Air quality across the world has reached toxic levels

It’s no secret that air pollution is a growing problem. But just how bad it is it ? Earlier this year, the air quality in London surpassed the toxic smog in Beijing — reaching a jaw-dropping 197 micrograms of particulate per cubic meter.
For the first time, London’s air quality is worse than China’s; experts say that this is the worst air quality reading London has had since 2011. London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan has even issued the highest air pollution alert in the capital city, citing the “filthy air” as a “health crisis.”
To put that all in perspective, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that PM2.5 and PM10 (particulate matter) stay at or below a mean value of 25 and 50 micrograms per cubic liter in any given 24-hour period, respectively. Their suggested yearly averages are 10 and 20 micrograms per cubic liter, respectively.
London’s 197 micrograms of particulate per cubic liter smashes those recommendations and is clearly an imminent risk to human health. And unfortunately, the rest of the world isn’t faring much better.

Global air pollution takes its toll

In the fall of 2016, the World Health Organization released a new air quality model that revealed approximately 92 percent the entire world’s population lives in places where the air quality exceeds the WHO’s limits on particulate matter.  And that’s just outside: indoor air pollution is a whole separate issue that is also increasingly problematic.
According to the WHO’s report, at that time approximately 3 million deaths each year are related to outdoor air pollution — though some estimates are much higher.
In February 2017, BBC reported that the number of deaths attributable to air pollution is nearly double that. Data from the Global Burden of Disease Project has revealed that the number of deaths from air pollution has actually reached some 5.5 million annually.
Dan Greenbaum from the Health Effects Institute, located in Boston, MA, explains, “In Beijing or Delhi on a bad air pollution day, the number of fine particles (known as PM2.5) can be higher than 300 micrograms per cubic metre.”
Greenbaum reiterates that the amount of PM2.5 should really be sitting around 25 or 35 micrograms.
According to the research, air pollution causes more deaths than malnutrition, obesity, unsafe sex, and alcohol and drug abuse. The Global Burden of Disease project ranks air pollution as the world’s fourth greatest risk for mortality. [RELATED: Keep up with the latest information on toxic substances at Toxins.news]
No country is exempt from the ill effects of air pollution. The Guardian reported last year:
In Delhi, where there are nearly nine million vehicles, the high court has compared conditions to living in a “gas chamber;” Beijing and 10 other Chinese cities have issued red alert warnings; in Tehran, where the chairman of the city council, Mehdi Chamran, says air pollution kills up to 180 people a day, the smog has been so bad that schools have been closed and sports banned.
China and India are known for their terrible air quality; in 2015, roughly half of all air pollution-related deaths occurred in these two countries.

Other adverse effects of air pollution

The damaging effects of air pollution do not only show up in terms of mortality. There are many other ways that nano-sized particles in the air can cause harm. For example, recent research from University of Southern California has  found that air pollution raises the risk of dementia by up to 92 percent.  The small size of the particulate allows it to cross through the linings of the nasal cavity and go directly to the brain. Once there, damaging inflammation ensues, as your brain (and other exposed bodily tissues) react to the presence of foreign material.
A 2012 review published by the Journal of Toxicology notes that numerous studies have linked air pollution to diseases of the central nervous system (CNS), strokes, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and neuro-developmental disorders. Preliminary research has also shown that there are a variety of avenues for air pollutants to exert their negative effects, particularly in regard to the CNS.  The team also noted that the adverse effects air pollution has on the cardiovascular and respiratory systems is well-documented, but that study of its effects on the brain and the rest of the CNS have been largely neglected. [Related: Keep up with the latest research news at Scientific.news]
The researchers write in their conclusion, “Air pollutants have been, and continue to be, major contributing factors to chronic diseases and mortality, thereby dramatically impacting public health. Air pollution is a global problem and has become one of the major issues of public health as well as climate and environmental protection.”

Source: Natural News

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Mexico City gets choked by worst smog in decades

Mexico City is in the grips of a pollution crisis.
Authorities have issued the first smog alerts for the city in more than a decade and recently implemented restrictions on when cars can be on the road. On Wednesday, for example, two-in-five cars were ordered off the road because the pollution reached such high levels.
In addition, Mexico City closed a loophole in its existing rules that kept about 20 percent of cars off the road each day. Now, even vehicles certified as low-emission will also be banned on designated days, typically based on a number on their license plates.
The pollution problem isn't new for Mexico City. Some driving restrictions have been in place for years. But still, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness estimates that 1,823 people each year die prematurely in Mexico City because of air pollution. The city's geography is a major factor in the city's bad air. Surrounded by mountains, during the city's dry season, smog just sits and accumulates.
Warmer tempeatures — it's been in the mid-80s this week — also contribute to the thick smog.
The new, tighter restrictions are set to remain in place until the rainy season arrives this summer.
In the meantime, the city is offering free bus and subway rides as a way to get people off the road. And it's also proving to be a profit center for some businesses. Uber has a major presence in the city and is setting high surge prices.
According to a story in Quartz, Uber was charging a 9.9x surge on rides in Mexico City on Wednesday. In response, the app has been pushing its UberPool service, which allows users to share a ride with others going the same direction for a lower price.
In the meantime, environmentalists and scientists wonder if the new restrictions will actually reduce the pollution at all. They blame new freeways and a court decision that reversed a ban on older model cars for getting more vehicles moving on the streets.
So what are residents to do? The World's Global Nation editor Monica Campbell, who lives in Mexico City, said there are a few options that really boil down to this: Stay indoors, or try to escape the city for some fresh air. Hear more from her:

This story first published on PRI.org.

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Die off in Pacific far worse than anything ever seen before

Scientists estimate as many as 500,000 Murres may have died in total, washing up on beaches along just about every Alaska coastline, as well as turning up in more unlikely places like Palmer.

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West Coast bird die-off “is biggest ever recorded”

