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As marijuana industry explodes, some shift focus to water conservation.
No one yet knows how big the legalized recreational marijuana business will become. But as it grows, water consumption is sure to become a concern in the arid West.
MARIJUANA IS BECOMING big business around the West as more states legalize the plant’s cultivation for recreational purposes. California’s entry into the field, which becomes official on January 1, is certain to bring an explosion of cannabis-related commerce simply because of the size of its market.
All this poses a vital question: How much will marijuana tax the West’s water supplies?
No one knows the answer to that yet, but some in the industry are already working diligently to slash marijuana’s water footprint. Marijuana is known to be a thirsty crop, but much of that depends on how it’s grown.
To get a feel for this landscape, Water Deeply recently interviewed Brandy Keen, co-founder and senior technical adviser at Surna. The company, based in Boulder, Colorado, makes and distributes water-efficient indoor cultivation equipment and serves as a consultant to growers who want to manage their resource consumption and expenses.
Keen got into the business when she and her husband, an epileptic, discovered that marijuana helped manage his seizures and eliminated his need for conventional medication. In September, Keen was a featured speaker on water and energy conservation at the Cannabis World Congress and Business Expo, held in Los Angeles.
Water Deeply: How much water does marijuana use?
Brandy Keen: It’s pretty water-intensive. It uses a lot of water in comparison to other crops. But what’s really interesting is that cannabis is grown in a controlled environment far more often than agricultural food crops. And when you cultivate in a controlled environment, you can dramatically reduce waste [such as] runoff associated with growing in fields, for instance.
In California, a lot of folks are still growing their marijuana plants outside, but they’re growing them in pots in an effort to conserve water. But they may still have a bunch of evaporation out of their pots that the plants aren’t actually using. We can reduce that with cannabis through creative irrigation and reducing the amount of evaporation by not overwatering. That compares to a hydroponic system, where I irrigate and then store that water, and it’s not evaporating.
But the most interesting thing you can do is use reclaimed condensate. No plant consumes water. Plants borrow water. They use water as a delivery mechanism for nutrients, then they transpire that water back out into the space. So when you grow in an open-air greenhouse or outdoors, all the water your plant transpires is evaporated. It just ends up back in the atmosphere.
When I grow in a controlled environment where I dehumidify that space, now I can actually recapture all that condensate. That’s water I gave my plant, and I can just condense it back out of the air and reuse it. It’s basically like you’re producing distilled water. You just add more nutrients to it and give it right back to the plant. I can actually make this a net-zero water consumption process.
Water Deeply: How common is the use of reclaimed condensate?
Keen: It’s increasingly common. In some areas reclaimed water is accepted for some kinds of agricultural use, but not accepted for cannabis yet, for whatever reason. Denver right now is actually looking at its regulations, and it looks like they’re going to change it so the city of Denver will allow you to use reclaimed condensate.
Water Deeply: What does it involve mechanically?
Keen: In a controlled growing environment, you have condensate piping from cooling and dehumidifying systems already. You already are putting in the piping that puts that condensate down the drain or outside. So I just build a tank to hold it instead. It’s not any more expensive from an infrastructure standpoint, except for the cost of the tank. Then you need a filtration system for the condensate, which is going to be a couple thousand dollars.
Water Deeply: Presumably there’s a saving on the water bill as well.
Keen: Oh yes. If I can reduce my water consumption – even if it’s just by half – that’s a big deal. Keep in mind, most cultivation facilities incorporate some kind of reverse osmosis system on their municipal water supply anyway. And they do that because in order to accurately measure the nutrients I’m adding back into the water, I’ve got to start with low concentrations in the water. Reverse osmosis produces some parts clean water and some parts of extremely dirty water as a waste product. That means for every gallon I save through reclaimed condensate, I’m actually saving two gallons. And as that one gallon is continually reused, it eventually saves me six gallons of municipal supply.
But energy is the big cost component right now. Water is a pretty small consideration. It just doesn’t cost that much to get water. If water was as expensive as energy – well, then we’d be having a different conversation today. That being said, it’s so cheap and so easy to reclaim condensate, and drop my water consumption 70 to 80 percent, there’s absolutely no reason not to do it.
Water Deeply: What factors affect marijuana’s water consumption?
Keen: What we see most commonly is actually a calculation based on how much light density is in the space. So the type of light the cultivator selects and the intensity of that light is what drives the transpiration from the plant. And how quickly it’s transpiring tells you how much more [water] it needs to uptake.
We like to drive as much transpiration as possible because that means we’re getting as much yield from the plant as we can. But water and nutrient consumption and photosynthesis are all really closely interrelated. So every time I change one of those things, they all change. If I switch to a lower-intensity bulb, I’m going to be adjusting other things to get my plant to consume as much water as it can.
We typically see watering ranges of somewhere between 3 and 5 gallons [11-19 liters] per day per kW of light – not per plant – in the building. And generally speaking, in a growing operation you have between 0.6 kW and 1 kW for every 25 square ft [2 square meters] of plant canopy.
Water Deeply: What else can be done to reduce water consumption?
Keen: People are doing things like reducing the evaporation of water outside of what your plant is transpiring: not having open tubs of water laying around, covering your pots so that water that would be evaporating out of the pot is contained so your plant can actually drink it.
That has the added benefit of helping you control your environment. Humidity is a huge problem in cultivation facilities. When I’ve got a bunch of water evaporating in a room, now I’m using a whole bunch of energy to dehumidify water that’s not even being used by my plants.
Water Deeply: Are growers interested in saving water?
Keen: Absolutely. We have a multi-pronged reason for doing this. One is obviously the cost of cultivation. Everyone’s always going to be looking at the competition and how to cultivate at a lower price point. Is the cost of water their biggest consideration? No. Overall, water is pretty inexpensive. But it’s still a consideration. So that’s one driver.
The other is, as I like to put it, the ability to do good and do well. We all understand we have to be stewards of this planet. Anything we can do to reduce the resource intensive cultivation of anything, we should be doing it. It takes energy to move that water and treat it. So I think the industry in general wants to do better, wants to be more efficient, wants to do these things that are better for our planet. Whether it’s out of complete altruism, whether it’s out of a marketing competitiveness to say, “We’re a water-wise business,” or whether it’s simple mathematics around how I can make this less expensive to do.
Water Deeply: Do marijuana consumers care how much water their weed uses?
