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Overpopulation in America part 14 - Radioactive Oceans

Fukushima in overflow: radioactive effluent circulating into all oceans
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”
- Chief Seattle

Many months after Fukushima’s nuclear power plants exploded and started leaking millions or possibly billions of gallons of radioactive toxic waste into the Pacific Ocean, the contaminated liquid circulates in all of the oceans of the world.

Fact: that radioactive waste enters into every living creature in the Earth’s oceans and contaminates their flesh. If you eat salmon, tuna, shrimp and other marine creatures , you cannot help but absorb, to some degree, the radioactive contamination of Fukushima.

That single catastrophe may spell even greater disasters for humans and all living creatures in the world's oceans for decades to come. As one writer said, “We’re all standing on the beach for this one.”

“Radiation readings around tanks holding contaminated water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have spiked by more than a fifth to their highest levels, Japan's nuclear regulator said, heightening concerns about the clean-up of the worst atomic disaster in almost three decades,” according to Alan Sheldrik, Tokyo, Japan.

The NRA later raised the severity of the initial leak from a level 1 "anomaly" to a level 3 "serious incident" on an international scale of 1-7 for radiation releases.

"There's a strong possibility these tanks also leaked, or had leaked previously," said Hiroaki Koide, Assistant Professor at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute. "We have to worry about the impact on nearby groundwater...These tanks are not sturdy and have been a problem since they were constructed two years ago."

What bothers me as a food eating, water drinking and air breathing human being on this planet stems from the reality that we humans continue our mass contamination of our planet at breakneck speed. If you look at the swirling radioactive plumes fanning out of Japan on every ocean current—you see that Fukushima’s radioactive waters spread to every nook and cranny of every ocean in the world.

Numerous reports tell us not to eat any more fish from the oceans.

“Radiation levels around Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant are 18 times higher than previously thought, Japanese authorities have warned,” reported the BBC September 1, 2013.

As to Fukushima, when the entire story comes to light and countless thousands and even millions of humans suffer from radiation poisoning, cancers and heaven knows what else—we must ask ourselves how much further we humans will allow our planet to degrade its essential resources.

Every single day of the year, we burn 84 million barrels of oil that ultimately exhausts into our oceans—to acidify them—which makes them more and more uninhabitable for all living marine creatures and planetary life.

We spray billions of tons of pesticides and insecticides onto our plants and crops 24/7 here in the USA and abroad. Ironically, we outlawed DDT in the USA, but Chevron Company still makes it and sells it to people around the world. I know because I smelled it in my bicycle travels in Asia and South America. We know it kills all life and destroys ecological systems, but, for the love of money, we keep selling lethal DDT abroad. Unfortunately, like the Fukushima disaster, the 80,000 chemical poisons that we create also spread around the world 24/7.

Consequently, cancers affect 1 in 3 people here in the United States and cancers grow worldwide as we continue our quest to soak the planet with chemicals. Cancer escalates as the number one cause of death in the world. The more we continue our plundering and polluting of this miraculous globe, the more we shall face the wrath of Mother Nature in various forms such as the increasingly frequent, killer tornadoes that destroy anyone and anything in their paths. All because our massive carbon footprint unbalances our weather patterns, causing the loss of rain forests and the positive weather systems they generate.

We lose over 100 species every single day of the year because of human encroachment. (Source: Norman Myers, Oxford University), and acidified oceans continue their death spiral with radioactive wastes from Fukushima. Not known by most Americans, we dumped billions of pounds of mustard gas and Lewisite gas into the oceans after WWII. We dumped over 500 barrels of radioactive waste 20 miles off San Francisco, CA in the 50s. Today, many of those drums have rusted open and spewed their contents into the Pacific waters. And we continue to draw down aquifers and contaminate ground water here in the USA with massive pig farms, cattle farms and industrial waste. For example: the toxic and polluted Mississippi River blooms into a 10,000 square mile dead zone at its mouth because of the many chemicals that flow into it from farm and industrial run-off.

If you could see what I have seen of raw sewage-chemicals injected into the Yangtze River in China, Ganges River in India, Hudson and Potomac Rivers in the USA, and many other rivers in South America—it would shock and scare you. We humans have created upwards of 27,000 square mile dead zones at the mouths of these major rivers because of the enormous amount of chemicals we inject into them before they reach the oceans.

The radioactive waste from Fukushima will find its way to all the oceans of the world and will take centuries to neutralize, if ever. At some point, we human beings, whether Americans or planetary citizens from other countries, must take stock of what we are doing to the planet and to ourselves.

“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” — Chief Seattle

If we keep going in the same direction we tread today, the 21st century will prove a bumpy ride for all of humanity along with all the other creatures in our path.