Whale burps found on Lake Superior shore

by Elizabeth Seward on

If you’re unclear on what a whale burp is, you’re not the only one. Often misconstrued to be connected in some way to whales (and I wonder why that is… ), whale burps are actually purely environmental–no whales necessary. They don’t look too unlike rubberband balls. Except they’re made up of pine needles, bird shells, twigs, and other natural debris… as well as a disconcerting unnatural item: strands of plastic.

It’s believed that these bad news balls form when strands of plastic roll around with natural debris.

And they’ve formed and come to shore in Duluth, Minnesota.

A Lake Superior beach sweep in 2010 yielded thousands of pieces of plastic items. Volunteers collected the plethora of garbage, but there’s clearly more where all of that came from. This particular plastic appears to be the kind often used in contruction, in silt fences, for example.

I spent a week this past summer on Lake Superior. After watching the sunset on those ostensibly sparkling clean shores so many nights in a row, it breaks my heart to know that the lake’s pollution is now rolling up on the shores.

[Thanks, Treehugger]

[photo by Ben Britz]

New York City water and David Letterman’s Eliot Spitzer joke

by Jamie Rhein on

Recently, an AP news story came out about the traces of pharmaceuticals, including sex hormones and antibiotics, found in 41 million people’s drinking water in the U.S. The traces are teeny tiny and probably aren’t much to worry about. It’s not that people are dumping medicine directly into the water in large amounts, but a body absorbs only so much. What isn’t absorbed goes into the toilet and on out into the water supply. That’s the watered down version of what occurs. All those hormones and antibiotics animals are given are also part of the mixture.

The pharmaceuticals could become more of a concern because there aren’t regulations about how water is treated in order to get rid of the traces of such ingredients. It seems to me that if people are taking more and more medicine for whatever ails them so wouldn’t that have an increase? On the other hand, if what people are taking more of is anti-anxiety medication, maybe we’ll all be a little more relaxed and problems like road rage with go down. If it’s sleeping pills though, accidents could go up. (I’m just musing here. Don’t take me seriously.)

New York City is one of the places where the traces have been found. Leave it to David Letterman to come up with a funny combination of two New York stories. Last night, pairing Eliot Spitzer’s recent woes which have caused him to resign as governor of New York with New York City water quality, Letterman talked about what has showed up in the water and showed a picture of Elliot Spitzer with an announcer’s voice over that said, in reference to the water, “The fuel that keeps the Spitzer Spitzin.” Letterman was pretty pleased with himself.