Keen: I don’t think so. But I think in certain markets, they’re going to be really receptive to the marketing component. If the grower can say “We are focusing on energy conservation and water conservation,” I think there are certain buyers who would be influenced by that. Folks in more progressive markets, like California, or areas where brownouts and droughts are really common, people are a lot more focused on this kind of thing than they would be in states like Texas, where climate change doesn’t exist. I’m from Texas, by the way, so I can say that.
So, certainly I think it will start to matter to the consumer. But it’s the industry itself that has to start talking about it.
Water Deeply: What’s the growth potential of this industry?
Keen: The sky is the limit. California and Canada are a huge focus for our company because of the marketing potential there. There are estimates that California alone is going to triple the size of the regulated cannabis market just by itself. So it’s game-changing for the industry.
And it’s a really positive thing, too, that we’re regulating it. Because now we can actually get this information out there [about saving water]. Historically, the industry has had all these underground facilities, and everybody was kind of guessing at what they were doing, because nobody knew where they were, nobody was regulating pesticide use or water consumptive activities.
But I’ve already seen, in some of the cities down in the desert, where they’ve actually had to tell people, “we can’t provide you that many acre-feet of water because the city just can’t even get that much water.” If we go in and reclaim all our condensate, and suddenly that’s 70 percent less water – well, guess what? Suddenly we can build there. If we can figure out a way to make sure we are using water mindfully – well, then we’ve got a completely different opportunity there.
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Here are some EPA programs that Scott Pruitt’s $900,000 taxpayer-funded expenses could pay for .
Scott Pruitt wants to cut waste at the EPA. Here's what he could save by cutting his own expenses.
Here are some EPA programs that Scott Pruitt’s $900,000 taxpayer-funded expenses could pay for
Scott Pruitt wants to cut waste at the EPA. Here's what he could save by cutting his own expenses.
NATASHA GEILING
SEP 29, 2017, 9:24 AM
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(CREDIT: AP PHOTO/PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS)
Since assuming office in late February, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has spent upwards of $900,000 of taxpayer dollars on extraneous expenses, including round-the-clock personal security, private chartered and military flights, and a soundproof booth for his office.
Such spending offers a stark contrast to the rhetoric of the former Oklahoma attorney general, who is a staunch proponent of small government and fiscal conservatism. Moreover, since coming to the agency, Pruitt has publicly espoused a philosophy of deep austerity for the EPA, arguing that the agency should work to do more with less by partnering more efficiently with state agencies and private industry. He defended the Trump administration’s proposed 31 percent cut to the agency, telling members of Congress that he feels the EPA can “fulfill the mission of our agency with a trim budget.” And he’s championed cutting programs he deems a waste of taxpayer dollars, like spending less than $15,000 for 37 employees to use a private gym for a year — at an average cost of $34/month per person. Pruitt ended that program in April of this year, saying that “it was quite something to hear about that.”
But it’s not just gym memberships that are on the chopping block in Pruitt’s EPA: The Trump administration’s proposed budget call for deep cuts to programs in everything from environmental enforcement to environmental justice, programs funded by grants and research that often carry a much lower price-tag that Pruitt’s private flights and security.
Lavish spending on Scott Pruitt runs counter to Trump’s plan to slash EPA’s budget
For $900,000, for instance, the EPA could fund at least 30 projects through the Environmental Justice Small Grants program to help vulnerable communities deal with environmental issues. Past projects include community education programs about air pollution, weatherizing homes for better energy efficiency in low-income communities, and testing drinking wells for contamination in rural areas. It could also easily pay for the $544,000 Superfund portion of the EPA’s Environmental Justice program, which focuses on environmental issues facing low-income and minority communities that live near extremely polluted Superfund sites.
Both of those programs were cut entirely under the Trump budget. The House budget, which is expected to be taken up by the Senate in October, cuts funding to the overall environmental justice program by $1 million, but the specific programmatic cuts have not yet been identified. The House budget restored some funding to the EPA — over Pruitt’s objection — but still cuts the agency by 6.5 percent, a 20 percent decrease since Republicans took control of the House in 2010.
The $900,000 in taxpayer dollars that Pruitt spent on private travel, security, and a soundproof booth for his office could almost have paid for the entire South Florida Geographic Initiative, which funds water monitoring programs in sensitive South Florida ecosystems like the Everglades and the Florida Keys. Marine scientists worry that the Everglades are especially vulnerable in the wake of Hurricane Irma, which caused widespread destruction to seagrass beds in the area. That program is entirely cut in both the Trump and House budgets.
Scott Pruitt spent $12,000 in taxpayer money to travel back to Oklahoma
Pruitt’s expenses could have paid for for several climate and science programs that were completely zeroed out in the Trump administration’s proposed budget, such as the Office of Science and Technology’s $209,000 program to reduce risks from indoor air pollution, or the $172,000 Radon Program, which helps study the public health impacts of the lung cancer-causing radon gas in homes.
It could almost pay for the $1,172,000 Science Policy and Biotechnology program in Pesticides Licensing that the administration proposed eliminating. That program provides scientific and policy expertise about pesticides and toxic chemicals — the kind of science that helped the EPA identify the widely-used pesticide chlorpyrifos as capable of causing brain damage in children. (Despite internal research, Pruitt decided to reject calls to ban the pesticide in March.) His superfluous spending would nearly cover the administration’s proposed $977,000 cut to the Office of Science and Technology’s pesticide program meant to protect human health and ecosystems from the impact of pesticides.
It would pay for the administration’s proposed cuts to the EPA’s Superfund program, which deals with cleaning up some of the nation’s most toxic sites — places like former munitions plants or lead factories, where pollution is so bad that the surrounding air, water, and soil poses a threat to human health. Pruitt has said that cleaning up Superfund sites is a major priority of his, but the Trump budget proposes a $406,000 cut to the program’s emergency preparedness program, which helps the agency respond to discharges or releases from Superfund sites caused by natural or environmental disasters. Earlier this month in Houston, flooding from Hurricane Harvey inundated at least seven Superfund sites in the area.
Pruitt’s taxpayer-funded spending could have paid for a slew of EPA grants, from a grant meant to help tribal communities adapt to climate change ($600,000), to grants meant to help rural and tribal communities along the border access clean drinking water ($870,000). It could pay for grants under the EPA’s Nonpoint Source Program, which helps state and tribal partners create and implement programs meant to clean up polluted or degraded rivers, creeks, streams, and wetlands (one grant, issued in 2016, gave Alabama $255,000 to clean up Black Branch and Cane Creek, which had been listed as degraded waterways since 1998).
