BRAZIL NUTS-A JUNGLE NUT
It does not grow in a. cultivated form of
groves of trees, but in the ''wild tropical
jungles of the Amazon region in South America
The trees obtain a height of 100 to 160 feet
and there you find the giant pods that hold
12 to.22 nuts, and arranged inside like the
section of an orange. The hard walled pod
weighs an average of 3 pounds. A person
takes his life in his hands to walk under
the trees, during the season when the pods
are falling. The hard pods falling from
1.60 feet can be a deadly missile, /hen the
falling season ends, the harvester must stil'
watch out for late falling nuts and venom
ous jungle snakes. The pods are gathered
from the ground and in safe spots are crack
ed open by means of a large knife. Nuts are
then removed to tall baskets, transferred
to nearest river by donkey, and shipped by
beat to a processing mill, lit the mill, nuts
are sorted on racks of heavy mesh wire so
dirt and spoiled nuts are removed. The
rotten ones are sent to a factory and turn
ed into cheap soapc Good nuts are shipped
from the mill fresh with the shell on, dried
both in and out of the shell. The drying
process is gteam-.heated ovens with a temper
ature of 50 c ji.tjgrade or 122°fahrenheit;
from 2-b to 60 hours to reduce the weight 20
per cent. They are then packed and sent to
many parts of the world. One must have skill
ho crack the nuts and keep them in one piece
To make this easier for the women workers,
the nuts are soaked in water at least 6
hours, then steamed 1 minute in a pressure
cooker. The workers use a small hand press
with skill as they are only paid for the
unbroken ones. Two of these nuts are equivi
lant to one egg for nourishment and a double
handful to tx^enty eggs. Souveniers’. have been
made from the pods to delight the tourists.
Their growth is too slow for commercial use
in cultivated farms, their independability
for producing nuts late sometimes and other
times, not plentiful. Brazil gathers 8,000
tons yearly and we can alx-jays depend on that
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WASTE
DISPOSAL •
I It is silll the custom of cities to pour
i their x^astes into rivers from which they
draw drinking water. Cholera epidemics
epidemics, seldom experienced in the world,
ciue to purifying treatments of waste before
discharging it into rivers before it is used
for drinking, yet problems still arise. In
many countries it has to be boiled before it
is used. Dumping in streams, rivers, and off
shore destroy fish, shellfish, and other
water life, also leaving bathing beaches
unusatlc. In Canada the outbreak of polio
| xcas traced to sewage x^aste in the drinking
j vator. Russian fishery was cut about a
'Quarter of a billion dollars a year. In the
U.S. grave concern exists as 100 million
draw water and 120 million dump waste. It
is too great for rivers to purify themselves.
Further 'complications of approximately 10,00C
new chemicals are dumped on soil or in rivers.
! It is hard to keep radioactive pollution out
j of wator and food. Re-cycling of water_
i Cities along'the rivers re-cycle their water
I waich is sa.fe if two cities do not get too
| close together and the sewage is the intake
y 0 - ’the water supply as the river cannot purify
i fast enough. Some pla.ces use sedimentation and
j it is suflicient if the water is swift-moving
| and well oxycnated. The solids drop to the
! bottom of a tank and cannot destroy plant
i and fish. There arc several ways to purify
| water.
Pri ma ry. trea-tmont -- ;
'/'/i L<ur
0 l
bIack di.a™d bIfts
LOTS OF NEW BONE CHINA AND GLASSWARE
MEN THIS YEAR: STUFFED ANIIIALS .'AID TOYS
DON’T FORGET YOUR RIDE WITH BABE AND HER
JINGLE BELLS .AID SLEIGH *
OPEN
WENINGS
| I'" begins by passing through racks or screen
f kars of stool, set two inches apart, to keep
i trash back. Revolving cutters are sometimes
used instead of the screens. Proceeding the
cutters, a widened channel and a slow rate
; of flow to permit sand to fall in the grit
| chambero Sewage now drops to an 8 to 10 ft.
deep tank. This takes from jO minutes to
• three hours.-. About 40 to 55 per cent of
solids settle out. If chemicals arc added,
almost all x-jill be removed. Scum must be re- »
moved, from the top and is either burned or
buried.
Filters—The fluids then pass from the sett
ling tank through a filter of rocks five or
six feet deep to put oxygen into it and where;
oxidizing bacteria can live. This changes it
to offensive compounds such as nitrates and
sulfates. It does not strain and must pass
into a settling tank and floating material
removed. Then the fluids can be put into the
river. Some Cities use sand .filter, a better
contact to bacteria for purifying action. Ihi
makes the rest hardly distinguishable in
appearance from drinking water.
Activated sludge—Solids are removed from
settling tanks by mechanical scrapers, pumped
into heated digestion tanks where bacteria
converts it to mineralized form without odor.
The ga.s produced by the process is used to
heat the digester tank and sometimes servos
as fuel for the engines that operate the
(continued on Page Four WASTE DISPOSAL)
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