Mark Schapiro: Uphill Battle for Clean Water in Corn Country→

Yale E360:

““Health trumps politics,” said Iowa State Senator David Johnson before taking the stage at a raucous rally in Des Moines last winter to support strengthening the state’s water quality. In the marble rotunda of the state capitol, he rose to denounce the nitrogen and phosphates that have been flowing in ever-increasing quantities into Iowa’s public water supplies — and was cheered by the small crowd of family farmers, concerned mothers, and his new political allies, the legislature’s drastically outnumbered Democrats. Johnson had been one of the longest-serving Republicans in Iowa until he left the party to become an independent in 2016 after defying it repeatedly on one of the most divisive issues in Iowa — the integrity of the state’s water.

Iowa’s nitrogen load has been accelerating despite more than $100 million spent by the federal and state governments to rein it in. Starting in 1999, the concentration of nitrogen in the state’s major waterways has increased almost 50 percent, according to a study from the University of Iowa, published last spring in PLOS One. The battle over Iowa’s water had long been posed as one between rural and urban interests, until Johnson, whose district is one of the most thinly populated and heavily farmed in the state, came along...

More than 750, or 58 percent, of the state’s rivers and streams do not meet federal water quality standards and are designated by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) as too contaminated for swimming or consuming fish caught there — making a state once renowned for its lattice of waterways into a mess of inaccessible creeks, streams and lakes. Another 23 percent fall into a category of being “potentially impaired,” which the state defines as, “waters in need of further investigation.” Ninety-two percent of the nitrogen and 80 percent of phosphates in the state’s waterways, says the DNR, come from farms and animal feedlots.”

Aaron Bady: Heavy Stuff: Lead is Poison→

Popula:

“It’s peculiar that we know that lead is poison, that there is no “safe” amount to put in your body, and yet we still put it in our bodies. It is peculiar because you would think that what we know would inform what we do; you would think, for example, that Flint, Michigan, would not choose to use a river that had been poisoned for nearly a century as its municipal water supply. The fact that it did—the impossible-to-avoid fact that this is the choice that was made in Flint, Michigan—forces us to re-evaluate the basis of that expectation. One of the terms is wrong. Is it “we”? Is it “know”? Is it “safe”? Is it “choose”?

Or maybe it’s the word “peculiar,” which has two primary but opposed meanings: “strange” and “particular.” Describing slavery as America’s “peculiar institution” in the 19th century, for example, was not meant to imply that slavery was strange, but that it was particular to the southern United States (the rest of the world having mostly abolished it). In this sense, it was anything but “estranged” or “alien”; precisely in its particularity, “the peculiar domestick institution of the Southern States,” as John Calhoun put it, was what made his home what it was.

If it’s peculiar that we drink poison, as a society, then there are one of two choices: either it’s a strange and inexplicable practice, or it’s what makes us who we are. It might also, like the word peculiar itself, be a strange and particular combination of both.

Here is what we know....”

Mimi Kirk: Fertility -- Lead's Other Toxic Toll→

CityLab:

“A recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, “Toxic Truth: Lead and Fertility,” confirms this connection by providing, for the first time, causal evidence of the effects of lead exposure on fertility for large portions of the U.S. population, both male and female.

It’s a troubling new addition to the body of research examining the effects of lead poisoning on young people and families. American cities remain heavily laced with this toxic metal, which was once found in paint, plumbing, gasoline, and in various industrial usages. As the Flint water crisis demonstrated, its public health impacts are severe: Lead exposure in children is associated with serious health and developmental consequences. At least half a million American children under the age of five have blood lead levels higher than the point at which the Centers for Disease Control recommends public health intervention, and at least 4 million households are exposed to high levels of lead, the CDC says.

Many are clustered in low-income areas of cities like St. Louis, Cleveland, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, where the effects of lead poisoning span generations. Some researchers have posited that chronic lead exposure is partially responsible for poor educational outcomes and high crime rates in some cities.”

