Pesticides Damaging Australia's Great Barrier Reef: Government Study

International Business Times
Mon, 15 Aug 2011

Agricultural pesticides are damaging Great Barrier Reef - one of the world's great natural wonders - according to a report by the Australian government on water quality.

The report stated that farmers are using to many toxic chemicals that are seeping into the water - in fact, almost 25 percent of horticulture producers and 12 percent of pastoral farmers are believed to using pesticides regarded as unacceptable.

Pesticides of toxic concentrations have been detected 38 miles inside the reef.

The severe flooding as well as cyclone Yasi that hit the region earlier this year are believed to have worsened the problem by sending pollutants into the ocean.

The report particularly blamed pesticides used by the sugar cane industry in northern Queensland province.

Sad But True

Fri, 13 May 2011

 

"Our entire food chain within the gulf of Mexico is affected, there's no denying that."

 

Mon, 09 May 2011

 

Mangystaum, Kazakhstan -- Some 12-15 dead seals have washed up over the past week on the western Kazakh shore of the Caspian Sea, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reports.

Erik Utebaliev, a local resident, told RFE/RL he found 10-12 dead Caspian seals of all ages, from full-grown adults to pups, on May 3 and three more on May 8.

Kirill Osin, director of the nongovernmental organization EKO Mangistau, told RFE/RL he and his colleagues planned to inspect the seals on May 10 and take tissue samples for analysis to try to determine whether they were poisoned.

He said he had only seen photos of the dead animals and it was too early to speculate about the cause of death.

Osin recalled that the local authorities attributed a mass death of seals in the region two years ago to a virus and inclement weather.

He rejected that conclusion, noting that dead seals are found only in the vicinity of intensive exploitation of offshore oil deposits.

Cholera Epidemic Kills Thousands in Haiti

Examiner

06 May 2011

It’s beginning to look like rain.

What’s good news for some is tragic for others.

In Haiti, the coming rainy season means more are likely to die from the spread of cholera via and increase in flowing, dirty water.

Since October, the United Nations said Thursday, more than 3,500 Haitians have died from the “severe, acute, dehydrating diarrhea that can kill children and adults in less than 12 hours.”

Nearly 300,000 other Haitians have been sickened by the bacteria, and the numbers of sick and dying continue to increase.

The first cases were reported on Oct. 22, 2010 and the disease began spreading rapidly.

On Wednesday, the UN released a special, 32-page report, the result of an investigation of how the epidemic started. The UN concluded  the epidemic is the result of a “confluence of circumstances, and not the fault of any group or individual.”

The death rate from cholera should be less than one percent, the UN said, but it is 1.7 percent in Haiti.

Part of the problem is cholera has not been seen in Haiti in almost 100 years, the UN said, and health workers did not know how to treat it properly.

“It is important to mention that cholera cots were not seen in any of the three hospitals visited,” the UN report states. “Cholera cots are designed to minimize fecal contamination in cholera wards and to measure fluid loss easily. All three cholera units visited were equipped with regular or small portable beds only.

Cholera patients thus defecated in the bed itself, or were asked to walk to the toilet. Asking cholera patients to walk puts them at risk of orthostatic hypotension, a decrease in blood pressure that can be fatal in cholera patients. Hospital staff reported walking on feces in cholera units. In addition, neither hand washing facilities with running water nor hand cleansing products for patients or relatives in these units were evident. Thus, intra-hospital transmission could have been a source of cholera for families, visitors, other patients, and health staff.”

Among the solutions for the problem in Haiti, the UN says, are:

• Training health workers, especially at the treatment center level;
• Scaling-up the availability and use of oral rehydration salts at the household and community level in order to prevent deaths before arrival at treatment centers; and,
• Implementing appropriate measures (including the use of cholera cots) to reduce the risk of intra-facility transmission of cholera to health staff, relatives, and other patients.
• To prevent the spread of cholera, the United Nations and the Government of Haiti should prioritize investment in piped, treated drinking water supplies and improved sanitation throughout Haiti. Until such time as water supply and sanitation infrastructure is established:
• Programs to treat water at the household or community level with chlorine or other effective systems, handwashing with soap, and safe disposal of fecal waste should be developed and/or expanded; and,
• Safe drinking water supplies should continue to be delivered and fecal waste should be collected and safely disposed of in areas of high population density, such as the spontaneous settlement camps.
• The international community should investigate the potential for using vaccines reactively after the onset of an outbreak to reduce cholera caseload and spread of the disease.

