Justin Gallivan and his team programmed a type of E. coli bacteria to seek out atrazine in a petri dish, and destroy it, but right now the bacteria is too weak to survive in the wild.
(Photo courtesy of the National Institutes of Health)
Scientists have engineered bacteria to seek out and destroy a chemical that pollutes drinking water. Rebecca Williams has more:
Transcript
Scientists have engineered bacteria to seek out and destroy a chemical that pollutes drinking water. Rebecca Williams has more:
Atrazine is a pesticide used on corn, sorghum and sugar cane. It’s one of the most common chemicals polluting water supplies in the US.
Justin Gallivan is a chemist at Emory University. His team genetically engineered a type of E. coli bacteria. They programmed it to seek out atrazine in a petri dish… and destroy it.
He says right now, this engineered bacteria is too weak to survive in the wild.
“It requires quite a bit of care and feeding, as you might say, to survive even in a petri dish. So if it were placed in a more harsh environment, it is extremely likely that these types of organisms would not survive.”
He says using this kind of genetically engineered bacteria to clean up pollution is still a long way off.
The EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson, announced the U.S. is moving ahead to eventually restrict greenhouse gases.
(Photo courtesy of the US EPA)
The US Environmental Protection
Agency has ruled CO2 is a dangerous
pollutant. Lester Graham reports
the finding gives President Obama
something to take to the climate
talks in Copenhagen:
Transcript
The US Environmental Protection
Agency has ruled CO2 is a dangerous
pollutant. Lester Graham reports
the finding gives President Obama
something to take to the climate
talks in Copenhagen:
The EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson, announced the U.S. is moving ahead to eventually restrict greenhouse gases.
“EPA has finalized its endangerment finding on greenhouse gas pollution and is now authorized and obligated to make reasonable efforts to reduce greenhouse pollutants under the Clean Air Act.”
But even with an administrative rule, Jackson says it’s still important that Congress pass a climate change law.
“I stand firm in my belief that legislation is the best way to move our economy forward on clean energy and to address climate pollution.”
The new rule sends a strong message to the climate summit currently going on in Copenhagen that the U.S. is getting serious about the emissions that are causing global warming. And next week, President Obama will go to Copenhagen with something a little more substantive.
A sign on the Tittabawassee River, downriver from Dow Chemical Plant, stating to avoid contact with the soil and not eat the fish due to dioxin contamination (Photo by Vincent Duffy)
The federal government and a major
chemical company have reached an
initial agreement about cleaning
up one of the nation’s largest dioxin
pollution sites. But, Shawn Allee reports, the public will
have to wait a bit to examine the
fine print:
Transcript
The federal government and a major
chemical company have reached an
initial agreement about cleaning
up one of the nation’s largest dioxin
pollution sites. But, Shawn Allee reports, the public will
have to wait a bit to examine the
fine print:
Central Michigan has a dubious distinction: The Environmental Protection Agency
claims that a flood plain there has some of the highest dioxin levels ever found in soil.
That dioxin came from a Dow chemical plant decades ago. The EPA and Dow just
concluded negotiations over a clean-up deal.
Wendy Carney is with the EPA’s regional Superfund cleanup office. Carney says the
deal is not done, though.
“This agreement doesn’t actually contain any cleanup options. It also doesn’t
address any cleanup levels for the site. That would be a part of things we would talk
about with the public in a public forum to get their feedback on those issues.”
Carney says the EPA could unveil its agreement with Dow in two weeks.
The EPA suspects dioxins cause cancer and other health problems.
The Energy Information Administration projects that in 2009 we'll cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 5%. (Photo courtesy of the US EPA)
The recession doesn’t have a lot of upsides,
but there is an environmental silver lining.
Carbon dioxide emissions are down. But,
as Tamara Keith reports,
greenhouse gas emissions are expected to
rise as the economy improves:
Transcript
The recession doesn’t have a lot of upsides,
but there is an environmental silver lining.
Carbon dioxide emissions are down. But,
as Tamara Keith reports,
greenhouse gas emissions are expected to
rise as the economy improves:
The Energy Information Administration projects that in 2009 we’ll cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 5%. Emissions were down in 2008 too.
Elias Johnson is an energy analyst. He says the economy is expected to pick up next year. That means coal, natural gas and petroleum use will pick up too.
