Category Archives for "articles"

0 Developed Countries Are Hiding Their CO2 Emissions

It looks like the developed countries have done their job controlling global-warming generation emissions. The results of research show a fall in greenhouse gases polluting in the recent years.

CO2 emissions were at a static level in the US for the last decade. In 2008-9, the greenhouse gas emissions were lowered.  Last year revealed that UK homes are difficult to heat, but their CO2 emissions are 16% lower than in 1991, when they peaked.

Does that mean that they are on their way to meet the conditions they signed in Kyoto? According to a recent report in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Science (PNAS) – no. They looked in the problem of “emissions transfers” and the way they are counted by the new “carbon accountants”.

Recently, these countries have reported only the amount of greenhouse gas emissions within their jurisdiction. This way, accounting carbon-like emissions is made easier, and is the basis of all aims of the Kyoto Protocol.

The problem is elsewhere. There are countries that have fully moved their production in different countries, where labour is cheaper. They claim that they have reduced greenhouse gas emission greatly. The pollution seems to be from another country. This way, they don’t stop the production, but also exploit cheap labour and hide the pollution they’ve caused because of their overproduction, and the blame is pointed to someone else.

The report authors tried to put numbers on the size of the effect, using a new accounting standard – checking who ends up using the products and counting the emissions of the production towards their „environmental bills”. They found out that while the developed world thought its emissions stopped growing and even lowered, they have actually grown a lot. By 2008, the amount of CO2 emissions, which were exported, is much more than what they have committed to Kyoto – 1, 6 Gigatonnes.

This explains why, while lower emissions were reported, the global amount had continued to rise. The Kyoto solution won’t work and will inevitably fail- especially when only half of the world signed it. What we need is a global agreement, one which every country takes part of. Climate change seems inevitable and it seems that no solution presents itself. For now, CO2 emissions keep rising in amount while developed countries wash their hands with their poorer neighbours.

0 Mercury Pollution In The Great Lakes

Mercury is the new threat to the clean up of the Great Lakes. It has been reported by a compilation of 170 researchers’ work just how mercury affects the Great Lakes region – the Canadian state Ontario and eight US states. Problems that stem from ingesting methyl mercury include cardiovascular disease. Fish is the most common source.

For the last 200 years the Lakes have been polluted by burning fossil fuels, incinerating waste, smelting metal, producing chlorine, mining and discharging mercury. The authorities have done all they could over the last 40 years to stop the mercury pollution. Charles Driscoll, University Professor of Environmental Systems Engineering at Syracuse University NY, explained, “We documented a 20% decline in sediment mercury deposition from peak values around 1985. This decline was concurrent with a 48 percent decline in mercury emissions from sources in the Great Lakes region and a 17 percent increase in global emissions.” Recently, atmospheric mercury has continued to flow in fresh water through the methyl mercury path and has contaminated about six fish species and some bird species.

These fish species were also game spp. such as trout, walleye, bass, pike and muskellunge. Loons are also among the birds with increased mercury content. They are also useful for studying the effects of mercury. These studies have established a clear relation between exposure to methyl mercury and reproduction in adult loons. Developing embryos are sensitive to it, especially if they’re in eggs. This way mercury can cause population-level impacts.

Atmospheric pollution should definitely be lowered, there’s no question about it. That way we can address the problem of mercury contamination in fresh water and their impact on the environment. The reasons for the increase of mercury are related to other factors affecting these areas. The northern and north-eastern parts have a high dry deposition of mercury and other watershed features, which can produce methyl mercury. The fish in these parts are more contaminated with mercury.

Even at the moment researchers are doing their best to determine the reasons for mercury ingress and how to stop it.

Is it possible that the clean up of such an imposing body of water and will it then give hope for fixing both fresh water and oceans alike?

0 Cleaning Up The Hudson River

One of the things that are well known when t comes to New York is the Hudson River, which is a long, majestic river – or, we could say it used to. Ever since the 1900s, as cities appeared along its length, and industrialism took over its waters, it has become a toxic garbage dump.

