Archive for the 'waterborne diseases' Category

Hundreds of dead pigs fished from Shanghai river

Published on 03/20/2013 in agriculture, contaminated water, rivers, tap water and waterborne diseases. 0 Comments Tags: .

Photo retrieved from: www.globaltoronto.com

“At least 2,800 dead pigs have been fished from a Shanghai river since Friday, but authorities insist that tap water in the city is still safe to drink.

State news agency Xinhua said labels tagged to the pigs’ ears indicated they came from the upper waters of the Huangpu River, which flows through the center of Shanghai and is a source of the city’s drinking water.

It’s not clear why the pigs had been dumped in the river, though local media reported earlier this month that a disease had killed thousands of pigs in a village south of Shanghai.

“We will continue to trace the source, investigate the cause, co-operate with neighboring areas and take measures to stop the dumping of pigs into rivers,” the Shanghai Municipal Agricultural Commission said in a statement posted on their website on Monday.

As of Sunday, water quality on the Songjiang section of the river, where most of the pigs were found, remained normal and the incident has had “no significant effect on tap water supply,” the commission added.”

Read more: CNN

 

lily victoria

Can Jakarta ever root out the problems that cause so much destruction after every monsoon season?

Published on 02/19/2013 in climate change, contaminated water, displacement of people, floods, greenwashing, hydrology, management, policy, rivers, wastewater and waterborne diseases. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Photo retrieved from: www.inquirer.net

“Jakarta, Indonesia, is one of Asia’s most flood-prone cities. Every year hundreds of thousands of citizens living in the capital of Southeast Asia’s largest economy brace for the loss of business, shelter and livelihoods.

Each year, as the rainy season approaches, the authorities insist they are ready to counter the tides of brown murky water, trash, and even animals, surging downstream. But the annual city-wide submergence continues.

This year’s sustained downpour threatens to prompt the kind of flooding not seen since 2007 when 350,000 people were evacuated from water-logged areas and dozens were killed. Already, at least 100,000 people have been affected. Army personnel have been deployed to some of the city’s poorest parts to clean up – a process likely to take weeks, if not months.

Asia’s monsoon season prompts annual debate about the state of infrastructure and the fundamental mismanagement of vital systems meant to keep some of the world’s biggest cities moving. With a population of 10 million, Jakarta’s latest battle to stem the tide highlights a deeper political and social problem: The government’s inability to remove and rehabilitate low-lying slum areas; an unwillingness on part of thousands of poor people to leave dangerous areas despite the risk to themselves and their families; and the overwhelming problem of waste and dumping, often cited as the biggest hindrance to keeping Indonesia “flood-free”.

Indonesia faces a formidable challenge: The country’s economy is growing at breakneck speed, its population is rising and the pressures on its decaying systems are mounting. The World Bank has stepped in to help save what it describes as a “sinking city”, due to rising sea levels, trash and annual rain. To dig the city out of its mess, the World Bank has invested $200 million to dredge parts of Jakarta.”

Read more: Aljazeera

 

lily victoria

Traces Of Anxiety Drugs May Make Fish Act Funny

Published on 02/16/2013 in aquatic ecosystems, contaminated water, lakes, oceans, rivers, tap water, wastewater and waterborne diseases. 0 Comments Tags: .

Photo retrieved from: www.npr.org

“The water is likely to be considerably cleaner upstream and downstream from the sewage plant where the Swedish perch were captured.

Adding more uncertainty in this case: Benzodiazepines have been used for decades in Sweden, so they have no doubt been in this aquatic ecosystem for many years.

“These fish may have adapted to that,” Schlenk says.

Scientists now realize that low levels of pharmaceuticals have spread through the environment. For instance, Schlenk has found a Valium-like drug in the hornyhead turbot, a fish that lives on the seafloor off the California coast. Other lab studies have shown that human drugs can affect the behavior of striped bass and other species.

These drug traces don’t pose an obvious threat to people, who might drink water from streams or eat the fish that live in them.

