ApocaDocuments (10) for the "Biology Breach" scenario from this week
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Sun, Mar 7, 2010
from Charleston Gazette:
EPA delays action on mountaintop removal plan
The Obama administration has delayed action on a set of broad-ranging and specific measures to reduce the environmental impacts of mountaintop removal, after details of the plan were leaked to coal-state mining regulators...Agency officials are pushing for more stringent water pollution standards, tougher permit requirements and more extensive monitoring downstream from mining operations.
Among the initiatives are initial steps toward tighter mining discharge limits on the toxic pollutant selenium and on electrical conductivity, which serves as a measure of harmful salts and metals and has been identified by scientists as an indicator of coal-mining water damage. An announcement had been planned for Wednesday, but has been delayed for at least several weeks. ...
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If you've been to the mountaintop, then you know there is no more time to waste.
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Sat, Mar 6, 2010
from Associated Press:
Disposal of spilled coal ash a long, winding trip
More than a year after a Tennessee coal ash spill created one of the worst environmental disasters of its kind in U.S. history, the problem is seeping into several other states...After the spill, the TVA started sending as many as 17,000 rail carloads of ash almost 350 miles south to the landfill in Uniontown, Ala. At least 160 rail shipments have gone out from the cleanup site... The landfill operators first sent it to wastewater treatment plants -- a common way that landfills deal with excess liquid -- in two nearby Alabama cities, Marion and Demopolis.
After what the EPA calls unrelated problems with ammonia in Marion, the landfill in January started using a commercial wastewater treatment plant in Mobile, Ala., 500 miles from the original spill. ...
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Spreadin' the love...
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Thu, Mar 4, 2010
from SciDev.net:
Farmers and pesticide blamed in Thai rice pest invasion
Thai farmers keen to exploit high rice prices have made an outbreak of a devastating pest worse by overplanting and using too much pesticide, according to ecologists.
An outbreak of brown planthoppers has destroyed 368,000 hectares -- about four per cent of Thailand's rice paddies -- since August last year.
The pests have periodically plagued Asian rice farming for decades, eating their way through rice crops and spreading viral diseases that can stunt growth and prevent rice grain formation.... To ensure good yields, farmers overuse fertilisers -- thought to increase the planthopper's fertility -- and pesticides such as synthetic pyrethroids, which have no effect on planthoppers but kill many of their natural enemies such as spiders.
Golsalvitra said the problem remains unabated despite state efforts to control the situation and the pest is migrating south to the Central Plains -- the country's rice bowl, which is preparing for the next rice season in May.... He said the outbreaks are preventable and that the best way to deal with them is to restore biodiversity rather than destroy it. ...
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We should have used cane toads!*
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Wed, Mar 3, 2010
from Gatehouse News Service, via Winchester Star:
Markey issues statement on safe drinking water
U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Energy and Environment Subcommittee and the author of a bill to establish a federal ban on the chemical Bisphenol A in all food and beverage containers, issued the following statement recently at a hearing titled "Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in Drinking Water: Risks to Human Health and the Environment."... "Lately, not a day goes by where the public is not reminded of the presence of toxic chemicals in the air we breathe and the water we drink, and the potential harmful effects that these chemicals can have on public health and the environment.
"Just last week a local newspaper warned that the Potomac River and other mid-Atlantic rivers are laced with toxins that may be responsible for bizarre deformities in fish, frogs and other wildlife that come in contact with the contaminated water. This includes male fish that have begun growing female sexual organs, and female fish that can no longer reproduce.
"W.C. Fields once said, 'I never drink water because of the disgusting things fish do in it.'..." ...
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A deformed little chickadee told me.
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Tue, Mar 2, 2010
from Purdue, via EurekAlert:
Popular nanoparticle causes toxicity in fish, study shows
... [N]anosilver suspended in solution proved toxic and even lethal to the minnows. When the nanosilver was allowed to settle, the solution became several times less toxic but still caused malformations in the minnows.
"Silver nitrate is a lot more toxic than nanosilver, but when nanosilver was sonicated, or suspended, its toxicity increased tenfold," said Maria Sepulveda, an assistant professor of forestry and natural resources whose findings were published in the journal Ecotoxicology. "There is reason to be concerned."... "These nanosilver particles are so small they are able to cross the egg membranes and move into the fish embryos in less than a day," Sepulveda said. "They had a potentially high dose of silver in them." ...
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Only a really tiny reason to be concerned!
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Tue, Mar 2, 2010
from Sacramento Bee:
Study of hospitals puts price tag on California's dirty air
California's dirty air led to nearly $200 million in hospital spending over a three-year period -- including $9 million in Sacramento County -- because of asthma, pneumonia and other pollution-triggered ailments, according to a study released today.
With its research, Rand Corp. attempts to put a price tag on the state's bad air. The study analyzed records from hospitals and air quality agencies from 2005 to 2007. As many as 30,000 people statewide sought relief in emergency rooms because of air pollution during that period, the report states...The study focused on pollution from ozone, most commonly derived from automobile tailpipe emissions, and fine particulate matter, such as soot from fireplaces and wood-burning stoves. ...
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Sounds worth it to me!
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Tue, Mar 2, 2010
from Greenwich Time:
For frogs, and perhaps humans, there's something strange in the water
Medications leaking into groundwater are producing strange effects on the frogs of Connecticut, effects that could be a harbinger of safety concerns for humans, too, researchers say. A team led by David Skelly, professor of ecology and associate dean for research at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University, has found that male frogs are developing eggs in their reproductive tracts... Skelly's team found that deformities were concentrated in suburban and urban areas, which was something of a surprise for the scientists because it was previously thought that chemicals used on the farm were mostly to blame, particularly the widely used cornfield herbicide atrazine.
"But in agricultural areas, only 7 percent of the frogs show these deformities," he said. "In urban and suburban areas, it's about 20 percent." ...
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These urban and suburban frogs are already metrosexual.
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Tue, Mar 2, 2010
from Washington Post:
Manure becomes pollutant as its volume grows unmanageable
...Animal manure, a byproduct as old as agriculture, has become an unlikely modern pollution problem, scientists and environmentalists say. The country simply has more dung than it can handle: Crowded together at a new breed of megafarms, livestock produce three times as much waste as people, more than can be recycled as fertilizer for nearby fields.
That excess manure gives off air pollutants, and it is the country's fastest-growing large source of methane, a greenhouse gas.
And it washes down with the rain, helping to cause the 230 oxygen-deprived "dead zones" that have proliferated along the U.S. coast. In the Chesapeake Bay, about one-fourth of the pollution that leads to dead zones can be traced to the back ends of cows, pigs, chickens and turkeys. ...
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That is just a shitload of shit!
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Mon, Mar 1, 2010
from UC Berkeley, via PhysOrg:
Atrazine can turn male frogs into females
Atrazine, one of the world's most widely used [weed killer], wreaks havoc with the sex lives of adult male frogs, emasculating three-quarters of them and turning one in 10 into females, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, biologists. The 75 percent that are chemically castrated are essentially "dead" because of their inability to reproduce in the wild, reports UC Berkeley's Tyrone B. Hayes, professor of integrative biology.... Though the experiments were performed on a common laboratory frog, the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis), field studies indicate that atrazine, a potent endocrine disruptor, similarly affects frogs in the wild, and could possibly be one of the causes of amphibian declines around the globe, Hayes said. ...
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Ribbit.
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Mon, Mar 1, 2010
from New York Times:
Rulings Restrict Clean Water Act, Foiling EPA
Thousands of the nation's largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act's reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators. As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising.
Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years. ...
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Supreme fiddling while Home turns.
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