tagged w/ dead zones
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The fishermen have never seen anything like this," Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. "And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I've never seen anything like this either."
Dr Cowan, with Louisiana State University's Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences started hearing about fish with sores and lesions from fishermen in November 2010.
Cowan's findings replicate those of others living along vast areas of the Gulf Coast that have been impacted by BP's oil and dispersants.
Gulf of Mexico fishermen, scientists and seafood processors have told Al Jazeera they are finding disturbing numbers of mutated shrimp, crab and fish that they believe are deformed by chemicals released during BP's 2010 oil disaster.
Along with collapsing fisheries, signs of malignant impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp - and interviewees' fingers point towards BP's oil pollution disaster as being the cause.
Eyeless shrimp
Tracy Kuhns and her husband Mike Roberts, commercial fishers from Barataria, Louisiana, are finding eyeless shrimp.
"At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these," Kuhns told Al Jazeera while showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp.
According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP's oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: "Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets."
Eyeless shrimp, from a catch of 400 pounds of eyeless shrimp, said to be caught September 22, 2011, in Barataria Bay, Louisiana [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]
"Some shrimpers are catching these out in the open Gulf [of Mexico]," she added, "They are also catching them in Alabama and Mississippi. We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don't have their usual spikes … they look like they've been burned off by chemicals."
On April 20, 2010, BP's Deepwater Horizon oilrig exploded, and began the release of at least 4.9 million barrels of oil. BP then used at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic Corexit dispersants to sink the oil.
Keath Ladner, a third generation seafood processor in Hancock County, Mississippi, is also disturbed by what he is seeing.
"I've seen the brown shrimp catch drop by two-thirds, and so far the white shrimp have been wiped out," Ladner told Al Jazeera. "The shrimp are immune compromised. We are finding shrimp with tumors on their heads, and are seeing this everyday."
While on a shrimp boat in Mobile Bay with Sidney Schwartz, the fourth-generation fisherman said that he had seen shrimp with defects on their gills, and "their shells missing around their gills and head".
"We've fished here all our lives and have never seen anything like this," he added.
Ladner has also seen crates of blue crabs, all of which were lacking at least one of their claws.
Darla Rooks, a lifelong fisherperson from Port Sulfur, Louisiana, told Al Jazeera she is finding crabs "with holes in their shells, shells with all the points burned off so all the spikes on their shells and claws are gone, misshapen shells, and crabs that are dying from within … they are still alive, but you open them up and they smell like they've been dead for a week".
Rooks is also finding eyeless shrimp, shrimp with abnormal growths, female shrimp with their babies still attached to them, and shrimp with oiled gills.
"We also seeing eyeless fish, and fish lacking even eye-sockets, and fish with lesions, fish without covers over their gills, and others with large pink masses hanging off their eyes and gills."
Rooks, who grew up fishing with her parents, said she had never seen such things in these waters, and her seafood catch last year was "ten per cent what it normally is".
"I've never seen this," he said, a statement Al Jazeera heard from every scientist, fisherman, and seafood processor we spoke with about the seafood deformities.
Given that the Gulf of Mexico provides more than 40 per cent of all the seafood caught in the continental US, this phenomenon does not bode well for the region, or the country.
BP's chemicals?
"The dispersants used in BP's draconian experiment contain solvents, such as petroleum distillates and 2-butoxyethanol. Solvents dissolve oil, grease, and rubber," Dr Riki Ott, a toxicologist, marine biologist and Exxon Valdez survivor told Al Jazeera. "It should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known".
The dispersants are known to be mutagenic, a disturbing fact that could be evidenced in the seafood deformities. Shrimp, for example, have a life-cycle short enough that two to three generations have existed since BP's disaster began, giving the chemicals time to enter the genome.
Pathways of exposure to the dispersants are inhalation, ingestion, skin, and eye contact. Health impacts can include headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitisation, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, cardiac arrhythmia and cardiovascular damage. They are also teratogenic - able to disturb the growth and development of an embryo or fetus - and carcinogenic.
Cowan believes chemicals named polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), released from BP's submerged oil, are likely to blame for what he is finding, due to the fact that the fish with lesions he is finding are from "a wide spatial distribution that is spatially coordinated with oil from the Deepwater Horizon, both surface oil and subsurface oil. A lot of the oil that impacted Louisiana was also in subsurface plumes, and we think there is a lot of it remaining on the seafloor".
Marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia published results of her submarine dives around the source area of BP's oil disaster in the Nature Geoscience journal.
Her evidence showed massive swathes of oil covering the seafloor, including photos of oil-covered bottom dwelling sea creatures.
While showing slides at an American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington, Joye said: "This is Macondo oil on the bottom. These are dead organisms because of oil being deposited on their heads."
Dr Wilma Subra, a chemist and Macarthur Fellow, has conducted tests on seafood and sediment samples along the Gulf for chemicals present in BP's crude oil and toxic dispersants.
"Tests have shown significant levels of oil pollution in oysters and crabs along the Louisiana coastline," Subra told Al Jazeera. "We have also found high levels of hydrocarbons in the soil and vegetation."
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, PAHs "are a group of semi-volatile organic compounds that are present in crude oil that has spent time in the ocean and eventually reaches shore, and can be formed when oil is burned".
"The fish are being exposed to PAHs, and I was able to find several references that list the same symptoms in fish after the Exxon Valdez spill, as well as other lab experiments," explained Cowan. "There was also a paper published by some LSU scientists that PAH exposure has effects on the genome."
snip
"What we think is that it's attributable to chronic exposure to PAHs released in the process of weathering of oil on the seafloor," Cowan said. "There's no other thing we can use to explain this phenomenon. We've never seen anything like this before."
More at the linkThe fishermen have never seen anything like this," Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera.... more
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A detailed analysis of global nitrogen cycles shows without a doubt that a spike in atmospheric nitrous oxide can be traced to increased fertilizer use during the past 50 years.
Since 1970, nitrous oxide concentrations have increased by 20 percent, from below 270 parts per billion to more than 320 ppb. After carbon dioxide and methane, nitrous oxide (N2O) is the most potent greenhouse gas, trapping heat and contributing to global warming. It also destroys stratospheric ozone, which protects the planet from harmful ultraviolet rays.
Climate scientists have assumed that the cause of the increased nitrous oxide was nitrogen-based fertilizer, which stimulates microbes in the soil to convert nitrogen to nitrous oxide at a faster rate than normal.
The new study, reported in the April issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, uses nitrogen isotope data to identify the unmistakable fingerprint of fertilizer use in archived air samples from Antarctica and Tasmania.
“Our study is the first to show empirically from the data at hand alone that the nitrogen isotope ratio in the atmosphere and how it has changed over time is a fingerprint of fertilizer use,” said study leader Kristie Boering, a UC Berkeley professor of chemistry and of earth and planetary science.
“We are not vilifying fertilizer. We can’t just stop using fertilizer,” she said. “But we hope this study will contribute to changes in fertilizer use and agricultural practices that will help to mitigate the release of nitrous oxide into the atmosphere.”
The steep rise in atmospheric nitrous oxide coincided with the green revolution of the 1960s, when inexpensive, synthetic fertilizer and other developments boosted food production worldwide, feeding a burgeoning global population.
