White House Bars Science

  • Memos from Bush political appointees are telling government scientists there's no way to make a connection between specific greenhouse gas emissions and endangered wildlife, so don't going looking for one. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Wildlife scientists in government
agencies have been ordered not to analyze
whether greenhouse gases affect endangered
animals. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Wildlife scientists in government
agencies have been ordered not to analyze
whether greenhouse gases affect endangered
animals. Lester Graham reports:

Memos from Bush political appointees are telling government scientists there’s no way
to make a connection between specific greenhouse gas emissions and endangered
wildlife, so don’t going looking for one.

In other words, that ice melting in the arctic causing polar bears so much difficulty?
Don’t try to use science to blame coal-burning power plants in the U.S.

Jeff Ruch is with Public Employees for Envrionemental Responsibility. He says this new
rule is the Bush administration’s way of making sure more coal-fired power plants can
be built.

“The Bush administration is doing everything they can to smooth a way to site an
additional 20 plants in the near term from their point of view, before they leave office.
And that’s an awful lot of greenhouse gases and that’s where the fight is.”

This ruling will likely be overturned in the courts, eventually – but probably not before the
coal-burning plants have been approved.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Pollution and Classroom Performance

  • Researchers at the University of Michigan are looking to see if air pollution is a factor in school kids’ health and academic performance. (Source: Motown31 at Wikimedia Commons)

Scientists are investigating whether
air pollution is affecting how well students
perform. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Scientists are investigating whether
air pollution is affecting how well students
perform. Lester Graham reports:

Researchers say we might be building schools in the wrong places. We build them
near interstates full of polluting cars and trucks, and we build schools downwind of
factories. Kids might be getting a big dose of air pollution everyday they’re at school.

Researchers at the University of Michigan want to look at whether it’s actually
affecting kids. Paul Mohai is the lead researcher.

“School-aged children are particularly vulnerable because their bodies are growing.
They’re considered a vulnerable population and that’s all the more reason we should
be looking at the toxic burden that they may face, both in the schools that they go to
and where they live.”

Mohai and his colleagues will look at all the social and economic issues, and then air
pollution to see if it’s a factor in school kids’ health and academic performance.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Interview: The Attack on Science

  • Michaels' book about industry's influence on science. (Oxford University Press)

There’s a lot of confusion about global
warming. Is it real or not? Are the ingredients
in our food, our soap, the household products we
use all safe? Even if they’re not, there’s a
whole industry that’s working to make you, and
Congress, uncertain. David Michaels recently wrote
about this. His book is titled ‘Doubt is Their
Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens
Your Health.’ Lester Graham talked with Michaels,
who says companies today base their approach on the
tactics of big tobacco. The tobacco companies
successfully obscured the connections between
smoking and lung cancer for decades.

Transcript

There’s a lot of confusion about global
warming. Is it real or not? Are the ingredients
in our food, our soap, the household products we
use all safe? Even if they’re not, there’s a
whole industry that’s working to make you, and
Congress, uncertain. David Michaels recently wrote
about this. His book is titled ‘Doubt is Their
Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens
Your Health.’ Lester Graham talked with Michaels,
who says companies today base their approach on the
tactics of big tobacco. The tobacco companies
successfully obscured the connections between
smoking and lung cancer for decades.

David Michaels: “Companies know that by putting off the scientific debate for as many years as
they can, they can keep doing the work that they’re doing and not be disturbed. It works.”

Lester Graham: “We hear about Bisphenol-A in plastics, of course we hear about mercury in fish,
phthalates, even something like dioxin – industry scientists say ‘we’re safe, these are in minute
quantities’ or ‘the jury is out on just how dangerous this chemical is’. If they are dangerous, why
doesn’t the government make that determination and phase these products out?”

Michaels: “Well, right now, the Bush administration has absolutely abdicated its responsibility to
protect the public’s health and the environment. It’s not even a question of phasing them out, the
Bush administration has turned a blind eye, and said ‘we’re not even going to think about those
chemicals’. I’m hoping that as public consciousness of this increases, we’ll have more demand on
regulatory agencies to do something.”

Graham: “You’re very critical of the Bush administration in the book, saying scientific review
boards are stacked with industry officials. Why, or how, does the scientific community continue to
allow that?”

Michaels: “Well, the scientific community doesn’t have the power to stop it. But the scientific
community has me furious about this. And over and over again, not just individual scientists, but
mainstream science organizations, like the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
have issued statements, have passed resolutions complaining, criticizing the Bush administration.
But that’s all we can do. Congress has to stop it. And, the American public has to stop it.”

