1 post tagged “dean kamen”

For once I read about something elsewhere and a week earlier, than it appeared in DemocracyNow. Still, DN always has great interviews and voices that you don’t normally hear in the mainstream or at such length.

I am particularly interested in this story about drugs in the water supply because water concerns me at work. I’m up to my eyeballs in e. Coli water test results these days. My customers ask for the 5 geometric mean of most recent results, others want the results before they’ll take the product. One customer came out to inspect our fields to see if we were in accordance with the Leafy Greens Metrics for buffer zones from grazing cattle, etc. Nevermind that this particular company wants more strict buffers, etc and there is no scientific guidance for this.

So what will they want next? We test for generic e. Coli, sometimes e. Coli 0157:H7, sometimes salmonella… the coolers test for all these things and several others in the water that makes ice. We have to test pre-harvest water, post harvest water, the water that mixes with pesticides and fertilizers… I’ve read what the EPA tests for (MANY things) – so when do we start having to test for prescription and illicit drugs? Where does it end? And why did no one ever realize that things go in cycles and have to go somewhere? There are pesticides in everything we eat, even if it’s organic or you raise it yourself. There is corn in everything we eat. Know what else it probably in the water? Vitamins. The dry tablet form that most people take doesn’t all stay in your system – most of it comes back out (visibly if you're paying attention). Even if they are removing that stuff, where does the residue go? What do they do with it?

I was watching the Colbert Report last week and they had Dean Kamen on the show. He has  invented a vapor compression distiller that can make clean water from sewage, seawater or poison without any filters, chemicals or membranes. It seemed amazing. I’ve read in a few blogs that there is a power source concern, but some say that it is equipped to run on several alternate energy sources. But is the water safe to drink? Can’t seem to find anything on Kamen that isn’t from Colbert.