Alaska Dispatch News, Jan 29, 2016 (emphasis added): Scientists think Gulf of Alaska seabird die-off is biggest ever recorded… The mass of dead seabirds that have washed up on Alaska beaches in past months is unprecedented in size, scope and duration, a federal biologist said… The staggering die-off… is a signal that something is awry in the Gulf of Alaska, said Heather Renner, supervisory wildlife biologist at the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge… It coincides with widespread deaths of other marine animals, from whales in the Gulf of Alaska to sea lions in California… Common murres and whales… are not the only Gulf of Alaska marine animals to fall victim to ailments… Kachemak Bay saw an eight-fold increase in sea otter deaths… Sea stars in Kachemak Bay in 2015 were found stricken with a wasting disease similar.
Heather Renner, Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge: “We are in the midst of perhaps the largest murre die-off ever recorded”… [In Homer] the beaches are “littered” with murre carcasses… A breeding colony in the Barren Islands that is usually teeming in late summer with adult murres tending their young was deserted this year… “nobody was home… In more than three decades of monitoring murres in the Barrens, we’ve never had complete reproduction failure before“… Similar failures occurred at some other nesting colonies.
USGS (pdf), Jan 2016: During March through September 2015, at least 25 seabird mortality events were reported across Alaska… The primary avian species reported included common and thick-billed murres, black-legged kittiwakes, horned and tufted puffins, glaucous-winged gulls, and sooty and short-tailed shearwaters… Some of these avian mortalities were concurrent with whale, pinniped, sea otter, and fish mortalities…
Alaska Public Radio, Jan 28, 2016: [T]his event will likely be the largest and most widespread on record. And seeing the starving birds dying far inland apparently searching for food is “nearly unheard of,” said USFWS’s Heather Renner.
KHNS, Jan 15, 2016: “We’re seeing the effects of this throughout the food web,” [Rob Kaler U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologist] says… The murres’ stomachs are completely empty, Kaler says… Not only is the bird die-off unsettling, the implications are scary, [bird expert Pam Randles] says. “Our salmon eat that stuff and who knows what else is dying off, or starving, or having trouble?” Norm Hughes has been commercial salmon fishing in Alaska for more than 30 years. He says last season saw skinnier fish – up to 20 percent smaller… “there’s less fish”…
CNN, Jan 22, 2016: “We have never found close to 8,000 birds on a 1-mile long beach before,” [seabird biologist David Irons] said… “It is an order of magnitude larger than any records that I am aware of… Seabird biologists say seabirds are indicators of the health of the ecosystem. Now they’re dying and that is telling us something… this is bigger than I’ve ever seen.”
APRN, Jan 28, 2016: Scientists say murre die-off comparable to Exxon Valdez spill… Heather Renner with USFWS says it is already one of the largest die-offs in history and, unlike when the tanker went aground, not many people have gone out to remote beaches to survey for dead seabirds… “there’s dead murres on the ground everywhere, and it’s hard not to notice them.”
The Economist, Jan 30, 2016: [Probably hundreds] of thousands of these birds have drifted in dead… last summer they failed to raise chicks. And they have been dying in large numbers along the Pacific coast, from California to Alaska… “Whole systems are out of whack,” says Heather Renner… Old-timers in Homer have never experienced anything like this. And they are perplexed by a host of other freakish phenomena…
KTOO, Jan 28, 2016: “[T]here’s dead murres on the ground everywhere, and it’s hard not to notice them.”… The reason for the dead birds is still a mystery… “I think it suggests something more related to the food web structure,” said Renner.
Homer Tribune, Jan 2016: Irons found an estimated 7,800 dead murres on a one-mile stretch of beach… he had never seen anything like that. Similar reports came in from other areas… “The really frustrating question of why they are starving to death”… said Heather Renner… [M]urres abandoned their breeding attempts mid-season at many colonies in the Gulf of Alaska, something very uncommon.
LiveScience, Feb 3, 2016: Massive Bird Die-Off Puzzles Alaska Scientists — Dead common murres have washed ashore in Alaska in alarming numbers … leaving scientists concerned and confused… [The birds] have nothing in their stomachs… [S]imilar events affected seabird populations in Washington, Oregon and California.
CBC News, Jan 28, 2016: Bruce Wright, a senior scientist Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association… estimates up to 200,000 Alaskan murres could die. With a population he puts at more than two million, Wright said the species should recover, as long as the food base comes back.
New York Times, Jan 18, 2016: Animals Die in Large Numbers, and Researchers Scratch Their Heads… The latest victims are common murres… this die-off has surprised experts, because it has been going on for around a year and it covers such a vast area… “I still don’t think we’ve seen the worst,” said [John F. Piatt, USGS seabird expert], who… speculated that if the worst happened, the deaths could reach into the many hundreds of thousands.

Watch CNN’s broadcast here

Source: ENE News

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Burning 9-story-high landfill covers Mumbai with toxic fumes

Social media has been flooded with apocalyptic pictures of the Indian city of Mumbai after a massive toxic fire broke out at a nine-story-high local dumping ground. For the second week, fumes have covered buildings and forced motorists to drive in thick smog.

The fire started at Deonar dumping ground in Mumbai on January 27. Since then, local residents have been complaining of eye irritation, breathlessness and coughing.

"My elder child, who is in class 3, has been feeling nauseous every morning for the past four days, owing to the heavy smog. He has a bad cough and has missed school," Mumbai resident Gunjal Chattree told the Hindustan Times.

Vikram Vishwanath, who lives close to Deonar, has stopped sending his son to school.

"My six-year-old has been having a lot of trouble breathing since the fire broke out at the dumping ground. We took him to an ENT specialist and he is on medication," he said.

Dr Satish Kaushik, a practicing consultant family physician, said in the last few days he has seen "close to a 50% increase in the number cases related to respiratory problems."

"People are complaining of cough, cold headaches and chest burn," he said.

On the sixth day after the fire started, local residents staged a protest as the air quality worsened in the affected neighborhoods.

More than 500 citizens wearing pollution masks and black clothes demanded answers from the government. They asked why the blaze had started and why the authorities were not able to handle the situation.

The inferno is so big that it was clearly recorded by NASA - which has released pictures of the blaze. {Top Photo}

The Deonar dumping ground "receives more than 3,700 metric tons (8.1 million pounds) of trash per day, about one-third of the city's waste. With piles of trash that rise up to 30 meters (100 feet) tall—the equivalent of a nine-story building—the landfill has literally become a mountain of trash," according to NASA.


RT

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Radioactive Water From Fukushima Is Leaking Into the Pacific

"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind," Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Truthout shortly after a 9.0 earthquake in Japan caused a tsunami that destroyed the cooling system of Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan.
While this statement might sound overdramatic, Gundersen may be right.
Several nuclear reactor meltdowns in the plant, which at the time forced the mandatory evacuations of thousands of people living within a 15-mile radius of the damaged power plant, persist, and experts like Gundersen continue to warn that this problem is not going to go away.

"The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor."

The March 11, 2011, 9.0 earthquake that destroyed the cooling systems at TEPCO led to hydrogen explosions and reactor meltdowns, and has left exposed highly radioactive materials that Gunderson says are the root of the problem. For now, there is no solution in sight.
"Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed," Gundersen said. "You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively."
This persistent problem reared its head yet again in December 2015, when TEPCO was forced to deal with a massive amount of highly radioactive water generated by having to cool the reactors and exposed fuel cores Gundersen mentioned.
TEPCO must now transfer between 200 and 300 tons of groundwater into highly contaminated reactor buildings, having been unable to devise an effective plan for keeping the groundwater from continuing to flow under the plant.
To see more stories like this, visit "Planet or Profit?"
"The problem is how to keep it cool," Gundersen explained. "They are pouring in water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you put the water?"
The company has repeatedly come under fire for periodically dumping large amounts of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean.
Even though the plant has not been online since it was largely destroyed in 2011, fission products such as uranium continue to generate heat, and therefore require cooling.
"The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor," Gundersen said.
Shortly after the plant was damaged, TEPCO announced that they had experienced a "melt through," which means a melted reactor core had melted through some layers beneath it.