Tracking the origin of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere, however, is difficult because a molecule from a fertilized field looks identical to one from a natural forest or the ocean if you only measure total concentration. But a quirk of microbial metabolism affects the isotope ratio of the nitrogen the N2O microbes give off, producing a telltale fingerprint that can be detected with sensitive techniques.
Global warming impacts
Limiting nitrous oxide emissions could be part of a first step toward reducing all greenhouse gases, Boering said. In particular, reducing nitrous oxide emissions can initially offset more than its fair share of greenhouse gas emissions overall, since N2O traps heat at a different wavelength than CO2 and clogs a “window” that allows Earth to cool off independent of CO2 levels.
“On a pound for pound basis, it is really worthwhile to figure how to limit our emissions of N2O and methane,” she said. “Limiting N2O emissions can buy us a little more time in figuring out how to reduce CO2 emissions.”
One approach, for example, is to time fertilizer application to avoid rain, because wet and happy soil microbes can produce sudden bursts of nitrous oxide. Changes in the way fields are tilled, when they are fertilized and how much is used can reduce N2O production.
Boering’s studies, which involve analyzing the isotopic fingerprints of nitrous oxide from different sources, could help farmers determine which strategies are most effective. It could also help assess the potential negative impacts of growing crops for biofuels, since some feedstocks may require fertilizer that will generate N2O that offsets their carbon neutrality.
“This new evidence of the budget of nitrous oxide allows us to better predict its future changes– and therefore its impacts on climate and stratospheric ozone depletion – for different scenarios of fertilizer use in support of rising populations and increased production for bio-energy,” said coauthor David Etheridge of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research in Aspendale, Victoria.
More at the linkA detailed analysis of global nitrogen cycles shows without a doubt that a spike in... more
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EXTRACT: "Though glyphosate is the mostly widely used herbicide in the world, we know very little about its long term effects to the environment," says Paul Capel, USGS chemist and an author on this study. "This study is one of the first to document the consistent occurrence of this chemical in streams, rain and air throughout the growing season."
Technical Announcement:
Widely Used Herbicide Commonly Found in Rain and Streams in the Mississippi River Basin
Released: 8/29/2011
Contact Information:
U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey
Office of Communications and Publishing
12201 Sunrise Valley Dr, MS 119
Reston, VA 20192 Paul Capel
Phone: (612) 625-3082
Kara Capelli
Phone: (571) 420-9408
Glyphosate, also known by its tradename Roundup, is commonly found in rain and rivers in agricultural areas in the Mississippi River watershed, according to two new USGS studies released this month.
Glyphosate is used in almost all agricultural and urban areas of the United States. The greatest glyphosate use is in the Mississippi River basin, where most applications are for weed control on genetically-modified corn, soybeans and cotton. Overall, agricultural use of glyphosate has increased from less than 11,000 tons in 1992 to more than 88,000 tons in 2007.
"Though glyphosate is the mostly widely used herbicide in the world, we know very little about its long term effects to the environment," says Paul Capel, USGS chemist and an author on this study. "This study is one of the first to document the consistent occurrence of this chemical in streams, rain and air throughout the growing season. This is crucial information for understanding where management efforts for this chemical would best be focused."
In these studies, Glyphosate was frequently detected in surface waters, rain and air in areas where it is heavily used in the basin. The consistent occurrence of glyphosate in streams and air indicates its transport from its point of use into the broader environment.
Additionally, glyphosate persists in streams throughout the growing season in Iowa and Mississippi, but is generally not observed during other times of the year. The degradation product of glyphosate, aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA), which has a longer environmental lifetime, was also frequently detected in streams and rain.
Detailed results of this glyphosate research are available in "Occurrence and fate of the herbicide glyphosate and its degradate aminomethylphosphonic acid in the atmosphere," published in volume 30 of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry and in "Fate and transport of glyphosate and aminomethylphosphonic acid in surface waters of agricultural basins," published online in Pest Management Science. Copies of the reports are available from the journals or from Paul Capel ( capel@usgs.gov).
Research on the transport of glyphosate was conducted as part of the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) program. The NAWQA program provides an understanding of water-quality conditions, whether conditions are getting better or worse over time, and how natural features and human activities affect those conditions. Additional information on the NAWQA program can be found online.
http://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/
http://eii.org/eijournal/spring05/images/spraying.jpgEXTRACT: "Though glyphosate is the mostly widely used herbicide in the world, we... more
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In June, scientists predicted that the Gulf of Mexico’s annual dead zone — a subsea region where the water contains too little oxygen to support life — might develop into the biggest ever. In fact, that didn’t happen. Owing to the fortuitous arrival of stormy weather, this year’s dead zone peaked at about 6,800 square miles, scientists reported on Aug. 1 — big but far from the record behemoth of 9,500 square miles that had been mentioned as distinctly possible.
That’s the good news. The bad: Substantial portions of the affected Gulf weren’t just low in oxygen, but virtually devoid of it from the surface to the seafloor. And researchers could literally smell the problem, notes Nancy Rabalais, executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, based in Chauvin. Where oxygen loss occurs at the seafloor, she reports, the sediment gurgles up hydrogen sulfide — a gas that carries the stench of rotten eggs to the surface.
Nor was this the only sign of a very perturbed environment.
As in past years, Rabalais and her colleagues spent time at sea this summer mapping oxygen levels (see below) at various depths across the northern Gulf. In July, Rabalais witnessed foot-long eels swimming at the surface. Normally they live in the Gulf sediment. Some seafloor-dwelling crabs also propelled themselves dozens of feet up to the surface to avoid suffocating.
“I have seen brown shrimp (not on this cruise) doing the same thing. They live in the mud as well,” she says. And for them to swim up 65 feet to avoid the suffocating bottom waters was an act of desperation, she says, because they would have been prime fish food all along the way.
Such sights attest to the severity of oxygen depletion, or hypoxia, that developed in some regions of this year's dead zone’s waters. As oxygen concentrations at the seafloor approach zero, the chemistry at this sediment-water interface shifts, releasing hydrogen sulfide. This poses a double whammy to aquatic life, Rabalais explains: Not only is there little or no oxygen present, but hydrogen sulfide can itself kill organisms that can’t swim away.
Even those that can move may develop subtle reproductive toxicity, Rabalais adds, pointing to work by Peter Thomas of the University of Texas at Austin’s Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas.
His team has studied croakers, a type of fish that can find itself living in oxygen-depleted waters. Initially, his team reported an absence of spawning — because affected croakers lacked mature eggs or sperm. More recently, Rabalais notes, his team “has showed that the low oxygen has led to some sex change in croakers that live in the area — turning females into males.”
More at the link
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/332990/name/Gulfs_2011_dead_zoneIn June, scientists predicted that the Gulf of Mexico’s annual dead zone —... more
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The EOS report showed industry has known that glyphosate causes birth defects since the 1980s and EU regulators have known since the 1990s. But instead of informing the public, industry and regulators have repeatedly claimed that glyphosate and Roundup do not cause birth defects.
Earth Open Source's response to Monsanto is also below (item 1).
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1. Earth Open Source response to Monsanto
June 14, 2011
http://on.fb.me/machCY
Monsanto responded to our report, "Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark?" in a statement on its website.
