news20090912gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Money > Energy bills]
Plan for energy co-ops to cut fuel bills by 20%
Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent
The Guardian, Saturday 12 September 2009 Article history

Gas and electricity bills will be cut by up to 20% under a scheme that will also cut carbon emissions by encouraging an increase in environmentally friendly technology.

Ed Miliband, the climate change secretary, will today back the scheme, which is designed to answer climate change sceptics who say tackling global warming will mean higher energy prices.

Under the plan, to be launched in Edinburgh by the Co-operative party at its annual conference today, local residents will join schools, community organisations and businesses to form consumer energy co-ops. These would negotiate with wholesale energy groups to supply gas and electricity at between 10 and 20% less than the normal domestic price.

A modest step towards reducing emissions would occur at this first stage because the co-ops would install smart meters in members' homes.

A bigger step in cutting emissions would occur later when co-ops install environmentally friendly technology, including combined heat and power systems (CHP), heat pumps or biomass boilers. CHP is the process by which heat generated at power stations while creating energy supplies is captured and used to heat the homes of local people.

The co-op plan is closely modelled on a scheme in the coal-producing Belgian province of Limburg, where residents joined forces after fuel prices rose after liberalisation of the Belgian energy market in 2003. In all, 15,000 families each save an average of €250 (£218) a year in the scheme run by the ACW charity.

The Co-operative party is interested in the Limburg scheme because Belgium's energy market is similar to Britain's. The party says a series of pilot schemes in the UK have been successful. One of these involved the Reddish Vale Technology College in Stockport, the Co-operative movement's first trust school.

The consumer co-ops would fund their projects by raising capital from schemes such as the Emissions Reduction Target (Cert), which are designed to help environmentally friendly projects. They would also use their status as mutual societies to raise capital from the community, in the way building societies raised funds in the 1980s to compete with high street banks.

Michael Stephenson, the general secretary of the Co-operative party, said: "There is a false choice that we have to kill: that is you can't be green without it costing. People want to be environmentally sensitive, but they see it as punitive. The virtue of this scheme is that it says you can be environmentally sensitive, but save money. The key to reconciling those two objectives is you take a co-operative approach."

Miliband will say today: "Communities should be able to work together to generate clean energy in their own area. We're bringing in guaranteed feed-in rates so local wind or hydro power gets a cashback. We want communities to be able to work together to show their area can lead the way on climate change."


[Life & style > Food & drink]
Fat Duck's oyster supplier bites back
> John Wright: The water companies must clean up
> Timeline: The key dates in the Fat Duck food poisoning
James Sturcke and Peter Walker
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 September 2009 21.27 BST Article history

The family-run fishery that provided the oysters blamed for an outbreak of food poisoning at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck restaurant has blamed poor sewage treatment at a nearby plant for the contamination.

Graham Larkin, the operations manager at Colchester Oyster Fishery, which harvests 1.5 million wild gigas (rock) oysters a year from the river Colne, insisted it had been an isolated incident.

A report by the Health Protection Agency (HPA) into the poisoning of more than 500 diners at the Fat Duck, regularly named as one of the world's best restaurants, said the most likely cause was a norovirus introduced by oysters, although other ingredients such as langoustines could have played a role.

Larkin said: "The HPA inspectors have found traces of norovirus in our oysters, and in other produce at the restaurant which we did not supply. It happened in January and February when winter vomiting disease is quite common."

He claimed the company was a victim because there had been alleged contamination at a sewage treatment plant in Colchester. Anglian Water, which runs the plant, did not respond to calls last night.

Larkin said the fishery was seeking legal advice and also laid blame with the Environment Agency, which he said was supposed to monitor the sewage plant.

Colchester Oyster Fishery was founded by Christopher Kerrison, who still runs the firm on Mersea Island off the Essex coast. The oysters are dredged from the bed of the Colne estuary and brought ashore at the firm's processing plant. The oysters are filtered with clean running water for 48 hours to remove impurities before being packaged and sent to market.

The fishery, which employs 30 people, has supplied the Fat Duck for "many years" and never had a problem with its produce, Larkin said. It also supplies London's Le Gavroche and Gordon Ramsay's restaurant, as well as Billingsgate fish market.

Oysters are recognised as a risky food, most recently by Thursday's HPA report, where investigators found the Fat Duck norovirus outbreak "confirms the well-known risks that raw shellfish pose".

The Environment Agency said the government's shellfish water directive, which lays down water quality standards for oysters, mussels and other molluscs, were extremely strict. The waters around the Colne estuary were regularly tested for impurities and while sewage levels were monitored, the presence of the norovirus cannot be detected.

Recent tests showed that the water quality near the oyster beds was good but results for earlier this year were not immediately available, a spokeswoman said.

As with all rivers, the Colne sometimes had raw sewage pumped into it, she added: "Like all water companies, Anglian are permitted to make discharges a certain number of times, for example during storms, as the alternative is the system backing up into people's bathrooms."

This practice came to public prominence in August 2004 when almost 900,000 cubic metres of waste was discharged into the Thames in London after violent storms, killing thousands of fish.

Larkin – who is allergic to oysters – said the company had monthly tests carried out on water quality.

> John Wright: The water companies must clean up
> Timeline: The key dates in the Fat Duck food poisoning


[Environment > Mining]
White House action puts on hold dozens of mountaintop mining projects
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 September 2009 19.45 BST Article history

The Obama administration took its strongest action to date against highly destructive mining practice today, putting a hold on dozens of mountaintop removal projects in the Appalachian region.

The Environmental Protection Agency said it was ordering a review of 79 permits in West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky to mine for coal by blowing the tops of mountains to assess the impact on water quality.

