7 ms·
In Search of the Cookie Dough Tree
- ChuckMcM 14y ago"The good news is that Palo Alto's water comes from the relatively pristine Hetch Hetchy reservoir." It would be worthwhile to meditate on this while people work to remove the Hetch Hetchy reservoir from existence in the name of "restoring nature."
- scarmig 14y agoI'm hardly a supporter of efforts to remove HH reservoir in the near term. But... surely "we have to keep on importing water from two hundred miles away because the water all around us is a biohazard" is a less than ideal state of affairs, no? ETA: of course, the biohazard aspect is just one of the reasons we rely on HH and not even the biggest. But it plays a role.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoLess than ideal? Yes. Changeable at this stage? No. At some point we may have an alternate source of water but until this removing that reservoir will create a disaster.
- fennecfoxen 14y agoIt's not a biohazard. It's a chemical hazard. A biohazard is when you spill untreated sewage into the Gowanus Canal during heavy storms because you have a combined sewage system, and it's full of freakish bacteria. I assume when you said "biohazard" you thought "hazardous to biological things". That's really covered with just the "hazard" part though. :b
- scarmig 14y agoBiohazard sounds so much cooler than "hazard" though!
- anigbrowl 14y agoI don't think there's a high likelihood of that, really. True, the sierra Club is behind it and it has some local support, but since HH is a bargaining chip in the endless saga of trying to get public power for San Francisco instead of being served by PG&E, there are also a bunch of 'progressive' voices against any change. Anyway, if any of your friends start rhapsodizing about blowing up dams and returning it to its original condition, point out to them that the water in the East Bay is hard as nails and nowhere near as tasty.
- owenfi 14y agoThe domain is blocked on the corporate network of one of the Silicon Valley companies mentioned.
- outside1234 14y agoIntel?
- trentlott 14y agoIf it impacts your ability to read it, here's a copy: http://pastebin.com/uwKn6NUr http://pastebin.com/uwKn6NUr
- lostlogin 14y agoIs this common? What other sorts of things are blocked? At a former workplace I didn't abuse Internet browsing rights until sites I used during breaks started getting blocked. From then on break times were spent either bypassing or working out how to bypass the blocking. Even work related sites were blocked. Cat and mouse with the IT department was good fun.
- owenfi 14y agoIt's pretty rare, I see it pop up once a week or less. A handful of sites are blocked, after a while of being available iphonedevsdk.com was blocked, for instance. That makes perfect sense given they were the vector for lots of high profile attacks. Noisebridge.net was blocked, but while organizing an event I requested it be made available and it has been since. I suspect there is a lot of overlap with Google's unsafe sites list, but this was listed as "Education;Spam/Illegal".
- rayiner 14y agoThe lucky thing here, to the extent that anything involving a Superfund site can be lucky, is that the people and organizations affected are rich. I have spent some time over the last couple of years working with a heavily polluted town in Central Illinois (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DePue,_Illinois http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DePue,_Illinois). In this town, there are heavy metals in the soil of the school playground.[1] Property values have fallen to next to nothing, which prevents the residents from leaving. And these residents, who were working-class folks in the heyday of the town before all the jobs moved out, and many of whom are Hispanic immigrants who work the surrounding farms and are too scared of the government to raise a fuss, don't have the leverage of Palo Alto's Stanford and Berkeley grads. Cleanup happens at whatever pace the responsible polluters feel like moving at, which is to say: glacially. These sites are all over the country, and as bad as it is being described here, what's happening in Palo Alto is a sort of best case scenario as far as these things go. [1] It comes from a giant pile of ore refining waste product: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HQPY7nT2L4c/UPc4_GK-VDI/AAAAAAAABAc/_-FdHmA2yAY/s1600/gabby-garcia-stands-in-front-of-the-slag-pile.jpg http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HQPY7nT2L4c/UPc4_GK-VDI/AAAAAAAABA... (short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au24-gdV2c0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au24-gdV2c0). It's hard to get an idea of the scale, but the actual pile is a good ways away from the fence the girl is standing in front of and extends a ways in both directions out of the frame (see the video). It contains 750,000 tons of zinc slag. When it rains, all the heavy metals leach out of the slag. EDIT: I don't mean to minimize the situation in Palo Alto by any means. Just trying to put it in the bigger context. The things you're seeing: local governments doing nothing, landlords looking the other way, regular people being the ones who get hurt--are standard operating procedure for these sorts of situations.
