A solution may have been discovered to save frogs from the chytrid fungus (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
Frogs are in trouble. A nasty disease caused by a fungus is wiping out frogs around the world. But researchers might have found a solution. Rebecca Williams has more:
Transcript
Frogs are in trouble. A nasty disease caused by a fungus is wiping out frogs around the world. But researchers might have found a solution. Rebecca Williams has more:
A disease caused by something called chytrid fungus is sweeping through frogs. When the disease moves through a frog population it can wipe out 80% of the entire population. Scientists have been rushing to find something that might help.
Reid Harris is a biologist at James Madison University. He says he’s discovered there are friendly bacteria that live on some types of frogs. And they can kill the fungus.
“It does seem like the pathogen moves in this predictable wave, so you might be able to get out in front of that wave sort of like a fire line.”
Harris says it might be possible to give wild frogs extra doses of the bacteria to fight off the fungus. But first they have to make sure there won’t be side effects.
The tomato ban was really tough on some farmers (Photo by J. Beavers, courtesy of the USDA)
The Food and Drug Administration continues
to investigate the source of tainted tomatoes that
sickened more than 160 people. It’s narrowing down
the source of the salmonella bacteria, and has lifted
a ban on tomato sales in many states. Julie Grant
reports on how the ban has affected tomato growers:
Transcript
The Food and Drug Administration continues
to investigate the source of tainted tomatoes that
sickened more than 160 people. It’s narrowing down
the source of the salmonella bacteria, and has lifted
a ban on tomato sales in many states. Julie Grant
reports on how the ban has affected tomato growers:
It’s been a tough June for Florida tomato growers – who
grow 90% of the nation’s tomatoes. It’s not that they’ve
been working too hard – it’s that they haven’t been able to
work.
Lisa Lochridge is with the Florida Fruit and Vegetable
Association.
“Business pretty much ground to a halt for Florida tomato
growers. There were tomatoes out in the fields left, there
were tomatoes in the packing houses just sitting there, there
were tomatoes on trucks that were being turned away.”
Lockridge says Florida growers will have lost 500-million
dollars as a result of the ban. Now that the ban has been
lifted in Florida, she says growers are restarting business
and shipping tomatoes to the stores, cafeterias and
restaurants that want them.
Vegetables in the produce section of a supermarket in VA. (Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of the USDA)
During the past 35 years, people have been getting
sick from contaminated produce more often. That’s according
to a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. Rebecca Williams reports:
Transcript
During the past 35 years, people have been getting
sick from contaminated produce more often. That’s according
to a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. Rebecca Williams reports:
After hundreds of people got sick from contaminated spinach and
lettuce, researchers started looking back at three decades of disease
cases. They found that people are getting sick from contaminated produce
more often. Bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella are often the cause.
Michael Lynch is one of the study’s authors. He says Americans are eating
more salads, but that doesn’t totally explain why there are more disease
outbreaks.
“We were a little surprised that that didn’t entirely explain the increase
but what else is contributing to that is not clear.”
Lynch says contamination can happen anywhere between the farm and your salad
plate. He says it’s important to thoroughly wash lettuce before eating it.
But he says that might not be enough to avoid getting sick.
He says stronger controls are needed at every step to try to prevent
contamination.
A Wyoming toadlet at the Detroit Zoo. (Photo by Danna Schock, National Amphibian Conservation Center)
A golden mantella at the Detroit Zoo. (Photo by Danna Schock, National Amphibian Conservation Center)
A surinam toad at the Detroit Zoo. (Photo by Danna Schock, National Amphibian Conservation Center)
The National Amphibian Conservation Center. (Photo by Danna Schock, National Amphibian Conservation Center)
There are thousands of kinds of frogs and toads that could go extinct
in our lifetime. Rebecca Williams reports zoos are trying to save the
most endangered frogs by playing matchmaker:
Transcript
There are thousands of kinds of frogs and toads that could go extinct
in our lifetime. Rebecca Williams reports zoos are trying to save the
most endangered frogs by playing matchmaker:
“Okay, so we’re in our Panamanian golden frog room.”
This is the frog bachelor pad.
(slow music)
The lights are low. One of the girls
is sitting naked under the waterfall. And in a dark corner of an
aquarium, there’s some action.
“Well, the male has clasped onto the female around the back…”
Danna Schock is like Dr. Ruth for frogs. She’s the curator of frogs
and toads at the Detroit Zoo. Right now she’s trying to get these
little yellow and black frogs in the mood.