Graham: “The members of the Bush administration often point out, ‘hey we can’t make knee-jerk
reactions, over some single study, or even a small group of studies, we really need to rely on
sound science, this needs more review’. And it sounds like common sense to many of us.”

Michaels: “Well, when I hear the Bush administration call for ‘sound science’, I see what they’re
doing is calling for something that sounds like science, but isn’t. Bisphenol-A is a great example.
There are well over 100 studies showing that this causes endocrine disorders and reproductive
disorders in laboratory animals. And there are less than a dozen studies that say it doesn’t cause
it. The question we have to ask is: should we be exposing our babies, our children, ourselves to
potentially toxic chemicals that we don’t know that they’re safe?”

Graham: “And Bisphenol-A is, of course, used in plastics, in liners of canned foods, and so forth.
It’s a product that we come across a lot.”

Michaels: “Not only that, the studies are right now that 90% of us have Bisphenol-A in our body.
We can tell that from studies where we’re are excreting it in our urine. So, it’s out there are we’re
being exposed to it. We don’t know what the effects are, but since it causes harm in animals, why
should we be exposing ourselves to it?”

Graham: “You note that journalists are often the victims of their own determination to get both
sides of the story. What are you suggesting? That journalists ignore industry when it questions
studies or scientific method? That would assume that corporations are always bad actors.”

Michaels: “No, but I think it’s very important to note, for example, when an industry scientist
criticizing the study, to note, for example, that, you know, that this criticism is being paid for by the
industry. But the other criticisms, which are, you know, are independent, often paid for by the
government through grants to universities, are independent, and therefore have a lot more validity.
We have example after example, in the book, and all through the medical literature, of companies
that essentially create studies that provide the results they want. In my reviewing it, I’ve never
found a study which disagrees with what the sponsor wanted them to hear. It’s just overwhelming.”

Related Links

Saving the Orcas

  • Mother-calf pair of "Type C" orcas in the Ross Sea. (Photo by Robert Pitman, NOAA)

For many people orca whales are very
familiar. Think Shamu. We’ve even given the wild
killer whales of the Pacific Northwest individual
names. But there’s still a lot we don’t know, like
where the whales go and what they eat. Now that they’re
listed as endangered, those have become important
questions. Liam Moriarty accompanied a research
crew trying to get answers:

Transcript

For many people orca whales are very
familiar. Think Shamu. We’ve even given the wild
killer whales of the Pacific Northwest individual
names. But there’s still a lot we don’t know, like
where the whales go and what they eat. Now that they’re
listed as endangered, those have become important
questions. Liam Moriarty accompanied a research
crew trying to get answers:

Killer whales are sloppy eaters, so one way to study their diet is to
scoop up the leftover crumbs. Robin Baird says another way is to
study what comes out the other end.

“And so we basically follow behind the whales and pick up whatever
they leave behind, so either bits of fish if they’re actually catching
prey, or fecal material which we can use to look at what they’re
feeding on using genetic analysis.”

Baird is a biologist with Cascadia Research in Olympia, Washington.

(outboard motorboat sounds up)

On this morning, Baird, biologist Brad Hanson, and several other
researchers are piled into a 19-foot inflatable boat. We’re heading out
from Friday Harbor, north of Seattle to look for whales. We head
toward the Canadian border, keeping our eyes peeled. A while later,
we locate a group of more than a dozen whales.

(boat slows down)

Now comes the tricky part. The game plan is to pick an animal to
follow, and hope it leaves a specimen in its wake.

Baird: “We’ll come along side this one, get an ID then we’ll start a
flukeprint on her.”

Whales are surfacing and diving all around us.

(whale exhalation)

Researchers call out sightings, directions and distances …

“Multiple targets. Two animals. (How far?) 100 meters.”

Robin Baird maneuvers the boat into the wake of a passing whale.

“Oh, fish in mouth! Eleven’s got … the male’s got a fish in mouth!”

Researcher Greg Shorr stands in a pulpit at the bow of the boat with
a long handled pool net, looking intently into the water for the telltale
glitter of fish scales.

“OK, dip!”

He dips the net and comes up with a few scales and bits of tissue.

(whale breath)

Soon we’re tracking other orcas.

Hanson: “Chase! Underwater chase, 12 o’clock! Another target up,
125 behind us at 5 o’clock … might be chasing something … Yep!
Definitely chasing something! Two animals back there, three
animals!”

