An EPA scientist testing online sensors for water distribution systems (Photo courtesy of the US Office of Management and Budget)
Scientists at the Environmental Protection
Agency say government appointees have interfered
in scientific decisions. Rebecca Williams reports
the scientists say political pressure has become
more common during the past five years:
Transcript
Scientists at the Environmental Protection
Agency say government appointees have interfered
in scientific decisions. Rebecca Williams reports
the scientists say political pressure has become
more common during the past five years:
In a survey, more than 800 scientists reported interference in their work by
government officials. They say political appointees have used data
selectively to influence policy decisions, and ordered scientists to alter
information.
One scientist anonymously wrote, quote: “Do not trust the Environmental
Protection Agency to protect your environment.”
Francesca Griffo is with the Union of Concerned Scientists – the group that
conducted the survey. She says political interference with science has
happened before the Bush Administration.
“But I do think and what we have from the scientists themselves is this idea
that it’s gotten much, much worse, much more pervasive, much more common than it’s
ever been before.”
The EPA did not respond to calls for comment. But it’s been reported the
agency has said it carefully weighs the input of staff scientists in policy
decisions.
A new study says modern humans are in the evolutionary fast lane. Scientists say world
population growth is leading to beneficial genetic mutations. Chuck Quirmbach has
more:
Transcript
A new study says modern humans are in the evolutionary fast lane. Scientists say world
population growth is leading to beneficial genetic mutations. Chuck Quirmbach has
more:
Some scientists contend modern culture and conveniences have basically halted human
evolution. But anthropologist John Hawks says that’s not so. He’s been analyzing data
from an international gene-cataloguing study. He says many genes have rapidly changed
within the last 5-thousand years. For example, Hawks says one positive development is
that humans have more genes that fight off some diseases:
“Things that resist malaria, things that resist smallpox, things that are resistant to new
diseases that have emerged in the last 10,000 years.”
Hawks says there have also been changes related to what some groups can eat and drink,
for example, many northern Europeans can now drink milk their whole lives. The study
of genetic change is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
When we think about climate change, many of us think about it as a national, even international, problem. But a growing number of officials at the local level are beginning to see it as a local problem as well. Karen Kelly brings us the first
of a two-part series on what cities are doing to
prepare for global warming:
Transcript
When we think about climate change, many of us think about it as a national, even international, problem. But a growing number of officials at the local level are beginning to see it as a local problem as well. Karen Kelly brings us the first
Of a two-part series on what cities are doing to
prepare for global warming:
Ron Sims has lived in Washington State his whole life, and he loves its unique environment: Puget Sound, the snow-capped mountains, and the salmon runs. But he’s worried about its future. He’s now the head of King County, Washington. It’s home to about 2 million residents, including the city of Seattle.
As county executive, he sees the scientific reports about his region.
They say the snow caps are melting, marine life is changing and the cedar trees are being replaced by other species. That’s what happening right now.
But what really convinced Sims he had to do something is when he called scientists at the nearby University of Washington’s School of Climate Impacts.
“And I asked them a simple question. I wanted to know what the climate in our area would be in 2050.”
The scientists’ report said King County could expect frequent torrential rains that would cause serious flooding, even swamping the buildings of some major employers. In terms of wildlife, the rains would wipe out the salmon’s spawning grounds. Yet, at other times of the year, they say they’ll be a drought as the snowcaps decline. Sims knew it was time to take action:
“Should we wait for our children to make this decision in 2045 or 2030? And since we now know that we have to make these decisions, based upon what the scientists are telling us, why aren’t we doing it now? Because generations in the future are going to have to make far more complex decisions and this shouldn’t be one of them they have to work from.
Sims isn’t the only city or county leader who’s taking climate change seriously.
The mayor of London, England starting charging people a fee for driving into his city during rush hour.
In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg made the same proposal to reduce emissions. He also wants to see a new rule that requires all New York City taxis to be hybrids within the next five years, and groups like the US Conference of Mayors are holding climate change summits to help local officials plan for the effects of global warming.
Jennifer Penney is with the Alliance for Resilient Cities, which recently brought local leaders to Toronto. She says a lot of officials are realizing that they’ll be on the front lines when serious weather events occur:
“Most of those things are in the jurisdiction of the local government. So protecting people from heat waves. Dealing with local floods. Dealing with wind storms or tornadoes that come through. Those are the kinds of things that local governments are on the ground, they have to deal with.”
And that’s why city and county officials across the nation are starting to make plans.
