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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(6)
Plague/Virus:(1)
Climate Chaos:(10)
Resource Depletion: (4)
Biology Breach:(11)
Recovery:(6)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
arctic meltdown  ~ unintended consequences  ~ water issues  ~ toxic buildup  ~ oil issues  ~ climate impacts  ~ fertilizer runoff  ~ overfishing  ~ ocean warming  ~ global warming  ~ governmental corruption  



ApocaDocuments (11) for the "Biology Breach" scenario from this week
[see full week] ~ [see full Biology Breach scenario and stories]
Sun, Aug 8, 2010
from Daily Mail:
Billions of pieces of rubbish clogging Three Gorges
... But China's Three Gorges superstructure is now under threat from vast floating islands of rubbish and debris which have been swept into the Yangtze River by torrential rain and flooding. The debris has clogged a large swathe of the river and the locks of the hydroelectric dam - which cost $25billion to build and claimed more than 100 lives - are now at risk. The crust of rubbish is jammed so thick in places that people can stand on it. The Three Gorges rubbish jam is not an isolated occurrence. Another island covering 15,000 square metres - more than 150,000 square feet - had lodged under a bridge in the north-eastern city of Baishan in Jilin province and was blocking water flow. Officials in Baishan are racing against time to clear the debris as they fear a fresh wave of flooding could bring down the bridge. If the island is washed downstream, it could block floodgates at the Yunfeng dam, now operating at full capacity.... 'We have collected 40 trucks of the trash, but the remaining trash might fill another 200 trucks,' police officer Wang Yong said. More rain is forecast in the coming days. ...


Thank goodness this is an isolated occurrence!

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Sun, Aug 8, 2010
from Scientific American:
Genetically Modified Crop on the Loose and Evolving in U.S. Midwest
Outside a grocery store in Langdon, N.D., two ecologists spotted a yellow canola plant growing on the margins of a parking lot this summer. They plucked it, ground it up and, using a chemical stick similar to those in home pregnancy kits, identified proteins that were made by artificially introduced genes. The plant was GM--genetically modified.... What was more surprising was that nearly everywhere the two ecologists and their colleagues stopped during a trip across the state, they found GM canola growing in the wild. "We found transgenic plants growing in the middle of nowhere, far from fields," says ecologist Cindy Sagers.... Most intriguingly, two of the 288 tested plants showed man-made genes for resistance to multiple pesticides--so-called "stacked traits," and a type of seed that biotechnology companies like Monsanto have long sought to develop and market. As it seems, Mother Nature beat biotech to it. "One of the ones with multiple traits was [in the middle of] nowhere, and believe me, there's a lot of nowhere in North Dakota--nowhere near a canola field," she adds. ...


Those stacked traits belong to Monsanto now!

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Sun, Aug 8, 2010
from AP, via PhysOrg:
Ruptured Mich. oil pipeline shows lengthwise rip
Officials say a ruptured section of pipeline that spewed oil into a southern Michigan river had a lengthwise rip that likely is less than five feet long. The Environmental Protection Agency and pipeline company Enbridge Inc. said Saturday the section was removed a day earlier in Calhoun County and will be shipped to a National Transportation Safety Board lab in Washington, D.C. Enbridge Executive Vice President Steve Wuori (WUHR'-ee) says officials on the scene can't tell from looking at the pipeline what led to the failure. Enbridge reported the spill July 26. The EPA says more than 1 million gallons of oil have flowed into the Kalamazoo River and other waterways. The company estimates the total at 820,000 gallons. ...


I bet it was Uncle Buster using his mini-backhoe.

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Fri, Aug 6, 2010
from Ecological Society of America:
Scientists find the first evidence of genetically modified plants in the wild
Scientists currently performing field research in North Dakota have discovered the first evidence of established populations of genetically modified plants in the wild. Meredith G. Schafer from the University of Arkansas and colleagues from North Dakota State University, California State University, Fresno and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency established transects of land along 5,400 km of interstate, state and county roads in North Dakota from which they collected, photographed and tested 406 canola plants. The results--which were recorded in early July and are set to be presented at ESA's Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh--provide strong evidence that transgenic plants have established populations outside of agricultural fields in the U.S. Of the 406 plants collected, 347 (86 percent) tested positive for CP4 EPSPS protein (confers tolerance to glyphosate herbicide) or PAT protein (confers tolerance to glufosinate herbicide). "There were also two instances of multiple transgenes in single individuals," said one of the study's coauthors Cynthia Sagers, University of Arkansas. "Varieties with multiple transgenic traits have not yet been released commercially, so this finding suggests that feral populations are reproducing and have become established outside of cultivation. These observations have important implications for the ecology and management of native and weedy species, as well as for the management of biotech products in the U.S." ...