“The presence of pharmaceuticals in surface waters — or even the residues that accumulate in edible in fish and shellfish — are much lower than what you might need to gain a therapeutic dose,” says Bryan Brooks of Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

But, he cautions, that isn’t necessarily the case in the developing world.”

“Some of the observations in India, for example, downstream of manufacturing facilities, are among the highest concentrations of pharmaceuticals reported in the environment,” he says. “So the developing world really deserves some additional attention.”

Read more: NPR

lily victoria

More Threats From Fracking: Radioactive Waste

Published on 01/28/2013 in contaminated water, fracking, natural gas drilling, oil, policy, tap water and waterborne diseases. 0 Comments Tags: .

Photo retrieved from: www.commondreams.org

“Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection announced Thursday it was embarking on a year-long study of radioactivity in by-products from oil and natural gas development.

But findings and any action from the study may come too late for people like Portage, Pennsylvania resident Randy Moyer, who is suffering from a flurry of health problems he believes are the result of radiation exposure from his work transporting fracking wastefluids. Pennsylvania’s Beaver County Times reports:

Moyer said he began transporting brine, the wastewater from gas wells that have been hydraulically fractured, for a small hauling company in August 2011. He trucked brine from wells to treatment plants and back to wells, and sometimes cleaned out the storage tanks used to hold wastewater on drilling sites. By November 2011, the 49-year-old trucker was too ill to work. He suffered from dizziness, blurred vision, headaches, difficulty breathing, swollen lips and appendages, and a fiery red rash that covered about 50 percent of his body.”

Read more: Common Dreams

 

lily victoria

Chinese Mayor Apologizes for Drinking Water Contamination

Published on 01/07/2013 in coal, contaminated water, policy, tap water, wastewater and waterborne diseases. 0 Comments Tags: .

Photo retrieved from: www.scmp.com

“The mayor of the Chinese city of Changzhi apologized for a delay in reporting a poisonous leak from a chemical plant that caused the cutoff of water to 1 million people, the state Xinhua News Agency said.

The environmental authority in China’s northern Shanxi province didn’t receive a report about the pollution from the city until five days after the Dec. 31 incident when it should have been reported within two hours, the official news agency said, citing a news conference with the mayor.

About 9 metric tons of aniline, a colorless and poisonous liquid chemical, spilled from a plant owned by Shanxi Tianji Coal Chemical Industry Group, which also makes fertilizer, disrupting the drinking water supply in Handan city downstream in Hebei province, according to Xinhua. The leak was due to a loose drainage valve, Xinhua said.

Thirty more tons of aniline, which can be used to make pesticides, have been found in a nearby disused reservoir, it said, citing a local emergency response agency. The local environmental bureau is cleaning up the contamination in its reservoir, where water won’t be used until tests prove it safe.”

Read more: Bloomberg

 

lily victoria

The Great Lakes legacy: Old contaminants declining; newer ones on the rise

Published on 11/10/2012 in agriculture, clean water act, contaminated water, hydrology, lakes and waterborne diseases. 0 Comments

Retrieved From: Environmental Health News

Legacy contaminants are decreasing more quickly than previously reported in three of the Great Lakes, but have stayed virtually the same in two other lakes, according to new research. “These are very positive results. The lakes are improving and slowly cleaning themselves up,” said Thomas Holsen, co-director of Clarkson University’s Center for the Environment. Even with the decreases, it will be 20 to 30 years until the decades-old contaminants in Great Lakes fish decline to the point that fish consumption advisories can be eliminated. Banned in the 1970s, PCBs, DDT and other banned compounds dropped about 50 percent in fish in Lakes Michigan, Ontario and Huron from 1999 through 2009, although there were no significant changes in Lakes Superior and Erie fish, according to the new study. In all of the lakes, the older contaminants are being replaced by newer ones, mostly flame retardants, that are building up in fish and wildlife.