Back in Washington State, Ron Sims decided on two strategies to deal with this. One, reduce his county’s carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050, mostly by getting cars off the road. That’s led the county to start buying up development rights on rural lands to prevent sprawl and the number of suburban commuters. They’ve also bought a fleet of hybrid buses.
And the second strategy? Start finding ways to adapt to the realities of climate change. King County has taken many steps. They range from a plan to strengthen their levies to prevent flooding, and the county is buying up forest land to act as a sponge for the runoff water. Sims says King County’s climate change plan has touched every department in the government:
“We decided to go backwards in time in all functions of this government… how we plan for growth, what do preserve, what will we face, what do we see the consequences of 2050 being, and are we prepared for that?”
A lot of people wonder if the public is ready for that, to sacrifice for it.
Ron Sims tells his colleagues in local government that the public is ready.
They saw the pictures of Hurricane Katrina. Many saw Al Gore’s documentary on climate change, and now they’re looking for elected officials, if not at the national level, then at the local level, to take the lead.
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.
Farmer Laura Krouse says the ethanol boom has been great for corn farmers, who she says are finally getting a fair price for their corn. But she says she's worried that there's not enough being done fast enough to reduce the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Laura Krouse's Iowa farm. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Laura Krouse built a prairie wetland to filter water running off her farm and part of her neighbor's farm. Wetlands remove the soluble form of nitrogen - called nitrate - from the water. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Ethanol plants are sprouting up across the Corn Belt. 14 million acres more corn was planted this year to meet demand for corn ethanol. Scientists warn that could mean a lot more nitrogen fertilizer pollution draining into the Gulf. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Gulf of Mexico shrimpers are hurt by the "dead zone." Scientists point to nitrogen fertilizer from the Corn Belt as the main cause of the dead zone. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Management practices by some farmers do little to prevent nitrogen runoff from going into rivers that eventually dump into the Gulf of Mexico. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Scientists are predicting the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico will reach its largest size ever this summer. Fish and shrimp can’t survive in the Dead Zone. It’s believed to be mainly caused by fertilizer washed from farm fields across the nation. Rebecca Williams reports some scientists say demand for ethanol made from corn could make the Dead Zone even bigger:
Transcript
Scientists are predicting the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico will reach its largest size ever this summer. Fish and shrimp can’t survive in the dead zone. It’s believed to be mainly caused by fertilizer washed from farm fields across the nation. Rebecca Williams reports some scientists say demand for ethanol made from corn could make the dead zone even bigger:
(Sound of tractor raking hay)
“It’s the perfect Iowa day, you know?”
Laura Krouse is tearing apart a bale of hay to mulch her tomatoes.
She’s a thousand miles from the Gulf of Mexico. But she points out,
what happens on farms here ends up affecting life way down South:
“This watershed I live in drains 25% of Iowa. And we’re one of the
richest farming states in the nation – of course we have something to
do with it.”
By “it,” Krouse means the dead zone. All or parts of 31 farm states
drain into the Mississippi River, which empties into the Gulf.
Scientists point to nitrogen fertilizer used on farm fields as the main
cause of the dead zone. All that nitrogen causes an enormous algae
bloom. When the algae dies it drops to the ocean floor. Bacteria eat
the algae and they rob the water of oxygen.
This summer, the dead zone’s predicted to reach a record size. It could get as big as the state of New Jersey.
Laura Krouse has been trying to cut back her own role in the dead zone.
Five years ago, she added something to her farm that’s rare around here.
Krouse cut some of the tile lines that drain water from her farm, and
replaced part of her farmland with a prairie wetland. She says that
made her neighbors nervous:
“We just don’t see people taking land out of production in Iowa very
frequently.”
Wetlands like this one remove nitrogen from the water that flows from
farm fields.
It’s one of the things a government task force on the dead zone
recommended to cut nitrogen loading into the Gulf.
But instead of a big push to restore wetlands, the economic landscape
is changing in the other direction. Demand for ethanol has led to
historically high corn prices. And that’s encouraging farmers to grow
more corn. A USDA report says farmers have planted 14 million more
acres of corn this year than last year. It’s the most corn planted in
the U.S. in more than 50 years.
Laura Krouse says this is not good for the Gulf of Mexico:
“I’m concerned about all the extra corn because it requires nitrogen to
produce that corn and no matter how careful we are and no matter how
expensive it is which causes us to be more and more careful with
application, nitrogen as a molecule just wants to get away. It is
leaky.”
When it rains, nitrogen runs quickly from farm fields and gets into
creeks and rivers. The federal government’s task force on the dead zone has been trying to
tackle all this.