Haiti may not get what it needs.

“An appeal for $175 million launched by humanitarian agencies last year to respond to the epidemic has received only 48 per cent of the requested funding.” Sylvie van den Wildenberg, spokesperson for the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, said in a news released emailed Thursday to journalists.

Nearby Residents Say Alberta Oil Spill Making Them Ill

The Vancouver Sun
May 4, 2011

EDMONTON — While cleanup continues at the site of Alberta's worst oil spill in 35 years, some of those living in the nearby hamlet of Little Buffalo say they are being made sick by a noxious smell they believe has been caused by the spill.

The strong, propane-like odour was first noticed in the community Friday morning, not long after thousands of barrels of crude oil began spewing from a large crack in a 44-year-old pipeline about 30 kilometres away.

"I am thinking they should get us all out of here ASAP," Brian Alexander, principal of the Little Buffalo school, said Wednesday.

The oil leak was discovered early Friday morning after a drop in pressure was detected along the Rainbow pipeline, which runs about 770 kilometres from Zama to Edmonton. The leak was stopped later that day, but not before 4.5 million litres of oil, or 28,000 barrels, leaked into a wetland area near Little Buffalo, about 460 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

The oil spill was contained by a beaver dam, which prevented it from spreading further, and an Alberta Environment spokesman said six beavers and 10 ducks died or had to be euthanized after the spill.

Most nearby residents are members of the Lubicon Cree Nation, a community that remains deeply divided after a 2009 election dispute.

Garrett Tomlinson, a spokesman for one of the men claiming to be the band's chief, said residents are worried.

"The biggest concern that's been identified is the aftermath that's going to be left behind by this environmental catastrophe. What the long-term environmental and health impacts are going to be for the people here . . . and how we're going to move forward to mitigate those negative impacts," Tomlinson said.

The pipeline is owned by Plains Midstream Canada, the Canadian arm of Rainbow All American Pipeline, a company that controls about three million barrels of crude oil a day around the continent. The Rainbow pipeline carried about 187,000 barrels of oil a day in Alberta last year. The same line leaked about 200,000 litres of oil near Slave Lake in 2006.

Company spokesman Roy Lamoreaux said monitoring at the site for hydrocarbons did not find any levels above Alberta ambient air quality guidelines. Air monitoring done at the school failed to find any hydrocarbon levels whatsoever, he said.

Energy Resources Conservation Board spokesman Davis Sheremata said the ERCB is "certain" the odour is not related to the oil spill, but added that its source remains under investigation.

Little Buffalo students were sent home from school Friday because of the smell and classes have not resumed.

Alexander said he believes the smell has to be coming from the spill site, especially since the odour began around the same time as the spill occurred.

"This has never happened before, and it only happens when the wind is from the east," he said. "The spill is in the east. How can it not be from that?"

Steve Noskey, the other man claiming leadership of the First Nation, said he is unhappy with the response from both the oil company and the ERCB, which he says has left residents with many unanswered questions about the impact of the spill on humans and wildlife in the area.

He said a community meeting had been planned for Tuesday but was cancelled by the ERCB, which instead sent a one-page "fact sheet" with information about the spill.

"There are a lot of questions that remain unanswered from Plains and the ERCB . . . and they should be more honest with our First Nation than they have been," he said.

Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner told the media on Wednesday that he was "disappointed" by the oil spill. He described such leaks as "unfortunate" but rare, and said he stood by Alberta's rigorous process for inspecting and maintaining pipelines, and dealing with incidents when they do occur.