Awright! Now everything's becoming RoundupReady!

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Thu, Aug 5, 2010
from Q13Fox TV:
Puget Sound is becoming threat to shellfish industry
It's a multi-million dollar business that depends on Puget Sound to help it thrive. But, those very waters could be killing the shellfish industry. Scientists say the Sound is becoming more acidic and oysters are dying because of it.... "When you have the water incoming into the hatchery and it's very low PH waters it can kill off the larvae of many of our oyster species," said Feely.... There is no easy fix. Scientists believe the high acid levels we're seeing right now has been building up in Puget Sound for decades. Bill Dewey believes the best way to protect future generations of oysters is stop polluting the environment right now. "Even if we change carbon emissions, policies today, we still have got 50 more years of problems coming our way," said Dewey. ...


It's as if our own environment were becoming toxic to life... Oh, wait... we already know that!

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Thu, Aug 5, 2010
from ACS, via EurekAlert:
Homes of the Poor and the Affluent Both Have High Levels of Endocrine Disruptors
Homes in low-income and affluent communities in California both had similarly high levels of endocrine disruptors, and the levels were higher in indoor air than outdoor air, according to a new study believed to be the first that paired indoor and outdoor air samples for such wide range (104) of these substances. The study appears in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology.... Examples include phthalates, which are found in vinyl and other plastics, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which are found in older paints, electrical equipment, and building materials. EDCs also are among the ingredients in some pesticides, fragrances, and other materials.... Levels were generally higher indoors than outdoors -- 32 of the compounds occurred in higher concentrations indoors and only 2 were higher outdoors. The scientists expressed surprise at finding higher concentrations of some phthalates outdoors near urban homes contributing to higher indoor levels as well, but concluded that EDCs "are ubiquitously common across socioeconomic groups." ...


The disrupted will always be with us.

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Wed, Aug 4, 2010
from BBC:
Europe breaking electronic waste export ban
"We have an extraordinary amount of illegal shipment along the coast in Europe", says Karl-Heinz Florenz, a German member of the European Parliament who is working to update EU law. Traffickers trick the authorities by not labelling goods as electronics, by pretending they are for re-use, or by hiding them in the middle of a container. The containers that get through are shipped to West Africa - most commonly Ghana and Nigeria - and to South Asian countries including India and Pakistan. "The fundamental problem with electronics is that it's designed in a very bad way," says Kim Schoppink, a campaigner at the Dutch branch of Greenpeace who travelled to Ghana to look at the issue in 2008. "That makes it very expensive to recycle in Europe and therefore it's dumped in developing countries."... The e-waste contains valuable metals, which are extracted at informal recycling sites. But it also contains toxic heavy metals and hazardous chemicals that are handled by workers, some of them children. "They take some copper and aluminium and the rest they burn," says Ms Schoppink. "With this burning process a lot of toxic chemicals are released and these workers are exposed to that every day." ...


"Informal recycling" may produce "collateral damage." Or, "poverty-driven desperation" may "kill people."

