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Killer nets reinstated

Byoliveridley

Council Decisions: March 2006

Drift Gillnet Management

The Council adopted a recommendation to NMFS to authorize an exempted fishing permit (EFP) that would allow drift gillnet fishing in the current August 15-November 15 closed area. The EFP fishery would be governed by several requirements for all vessels, including, to carry an observer; to limit total fishing effort in the EFP fishery to 300 sets; to immediately cease the EFP fishery if, and when, two leatherback sea turtles were encountered by the fishing gear; and to immediately cease the EFP fishery if one mortality or serious injury occurred to any of the following marine mammals: short-finned pilot whale, sperm whale, fin whale, gray whale, humpback whale, or minke whale.

And, with that, starts the rather egregious practice of drift gillnet fishing. The restrictions seem fairly tight, an observer on every boat, and end to the fishery after two incidences of capture. There is definitely more than meets the eye here, I don’t know what. Drift gillnet fishing is well documented to cause turtle catch, this from the 1998 Fishery Bulletin for 1990-1995

In the drift gillnet fishery, seven out of 387 mammals observed entangled were released alive. In the set gillnet fishery, five out of 1,263 mammals observed entangled were released alive. Estimates of incidental kill are presented along with estimates of entanglement for species that were observed to be released alive. For the period under consideration, the estimated mortality for the drift gillnet fishery was over 450 marine mammals each year. A total of 20 turtles and 3 seabirds were observed entangled during the entire period. The most frequently entangled species in this fishery were common dolphins, Delphinus spp., and northern elephant seals, Mirounga angustirostris. Estimated cetacean mortality in the driftnet fishery decreased from 650 in 1991 to 417 in 1995; pinniped mortality decreased from 173 in 1991 to 116 in 1995. Estimated cetacean mortality in the set gillnet fishery ranged from a high of 38 in 1991 to a low 14 in 1993; pinniped mortality rose to a high of 4,777 in 1992 and then decreased to 1,016 in 1995. We postulate that there has been a decline in the number of pinnipeds and cetaceans in the setnet fishery owing to area closure. No similar proposal can be made for the driftnet fishery. The most frequently entangled mammals in the setnet fishery were California sea lions, Zalophus californianus, and harbor seals, Phoca vitulina. Six turtles and 1,018 seabirds were estimated entangled in this fishery during the NMFS Observer Program from July 1990 to December 1995.

So what’s the deal, this thing caught 20 turtles in 5 years, so it is going to catch turtles, no doubt about it. Anyone who does not get what the death of one adult sea turtle means read this. Sea turtles are wonderfully fragile animals given their size, they take long to mature sexually, they do not breed all that much and less than 1% of turtle hatchlings survive to adulthood. Leatherbacks are highly endangered.

I have a feeling that this is the first part of a one-two punch intended to reinstate the famed turtle killer long line swordfish nets on the pacific coast. The “proof” that these nets do not catch turtles will be used to lobby for longline swordfishing in, oh say three months?

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Federal Study Results in Invention of Wheel

Byoliveridley

Federal Study Finds Accord on Warming – New York Times

A scientific study commissioned by the Bush administration concluded yesterday that the lower atmosphere was indeed growing warmer and that there was “clear evidence of human influences on the climate system.”

Wait, we still need to study this more, we need to eliminate all uncertainty before we act, we need more proof, we need to be more certain :-;

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Split court rules against Bush on greenhouse gases – CNN.com

Byoliveridley

Interesting, see here for background…. So, the Supreme Court has ruled that CO2 is a pollutant, good for them.

Split court rules against Bush on greenhouse gases – CNN.com

The Supreme Court ordered the federal government on Monday to take a fresh look at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from cars, a rebuke to Bush administration policy on global warming.

In a 5-4 decision, the court said the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars.

Greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the landmark environmental law, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his majority opinion.

The court’s four conservative justices — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — dissented.

Kennedy, swung left on this one! I stand by my original asseesment, just regulating cars using the clean air act is inadequate, but the important matter resolved here is that CO2 is a pollutant, and this will, I hope, provide precedent in cases to come.

USGS Releases Study on US Well Water

Byoliveridley

The actual journal paper seems to be behind a subscription wall. But, here’s a summary…

ScienceDaily: Chemical Quality Of Self-Supplied Domestic Well Water

Since the water quality of domestic wells is not federally regulated or nationally monitored, this study provides a unique, previously nonexistent perspective on the quality of the self-supplied drinking water resources used by 45 million Americans in the United States. This national reconnaissance study is based on a compilation of existing data from a very large number of wells sampled as part of multiple USGS programs.

Well water is not held to the same standards as municipal water, which means it is not normally tested for nasties such as arsenic.

gwmr_89_f4.gif
Well (no pun intended!), looky here, but arsenic levels in well water exceed EPA Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs) more than 10% of the time. If, and this is a big if, you extrapolate these results to the whole country, as much as 5 million people may be exposed to higher than allowed arsenic levels. Arsenic is a notorious contaminant with an MCL of 0.01 mg/L, down a factor of 5 as of January 2006 due to data that indicates effects at even lower doses.

If I drank well water, I would get it tested for arsenic.

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Most of the results are from the North East, which means that outside research circles (and behind subscription walls), groundwater arsenic levels could be a significant problem that not too many people are aware of.

All figures are from the paper.

Reference

Focazio, Michael J., Tipton, Deborah, Dunkle Shapiro, Stephanie & Geiger, Linda H. (2006) The Chemical Quality of Self-Supplied Domestic Well Water in the United States. Ground Water Monitoring & Remediation 26 (3), 92-104. doi: 10.1111/j.1745-6592.2006.00089.x

Virulent E-Coli strain lives in grain-fed cattle.