Air Pollution Damaging Europe's Wildlife Havens



Some farming systems require chemicals to be

added to the soil in order to improve fields' fertility

BBC News
19 April 2011

Air pollution is damaging 60% of Europe's prime wildlife sites in meadows, forests and heaths, according to a new report.

A team of EU scientists said nitrogen emissions from cars, factories and farming was threatening biodiversity.

It's the second report this week warning of the on-going risks and threats linked to nitrogen pollution.

The Nitrogen Deposition and Natura 2000 report was published at a key scientific conference in Edinburgh.

Earlier this week, the European Nitrogen Assessment - the first of its kind - estimated nitrogen damage to health and the environment at between £55bn and £280bn a year in Europe, even though nitrogen pollution from vehicles and industry had dropped 30% over recent decades.

Nitrogen in the atmosphere is harmless in its inert state, but the report says reactive forms of nitrogen, largely produced by human activity, can be a menace to the natural world.

Emissions mostly come from vehicle exhausts, factories, artificial fertilisers and manure from intensive farming.

The reactive nitrogen they emit to the air disrupts the environment in two ways: It can make acidic soils too acidic to support their previous mix of species. But primarily, because nitrogen is a fertiliser, it favours wild plants that can maximise the use of nitrogen to help them grow.

In effect, some of the nitrogen spread to fertilise crops is carried in the atmosphere to fertilise weeds, possibly a great distance from where the chemicals were first applied.

The effects of fertilisation and acidification favour common aggressive species like grasses, brambles and nettles.

They harm more delicate species like lichens, mosses, harebells and insect-eating sundew plants.

Ignored Problem

The report said 60% of wildlife sites were now receiving a critical load of reactive nitrogen.

The report's lead author, Dr Kevin Hicks from the University of York's Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), told BBC News that England's Peak District had a demonstrably low range of species as a result of the reactive nitrogen that fell on the area.

"Nitrogen creates a rather big problem that seems to me to have been given too little attention," he said.
"Governments are obliged by the EU Habitats Directive to protect areas like this, but they are clearly failing."

He said more research was needed to understand the knock-on effects for creatures from the changes in vegetation inadvertently caused by emissions from cars, industry and farms.

At the conference, the delegates agreed "The Edinburgh Declaration on Reactive Nitrogen". The document highlights the importance of reducing reactive nitrogen emissions to the environment, adding that the benefits of reducing nitrogen outweigh the costs of taking action.

Japan's Ocean Radiation Hits 7.5 Million Times Legal Limit

Los Angeles Times

April 5, 2011

High readings in fish prompt the government to establish a maximum level for safe consumption.

The operator of Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant said Tuesday that it had found radioactive iodine at 7.5 million times the legal limit in a seawater sample taken near the facility, and government officials imposed a new health limit for radioactivity in fish.

The reading of iodine-131 was recorded Saturday, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. Another sample taken Monday found the level to be 5 million times the legal limit. The Monday samples also were found to contain radioactive cesium at 1.1 million times the legal limit.

The exact source of the radiation was not immediately clear, though Tepco has said that highly contaminated water has been leaking from a pit near the No. 2 reactor. The utility initially believed that the leak was coming from a crack, but several attempts to seal the crack failed.

On Tuesday the company said the leak instead might be coming from a faulty joint where the pit meets a duct, allowing radioactive water to seep into a layer of gravel underneath. The utility said it would inject "liquid glass" into gravel in an effort to stop further leakage.

Meanwhile, Tepco continued releasing what it described as water contaminated with low levels of radiation into the sea to make room in on-site storage tanks for more highly contaminated water. In all, the company said it planned to release 11,500 tons of the water, but by Tuesday morning it had released less than 25% of that amount.

Although the government authorized the release of the 11,500 tons and has said that any radiation would be quickly diluted and dispersed in the ocean, fish with high readings of iodine are being found.

On Monday, officials detected more than 4,000 bequerels of iodine-131 per kilogram in a type of fish called a sand lance caught less than three miles offshore of the town of Kita-Ibaraki. The young fish also contained 447 bequerels of cesium-137, which is considered more problematic than iodine-131 because it has a much longer half-life.

