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Letter to American Honeybee Farmers

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Sammy Vatts
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My pen name is Sammy Vatts. Everyone around here (Bronx, New York) calls me Hoppy. That's because I used to drink a lot of beer. I can't do that anymore on account I have health problems that make's me allergic to alcohol, or really what it turns into after I drink, the chemical that causes hangovers, acetaldehyde. So I don't go out on Saturday night anymore, not much anyway. I don't work either, I can't because I have to constantly be protecting myself from pollution because this acetaldehyde is everywhere, especially coming from exhaust fumes of engines using gasoline mixed with ethanol.

When you here about ethanol added to gasoline, you probably aren't aware that it's moonshine with all the water taken to make it 200 proof corn whiskey. You would probably also be surprised to know that it doesn't actually burn well in most engines. It rather ignites as the exhaust valve opens causing a loss of power and high emissions of acetaldehyde. When there is a lot of water vapor present, like when it's raining or humid, the actual ethanol itself might come straight out of the tail pipe into the air. Since it makes engines and catalytic converters run hotter, it also causes high emissions of nitrous oxide, which is laughing gas, like the dentist gives you or kids huff from whipped cream canisters. So when you read stories telling how school busses become highway sinks for pollutants from other vehicles exhaust pipes, know that this is the kinds of poisons your children are breathing to and from school as a result of using ethanol.

This is all such a shame because there are ways to use ethanol that won't cause these kinds of problems. If you are interested in knowing how that can be done, read my other article called "Letter to American Corn Farmers" from last week (click here ) There is no way for me to know but I believe it was read by a lot of people. It was on the front page here at OpEdNews.com for a couple days and has been in the food/farm section for even longer. But when I do my morning search of ethanol stories on Google's news search engine, I don't see any changes in how the ethanol industry or politicians look at ethanol. They seem be happy with it just the way it is. So I guess that means they want top play hard ball. That is fine with me. If they insist on making me sick and I can't drink beer, then they ask for what they get and I got nothing better to do than give it to them.

My sensitivity to pollution happened as a result of the September 11th attacks on World Trade Center buildings 1,2, and 7. Since then everything has become a struggle. But I was doing pretty well with it until they started adding moonshine to gasoline. Now the whole city has been turned intro a cesspool of acetaldehyde and nitrous oxide, which then leads to more ozone and some really nasty stuff that comes from it called peroxyacetylnitrate. Peroxyacetylnitrates are bad for your eyes, nose, lungs and even skin. It can also cause heart problems for people sensitive to it. If you read Letter to American Corn Farmers, you will find out that this is all unnecessary because there are better ways to use ethanol that won't cause these problems.

How this connects to honeybees has to do with something I watched happen and then looked further into to see if there was the obvious connection there appeared to be. Ethanol started to be added to gasoline in the spring of 2006. That's the same time that something they call CCD, Colony Collapse Disorder, started wiping out honeybees all over the country. Without honeybees, we could be in a lot of trouble as far as growing food crops because they pollinate them. Another thing that is important, something I didn't know about until I came down with CSD, Chemical Sensitivity Disorder, is that sugar and something called high fructose corn syrup are toxic. It isn't so much that they are toxic before you eat them. It's what happens once they get into the digestive system that turns them into something dangerous for your health. It has to do with the fact that they are refined to the point the can't be refined anymore without becoming something other than food. They do this to get the highest amount of sweetness from them.

But see the digestive system is a food refinery. So it takes it to that next toxic level, at least that is what I have read. I however didn't need to read anything to know there was something wrong with it. When I had to stop drinking beer, I started eating sweets and drinking sodas more. After a while I started to think it was making me sick too. So I stopped and felt a whole lot better. Ever since then, I sometimes eat something sweet now and then because,, it's hard not to. But every time I do, I'm reminded why I don't do it anymore, because it makes me feel so much worse than I would have if I didn't. I swear I can now distinguish a chemical taste in sweets if I focus when eating them, unless they are made with honey. That's the point, honey is healthy. So at the same time we are killing the honeybees with this ethanol, we are not only putting at risk our food supply, we are killing off the best source of healthy sweetener, which ironically, high fructose corn syrup and ethanol are made from the same thing, corn, a crop that doesn't need honeybees because it self pollinates. I just find the whole cycle so absurd that have to speak out about it.