Monsanto said, "Regulatory authorities and independent experts around the world agree that glyphosate does not cause adverse reproductive effects in adult animals or birth defects in offspring of these adults exposed to glyphosate, even at doses far higher than relevant environmental or occupational exposures."
However, one of the main points of our report is that regulatory authorities have indeed agreed that glyphosate does not cause birth defects – but that conclusion is directly contradicted by the evidence in industry's own studies. These industry studies, submitted by companies including Monsanto in support of glyphosate's approval in the EU, showed that glyphosate causes birth defects in experimental animals. These effects were found not only at high doses, but also at mid and lower doses.
In addition, studies from the independent scientific literature, also detailed in our report and hitherto ignored or dismissed by the EU Commission and the EFSA, show that glyphosate and Roundup cause birth defects in experimental animals, as well as cancer, genetic damage, endocrine disruption and other serious health effects. Many of these effects are found at very low, physiologically relevant doses.
Monsanto said that Earth Open Source created "an account of glyphosate toxicity from a selected set of scientific studies, while they ignored much of the comprehensive data establishing the safety of the product". This is false, since our data analysis included industry-funded research studies, some commissioned by Monsanto, which were submitted to the European Commission in support of glyphosate's approval. We found that both these studies and studies by independent scientists contained clear evidence indicating that glyphosate and Roundup cause birth defects.
Monsanto said, "glyphosate inhibits an enzyme that is essential to plant growth; this enzyme is not found in humans or other animals, contributing to the low risk to human health from the use of glyphosate according to label directions."
However, numerous studies by industry and independent scientists detailed in our report show that glyphosate and Roundup are toxic to mammals and to human cells tested in vitro. Thus, Roundup must have other modes of action in addition to the enzyme inhibitory effect described by Monsanto. This is not surprising, as it can take decades to establish the precise mode of action of a toxin. Often, it remains unclear.
Monsanto called the studies that show problems with glyphosate "flawed". But we repeat – among the studies that we review in our report are industry studies, including some commissioned by Monsanto, which show that glyphosate causes birth defects in experimental animals. It follows that Monsanto is condemning the industry studies – including its own studies – as flawed. Since the current EU approval of glyphosate is based on these industry studies, Monsanto's apparent judgment that they are flawed gives us all the more reason to question the current approval of glyphosate.
Monsanto's less than convincing attempt to rebut the conclusions presented in our paper raises additional questions regarding the logic supporting the approval of glyphosate as safe for use in the EU. It provides additional justification for our appeal that the European Commission appoint independent scientists to carry out an immediate, objective review of glyphosate and Roundup, considering the full range of industry and independent studies.The EOS report showed industry has known that glyphosate causes birth defects since... more
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Public kept in the dark on Roundup link with birth defects
*Industry knew since 1980s, regulators since 1990s*
Earth Open Source
Press release for immediate release, 7 June 2011
Contact: claire.robinson@earthopensource.org
Industry and EU regulators knew as long ago as the 1980s-1990s that Roundup, the world's best selling herbicide, causes birth defects – but they failed to inform the public. This is the conclusion of a new report, "Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark?" co-authored by a group of international scientists and researchers and released today.[1]
The report reveals that industry's own studies (including one commissioned by Monsanto) showed as long ago as the 1980s that Roundup's active ingredient glyphosate causes birth defects in laboratory animals.
The German government has known about these findings since at least the 1990s, when as the "rapporteur" member state for glyphosate, it reviewed industry's studies for the EU approval of the herbicide. The European Commission has known since at least 2002, when it signed off on glyphosate's approval.
But this information was not made public. On the contrary, regulators have consistently misled the public about glyphosate's safety. As recently as last year, the German Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety, BVL, told the Commission there was "no evidence of teratogenicity" (ability to cause birth defects) for glyphosate.
BVL made this comment in its rebuttal[2] of an independent scientific study published last year by Argentine scientists. The study showed that Roundup and glyphosate cause birth defects in frogs and chickens at concentrations much lower than those used in agricultural spraying.[3] The study was prompted by reports of high rates of birth defects and cancers in areas of South America growing genetically modified (GM) Roundup Ready soy, which is engineered to tolerate being sprayed liberally with glyphosate herbicide.
In its rebuttal of the Argentine study, BVL cited as proof of glyphosate's safety the industry studies submitted for the Commission's 2002 approval of glyphosate (the approval that is currently in force).
But the authors of the new report obtained the approval documents and found that contrary to BVL's claim, industry's own studies, conducted in the 1980s and 1990s, showed that glyphosate/Roundup causes birth defects in experimental animals. In some cases, these effects occurred at low doses.
The German authorities and the EU Commission's ECCO expert review panel[4] whitewashed the findings and the Commission approved the herbicide.
Claire Robinson, a co-author of the new report and spokesperson for the sustainability NGO Earth Open Source, which published it, said, "This looks like a thirty-year cover-up by industry and regulators and it has certainly placed the public at risk. Roundup is used not only by farmers but by home gardeners and in school grounds and other public areas, in part because of false marketing claims that it is safe."
Commission delays review of glyphosate
A new, more stringent pesticide regulation comes into force in the EU this June. An objective review of glyphosate under this new regulation would almost certainly result in a ban. This is because under the regulation, independent studies have to be taken into consideration. Many of these studies, summarised in the new report, show that glyphosate and Roundup cause birth defects, cancer, genetic damage, endocrine disruption, and other serious effects, often at very low doses.
Glyphosate was due to be reviewed in 2012. But late last year, the Commission quietly passed a directive delaying the review of glyphosate and 38 other pesticides until 2015.[5]
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Public kept in the dark on Roundup link with birth defects
*Industry knew... more
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A low-oxygen "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico (map) is causing sexual deformities in fish, a new study says.
The Gulf dead zone occurs when agricultural and waste runoff from the Mississippi River spark blooms of algae and microbes. These organisms gobble up oxygen, starving other marine life and creating huge swaths of "dead" ocean.
Between 2006 and 2007, nearly a quarter of female Atlantic croaker fish caught in the northern Gulf's dead zone had developed deformed, testes-like organs instead of ovaries.
(See "Sex-Changing Chemicals Found in Potomac River.")
It's unclear how long the fish were living in hypoxic—or low oxygen—waters before they began developing such sexual defects. But lab experiments showed that ten weeks of exposure is all that's needed.
The Gulf dead zone, which occurs annually, generally persists between May and September, and has more than doubled since the 1980s.
This zone, which often fluctuates in size, currently occupies a patch of ocean larger than the state of Connecticut. (Related: "Gulf of Mexico 'Dead Zone' Is Size of New Jersey [2005].")
Low Oxygen Screws Up Fish Hormones
Lab analysis of the fish revealed that the masculinized female croakers had decreased levels of a key chemical found in the brain and ovaries called aromatase.
This enzyme regulates the production of the female sex hormone estrogen, which is critical for proper development of the ovaries.
The brain uses about 20 percent of the oxygen that the croakers breathe, said study co-author M.S. Rahman, a marine biologist at the University of Texas in Austin's Marine Science Institute.
"If the oxygen levels go down, it affects the brain and the neurohormones and neuropeptides that it produces."
In croakers and many other fish species, the sex organs are male by default—estrogen exposure is required to transform the testes into ovaries.
