And a whole lot of Fukushimapoocalypse Now!, this being four years to the day since disaster struck.
First, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the latest measles numbers for the U.S.:
Al Jazeera America has some Canadian numbers:
Health officials confirm 119 measles cases in Quebec
Children from Lanaudiere, Quebec caught measles at Disneyland and spread the disease to other unvaccinated people
Canadian public health officials said Wednesday that there are 119 confirmed cases of the measles in Lanaudière, Quebec (PDF), a town about 50 miles north of Montreal.
The first case of measles in the region was reported to Lanaudière’s public health agency on Feb. 10, according to the Toronto Sun newspaper, but the infection spread to people who hadn’t been vaccinated for the disease.
The spread of measles to Lanaudière is the result of visits by two families to the Disneyland resorts in California, where they were exposed and brought the measles back with them to Quebec, according to the Montreal Gazette newspaper. The infected children as well as classmates and staff who came into contact with them have been ordered to stay home for two weeks, the newspaper said.
And from Outbreak News Today, good numbers in the Philippines:
Philippines reports 200 measles cases in January
After reporting more than 58,000 suspected and confirmed measles cases in 2014, including 110 fatalities, the Philippines saw only 201 suspected and confirmed cases during the first month of 2015, according to a recently published World Health Organization Measles-Rubella Bulletin.
The 33 lab-confirmed measles cases reported in January is a dramatic decrease compared to the 9,549 confirmed cases in January 2014. There were no deaths related to measles reported in January.
The measles outbreak in the Philippines last year was implicated in imported measles cases and outbreaks in a number of countries including the United States and Canada.
From Reuters, warnings of an outbreak to come:
Mutating H7N9 bird flu may pose pandemic threat, scientists warn
A wave of H7N9 bird flu in China that has spread into people may have the potential to emerge as a pandemic strain in humans, scientists said on Wednesday.
The H7N9 virus, one of several strains of bird flu known to be able to infect humans, has persisted, diversified and spread in chickens across China, the researchers said, fuelling a resurgence of infections in people and posing a wider threat.
“The expansion of genetic diversity and geographical spread indicates that, unless effective control measures are in place, H7N9 could be expected to persist and spread beyond the region,” they said in a study published in the journal Nature.
The Guardian covers a finding:
Homeopathy not effective for treating any condition, Australian report finds
Report by top medical research body says ‘people who choose homeopathy may put their health at risk if they reject or delay treatments’
Homeopaths believe that illness-causing substances can, in minute doses, treat people who are unwell.
By diluting these substances in water or alcohol, homeopaths claim the resulting mixture retains a “memory” of the original substance that triggers a healing response in the body.
These claims have been widely disproven by multiple studies, but the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has for the first time thoroughly reviewed 225 research papers on homeopathy to come up with its position statement, released on Wednesday.
“Based on the assessment of the evidence of effectiveness of homeopathy, NHMRC concludes that there are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective,” the report concluded.
From Medical Daily, a diabetes breakthrough hinted:
Diabetes Treatment May Soon Involve Psychedelic Ayahuasca; Chemical Harmine Triples Beta Cell Count
The role of psychedelics like LSD and magic mushrooms in modern medicine is being uncovered more than ever these days, with their uses ranging from easing anxiety to treating post-traumatic stress disorder. But, as a new study shows, their role isn’t only limited to psychiatric conditions but chronic diseases as well. In this case, a chemical in the Amazonian psychoactive brew ayahuasca may actually promote the growth of insulin-producing beta cells in people with diabetes.
Ayahuasca, which is also the name for the Banisteriopsis caapi vine it’s made from, is commonly associated with the indigenous tribes of the Peruvian Amazon, where shamans brew it with other psychedelic plants to induce an hour’s long trip full of spiritual revelations, often viewed as a reawakening. In the U.S., the drug is classified as a schedule 1 drug under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which defines it as having “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” They’re considered “the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence.”
