And more. . .
We begin with a new outbreak from Outbreak News Today:
Norovirus: Dozens of staff and patients sickened at Phoenix VA
At least 35 people, including 16 patients and 19 staff members at The Carl T. Hayden Veterans Affairs Medical Center have contracted norovirus. According to a hospital press release, everyone infected was from two inpatient mental health units and to date, all but three have fully recovered.
The Phoenix VA hospital stopped taking new patients at two mental health units with 48 beds on the hospital’s fifth floor. VA officials have embarked on a cleaning regimen to rid the hospital of the highly-contagious virus. Some steps included limiting staff members who are allowed to access the affected floors and using paper trays to deliver food, according to Phoenix VA Health Care spokeswoman Jean M. Schaefer.
Norovirus is a highly contagious viral illness that often goes by other names, such as viral gastroenteritis, stomach flu, and food poisoning.
From Al Jazeera America, deadly outbreaks from an instrument of healing:
Medical scope now tied to Wisconsin superbug outbreak
Congressman considers bill to force states to notify federal agencies of superbug outbreaks and medical device failures
A medical device called a duodenoscope that’s been linked to recent deadly superbug infections across the country was also connected to a 2013 outbreak at a Wisconsin medical facility that infected five people, America Tonight has learned.
Health officials at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services confirmed the five patients were sickened with NDM1 – a subgroup of an antibiotic-resistant “superbug” known as carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE, that’s responsible for two deaths at UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center in Los Angeles since October and dozens of serious infections around the country in recent years.
Meanwhile, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, another Los Angeles hospital, announced Wednesday that four patients there were infected with the deadly superbug due to a dirty duodenoscope and that 64 more patients may have been exposed since August.
From the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control [PDF], measles numbers on another continent:
Germany- update
A large measles outbreak is ongoing in Berlin. As of 24 February 2015, media report nearly 600 cases. The outbreak that started in October 2014 initially affected asylum seekers from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia but has now spread to the general population. According to media, at least two cases in Berlin have been linked to the United States. One involved a woman who developed symptoms in the United States before travelling to Berlin. A second involved a child who developed the infection after returning from the United States of America. There has been one death in an 18 months old unvaccinated toddler. The child fell ill in the Reinickendorf district of Berlin on 12 February with fever and cough and later rash. The child was hospitalised due to worsening condition on 14 February and died in hospital on 18 February. The child was not vaccinated against measles and had no pre-existing conditions.
Denmark
Media report two epidemiologically linked cases of measles in children in Copenhagen.
Serbia- update
Since November 2014 and as of 13 February 2015, 228 cases of measles have been reported in Serbia in several outbreaks affecting numerous areas of the country. This is an increase of 105 cases since 26 January 2015, the last monthly update.
Kyrgyzstan – update
According to WHO, Kyrgyzstan has reported 7477 cases between May 2014 and February 2015. The first case was identified in Bishkek city on 3 May 2014, but the number increased dramatically in 2015.
From BBC News, causation:
Autism is largely down to genes, twin study suggests
Autism is caused by genetic make-up in 74-98% of cases, a Medical Research Council study of 516 twins indicates.
The King’s College London team said 181 of the teenagers had autism, but the rate was far higher in the identical twins, who share the same DNA. The researchers told JAMA Psychiatry tens if not hundreds of genes were involved, and they do not rule out environmental factors entirely.
Both twins in each pair had been raised by their parents in the same household.
The World Health Organization issues a call:
WHO calls on countries to reduce sugars intake among adults and children
A new WHO guideline recommends adults and children reduce their daily intake of free sugars to less than 10% of their total energy intake. A further reduction to below 5% or roughly 25 grams (6 teaspoons) per day would provide additional health benefits.
Free sugars refer to monosaccharides (such as glucose, fructose) and disaccharides (such as sucrose or table sugar) added to foods and drinks by the manufacturer, cook or consumer, and sugars naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices and fruit juice concentrates.
“We have solid evidence that keeping intake of free sugars to less than 10% of total energy intake reduces the risk of overweight, obesity and tooth decay,” says Dr Francesco Branca, Director of WHO’s Department of Nutrition for Health and Development. “Making policy changes to support this will be key if countries are to live up to their commitments to reduce the burden of noncommunicable diseases.”
