contends that the city allowed toxic wastes to be dumped into sewers. City Manager Bud Ovrom and Public Works Director Ora Lampman said Burbank didn’t crack down hard enough during the mid-1980s on industries […]