The psychoactive chemical that makes ayahuasca a schedule 1 drug is dimethyltryptamine, more commonly known as DMT. Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City believe that if they can figure out a way to bypass the effects of this chemical, they’ll be able to tap into the effects of another chemical in the ayahuasca plant called harmine. In their new study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, they found this chemical was the only one out of over 100,000 the ability to reproduce insulin-producing beta cells in diabetic mice, thus normalizing glycemic control.
From the San Jose Mercury News, the toxicology of beauty:
Santa Clara County targets ‘toxic trio’ used in nail salons
They’re known as the “toxic trio,” the worst of the bottled bad boys that can likely be found at any given nail salon, and Santa Clara County is hoping to run the gang out of town.
Supervisor Cindy Chavez led the charge to join a handful of local governments that are encouraging salon owners to switch away from products containing chemicals known to cause an array of health disorders, and with unanimous support from her colleagues, a Healthy Nail Salon Recognition Program was enacted on Tuesday.
“What’s key is that wherever people work, they should be safe,” Chavez said. “I’m looking at a group of women of childbearing age, working in shops that sometimes aren’t very well ventilated. This is good for them and good for the customer.”
In the gang of three, there’s the well-known carcinogen formaldehyde and the neurological agent toluene, which causes headaches, dizziness and nausea. Rounding them out is dibutyl phthalate — or DBP — a particular threat to pregnant women that’s been banned in Europe.
Big Agra flexes muscle, via the Associated Press:
INFLUENCE GAME: Meat industry fights new dietary proposal
The meat industry is seeing red.
Meat companies have tried to rehabilitate an image tarnished in recent years by health and environmental concerns. Now the industry is swiftly and aggressively working to discredit a proposal for new dietary guidelines that recommends people eat less red and processed meat.
The proposal last month by a government advisory committee also relegates the health benefits of lean meat to a footnote to the main recommendations.
“We’ve been put in a position over the years to almost be apologizing for our product, we’re not going to do that anymore,” said Barry Carpenter, the president and CEO of the North American Meat Institute.
So why keep whaling anyway?, via JapanToday:
Japan dumps Norwegian whale meat after finding pesticide
Whale meat imported into Japan from Norway has been dumped after tests found it contained up to twice the permitted level of harmful pesticide, the government said Wednesday.
The announcement came after Western environmentalists first exposed the issue, in the latest salvo of a battle that pits Japan against many of its usual allies, such as Australia and New Zealand.
An official at Japan’s health ministry said whale meat was subject to extensive routine tests before and after import. “We conduct strict checking because whales tend to collect contaminants in the environment such as pesticides and heavy metals,” he said.
From the McClatchy Washington Bureau, a call for help for an oceanic critter:
Massive starfish deaths prompt calls for emergency help
With millions of starfish dying all along the West Coast, Washington state Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives say it’s time for Congress to intervene and find out why.
The outbreak, first noticed in the state by rangers in Olympic National Park in June 2013, has hit 20 species of starfish, also known as sea stars.
After getting lesions on their bodies, the sea stars begin curling up and soon lose their legs, shriveling up and disintegrating into mush. Researchers fear the epidemic may be the result of a virus caused by climate change, with the disease showing its fastest progression in warmer ocean waters.
From the Ecologist, collusion coal-escing:
Coal industry setting its own air pollution standards
Coal is Europe’s biggest source of mercury and sulphur pollution, writes Kyla Mandel, killing tens of thousands of people a year. So how come more than half the members appointed by EU governments to set air pollution standards for coal plants are industry representatives?
The UK is one of several European governments allowing energy industry representatives to help draw up the European Union’s (EU) new air pollution standards, a Greenpeace investigation has found.
The EU is currently in the process of drafting new standards to limit pollution from coal-fired power stations. However, this “once-in-a-decade opportunity” has been captured by the coal industry Greenpeace claims and could result in “extremely lax” emission limits.