- _delirium 14y agoFwiw, these situations, where there is not a responsible polluter with enough money to go ahead with a reasonable cleanup, are supposed to be covered out of a trust fund, which is funded by a general tax on likely-to-pollute industries. Except: this tax was repealed in 1995, and the trust fund is now out of money. So they don't get cleaned up. There are occasional proposals to reinstate the Superfund tax, but the GOP has been blocking them.
- Spooky23 14y agoGroundwater pollution is really tough. In my area have an old Army depot where dioxins, PCBs, and other nasties were dumped in the 1950's and 60's have leached into the ground, and now form a underground plume that has resisted remediation efforts, and is moving with the groundwater to the playing fields of the local high school. Basically, they drill wells and try to suck up contaminated groundwater. In other cases, remediation measures are not 100% effective and can be really disruptive. In coastal areas on Long Island where Hurricane Sandy smashed ships to shore and ruptured oil tanks, nearby property owners are not allowed to reoccupy the property for 15 or more years while the contamination disperses into the environment. So be careful what you wish for.
- tptacek 14y agoHere are the tox reports for 1,1,1-TCE and Trichloroethylene, respectively http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp70.pdf http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp70.pdf http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp19.pdf http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp19.pdf 1,1,1-TCE used to be a household chemical; it was a component of liquid paper, of floor adhesives, and spray-on shoe polish. It was phased out due to concerns about the ozone layer. It is not classified by the EPA or the WHO IARC as carcinogenic. Unlike 1,1,1-TCE, Trichloroethylene is apparently still used in household products, like corrections fluids, and in a number of automotive solvent cleaners. You can smell it at 0.01% concentration in the air; it is indeed apparently smelly stuff, about twice as smelly as 1,1,1-TCE (I'm guessing this is a linear response). It is a probable human carcinogen based on mouse models; maximum routine occupational exposure over 8 hours is 200ppm (so about twice the level at which you start to smell it). If you're my age and you remember the CFC media blitz of the late 80's: TCE/1,1,1-TCE are apparently archetypical examples of CFCs. TCE is an extremely common industrial chemical; it isn't (if you were wondering) in any way specific to electronics.
- icegreentea 14y agoJust to build on this a little bit, cause the article also gets a little confusing regarding chemicals in question. The TCE that pops up in the article over and over again is 1,1,1-TCE. As pointed out, it is not counted as carcinogin, however it has been linked to birth defects in lab animals.
- thinkcomp 14y agoWhat is your source for this statement? According to the EPA, "The primary contaminants detected at the site were trichloroethene (TCE); 1,1,1-trichloroethane (1,1,1-TCA); tetrachloroethene (PCE); gallium; and arsenic." Wikipedia says "The IUPAC name [for trichloroethylene] is trichloroethene." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichloroethylene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichloroethylene
- tptacek 14y agoFor whatever it's worth, what I called 1,1,1-TCE was 1,1,1-trichloroethane (what you [probably correctly] called 1,1,1-TCA).
- stox 14y agoOh fun! I lived for a decade next to Illinois's largest TCE leak, Lockformer. Nasty stuff, and it has some rather interesting properties when underground.
- OGinparadise 14y agoOn June 27, 2006, a monitoring well, which most people (myself included) would probably never notice among the carefully manicured flowers and shrubs, registered 85,000 µg/L of TCE, the same toxic industrial de-greaser that newspapers reported about in Google's buildings a few weeks ago. For the sake of comparison, the federally-mandated limit for one liter of groundwater in micrograms is pretty far from 85,000. It's 5. The silicon part of "Silicon Valley. "
- rayiner 14y agoThat's a shit-ton of TCE too. 85,000 micrograms per L is 85 milligrams per L. In comparison, there is about 100 milligrams of caffeine in a liter of coke and about 400 milligrams of caffeine in a liter of coffee. So we're talking about containment levels at about the same order of magnitude as beverages that intentionally contain an active specific ingredient.
- tptacek 14y agoThat is a shitload of TCE. I can't find any Superfund site with a similar concentration.
- rayiner 14y agoI found 29,000 uG/L at this petrochemical distribution facility: epa.gov/tio/download/remed/rse/mattiace.pdf (page 13 of the text, section 4.3.2).
