Author Archive for Michael Collins
Swiss Roll Green Tea – September 5, 2011
A popular Japanese-made Swiss Roll Green Tea cake tests 21.6% higher in radiation than normal. Detection results of the cakes out of their packaging indicate possible heightened alpha radiation.
Japanese Beer – August 30 & September 1, 2011
Two different Japanese rice beers are 30.2% above background as measured in filters the contents were poured through. Radiation Station graph artist Dale Ramicone buys two beers to tested by EnviroReporter.com and one beer’s twice-filtered liquid comes in at approximately 62% above the background level.
Green Tea – August 30, 2011
EnviroReporter.com detects 65.1% higher than normal radiation in Sencha green tea from Japan purchased at a Japanese-run store in Southern California by Radiation Station’s graph artist Dale Ramicone. Japanese green tea can be purchased all over Southern California and the rest of the United States.
Adlay tea – August 30, 2011
Adlay tea from Japan tests over 39% higher in radiation compared to background at Radiation Station in Santa Monica California. Tea was bought at a local Japanese market in the Los Angeles area.
Japanese Dattan Soba Tea – August 30, 2011
Japanese Dattan Soba Cha tea tests 32.9% higher than background radiation at Radiation Station. This popular tea is made from buckwheat seed that is harvested every three months.
Seaweed – August 23, 2011
Japanese seaweed bought in Southern California in a bag tests 54.2% higher in radiation than background levels at Radiation Station. Tested out of the bag, the seaweed tests 67.2% higher, or 22.6% higher than in the bag which suggests the presence of deadly alpha radiation, which is 20 to 1,000 more lethal that beta and gamma radiation.
Eat Me
EnviroReporter.com expands Radiation Station’s Fukushima fallout coverage to include choices for rad free food foraging. This is in part a reaction to the government’s abandonment of crucial radiation monitoring.
Toxies Take Tinseltown
Even the multiple meltdowns and melt-throughs in Japan at the worst nuclear reactor disaster in history can’t crimp the style of the Second Annual Toxies Red Carpet Awards for Bad Actor Chemicals taking place at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood California June 16, 2011 at 4 pm and is also streaming live on the Toxies website. This reporter’s favorite Toxie remains the silver siren with rocket booster boots named Perchlorate which has impacted water supplies in 43 states including California where millions drink this toxic rocket fuel oxidizer. Perchlorate the foxy Toxie redefines what it means to be bad.
Five Years
EnviroReporter.com celebrates its Five Year Anniversary by looking at the beginnings of this investigative reporting and where its headed as we confront the reality of multiple meltdowns an ocean away and a government that assures the public there is no chance for radioactive exposure. Despite the grim outlook, miracles do happen, and the accomplishments of this website, totally $6 billion in saved land because of toxic contamination issues.
Radiation Nation
As the world lurches to a precipice with the multiple meltdowns at Fukushima, thousands of Americans are frantic to find the truth about the disaster. Nearly 700,000 have come to EnviroReporter.com‘s Radiation Station in just a week to watch live Los Angeles basin readings and exchange information sparked by an impending disaster.
EnviroReporter.com’s Radiation Station
Watch a streaming webcam shot of EnviroReporter.com‘s Radiation Station picking up radiation in the Los Angeles Basin. If fallout from the Japanese Fukushima partial nuclear meltdowns and fires makes its way on the jet stream across the Pacific Ocean into Southern California, you will find out about it on the ground in the Los Angeles Basin at this monitoring site.
Melt Down Wind
Fukushima reactors teeter on the brink of full meltdown as huge spent fuel rods burn. Californians can’t help but think about the possibility of nuclear fallout. And for good reason. The State dismisses even the possibility that fallout could reach our shores hence no need to pre-distribute life-saving KI pills that fight radioactive iodine in the airborne goo. On top of that, no readily-accessible network of static ground-based Geiger counters exists making it increasingly possible that LA could suffer a “soft disaster” and not even know that the Hot Zone had landed on top of it.
Radiation Station
EnviroReporter.com‘s “Radiation Station” will go online tomorrow. We will be able to show, in live time, just what the radiation readings are in Santa Monica which will give some indication of what the Los Angeles Basin is going to be exposed to since Santa Monica is upwind of most of the basin.