Tom Price took military jets abroad, bringing total cost of travel to more than $1 million
It would pay 30 times over for a $30,000 grant awarded to Cleveland State University in 2015 to help fund water pollution research. And it would be enough to fund a $125,000 grant awarded to the Alaskan village of Port Heiden, an indigenous community threatened by climate change-fueled sea level rise and coastal erosion, more than seven times.
Pruitt’s use of taxpayer funds has come under scrutiny before — he’s already being investigated by the EPA’s Office of Inspector General over whether he misused taxpayer dollars for his frequent trips home to Oklahoma. According to EPA records and travel stubs, Pruitt spent 43 days in a three-month period traveling back to his home state, running up a tab of $12,000. On Wednesday, three Democratic lawmakers on the Energy and Commerce Committee the EPA to extend its investigation to Pruitt’s use of taxpayer dollars for private and military flights, calling it “just the latest example of repeated and blatant abuse of taxpayer funds by the Trump administration.”
#CLIMATE, #ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES, #SCOTT PRUITT, #TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
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Fuel-cell cars finally drive off the lot.
While consumers can now buy their own hydrogen-powered vehicles, industry looks to expand the refueling infrastructure and lower the cost of fuel-cell cars.
While consumers can now buy their own hydrogen-powered vehicles, industry looks to expand the refueling infrastructure and lower the cost of fuel-cell cars
By Mitch Jacoby
Credit: Toyota
In brief
The idea of powering a car with a fuel cell has been around for decades. In principle, these cars, which run on electricity generated on board by electrochemically combining hydrogen with oxygen from the air, could reduce global dependence on petroleum while emitting just water from their tailpipes. But despite extensive fleet testing, fuel-cell passenger cars have always seemed to be another five years away. No longer. Motorists can now buy or lease their very own fuel-cell cars. The numbers today are low, and the cars are available only in a few geographic regions equipped with public hydrogen-filling stations. But the industry is gearing up to manufacture more of these cars and expand refueling infrastructure. And researchers continue to look for ways to reduce fuel-cell costs and improve durability.
Raymond Lim, a psychology and statistics instructor, describes himself as an “automobile enthusiast who likes to try out new technology.” Celso Pierre also has a thing for cool gadgets. He’s a mechanical engineer who loves hiking and the great outdoors. Anytime Pierre hears about new technology, he rushes to learn about it. For both men, that excitement has long included electric vehicles and fuel-efficient cars. So Lim and Pierre jumped at the opportunity to join the small but growing number of motorists who zip around California’s roadways in their own fuel-cell vehicles. Lim drives a Toyota Mirai and Pierre motors around in a Hyundai Tucson.
These hydrogen-powered, all-electric cars have been in development for decades as alternatives to conventional cars; they do not depend on fossil fuels and do not pollute—they emit just water vapor. During that time of development, numerous prototypes and fleets of fuel-cell demonstration vehicles logged millions of miles, advancing the transportation technology far beyond the laboratory test stage. Yet industry watchers grew disheartened at the seemingly endless delays that kept fuel-cell vehicles from auto dealers’ showrooms. And upon hearing projections year after year that these cars would hit the market “five years down the road,” technology enthusiasts figured the automobile industry had largely given up on mass-producing fuel-cell cars.
That impression is just plain wrong. The industry continued working away on the technology, and those “five years down the road” projections finally came true in the past couple of years. Although the numbers of fuel-cell cars for sale or for lease today are relatively low and the vehicles are available only in select geographical areas, it is finally possible for a private motorist to drive one off the lot. Meanwhile, industry is expanding the hydrogen-refueling infrastructure in the U.S. and other countries and continuing to find ways to make the vehicles cheaper and more durable.
Rise of the fuel cell
The fuel-cell concept dates back to the 1800s. But it wasn’t until the past century that various types of demonstration units proved that these electrochemical devices could reliably produce electric current. They came to be recognized as reliable devices when the U.S. National Aeronautics & Space Administration used these power generators in the 1960s and 1970s in the Gemini and Apollo missions and other space programs.
Similar to their electrochemical cousin the battery, fuel cells contain electrodes that extract usable electricity from chemical reactions. In both batteries and fuel cells, redox reactions occur when a positive electrode is connected to a negative electrode through an external circuit. When oxidation reactions take place at an anode and reductions proceed at a cathode, electrons flow through the circuit, powering the device connected to it—an electric motor, in the case of a fuel-cell car.
Fuel-cell cars by the numbers
$57,500
Manufacturer’s suggested retail price for 2017 Toyota Mirai
370
Number of fuel
cells in Mirai’s
fuel-cell stack
~5
Mass in kilograms of hydrogen stored in Mirai’s fuel tanks
≥480 and
Driving range in kilometers on one tank of hydrogen and range for various battery-powered electric cars, respectively
Minutes for hydrogen refueling and electric-car battery recharging, respectively
But unlike batteries, which store the oxidant and reductant within the electrochemical package, fuel cells draw oxidizers and fuels from the outside. As a result, fuel cells don’t get used up or need to be recharged like batteries do. In principle, fuel cells can continue generating electricity as long as fresh reactants continue to flow into the devices.
Numerous types of fuel cells have made their way through research and development stages, and several versions have been commercialized. The devices differ principally in terms of the electrolyte, which is the medium that transports ions between the electrodes; the materials that make up the electrodes and other components; and the intended application.
Fuels also vary from device to device. In a basic fuel cell, hydrogen serves as the fuel and oxygen as the oxidant. But there are also systems that derive hydrogen from alcohols or hydrocarbons, as well as ones that use methanol directly, without first converting it to hydrogen.
Fuel cells in automobiles rely on a polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM). The micrometers-thick film serves two functions: It’s a solid electrolyte that conducts hydrogen ions from the anode to the cathode, and it’s a gas separator that prevents direct, uncontrolled mixing of hydrogen and oxygen. Such mixing wastes fuel, causes the fuel cell to operate inefficiently, and leads to by-products that can degrade fuel-cell components.
The number of fuel-cell vehicles has been growing steadily since they entered the retail market in mid-2015, when Toyota began selling them in Japan and California. Hyundai and Honda have also moved into the retail market, and so the numbers are starting to climb.
In 2016, Toyota boosted production of its four-seat fuel-cell car, the Mirai, which means “future” in Japanese, from the 2015 level of 700 units to approximately 2,000 cars. This year the carmaker plans to produce about 3,000 of them.