Rahman and colleague Peter Thomas, also at the University of Texas, think that when the croaker's estrogen levels were reduced as a result of hypoxia, some of the cells in the animals' ovaries reverted back to testicular tissue.
(Also see "Mercury Poisoning Makes Birds Act Homosexual.")
The sex organs of the masculinized female fish were smaller and less developed than normal male testes. While some of malformed organs even contained sperm, they were incapable of fertilizing normal female eggs, Rahman said.
The study also found that male croakers were affected by hypoxia, although to a lesser degree. Males caught in the Gulf dead zone, as well as those bred in hypoxic lab conditions, had smaller than average testes and lower sperm counts, according to the study, published online recently in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Sexual impairments of both male and female croakers help explain the low hatching rates among fish exposed to dead zones, the scientists added.
cont.A low-oxygen "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico (map) is causing sexual... more
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As the surging waters of the Mississippi pass downstream, they leave behind flooded towns and inundated lives and carry forward a brew of farm chemicals and waste that this year — given record flooding — is expected to result in the largest dead zone ever in the Gulf of Mexico.
Dead zones have been occurring in the gulf since the 1970s, and studies show that the main culprits are nitrogen and phosphorus from crop fertilizers and animal manure in river runoff. They settle in at the mouth of the gulf and fertilize algae, which prospers and eventually starves other living things of oxygen.
Government studies have traced a majority of those chemicals in the runoff to nine farming states, and yet today, decades after the dead zones began forming, there is still little political common ground on how to abate this perennial problem. Scientists who study dead zones predict that the affected area will increase significantly this year, breaking records for size and damage.
For years, environmentalists and advocates for a cleaner gulf have been calling for federal action in the form of regulation. Since 1998, the Environmental Protection Agency has been encouraging all states to place hard and fast numerical limits on the amount of those chemicals allowed in local waterways. Yet of the nine key farm states that feed the dead zone, only two, Illinois and Indiana, have acted, and only to cover lakes, not the rivers or streams that merge into the Mississippi.
The lack of formal action upstream has long been maddening to the downstream states most affected by the pollution, and the extreme flooding this year has only increased the tensions.
“Considering the current circumstances, it is extremely frustrating not seeing E.P.A. take more direct action,” said Matt Rota, director of science and water policy for the Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental advocacy group in New Orleans that has renewed its calls for federally enforced targets. “We have tried solely voluntary mechanisms to reduce this pollution for a decade and have only seen the dead zone get bigger.”
Environmental Protection Agency officials said they had no immediate plans to force the issue, but farmers in the Mississippi Basin are worried. That is because only six months ago, the agency stepped in at the Chesapeake Bay, another watershed with similar runoff issues, and set total maximum daily loads for those same pollutants in nearby waterways. If the states do not reduce enough pollution over time, the agency could penalize them in a variety of ways, including increasing federal oversight of state programs or denying new wastewater permitting rights, which could hamper development. The agency says it is too soon to evaluate their progress in reducing pollution.
Don Parish, senior director of regulatory relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation, a trade group, says behind that policy is the faulty assumption that farmers fertilize too much or too casually. Since 1980, he said, farmers have increased corn yields by 80 percent while at the same time reducing their nitrate use by 4 percent through precision farming.
“We are on the razor’s edge,” Mr. Parish said. “When you get to the point where you are taking more from the soil than you are putting in, then you have to worry about productivity.”
Dead zones are areas of the ocean where low oxygen levels can stress or kill bottom-dwelling organisms that cannot escape and cause fish to leave the area. Excess nutrients transported to the gulf each year during spring floods promote algal growth. As the algae die and decompose, oxygen is consumed, creating the dead zone. The largest dead zone was measured in 2002 at about 8,500 square miles, roughly the size of New Jersey. Shrimp fishermen complain of being hurt the most by the dead zones as shrimp are less able to relocate — but the precise impacts on species are still being studied.
The United States Geological Survey has found that nine states along the Mississippi contribute 75 percent of the nitrogen and phosphorus. The survey found that corn and soybean crops were the largest contributors to the nitrogen in the runoff, and manure was a large contributor to the amount of phosphorus.
There are many other factors, of course, that determine what elements make it from crops into river water, for example, whether watersheds are protected by wetlands or buffer strips of land.
John Downing, a biogeochemist and limnologist at Iowa State University, said structural issues were also to blame. Many farms in Iowa, he said, are built on former wetlands and have drains right under the crop roots that whisk water away before soils can absorb and hold on to at least some of the fertilizer.
Still, overapplication of fertilizers remains a key contributor, he said. “For farmers, the consequences of applying too little is much riskier than putting too much on.”
cont.As the surging waters of the Mississippi pass downstream, they leave behind flooded... more
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The Ohio and Mississippi River levels were falling Wednesday at the site where engineers blasted holes in a Missouri levee to relieve pressure. But unleashing torrents of water across 35 miles of farmland in what has already been a terrible flooding season could carry other consequences.
One risk, scientists cautioned, is fertilizer runoff from the flooded farm country along the Mississippi. As it moves downstream, they predicted it would contribute to the largest-ever summertime depletion of oxygen in the Gulf of Mexico, posing a substantial risk to marine life.
The concern is that the water is likely pulling up components of fertilizers—notably nitrogen and phosphorus—and washing them downstream toward the Gulf, helping slash oxygen to levels marine life can't survive, said Nancy Rabalais, a marine scientist who is executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium on the Gulf coast.
Those chemicals act as nutrients in the Gulf, intensifying the growth of microscopic plants. Microbes eat away at those plants. In the process, they consume oxygen, reducing it to levels that kill marine life.
In the days leading up to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' breach of the levee near Birds Point, Mo., authorities began removing fuel and other chemicals stored in tanks in a 35-mile long floodway bordering the Mississippi River, said Karl Brooks, administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency region that includes much of the Midwest.
In addition to the effects in the Gulf, another concern has begun to emerge: drinking water. Much of the Midwest gets its water from rivers, and scientists say they'll be monitoring to see whether the floodwaters show elevated levels of nitrate, a derivative of nitrogen in fertilizers. Nitrate can cause sickness, particularly in infants, the EPA says.
Water-treatment plants filter out nitrate to government limits. But "the faster the water moves across the land, the more sediment it picks up, and the more nitrate and other pollutants," said John Downing, a professor at Iowa State University specializing in inland-water issues.
James Kopp, chemistry manager for the water division in St. Louis, said nitrate levels of water filtered in the city don't appear to be any higher than in a normal May—a month when nitrate levels are typically elevated because of spring runoff.
Not far from the breached levee, some 3,800 Western Kentucky residents have evacuated their homes as the Mississippi River and its tributaries continue to rise.
Kentucky, along with Tennessee, Mississippi, and other Southern states have been urging evacuations and bracing for what state officials say could be near-record crests of the Mississippi River in the coming days after the intentional breach of a flood wall upstream in Missouri.
Heavy rains on Monday and Tuesday brought as much as four-and-a-half inches of rain to Kentucky and have contributed to flooding that has already hit low-lying parts of the state; in addition, authorities expect the Ohio River to crest on Thursday, and the Mississippi River to do so on Friday.