The WHO guideline does not refer to the sugars in fresh fruits and vegetables, and sugars naturally present in milk, because there is no reported evidence of adverse effects of consuming these sugars.
Much of the sugars consumed today are “hidden” in processed foods that are not usually seen as sweets. For example, 1 tablespoon of ketchup contains around 4 grams (around 1 teaspoon) of free sugars. A single can of sugar-sweetened soda contains up to 40 grams (around 10 teaspoons) of free sugars.
From the Los Angeles Times, kicking the habit. . .sort of:
McDonald’s to phase out serving chicken raised with antibiotics
McDonald’s Corp. will phase out over the next two years the use of chickens raised with antibiotics important to human health in a step to combat resistance to antibiotics.
The Oak Brook, Ill. fast food giant said Wednesday that later this year it will also begin selling only milk from cows that are not treated with the artificial growth hormone rbST.
Farmers in the company’s supply chain can continue to use ionophores, a type of antibiotic not used for humans, on their chickens.
From the Guardian, Aussie bananas threatened:
Queensland banana farm quarantined after testing positive for fungal disease
Biosecurity experts warn Panama TR4 disease could pose a serious threat to the banana industry in Australia
A north Queensland banana farm has been quarantined after testing positive for a potentially destructive fungal disease.
Biosecurity Queensland has warned that the Panama TR4 disease would have serious consequences for the state’s banana industry if it spread from the plantation near Tully, south of Cairns.
Panama, a soil fungus, was found in the Northern Territory in 1997 and has since spread to a number of areas in the Top End, but this is the first time it has been detected at a Queensland plantation.
Science covers sewer diagnostics:
Pollution, human health tracked with sewage microbes
Microbiologists have a new way to tell whose sh-t is dirtying the waters. A survey of sewage across the United States shows that every city has a distinct microbial character that can reveal signs of health, such as how obese its residents tend to be. Dozens of the microbes identified in the survey are common throughout the United States, and could provide better ways to tell whether bacterial pollution comes from humans.
The human gut is filled with microbes that are proving ever more important to health and disease. To understand the diversity of these bacteria—collectively called the gut microbiome—and how their numbers and types vary through time, microbiologists have isolated and sequenced DNA from stool samples of hundreds of individuals. But Mitchell Sogin, a molecular evolutionist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and Sandra McLellan, a microbiologist at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, wanted to take a much broader view and study the microbiomes of entire human communities. In addition, they were looking for a better indicator of human fecal pollution.
To do that, they needed to figure out how to assess the microbiomes of large numbers of people at once. They recruited wastewater treatment plant operators from 71 U.S. cites to collect more than 200 samples of incoming sewage. They then sequenced DNA in the samples and determined its origin. About 15% of the isolated sewage DNA belonged to microbes found in humans, Sogin and McLellan’s team reported online last week in mBio. Many of the rest are microbes that live in sewer pipes. Using a technique developed by Sogin and his colleagues, which can more precisely determine which bacteria are present in a large sample of feces, the researchers identified about 60 types of bacteria that were common to people in all of the cities. Because they seem to be found wherever humans are, these 60 may be a more reliable way to determine if human feces are contaminating a waterway, McLellan says.
From StarAfrica, African climate change costs:
Africa’s climate adaptation costs to hit $50 billion -UNEP
Africa, the continent with warming deviating most rapidly from “normal” conditions, could see climate change adaptation costs rise to $50 billion per year by 2050, even assuming international efforts keep global warming below 2°C this century, according to a new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report.
Released on Wednesday at the 15th African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN), Africa’s Adaptation Gap builds on UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2014, which showed that the world is not currently headed in the right direction for holding global warming below 2°C.
This latest Africa Adaptation Gap report also builds on UNEP’s Global Adaptation Gap Report 2014, which found that adaptation costs in all developing countries together could climb as high as $250-500 billion per year by 2050.
Produced in collaboration with Climate Analytics and the African Climate Finance Hub, the report says deep global emissions reductions are the best way to head off Africa’s crippling adaptation costs.
After the jump, California beach town voters nix downtown oil drilling, groundwater-endangering oil wells ordered to close in the Golden State, a vote to overturn Obama’s Keystone veto fails, Canadian frackers cast eyes on Spain, Chinese media invoke a foggy Cone of Silence, termites saving the soil, an endangered Cuban bat, on to Fukushimapocalypse Now!, first with massive numbers on a radioactive water leak, an order to look for all possible sources, and a long time remains before a watery resolution, and very slow progress in securing land for interim radioactive soil storage, lifelong monitoring ordered for Fukushima cleanup workers, massive dissatisfaction over the government’s handling of the disaster, more delays for another reactor restart, and desperate dreams of a nuclear power economic boom zone. . .