"Most of the time TEPCO seems to be firefighting, discovering leaks here and unexpectedly high levels of radiation there."

That left several highly radioactive blobs that now have water on top of them, hence causing the water to become extremely radioactive. This process of cooling the cores has now generated hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of tons of highly radioactive water that then must be dealt with somehow.
Dr. M.V. Ramana, a physicist and lecturer at Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security and the Nuclear Futures Lab, says the problem is the lack of a real long-term plan for addressing the issue.
"Most of the time TEPCO seems to be firefighting, discovering leaks here and unexpectedly high levels of radiation there," Ramana told Truthout. "In part, this is because TEPCO's plans do not account for the many possibilities of failure and putting in place backup safety systems."
Dr. Helen Caldicott, an author and anti-nuclear advocate who has established several foundations that oppose the use of nuclear power and weapons and depleted uranium munitions, told Truthout that the situation in Fukushima is "very serious indeed."
"There is no way to prevent the radioactive water [from] reaching the western shores of the North American continent and then circulating around the rest of the Pacific Ocean," Caldicott said. "At the moment, it seems like this is going to occur for the rest of time."
Massive Releases of Radiation
A declassified report from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission written immediately after the disaster began states that massive amounts of radiation from the plant were released into the atmosphere early on.
The report states: "25% of the total fuel in unit 2 released to the atmosphere ... 50% of the total spent fuel from unit 3 was released to the atmosphere, and ... 100% of the total spent fuel was released to the atmosphere from unit 4."
Meanwhile, in December 2015, Japan's NHK news agency reported alarmingly high spikes in radiation levels underneath the Fukushima plant.

"There are no safe levels of radiation for biological systems."

TEPCO detected levels of radioactive cesium (a material which has a half-life of 30 years) in water samples that were 4,000 times higher than data taken the same month one year earlier. The samples also contained levels of a beta-ray-emitting radioactive substance that were 4,100 times higher than they were from the same period a year earlier.
As Caldicott warned, radiation from Fukushima along the US West Coast is expected to continue to worsen.
According to a 2013 study by the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center in Norway, the first radioactive oceanic plume released by Fukushima is likely to hit the US's West Coast in force in 2017, with levels expected to peak in 2018. According to the report, the majority of the radioactive material from the disaster is expected to stay concentrated along the West Coast through at least 2026.
Even though that plume hasn't yet hit, the spread of radiation has already been substantial. Professor Michio Aoyama of Japan's Fukushima University Institute of Environmental Radioactivity believes the amount of radiation that has now reached North America is probably nearly as much as was spread over Japan during the initial disaster.
A recent Woods Hole study shows a 50 percent increase in radiation levels 1,600 miles west of San Francisco, but states that the levels are still far below what the US government considers dangerous.
However, Caldicott takes issue with what the United States considers a "safe" level of radiation exposure.
"There are no safe levels of radiation for biological systems," she said. "That terminology is used by the nuclear industry to cover their inevitable radioactive releases."
Solution?
Ramana believes it could still take decades before the plant's radiation leaks are even contained.
"I think this is going to take a couple of decades," he said. "We are still in the early years; it hasn't even been five years since the disaster started. It has been 30 years since Chernobyl and remediation of that site is still [a] work in progress."

"March 2011 was just the beginning of the disaster, which is still unfolding."

Disconcertingly, Ramana does not believe there is a "true solution" to the crisis. When asked how TEPCO and the Japanese government are likely to handle the crisis, he said, "What we will get is TEPCO and other Japanese authorities muddling through this completely unprecedented situation."
Ramana pointed out many reasons why he believes people should pay attention to what is happening in Fukushima, and started by correcting the belief that the disaster "occurred" and is now over.
"March 2011 was just the beginning of the disaster, which is still unfolding," he said. "As something that is unfolding, one should be concerned about how the situation is being managed."
He added that since this is an ongoing crisis, people need to remember how challenging it is to deal with a nuclear accident, and that this should cause people to be skeptical of "safe" nuclear power more broadly.
"TEPCO's actions should serve as evidence that organizations that seek to profit from running a nuclear plant are not always the best ones to manage accidents or cleanup," Ramana said. "Likewise, its actions prior to the accident, wherein it made decisions that maximize its short-term profits while not making decisions that would have promoted safer operations (or shutting down the reactor), are emblematic of a number of other utilities, all of whom have conflicting priorities. That TEPCO is the organization that experienced such a major accident while others have escaped, at least so far, is at least in part a matter of luck."
Gundersen told Truthout he had seen data that revealed radioactive hot spots further away from Fukushima than the radiation from Chernobyl had reached after that disaster.
"And the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no man's land for Chernobyl," he said. "You can't clean all this up. We still have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 35 years after Chernobyl."
Radioactive water from the Fukushima disaster continues to be released into the Pacific, and spread around the globe.
Of this, Caldicott warned, "There is a system of biological magnification by orders of magnitude at each step of the food chain: algae, crustaceans, little fish, big fish." That means that the radiation's impact on the planet's ecology expands the further it moves up and across the food chain.
Meanwhile in the United States, the nuclear industry continues apace.

"With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started, but they never end."

Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation was among Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama was a US senator. Exelon donated more than $269,000 to his political campaigns, and Obama appointed Exelon CEO John Rowe to his Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future.
Yet the Fukushima disaster, which, as Ramana points out, is just beginning, stands as a reminder of the dire consequences of continuing to allow the nuclear industry to grow. This reminder will remain with us indefinitely.
"With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started," Gundersen said, "but they never end."
In Japan, US citizens living there who were located within a 50-mile radius of the Fukushima plant were required to evacuate. Within the United States, more than 120 million people live within a 50-mile evacuation zone of a nuclear plant.
Meanwhile, officials from TEPCO have admitted they are not sure when their company might be able to solve its multitude of problems, and begin to reduce the amount of contaminated water at the plant. When it comes to the nuclear industry, it seems, it is always difficult to determine when a disaster will end - or if it will end at all.