Kelly April Tyrrell: Heavier Rain Means More Polluted Runoff→

University of Wisconsin - Madison:

“Phosphorus, a nutrient found in the manure applied to agricultural fields, makes its way to Wisconsin waters (and waterways elsewhere) in runoff following rain storms. When the weather is warm, it can lead to the foul-smelling water and toxic algae blooms that plague lakes like Mendota, which is situated in an agricultural landscape.

This runoff may be getting worse, according to a recent study from researchers with the Water Sustainability and Climate Project at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. With a changing climate, the frequency of high-intensity rain events is on the rise. These storms bring heavy rains over a short period of time and exacerbate phosphorus runoff from manure-covered agricultural fields, more so than scientists expected.

“Both things are bad for water quality – too much manure is bad and too many intense storms are bad, too,” says lead author of the study in Environmental Research Letters, Melissa Motew. “This is a story about how one problem really compounds another problem.””

Lauren Chambliss: Fishing Tackle Kills Loons→

All About Birds:

Roberta Olenick

“Loons still face many threats today, including the lead commonly used in fishing tackle. Decades after the U.S. government began regulating lead out of our environment through lead bans in gasoline, household paint, and the shotgun ammunition used for hunting waterfowl, the poisonous soft metal is still being directly introduced into lakes and waters via fishing tackle. In the contiguous U.S., lead is a leading cause of death in the Common Loon. And now for the first time, researchers in New Hampshire have discovered a much worse population-level impact than previously suspected.”

In Minnesota, an estimated 100 to 200 loons die each year from lead poisoning. 

Vinicius J. Taguchi et al.: Urban Stormwater Phosphorus Dynamics→

University of Minnesota:

“There is evidence that aging stormwater ponds can become net sources of phosphorus to receiving waters during high flow events. For example, the total phosphorus (TP) concentration in the pond should be equal to or less than the typical inflow TP concentration (due to settling). To evaluate this, we examined data from the Riley Purgatory Bluff Creek Watershed District (RPBCWD) in Minnesota. Between 2010 and 2012, the RPBCWD surveyed 98 ponds and observed high TP concentrations in a number of them...

All of the pond sediments released ortho-P under low DO conditions (< 0.5 mg/L) , as shown in Table 1 and Figure 5). By contrast, ortho-P release was negligible under high DO conditions (not shown). We used the calculated P flux rates for each pond to approximate the potential impact on the overall TP concentration in the pond (Table 1)... Stratification during the summer with turnover and mixing in the fall and spring are normal in large lakes, but small ponds were thought to turn over diurnally or at least during large storm events. Instead, regular manual temperature profiles throughout 2017 revealed evidence of stratification throughout most of the year, with DO concentration below 0.5 mg/L at the bottom sediment surface.

Phosphorus concentration is unusually high in roughly 1/3 of urban stormwater ponds, indicating that they are not performing as designed. Rather than capturing P, these ponds seem to be releasing P and polluting downstream waters. We believe the reason is the sediments are releasing ortho-P to the water column, a process known as internal loading. Phosphorus release from the sediments of ponds may be facilitated by low DO concentration. It appears that many ponds in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area are stratified through most of the summer by accumulation of road salt in winter and spring snowmelt, therefore leading to low DO concentration that promotes internal loading. ”

Jennifer-Anne Pascoe: The World's Largest High Arctic Lake Changes→

Folio:

“A 1 C increase in temperature has set off a chain of events disrupting the entire ecology of the world’s largest High Arctic lake. “The amount of glacial meltwater going into the lake has dramatically increased,” said Martin Sharp, a University of Alberta glaciologist who was part of a team of scientists that documented the rapid changes in Lake Hazen on Ellesmere Island over a series of warm summers in the last decade.

“Because it’s glacial meltwater, the amount of fine sediment going into the lake has dramatically increased as well. That in turn affects how much light can get into the water column, which may affect biological productivity in the lake.”

