Copper Palate. Have you ever tasted a penny? I can't recall ever having done so, but I feel like I just did after reading this vivid Associated Press report about the shipbreaking business in southern Texas.

 

The article focuses on the skyrocketing market for scrap metal and how it has turned the tables on U.S. ship recyclers:

 

"For years the federal government paid the shipbreakers at the Port of Brownsville -- the center of the U.S. shipbreaking industry -- to dispose of its rusted frigates and tankers. But soaring scrap metal prices have led these companies to begin paying the federal government for the chance to get ahold of all that valuable steel.

 

"International Shipbreaking Ltd. recently began recycling Adonis, an 18,000-ton tanker built in 1966. The company paid the U.S. Maritime Administration an unprecedented $1.1 million for the privilege, on top of the cost of towing it from the reserve fleet's home in Beaumont, Texas, nearly 700 miles up the Gulf Coast."

 

Just What The Doctor Didn't Order. Scientists have discovered yet another way air pollution can kill you.

 

Reuters reports that small-particle pollution can cause blood clots in the legs -- "the same condition air travelers call 'economy class syndrome' from immobility during flight."

 

"Dr. Andrea Baccarelli of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and colleagues said they found the link after looking at 870 people in Italy who had developed deep vein thrombosis between 1995 and 2005. When compared with 1,210 others living in the same region who did not have the problem, they found that for every increase in particulate matter of 10 micrograms per square meter the previous year, the risk of deep vein thrombosis increased by 70 percent."

 

We'll all be sporting gas masks before we know it.

 

Offensive, Foul. The San Francisco 49ers professional football franchise is considering building a new stadium on the site of a former garbage dump in Brisbane, Calif.

 

I apologize in advance for this flagrantly mismatched sports metaphor, but is that not a deliciously fat pitch, wisecrackwise?

 

Insert your own punchline about the odor of the 49ers' recent-years on-field performance here.

 

Pete Fehrenbach is managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.

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