Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

defector.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 295 posts

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#81

Post by jjmarr »

gruez wrote: post #62
busterarm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canadian bureaucracy around food is at times insane (and vaguely racist). Just look up '1985 Jamaican patty wars'.

From cbc: >In 1985, the Canadian government tried to stop Jamaican bakeries and restaurants from using the term "beef patty." >At the time, Canada's Meat Inspection Act classified a beef patty as what goes in a hamburger. It could contain only meat and seasoning and it couldn't be encased in dough or a crust. Therefore, a Jamaican patty — widely known as a flaky pastry with a spiced beef filling — didn't meet the cri…

Having grown up in Toronto, unqualified "beef patty" means the Jamaican snack. It is extremely common junk food I would buy at a convenience store on my way home from school.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#82

Post by Arainach »

Maxion wrote: post #51

Why on earth are they not composting it, but instead putting in a landfill and locking it up? What a dumb idea.

Salt isn't conducive to things growing - or composting. High salt levels kill bacteria and hurt plants.

Fish sauce is very high in salt.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#83

Post by wang_li »

Reason077 wrote: post #66
wang_li wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This stuff is barely pollution. Everything there is a natural part of the environment and biological processes. Literally the only issue here is the concentration of it. Dumping it in the ocean is an ideal course of action. Failing that it should be dumped out in the wilderness, not in bags, but just on the ground. It may have a short-term change in the local environment, but long term it's fertilizer. The risk of du…

> ”It may have a short-term change in the local environment, but long term it's fertilizer.” The fish would make for great fertilizer, but the salt would not. High salt concentrations will kill many plants and probably would stick around in the soil for a long time.

There's not enough salt to sterilize the land where dumped. The salt in fish sauce preparation may be as high as 20% initially but by the time it's done, after having been drained and refilled multiple times, it's 2-4%. To sterilize land requires 5-10kg/m^2 of salt applied repeatedly.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#84

Post by Arainach »

fred_is_fred wrote: post #41

I am surprised that after this long the smell isn't gone. If one were to open all these tanks and spread it around on the ground in a layer, wouldn't it dissipate after a few months when the bacteria finish up?

Salt isn't conducive to bacteria.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#85

Post by moralestapia »

compass_copium wrote: post #46
moralestapia wrote: post #40

Hmm, curious, could there be any use for this substance? Fertilizer or something?

With all the salt, you'd turn your fields into the next Carthage.

Ah, I thought it was some rotten fish. Thanks.

>With all the salt, you could create another Hacker News.

Lol.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#86

Post by willy_k »

gruez wrote: post #48
d-e-r-e-k wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While your comment is true, it is reductive. While celery seed does in fact contain nitrates which are turned into nitrites, it’s the next step that’s important. Unlike synthetic sodium nitrite, celery seeds contain vitamin C which acts as an antioxidant that converts the nitrites into harmless nitric oxide whereas the synthetic sodium nitrite is converted into harmful nitrosamines. The subtle differences in how our…

>celery seeds contain vitamin C which acts as an antioxidant that converts the nitrites into harmless nitric oxide whereas the synthetic sodium nitrite is converted into harmful nitrosamines. This just sounds like post hoc justification. There's hardly any vitamin C in celery seeds[1][2]. Broccoli has 5x the vitamin C per 100g, despite much of it being water. Moreover, if the point is that vitamin C protects against…

Maybe because people still want to eat food. The culture of trying to re-engineer life is not it.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#87

Post by rootusrootus »

wbl wrote: post #42
bhouston wrote: post #10

Isn't the ocean filled with salt and already knows how to biologically degrade fish? I sort of think that you could deposit this at sea somehow, just need to spread it out sufficiently. I am sure I am overlooking something that would lead to an unintended ecological disaster.

"The blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds" - prior failure of intuitively appealing disposal option.

Even in 1970 that could not have made sense to anybody with a brain. They certainly knew enough about explosives to know that the kind of blast required to reliably vaporize an entire whale carcass would be considerably larger than anything they were going to do on a public beach. That whole event was just a couple dudes who thought it would be hilarious and insufficient supervision by adults.

Diluting salty rotting fish sauce in seawater is a lot more defensible. It's not like they'd have to just dump it all in one spot.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#88

Post by mythrwy »

wang_li wrote: post #52
cwal37 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to pollution is dilution was a philosophy prior to modern environmental protection laws, which were a reaction to the fact that we were absolutely destroying all kinds of ecosystems, even when we thought we were just diluting toxins down to nothing.

This stuff is barely pollution. Everything there is a natural part of the environment and biological processes. Literally the only issue here is the concentration of it. Dumping it in the ocean is an ideal course of action. Failing that it should be dumped out in the wilderness, not in bags, but just on the ground. It may have a short-term change in the local environment, but long term it's fertilizer. The risk of du…

They could mix it with woodchips and compost it and it would be an excellent soil amendment full of trace marine minerals.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#89

Post by d-e-r-e-k »

gruez wrote: post #48
d-e-r-e-k wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While your comment is true, it is reductive. While celery seed does in fact contain nitrates which are turned into nitrites, it’s the next step that’s important. Unlike synthetic sodium nitrite, celery seeds contain vitamin C which acts as an antioxidant that converts the nitrites into harmless nitric oxide whereas the synthetic sodium nitrite is converted into harmful nitrosamines. The subtle differences in how our…

>celery seeds contain vitamin C which acts as an antioxidant that converts the nitrites into harmless nitric oxide whereas the synthetic sodium nitrite is converted into harmful nitrosamines. This just sounds like post hoc justification. There's hardly any vitamin C in celery seeds[1][2]. Broccoli has 5x the vitamin C per 100g, despite much of it being water. Moreover, if the point is that vitamin C protects against…

I’m in no way implying or arguing celery seeds contain a great amount of vitamin C. There are of course many foods that contain more vitamin C than celery seeds. I’m stating that the naturally occurring vitamin C in celery seeds is the key difference between natural and synthetic nitrites.

I guess for me it just comes down to going back to basics. Why use multiple synthetic ingredients if a natural alternative exists. There are thousands of synthetic chemicals in the American food supply and we just don’t entirely know how they’re affecting our bodies.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#90

Post by mythrwy »

hluska wrote: post #77
Maxion wrote: post #51

Why on earth are they not composting it, but instead putting in a landfill and locking it up? What a dumb idea.

Environment Canada’s testing found it ‘acutely lethal’. I’d consider composting an acutely lethal substance that is extremely high in salt to be the dumb idea. Canada actually has scientists. From reading through these comments, I know that’s a shock but we do, they test things and they follow the evidence before making recommendations. In fact, those test results from back in 2016 are even public. Just because this…

A little salt in compost is fine. Too much is an issue. They actually sell salt based soil amendments for areas that have been depleted of minerals. (Sea-90 is one brand). It's very lightly applied.

It could be composted and that would kill the smell, it's just getting the ratios right and you might need an additional nitrogen source, but Canada has a lot of wood chips for the carbon.

Post reply on HN