Rachel's Democracy & Health News #985
Thursday, November 13, 2008
From: The Daily Climate ...................................[This story printer-friendly]
November 12, 2008
THE OCEAN'S ACID TEST
[Rachel's introduction: If carbon dioxide emissions remain unchecked, in 40 years the oceans will be more acidic than anything experienced in the past 20 million years.]
By Douglas Fischer, Daily Climate editor
The most pressing example of climate change's impact is not monster hurricanes, retreating glaciers or water wars. It's the humble swimming sea snail.
The tiny pteropod has difficulty growing a shell in a warmer planet's acidified ocean waters. Given the snails' role at the base of the cold-water food chain, its struggle threatens the entire polar ecosystem, through salmon to seals and whales.
The problem is one of many associated with ocean acidification. That change is well underway -- a consequence of warming that has already happened and fossil-fuel emissions that have long since been dumped into the atmosphere.
In absorbing those emissions the oceans have buffered humanity from the worst effects of climate change. But in doing so ocean chemistry has changed, acidifying to levels not seen in 800,000 years.
The result, according to a new report issued today by Oceana, is that today's ocean chemistry is already hostile for many creatures fundamental to the marine food web. The world's oceans -- for so long a neat and invisible sink for humanity's carbon dioxide emissions -- are about to extract a price for all that waste.
The effects are not local: Entire ecosystems threaten to literally crumble away as critters relying on calcium carbonate for a home - from corals to mollusks to the sea snail -- have a harder time manufacturing their shells. Corals shelter millions of species worldwide, while sea snails account for upwards of 45 percent of the diet of pink salmon.
To avoid the most serious problems associated with acidification, Oceana and other scientists warn, society must hold atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at 350 parts-per-million, roughly 25 percent higher than the pre-industrial mark.
The rub is that the globe has already passed 385 ppm. And many economists and climatologists figure the peak will lie somewhere north of 570 ppm before society figures out how to curb emissions.
"Climate change has been happening for a long time," said Jackie Savitz, Oceana's senior director of pollution campaigns and co-author of the report, Acid Test: Can we save our oceans from CO2? The oceans "are so big, so vast, and everyone thought they were untouchable. But the fact is we've been touching them all along."
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What alarms scientists most is the rate of change: The transformation has happened over 250 years, faster than anything in the historical record. And if emissions remain unchecked, Oceana warned, the oceans in 40 years will be more acidic than anything experienced in the past 20 million years.
Over the next several centuries the pH changes may be larger than any inferred from the geologic record of the past 300 million years, with the exception of a few rare extreme events, scientists predict.
The process is fairly simple. For eons prior to the Industrial Revolution, oceans were at equilibrium with the atmosphere, absorbing as much carbon dioxide as they released.
As humanity started burning fuel, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels started to rise, and the oceans responded, taking in more and more carbon each year and increasing acidity by nearly 30 percent.
The oceans so far have absorbed some 30 percent of the carbon dioxide that humans have added to the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and nearly 80 percent of the heat generated by those gases, according to Oceana.
Today the world's oceans absorb some 30 million metric tons of extra carbon dioxide every day, according to scientists -- roughly twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted each day by the United States.
The ocean has a number of natural buffers to help with change -- ocean sediments and deep water represent two enormous potential reservoirs - but they all work on vastly slower time scales, said Richard Zeebe, associate professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
"It's very difficult to find a nice analogue in the past that's going to show what we're going to experience over the next 200 to 300 years," he said. "It's pretty much outrageous what we've done."
"We are overwhelming the system," he added. "The system is not quick enough to react. It takes thousands of years to do this."
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Scientists are already seeing harm as the oceans acidify. Reefs are struggling in many parts of the world, shell growth rates are slowing, life phases -- particularly reproductive maturity -- are being thrown out of whack.
Even the healthiest reefs in the most optimum conditions today face a daily struggle to grow faster than reef dwellers and the ocean can erode them, and the effects grow more dire as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise.
Somewhere between 450 ppm and 500 ppm atmospheric carbon dioxide, for instance, lies a tipping point where, scientists suspect, reefs become "rapidly eroding rubble banks." Much beyond that, Oceana reported, "reefs as we know them would be extremely rare." Current projections show that by the end of this century no adequate conditions for coral will remain in the world's oceans.
But the chemistry is complex and the variables myriad. Atmospheric carbon dioxide alone does not determine acidity.
"We cannot look into the past and say atmospheric carbon dioxide was highest in the Cretaceous (65 to 145 million years ago), therefore this is what the ocean is going to look like," Zeebe said. "Time scale is key. Rate of change is key."
