We have a small river here that feeds into Lake Erie. It is the Ottawa River. It is filled with all kinds of farm run-off, PCBs and other landfill hazardous materials. There are warning signs to not fish or swim in it. I lived near it for a couple of years and it smelled so bad from a fish kill you could barely breathe. It has since been partially cleaned up with a dredging project.
Yeah, it was the Cuyahoga but nobody outside the area knows what that is. (When the fire was first reported is was reported as being the Ohio, which makes no sense as the Cuyahoga dumps into Lake Erie, doesn't come close to connection with the Ohio). Ask someone where the Youghiogheny Reservoir is and you'll draw a blank stare from most folks. (I grew up less that 50-miles from it and had no idea where it was, other than "west of here" until a couple of years ago when I drove past it on my way to somewhere else.)
You're a keen observer of the painfully obvious (or of the painfully well-known).
It's just like Radon. In minute quantities it's relatively harmless. But concentrate it and it's a different story altogether.
This post was edited by Salt and Red Pepper at October 26, 2017 1:08 PM MDT
Long time ago I saw the Charles River just at the edge of Boston on fire. What happened was an oil tanker overturned on the highway not far above it and the oil ran down the drains and into the river where it caught fire.
'Heavy water' is found in natural water in minute quantities and is harmless. Nuclear technology was not started with it, but created by numerous physicists and mathmeticians. One could say that Wilhelm Röntgen started it with the discovery of X-rays in 1895, followed by the Curie's discovery of the element Radium,
Oh sorry I was just referring to Hitlers heavy water (deuterium oxide) experiments during wwII in Nazi occupied Norway in an attempt to produce an atomic weapon, fortunately the plant was destroyed by an allied attack