“It’s not all going to happen at one time, so that will be gradual. And then visvis the emissions from that energy consumption will probably increase gradually.”
In 2010, Johnson says emissions are projected to rise 0.7%. Not much, really. And emissions will still be lower than they were when the economy was booming.
“For one thing, the economic activity is not going to be getting back to those levels.”
Beluga Whales along the Canadian Atlantic coast developed tumors after they came in contact with chemicals from aluminum smelters. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)
A new report in the journal Nature Reviews
Cancer looks at cancer in wildlife. Mark
Brush reports, the disease in animals is
sometimes caused by pollution:
Transcript
A new report in the journal Nature Reviews
Cancer looks at cancer in wildlife. Mark
Brush reports, the disease in animals is
sometimes caused by pollution:
The authors of this paper looked at a lot of research on cancer in wild animals. Some of these studies linked the cancer cases to pollution.
Beluga Whales along the Canadian Atlantic coast developed tumors after they came in contact with chemicals from aluminum smelters. And some fish and clam species have developed cancers after being exposed to pollution.
Denise McAloose is a veterinarian with the Wildlife Conservation Society. She’s the lead author of the paper.
“People should care about cancer in wildlife because, especially in those cancers that are driven by environmental factors, those environmental factors affect not only the animals, but people as well.”
For example, the people who worked in those aluminum smelters also had higher rates of cancer.
She says more research into the link between pollution and cancer in animals needs to be done. Because looking at how the disease affects wildlife might help us treat or prevent cancer in people.
A creek runs through Melvin Hershberger's farm in Holmes County, Ohio.
He was able to clean up the water with money from the Alpine Cheese Company.
The company needed to offset phosphorous pollution from its factory, so it pays farmers to
reduce their manure runoff. (Photo by Julie Grant)
Hershberger has 54 milking cows. Their manure used to run into the waterways.
Now the cows are fenced away from the creek. (Photo by Julie Grant)
When you hear about dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes, they’re largely caused by pollution draining from the farm belt. It can take a long time and a lot of money to reduce pollution at factories. So they’re starting to pay farmers to cut pollution instead. Julie Grant explains:
Transcript
When you hear about dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes, they’re largely caused by pollution draining from the farm belt. It can take a long time and a lot of money to reduce pollution at factories. So they’re starting to pay farmers to cut pollution instead. Julie Grant explains:
When you eat cheese, you might not realize that something so delicious creates a lot of waste. And that waste – that pollution – ends up going into the drain. It eventually ends up in rivers and lakes.
(sound of a factory)
We’re at a cheese factory in Holmes County, Ohio where they make nearly 60,000 pounds of cheese a day.
The big stainless steel vats look immaculate. But our shoes are wet.
Bob Ramseyer is CEO of the Alpine Cheese Company.
He says the floors are covered with water because the equipment is constantly being washed.
“We have a pre-rinse – that goes to drain. We have a final rinse, and that goes to drain. And we have all the floors that are flushed down and so forth, so that all ends up as part of the wastewater.”
The cheese factory’s wastewater includes not only those caustic chemical cleaners, but wasted milk by-products. One milk nutrient is the chemical, phosphorous.
About a decade ago, the Environmental Protection Agency told Ramseyer that the cheese company had to reduce the phosphorous it was releasing into the nearby river. Ramseyer was concerned.
“The equipment alone was going to cost a half million dollars. We projected it was going to cost between a half million dollars and a million dollars a year in operating costs. So we were looking for any way we could to reduce that cost. That’s where we got into the nutrient trading program.”
Alpine Cheese was among the first to negotiate what’s called a nutrient – or water quality – trading program. Instead of reducing the phosphorous coming from his factory, he pays farmers to reduce manure – another source of phosphorous – from washing from feedlots into the river.
(sound of cows)
Mervin Hershberger is an Amish dairy farmer with 125 acres and 54 milking cows.
(sound of a stream)
His farm looks like a postcard – beautiful hilly green pasture.
But a lot of the manure was washing off his farm into the streams. Herberberger says the cows were grazing right around the water.
“With the cows being in the creek we could see dirty water. The rocks were covered with dirt from cow’s waste. You walk through the stream, you’d kick up dirt and waste from the cows.”
Hershberger didn’t like it, but he didn’t have money to change it.
