Tel Aviv is Israel’s largest city, and at times has been so saturated by car exhaust air pollution environmentalists have sometimes said that people run a serious risk of brain damage if they ride their bicycles there during heavy air pollution days. While perhaps not as polluted as other regional cities such as Teheran, Iran  and during “black cloud” days in Cairo Egypt, Tel Aviv certainly does has its share of air pollution.

A pollution of a different kind occurred on Thursday, May 3, when local residents began to complain of a sharp, burning odor that irritated their eyes and lungs. Some called in saying they were afraid to light their cigarettes for fear of blowing up. 

The heavy gas smell was experienced by people all the way to the suburban city of Herzliya, ten kilometers north of Tel Aviv. The incident was reported on local news sites,and on TV stations later in the day. Ehud Zvi of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel said that the source of the gas pollution is still being investigated and that such incidents are “not necessarily bad for public health, including those with respiratory problems.”

Gilad Erdan, the Israeli government’s Environmental Protection Minister, was quoted as saying that  the source of the foul smell has not been found, but that if attributed to a local industry, criminal charges could possibly be filed.

It’s like the mystery Red River in Lebanon a couple of months ago.

Emergency vehicles were sent to locations where the smell was exceptionally severe in case people might be overcome by it. Israel’s Channel 2 news reporters mentioned that suspected causes for the smell included pesticides that had been sprayed in areas just north of the city.

Such incidents are not common in the “Non-stop City”, although daily air pollution from cars, trucks and buses has resulted in  the municipality considering putting a ban on polluting vehicles like trucks from entering the city during morning rush hours.

In any case, air pollution in Tel Aviv is still not as serious as other regional cities; especially in Cairo and Teheran.

::Globes

Read more about air pollution issues in Tel Aviv and other regional cities:
Free Radicals Attack Your Brain on Bikes in Polluted Cities
Iranian Artists Fight Smog With the Teheran Monoxide Project
While You Eat Rice And Breathe Pure Air It’s Black Cloud Season Again in Cairo
Tel Aviv Will Ban Trucks From Tel Aviv During Morning Rush Hours

Image of Cairo smog via Masterplaan

Landfills and garbage dumps in Lebanon have had their share of environmental issues. This reality is an ongoing problem for environmentalists there, and involves giant, smelly garbage mounds in cities like Sidon, as well as garbage trucks dumping their loads straight into the sea.

Giant landfills often contain all kinds of waste items, including discarded appliances, construction materials, and especially old tires form both both cars, trucks, and buses.

Recently a huge “trash mountain” outside the capital Beirut was the scene of a massive tire burning —  hundreds or even thousands of discarded tires catching fire, resulting in pillars of black smoke rising into the sky. The tire fire brought on health fears for people suffering from respiratory related diseases.

Lebanon’s GreenPeace organization investigated the fire, which occurred at the Bourj Hammoud-Karantina dump. They came to the conclusion that the fire was set intentionally by people wanting to extract iron and other metals used in tires.

With regards to the Karantina tire fire, the very thought that such environmental damage was caused by people who wanted to make a profit on the extracted metal afterwards is enough to make one wonder what might happen next.

The Karantina tire burning incident follows closely on the heels of an even larger regional tire fire late April at a tire dump near Al Jahrah in Kuwait, and involved an estimated five million tires. This Kuwait tire burning incident was so large the NASA satellites could see the smoke rising from it from hundreds of miles up in space.

The obvious environmental impacts of such fires are reminiscent of the 1991 Gulf War when hundreds of burning oil wells set on fire in Kuwait by retreating Iraqi military forces created an environmental catastrophe that still affects the area to this day.

Unsupervised dumps and landfills in Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries are a problem that is not going to be solved any time soon.

Photo via Nararnet News Desk

Read more on Mid East regional dumps and land fill issues:
Tire Fire in Kuwait Seen From Space
Lebanon’s Wasted Opportunity in Landfill Management
Garbage Trucks Dump Straight into the Sea in Lebanon as Hizbollah Takes Hold
Lebanon’s Sidon Garbage Dump More Serious Than Just the Smell

To mark the 26th anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant accident, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych presided at a ceremony at the site of the ruined nuclear plant in which a new construction project is being launched. The country will  build a new protective cover over the plant that when completed will enable the safe dismantling of the destroyed reactors which still contain “hot spots” of radiation contamination.

The new cover will be 108 meters high, 250 meters aide and 150 long. It will involve the use of 20,000 tons of steel and will be a great improvement over the temporary cover that was constructed following the accident.