A frequently touted example of rapid change in the geologic record is the so-called Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. About 55 million years ago the Earth abruptly warmed 6 deg. C, the oceans acidified, atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns shifted and a large number of bottom- dwellers died off.
That change happened over perhaps 10,000 years -- not even close to today's pace.
"This is hard for many people to understand," Zeebe said. "You need to separate the different time scales."
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Oceana maintains that holding atmospheric carbon dioxide at 350 ppm would prevent the most dire problems but still represents a concentration above the safe threshold for today's ocean life.
But for many scientists, that mark is history; in fact current industrial emissions exceed even the highest scenario -- 850 ppm by century's end -- mapped by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said Stanford University climatologist Stephen Schneider.
There's no question 350 ppm represents the safest level, Schneider said. But society will be lucky to peak at 450 ppm, he said, with a more likely crest north of 550 ppm before emissions stabilize.
"We're going to have an overshoot," he said. "The only question is how bad is that overshoot going to be."
"Our objective has to be to prevent a 'much worse,' rather than pretend we can roll the clock back to an impossibility."
The question then becomes how much acidification can reefs handle before they start to crumble. Unfortunately as scientists learn more, the threshold keeps dropping.
"We're pretty sure that 560 is too high and we're almost certain that 700 is too high, but we just plain don't know much about whether 350 or 450 would be OK," said Joanie Kleypas, a marine scientist studying coral at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
Marine scientists have gradually concluded that world carbon dioxide levels will eventually peak at some higher-than-desired threshold no matter what happens, Kleypas said, and hold hope that some technology or solution will bring concentrations back down to the threshold level or lower.
There are hazards with this approach, or course, notably the increased likelihood of passing dangerous tipping points in climate, ocean circulation or general ecological response.
That's why Oceana's Savitz believes the line must be held at 350 ppm. It is a realistic goal, she said. "The good news is it's from lack of trying. We really haven't done the obvious things or picked the low- hanging fruit."
Conservation, for instance, can erase big chunks of projected emissions.
The Oceana report outlines five approaches that together would help drop atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to 350 ppm and preserve coral, including stopping deforestation and overfishing, promoting energy efficiency and low-carbon fuels, and regulating carbon releases.
"The better job we do at limiting ourselves, the less (harm) we'll see," Savitz said. "But we're going to see some impacts. We're not going to get out of this unscathed."
Douglas Fischer is editor of TheDailyClimate.org. Reach him at dfischer@dailyclimate.org.
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From: Rachel's Precaution Reporter #168 ..................[This story printer-friendly]
November 12, 2008
TOWN OF LYNDHURST, N.J. ADOPTS THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE
[Rachel's introduction: The town of Lyndhurst, N.J. this week adopted a precautionary principle ordinance to guide municipal policy. Lyndhurst is only the second municipality in the U.S. to adopt precaution as an overarching guide to municipal policy, and the first on the East Coast to do so.]
By Peter Montague
The town of Lyndhurst, N.J. yesterday adopted a precautionary principle ordinance to guide municipal policy.
Lyndhurst is only the second municipality in the U.S. to adopt the precautionary principle as an overarching guide to municipal policy, and the first on the East Coast to do so. The City and County of San Francisco (Calif.) adopted the precautionary principle in June, 2002.
Ordinance #2674 was introduced Oct. 14, unanimously approved Oct. 21 after a "first reading" and finalized Nov. 11 by a unanimous vote of the township Commission. The official text of Ordinance 2674 is available here.
Lyndhurst is a municipality of 20,000 people in Bergen County, an old industrial town located in the Meadowlands of northern N.J.
Section 22-8.1 of Ordinance 2674 reads, "The following Precautionary Principle shall be established as the policy of the Township of Lyndhurst: 'When an activity raises threats of harm to human health, or the environment precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.' (Wingspread Statement, 1998)"
Section 22-8.2 of Ordinance 2674, says, in part,
"a. ...The Township of Lyndhurst will utilize the Precautionary Principle to develop laws for a healthier environment. By doing so, the Township will create and maintain a healthy, viable environment for current and future generations, and will become a model of sustainability. The Precautionary Principle is intended as a tool and philosophy to promote environmentally healthy alternatives while removing the negative and often unintended consequences of new technologies."
"b. ...The Township of Lyndhurst will strive to make decisions based on the least environmentally harmful alternatives in order to provide every resident with an equal right to a healthy and safe environment. This requires that our air, water, soil, and food be of a sufficiently high standard that we can live healthy lives. The precautionary approach to decision-making will help Lyndhurst move beyond fixing environmental ills to preventing the ills before they can do harm."