According to Bo Ki Hong, a research fellow at Hyundai’s Fuel Cell Research Lab, the South Korean carmaker expects to produce about 1,000 of its Tucson Fuel Cell compact sport-utility vehicles by the end of this year and distribute them to 18 countries. Honda is producing similar numbers of its Clarity, a sporty five-passenger fuel-cell sedan. And all three automakers, which are currently the only companies selling or leasing fuel-cell passenger cars in the U.S., collectively aim to boost production levels to the tens of thousands by the end of the decade.
So what allowed fuel-cell cars to move from perpetually five years away from dealership lots to finally parking in people’s garages? To begin with, carmakers have continuously been gaining engineering and manufacturing experience, which has helped lower production costs. They have also steadily improved the efficiency of PEM fuel cells and learned how to significantly reduce the amount of costly platinum needed to make the devices work effectively. Those advances translate to less-expensive, smaller, and more-powerful devices that provide flexibility to design cars in a range of sizes and prices attractive to customers.
How hydrogen powers a car
Credit: Adapted from Toyota
Room for growth
But whether or not carmakers will reach their production goals will depend in large part on how satisfied owners are with their fuel-cell cars. “Customers expect the same level of performance and overall driving experience they get with gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles,” Hong says.
Lim raves about the handling and performance of his Mirai. “This car is wonderful,” he says. “The ride is smooth, quiet, and powerful.” And when it comes to refueling, the process is quick—“less than five minutes, and that gets me over 300 miles [about 480 km] of driving,” he says.
These similarities to gasoline-powered vehicles stand out as advantages for fuel-cell vehicles over battery-powered, all-electric cars. Many of those kinds of cars, which are also known as plug-in electrics, require from 30 minutes to 12 hours for a full charge, depending on the type of charger. And many of them travel less than 150 miles (about 240 km) per charge.
Those factors seem to make a strong case for fuel-cell vehicles. But fuel-cell cars need hydrogen, and currently there are only 29 retail hydrogen filling stations in the U.S., all in California.
“It’s a chicken-and-egg scenario,” says Joseph Cargnelli, chief technology officer at Hydrogenics, a Toronto-area fuel-cell manufacturer.
Fuel-cell carmakers hesitate to ramp up production if customers don’t have convenient access to hydrogen, he says. And gas suppliers are iffy about building hydrogen filling stations without ample demand for the fuel.
But the number of hydrogen stations is about to grow. California expects to see 36 more stations by 2018, half in the north and half in the south.
Hydrogen filling stations are also coming to the Northeast. According to Jana L. Hartline, a Toyota communications manager, Toyota, in partnership with Air Liquide, is supporting construction of 12 hydrogen fueling stations in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The first of those stations should be completed before the end of the year, she says. And in Japan, Air Liquide, Toyota, and nine other Japanese companies agreed to build 160 hydrogen stations and aim to put 40,000 fuel-cell vehicles on Japan’s roads by 2020.
Fuel-cell passenger cars massively outnumber other types of vehicles powered by this electrochemical technology, and as a result, they get the most attention. Yet other vehicle types have seen notable success. For example, nonpolluting, fuel-cell-powered transit buses have traversed congested city streets since the early 2000s. According to a U.S. Department of Energy report, worldwide, 370 fuel-cell buses were delivered or were on order in 2015.
Also, although 18-wheelers aren’t likely to be propelled down the highway by fuel cells anytime soon, Toyota earlier this year began experimenting with one prototype semitrailer at the Port of Los Angeles.
Fuel-cell forklifts rack up far larger numbers than higher road vehicles. Major warehouse operators in North America, including Amazon, Walmart, and FedEx, use some 15,000 of these indoor vehicles to shuttle products and equipment to and fro. Unlike standard battery-powered versions, these fuel-cell-powered versions don’t have to sit idle for 30 minutes or longer to recharge.
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Move over malaria: Mosquitoes carrying Zika, dengue may thrive in warmer Africa.
Hotter weather and migration to cities may make different diseases the scourge of the future in Africa, scientists say.
by Kieran Guilbert | KieranG77
DAKAR, Sept 22 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - From deadly droughts and destroyed crops to shrinking water sources, communities across sub-Saharan Africa are struggling to withstand the onslaught of global record-breaking temperatures.
But the dangers do not end there. Rising heat poses another threat - one that is far less known and studied but could spark disease epidemics across the continent, scientists say.
Mosquitoes are the menace, and the risk goes beyond malaria.
The Aedes aegypti mosquito, which spreads debilitating and potentially deadly viruses, from Zika and dengue to chikungunya, thrives in warmer climates than its malaria-carrying cousin, known as Anopheles, say researchers at Stanford University.
In sub-Saharan Africa, this means malaria rates could rise in cooler areas as they heat up, but fall in hotter places that now battle the disease. In those areas, malaria - one of the continent's biggest killers - may be rivalled by other vector-borne diseases as major health crises.
"As temperatures go past 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit), you move away from the peak transmission window for malaria, and towards that of diseases such as dengue," said Erin Mordecai, an assistant professor at Stanford.
"We have this intriguing prospect of the threat of malaria declining in Africa, while Zika, dengue and chikungunya become more of a danger," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Besides a warming planet, scientists fear growing urbanisation across Africa could also fuel the transmission of diseases carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which flourishes in cities and slums - the opposite of the country-loving Anopheles.
One in two Africans are expected to live in cities by 2030, up from 36 percent in 2010, according to World Bank data.
A soaring number may become prey to vector-borne viruses like dengue, which have struck Africa at a record pace in recent years, fuelled by urbanisation, population growth, poor sanitation and global warming, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.
"We see poorly planned development in Africa, not just with megacities but smaller settlements ... which often lack proper water and sanitation," said Marianne Comparet, director of the International Society for Neglected Tropical Diseases.
"Climate change, disease and the interaction between man and habitat - it is a crisis going under the radar ... a time-bomb for public health problems," she added.
NEGLECTED DISEASES
Last year was the hottest on record, for the third year in a row, with global temperature rise edging nearer a ceiling set by some 200 nations for limiting global warming, according to the European Union's climate change service.
Parts of Africa were among the regions suffering from unusual heat.
As temperatures keep rising, mosquitoes in low-latitude regions in East African countries are finding new habitats in higher altitude areas, yet malaria rates are falling in warmer regions, such as northern Senegal in the Sahel, studies show.
So as cooler parts of sub-Saharan Africa gear up for the spread of malaria, hotter areas should prepare for future epidemics like chikungunya and dengue, experts say.