So when the County Soil and Water Conservation District held a neighborhood meeting to explain that Alpine Cheese was going to pay to reduce pollution from nearby farms, Hershberger saw a way to afford to clean up his farm.
He did about a dozen projects to reduce manure run-off into the water, like building a fence to keep the cows out of the stream.
And the little creek is bouncing back:
“As of now, it’s just totally clean, what you see. For the minnows and all the critters that are in the creek.”
Hershberger gets paid for the amount of phosphorous he keeps out of the water.
About 25 other farms in Holmes County are doing similar projects to reduce water pollution. And Alpine Cheese foots the bill. In exchange, the company doesn’t have to clean up wastewater coming from the cheese factory.
It’s a lot like a cap and trade program on water pollution.
There are a growing number of small programs like this around the country. But some people are trying to create water trading projects on a much larger scale.
That would mean a factory in one state might be able to pay farmer in another state. Eventually, all of the thousands of factories in just one river basin could pay farmers enough to reduce dead zones like the one in the Gulf of Mexico and in some of the Great Lakes.
Argonne researchers and technicians are
tracking how well poplar trees are containing and removing
toxic solvents (such as Trichloroethane, 1,1-Dichloroethane,
and 1,1,1-Trichloroethane, Trichloroethylene) from underground
water. Pictured here are Cristina Negri, Lawrence Moss, John Quinn,
Rob Piorkowski.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
rgonne National Laboratory planted
800 poplar trees to remediate land that had been
contaminated with toxic solvents. To ensure the tree
roots suck up polluted groundwater, Argonne researchers
manipulate the trees into sending roots far deeper
than they normally do.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
When you think of cleaning up toxic waste, you might think of technicians digging huge holes
and carting off contaminated soil. It’s expensive, and they’re often just putting the soil and the
problem, somewhere else – say, to a hazardous waste landfill. Shawn Allee met researchers
who hope trees can clean some toxic waste, and leave the landscape in place:
Transcript
When you think of cleaning up toxic waste, you might think of technicians digging huge holes
and carting off contaminated soil. It’s expensive, and they’re often just putting the soil and the
problem, somewhere else – say, to a hazardous waste landfill. Shawn Allee met researchers
who hope trees can clean some toxic waste, and leave the landscape in place:
Argonne National Laboratory is a Big Science kinda place.
It’s a federal lab southwest of Chicago where they study particle physics, nuclear energy, and
advanced environmental clean-up.
The irony is, the place has been around so long, it’s now cleaning up its own environmental
messes.
In fact, it’s Larry Moss’s job. He takes me to a toxic waste site where trees help clean the soil.
More on those trees in a sec – first, here’s why Larry Moss needs them.
“This site was a very busy site back in the 50s and 60s. We had a large manufacturing process
for reactor components – did a lot of testing of reactor assemblies and different fuel mixtures. And to
do that you had to clean all that equipment and a lot of that solvent came down here.
There was a unit that was called a French drain, which basically was a trench filled with gravel. They would come down here and dump chemicals into this trench, and their theory was it would dissolve into the ground. They
thought it would just go away.”
Those solvents did not go away. They leeched into underground water.
The solvents potentially cause cancer and other problems, so the government said Argonne
needed to do something about the mess.
Researcher Christina Negri lays out what the options were.
“Put a parking lot on top of the pollution area
and basically leave it there forever. The other extreme, it would have been: dig out the soil, take it
somewhere – where you haven’t changed much. You’ve moved it from here to a landfill. That’s not the solution as
well.”
Those options – covering it up or carting it off – are also expensive.
So, Argonne researchers figured they’d try something new.
Negri says they hope to eliminate pollution on site – with the help of poplar trees.
Negri: “We’re taking advantage of a trait that these trees have to
go about finding water.”
Allee: “Let me get a closer look at a tree, here.”
Negri: “What you have to picture in your mind – See the height of the tree?”
Allee: “I’m looking at one that’s as tall as a three story walk-up building I live in.”
Negri: “You have to flip it 180 degrees and imagine the roots are going down that deep.”
Negri says they coaxed the roots into going straight down instead of spreading out. It seems to
work; the poplar trees are sucking water out of the ground and taking up solvent.
“Part of it is degraded within the plant. Part of it goes out into the air, which sounds like an
ominous thing to say, right? But if you do your calculations right, there’s much less risk when
these compounds are in the air than there is when they’re down 30 feet below.”
