Waste Not, Want Not

Louisiana is refusing to accept the waste products that were recently collected from Thomas Duncan’s Dallas-Texas apartment. Duncan is the Liberian man who recently died in Dallas from Ebola and these collected apartment waste products have already been incinerated, but are still being denied disposal in a landfill in Louisiana … see: Breitbart Story. This is because there is a question about the inherent safety of even these well-burned items.

This revelation has got me to thinking about a similar matter. What is the potential danger from the contaminated liquid waste products (feces, vomit, blood, urine, spit, etc.) that were flushed down the toilets and into the Dallas’s sewers by Duncan and now by this new nurse victim of Ebola before they were admitted to the hospital? Is there a public health threat from this obvious vector of the Ebola virus? Can this virus survive and/nor multiply in the Dallas sewers and municipal sewage plant and pose a potential threat to workers there or to future generations?

I suspect that the waste disposal infrastructures in West Africa are not as sophisticated and efficient as they are in Dallas … and I wonder if, as such, this Texas municipal plumbing might pose another type of threat that didn’t exist in the lesser developed countries of West Africa?

I surely would like to have the Center for Disease Control (or someone) effectively address this possible problem.

Afterward: See a related story: The Watchers. Particularly note that reclaimed water from sewage treatment facilities may be used on food crops!

Bad Blood

Here in Massachusetts there is a blood feud occurring between the Demoulas cousins, Arthur T. and Arthur S. over the control of the Market Basket grocery chain. Briefly, the Board of Directors recently ousted Arthur T. as CEO and replaced him with Arthur S.'s nominees … causing a revolt among the employees at most of these stores. Many have refused to come to work unless Arthur T. is re-instated and have therefore been fired … and, as a result, this company is suffering in extremis.

Market Basket stores are emptying out of both goods and customers and this family-owned private company has been losing millions of dollars a day for almost three weeks. To read more of the details of this nasty brouhaha, read: Boston Globe Story. Boston talk radio is also chock-a-block full of callers offering the pros and cons of this internecine battle.

I have shopped at our local Market Basket and like it quite a lot and am saddened by the real possibility that things there will never be the same again. And I am sure that I can never know all the ins and outs of this battle between these cousins. Was this all started by some insult at a family gathering? Or is it just the greed for a bigger slice of the company largess that is the root of all this silliness?

Whatever the reason, may I make one modest suggestion to the Demoulas extended family … revised from an old saw … close ranks, blood runs thicker than seltzer water.