[Sca-cooks] Long response Re: River Pollution Study

[Tara Sersen Boroson]

> whole new effect.   By the way there are lots of pharaceuticals used in the
> poultry, beef and pork "ranching/farming" industries.


That was the point I was going to make...  Meat production uses an
incredible amount of pharmaceuticals (not to mention pesticides, etc.)
and a big percentage of them are simply excreted.  Depending on the
location (in the middle of a field in Montana compared to a factory
chicken farm in Delaware,) treatment ranges from none at all to very
basic cess-pools.  Also, a good number of Americans are not on city
sewer systems.  Personally, I have a septic system.  Every time I wash
something down the drain, whether it be shampoo or spilled medicine or,
well, excrement, it is treated merely with simple microbial action and
then natural filtration.  I'm barely out in the sticks here - I can see
a nuclear power plant from my window, I'm 45 minutes from the heart of
Philadelphia, I have four neighbors each within 1 minutes walking
distance, there's a huge new housing development going in in a farmers
field behind me.  I've always been an environmentalist, but living with
a septic system has made me *really* thoughtful about what kinds of
chemicals I use around my home.

-Magdalena