“They were just put together a couple days ago, we’re not sure
they’re feeling it yet. I don’t know if we need Barry White music in
here or what.”
(Barry White song)
Getting the mood right matters because frogs are sensitive. The
temperature has to be just right. Sometimes what the male wants is
just not what the female wants.
Danna Schock wants these guys to have lots of babies. That’s because
frogs are in big trouble in the wild. They’re disappearing really,
really fast.
“The extinction going on is really of the scale that happened
at the end of the Cretaceous when the dinosaurs went. But that
extinction happened over a million years. We’re seeing some of this go
down in my lifetime. This is unprecedented.”
As much as half of all amphibian species on Earth could go extinct in
our lifetime. Here’s why. Frogs and toads breathe and drink through
their skin. Those thin skins make them very sensitive to pollution
from farms and industry and whatever we put down the drain. Also, the
places frogs live are being paved over for parking lots and
subdivisions.
Then there’s another really big problem. There’s a disease
sweeping through frogs around the world. It’s called chytrid fungus.
It can kill frogs in just a few weeks.
Kevin Zippel is the program director for Amphibian Ark. It’s kind of
like Noah’s Ark for frogs. It’s a group working with zoos to save the
frogs and toads that are most at risk. Especially the ones dying from
chytrid fungus.
“The only solution for those species that are susceptible is to bring
them into captivity as a stop-gap measure until the day when we do have
a cure for it.”
Zippel says chytrid fungus was first found in the 1930s in the African
clawed frog. That frog was exported around the world for medical
research. And scientists think the disease was spread with it.
Kevin Zippel says they’re scrambling to bring frogs into zoos before
they’re wiped out. He says it’s always much better for frogs to live
in the wild. But he says, for hundreds of frog species, taking them
into zoos is the only way to keep them alive.
The Wyoming toad is one species that’s been saved by zoos. For all
practical purposes, it’s considered extinct in the wild. Zoos around
the country have taken in the toads and gotten them to mate.
(Sound of tanks bubbling)
At the Detroit Zoo there’s a special quarantine room. It’s under lock
and key. We have to disinfect our shoes so we don’t track in bacteria
or other diseases.
Then Danna Schock lets us peek in on her
babies. These Wyoming toadlets are about the size of gumballs.
“These guys are fabulous little creatures. These are not divas.
They’re just such a pleasure to work with, they’re fun, they eat well.
There are just little Buddha bellies on ’em.”
These little Wyoming toads have big lives ahead of them. A lot of sex.
And their babies might get released back to the same place where they
got their name – Wyoming.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has been releasing toad eggs and
tadpoles in a few protected areas there.
Brian Kelly is with the Service. Last summer, for the first time in 10
years, his team found new Wyoming toad eggs in the wild.
“It’s incredibly encouraging because that’s why we’re doing this, we
want to establish populations that maintain themselves and remain
viable over time.”
Kelly says the toads are still in trouble. Their habitat has to be
protected. And the fatal chytrid fungus is still a major threat. So
zoos will have to fill the gap for a while.
It’s not ideal. It costs a lot to keep frogs at the zoo. There isn’t
enough room in zoos to save every type of frog. And, as Danna Schock at
the Detroit Zoo will tell you, it’s tough to figure out exactly what
the frogs want. But she says she’s not going to give up.
“I’d rather go down flailing in flames. At least we can say we tried.
And there are reasons to be optimistic. We have had successes – and
they’re scattered, and they’re patchy, and we learn from our mistakes all
the time.”
Schock says it would be much better to solve the frogs’ problems in the
first place. She says that means not paving over all the wetlands. It
means not polluting ponds and creeks. And hopefully, finding a cure
for chytrid fungus.
Millions of gallons of wastewater is produced by cleaning operations at the Welch's. Some of the sugar in the wastewater is being used to make electricity. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)
Tiny single-celled organisms could become the giants of
energy production in the near future. Scientists are
using bacteria to convert waste into hydrogen energy.
Lisa Ann Pinkerton recently watched a vat of microbes
turning wastewater into electricity:
Transcript
Tiny single-celled organisms could become the giants of
energy production in the near future. Scientists are
using bacteria to convert waste into hydrogen energy.
Lisa Ann Pinkerton recently watched a vat of microbes
turning wastewater into electricity:
More than 17 million gallons of grape juice is sitting in what amounts to be a huge
refrigerator. It’s Welch’s grape juice ready to be bottled. About the size of a
gymnasium, the cooler’s covered with tile and the juice is stored in big
stainless steel tanks.
