Plus a lot of Fukushimapocalypose Now!
We begin with the latest measles news, via the Guardian:
Measles outbreak: infected LinkedIn commuter puts Silicon Valley on alert
Advisory issued after tens of thousands of commuters may have been exposed to disease by Bay Area’s first confirmed case since outbreak began in December
Tens of thousands of commuters may have been exposed to measles after an infectious LinkedIn employee – apparently en route from vaccination-averse Silicon Valley – traveled by train into and out of San Francisco last week, county health officials said on Wednesday.
Contra Costa Public Health officials issued an advisory to riders of San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (Bart) system on Wednesday after confirming the area’s first case of measles since a massive outbreak began in California in December and quickly spread across the US. The infected employee rode the Bart to and from work for three days last week, officials said. The infectious employee also went to a restaurant and bar in San Francisco last week.
Since the beginning of the year, 121 people from 17 states and Washington DC are reported to have contracted measles, a majority of which are linked to the outbreak that began with an infected guest at the Disneyland theme park in southern California. But one rider in the north had a major metropolis and its tech economy on alert Thursday.
From Outbreak News Today, the spotted sickness hits Sin City:
Emeril’s employee prompts measles advisory in Las Vegas
Clark County, NV has now reported four cases of measles this year after not seeing a case in some four years, the Southern Nevada Health District reported Wednesday.
The two newest cases include a young child whose case was confirmed by appropriate testing on Wednesday, February 11. This case appears to be unrelated to the third case or previously reported cases. The child had previously received a single dose of the vaccine.
The other is an under-immunized adult whose case was confirmed by appropriate testing on Tuesday, February 10. The individual is employed at Emeril’s New Orleans Fish House at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino.
From Medium, a reminder of just what measles can do:
A Rabbit Feever resurgence, via Outbreak News Today:
Tularemia outbreak in Kosovo, 206 cases this year to date
Health authorities in Kosovo have declared an outbreak of the bacterial disease, tularemia, after recording 206 human cases since the first of the year.
In a Health Ministry statement, “All the teams on the ground are activated in order to prevent new cases of the disease.”
No fatalities have been reported.
Kosovo is no stranger to tularemia reporting 1,221 confirmed cases from 1999 to 2010, according to a study published in Eurosurveillance in 2012.
Also known as rabbit fever and deer fly fever,tularemia is caused by the bacterium Francisella tularensis. This bacterium is found in nature in rabbits, rodents, beavers, squirrels and several domestic and farm animals.
From Independent Online, an old killer resurfaces:
Cholera outbreak kills 19 in Mozambique
A cholera outbreak in parts of Mozambique hit by floods has killed 19 people, the government said, raising the death toll from one of the worst disasters to hit southern Africa in years.
Another 158 people have died in Mozambique in flooding triggered by heavy rains at the start of the year, which also affected Malawi, Madagascar and Zimbabwe.
Mozambique’s deputy health minister Mouzinho Saide said late on Tuesday that flooded rivers had started to subside in the country’s northern and central provinces, easing the plight of about 177 000 people affected by the rain storms.
Do you want your chocolate leaded or unleaded? Via the Washington Post:
How much lead is in your chocolate?
If you (like me) have been happily snarfing down chocolate in recent years, secure in the knowledge that those flavonols were at least doing good things for your heart, today is not your day.
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a California consumer health watchdog group filed legal notices Wednesday demanding that many of the big chocolate companies post warnings on their packages that show their products contain high levels of lead and cadmium.
As You Sow, an Oakland nonprofit, says single servings of 26 products it tested (three times) contain more of the two harmful heavy metals than allowed under the Golden State’s Proposition 65 toxic chemical warning law. Here is the list, which includes many of the big name producers of my favorite food. Try not to weep openly at work.
And if reading this makes you depressed, take hope, via Al Jazeera America:
Could ketamine become the next great depression drug?
Patients, researchers and drug companies look to the future after ‘the biggest breakthrough in depression’ in 50 years
In August, a study from the National Institute of Mental Health discovered that ketamine reduces suicidal thoughts – totally independent of the drug’s effect on depression or anxiety. In April, a University of Oxford study in the Journal of Psychopharmacology found that approximately a third of patients with treatment-resistant depression saw immediate improvements in their moods. And since 2012, studies from Yale University, Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine and New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine found that ketamine is overwhelmingly successful for treatment-resistant patients.