The local newspaper, The Leader, ran a story October 23 quoting Lyndhurst Mayor Richard J. DiLascio explaining how precaution could serve Lyndhurst:
"In an interview after the ordinance was introduced Oct. 14, DiLascio expressed frustration that the cost of environmental monitoring tests near Bedroc [a demolition firm that emits dust into the air adjacent to a public recreational complex] would have to be borne by the township. Lyndhurst opted not to perform them.
"Instead, DiLascio said the contractor should have to prove that its actions are not unhealthy.
"'If you're going to do something that has a potential hazard, you are going to have to show that it's not going to be detrimental to the environment, the municipality or any other waterway,' DiLascio said."
Bedroc Contracting is a demolition company operating immediately adjacent to public ball fields where kids play soccer. Bedroc operates heavy machinery, kicking up clouds of dust.
In response to the Bedroc situation, and to a possible cancer cluster, the township's health officer, Joyce Jacobson, initiated the precautionary ordinance.
"We're almost positive [Bedrock's air emissions are] harmful," Jacobson told the Leader newspaper. "But the scientific proof isn't there.... We can't prove (it), because we can't do the testing that it's harmful, so we don't have scientific evidence. But, we all pretty much know or believe that it is."
Jacobson -- trained as a physician's assistant -- wrote the precaution ordinance in conjunction with Mayor DiLascio.
The new ordinance puts a premium on preventing harm, rather than managing harm. It shifts the burden of proof of safety from the health department onto a polluter like Bedroc, to show that its emissions are not harmful. When decisions are pending, it will also initiate a systematic search for the least-harmful way of achieving the municipality's goals.
Mayor DiLascio says he hopes other communities will follow Lyndhurst's example and adopt the precautionary principle.
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From: New Scientist ......................................[This story printer-friendly]
November 6, 2008
ENERGY AGENCY WARNS OF 6 DEG. C RISE IN TEMPERATURES
[Rachel's introduction: The International Energy Agency's latest report says the planet is on course to experience an average temperate rise of 11 degrees Fahrenheit.]
by Catherine Brahic
Our voracious appetite for energy is potentially putting the planet on the path for a 6 deg. C (10.8 deg. Fahrenheit) rise in temperatures -- which is far more than what climate specialists say the environment can cope with.
In its 2008 World Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency says the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit will have to set ambitious carbon- limiting caps and that the energy sector must play a key role in making this possible.
European policy-makers have set themselves the goal of keeping temperature rises below 2 deg. C (3.6 deg. F.) relative to what they were before the industrial revolution. Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] issued its forecasts of how rises between 1 deg. C (1.8 deg. F.) and 5 deg. C (9 deg. F.) would change the environment (see table in Climate Change is here now, says major report). A rise of 6 deg. C (10.8 deg. F.) was off the charts.
The report addresses fossil fuel reserves -- the main culprits of temperature rises. It says that oil is not running out just yet, and could last until at least 2030, if consumption continues to rise at current rates. However, the agency warns that while the oil may be there, we may not be able to exploit it fast enough to meet demand.
The group also chastises oil-rich African nations for the energy poverty of its citizens. As an example, it cites Nigeria and Angola whose oil and gas exports bring in some £3.5 trillion each year. Yet the IEA estimates that more than half the population in ten oil- rich African nations could still rely on wood and charcoal for cooking by 2030.
"Tackling energy poverty is well within these countries' means but major institutional reforms are needed," the IEA concludes.
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From: The Kansas City Star (Missouri) ....................[This story printer-friendly]
November 8, 2008
CHANGING CLIMATE MAY PUSH MORE COUNTRIES PAST THE BRINK OF WAR
[Rachel's introduction: At the planet rapidly warms and people are dislocated by floods, drought and famine, they will be thrown together in unexpected ways, so rising levels of conflict will not be a surprise.]
By Scott Canon
A warmer planet could find itself more often at war.
The Earth's fast-changing climate has a range of serious thinkers -- from military brass to geographers to diplomats -- predicting a spate of armed conflicts driven by the weather.
Shifting temperatures lead to shifting populations, they say, and that throws together groups with longstanding rivalries and thrusts them into competition for food and water.
"It's not hard to imagine violent outbursts," said Julianne Smith of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Smith helped write one of four major studies put out in a little more than a year by centrist organizations in Europe and the United States that warn climate change threatens to spark wars in a variety of ways.
Each report predicted starkly similar problems: gunfire over land and natural resources as once-bountiful soil turns to desert and coastlines slip below the sea. They also expect violent storms to unsettle weak governments and set up dispirited radicals in revolt.
Security analysts say profound dangers are just years, not decades, away. They already see evidence of societies at odds.
