Blogs / 80beats

As the cleanup continues of the billion gallons of ash that spilled out of a reservoir at a Tennessee coal-fired power plant two weeks ago, nearby residents continue to worry about the long-term health and environmental effects of the waste material. Residents of Kingston, Tennessee, say they’ve gotten conflicting messages regarding the gray sludge that poured into the Emory River and coated their fields and roads. Meanwhile, other coal-burning power plants around the country are inspecting their own waste storage systems for weaknesses.

Preliminary results from water samples taken in the spill area show no unsafe levels of toxins, said Leslie Sims, on-scene coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency. The testing includes municipal supplies and private wells, he said. However, samples of the fly ash scooped up along roadsides and river banks show elevated levels of arsenic that normally would trigger an EPA response, Sims said. “These are levels that we consider harmful to humans,” he said [CNN]. But the EPA is not responding because the Tennessee Valley Authority, which operates the plant, is already working on cleaning up the pollution, Sims said.

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The growth of the world’s largest coral reef system has slumped to its slowest rate in at least four centuries, according to a new report in Science [subscription required]. Researchers studying coral colonies in the Great Barrier Reef found that calcification, the process that builds the reefs, has dropped 13.3 percent since 1990. They fear the decline is indicative of a worldwide threat to coral reefs caused by rising seawater temperatures and ocean acidification. The loss of coral growth threatens food webs and may lead to “precipitous” changes in biodiversity, the authors said [Bloomberg].

The Great Barrier Reef along the northeast coast of Australia stretches more than 1,200 miles and is visible even in space. Coral reefs, delicate undersea structures resembling rocky gardens made by tiny animals called coral polyps, are important nurseries and shelters for fish and other sea life. They also protect coastlines, provide a critical source of food for millions of people, attract tourists and are potential storehouses of medicines for cancer and other diseases [Reuters]. Massive coral reefs materialize from the gradual accumulation of calcium carbonate by billions of coral polyps over thousands of years.

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The health benefits of eating more fish outweigh the risks of mercury poisoning, according to a new Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposal that would revise current federal seafood advisories. The proposal is drawing fire from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and environmental groups that accuse the FDA of pandering to the seafood industry. Richard Wiles, director of an environmental advocacy group, said, “This is an astonishing, irresponsible document…It’s a commentary on how low FDA has sunk as an agency. It was once a fierce protector of America’s health, and now it’s nothing more than a patsy for polluters” [Washington Post].

Currently, the government advises young children, pregnant women, and women of child-bearing age to restrict overall fish consumption to 12 ounces per week and to avoid shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish, which are known to have particularly high mercury levels. Mercury in the environment accumulates in fish and studies have linked the element to developmental problems in fetuses and young children as well as cardiovascular disease in adults. However, the new FDA report says recent studies suggest “a beneficial impact on fetal neurodevelopment from the mother’s consumption of fish, even though they contain methylmercury…The net effect is not necessarily adverse, and could in fact be beneficial” [AP]. The report argued that nutrients in fish, including omega-3 fatty acids, selenium and other minerals could boost a child’s IQ by three points [Washington Post]. The new analysis places ideal fish consumption—for optimal IQ-boosting—somewhere above 12 ounces per week.

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Massive swarms of jellyfish are a growing threat to swimmers, the fishing industry, and even the nuclear power industry, a new report argues, and it’s high time for scientists to begin researching the causes of the population boom and how to reverse the trend. The new report from the National Science Foundation may tend towards sensationalism (the report is titled “Jellyfish Gone Wild!!“), but the problem is very real. The report says more than 1,000 fist-sized comb jellies can be found in a cubic yard (meter) of Black Sea water during a bloom. They eat the eggs of fish and compete with them for food, wiping out the livelihoods of fishermen, according to the report [Reuters]. A big swarm of jellies can also burst a fishing net or poison and crush a load of captured fish, the report says, and their bodies can clog boat engines.