Mountaintop removal involves dynamiting the tops of mountains - leaving mounds of debris in neighbour rivers and waterways - razing forests and cutting off hundreds of feet of rock to reach narrow seams of coal.

The EPA said it had continuing concerns about toxic debris from the mine sites, and the loss of hundreds of miles of streams, which were choked off by the rubble.

"The administration pledged earlier this year to improve review of mining projects that risked harming water quality. Release of this preliminary list is the first step in a process to assure that the environmental concerns raised by the 79 permit applications are addressed and that permits issued are protective of water quality and affected ecosystems," the EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, said in a statement.

The decision was welcomed by some environmental organisations as a key break by the Obama administration with the policies set by George Bush.

Appalachian Voices, a local activist coalition, said in a statement:

"By recommending these permits not be approved, the EPA and the Army Corps has demonstrated their intention to fulfill a promise to provide science-based oversight which will limit the devastating environmental impacts of mountaintop removal mining."

But environmental organisations are still pressing the Obama administration for an outright ban on mountaintop removal, which environmentalists say is the most destructive method of extracting coal.

Bush-era regulations had made it far easier for mining companies to win approval for mountaintop removal and to avoid regulatory control. The EPA, in Bush's eight-year term, did not oppose a single permit for mountaintop removal.

Jackson, in a recent interview, admitted the agency had grown "toothless".

The Obama administration signalled last June that it would take a tougher approach to enforcement. Earlier this week, the agency said it would halt West Virginia's biggest mining project, spread over 2,300 acres, because of concerns over dumping debris.

The agency now has two weeks to issue its final decision on the pending permits. Projects that do meet EPA environmental standards will move ahead.

news20090912gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[World news > Iraq]
Surge of seawater drives Iraqis from their homes in the south
Martin Chulov in Baghdad
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 September 2009 18.47 BST Article history

The already parched lowland farms of southern Iraq face a new disaster of encroaching salination as tidal waters from the Persian Gulf push further upstream than ever before, forcing families to abandon their homes.

Sea water from the Gulf is usually held back by fresh water flowing downstream from the Euphrates, which has maintained a delicate balance in the Shatt al-Arab waterway during previous droughts.

But the scale of Iraq's current water crisis is continuing to grow, with 2,000 residents of riverside villages reportedly abandoning their homes this week.

Iraq's latest ecological refugees join an estimated 3,000 others who left their land on the banks of the Shatt al-Arab in August after rising salt levels made irrigating crops and feeding animals impossible.

Prime minister Nouri al-Maliki and water minister Dr Abdul Latif Rashid travelled to Basra on Thursday to reassure increasingly worried residents that recent talks with Turkey would soon bring an end to the water shortage. Dr Rashid said Turkey, which controls the headwaters of the Euphrates, had released more water to Iraq during the past three to four days.

"We have people monitoring the levels and reporting every hour," he said. "And some water is on the way."

However, the extra water is yet to reach the southern provinces, including Basra and Nasireyah. Both desperately need at least a 20cm rise in the level of the Euphrates to feed water through electricity generating turbines that have stalled because of low volumes.

Iraq's dams are at about 10% capacity, Dr Rashid said today. Irrigation has all but ground to a halt throughout Iraq's already decimated bread basket of Diyyala and Anbar. Most villages live subsistently along the Shatt al-Arab and the vast marshlands to the north. The area's small export industry has ceased to exist.

Dr Rashid held tripartite talks with his Syrian and Turkish counterparts earlier this week and received guarantees that Ankara would allow more water to cross into Iraq. He said the agreement marked a small step for the Euphrates, which has been steadily falling in the past two years.


[World news >Vladimir Putin]
Vladimir Putin signals plan to reclaim old job as Russian president
Russia PM says he and Dmitry Medvedev would take joint decision over roles, raising prospect of Putin era continuing
Luke Harding and David Hearst in Moscow
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 September 2009 14.57 BST Article history

Vladimir Putin dropped the heaviest hint so far that he aims to return to his former post as president in 2012, a move that could see him still in the Kremlin in 2024 – aged 72. Speaking to a group of international scholars and journalists at his country residence, the Russian prime minister refused to quash rumours that he would return as president when Dmitry Medvedev finished his first term.

He said the process of deciding who would be president would follow the same pattern as in the run-up to the last election, when Putin effectively called all the shots and picked Medvedev as his successor. An election took place, but the result was a foregone conclusion.

"Was there any competition in 2007? No. Then we won't have this in 2012," Putin said. Smiling broadly, he added: "We will agree because we are people of one stamp. We will take all these things into account and then decide."

Putin even sought to use Britain as a defence of the Russian example of a ruling elite deciding over the head of the people who should lead the state.

"Look at Great Britain, when a friend of mine [Tony Blair] retired and automatically promoted Gordon Brown to the post of prime minister. Did the people of Great Britain participate in this? There was a change in leadership in the country and they just decided. Whereas when my term expired I supported Dmitry Medvedev because I thought he was the best person to be leader, and I was right."

Putin's comments to the annual session of the Valdai Club, a group of foreign and Russian experts, raise the prospect that his era, which began in 2000, could extend for at least another decade. Under Russia's new constitution the next president is entitled to stay in power for two consecutive six-year terms.

Medvedev has been struggling hard to emerge from Putin's shadow and the prime minister's latest comments will not help his efforts to put an individual stamp on his term of office. His power remains largely declarative and on Thursday he delivered a withering assessment of the state of his country, while avoiding any direct reference to Putin.

The country faced vast social challenges, Medvedev said, including endemic corruption, a feeble civil society, terrorism, alcoholism and smoking. It was also in the grip of a poverty-fuelled insurgency across its North Caucasus.

"An ineffective economy, a semi-Soviet social sphere, a weak democracy, negative demographic trends and an unstable Caucasus. These are very big problems even for a state like Russia," Medvedev, who took over as president in May 2008, wrote in his official blog.

