#soilislife — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #soilislife, aggregated by home.social.
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#RocklandME - #KnoxLincolnSoilAndWaterConservationDistrict
Annual Bin and Barrel Sale
Featuring #EarthMachine #Composters and Systern #Rainbarrels
Note: The Systern Rainbarrels are made from thinner plastic than some rainbarrels and definitely need to be stored when the weather gets cold -- or else they will crack!
https://www.knox-lincoln.org/shop/bin-barrel-sale
#SolarPunkSunday #BackyardComposters #RainwaterCollection #WaterIsLife #SoilIsLife #Compost
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#NapervilleIL - #TheConservationFoundation
#RainBarrels & #Composters"One simple, efficient, low-cost method to reduce the amount of #StormwaterRunoff from your property is to use rain barrels. Estimates indicate that a quarter-inch of rain falling on an average home yields over 200 gallons of water. Rain barrels are simply large containers that help conserve stormwater from your roof that would otherwise be lost as runoff. Modern rain barrels are sealed, safe around children and insect resistant – they can even be painted or decorated to your liking. You can divert water from your downspout to fill your rain barrel and a hose spigot on the front makes the water easy to access and use.
The Conservation Foundation sells rain barrels, also known as #WaterBarrels, year-round through our partnership with Upcycle Products, Inc. Our 55-gallon rain barrels are made of recycled food-grade plastic, come in a variety of colors and can be purchased for $72.00 (plus tax) for pick-up at #McDonaldFarm in Naperville.
Composters
When we compost our #KitchenScraps and #YardWaste we reduce the amount of material going to the #landfills and instead return nutrients to the #soil. The many benefits of #composting include reducing the amount of material going to landfills and adding organic matter to our #garden beds. This improves soil structure and texture, increases the soil’s ability to hold both water and air, improves soil fertility, and stimulates healthy root development in plants. And it saves you money so you don’t have to buy chemical fertilizers!
Upcycle compost bins (stationary and tumbling) are the same size as the 55 gallon rain barrel, approximately 2 ft by 3.5 ft (the base of the tumbling composter requires a 3 x 4 ft area). The bins are re-purposed BPA-free food grade plastic barrels."
FMI and to order:
https://theconservationfoundation.org/conservation-home/rain-barrels/#SolarPunkSunday #Illinois #Composters #RainwaterCollection #WaterIsLife #SoilIsLife
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#Fukushima at 15: The Fallout Continues
Officials claim Japan’s worst-ever #NuclearDisaster is dealt with. Try telling that to the people.Thomas A. Bass, March 9, 2026
"Cesium-laden microparticles from Fukushima have been found in air filters across Japan. As one drives the highways in Fukushima, some of the large green road signs that would usually indicate towns and turnoffs have been replaced by panels displaying radiation levels, given in microsieverts per hour. (A microsievert measures the biological effect of ionizing radiation on human tissue.) These readings can spike to dangerous levels depending on which way the wind is blowing. The radioactive material blown out of the destroyed reactors made Fukushima’s forests, which cover three-quarters of the nuclear exclusion zone, unsafe to enter. The wild boars that used to be hunted here, as well as the plants and mushrooms that used to be foraged for food, are too radioactive to eat."
[...]
"A town in Fukushima, such as Iitate, might be considered decontaminated when as little as 15 percent of the radioactive soil is removed. This creates a kind of lily pad effect; people can safely hop from one clean spot to another or walk along narrow paths between radioactive hot spots. A law passed in November 2011 mandates that all of Fukushima’s radioactive soil, roughly 15 million cubic meters, will be removed from the prefecture by 2045. With no place having volunteered to take any of the soil, the government has decided to spread it across Japan.
"Most of Fukushima’s bagged soil has been re-deposited into a dump built on the cliff behind the destroyed reactors. This facility separates the most radioactive elements from the soil and sequesters them in concrete bunkers. Soil containing less than 8,000 becquerels per kilo of radioactivity, which the Ministry of the Environment calls “Happy Soil,” is readied for shipment across the country, to be used in landfills and construction. (A becquerel is a unit of radioactivity, corresponding to one nuclear disintegration per second.) A load of Happy Soil, described as “revitalized and strong,” was recently dumped into the flower beds in front of the Prime Minister’s office in Tokyo."
#NoNukes #RethinkNotRestart #Fukushima #FukushimaIsntOver #NuclearWaste #SoilIsLife #WaterIsLife
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Um, anyone who willingly uses #PFAS-laden #SkiWax these days should be forced to eat it! After all, all the critters exposed to the wax will end up consuming it. Fairs fair! You use it, you eat it!
The #Olympics just saw its first ‘forever chemical’ disqualifications
Waxes containing #PFAS are banned at the Milan-Cortina Games. Three athletes already have been disqualified for using them
Tik Root, Feb 12, 2026
"Heading into the Milan-Cortina #2026Olympics, skiers and snowboarders were already adjusting to a ban on #fluorinated waxes long prized for making their equipment faster. This week, the #WinterGames saw their first enforcement of that rule, which is aimed at protecting public health and the #environment.