The levee breach sent water rushing across the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway, and water levels Tuesday dropped as much as three feet from expected levels on the Ohio River at Cairo, Ill. The Corps blew a second hole Tuesday and was preparing Wednesday to blow a third, to let the water drain back into the river.
Springtime flooding is natural along the Mississippi, as melting snow and ice and seasonal rains swell the river. But in recent years some floods have gotten more severe, and their ecological effects heightened.
Officials probably won't have a sense of how the flood affected the area until the weekend, when they expect rushing water will have slowed enough so they can enter the area and begin environmental testing, said the EPA's Mr. Brooks. "Until we see what the landscape looks like, it's going to be hard to know how extensive that is," he said.
This week's flooding comes one year after the country's largest-ever offshore oil spill sent 4.1 million barrels of crude into the Gulf ecosystem.
For decades, summertime oxygen levels in a large swath of the Gulf spreading out from the mouth of the Mississippi have plummeted to levels that have killed fish, shrimp crabs and other marine life. The oxygen depleted areas, known as dead zones, began to appear in the early 1970s, also the time when chemical-fertilizer use was intensifying on Midwest farms, said Ms. Rabalais, a dead-zone expert.
Even before the latest flooding, high water levels along the Mississippi earlier this year were creating signs of an earlier—and larger—than normal dead zone in the Gulf, she said. Now, she said, scientists are predicting a Gulf dead zone this year far larger than the prior record—an 8,500-square-mile dead zone in 2002.
cont,The Ohio and Mississippi River levels were falling Wednesday at the site where... more
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Don Huber spent 35 years as a plant pathologist at Purdue University and knows a lot about what causes green plants to turn yellow and die prematurely. He asked the seed dealer why the SDS was so severe in the one area of the field and not the other. “Did you plant something there last year that wasn’t planted in the rest of the field?” he asked. Sure enough, precisely where the severe SDS was, the dealer had grown alfalfa, which he later killed off at the end of the season by spraying a glyphosate-based herbicide (such as Roundup). The healthy part of the field, on the other hand, had been planted to sweet corn and hadn’t received glyphosate.
This was yet another confirmation that Roundup was triggering SDS. In many fields, the evidence is even more obvious. The disease was most severe at the ends of rows where the herbicide applicator looped back to make another pass (see photo). That’s where extra Roundup was applied.
Don’s a scientist; it takes more than a few photos for him to draw conclusions. But Don’s got more—lots more. For over 20 years, Don studied Roundup’s active ingredient glyphosate. He’s one of the world’s experts. And he can rattle off study after study that eliminate any doubt that glyphosate is contributing not only to the huge increase in SDS, but to the outbreak of numerous other diseases. (See selected reading list.)
Sudden Death Syndrome is more severe at the ends of rows, where Roundup dose is strongest. Photo by Amy Bandy.
Roundup: The perfect storm for plant disease
More than 30% of all herbicides sprayed anywhere contain glyphosate—the world’s bestselling weed killer. It was patented by Monsanto for use in their Roundup brand, which became more popular when they introduced “Roundup Ready” crops starting in 1996. These genetically modified (GM) plants, which now include soy, corn, cotton, canola, and sugar beets, have inserted genetic material from viruses and bacteria that allows the crops to withstand applications of normally deadly Roundup.
(Monsanto requires farmers who buy Roundup Ready seeds to only use the company’s Roundup brand of glyphosate. This has extended the company’s grip on the glyphosate market, even after its patent expired in 2000.)
The herbicide doesn’t destroy plants directly. It rather cooks up a unique perfect storm of conditions that revs up disease-causing organisms in the soil, and at the same time wipes out plant defenses against those diseases. The mechanisms are well-documented but rarely cited.
1.The glyphosate molecule grabs vital nutrients and doesn’t let them go. This process is called chelation and was actually the original property for which glyphosate was patented in 1964. It was only 10 years later that it was patented as an herbicide. When applied to crops, it deprives them of vital minerals necessary for healthy plant function—especially for resisting serious soilborne diseases. The importance of minerals for protecting against disease is well established. In fact, mineral availability was the single most important measurement used by several famous plant breeders to identify disease-resistant varieties.
1.Glyphosate annihilates beneficial soil organisms, such as Pseudomonas and Bacillus bacteria that live around the roots. Since they facilitate the uptake of plant nutrients and suppress disease-causing organisms, their untimely deaths means the plant gets even weaker and the pathogens even stronger.
1.The herbicide can interfere with photosynthesis, reduce water use efficiency, lower lignin , damage and shorten root systems, cause plants to release important sugars, and change soil pH—all of which can negatively affect crop health.
1.Glyphosate itself is slightly toxic to plants. It also breaks down slowly in soil to form another chemical called AMPA (aminomethylphosphonic acid) which is also toxic. But even the combined toxic effects of glyphosate and AMPA are not sufficient on their own to kill plants. It has been demonstrated numerous times since 1984
Glyphosate with sterile soil (A) only stunts plant growth. In normal soil (B), pathogens kill the plant. Control (C) shows normal growth.
that when glyphosate is applied in sterile soil, the plant may be slightly stunted, but it isn’t killed (see photo).
1.The actual plant assassins, according to Purdue weed scientists and others, are severe disease-causing organisms present in almost all soils. Glyphosate dramatically promotes these, which in turn overrun the weakened crops with deadly infections.
“This is the herbicidal mode of action of glyphosate,” says Don. “It increases susceptibility to disease, suppresses natural disease controls such as beneficial organisms, and promotes virulence of soilborne pathogens at the same time.” In fact, he points out that “If you apply certain fungicides to weeds, it destroys the herbicidal activity of glyphosate!”
By weakening plants and promoting disease, glyphosate opens the door for lots of problems in the field. According to Don, “There are more than 40 diseases of crop plants that are reported to increase with the use of glyphosate, and that number keeps growing as people recognize the association between glyphosate and disease.”
cont.Don Huber spent 35 years as a plant pathologist at Purdue University and knows a lot... more
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A historic deal to halt the mass extinction of species was finally agreed last night in what conservationists see as the most important international treaty aimed at preventing the collapse of the world's wildlife.
Delegates from more than 190 countries meeting in Nagoya, Japan, agreed at the 11th hour on an ambitious conservation programme to protect global biodiversity and the natural habitats that support the most threatened animals and plants.
After 18 years of debate, two weeks of talks, and tense, last-minute bargaining, the meeting of the UN Convention on Biodiversity agreed on 20 key "strategic goals" to be implemented by 2020 that should help to end the current mass extinction of species.
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Search the news archive for more stories
The sweeping plan to put the brakes on the loss of species includes a set of new targets to be implemented by the end of the decade that will give greater protection to the natural world and enshrine the benefits it gives to humankind in a legally binding code of protection.
"This agreement reaffirms the fundamental need to conserve nature as the very foundation of our economy and our society," said Jim Leape, director general of the conservation group WWF International.
"Governments have sent a strong message that protecting the health of the planet has a place in international politics, and countries are ready to join forces to save life on Earth," Mr Leape said.
One of the 20 targets agreed by the delegates was to extend national parks to increase the area of protected land in the world from 12.5 per cent to 17 per cent, and the area of protected oceans from 1 per cent to 10 per cent by 2020. Another target is to lift threatened species from the risk of extinction.