The changes resulted in algal blooms and detrimental changes to the Arctic char fish population, and point to a near certain future of summer ice-free conditions.”

Geoffrey Lean: Death by Lead→

The Guardian:

“ooking back, it seems insane. Bluntly put, we took a known poison and – for three quarters of a century – used it in machines that puffed it out in breathable form. Then we drove them millions of miles a day, all over the world, regularly dosing billions of people with the toxin...

The study, published in the Lancet Public Health journal and believed to be the first to research the effects of low levels of lead exposure on the general public, also concludes there is no safe level of the toxic metal: people with the lowest detectable amounts were still affected.

Researchers at four North American universities, led by Bruce Lanphear, of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, studied the fate of 14,289 people whose blood had been tested in an official US survey between 1988 and 1994. Four fifths of them had harboured levels of the toxic metal below what has, hitherto, been thought safe.

The study found that deaths, especially from cardiovascular disease, increased markedly with exposure, even at the lowest levels. It concluded that lead kills 412,000 people a year – accounting for 18% of all US mortality, not much less than the 483,000 who perish as a result of smoking.”

Sophie Yeo: Resilience to Climate Change→

Pacific Standard:

“Kodiak Island Borough is a remote community of around 14,000 people that spreads down the coast of the Alaska Peninsula and across 16 islands. It sits downwind from a cluster of active volcanoes, and its six villages are accessible only by boat or plane. It is home to 3,500 oversized bears.

It is also one of the safest places to live in the United States—at least when it comes to climate change. A recent survey of America’s 3,135 counties concluded that this inhospitable stretch of land is the most climate-resilient place in the entire nation...

The results shed light on the vast inequalities in how different parts of the U.S. will deal with such hazards. While places like Kodiak Island are expected to fare well, residents of areas like Appalachia, the southeast, and western Texas are on course to suffer far worse than the average American.”

Laurel Wamsley: Free Transit Considered for Germans→

NPR:

“Germany is considering free public transit in its cities in order to curb car use, as it hurries to meet the European Union’s requirements for air quality. That proposal is put forth in a letter to from the German government to the EU’s Environment Commissioner. The free transit plan is part of a range of measures suggested in the letter, including low emission zones, incentives for electric cars, and technically retrofitting existing vehicles, Reuters reports.

”We are considering public transport free of charge in order to reduce the number of private cars,” the letter says, according to Agence France Presse. “Effectively fighting air pollution without any further unnecessary delays is of the highest priority for Germany.””

Cheryl Dybas: Large Rains Mean High Phosphorus Pollution→

National Science Foundation:

“While April showers might bring May flowers, they also contribute to toxic algae blooms, dead zones and declining water quality in U.S. lakes, reservoirs and coastal waters, a new study shows. In the Midwest, the problem is largely due to phosphorus, a key element in fertilizers that is carried off the land and into the water, where it grows algae as easily as it grows corn and soybeans.

Previous research had found that waterways receive most of their annual phosphorus load in only a dozen or two events each year, reports Steve Carpenter, director emeritus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Limnology and lead author of a new paper published online in the journal Limnology and Oceanography. The paper ties those phosphorus pulses to extreme rain events. In fact, Carpenter says, the bigger the rainstorm, the more phosphorus is flushed downstream.”

Jacques Leslie: Self-Driving Cars - Utopia or Dystopia?→

Yale360:

“Automated cars, often referred to as “autonomous vehicles” (AVs) — whose passengers determine their routes without having to drive them — are being widely developed and tested, and probably will be used commercially in controlled settings within a few years. Lyft, Uber, and others have introduced ride-sharing, in which customers agree to travel with strangers in return for reduced fares. Put all three concepts together in one vehicle, posit that within a few decades this shared EV-AV technology will take over the nation’s automobile fleet, and the outcome seems environmentally irresistible, verging on fantastical.