The president also conceded that Russia's vertically controlled political system, in which all opposition parties have been squeezed out, was not ideal. The country's democracy should be "open, flexible and complex", he wrote. There should also be "competitive elections".

Commentators were underwhelmed by Medvedev's attempts to shape the debate. Most Russians believe that Putin still runs the country.

Although foreign policy is supposed to be the president's preserve, Putin talked widely about US attempts to press the so-called reset button to establish better relations with Russia and Iran.

Putin said Obama's intentions were good. " It gives me modest optimism," he said of their meeting in Moscow in July. However he refused to say what Russia would give Obama, if, as expected the US announces plans to shelve the instalment of missile interceptors in Poland and a high powered radar system in the Czech Republic, as part of missile defence against Iran.

Putin met the group at his dacha in Novo-Ogaryovo, among pine and birch forests just outside Moscow. Unlike on previous occasions, he made no attempt to appear as Russia's strongman. Instead he cracked jokes with journalists, saying at one point that Obama had struck him as "cute".

On Iran, Putin was less hard line than the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, saying that while Iran had the right to develop a civil nuclear energy programme, it had to understand how explosive the attempt to get a nuclear bomb would be to the Middle East as a whole. "Iran should exercise responsibility and remove concern on the part of Israel and the international community as a whole," Putin said.

This week Russia had been embarrassed by revelations in the Israeli press that the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, flew secretly to Moscow on Monday. The visit came after unconfirmed reports that parts of the Russian S300 anti-aircraft system had been found on a ship bound for Iran. Israel has pressed Moscow not to go ahead with the sale of the system to Iran, for fear that it could make endanger Israeli aircraft striking Iran's nuclear installations

news20090912sa1

[Environment] from [scientificamerican.com]

[Greenwire > Environment]
September 11, 2009
Is Mountaintop Removal Mining a Threat to Watersheds?
The EPA will review again whether mountaintop removal mining poses a threat to mountain watersheds and streams
By Eric Bontrager

U.S. EPA is conducting further environmental analysis on 79 pending permits for mountaintop mining, the agency announced today.

The agency said the permits issued by the Army Corps of Engineers, identified in a preliminary list released today, could all potentially pose a threat to the mountain watersheds and streams, warranting further review under the Clean Water Act.

"Release of this preliminary list is the first step in a process to assure that the environmental concerns raised by the 79 permit applications are addressed and that permits issued are protective of water quality and affected ecosystems," EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a statement.

EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers will work together in evaluating the permits to ensure Clean Water Act compliance, EPA says in a statement.

"We look forward to working closely with the Army Corps of Engineers, with the involvement of the mining companies, to achieve a resolution of EPA's concerns that avoids harmful environmental impacts and meets our energy and economic needs," the statement says.

The identified permits span four states -- Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia -- where surface coal mining is widespread but has been repeatedly criticized for its environmental impacts.

Over the next two weeks, EPA will conduct additional analysis of the listed projects, consulting with its regional offices about which permits raise "substantial environmental concerns" and warrant further review. Permits that remain on the list after the analysis will be addressed during a 60-day review process that will begin when the corps informs EPA that a particular permit is ready for review.

This is the second time EPA has put the brakes on permits for mountaintop mining. In March, EPA placed six permits that had been issued by the Army Corps on hold, requesting that the agency re-examine the effects those permitted operations could have on mountain waterways and air quality.

While the move raised hopes with mountaintop opponents who believed the Obama administration's actions would mean an end to the practice, those hopes were diminished two months later when EPA allowed 42 other permits for Appalachian mining operations to move forward.

The next month, the administration announced it would be taking a closer look at its environmental effects and ways to curtail mountaintop extraction.

As part of that initiative, EPA identified 108 pending corps permits for mountaintop mining that it had concerns with and would review to determine whether they should be revised to minimize their environmental impacts.

The remaining 29 permits were dropped from the list for various reasons since EPA began its review in June, the agency explained, including requests from applicants that their permits be withdrawn.

Opponents of the practice said today that they are cautiously optimistic about today's announcement, noting that while the administration has not pledged to end mountaintop mining, it is taking steps to minimize its environmental impacts.

"By recommending these permits not be approved, the EPA and the Army Corps has demonstrated their intention to fulfill a promise to provide science-based oversight, which will limit the devastating environmental impacts of mountaintop removal mining," said Willa Mays, executive director for Appalachian Voices.

Proponents of the practice, however, said today's announcement further demonstrates EPA's continued insistence to review permits that are supposed to be the responsibility of the Army Corps, jeopardizing the livelihoods of rural communities that depend on coal mining to feed their economies.

"No one outside of EPA -- not even the corps -- knows what criteria EPA has used to now find these 79 permits insufficient," National Mining Association Hal Quinn said in a statement. "Permit applicants do not know what conditions outside the bounds of the existing regulations they must meet to obtain a permit."


[Extreme Tech > Technology]
September 11, 2009
Underwater Rover Searches the Ocean Floor for Signs of Climate Change
Scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute sent an aquatic robot on a test run deep below the Pacific Ocean this summer
By Larry Greenemeier

While the Spirit and Opportunity rovers this summer soldiered on after more than five years on Mars (despite a number of glitches), an intrepid bot called the benthic rover created by scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) showed its chops as a remote research vehicle by spending most of July traveling over the Pacific Ocean floor about 40 kilometers off the California coast, some 900 meters below sea level.

Robotic voyagers today give scientists the ability to continuously study remote places and phenomena previously available only in snapshots. MBARI's rover afforded researchers a close-up view of life on the deep seafloor, collecting information they're hoping will help document the effects of climate change on marine life as the oceans warm. The aquatic roamer took 18 different measurements (each one taking about a day to complete) of how much oxygen is being consumed by the community of organisms living in the ocean floor's sediment. From there, scientists hope to calculate how much food the creatures are consuming.