“Not only would most of the existing plants be allowed to pollute several times more than could be achieved by adopting the best clean technologies available”, the environmental NGO said, “but EU standards would also be significantly weaker than those imposed in other parts of the world, including China.”
From the Los Angeles Times, an admission of failure:
Agencies admit failing to protect water sources from fuel pollution
The agencies charged with overseeing oil production and protecting California’s ever-dwindling water sources from the industry’s pollution all fell down on the job, one state official told a panel of peeved lawmakers Tuesday.
During a testy two-hour oversight hearing, officials from the California Department of Conservation, the department’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources and the state Water Resources Control Board promised senators a top-down overhaul of their regulation of the disposal of oil field wastewater.
But after a handful of recent embarrassing revelations about the division’s history of lackluster regulation, lawmakers questioned how they could trust agency officials to follow through, characterizing longstanding agency practices as corrupt and inept.
After the jump, Koch brothers stonewall senators on climate skeptic funding, odds on the next Golden State megaquake jump, the grass-is-always-greener syndrome sends waterway fertilizer contamination soaring, seeking Dutch help for Olympian pollution in Rio, on to Fukushimapocalypse Now!, first with a warning from Japan’s top nuclear regulator, contaminated soil shipments to interim storage near, tons of ‘hot’ water escape into the soil awaiting an underground ice wall that might not work, yet another proposal to recover fuel that melted through the reactor, one Japanese in five leery of Fukushima-grown food, the government heads back to the reconstruction planning drawing board, questions surround the country’s other aging nuclear plants, the Angela Merkel/Shinzo Abe Fukushima response divide, meanwhile, aftershocks continue, Fukushima’s American-born reactor and plant construction, while the nation’s food supply was protected after the disaster, and Shinzo Abe’s pro-nuclear government holds applications to restart 21 plants. . .
From Al Jazeera America, brotherly stonewalling:
Koch brothers refuse to cooperate with climate research funding probe
Billionaire libertarians say they won’t cooperate with Senate investigation into corporate funding of climate skeptics
The multinational corporation run by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch has said it will not cooperate with a Senate investigation into whether the corporation has paid for research skeptical of climate change.
Koch Industries Inc., which operates refining, chemical and pipeline companies, was among 100 fossil fuel businesses and organizations that were sent letters by three Democratic senators seeking information on whether they had backed research into global warming.
Koch general counsel Mark V. Holden replied in a March 5 letter to Senators Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.
Odds on the next Golden State megaquake jump, via the Los Angeles Times:
New forecast boosts chance of mega-quake in California in next 30 years
The next magnitude 8.0 or greater earthquake to hit California could come a little sooner than expected.
The estimated chance of whether such a mega-earthquake would hit California in the next three decades was raised to 7% from about 4.7%, the U.S. Geological Survey said Tuesday.
An 8.0 earthquake hitting a populated area would be devastating — producing 89 times more energy than the magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake in 1994. Such powerful quakes are relatively rare — scientists believe the last mega-quake to hit Southern California was a magnitude 7.9 earthquake in 1857.
The grass-is-greener syndrome sends fertilizer contamination soaring, via the Washington Post:
Americans are judging their neighbors’ lawns — with surprising environmental consequences
Americans love their lawns — a little too much, perhaps. And like all loves, this one too has its chemistry — in this case, rooted in nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, the key components of lawn fertilizer. Sure, it makes the grass grow. But that’s not where the effects end if people over-fertilize or fertilize carelessly, and these nutrients end up getting into our lakes, rivers, or water supplies.
According to the U.S. EPA’s New England Regional Laboratory, 40 to 60 percent of the nitrogen that people put on their lawns through fertilizer winds up in “surface and groundwater.” Take the case of the Chesapeake Bay: A significant part of the nitrogen and phosphorous that is keeping the Bay polluted comes from urban sources, according to the EPA.