Researchers are the excited about these developments in hopes of combatting the rising number of depression cases nationwide. Almost 7 percent of Americans 18 or older – about 16 million people – suffered at least one major episode of depression in the last year, according to NIMH. The World Health Organization recently found that “depression is the predominant cause of illness and disability” for boys and girls 10 to 19 years old. In the United States, lost productivity and health care expenses from depression cost an estimated $80 billion a year. And those trends are not expected to slow down. National Institutes of Health researchers project depression to be “the second leading cause of disability worldwide and the leading cause of disability in high-income nations, including the United States” within 20 years.
From Co-Exist, Big Agra peaks out:
The World Has Reached Peak Chicken, Peak Rice, And Peak Milk
We no longer have the ability to harvest from the Earth at ever-increasing rates. What does that mean for the future of the food supply?
We still haven’t reached peak oil. But peak milk happened in 2004, peak soybeans in 2009, and peak chicken in 2006. Rice peaked in 1988.
A new study published in Ecology and Society explains that 21 key resources that humans rely on—mostly food—have already passed their peak rate of production.
“Peak,” in this case, doesn’t mean that we’re actually producing fewer chickens or less milk yet. Instead, the researchers looked at the fact that the rate of production has plateaued, at the same time that population is increasing.
More Brazilian drought woes, via the Thomson Reuters Foundation:
Drought-hit Rio braces for Carnival water shortages
As Carnival begins in Rio de Janeiro, the city is bracing for possible water shortages as a severe drought that has dried up reservoirs in Brazil’s southeast hits the country’s top tourist destination.
Authorities say there is no imminent risk of water supply interruptions. But hotels and restaurants in this oceanfront city are preparing for that possibility as an expected almost one million tourists begin arriving for festivities that officially start this weekend and run until Ash Wednesday, on Feb. 18.
Rio’s Hotel Industry Association has asked its members to take more vigorous measures to conserve water, while the city’s hotel and restaurant union said it is planning for water scarcity.
Some street carnival parades have canceled the use of water tank trucks that are traditionally used to cool off revelers.
The Associated Press covers massive dryness to come:
Study sees even bigger longer droughts for much of US West
As bad as recent droughts in California, the Southwest and the Midwest have been, scientists say far worse “megadroughts” are coming — and they’re bound to last for decades.
“Unprecedented drought conditions” — the worst in more than 1,000 years — are likely to come to the Southwest and Central Plains after 2050 and stick around because of global warming, according to a new study in the journal Science Advances on Thursday.
“Nearly every year is going to be dry toward the end of the 21st century compared to what we think of as normal conditions now,” said study lead author Benjamin Cook, a NASA atmospheric scientist. “We’re going to have to think about a much drier future in western North America.”
There’s more than an 80 percent chance that much of the central and western United States will have a 35-year-or-longer “megadrought” later this century, said study co-author Toby Ault of Cornell University, adding that “water in the Southwest is going to become more precious than it already is.”
From the Environmental News Network, the Big Melt:
19,500 square miles of polar ice melts into oceans each year
Sea ice increases in Antarctica do not make up for the accelerated Arctic sea ice loss of the last three decades, according to the stark findings of a new NASA study.
As a whole, the planet has been shedding sea ice at an average annual rate of 13,500 square miles (35,000 square kilometers) since 1979, the equivalent of losing an area of sea ice larger than the state of Maryland every year.
However, the rate of sea ice loss has recently doubled to now reach an alarming rate of nearly 20,000 square miles.
“Even though Antarctic sea ice reached a new record maximum this past September, global sea ice is still decreasing,” said Claire Parkinson, author of the study and climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “That’s because the decreases in Arctic sea ice far exceed the increases in Antarctic sea ice.”
And from the Los Angeles Times, another arctic anxiety:
Federal environmental review makes Arctic drilling more likely
A revised environmental review of a contested Arctic oil lease makes drilling in the area far more likely, a development that has infuriated environmentalists.
The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management released the new environmental assessment of drilling leases on Thursday, upping the projected oil yield but saying little otherwise about the potential environmental impact.
The revised report was a particularly bitter disappointment for environmentalists, who had just celebrated the Obama administration’s decision in January to put parts of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off-limits from future oil and gas leasing.
