Matt Ellison

This was a huge leak of a liquid aluminum compound that happened in Hungary in the last few years.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/news/world-europe-11481107

I asked If they thought that environmental hazards are something we need to be worried about daily.

1.  I only saw the one story of toxic sludge in Hungary.  Shocking.  You asked "Do you think think environmental hazards are something we need be concerned about daily?"   Yes, definitely.  Corporations are allowed to run amok and not pay the true costs for damage they cause.

2. There's always a risk of such accidents in any industrial setting (e.g. read up on the Bhopal disaster in India and plenty of others currently in China).  Western Europe, U.S. and Canada have done a good job at improving safety regulations and changing engineering practices (typically in response to disasters and hazardous sites from decades past), but Fukushima shows us that there are always worst-case scenarios that can completely overwhelm our best engineering practices

3. That is so sad.  Especially in Hungary, I mean I bet there were many families there that had lived in those areas for maybe even hundreds of years and they would have to rebuild the homes their great-grandfathers built or completely relocate to a new area!  I never thought that could happen to us but I guess it could!

4.  On the one hand, we're safer than we ever have been due to regulations, but on the other hand, we're also more at risk due to the huge volume of global trade.  I'm certainly not an expert in this area, but those are my thoughts.

5.  I don't even hear about these things!  I guess I better get more into the news.  Thats crazy though.  There is that huge refinery north of Salt Lake, I wonder if something happened to that if we would suffer.

6.  It seems so weird that some of those people didn't want to leave the area where all those poisons were affecting their lives so much.  But If your home and where you live is that important to you...

7.  What we don't see much of in these reports is how drastically the wildlife is affected.  If the people were suffering, you can only imagine how bad the plants and animals were taking it.

8.  I swear man, one day we are just going to blow up the world because of some stupid mistake in some factory!

9. I would say the biggest risks to us today are the ones we don't yet understand.  There's growing concern about the hormone levels in our waste water as well as bioaccumulation of new substances (e.g. nanoparticles).  There are also the indirect dangers of countries with lax environmental regulations (i.e., China) considering how much of our food (e.g. honey) is imported or mixed with imports and the FDA can no longer verify the quality of the food due to illegal imports/mixing (see for example, the recent horse meat scandal in europe).

10.  I do worry about these things sometimes, but I don't live now where there are many factories or places where if a huge accident occurred, I would be that affected.  Are there opportunities for big chemical spills or explosions somewhere near Provo?