Global Warming Issues

Increasing numbers of younger women continue to receive diagnoses of the most dangerous form of skin cancer even as the rate of new cases has leveled off in younger men, federal health officials reported yesterday.

An analysis of government cancer statistics from 1973 to 2004 found that the rate of new melanoma cases in younger women had jumped 50 percent since 1980 but did not increase for younger men in that period.

“It’s worrying,” said Mark Purdue, a research fellow at the National Cancer Institute, who led the analysis published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology. “What we are seeing in young adults right now could foretell a much larger number of melanoma cases in older women.”

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The Environmental Protection Agency issued new rules today governing fumigant pesticides, which are used to sterilize soil before the planting of strawberries, tomatoes and other crops throughout the country.

Many of these new rules are not groundbreaking to Californians — the state already has some of the country’s strictest regulations governing fumigant use under the Department of Pesticide Regulation. But nationwide the proposals are significant and include creating buffer zones, monitoring air quality around fields, creating fumigant management plans and training emergency responders and applicators.

“This stuff is pretty much what we’ve been doing in California for years,” said Rob Roy, president and general counsel for the Ventura County Agricultural Assn., which represents more than 150 major farming organizations.

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A federal appeals court has struck down an environmental rule that the Bush administration championed as crucial in protecting public health.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously rejected the Clean Air Interstate Rule, saying it found several flaws.

Announced in 2005, the regulation required 28 mostly Eastern states to reduce smog-forming and soot-producing emissions. Those chemicals can drift long distances in the wind. The EPA said the regulation would reduce pollution more than any clean air rule in a decade.

Advocacy group Clean Air Watch said the ruling was without a doubt the worst environmental news of the year and called on the Bush administration and Congress to quickly come up with a fix.

Governments worldwide are starting to address the curse of outdoor air pollution. But for millions, indoor air pollution is a bigger a problem.

In an endeavour to address the increasing and harmful impact of Indoor Air Pollution in India, Envirofit today announced the launch of a range of clean burning biomass cookstoves in the country. Designed by an international team of globally recognized scientists and engineers, the cookstoves reduce toxic emissions by as much as 80%, while using 50% less fuel and reducing cooking cycle time by 40%. The cookstoves have been developed as a result of a partnership between Envirofit and Shell Foundation (UK) initially launched in 2007 to engineer and deliver clean burning biomass stoves that are affordable and attractive to people who are impacted by Indoor Air Pollution (IAP).

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Increased smoke from California wildfires has put northern Nevada’s air in the unhealthful range again, health officials said Thursday.

Children and people with respiratory problems were advised to stay indoors in the Reno, Carson City and Minden areas along the eastern Sierra.

The National Weather Service issued an “air stagnation alert” for much of the Sierra and western Nevada, including the Reno-Lake Tahoe area.

Pollution and smoke might increase to dangerous levels until the alert expires at noon Friday, according to the weather service.

Visibilities will drop to below a mile in the Sierra at times, and below three miles in western Nevada valleys, the weather service added.

Tracie Douglas, spokeswoman for the Washoe District Health Department, said deteriorating air quality could trigger a Stage 2 pollution alert by Friday in Reno.

That would put air quality in the “very unhealthful” range and result in a recommendation that all residents stay indoors, she said.

A Stage 2 alert was issued June 25 in Reno, the first such alert that Douglas could recall in her 21 years with the department.

“The biggest problem is we have no control strategies for this,” she said. “In winter, we do have control strategies such as bans on using woodstoves. At this point, this is Mother Nature and there’s not a thing we can do.”

Air quality has been in the unhealthful range off and on in the Reno-Tahoe area since lightning touched off hundreds of wildfires in California more than two weeks ago.

The blazes have burned nearly 1,100 square miles and destroyed nearly 100 homes. Some 1,460 fires had been contained, but more than 320 were still active Thursday, authorities said.

Poor air quality is delaying a decision on whether to conduct aerial spraying to control mosquitoes in south Sacramento.

The Sacramento-Yolo Mosquito and Vector Control District, which announced the delay in a press release Thursday, said spraying may not work as intended because of the smoky and polluted conditions.

“High mosquito infection rates indicate we should be considering spraying now,” said David Brown, district manager. “However, based on high particulate matter in the air, we are waiting for the right environmental conditions before we proceed with any aerial treatments.”

So far this year, 18 birds and 34 mosquito samples in Sacramento and Yolo counties have tested positive for West Nile virus.

No humans have tested positive.

The district will decide whether to proceed with spraying next week, when weather conditions are forecast to change.

If it goes ahead, the treatments will occur for three consecutive days over 23,000 acres of high-risk areas in south Sacramento, including the Pocket area plus 2.4 miles east to the railroad line as well as the Florin/Elk Grove area from Elder Creek Road to Elk Grove Boulevard.