The Hudson River used to be a very important travel route for European settlers back in 17th century. For 200 years humans have been throwing their trash, chemicals and more in there. In the early 1900’s, the river looked as a sea of trash within 15 miles of Manhattan. In the 1960s, the river below the Troy dam looked as a swamp of human waste, filled with fungus, oil, dead animals, and smelling of sulphide.

PCBs (Polychlorinated biphenyls) are in the top pollutants of the river. It was used in some industries until it was banned in 1977. These chemicals are carcinogens and have awful impact on foetal development and neurogical functioning, and have left a long lasting transmittal effect in the food chain because of the fish.

They don’t disappear with the death of the carrier, and their contamination spreads easily. They can also be stored in sediments.

In 2002, however, the EPA forced General Electric to clean up the river from PCBs. For twenty years, they have dumped about 1, 3 million pounds of these chemicals in the Hudson River. The PCBS is expected to be removed completely in 2020.

Another problem chemicals in the river are toxins as mercury, cadmium and strontium-90. As with PCBs, they have a lasting presence in the food chain, and come from either industry, medicinal devises or old batteries, which used to contain mercury and cadmium. Nuclear energy generators produce strontium-90. Other water pollutants range between heavy metals, pesticides, urban runoff, and sewage. CSOs (Combined Sewage Overflows) are a huge problem, since there are 460 CSO outfalls in New York City, which spill countless gallons of sewage in the Hudson River.

In the 1960s appeared many organizations whose effort is to protect the river from pollution, the river’s biodiversity and also cleaning of the river. Such are the Clearwater organisation or the Riverkeeper. More is needed, however. All activities concerning the river must be monitored by the government and citizens, if there should be any change of cleaning the river up and remediating the damage.

0 Chernobyl, 25 Years Later

1986 was marked by the events that happened on 26th April, at 1:23 local time. Reactor number 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant that is 62 miles away from Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, suffered a huge explosion to its core.

It was a catastrophe. 28 of the 134 workers who were severely exposed were terminally ill with the radiation syndrome and had only few months to live. Later, 19 more died of different problems. It was predicted that the victims of increased cancer risks will be about 4,000.

The fire which followed the explosion sent radiation in the atmosphere over most of Europe and the former Soviet Union. People in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia were forced to evacuate and be resettled far away, including the whole town of Pripyat, which was the nearest to Chernobyl.

This town was made for the workers in the power plant to live in and has widened and grown in a big, modern city with a young population of 50,000 people. Average age was 26 and there ware 15 primary schools and 5 secondary ones. There were many streets, malls and even an amusement park with a huge Ferris wheel.

Complete evacuation was the expected result of the explosion and was executed the day after. The people took only what they could carry and Pripyat became a ghost city overnight.

The 19-mile area around the reactor is still restricted, but during the 25 years that have passed the radiation levels have decreased and it’s possible to make conducted tours of Pripyat. Soil is, however, still heavily contaminated. Plants have either adapted or died, since they cannot move away.

Martin Hajduch from the Slovak Academy of Sciences has made several experiments and his co-researchers have reported a surprising tendency in plants to adapt to a radiation-contaminated environment.

The researchers tried to grow flax seeds in the contaminated soil in the region of the reactor. The plants were compared with those grown from the same seeds, however, in non-radioactive soil. They found that radiation didn’t affect the protein level of the plants, with difference between the types about 5%.

Hajduch confessed, that he was surprised when he found out about how quickly the environment has adapted to the radiation. It seems that there is a mechanism of some kind inside the plants. Maybe they have been exposed to it ever since the early times of the Earth’s formation.

Back then, there was a lot more radiation on the surface of the Earth than today, and it was also the period when life started evolving, so plants have probably been able to adapt to radioactivity ever since those times, and now that they have been once again exposed do it, they somehow revived that part of themselves.

0 My Scary Accident

Yesterday was an awesome day. Or at least the weather was awesome, so I decided to go for a ride. I mean, conditions like these could hardly become any better. And you know how bike fanatics are. Even the smallest detail counts. And it was about time, too. During the rainy period all that the action around the bike was the endless hovering, polishing and dusting. So it was time to stretch its legs. However, even in a day like this one, an accident may happen.