Don Scavia led a group of scientists advising the task force under the
Clinton Administration. The Bush Administration convened a new science
panel to review the original science panel’s work. Don Scavia says
since then, there’s been very little progress in shrinking the dead
zone, or what scientists call an area of hypoxia:
“In fact what we’ve seen in the last year is just the opposite with
this push towards corn-based ethanol production. Even acres that were
set aside into conservation are coming back out into production, into
corn, and the increased nitrogen load to the Gulf this year and the projected record
hypoxia is probably caused by this increased corn production.”
Scavia says if the dead zone keeps increasing, the Gulf shrimping
industry could collapse.
Ironically, the new science panel appointed by the Bush White House is
calling for even bigger cuts in nitrogen than the first panel appointed
by the Clinton Administration. They want to reduce nitrogen from farm
fields and other sources by 40 to 45 percent.
Don Parrish is with the American Farm Bureau. He says those reductions
are too much:
“Those are going to be really difficult and they could cause
significant economic dislocation at a time when I think we need to be
thinking about the products that agriculture produces, and those are
important.”
There’s no question corn for ethanol is at the top of that list right
now. Ethanol’s popular. It’s making farmers richer. It’s making the
chemical companies that supply nitrogen richer. The government task
force has to figure out how to cut back on all the nitrogen that’s
needed to grow all the corn… that’s needed for billions of gallons of
ethanol.
Lake Superior's North Shore.
(Photo by Dave Hansen - Minnesota Extension Service)
For the first time, state legislatures in the Great Lakes region have a set of laws in front of
them that could comprehensively define how and where they can use Great Lakes water.
Melissa Ingells has a look at the document called the Great Lakes Compact:
Transcript
For the first time, state legislatures in the Great Lakes region have a set of laws in front of
them that could comprehensively define how and where they can use Great Lakes water.
Melissa Ingells has a look at the document called the Great Lakes Compact:
For a long time, nobody thought much about regulating the water of the Great Lakes.
They just seemed inexhaustible. There was no firm legal definition of who the water
belonged to, or who could give it away.
At some point, scientists figured out the boundaries of what’s known as the Great Lakes
Basin. It’s like a huge land bowl where all the waterways flow back into the Lakes. It
includes areas of eight states and parts of Canada. Scientists figured out that you had to
leave at least 99% of the water in the lakes in order to maintain all the important
ecosystems that depend on the water.
The natural boundary of the Great Lakes basin started to become a political boundary
when demand for water started rising. The only regulation for a long time was a 1984
federal law that said all the Great Lakes governors had to agree before any water could
be taken out of the lakes.
Then, in 1998, an organization called the Nova Group got a permit from Ontario to ship
water to Asia. People didn’t like that idea at all, and the politicians reacted:
“It seems like every major policy change has a triggering event.”
Dennis Schornack is the U.S. chairman of the International Joint Commission, which
oversees Great Lakes issues:
“The Nova permit granted initially by Ontario to this shipping company to take Great
Lakes water apparently by tanker to the far east… was the triggering event to start the
compact in motion. There have been a number of cases over the years… they all lead
down the same path, and that is that we had to have a structure to manage these waters
cooperatively.”
The Compact Schornack was talking about is the Great Lakes Compact. It’s a
comprehensive set of strict water usage laws. The states realized the need for something
like it after the Nova Group incident, and work on it was completed in 2006. It’s a strong
agreement because each state, and two Canadian provinces through a separate agreement,
must get it through their legislatures and get their governors to sign it. After all the states
have passed it, it has to be approved by the U.S. Congress.
Schornack was one of the people who helped write it. He thinks it’s a pretty good
solution for the lakes:
“This is really a big deal. Whether it’s a perfect solution, who knows, only time will tell,
but it certainly is a very strong and positive step in the right direction. When eight
governors get together and two premiers and decide we’re going to manage a fifth of the
world’s fresh surface water, and we’re going to do it with conservation, we’re going to do
it with very severe restrictions on diversions, this is all very good for the basin, this is
good news.”
The Compact does have its detractors. There are people from the business and
environmental worlds who have problems with some of it, but the general feeling is that something has to be settled on, and the Compact is a good start. Most states seem
to have bipartisan support in their legislatures, although so far only Minnesota has
actually passed it. Peter Annin is the author of “The Great Lakes Water Wars.” He
thinks that by legislative standards, things are moving pretty quickly:
“The pace of ratification to the average citizen might seem like it’s
painfully slow and laborious. But in fact, with compacts in general, some of them have
taken ten, twenty years to make it through all the various legislatures. And so here we
are about 18 months after the documents were released… if you look at the eight states,
the vast majority of them have some sort of activity going.”