The contested oil lease held by Royal Dutch Shell in the Chukchi Sea has been tied up in litigation since the government put 30 million acres up for sale in 2008.
After the jump, the semantics of climate change, an ancient oceanic carbon catastrophe, an oceanic plastic catastrophe in the making, another oceanic warming catastrophe, forests versus mining interests in China, Obama battles endangered wildlife smuggling — sort of, a Peruvian highway threats rare biodiversity, Cameron’s government okays fracking Britain’s national parks, on to Fukushimapocalypse now!, starting with a new child thyroid cancer case, a brief documentary on two survivors of the 3/11 disaster, a massive home demolition in Fukushima, two more reactors get a restart green light and protests ensue, and nuclear fuel plants remain unscreened, plus China bets big on nuclear reactor construction worldwide. . .
From the New York Times, the Roger Ailes problem:
In Climate Change, What’s in a Name?
The words are hurled around like epithets.
People who reject the findings of climate science are dismissed as “deniers” and “disinformers.” Those who accept the science are attacked as “alarmists” or “warmistas. “ The latter term, evoking the Sandinista revolutionaries of Nicaragua, is perhaps meant to suggest that the science is part of some socialist plot.
In the long-running political battles over climate change, the fight about what to call the various factions has been going on for a long time. Recently, though, the issue has taken a new turn, with a public appeal that has garnered 22,000 signatures and counting.
The petition asks the news media to abandon the most frequently used term for people who question climate science, “skeptic,” and call them “climate deniers” instead.
BBC News covers an ancient oceanic carbon catastrophe:
Ocean carbon release ‘ended last Ice Age’
Carbon dioxide escaping from the depths of the ocean heralded the end of the last Ice Age, a study suggests.
Its release into the atmosphere drove the shift towards a warmer period, according to scientists at the University of Southampton.
The research, published in Nature, is based on analysing chemical signals in the shells of ancient plankton.
The world’s oceans absorb about a third of the atmospheric carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.
From the Guardian, an oceanic plastic catastrophe in the making:
Coastal communities dumping 8m tonnes of plastic in oceans every year
China ranked top polluter as figures suggest total plastic litter ending up in the seas could rise tenfold by 2025
Coastal populations put about 8m tonnes of plastic rubbish into the oceans in 2010, an annual figure that could double over the next decade without major improvements in waste management efforts, scientists warn.
The mountain of plastic litter, including bags, food packaging and toys, was equivalent to five full shopping bags of debris for every foot of coastline bordering nearly 200 countries the team studied.
Though researchers have known about plastic waste in the oceans for 40 years, the latest report, published in the journal Science, is the first to attempt a detailed estimate of how much plastic made on the planet finds its way into the oceans.
The accompanying graphic:
From the Guardian again, another oceanic warming catastrophe:
Great Barrier Reef: warmer waters helping coral-eating starfish thrive
The survival chances of crown-of-thorns starfish increase by as much as 240% if sea-surface temperatures rise 2C, say Australian researchers
Warmer seas are creating an additional threat to the Great Barrier Reef, with new research suggesting rising temperatures are helping a key coral predator thrive.
Crown-of-thorns starfish that eat coral are more likely to survive with rising sea-surface heat levels, according to a study by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims).
An Aims scientist, Sven Uthicke, said a study largely carried out at the institute’s marine laboratory in Townsville showed a 2C rise in sea temperature increased the starfish’s chances of survival by up to 240%.
“Warmer sea temperatures were found in this study to enhance COTS [Crown-of-thorns starfish] survival along with other, cumulative pressures on the reef,” he said.
Forests versus mining interests in China, via the Japan Times:
In China, legal fight to save forest tests toughened anti-pollution law
A lawsuit filed against four Chinese mining executives accused of destroying a stretch of forest is shaping up as a test of China’s strengthened environmental law and the ability of green groups to make companies more accountable for their actions.
Environmentalists hope the case will prompt a wave of legal action across China, where discontent is rising over a growth-at-all-costs economic model that has spoiled much of the country’s water, skies and soil.
The environmental lawsuit, filed at a Fujian court in early January, was the first to be accepted under the new law.
The miners hired workers to clear about 2 hectares of forest on Hulu Mountain in southern Fujian province in 2008 in a bid to extract granite from the mountaintop without a license, according to two environmental groups who filed the suit and Chinese state media reports.