" 'South Korean cross-country skiers #HanDasom and #LeeEuiJin were disqualified from the women’s sprint event on Tuesday. That came one day after Japanese snowboarder #ShibaMasaki was disqualified from the men’s parallel giant slalom. In all three cases, routine testing found banned compounds on their equipment.
"For decades, elite snow sports athletes have relied on waxes with #fluorocarbons that are exceptional at repelling water and dirt. Former U.S. cross-country racer Nathan Schultz told Grist the so-called '#fluoro' waxes provide a 'really ridiculous speed advantage,' especially in warmer conditions like those experienced at these Games.
"But these waxes also contained PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. This class of 15,000 so-called 'forever chemicals' are notorious for never breaking down. Studies have linked exposure to PFAS to #ThyroidDisease, developmental problems, and #cancer, and research has found elevated levels in ski technicians who regularly handled the waxes. PFAS have also been detected in #soil and #water near ski venues, including wells drawing from aquifers in #ParkCityUtah, suggesting broader #environmental #contamination."
Read more:
https://grist.org/accountability/the-olympics-just-saw-its-first-forever-chemical-disqualifications/#ForeverChemicals #Poisons #Wildlife #WaterIsLife #SoilIsLife #HumanStupidity #3MKnew
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Hey, as I do love soil animals and critters, I did support an artist who draws very nice pictures of the vast variety of #SoilBiodiversity (mainly #SoilFauna). Stickers for the kids 🤩
If you love #soil too, give it a try and support Svenja Meyer (https://bsky.app/profile/fminifera.bsky.social) and check out her store at https://smartwork.bigcartel.com/
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The smoke from #Canada’s #wildfires may be even more #toxic than usual
A legacy of #mining means that #ToxicMetals could be carried along plumes of smoke.
by Matt Simon, June 5, 2025
"More than 200 wildfires are blazing across central and western Canada, half of which are out of control because they’re so hard for crews to access, forcing 27,000 people to evacuate. Even those nowhere near the wildfires are suffering as smoke swirls around Canada and wafts south, creating hazardous air quality all over the midwestern and eastern parts of the United States. The smoke is even reaching Europe.
"As the climate changes, the far north is drying and warming, which means wildfires are getting bigger and more intense. The area burned in Canada is now the second largest on record for this time of year, trailing behind the brutal wildfire season of 2023. That year, the amount of #carbon blazed into the atmosphere was about three times the country’s #FossilFuel emissions. And the more carbon that’s emitted from wildfires — in Canada and elsewhere — the faster the #PlanetaryWarming, and the worse the fires.
" 'There’s obviously the #ClimateFeedback concern,' said Mike Waddington, an environmental scientist at McMaster University in Ontario who studies Canada’s forests. 'But increasingly we’re also concerned about the smoke.'
"That’s because there’s much more to wildfire smoke than charred sticks and leaves, especially where these blazes are burning in Canada. The country’s #forests have long been #mined, operations that loaded #soils and #waterways with #ToxicMetals like #lead and #mercury, especially before clean-air standards kicked in 50 years ago. Now everyone downwind of these wildfires may have to contend with that legacy and those pollutants, in addition to all the other nasties inherent in #WildfireSmoke, which are known to exacerbate respiratory and cardiac problems.
" 'You have there the burning of these organic soils resulting in a lot of carbon and a lot of #ParticulateMatter,' said Waddington. 'Now you have this triple whammy, where you have the metals #remobilized in addition to that.'
"What exactly is lurking in the smoke from Canadian wildfires will require further testing by scientists. But an area of particular concern is around the mining city of #FlinFlon, in #ManitobaCanada, which is known to have elevated levels of toxic metals in the landscape, said Colin McCarter, an environmental scientist who studies pollutants at Ontario’s #NipissingUniversity. Flin Flon’s 5,000 residents have been evacuated as a wildfire approaches, though so far no structures have been destroyed.
"But a fire doesn’t need to directly burn mining operations to mobilize toxicants. For example, in #Yellowknife, in Canada’s #NorthwestTerritories, #GoldMining operations between 1934 and 2004 spread #arsenic as far as 18 miles away, adding to a landscape with an already high concentration of naturally occurring arsenic. In a paper published last year, Waddington and McCarter estimated that between 1972 and 2023, wildfires around Yellowknife fired up to 840,000 pounds of arsenic into the atmosphere. Arsenic is a known carcinogen associated with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and developmental problems, according to the World Health Organization. (After the 2023 #LahainaFire in Maui, officials reported elevated levels of arsenic, lead, and other toxic substances in ash samples. California officials also found lots of lead in smoke from 2018’s #CampFire.)"
Source:
https://grist.org/climate/canada-wildfire-smoke-toxic-arsenic/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us#WaterIsLife #SoilIsLife #AirIsLife #Mining #ToxicLegacy #FirstNations #Canada #Pollution #Worldwide #AQI #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateCatastrophe #AirQualityIndex