Indeed, careless lawn fertilization can have such negative consequences that some states have passed laws to restrict phosphorus in fertilizer. As the New York Department of Environmental Conservation puts it, “Phosphorus going into the State’s water has been linked to: reductions in oxygen in waterbodies necessary for fish to breathe; algae that turn water bodies green; and algae and algae by-products that degrade drinking water.” Scotts Miracle-Gro, a leading maker of fertilizers and lawn products, itself announced the removal of phosphorus from a key line of fertilizer products, TurfBuilder, in 2013, saying this was “a partial solution to nutrient runoff that can lead to excessive algae growth in waterways.”
From the Washington Post again, seeking Dutch help for Olympian pollution in Rio:
Rio turns to Dutch experts to confront Olympic pollution
Under pressure from the International Olympic Committee, the government of Rio de Janeiro has turned to a high-technology Dutch firm to help collect floating rubbish in Guanabara Bay, the sailing venue for the 2016 Games.
Researchers have created a system that compiles weather and water-condition data and possibly real-time footage from cameras to forecast where litter accumulates and travels.
Project leader Joao Rego said Wednesday that the computer simulations provide an overview to make the job of collecting waste more cost-effective.
On to Fukushimapocalypse Now!, first with a warning from Japan’s top nuclear regulator, via the Japan Times:
NRA chief warns of ongoing risks at wrecked Fukushima No. 1 plant
The situation still remains risky at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant four years after a series of meltdowns, the chairman of Japan’s nuclear regulator said Wednesday, vowing utmost efforts to avoid further trouble there.
“There have been quite a few accidents and problems at the Fukushima plant in the past year, and we need to face the reality that they are causing anxiety and anger among people in Fukushima,” Shunichi Tanaka told personnel at the Nuclear Regulation Authority on the fourth anniversary of the nuclear disaster.
Mishaps still occur regularly at the radiation-leaking complex in Fukushima Prefecture, where decommissioning work is continuing after it was heavily damaged in the massive earthquake and tsunami that hit the Tohoku region on March 11, 2011.
Shipments to commence, via NHK WORLD:
Transfer of tainted Fukushima soil to begin
Workers will begin transferring soil and debris collected during decontamination efforts to an intermediate storage facility in Fukushima Prefecture on Friday. The material was tainted by fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and is being kept at initial storage sites in the prefecture.
The government began building the intermediate storage facility last month in an area straddling the towns of Futaba and Okuma.
Environmental and local officials say 54 of the 59 municipalities in the prefecture are storing soil and debris contaminated by nuclear fallout. 43 of those municipalities are hosting about 1,050 initial storage sites.
Soil and debris are also being stored at about 86,000 other sites, such as yards and parking lots. It was estimated at the end of January that sites in the prefecture are storing about 6.6 million cubic meters of contaminated material.
Tons of ‘hot’ water escape into the soil, via the Asahi Shimbun:
FOUR YEARS AFTER: Tons of radioactive rainwater seeps into soil at Fukushima plant
According to TEPCO, the level of rainwater accumulating behind the outside weir of two barriers around storage tanks for contaminated water was 15 centimeters as of 10:30 p.m. on March 9. But the water level had dropped to 7 cm by a little past 8 a.m. on the following day.
Based on the decrease, TEPCO estimated that 747 tons of radioactive rainwater seeped into the soil.
The plant operator measured levels of beta-ray-emitting materials in the leaked water and detected a maximum reading of 8,300 becquerels per liter at one location. The average level of radioactivity at five sample locations was 2,300 becquerels per liter, according to TEPCO.
And an uncertain remedy, via the Japan Times:
Fukushima No. 1’s never-ending battle with radioactive water
The disaster that struck four years ago may have abated for most of the Tohoku region, but the nightmare continues at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, which suffered three reactor core meltdowns and is plagued daily by increasing amounts of radioactive water.
