Blog P3

´ve just been talking with a friend back in New Zealand who told me how the Pacific Ocean is the only ´clean´ocean left on this planet; he may be slightly right, but in the fifty years I had in that part of the world I knew of many horrific anecdotes of accidents, spillages, and deliberate dumpings of things toxic around the shores of those Pacific isles, not to mention the extensive history of shipwrecks that the coastline has accumulated. I have deliberately avoided the active research into the truth of the ´purity of the Pacific´; I suspect it is a myth; there are enough big cynics in this world without my joining them; suffice it to say the industrialists, energy producers and military actors who´ve roved over that part of the globe looking for an out-of-the-way spot to do something irresponsible, are thick on the ground still; maybe the oilcos are using ´green´ attitudes in their new approach to being ´responsible players´ in the world energy market, but as someone who acquired a serious level of lead poisoning while just ´living an active life´ in NZ, and having to discover that
´ínadvertent poisoning´ was a likely outset of life in the Pacific, (which one could not avoid if driving long distances was part of the plan,) I have to say we are all in need of a higher level of consciousness regarding the purity of our environment wherever we are. Until relatively recently NZ had the highest levels of lead in petrol, in the world; the ´unleaded´in that part of the world STILL has lead; it is all a matter of levels of acceptability as to what half-truths we are told; the Australian Lead Association used to host annual gatherings for the motor trade in NZ, and I recall their sole interest was to sell us more lead, anyway they could; I was in the Sales and Distribution office of a large battery manufacturer, and it was there that I learnt the horrors of lead cholic, and the allied problems that careless actions around lead could create. That is one chemical we´ve `brought out in public´, but lead accumulates (sic) in our systems, and does not go away rapidly, and yet is generally not covered in blood analysis other than for exposure in the most recent weeks, whereas analysis of the hair, a medically `uncommon´ procedure except in autopsies, can show amazingly high levels of all sorts of ´unnaturally occurring´ chemicals, the side effects of which can only lead to `unsubstantiated suppositions´concerning the behaviour of the human race. (Just for the record, I had 11.9 ppm of Lead, and did the EDTA detox, and all the other detoxes known to man, and found my anger levels subsided amazingly. I think anger in society could be closely allied to lead, but what would I know?) So why I live here in Slovenia, just a stone´s throw from a nuclear power station, is that it is a truth, and I live with a lot of truths; should I be cruising the Pacific as my Marine Biologist son will do this January and February, I could check Mururoa or those other `ex-nuclear´ bombsites, and maybe assess what `pure and clean´means in terms of scientific fact. Instead I´ll just close my eyes and imagine all those dudes surfing those remore breaks under the endless blue skies. Nuff said.