Hi Deb I hope things go well For Dadford and your stiffies go away with the dank weather.
thomascanty wrote in post #5229566
The pictures from the little trip Minnie and I took last Thursday are online now. You can see them
here, if you'd like.
Nice shots. In one shot I noticed it looks like Minnie may have been a momma at one time in her life. The pigs feet in the jar was a bit creepy. What is the arsenic danger from in the one shot?
We have a very wealthy, several square mile area here in D.C. adjacent to American University that is arsenic poisoned. A.U. was the site of the governments WWI chemical warfare laboratories. They developed produced the nations chemical warfare agents then test fired them. Somewhere along the line after the war A.U. sold the land to a developer. The area was slowly developed with huge homes and mansions. Roughly 20 years ago or so they discovered that peoples yards were full of spent chemical shells and the ground is toxic. The main poison is huge levels of arsenic. The army core of Engineers have been stripping whole neighborhoods of topsoil and replacing the top couple of feet claiming it makes the area safe.
There was one property in particular that was not sold and some old A.U. papers even say it should never be sold. It is the site of the chemical dumping ground just adjacent to the old labs. Well it was sold and a house was built into the hill side. During the excavation one trash pit was breached and the chemical smoke that poured out badly burnt some workers brought in from West Virginia. They, by all accounts, have disappeared. Later a person operating a tree spade broke some underground glassware and was also chemically burned.
The house was built, people moved in, hired some landscapers to clear and scape the property.Within 5 years the lady of the house came down with a benign brain tumor and their immigrant house keeper got a disorder of some sort and I believe has also disappeared. The property was condemned and the owners sued the developer for failure to disclose the properties history and moved on. A.U. and the developer fought for a couple years and A.U. bought the property back for insane amounts of money.
Well finally the Army got the funding needed and a plan to go in and "clean" it up.The clean up is currently under way. There is a giant fence around the house, a blast structure with chemical filtration system is built over the pit they are currently working on. There are police 24 hours a day guarding it and an ambulance stationed on site.
An interesting side note to the story is I worked for the company hired to landscape it. I cleared the land, tilled the soil, built hardscape such as stairs, planted trees and maintained the property until the owners got sick. We dug up at least one shell during the work.
It is a giant dog and pony show being put on by the army and although covered in the press it is basically swept under the carpet. Many pets in the area have gotten sick which is not being charted. 1 in six homes have someone with an autoimmune disorder. The army says this is not to far out of kilt to show a pattern
George and Barbra bush lived in the neighborhood and both have graves syndrome and they had a dog die of a strange blood disorder.
In light of all my health issues it makes me wonder what I got into.
http://en.wikipedia.org …g_Valley,_Washington,_D.C.
The house on page 4 is the one I landscaped.
http://www.cpeo.org …g%20Valley%20diseases.pdf
Pretty cool but too hot and only 15 minute burn time. I have some Surefire tactical lights that are blindingly bright but also short burn time.
neil_r wrote in post #5231106Wohhhh too much time on your hands .........
eeeeep!
