Phyllis A. Balch, CNC
See book keywords and concepts |
 Sulfur Dioxide (SO2)
Sulfur dioxide is a pungent, toxic gas produced by the burning of coal, usually in power plants. More than 65 percent, or 13 million tons a year, comes from our electric utilities. This takes into account the large number of domestic power plants that have installed scrubbers. Worldwide, the problem is almost out of control. Coal-fired power plants in China and other areas of Asia are not even equipped with rudimentary stack scrubbers. |
Mehmet C. Oz., M.D. and Michael F. Roizen, M.D.
See book keywords and concepts |
 Think of them as the power plants of our bodily city. Just like an old factory (see Figure B.l), aging mitochondria spill more industrial waste into the environment. The damage this inflammation causes to your cells and to the mitochondria within your cells is responsible for many aging-related problems. This oxidation, for example, is what causes a "rusting" of your arteries, which is some of what ages your cardiovascular system. So let's take a closer look at how mitochondria work. |
Donna Jackson Nakazawa
See book keywords and concepts |
 Dry particles of mercury travel effortlessly in effluent clouds across the American landscape—migrating from coal-burning power plants in the Midwest to points often thousands of miles away, where they literally rain out of the sky in what environmentalists commonly refer to as "mercury polluted rainstorms." Once mercury particles shower to earth, they lace every acre, from forest floors to neighborhood parks to rippling ocean waves. |
| To measure how much mercury exists in our day-to-day environment, researchers tested mercury levels in fish, birds, and mammals across remote areas of New England and found that even animals far from industrialized cities carry disturbingly high amounts of mercury in their bodies, mercury that could be specifically traced back to power plants thousands of miles away in the Midwest. |
Andreas Moritz
See book keywords and concepts |
 Mercury gets into water primarily through solid-waste incinerators, mines and power plants. Algae typically absorb the mercury and tiny zooplankton animals eat the algae. In turn, small fish eat the zooplankton, and from there the mercury moves up through the aquatic food chain, with the large, deep-ocean fish at the top of the chain carrying the highest mercury concentration. Even waterways that are far away from any ocean, such as the Elkhorn River in Nebraska or the Colorado River in the Western part of the United States, are known to have mercury-contaminated fish. |
Bill Sardi
See book keywords and concepts |
 The mitochondria are the steam engines or atomic power plants of living cells, where cell energy is produced in the form of adenotriphosphate, or ATP.
The production of ATP is repressed in human cancer cells (carcinomas). [Cancer Research 62: 6674-81, 2002]
Think of how much cell energy is needed for all the cellular functions of the body. Just the energy needed to replace old cells with new ones (about 2 trillion cell divisions in an adult human every 24 hours or about 25 million a second) requires lots of ATP. |
| A recent international summit on breast cancer and the environment outlined the need for more research to be conducted into the effects of exposure in the vicinity of nuclear power plants or chemical landfill sites and, more generally, into contaminants in food, air, water and soil." [Hormone Research 60 Suppl 3:50, 2003] But none of this makes any sense. As explained earlier in this chapter, the predominant factor in breast cancer is age, not exposure to carcinogens. |
Bottom Line Health
See book keywords and concepts |
| Some investigators have attributed the increase to environmental radiation from sources such as nuclear power plants. However, the report suggests that the real reason for the higher rates may be "increased detection of subclinical disease."
"New tests are available to detect abnormalities that we never saw in the past," says the coauthor of the national report, Dr. Louise Davies, an assistant professor of surgery at Dartmouth Medical School.
Ultrasound scans and needle biopsies can detect nodules as small as 2 millimeters (mm), one-quarter of the size of a pencil eraser. |
Ron Garner
See book keywords and concepts |
 Coal-burning power plants release a large amount of mercury into the environment.2 Mercury poisoning is a global problem, because winds carry it around the world, even to the Arctic. Once in the air, it is inhaled, and starts accumulating in the food chain. A World Health Organization report from 1997 stated that mercury accumulates at the top of the aquatic and marine food chains, and that fish are the major source of dietary exposure. Many species of fish, especially tuna, swordfish, shark, and bottom-feeders, as well as shellfish, are now considered unsafe to eat. |
Mehmet C. Oz., M.D. and Michael F. Roizen, M.D.
