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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(4)
Plague/Virus:()
Climate Chaos:(12)
Resource Depletion: (6)
Biology Breach:(7)
Recovery:(2)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
ecosystem interrelationships  ~ climate impacts  ~ short-term thinking  ~ contamination  ~ oil issues  ~ economic myopia  ~ governmental idiocy  ~ deniers  ~ carbon emissions  ~ corporate malfeasance  ~ invasive species  



ApocaDocuments (7) for the "Biology Breach" scenario from this week
[see full week] ~ [see full Biology Breach scenario and stories]
Sun, Jul 11, 2010
from Associated Press:
BP claims progress on new cap as oil spews freely
Oil was spewing freely into the Gulf of Mexico as BP crews claimed progress Sunday in the first stages of replacing a leaky cap with a new containment system they hope will finally catch all the crude from the busted well. There's no guarantee for such a delicate operation nearly a mile below the water's surface, officials said, and the permanent fix of plugging the well from the bottom remains slated for mid-August. "It's not just going to be, you put the cap on, it's done. It's not like putting a cap on a tube of toothpaste," Coast Guard spokesman Capt. James McPherson said. ...


Hell, I can't even get my kids to do that at home.

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Fri, Jul 9, 2010
from New Scientist:
Prawns on Prozac, whatever next? Crabs on cocaine?
Second-hand Prozac in waste water could be sending shrimps' swimming patterns haywire, making them easy targets for predators. Alex Ford and Yasmin Guler at the University of Portsmouth in the UK collected local shrimp, Echinogammarus marinus, and observed their behaviour in the lab. The shrimp were exposed to different levels of the antidepressant fluoextine - or Prozac - to test whether the presence of the drug would affect the way the shrimp respond to light. In humans, Prozac acts as a mood enhancer by prolonging the effect of serotonin at nerve terminals. The shrimp, on the other hand, responded to increased serotonin levels by swimming towards the light (Aquatic Toxicology DOI:10.1016/j/aquatox.2010.05.019). The pair found that shrimps exposed to the same Prozac levels present in waste water that flows to rivers and estuaries are five times more likely to swim toward the light instead of away from it. ...


Whatever you do... don't... go... to... the light!

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Thu, Jul 8, 2010
from Huffington Post Investigative Fund:
Weighing Safety of Weed Killer in Drinking Water, EPA Relies Heavily on Industry-Backed Studies
Companies with a financial interest in a weed-killer sometimes found in drinking water paid for thousands of studies federal regulators are using to assess the herbicide's health risks, records of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency show. Many of these industry-funded studies, which largely support atrazine's safety, have never been published or subjected to an independent scientific peer review. Meanwhile, some independent studies documenting potentially harmful effects on animals and humans are not included in the body of research the EPA deems relevant to its safety review, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund has found...at least half of the 6,611 studies the agency is reviewing to help make its decision were conducted by scientists and organizations with a financial stake in atrazine, including Syngenta or its affiliated companies and research contractors. ...


Industry, like father, knows best!

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Wed, Jul 7, 2010
from Associated Press:
AP IMPACT: Gulf awash in 27,000 abandoned wells
More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one -- not industry, not government -- is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows. The oldest of these wells were abandoned in the late 1940s, raising the prospect that many deteriorating sealing jobs are already failing. The AP investigation uncovered particular concern with 3,500 of the neglected wells -- those characterized in federal government records as "temporarily abandoned." ...


We have perforated the earth with our neglect.

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Wed, Jul 7, 2010
from Environmental Health News:
Traffic air pollution near school associated with onset of asthma
Children who breathe traffic-related air pollution at school are more likely to develop asthma, even after taking into account levels of air pollution at their homes, report researchers in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. This study adds to the small, but growing, body of research implicating traffic-related air pollution in the development of asthma. In addition, this study suggests that places away from home where children spend time play an important role in their health. Asthma is one of the most common childhood diseases in the United States. Rates among school-aged children continue to rise, leading to increased absences, more health care and lower quality of life. Asthma is a lung disease with symptoms that include wheezing, coughing, shortness of breath and difficulty breathing. ...


Score one for homeschooling.

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Tue, Jul 6, 2010
from CNN, via DailyKos:
'Whale' oil barge sucks up whopping 32 gallons per minute
CHERNOFF (voice-over): That so-called product, crude oil floating in the sea, hasn't been concentrated enough according to BP for "A Whale" to skim effectively, even though it appears the ship has been surrounded by pools of oil just a few miles from the gusher. WILCOX: We've got oil coming up from over a mile below the surface. And it doesn't always come up in one spot. CHERNOFF: "A Whale" may still prove itself, but the vessel will have to do so before BP officially hires it to join the cleanup fleet. And if that's to happen, the sea will need to cooperate. HANK GARCIA (BP): When you've got seas, six foot, eight-foot seas, it's not going to lend itself to a good capture of the oil. CHERNOFF: As crude continues gushing into the gulf, skimming has been scant. Only 1,100 barrels of oil were skimmed in a 24-hour period, from Sunday to Monday, less than the amount pouring out of the blown-out well in an hour using the most conservative estimate. ...


The conditions weren't ideal.

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Tue, Jul 6, 2010
from Agence France-Press:
More bad news for BP as arsenic levels rise around Gulf of Mexico
British scientists warned that the oil spill is increasing the level of arsenic in the ocean, and could further add to the devastating impact on the already sensitive environment. BP's Deepwater Horizon rig has been spilling between 3,681,500 litres and 911,454,000 litres of oil into the sea per day since it exploded on April 22. The spill is already being labeled as America's worst environmental disaster and has turned into a economic and PR nightmare for the British company. Seventy-five days into the spill, the oil has fouled some 715km of shoreline in four southeastern US states, killed wildlife and put a massive dent in the region's multi-billion-dollar fishing industry. ...


Poor BP... How dare we blame the victim so!

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