pollution » the constant skeptic

24th May 2006

Clean water can still yield polluted sand

Sand Can Be Polluted Even with Clean Water

May 24, 2006 By Associated Press

LOS ANGELES Beach sand can be teeming with bacteria even
when the ocean water is clean, according to a study
released on Tuesday.

Health officials have long known that urban runoff
pollutes ocean water with microbes including E. coli and
enterococci bacteria found in fecal material. The study by
University of California, Los Angeles researchers found
microbes can grow in the sand as well, and remain there
long after the ocean has flushed itself clean.

“Even on days when the water is very clean, bacteria is
still in the sand for a week,” said Jennifer Jay, a UCLA
environmental engineering professor who headed the study.
“We feel it can be an important exposure route” for
contamination.

Jay and a graduate researcher tested three beaches —
Surfrider Beach in Malibu, Santa Monica Beach and Mother’s
Beach in Marina del Rey — during a storm in February
2003. They also surveyed sand at 13 Santa Monica Bay
beaches from Malibu to Redondo during the summer, focusing
on wet sand near the water’s edge.

They found that sand bacteria concentrations at sheltered
beaches favored by parents with toddlers were 1,000 times
higher than at beaches that were open to the ocean.

However, Jay said it’s hard to evaluate the health risk
these bacteria pose because health standards for beach
sediment have not been developed.

Sphere: Related Content

posted in environment |

Europe approves new bill for collecting old batteries to curb

The European Parliament on Wednesday gave preliminary
approval to a new program for collecting and recycling
batteries to limit pollution; the plan is expected to cost
industry at least 200 million.

Representatives of the European Parliament, EU governments
and the European Commission agreed late Tuesday on rules
that have been under discussion since they were first
suggested in 2003, the European Parliament said in a
statement.

Programs to protect nature from the often toxic substances
contained in batteries are to be enacted in all 25 EU
countries by 2008.

The legislation, which affects companies like Energizer
Holdings and Philips Electronics, “will help consumers to
consume more intelligently and producers to reduce
pollution,” Dagmar Roth-Behrendt, a German member of the
Parliament, said Wednesday in Brussels.

The new legislation will require 19 of the EU’s 25 members
to set up programs for collecting spent consumer
batteries. Austria, Belgium, Germany, France, the
Netherlands and Sweden already have such systems in place.

The law will also ban some portable cadmium batteries and
prohibit the dumping in landfills or burning of automotive
and industrial batteries, most of which are already
collected. The EU wants to ensure that all such batteries,
which make up about 86 percent of the market, are
collected.

By 2012, a quarter of all batteries sold must be collected
once they run out. By 2016, the target will rise to 45
percent.

Distributors will be required to take used batteries back
at no charge. The rules also determine how batteries must
be recycled once collected.

Battery producers and distributors will foot most of the
bill for implementing the recycling programs and educating
the public about where to turn batteries in. The European
Commission calculates that the recycling and education
programs cost at between 200 million and 400 million.
-from Bloomberg News, The Associated Press

Sphere: Related Content

posted in environment |

Pollution choking North China’s largest lake - still think

Pollution slowly choking North China’s largest lake to
death
ANXIN, China, April 28 (AFP) Apr 28, 2006
When a slick of pollution in north China’s biggest
freshwater lake left fish farms decimated in early March,
locals and environmentalists were little surprised.
Large-scale fish deaths have occurred regularly since the
1980s as excessive amounts of untreated industrial waste
water and raw sewage, coupled with drought and constantly
falling water levels, have left Baiyangdian Lake in
northern China’s Hebei province choking for its life.

“When we were kids we used to drink the water straight
from the lake,” Liu Zhanbing, 41, a fish farmer who has
lived his entire life on the banks of the lake in
Dazhangzhuang village, told AFP.

“Now we can’t even cook with it. We have to use well water
for our drinking water.”

This year’s fish kill came after upstream reservoirs of
waste water in the Baoding city region, home to about 10
million people, emptied their putrid sludge into streams
and rivers that run into the lake, state media said.

The pollutants, full of phosphorous and nitrogen, sapped
the oxygen out of the blackish green water and when the
frozen lake thawed, farmers found their suffocated fish
floating to the top.

“Farmers who didn’t harvest their fish in October, lost
their entire crop,” Liu said. “They were hoping that the
fish would grow bigger over the winter and then they would
be able to get better prices this spring.”

Liu, like many other farmers on the marshy lake, turned to
fish farming after wild fish began dying out years ago. He
said he barely makes ends meet farming fish, mostly carp,
but there is no other work for him to do.

With environmental disasters on the rise and especially
following a huge toxic benzene spill on the Songhua river
in northeast China in November, the government has
repeatedly vowed to put an end to the environmental
degradation that has come with 25 years of unbridled
economic growth.

For Chinese environmentalists and academics who have long
called for more environmental protection, cleaning up
Baiyangdian Lake has now become a test of China’s
determination to avoid an environmental crisis and clean
up its act.

So far, the government response has been strong with 218
polluting tannery, paper making and other factories above
the lake shut down, while at least seven environmental
protection officials in towns and cities up stream have
been fired for allowing the waste water to be released
into the lake.

Upstream reservoirs which have hoarded natural run-off
water for irrigation and industrial purposes have been
ordered to share their water and open flood gates to help
dilute the pollution in the lake.

Sphere: Related Content

posted in environment |