Estrogens Everywhere

Where did all the real men go?

Endocrinology has given us another theory on why there are not real men left in the world.

The next time your girlfriend says your not a real man, tell her its not your fault, it’s all the estrogen and endocrine disruptors in the drinking water, in your plastic water bottle, your shampoo, the plastic liner in the can of beans, all the tofu and soy milk you drink.

If the Associated Press’ investigative story on drugs in our drinking water has wet your appetite to learn more about trace amounts of drugs accumulating in your liver and other organs, here's an audio file from a lecture given by Dr. David Norris.

The same week Associated Press came out with its sweeping investigative story about pharmaceuticals in our drinking water, I heard Dr. David Norris' lecture on "Environmental Estrogens: Sex, Lies and Water Supplies." He talks about the evidence that estrogen may be turning male fish into female fish Norris and his grad students made the startling discovery that white sucker fish in Boulder Creek, downstream from where the Boulder wastewater treatment plant was releasing effluent into the creek, were developing female sex organs. Norris is a professor of Integrative Physiology department at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Norris has given this speech many times, and I think he does a good job of explaining endocrinology in lay terms. Here is an audio recording of the lecture he gave on March 11, 2008 at the Boulder Public Library. Estrogen is a natural hormone found in every sewer system, and researchers also say that chemical compounds derived from detergents or in personal care products, plastics and the like can mimic estrogen.

Here's a few links to related sites:

http://scienceblogs.com/chaoticutopia/2008/02/theres_what_in_the_water.php

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/pharmawater_i;_ylt=Av3hcO_tBxm5krXrR8cgqgRH2ocA

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080311/ap_on_re_us/pharmawater_senate_hearings;_ylt=As2X4ciCGLR_ZMe.OA2hAAFG2ocA

National Ice Core Lab

I and the other Ted Scripps Fellows went on a tour of the U.S. National Ice Core Laboratory in Denver. The NICL holds 13,000 meters of ice, the largest and most comprehensive collection of polar ice cores in the world. Our guide was Dr. Todd Hinkley and this audio is the speech he gave before leading us into the freezer where the ice is stored. There is a humming sound in the background from the freezer but his voice is audible. The temperature in the freezer was -30 degrees Fahrenheit. I didn't dare take my digital recorder in the freezer but I brought in my camera and snapped these photo.

Why Adaptation to Climate Change Isn't a Hot Issue

The media generates tons of greenhouse gas mitigation stories but not enough about the need to adapt to the coming storms. We should not only work on mitigating causes of global warming but also on mitigating the effects. One reason the media neglects this important story is because environmentalists and politicians rarely talk about it. Environmentalist may be afraid that adaptation could be used as an excuse not to curb greenhouse gases. Maybe adaptation just doesn't capture people's imaginations the way electric cars and wind turbines the size of 747 jet planes do.

This NASA satellite image above shows wildfires blazing in California on Oct. 23, 2007. Fire activity is shown with red pixels. Plumes of smoke can be seen blowing out over the Pacific Ocean. Scientists have done studies and found that global warming is increasing wildfire activity in the Western United States. It might be time for elected officials to push new building codes and zoning for fireproofing homes and preventing building in indefensible places. This is an example of adapting to climate change.

While it's reassuring that President George Bush addressed climate change in his State of the Union address and the Democratic presidential candidates discussed the issue in their debates, the term adaptation never comes up. There's no reason why we can't work on mitigation and adaptation at the same time. In fact, we would be stupid not to.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick made a statement about this during his trip to China in December: "For developing countries the adaptation challenge is as important, if not more so, than the mitigation challenge, but there has been less work on adaptation.”

In November I toured the National Center Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, where I heard a presentation by Gerald A. Meehl, a research scientist. Meehl spoke about research he and other scientists had done on "committed warming." In short, greenhouse gases we produced in the 20th century have committed us to further climate change in the 21st century. Even if we could stabilize our concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere yesterday,we can expect our planet to warm an average of 1 degree C per decade for at least the next three decades. It takes centuries for warming to reach the bottom of the ocean and so the heating of the ocean is lagging behind the heating of the earth's surface. He and his colleagues reached their findings using computer modeling, backed up by real world observations. A few years ago, scientists began taking the oceans' temperature from boats and by deploying Argo floats worldwide to measure underwater temperatures as deep as 2,000 meters.

Even supercomputers make mistakes, but it makes good sense to prepare for the effects of climate change. Below are some excellent sites to learn about adaptation to climate change.