Image Above:  The Ikata Nuclear Power Plant, which was idled after the 2011 disaster in Fukushima, in the Ehime prefecture of Japan, January 23, 2014. (Photo: Ko Sasaki / The New York Times)

Truth Out

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Earth's Deepest Lake is Seriously Ill

On the main drag of Khuzhir, the principal town of Olkhon Island in Lake Baikal, Siberia, the dust blown from buses delivering tourists billows through the windswept streets. By the upturned chassis of vehicles picked clean of parts, babushkas wade through piles of trash, searching for anything worth claiming. In the shadows of a former prison, sunbathers line a beach around clumps of algae and rusted metal detritus. While Buryat shamans, who revere the lake as holy, perform ceremonies around totem poles festooned with ribbons on a bluff above town, in a ship graveyard below them, children toss empty vodka bottles at each other for entertainment.
Stretching for 395 miles, thirty-million-year-old Baikal is the world’s deepest lake, its volume roughly equivalent to the five Great Lakes of North America combined. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Baikal contains one-fifth of the unfrozen freshwater on the planet. Its unique closed ecosystem is home to over 3,500 species and subspecies of animals and plants, roughly sixty percent of which are not to be found anywhere else on Earth. The lake is now subject to an unprecedented catalogue of threats.
I visited the region this summer, when wildfires the likes of which had never been seen before were raging, leading locals to describe the scene as feeling “like doomsday.” The lake faces a range of environmental issues: phosphate run-off from unplanned tourist developments and poor sewage treatment, the rampant growth of algae mats and a sponge die-off, and low inflow that saw water levels hit critical marks this year, down 40cm since 2013. A waterfront industrial plant that produced cellulose fiber for Soviet aircraft tyres is now closed, but dotted around the dimly-lit derelicts lie 13 toxic reservoirs, each the size of two football fields. Now, Baikal is further endangered by Mongolian plans for hydropower plants which, Professor Marianne Moore from Wellesley College told Motherboard, would effectively starve the lake of oxygen.

A few miles from Khuzhir, beyond an abandoned fish factory that had operated as a gulag, I came across the rotting corpses of Nerpa seals which had washed to shore. According to Greenpeace, the number of these unique seals, one of only three entirely freshwater seal species, has decreased by approximately a third since the beginning of the 1990s. Commenting on this “huge die-off,” Greenpeace Russia campaigner Roman Vazhenkov noted that although the seals had died of disease, chlorine substance found in the creatures' fatty tissues suggests their immune systems had been weakened.
I spoke to Professor Oleg Timoshkin from the Limnological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences about the levels of pollution threatening the lake. “In some areas of Northern Baikal, a crust of rotten spirogyra algae up to ten meters [wide] covers the once cozy beaches,” he told me. “Even cows and horses refuse to drink the water.”
Emissions from a failed sewage treatment plant in the town of Severobaikalsk on the northern shore have caused a bank of foul-smelling algae to form that stretches for six miles. In addition to this, locals report that for years, sewage trucks pulled up daily to dispose of wastewater at another dilapidated station near the shoreline.
“The [new] plant failed in large part because the railroad industry dumped a bunch of cleaning products into the sewage treatment facility,” Moore told Motherboard. “They were cleaning railroad cars with heavy duty detergent and it killed the microbes that helped remove nutrients. Untreated sewage has been entering the shallow waters up there.”

Discarded piles of litter at the abandoned gulag fish factory, Khuzhir. Image: Stephen M. Bland

I took a hydrofoil across the lake to Ust-Barguzin, the boat cutting through swathes of smoke rising from the mainland. In this remote hamlet of feral dogs and high-walled compounds, we docked at a port choked with the rusting hulks of half-sunken ships. In an effort to dampen the acrid fumes, some residents had hung wet cloths across their windows. Despite being home to some 7,000 people, the sewage treatment facilities in Ust-Barguzin are, according to Timoshkin, “completely destroyed.”
With tourist numbers around Baikal rapidly increasing from 300,000 in 2009 to 1.3 million in 2015, according to the Siberian Times, infrastructure is struggling to keep up with demand. “Down at the southern end of the lake, there’s a town called Listvianka,” Moore continued. “It’s a tourist mecca and the hotels there, many of which have gone up in the last fifteen years, none of them have treatment facilities, so sewage is going right into the lake.”
During his group’s latest expedition, Timoshkin and his colleagues also found that a pathogen had been killing sea sponges, which naturally filter the water. In the area under investigation, “from 30 to 100 percent of branched Lubomirskia baicalensis specimens were either sick or damaged and died,” Timoshkin commented.
On the shoreline near the monogorod (single-factory town) of Baikalsk lie the ruins of the Baikal Paper and Pulp Mill. The plant, from which chlorinated waste found its way into the lake, finally closed at the end of 2013—for financial, not ecological reasons—but 6.2 million tons of toxic waste still remain in the aforementioned reservoirs. The Baikal trough is located on a rift zone and should an earthquake strike, the contaminated holding pods could easily rupture, causing an ecological disaster.

Buryat shaman performing a ceremony on the bluff above Maloe More. Image: Stephen M. Bland

In 2014, the Moscow Times reported that the site of the old factory would be turned into a “Russian Disneyland” called "Precious Russia" following the biggest clean-up in the country’s history, projected to take six years. With the economic crisis continuing though, those plans have now been shelved. “I just don’t think Russia has the political will,” Moore told Motherboard.
Now, with Mongolia planning to build a series of massive dams upstream, Lake Baikal is facing a challenge which Moore believes could make all other problems “pale in comparison.” The plans, which are being evaluated as part of a World Bank-funded environmental and social impact assessment, include a project to dam the Selenga River, which provides nearly 50 percent of the lake’s water.
“If this dam were built then this might cause major damage to Baikal’s ecosystem,” Professor Anson Mackay of University College London told Motherboard. “The Selenga is the lake’s largest tributary. Should flow be reduced [there could be] long-term catastrophic consequences for the ecology and wildlife in and around the lake.”
When NGOs met with local authorities in Irkutsk and Baikalsk last week, Mongolian plans for the so-called Shuren Hydropower Project were high on the agenda. As the Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage states that countries should not take actions that could affect World Heritage Sites in other nations, environmental groups have questioned the legality of the project.
As this row rumbles on, the Russian authorities have continued to drain the lake for an existing hydroelectric station downstream, which is at least partly culpable for water levels that Jennie Sutton from NGO Baikal Wave describes as “critically low.” A source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the source did not have authorization to speak publicly, said that despite having poured 54 billion roubles into protecting the lake over the last three years, mismanagement of government funds has seen the state of the region continue to deteriorate. Disregarding evidence to the contrary, however, the most recent report from the Ministry of Environment and Ecology on the state of Baikal maintains that the ecosystem has not undergone “any significant changes.”
Ruminating on what needs to be done to save the lake, which he describes as “seriously ill,” Timoshkin says he is calling for the introduction of a more effective system of government monitoring. He is not alone in concluding that the current approach is only fit to “diagnose cancer in the last stage.” UNESCO has accused Moscow of "dereliction of duty," per Deutsche Presse-Agentur, with regard to its handling of the Baikal region.
As the sun set, having completed their daily pilgrimage to the sights, a clutch of minivan drivers returned tourists to Khuzhir. Beneath ominous skies, Russian holidaymakers hit the bars, discarding their trash as they tottered down the dung-spattered streets. Illegal campfires illuminated the dusky woods along the Maloe More Strait. Mats of algae and flotsam washed to shore. With more of Baikal than ever before open to tourism, dependence on this source of income continues to grow. The future is uncertain for a lake that until recently was considered the cleanest on Earth.
Clarification: This story originally referred to Lake Baikal as the "largest" lake in the world. It's the largest by volume, unless you count the Caspian Sea, which is a matter of debate. Baikal, however, is definitely the deepest freshwater body on Earth, which makes for a clearer headlines, so we've referred to it as such. The body of the story never referred to Lake Baikal as the world's largest lake. Apologies for any confusion.

