Dear Kitty. Some blog

This is a video of an ivory gull, ‘30/12-06 … Langø Havn, Lolland Denmark’.

Reuters reports:

Gull sets Arctic pollution record for birds

Thu Sep 4, 2008 11:03am EDT

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO - A small Arctic gull has set a record as the bird most contaminated by two banned industrial pollutants, scientists said on Thursday.

Eggs of the ivory gull, which has a population of about 14,000 from Siberia to Canada, were found to have the highest known concentrations of PCBs, long used in products such as paints or plastics, and the pesticide DDT.

“Environmental poisons are threatening ivory gulls,” the Norwegian Polar Institute said in a statement of eggs collected off northern Norway and Russia. “Levels of PCB and DDT are higher in ivory gulls than in other Arctic seabirds.”

The long-lasting chemicals, swept north by prevailing winds and currents from industrial centers, often end in the Arctic where they build up in fatty tissues of animals, fish and birds.

A 2001 U.N. convention outlawed most uses of 12 so-called persistent organic pollutants after the chemicals were found in the breast milk of Inuit women and in polar bears. Levels of many of the “dirty dozen” in the Arctic have been falling.

“Ivory gulls are top predators, that’s a main reason why they have high levels of contaminants,” said Hallvard Stroem, of the Polar Institute. The gulls eat cod and other fatty fish and also scavenge dead seals or polar bears for a fat-charged diet.

“We’re not sure why the levels are higher than for other birds,” he told Reuters, adding there were no known local sources of the pollutants to explain the high concentrations.

PCBs, at up to 0.02 percent of the egg weight, were comparable with those found in some polar bears 20 years ago.

Previous studies show that the chemical pollutants can have effects on birds such as shortening lifespans or thinning of eggshells. Ivory gulls can live about 10 to 20 years.

The shrinking of Arctic sea ice in recent years, apparently because of global warming, also threatens the birds by reducing the size of their habitat. The gulls feed most around the fringes of the ice, where fish and plankton thrive.

“Climate change is an added stress — the ivory gull is dependent on the sea ice,” Stroem said.

The survey was carried out after reports that numbers of ivory gulls had plunged by 80 percent in Canada. Stroem said population trends elsewhere were not clear.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

Arctic and Antarctic: here.

This video from the United States Senate is called The Exposure at Qarmat Ali: WMD’s Iraq = KBR.

From Associated Press in the USA:

Soldiers may have been exposed to toxic chemical

JASPER, Ind. — The Indiana National Guard is notifying nearly 600 soldiers who served in Iraq that they may have drunk water tainted with a carcinogen at an Iraqi treatment plant.

During a U.S. Senate hearing in June, senators learned that sodium dichromate — a cancer-causing chemical that can also cause breathing problems — was used at the Qarmat Ali water plant near Basra, Iraq.

Guard spokeswoman Lt. Col. Deedra Thombleson told The Herald of Jasper on Monday that the Guard has sent letters to most of the 140 current and former soldiers known to have been at that treatment plant between May and September 2003.

The addresses for 18 of those soldiers could not be found to send them letters notifying them of their possible exposure.

Thombleson said 448 other Guardsmen are also being contacted to determine if they were ever at the plant. Of the 588 soldiers being sent letters, she said 138 are back in Iraq. …

According to the testimony heard June 20 by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, sodium dichromate was used at the Basra facility as a corrosion inhibitor in water.

Indiana National Guard officials learned of the potential exposure June 27.

Paul Eckert of Jasper received his notification letter Friday. He served in the Guard for 10 years and was in Iraq with the Jasper-based 1st Battalion, 152nd Regiment from February 2003 to February 2004.

During his tour, Eckert went to the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant several times with a group to pick up water and supplies for their unit.

When he returned to Jasper in 2004, Eckert, 38, said he noticed a change in his health.

“I never snored or had breathing problems until I got back from Iraq,” he said Monday. “I have a lack of energy, and I didn’t know why. I’ve always been in top shape.”

