high tide for oil

The human species will be well served by the end of the oil age. Destruction of our habitat, seemingly left in our wake, is steadily catching up with us. Our industrial obsessions are slathering the earth with persistant filth.

I Am Polluted
In one, researchers found at an average of 91 "industrial compounds, pollutants and chemicals" in the blood and urine of nine volunteers and a total of 167 chemicals in the group. According to the research, conducted by Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York with the Environmental Working Group, "76 cause cancer in humans or animals, 94 are toxic to the brain or nervous system, and 79 cause birth defects or abnormal development." None of the people tested worked with chemicals or lived near an industrial facility.
(...)
In total, the scientists found 76 chemicals in my body, including PCBs, pesticides, solvents and metals. (...) There has been little scientific inquiry into the net effect of being exposed to many chemicals at the same time, the so-called "toxic soup effect."

I believe my generation and the next two or three after that will be hardest hit by the plague of illness, toxicity and cancer as a result of our hollow lifestyle. I had two sets of grandparents live into their eighties. They reached adulthood in a paradise of horse manure and flies, with only a few coal snorting trains and goofy jalopies around for comic relief. They got the best of both worlds, we'll get the flip side of that coin.

I have answers for a lot of things, but the "endowment" of persistant pollution we have loaded up the world with is a tough one.