After a few hours, I decided that the tires have had enough. I know my spine had enough. So I thought I might take the long way round, the scenic route back home. And just on the last few bends, a dog leaped in front and in my attempt to avoid it, I hi-sided into the nearby park. The landing was pretty soft and I was unharmed and the bike just had a few scratches and a broken handle bar… lucky. The weird thing was the big spot of oil on my left boot. I double check the bike for leaks and it wasn’t from it. There was nothing on the road as well. So given the fact that everything was pretty much fine, I fired the bike again and slowly dragged it to the garage.

The sticky messy boot was really getting on my nerves, so I got some polishes and wipes to give it a wash. I’m no expert when it comes to cleaning, but I did everything proper, but there was no washing off. I tried a few times over again, but nothing happened. Ignoring everything else I felt the urge to clean this thing that was standing in the way of my biking perfection. One extra OCD for me.

After taking it to a shoe cleaner with no effect I got desperate and went to a chem-cleaning specialist. This was promising but it proved to be pointless as well. I went on the internet, looking for some homemade solutions, anything that would help me clean this off. After trying pretty much everything and spending a large amount of cash and energy I felt that I was about to lose it, to crack, to go mad.

At that point I smacked my boots to the ground and started shouting randomly. After I got exhausted I picked the dirty boot with the nasty black spot and yelled ‘GO AWAY’ at it and just decided to burn them. So I went in the back yard, with the idea of making a nice camp fire. After the flame was large enough I tossed my boots inside. Seeing as how they burned to smoke I felt my sanity returning. In the morning I woke up and the grass seemed greener. And my left foot black. What’s that black spot on my foot there?

0 The Janitor Millionaire

There’s always that talk that cleaning is done by the lowest and poorest of people. By some that are willing to go low, if they’re ready to tackle the obstacles that this job has to offer, setting their goals and requirements even lower. Basically, forgetting they have got any principals. It was until those couple of weeks since I arrived at those offices, that I thought the same too. But what I saw there was something that never really happens in the real world… something extraordinary. A man with very unusual concepts. A janitor millionaire.

Here is where I want to leave a few words for Arthur Hopkins, to tell his story. Or at least, what I managed of found out about him. Hopkins is a man who for the past 10 years, managed to hold on to the job of a hygiene technician, just because of who he is. And he is truly a humble man, a funny character and an awesome person. From what the CEO told me, Hopkins was never all that good at what he does and after the evaluation, the best and most reasonable and sensible thing to do was to sack him. But he didn’t do that. Something about the overall expression of this man, forced him to leave him at work here. And seeing as how he was around people I could see why. There’s something about this man that just makes you smile.

I never got the opportunity to have a proper conversation with Arthur, due to my job being what it is, but from what the others in the facility told me, his story is quite colorful. When he was a small boy he lost his parents in a horrible accident, leaving him an orphan. He didn’t have any living relatives or any that he was aware of… well until recently. So he grew up in an orphanage. Being a bad student and constantly taking harassment from the other children. But despite this, he never became a bad man. Even then, the caretakers were saying that he always helped out in the course of their miserable jobs.

And later when he was old enough and had to leave the orphanage and get a job he randomly came here. And so far he’s been here for the past ten years. A couple of weeks ago, a letter addressed to him informed his that a distant aunt of his, left him an estate and some millions in her off-shore accounts as heritage before passing away. Odd blood line isn’t it?

But still, he remains a janitor, washing windows, taking out trash and unclogging toilets. Still smiling and greeting everyone warmly. And he really isn’t affected by the fact that he is rich and a world of opportunity is ahead of him. The only difference is that he has received a dozen marriage proposals in the last few weeks.