Ethnic groups clash in Sudan's Darfur region, trading gunfire in a conflict with climatological overtones. The armed thugs who rule Myanmar were exposed, and their regime knocked back on its heels, when Cyclone Nargis killed tens of thousands of people in May and the leadership responded so poorly. Likewise, hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 began the fall of President Bush's approval ratings.
Much more is going on in Darfur than climate change, but crop scarcity in the region has pushed rival ethnic groups onto the same turf.
Even those scientists who are most adamant that the planet is warming in unnatural ways don't blame single storms on climate change. But even conservative climatologists predict crazier weather that is capable of toppling governments.
"Governments that are already weak will be destabilized much more often and much more easily," said Jay Gulledge, a senior scientist at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "And if cooperation isn't enough to stretch resources, then what happens?"
Mounting studies suggest a number of potentially violent scenarios:
oPeople see their fertile land turn arid and migrate -- packing them closer to historical and newfound adversaries.
oCountries already weak or crippled by corruption tip into chaos with even moderate climate change. Crop failures spur violent uprisings and give new energy to ethnic grudges in the face of famine.
oCompetition for resources -- food, water, oil -- grows more tense in times of scarcity.
oEconomic collapse in North Africa gives rise to Islamist extremism as blame for climate change focuses on the West. By accident of history and geography, Islamic countries feel the first profound effects of climate change.
** Flooding of coastal areas -- particularly in South Asia and the United States -- force severe migration and alter regional and even national identities.
** A push to revive the nuclear power industry -- as a way to find energy that doesn't belch more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- masks rogue countries' efforts to build atomic weapons.
Although still controversial in some circles -- Congress has split along partisan lines over whether the military should plan for global warming -- the scientific consensus is that the Industrial Revolution increased greenhouse gases that set off an unprecedented rate of climate change.
Growing seasons could lengthen. Frozen seas could thaw to make way for convenient shipping routes. Previously inaccessible spots could be ripe to gush oil.
Meantime, wetlands could dry up. Rivers could disappear. Scientists already think that hurricanes, blizzards and droughts are more frequent and more severe. Rising sea levels could send tens of millions of people scurrying for higher ground.
"The idea that somehow there are winners in this is wrong," said Peter Ogden, a security analyst at the Center for American Progress. "Even places that come out ahead" -- a longer growing season, for instance -- "will see pressure on them from outside from the losers."
Last year the Center for Naval Analyses gathered retired generals and admirals to gauge the potential for climate to cause conflict. The former commanders concluded that war would be more likely, that the U.S. military needed to plan for the new threats and that the United States had to reduce its carbon emissions.
"We will pay for this one way or another," wrote retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former chief of the U.S. Central Command. "We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we'll have to take an economic hit of some kind. Or, we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll."
Already, the effects pose logistical headaches for the military.
The retreat of ice in the Arctic Ocean means more water for the Navy to patrol. Yet it sports only two aged ships designed to patrol in icy waters while Russia and Canada have far larger fleets capable of sailing the region.
In the tropics, British and U.S. forces have come to rely on the remote Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia as a key staging ground -- including for the Missouri-based B-2 stealth bomber. With an average elevation of just four feet above sea level, the melting of ice near the Earth's poles could raise oceans and flood runways there.
Even as the planet becomes harder to navigate, the military could be called on with increasing regularity to respond to humanitarian crises set off by the upswing in severe storms.
Developing countries stand most at risk, the studies conclude. Those countries lack the resources to absorb resulting disasters.
Consider Bangladesh. Long riddled by crushing poverty, it lies in a region that scientists expect will see even more devastating storms and the steady retreat of its coastline. That could send even more Bangladeshi Muslims running to the fence that predominantly Hindu India is building to keep them out.
Likewise, weather patterns that make it harder to grow food in Latin America could increase the rush to cross the southern U.S. border.
"People will pay no attention to borders. They will swamp borders. They will trample over them in desperation." said Raymond Callahan, a military historian at the University of Delaware.
Even efforts to mitigate global warming could prove dangerous.
Nuclear power doesn't add greenhouse gases, but it could mean the spread of doomsday technology to unstable parts of the world. Iran already is thought to be cloaking nuclear weapons ambitions inside "peaceful" nuclear facilities.
The techonology needed for nuclear power also can produce weapons- grade uranium.
"If you don't have a lot of safeguards in sharing the technology, you're going to have a lot of problems," said Richard Weitz, a Hudson Institute analyst who consulted on one of the climate-security reports.
The pluses of climate change -- new shipping routes through the Arctic, land newly suitable for cultivation, fresh access to oil fields -- could set large militaries on edge.