But it’s equally plausible that the vision may turn out to be a mirage. Automated vehicles may eventually be widely adopted, but if the fleet is not electrified using renewable energy, or car sharing fails to take off, greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution could actually increase. A study last year by University of California, Davis researchers projected that if vehicles are automated but not electrified or shared, greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector would go up 50 percent by 2050 compared to business as usual. But if shared, electrified, automated vehicles flourish, greenhouse gas emissions could plunge by 80 percent, the study concluded⁠.”

Sarah DeWeerdt: Leaky Sewers a Source of Pollution→

Anthropocene:

““Wastewater treatment facilities are not equipped to remove many pharmaceutical compounds,” lead author Emma Rosi, an aquatic ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, a nonprofit research organization in Millbrook, NY, said in a press release. “We were interested in how stream microorganisms – which perform key ecosystem services like removing nutrients and breaking down leaf litter – respond to pharmaceutical pollution.” Rosi and her colleagues studied biofilms—complex assemblages of bacteria and algae that make rocks and leaves in streams slippery – in four waterways in and around Baltimore, Maryland.

The study sites represent an urban-to-suburban gradient of habitats, and they each harbor a different assemblage of microbes, the researchers found. The biggest differences were between Gwynns Run, the most urbanized stream with a documented history of sewage contamination, and Gwynnbrook, the least developed stream.

First, the researchers looked for six different drugs in the streams: acetaminophen, caffeine, sulfamethoxazole (an antibiotic), diphenhydramine (an antihistamine), amphetamine, and morphine. They detected all of the drugs in all four streams, with the highest concentrations in the most urbanized stream and the lowest concentrations in the least urbanized stream.”

Greg Breining: Road Salt's Problems and Solutions→

ENSIA:

“A recent study of 371 lakes in North America — most in the northern states and southern Canada — showed chloride concentrations rising in more than a third. More than two dozen were nudging toward levels harmful to aquatic life. Extrapolated to all lakes in the U.S. northern Great Lakes and Northeast regions, about “7,770 lakes may be experiencing elevated chloride concentrations, likely due to road salt runoff,” the study concludes.

U.S. road maintenance departments have been spreading salt on streets and highways to melt snow and ice since the 1940s, but the use of salt skyrocketed over time — from 0.15 metric tons (0.16 tons) per year during the 1940s to about 18 million metric tons (19.8 million tons) per year today. Road salt use is common and growing throughout Canada, Europe, Japan, China and even South America. As much as 60 million metric tons (66 million tons) may be applied worldwide each year. Unlike chemicals that break down into less harmful compounds, road salt persists and may remain in water and soil for years, until it eventually is diluted and carried away by moving water...

...the biggest single change to use less salt is switching to liquid solutions. The brine spreads more evenly, stays put and begins working immediately because the salt is already in solution. As a result, spraying liquid brine is more effective while using less salt.”

Michael Casey: Loons Poisoned by Lead→

Associated Press:

“More than year after New Hampshire passed one of the nation’s toughest bans on using lead fishing tackle, loons are still dying from ingesting fishing weights and lures.

The 2016 law prohibits the sale and use of lead tackle in the state as part of an effort to revive the state’s loon population. But Loon Preservation Committee senior biologist Harry Vogel says eight loons have died this year from lead poisoning, up from two last year.

”The day this law was passed, we knew we would continue to see lead-poisoned loons,” Vogel said. “As long as Grandpa’s old tackle box is in the dusty corner of the garage, some people will just put lead tackle on the line and continue to fish. The hope is that it will become less and less common over time.””

From necropsy studies, I've estimated that between 100 and 200 Minnesota loons die each year due to lead poisoning.

Rachel Cernansky: Artificial sweeteners and polluted water→

ENSIA:

“Artificial sweeteners pop up in products all over the grocery store, from diet soda to yogurt, to help people keep calories down and pounds off. It turns out their popularity has given artificial sweeteners — sucralose in particular — a purpose beyond helping with weight or carb control. Sucralose, and to some extent acesulfame, may also play a role in keeping water contamination down by helping researchers and water resource managers identify hot spots of pollutants in order to better manage them.

