Environment Memo

Bjorn Lomborg has apparently defected, calling global climate change “undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today” and calls for the world’s governments to invest tens of billions of dollars annually to fight climate change.

Some 19 high school football players on a team in Oregon have come down with a mysterious illness. There appears to be no evidence of steroids or other drug use that could have caused a tissue condition that has required surgery for some, and intravenous fluids for others. Maybe  they worked out in too much [...]

Wow, there’s a 9-day, 62 mile long traffic jam near Beijing, China. Can they really think that more automobiles and roads are a good path to the future? Haven’t we already proved in the US that such growth is NOT progress? To make matters worse, one stranded driver said

I’ve been off on a vacation, but have heard snatches about the salmonella fuss here and there. But I don’t understand the problem, because, as I learned while studying public health, one has to flat out assume that salmonella is in and on raw eggs, as well as in and on raw chicken, and act [...]

New York’s senate passed a 9 month moratorium on drilling in the Marcellus shale, and the house is not far behind. The gas industry is hoisted on its own petard, because removal of federal controls has made it such that individual states are more likely to act on their own. I’d sure like to see [...]

Scientists at public universities who are funded by BP are being told by BP that they can’t reveal their oil-spill results while litigation is pending. I’m not sure I buy it. (Caveat: I’m not an attorney.) States like NC have public records statutes making all state records, except for trade secrets, the property of the [...]

I don’t think fish should be tested for safety using smell, any more than looking at how clear the fish eyes are. Many Gulf fishermen agree. What is needed is a comprehensive composite testing program: puree a whole lot of fish in a  huge blender, and analyze the resulting mash using state-of-the-art techniques of chemistry. [...]

A laser company seems to have stopped comparisons to Star Wars light sabers, But coverage of the $199 Spyder 3 laser, billed as the most powerful handheld laser in the world, created a spike in demand among hobbyists. What sort of hobbyist needs a military-grade Spyder II™ GX, which is the perfect tool for tactical [...]

I’ve been advocating adding tracers to fracking fluids, and not just for research. Tracers can allow following water movement from individual wells, for example, so that liability can be assigned in the event of ground or surface water contamination, even decades after a well is closed. EPA’s science advisory board is on the right track, [...]

Pennsylvania has had quite a few violations of the regulations by Marcellus shale drillers.  And it should be kept in mind that these are only the reported violations. How many went unreported, we will never know. Eventually, there will be a lot of watchers, so the Marcellus shale gas drillers should really embrace the regulation, [...]

A Kellog’s recall was apparently prompted by a chemical breakdown product, methylnaphthalene, in some of their cereals. The parent material is supposedly in the cereal box liner, not the cereal itself (one hopes). While lack of information about this compound and others is a big part of the story, it’s not hard to learn some [...]

That’s the report about the site in the river Jordan (the Qasr al-Yahud),  but I don’t quite follow why Israeli inspectors sample the water at the site….twice a year. That’s not very often. There are some fairly quick tests available these days for bacteria indicating fecal contamination, but I’ve not looked lately for them in [...]

The leaked BP oil appears to be dissipating relatively rapidly, due to a number of factors, one of which I identified earlier: the higher temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico as opposed to the arctic. These high temperatures help speed the release of volatile compounds into the air (note: this increases worker exposures that will [...]

There’s a certain amount of nitrogen in sewage, and a bit of it is released as nitrous oxide during treatment. One problem is that nitrous oxide is a powerful greenhouse gas (about 300 times stronger than carbon dioxide). It is reported that researchers at Stanford believe they might one day increase that amount, separate it, [...]

What’s the rush? NRDC sues the Food and Drug Administration for failing to issue a final rule regulating the chemicals triclosan and triclocarban, which are commonly found in antibacterial soaps. These chemicals are suspected endocrine disruptors linked to reproductive and developmental harm in laboratory studies. … In April, FDA acknowledged soaps containing triclosan offer no [...]