“When jellyfish populations run wild,” the NSF jellyboffins warn, “they may jam thousands of square miles with their pulsing, gelatinous bodies.” It seems that no less than half a billion “refrigerator sized” slimy horrors weighing 450 pounds each invade the Sea of Japan daily, while Australian waters are plagued with “deadly, peanut-sized” Jellybabies of Death [The Register]. Popular tourist beaches from Spain to Alabama have been closed in recent years when swarms of stinging jellies threatened to harm bathers. As for their impact on nuclear power: The report claims that swarms of jellies sometimes clog the water intake pipes of power plants, and notes that in 1999 just such an incident forced a power plant in the Philippines to shut down, which “plunged 40 million people into darkness and started rumors of a coup d’etat.”

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Even the recycling business is taking a hard hit from the current economic crisis. What in recent years has been a booming market bolstered by a new environmental awakening, has seen a complete reversal of fortunes in recent months as the demand for recycled materials plummeted with a drop in manufacturing. “Before, you could be green by being greedy,” said Jim Wilcox, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. “Now you’ve really got to rely more on your notions of civic participation” [New York Times].

Mixed paper that sold for $105 a ton in October now sells for as low as $20 a ton. Tin is down from $327 a ton earlier this year to just $5 a ton. Plastic bottles have fallen from 25 cents to 2 cents a pound. Aluminum cans dropped nearly half to about 40 cents a pound, and scrap metal tumbled from $525 a gross ton to about $100 [AP]. Only glass prices are holding because demand is still high. The market for recycled materials is tied closely to new manufacturing, much of which takes place in Asian countries; the recyclables are shipped overseas and new products are shipped back to the U.S. Ordinarily the material would be turned into products like car parts, book covers and boxes for electronics. But with the slump in the scrap market, a trickle is starting to head for landfills instead of a second life [New York Times].

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The official death toll from the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe has climbed to nearly 500, according to the World Health Organization. But doctors on the ground say the actual fatalities may be closer to 1,000, with more than 12,000 infected since the start of the outbreak in August. Severe shortages of clean water, food, and medicine have allowed the normally treatable illness to ravage the country. Poorer areas have been without running water for months and just this week, the government cut off water to the nation’s capital, Harare. “The country is reaching a catastrophic level, in terms of food, health delivery, education,” said Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC [opposition party] leader. “Everything seems to be collapsing around us” [Times Online].

Authorities say they have run out of water-purifying chemicals and have therefore shut down the water system in an attempt to contain the waterborne disease. But without running water, sanitation systems are nonexistent and sewage lies in the open air. “Proper hygiene is the best protection against cholera and you can’t do that without clean water,” [BBC News] said Marcus Bachmann of Doctors Without Borders. Residents have resorted to digging shallow wells and using contaminated water despite the government’s warning to use only boiled water. “We are afraid but there is no solution, most of the time the electricity is not available so we just use the water,” resident Naison Chakwicha said [USA Today]. The Health Minister has even asked residents to stop shaking hands. “Although it’s part of our tradition to shake hands, it’s high time people stopped,” he said [CNN].

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One-third of China’s Yellow River is no longer fit for any use, and only one-sixth is safe to drink, according to a bulletin released over the weekend by the Chinese government. It reported the results of a 2007 study that surveyed water quality along the 5,464-kilometer-long river, which has become increasingly polluted from booming riverside industries and raw human sewage. Li Xiaoqiang of the Yellow River Conservancy Committee, which ran the study, called for “urgent action” to save the river, and added forlornly: “I wish that a harmony could be achieved between development, utilisation and protection of the river someday” [Telegraph].

The 2007 study monitored the river’s mainstream and its 35 tributaries, with the combined length totaling 13,492.7 km, and found 4,557.6 km, or 33.8 percent of the waterways monitored, to have polluted water classified as type-five negative [XinHua]. The United Nations Environmental Program considers level five water to be unfit for drinking, aquaculture (such as fish farming and oyster farming), agriculture, and industrial use. Only 16.1 percent of the river water was rated level one or two, considered safe for drinking and household use. Of the 4.29 tons of pollution discharged into the river, industry and manufacturing contributed 70 percent and human sewage made up most of the rest, the bulletin reported. Specific pollutants were not reported. Wen Bo of the environmental group Pacific Environment said “It’s not surprising…They are just treating the river as a dumping site. It’s basically a sewage channel for the provinces that share the river” [AP].

