Author Archive for Michael Collins
The Toxies
Just days before the 82nd Annual Academy Awards in Hollywood, the First Annual Toxies Awards took place at the legendary Egyptian Theatre across the boulevard. A rogue’s gallery of “bad actors” with names like Trichloroethylene, Hydrofluoric Acid and Toluene competed for Toxies in this first-ever awards ceremony celebrating the worst of the 85,000 chemicals we come into contact with on a regular basis. One bad actor, Perchlorate, was a sleak silver rocket girl with thrusters for feet, so beautiful as fireworks, she was ‘the chemical that launched a thousand rockets’ including mine.
We, Robot
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, home of America’s greatest robotic explorations of the heavens, isn’t sold on deep-sixing the manned space program. Part Two of a special Pasadena Weekly cover story investigation that also explores the origins of NASA’s manned space program, the brainchild of an infamous Nazi rocket scientist, Wernher von Braun, whose V-2 rockets killed thousands during the London Blitz of World War II, rockets built by concentration camp slave labor who were worked to death, tortured and executed during the production of these American-coveted missiles. Von Braun is considered by NASA to be the 20th Century’s greatest rocketeer illustrating that one man’s Nazi is another man’s hero.
Space Monkey Business
Critics say NASA is taking a giant leap backwards by irradiating monkeys in space-travel tests designed to simulate the intense radiation astronauts would experience in voyages to the moon and Mars. The Pasadena Weekly discovers that Italian human radiation tests aboard the International Space Station obviate the need for these crude and inhumane radiation tests on primates, the first of their kind in nearly three decades.
Goo-ology
EnviroReporter.com discovers a pathway for pollutants from rocket test stands into the soil and groundwater of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. In the early 1950s, a rocket crew member figured out how to keep rocket exhaust flames from melting the bottom of not only the test stands, but the rock they were standing on: use cascading showers of water to cool the hot zone. The result may have been to massively spread poisonous rocket fuel on a level not previously known. Finding may help explain one major contributing factor at the astronomically polluted lab.
NASA’s Monkey Business
The future of manned space exploration may be revealed Monday when President Obama unveils his 2011 budget request for NASA. The budget’s approval by Congress may also determine the future of 28 squirrel monkeys and renewed animal radiation experiments.
Challenger Remembered
EnviroReporter.com remembers the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger that perished 24 years ago January 28, 1986. These people represent the very best of this country and of this planet. Remembering our heroes, and emulating the bravery of their deeds, is their due honor.
Grave Mistakes
Despite public outrage over soldiers’ tombstones disposed of in the VA’s biomedical nuclear and chemical dump in Brentwood, focus turns to the VA’s $1 million Phase II testing for toxins. VA refuses to answer LA Weekly and EnviroReporter.com questions about its million dollar boondoggle as it cores for contamination away from the known dump, ignoring Phase I recommendations to test near upscale Barrington Avenue condominiums and exclusive Brentwood school despite high radiation readings in 2006.
Cain Was Able
EnviroReporter.com was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of our friend Steve Cain, senior environmental planner for the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, on December 16. In our last communications, Steve provided us with information crucial to an investigation that could impact the health and well-being of untold numbers of people, speaking volumes about Steve’s integrity. We will miss this delightful and dedicated man.
Atomic Tombstones
Soldiers’ tombstones are emerging from the muck of a biomedical nuclear and chemical dump on the Department of Veterans Affairs grounds in Brentwood, California. The VA says its long-promised $1 million investigation of the dump is still on yet it hasn’t noticed the gravestones. The dump is far larger than previously known. Adjacent Brentwood School’s athletic fields may have been impacted with heavy metal contamination with football field reportedly built over trench of syringes. School denies all and VA isn’t talking to LA Weekly or EnviroReporter.com.
Dereliction of Duty
A ghoulish graveyard of atomic tombstones, actually American military veterans’ headstones, were dumped in Brentwood’s toxic grave, according to a new LA Weekly article by Michael Collins. This online companion piece digs deeper into the biomedical nuclear and chemical dump on West Los Angeles VA land, land that stretches up under exclusive Brentwood School where headstones have also been found.
Darkness Over the Land
EnviroReporter.com experiences the tragedies and triumphs of California’s Inyo County and it’s timeless treasure, Death Valley National Park. This rowdy romp includes a cast of characters whose devotion to their earthly paradise is devilishly dangerous. Their sizzling tales shed light on the hopes and hazards of the hottest, lowest land in North America.
It’s a Gas
The U.S. EPA just announced new draft guidelines for the vapors of the toxic solvent, trichloroethylene or TCE, and they are four times stronger than they already were in recognition of the chemical’s dangers. This will make an alarming TCE groundwater crisis in Southern California even more important as the solvent spreads.
Career Day
Recruiting men and women for aerospace and experimental nuclear reactor work in the 1950s for Rocketdyne was art, literally. The company used colorful brochures to attract the best and the brightest.
Age of Consent
California EPA’s Department of Toxic Substances Control issues a new draft consent order regarding the cleanup of the old Rocketdyne Santa Susana Field Laboratory that now includes site owner Boeing and requires that the company, NASA and the Department of Energy adhere to the strictest cleanup standards passed into law by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2007. Environmental activists like Simi Valley’s Radiation Rangers are thrilled by this renewed effort to remediate the pollution left at the site contaminated by chemicals and radiation and home to America’s worst uncontained nuclear reactor meltdown.
There Lies the Fault
After extensive investigation, EnviroReporter.com may have discovered the source of Runkle Canyon’s heavy metal nightmare which has stalled KB Home’s development plans for over two years – Rocketdyne’s old polluted Empire State Atomic Development Authority site sits on top of Burro Flats Fault which transports toxins down into the canyon that the Radiation Rangers want tested.
Bowled Over
The old Bowl Test Facility has extremely contaminated soil like much of the rest of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. What sets this rocket testing area apart from the rest of Rocketdyne is that it duplicates the Nazi rocket test stand design for the terrifying V-2 rocket that killed thousands of civilians and soldiers in World War II. Today Bowl sits as a silent and deadly reminder of Southern California’s Nazi-influenced past.
