A crew for the CBS investigative journalism program 60 Minutes was roughed up at a Chinese electronic waste site. 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley and his crew were in the Middle Kingdom to trace the illegal black market electronic waste in the world’s most populous country. Upon entering a facility in Guiyu, on the south coast of China, the crew was attacked by a gang of workers who attempted to take their cameras. The crew managed to escape and brought back footage of the incident to air on CBS this week.

The workers at the facility had reason to want to take the cameras as their activities are highly illegal even in the loosely regulated world of Chinese industry. Improper dismantling of e-waste for the black market, as was being done in Guiyu, produces some of the most harmful pollutants known to man. The City of Guiyu is afflicted with some of the highest levels of cancer causing agents on Earth while pregnancies there are 6 times more likely than normal to result in miscarriage and 7 out of 10 children have too much lead in their blood.

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Before the Olympics this summer, China removed half its cars from the roads in attempts to cut down pollution.   During the Games, pollution seemed to be kept at bay in Beijing, so it looks like China thinks it may be on to something.   The Washington Post reports today that the Chinese Government is enacting rules to remove thirty percent of cars from Beijing roadways every day.   From the article,

Beginning Oct. 11, Chinese motorists will also stop driving one workday a week, based on the final number on their license plates. The new rules should take 800,000 vehicles off the roads each day, according to reports quoting Wang Zhaorong of Beijing’s Municipal Traffic Committee. There are 3.5 million cars in Beijing, and more than 1,000 vehicles are added each day, according to government statistics.

The Chinese people, we are told (consider the source is the New Beijing News), are overwhelmingly in favor of the plan, as it will cut commute times drastically.

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China’s contaminated dairy crisis continues to threaten the health of the country and now the effects have spread to Europe and the United States.   Milk-based products containing melamine, including non-dairy creamers, are being recalled from American shelves.   And while the F.D.A. has not yet reported any contamination in the U.S., the pervasiveness of the tainted products elsewhere should give us pause.   The appalling lack of oversight and accountability for China’s safety regulations has led to the sickening of 53,000 children and the deaths of at least four, and melamine continues to appear everywhere from zoos to candy stores.

As the list of incidents grows the international community must demand the Chinese government take responsibility and investigate any attempts at covering up the scandal.   We should also ask that our own government increase inspections and put a ban on Chinese dairy products to protect consumers.   The health risks involved here offer a bold argument for informing consumers about the sources and ingredients of the foods we eat.

takepart and ask the FDA to take proactive measures to protect American consumers.

Photo: 2dog’s Flickr Photostream

Related:   Sarah’s Social Action Snapshot: Menu Labeling

The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

TakePart Gang:

Participant Media Takes Burning Man by Blair Golson

Hurricane Gustav: Photo Update by Joshua Tremblay

* * *

Nicole Hughes:

Top 5 Tips for Biking to Work

Obama Acceptance Speech: Green Energy Highlights

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Andy Kondrat:

A Survey of the Top 10 Greenest Presidents

HP Designs Laptop for Wal-Mart, Reduces 97% of Packaging

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Jon Popham:

Open Mic Reveals Right-Leaning Journalists’ Real Views

Comcast Appeals FCC Net Neutrality Decision

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Giulia Rozzi:

Getting What You Want

Female Amputee Competes in Beijing Olympics

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Gina Telaroli:

Heart Not Happy with Sarah “Barracuda” Palin

Top 10 Cancer Movies That’ll Make You Stand Up

You may or may not have noticed, but we’re kind of right smack-dab in the middle of some sort of political something-or-other, what with the partisanship and nasty ads and the like. So I thought it might be nice to take a step back from that kind of politics, and instead bring you a survey of some of the greenest presidents this country has ever had, courtesy of The Daily Green. The nice thing about this list is that it includes presidents from both sides of the aisle, as conservation isn’t actually a partisan issue. So, let’s get to getting to!

1. Teddy Roosevelt: This man had chutzpah, to say the least, and a Conservative in the true sense of the word. He wanted to conserve money, the American way of life, and importantly for this post, the environment. When not running around with the Rough Riders and being generally brash, The Daily Green notes that

‘TR’ consistently lobbied Congress for wilderness protection, used the Forest Reserve Act of 1891 to set aside 150 million acres of timberland as public domains, and oversaw creation of the U.S. Forest Service. Roosevelt also created 50 wildlife refuges and five national parks.