In August 2007, a Russian diver went almost three miles beneath the North Pole to plant a titanium flag and claim 463,000 square miles for his country. That came as Canada was boosting its military presence in the Arctic.
"When climate changes, then a lot of things follow," said Sherri Goodman, who helped direct the Center for Naval Analyses study. "People come into conflict."
To reach Scott Canon, call 816-234-4754 or send e-mail to scanon@kcstar.com.
Copyright 2007 Kansas City Star
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From: Time Magazine ......................................[This story printer-friendly]
October 28, 2008
WHAT THE PUBLIC DOESN'T GET ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE
[Rachel's introduction: We have a steady drumbeat of new scientific evidence of global warming's severity but little in the way of real precautionary action. Why? Because "There is a profound and fundamental misconception about climate." Even graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) don't get it.]
By Bryan Walsh
As I report on climate change, I come across a lot of scary facts, like the possibility that thawing permafrost in Siberia could release gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere or the risk that Greenland could pass a tipping point and begin to melt rapidly.
But one of the most frightening studies I've read recently had nothing to do with icebergs or mega-droughts. In a paper that came out Oct. 23 in Science, John Sterman -- a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Sloan School of Management -- wrote about asking 212 MIT grad students to give a rough idea of how much governments need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by to eventually stop the increase in the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere. These students had training in science, technology, mathematics and economics at one of the best schools in the world -- they are probably a lot smarter than you or me. Yet 84% of Sterman's subjects got the question wrong, greatly underestimating the degree to which greenhouse gas emissions need to fall. When the MIT kids can't figure out climate change, what are the odds that the broader public will?
The shocking study reflects the tremendous gap that exists regarding global warming. On the one hand are the scientists, who with few exceptions think climate change is very serious and needs to be dealt with immediately and ambitiously. On the other side is the public, which increasingly believes that climate change is real and worries about it, but which rarely ranks it as a high priority.
A 2007 survey by the U.N. Development Programme found that 54% of Americans advocate taking a "wait and see" approach to climate-change action -- holding off on the deep and rapid cuts in global warming that would immediately impact their lives. (And it's not just SUV- driving Americans who take this position -- similar majorities were found in Russia, China and India.) As a result, we have our current dilemma: a steady drumbeat of scientific evidence of global warming's severity and comparatively little in the way of meaningful political action.
"This gap exists," says Sterman. "The real question is why."
That's where Sterman's research comes in. "There is a profound and fundamental misconception about climate," he says. The problem is that most of us don't really understand how carbon accumulates in the atmosphere. Increasing global temperatures are driven by the increase in the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere. Before the industrial age, the concentration was about 280 parts per million (p.p.m.) of carbon in the atmosphere. After a few centuries of burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels, we've raised that concentration to 387 p.p.m., and it continues to rise by about 2 p.p.m. every year.
Many scientists believe that we need to at least stabilize carbon concentrations at 450 p.p.m. to ensure that global temperatures don't increase more than about 2 degrees Celsius [3.6 degrees Fahrenheit] above the pre-industrial level. To do that, we need to reduce global carbon emissions (which hit about 10 billion tons last year) until they are equal to or less than the amount of carbon sequestered by the oceans and plant life (which removed about 4.8 billion tons of carbon last year). It's just like water in a bathtub -- unless more water is draining out than flowing in from the tap, eventually the bathtub will overflow.
That means that carbon emissions would need to be cut drastically from current levels. Yet almost all of the subjects in Sterman's study failed to realize that, assuming instead that you could stabilize carbon concentration simply by capping carbon emissions at their current level. That's not the case -- and in fact, pursuing such a plan for the future would virtually guarantee that global warming could spin out of control. It may seem to many like good common sense to wait until we see proof of the serious damage global warming is doing before we take action. But it's not -- we can't "wait and see" on global warming because the climate has a momentum all its own, and if we wait for decades to finally act to reduce carbon emissions, it could well be too late. Yet this simply isn't understood. Someone as smart as Bill Gates doesn't seem to get it. "Fortunately climate change, although it's a huge challenge, it's a challenge that happens over a long period of time," he said at a forum in Beijing last year.
"You know, we have time to work on it." But the truth is we don't.
If elite scientists could simply solve climate change on their own, public misunderstanding wouldn't be such a problem. But they can't.
Reducing carbon emissions sharply will require all 6.5 billion (and growing) of us on the planet to hugely change the way we use energy and travel. We'll also need to change the way we vote, rewarding politicians willing to make the tough choices on climate. Instead of a new Manhattan Project -- the metaphor often used for global warming -- Sterman believes that what is needed is closer to a new civil rights movement, a large-scale campaign that dramatically changes the public's beliefs and behaviors. New groups like Al Gore's We Campaign are aiming for just such a social transformation, but "the reality is that this is even more difficult than civil rights," says Sterman.