See book keywords and concepts |
| Your brain's nerve cells, or neurons, are constantly firing and receiving messages in much the same way that power plants send signals and homes and businesses receive them. Power may originate from a main source, but the connections then branch out every which way throughout the city. Your brain functions the same way: Messages are sent from one neuron to another across your neurological grid. When those neurons successfully communicate with one another through the sending and receiving of neurological impulses, your brain can file away your memories. |
Devra Davis
See book keywords and concepts |
 The Atomic Energy Commission had recently declassified a report about a remarkable aerosol filter that removed radioactive particles from the air in nuclear power plants. This extraordinary material was crocidolite—a bluish kind of asbestos. The company making Kent cigarettes, P.J. Lorillard, decided to use this new material in its brand-new cigarettes in 1952. Nearly 12 billion cigarettesabout 585 million packs of these asbestos-filtered cigarettes—were sold in the United States until 1956. Ads assured smokers that these filters provided health protection. |
| It is one of the best-studied workplace hazards in the world, partly because it was so widely employed as an insulator in buildings, ships, power plants and factories. But unfortunately asbestos is much tougher and resilient than the bodies of those who mine, use, transport or carry it away. It degrades into invisible, floating particles that can slip into the exquisitely fragile sacs of the lung, where they are walled off, leaving permanent scars. Chronic exposure leaves a person with less and less working lung tissue; eventually she suffocates. |
Dr. Sharon Moalem
See book keywords and concepts |
 Almost every human cell contains microscopic workhorses called mitochondria that function as dedicated power plants, producing the energy to run cells. Most scientists now believe that mitochondria were once independent, parasitic bacteria that evolved a mutually beneficial relationship with some of our pre-mammal evolutionary predecessors. Not only do these likely former bacteria live in almost all your cells, they even have their own inheritable DNA, called mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA.
Former bacteria aren't the only microbes we've married. |
Mark Lynas
See book keywords and concepts |
 And we need to make a difficult choice between injecting billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide underground and investing in 1,400 new gas power plants to produce electricity.
All this, and we can hope to stabilise emissions in 2055 at today's levels, breaking the continual upward growth of a 'business as usual' path. But this still leaves us with a problem. As I mentioned earlier, simply stabilising emissions at today's levels in fifty years isn't nearly enough to keep us within the two degrees safety target. We need to cut emissions, and to do so within a decade. |
Paul D. Blanc, M.D.
See book keywords and concepts |
 Were this not enough, large coal-burning power plants along the River Thames within the heart of London were also just coming on line.
In December 2002, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine hosted a scientific conference to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Killer Fog. During a question and answer period, a young researcher recounted a story that his father had told him only a few days before, on learning of the meeting and his son's participation in it. |
Phyllis A. Balch, CNC
See book keywords and concepts |
| This takes into account the large number of domestic power plants that have installed scrubbers. Worldwide, the problem is almost out of control. Coal-fired power plants in China and other areas of Asia are not even equipped with rudimentary stack scrubbers. A few other industrial processes, including some paper mills and smelters, also produce SO2 (from the odor, people generally know where they are). Like the oxides of nitrogen, sulfur dioxide is a major contributor to acid rain and smog. |
Mehmet C. Oz., M.D. and Michael F. Roizen, M.D.
See book keywords and concepts |
| Now think about your bodily city and picture these mitochondria as your body's nuclear power plants. They give off a lot of energy but also have the potential to cause a lot of damage. As you'll see many times throughout the book, most things that are powerful enough to help you are also powerful enough to hurt you.
If something bombs your power plant, it's not just the physical plant that suffers damage; a whole lot of collateral damage takes place as well. In the case of
Figure fcl Biological Backbone Mitochondria provide the power to our metaphorical city. |
Paul D. Blanc, M.D.
See book keywords and concepts |
| Acid rain falling in New England but originating from midwestern power plants is a potent refutation of this proposition. Acid rain also underscores the truism that risks do not evaporate outside the factory door. There is no absolute boundary point between "occupational" and "environmental" risks. Hazardous materials certainly do not recognize a separation between the workplace and the wider environment. Each such product passes though its own life cycle, from invention through technological refinement, then on to mass production, until it reaches obsolescence. |
Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
See book keywords and concepts |
 These tiny power plants generate more than 90 percent of the energy used by the body to support life, and they take up approximately 35 percent of the entire space inside the heart cell, or myocyte. Inside the mitochondria, carbon fragments such as fatty acids (fats) and pyruvate are oxidized by oxygen that's delivered by the blood, and taken up by the cell to drive the metabolic reactions associated with converting ADP to ATP in the process of energy turnover.