Paul Zorzie is the plant manager. He says they have to regularly clean the
tanks. And first they rinse them with water to clean out the remaining juice:
“Juice would be anywhere from 10 to 20 percent
sugar, so what goes down the drain might be .3.”
Since there’s still a little bit of grape juice and sugar in that wastewater, it can
still be used. Behind the plant, the faint smell of grape juice wafts from a
bubbling tank of wastewater. It looks kinda like a purple jacuzzi. In a nearby
shed, Gannon University Professor Rick Diz has built a pilot system to covert
the sugar in that grape juice wastewater into electricity. With the help of the
Ohio biotechnology firm NanoLogix, he’s coaxing millions of microorganisms
to consume the sugar and produce hydrogen:
“The sort of bacteria that produce hydrogen and
actually other bio fuels of one sort or another just
love sugar. Just like for people, sugar is the easiest
thing to digest for many organisms.”
Diz says if you keep introducing food that sugar from the watered-down grape
juice, the microbe population will double every 24-48 minutes. He’s trying to
keep the conditions just right to encourage hydrogen-producing microbes to
grow, while at the same time discouraging methane producing ones. They feed
on hydrogen, and it can be a careful balancing act.
When the microbes produce enough gas, the pressure trips a switch and the
hydrogen is pumped into a slender, high-pressure holding tank:
“And so far we’re been quite successful. We are in fact
producing hydrogen gas, we have used that gas to run an
engine that generated electricity for us on just a
demonstration purpose.”
You can imagine, there are all sorts of industries that create waste sugar
water, from fruit juices, and sodas to candy makers. So there’s lots of
potential to generate hydrogen and then electricity from residual sugar in
wastewater.
But, Diz says the Welch’s system is the only one in the US to successfully do
this outside a laboratory setting. The Welch’s plant in Erie, Pennsylvania
spends about one-and-a-half million dollars a year for electricity and
wastewater treatment each. It hopes a large-scale project that Diz will build
this spring can put a dent in those bills:
“Welch’s is certainly one of the first companies that we’ve hear of who’s expressed
interest in producing hydrogen from microorganisms.”
That’s Patrick Serfass at the National Hydrogen Association. He says
developing renewable ways to generate hydrogen is ideal for a greener energy
sector. But the methods have to be economically worth it:
“The trick is to make the leap from the laboratory to real world applications, and using the hydrogen to either produce
electricity or meet some other energy need.”
Serfass says if Welch’s makes good on it’s plans to built a large demonstration
bio reactor it’ll be a major step for renewable hydrogen and an example to the
rest of the nation’s over 200 beverage makers and bottlers.
For the Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.
Hog manure being injected into the ground and tilled under. The manure fertilizes the crops, but if too much is applied it can foul up waterways. (Photo by Mark Brush)
Transcript
(sound of giant fans)
About a thousand cows are in this building, eating, lolling around, and waiting for the next round of milking.
There’s a sharp smell of manure hanging in the air. Big fans are blowing to keep the cows cool, and to keep the air circulated.
Stephan Vander Hoff runs this dairy along with his siblings. He says these big farms are good for consumers:
“We’ve got something here and we’ve been able to do it in such a way that we’re still producing at the same cost that we were fifteen years ago. It costs more now for a gallon of gas than a gallon of milk. And so, that’s something to be proud of.”
Vander Hoff’s dairy produces enough milk to fill seven tanker trucks everyday. They also produce a lot of waste. The cows in this building are penned in by metal gates. They can’t go outside. So the manure and urine that would normally pile up is washed away by water.
Tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater are sent to big lagoons outside. Eventually, the liquefied manure is spread onto nearby farm fields. It’s a challenge for these farmers to deal with these large pools of liquid manure. The farther they have to haul it, the more expensive it is for them. Almost all of them put the manure onto farm fields.
It’s good for the crops if it’s done right, but if too much manure is put on the land, it can wash into streams and creeks. In fact, this dairy has been cited by the state of Michigan for letting their manure get into nearby waterways.
(sound of roadway)
Lynn Henning keeps a close eye on Vander Hoff’s dairy.
(car door opening and closing)
She steps from her car with a digital camera, and a device that measures water quality.
(sound of crickets and walking through the brush)
She weaves her way down to the edge of this creek.