Do you know that honeybees like to get drunk. They even have honeybee cops who hang around the entrance of the hive top make sure that they can't come inside until they sober up. So I'm looking at all these stories, ethanol being added to gasoline at the same time honeybees start disappearing, how honeybees drink and get hangovers, how they can become alcoholics and go through withdrawal just like we do. I also thought about how school buses collect pollution and how honeybees are loaded on trucks to be moved all over thc country for agricultural purposes wondering if their hives or the trucks they are moved in act the same way as school busses do for children in collecting highway pollution like filters. It seems an obvious conclusion to consider because transient agriculture honeybees have the worst problems with colony collapse disorder.

The one thing that made me believe the most in ethanol causing honeybees populations to die off is a phone call I made to an actual honeybee farmer in the Midwest. He seemed very interested in what I was telling him as it seemed no one has ever brought up the ethanol possibility. Then he seemed to go silent when I mentioned how ethanol refineries give off the same pollutants as comes from exhaust pipes. When I pressed him to tell me what was wrong, he didn't want to answer. Then he finally told me there was an ethanol refinery right there where he lives and the fumes that come from it can be smelled everywhere in the community. He then wanted to get off the phone and wouldn't talk to me anymore hinting that it is understood in corn country that no one talks bad about ethanol because of all the money being made growing corn to make it from.

There are just a few more reasons why it's so important to read my other article "Letter to American Corn Farmers." I have been over the facts I relate in it many times trying to figure out how I could be wrong about how to make ethanol work without causing these problems,, the point being is that it would mean more money for farmers to do it the right way over how they're doing it now way. It might mean less money for Wall Street types who make money from federal ethanol subsidies, people who have nothing to do with growing corn or making ethanol. It however would be a boon for everyone else, and I mean everyone, not just corn and honeybee farmers but the whole country, especially me because I wouldn't get as sick anymore.

As far as I can tell from everything I can find on these topics on the internet, my plan for ethanol would work. But it seems no one in charge of managing these kinds of things cares for anything that works anymore. In fact it seem that if it does work, they find new ways to break it while making things that don't work worse. I don't exactly know why they would do this but it appears greedy educated people are behind all our problems as if they think they rest of us are stupid, even worse, their slaves who they think it is funny to make sick while they steal all our money through their crooked banks. Whatever the reason no one is stopping them, I am getting damn sick and tired of it. If this article doesn't spark some kind of interest towards getting something related to ethanol done right for a change, then the next article I write will be about my campaigning to run for congress. You might think it's funny that a guy like me would run for public office. But you won't be laughing if I get elected because I'm not the kind of person that can be bought off, especially not when there is so much more money to be made doing things the right way over screwing everything up. With that kind of equation, I don't see how I can loose.

Wikipedia - Bees and toxic chemicals - "The effects of alcohol on bees are sufficiently similar to the effects of alcohol on humans that honey bees have been used as models of human ethanol intoxication."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bees_and_toxic_chemicals

School Bus Pollution Examined
click here

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), sometimes called Honeybee Depopulation Syndrome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder

Peroxyacyl nitrates, or PANs, - powerful respiratory and eye irritants present in photochemical smog.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peroxyacyl_nitrates

Study: Dietary Added Sugars Pose Heart Attack, Stroke and Diabetes Risk
click here=10431132

The Hidden Ingredient That Can Sabotage Your Diet
click here=56589

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I worked in New York City until 911 caused me breathing problems. When I thought I was better, I started having trouble again and found out it was pollution caused by ethanol in gasoline. So I wrote a letter to farmers who grow the corn to make the (more...)
 
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