Test relies on visual inspection of ash to then check soil for toxins, which is ‘unlikely to give a complete picture’ of contamination
A plan to test for toxic dioxins near the site of a February train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio, is flawed and unlikely to find the dangerous substances, independent chemical pollution researchers in the US who reviewed the testing protocol told the Guardian.
Initial soil testing already revealed dioxin levels hundreds of times above the threshold that Environmental Protection Agency scientists have found poses a cancer risk, but that sampling was limited in scope.
Arcadis will largely rely on visual inspections of the ground to find evidence of dioxins, instead of systematically testing soil samples that may contain the compounds, which is standard protocol.
The plan does not say how low the levels of dioxin the company will check for will be.
Testing will only be conducted up to two miles from the accident site when ash has been found up to 20 miles away.
The testing is limited to soil and does not include food or water.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
03/24/2023 - 05:00
03/24/2023 - 03:00
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including a rescued sloth, a baby nutria and a patient frog
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03/23/2023 - 18:00
Exclusive: Report says 435,000 hectares have been degraded through logging since 2000, affecting 244 threatened species
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More than half of the forests and woodland in New South Wales that existed before European invasion are now gone and more than a third of what’s left is degraded, according to new research.
Despite the loss of 29m hectares of forest since 1750 – an area larger than New Zealand – continued logging since 2000 had likely affected about 244 threatened species.
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This story was amended on 24 March 2023 to replace the main image, which previously depicted a different animal that was not a long-nosed potoroo.
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03/23/2023 - 17:30
Report also suggests migration could help ensure UK has necessary skills to meet government’s 2050 net zero target
New climate visas should be created to allow victims of natural disasters to come to the UK, and to bring in skilled workers needed for the transition to net zero, a Conservative thinktank has argued.
Onward, whose co-founder Will Tanner recently became Rishi Sunak’s deputy chief of staff, is urging the government to prepare for the likely increase in global migration as a result of the climate crisis.
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03/23/2023 - 15:33
Accounts of global impact of floods, droughts and storms at New York meeting add to pressure to make water central to Cop28
Water is at the heart of the climate crisis, with an increasingly dire carousel of droughts, floods and sea level rise felt “making our planet uninhabitable” the secretary-general of the United Nations, António Guterres, has warned.
On the second day of the first UN water conference in almost half a century, countries lined up to describe how they are suffering from water disasters linked to human-made global heating. “We seem to either have too much water, or too little,” said Senzo Mchunu, South Africa’s water minister. “We will fail on climate change if we fail on water.”
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03/23/2023 - 11:32
Green party accuses FDP of gambling away country’s reputation after last-minute blocking of phase-out from 2035
A clash over climate protection measures is threatening to unravel Germany’s three-party governing alliance, after the Green party accused its liberal coalition partners of gambling away the country’s reputation by blocking a EU-wide phase-out of internal combustion engines in cars.
“You can’t have a coalition of progress where only one party is in charge of progress and the others try to stop the progress,” the country’s vice-chancellor and economy minister, Robert Habeck, said at a meeting of the Green party’s parliamentary group in Weimar on Tuesday.
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03/23/2023 - 10:38
Exclusive: People left to ‘swim in filth’ as Defra turns down applications, say Lib Dems
Most applications for bathing water status to clean up rivers and coastal waters in England have been rejected by the government in the last 14 months, according to new data from the Liberal Democrats.
Local groups have been working for months to create bathing water areas, where the Environment Agency is forced to undertake more rigorous testing for faecal bacteria. Grassroots groups are focusing on inland waters in particular, in a push to stop the discharge of raw sewage by water companies and force a clean-up of English rivers, which all fail tests for chemical and biological pollution.
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03/23/2023 - 09:53
Fatal bloodstream illnesses driven by urinary tract infections could rise, warn scientists as research shows link to food-borne bacteria
Meat bacteria are the likely cause of over half a million urinary tract infections (UTIs) in the US every year, a new study has found, with one of its authors warning that deaths from UTI-driven bloodstream infections could be on the rise.
The study found that of the 6-8m UTIs caused by E coli bacteria in the US every year, between 480,000 and 640,000 could be linked to strains known as FZECs, or food-borne zoonotic E coli. Women are far more likely than men to suffer from UTIs. The British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC) estimates that about half of all women in the UK will have at least one UTI in their lifetime.
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03/23/2023 - 07:59
With the domestic market in long-term decline, whalers and restaurants are working with the Japan travel bureau in a bid to win over skeptical visitors
The anticipation is building in the private, tatami-mat room at Murasaki, a restaurant in Osaka. At one end sit a handful of Japanese journalists; on the other, executives from the country’s biggest whaling company and officials from the travel industry.
In the middle, six hand-picked social influencers from Thailand, France, Russia and South Korea take their places around a hori-zataku table and wait for the first of several courses devoted to Japan’s most controversial cuisine: whale meat.
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03/23/2023 - 05:35
Being part of the People’s Plan for Nature, it was illuminating to see how people could reach consensus
The People’s Plan for Nature, launched on Thursday, sets out the public’s recommendations for reversing massive declines in Britain’s nature. One hundred people were invited to come together, in a citizens’ assembly, to agree on a plan for how to renew and protect nature. Their recommendations include calls for access to nature to be a human right, the urgent restoration of rivers, transparency from supermarkets and a cross-party commitment to farming for nature. One of the assembly members, Sara Hudston, here shares her views on taking part in the process.
I first heard of the People’s Plan for Nature early last autumn, but I didn’t intend to take part because I thought it looked too simplistic. It began with a national callout for ideas about how nature might be renewed, which I felt lacked urgency and wasn’t enough given the scale of biodiversity loss in the UK.
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