Annin also thinks that given the pressing issues over natural resources everywhere, that
agreements like the Compact will change the way other regions think about their
resources:
“Why it’s a model I think is because it’s encouraging to people to think not just in
political boundaries, but in watershed boundaries, in that the Compact encourages people
to work communally to a greater social and sustainability good on behalf of the regional
water supply and water resources and I think that’s going to be a model for the future no
matter where you are.:
Annin thinks there will be a flurry of activity in the legislatures in the next year or so.
That’s because after the 2010 congressional redistricting, the water-hungry Southwest
will likely have more power in the U.S. House. So it’s in the interest of Great Lakes
States to get the Compact through Congress before those political changes happen.
A new report says true wilderness is vanishing. The authors say we
might need to rethink conservation. Rebecca Williams reports:
Transcript
A new report says true wilderness is vanishing. The authors say we
might need to rethink conservation. Rebecca Williams reports:
The report in the journal Science says we might need to think
differently about how we protect wild areas. There are very few places
left on Earth that haven’t been touched by people.
The authors say that as of 1995, only 17% of the planet’s land area had
remained untouched. They’re defining true wilderness as places without
any people, roads, crops or lights detectable at night by satellite.
They say there’s some land set aside in wilderness preserves…
but it’s just 1% of Earth’s land area.
The authors of the report include two Nature Conservancy scientists.
They say population growth might make traditional views of conservation
unsustainable.
They argue we might have to focus more on managing nature and the
services it provides… instead of trying to keep people out of
wilderness areas.
A new study in the journal Ecology finds that in the animal world,
there are worse things than being eaten alive. Rebecca Williams
reports:
Transcript
A new study in the journal Ecology finds that in the animal world,
there are worse things than being eaten alive. Rebecca Williams
reports:
Getting eaten by a predator might be bad, but it might be just the
beginning of the bad news for prey.
Scientists looked at the effects of an invasive species in the Great
Lakes called the spiny water flea. The water fleas eat tiny creatures
called daphnia. In the study, daphnia swam to deeper, colder water to
get away from the predator.
Scott Peacor is a fisheries scientist with Michigan State University
and the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab:
“Prey of course do all sorts of things to avoid becoming a meal. In this case,
the daphnia swimming down to colder waters means they reproduce at much
slower rates. So that’s a major cost in this case.”
So instead of one daphnia getting eaten, the entire population is at
greater risk of dying off. And that’s bad because daphnia are a key
food source at the bottom of the Great Lakes food web.
China is now producing more carbon dioxide emissions than the United
States. Lester Graham reports experts expected China to become the
leader in CO2 emissions, but not so soon:
Transcript
China is now producing more carbon dioxide emissions than the United
States. Lester Graham reports experts expected China to become the
leader in CO2 emissions, but not so soon:
Just last year, experts were predicting China CO2 emissions would
exceed U.S. emissions by as soon as 2009. Turns out, China was already
there.
The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency estimates China’s CO2
emissions for last year, 2006, were 8% higher than the United States.
CO2 is the main greenhouse gas which most scientists believe is
contributing to climate change and global warming.
Expanding Chinese industry relies more heavily on coal for fuel than
many U.S. based industries. The new estimate will likely fuel
President George Bush’s arguments that China and other developing
nations must do more to reduce emissions.
But… the 300 million people in the U.S. are still pumping out four times the CO2 emissions
per person than China with its more than 1 billion people.
For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
The external bleeding on this freshwater drum fish is a result of VHS. The disease is spreading beyond the eastern Great Lakes region. (Photo by John Lumsden, University of Guelph)
A virus that’s been killing fish in the Great Lakes is spreading to
other waterways in the US. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
A virus that’s been killing fish in the Great Lakes is spreading to
other waterways in the US. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Viral hemorrhagic septicemia has been limited to the eastern Great
Lakes region, but now it’s gotten into a forty-mile long lake in
Wisconsin. Lake Winnebago draws anglers from a wide area.
Mike Schmal is a local tourism official. He says the fish-killing
virus could be very disruptive.
“There’s numerous bait shops and numerous businesses that depend on the
lake and this is our summer leisure season… when the boating season
begins and when sportfishing begins.”
Scientists say it appears to be impossible to get the virus out of
infected waters, so natural resource officials are trying to stop VHS
from being spread to more lakes and rivers in other states.
It’s not clear how VHS got into the US, though contaminated
ballast water from international ships is one possibility.
An EPA scientist testing online sensors for water distribution systems (Photo courtesy of the US Office of Management and Budget)