0 The Unsuspected “Flatmates” At Home

I am sure that we are good housekeepers and we try to keep our homes clean every day. Probably every lady of the house has a closet full of cleaning compounds, detergents, dusters, brushes or she prefers the natural cleaners like vinegar, baking soda, lemon juice. But where is the dirtiest place in the house and where we have to double our efforts?

Probably the dirtiest place in the house is the toilet. This concept makes sense in view of the activities carried out there. But this is far from the truth. The kitchen is full of milliards of microbes and bacteria, among which the dangerous E. coli. Notwithstanding where is the dirtiest place in our home?

The telephone, the remote control of the television, the computer mouse, these are the things we touch most often during the day. So, logically they are layered with a lot of dust. Unfortunately we often forget about them when we clean the house. My advice is to clean them when we do the regular cleaning of the house. You could use a special cloth for electrical appliances.

It is time to enter the bathroom. You have to pay attention to the toothbrushes, especially if the bath and the toilet are situated in one room. The bacteria on your toothbrush are the same as on the brush of the toilet. The logic is one, the decaying food. The men of science have proved that the bacteria from the toilet can “travel” off a meter in radius, on the way to the next wet and undisturbed place. My advice is to wash very well the toothbrush every time you brush your teeth. Don’t forget to change it regularly, every 2-3 months.

The toilet is undoubtedly a very dirty place, but as we see this statement is highly overestimated. Anyway this place is home of milliards of microbes, which we try to remove, using bags of chemicals. My advice is one, keep on in the same vein!

Which are the dirtiest places in the kitchen? These are the chopping board, the sponge, the taps and the dustbin. The chopping board is a perfect home for microbes as it is a warm and wet place. The best thing you can do is to clean it regularly with vinegar and to put it on an appropriate place to become dry. Regarding the sponge, it would be good to change it regularly. Clean the taps while washing your hands and disinfect the rubbish-bin at least once a week.

It is impossible to destroy all the microbes and bacteria in our homes. This is not necessary because without their existence we wouldn’t have effective immune system. But the good hygiene is the key to good health and we all know that there are plenty of the so-called diseases of the “dirty hands”. Think about this.

0 8 Reasons To Clean Your Home

The season cleaning has to be done. You postpone it or you hope to be done by someone else (unfortunately this does not happen very often).  At one point you inevitably face the need to grab the mop and the duster. The season cleaning gives us a new beginning both literally and figuratively. So, mind the following 8 reasons why we should clean periodically our homes.

1. Clean up your terrace. Get rid of the lumber and you could drink your tea there or just enjoy the pure air. If you are able to spend some money on it, do it! Buy some pots of flowers and turn your porch into a real oasis.

2. Home fitness. Get off the chair. Now get onto the chair. Stretch your body in order to reach the little stain on the cupboard! Hurry up! This sounds like home fitness training program but it is not. This is your inner voice which insists on doing the domestic work that actually turns out to be an effective training for your body.

3. Remove the dust. Clean the furniture thick with dust and you will take a step to healthy life. The dust we breathe at home every day is a cause for discomfort, illnesses and allergies.

4.Cleaning as a therapy. Some experts recommend the cleaning when we feel angry or depressed. Focus on the patch in the bathroom, clean it up using your extra energy and you will see that this will ease the tension. Try it!

5. Clean with pleasure. Make a playlist with energetic songs or just play your favourite music album (I don’t recommend you this one with the ballad songs). Listen to the music while cleaning, you can also dance if you want!  Some people clean and study foreign languages at the same time. While you are cleaning the windows play the self-study audio CD and improve your language skills. You could learn only 10 new words, but this would be an advance.

6. Arrange the wardrobe. This has its advantages. It will make you ready for the next season. You will be prepared for the hot summer or the cold winter, it depends on the season that comes next. Another reason why you should arrange your wardrobe is that it would be easier for you to dress in the morning. You won’t spend too much time searching for the proper tog.

7. The house changes. The time has come to rearrange the furniture or to change the accessories in the interior design of your home. When you do this, your home will look like a new one.

8. The cleaning of your house could help you find things you had lost long time ago. Yes, here is the earring I was searching for after the last party at home. It’s been here all the time – behind the bookshelf. I saved money for a new pair of earrings.