- philsnow 14y agoClick the red triangle near 101 / 237 interchange in Sunnyvale on the google maps link from the footer of the article, you'll get this page: http://geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/gama/gamamap/public/cluster_wells.asp?parlabel=TCE&sitelat=null&sitelon=null&mytype=detections&zl=15&dataset=EDF&rx=-122.05&ry=37.4&timeframe=ALL&gis_layer=&gis_name= http://geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/gama/gamamap/public/clu... It's sorted in descending order by max level of TCE detected at each well, ever. The top three wells are 140k (ca 2006), 110k (ca 2009), and 100k (ca 2007) micrograms / liter. There's a similar site by the Sunnyvale Fry's on Arques, but that one's peak detection was 74.7k ug/L.
- pnathan 14y agoSo I wonder, what would it take to create a low-cost gadget to sense & record pollutant levels and sell them on the market(maybe as an arduino plugin?). It would be really great to be able to deploy your own sensor network instead of pleading with busy and underfunded governmental agencies to help you out.
- tensafefrogs 14y agoWould love to see something like the Thermodo[1] but for air quality or pollen sniffing. The aggregate data could be really interesting. [1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/robocat/thermodo-the-tiny-thermometer-for-mobile-devices http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/robocat/thermodo-the-tin...
- wes-exp 14y agoThat would be awesome. Plenty of people already have their own weather stations... why not detect pollutants too?
- rayiner 14y agoBecause chemical detection is orders of magnitude harder than detecting wind speed/direction, temperature, and humidity? Doesn't mean it can't be done, but you'd have to throw some real money at the problem.
- wes-exp 14y agoHere's a VOC sensor for $229: http://www.co2meter.com/collections/co2-sensors/products/iaq-2000-indoor-air-quality-sensor http://www.co2meter.com/collections/co2-sensors/products/iaq...
- stevenrace 14y agoAgreed. My startup builds big sensor networks - but the sensor side of things is where the real innovation is. Microfluidics, 'labs on a chip' in CMOS, infrared spectroscopy, etc... Sadly it's worlds different than using thermocouples or reading i2c type buses.
- lostlogin 14y agoHas anyone got any idea about the contamination of water through pipes? Is it a real risk? I know it may be theoretically possible, but has this been documented? My attempt to search this are contaminated (sorry) by hits on stuff the pipes themselves contaminate water with.
- ScottBurson 14y agoMy guess is that the diffusion rate through the plastic pipes is very small compared to the average rate of water flow. But I'd love to see measurements, particularly if they're taken early in the morning, when the flow rate has probably been low for several hours.
- gwern 14y ago> When my company's office was located on Hillview Avenue in 2010, literally around the corner from Hewlett-Packard, I heard gossip about how the tech giant had polluted the area back in the day. Once a quick search confirmed that there was some truth to the rumor, it made me a bit nervous about drinking water straight from the tap at the office, so I bought a Brita filter, and didn't think much of it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a Brita filter be completely useless for this kind of contamination?
- tptacek 14y agoActivated charcoal is effective for 1,1,1-TCE water contamination.
- seanp2k2 14y ago640 Page Mill is now an ATT office. How fitting. Too bad De La Vega doesn't work there: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=640+Page+Mill+Road&hl=en&ll=37.423171,-122.141841&spn=0.002209,0.004128&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb&hnear=640+Page+Mill+Rd,+Palo+Alto,+California+94306&t=m&z=19&layer=c&cbll=37.423253,-122.141773&panoid=SLLDDS11en06cjk81sskYw&cbp=12,75.81,,0,4.21 https://maps.google.com/maps?q=640+Page+Mill+Road&hl=en&... What's across the street? Why, an old folks home, of course: http://www.sunriseseniorliving.com/communities/sunrise-of-palo-alto/overview.aspx http://www.sunriseseniorliving.com/communities/sunrise-of-pa... Also, luxury apartments and a VTA stop.
- thinkcomp 14y agoTechnically, the AT&T store is at 2805 El Camino Real. 640 Page Mill Road no longer exists. It's a soccer field. Still, all of these are in the zone, including the apartments.
- Sukotto 14y agoI'm considering a move to SF with my three young children and this gives me serious pause. I can research schools, crime, and "normal" pollution.... but how can I learn more about where these sorts of toxic environments are located? Especially if, like the OP states, the EPA are simply ignoring areas like his. (I'm inclined to believe him too. But I'm biased against the EPA anyway... I'm still mad at them for telling us it was safe to go back to lower Manhattan days after the towers fell.)