Eckert also noticed blotches on his skin that burned and itched. When he got it checked out at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Louisville, Ky., he said he was given a medicated lotion that didn’t help his condition, he said. …

A fact sheet provided by the Guard states that exposure to sodium dichromate can cause sores in the nose and sores on the skin that tend not to heal.

Other symptoms include skin irritation, tearing and eye irritation, runny or bleeding nose as well as sneezing, coughing, wheezing and pain in the chest when breathing. Fever, nausea, vomiting and upset stomach are other symptoms.

Long-term exposure to the chemical can cause lung cancer, the Guard’s fact sheet says.

Eckert wonders if his late comrade, David Moore, might have been sickened by the chemical. Moore, of Dubois, died earlier this year from what doctors called interstitial lung disease.

While in Iraq, Moore escorted Eckert’s group to the water treatment plant and drank the water the team brought back, Eckert said.

Moore’s sister, Beth Pfau, said Monday that her brother had serious breathing problems after returning home in 2004. He saw specialists at Indiana University Hospital and elsewhere, but no one could figure out what was causing the problem.

“His breathing got worse and worse,” she said. “He was on oxygen at home for a while.”

Pfau said that in early January her brother checked into the VA hospital in Louisville, where he was eventually put on a ventilator.

He was 42 when he died at the hospital Feb. 4. She said her family has not heard from the Guard but they plan to contact officials.

Sodium dichromate is the same chemical residents in Hinkley, Calif., were exposed to and highlighted in the movie “Erin Brockovich.”

Staff Writer Sally Petty contributed to this report.

This Associated Press item does not say who put the poison in the US soldiers’ drinking water. The answer is, KBR corporation, then part of Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s conglomerate.

Meanwhile, from the blog of US Congress Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

The Oversight Committee is currently holding a hearing, “Deficient Electrical Systems at U.S. Facilities in Iraq.” The hearing will examine electrical problems leading to the injuries and deaths of military personnel and the Department of Defense’s management and oversight of contractors. Chairman Henry Waxman has been investigating the situation for several months, see his letter to Secretary of Defense Gates. Witnesses from the Defense Department Inspector General’s office, Defense Contract Management Agency and KBR, Inc. will testify.

Pentagon Attempted To Cover-Up KBR’s Negligence In Electrocution Of U.S. Soldier: here.

Use of Contractors in Iraq Costs Billions, Report Says: here.

This video is about a leak at the Tricastin nuclear plant in France.

In France, at the Tricastin nuclear plant, this week for the second time in a short period, there was an accident. Over a hundred workers were damaged by nuclear radiation.

In the same week, there was a chemical accident at the Urenco nuclear plant in Almelo, the Netherlands.

The apologists for nuclear energy will, no doubt, pretend that all this did not happen.

US UK Iran nuclear issues, by George Monbiot: here.

This video from Britain is called Bhopal Disaster - Channel 4/BBC - The Yes Men.

From British daily The Guardian:

Booker-shortlisted novelist begins hunger strike over Bhopal

Randeep Ramesh in Delhi

Thursday June 12, 2008

Indra Sinha, the author of a Booker-shortlisted novel set in the aftermath of the tragedy of the world’s worst industrial disaster in Bhopal, yesterday began an indefinite hunger strike in support of survivors protesting against “government indifference” over their plight.

Sinha, a longtime supporter of the Bhopal campaign, told the Guardian that he wanted to “give something back to people who had given me so much. The survivors have gone through hell and been let down by everybody that matters. The judges, politicians have all sold them down the river.”

More than two decades ago, white clouds of toxic gas escaped from American multinational Union Carbide’s pesticide plant. The gas killed 5,000 people that night and 15,000 more in the following weeks - and there is evidence that hundreds of children are still being born with birth defects.

Sinha joins another nine activists in Delhi who began fasting this week. The protestors, who include children and survivors, have complained of being beaten by police after they demonstrated outside the prime minister’s office in the Indian capital.

Set in the slums of a town a re-imagined Bhopal, Sinha’s Animal’s People is a damning indictment against corporate greed and indifference to human suffering. Its climax is a hunger strike to shame the authorities into helping the survivors.

