[Newspoetry] a big week for arsenic

[Joe Futrelle]

This week
George W. Bush's environmental wing
OK'd levels of arsenic
in drinking water
tens to hundreds of times above
what scientists confirm
disables the body's natural defense against
certain cancers.

Most of this arsenic
occurs naturally,
and as water gets scarcer,
we have to resort to aquifers
with more and more arsenic.

In other news
I was at a meeting
and a colleague told me that
some botanist had chanced upon
a plant species which absorbs arsenic
hundreds of times better than
most.

You could plant one of these,
he said,
it would absorb the arsenic,
and then you could cut it down,
put it in a toxic waste dump,
and plant another
in its place.

There may be other species like this;
with better databases,
maybe,
we could find them.

I was feeling tired that day
so I left work early with a headache,
I think I was just
dehydrated ...

--
Joe Futrelle
editor-so-called
Newspoetry dawt kom