- rayiner 14y agoSuperfund sites: http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/sfund/r9sfdocw.nsf/vwsoalphabetic?openview http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/sfund/r9sfdocw.nsf/vwsoalphabetic... Brownfields: http://www.epa.gov/region9/cleanup/california.html http://www.epa.gov/region9/cleanup/california.html
- blaines 14y ago> How can I learn more about where these sorts of toxic environments are located? It depends. Some cities and counties have maps available online with this information. Also the EPA has maps of every site, http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/ http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/
- thinkcomp 14y agoSee the Google Map link below my piece. You can zoom out to the entire state of California and then into any neighborhood for any chemical over various time periods. It isn't pretty.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- frankus 14y agoMy first thought at "Cookie Dough Tree" was this (NSFW-ish): http://www.thefrisky.com/2010-04-12/a-tree-that-smells-like-semen/ http://www.thefrisky.com/2010-04-12/a-tree-that-smells-like-... OP's contaminants are a class of chemicals called dense nonaqueous phase liquids (DNAPLs) and they have a nasty habit of collecting at the bottom of aquifers (they're denser than water), making them particularly hard to clean up. They eventually degrade into vinyl chloride, which is a carcinogenic and toxic gas with a (yup) sweet smell. (This is probably glossing over a lot, but it's the summary I got from my boyfriend who does site investigation for soil and groundwater contamination—It could be summed up as "never live downgradient from a dry cleaning establishment").
- andyl 14y agoThe golden age of groundwater contamination is just getting started. Fracking fluids are going to become part of our environment and bodies for eons to come.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Evbn 14y agoIf it is in our bodies for eons, maybe it isn't so hazardous?
- GuiA 14y agoI longboarded to and from work on that path everyday for almost a year over 2011/2012, and never smelled anything :(
- drfuchs 14y agoBack in 1979, where the soccer field is now, was a pizza place called "The Antique" (though its official address was undoubtedly on El Camino). I preferred it to any other pizza in the area, so I sure hope they weren't using well water...
- thinkcomp 14y agoThe spill occurred in 1981, so your pizza was most likely fine.
- sadface 14y agoOne of the projects Terradex, my company, works on is the collection and mapping of various sources of publicly available environmental data. We're based in Palo Alto and actually spent a decent amount of time getting information on various groundwater plumes in Santa Clara County. We paid extra close attention to this HP plume and a few others like the MEW plume around the Google campus, drawing them in manually from documents, but the vast majority are created based on convex hull calculations from the well information available on geotracker [1]. They are not perfectly accurate but provide a reasonable approximation of plume locations. We pulled this data together last year during the summer and haven't done much with it since, but if anyone wants to click around and have a look here's a link that will bypass the login requirement: http://cleanupdeck.terradex.com/target/map_icplume/16/37.4249/-122.1472/paloalto%40terradex.net/paloalto2 http://cleanupdeck.terradex.com/target/map_icplume/16/37.424.... You just need to click on the "groundwater plumes" layer on the left, and when you click on a blue plume it will bring up an info panel, most of which will have a link to the geotracker page which collates most of the useful information about the plume. [1]http://geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/data_download_by_county.asp http://geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/data_download_by_county...
- paulgerhardt 14y ago>The intersection of California Avenue and El Camino Real was about as reasonable a place to smell cake batter or cookie dough as Olympus Mons. There's a bakery about 100 feet from that corner. They make 21 different kinds of cookies and various other assorted pastries. See: http://goo.gl/maps/DHFmn http://goo.gl/maps/DHFmn
- thinkcomp 14y agoI've never smelled anything even when standing right outside of Izzy's, and I've been there a number of times. Also, Izzy's front door is actually 349 feet from where I was standing outside of Wells Fargo. It's 4,385 feet from the intersection where I first noticed the smell. So it's probably not Izzy's.
- ScotterC 14y agoAnd people think radiation is bad. At least radiation decays. The chemicals in this superfund site stay around for ever!
- kcoop 14y agoI grew up near Matadero Creek. Spent a lot of time there, near the donkey pasture, and behind what was then Barron Park Elementary school. Used to catch polywogs, bring them home, watch them grow into frogs. Chewed on more than my share of anise growing on the banks. I was a bit shocked a few years ago to discover it's now a superfund site, and most of the dumping in the creek was taking place while I was busy being a typical kid. So far, I haven't grown any extra limbs.
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoGOod news: frogs are a sensitive indicator of water pollution levels. So your polywogs growing up normally is as good evidence as you could have that all was well,at least with the water sources you played around.
- josephcooney 14y agoSuperfund is an interesting term which I only came across recently in the context it is being used here. In Australia it means something very different - a shorthand for Superannuation Fund.