Oct 9, 2010

Red Sludge and Red, Red Rain

The so-called Red Sludge disaster in Hungary is pretty crazy stuff, no? I mean, not only is it burying its victims, but it is also BURNING them! A little science lesson to help explain all this:

"Red sludge is a byproduct of the refining of bauxite into alumina, the basic material for manufacturing aluminum. Treated sludge is often stored in ponds where the water eventually evaporates, leaving behind a largely safe red clay...."

Wait a minute here. Keep in mind, I was a pretty poor student in the low-level hard science courses I was forced to take as part of my liberal arts education, but bear with me here with this question I have:

Q: The sludge is toxic, until the water evaporates, at which time it's not so toxic. Doesn't that mean that the toxicity went up in the air into the clouds; and when things go up, they tend to come back down?

Someone has a good bead on all this: Mr Peter Gabriel, taking us into the weekend....

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Welcome to the Tea Party world of corporate domination.

bINgO BaNGo said...

Remember this song?

"We don't need your fascist groove thing"

For some reason, it comes to mind.

nhg said...

Yawn.