Motherboard

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Catastrophic Pacific Ocean Die-Off

Many have heard about some of the die-offs occurring in our oceans, but most have no understanding of how catastrophic the actual reality is.


Fukushima is where all the fingers point as the source of the carnage along the coast, but there is much more to the story. Those who control the US military have virtually no regard for any of the destruction they are wreaking on the entire web of life, including marine life. The US Navy has long since been using live depleted uranium ammunition and devastating sonar devices along the Pacific coast (the US Navy is now also waging electromagnetic warfare along our forests and our coasts). The US (and other nations) have also routinely dumped nuclear waste into our oceans. The excerpt (shown below) from the US Navy’s “Environmental Impact Statement ” is beyond shocking. Their position is this, if there are no studies to prove the harm they are causing, then no harm was caused.

“The study area for consideration of impacts on marine plants and invertebrates includes the open ocean west of Washington, Oregon, and Northern California….Aircraft overflight and training activities are assumed to have no impacts to marine communities, because impacts of sound on plants and invertebrates are unknown and difficult to quantify.”

The statement below was appropriately presented (along with other pressing points) to the US Navy’s EIS staff by concerned Oregon resident Carol Van Strum.

The question of past and current Naval activities is highly significant. For example, the EIS acknowledges that past and present activities off the Oregon coast have involved the use of rounds comprised of depleted uranium. Uranium, depleted or otherwise, is an exceptionally persistent material in the environment. The EIS revelations of Navy use of depleted uranium thus raise very serious concerns about how long the Navy has been using depleted uranium rounds in the Pacific Ocean, how much was used per year, where that use has occurred, and what environmental impacts have already accrued from such use, such as uptake by fish and synergistic effects with other wastes and products from Naval exercises. The EIS mentions none of these issues.

In 2010 I personally spoke to a US Navy Public Relations representative that very cavalierly confirmed the Navy’s use of depleted uranium ammunition for “practice” off of the US West Coast. She seemed to have no idea of the dangers posed by this ammunition, but rather was only repeating whatever she was told.  The US Military has also permanently contaminated vast areas of land masses with its deadly depleted uranium ammunition. An epidemic of birth defects in Iraq and elsewhere is the legacy of this use. But there is an even larger ongoing assault on the ocean, the planet, and all life, global geoengineering/weather warfare. The blatant atmospheric aerosol spraying so clearly seen of the coast of California in the satellite photo below is nothing short of shocking.

Geoengineering is undeniably a major factor relating to the die-off of the oceans. The US military is certainly the single largest participant in the ongoing global climate engineering insanity (though all major powers are involved). Geoengineering is destroying the ozone layer which has subjected the planet to deadly levels of UV radiation greatly contributing to the die-off of plankton populations around the world. The plankton die-off has taken the foundation out of the food chain for marine ecosystems. Geoengineering has also radically altered upper level wind currents which have in turn altered ocean currents. This has contributed to the massive methane release in the Arctic which holds the future of our planet in the balance if it continues. In regard to the Pacific ocean, the altered wind currents have greatly contributed to the record heat buildup. This in turn has fueled the extreme algae blooms, sea bed gassing of methane, hydrogen sulfide (which create hypoxic and anoxic zones), and thus even more marine die-off. There is also the less known form of geoengineering, ocean fertilization, which is also taking its toll on our once thriving seas. Seven decades of highly toxic and destructive global geoengineering programs have inflicted unimaginable decimation to the planet. These programs (combined with the other US military operations already mentioned), have played a major part in the collapse of life in our oceans, most especially in the Pacific. If the oceans die, we die.

Our military brothers and sisters must awaken to what they are participating in, the destruction of their own planet and the health of their own citizens. Military personnel are sworn to protect their countrymen from all threats, foreign AND DOMESTIC. All of us are needed to help awaken the population, this includes the families of military personnel. Pass on credible information to all those that need to see it, every day counts in this battle. Make your voice heard.

Zen Gardner

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India Bangalore lake of toxic snowy froth

Is it snowing in India's tropical southern city of Bangalore?

The picture above would certainly make you think so.
Unfortunately, the reality is quite different: what looks like snow is actually harmful snow-white froth that floats up from the city's largest lake and spills over into neighbouring areas.
Over the years, the 9,000-acre Bellandur lake in India's technology capital has been polluted by chemicals and sewage.

IT professional Debasish Ghosh has been taking pictures of the lake of "harmful snowy froth" for months now. Here is a selection of his pictures.

BBC NEWS

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Purple Waves Puzzle Oregon Coast Scientists

(Oregon Coast) – A true mystery is brewing on the Oregon coast, with a dozen or so scientists and public officials stumped, and the public increasingly enthralled. (photo above: Jeanine Sbisa).

Puzzling purple waves have been hitting the Oregon coast here and there for the last month, and no one seems to know what it is. Meanwhile, a lot of velella velella jellyfish – otherwise known as Purple Sails – have shown up again as well, but the two are completely unrelated.

Oregon Coast Beach Connection got word of the perplexing purples in the ocean over the weekend from visitor Jeanine Sbisa and her family. She photographed these examples of the stuff in Neskowin on August 15. Oregon State Park Ranger Dane Osis snapped another incident at Fort Stevens State Park near Astoria.

After sending word to a host of scientists, naturalists, volunteers from CoastWatch and even state officials from the Oregon Health Authority (which sends out beach bacteria alerts), no one could come up with a positive answer. All were quite mystified and admitted they hadn't seen anything like it. There is no evidence it's harmful in anyway, just a big enigma.

While some scientists from institutions like the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport or UofO's Institute of Marine Biology have ventured a few educated guesses, even those were tempered with assertions that they weren't sure and that water samples needed to be taken.

The typical response was like that of Jonathan Modie, a spokesman with the Oregon Health Authority. He had passed along the photos to the agency's Beach Monitoring and Harmful Algae Bloom Surveillance programs.

“It’s difficult to identify an organism from photographs (one thought is that it could be a type of jellyfish), and the substance probably needs to be sampled and tested to make a reliable identification,” Modie said.

Oregon State Parks and Recreation Department is still working on the research, while a few phytoplankton experts from the Hatfield weighed in on the subject.

In the meantime, Oregon Coast Beach Connection discovered a few more eye-witnesses, including those saying they've seen it as far back as a month ago in Lincoln City and Newport. Another mentioned seeing the purple waves in Seaside.

Another report from Neskowin said the purple waves had a funky smell to it, but Sbisa said she did not have that experience in the little village when she photographed it.

What Sbisa describes mostly matched what others reported: large segments of the tideline that were colored this vivid and beautiful shade of purple. She found a few such areas about a 100 feet in length on a mile or so stretch between Winema Beach and Neskowin.