“I know the problem with a hunger strike is that it hurts you more than the government but there has to be some moral pressure on this government which appears dazzled by Dow Chemicals (which brought Union Carbide in 2001) and promises of god knows what investment. How long can I go on (without food)? I don’t know honestly.”

The author, who is based in southern France, said that the real problem is that there has been no case made against Union Carbide, the question of Dow becomes one of “public relations”.

“Because no American executive has ever been brought before a court of law there has been no rigorous investigation of the facts. So it is not a legal or moral problem but one of image. Next week Dow are sponsoring an event at the Cannes advertising festival which is about using marketing for good causes. It is absurd.”

Dow, one of the world’s largest chemical companies, purchased Union Carbide in 2001 and says it never owned or operated the Bhopal plant. Therefore it has no responsibility for the events in 1984. The disused Union Carbide factory in Bhopal contains about 8,000 tonnes of carcinogenic chemicals which continue to leach out and contaminate water supplies used by 30,000 local people.

Satinath Sarangi of the Sambhavna Trust, which helps to rehabilitate victims, said the government is washing its hands of Bhopal. No one, he says, has taken responsibility for cleaning up the site and paying the high cost of medical bills.

“We need to catalyse global opinion about the issue. The government tries to buy us off with empty promises but really there’s nothing.”

India: Victory for Bhopal survivors: here.

This video on Dow Chemical is called Bhopal Disaster - BBC - The Yes Men.

By Naomi Spencer:

US environmental regulatory official forced out after dispute with Dow Chemical

12 May 2008

A regional US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator in a long-running fight with Dow Chemical over pollution announced her resignation May 1, after high-ranking federal officials stripped her of her enforcement powers and told her to quit or be fired by June 1. The ouster is the latest example of the Bush administration’s political interference into science and regulation at the EPA on behalf of big business.

The administrator, Mary Gade, headed the EPA’s Region 5 office in Chicago, which oversees federal enforcement throughout Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Since she was appointed by Bush to the Midwest office in 2006, Gade had pressed for clean-up efforts and pursued penalties against Dow for dioxin contamination surrounding its Midland, Michigan plants.

For decades, Dow has dumped dioxin—a highly toxic byproduct of herbicides and chlorinated chemicals—into local rivers, contaminating fish and wildlife and saturating the water and soil within 50 miles of its plants. Dioxin is known to cause cancer, mutations, and serious skin diseases. The EPA considers the chemical dangerous to public health and the environment even at very low levels because it bioaccumulates, or builds up in the environment and in the body much faster than it breaks down.

See also here.

From the site of the Periodic Table Printmaking Project, where you can see the prints and explanations:

Ninety-six printmakers of all experience levels, have joined together to produce 118 prints in any medium; woodcut, linocut, monotype, etching, lithograph, silkscreen, or any combination. The end result is a periodic table of elements intended to promote both science and the arts.

From British daily The Morning Star:

Tainted legacy

(Friday 08 December 2006)

THERE is a lesson in the news that Prime Minister Tony Blair should take to heart and that is that history does not absolve you and it does not forgive.

Professor Sir Richard Doll, the eminent scientist whose professional opinion cleared the virulent defoliant Agent Orange of causing cancer during its use by the US in the Vietnam war, died last year.

But among his personal papers has been found a contract with Monsanto, the firm now best known for its work on genetically modified crops, but which, back in the days of the Vietnam conflict, manufactured - Yes, you’ve guessed it - Agent Orange.

And this was not just a one-off contract.

It was an extension of a commission that ran from May 1979 until its one-year renewal at a fee of $1,500 a day in 1986.

It was during that extension that he wrote his evidence to an Australian commission on Agent Orange, declaring that there was no evidence that it caused cancer.

Sir Richard was also paid a £15,000 fee by the Chemical Manufacturers Association and chemicals companies Dow Chemical and ICI for a review of vinyl chloride, which is used in plastics manufacture, clearing the substance of any link with most cancers, a view to which the World Health Organisation takes decided exception.

