Earth Day at PTA
had warning prior
The following public service announcement was sent out to every school on the island one month in advance of the PTA 2018 Earth Day events of April 20:
“For school officials and teachers — Please print and post in the teacher meeting room. Please forward this message to your Parent-Teacher Association PTA, so that this important information is circulated prior to organizing any student Earth Day excursions to Pohakuloa Training Area.
Parents of young children and pregnant women are warned of the dangers of DU (depleted uranium) and other military toxins at the Pohakuloa Training Area!
Please view the short video of Dr. Lorrin Pang, M.D., public health officer and retired Army Medical Corps explaining the health dangers of inhaling DU oxide dust particles (See https://vimeo.com/19153948). As Dr. Pang explains, especially vulnerable are young children and pregnant women.
Allowing children in your care to attend programs at Pohakuloa, especially during live fire training, unnecessarily puts them at risk. Mahalo.
For more information, contact Malu Aina Center for Non-violent Education &Action, P.O. Box 489, Kurtistown, HI 96760. Tel. (808) 966-7622.”
At 9:18 a.m. on Friday, April 20, our certified calibrated radiation monitor hit 68 counts per minute (CPM) outside the main gate of PTA, two to three times background levels.
Jim Albertini
Kona
Urge sunscreen
ban for reef safety
Hawaii’s legislators are garnering worldwide attention by taking steps toward passing a ban on the sale of sunscreens containing chemicals known to be lethal to our reefs.
Our reefs are the cornerstone of Hawaiian culture, the gem of the tourism industry, and the generator of our fish and seafood products. The chemicals, oxybenzone and octinoxate, are so pervasive in our waters that they have been found in our table fish. Needless to say, the consumption or absorption of chemicals that mimic estrogen isn’t a good thing.
The governor has already agreed to sign the bill. The only hurdle left is the Conference Committee. Rep. Chris Todd, who serves on the Conference Committee, has previously been supportive of the bill.
Let’s thank Rep. Todd for supporting the passage of SB2571 with an email to reptodd@capitol.hawaii.gov. And do the pono thing and choose a zinc-based sunscreen!
Dee Fulton
Holualoa
Taking fish hampers gene pool
I would guess that if 100 million or so random human beings were to simply have vanished during the evolving course of humanity things would probably not have changed a lot. On the other hand, I might suggest that if 20 or so selected individuals had not been around to contribute toward who we are today, things would be a whole lot different.
This, of course, is conjecture, but the point is, when the aquarium collectors of reef fish choose the individuals they capture, they are not randomly selecting which fish they take. What they collect are the “stand outs,” the outliers, the defenders of the school, the healthiest specimens, the leadership, the ones that are phenotypically similar to the rest but all too often genetically irreplaceable. In human terms, they are taking Winston Churchill, Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Eleonore Roosevelt, Chairman Mao, Edison, Einstein, and yes, even Donald Trump.
What a different world this would be had the contributions of these individuals been lost.
Likewise, what a different world the reef fish will face minus the genetic diversity that produces leadership, strength, variety, and yes, even chaos within their populations. It’s not the numbers that count; it’s the loss of genetic variance — the essence of species survival. That is what matters and that is what is being lost.
Kelly Greenwell
Kailua-Kona