Although researchers are still analyzing the oxygen figures, MBARI marine biologist Ken Smith says the fact that the scientists now have so much data to work with proves the rover performed well.

Smith has been developing the benthic rover with MBARI project engineer Alana Sherman over the past four years. They designed it to creep slowly across the seabed at a rate of one meter per minute, stopping every three to five meters to examine the sediment and organisms in its path. One of the researchers' goals is to determine how deep-sea animals find enough particles of organic detritus, known as "marine snow," for sustenance in the absence of plant life.

The rover uses probes to record oxygen levels in the underwater sediment as well as acoustic scanners to sense the presence of worms and other animals as deep as 10 centimeters into the mud.

The researchers shielded the rover's electronics and batteries inside titanium pressure spheres so the vehicle could withstand 420 kilograms per square meter of water pressure. Another important feature are the large yellow blocks of buoyant foam attached to the vehicle that help support much of its 1,400-kilogram weight (making it weigh only 45 kilograms underwater) so that its tractorlike treads do not get bogged down on the seafloor.

To avoid the problem of loose sediment affecting the rover's measuring equipment, the researchers programmed the device to sense the direction of the prevailing current, and move only in an up-current direction, so that any stirred-up mud and particles would be carried away from the front of the vehicle.

During its July mission, the rover was tethered via a long cable to the Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS) Ocean Observatory Test Bed. This provided the vehicle with power and a communications link, although the goal is to make the rover battery-operated and autonomous by year-end. "We used a cable this time so we could troubleshoot any problems," Smith says.

Once the rover is autonomous, it will store data for six months on its own. "You'll throw it off the ship, and then you send an acoustic signal demanding it to drop its weights when you want to retrieve it," Smith says. The researchers are planning at some point to outfit the rover with an acoustic modem so it can communicate information in real-time with buoys, which can then relay messages to researchers on board ships or onshore.

The rover's next mission will be to continue measuring sediment samples at its underwater stomping ground in Monterey Bay for two and a half months this fall. In 2010 the researchers plan to increase the stakes, sending their creation on a six-month crawl of the ocean floor 220 kilometers off the central California coast at a depth of about 4,000 meters (its depth limit is 6,000 meters). Success in these endeavors could see the rover sent to study the seabed near Antarctica or hooked up to a deep-water observatory several hundred kilometers off the coast of Washington State.

news20090912sa2

[Environment] from [scientificamerican.com]

[Environment > Cancer]
September 11, 2009
Hispanics Face Higher Cancer Risk from Breathing Household Chemicals
Hispanics face a cancer risk from air pollutants as much as five times the rate of others living in the same cities thanks to inexpensive deodorizers and moth repellents
By Janet Wilson and Environmental Health News

Elena Rios still remembers going into the bathroom as a child and smelling a pungent odor from the big, round air freshener hanging on the back of the toilet.

“I’m Mexican American, I grew up in Los Angeles, and I can tell you that particular product was in all the stores in the neighborhood, at low cost,” said Rios, a doctor who currently heads the National Hispanic Medical Assn.

Now a new study concludes that heavy use of these products could be jeopardizing the health of consumers, particularly Hispanics, across the country.

Among residents tested in parts of Houston, Los Angeles, and Elizabeth, NJ, Hispanics faced a cancer risk from air pollutants as much as five times the rate of non-Hispanic whites. But it wasn’t outdoor air causing the greatest risk; it was something much closer to home: A chemical, called p-dichlorobenzene, found in many inexpensive toilet deodorizers and moth repellents in bathrooms and closets.

Inside Houston homes with the highest levels of the chemical, 16 out of every 1,000 Hispanic residents were at risk of cancer. In the New Jersey city, six out of every 1,000 were at risk, and in Los Angeles, four out of every 1,000.

Experts say such a high cancer danger from a single source is highly unusual. Federal guidelines usually consider ten cancers per million people an “acceptable” risk; in some of the Hispanic households, the cancer risk is about 1,000-fold higher.

“The risk numbers we’re talking about for that group are comparable to or greater than what we see for radon, which has been identified as the most dangerous hazard in homes in the country by far,” said Richard Corsi, a professor specializing in indoor air pollution at the University of Texas at Austin. He was one of the authors of the study, which was published online in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives last month.

Many of the products contain 100 percent p-dichlorobenzene packaged in large, white tablets or blocks that can be hung inside the back of toilets or placed in men’s urinals. The chemical also is used in some mothballs, and in moth-repellent crystals packaged in miniature hangers. The products are designed to release the substance into the air in confined spaces, meaning it sticks to clothes and skin and is repeatedly inhaled.

Corsi and the other authors said their findings were alarming, particularly because Hispanics are the fastest growing population in the United States. “Hispanic” was a designation researchers assigned to people who spoke Spanish as their first language and those who identified themselves as Hispanic.

The researchers are not sure why Hispanics had sharply higher exposure. But they noted that the products cost less than other deodorizers, and that they may have been more readily available in countries from which they emigrated.

Rios, from the Hispanic medical association in Washington, D.C., said marketers have targeted generations of Latino Americans with the cheap air fresheners.

“It’s because of the stores in the neighborhood, and the buying patterns for low income neighborhoods, where you have limited opportunities for purchasing products,” she said.

Other populations, such as people in colder climates who keep windows closed or use more mothballs in coat closets, also might be at higher risk. Some mothballs contain p-dichlorobenzene while others are made of another chemical, naphthalene.

“Basically if Caucasians were using more of these products, I would expect their exposures and risks would be just as high,” Corsi said.