5. Richard Nixon: People tend to forget, under the shadow of Watergate, that at one point Richard Nixon was an extremely popular president who opened China, put an end to the Vietnam War, and eased the tensions of the Cold War through treaties with the Soviet Union.

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Though China enacted some pollution-controlling measures (we may have mentioned some of the issues around that) in the months prior to the Olympics (and I haven’t actually heard much about any pollution problems since the games started), the country is also making policy changes that will hopefully curb pollution in the long run. In a not-so-subtle nudge for Chinese consumers, the Finance Ministry is raising taxes on large cars, while simultaneously lowering taxes on small ones. From the Associated Press, as reported in The Detroit News:

The tax on passenger vehicles with engines bigger than 4 liters will be doubled to 40 percent from 20 percent, effective Sept. 1, the Finance Ministry said Wednesday in a statement on its Web site. Those buying vehicles with engines sized from 2 liters up to 4 liters will have to pay a 25 percent tax, up from the current 15 percent, it said.

Cars with engines up to one liter in size will have their tax dropped from three percent to one percent.

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What would the Olympics be without controversy…?

I’m not talking about Beijing pollution, media control and the vast human rights issues – from Darfur genocide to Tibet’s destruction to Spielberg’s exit to British journalist persecution – but about the athletes and their performances.

Gone, it appears, are the swimming false starts (and normal swim suits), the track and field drug exposes, the simpler gymnastics’ scoring that revealed individual nationalistic biases. However, the biggest controversy so far has been the age-doping.

Jon Stewart has some athlete-producing sweatshops fun below.

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I’ve never really considered the direct international implications of polluting, mainly because thinking takes energy and can be difficult and stuff, but it turns out the pollution in China is having an adverse effect on Alaska’s environment. The Peninsula Clarion in Alaska reports:

Industrial pollutants from China’s increasingly robust use of coal are plating out across the globe, including here in Alaska, brought here by storms crossing the Pacific Ocean transporting tons of airborne chemicals that shower onto coastal waters and inland where it they end up in the local food chain, according to scientists studying the phenomenon.

The scientists doing their sciency thing can study the pollutants to find the original source, which is why they can say as a certainty the pollution in Alaska is coming from China. As well, they are attempting to measure the percentage of overall pollution in the United States coming from China, and the numbers are a little frightening.

A Scientific American article published online this week noted that a brown cloud leaving China is visible from space ‘and takes about a week to cross the Pacific to the western U.S., where it accounts for as much as 15 percent of the air pollution.’

You can takepart here to find more articles about airborne pollution.

Olympics Olympics Olympics! We love the good, the bad, the ugly and everything in between when it comes to the 2008 Beijing Olympics here at TakePart.   It’s reason enough not to miss our Top 10 Stories about the Olympic Games, which we’ve been reporting on in the months leading up to now. Catch the best in TakePart Olympic news below:

1) 2008 Olympic Torch Relay Will Create 11 Million Pounds of CO2 by Nicole Hughes

The 2008 Olympic torch relay hasn’t galvanized a lot of warm fuzzy feelings and hand holding this year. Opposition to China’s treatment of Tibet has inspired international protests, with some dissenters even managing to snuff out the torch and delay the tour… [click here for the full story]

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The Olympic Games start tomorrow, and though China has made concerted efforts to cut pollution down before the games begin, today the residents of Beijing woke up to a “white smog,” a phenomenon occurring when pollution is so thick that a skyline is virtually invisible.

How thick is a white smog, you ask? ABC (this is the Australian one, not the Disney one) puts it pretty well as such: “The smog is so thick that passers-by on the streets fail to cast shadows.” Gross. But if rain does hit Beijing tomorrow afternoon, as forecasted, the smog may dissipate prior to the Opening Ceremonies.

Way before this development, the pollution had already become such an issue some athletes had decided not to compete for health reasons. And this isn’t really helping any. At this point, though, it’s up to nature to hopefully lend a helping hand so that the events can proceed unhindered. As it’s not so likely you can take action to help unpollute Beijing before the Opening Ceremony, instead you can takepart here to see fifty ways you can reduce your own pollution output.