While not as lethal as malaria, chikungunya lasts longer and can lead to people developing long-term joint pain. Dengue causes flu-like symptoms and can develop into a deadly hemorrhagic fever.
There is a danger that the global drive to end malaria, which absorbed $2.9 billion in international investment in 2015, has left African countries ill-prepared to deal with other vector-borne diseases, said Larry Slutsker of the international health organisation PATH.
"Diseases such as dengue and chikungunya have been neglected and under-funded," said Slutsker, the leader of PATH's malaria and neglected tropical diseases programmes. "There needs to be much better surveillance and understanding."
Malaria kills around 430,000 people a year, about 90 percent of them young African children.
Dengue, the world's fastest-spreading tropical disease, infects about 390 million annually but is often badly recorded and misdiagnosed, health experts say.
Some experts believe the global alarm triggered by Zika, which can cause birth defects such as small brain size, may see more money pumped into fighting neglected tropical diseases in sub-Saharan Africa, especially after outbreaks in Angola, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau during the last year.
Although 26 African nations - almost half of the continent - have strategies in place to fight vector-borne diseases, most of them only target malaria, according to data from the WHO.
Malaria rates have been slashed in recent decades through the use of bed nets, indoor spraying and drugs. But there are no dedicated treatments or vaccines for chikungunya and dengue.
"The most important preventive and control intervention is vector management, particularly through community engagement," said Magaran Bagayoko, a team leader for the WHO in Africa.
DISENTANGLING DATA
However, efforts to beat back mosquitoes are hampered by a lack of quality and affordable climate data that could help predict outbreaks and indicate risks, said Madeleine Thomson of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society.
"What countries really want to know is what they can do to improve their programmes, as well as the capacity of their health workers," said the scientist at the Columbia University-based institute.
But to do that, "climate information must be put into practice", Thomson added.
African nations also must improve coordination between their health ministries and meteorological agencies, said the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), a new continent-wide public health agency launched this year by the African Union.
"They are not linked, or talking to each other," said Sheila Shawa, a project officer at the Africa CDC headquarters in Ethiopia. "There needs to be better communication in order to model neglected diseases, such as chikungunya, across Africa."
Yet climate scientists and health experts warn of the difficulty of analysing the impact of rising temperature on mosquito-borne diseases without looking at other factors.
"We have a major challenge of isolating effects of rising temperatures – which are really variable – from all the other aspects like rainfall patterns, humidity, mobility and migration, as well as socioeconomic factors," said Stanford's Mordecai.
"They are all changing at the same time, making individual drivers very difficult to isolate and disentangle for analysis."
(Reporting by Kieran Guilbert, Editing by Laurie Goering and Megan Rowling; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit https://news.trust.org)
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Building a better coral reef.
As reefs die off, researchers want to breed the world's hardiest corals in labs and return them to the sea to multiply. The effort raises scientific and ethical questions.
Building a Better Coral Reef
As reefs die off, researchers want to breed the world’s
hardiest corals in labs and return them to the sea to
multiply. The effort raises scientific and ethical questions.
By DAMIEN CAVE and JUSTIN GILLISSEPT. 20, 2017
ON THE GREAT BARRIER REEF, off Australia — After a plunge beneath the crystal-clear water to inspect a coral reef, Neal Cantin pulled off his mask and shook his head.
“All dead,” he said.
Yet even as he and his dive team of international scientists lamented the devastation that human recklessness has inflicted on the world’s greatest system of reefs, they also found cause for hope.
As they spent days working through a stretch of ocean off the Australian state of Queensland, Dr. Cantin and his colleagues surfaced with sample after sample of living coral that had somehow dodged a recent die-off: hardy survivors, clinging to life in a graveyard.
“We’re trying to find the super corals, the ones that survived the worst heat stress of their lives,” said Dr. Cantin, a researcher with the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville.
Continue reading the main story
Photo
Dr. Cantin with tanks used to hold coral at the Australian Institute of Marine Science center in Cape Cleveland, Australia. Credit David Maurice Smith for The New York Times
The goal is not just to study them, but to find the ones with the best genes, multiply them in tanks on land and ultimately return them to the ocean where they can continue to breed. The hope is to create tougher reefs — to accelerate evolution, essentially — and slowly build an ecosystem capable of surviving global warming and other human-caused environmental assaults.
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The research here is part of a worldwide push that is growing increasingly urgent. After decades of accumulating damage, followed by a huge die-off in 2015 and 2016, some scientists say they believe half the coral reefs that existed in the early 20th century are gone.
Instead of standing around watching the rest of them die, a vanguard of reef experts is determined to act.
In Florida, they are pioneering techniques that may allow the rapid re-establishment of reefs killed by heat stress. In Hawaii, they are studying the biology of corals that somehow managed to cling to life as an earlier generation of people dumped raw sewage into a magnificent bay. In the Caribbean, countries are banding together to create a genetic storage bank for corals, a backup plan if today’s reefs all die.
“We created these problems,” said Michael P. Crosby, president of the Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium in Sarasota, Fla., one of the institutions leading this work. “We have to get actively involved in helping the corals come back.”
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A section of healthy coral on the Great Barrier Reef, and an area where the coral has died. Credit Left, Jodie Rummer/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; right, XL Catlin Seaview Survey, via Associated Press
Yet this new push to aid the world’s reefs comes with its own risks, and with many questions.
A large-scale restoration effort could be expensive, and so far, governments have put up only modest sums, despite the hit that their multibillion-dollar tourism industries could take from continued deterioration of the reefs. Private philanthropists — including Paul G. Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft — are paying for much of the early work, spending millions. But will they ultimately commit billions?
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And while scientists are trying modest approaches first, the most effective strategy for saving reefs in the long run might be through genetic methods, including selective breeding or transferring heat-resistance genes into corals. That type of thing has been done for crops, but would it be ethical to do it in the wild?
“How do you decide what interventions are right and when to intervene?” said Madeleine van Oppen, a professor of marine biology at the University of Melbourne who is leading the experiments in Australia, aiming at what she calls the “assisted evolution” of coral reefs. “There’s a long road ahead; that’s why we’re starting now.”
Questions like these appear to be an inescapable part of the human future, and they go beyond coral reefs.
Already, some species of fish and birds are being kept alive only because they are bred in pens or hatcheries and then returned to the wild. Forests are under stress on a rapidly warming planet, and scientists are wondering whether to manipulate their fate by planting more heat-resistant trees. Creatures are fleeing toward the poles to escape rising heat; should humanity give them a lift?
