WA residents file massive US lawsuit against Alcoa

As per the email alert I sent out the night before last, this is big news:

"RESIDENTS living near Alcoa's Wagerup alumina refinery have filed a massive US lawsuit - led by health crusader Erin Brockovich."

See the story on TribLive, Perthnow, theWest,

The Australian law firm involved are Shine Lawyers here.

Update 13-06-09:

Alcoa deceived locals from the start, US writ alleges:

"Lawyer William Caroselli said Alcoa had put its bottom line and making money ahead of the safety of the environment and the public's health.

``As a result of their (Alcoa's) negligence and recklessness there are a lot of sick people who, through no fault of their own, are fated to lives full of illness, pain, and suffering. We intend to hold Alcoa accountable,'' Mr Caroselli told The Sunday Times".

Full story on Perthnow and in the Sunday Times.

Perfluorochemicals in Biosolids

Are perfluorochemicals widespread in biosolids?

"“We are finding that, for perfluorochemicals, they are showing up where we didn’t expect them to be. The levels vary, but these seem to be universal chemicals that are showing up everywhere,” Hora adds.

EPA recently completed a survey of organic contaminants in sludge but did not measure perfluorochemicals. “When the study started, we didn’t have a method,” says Rudzinki. “We won’t be able to analyze those samples now because they are stored in Teflon containers,” she adds."

An interesting and credible journal article on the major data gaps that exist in relation to waste sludges (biosolids) and waste waste water treatment.

See the full story here.

Thanks to NTN

Who said a leopard can't change its spots

Well, after publishing this blog post about the Kwinana Child Health Study, this blog post about Kwinana air monitoring cuts, this blog post asking whether our Premier is a hypocrite , various media releases and articles, heated discussions at community-industry forums and becoming more and more depressed over the state of air monitoring in Kwinana and the effort we seemed to have had put into this issue over recent years...

I was today blown away, when the DEC told us they will monitor for Volotile Organic Compounds (VOC's) and Ammonia (NH3) as well as Particulates during the upcoming air toxics study air quality study and to top it off, we will also get monitoring done in Medina - the suburb of Kwinana most at risk from the industrial pollution that doesn't exist.

Was I dreaming or is this reality?

Time will tell.

Ok I know...

I shouldn't make a whole blog post out of a comment on a previous blog but I just couldn't resist this classic about the industrial noise issue:

"how close are ya to this place? i drive past it about midnight every night to goto work and i cant hear them... and i had to look on google maps and parmelia is ages away. and seriously doubt they can hear the place from there.
are ya sure its not something a lot closer to where ya live?"

I am so, so tempted to let rip but I won't because I am so over support industry at any cost idiots who think they can hide behind anonymity but really just show us all they haven't got a clue.