“Our goal is to protect public health and welfare,” Brown said. “At this point, aerial treatments may be necessary to prevent human illness.”

Brown said that until then, the district would encourage residents to stay indoors at dusk and dawn, when mosquitoes are most active.

The primary sources of soot, or small particles of black carbon, are fossil fuel combustion, wildfires, and burning vegetation for agricultural purposes. In the Arctic, an increase in soot may contribute to climate change if shipping routes expand, according to the study.

“Commercial shipping emissions have been one of the least studied areas of all combustion emissions,” said lead author Daniel Lack, of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) and the NOAA-CU Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. “The two previous studies of soot emissions examined a total of three ships.  We reviewed plumes from 96 different vessels.”

Lack and his colleagues observed emission plumes from commercial vessels in open ocean waters, channels, and ports along the southeast United States and Texas during the summer of 2006. From the NOAA research vessel, Ronald H. Brown, the team measured black carbon emitted by tankers, cargo and container ships, large fishing boats, tug boats, and ferries, many of them in the Houston Ship Channel.

Commercial shipping releases roughly 130,000 metric tons of soot per year, or 1.7 percent of the global total — much of it near highly populated coastlines, the authors estimate. In the coming years global shipping is expected to grow two to six percent annually.

Tugs emit nearly a gram of soot per kilogram of fuel burned — twice as much as any other vessel type, the authors found. The high levels point to their low-quality fuel — a thick, black tar left over from crude oil after the gasoline and kerosene have been removed. Engine age and maintenance also play a role. Tugboats have a disproportionate impact on air quality because they travel within ports, emitting potentially harmful particles near populous urban areas, according to the authors.

“Tugboats are a huge source of black carbon that may be under-reported or not reported at all in emissions inventories compiled by ports,” said Lack.

Oceangoing tankers and container ships emit half a gram per kilogram of fuel burned when at dock and slightly less when traveling, according to the study. That’s more than twice as much as previously estimated.

A 2007 study by American and German scientists linked particle pollution from shipping to tens of thousands of premature deaths each year, most of them along coastlines in Europe, East Asia, and South Asia. Soot makes up a quarter of that pollution, said Lack.

On a global scale, soot currently traps about 30 percent as much heat as does carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas, according to the latest assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The small dark particles absorb sunlight, create haze, and affect how clouds form and make rain, further altering a region’s heat balance, according to the new NOAA study. If commercial shipping extends new routes through Arctic waters as they become navigable, soot emissions there could increase.

Trailer manufacturers defended themselves Wednesday on Capitol Hill, insisting they’re not responsible for FEMA trailers that had toxic levels of formaldehyde, despite Democrats’ claims the companies knew the dangers yet didn’t do anything about it. Top executives from four companies backed the safety and quality of their products in what is shaping up to be a partisan fight over who is to blame for health issues afflicting Katrina victims who lived in their trailers after the hurricane.

Democrats say the manufacturers should have taken more tests when medical complaints surfaced and done more to protect the displaced Katrina victims living in these trailers. Republicans say it is the government’s fault for not having standards for safe levels of formaldehyde in trailers.

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Scientists from around the world are closely monitoring the Greenland ice sheet, as accelerated glacial melting is believed to cause rising sea level. The theory is that increased volumes of meltwater accelerate the movement of ice to warmer low-lying areas and, consequently, even more intensified glacial melting. Utrecht University researchers, however, insist that this is not how the process actually works in the long term.

GPS measurements

Since the early 1990s, Utrecht University scientists have tracked the movement of the West Greenland ice sheet using GPS measurements. During warmer weather, the ice appears to move – over the course of a few days – as much as four times faster, because the meltwater acts as lubricant between the ice and the subsoil.

As a result, the ice sheet moves more rapidly to lower and warmer areas. It seems, however, that over time larger channels form in the ice that are able to drain off the increased volumes of meltwater.

As a result, the water pressure on the ground once again decreases, as does the tempo of the ice movement. Over the long term, therefore, the feedback mechanism between the glacial melting and ice sheet movement contributes little to rising sea levels.

n a new issue on “microbial ecology and sustainable energy” in the journal Nature Reviews Microbiology, the Biodesign researchers outline paths where bacteria are the best hope in producing renewable energy in large quantities without damaging the environment or competing with our food supply.

Two distinct, but complementary approaches will be needed. The first is to use microbes to convert biomass to useful energy. Different microorganisms can grow without oxygen to take this abundant organic matter and convert it to useful forms of energy such as methane, hydrogen, or even electricity. The second uses bacteria or algae that can capture sunlight to produce new biomass that can be turned into liquid fuels, like biodiesel, or converted by other microorganisms to useful energy. Both approaches currently are intensive areas of biofuel research at the Biodesign Institute, which has a joint project with petroleum giant BP to harvest photosynthetic bacteria to produce renewable liquid fuels, such as biodiesel.

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