However, even in the light of this, it would be wrong to write off all of Sir Richard’s work. He gave valuable service on, among other things, asbestos contamination and he made no secret of his forthright anti-Iraq war position.

But these revelations cast a long shadow over his evidence in relation to Agent Orange and, in this context, it is not sufficient to say, as US politician Madeleine Albright famously claimed: “We need more facts.

From History News Network:

New interest in alchemists

Source: NYT (8-1-06)

Historians of science are taking a new and lively interest in alchemy, the often mystical investigation into the hidden mysteries of nature that reached its heyday in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries and has been an embarrassment to modern scientists ever since.

There was no place in the annals of empirical science, beginning mainly in the 18th century, for the occult practices of obsessed dreamers who sought most famously and impossibly to transform base metals into pure gold. So alchemy fell into disrepute.

But in the revival of scholarship on the field, historians are finding reasons to give at least some alchemists their due.

Even though they were secretive and self-deluded and their practices closer to magic than modern scientific methods, historians say, alchemists contributed to the emergence of modern chemistry as a science and an agent of commerce.

“Experimentalism was one of alchemy’s hallmarks,” said Lawrence M. Principe, a historian of science at Johns Hopkins University and a trained chemist.

“You have to get your hands dirty, and in this way alchemists forged some early ideas about matter.”

From British daily The Independent:

Vietnamese wildlife still paying a high price for chemical warfare

By Jessie King

Published: 08 July 2006

Forty years on, much of the environmental damage caused to Vietnam by American forces during the Vietnam War has still not been repaired, according to a new study.

In particular, the effects of the massive amounts of chemical defoliants sprayed from the air to destroy the jungle hiding places of the Vietcong guerrillas are still being felt, says the study, the first comprehensive account of Vietnam’s natural history written in English.

Between 1961 and 1971, more than 20 million gallons of herbicides, the most notorious being “Agent Orange“, were sprayed by the US to defoliate forests, clear growth along the borders of military sites and eliminate enemy crops.

Some of the herbicides also contained dioxins - compounds potentially harmful to people and wildlife - while one, “Agent Blue” - used mainly for crop destruction - was made up mainly of an organic arsenic compound.

Repeated applications of the chemicals “sometimes eradicated all vegetation”, according to the study - Vietnam: A Natural History - and the environment has still not recovered in many places.

Weedy plant species such as alang-alang (also known as cogon or American grass) often invaded cleared areas, killing other plants and preventing normal regeneration of the forest.

“In many areas, these weeds continue to dominate the landscape decades after the defoliants were sprayed,” says the study.

As the spray was often concentrated along strategic waterways, it is believed to have had a long-term impact on wetlands and riverside vegetation.

Scientists are finding that dioxins still surface in freshwater animals.

The study adds: “In addition to effects on individuals, the defoliants undoubtedly modified species distribution patterns through habitat degradation and loss, particularly in wetland systems.”

Direct attempts to eradicate Vietnam’s forests were not the only military activities to affect its environment.

The estimated 14 million tons of bombs or cluster-bombs dropped on to northern and southern Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia left an estimated 10 to 15 million large bomb craters.

In addition to the effects of these bombs, the impact of napalm, land mines, and other wartime technology on Vietnam’s biological communities must also be taken into account, says the study.

It has been written by three wildlife specialists at the American Museum of Natural History - Eleanor Jane Sterling, Martha Maud Hurley and the Vietnamese expert Le Duc Minh.

They say: “A country uncommonly rich in plants, animals and natural habitats, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam shelters a significant portion of the world’s biological diversity, including rare and unique organisms and an unusual mixture of tropical and temperate species.”

Most remarkably of all, in the past 15 years a whole suite of species hitherto unknown to science has been discovered in Vietnam, deep in jungles where scientific access had been made impossible by the war.

They include the saola, a large hoofed mammal of an entirely new genus - an antelope-like wild ox which is the world’s largest land-dwelling animal discovered since 1937.

Vietnam: A Natural History is published by Yale University Press