November 10, 2009

Oh noes - it's golf balls

Talk about asinine -- from CNN:
Golf balls: 'Humanity's signature litter'
Research teams at the Danish Golf Union have discovered it takes between 100 to 1,000 years for a golf ball to decompose naturally. A startling fact when it is also estimated 300 million balls are lost or discarded in the United States alone, every year. It seems the simple plastic golf ball is increasingly becoming a major litter problem.
And more:
With an increasing number of golf balls discarded each year, the Danish Golf Association devised a number of tests to determine the environmental impact of golf balls on their surroundings.

It was found that during decomposition, the golf balls dissolved to release a high quantity of heavy metals. Dangerous levels of zinc were found in the synthetic rubber filling used in solid core golf balls. When submerged in water, the zinc attached itself to the ground sediment and poisoned the surrounding flora and fauna.

Course manager for the Danish Golf Union, Torben Kastrup Petersen, said the scale of the problem is unknown: "There has been very little research on the environmental impact of golf balls, but it's safe to say the indicators are not good. We are planning to collaborate with environmentalists in America to conduct more tests to fully explore the extent of the problem."
Isn't there something more pressing that needs doing guys? How about volunteering to tutor kids, how about wiping out the piracy in Somalia, how about deposing Mugabe and restoring Zimbabwe to its former glory, how about doing something that really matters for a change instead of this banal pettifogging chicanery -- oh, but that would mean that you would actually have to do something, be effective, be a man -- well never mind... Posted by DaveH at November 10, 2009 12:59 PM | TrackBack