The authors cautioned that the study was based on only a couple hundred volunteers, which is not statistically representative of the country. But they, along with researchers not involved with the study, said the findings are important because they were so striking.

"These are just three locations in three parts of the country," said Tracey Woodruff, associate director of reproductive health and the environment at University of California, San Francisco. "Nonetheless, they have actual monitoring data, which to me is very powerful.”

The air pollutants measured in the homes are “at a level that would be of concern. High concern,” said Woodruff, who specializes in research of hazardous air pollutants.

The authors of the new report recommended that products containing p-dichlorobenzene be removed from homes. There are plenty of other air fresheners available, they said, although they cost more.

“There’s a very simple answer…don’t let people purchase these products anymore,” said Corsi. “It doesn’t take a sophisticated air pollution control system to solve this problem.”

But regulating the products isn’t simple: They come under the authority of various federal and state agencies.

Air fresheners are regulated by the Consumer Products Safety Commission. Officials from the commission did not return calls seeking comment about the products.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulates moth repellants because they are considered pesticides. The agency has approved use of the chemical, although it requires the products to bear warnings such as "avoid breathing vapors" because they can irritate eyes and nasal passages and cause liver problems.

Regulators from various agencies disagree about the level of human threat that these products pose. In animal tests, p-dichlorobenzene causes kidney and liver tumors.

The EPA and the Dept. of Health and Human Services decided years ago that p-dichlorobenzene was a hazardous air pollutant and possible human carcinogen. As a result, the EPA regulates its industrial emissions. But the arm of EPA that approves pesticides concluded in 2007 that it was “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.” A full assessment is now being conducted, an agency spokeswoman said.

Maria Morandi, the study’s principal investigator, explained that p-dichlorobenzene is a milder carcinogen than other substances, meaning it could take years of high-level exposure to develop cancer. The EPA only looked at low levels of exposure from the products, while the new data show some Hispanics are breathing extremely high levels, said Morandi, a recently retired University of Texas at Houston assistant professor of environmental sciences and occupational health.

California has banned bathroom products containing p-dichlorobenzene since 2006. The city of Seattle, New York State’s corrections department, and New York City’s fire department also have banned them. Urinal blocks traditionally have been used in some prisons and firehouses.

“It’s nasty stuff,” said Dmitri Stanich, a spokesman for the California Air Resources Board, which regulates air pollutants. “We banned it as an air freshener because it’s carcinogenic. Our position is it’s not safe.”

However, mothballs and miniature hangers loaded with the substance are still on sale in California because they come under the control of a separate state agency.

The California Dept. of Pesticide Regulation this year began to assess the potential hazards of the moth products. “We are evaluating whether additional restrictions are necessary,” said Mary-Ann Warmerdam, the department’s director.

Willert Home Products, a leading manufacturer of home air freshener and closet products, said during California’s rulemaking that the levels people were exposed to were too low to cause harm, and that there was no evidence of human cancer. Calls to the company seeking comment on the new study were not returned.

In the study, 243 people wore personal monitors that measured their exposure to 12 major pollutants over 48-hour stretches. The results were based not on actual cancers, but on measured levels of the chemical, which were then used to calculate the estimated cancer risk. A larger study is being conducted.

Hispanic residents in Elizabeth and Houston had higher exposures than those in Los Angeles, probably because there were also greater exchanges of indoor and outdoor air in California. In the Los Angeles area, risk levels from the chemical were about equal for all populations, but still higher than federally accepted guidelines. The testing was done from 1999 to 2002, years before California’s partial ban was enacted.

Hispanics in the study also were exposed to higher levels of formaldehyde, probably from car upholstery and particle board used in some home construction.

And Latina women had higher exposure to chloroform, probably as a byproduct of cleaning with chlorine. But by far the highest levels of exposure were from p-dichlorobenzene.

The researchers said their findings show that consumers should be wary of household chemicals because the risk of inhaling them can be more dangerous than breathing the polluted air outside.

Rios said she was glad that scientists were studying Hispanics’ exposure to chemicals in consumer products. “Nobody realized the dangers about pesticides and migrant workers for a long time either,” she said.

This article originally ran at Environmental Health News, a news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.

news2009092nn1

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 11 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.906
News
Atomic agency rescues 'dirty bomb' material
Radioactive cobalt cleared from Lebanese lab.
By Paula Gould

{Recovering 'lost' radioactive sources can reduce the risk that they will fall into terrorists' hands.Getty}

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repatriated dozens of Russian-made, highly radioactive sources that had been languishing unused in a Lebanese research institute for more than a decade.

The effort forms part of a wider IAEA initiative to secure radioactive materials used in scientific research, medicine and industry, which could potentially be used by terrorists to make a so-called 'dirty bomb'.

IAEA officials identified possible security issues with the radioactive material at an unspecified agricultural institute in Lebanon in 2006. They were concerned to find that a cobalt-60 irradiator, originally used for a biological pest control project, had been lying dormant since 1996. The sealed unit still contained 36 individual sources with a combined activity of 3,500 Curies, making it the most powerful source of radioactivity in Lebanon.

The irradiator had previously been used to sterilize male Mediterranean fruit flies or medfly (Ceratitis capitata), with a view to controlling the medfly population and preventing crop damage by egg-laying females. But after the project ended, all the staff members who knew how to look after the radioactive equipment subsequently left the institute, leaving the cobalt-60 sources potentially insecure.

{“It's a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle and this is at best one piece.”
Matthew Bunn
Harvard University}

The sources were fully shielded, so there was no risk to research staff entering the room where the irradiator was stored. "We were worried about the risk of theft, either for the value of the irradiator or particularly for malicious purposes," said Robin Heard, an IAEA radioactive source specialist who oversaw the mission. If the sources had been removed from the container, direct exposure to the radioactive material could have killed someone within minutes.