I was encouraged to find that Marketplace, produced and distributed by American Public Media, did a series called “Plan B: Adapting to a Warmer World”

IPCC: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group II did an asessment report “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” which can be found in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Fourth Assessment Report, Chapter 17: Assessment of adaptation practices, options, constraints and capacity

NCAR's Societal-Environmental Research and Education Laboratory is working to better understand these impacts and to help decision makers anticipate and respond to them.


NCAR's Center for Capacity Building

Size Is Everything

“Groups Petition EPA To Ban Nanosilver in Consumer Goods”

“A coalition of consumer protection groups yesterday [May 1] filed a legal petition with the Environmental Protection Agency seeking to halt the sale of consumer products containing microscopic nanoparticles of silver, an increasingly popular germ-killer that has raised environmental concerns.

More than 200 products -- including odor-resistant socks, baby bottles and clothes-washing machines -- are laced with specks of nanosilver, part of a larger nanotechnology revolution fueled by the novel chemical properties substances gain when honed to a few billionths of a meter.

But nanosilver's effects are not specific to harmful bacteria. Studies indicate it can harm aquatic organisms. And with the exception of one narrow rule that focuses on washing machines, the EPA has not addressed the potential risks of this new form of pollution, said George Kimbrell, staff attorney with the Washington-based International Center for Technology Assessment, which spearheaded the petition.” Rick Weiss reports for the Washington Post May 2, 2008.

Nanotechnology is the manipulation of materials less than 100 nanometers in size, that is one billionth of ameter, 1/100,000 of a human hair, 1/500 of a human red blood cell, ½ the diameter of a DNA molecule. Nanoparticles do exist naturally. Some volcanic ash and salt in ocean air are nanosize. Unintentionally produced nanoparticles include those emitted in car and truck exhaust. Because of their unique size and shape, nanos are like completely new substances. They have new and unknown chemical, electrical, magnetic and imaging properties. For instance, on a nano scale, gold is a liquid; inert metals like platinum are reactive.

The story behind the washing machines is strange but true.

Last summer, EPA Region 9 quarantined at the Port of Oakland several thousand Samsung's SilverCare Washing Machine that used silver nanoparticles Samsung believed consumer would go crazy for a washing machine that uses silver ions to kill germs in clothing.

But the Bay Areas’ water treatment plant operators and EPA officials feared the silver ions would kill the antibacterial germs that the wastewater plants use to treat the wastewater. The EPA only has the authority to regulate new chemical compounds, as silver is not a new substance. Under the Toxic Substances Control Act, EPA does have the authority to regulate pesticides, and the danger from these machines after all was their ability to kill pests.

After holding the washers at the docks for a period of time, the machines were allowed to be shipped to the retailers. After negotiations with EPA, Samsung agreed to remove the component that produced the silver nano particles.

Study: "Tree-Lined Streets 'Cut Asthma'"

"Children who live in tree-lined streets have lower rates of asthma, a New York-based study suggests. Columbia University researchers found that asthma rates among children aged four and five fell by 25% for every extra 343 trees per square kilometre. They believe more trees may aid air quality or simply encourage children to play outside, although they say the true reason for the finding is unclear." BBC News aired the story May 1.

Save Money and Threatened Species by Planting Cacti

In 2006, the Nature Reserve of Orange County successfully relocated the cactus wrens observed in this video to protected lands in the coastal reserve. Dana Kamada shot this video.

If you live between sea level and 600 feet in Orange or San Diego counties, plant cactus scrub in your backyard. Not only will you save money on your water bill but you'll help save a threatened species, the coastal cactus wren.

The coastal cactus wren is vanishing from California’s Pacific slope. Driving through the foothills of San Pasqual Valley in San Diego County, I recently saw why. Blackened and yellowing prickly pears, some melted like rubber, marred the southern slopes of the hills. The cactus wren builds nests in prickly pear and cholla, using the prickers like barbed wire against predators. But the wren needs mature stands at least a meter tall, and the cacti take decades to recover from fire. According to Jonathan Atwood, director of the conservation biology program at Antioch University, the cactus wrens are more threatened than California gnatcatchers, a federally listed species. That's because cactus wrens have a smaller total population, more fragmented distribution, more specialized habitat needs, and are underemphasized in habitat reserve design. But one issue complicates preservation, making this an even more interesting and important story: the cactus wren is not considered a separate subspecies, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has issued a controversial ruling that the bird does not warrant federal protection.

With half a million people moving to California each year, conservationists are bracing themselves for more wildfires. They warn that to save the cactus wren, gnatcatcher and other species in coastal Southern California, people must slow the frequency of human-caused wildfires and quickly plant and restore coastal sage, not just in reserves but also in homeowner's yards.