LA Reservoir Filled with Plastic Balls – On Purpose
This is be something that would probably cause you to do a double-take if you drove by. Four hundred-thousand black plastic balls were dumped into one of Los Angeles’ open-air reservoirs. Why? In hopes of preventing a chemical reaction that can damage the water supply.
The balls are giving shade to the water. This comes after a previous incident of sunlight reacting with chlorine to taint the water with bromate, which can cause cancer.
For what they deemed a “cost effective method” of creating shade, it sure is weird. I wonder who came up with that idea? Do they have a secret clown department that we’re not aware of?
Don’t get us wrong — we’re glad they’re taking pre-emptive measures to keep the water safe, rather than draining them like they had to do earlier this year. But who comes up with these things?
Image: Newscom
3 Comments
“bromate, which can cause cancer”.
*Potassium* bromate caused cancer in mutant rats. Sodium bromate has not, depsite continued testing. The EPA is attempting to say that one in a million of us has the kidneys of a mutant rat, and ignore that equal excesses of potassium are required even for them. That is why they say it is a “suspected human carcinogen”.
There is no evidence that bromate ion *is* a human carcinogen.
Thanks for the clarification, David. The article I reviewed didn’t specify the type of bromate.
If we’ve learned nothing else from network and local news, it’s that everything on earth can and will kill us. Even tomatoes are dangerous these days.