“This is the area where we got E. coli at 7.5 million.”
High E. coli levels mean the water might be polluted with dangerous pathogens. Lynn Henning is testing the creek today because she saw farmers spreading liquid manure on the fields yesterday. Henning is a farmer turned environmental activist. She works for the Sierra Club and drives all over the state taking water samples and pictures near big livestock farms.
Henning says she got involved because more of these large animal farms expanded into her community. She says when the farmers spread the liquid manure, it can make life in the country pretty difficult:
“The odor is horrendous when they’re applying –we have fly infestations–we have hydrogen sulfide in the air that nobody knows is there because you can’t always smell it. We have to live in fear that every glass of water that we drink is going to be contaminated at some point.”
Water contamination from manure is a big concern. The liquid manure can contain nasty pathogens and bacteria.
Joan Rose is a microbiologist at Michigan State University.
“If animal wastes are not treated properly and we have large concentrations of animal waste going onto land and then via rainfall or other runoff events entering into our water – there can be outbreaks associated with this practice.”
Rose tested water in this area and found high levels of cryptosporidium that likely came from cattle. Cryptosporidium is the same bug that killed people in Milwaukee back in 1993. Rose says livestock farmers need to think more about keeping these pathogens out of the water. But she says they don’t get much support from the state and researchers on how best to do that.
For now, the farmers have to come up with their own solutions.
(sound of treatment plant)
Three years ago, the state of Michigan sued Stephen Vander Hoff’s dairy for multiple waste violations. The Vander Hoff’s settled the case with the state and agreed to build a one million dollar treatment system. But Vander Hoff isn’t convinced that his dairy was at fault, and thinks that people’s concerns over his dairy are overblown:
“If we had an issue or had done something wrong the first people that want to correct it is us. We live in this area. So why would we do anything to harm it?”
Vander Hoff is upbeat about the new treatment system. He says it will save the dairy money in the long run.
The Sierra Club’s Lynn Henning says she’s skeptical of the new treatment plant. She’ll continue to take water samples and put pressure on these farms to handle their manure better. In the end, she doesn’t think these big farms have a place in agriculture. She’d rather see farms go back to the old style of dairying, where the cows are allowed to graze, and the number of animals isn’t so concentrated.
But farm researchers say because consumers demand cheap prices, these large farms are here to stay and there will be more of them. Because of this, the experts say we can expect more conflicts in rural America.
There’s a new generation of washing machines that use charged particles
of silver to kill bacteria. Rebecca Williams reports the Environmental
Protection Agency says it’s going to regulate the machines as
pesticides:
Transcript
There’s a new generation of washing machines that use charged particles
of silver to kill bacteria. Rebecca Williams reports the Environmental
Protection Agency says it’s going to regulate the machines as
pesticides:
The Samsung Silver Ion machine generates tiny charged particles of
silver that kill bacteria on contact.
The EPA has decided any kind of machine that generates ions to kill
pests has to be regulated as a pesticide.
Andrew Maynard is a scientist with the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars. He says there are worries that these kinds of
machines could kill helpful bacteria:
“What’s causing concern is the release of these charged silver atoms
into the environment which can kill bacteria but also might end up
killing bacteria we don’t want them to.”
Maynard says there are about 130 products on the market now that use
tiny silver particles to kill bacteria. They’re in everything from kitchen
countertops to food containers.
But he says EPA hasn’t decided whether to regulate those products as
pesticides.
A new review paper in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases finds that antibacterial soap is no better than plain soap at keeping you from getting sick. Some national studies have found that about 70% of liquid soaps on store shelves contain antibacterial ingredients.
(Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Antibacterial soaps are marketed as an extra
defense against that awful bug going around the
office or your kid’s school. But as Rebecca Williams
reports, new research finds antibacterial soap is not
any better than plain soap at keeping us from getting
sick. And some scientists and doctors worry there might
be risks to widespread use of antibacterial products:
Transcript
Antibacterial soaps are marketed as an extra
defense against that awful bug going around the
office or your kid’s school. But as Rebecca Williams
reports, new research finds antibacterial soap is not
any better than plain soap at keeping us from getting
sick. And some scientists and doctors worry there might
be risks to widespread use of antibacterial products:
Child: “Make the frosting for the carrot cake?”
“You want to make the frosting for the carrot cake? Okay, Jasmine,
bring up your chair so you can wash your hands.”
(Sound of Jasmine pulling a chair over & washing up)
Margo Lowenstein says she’s just a little extra careful about germs.
