The recommendation if you’ve purchased this spinach is to throw it away and thoroughly clean anything that might have come into contact with the spinach.
This and other current outbreaks can be found of the CDC website.
Here in the U.S. we’ve seen a lot of companies struggle to keep certain products in stock as the pandemic put more and more strain on every stage and step of the supply chain. This paired with the growth in ecommerce due to significantly more online shopping has produced a boom in the warehouse market. This is just one change in the market of today and it’s important to keep in mind that online grocery shopping is a major contributor. Check out this video for details:
It is predicted that this issue will only increase as we head into 2022!
Johns Hopkins is involved in the analysis of biosolids and the assessment of the inherent health risks it may cause the public.
Biosolids are created during the wastewater treatment process. When biosolids are spread on agricultural land, they add nutrients, improve soil, and enhance moisture retention. Applying biosolids to land has economic and waste management benefits, since it saves space in landfills, recycles a waste product, and reduces demand for synthetic fertilizers.
Biosolids can also contain a variety of pollutants. Some of the main offenders: per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, which are found in non-stick cookware, carpets, and food packaging; triclosan, an antimicrobial found in personal care products; and unmetabolized pharmaceuticals.
The Johns Hopkins team was granted $1.87 million dollars by the EPA to study sewage and are using toxicology to provide utilities and state with guidelines to ensure that they process and handles biosolids in the least harmful way.
Since the banning of ocean dumping in 1991, biosolids have been increasingly applied to agricultural land, forests, parks, golf courses, home gardens, and lawns.
"We know very little about the organic chemical contaminants in biosolids," Prasse says. "This information is critical to the development of strategies to understand exposure and potential public health risks."
Carsten Prasse, the team lead says that this problem goes beyond biosolids alone and we need to focus on the big picture as well. The best approach may be to try and stop some of these chemicals at the source, before they even research treatment facilities and are incorporated into biosolids.
“We need to think about the chemicals we use in our households and industries that are potentially problematic, why we use them, whether we really need them and can we just take them out”
RENO, Nev. (AP) — AT&T’s Pac Bell subsidiary has settled a lawsuit conservationists filed under a U.S. law more typically cited in Superfund cases, agreeing to spend up to $1.5 million to remove 8 miles (12.9 kilometers) of toxic telephone cables that were abandoned on the bottom of Lake Tahoe decades ago.
A U.S. judge in Sacramento recently signed the consent decree in the suit the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance filed in January.
The abandoned cables — replaced with fiber optic ones in the 1980s — contain more than 65 tons (59 metric tonnes) of toxic lead that is polluting the alpine lake on the California-Nevada line, the lawsuit said.
In addition to violating state water quality protections, the suit said the more than 3 pounds (1.3 kilograms) of lead per foot (30 centimeters) of cable constitutes solid waste regulated under the U.S. Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
Pac Bell knew the cables they owned and operated contained lead that eventually would leak into the 1,644-foot (501-meter) deep lake, the lawsuit said. Lead in both solid and dissolved forms is listed as known to cause cancer and reproductive toxicity, it said.
“All of the cables are damaged and discharging lead into Lake Tahoe,” the lawsuit said.
The settlement agreement with the Stockton-based sportfishing alliance states “the parties agree that defendant makes no admission of liability or of any other issue of law ... whatsoever regarding the claims made by plaintiff.”
Initial cost estimates for cable removal range from $275,000 to $550,000. But Pac Bell agreed to deposit $1.5 million in an account to guard against overruns, according to the settlement U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremy Peterson signed Nov. 4.
The company must obtain all necessary permits and if permitting requirements push costs above $1.5 million, the sides will need to come together to reassess, and go back to litigating if they can’t then agree, it said.
The cables were discovered by divers for the non-profit group Below the Blue as part of an effort to remove foreign debris from the alpine lake that holds enough water to cover the entire state of California more than 14 inches (35 cm) deep.
“As professional divers, we’re all too familiar with the volume of dumping that goes on in Lake Tahoe, but even we were shocked when we came upon these cables and saw how old they looked, and how far they stretched across the Lake,” said Monique Rydel Fortner.
One stretches from the southwestern shore of the lake at Baldwin Beach to the west shore at Rubicon Bay. The other runs past the mouth of Emerald Bay.
The lawsuit said the company was violating both the federal RCRA and the California Health and Safety Code, subject to civil penalties of up to $2,500 a day dating to 2020 and up to $2,500 a day “until Pac Bell stops releasing lead into the waters of Lake Tahoe.”
The Klamath Environmental Law Center based in Eureka, California, sent notice of the alleged violations in August 2020 to Pacific Bell Telephone Co., the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, California regulators, El Dorado County, Placer County and local utilities providing services in the area, including Sierra Pacific Power Co./NV Energy and Liberty Utilities.
The subsequent lawsuit cited alleged violations under both RCRA and protections established under Proposition 65 California voters approved in 1986. It ordered California’s governor to establish a list of cancer-causing and other chemicals, put the burden on businesses to provide clear warnings about the dangers of exposure to them and prohibited their discharge into sources of drinking water, including Lake Tahoe.
David Roe, a longtime lawyer for the Environmental Defense Fund who was the principal author of Proposition 65, said the alliance’s legal team deserved credit for devising a strategy that utilized a combination of the two laws to protect the public.
“Most businesses think Proposition 65 requires only warnings about toxic chemicals, but it has strong extra teeth to protect the waters we drink from,” Roe said. “Local agencies with responsibilities to protect those waters would do well to study this innovative legal approach.”
by Scott Sonner, The Associated Press
““Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.””