Contaminated Sand--An Unlikely Lens

A shipment of sand from Kuwait is on its way to Idaho from California. The sand has been contaminated with lead and depleted uranium. READ ABOUT IT HERE. It serves as an interesting multi-dimensional lens through which to view the globalized aspects of war, waste, and its disposal. The sand was contaminated at a U.S. base in Kuwait during the first Gulf War. It is just now making its way across the oceans, to our continent and to our state where it will remain. When we talk about nuclear issues it is important to remember the ways such a concentrated power source is dispersed into so many different aspects of our shared cultural-historical experience. War, famine, economic insecurity, water scarcity, all of these factors are at play in our energy matrix existing within a frame of severe global insecurity. Our defense industry is, of course, deeply inter-linked because the energy used for public consumption of fuel is the same energy used to defend and attack in warfare. The consequences of its use are not always readily contained (as this example demonstrates) and will continue to present us with troubling contamination in terms of environmental and health-related risks for years to come.