Environment ministers from around the globe also agreed on rules for sharing the commercial benefits of nature's genetic resources between governments and companies, a key trade and intellectual property issue that could be worth billions of dollars in new funds for developing nations.
One idea enshrined in the new protocol is to set up a special fund from a proportion of the profits made from commercial products derived from biological material collected decades or even centuries ago from natural habitats in the developing world.
Caroline Spelman, Britain's Environment Secretary, said last night from Nagoya: "We have also agreed an historic protocol which has been 18 years in the making, establishing a regime where developing countries will allow access to their genetic and natural resources in return for a share of the benefits for their use."
This feature of the agreement was the biggest stumbling block to a deal because of concerns by developing nations that they would miss out on the revenues generated by Western companies that discover new drugs and medicines derived from studying the chemistry and genetics of species living in regions rich in biodiversity.
Developing nations, particular in Africa, had argued they had not benefited in the past from their natural resources which had been developed into lucrative products by wealthy Western countries.
Poorer countries had insisted that the cost of increasing their spending on the conservation of natural habitats had to be offset by some financial mechanism that paid them for the benefit of the genetic resources they were protecting.
Johansen Voker of Liberia's Environmental Protection Agency
had said: "The forest and the other biological resources we have serve the general interests of the global environment. So we expect assistance to be able to effectively conserve our environment for the common good of the world community."
The Nagoya meeting agreed to establish an International Regime on Access and Benefit Sharing of Genetic Resources to lay down the basic ground rules on how nations co-operate in obtaining genetic resources from animals, plants and fungi.
Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environment Programme, which administers the Convention on Biological Diversity, said: "This is a day to celebrate in terms of a new and innovative response to the alarming loss of biodiversity and ecosystems. And a day to celebrate in terms of opportunities for lives and livelihoods in terms of overcoming poverty and delivering sustainable development."
Ms Spelmen said the agreement sets out a plan to halt the loss of habitats that provide essential biological services for the benefit of people, such as the supply of fresh water. This, she insisted, would help to eradicate poverty. "We have also secured an agreement to link climate change, global poverty and biodiversity together in protecting the world's forests, which is essential if we are to achieve our aims in these areas," she said.
Last week, a report by the Zoological Society of London warned the populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish have declined by 30 per cent over 40 years and that one-fifth of all vertebrate species are threatened with extinction.
cont.A historic deal to halt the mass extinction of species was finally agreed last night... more
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When measuring our food's environmental impact, carbon isn't the only important element to consider. Calculating a food's "carbon footprint" can tell us how much climate-altering greenhouse gas we emit when growing and transporting it, but estimating the meal's associated nitrogen pollution accounts for the excess nutrients that create oxygen-depleted dead zones in our oceans.
Now two University of Pittsburgh researchers have analyzed the "nitrogen footprint" of different foods, and found that some products leave us with a trade-off between combating climate change and feeding dead zones (Environ. Sci. Technol., DOI: 10.1021/es9034478).
Marine dead zones form when nitrogen and phosphorus pollution concentrates in near-coast waters through a process called eutrophication. Bacteria consume most of the water's oxygen when they feast on the algal blooms attracted by these abundant nutrients. Drops in oxygen levels then suffocate other organisms or drive them away. The 8,000-sq-mile dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi River in the Gulf of Mexico has disrupted the region's shrimp fishery for years.
To determine which foods contribute most to these harmful dead zones, Pittsburgh environmental scientists Xiaobo Xue and Amy Landis assessed the nitrogen output of different agricultural products during four lifecycle phases: farming, processing, packaging, and transportation. They then calculated the eutrophication potential of each food group and compared these farm-to-table nitrogen footprints to carbon footprints, using data from a well-known 2008 study (Environ. Sci. Technol., 2008, 42, 3508).
Red meat topped both footprint lists, making it the food with the greatest impact on both climate change and eutrophication: Eating a pound of beef creates about 22 lb of greenhouse gases and about 2.5 oz of nitrogen pollution. Cereals and carbohydrates had the smallest footprints, with each pound of food releasing only 3 lb of greenhouse gases and almost no nitrogen pollution.
But many foods had diverging impacts on the climate and coastal ecosystems. Dairy products landed at the bottom of the carbon footprint list with carbohydrates, but sat second only to beef in eutrophication potential, releasing 1.1 oz of nitrogen pollution for every pound of food produced.
And that dairy-produced nitrogen pollution adds up: According to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics, the average U.S. American consumes 10-times as much dairy foods as beef each year, which translates into about 42 lb of nitrogen pollution per year compared to almost 9 lb released from beef. Meanwhile, people's annual dairy and beef consumption emits about the same amount of greenhouse gases.
The findings suggest that consumers, the food industry, and policymakers need to take more than climate change into account when trying to reduce food production's environmental impact, Landis says: "We showed that carbon footprints are not necessarily the best metric in evaluating the sustainability of a product."
cont.When measuring our food's environmental impact, carbon isn't the only... more
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The Obama administration has indicated a shift in US development policy from "food aid" (dumping our excess production overseas) with "food security" (improving food production in foreign countries). This would be great for world's family farmers if Obama's plan were to ensure their access to clean water, arable land and diverse, locally adapted plants and animals. Unfortunately, President Obama seems set on replacing the bags of wheat, rice and corn with bags of pesticides, fertilizers and genetically engineered seeds.
Most of the world's food is not produced on industrial mega-farms. 1.5 billion family farmers produce 75 percent of the world's food.
The hunger problem is not caused by low yields. The world has 6 billion people and produces enough food for 9 billion people.
There are now 1.02 billion hungry people in the world (nearly 50 million in the US). At the same time, there are 1 billion people who are overweight, many of whom are obese and suffer from diet-related diseases that can be as deadly as starvation. Hunger and obesity are not the result of low yields, they stem from the overproduction of toxic junk food, the scarcity of healthy organic food, and injustice in the way farmland and food are distributed.
While many of the world's leaders discussed the food crisis at a UN Food Summit in Rome (November 13-17, 2009), farmers, who were not part of the official delegations, took part in demonstrations outside the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) headquarters and met at an alternative forum, People's Food Sovereignty Now! The 642 participants (more than half women) from 93 countries represent the more than 1.5 billion family farmers who produce 75 per cent of the world's food. Here's what they had to say:
We reaffirm that our ecological food provision actually feeds the large majority of people all over the world in both rural and urban areas (more than 75%). Our practices focus on food for people not profit for corporations. It is healthy, diverse, localized and cools the planet.
...Our practices, because they prioritize feeding people locally, minimize waste and losses of food and do not create the damage caused by industrial production systems. Peasant agriculture is resilient and can adapt to and mitigate climate change...
We call for a reframing of research, using participatory methods, that will support our ecological model of food provision. We are the innovators building on our knowledge and skills. We rehabilitate local seeds systems and livestock breeds and fish/aquatic species for a changing climate...
We commit to shorten distances between food provider and consumer. We will strengthen urban food movements and advance urban and peri-urban agriculture. We will reclaim the language of food emphasizing nutrition and diversity in diets that exclude meat provided from industrial systems.