“The purple was only on the edge of the water,” Sbisa said. “I did not see any patches in the deeper water. ( in fact the deeper water was a beautiful turquoise, instead of the deep blue that it usually is at Winema). Some of the waves were a deep clear purple. Other waves in other segments were a rich foamy lilac color. The colors were amazing. Very beautiful.”

Most of the guesses from Oregon scientists included some form of phytoplankton. One standout possibility was a form of protozoan (similar to phytoplankton) that is common on the Oregon coast, and when it consumes certain nutrients it can turn purple or other similar colors.

Others reported seeing a lot of dead jellyfish in the vicinity of their sightings, but this is purely coincidental. Velella velella pop up periodically when washed in by western winds. There was a huge inundation of them during the spring. These do not create purplish waves, however.

Scientists also said it is not related to the algal bloom that had affected Oregon mussels and still affects razor clamming at this time. Some outrageous rumors have sprung up about the source being from the Fukushima power plant or something from chemtrails, but it is definitely not from factors such as those.

Currently, plenty of Oregon scientists are working on it, and with any luck the public, fans of the coast and naturalists will have an answer. There has been some talk of collecting water samples, but that's unclear if that will occur.

For now, the Oregon coast has a purple mystery on its hands.

beachconnection.net

Photo above: Dane Osis of Oregon State Parks snapped the purple waves on Wednesday morning at Fort Stevents. Below: more of Jeanine Sbisa's photos from Newkowin.

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Toxic sludge in contaminated Colorado river reaches New Mexico

Toxic waste, including arsenic and lead, which seeped into a river in southwest Colorado, has now crossed the state border into New Mexico. More than 550 gallons per minute are entering the water flow system according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which caused the spill.

The agency says it should have the results of samples undergoing lab testing soon, so they can find out just how contaminated the river has become. Aside from lead and arsenic, federal officials say the spill also contains, cadmium, aluminum, copper and calcium.




High levels of arsenic can cause blindness, paralysis and cancer, while lead poisoning can create muscle and vision problems in adults and can be fatal for children.
"We're busting our tails to get that out," Environmental Protection Agency Regional Director Shaun McGrath said, as cited by AP. "We know the importance to people to have this information."
READ MORE: EPA spills 1 mln gallons mine waste, turns river in Colorado orange

The bright orange toxic sludge, which entered the Animas River in Colorado, has now crossed the state border into New Mexico and reached the city of Aztec on Friday night. Local communities in both states are not happy and have blasted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for being slow in warning residents after the spill took place.
"There's not a lot we can do. We can keep people away (from the river) and keep testing. We still don't know how bad it is," San Juan County Emergency Management Director Don Cooper said, according to AP.

Officials in the cities of Aztec and Farmington say they have shut down the river’s access to water treatment plants, adding that the communities had a 90-day supply of water.
The Animas flows into the San Juan River in New Mexico, and the San Juan flows into Utah, where it joins the Colorado River in Lake Powell. There are also reports that the contaminated water is heading towards Utah.

                         Durango, Colorado: EPA's Animas River mine disaster. Before & after

The EPA says they have finished building two containment ponds, which are aimed at treating the toxic sludge in the river. However, this is very much a short-term plan, while the long-term issue of cleaning up the spill will take some time according to McGrath.
“The sediment, the metals that are in that sediment are going to settle out to the stream bottom," he said. "As we have storm surges, as we have flooding events, that sediment can and likely will get kicked back up into the water. We're going to have to do ongoing monitoring," McGrath added.

It is estimated that over one million gallons of toxic waste has already found its way into the river. The spill was caused after the EPA was investigating the abandoned Gold King Mine on Wednesday together with the state Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety. They accidentally breached a debris dam that had formed inside the mine and this triggered the release of the waste into Cement Creek, a tributary of the Animas River in San Juan County.

 A look at the bottom of the Animas River on Saturday sure looks allot different than it did a few days ago.

Ironically, the initial goal was to find a safe way to pump out the wastewater from the mine, which was abandoned in 1923 and treat it, EPA spokeswoman Lisa McClain-Vanderpool said.

RT

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Record toxic algae bloom off the West coast is devastating the Pacific Ocean

Algae blooms happen every year around May, but this one is ridiculously large and long-lasting.
"The bloom is laced with some toxic species that have had far-reaching consequences for sea life and regional and local economies," according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Photo Above: The neurotoxin-producing algae Pseudo-nitzschia is responsible for many of the animal deaths and illnesses.

Part of the reason this bloom is worse than usual is because of a mysteriously large mass of warm water off the Pacific coast. The warmer the water, the more algae grow.
"It's just lurking there," Vera Trainer, research oceanographer with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Washington state, told Reuters. "It's the longest lasting, highest toxicity, and densest bloom that we've ever seen."
As you can see in the map below, the algae bloom stretches all the way from Alaska to California:

 

This year's harmful algae bloom goes all the way from Alaska to California.

While not all algae species in the bloom are dangerous, some of them produce a toxic chemical called domoic acid that can kill or make animals sick — and can even impact human health. Domoic acid is a neurotoxin produced by the algae Pseudo-nitzchia. When an animal, say a clam, eats this algae, it also injects the domoic acid, which can build up inside it. Any bigger animal that comes along and eats it — including humans — can get sick too if they take in enough of the toxin.
This year's bloom is so bad that we are seeing lots of animal deaths. At least nine fin whales were found dead in the waters off Alaska in June, according to Alaska Dispatch News, and in July reports of dead or dying whales, seals, birds, and fish have been rolling in according to NOAA. It's difficult to pin these deaths on the algae specifically, but signs are pointing to these toxins as the cause.

Toxic algae blooms, some of which are called red tides, can poison fish and close local fisheries.
And to prevent any human illnesses, Washington and Oregon have closed recreational razor-back clam fisheries. Washington also closed commercial dungeoness crab fisheries, and California has closed sardine fisheries and put warnings out about eating local mussels, clams, and crabs.
"Ongoing testing shows that crab in these waters have domoic acid levels that exceed health-safety standards," Dan Ayres, coastal shellfish manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife said in a press release. "We've been closely watching toxin levels in crab since closing beaches to razor-clam digging in May."
If a person eats too much fish or shellfish contaminated with demoic acid they could get symptoms ranging from vomiting, headaches, and dizziness to, in severe cases, breathing trouble and seizures, and they could fall into a coma and die, according to the California Department of Public Health.
The algae doesn't just poison sea creatures, they also poison the water and create dead zones when they die. The decomposing algae use up all of the water's oxygen, making it unlivable for the majority of sea life. There's nothing we can do to stop this process, and it seems like it will keep getting worse as climate change makes oceans warmer, creating more dangerous algae blooms.

As the algae blooms, like this one off La Jolla, California, decay they use up the water's oxygen and create dead zones.
Luckily, a research division of NOAA is in the midst of a five-year-long monitoring program to develop an early-alert detection system for algae blooms and their effects.
They send researchers out to harmful algae blooms to examine the toxicity of the bloom, what type of species are blooming, and under what conditions the algae is growing.
With the project expected to conclude in 2016, hopefully we will have a better understanding of these blooms — and what we can do about them — in the near future.

