Pollution

With all the millions and millions of cars on the road we should thank your lucky stars that there is such a thing called a catalytic converter. For without catalytic converters our city's is would be virtually unlivable. Today's catalytic converters do their jobs very well which is to virtually eliminate carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and nitrous oxide., and this is in direct correlation with the amount of platinum group metals that are within the catalytic converter itself. Platinum, palladium and rhodium make up the platinum group metals with platinum being the most efficient for today’s cars. Depending on the amount that's in you converter ... Read Full Story

Highway spam! Litter on a stick! Sky trash! Whatever we call them, billboards are ugly, intrusive, and sometimes pointless. Is billboard blight a problem? I think so, but what do other people think? Recent polls commissioned by various states and universities reveal the same definitive fact--People do not like billboards. They favor moratoriums on new construction of boards, if not outright bans. In Houston, 81% of the citizens strongly support the city’s ordinance which will remove all billboards by 2013. In Missouri, 78% of citizens oppose any new billboard construction. (I sympathize with them, since their state is already inundated with outdoor advertising.) Citizens ... Read Full Story

My recent trip to San Francisco was life-changing. I went touristing around the City by the Bay, walked to the Golden Gate Bridge, took a cable car, visited Chinatown and Golden Gate Park, went to the opera, and just marveled at the sights and smells of the City. I was composing a long blog about my experiences, but I feel I must wait a bit because that beautiful bay I walked along was marred when a container ship was damaged in the bay and dumped 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel into its water . There were so many birds there. So many diving birds, ... Read Full Story

Buy anything on the highstreet and you will automatically gain recompense if the item is broken or faulty.  For it is well understood and appreciated that small businesses or agencies are obliged by law to operate decent complaint procedures and policies for satisfaction guarantee related to any product bought.  At this level of most kinds of consumer markets affairs work pretty well. But then if we look at  how the matter of business ethics functions abroad, personal presumptions about all things being equal are not sound. Multi-national and corporate negligence is badly reported upon and for a long time has been treated very dismissively as an issue. Tranfigura, an independent company which carries and trades in commodities all around the world, has ... Read Full Story

Love Canal is a working class community in Niagara Falls, New York. 30 years ago this summer the community came to world wide attention because it was built on top of a chemical waste dump . The elementary school was located just 3 blocks from the chemical dump. A couple now in their 40’s who attended the school remember playing with ooze bubbling up on the playground. That ooze was Phosphorous rocks that would exploded like a firecracker when the children threw them on the sidewalk. In fact many of the children attending the school suffered phosphorous burns from playing on the playground. A ... Read Full Story