Recently the environmental movement has been setting its hair on fire over a picture of a sea turtle with a plastic straw in its nose.
They made the assumption that it snorted it while swimming in the ocean.
However, I never heard of a sea turtle that breathes through its nose while swimming underwater.
When they surface to breathe they stick their heads out of the water so the only straws that could get in their noses are the flying kind, which I have never seen.
Because of this picture everyone is busy banning plastic straws, but at the same time no one is calling for banning hypodermic needles, which are fouling our gutters and sidewalks.
If you use injectable medicines the protocol for disposal is very strict, requiring special containers and a process for disposing of the containers.
We all know used needles are very dangerous because they carry the infections of the users. To get a grasp of what a problem used needles are, the authorities removed over 14,000 used needles from a single encampment in the Santa Ana River recently.
In these times there are homeless encampments everywhere, which means there are used needles everywhere, but no one is calling for the ban of hypodermic needles.
The diseases carried by such needles are often fatal to humans, but the focus is on plastic straws.
Plastic straws are not dangerous unless you use them to toot your drugs and no one is counting those fatalities because it can’t be linked to the environment.
Ted Aquaro
Valencia