We spend over an hour tailing whales and dipping pool nets that
mostly come up empty.
(whale breath)

Getting this up-close and personal with the whales would get anyone
who doesn’t have a federal research permit ticketed for whale
harassment … But this kind of work is one important way to get
information that could help save the orcas from extinction.
Eventually, the whales move on. We make the long trip back.

(boat motors up, fades)

(brewpub noise)

That evening, in a dockside brewpub, Brad Hanson and Robin Baird
reflect on the day’s work; twelve hours on often-choppy seas. Baird
says that’s what it takes to get close to the whales.

“If we want to be able to really understand what they’re doing, we
have to be able to see the fine details of their behavior. And the only
way we’re going to se those fine details is if we’re actually close
enough to see whether a whale has a fish in its mouth when it comes
up to the surface.”

Hanson says that approach is paying off.

“Some 30 years we’ve known all these individual animals and people
have spent a lot of time looking at them, but we are seeing things in
the last couple of years that other people have not seen.”

For instance, orcas sometimes play with their food or share prey with
each other. Analysis of fecal samples has pinpointed what kinds of
fish the whales eat, and when. Observations like these have given
researchers a better picture of how the animals interact with their
habitat. And that fills in a few more pieces of the puzzle they hope will
lead to recovery for the Pacific Northwest’s endangered killer
whales.

For The Environment Report, I’m Liam Moriarty.

Related Links

Climate and Plant Extinction

A new study finds that as plant species go extinct around the world,
ecosystems could become a lot less productive. Rebecca Williams
reports, this could be bad news for the services people depend on from
nature:

Transcript

A new study finds that as plant species go extinct around the world,
ecosystems could become a lot less productive. Rebecca Williams
reports, this could be bad news for the services people depend on from
nature:


Plants work overtime for us. They produce oxygen and food, among a lot
of other things. But many plant species are going extinct.


A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says as
we lose plant species, ecosystems could become half as productive as
they are now.


Brad Cardinale is the study’s lead author. He says preserving habitats
could slow the loss of species:


“For every place we build, every place we put a house, every place we
put a mall, we set aside another tract of equal size for the other 10 million
species on the planet to persist.”


Cardinale says we should start setting aside more land soon. Some
estimates suggest as much as half of all known species on Earth could
be extinct by the end of this century.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Big Perks for Tiny Houses?

  • Gregory Johnson's teeny tiny house - 140 square feet in all. (Photo by Gregory Johnson)

New homes in America keep getting bigger and bigger. The average new
American home is about 2400 square feet. Moving up to a bigger house
can seem like a sign of success… or it might feel necessary for a
growing family. But in the face of pressure to buy big… some people
are choosing to downsize their homes… way, way down. Rebecca
Williams visits some of the tiniest houses on the block:

Transcript

New homes in America keep getting bigger and bigger. The average new
American home is about 2400 square feet. Moving up to a bigger house
can seem like a sign of success… or it might feel necessary for a
growing family. But in the face of pressure to buy big… some people
are choosing to downsize their homes… way, way down. Rebecca
Williams visits some of the tiniest houses on the block:


(Sound of door opening)


“C’mon in!”


Andru Bemis lives in a little house on a corner.


“Here it is, you’ve just about seen it. You’re standing looking at the
kitchen, you’re standing in the living room, there’s a study, and
there’s a bathroom behind that wall and somewhere above the bathroom there’s a
bed.”


It takes a hop, skip and a jump to cross from one end to the other.
That’s because his house is 300 square feet. Total.


Andru Bemis says a little house is better:


“I’m not owned by it, that’s one of the biggest things. I’ve only got
one sink I’ve gotta keep running, I’ve only got one of anything, don’t have an entire house to
take care of. I also leave town a lot and don’t have to leave an
entire house and worry about it.”


Bemis is a musician. His love of music explains the 5,000 records
lining one wall of his house and taking up precious space.


Of course he also makes room for his banjo.


(Sound of strumming)


You just don’t see tiny houses that much any more. Some, like Andru
Bemis’, are remnants from the early 20th century. His tiny house is in a sleepy
neighborhood that used to be the factory district. He’s seen other
little houses like his get torn down to build bigger new ones.


“Bigger is better, I guess. Bigger means you’ve achieved a lot more.
But as far as I’m concerned bigger generally means you’re working a
whole lot harder.”


That’s one reason people are choosing to live small. They’re after a
simpler life with less stuff. A smaller house costs less to buy and
maintain. And some people argue smaller homes make better use of
resources because they just use less of everything.


Jay Shafer says building small is the greenest thing you can do with a
new home. He owns the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. He designs and
builds super small houses. He started with his own home. It was
really tiny – 70 square feet. That’s 7 feet by 10 feet.