- From the People's Food Sovereignty Now! Declaration, November 2009
Are rich countries hearing the world's family farmers? Last summer, President Obama announced a dramatic shift in the way the United States, the world’s largest provider of food aid, would address hunger and food shortages in foreign countries. The focus will now be on "sustainable agricultural development" that will "empower smallholder farmers." As a member of the G8, the United States is committed to contribute $3.5 billion toward:
$20 billion over three years through [a] coordinated, comprehensive strategy focused on sustainable agriculture development, while keeping a strong commitment to ensure adequate emergency food aid assistance. … [This includes] country-owned strategies, in particular to increase food production, improve access to food and empower smallholder farmers to gain access to enhanced inputs, technologies, credit and markets.
It’s about time that the US and other rich countries that subsidize overproduction stopped dumping food aid on countries in a way that drives local producers out of the market and off their land. But, what do rich countries mean when they say, “enhanced inputs” and “technologies”?
“Enhanced inputs” and “technologies” is the language of the Green Revolution and the Gene Revolution that has come to see the world’s family farmers as a captive market for Monsanto and Dupont’s patented, genetically engineered crops, the pesticides these crops are modified to produce or withstand, and the synthetic fertilizers needed to spur their growth.
President Obama has stacked his administration with people who are tied to multinationals like Monsanto (of Agent Orange infamy) and Dupont (the company that earned the largest civil administrative penalty ever for concealing the cancer risks of one of its products), to push expensive inputs that threaten family farmers' access to clean water, arable land and the biodiversity cultivated by previous generations.
cont.The Obama administration has indicated a shift in US development policy from... more
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just released a report that contains even more bad news for the Gulf of Mexico. This year's Gulf Dead Zone will be unusually large -- and that's without accounting for any impact from the ongoing oil spill.
The Dead Zone refers to an annual oxygen-depleting algae bloom in the waters off the Gulf Coast. Krista Hozyash recently described its origin and impact in detail for Grist's series on nitrogen, and Grist's Tom Philpott summarized its cause in a post from the early days of the spill:
Every year, millions of tons of synthetic nitrogen and mined phosphorous leach from Midwestern farm fields and into streams that drain into the Mississippi. The great river deposits those agrichemicals right into the Gulf, where they feed a 7,000-square-mile algae bloom that sucks up oxygen and snuffs out sea life underneath. The bulk of this vast Dead Zone's rogue nutrients comes from the growing of corn, our nation's largest farm crop.
According to NOAA, the average size of the dead zone over the last five years has been about 6,000 square miles. Current models predict something between 6,500 and 7,800 square miles which, as the report observes, is "an area roughly the size of Lake Ontario."
Study scientist and ecologist Donald Scavia says the likeliest outcome is 6,564 square miles. Though at the low end of the projected range, a Dead Zone that size would still make the Gulf's top ten list, with the top five largest all having occurred within the last ten years.
"We're not certain how this will play out. But one fact is clear: The combination of summer hypoxia [oxygen depletion] and toxic-oil impacts on mortality, spawning and recruitment is a one-two punch that could seriously diminish valuable Gulf commercial and recreational fisheries," said Scavia, Special Counsel to the U-M President for Sustainability, director of the Graham Sustainability Institute, and a professor at the School of Natural Resources and Environment, in the release for the report.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just released a report that... more
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Environmental engineer Joe Taylor has a dire warning for BP: they have to stop using their chemical dispersant, Corexit, immediately. Or else, according to a report from WKRG in Mobile, everything is going to die!
He says the sulfur and sulfuric acid based dispersant makes the oil spewing into the gulf sink, where its impossible to clean up--and where it depletes oxygen levels under the water, killing plankton and everything above plankton in the food chain. "Corexit is toxic, petroleum is toxic, and its depleting the oxygen levels," he says.
What's worse says Taylor, is that if he knows this information, so does BP. "They have a lot of chemists who are a lot smarter than I am, and they know this," he says.
Taylor told WKRG that BP is using Corexit "the wrong way," recommending they use an alternative, BioSolve, that is "bio-friendly" and usable on the beaches as well as in the Gulf.
The problems keep mounting for the Gulf, environmentally speaking. As USA Today reported today, BP's next problem is how to dispose of "millions of gallons of potentially toxic oil sludge." BP's plan, which has been endorsed by the Coast Guard and the EPD is to recycle as much of the sludge as possible, but experts say the toxic goop could actually "ruin refineries."Environmental engineer Joe Taylor has a dire warning for BP: they have to stop using... more
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It is an overlooked danger in oil spill crisis: The crude gushing from the well contains vast amounts of natural gas that could pose a serious threat to the Gulf of Mexico's fragile ecosystem.
The oil emanating from the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits, said John Kessler, a Texas A&M University oceanographer who is studying the impact of methane from the spill.
That means huge quantities of methane have entered the Gulf, scientists say, potentially suffocating marine life and creating "dead zones" where oxygen is so depleted that nothing lives.
"This is the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history," Kessler said.
Methane is a colorless, odorless and flammable substance that is a major component in the natural gas used to heat people's homes. Petroleum engineers typically burn off excess gas attached to crude before the oil is shipped off to the refinery. That's exactly what BP has done as it has captured more than 7.5 million gallons of crude from the breached well.
A BP spokesman said the company was burning about 30 million cubic feet of natural gas daily from the source of the leak, adding up to about 450 million cubic feet since the containment effort started 15 days ago. That's enough gas to heat about 450,000 homes for four days.
But that figure does not account for gas that eluded containment efforts and wound up in the water, leaving behind huge amounts of methane.
BP PLC said a containment cap sitting over the leaking well funneled about 619,500 gallons of oil to a drillship waiting on the ocean surface on Wednesday. Meanwhile, a specialized flare siphoning oil and gas from a stack of pipes on the seafloor burned roughly 161,700 gallons.
Thursday was focused on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers chastised BP CEO Tony Hayward.
Testifying as oil still surged into the Gulf at between 1.47 million and 2.52 million gallons a day, coating more coastal land and marshes, Hayward declared "I am so devastated with this accident," "deeply sorry" and "so distraught."
But he also said he was out of the loop on decisions at the well and disclaimed knowledge of any of the myriad problems on and under the Deepwater Horizon rig before the deadly explosion. BP was leasing the rig the Deepwater Horizon that exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and triggering the environmental disaster.
"BP blew it," said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of the House investigations panel that held the hearing. "You cut corners to save money and time."
As for the methane, scientists are still trying to measure how much has escaped into the water and how it may damage the Gulf and it creatures.
The dangerous gas has played an important role throughout the disaster and response. A bubble of methane is believed to have burst up from the seafloor and ignited the rig explosion. Methane crystals also clogged a four-story containment box that engineers earlier tried to place on top of the breached well.
Now it is being looked at as an environmental concern.
The small microbes that live in the sea have been feeding on the oil and natural gas in the water and are consuming larger quantities of oxygen, which they need to digest food. As they draw more oxygen from the water, it creates two problems. When oxygen levels drop low enough, the breakdown of oil grinds to a halt; and as it is depleted in the water, most life can't be sustained.
The National Science Foundation funded research on methane in the Gulf amid concerns about the depths of the oil plume and questions what role natural gas was playing in keeping the oil below the surface, said David Garrison, a program director in the federal agency who specializes in biological oceanography.
"This has the potential to harm the ecosystem in ways that we don't know," Garrison said. "It's a complex problem."