Tepco hopes to improve the situation via two key measures: a 1.5-km-long sunken wall of frozen soil encircling stricken reactors 1, 2 and 3 and the damaged reactor 4 building to keep groundwater from entering and mixing with coolant water leaking in the reactor building basements, and “subdrain” wells around the buildings to pump up the tainted groundwater for treatment and ultimate discharge into the Pacific.
The utility hopes these steps will drastically reduce the amount of radioactive water, which is now increasing daily by some 300 tons. Many experts, however, say Tepco can’t expect smooth sailing as a wall of underground ice of such magnitude has never before been attempted.
From the article, a graphic depiction of the ice wall:
From NHK WORLD, yet another proposal to recover fuel that melted through the reactor:
New method to remove molten fuel considered
Experts tasked with developing ways to decommission the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant are examining a new method to remove molten fuel from the damaged reactors.
Nuclear fuel in 3 of the plant’s 4 reactors melted down in the March 2011 accident. Experts believe some of it penetrated the reactor cores and is sitting at the bottom of the containment vessels.
Officials of the government-backed Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation had planned to fill the vessels with water to block extremely high radiation when retrieving the fuel.
But they say holes and other damage to the vessels have yet to be identified. The water method would be difficult without knowing where the holes are.
From the Wall Street Journal, lingering reluctance:
Nearly One in Five Japanese Reluctant to Buy Fukushima Food
About 17% of Japanese consumers remain cautious about buying food produced in Fukushima prefecture, according to a twice-yearly survey carried out by the Consumer Affairs Agency following the Fukushima nuclear accident.
The percentage fell from 20% marked in the previous survey in August, but is higher than the 15% recorded a year ago.
The latest study, released Tuesday, was conducted online in February and surveyed 5,176 adults in 11 prefectures, including Tokyo and Osaka as well as areas in the Tohoku region hit by the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis.
Of those surveyed, 67% said they care or care somewhat about the origin of the food they purchase, and of those respondents, 34% said it was because they wanted to purchase food that was free of radioactive contamination.
The government heads back to the reconstruction planning drawing board, via the Mainichi:
Gov’t to craft fresh plan for Fukushima by summer: Abe
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Tuesday that the government will outline a fresh plan by the summer for the future of Fukushima Prefecture, home to the power plant that in 2011 sparked the world’s worst nuclear crisis since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Speaking on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the March 11, 2011, earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, Abe said the government will also craft a new five-year plan by the summer to promote the recovery of Fukushima and other disaster-hit areas in northeastern Japan.
As part of a future vision of Fukushima, Abe referred to the idea that the government will help it build a center of advanced research in such new areas as robotics and renewable energy.
Aging nuclear infrastructure questions, via the Japan Times:
Questions remain over future plan for Japan’s aging nuclear plants
As the debate about what to do with Japan’s aging nuclear reactors intensifies, questions remain about the ramifications of decommissioning plants, and how to tear down the facilities in a way that’s efficient, affordable, safe, and that has the support of the local community.
In the United Kingdom, these concerns formed the basis of a policy that has led to the decommission of numerous power stations, two of which began operating in the 1950s.
“There is no set of rules for decommissioning. This is because when you’re operating a nuclear power station, you want every day to be the same,” said Keith Franklin, of the U.K. National Nuclear Laboratory, and First Secretary (Nuclear) at the British embassy in Tokyo.
“But when you’re decommissioning, you want each day to be different than the day before in terms of progress on cleaning things up,” he told a news conference in Osaka on Tuesday.
The Angela Merkel/Shinzo Abe Fukushima response divide, via the Asahi Shimbun:
On nuclear energy, Abe and Merkel remain far apart
German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed on a number of things during her talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, but where the two leaders parted company was on the issue of nuclear energy.
Merkel explained her decision to cancel Germany’s dependence on nuclear power plants was a direct result of the Fukushima disaster in Japan four years ago.