“It’s a huge challenge – it’s much harder than designing a large house.
There’s just no room for error. And if you want to do it well and get
the proportioning right you have to consider everything as part of
everything else.”


Shafer says to live in a tiny house, you have to figure out how much
elbow room you need. Turns out, 70 square feet was a tad too small for
Jay Shafer. So he traded up to 100 square feet.


Shafer says tiny houses are a tough sell for most Americans. But some
people just love small little spaces. Shafer calls himself a
claustrophile. He’s built 10 tiny houses and sold dozens more plans.


Gregory Johnson is one of Shafer’s converts. He’s a computer
consultant in Iowa City. He lives in one of Jay Shafer’s high tech
tiny houses. It’s just 140 square feet. But with a little bit of
magic, one room turns into three.


(Sound of sliding panels)


“You can take what was an office and in about 20 seconds it converts into
a dining area with a sink off to our right because that’s the kitchen.”


Gregory Johnson says his tiny house has changed him. He says he had
his doubts at first, like the time he visited Jay Shafer at the construction
site:


“He showed this little hole I was supposed to crawl through, the
passageway to the upstairs to the loft and I thought I might have to
lose some weight to get up in there (laughs).”


Johnson says he started really scaling back. He realized if he had a
refrigerator, he’d just fill it up with ice cream and pizza. Things he
really didn’t need. So to save energy, he doesn’t have a fridge at
all. He started eating nuts and grains and fruit. By shrinking his
life down to match his house he lost 100 pounds.


Johnson says tiny spaces don’t work for everyone. But he says he has a
fulfilling life with a whole lot less stuff and space to put it in.


Many tiny house owners such as Andru Bemis want their miniature homes
to make a statement: size does matter.


(Andru Bemis song: “my house is a very small house it’s the littlest
house there is/it’s bigger than yours”)


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Chemical Making You Fat?

A common group of chemicals used in all kinds of products is being
associated with increased obesity. Lester Graham reports this study
is the latest to link the chemicals to health problems:

Transcript

A common group of chemicals used in all kinds of products is being
associated with increased obesity. Lester Graham reports this study
is the latest to link the chemicals to health problems:


Phthalates are found in cosmetics, shampoos, soaps, lubricants, paints,
pesticides, plastics and more. A Harvard study had linked phthalates
to lower testosterone levels in men and lower sperm counts.
Testosterone also helps keep men lean.


Dr. Richard Stahlhut and his team at the University of Rochester looked
at the data and the Harvard study and took it to the next step:


“If what they found is correct, then what we should find perhaps is
that higher phthalate levels are associated with more abdominal obesity
and insulin resistance.”


And that’s what they found. The authors of the study published online
by Environmental Health Perspectives hypothesize that phthalates
might be directly linked to more belly fat and pre-diabetes in men.


The higher the phthalate level found in a person, the greater the
chance of abdominal obesity.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Cement Kiln Pollution

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new rule regulating
mercury emissions from cement kilns is being challenged by both sides.
As Tracy Samilton reports, the cement industry says the rule goes too
far. Environmentalists say it doesn’t go far enough:

Transcript

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new rule regulating
mercury emissions from cement kilns is being challenged by both sides.
As Tracy Samilton reports, the cement industry says the rule goes too
far. Environmentalists say it doesn’t go far enough:


The rule regulates mercury emissions from new cement kilns only. The
EPA doesn’t think cement kilns are that big of a factor in mercury
pollution, but the EPA’s estimate is based on voluntary disclosure by
kiln operators. Some kilns were found to be emitting ten times what
they’d been claiming.


EarthJustice Attorney James Pew says he’s skeptical that the mercury
emissions are as low as the EPA thinks they are:


“There’s strong reason to believe that it’s a lot worse than that, in
fact it could be off by an order of magnitude.”


Meanwhile, the cement industry is challenging the EPA’s requirement
that new kilns install mercury-scrubbing technology. Industry officials
say more study is needed to show that it works.


For the Environment Report, I’m Tracy Samilton.

Related Links

Could Humans Get Chronic Wasting Disease?

  • A deer wasting away from Chronic Wasting Disease. (Photo courtesy of Michigan's Department of Natural Resources.)

A disease that infects deer and elk has been alarming wildlife officials and hunters for years. But now it seems the disease could be more dangerous than previously thought. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley reports:

Transcript

A disease that infects deer and elk has been alarming wildlife officials
and hunters for years, but now it seems the disease could be more
dangerous than previously thought. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Christina Shockley reports:


Chronic Wasting Disease, or CWD, affects the brain tissue of deer and
elk. Sponge-like holes form in the brains of sick animals. The deer
begin to waste away, become weak, and then die.