"Even that took a long time, and we don't have that kind of time with the climate."
The good news is that you don't need a Ph.D. in climatology to understand what needs to be done. If you can grasp the bathtub analogy, you can understand how to stop global warming. The burden is on scientists to better explain in clear English the dynamics of the climate system, and how to affect it. (Sterman says that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's landmark report last year was "completely inadequate" on this score.) As for the rest of us, we should try to remember that sometimes common sense isn't a match for science.
Copyright 2008 Time Inc.
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From: The Times (London, U.K.) ...........................[This story printer-friendly]
November 12, 2008
NANOTECHNOLOGY SPARKS FEARS FOR THE FUTURE
[Rachel's introduction: A report from the British Royal Commission -- the top science agency in the United Kingdom -- says nano particles that are already in consumer products will kill people, just as asbestos has done, unless humans become much better at regulating commerce and protecting the public.]
By Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter
Read the report in full.
Nanomaterials are likely to kill people in the future just as asbestos did unless extensive safety checks are put in place, a Royal Commission report has said.
The team of experts assessing the likely impacts of the emerging technology are worried that when nanomaterials escape into the environment they will damage people and wildlife but that it will be years before the effects are seen.
Past generations have brought into general usage materials such as asbestos, leaded petrol, CFCs and cigarettes without adequately considering the potential damage and the commission fears nanomaterials will prove similarly dangerous.
Only by introducing rigorous safety systems, including widespread monitoring and intensive research, can threats posed by nanomaterials be identified and countered, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution concluded.
Nanomaterials are already used in a variety of products on the market including a range of clothes in Japan that have dispensed with dye because refracting nanomaterials provide the colours.
A nanomaterial placed on the surface of the glass in the roof at St Pancras Station has been designed to keep it clean. It reacts with sunlight to break down dirt without the need for window cleaners to clamber up on the roof.
Many sun creams contain titanium dioxide particles, a nanomaterial which has been in use for years. There are about 600 different products using nanomaterials around the world and around 1,500 have been patented.
Professor Sir John Lawton, chairman of the commission, accepted that no evidence has yet been found to show damage has been caused to human health or the environment by nanomaterials.
But he said that while the technology had the potential to offer many benefits to society there is also the possibility it will cause harm.
"The rate of innovation in this sector far outstrips our capacity to respond to the risks," he said. "There is an urgent need for more research and testing of nanomaterials."
So little is understood about nanomaterials in the environment that scientists have yet even to work out ways of finding them.
Nanomaterials manufactured for use in products were considered by the Commission to be those that measure one to 100 nanometres long. A grain of sand is about a million nanometres wide.
Professor Susan Owens, of the University of Cambridge, said: "If we don't do anything and we leave it, then things manifest themselves in 10 to 15 years' time. By then the technology is so embedded in society it's very difficult to deal with it."
Backing calls for research and monitoring she said that problems caused by CFCs, asbestos and other products, were only detected when they started damaging human health and the environment.
Experts on the Commission estimated Britain and the rest of the world has about a decade to carry out research on the safety of nanotechnology before the use of nanomaterials, ranging from the diameter of a DNA strand to that of a virus, become too widely-used for any damage to be halted.
The commission's report, Novel Materials in the Environment: the case of nanotechnology, rejected an outright ban on the technology because of the huge potential benefits.
A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said: "As the Commission states, it has found no evidence of harm to health or the environment from nanomaterials, but the Government remains committed to researching their health and environmental impact.
"In particular, ministers are pushing in Europe to ensure that effective regulation is in place. EU and UK reviews of existing legislation have concluded that the existing regulatory framework can be changed to extend to nanomaterials."
Copyright 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.
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From: Environmental Health News ...........................[This story printer-friendly]
November 10, 2008
PRESCRIPTION DRUGS CAN DELIVER HIGH DOSES OF PHTHALATES
[Rachel's introduction: "Every day for three months, the patient took a prescription drug called Asacol to treat his inflamed colon. Unbeknownst to him, every pill he swallowed also delivered a dose of a hormone-altering, industrial chemical."]
By Marla Cone
Every day for three months, the patient took a prescription drug called Asacol to treat his inflamed colon.
Unbeknownst to him, every pill he swallowed also delivered a dose of a hormone-altering, industrial chemical.
The man, who lived in the Boston area, was contaminated with about 100 times more dibutyl phthalate than ever recorded before in a human being. His daily dose of the chemical was double the amount that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.
