Smithsonian.com

Image: Jack Zalium

Earlier this month, locals spotted what would prove to be the first of a plague of dead pigs floating down the Huangpu River in Shanghai, which supplies drinking water to the metropolis. The pig death toll has steadily risin since then—16,000 confirmed at last counting.

But just as officials said they were finishing up with recovering the last of the carcasses, dead ducks joined the swine in polluting China’s rivers. Locals in Sichuan Province spotted around 1,000 of the birds floating down the Nanhe River, the BBC reports.

As for the dead pigs, officials still have not produced an explanation for the animals’ presence. The Huffington Post writes:

Hog farmers have told state media that the dumping of swine carcasses is rising because police have started cracking down on the illicit sale of pork products made from dead, diseased pigs.

Local officials also told Southern Weekly that the city lacks enough facilities to properly dispose of dead pigs.

Though many hog farms are situated upstream of Shanghai, the authorities still haven’t nailed down any culprits. The New York Times explains that authorities do have their eye on the upstream farmers, though: 

Those suspicions seemed to be confirmed when Shanghai officials said that more than a dozen of the pigs carried ear tags indicating that they were from Jiaxing. The authorities then announced that they had detained a farmer who confessed to throwing his animals into the river.

But in Jiaxing, farmers denied dumping pigs into the river, calling it preposterous and saying that the animals could not possibly have floated all the way to Shanghai.

It’s also possible, the Times writes, that the animals died on their way to Shanghai and that truck drivers decided to dump the bodies in the river. The paper argues, though, that this may actually be a bit of positive environmental news from China:

In May, for example, the police in this hog-producing city arrested four people who had sold dead pigs to slaughterhouses. And in December, a Zhejiang Province court sentenced 17 people to prison sentences, one for life, for processing and selling meat from pigs that had died of various diseases. In less than two years, the group had collected about 77,000 animals.

So, as the authorities have cracked down on people selling diseased or dead pigs, agriculture experts say, it is possible that someone may have decided it was better to dump dead pigs into the river.

Officials insist to locals that the water is still safe to drink and that the city’s pork is fine to eat.

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Photo: ponte 1112

Deborah Blum, a journalist who specializes in poisons, first picked up on the disturbing frequency of pet poisonings after setting up a Google alert on poisoning events and accumulating more 300 news stories on poisoned pets over the course of one year. Then, she began receiving unsolicited emails from pet owners who had lost animals. When she began looking into it, she also stumbled upon forums where pet haters who wanted to rid themselves of their neighbor’s pesky dog or cat would post messages such as:

I want to know the best way to kill next door neighbors’ cat, with out them suspecting anything. Its her closest pet and I need it to be gone. It kills bird and it comes in my back yard. Is there any way to poision it or dart it?

Last year when Blum wrote a piece for PLoS Blogs on the topic, the comment section turned into a bragging forum on the best ways to kill a messy cat or poison a barking dog.

So why do people chose to harm others’ pets? From the hundreds of news stories, comments and emails Blum has combed through, she explains on Wired, she found a few culprits that cropped up again and again:

• Common crime. For example, a California burglar recently poisoned two dogs in order to break into a house.
• Neighbors or people we know. Estranged spouses or exes may kill an animal as a form of revenge upon their former flame. Others do it to terrorize or send a threatening message to enemies. (Think of the horse head scene from The Godfather.) Neighbors often poison pets in order to quiet a noisy dog or stop a cat from digging up the rose garden or stalking the birds.
• Random cruelty. Still others chose to poison pets for the heck of it, Blum writes, leaving poison-laced treats in public parks.

As Women in Crime Ink writes, the link between animal cruelty and crime is well documented in scientific literature. Killing a noisy dog or an irksome cat is only a step or two removed from carrying out similar violence upon fellow humans. So there is ample reason for anyone who suspects their pet was poisoned to feel nervous.

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Not the self-healing concrete, obviously. Photo: Bill Keaggy

Concrete, a slushy mix of cement, rocks and sand, has built empires. The Assyrians and Babylonians used it. So did the Egyptians. Though the specific formula has changed with time, today, concrete is the “single most widely used material in the world,” says Chemistry World [pdf], used in everything from bridges and highrises to, in some cases, benches, lights and coasters.