Byoliveridley

Interesting side note about the spinach E-Coli outbreak

Leafy Green Sewage – New York Times

Where does this particularly virulent strain come from? It’s not found in the intestinal tracts of cattle raised on their natural diet of grass, hay and other fibrous forage. No, O157 thrives in a new — that is, recent in the history of animal diets — biological niche: the unnaturally acidic stomachs of beef and dairy cattle fed on grain, the typical ration on most industrial farms. It’s the infected manure from these grain-fed cattle that contaminates the groundwater and spreads the bacteria to produce, like spinach, growing on neighboring farms.

Well, talk about unforeseen consequences, cows really should not eat grain. Go watch my favorite food cartoon ever, the Meatrix, and its most excellent sequel, The Meatrix 2: Revolting for more.

When cows were switched from a grain diet to hay for only five days, O157 declined 1,000-fold. This is good news. In a week, we could choke O157 from its favorite home — even if beef cattle were switched to a forage diet just seven days before slaughter, it would greatly reduce cross-contamination by manure of, say, hamburger in meat-packing plants.

Seems easy enough to implement, if impossible to enforce.

Update

A more nuanced look, if not a debunking of the above theory can be found on this scienceblogs page.

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Chemical Warfare

Byoliveridley

This story from a local Chicago TV station does an excellent job of documenting the chemical weapons dropped on Vietnam by the United States in the 1960s, the effects they still have on Vietnam, and the Americans who handled these so called “defoliants”.

cbs2chicago.com – Agent Orange: A View From Vietnam

During the eight years of the Vietnam War that the U.S. Military dusted the Vietnamese landscape with Agent Orange, it was only intended to kill vegetation. It was a combination of two herbicides 2,4D and 2,4,5T mixed together into the most potent plant killer ever made. It was spread over 3 1/2 million acres of forests and crops to kill the trees and vegetation so the United States troops could see the enemy. The Armed Forces were told it was harmless. But in March 1978, Bill Kurtis broke the story on CBS 2 that American veterans of Vietnam who had been exposed to Agent Orange were complaining of illnesses, birth defects among their children, skin rashes, cancer, nervous problems and respiratory problems.

orange3_small.jpgPeople tend to blame dioxins for all the health effects. But 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, constituents of Agent Orange, are no spring chickens. Exposure during spraying, especially of the grossly excessive amounts that rained down upon Vietnam, can cause various health effects as well, not to mention long-term devastation of entire ecosystems.

Side note: New Zealand, in 2004, apologized to New Zealand’s “veterans” for their exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam war. Not a word to the Vietnamese, of course.

Side note 2: A US Federal court, in 2005, dismissed the first claims brought by Vietnamese plaintiffs against Dow Chemicals and Monsanto, here was the government’s  reasoning:

In a brief filed in January, it said opening the courts to cases brought by former enemies would be a dangerous threat to presidential powers to wage war.

Translation: We reserve the right to drop chemical weapons on our “enemies”, and doing anything to abrogate this right is “dangerous”.

Image courtesy of Reuters shows a Vietnamese child, one of many with birth defects associated with Agent Orange exposure.

Image of coffee beans
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Coffee Roasting and Popcorn Lung

Byoliveridley

Cross-posted from Interrobang

Who among us coffee drinkers don’t love the smell of freshly roasted coffee? I am sure some of us imagine how much fun it would be to smell freshly roasting coffee more often. I don’t, because smell for me is an instant jolt of pleasure/pain followed by a rather rapid decline into the background.

Caution, though. New measurements from the US Centres for Disease Control warn of high exposure to some pretty nasty chemicals that can cause your lungs to be destroyed irreversibly, the unfortunately named “popcorn lung” or bronchitis obliterans:

Investigators with the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, a research arm of the CDC, spent several days at Madison-based Just Coffee in July. Investigators tested personal air space and took air samples to measure the concentration of the chemicals diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedione… NIOSH researchers found levels in three breathing-zone samples that exceeded the safety levels recommended by the CDC.

Coffee Roasting Plants and Exposure

The test results show a marginal exceedance in this case, but noted that ventilation is a big factor and these tests were done under well ventilated conditions on a warm and dry day when doors were open. So, exposure can be higher in other circumstances.

Worker exposures are to higher levels, and are more sustained, so they deserve the most attention.

So, local coffee roasters, it may make sense to confirm that your roasting environments are not exposing your workers to harmful, lung obliterating chemicals. Remember, organic, shade grown, fair pay, artisanal roasting aside, chemical exposures to workers don’t change. And, everything that smells good isn’t good for you.

One of my frequent points of emphasis (rants, some might say) is on the relative risk vs. media attention to exposures of people to ambient, day to day concentrations of potential harmful chemicals vs. those faced by workers everywhere. The last time diacetyl and bronchitis obliterans were in the news, it was around the use of diacetyl to produce that buttery smell so beloved in microwave bag popcorn (I don’t like it myself, olive oil all the way!). Despite reports of many workers facing severe lung issues, it took the detection of the disease of one person eating multiple bags of microwave popcorn over many years to actually move government regulators into action on diacetyl. People who work in factories, in the fields, and make things are exposed to thousands of times higher concentrations of harmful chemicals for longer periods of time, but their concerns are often de-emphasized.

This doesn’t mean ambient exposures in the general population are to be ignored, but worker exposures are to higher levels, and more sustained, so they deserve the most attention.

16-May-2016 Update

This US Centers for Disease Control page is a good collection of information and further readings. They recommend facility tests to measure diacetyl and its cousin 2,3-pentanedione, and better ventilation, worker safeguards and personal protective equipment as necessary. They also note that at least five workers in large scale coffee processing plants have been diagnosed with bronchitis obliterans.

Coffee image By Ailura – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

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