In early June, a research team led by Samantha Joye of the Institute of Undersea Research and Technology at the University of Georgia investigated a 15-mile-long plume drifting southwest from the leak site. They said they found methane concentrations up to 10,000 times higher than normal, and oxygen levels depleted by 40 percent or more.
The scientists found that some parts of the plume had oxygen concentrations just shy of the level that tips ocean waters into the category of "dead zone" — a region uninhabitable to fish, crabs, shrimp and other marine creatures.
Kessler has encountered similar findings. Since he began his on-site research on Saturday, he said he has already found oxygen depletions of between 2 percent and 30 percent in waters 1,000 feet deep.
Shallow waters are normally more susceptible to oxygen depletion. Because it is being found in such deep waters, both Kessler and Joye do not know what is causing the depletion and what the impact could be in the long- or short-term.
In an e-mail, Joye called her findings "the most bizarre looking oxygen profiles I have ever seen anywhere."
contIt is an overlooked danger in oil spill crisis: The crude gushing from the well... more
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Photo caption: Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar visited a wildlife treatment center in Louisiana on Saturday.
May 15, 2010
Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Under the Gulf
By JUSTIN GILLIS
Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.
“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”
The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.
Dr. Joye said the oxygen had already dropped 30 percent near some of the plumes in the month that the broken oil well had been flowing. “If you keep those kinds of rates up, you could draw the oxygen down to very low levels that are dangerous to animals in a couple of months,” she said Saturday. “That is alarming.”
The plumes were discovered by scientists from several universities working aboard the research vessel Pelican, which sailed from Cocodrie, La., on May 3 and has gathered extensive samples and information about the disaster in the gulf.
Scientists studying video of the gushing oil well have tentatively calculated that it could be flowing at a rate of 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day. The latter figure would be 3.4 million gallons a day. But the government, working from satellite images of the ocean surface, has calculated a flow rate of only 5,000 barrels a day.
BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.
“The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”
The undersea plumes may go a long way toward explaining the discrepancy between the flow estimates, suggesting that much of the oil emerging from the well could be lingering far below the sea surface.
The scientists on the Pelican mission, which is backed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency that monitors the health of the oceans, are not certain why that would be. They say they suspect the heavy use of chemical dispersants, which BP has injected into the stream of oil emerging from the well, may have broken the oil up into droplets too small to rise rapidly.
BP said Saturday at a briefing in Robert, La., that it had resumed undersea application of dispersants, after winning Environmental Protection Agency approval the day before.
“It appears that the application of the subsea dispersant is actually working,” Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said Saturday. “The oil in the immediate vicinity of the well and the ships and rigs working in the area is diminished from previous observations.”
Many scientists had hoped the dispersants would cause oil droplets to spread so widely that they would be less of a problem in any one place. If it turns out that is not happening, the strategy could come under greater scrutiny. Dispersants have never been used in an oil leak of this size a mile under the ocean, and their effects at such depth are largely unknown.
Much about the situation below the water is unclear, and the scientists stressed that their results were preliminary. After the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, they altered a previously scheduled research mission to focus on the effects of the leak.
Interviewed on Saturday by satellite phone, one researcher aboard the Pelican, Vernon Asper of the University of Southern Mississippi, said the shallowest oil plume the group had detected was at about 2,300 feet, while the deepest was near the seafloor at about 4,200 feet.
“We’re trying to map them, but it’s a tedious process,” Dr. Asper said. “Right now it looks like the oil is moving southwest, not all that rapidly.”
He said they had taken water samples from areas that oil had not yet reached, and would compare those with later samples to judge the impact on the chemistry and biology of the ocean.
While they have detected the plumes and their effects with several types of instruments, the researchers are still not sure about their density, nor do they have a very good fix on the dimensions.
Given their size, the plumes cannot possibly be made of pure oil, but more likely consist of fine droplets of oil suspended in a far greater quantity of water, Dr. Joye said. She added that in places, at least, the plumes might be the consistency of a thin salad dressing.
Dr. Joye is serving as a coordinator of the mission from her laboratory in Athens, Ga. Researchers from the University of Mississippi and the University of Southern Mississippi are aboard the boat taking samples and running instruments.
Dr. Joye said the findings about declining oxygen levels were especially worrisome, since oxygen is so slow to move from the surface of the ocean to the bottom. She suspects that oil-eating bacteria are consuming the oxygen at a feverish clip as they work to break down the plumes.
While the oxygen depletion so far is not enough to kill off sea life, the possibility looms that oxygen levels could fall so low as to create large dead zones, especially at the seafloor. “That’s the big worry,” said Ray Highsmith, head of the Mississippi center that sponsored the mission, known as the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology.
The Pelican mission is due to end Sunday, but the scientists are seeking federal support to resume it soon.
“This is a new type of event, and it’s critically important that we really understand it, because of the incredible number of oil platforms not only in the Gulf of Mexico but all over the world now,” Dr. Highsmith said. “We need to know what these events are like, and what their outcomes can be, and what can be done to deal with the next one.”
Shaila Dewan contributed reporting from Robert, La.Photo caption: Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar visited a wildlife treatment... more
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Scientists are saying lower levels of oxygen in the Earth's oceans, particularly off the United States' Pacific Northwest coast, could be another sign of fundamental changes linked to global climate change. They warn that the oceans' complex undersea ecosystems and fragile food chains could be disrupted.Scientists are saying lower levels of oxygen in the Earth's oceans, particularly... more
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Excerpt:
'A team of NOAA-supported scientists from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, Louisiana State University, and the University of Michigan is forecasting that the "dead zone" off the coast of Louisiana and Texas in the Gulf of Mexico this summer could be one of the largest on record.
The dead zone is an area in the Gulf of Mexico where seasonal oxygen levels drop too low to support most life in bottom and near-bottom waters.
Scientists are predicting the area could measure between 7,450 and 8,456 square miles, or an area roughly the size of New Jersey. However, additional flooding of the Mississippi River since May may result in a larger dead zone. The largest one on record occurred in 2002, measuring 8,484 square miles.
Dead zones are caused by nutrient runoff, principally from agricultural activity, which stimulates an overgrowth of algae that sinks, decomposes, and consumes most of the life-giving oxygen supply in the water.
The dead zone size was predicted after researchers observed large amounts of nitrogen feeding into the Gulf from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers. The rivers experienced heavy water flows in April and May that were 11 percent above average.
"The high water volume flows coupled with nearly triple the nitrogen concentrations in these rivers over the past 50 years from human activities has led to a dramatic increase in the size of the dead zone," said Gene Turner, Ph.D., a lead forecast modeler from Louisiana State University.
This forecast helps coastal managers, policy makers, and the public better understand and combat the sources of the dead zones. For example, the models that generate this forecast have been used to determine nutrient reduction targets required to reduce the size of the dead zone.
This hypoxic, or low-to-no oxygen area, is of particular concern because it threatens valuable commercial and recreational Gulf fisheries by destroying critical habitat."
End of excerpt
_________
It isn't enough that we are killing the land and air with toxic waste and poisoning our food with an overuse of pesticides and herbicides... we are now literally sucking the life out of our water.Excerpt:
'A team of NOAA-supported scientists from the Louisiana Universities... more
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