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American voters may have enthusiastically chosen to send Barack Obama to the White House as the next president of the United States, but the Bush Administration still has 76 days in office and seems to be making the most of that time by passing a host of so-called “midnight regulations.” Many of these last-minute rule changes relax environmental regulations, and watchdog groups say these controversial changes may be difficult for the incoming president to undo.

Some of the rule changes would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms. Those and other regulations would help clear obstacles to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking-water standards and lift a key restriction on mountaintop coal mining [Washington Post]. If the rules take effect before inauguration day, the incoming Obama Administration would have to begin a long and complicated regulatory process to reverse them.

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A new government report issues a harsh critique of the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to regulate the tons of toxic electronic waste that are discarded each year. U.S. authorities have yet to develop a national approach for handling the waste, which often contains toxic metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium. Amounts are rapidly growing as consumers replace their laptops, cellphones and televisions [Washington Post].

These discarded devices often end up in slipshod recycling facilities in China, India, and Africa, the report says, where they both pollute the environment and threaten workers’ health. Jim Puckett, an activist with the Electronics TakeBack Coalition, which promotes responsible recycling, said he recently saw workers in Guiyu, China, burning wiring and using acid baths to extract usable ingredients. “It was a cyber-age horror show,” he said [San Jose Mercury News].

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This summer, Louisiana researchers say the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico will reach record size, a prediction that troubles environmentalists and fishermen alike. Researchers say that blame for this record-setting year goes partly to farmers’ rising interest in ethanol, and partly to the aftermath of the Midwest flooding.

The dead zone is an area off the coast of Louisiana and Texas where the water’s oxygen level drops each summer, creating a zone which can’t support most marine life. The low oxygen, or hypoxic, area is primarily caused by high nutrient levels, which stimulates an overgrowth of algae that sinks and decomposes. The decomposition process in turn depletes dissolved oxygen in the water. The dead zone is of particular concern because it threatens valuable commercial and recreational Gulf fisheries [LiveScience].

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With less than a month to go before the opening ceremony for the summer Olympics in Beijing, athletes are still worrying about what effect the city’s famously polluted air will have on their performances. Doctors say that endurance athletes, such as marathon runners and long-distance cyclers, will be most at risk if they compete on smoggy days.

“Marathon runners take about 40 to 50 breaths per minute and there is a real need for oxygen to be transported to the muscles. In normal conditions oxygen makes up about 21% of the air, if that’s compromised, because the very complex transport process in the lungs is compromised, there will be less oxygen getting to the muscles. Add in the heat and the humidity and there could be some major implications,” says [sports doctor John] Brewer [BBC News].

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At the sailing venue for this summer’s Olympic Games, a vast algae bloom has covered the coastal waters with a bright green slime. The Chinese government is scrambling to clean up the mess before the games begin in early August, and more than 1,000 fishing boats have already been mobilized. “We can only haul the blue-green algae manually and we’re doing all we can with our arms full and by the boat-load,” said Wang [Haitao], a sailing spokesman for the Beijing Games organizing committee. “All you can see is fishing boats along the coast” [Bloomberg].

Besides being a concern to the sailors who plan to compete in the Olympic regattas, the algae explosion is also another instance of bad publicity highlighting China’s polluted environment. The country’s three-decade economic boom has left its waterways and coastlines severely polluted by industrial and farm chemicals and domestic sewage [AP], which contain high levels of nitrogen that nourish the algae blooms.

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A mesh made of tiny metal nanowires could clean up oil spills in the ocean, according to a new report [Nature Nanotechnology, subscription required]. The “nanosponge,” which looks like a thin piece of brown paper, can sit on top of water without ever getting wet, while absorbing 20 times its weight in oil.

The MIT nanotech researchers haven’t tested their invention outside the lab yet, but say the nanosponge could be more effective than materials that are currently used to sop up oil, which often absorb water as well as the targeted oil, and which can’t be reused.

The nanowires, which are each 20 nanometers in diameter, are made of potassium manganese oxide and clump together naturally in dense tangles. The researchers then coated the material with a water-repelling silicone layer.

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