She never borrows somebody else’s ink pen during flu season. She opens
public bathroom doors with a paper towel on her way out. But her
friends call her a germ-phobe.
“You know, you go to a birthday party and some kid blows out a cake, and
you just see the spit flying on the top of the cake, that just kinda
grosses me out. So I usually take the cake but I won’t eat that top
layer of frosting. (laughs)”
Lowenstein is a soap marketer’s dream customer. Market researchers say
Americans have been getting more worried about germs. And as a result
we’ve been buying more soap and hand sanitizer and antibacterial
products.
Antibacterial soaps have been around since the late 1940s. But the
market research firm Euromonitor International says in recent years,
germ-phobia has given manufacturers a reason to ramp up the
antibacterial products in their lines.
There are some studies that estimate that about 70% of liquid soaps on
store shelves have antibacterial ingredients in them. Ingredients such
as a chemical called triclosan.
Allison Aiello teaches epidemiology at the University of Michigan
School of Public Health. Aiello is lead author of a paper in the
journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. She examined more than two dozen
studies on antibacterial soaps containing triclosan. She says
triclosan kills bacteria by going after the bacterium’s cell wall:
“The cell wall cannot be kept intact anymore; it’s not able to
survive.”
But Aiello says there’s a growing body of evidence that even though
antibacterial soap kills bacteria, it’s no better than regular soap
at preventing illness. Regular soap doesn’t kill bacteria, but Aiello
says it works just as well at getting that harmful bacteria off your
hands.
“Regular soap, is basically, it has a surfactant in it and what it does is it allows
bacteria to be dislodged from hands and then the motion that you’re using
under water helps dislodge it and make it go down the drain,
basically.”
Aiello says it’s important to note that the soap studies were done with
basically healthy people. She says more research needs to be done to
find out if antibacterial soaps could be more effective for elderly
people or people with compromised immune systems.
But Aiello says generally, for healthy people, antibacterial soaps are
no better than plain soaps at keeping you healthy.
And she says there could be risks to antibacterial products. She says
there’s evidence from lab studies that antibacterial soaps might be
adding to the emergence of super-bugs: bacteria that are resistant to
antibiotics.
“In the laboratory setting, it is clear that there are mechanisms that
can lead to antibiotic resistance when bacteria are exposed to
triclosan.”
Aiello says they haven’t seen this play out for antibacterial soaps in
the real world yet. But she says researchers need to keep an eye on it
because antibiotic resistance might take some time to develop.
The soap industry dismisses the idea that antibacterial soaps might
have something to do with antibiotic resistance.
Brian Sansoni is with the Soap and Detergent Association.
“The last thing we want to see is people discouraged from using
beneficial products. Antibacterial soaps have proven benefits, they’re
used safely and effectively by millions of people every day. Consumers
should continue to use these products with confidence.”
The Food and Drug Administration has the final word on antibacterial
soaps. But they’re still trying to figure out what to say about them.
The FDA has been trying to come up with rules for the products for more
than 30 years. Right now there are no formal rules about the levels of
antibacterial chemicals in soaps. And there aren’t any rules about how
the products can be marketed or labeled.
There’s one thing both the soap industry and doctors agree on –
Americans don’t lather up often enough with any kind of soap. A new
study found one out of every three men walk out of the bathroom without
washing their hands. Women did better than the guys, but still, about
one of every ten women didn’t wash their hands either.
Experts say the best way to avoid getting sick is to wash your hands with soap and water for 20 seconds. That’s as long as it takes to sing the happy birthday song twice.
There’s growing concern about the spinach and lettuce in your crisper. There have been
several recalls of bags of salad produce after they hit the grocery stores. The federal
government recently noted that food safety has become one of the biggest ongoing
problems facing agencies responsible for inspecting food. The result is a debate among
growers, food processors and conservation groups over how to better protect the food
supply. But environmental groups say some of the safeguards can harm wildlife. Chuck
Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
There’s growing concern about the spinach and lettuce in your crisper. There have been
several recalls of bags of salad produce after they hit the grocery stores. The federal
government recently noted that food safety has become one of the biggest ongoing
problems facing agencies responsible for inspecting food. The result is a debate among
growers, food processors and conservation groups over how to better protect the food
supply. But environmental groups say some of the safeguards can harm wildlife. Chuck
Quirmbach reports:
During the last year, people have died and hundreds of people have gotten sick because
of E. coli bacteria contamination of some produce. Farmers and food processors are
fighting in court over what officially caused the contamination. But in the Salinas Valley
of California, an area known as the nation’s Salad Bowl, the food processing industry is
trying to show consumers they can be confident about the safety of commercially-
produced leafy greens. Even processors who were not linked to last year’s E. coli scare
suffered a drop in sales. They’re anxious to show off their facilities and the safety
precautions they’ve taken.