No drilling in a beautiful beach town, via the New York Times:
Hermosa Beach, Calif., Voters Give Thumbs Down to Oil Drilling
Voters of Hermosa Beach, a small community on the Pacific Ocean south of here, ended a highly contentious campaign Tuesday with an overwhelming vote to deny permission for the construction of up to 34 oil wells on a 1.3 acre municipal parking lot in the center of town. According to unofficial returns, the measure was defeated 3,799 to 1,016.
The initiative would have created an exception to what is currently a ban on oil drilling there, in order to permit E&B Natural Resources Management to proceed with a previously approved contract to do the drilling.
As a result of the vote, Hermosa Beach now owes E&B $17.5 million to terminate the contract, under the terms of an agreement ending litigation with the firm. The drilling had been opposed by the entire City Council, whose members said that the drilling posed unacceptable environmental risks to the city and was not in keeping with the aesthetics of this small beach community.
Water-endangering oil wells ordered to close in the Golden State, via the Los Angeles Times:
California orders 12 oil-field wells shut to protect groundwater
California officials, responding to concerns about groundwater contamination, are closing 12 wells in the Central Valley used to dispose of chemical-laden water from oil and gas production, regulators announced Tuesday.
Steve Bohlen, who leads the state Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources, said the wells are being shut down “out of an abundance of caution for public health.”
Ten of the wells, including some owned by Chevron, have been closed voluntarily and the companies have surrendered their permits. Two more are being ordered to cease operations.
Federal officials have expressed concerns about the state’s oversight of injection wells. Some of the wells are used to dispose of wastewater produced during hydraulic fracturing, a method of oil and gas extraction better known as fracking.
A vote to overturn Obama’s Keystone veto fails, via the Hill:
Keystone veto override fails
The Senate failed on Wednesday to override President Obama’s veto of legislation approving the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline, falling five votes short of the two-thirds majority needed in a 62-37 vote.
It’s the first time Congress has voted on whether to override a veto from Obama and could be a sign of things to come with Republicans in charge of the House and Senate.
Eight Democrats voted with Republicans to override Obama: Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Mark Warner (Va.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Bob Casey Jr. (Pa.), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Tom Carper (Del.) and Jon Tester (Mont.).
From El País, Canadian frackers cast eyes on Spain:
Canadian fracking firm eyes Burgos
Spain’s government is now supporting plans to use the controversial gas extraction method
The wind energy boom of the early 2000s brought money to many rural communities throughout Spain, but never quite made it to Masa, a remote village in the northern province of Burgos.
There were plans to install a number of turbines on public land there that would have brought in around €6,000 a year, says Florencio Herrero, the village mayor. “We had signed a provisional agreement, but it ran out after four years and that was that,” he explains.
Now the community has been approached by BNK, a Canadian company that wants to explore for shale gas using the controversial technique of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which involves pumping water at high pressure thousands of meters underground to force gas out of fissures in the rock.
Via Google Maps, an aerial image of the village:
Beijing invokes the Cone of Silence, via Want China Times:
State media drop coverage of viral documentary on China’s smog
The sudden buzz around former China Central Television reporter Chai Jing’s documentary on smog has been quite short-lived, as positive coverage of it in mainland media outlets ceased on March 1.
In the two days from Feb. 28 to March 1, media including state-run outlets ran stories on the self-funded documentary Under the Dome, which has been a viral sensation, and it was praised by the country’s environment minister Chen Jining, but this brief window did not last long. On March 2, reports in the Taiwanese and Hong Kong media continued to appear but coverage in the mainland cooled down abruptly, with the only reference to Chai’s ideas appearing in financial reports on the stock market. A source cited by the BBC said that censorship instructions had been issued to the press leading to the sharp turnaround in coverage.
The documentary has racked up over 200 million views in a few short days, without counting the views on media sites that reposted it, suggesting that around one in three internet users in China have seen it.