Sucralose is increasingly being used as what experts call a “tracer” — a substance that can help identify where contamination comes from. This ability is important for maintaining water quality, both in surface waters and in drinking water supplies...

A bigger concern is that sucralose concentrations will only increase, and it’s unclear what that will mean for ecosystems. Even less well-studied may be the effects of the compounds that form when sucralose does break down, which occurs to some extent despite how stable it is.”

Dan Gunderson: In the Lake We Find What We Dump→

MPR:

“A new study offers an explanation to the mystery of why pharmaceuticals and other chemicals are found in remote Minnesota lakes, far from developed land that would create contaminated runoff.

”These chemicals such as antibiotics, and anti-corrosives and endocrine active chemicals were being found in lakes where we might not expect them because there was no surrounding development,” said Mark Ferrey, a Minnesota Pollution Control Agency scientist who, in search of an answer, collected snow, rain and air samples at three locations in the Twin Cities and had them tested for 126 chemicals.

Ferrey found 17, including DEET, cocaine, antibiotics, an anti-corrosion chemical, an x-ray contrast chemical and the pain reliever naproxen.”

Fred Pearce: Solving the Ozone Problem→

Yale360:

“Did the Montreal Protocol fix the ozone hole? It seemed so. With chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-eating chemicals banned, many scientists said it was only a matter of time before the ozone layer recharged, and the annual hole over Antarctica healed for good.

But 30 years on, some atmospheric chemists are not so sure. The healing is proving painfully slow. And new discoveries about chemicals not covered by the protocol are raising fears that full recovery could be postponed into the 22nd century – or possibly even prevented altogether.

In mid-September, the United Nations is celebrating the protocol’s 30th anniversary. It will declare that “we are all ozone heroes.” But are we patting ourselves on the back a bit too soon?

The ozone layer is a long-standing natural feature of the stratosphere, the part of the atmosphere that begins about six miles above the earth. The ozone layer filters out dangerous ultraviolet radiation from the sun that can cause skin cancer and damage many life forms. It may have been essential for the development of life on Earth.”

Kirsti Marohn: Surveying Fish in Streams for Water Health→

MPR:

“Chad Anderson and John Sandberg slosh through a muddy stream in hip waders, pausing occasionally to duck under overgrown branches or swat a mosquito.

Sandberg carries a long pole with a metal ring on the end. He moves it through the water, sending out an electrical current that temporarily stuns the fish. Anderson comes behind him with a net, scooping them up. “We want to capture every single species, every fish,” Anderson said. “The little species are sometimes just as important as the big ones...”

This slow and sometimes painstaking work is part of the MPCA’s effort to document and monitor all 80 of Minnesota’s major watersheds. The work has produced a wealth of data about the health of Minnesota’s rivers, lakes and streams.”

Steven Verburg: Farm Pollution Exacerbated by Zebra Mussels→

Wisconsin State Journal:

“An explosion of the zebra mussel population in Lake Mendota this year could mean more foul-smelling shoreline slime and repeats of the major fish kill and vast bloom of toxic bacteria that hit Madison’s lakes already this summer, experts say.

Farm pollution is the main driver of this month’s surprisingly severe water quality woes, but the invasive mollusks now covering much of Lake Mendota’s bottom aren’t going to help matters.

“We’ve been shocked to see how many there are,” said Jake Vander Zanden, UW-Madison’s top expert on zebra mussels.

Zebra mussels change a lake by filtering food from water, which makes water clearer so that additional sunlight reaches the bottom. The sunlight, along with nutrients mussels excrete on the bottom, spur plant growth and the potential for more dead vegetation washing up and decomposing in smelly piles on shores, Vander Zanden said.

This year divers are finding a typical zebra mussel by-product — bottom-clinging mats of algae that look like green cotton candy — all over Lake Mendota, he said.”