At least 47 prescription medications--including the colitis drug Asacol, an antacid and an HIV drug--contain phthalates, according to scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Widely used as plasticizers, phthalates have been linked to abnormal reproductive tracts, sperm damage and reduced testosterone in animal tests as well as some human studies.
Russ Hauser, a Harvard professor ofenvironmental epidemiology, called pharmaceuticals "an unrecognized source of potential high exposure." A thin layer of a phthalate-containing polymer, designed to slow the release of medication, coats many timed-release drugs.
Phthalates are found in virtually every human body. But for people taking medications coated with the compounds, their exposure exceeds other, well-known sources, such as plastics, perfumes and lotions, by ten to 1,000-fold, Hauser said.
Phthalates are ingredients in vinyl, as well as some building materials, paints, adhesives and personal care products, including fragrances, shampoos and nail polishes.
Congress enacted a law in August banning the chemicals in toys and other children's products.
But their use in prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
New data showing high levels of phthalates in people taking some medications "raise concern about potential human health risks," Hauser and his colleagues reported in a study published in October in Environmental Health Perspectives online.
The scientists warned "of the potential for high delivered doses of phthalates to vulnerable segments of the population, particularly pregnant women or young children."
In one case, the man taking Asacol for his ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease, had a concentration of a dibutyl phthalate (DBP) metabolite in his urine measuring nearly 17,000 parts per billion, according to a case study reported by the Harvard/CDC team.
The average for the general population was 46.
The unidentified man, in his early 30s, was tested for phthalates as part of a visit to a Boston infertility clinic. He and his wife were unable to conceive a child.
The effects of phthalates on male fertility remain unknown, but some scientists theorize that exposure, especially in the womb, could contribute to an increase in men's reproductive disorders, such as reduced sperm quality, testicular cancer and undescended testicles.
Representatives of the plastics industry say the levels of phthalates used in consumer products are safe. They say human studies are small and inconclusive, and that the animals in studies showing effects were exposed to high doses.
The FDA has not put restrictions on use of phthalates except for a 2001 guideline that warned hospitals that phthalate-containing intravenous tubing and other plastic medical devices exposes infants to large doses of the chemicals.
Dr. Shanna Swan, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and of environmental medicine at University of Rochester, called DBP, used in Asacol, "one of the most toxic" phthalates. It was associated with feminization of newborn boys--a shortened distance between the genitals and the anus -- in a study that Swan and her colleagues published in 2005.
About 20 million prescriptions for Asacol have been written in the United States since it was approved by the FDA in 1992, according to Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals, the drug's manufacturer.
"DBP is an important component of our enteric coating, which ensures that Asacol is delivered to the site of inflammation in the colon and/or rectum," said Scott Docherty, external relations manager for Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals.
Without the phthalate coating, which dissolves when it reaches a certain pH, the drug would be released in the stomach. Because DBP has been approved by the FDA, the company is not looking for alternatives, Docherty said.
P&G's surveillance of patients "has not identified any adverse events or effects" caused by the DBP, he said.
The Boston area man was prescribed an extraordinary dosage of Asacol--12 pills a day, which is double the highest recommended dose on the manufacturer's label. He took it for three months, twice as long as recommended.
Docherty said for patients taking the recommended doses of Asacol, their DBP exposure is far below the EPA's "no observed effects level."
"If the patient follows the labeled dose, even the highest dose on the label, they would be taking six tablets per day and there would still be a safety margin 100-fold below" the EPA's guideline, Docherty said.
But Hauser's team recently found other examples of high exposure, although not as extreme as that man's.
The scientists analyzed a national database of 8,000 people, and found six, including a pregnant woman, who took mesalamine, the active ingredient in Asacol. They averaged 50 times more DBP metabolite in their urine than people who did not take the drug, and two exceeded the EPA's no-effects level, the October report said.
Another 121 people who took three other medications--omeprazole, used in Prilosec antacids; didanosine, which is sold under the name Videx EC and treats HIV patients; and theophylline, a pulmonary disease medicine -- also had above-average levels of another phthalate, up to eight times higher than people who did not take the drugs.
Swan cautioned that the Harvard/CDC study included small numbers of people taking the drugs so the averages may be distorted by a few highly exposed ones. Nevertheless, Swan, who did not participate in the study, said the data suggest that millions of people could be at risk.
Baby boys exposed in the womb may be the most vulnerable, Hauser and Swan said.
At least three women in the study with above-average phthalate levels were pregnant -- one was taking mesalamine and two were taking the antacids, said Sonia Hernandez-Diaz, a Harvard associate professor of epidemiology who was the study's lead author. Another woman of childbearing age who took the colitis drug had a daily dose of DBP exceeding the EPA's guideline.
