Are mercury fillings safe? Mercury-based fillings have been used by dentists to repair teeth for well over a century. But in recent decades, their use has become controversial due to concerns about exposure to potentially toxic mercury.
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Tires are a necessity, but disposing of them is a headache. There are all kinds of surprising uses for weeds, and latest in green technology is using the common (annoying) dandelion to make biodegradable automobile tires. Using the ordinary weeds growing all around us to create substitutes for polluting products is a dream resurrected.
Right now, most of the world’s rubber comes from tropical rubber trees, which are sliced in the trunk to allow the white latex to drip into a can (the same way syrup is tapped from Maple trees).
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Major cause of global warming – Infrared cameras have revealed major methane leaks in gas wells in eastern Texas. In the October 15th editions of the New York Times, Andrew C. Revkin and Clifford Krauss quote environmentalist Terry Gosney, who took the infrared photos, as saying, “Holy smoke, it’s blowing like mad. It does look nasty.” The same thing is going on with gas wells all over the world. Methane may cause as much as one-third of the human contribution to global warming. However, unlike carbon dioxide, which can remain in the atmosphere for 100 years, methane stays in the air for about 10 years, so capping these wells is a short-term solution, while we invest in longer-term fixes.
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Viruses are nasty, yet surprisingly simple organisms. What makes flu so potentially dangerous is that it’s not very good at making copies of itself, which leads to mutations, or slight changes in its genetic code. Though most mutations don’t amount to anything, some can lead to new versions of the flu that could spread more easily or make people sicker once infected. These mutated strains can also make your Swine Flu shot less effective. And one county in Iowa contends that many more people are dying from Swine Flu than has been reported. This finding is based on autopsies of Iowans who died but were never diagnosed as having H1N1.
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