According to World Nuclear News President Yanukovych hailed the project as: ”A historic event in the transformation of the Object Shelter into an ecologically safe system: the construction of the arch of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. This project’s successful implementation will ensure that the surrounding area becomes environmentally safe and that there are no radiation leaks into the atmosphere.”

Up to last year’s meltdown of three Japanese Fukushima nuclear reactors in the aftermath of a 9.1 magnitude earth quake and resulting tsunami, the Chernobyl reactor meltdown had been considered as the world’s worst nuclear accident. Anti-nuclear power advocates, such as Australia’s Dr. Helen Caldicott are still saying that the Fukushima accident was worse than Chernobyl.

What is worrisome regarding the Chernobyl plant is that its status as a symbol of what can  happen if a nuclear plant reactor does melt down may become less relevant if the Chernobyl plant is dismantled or even rehabilitated, as may also be the case.

Although some Ukranians have returned to the area where radiation levels are low,other areas, especially the immediate vicinity of the plant itself may never again be suitable for human habitation.

This should be a good warning to countries here in the Middle East like Jordan who want to use nuclear energy to produce electricity. Jordan appears to want to use nuclear energy to “jump forward for energy development” by using atomic energy. Saudi Arabia too.

In the cases of both Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear energy is not that safe. Even if only desired for peaceful purposes and not the make weapons, nuclear energy is a very dangerous direction. Chernobyl may finally be rendered safe by the installation of the new canopy, the damage has already been done and will continue to be felt for many years to come.

Photo:  World Nuclear News Organization

More on Chernobyl and other nuclear plant disasters:

Jordan Jumps Forward on Energy Development
Dr. Helen Caldicott: Fukushima Nuclear Blast Much Worse Than Chernobyl
Worst Case Scenario Realized as Three Fukushima Reactors Melt Down
Will Nuclear Radiation Vaccine Transform Hazzards of Nuclear into Energy Innovation?

Lawyer Amit Bracha, director of Israel’s Union for Environmental Defense,  was a recent guest on Israel’s Channel 10 morning TV show, speaking on the official opening of beach season for 2012. Bracha told the program moderators that despite greater efforts being made to clean up the beachfronts many beaches are still very dirty, with the main responsibility for this situation falling on  the Israeli public.  This statement by Bracha come despite continuing efforts to clean up the country’s beaches with various clean-up projects that been ongoing since at least the summer of 2008.

A sample of left over trash on the Netanya beach

No truer words can be said due to the sad fact that the Mediterranean Sea, of which Israel shares a more than 220 kilometer western shoreline, is a very dirty body of water which also may contain large amounts of plastic debris and even its own “plastic garbage patch”. It appears now that Israel’s clean technology advances have not been applied enough torwards helping to clean up its part of the Mediterranean. This is especially true in regards to helping reduce the country’s regional carbon footprint  that could become even “heavier” due to drilling of undersea natural gas and increased reliance on desalination to produce adequate fresh water supplies.

Just taking a stroll along many beach areas indicate that one of the worst pollution problems is the public leaving their waste items there after a morning or afternoon beach session. While some public beaches try to clean up after people by hiring workers to pick up trash left there, other beach areas outside the “policed” areas are literally covered with food wastes, glass and plastic bottles, and large amounts of discarded plastic bags; much of which are afterwards washed out to sea during high tide.

Local marine ecologists, such as Dr.  Ruth Yahel with Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority, are warning that unless more efforts are made to clean up the Med, the pollution situation will be  out of control as far as being able to change it for the better. She told me recently: “Either we can improve the Med’s overall condition, or we will wind up losing control of the sea’s environment, which will have a major impact on us, from both a health as well as economic standpoint.”

Read more on Israel beach and Mediterranean pollution issues:
Israel Marine Ecologist Says Mediterranean Needs More Environmental Protection
Is the Mediterranean Harboring a Giant Plastic Garbage Patch?
Israel Can do More Than Cleantech to Reduce Regional Carbon Footprint
Israel Cleans up its Act And Recycles Its Beach Waste

Top image by Zalul; lower image by Maurice Picow.

Another Earth Day is upon us, and for those of us living the Middle East the very origins of this ecological event have much to do a lot with fossil fuel based energy so prevalent in this region. Aside from the frequently discussed issues surrounding the affects of oil and other fossil fuels on the world’ environment, much has been written and talked about the effects of plastic products on the world’s seas and oceans like “islands” of floating plastic material.

While of environmental effects of plastics in the oceans has become more than obvious, more attention needs to be given to common day-to-day plastic containers and other items, including so-called one time use or “throwaway” plastic dishes and silverware.

David de Rothschild’s Plastiki  Catamaran was made with recycled plastic drink bottles

Uses for recycled plastic items have been written a lot by Green Prophet, and range anywhere from upscale fashion clothing items  to even bridges for cars made out of certain types of recycled plastics.