That Chai Jing was able to interview so many officials and corporations to put together such a professional documentary that was critical of state-owned enterprises even though she no longer carried press credentials has been lauded as a remarkable feat by many media outlets. Chen Jining was cited by the BBC as saying that he had watched the documentary and thanked Chai for drawing attention to environmental issues. The BBC also stated that the website of the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily was among the first media outlets to express their support for the documentary and the state newswire Xinhua was also positive about it.
Termites saving the soil, via the New York Times:
Termites: Guardians of the Soil
The giant termite mounds that rise up from the sands of the African savanna are so distinctive it’s tempting to give them names, like “Art Deco Skyline” or “Trumpeting Elephant” or “Flagrantly Obvious Fertility Totem.”
Whatever the metaphor, the charismatic megaforms dominate their landscape, and not just visually. As scientists are just beginning to appreciate, termites and the often elaborate habitats they construct are crucial to the health and robustness of a broad array of ecosystems: deserts and semideserts; tropical and subtropical rain forests; warm, temperate woodlands; possibly your local park.
Researchers at Princeton University and their colleagues recently reported in the journal Science that termite mounds may serve as oases in the desert, allowing the plants that surround them to persist on a fraction of the annual rainfall otherwise required and to bounce back after a withering drought. The mounds could thus prove potential bulwarks against climate change, preventing fragile dryland from slipping into lifeless wasteland.
An endangered Cuban bat, via Prensa Latina:
Greater Funnel-Eared Bat: A Cuban Endangered Species
The cave La Barca, hidden in the coastal weeds in the westernmost part of Cuba, Guanahacabibes Peninsula, preserves an important natural treasure nearly to disappear.
Studied, photographed and filmed by specialists from different research centers, the Cuban Greater Funnel-Eared Bat (Natalus Primus) is an endangered species, and its last refuge is the cave La Barca.
The aforementioned chiropteran is not endemic, but today it inhabits only in the explored cave in the Western end of Cuba, although evidence indicates that it used to live around the island territory and the Isle of Youth, as well as in four islands of Bahamas.
According to Gilberto Silva Taboada, Merit Curator of the National Museum of Natural History of Cuba, in all these places there are abundant fossilized remains of the species, nonexistent there but not extinct thanks to this unique living colony in La Barca, sharing with other species of bats.
On to Fukushimapocalypse Now!, first with massive numbers on a radioactive water leak, via Fukushima Diary:
Tepco admits 400,000,000 Bq of All ß leaked to the sea / Radiation level jumped over double in seawater
On 3/4/2015, Tepco announced they estimate approx. 420,000,000 Bq of All ß nuclides (including Strontium-90) leaked to Fukushima plant port due to the leakage accident.
This is merely based on Tepco’s own assumption.
The report was submitted to NRA (Nuclear Regulation Authority). The report and mass media state “approx. 400,000,000 Bq of All ß nuclides leaked to the sea”, however actually about 44,000 Bq/m3 of All ß nuclides have been constantly detected from the drain water flowing to the sea since before the leakage accident. 420,000,000 Bq is only the increased amount from the usual leakage level.
From NHK WORLD, an order:
TEPCO ordered to check all sources of toxic spill
Japan’s nuclear regulator has ordered the operator of the crippled Fukushima plant to check every possible source of contaminated water that flowed through a drainage channel into the sea.
Tokyo Electric Power Company announced in late February that radioactive water that had accumulated on the roof of the No. 2 reactor building had made its way into the sea.
TEPCO officials presented plans to prevent a similar recurrence at a hearing of the Nuclear Regulation Authority on Wednesday. They said they will pump radioactive water from the current drainage channel to another channel leading to the plant’s port by early April.
From Jiji Press, and a long time remains before a watery resolution:
4 Years On: TEPCO Hopes to Contain Water Crisis before Summer 2016
The treatment of water tainted with radioactive substances at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is expected to finish in May next year, Naohiro Masuda, chief of TEPCO’s in-house unit to promote safe decommissioning of reactors at the disaster-crippled northeastern Japan plant, said in a recent interview with Jiji Press.
TEPCO plans to end its first-round of treatment using equipment that cuts the level of radioactive strontium by May this year and spend another year to remove all radioactive substances from the water using the Advanced Liquid Processing System, or ALPS, Masuda explained.
As a result, TEPCO “hopes to report that there is almost no risk from the contaminated water” stored in many tanks at the plant by summer 2016, he said.
