Mike Thornton followed a tough act speaking after Gary Noy. I was charged up for another exciting lecture, and wasn't as impressed when it was all said and done. The speech itself was educational, I still took several pages of notes, but I think his charisma score was a few points lower than Mr. Noy's. Being a doctor and not a scientist, as he readily confessed several times, also detracted from his ability to answer questions at the end. Still a great speaker, though.
For years I haven't touched tap water save for use in cooking. I won't drink it straight out of the faucet; I prefer purified or bottled water. That was in part from living in Nevada for four years, which has some of the poorest quality drinking water in the nation, mostly due to all the mining that occurred over the years. Listening to Dr. Thornton lecture on how bad our water is only added to my stigma of drinking public water. I love eating fish, though, and each summer I eat a good amount of trout, so I'm kind of torn as to if I'm going to continue again this year.
The depth of his coverage on mining techniques and the legacy of mining today was very detailed, and quite scary as I scan over my notes now. Of the 26 million pounds of Mercury used for gold mining, only roughly half was recovered. That is a LOT of contamination, let alone the amounts of asbestos, arsenic, and cyanide in addition to that. I don't have the money or time to dedicate currently in helping take care of the problem, but like he said in class outreach and education are going to be the strongest tools, and I can certainly pass on the lessons I learned on Thursday.
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