The process of oxidizing these carbon fuels releases electrons. |
Lynne McTaggart
See book keywords and concepts |
 Scalar Field waves possess astonishing power: a single unit of energy produced by a laser in such a state would represent a larger output than all the world's power plants combined.26
Certain technologies, such as quantum optics, have made use of laser pulses to squeeze the Zero Point Field to such a degree that it creates negative energy.27 It is well accepted in physics that this negative energy, or exotic matter, is able to bend space-time. |
Brenda Watson and Leonard Smith
See book keywords and concepts |
 Nowadays we are more likely to drive cars that don't require diesel gas, but diesel-burning engines are still around us filling the air we breathe, from trucks and buses to roadside machinery and equipment that run on diesel gas (not to mention nearby factories and power plants). "Clean air" initiatives hope to reduce the number of diesel-burning engines on the road in the future, but we may still feel their effects for years to come?after they have been taken off the road. Because diesel particulates are so small, they can easily penetrate deep into the lungs once inhaled. |
| Air pollution comes from many different sources, such as factories, power plants, dry cleaners, cars, buses, trucks, and even windblown dust and wildfires. It can threaten the health of human beings, trees, lakes, crops, and animals, as well as damage the ozone layer and buildings. It also can cause haze, reducing visibility in national parks and wilderness areas. |
David Steinman
See book keywords and concepts |
 The EU scheme caps C02 emissions from about twelve thousand factories and power plants, and allows firms to trade credits. This is big business in Europe. According to BusinessWeek, "The system is helping foster green investments in countries that are home to some of the world's biggest polluters."25 For example, JGC Corp. and Marubeni Corp. teamed with a chemical maker in China's Zhejiang Province to recover gases released in making refrigerants. The estimated carbon savings was 40 million tons of C02. |
| Install them in a million homes nationwide, and you could reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 640,000 tons a year. Eventually, MicroPlanet hopes its device will become the standard for all U.S. households. Visit www.microplanet.com.
How many chargers are plugged in your wall socket or under your desk or table to the power surge protector strip? I counted seven or eight under my desk alone. We live and travel by the charger and converter. |
| Put another way, these sleeping gadgets keep the equivalent of seventeen 500-megawatt power plants running year-round, just to keep your light-emitting diodes glowing," he told the magazine.
Meier, however, has come up with several innovations that should help to reduce electricity consumption by replacing the more wasteful adapters with the more efficient switching power supplies, and redesigning the software in electronics devices such as printers to automatically turn off everything but the most essential components. |
David Winston, RH(AHG), and Steven Maimes
See book keywords and concepts |
 There are many sources of ionizing radiation, including the sun, X-rays, radiotherapy, and leaks at nuclear power plants. Radioprotective properties of adaptogens include the ability to protect the DNA of the body from the dangerous, mutating power of various forms of radiation. Free radical scavenging and antioxidant activity is the likely mechanism involved in this radioprotective effect.
By causing oxidative damage in the DNA, free radicals can produce mutations that, over time, can lead to cancer. |
David Steinman
See book keywords and concepts |
| The company's coal-burning power plants at Four Corners Generating Station at Fruitland, New Mexico, and its Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nevada, contribute to global warming. Indeed, coal is one of the major contributors to greenhouse gases. (Interestingly, although nuclear power presents environmental problems due to toxic waste? |
James Howard Kunstler
See book keywords and concepts |
 Even our nuclear power plants ultimately depend on cheap oil and gas for all the procedures of construction, maintenance, and extracting and processing nuclear fuels. The blandishments of cheap oil and gas were so seductive, and induced such transports of mesmerizing contentment, that we ceased paying attention to the essential nature of these miraculous gifts from the earth: that they exist in finite, nonrenewable supplies, unevenly distributed around the world. |
Phyllis A. Balch, CNC
See book keywords and concepts |
| The burning of fossil fuels, either gasoline in automobiles or coal and oil in power plants, predominantly produces these oxides of nitrogen. As energy demands increase we can expect NOx emissions to increase, and consequently more ozone and smog will be created.
Particulate Matter
The term particulate matter refers to any type of solid material in the air in the form of dust, smoke, or vapor, which can remain suspended for a long time. Breathing in these microscopic particles is one of the major causes of lung damage and respiratory disease. |
Alex Steffen
See book keywords and concepts |
 A variety of organizations offer the credits, which use our donations to support renewable energy projects such as green power plants or clean waste disposal, as a means of contributing something positive to balance out the carbon emissions generated during our flight.
One organization is finding a way to use airlines as an opportunity to effect positive change. Airline Ambassadors International, which was started by airline industry employees, organizes trips to hand-deliver food, clothing, and medical supplies to people in need. |
Email this page to a friend