On Tuesday chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano said the government was imposing a standard of 2,000 bequerels of iodine per kilogram of fish, the same level it allows in vegetables. Previously, the government did not have a specific level for fish. Another haul of sand lance with 526 bequerels of cesium was detected Tuesday, in excess of the standard of 500 bequerels per kilogram.

Fishing of sand lances has been suspended. Local fishermen called on Tepco to halt the release of radioactive water into the sea and demanded that the company compensate them for their losses.

Fishing has been banned near the plant, and the vast majority of fishing activity in the region has been halted because of damage to boats and ports by the March 11 tsunami and earthquake. Still, some fishermen are out making catches, only to find few buyers because of fears about radiation.

It was unclear what Tepco might offer the fishermen, but the company did say Tuesday that it had offered "condolence payments" totaling 180 million yen ($2 million) to local residents who had to evacuate their homes because of radiation from the Fukushima plant. One town, however, refused the payment.

The company has yet to decide how it will compensate residents near the plant for damages, though financial analysts say the claims could be in the tens of billions of dollars. Tepco's executive vice president Takashi Fujimoto said the company's decision on damages hinges on how much of the burden the government will share.

Edano urged the company to accelerate its decisions on compensation.

For now the company has offered to give 20 million yen ($240,000) to each of 10 villages, towns and cities within 12 miles of the plant, Fujimoto said.

"We hope they will find it of some use for now," he said.

Namie, a town of 20,600 located about 6 miles north of the plant, refused to take the money. Town official Kosei Negishi said that he and other government officials were working out of a makeshift office in Nihonmatsu city, elsewhere in Fukushima prefecture, and that they faced more pressing issues.

"The coastal areas of Namie were hit hard by the earthquake and the tsunami but because of the radiation and the evacuation order we haven't had a chance to conduct a search for the 200 people who are missing," said Negishi. "Why would we use our resources to hand out less than 1,000 yen ($12) to every resident?"

Tokyo Electric Power's Fujimoto acknowledged that there was a "gap" in the views of company and Namie officials.

Tepco's shares dropped to an all-time low Tuesday, falling by the maximum daily trading limit -- about 18% -- to 362 yen, below the previous record low of 393 yen reached in December 1951. The company's share price has lost 80% of its value -- nearly 1.1 trillion yen -- since the quake and tsunami, according to the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

"We take the stock price decline very seriously," Fujimoto told reporters.

Fujimoto said the company's annual earnings report, which was originally scheduled for April 28, would be postponed, but he declined to give any other details.

The Battle for Fukushima is Lost

RT
31 March 2011

­Japan has lost the battle to rescue the Fukushima nuclear reactor, where preventing a large radiation release is practically impossible, conclude Western experts.

Meanwhile, Japanese authorities are taking additional measures to prevent a manmade disaster – the European press calls them “desperate.” In particular, they are planning to cover the damaged power generating units with fabric domes. Experts from various countries are urging the creation of an international commission on nuclear safety, which would consult authorities in similar situations and inform the public about health hazards.
  
The British newspaper The Guardian reported that, with each passing day, the risk of a massive release of radiation at Fukushima is rising. “The radioactive core in a reactor at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant appears to have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and onto a concrete floor, experts say,” the publication reported. It references America’s leading nuclear expert, Richard Lahey, who headed the safety research for boiling-water reactors at General Electric when the company installed the power generating units at Fukushima. According to him, the major concern is when the fuel reacts with the drywell underneath the concrete floor and releases radioactive gases. The drywell is enclosed in a protective chamber, but it was most likely damaged during the hydrogen explosion.

“It's not going to be anything like Chernobyl, where it went up with a big fire and steam explosion, but it's not going to be good news for the environment,” said Lahey. He advocates creating an international group of nuclear safety experts that could consult the authorities of various countries in emergency situations.  
    
