Letter to the World Health Organisation, Avenue Appia 20, 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland
Subject: Swine Flu and factory farming, plastic, use of additives in fuel.
Subject: Swine Flu and factory farming, plastic, use of additives in fuel.
Dear Sir
Given an observable and worrying rise in unrestricted burning plastic in the third world, and continued use of lead as an additive in fuel, please consider raising your profile on these issues on your website?
I could find no specific reference acknowledging these issues on your website or information to educate communities. Which countries continue to sell leaded gasoline? I suspect there are too many, as most are still unaware of the hazards of airborne lead. On the issue of plastic disposal by burning, it has reached endemic levels in many parts of the world. The Republic of Ghana for example, requires by law that plastic be disposed of by burning. Clearly there is much ground to cover.
Business appears to have little genuine interest in reducing the amount of plastic introduced into the environment, yet if an institution of your stature gave more public support, I sense it would do much to forward a solution. We cannot expect poverty stricken communities to organise waste disposal systems and moral responsibility therefore falls on those who produce and sell it. I can also find no guidance that helps interested readers understand the dangers of burning plastic or ways of protecting oneself as a traveller through high-threat areas? What filter is useful against the lead and dioxin charged air of Manilla, Beijing and other similar cities of the world? How can we protect children, traffic policemen and pedestrians in places like Indonesia and Thailand where plastic is disposed after sundown in small burn pits everywhere. The evening air fills with the smell of burning plastic at sunset. I note air pollution is not mentioned as one of your eight Millennium Development Goals, though deep in your server I located the following:
- http://search.who.int/search?ie=utf8&site=default_collection&client=WHO&proxystylesheet=WHO&output=xml_no_dtd&oe=utf8&q=burning+plastic&Search=Search&sitesearchie=utf8&site=default_collection&client=WHO&proxystylesheet=WHO&output=xml_no_dtd&oe=utf8&q=burning+plastic&Search=Search&sitesearch=
Here however, there is no direct reference to plastic or lead, only coal, and information appears to be three years old (see press release date in the link). I'm lead to wonder how the world is ever going to understand the scale and impact of this problem without you. I noted a list of dangerous airborne chemicals including TEL, though I imagine few understand TEL is leaded gasoline. Moreover, when I clicked on the link I was directed to a page on H1N1, not TEL. I'm a man with few resources or credibility. Can you however summon the time to express your position and help educate those like me who need the support of trusted authorities like yours. This is my first visit to your website, and I hoped to find there information at which I could point, so others might understand the dangers of which I speak. Shouldn't you be that source?
It cannot have escaped your attention that public faith in medical institutions is sadly eroded by profit-orientated pharmaceutical giants particularly regarding the H1N1 issue. Can you confirm for example, sources on the internet indicating factory farming is the source of H1N1 (La Gloria pig farm, Mexico) and that greed is driving the media campaign?. One has only to search Swine Flu and Rumsfeld in Google to wonder at the scale of malfeasance (link provided above). With 53,000 cases in Europe and 153 deaths (your figures issued 22 Sept 98) politicians will likely conclude success. Hollow in the light however, of an industry and media campaign that misleads and frightens to sell product. Yahoo online news for example, claiming tens of thousands would die of H1N1 in the UK alone; reporting initially a hybrid bird-flu strain and similar hyperbole which clearly was serving the interests of industry rather than the community at large. Repeated inflammatory statements and deceits being broadcast to billions around the globe and creating conditions in which government body's were pressed into wasting millions, perhaps billions, on unreliable vaccines. The result, a public confidence shaken not by the threat of H1N1, but by the standards of animal husbandry and an exaggerated platform upon which some are now proposing Marshall Law no less. Your position therefore, in terms of corporate and political morality is critical on political and health grounds.
Indeed, there's a valuable opportunity to promote higher standards of animal welfare given the link between factory farming and H1N1.. If you can confirm this link, great leaps in improving the lot of the hundreds of thousands of pigs in Mexico could be made while also serving to protect the well-being of millions across the globe. I'm very grateful to you.
Sincerely Yours
November 2009
Olive Spring Hotel, Pulau Penang
Find more videos of mine at www.youtube.com and search for nickgonewalkabout.
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