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Even the scientists who have plunged into this kind of work are asking themselves if it is the right thing and it if would ever be enough given the scale of climate change’s predicted impact. “To think we’ve had to turn our science this way is kind of terrifying, but that is what we’ve had to do,” said Ruth Gates, a coral researcher who is heading up the work in Hawaii.
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Dr. Ruth Gates with tanks of coral at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Science.
Credit Logan Mock-Bunting for The New York Times
Scientists first warned decades ago that coral reefs were particularly sensitive to heat stress and would be among the earliest victims of global warming if emissions were not brought under control.
They were ignored, and humanity continued burning fossil fuels with abandon — setting up an early test of whether the scientific predictions about global warming could be believed.
Most of the heat trapped by those emissions has gone into the oceans, which have now warmed enough that just a bit of additional heat can cause massive coral die-offs. The extra jolt arrives during El Niño weather patterns that warm large parts of the tropics.
The first global coral die-off began in 1982, and now they seem to be happening every few years. Along the Great Barrier Reef, the El Niño-related heat wave of 2015-16 left 35 to 50 percent of the corals dead along a 650-mile stretch of the Queensland coastline, a profound blow to what was the single most impressive reef on Earth.
“It’s not too late to be aggressive and make changes to preserve the reef of the future,” Dr. Cantin said. But, he added, without a broad effort that includes tackling the emissions causing climate change, reefs could largely die within this century.
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Dr. Cantin placed a Pocillopora acuta sample in a holding tank in Cape Cleveland. Credit David Maurice Smith for The New York Times
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A researcher used a pipette to release coral larvae into trays to encourage settlement and growth. Credit David Maurice Smith for The New York Times
Coral reefs are among the most beautiful sights on the planet, dubbed the “rain forests of the sea” because, while occupying a tiny area, they harbor much of the variety of life in the ocean. The brightly hued corals attract equally vivid fish, as though the creatures had dressed to match their surroundings.
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Coral polyps are tiny animals that act a bit like farmers, raising even tinier plants — algae — that supply them with food. The corals excrete a hard substance that builds up into a reef, giving the coral polyps and many other creatures a place to live.
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The loss of coral reefs is not just an aesthetic disaster. A half-billion people depend on reef fish for food, and in some island nations, they are essentially the only source of protein. The continued destruction of reefs might well worsen global hunger. In wealthier nations, and especially in Australia, the reefs are a prime attraction in tourist economies worth billions.
Dr. Cantin is among the many marine biologists who spent the past two years watching huge stretches of Australia’s greatest natural wonder die from the heat.
A native of Canada who found his passion while diving reefs in Florida as a teenager with his father, he belonged to one of the teams that surveyed the reef, leading to a report this year that stunned the world with the scale of the damage.
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Jose Montalvo-Proaño, left, a Ph.D. student, and Dr. Cantin on Rib Reef.
Credit David Maurice Smith for The New York Times
And yet, on a three-day trip in July to harvest coral samples, he repeatedly found himself surprised. The Rib Reef, where he was diving, had been healthy and vibrant only a year ago. But during his return visit, large sections were dead, covered in algae that looked like soot.
The samples he collected — of the Pocillopora acuta species — were often the only healthy chunks of coral to be found among canyons of dead reefs.
Near the end of their research trip, he and two other scientists dove for nearly an hour before finding just three samples, which they removed with a hammer and chisel and placed in a metal supermarket dish rack for transport to the surface.
“This is probably a three-year-old coral,” he said back on the boat, admiring a pinkish sample with a handful of healthy branches that made it look like a fist-size shrub. “We want to take the whole adult coral, collect its babies and then grow the larvae into adult coral.”
Professor van Oppen, a senior scientist who oversees Dr. Cantin’s research, said that part of what makes the Australian experiment stand out is the “sea simulator” at the Townsville marine institute. It is a complex high technology laboratory where corals live in tanks with water temperatures that can be calibrated to a tenth of a degree and simulate seasonal patterns of warming events. Lighting systems replicate the moon cycles that corals use to time their spawning.
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Future generations of corals, the offspring of the those Dr. Cantin harvested, will be tested for resilience in this artificial environment, with warmer and more acidic water that mimics what scientists are predicting for the years 2050 and 2100.
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Young Pocillopora acuta, bred from samples collected on the Great Barrier Reef, in Cape Cleveland. Credit David Maurice Smith for The New York Times
The strongest corals will then become parents again, with some crossbreeding of the same species from different sections of the reef and also crossbreeding of different species to create genetic hybrids.
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“If the speed of natural adaptation was fast enough to keep up with climate change, we wouldn’t see the scale of loss we’re seeing,” Professor van Oppen said. “There’s an urgent need to come up with ways to slow it down.”
Professor van Oppen is collaborating with Dr. Gates, who heads the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology on a small island in Kaneohe Bay, off Oahu. Their joint project is partially funded by the family foundation of Mr. Allen, the billionaire philanthropist.
On a recent day at the lab, a manager, Jen Davidson, meticulously examined coral colonies growing in indoor tanks under artificial lights.
Starting with hardy coral polyps that survived past environmental assaults in Kaneohe Bay, the Gates lab is trying to make them even hardier, crossbreeding the corals and testing offspring in water treated to mimic the hotter, more acidic conditions likely to prevail in a future ocean.
Under normal conditions the animals grow and build their reefs only slowly, one of the factors that is stymying the effort to save them. “We can do all this work here, but can we scale it up enough to make an impact?” Ms. Davidson asked.
Researchers in Florida may be closest to answering that question. At the Mote laboratory in Sarasota, a researcher named David Vaughan has perfected a technique in which coral samples are broken into tiny fragments; the polyps grow much faster than normal as they attempt to re-establish a colony.
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“It used to take us six years to produce 600 corals,” Dr. Vaughan said in an interview. “Now we can produce 600 corals in an afternoon, and be ready in a few months to plant them.”
Florida’s reefs have been badly damaged over the years, not just by climate change but by more direct human assaults, like overfishing that disturbs the ecological balance. Yet the Mote lab and other centers have already replanted thousands of small coral colonies.
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Mr. Montalvo-Proaño with coral samples from Rib Reef. Credit David Maurice Smith for The New York Times
A center in Key Largo, the Coral Restoration Foundation, has had particular success in bringing back two species, elkhorn and staghorn corals, that had been devastated in Florida waters. The state legislature has begun to appropriate small sums as Florida’s scientists dream of reef restoration on a huge scale.