It seems that the concerns of the specialists are being realized. Yesterday, smoke was seen at the nuclear power plant, which also increases the risk of radiation release. The content of radioactive iodine in seawater close to Fukushima was slightly higher than was reported earlier. In an isolated place, located 300 meters from the shore, it exceeded the maximum allowable level by 3,355 times. 

The chairman of the board of directors of the power plant’s operating company, Tepco, Tsunehisa Katsumata, told journalists that the first four reactors of the distressed nuclear power plant cannot be repaired, and confirmed that the situation will remain “unstable” throughout the coming weeks. He added that the first four reactors have not yet been brought under control, but specialists “are making maximum efforts to cool them.”   

Meanwhile, it became known that the Japanese authorities are trying new measures to prevent the consequences of the accident. It is planned to cover the damaged reactors with domes of special fabric, which should prevent further distribution of radioactive particles. This applies to reactors 1, 3 and 4, the buildings of which were severely damaged in the first days of the catastrophe, when hydrogen explosions periodically occurred inside. However, experts are skeptical of the idea, insisting that the real threat is not posed by radioactive dust, but by the contamination of water, which could seep into the ocean and the ground. Collection of the radioactive water that is being pumped from the turbine halls of the reactors will involve a tank vessel, which will be docked at a pier near the nuclear power plant.

Today, French President Nikolas Sarkozy will arrive in Japan – he will be the first foreign leader to travel to the country since the destructive earthquake and tsunami on March 11. He will express solidarity with the Japanese people and offer the assistance of French Avera specialists, as well as “flex France’s nuclear muscles,” reported the Spanish newspaper El Pais. The United States has also become involved in helping with emergency operations at the nuclear power plant – it sent a shipment of radiation-resistant robots to Japan. Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a special address to Russian citizens, in which it asked to abstain from traveling to Japan in connection to the radiation threat. 

Meanwhile, the press noted a decline in consumer confidence toward food products from Japan. Foreign companies are refusing to purchase Japanese seafood out of fears of them being exposed to radiation, Hiromi Isa, the trade office director at Japan's Fisheries Agency, said in an interview with Bloomberg. Since March 11, at least 10 orders for the supply of seafood have been recalled, despite the assurances of the Japanese government that they do not pose any threat. Many countries, starting with Australia and ending with the US and Russia, have reduced the import of Japanese seafood after the radiation levels outside of the evacuation zone around Fukushima nuclear power plant were raised. A fall in demand, however, is often psychological in nature, note restaurateurs and vendors.

Radiation Dosage & Its Sources Explained [CHART]

Ben Parr / Mashable

Fear and uncertainty continue to grow around the condition of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. There has been a fervent struggle to keep the plant’s reactors from achieving a partial or complete meltdown after the devastating earthquake in Japan and Pacific tsunami damaged the plant and knocked out the backup power needed to cool its radioactive fuel rods.

Naturally, the events in Japan have people curious, frightened and confused about the potential impact of not only the Fukushima plant’s radiation, but on the impact of nuclear power plants and radiation in general on the body. Even friends have asked me if they should evacuate the U.S. West Coast just in case radiation from Japan travels across the Pacific Ocean.

Until now, I haven’t had a good way to explain why they shouldn’t worry about radiation from Japan, especially given the many other sources of radiation we encounter on a daily basis. However, Randall Munroe of XKCD has solved that problem by putting together a very informative chart explaining and visualizing radiation doses and their sources. Although we don’t suggest living by this chart, it’s a good general education tool for understanding the effect of radiation absorption.

We encounter sources of radiation every day, from natural background radiation to bananas. (Yes, bananas emit gamma rays, but you’d have to eat 5 million bananas in one sitting to get any kind of radiation sickness.)

The absorption of this radiation is measured in units called the sievert (Sv). As the chart explains, we absorb approximately 0.1 microsieverts (μSv) of radiation per day from eating a banana, 10 μSv from background radiation and 20 μSv from a chest x-ray. That’s more than the radiation you’ll absorb from living within 50 miles of a power plant (0.09 μSv). Even a coal power plant generates more radiation (0.3 μSv) because coal has trace amounts of uranium.