Please, do not be selfish. Make your family members participate in the work. And if you find another positive reason for putting your home in order feel free to share it with us.

0 How To Organize Your Bathroom

The bathroom and the kitchen are the basis of every home. They are repaired and rearranged very rarely so once you decide to arrange them you need to pay special attention to them. The bathroom and kitchen are like an investment because they are used all the time and we cannot do without them. But every good investment requires first of all funding. So, we need to put the needed means into the arrangement of those rooms in order to be able to use them for longer without any problems. You may not cook every day or eat at home but you certainly visit the bathroom every morning and evening to take a shower. Therefore, it is compulsory that you arrange your bathroom in a way that it will give you the necessary relaxation, comfort, pleasure and last but not least resistance. Here are some tips that can help you do this the right way. 

First, your bathroom should be arranged in a way that it will be easy to clean. The materials you use play quite an important role in this. The best choice for bathroom floor is tiles. They are stylish, sanitary and easily cleaned up. Their kind and appearance, of course, depends on your personal taste. The tiles can be one-colour or a combination of several colours. The most appropriate ones for a bathroom are the cold and light tones such as blue, green, purple. But you can also use other colours as long as they are not too dark or bright as they will certainly annoy the eye and hamper your relaxation. The tiles should be placed on the floor and the walls and the ceiling should be coloured with oil paint. This is the best choice if you don’t want the appearance of mould. 

Another important thing is the furniture. Make sure you choose only the most necessary ones because otherwise you risk your bathroom to be crammed. Pick stylish and plain furniture that match the tiles and the walls of the room. The mirror is an important object that every bathroom should have. You will use it every day so choose it according to your personal preferences and needs. Another significant thing is the choice of cupboards and shelves. Define their number and size according to the possessions you are going to keep there. Make sure they will be at hand when you are under the shower. 

If your bathroom is large enough you can place a bathtub there. It is a luxury and comfort for everyone who needs extra relaxation and pleasure. But if you don’t have much space you should arrange your bathroom using the most necessary furniture and objects. You can also find a place for a potted flower which will add a personal touch to the room and make it look exotic and beautiful.

0 Taking Care Of Your Furniture – Vol.2

Oak furniture should be cleaned up by rubbing with a wet leather cloth and then with a woollen or silk cloth until they are polished. Another well-tried method is to rub the oak furniture with cool beer and then polish it with a woollen or silk cloth. In this way you can also remove grease stains. 

Stains from water or some other liquid on oak furniture are cleaned with a mixture of oil and salt; it should remain on the stain for one or two hours; after its removal the stained spot should be rubbed with a wet towel and then polished with a dry cloth and finally with wax. Another way to clean liquid stains is cigarette ash. Mix it with some oil and then polish the surface with a dry woollen cloth. 

Polished furniture can be cleaned by rubbing with a soft cloth soaked in milk. After that, wipe them with a velvet or soft woollen cloth. Another way is to use Chinese tea. Strain the tea well and wrap it in a soft towel and rub the polished furniture with it. After that, wipe it with a clean dry towel. 

Cracks on wooden furniture can be concealed with wax. You should first hold it in your hands until it becomes softer and then put it inside the cracks. The unnecessary wax should be removed with the help of a wooden spoon or a knife. After that, the surface should be rubbed with a woollen cloth until it starts shining. If the furniture is black or brown you should add some paint while rubbing. 

If the drawers are difficult to close and open you need to rub them with talc or soap. 

In order to protect the upholstery of your furniture from dust and dirt you might need to put loose covers. But still you need to periodically clean the upholstery. You can do that with a mixture of turpentine and naphthalene. If there are grease stains on the upholstery they can be removed with a mixture of magnesium powder and benzene. Leave the mixture on the stain until it dries and then use a brush to remove it. If there are any traces from the stain repeat the procedure. 

Leather furniture can be cleaned up by rubbing with a woollen cloth soaked in benzene. After that, use a cloth soaked in beaten up white of an egg.