Though the risks remain unclear, the day may come when many of the reefs off Florida and Australia will be ones created by scientific intervention — a human effort, in other words, to repair the damage humans have done.
“We’ve shown that there is hope in all of this,” said Kayla Ripple, manager of the science program at the Coral Restoration Foundation. “People shouldn’t just throw their hands in the air and say there’s nothing we can do.”
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From coal to kale: Saving rural economies with local food.
Many counties are switching to oil and gas production as coal's fortunes wane, but farms, food hubs, and community kitchens may keep rural areas alive.
From Coal to Kale: Saving Rural Economies with Local Food
Many counties are switching to oil and gas production as coal's fortunes wane, but farms, food hubs, and community kitchens may keep rural areas alive.
BY STEVE HOLT
Climate, Food Policy, Local Eats
09.20.17
Coal Country USA has seen a very bleak few years. As mines have shut down around the nation, local economies have suffered. In fact, 77 percent of the 196 coal-producing counties in America had not returned to pre-recession job levels, with jobless rates as high as 16 percent in some places.
And, while many of those communities have replaced coal with oil and natural gas extraction, others are turning to local food as an economic driver.
A new book co-published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis says the time has never been better for thriving regional food systems, given Americans’ increasing interest in fresh, local food. In Harvesting Opportunity: The Power of Regional Food System Investment to Transform Communities, Deborah Tropp, deputy director of marketing services at USDA, points to data showing that consumers are willing to pay more for food produced in their own communities.
Increasingly, farms are responding: more than 167,000 U.S. farms sold their food directly to consumers in their areas in 2015, resulting in $8.7 billion in revenue, according to the authors. And data cited in the report suggest that more than half of local farm sales in 2012 were through intermediaries like wholesalers or institutions, suggesting an even more lucrative prospect for regional producers.
“Recognition is growing that support of small/local farm businesses may keep a greater share of money recirculating in the local economy and allow farmers to retain a greater share of consumer expenditures on food,” Tropp writes in the book’s first chapter.
The authors also note that so much more is possible, and that food has the potential to transform rural communities across the nation, with the right mix of support from local and federal governments, investors, banks, and philanthropists. The ground may be especially fertile in communities traditionally reliant on coal. For one, many coal-mining communities are also farming communities.
Coal’s Demise
Take Delta County, Colorado. For decades, the region’s coal companies flourished. Good-paying jobs attracted miners from across the nation. Towns like Somerset and Paonia, built by coal, were busting at the seams.
And then, almost overnight, it was nearly all gone. Following a slow recovery from the last economic downtown, the rapid closure of two of the region’s three largest mines between 2013 and 2016 sent shockwaves of panic throughout the area. Over the last four years, nearly 1,000 coal jobs—many of which paid upwards of $80,000 annually—vanished from the county. The one remaining mine is now under bankruptcy protection and on life support, every job hanging in the balance.
As many residents, especially younger ones, left the county to find work elsewhere, financial hardship hit many of the mining families who stayed. Enrollment in the public schools plummeted, while enrollment in the schools’ free or reduced lunch program nearly doubled, says Trish Thibodo, executive director of Delta County Economic Development, Inc. Revenues at area businesses have been flat for years.
“They were the volunteers at the schools, they were the coaches,” says Robbie LeValley, Delta County administrator, of the region’s mining families. “Their families were just critical to building this county.”
County officials and business leaders have been driven to envision life and business in Delta County after coal. One vision is a county teeming with productive farms and value-added food businesses marketing and distributing the region’s bounty throughout the state. This was the recommendation made in a recent strategic plan by county officials. Published last year, the plan recommended looking to food and agriculture to turn its economy around.
The county is already home to one of the state’s largest concentration of organic produce farms and livestock ranches. But many producers here, lacking more efficient distribution channels, put tens of thousands of miles on their own vehicles driving their products to restaurants and farmers’ markets as far as a state away.
Leaders envision the creation of a thriving food hub in Delta County, where ears of the area’s famous sweet corn, for example, can be marketed and distributed to restaurants and institutions and excess produce made into foods like salsa and jam in a new commercial incubator kitchen. Producers and farmers would receive business assistance as well, with longer-term plans including the creation of a food manufacturing certificate at Delta-Montrose Technical College and regular conferences on agricultural innovation.
“They may be making a great sauce or chocolate, but don’t necessarily have the skill base or the experience around distribution, marketing, planning and financials,” says Thibodo, who’s leading much of the effort. “We’re doing specialized support in that area.”
County Administrator LeValley will benefit from a bolstered local food sector herself. She is a fourth-generation cattle rancher, the co-owner of a direct-to-consumer beef operation and processing facility. She says that in addition to taking its food throughout the state, Delta County could become a food and farm destination for tourists.
“This area has always been very innovative in its agriculture,” she says. “We want to invite people here to enjoy what we have.”
Food as an Economic Driver
Delta County isn’t the only community thinking big about the power of local food, says Sanah Baig, program director with the National Association of Counties, which has been helping traditionally coal-reliant communities retool and diversify their economies since 2014. “No one community should rely on one employer—it’s not sustainable, not good for business, and it doesn’t let people sleep well at night,” she adds.
Across Appalachia, for instance, where more than 33,000 coal mining jobs disappeared between 2011 and 2016, diversification efforts are underway to provide people with technology training, courses for small-air drone operation, and careers in the natural gas utility and pipeline industry. Local food systems could also play a major role in revitalizing the economy.
Appalachian Sustainable Development was one of several agriculture-focused groups to receive a Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization (POWER) grant funded partially by the U.S. Department of Labor. The funding will help the nonprofit, which runs a large, successful food hub called Appalachian Harvest, to create and support a “food enterprise corridor” across 43 counties in five states to connect growers and value-added food producers to wholesale markets across the region. The corridor has also received funding from the Just Transition Fund and CoBank.
Another POWER grant recipient, Sprouting Farms, is a newer program training and incubating new farmers in two valleys in central West Virginia. The project, which aims to create 20 new businesses and 33 jobs, also hopes to leverage nearly $1 million in additional investment from private and public sources.
In all of these cases, it’s important to note that the authors of Harvesting Opportunity stress that initiatives like these can’t be solely funded by the federal government. It can provide an agricultural project some seed funding through a grant or low-interest financing, but foundations, corporations, and other private investors need to step in to sustain these projects and build capacity.
“If the government, which is so risk averse, is willing to put money into these communities, then the private sector has a lot to gain by doing the same,” says Baig. “This is a call to action for them to step up to the plate.”
