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Fun fact, if you ever want to locate sketchy sites, the keyword is "Wildlife Management Area". Odds are pretty good it's going to be some former superfund, gove
by kortex 4y ago
Fun fact, if you ever want to locate sketchy sites, the keyword is "Wildlife Management Area". Odds are pretty good it's going to be some former superfund, government, chemical, or industrial cleanup site. They do their best to clean up what they can and then declare it a nature preserve.
E.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quehanna_Wild_Area https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quehanna_Wild_Area
- iancmceachern 4y agoIt's nuts that this is a legal practice. It's intentionally deceptive to the general public and also removes peoples right to avoid exposure to bad stuff in bad places. There should be some kind of law passed that at least forces these places to be labeled what they really are. This quote about the former Rocky Flats that has become a nature preserve sums it up: "The area is an industrial nuclear waste site, not a nature preserve. If you want to learn about prairies and wildlife, there are plenty of other non-contaminated areas in Colorado to visit and learn."
- ethbr0 4y agoIt's a nuanced question, given the fact that toxicity depends on many characteristics: method of exposure, dose to body weight, bioaccumulation, etc. For a substance that needs to be ingested in high doses for an average human (even a small child) over an extended period of time, what's the harm of having a contaminated park? You have relatively infrequent exposure, and you likely don't eat / drink from the area. That's a helluva lot safer than living in a "less-polluted" industrial site, but where you could build up toxic exposure over time.
- logifail 4y ago> For a substance that needs to be ingested in high doses for an average human (even a small child) over an extended period of time, what's the harm of having a contaminated park? You have relatively infrequent exposure, and you likely don't eat / drink from the area Based on my experiences with how our children behave when they're playing in parks, I much prefer the thought of parks not being contaminated! Small kids typically come home from parks dirty. Heck, small kids come away from pretty much anything dirty :)
- code_duck 4y agoI agree. Children have a much higher hand-to-mouth propensity than adults and are also more affected by certain types of toxins.
- sbierwagen 4y agoAh, the SEC approach to a problem. Require more disclosure, change the name to something scarier, but don’t fix anything.
- jjoonathan 4y agoI won't be happy until I see at least one youtube recommendation per day about the subject with a red arrow, yelling face, and fire on the thumbnail.
- Tangurena2 4y agoOne of the geologists who used to work on that "clean up" project mentioned that the lines on the map of what was clean, what was still contaminated and how badly radioactive plumes spread were all drawn by politicians. Not by engineers, scientists or technicians.
- thenthenthen 4y agoIs it done so people will/can not settle there legally? Thers a large waste dump near me and its actually closed and defined as nature reserve and thus people are prohibited to live there.
- heresie-dabord 4y agoMore historical evidence of naming a disaster-site a "natural preserve": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster#Aftermath
- blululu 4y agoDon’t forget the largest stretch of undeveloped prairie in Colorado: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_Arsenal_National_Wildlife_Refuge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_Arsenal_Nationa...
- williamscales 4y agoIt is actually starting to be developed now. Pretty crazy. I wonder how many of the folks moving into the new subdivisions are aware of the history.