Source of worry

Plans to repatriate the radioactive material were initially delayed, owing to general political instability in the region, and in particular Israel's bombing of Lebanon's airport, which prevented outgoing flights. The sources were finally moved to a secure storage facility in Russia on 30 August.

"This is a big enough set of sources to be worrisome were it to fall into terrorists' hands," says Matthew Bunn, a non-proliferation expert at Harvard University. "Lebanon is certainly a country with some fairly substantial terrorist activity."

The IAEA's repatriation mission in Lebanon was a piece of "good international housekeeping", adds John Simpson, an expert on nuclear non-proliferation at the University of Southampton's Mountbatten Centre for International Studies, the United Kingdom. "It is clearly extremely sensible that the IAEA should try to get all states to account for all radioactive sources that are within their territories."

While this operation was a success, it merely scratches the surface of a global problem, says Bunn: "It's a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle and this is at best one piece."

The IAEA has identified more radioactive material that it would like to remove from Lebanon, although the location and activities of these sources is not being made public. The cost of the removal programme has been met by the European Union.

IAEA officials are also working in Africa and former Soviet Union satellite states to improve the security of radioactive materials. In the Ukraine, for example, a centralized storage facility is planned to house used radioactive sources from across the country. Construction of the facility within the Chernobyl exclusion zone is expected to begin later this year. The UK government has pledged £2.1 million from its Global Threat Reduction Programme towards the scheme.


[naturenews]
Published online 11 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.902
News
Publication bias continues despite clinical-trial registration
Fewer than half of registered trials publish their results.
By Elie Dolgin

{Selective publication of clinical trial data is still skewing the literature.
Getty}

Selective publication of data from clinical trials is still going on, despite the efforts of a US governmental repository to prevent it, say two new studies. Fewer than half of published trials are adequately registered, and, on the other hand, fewer than half of registered trials are ever published in peer-reviewed journals.

The online, publicly available registry ClinicalTrials.gov was established in 2000 by the US National Institutes of Health to address the problem that sponsors of drug trials often fail to publicly document studies with negative results.

Since then, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors has instructed researchers to deposit data in such registries as a precondition for publication. And the US Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 mandates that clinical trials of FDA-regulated products must be registered at ClinicalTrials.gov.

Nonetheless, there were still clear gaps in the system, so two research teams set out to identify the registry's shortcomings.

Moving goalposts

In the first study, a team led by Philippe Ravaud, an epidemiologist at Paris Diderot University, reviewed 323 studies relating to three medical areas — cardiology, rheumatology and gastroenterology — published in high-impact journals last year. The team found that just 46% of the trials had been correctly registered with clearly stated goals before publication, they report in the Journal of the American Medical Association¹.

{“It's not enough just to conduct your research: you have to disseminate your findings.”
Joseph Ross
Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York}

Even among the articles that were properly registered, nearly 1 in 3 studies switched the stated goals in the final publication, say Ravaud's team.

The study "exposes the apparent failure of the editorial process to pick up on [authors changing the stated aims of clinical trials]", says Alastair Wood, a clinical pharmacologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and the managing director of Symphony Capital, a private-equity company that invests in the biopharmaceutical sector. He proposes that journals should create an automated system to send ClinicalTrials.gov reports to reviewers along with the authors' manuscripts to allow for easier scrutiny during the peer-review process.

However, many manuscripts don't even acknowledge their linked records on the registry, according to the second study, published in PLoS Medicine² by Joseph Ross, a health policy researcher at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and his colleagues.

Missing trials

Ross's team came at the issue of publication bias from a different angle than Ravaud and his coauthors. They started with the entries on ClinicalTrials.gov and asked how many trials were eventually published in the scientific literature. The researchers analysed 677 trials at phases II–IV completed before 2006 and found that only 46% had been published. Of those, fewer than a third had cited their ClinicalTrials.gov record of the trial.

Studies primarily sponsored by industry had the worst publication record, with only 40% appearing in medical journals, and NIH-sponsored trials were not much better, at 47%.

"It's not enough just to conduct your research: you have to disseminate your findings," says Ross. "We have a ways to go before we can truly convince ourselves that the medical literature is comprehensive."

Deborah Zarin, director of ClinicalTrials.gov, finds a silver lining in the two reports. "Registration alone cannot improve the quality of research," she says. "It can only allow it to be systematically examined and monitored." In that way, the two studies show that registry is succeeding at pinpointing the deficiencies in trial reporting.

Ravaud agrees, noting: "Without registries, such a study would be impossible to do."

Ida Sim, a medical informatician at the University of California, San Francisco, notes that ClinicalTrials.gov was never intended to completely solve the publication bias problem. Rather, it was established simply to let people know that a particular trial had taken place.

"Now comes the more mundane part," Sim says. "Once we know that a study exists we have to focus on full reporting." She says that researchers should be compelled to deposit the results of clinical trials in an online database, but not necessarily in traditional journals.

Zarin also points out that the 2007 FDA regulations will phase in additional reporting of summary results to ClinicalTrials.gov. "These studies may provide a baseline against which we could judge the impact of [the FDA rules] in the future," she says.

References
1. Mathieu, S. , Boutron, I. , Moher, D. , Altman, D. G. & Ravaud, P. J. Am. Med. Assoc. 302, 977– 984 (2009).
2. Ross, J. S. , Mulvey, G. K. , Hines, E. M. , Nissen, S. E. & Krumholz, H. M. PLoS Med. 6, e1000144 (2009).

news20090912nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 11 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.905
News: Q&A
France unveils carbon tax
Nature talks to climatologist Jean Jouzel about the plans.
By Declan Butler

France is set to become the first major European economy to implement a carbon tax — a levy on activities that emit substantial amounts of carbon dioxide.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, announced on 10 September that the tax would come into effect at the start of 2010. The tax draws largely on recommendations made on 28 July by an expert panel commissioned by the government, and chaired by the former Socialist prime minister, Michel Rocard.