Aside from the usually mentioned plastic beverage bottles, of which environmentalist David De Rothschild had made into a catamaran sailing craft, most modern households purchase numerous items packaged or enclosed in plastic bottles or containers.

To emphasize this, I took a photograph of some items that came out of my own home (above); these are containers that many people usually throw away afterwards. Some of these common plastic items include yogurt containers, tomato paste and sauce packages, containers for salads and other food items, and even packages for spices and fresh vegetables. A great many such items are thrown into the garbage can daily wind up in a land fill along with other non-organic trash. To say that these items can stay in the ground for hundreds of years is just putting it lightly, as the polymer and Bisphenol A or BPA plastic material that can cause a number of health problems, including gene alterations that can lead to breast and prostate cancers.

Of my plastic packaging samples, the newly shaped yogurt containers are really quite cute and can be “recycled” in one’s home for a variety of uses; including fruit cups and drinking glasses, or used to hold ice cream. The food containers can be used over an over as well and therefore serve other purposes in the home. But if you insist in throwing these items out, at least separate them and dispose them in an outside plastic material recycling container; if one is readily available.

In my area, people bought a lot of disposable plastic dishes and tableware for use during the recent Passover holiday; of which a great deal of it has probably already wound up  being  thrown into landfills. Much of these disposable plastic items could have been separated and disposed of in plastic material recycle bins, just like plastic food packaging items.

At least in this way, one of the true meanings of going green in your home can be at least partially observed.

More articles about recycling plastic products:

The Origin of Earth Day and the Greening of the Arab Spring
Throwaway Passover Dishes to Fill Landfills
D Grade’s Hipster Trash Clothing is Made Cheap in China
Will Bridges of Recycled Plastic Work in the Middle East?
David De Rothschild Bravely Sails Away to Pacific’s Plastic Island

Is this bad news for all those folk in America and probably us in the Middle East who eat factory farm raised chickens: When we wrote previous articles about factory farm raised chickens, such as those used by fast food chains like Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), we spoke of the possibility that a form of arsenic was being fed to the poultry to rid them of various parasites. Now that’s a recognized fact in America.

Crispy good and maybe arsenic laced as well

This possibility may now be a reality as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)  appears to be admitting that arsenic and other “medications” are being fed to factory farm raised poultry. This comes after previous tests were made on poultry by Johns Hopkins University and Arizona State University which recorded levels of arsenic, the antihistamine benadryl, as well as illegal antibiotics.

The arsenic is said to be used to make the flesh of the chickens more pink and also rid the chickens of various parasites. The FDA appears to have admitted that the arsenic was added to chicken feed on purpose; but that the arsenic is of such low levels that the chickens are safe to eat.

The arsenic is added to a chicken feed called Roxarsone, which the US Environmental Protection Agency determined resulted in (PDF) levels of arsenic being found in chicken manure. The company actually making the Roxarsone is said to be Alpharma LLC.

An article from the New York Times reports that Johns Hopkins scientist Keeve Nachman said: “we were kind of floored, it’s unbelievable what we found,” in regards to finding not only the arsenic compound, but other chemicals as well. He added:

“We haven’t found anything that is an immediate health concern, but it makes me question how comfortable we are feeding a number of these things to animals that we’re eating. It bewilders me.”

As was noted in an earlier Green Prophet article, Roxosone was supposedly taken off the market in the USA back in 2006.  Factory poultry farms also contribute greatly to the earth’s carbon footprint, which can be calculated in the Earth Day website’s Ecological Footprint Quiz.

Large poultry farms are also found in many parts of the Middle East and this is especially true in Israel where I live. About the same time that use of arsenic in chickens had been reported in the USA , an article in the Israel newspaper Haaretz said that the Israeli agricultural ministry admitted that arsenic tainted chickens had been allowed to be sold to the public. Where environmental laws lag behind in the Middle East these kinds of stories will be coming out more in the future.

At that time, it was reported that the Agriculture Ministry in Israel had allowed the used of “growth stimulants” containing arsenic in poultry. The Haaretz article added that Israel has 700 large poultry farms, producing more than half a million tons of poultry per year.

The USA is the biggest world  producer of poultry, followed by China and Brazil. Notable Middle East area poultry producers, besides Israel, include Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. Until someone checks your chicken, be suspicious of what’s in it.

Read more about arsenic and other issues involving poultry raising:
Are you Eating Arsenic With Your Chicken?
Are Sick Chicks Poisoning Israel’s Ground Water?
Oprah, What are you Thinking With Your Free KFC Giveaway?

Image of factory chickens from Shutterstock