Read More: Environmental Health News

jenna cavelle

Water deficit leads to consumption of dirty water

Published on 09/17/2012 in agriculture, contaminated water, drought, management, tap water, wastewater and waterborne diseases. 0 Comments Tags: .

Photo retrieved from: www.eoearth.org

“Local residents in Kupang, Timor Tengah Selatan and Timor Tengah Utara, are reportedly consuming unhygienic fecal-contaminated water from nearby dikes, as sources of fresh water have dried up in the last few weeks.

“We’re using dirty water from a dike for drinking water. We have no choice,” said Marice Kono, a resident of Sainoni village, South Bikomi district, Timor Tengah Utara regency.

The dike, built by the provincial administration in 1998, was originally aimed at providing water for cattle farmers in the region.

But non-cattle farmers in Fenake village and Sainoni village have now taken advantage of the dike, fetching water for their daily consumption during the current dry season.”

Read more: The Jakarta Post

lily victoria

Villagers Sue Diamond Firms for Pollution in Zimbabwe

Published on 09/11/2012 in contaminated water, mining, policy, rivers and waterborne diseases. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Photo retrieved from: www.earthfirst.wordpress.com

“The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA) and villagers living along Save River are seeking a court order to bar three diamond mining companies in Marange district from polluting water sources.
ZELA is a common law trust established to promote environmental justice in the country. In a High Court application last week, ZELA and the villagers alleged that Anjin Investments (Chinese corporation that recently replaced striking workers with child laborers), Marange Resources (owned by corrupt billionaire Mhlanga) and Diamond Mining Corporation (DMC) were polluting Save, Singwizi and Odzi rivers with sewage, chemicals and metal deposits.

ZELA said the discharges by Anjin, Marange Resources and DMC exposed inhabitants of villages living along the banks of Odzi, Singwizi and Save Rivers to risks of contracting diseases such as cancer, cholera and typhoid.”

Read more: Earth First!

 

lily victoria

Rare-earth mining in China comes at a heavy cost for local villages

Published on 08/08/2012 in contaminated water, mining, rivers, wastewater and waterborne diseases. 0 Comments

Photo retrieved from: www.guardian.co.uk

“From the air it looks like a huge lake, fed by many tributaries, but on the ground it turns out to be a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world, collectively known as rare earths.

The town of Baotou, in Inner Mongolia, is the largest Chinese source of these strategic elements, essential to advanced technology, from smartphones to GPS receivers, but also to wind farms and, above all, electric cars. The minerals are mined at Bayan Obo, 120km farther north, then brought to Baotou for processing.

The concentration of rare earths in the ore is very low, so they must be separated and purified, using hydro-metallurgical techniques and acid baths. China accounts for 97% of global output of these precious substances, with two-thirds produced in Baotou.

The foul waters of the tailings pond contain all sorts of toxic chemicals, but also radioactive elements such as thorium which, if ingested, cause cancers of the pancreas and lungs, and leukemia.”

Read more: Guardian

 

lily victoria

Zimbabwe: Water Chemicals, Just Politics At Play

Published on 08/06/2012 in contaminated water, management, peak water, policy, wastewater and waterborne diseases. 0 Comments Tags: .

Read more: www.hardrainproject.com

“Water has always been one of the biggest problems besetting the City of Harare. Not only is money unavailable to ensure enough chemicals are bought to purify our water and to repair the dilapidated infrastructure, but also there has never been an interest on the part of the authorities to ensure that our sources of water are kept clean.

Indeed, Harare’s sources of water are the most polluted in the country due to industrial waste and nothing has been done to stop the wanton release into the river systems of this toxic waste, which makes it almost impossible to purify the water.

The worst polluters of the water system are known but we have not seen the same kind of enthusiasm and gusto on the part of authorities to stem this blatant poisoning of our water, such as we saw in the past few days.

While there should be no excuses for the recent mix-up, the manner in which the debacle was handled smacked of political intrigue rather than a genuine desire to safeguard the lives of Harare residents.”

Read more: All Africa

 

lily victoria