Since CWD was discovered in Colorado nearly forty years ago, wild deer
in nine other states have tested positive for the disease. Little is known
about CWD – including how to stop it.


What scientists do know is that the infectious proteins-called prions –
thought to cause CWD are found in the brain and spinal cord areas of
infected animals, but officials still don’t have the answer to the big
question.


Judd Aiken is a professor of Animal Health and Biomedical Sciences at
the University of Wisconsin.


“The ultimate question is whether venison from infected animals, CWD infected
deer, poses a risk to humans. Clearly the first question that needed to be
asked and addressed was whether there was infectivity in muscle.”


Recent findings say there is.


Researchers at the University of Kentucky injected muscle from an
infected deer into the brains of genetically altered mice. The mice
displayed signs of CWD. This is the first time the infectious proteins
blamed for CWD have been found in deer meat.


The finding raises questions about whether eating venison is safe.
Researchers including Aiken say the study is important, but has limits.
For example, he says it doesn’t replicate what would happen in real life.
Plus, he says it’s probably unlikely humans can even get CWD. He says
studies suggest it’s difficult for the disease to jump to other species. Still,
he urges caution. Hunters should get the meat tested before they eat deer
from an area where CWD has been found.


“I, in no way, can advocate the consumption of infected deer, and indeed,
I would suggest due to the limitations of the CW tests, I don’t advocate
the consumption of deer obtained from a CWD endemic area.”


Even if the test comes back negative, Aiken says a negative result isn’t
always accurate, and infected animals in the beginning stages of the
disease can look and act normal.


(Sound of sporting goods store)


John White is a deer hunter from Sheboygan, Wisconsin. He’s in the
hunting section of a nearby sporting goods store. White isn’t too
concerned about Chronic Wasting Disease.


“Not a whole lot of people are worried about it. I mean, when it first
came out, some people were a little leery about it and didn’t want to hunt
that year, but they kinda got over it. I’m not really worried about it being
in the meat at all, because by the time the test comes back I’ll probably
have the deer eaten already and then it’s already too late.”


State wildlife officials say… that’s not a good idea. They recommend that
if you hunt deer in areas where the disease has been found, get the deer
tested before eating it. That message hasn’t changed… since learning the
prions could be in the meat. Some argue… it should change.


John Stauber is with a government watchdog group in Wisconsin, and
is co-author of “Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?”
He says officials are keeping quiet about the risk of CWD so they don’t
lose revenue from hunting licenses.


A large portion of state conservation agency budgets are dependent on
fees from hunting licenses. He says all deer that die should be tested for
the disease. Stauber also says CWD is a major human health concern.


“The biggest risk might not be the people who would die from
eating venison, but rather, the people who would die from the
contamination of the blood supply. This is a problem that would unfold
not in days or months or years, but even over decades.”


Stauber says it’s just a matter of time before Chronic Wasting Disease
spreads to people… he says some might even have the disease already,
and not know it.


But researchers like Judd Aiken from the University of Wisconsin say
people shouldn’t over-react.


“People should be concerned, but I don’t want people to panic, either. If
you think you may have consumed venison from infected animals, I don’t
think it’s likely that you’ll ever develop a human prion disease.”


But, Aiken says there’s too much we don’t know about the disease, and
since studies can take years to complete, we might be in the dark for a
while longer.


For the GLRC, I’m Christina Shockley.

Related Links

Study: Primates Become Chubby Hubbies

Some human males claim they gain weight when their mates are pregnant. A new study documents a weight gain for some kinds of monkeys when they’re about to be fathers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

Transcript

Some human males claim they gain weight when their mates are
pregnant. A new study documents a weight gain for some kinds of
monkeys when they’re about to be fathers. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison weighed about sixty
cotton-top tamarins, and common marmosets during the study. Those
two squirrel-sized primates are known to be monogamous and good
parents.


Researchers found the male monkeys gained another ten percent in
weight when their partners were expecting. Endocrinologist Toni Ziegler
speculates that hormonal changes help the expectant fathers to bulk up
and prepare to lug around their babies.


“There’s a high energetic cost to being the one which these fathers are to
do most of the infant carrying and since they have twins and sometimes
triplets it’s a big responsibility.”


Ziegler says the additional weight only stays on the male monkeys
during the pregnancy… something their human counterparts can only
hope for.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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