Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Biosolids: Embrace the Waste

Biosolids is the name given to our recycled waste. Yes, that's right. Our poop, and what is it being used for? Well it's being used as fertilizer to grow our foods. Now at first, this may appear to most of you as extremely disgusting. This makes sense, since we are taught from birth that certain things are just unsanitary and must be avoided, like poop. But maybe this is actually more natural than we think.

The first thing that came to my head was cows. When cows are allowed to graze the fields and eat grass, they'll poop all over the grass. However, farmers expect their cows to poop on the fields, because cow poop is an excellent fertilizer. Now, if this applies to cows, wouldn't it make sense for it to apply to humans too? Financially, biosolids are great. They are essentially low cost to free fertilizer. This low cost fertilizer would encourage more farming as well. The production of the biosolids would create jobs, meaning an even better financial situation. Also, it would mean recycling instead of land-filling, which in turn means less pollution since the transportation to the landfills would have been eliminated. These are all excellent reasons for biosolids to become a regular thing.

However, the health issue arises. People are worried that this is not safe. That the composition of the biosolids is uncertain, and that it could be potentially harmful. Now this would be a good argument, however, there is clear evidence that proves this theory wrong. To start, the treatment facilities of the waste are so thorough that there is no real proof of the biosolids being dangerous. There is real proof, however, that biosolids are completely harmless. In fact, in 2001, there was a study done proving the fact that biosolids would have little to no effect on human health. However, even though there is overwhelming evidence as to why biosolids are a good choice, there are still those who disagree.

It is true, however, that there is a smell in certain biosolids. This can mean that the usage of biosolids can greatly reduce property value in the area applied. However, the smell can be covered and it is not a good reason to be against the idea of biosolids, when they would promote more jobs and reduce pollution. There are actually very strict regulatory laws that concern biosolids, so health issues are not at all a concern when it comes to this concept. The main problem people tend to have is simply that they're uncomfortable knowing their own poop is being used to fertilize foods. But that was the way nature intended it, as examples like the cows show us. We need to stop being so influenced by the world around us and EMBRACE THE WASTE!







Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Technology in the Human Body Field

It's an obvious statement to say that technology has improved greatly in the past decades, and with it has come a huge improvement in our understanding of the human body and it's systems in countless ways. Think big picture at first. What is one technology that has completely revolutionized that way in which doctors can easily look inside a patient?

The X- Ray was still being invented and played around with all the way back in the late 1800s, so it's not necessarily a new advancement. However, it completely changed the way in which your doctor could look inside your body to diagnose a number of diseases, especially those that have to do with your lung tissue. However, the x-ray is a rather old technology. Since then, we've continuously evolved technologically, and now, we have we is called the Magnetic Resonance Imaging technique. This is another way in which one can look inside the body of another without the need to preform surgery. However, this MRI technology can tell the difference between tissue all throughout your body, and has become a crucial factor is diagnosing cancer.

There are many smaller advances too however. Even though the microscope was in the process of invention since the 1500s, we've reached an age where there exists an electron microscope, that can provide magnifications up to 10,000,000 times! These kinds of magnification powers allow us to do many things, but mostly they reveal to us the subtleties behind the bodily systems, the cells. Cell study has allowed us to produce many different kinds of views on the human body and many other fields of work. For example, many different kinds of sicknesses, like cancer, were misunderstood before the theory of cells came to be. Microscopes are an important technology for another reason. Blood typing can be one of the most important and overall check ups since you doctor will be able to see what you've been eating, and most importantly he'll be able to check for diseases like leukemia or others that can be easily diagnosed through the counting of some blood cells. If anything, the rapid advancement of the microscope can be accredited to many of our discoveries about the body, since we now understand how each individual cell in each system works and is set up. With that kind of information, we can start to diagnose diseases we never understood before. For example, sickle cell anemia is a type of anemia where one has fewer red blood cells because they are sickle shaped blood cells. With the advent of the microscope, one's blood can be analyzed and the cells can be identified, and the sickness diagnosed.

Although it's known to cause harm to you body as well, chemotherapy is also an amazing breakthrough. Chemo is the main factor in the survival of certain cancer patients. And since our technology is ever growing, there may even be something called targeted therapy soon, that will only target the abnormal proteins in cancer cells.

However these breakthrough discoveries can happen at home too. For example, our very own Canadian Frederick Banting is the man who discovered a way to intake insulin, so as to offset the effects of diabetes. In his case, Frederick Banting saved the lives of countless, literally countless people who have to live with diabetes, as does my Grandma. This discovery has lengthened her life span considerably.

In the end, it's quite obvious that technology is one of the main reasons our understanding of the human body has reached such an advanced level. We continuously grow however, and there are definitely going to be more and more advancements that will even further our understanding of the body, and soon enough we will be able to diagnose and fix any sickness!