It takes a lot more radiation to actually cause harm to a person, although, the maximum yearly dose permitted for a U.S. radiation worker is 50 millisieverts (mSv), more than 200 times the exposure received from a typical X-ray. It takes double that amount though (100 mSv) for an increased risk of cancer and a full 2,000 mSv for severe radiation poisoning to occur.

For a more detailed explanation of radiation dosage, check out the XKCD chart below. Click on the image below to see a full-sized version:

WHO Warns of "Serious" Food Radiation in Disaster-hit Japan

Hartford Courant
March 22, 2011

TOKYO (Reuters) - The World Health Organization said on Monday that radiation in food after an earthquake damaged a Japanese nuclear plant was more serious than previously thought, eclipsing signs of progress in a battle to avert a catastrophic meltdown in its reactors.

Engineers managed to rig power cables to all six reactors at the Fukushima complex, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, and started a water pump at one of them to reverse the overheating that has triggered the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years.

Some workers were later evacuated from one of the most badly damaged reactors when smoke briefly rose from the site. There was no immediate explanation for the smoke, but authorities had said earlier that pressure was building up at the No. 3 reactor

Smoke was also seen at the No. 2 reactor.

The March 11 earthquake and tsunami left more than 21,000 people dead or missing and will cost an already beleaguered economy some $250 billion, making it the world's costliest ever natural disaster.

The head of the U.N. atomic agency said the nuclear situation remained very serious but it would be resolved.

"I have no doubt that this crisis will be effectively overcome," Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told an emergency board meeting.

"We see a light for getting out of the crisis," a Japanese government official quoted Prime Minister Naoto Kan as saying.

But news of progress at the nuclear plant was overshadowed by mounting concern that radioactive particles already released into the atmosphere have contaminated food and water supplies.

"Quite clearly it's a serious situation," Peter Cordingley, Manila-based spokesman for the World Health Organization's (WHO) regional office for the Western Pacific, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"It's a lot more serious than anybody thought in the early days when we thought that this kind of problem can be limited to 20 to 30 kilometers ... It's safe to suppose that some contaminated produce got out of the contamination zone."

However, he said there was no evidence of contaminated food from Fukushima reaching other countries.

Fukushima is the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, but signs are that it is far less severe than the Ukrainian disaster.

"The few measurements of radiation reported in food so far are much lower than around Chernobyl in 1986, but the full picture is still emerging," Malcolm Crick, secretary of the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, told Reuters.

TAP WATER

Japan's health ministry has urged some residents near the plant to stop drinking tap water after high levels of radioactive iodine were detected.

Cases of contaminated vegetables and milk have already stoked anxiety despite assurances from officials that the levels are not dangerous. The government has prohibited the sale of spinach from all four prefectures near the plant and also banned selling of raw milk from Fukushima prefecture.

There were no major reports of contaminated food in Tokyo, a city of about 13 million people. City officials however said higher-than-standard levels of iodine were found in an edible form of chrysanthemum.

"From reports I have heard so far, it seems that the levels of radioactive iodine and caesium in milk and some foodstuffs are significantly higher than government limits," said Jim Smith, a specialist in earth and environmental sciences at Britain's Portsmouth University.

"This doesn't mean that consumption of these products is necessarily an immediate threat, as limits are set so that foodstuffs can be safely consumed over a fairly long period of time. Nevertheless, for foodstuffs which are found to be above limits, bans on sale and consumption will have to be put in place in the affected areas."

Japan is a net importer of food, but has substantial exports -- mainly fruit, vegetables, dairy products and seafood -- with its biggest markets in Hong Kong, China and the United States.

China will monitor food imported from Japan, the Xinhua news agency said, citing the country's quality control watchdog. South Korea will expand radioactivity inspection to processed and dried agricultural Japanese food, from just fresh produce.

In Taipei, one of the top Japanese restaurants in the city is offering diners the use of a radiation gauge in case they were nervous about the food.