Negri’s team hopes the poplar trees will be more sustainable and cheaper than alternatives, but
they’re likely to be slower.
After all, it took years for the trees to grow. That’s fine for Argonne, because no one’s at risk – but that’s
not the case everywhere.
“Arguably, this is not the remedy you would adopt if you had, like, a tank spill or something that
you really need to go in right away, clean up and be done very quickly. It’s not a remedy if there’s
anybody’s at risk.”
This isn’t the only attempt to use plants to clean up toxic waste. The science behind it is called
‘phytoremediation.’
In other examples, scientists tried alpine pennycress to clean up zinc, and pigweed to suck up
radioactive cesium.
Negri says the trick is to use the right plant for the right toxin and know whether the plants stays
toxic, too.
Still, she says, toxic waste is such a big problem, it’s good to have lots of tools in your clean-up
toolbox.
Phosphorus has been banned from laundry detergents, but has not been banned from dishwasher detergents (Source: Piotrus at Wikimedia Commons)
Add another state banning the
use of a pollutant in dishwashing
detergent. Rick Pluta reports it will
help clear up environmental problems
in rivers and lakes:
Transcript
Add another state banning the
use of a pollutant in dishwashing
detergent. Rick Pluta reports it will
help clear up environmental problems
in rivers and lakes:
Well, there are dead zones in other places, including the Great Lakes.
One of the big culprits is phosphorus. It seeps into the water, and promotes the growth of
algae that chokes out other species.
Phosphorus was removed from laundry detergent back in the 1970s. But that was back
before there were a lot of automatic dishwashers, so dishwasher soap wasn’t part of the
ban.
Now, regulators are starting to catch up.
Michigan just joined at least 8 other states that have ordered phosphorus to be phased out
of dishwasher detergent.
The manufacturers aren’t arguing – some have already started eliminating phosphorus in
their products.
But there are still plenty of other ways that phosphorus is leeching into lakes, rivers, and
streams. The most common cause is agricultural fertilizers.
Governors in New England are up in arms about some changes the Bush administrations
wants to make that would allow older power plants to add on but avoid buying new
pollution control equipment. Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
Governors in New England are up in arms about some changes the Bush administrations
wants to make that would allow older power plants to add on but avoid buying new
pollution control equipment. Mark Brush has more:
The proposed rule change would change how air pollution is measured from power plants
that expand their operations.
Right now, the air pollution is capped at a certain amount
per year. The new rule would cap the amount of air pollution allowed by the hour.
That
means a power plant could put out a lot more air pollution over the course of a year.
John Walke is a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. He says
this little change in the rule could have a big impact.
“So as soon as these utility companies began to expand their plants and to pump out more
smog and soot pollution. People in surrounding communities would see their air quality
worsen.”
Six northeastern states are urging the EPA not to go forward with the rule change. In a
recent letter sent to the EPA they say the rule change – quote “threatens the quality of our
states’ air and the health of our citizens.”
A study found that people think of pollution coming from big
environmental disasters, and not daily exposure to chemicals from carpeting,
furniture, cosmetics and other things we buy
(Source: Immanuel Giel at Wikimedia Commons)
A new study finds people are
surprised to learn how much of their
exposure to chemicals comes from the
things they buy. Rebecca Williams reports:
Transcript
A new study finds people are
surprised to learn how much of their
exposure to chemicals comes from the
things they buy. Rebecca Williams reports:
In this study, researchers showed women the results of tests done in their
homes. The researchers sampled dust and they also measured chemicals in the
women’s bodies. On average, they found about 20 different chemicals.
Rebecca Gasior-Altman is the lead author of the study in the Journal of Health
& Social Behavior.
“Participants were surprised about where these chemicals were coming from
and did not anticipate that they were likely coming from products they brought
into their homes every day and used on their bodies unknowingly and were not
from big industrial dumps.”
She says, before, the women had thought of pollution coming from big
environmental disasters, and not daily exposure to chemicals from carpeting,
furniture, cosmetics and other things we buy.
Justin Gallivan and his team programmed a type of E. coli bacteria to seek out atrazine in a petri dish, and destroy it, but right now the bacteria is too weak to survive in the wild. (Photo courtesy of the National Institutes of Health)