Nature discussed the tax with Jean Jouzel, a member of the Rocard panel, director of the Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute near Versailles, and also the French representative on the executive of the International Panel on Climate Change.

The French carbon tax will be levied at a rate of €17 (US$25) per tonne of CO2 — the current market price. Is that enough to change people's carbon-emitting habits?

What's most important is that a carbon tax of some sort is going to be introduced. Starting at €32 per tonne, as our report recommended, would have been more courageous. The economists on the panel considered that €40 was the minimum for the carbon tax to be effective in changing consumer behaviour, so €32 was itself already a compromise. It's true that the plan is to phase in higher carbon prices over time, but Sarkozy failed to give further details. In the longer term, by around 2020, we need to reach a price of €100–€200 per tonne.

The Rocard panel called for electricity to be taxed, along with transportation fuel, coal and gas. Sarkozy has left electricity out of his plan, on the grounds that most of France's electricity comes from nuclear power and hydroelectric sources. Is that a problem?

It's true that most electricity in France comes from carbon-free generation. But 10% still comes from fossil-fuel plants, which are also called upon to alleviate peak loads. The panel argued that electricity should be included because the question goes beyond carbon — it's also about encouraging a culture of lower consumption of energy, to spur greater energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies.

The tax saw strong public support during a national consultation on the environment in 2007. Why has there been such a negative reaction to the tax over the past few weeks?

The government moved too slowly. If the tax had been implemented immediately after the consultation, before the financial crisis, it would have sailed through. This slowness — typically French — damaged the momentum.

There were also many errors in communication this summer. The tax was always intended to be fiscally neutral, so that all the tax collected would be repaid to taxpayers via reductions in income tax, or in the form of a 'green cheque'. But it was widely perceived as being a new tax burden, because it's fiscal neutrality had not been well explained.

Sarkozy has also taken on board our recommendations that the amount of offsets to people should be adjusted to take into account the size of households, and whether people live in urban areas, or in rural areas, where they have to use a car more often.

How will the carbon tax affect companies?

Heavy industry, which is already part of the EU's cap-and-trade emissions scheme, will not be affected. Small- and medium-sized companies will pay the tax, and unlike the public they will not be reimbursed, as the government considers that recent cuts in business taxes already provide a sufficient offset.

The tax will eventually need to be modulated to take into account sectors that depend heavily on energy such as fishing, agriculture and transport. The question will be in striking a balance between not unfairly damaging the competitiveness of certain sectors, and yet still providing incentives for them to modify their behaviour. Many companies I've spoken with are very well aware of green opportunities, and their potential for creating jobs.

Will this mean that certain sectors are at a disadvantage compared with competitors in other countries? Although Sarkozy stopped short of announcing firm measures, he suggested that a carbon tax could also be levied on imports.

Many French companies may find themselves at a disadvantage in certain sectors. But taxing carbon imports is not easy because of World Trade Organization rules. Ideally, Europe as a whole would take forward a carbon tax, but not all countries are agreed on this, and Germany and the United Kingdom are completely opposed. A carbon tax at the European level would be useful and totally justified. Europe needs to get its act together on this.

The EU aims to reduce its carbon emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020, and France by 75% by 2050. How realistic are these targets?

The targets set for 2020 are completely attainable. The extra effort needed to reach the 2050 targets will be much more difficult. The warming of the planet is inevitable, and it's now we have to act. We need to stabilise greenhouse-gas emissions between now and 2020, so the next couple of years are critical at the international level. Let's see what happens at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.

news20090912bcc1

[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]

[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 03:24 GMT, Saturday, 12 September 2009 04:24 UK
US ready for N Korea direct talks
The US says it would hold direct talks with North Korea to persuade it to return to stalled multilateral talks on ending its nuclear programme.

{North Korea insists it has a right to nuclear weapons }

A spokesman for the US state department said that there had been no decision on when such talks might take place.

Philip Crowley insisted the move was not a policy shift and talks would take place within "the six-party process".

North Korea pulled out of multilateral talks in April after international criticism following a rocket launch.

"It's a bi-lateral discussion that (is) hopefully...within the six-party context, and it's designed to convince North Korea to come back to the six-party process and to take affirmative steps towards de-nuclearisation," Mr Crowley said from Washington.

He denied that accepting North Korea's offer of bi-lateral talks was a policy shift but called it a "short-term" measure to try and bring the reclusive state back to talks.

The BBC's John Sudworth, in South Korean capital, Seoul, says the decision does appear to be a tactical shift - suggesting that the US is now prepared to meet directly with the North before getting the commitment it had sought to the broader multilateral process.

Earlier this week, the US special envoy on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, met in Asia with officials from Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo to discuss the talks.

Military threat

A senior state department official, speaking anonymously, told reporters that it would probably be Mr Bosworth who would meet with the North Koreans, according to Agence France Presse.

{ NUCLEAR CRISIS
Oct 2006 - North Korea conducts an underground nuclear test
Feb 2007 - North Korea agrees to close its main nuclear reactor in exchange for fuel aid
June 2007 - North Korea shuts its main Yongbyon reactor
June 2008 - North Korea makes its long-awaited declaration of nuclear assets
Oct 2008 - The US removes North Korea from its list of countries which sponsor terrorism
Dec 2008 - Pyongyang slows work to dismantle its nuclear programme after a US decision to suspend energy aid
Jan 2009 - The North says it is scrapping all military and political deals with the South, accusing it of "hostile intent"
April 2009 - Pyongyang launches a rocket carrying what it says is a communications satellite
25 May 2009 - North Korea conducts a second nuclear test}

He said it was unlikely the meeting would take place before the United Nations General Assembly meeting due to be held towards the end of the month in New York.