But concrete can crack, and when it does, water and salt can get inside, further breaking down the material’s integrity. But recent research has resulted in self-healing concrete, says Mike Orcutt for Technology Review. With a special polymer coating and the power of the sun, says Orcutt, a new type of concrete can heal tiny cracks before they get a chance to grow.

The new coating contains polymer microcapsules, filled with a solution that, when exposed to light, turns into a water-resistant solid. The idea is that damage to a coated concrete surface would cause the capsules to break open and release the solution, which then would fill the crack and solidify in sunlight.

The Economist describes the research:

Dr Chung …and his colleagues knew from laboratory tests that when two substances called methacryloxypropyl-terminated polydimethylsiloxane and benzoin isobutyl ether are mixed in the presence of sunlight, they are transformed into a protective waterproof polymer that sticks readily to concrete. The challenge was to pack these chemicals up in a way that would keep them safe until they were needed, and then release them. The solution the team came up with was to put the healing balm inside tiny capsules made of urea and formaldehyde. These would screen the chemical mixture from sunlight and keep it safely stowed away. They would, however, be weak enough to rupture and release their contents when the concrete near them cracked.

This isn’t the first case of self-healing concrete, but the reliance on sunlight as the source of energy to drive the chemical reaction that does the healing is a good step.

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The Cyclorama building in happier, less demolished days. Photo: National Park Service.

After a long legal battle and strong words from preservationists of all stripes, demolition work has begun on the Richard Neutra-designed Gettysburg Cyclorama.

Built in 1962, the Cyclorama building was part of the National Park Service’s Mission 66 program, a mid-century initiative designed to use the nation’s new highways to get people to spend their family vacations driving to national parks and historic sites instead of the beach.

The Chester County Daily News reports:

The park service has planned to tear down the building since 1999 but the architect’s son and a preservation group opposed the decision, and a court battle ensued that lasted more than three times the length of the Civil War. A court-ordered study last year concluded that demolition was the best course of action.

The building was constructed to house Paul Philippoteaux’s 360-degree painting of Pickett’s Charge, which was moved to a new visitor’s center in 2008. Some Civil War historians and preservationists long advocated its demolition, saying the building — which closed in 2005 — blocked views necessary to teach the story of the battle of Gettysburg.

Advocates of demolition called the Modernist structure a blight upon the historic landscape and hope to see Gettysburg returned to a more natural state, while the building’s advocates point out that turning back the clock to 1863 is, in fact, impossible:

“It’s the National Park Service’s own history,” said Susan Cabot, of Harrisburg.

Visitors can look across the field from the Cyclorama building and see Steinwehr Avenue, a busy street lined with fast food restaurants and heavy traffic, Cabot said.

This isn’t the first time the NPS has stepped in to moderate the Gettysburg landscape. In 1974, the agency purchased Gettysburg Fantasyland, a small-scale Disneyland-style theme park which opened in 1959 just south of General Meade’s headquarters. Before it closed in 1980, Gettysburg Fantasyland featured attractions like the Enchanted Forest and Santa’s Village; Fort Apache, which included nightly “attacks” by actors dressed as Native Americans; Rapunzel’s Castle, and a dairy barn that allowed visitors (5′ and under, alas) to slide into a pile of hay. Entrants to the park were greeted by a talking, twenty-three foot Mother Goose.

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A man sorts through rubbish in Guiyu, the world’s largest center for electronic waste. Photo: Bert van Dijk

After several years of speculation, China’s environment ministry just acknowledged the existence of so-called “cancer villages,” France24 reports. Rumors of these cancer hot spots first began in 2009 after a Chinese journalist posted a map pinpointing areas that seemed to suffer from higher incidences of disease. But this is most likely the first that authorities dubbed the pollution-laden problem locations “cancer villages” in an official report.

Across China, there is growing discontent over the levels of industrial waste, smog and other environmental problems that have resulted from rapid, sometimes unregulated development. The new five-year plan points out: ”Poisonous and harmful chemical materials have brought about many water and atmosphere emergencies… certain places are even seeing ‘cancer villages.’”

The report doesn’t get into too many specifics or potential solutions, but it does acknowledge that China uses “poisonous and harmful chemical products,” many of which are banned in developed countries around the world. These chemicals, they write, “post long-term or potential harm to human health and the ecology.”

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