"We know that high doses of DBP given to pregnant rats can lead to reproductive tract anomalies in the male offspring. Therefore, I would be concerned about high DBP exposure in pregnant women," Hauser said.
When prescribing medications to pregnant women, doctors should seek formulations free of the compounds, he said.
Many people who take the medicines have a serious disease that may make them more susceptible to chemicals. HIV patients, for example, have a suppressed immune system.
The authors reported that their study "probably underestimates the true impact of exposure to phthalates in medications."
Most notably, they did not study over-the-counter medications and vitamins, which often have timed-release coatings.
"I think there are likely other medications that also contribute to very high human exposure," Hauser said, adding that the number of problematic medications "is likely to change, up or down, depending on what we learn in the coming months."
Copyright 2003 Environmental Health Sciences.
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From: Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County .............[This story printer-friendly]
November 10, 2008
HUMBOLDT COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS CAVE TO CORPORATE PRESSURE
[Rachel's introduction: In 2006, a solid majority of voters in Humboldt County, California approved Meaure-T, which outlawed donations to local electoral candidates by corporations with headquarters outside the county (such as Wal-Mart). But the corporations have managed to frighten the County Board of Supervisors into declaring the new law null and void.]
Eureka, Calif. -- Humboldt County Board of Supervisors and the Pacific Legal Foundation filed a joint settlement proposal in Federal Court today declaring the county's ban on corporate campaign contributions "null and void."
Known locally as Measure T, the Humboldt County Ordinance to Protect Our Right to Fair Elections and Local Democracy was a groundbreaking county-wide law that banned non-local corporations from contributing money to local elections and challenged the legal doctrine of Corporate Personhood -- the idea that corporations can legally claim constitutional rights such as the First Amendment. Measure T passed by citizen's initiative in Humboldt County 2006 by 55%.
"We are deeply dismayed that our elected officials bowed so easily to the pressure from the corporate-backed Pacific Legal Foundation," said Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, the spokesperson for the Humboldt Coalition for Community Rights, the group that campaigned for the Measure. "We have offered help and support to the Board of Supervisors to do the right thing every step of the way -- instead they chose to make this decision without soliciting input from the people of Humboldt County who were looking to them to defend our rights and respect our authority to determine what is best for our local elections."
Measure T was passed in June 2006 in reaction to repeated interference in local elections by large corporations. The Measure received national attention when Humboldt County became the largest jurisdiction to directly challenge Corporate Personhood, and joined with dozens of communities across the country that have rejected the idea that a corporation can claim rights to overturn local laws that restrict their behavior.
"While this is a sad day for democracy, the fight is far from over. Past social movements like the civil rights struggle, the abolitionists, women's suffragists and the trade unionists have shown us that when people don't back down, justice ultimately prevails," said Sopoci-Belknap. "All movements have their wins and losses, and the movement for local democracy and citizen sovereignty over large corporations will prevail. Humboldt County will play a role regardless of whether the current Board of Supervisors have the integrity to stand with us."
Pacific Legal Foundation, the organization that initiated the lawsuit against Humboldt County, is a Sacramento-based law firm backed by the types of corporations Measure T sought to restrict -- companies like ExxonMobile and Philip Morris. In response to the lawsuit, many candidates in the recent local election races took a pledge to follow Measure T, regardless of the outcome. Many candidates declined contributions from companies that attempted to make political contributions to their campaigns and also pledged to publicly oppose the doctrine Corporate Personhood and to uphold the rights of citizens over those of corporations during their time in office. The majority of candidates taking the pledge were elected last Tuesday.
The proposed lawsuit settlement may be found at http://www.VoteLocalControl.org/MeasureT-SettleAgmt.pdf, the website of the Humboldt Coalition for Community Rights.
For more information visit: http://www.DUHC.org, the website for Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County.
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Rachel's Democracy & Health News highlights the connections between issues that are often considered separately or not at all.
The natural world is deteriorating and human health is declining because those who make the important decisions aren't the ones who bear the brunt. Our purpose is to connect the dots between human health, the destruction of nature, the decline of community, the rise of economic insecurity and inequalities, growing stress among workers and families, and the crippling legacies of patriarchy, intolerance, and racial injustice that allow us to be divided and therefore ruled by the few.
In a democracy, there are no more fundamental questions than, "Who gets to decide?" And, "How DO the few control the many, and what might be done about it?"
Rachel's Democracy and Health News is published as often as necessary to provide readers with up-to-date coverage of the subject.
Editors:
Peter Montague - peter@rachel.org
Tim Montague - tim@rachel.org
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