According to Reuters, the US has drafted a UN Security Council resolution calling on all countries with atomic weapons to get rid of them.

Diplomats suggest that the text could also refer to North Korea, which withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003, subsequently testing two nuclear devices.

The text, Washington hopes, could be carried during a special council session led by US President Barack Obama. In September, the US is holding the rotating presidency of the Security Council.

In September 2005, North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear programmes in exchange for aid in a deal decided between the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the US, beginning a process known as the six-party talks.

But since then, the talks have stalled over the failure of Pyongyang to verify the shutdown of the Yongbyon nuclear plant.

In May this year, the North said it had staged a second "successful" underground nuclear test, saying it was more powerful than a test carried out in October 2006.

The North says that it remains under military threat from its historic rival, South Korea, and South Korea's allies, primarily the US.


[Americas]
Page last updated at 03:48 GMT, Saturday, 12 September 2009 04:48 UK
Venezuela to get Russian missiles
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has announced that the country will soon take delivery of Russian missiles with a range of 300km (185 miles).

{Chavez included Russia on his recent tour and met Vladimir Putin }

Returning from a 10-day tour of Africa, Asia and Europe, including Russia, Mr Chavez is also planning to buy Russian T-72 and T-90.

"Soon some little rockets are going to be arriving... and they don't fail," he announced at the presidential palace.

But he denied they would be used for offensive purposes.

"We are not going to attack anybody, these are just defence tools, because we are going to defend our country from any threat, wherever it may come from," the president said.

{Russian warships took part in exercises last November}

Venezuela is involved in a long-running diplomatic stand-off with neighbouring Colombia, over the latter's plans to allow US troops greater access to its military bases.

Colombia says the US forces will help in the war against drugs and left-wing guerrillas and will not destabilise the region.

Mr Chavez, a fierce opponent of US foreign policy, did not say how many missiles he had ordered.

Russia has been strengthening its ties with several Latin American countries, including Venezuela.

The two countries held joint naval exercises in Venezuelan waters last November.


[Entertainment]
Page last updated at 03:51 GMT, Saturday, 12 September 2009 04:51 UK
Warhol art collection is stolen
Police in Los Angeles say a multi-million dollar Andy Warhol art collection has been stolen from a private home in the city.

{The paintings depict a series of famous athletes}

Among the missing works are 10 pieces created by Warhol in the late 1970s depicting famous athletes, including Muhammad Ali and OJ Simpson.

They were taken from the house of businessman Richard Weisman. A portrait of Mr Weisman was also stolen.

A $1m reward has been offered for information leading to their recovery.

The silkscreen paintings, commissioned by Mr Weisman, are valued at several million dollars.

Police said that the paintings - each one 40 inches (101 cm) square - had been taken on the 2 or 3 September.

{STOLEN WARHOLS
Muhammad Ali
OJ Simpson
Chris Evert
Tom Seaver
Jack Nicklaus
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Pele
Willie Shoemaker
Dorothy Hamill
Rod Gilbert}

Their disappearance was discovered by a domestic employee, who found the dining room walls bare and alerted the police.

Among the sports stars depicted in the series of paintings were tennis champion Chris Evert, Los Angeles Lakers basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Olympic skater Dorothy Hamill.

Though the house was locked up at the time of the theft, Los Angeles police said the rest of the property had remained untouched and there was no sign of forced entry.

"This was a very clean crime," Detective Mark Sommer said. "[The home] wasn't ransacked."

He added that the Warhol collection of sports personalities seemed to have been specifically targeted for the theft as other artwork, including pieces by Warhol, had not been taken.

"For some reason they had an interest in this collection," he said.

Mr Weisman described the theft of the works as "a profoundly personal loss to me and my family".

Andy Warhol, who died in 1987, became internationally famous in the 1960s for his iconic image of a Campbell's soup can and the social gatherings at his New York studio, "The Factory".

news20090912bbc2

[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]

[Science & Environment]
Page last updated at 04:04 GMT, Saturday, 12 September 2009 05:04 UK
US space shuttle returns to Earth
Nasa's space shuttle Discovery has landed at the Edwards air force base in California.

Space shuttle Discovery lands at Edwards AFB

Plans to land at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida were postponed due to bad weather.

The shuttle missed two landing slots on Thursday, before landing at 1753 PDT on Friday (0053GMT Saturday).

The shuttle had been on a supply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) with seven astronauts on board.

"We're very happy to be back on land here in California," mission commander Rick Sturckow said. "It was a great mission."

Nasa tries to avoid landings in California, because the shuttle must then be transported back to Florida, which takes more than a week and costs $1.7m.

Three spacewalks

Discovery took a furnace and freezer up to the station for use in science experiments.

It also delivered a new sleeping compartment, an air purification system and a treadmill to help maintain astronauts' health.

In addition, Discovery dropped off US astronaut Nicole Stott for a three-month stay on the platform, picking up colleague Tim Kopra for the ride home. Kopra has been living on the ISS for the past 44 days.

Three spacewalks were conducted during the mission. The exterior work included the replacement of an exhausted ammonia tank. Ammonia is used in the station's cooling system.

{The job of building the space station is nearly done}

Cabling was also laid in readiness for the arrival early next year of another module. This new "room" will have a large window attached to it. The Cupola, as it is known, is expected to give crewmembers the perfect vantage point from which to control future robotic operations on the outside of the ISS.

The US space agency plans six further shuttle flights to the ISS before retiring its re-useable spaceship fleet at the end of next year or early in 2011.

Atlantis is the next orbiter to launch. Its mission, set for November, will deliver important spares.