Obama battles rare wildlife smuggling — sort of, via the New York Times:
Obama Administration Plans to Aggressively Target Wildlife Trafficking
Hoping to stem illegal wildlife trafficking, the Obama administration on Wednesday introduced an aggressive plan for taking on traffickers that will include using American intelligence agencies to track and target those who benefit from the estimated $20-billion-a-year market.
The plan, which was outlined by officials from the State Department, Justice Department and Interior Department, will also increase pressure on Asian countries to stop the buying and selling of illegal rhinoceros horns, elephant ivory and other items, which President Obama has called an “international crisis,” and will try to reduce demand for those items worldwide.
“Right now, wildlife trafficking is a very profitable enterprise,” said John C. Cruden, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. “Our goal is to take the profit out of this illegal trade with all the tools at our disposal.”
But the planned actions, a result of a two-year administration review on how to limit wildlife trafficking, will be supported by only a modest increase in funding and staffing for the law enforcement arm of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency chiefly responsible for policing the wildlife trade.
A Peruvian highway threats rare biodiversity, via the Guardian:
Peru planning highway through most biodiverse place on earth
Manu national park in the Amazon under threat from extension of national ‘jungle highway’
The Manu national park and its buffer zone in Peru was international news early last year after scientists found it is “top of the [world’s] list of natural protected areas in terms of amphibian and reptile diversity”, beating off stiff competition from the Yasuni national park in neighbouring Ecuador. What these news reports didn’t acknowledge, not surprisingly, are the immense threats facing Manu – a Unesco biosphere reserve in the south-east Peruvian Amazon where Unesco states the biodiversity “exceeds that of any other place on earth”.
The first such threat, to the park itself, is from oil and gas exploration and exploitation. For years Manu has been believed to hold significant hydrocarbon deposits, and numerous oil and gas industry maps depict “undrilled prospects”, “seeps” and a “spring” lying under the park. According to Peru’s Ministry of Energy and Mines, five distinct “geological structures” in Manu could hold more than 14 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Shell explored in the far west of Manu in the 1980s, and in early 2013 the Guardian revealed that Pluspetrol was planning “geological exploration” there. Indeed, in a recent report NGO Peru Equidad refers to claims by local inhabitants reported by a Catholic priest living in the region of “continuous helicopter flights towards the Manu headwaters” which suggested “seismic exploration or preparations for seismic” was taking place in the park. The report also states that local inhabitants of the River Manu Chico region have been “disturbed” by overflights which “could be related to extractive projects.”
Cameron’s government okays fracking Britain’s national parks, via the Guardian:
Fracking will be allowed under national parks, UK decides
Amendments to infrastructure bill unpick earlier protections, meaning companies just outside parks will be able to drill horizontally below them
Fracking companies will be allowed to drill horizontally under national parks and other protected areas if the wells start just outside their boundaries, after the government rowed back on its earlier acceptance of new environmental protections.
Ministers were forced to accept a series of new regulations from Labour on 26 January after facing defeat by concerned backbenchers, but the final amendments passed by MPs on Monday unpicked many of them. Green Party MP Caroline Lucas accusing ministers of “doing the dirty work of fracking companies for them”, but the government move was welcomed by the nascent shale gas industry.
The Labour amendments had ruled out fracking for shale gas in national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty (AONBs), sites of special scientific interest and groundwater source protection zones (SPZs). A Guardian analysis revealed that this measure ruled out 40% of the large area of England being offered by the government for future shale gas exploration.
And on to Fukushimapocalypse now!, starting with a new child thyroid cancer case, via the Japan Times:
Fukushima child tests positive for thyroid cancer in second survey
A child in Fukushima Prefecture has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer in the latest health survey to assess the impact of the triple core meltdown that tainted the region with radiation in 2011.
Seven others in the survey of 385,000 children in Fukushima Prefecture are also suspected of having thyroid cancer but have not received a definitive diagnosis, a prefectural committee said. The survey began in April 2014, three years after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima No. 1 power plant.
The child diagnosed and the seven others tested negative in the first survey, which covered all 370,000 children in the prefecture who were 18 or younger at the time of the disaster. Those born a year after the meltdowns were not included.
