Grievance 35 - Health Threats

The U.S. Constitution failed to provide specific standards for clean
air, water and soil to protect life. As a result, the entire
environment, from space to subsurface, deteriorated from widespread
government and private development and discharge of harmful substances.

Tons of debris from various government space programs, ranging in size
fom a head of lettuce to refrigerators, orbited the planet in whirling
junkyards that threatened collision with space shuttles, satellites, and
other useful technology. Re-entry into Earth's atmosphere posed a
problem to the point space-trash pickup service was considered after
just 40 years of launchings.

Surface air pollution could be seen everywhere by orbiting astronauts,
and official studies found the worst was in Los Angeles, Mexico City,
Jakarta, Moscow, Beijing, Cairo and Sao Paulo.
Surface air quality worsened with rising levels of gases, mostly carbon
dioxide, caused mainly from burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal,
but also including such things as burning used rubber tires. CO2 was
known to stay in the atmosphere from 50 to 200 years. U.S carbon
dioxide emissions rose eight percent between 1989-95, and more than 3
1/2 percent in 1996 alone. Industry that depended on traditional energy
sources waged expensive political battles against stronger emission
controls.

Health-damaging chemicals were in everyday use and entering the human
food chain through plants, animals, and water. While acknowledging that
food was contaminated with toxins that kill insects and can cause human
problems, government agencies argued that the economic well-being of
farmers was of equal concern. Farmers using antibiotics in chickens,
cattle and fruit orchards created drug-resistant germs that showed up in
common foods.

Chemicals sprayed on farm crops remained trapped in the atmsphere,
posing a health threat to millions of people even miles away. The
government sprayed marijuana crops with chemicals intended to kill
plants, and the airborne toxins spread over wide areas on the wind
affecting the health of unknown numbers.

Dairy waste was illegally polluting water resources, gasoline fuel
additives poisoned drinking water and were blamed for cancer, and once
crystalline fishing waters harbored deadly PCB's, waste oils, and
diesel-fuel additives that contaminated sea food.

Navy sources spilled thousands of gallons of fuel, lubricating oil, and
other pollutants in American waters on the average of every two days
between 1990-97 while being exempt from restrictions imposed on
commercial vessels.

The advent of nuclear weapons and nuclear power created new
environmental hazards. Author Stephen I. Schwartz disclosed in his 1998
book "Atomic Audit" that eleven U.S. nuclear bombs which could not be
retrieved after air crashes over 50 years posed a long-term danger of
radiation leaks.

Government nuclear test explosions released deadly radiation both above
and below ground surface. There were 925 nuclear weapons tests by the
U.S. from the beginning of the nuclear age in the 1940's to 1990,
including on humans, and 204 were secret. Newsweek Magazine reported
the testing in its December 27, 1993 issue;

"For years the Pentagon and the
Atomic Energy Commission were
conducting all manner of secret
tests--from releasing clouds of
radiation into the atmosphere in a
determined attempt to build bigger
and better bombs, to irradiating the
testicles of prison inmates in order
to find out how much would cause
sterility."

Cleaning up nuclear sites was an additional burden on taxpayers. For
Oakridge, Tennessee alone, the estimate was up to $3 billion and many
years.

While expressing concern about nuclear proliferation, the U.S. hosted
scientists from other nations at its development facilities, including
814 from India and 30 from Pakistan between 1994-96, two years before
those countries began their own test explosions. Not all governments in
possession of nuclear weapons were willing to sign treaties banning tests
and proliferation.

The threat of nuclear radioactivity also came from peaceful uses. In
1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union exploded
sending at least eight tons of poison around the world on the planetary
jetstream, assuring illness, disfigurement and possible death for
unknown numbers of all life forms. The radiation was blamed for ill
effects ten years after the explosion, and fuel rods containing uranium
were stolen from the site posing an additional threat.

Impending meltdowns at hundreds of nuclear power plants, and the dumping
of tons of radioactive waste that could contaminate food, water and air,
was a constant health threat. Dangerous nuclear waste piled up at the
rate of 2,000 tons per year at 72 power plants in the U.S., and the
nuclear power industry sued the government for taxpayers funds to pay
for maintenance of their highly dangerous dumps.

Nuclear-powered U.S. warships were dubbed "floating Chernobyl's" in the
wake of several serious accidents aboard some vessels.

Seventy two pounds of plutonium, the toxic radioactive metal used as the
nuclear explosive in warheads, was launched by the U.S. aboard the
Cassini space probe to Saturn in 1998. Medical research told of
plutoniums danger;

"Plutonium lives for 500,000 years
and is so toxic that one-millionth of
a gram is carcinogenic."

More than 30 years after plutonium from the government laboratory at
Livermore, California, ended up in a soil additive, health investigators
tried to locate the hot spots. Soil given away in 1967 to city parks
and private property owners contained radioactive sewage from the lab.

The birthplace of plutonium, a government facility in Berkeley,
California, drew strong opposition to its ongoing research. Among the
opposition leaders was Dale Nesbitt, who was employed as an engineer at
the governments Lawrence National Laboratory;

"Since we have created this absolute
monstrosity which can still destroy all
life on this planet, Berkeley also ought
to be a place where we stop it."

Scientists tried to make radioactive waste harmless by using nuclear
accelerators to change the atom and, thus, not have to "send it into
space", or bury it five miles below the Earth's surface with no relief
from health threats or unending dumping costs.

The U.S. operated an "Atoms for Peace" program in which some nations
were provided with highly enriched uranium, and their waste was brought
back for storage in the U.S. The shipments were highly secret.

Trash at the Hanford, Washington city dump was found to be radioactive
from contact with ants, flies, gnats and rodents from the 560 square
mile Hanford nuclear complex that produced plutonium for 40 years. The
complex became highly radioactive, requiring billions of taxpayers
dollars for cleanup.

With an AUTHENTIC CONSTITUTION in harmony with the natural
Cosmic Laws of the universe, and producing High Moral Values and
Democratic Ideals, the people at-large vote on standards for clean air,
water and soil.

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