Business Insider

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Unprecedented Mass Die Offs as Pacific Ocean “Turning Into a Desert” Off California Coast

It was the dying cry of Charlton Heston in the creepy 1973 film Soylent Green… and it could resemble our desperate near future.

The ocean is dying, by all accounts – and if so, the food supply along with it. The causes are numerous, and overlapping. And massive numbers of wild animal populations are dying as a result of it.

Natural causes in the environment are partly to blame; so too are the corporations of man; the effects of Fukushima, unleashing untold levels of radiation into the ocean and onto Pacific shores; the cumulative effect of modern chemicals and agricultural waste tainting the water and disrupting reproduction.

A startling new report says in no uncertain terms that the Pacific Ocean off the California coast is turning into a desert. Once full of life, it is now becoming barren, and marine mammals, seabirds and fish are starving as a result. According to Ocean Health:

The waters of the Pacific off the coast of California are a clear, shimmering blue today, so transparent it’s possible to see the sandy bottom below […] clear water is a sign that the ocean is turning into a desert, and the chain reaction that causes that bitter clarity is perhaps most obvious on the beaches of the Golden State, where thousands of emaciated sea lion pups are stranded.

[…]

Over the last three years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has noticed a growing number of strandings on the beaches of California and up into the Pacific north-west. In 2013, 1,171 sea lions were stranded, and 2,700 have already stranded in 2015 – a sign that something is seriously wrong, as pups don’t normally wind up on their own until later in the spring and early summe

“[An unusually large number of sea lions stranding in 2013 was a red flag] there was a food availability problem even before the ocean got warm.” Johnson: This has never happened before… It’s incredible. It’s so unusual, and there’s no really good explanation for it. There’s also a good chance that the problem will continue, said a NOAA research scientist in climatology, Nate Mantua.

Experts blame a lack of food due to unusually warm ocean waters. NOAA declared an El Nino, the weather pattern that warms the Pacific, a few weeks ago. The water is three and a half to six degrees warmer than the average, according to Mantua, because of a lack of north wind on the West Coast. Ordinarily, the north wind drives the current, creating upwelling that brings forth the nutrients that feed the sardines, anchovies and other fish that adult sea lions feed on.

Fox News added:

The warm water is likely pushing prime sea lion foods — market squid, sardines and anchovies — further north, forcing the mothers to abandon their pups for up to eight days at a time in search of sustenance.

The pups, scientists believe, are weaning themselves early out of desperation and setting out on their own despite being underweight and ill-prepared to hunt.

[…]

“These animals are coming in really desperate. They’re at the end of life. They’re in a crisis … and not all animals are going to make it,” said Keith A. Matassa, executive director at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, which is currently rehabilitating 115 sea lion pups.

 The same is true of seabirds on the Washington State coast:

In the storm debris littering a Washington State shoreline, Bonnie Wood saw something grisly: the mangled bodies of dozens of scraggly young seabirds. Walking half a mile along the beach at Twin Harbors State Park on Wednesday, Wood spotted more than 130 carcasses of juvenile Cassin’s auklets—the blue-footed, palm-size victims of what is becoming one of the largest mass die-offs of seabirds ever recorded. “It was so distressing,” recalled Wood, a volunteer who patrols Pacific Northwest beaches looking for dead or stranded birds. “They were just everywhere. Every ten yards we’d find another ten bodies of these sweet little things.”

“This is just massive, massive, unprecedented,” said Julia Parrish, a University of Washington seabird ecologist who oversees the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST), a program that has tracked West Coast seabird deaths for almost 20 years. “We may be talking about 50,000 to 100,000 deaths. So far.” (source)

100,000 doesn’t necessarily sound large, statistically speaking, but precedent in the history of recorded animal deaths suggests that it is, in fact massive. Even National Geographic is noting that these die off events are “unprecedented.” Warmer water is indicated for much of the starvation faced by many of the dead animals.

Last year, scientists sounded the alarm over the death of millions of star fish, blamed on warmer waters and ‘mystery virus':

Starfish are dying by the millions up and down the West Coast, leading scientists to warn of the possibility of localized extinction of some species. As the disease spreads, researchers may be zeroing in on a link between warming waters and the rising starfish body count. (source)

[…]

The epidemic, which threatens to reshape the coastal food web and change the makeup of tide pools for years to come, appears to be driven by a previously unidentified virus, a team of more than a dozen researchers from Cornell University, UC Santa Cruz, the Monterey Bay Aquarium and other institutions reported Monday. (source)

Changing temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, driven by the natural cycle of gyres over decades, shifts wildlife populations, decimating the populations of species throughout the food chain, proving how fragile the balance of life in the ocean really is.

Recently, the collapse of the sardine population has created a crisis for fisheries and marine wildlife alike on the West Coast:

Commercial fishing for sardines off of Canada’s West Coast is worth an estimated $32 million – but now they are suddenly gone. Back in October, fisherman reported that they came back empty-handed without a single fish after 12 hours of trolling and some $1000 spent on fuel.

Sandy Mazza, for the Daily Breeze, reported a similar phenomenon in central California: “[T]he fickle sardines have been so abundant for so many years – sometimes holding court as the most plentiful fish in coastal waters – that it was a shock when he couldn’t find one of the shiny silver-blue coastal fish all summer, even though this isn’t the first time they’ve vanished.” [emphasis added]

[…]

“Is it El Nino? Pacific Decadal Oscillation? [La] Nina? Long-term climate change? More marine mammals eating sardines? Did they all go to Mexico or farther offshore? We don’t know. We’re pretty sure the overall population has declined. We manage them pretty conservatively because we don’t want to end up with another Cannery Row so, as the population declines, we curb fishing.” said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) official Kerry Griffin. (source)

According to a report in the Daily Mail, the worst events have wiped out 90% of animal populations, falling short of extinction, but creating a rupture in food chains and ecosystems.

And environmental factors are known to contribute, with pollution from chemicals dumped by factories clearly tied to at least 20% of the mass die off events of wildlife populations that have been investigated, and many die-offs implicated by a number of overlapping factors. The Daily Mail reported:

Mass die-offs of certain animals has increased in frequency every year for seven decades, according to a new study.

Researchers found that such events, which can kill more than 90 per cent of a population, are increasing among birds, fish and marine invertebrates.

The reasons for the die-offs are diverse, with effects tied to humans such as environmental contamination accounting for about a fifth of them.

Farm runoff from Big Agra introduces high levels of fertilizers and pesticides which create oxygen-starved dead zones which fish and aquatic live is killed off. Also present in agriculture waste are gender-bending chemicals like those found in Atrazine, used in staple crop production, and antibiotics and hormones, used in livestock production, which creates hazardous runoff for fish populations:

Livestock excrete natural hormones – estrogens and testosterones – as well as synthetic ones used to bolster their growth. Depending on concentrations and fish sensitivity, these hormones and hormone mimics might impair wild fish reproduction or skew their sex ratios. (source)

 Pharmaceutical contaminants are also to blame for changing the sex of fish and disrupting population numbers, while a study found that the chemicals in Prozac changed the behavior of marine life, and made shrimp many times more likely to “commit suicide” and swim towards the light where they became easy prey.