No More Monkey Business
NASA backs off its plans to irradiate 18 squirrel monkeys in a $1.75 million experiment that our Pasadena Weekly investigation found was not only cruel and scientifically useless but also redundant since an Italian space radiation experiment, using humans not harmed, had already been underway to understand longterm cosmic radiation exposure’s effects on astronauts.
Terminated
[This is an expanded version of a December 27, 2010 LA Weekly blog post entitled “Arnold Schwarzenegger backs down on gutting of California's Green Chemistry Initiative” where your comments are also invited as well as here.]
In the face of withering media coverage in LA Weekly and elsewhere, the Schwarzenegger Administration has pulled an about-face on [...]
Schwarzenegger’s Chemical Romance
Environmentalists are crying foul over the gutting of the Green Chemistry Initiative by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Department of Toxic Substances Control in his final days in office. Enviros say that slashed regulations hurt Californians and make a mockery out of Schwarzenegger’s ‘green governor’ legacy.
Backgrounded
EnviroReporter.com has confirmed through two independent sources that signing of final agreements between the California EPA’s Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) and the Department of Energy (DOE) and NASA for the cleanup of the former Santa Susana Field Laboratory site in Simi Valley will happen later today.
The Road to Runkle
California EPA’s Department of Toxic Substances Control, in a sleight of land, has negotiated a deal with KB Home that would leave the 1,595-acre property virtually unremediated for radioactive and chemical contamination while the adjacent 2,850-acre Santa Susana Field Laboratory would be extensively cleaned up to background levels. Some Simi Valley residents, led by the Radiation Rangers, are wondering why what’s good enough for Rocketdyne isn’t good enough for Runkle.
Rocketdyne Romper Room
EnviroReporter.com weeds out disgruntled Rocketdyne commenters freshly aroused by new LA Weekly article “Rocketdyne Cleanup Won’t Help Runkle Canyon.” What once were anonymous comment posters now find themselves on the receiving end of being outed. New technology finds function illumninating the phonies that are lighting up the Weekly‘s comment page.
Sleight of Land
Lost in the glow of an historic deal to clean up the sprawling Santa Susana Field Laboratory is the fact that the cleanup will stop at the edge of the property line and not include controversial Runkle Canyon which shows signs of being polluted by the same radiation and chemicals that the old Rocketdyne lab it abuts has been contaminated with.
The Right Thing to Do
A celebration of forty years of nuclear watchdog activism by Dan Hirsch’s Committee to Bridge the Gap brings out a Who’s Who of environmentalists recently. CBG’s numerous ‘David versus Goliath’ victories are recounted as Hirsch issues a new call to veteran activists to act now to save the planet.
Atomic Avenger
Bonnie Klea is the Atomic Avenger, an American who has taken her considerable skills and perseverance to fight for the rights of the nation’s nuclear workers many of which have suffered terribly for the work they performed at the height of the Cold War. Klea exemplifies what a real American hero does when faced with insurmountable odds — get cracking! Her efforts are now paying off, literally, to the tune of millions of dollars of compensation for America’s nuclear cowboys who rode on the edge of radiation technology which sometimes exacted a terrible toll.
AAN the Finalists are…
Deputy Editor, News of LA Weekly Jill Stewart surprises Michael Collins and EnviroReporter.com‘s editor Denise Duffield with word that our environmental exposés in the paper had made the finals in the AltWeekly Awards 2010 held by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies to be awarded July 16 in Toronto, Canada. Collins’ exposes on pollution hotspots Rocketdyne, Runkle Canyon, Corporate Pointe and the Brentwood nuclear dump resonate with the judges thanks in large part to these two delightful dynamos.
For Whom the Bell Tolls
On the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, Simi Valley’s Radiation Rangers take Runkle Canyon developer KB Home to task after news that its former head, Bruce Karatz, was convicted of four felonies secretly backdating stock options to the tune of $6.6 million and then lying to regulators about it. The Rangers are happy that Karatz may be incarcerated but point out that the residents of the Simi and San Fernando valleys still have to contend with one of Karatz’s most controversial aquisitions under his tenure at KB Home: Runkle Canyon. The Rangers demand that KB Home clean up the canyon which appears contaminated with high radiation, chemicals and heavy metal yet is planned for a 461 home community.
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.