On the expected removal of nuclear fuel from the spent fuel storage pool at the No. 3 reactor building, Masuda said that he is feeling the difficulty of the work as the radiation dose at the No. 3 reactor building is incomparably higher than that at the No. 4 reactor building.
Very slow progress in securing land for interim radioactive soil storage, via the Yomiuri Shimbun:
Path to Restoration / Only 0.4% of land secured for interim storage facility
On March 13, soil contaminated with radioactive substances released due to the nuclear accident at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant will finally begin to be transferred to an interim storage facility. The soil has been collected as part of decontamination work in the wake of the accident.
If the facility goes into full-scale operation, high expectations will be pinned on it to hold the radioactive soil that is now temporarily kept at more than 75,000 sites in Fukushima Prefecture.
However, at this point the central government has secured only six hectares of the 1,600 hectares of land necessary for the planned construction site for the facility in areas straddling Okuma and Futaba towns in the prefecture. The two towns are still designated as areas difficult for former residents to return to.
Whether this huge project goes well holds the key to accelerating reconstruction from the nuclear crisis.
And lifelong monitoring ordered for Fukushima cleanup workers, via Jiji Press:
Lifelong Health Monitoring Planned for Fukushima N-Plant Workers
A Hiroshima-based research institute plans to conduct lifelong health monitoring of people who worked at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant following the tsunami-triggered accident there on March 11, 2011, it was learned on Wednesday.
This will be the first such long-running survey on the people who worked there, according to the health ministry.
Last July, the ministry sought research institutes that hoped to carry out the lifelong health survey, and the Radiation Effects Research Foundation was selected in October.
The RERF is seeking those who are willing to participate in the survey from among some 20,000 people engaged in reactor cooling, rubble removal and other work at the Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant between March and December in 2011.
Massive dissatisfaction over the government’s handling of the disaster, via the Asahi Shimbun:
FOUR YEARS AFTER: 71% of residents dissatisfied with work at Fukushima
Around 71 percent of Fukushima Prefecture residents remain dissatisfied with the central government’s handling of the nuclear disaster four years after the triple meltdown forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, a survey showed.
Only 14 percent of respondents were satisfied with the central government’s efforts at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, according to the telephone survey conducted jointly by The Asahi Shimbun and Fukushima Broadcasting Co. on Feb. 28 and March 1.
In surveys conducted six months after the nuclear accident was triggered by the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, and before the first, second and third anniversaries of the disasters, the dissatisfaction rates were between 70 and 80 percent.
More delays for another reactor restart, via NHK WORLD:
Lifting ban on Monju tests to take over 6 months
Japan’s nuclear regulator says lifting an effective ban on test runs at the troubled Monju fast-breeder reactor will take more than 6 months.
Monju is a prototype in Fukui Prefecture, central Japan, built to reuse spent nuclear fuel in form of MOX fuel — a mixture of plutonium extracted from spent fuel, and uranium.
Officials of the Nuclear Regulation Authority’s secretariat made the remark at an NRA commissioners’ meeting on Wednesday.
And desperate dreams of an nuclear economic boomer zone, via the Mainichi:
Many see reactor restarts as only option to revive ‘Nuclear Ginza’ region
The reactivation of halted nuclear reactors is expected to be among the main issues of contention in the coming nationwide local election in April. But in this city, which has suffered a huge economic blow from the halted reactors, reactivation is unlikely to emerge as a point of dispute.
Elections will be held in Tsuruga, the largest city in the Wakasa Gulf Coast region — dubbed “Nuclear Ginza” as it is home to 14 nuclear reactors — for a new mayor and city assembly members. With the local economy in sharp decline, residents worried about making a living see no real option besides restarting the nuclear reactors.
“Money doesn’t circulate when the reactors aren’t in operation,” lamented Riichi Tsutsumi, 65, who runs a company in Tsuruga that manufactures aluminum building materials. “It’s suffocating.” Prior to the March 2011 triple disasters, orders related to the nuclear power plants — including materials for rebuilding The Japan Atomic Power Company (JAPC) employee housing facilities and replacement parts for automatic doors at the plants — constituted 30 to 50 percent of his company’s annual sales. Now such orders are virtually gone. Other clients based in Tsuruga have also scaled back on capital spending, bringing total sales of Tsutsumi’s company down to less than half of what they were four years ago.