Fish farms also introduce a large volume of antibiotic and chemical pollution into oceans and waterways:

The close quarters where farmed fish are raised (combined with their unnatural diets) means disease occurs often and can spread quickly. On fish farms, which are basically “CAFOs of the sea,” antibiotics are dispersed into the water, and sometimes injected directly into the fish.

Unfortunately, farmed fish are often raised in pens in the ocean, which means not only that pathogens can spread like wildfire and contaminate any wild fish swimming past – but the antibiotics can also spread to wild fish (via aquaculture and wastewater runoff) – and that’s exactly what recent research revealed. (source)

Mass die-offs of fish on the Brazilian coastline have linked to pollution from the dumping of raw sewage and garbage.

In the last few days it was reported that a massive die-off of bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico was connected by researchers to BP’s Deep Water Horizon oil spill. Evidence was found in a third of the cases of lesions in the adrenal gland, an otherwise rare condition linked with petroleum exposure. More than a fifth of the dolphins also suffered bacterial pneumonia, causing deadly lung infection that is likewise rarely seen in dolphin populations.

You can read more from Mac Slavo at his site SHTFplan.com, where this article first appeared.

This article may be re-posted in full with attribution.

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Shocking Aerial Footage of the Amazon Forest in Peru

This aerial footage of the Amazon forest throughout the region of Marde de Dios, Peru, will likely leave you speechless. It shows the expansiveness and the devastation caused by deforestation and mining, much of which has occurred in this particular region since 2010. Please share and show your support for efforts such as Community Carbon Trees in Costa Rica that protect and plant trees in regions close to the equator. Sponsor a tree today.


 Waking Times

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Dire Drought initiates California's first mandatory water restrictions

Standing in a brown field that would normally be smothered in several feet of snow, Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday ordered cities and towns across California to cut water use by 25% as part of a sweeping set of mandatory drought restrictions, the first in state history.
The directive comes more than a year after Brown asked for a 20% voluntary cut in water use that most parts of the state have failed to attain, even as one of the most severe modern droughts drags into a fourth year. It also came on the day that water officials measured the lowest April 1 snowpack in more than 60 years of record-keeping in the Sierra Nevada.
Wearing hiking shoes and a windbreaker in an area that normally requires cross-country skis this time of year, Brown announced the executive order in a Sierra Nevada meadow that provided a dramatic illustration of the state's parched conditions.

“We're standing on dry grass,” Brown said. “We should be standing on five feet of snow.”
Emphasizing that the drought could persist, Brown said Californians must change their water habits. “It's a different world,” he said. “We have to act differently.”
The order focused on urban life even though agriculture accounts for roughly three quarters of Californians' water usage. Cities have to stop watering the median strips that run down the middle of roads. The state will partner with local agencies to remove 50 million square feet of grass — the equivalent of about 1,150 football fields — and replace it with drought-tolerant landscaping.

State agencies will create a temporary rebate program to encourage homeowners to replace water-guzzling appliances with high-efficiency ones. Golf courses, campuses and cemeteries must cut their water use. New developments will have to install drip or microspray systems if they irrigate with drinking water. Water agencies will discourage water waste with higher rates and fees.
The order aims to reduce the amount of water used statewide in urban areas in 2013 by 25%.
Some critics of Brown's order said it didn't do enough to address agricultural uses. Adam Scow, director of Food & Water Watch California, called the order disappointing.
“The governor must save our groundwater from depletion by directing the state water board to protect groundwater as a public resource,” Scow said in a statement.
Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board, said the measure isn't about “finger-pointing”…“It's about everybody having to step up in these tough times.”
The water board will release draft regulations in mid-April to implement the order. It plans to approve the regulations in early May.
Marcus said local agencies will receive targets for cutting water use based on how well they've done so far

Local agencies that have been slow to conserve since then will feel the order's effects most dramatically, Marcus said.
“You're rewarding the early adopters ... and you're saying to the laggers, ‘You have to make a change,'” she said.
Most of the burden of enforcement will fall on local agencies.
If they don't follow the governor's order, the state can fine them as much as $10,000 a day.

Many Southern California agencies are already taking steps called for in Brown's order. For instance, under a turf rebate program administered by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, spokesman Bob Muir said homeowners are planning to remove almost 89 million square feet of turf, the equivalent of more than 59,000 frontyards. It's unclear whether Brown's mandate for 50 million square feet of lawn replacement includes work already done by local agencies. Similarly, Los Angeles already has a tiered water-rate structure to encourage conservation.
Although Southern California water managers said it might be tough for some cities to meet the 25% target, they welcomed Brown's action.
“It's the right time. It's a proper directive,” said Rob Hunter, general manager of the Municipal Water District of Orange County.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti praised the executive order, noting that last year he called for a 20% cut in the city's water use by 2017.
In Long Beach, Water Department General Manager Kevin Wattier said the order would have the biggest effect on water districts that use much more water per capita than Long Beach and Los Angeles.
“The governor understands we don't have time to allow any voluntary measures to work,” said Mark Gold of UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. “This is such a growing crisis that mandatory conservation was absolutely necessary.”

Lester Snow, executive director of the California Water Foundation and former state secretary of natural resources, said even more restrictions may be necessary in the future, such as banning all outdoor water use. “We're probably going to need more action before we're through the summer,” he said.
Brown issued his order at Phillips Station, about 90 miles east of Sacramento, where state workers conducted a manual snow survey as part of statewide readings that revealed that the water content of the Sierra Nevada snowpack was only about 5% of the average for April 1. That is the lowest for the date in records going back to 1950.
The Sierra snowpack accounts for about 30% of the state's water supply, and although major reservoir storage is better than it was last year, there will be little snowmelt to replenish reservoirs this spring.
Nurit Katz, UCLA's Chief Sustainability Officer and co-chair of a UC system-wide water task force, said every campus has created a water action plan focused on reducing consumption. UCLA is installing artificial turf on its intramural field, retrofitting fixtures such as toilets and developing a smart water filtration system.
Combined with other efforts, the campus expects to save millions of gallons of water each year, she said.
Brown's order requires agricultural districts in depleted groundwater basins to share data on groundwater use with the state.
“The agricultural community is already being hit very hard,” Marcus said.
For the second year in a row, Central Valley growers without senior water rights are likely to get no supplies from the valley's big federal irrigation project. Last year farmers idled about 500,000 acres for lack of water, and this year they may be forced to leave even more cropland unplanted.
“Some people want to say, ‘What about the farmers?' And farmers want to say, ‘What about those people watering their lawns?'” Brown said. “We all have something to do, and we can all do a little better.”
LA Times

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