Colorado Town at an Economic Junction
Back in Colorado, oil and gas is still one of the state’s largest employers, contributing more than $31 billion to the state’s economy annually. But like coal and other extractive industries, oil and gas is prone to cycles of boom and bust.
The people of Grand Junction, located just 40 miles from the Utah state line in Western Colorado and 250 mountainous miles from Denver, know this all too well. In 1982, on a day known locally as Black Sunday, Exxon ceased its extensive oil shale operation in the region, resulting in thousands of job losses and large-scale migration from the area. A decade ago, natural gas drilling on the Western Slope—including the Grand Junction—hit an all-time high, and the town thrived. But then, the Great Recession brought yet another bust.
Annalisa Pearson of the Business Incubator Center has witnessed the impact that downturns have on families and businesses and would like to see Grand Junction break free from the whims of the boom-bust cycle. She sees a thriving local-foods sector as a way to do that. In 2004, the Center opened its commercial kitchen incubator, which serves as a professional space to produce value-added foods and a commissary for a number of food trucks. In all, more than 30 food businesses now use the space.
In Pearson’s mind, there was always a sense that more could be done to support producers on the Western Slope. For instance, she found that if each household in the county spent just 10 percent of their cook-at-home food budget locally, $24 million would go into the pockets of the area’s farmers, ranchers, and entrepreneurs. A commitment from restaurants to source 10 percent of their food locally would add another $6.2 million to that equation. Last March, Pearson convened a group of small- and medium-sized food producers, as well as potential buyers, to begin talking about how they could leverage local food as an economic driver.
In attendance was rancher Kathryn Bedell, whose 85 head of cattle and sheep graze more than 10,000 mountainous acres in the county. She shared her experiences as a single mom, loading cattle into the truck by herself, the 120-hour workweeks, and the 40,000 miles a year she put on her truck hauling beef and lamb to six farmers’ markets between Glenwood Springs and Mesa, Utah.
“When you try and run any kind of business, from growing all the food to marketing it to getting it to the end user, there are so many steps,” she says. “If we can take [marketing] off [farmers’] plates, that will give them more time to grow.”
Building on the success of the incubator kitchen, Bedell, Pearson, and the rest of the steering committee have begun work on a regional food hub that will promote the county’s bounty, provide business and distribution support to producers, and build a larger processing space. Long-term, they envision a permanent indoor public market where visitors can buy meat, cheese, produce, and wine. Grand Junction would be the hub, distributing local food across Western Colorado.
“For us, it’s creating a community with enhanced economic and social benefits,” Pearson says.
There will always be those in the community who want Grand Junction to remain an oil town, Bedell says, but continuing to throw everything at such a volatile industry doesn’t make much sense. “On the other hand,” she says, “we can pick something else we’re good at and go with that.”
Photos courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
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Energy-efficient green buildings may emit hazardous chemicals.
Newly renovated low-income housing units in Boston earned awards for green design and building but flunked indoor air-quality tests, a new study shows.
(Reuters Health) - Newly renovated low-income housing units in Boston earned awards for green design and building but flunked indoor air-quality tests, a new study shows.
Researchers found potentially carcinogenic levels of toxic chemicals in the remodeled homes before and after residents moved in. All of the 30 eco-friendly homes in the study had risky indoor air concentrations for at least one chemical.
“Even in green buildings, building materials contain chemicals that we’re concerned about from a health perspective,” said lead author Robin Dodson, a researcher at Silent Spring Institute in Newton, Massachusetts.
“We should not only think about the efficiency of the building but the health of the building,” she said in a phone interview.
The hazards seemed to come both from materials used to renovate the housing units as well as from occupants’ furnishings and personal-care products, the study found.
“Synthetic chemicals are ubiquitous in modern life,” said co-author Gary Adamkiewicz, an environmental health professor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.
“They’re in new housing, old housing, green housing, conventional housing and high- and low-income housing,” he said by email.
As reported in Environment International, Dodson, Adamkiewicz and colleagues collected air and dust samples from 10 renovated units before occupancy and from 27 units one to nine months after residents moved in between July 2013 and January 2014.
By testing the homes before and after they were occupied, investigators were able to trace the presence of nearly 100 chemicals with known or suspected health concerns to the renovation, the residents or a combination.
Both before and after occupancy, all the tested units had indoor air concentrations of formaldehyde that exceeded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s cancer-based screening level.
The researchers expected formaldehyde, which has been associated with allergy and asthma, might leach out of building materials, and they found evidence that it did. But because formaldehyde emissions remained high after occupancy, the research team suspected that residents also brought formaldehyde in personal-care products.
Researchers also believe that flame retardants, which are suspected of causing cancer and diminishing male fertility, had been added to the building insulation.
To their surprise, they found chemicals used in sunscreen, nail polish and perfumes being emitted from building materials, possibly because they had been added to paint or floor finishes, Dodson said.
Residents appear to have brought into the renovated homes a number of health-disturbing chemicals, including antimicrobials, flame retardants, plastics and fragrances.
Flame retardant BDE-47, which appeared after residents moved in, has been banned since 2005. Dodson assumes residents carried the compound into their homes, possibly in second-hand furniture.
Consumers could improve household air quality by using products free of fragrance and other seemingly innocuous but harmful ingredients, Dodson said. But the onus should not be on consumers, she said.
“Why are manufacturers even allowed to use these chemicals in their products?” she said.
Green building standards should be broadened to prohibit use of hazardous chemicals, she said.
Tom Lent, policy director of the nonprofit Healthy Building Network in Berkeley, California, said the study provides important clues about which hazardous chemicals are being released from building materials so that green buildings can be constructed to be both energy-efficient and healthy.
“There does not need to be a conflict,” Lent, who was not involved with the study, said in an email.
But the conflict between energy-efficient building and the need to reduce toxic indoor air emissions has existed for 15 years, Asa Bradman said by email. Bradman, associate director of the Center for Environmental Research and Children’s Health at the University of California, Berkeley, was not involved with the study.
Adamkiewicz recently completed another study that suggests green buildings can be healthy, or at least healthier, he said.
He studied families who moved from old, conventional housing to new, green public housing units in Boston. The new buildings were designed to save energy and reduce exposures to indoor pollutants.
In the green units, adults wheezed and coughed less and suffered fewer headaches, he found, and children missed fewer school days and had fewer asthma attacks and hospitalizations.
SOURCE: bit.ly/2wZx8zN Environment International, online September 12, 2017.
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