Abe, on the other hand, was at pains to state that Japan must continue to rely on nuclear energy as a cheap and stable source of power.
Meanwhile, aftershocks continue, via Reuters:
Aftershocks still rattle east Japan four years after megaquake
Four years after a magnitude 9 earthquake shook northern and eastern Japan, the region is rocked by tremors at more than double the average rate of the decade before the disaster, a report this week from the Japan Meteorological Agency shows.
In the latest 12 months there were 737 quakes registering at least “1″ on the Japanese intensity scale of 1-7 in the quake zone, which runs more than 500 km (300 miles) from Tokyo’s eastern suburbs up the northeast coast nearly to the northern tip of the main island of Honshu. From 2001 to 2010, agency data shows, the annual average was 306.
The agency warns that there remains a risk of large aftershocks in the region, which includes the area of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant. Scientists say that while the quakes are getting weaker, the numbers are still a concern. Last month alone there were 64 quakes of magnitude 4 or higher in the quake zone. While the Japanese scale measures the intensity of shaking on the surface, with the lowest reading of “1″ felt only slightly if at all, magnitude measures the amount of energy released by a quake.
Fukushima’s American-born reactor and plant construction, via Al Jazeera America:
Fukushima at 4: New choices mired in old priorities
The boiling water reactors (BWRs) that failed so catastrophically at Fukushima Daiichi were designed and sold by General Electric in the 1960s; the general contractor on the project was Ebasco, a US engineering company that, back then, was still tied to GE. General Electric had bet heavily on nuclear and worked hand-in-hand with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (the precursor to the NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) to promote civilian nuclear plants at home and abroad. According to nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Energy Education, a nuclear watchdog group, GE told U.S. regulators in 1965 that without quick approval of multiple BWR projects, the giant energy conglomerate would go out of business.
It was under instruction from GE and Ebasco that the rocky bluffs where Daiichi would be built were actually shaved by 10 meters to bring the power plant closer to the sea, the water source for the reactors’ cooling systems. But it was under Japanese government supervision that serious and repeated warnings about the environmental and technological threats to Fukushima were ignored for another generation.
Failures at Daiichi were completely predictable, observed David Lochbaum, the director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Experts and engineers proposed many upgrades over many years, but recommendations were not heeded. “The only surprising thing about Fukushima,” said Lochbaum at a 2013 conference on the effects of the disaster, “is that no steps were taken.”
While the nation’s food supply was protected after the disaster, via Science:
Food supply was protected after Fukushima, study finds
On the 4th anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that triggered meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, there is one bit of reassuring news: A new study concludes that contaminated food was likely kept out of the market.
“In my honest opinion, the Japanese government did a terrific job to keep their people safe” from contaminated food, says Georg Steinhauser, an environmental radiochemist at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, who led the study.
The meltdowns at three reactors and subsequent explosions released massive radioactive plumes. To limit exposure, authorities evacuated more than 150,000 residents. (And many more left the area in fear of the radiation.) Mindful that drinking contaminated milk led to most of the cancers that resulted from the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986, the Japanese government also launched a massive effort to check foods for contamination and ban any items exceeding set limits. The limit for most food was initially set at 500 becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg), and then lowered to 100 Bq/kg a year later. For comparison, the European Union’s limit is 1250 Bq/kg.
And to close, what’s on the horizon, via NHK WORLD:
Utilities apply to restart 21 reactors
Japanese utilities have applied to restart more than 40 percent of the country’s reactors, which remain offline 4 years after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.
Regulators had received applications to screen 21 reactors at 14 plants as of Wednesday. All 48 of Japan’s commercial reactors are offline.
Regulators must determine whether operators’ safety measures are meeting new, stricter government requirements for earthquakes, tsunami and severe accidents. The measures against severe accidents were put in place after the 2011 nuclear crisis.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority has so far given the green light to 4 reactors at 2 plants.