Inside this large processing plant a million pounds of lettuce come through every day.
It’s washed in chlorinated water, some of it is mixed in with other raw vegetables and
packed into bags that are sent to grocery stores across the U.S. This plant is operated by
Fresh Express, a company owned by Chiquita Brands. Plant manager Phil Bradway says
the plant is sanitized daily:
“You generate organic material buildup and its extremely important on a regular and
consistent basis to remove that organic material before you continue to process a food
safe product and that’s why we’re rigorous about the seven-day-a-week sanitation activities in
our facilities.”
Fresh Express vice president Bill Clyburn says this salad bagging plant ships out a
product that is better protected than vegetables that are sent unbagged to the grocery
stores:
“We’re taking the precautions to wash the lettuce and make it clean. You take commodity
produce of any type, go into a grocery store and watch how many people pick it up,
breathe on it, put it back down and take another head of lettuce and how many people still
don’t wash that. You never hear about people getting sick on commodity lettuce ’cause
there’s no label to go back at.”
And Fresh Express says it’s not just conditions at the plant that they and other processors
are trying to control. In the last year, California growers came up with a voluntary
program to try to develop better agricultural practices. Things such as protecting farm
fields from contamination from animals. Fresh Express insists that its growers exceed the
standards so that no wildlife urine or fecal matter come into contact with the produce, but some farmers say the food processors have some unrealistic ideas.
(Sound of sprinkler)
A sprinkler waters crops at an organic farm. Grower Andrew Griffin says some food
industry giants want more fences around farms to help keep wildlife out of the fields. But
he says those won’t make a difference:
“Absolutely not. It’s ridiculous. You can’t fence out the birds. You can’t fence out the
sky… I mean I don’t know what they’re thinking.”
Griffin says a better solution would be reduce the growing concentration of agri-business
and not send so much of the Salad Bowl’s leafy greens through just a few processing
plants:
“So, if there’s a contamination of say the blade on the cutting machine, you have an
opportunity to contaminate salad that’s gonna feed a whole nation. Whereas if it was
diffuse, if we had a diffuse system and you had small farms in different places, you
wouldn’t have that same broad spectrum problem.”
And the skeptical farmers have allies in groups such as The Nature Conservancy.
Spokeswoman Chris Fischer says the new restrictions in the farm fields are affecting
wildlife habitat along streams and river. She says people across the nation who eat salads
should care about what happens to the environment of the Salinas valley:
“As both a consumer and a conservationist the sustainability of our farming and
watershed health and ultimately our water quality and public health is all wrapped up
together and unsustainable, unhealthy farm practices ultimately aren’t going to serve us
well.”
Fischer says some of the new restrictions on growers are based on the best available
research, but she’s concerned food processors are adding extra requirements that aren’t
based on good science. Recently news reports added to the debate about safety of leafy
greens that end up on your table. The Associated Press reported federal inspections of
both growers and processors of salad greens only happen about once every four years.
Even if it’s safe to go in the water at your local beach, the sand
might harbor bacteria. Rebecca Williams reports a new study finds
contaminated sand could cause beaches to be closed to swimmers:
Transcript
Even if it’s safe to go in the water at your local beach, the sand
might harbor bacteria. Rebecca Williams reports a new study finds
contaminated sand could cause beaches to be closed to swimmers:
If officials find the bacteria E. Coli or Enterococci in beach water,
they usually close the beach. That’s because at high levels, those
bacteria can make swimmers sick. A new study found those two types of
bacteria can be common in beach sand.
Alexandria Boehm is the author of the study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. She says the bacteria in sand
can occur naturally, but they can also come from human or animal waste.
She found that bacteria in sand can get stirred into the water at high
enough levels to trigger beach closings:
“If sand is the source of pollution at these beaches it makes
remediation very difficult because we don’t really know how to clean up beach
sand.”
Boehm says more studies are needed to know if people can get sick by
being exposed to bacteria in sand.
A solution may have been discovered to save frogs from the chytrid fungus (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