“Despite the new results, I don’t think we need to change our previous view” that they were not affected by the radiation, said Hokuto Hoshi, who heads the panel.
From VICE, a brief documentary on two survivors of the 3/11 disaster:
The Last Farmer in Fukushima’s Post-Nuclear Wasteland
Program notes:
Two years since the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant went into full meltdown, and the resulting 20km evacuation zone was enforced, one farmer still remains behind braving high levels of radiation and loneliness to tend to abandoned animals.
His name is Naoto Matsumura, and he is the last man standing in the ghost town of Tomioka. Another farmer, Kenji Hasegawa’s town of Iidate was also evacuated due to high levels of radiation, he sought refuge in temporary housing. Faced with a post-nuclear world both these men share brutally honest views on the state of their lives, TEPCO, government inaction and some of the hardest situations they have had to face in the midst of overwhelming radioactivity.
A massive home demolition in Fukushima, via NHK WORLD:
1,000 homes being torn down after decontamination
NHK has learned that at least 1,000 homes in Fukushima Prefecture will be demolished — even after they have been cleaned of radioactive fallout from the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident.
Local officials say that’s a waste of time and money. They call on the government to run the decontamination work more efficiently.
NHK polled officials from 9 Fukushima municipalities where demolition is under way. Each municipality remains partly or completely evacuated.
Officials from 3 towns said about 1,080 houses are to be torn down despite being decontaminated as requested by residents. Naraha Town reports the largest number, around 870.
Two more reactors get a restart green light, via the Asahi Shimbun:
Kansai Electric gets NRA go-ahead to restart 2 reactors in Fukui
Japan’s nuclear watchdog gave the green light Feb. 12 to restart two idled reactors at a plant in Fukui Prefecture, adding impetus to government efforts to bring nuclear facilities back online.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority approved enhanced safety measures submitted by Kansai Electric Power Co. for the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at its Takahama plant, a key hurdle for their restart.
Of the 48 commercial reactors that went offline after the Fukushima nuclear crisis unfolded in March 2011, only two other reactors–at Kyushu Electric Power Co.’s Sendai plant in Kagoshima Prefecture–have received safety clearance.
One result, via NHK WORLD:
Protesters demand more explanation
Protesters have called on Japan’s nuclear regulator to further discuss safety measures before approving the restart of the Takahama plant’s 2 reactors.
Over 30 people gathered on Thursday in front of a Tokyo building where the Nuclear Regulation Authority held its meeting.
They said regulators have not assessed evacuation plans for residents in the event of an accident and have not fully explained details of the restart to residents.
Nuclear fuel plants remain unscreened, via the Mainichi:
Screenings of nuclear fuel facilities in Japan not moving forward
December last year marked one year since the implementation of new safety standards applying to nuclear fuel facilities, which play a significant role in the nation’s nuclear fuel cycle. The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) is performing safety checks of such facilities alongside inspections of nuclear power plants, but so far there have been no major developments.
NRA member Akira Ishiwatari visited a reprocessing facility for spent nuclear fuel in Aomori Prefecture in December last year. It was the first full-scale, on-site inspection to be conducted since the facility’s operator, Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd., applied for a safety check in January 2014 with an eye to start operations. The focus of the inspection was whether an active fault lay beneath the plant. If a fault existed, the main structures would need further reinforcement against earthquakes.
After examining 10 spots including geological formations in trenches that were dug, Ishiwatari told reporters that he wanted the data for drilling that was underway, indicating that it would take quite some time to reach a decision on the facility.
And from the Asahi Shimbun, China bets big on nuclear reactor construction worldwide:
Despite safety concerns, China resuming construction of nuclear plants
Facing growing energy demands and struggling against air pollution, China this year plans to resume full-scale construction of nuclear power plants for the first time since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011.
The country’s target is to triple the electricity generation capacity of its nuclear power plants to 58 gigawatts by 2020. That figure would approach the level of France, whose current nuclear generation capacity is second only to that of the United States.
But the variety of reactors that China wants to fire up has raised concerns that workers and engineers will be ill-prepared if a disaster strikes.
One type is a high-temperature, gas-cooled “fourth-generation” reactor. Work is under way to assemble the world’s first demonstration reactor of that kind at a nuclear power plant in a coastal area of Shidao Bay at the tip of the Shandong Peninsula.