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Tue, Aug 3, 2010
from Spiegel Online:
Radioactive Boar on the Rise in Germany
As Germany's wild boar population has skyrocketed in recent years, so too has the number of animals contaminated by radioactivity left over from the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown. Government payments compensating hunters for lost income due to radioactive boar have quadrupled since 2007. It's no secret that Germany has a wild boar problem. Stories of marauding pigs hit the headlines with startling regularity: Ten days ago, a wild boar attacked a wheelchair-bound man in a park in Berlin; in early July, a pack of almost two dozen of the animals repeatedly marched into the eastern German town of Eisenach, frightening residents and keeping police busy; and on Friday morning, a German highway was closed for hours after 10 wild boar broke through a fence and waltzed onto the road. Even worse, though, almost a quarter century after the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in Ukraine, a good chunk of Germany's wild boar population remains slightly radioactive -- and the phenomenon has been costing the German government an increasing amount of money in recent years.... Wild boar are particularly susceptible to radioactive contamination due to their predilection for chomping on mushrooms and truffles, which are particularly efficient at absorbing radioactivity. Indeed, whereas radioactivity in some vegetation is expected to continue declining, the contamination of some types of mushrooms and truffles will likely remain the same, and may even rise slightly -- even a quarter century after the Chernobyl accident. ...


You mean those Atomic Age sci-fi movies were right?

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Tue, Aug 3, 2010
from AP, via PhysOrg:
La. fishermen wrinkle their noses at 'smell tests'
Even the people who make their living off the seafood-rich waters of Louisiana's St. Bernard Parish have a hard time swallowing the government's assurances that fish harvested in the shallow, muddy waters just offshore must be safe to eat because they don't smell too bad.... "If I put fish in a barrel of water and poured oil and Dove detergent over that, and mixed it up, would you eat that fish?" asked Graybill, a 28-year-old commercial oyster, blue crab and shrimp angler who grew up fishing the marshes of St. Bernard. "I wouldn't feed it to you or my family. I'm afraid someone's going to get sick."... "They capped the well, they stopped the oil, so now they're trying to hurry up and get us back working to where they can say everything's fine when it's not," he said. "It's not fine."... "It's nothing but a PR move," she said. "It's going to take years to know what damage they've done. It's just killed us all." ...


Something is rotten in the state of Louisiana.

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Mon, Aug 2, 2010
from Center for Science in the Public Interest:
CSPI Says Food Dyes Pose Rainbow of Risks
Food dyes--used in everything from M&Ms to Manischewitz Matzo Balls to Kraft salad dressings--pose risks of cancer, hyperactivity in children, and allergies, and should be banned, according to a new report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. A top government scientist agrees, and says that food dyes present unnecessary risks to the public. The three most widely used dyes, Red 40, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6, are contaminated with known carcinogens, says CSPI. Another dye, Red 3, has been acknowledged for years by the Food and Drug Administration to be a carcinogen, yet is still in the food supply. Despite those concerns, each year manufacturers pour about 15 million pounds of eight synthetic dyes into our foods. Per capita consumption of dyes has increased five-fold since 1955, thanks in part to the proliferation of brightly colored breakfast cereals, fruit drinks, and candies pitched to children. "These synthetic chemicals do absolutely nothing to improve the nutritional quality or safety of foods, but trigger behavior problems in children and, possibly, cancer in anybody," said CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson, co-author of the 58-page report, "Food Dyes: A Rainbow of Risks." "The Food and Drug Administration should ban dyes, which would force industry to color foods with real food ingredients, not toxic petrochemicals." ...


But without artificial dyes, how shall we get "Cheet-O-range"?

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Mon, Aug 2, 2010
from Guardian:
Floating debris threatens to block Three Gorges dam
Thousands of tonnes of rubbish washed down by recent torrential rain are threatening to jam the locks of China's massive Three Gorges dam, and is in places so thick people can stand on it, state media said on Monday. Chen Lei, a senior official at the China Three Gorges Corporation, told the China Daily that 3,000 tonnes of rubbish was being collected at the dam every day, but there were still not enough resources to clean it all up. "The large amount of waste in the dam area could jam the miter gate of the Three Gorges dam," Chen said, referring to the gates of the locks which allow shipping to pass through the Yangtze river. The river is a crucial commercial artery for the upstream city of Chongqing and other areas in China's less-developed western interior provinces.... Environmentalists have warned for years that the reservoir could turn into a cesspool of raw sewage and industrial chemicals backing on to nearby Chongqing city, fearing that silt trapped behind the dam could cause erosion downstream. China has made scant progress on schemes drawn up nearly a decade ago to limit pollution in and around the reservoir. Chen said about 10m yuan is spent each year clearing 150,000 to 200,000 cubic metres of floating waste by the dam. ...


Dam! Who would have expected debris?

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