8 of the 10 most polluted US cities are located in California

There is no doubt that great strides have been made in air pollution in the U.S. Awareness, stricter legislation and improved technology have all contributed to improved air, land and water conditions. Despite the improvements, four in 10 Americans still live where pollution levels are often dangerous to breathe.

Since the American Lung Association began studying particle pollution, almost all of the most polluted cities have consistently remained among the worst. The ALA’s 2013 “State of the Air” report measures cities based on low-lying ozone pollution, as well as both short- and long-term particle pollution.

Based on average long-term particle pollution figures collected by the ALA between 2009 and 2011, 24/7 Wall St. identified the 10 most polluted cities in the country. For each of these metropolitan areas, the ALA noted the population and the number of people in the area with health problems that high pollution can exacerbate, such as asthma and cardiovascular disease.

Check out the 10 most polluted US cities, 8 are in California:

High levels of radiation detected in Northwest rainwater

Image via WikipediaA Seattle nuclear watchdog group is accusing the federal government of failing to keep the public informed of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

In the days following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the U.S. began monitoring radiation from Japan's leaking nuclear power plants.

Most of the public attention went to the air monitoring which showed little or no radiation coming our way. But things were different on the rain water side.

"The level that was detected on March 24 was 41 times the drinking water standard," said Gerry Pollet from Heart of America Northwest. He reviewed Iodine 131 numbers released by the Environmental Protection Agency last spring. More...

Feds Abandon Extra Radiation Monitoring of Milk, Water

   
       
   

Drinking water in 35 American cities contains large amounts of likely carcinogen

Image via WikipediaA US environmental group has found that drinking water in 35 American cities contains hexavalent chromium, a probable carcinogen, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

The study by the Environmental Working Group -- the first nationwide analysis measuring the presence of the chemical in US water systems -- is to be made public on Monday, the daily reported.

The group found hexavalent chromium in the tap water of 31 out of 35 cities sampled. Of those, 25 had levels that exceeded the goal proposed in California, which has been trying aggressively to reduce the chemical in its water supply.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency is considering whether to set a limit for hexavalent chromium in tap water. The agency is reviewing the chemical after the National Institutes of Health, deemed it a "probable carcinogen" in 2008.

Hexavalent chromium has long been known to cause lung cancer when inhaled, and scientists recently found evidence that it causes cancer in laboratory animals when ingested. It has been linked in animals to liver and kidney damage as well as leukemia, stomach cancer and other cancers. More...

Whistle blower: BP is deliberately sinking oil with Corexit to hide it for financial gain

"They're here! They've formed a corporation called BP." (Image by tnarik via Flickr)

Hell, anyone following the gusher knows why BP has used well over one millions gallons of Corexit: to hide the oil. This is spite of an EPA request to restrict the use of this highly toxic dispersant. And we all know Thad Allen is BP's pathetic straw man in uniform. Only those who live for Nascar and Xanax believe Obama's in charge.

From the Examiner:

Testimony before a Senate investigative panel this week is expected to reveal what many have suspected about BP all along; they don’t care about the environment, the animals that are dying, and the lives that are being destroyed by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

In a shocking interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on June 29th, Allegiance Capitol Corporation V.P. Fred McCallister said that BP is deliberately sinking oil with the toxic chemical disbursant Corexit, to hide the size of the oil spill. By sinking the oil before it can be collected, BP won’t have to pay fines on it.

McCallister said, “Everybody in Europe, where the standard practice is to raise the oil and collect it, is scratching their heads, and quite honestly laughing at what’s happening in the Gulf.” He added, “Everyone is looking at us and wondering why we’re allowing this to happen.”

McCallister is set to appear before a Senate investigative panel on Thursday and testify that BP’s only interests regarding the Deepwater Horizon spill is protectimg their own financial interests. His statements explained why BP has been refusing offers of help from additional foreign skimmers. More...

Health Risks from Oil Spill: "Some of the Most Toxic Chemicals that We Know" , "Every Place Can be Ground Zero", CDC Advises

Image via Wikipedia

washingtonsblog.com

An "epidemiologist" is a scientist who studies diseases among groups of people.

So the following quote from Bloomberg caught my eye:

Shira Kramer, an epidemiologist who has conducted research for the petroleum industry on the health consequences of exposure to petroleum, said she is concerned that the risks are being downplayed.

“It’s completely scientifically dishonest to pooh-pooh the potential here when you are talking about some of the most toxic chemicals that we know,” said Kramer....

“When you talk about community exposure, you are talking about exposures in unpredictable ways and to subpopulations that may be more highly susceptible than others, such as those of reproductive age, people who are immuno-compromised, children or fetuses.

‘With the World Trade Center, there have been unpredictable adverse health effects to the populations that were exposed and not just the workers,” she said. “In this case, we have a soup of chemicals from the crude, chemicals from the dispersants and pollutants that were already in the water. Who can say how they will interact?”

Crude oil contains such powerful cancer-causing chemicals benzene, toluene, heavy metals and arsenic.

In addition, BP has poured millions of gallons of the highly-toxic dispersant Corexit into the Gulf. And see this.

Bloomberg also notes that the Centers for Disease Control has issued health warnings about the oil:

“Although the oil may contain some chemicals that could cause harm to an unborn baby under some conditions, the CDC has reviewed sampling data from the EPA and feels that the levels of these chemicals are well below the level that could generally cause harm to pregnant women or their unborn babies,” the CDC said on its website.

While they suggest there is no threat, the CDC simultaneously advised “everyone, including pregnant women” to avoid spill-affected areas. More...

Criticism of Secret Oil Dispersant in Gulf Grows Louder

Image by DigitalGlobe-Imagery via Flickr

Stacy Feldman

Scientists and ocean advocates stepped up warnings this week of potential dangers from chemical dispersants, as oil giant BP released unprecedented amounts of a classified and toxic chemical to thin the Gulf of Mexico oil slick before it reaches shore.

"Unfortunate recent events in the Gulf Coast have once again brought to the forefront issues pertaining to the impacts of dispersants and dispersed oil," Carys Mitchelmore, a researcher at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, told the Senate Subcommittees on Oversight and Water and Wildlife.

"There's a potential for a toxic soup of unknown effects, which cannot be predicted even if the individual constituents are known."

Response teams have dumped about 436,000 gallons of a chemical dispersant, called Corexit, into the Gulf to battle the leak from BP's sunken Deepwater Horizon ruptured rig—more than has ever been used in the United States.

Some of that is being pumped 5,000 feet underwater at the site of the spill, a deepsea technique that has never been tried. The exact ingredients of chemical dispersants are protected as trade secrets and are unknown.

"Putting this right on the seabed, it's unknown what the consequences will be," said Mitchelmore.

The dispersant, a detergent-like brew of solvents, surfactants and other compounds, breaks down oil into tiny particles that scatter into the sea to prevent crude from washing ashore and wiping out wildlife.

Some analysts describe the chemical stew as a a slow and silent killer, however, quietly altering the balance of food webs, contaminating species and damaging the overall health of the oceans.

John Everett, president of Ocean Associates Inc., a Virginia-based oceans and fisheries consulting firm, said the dispersant could cause more harm than the calamitous spill itself, which is gushing oil at a pace of 210,000 gallons a day and has now exceeded the four-million gallon mark.

"The oil damage will eventually heal. Better procedures will be employed and this oil will be recycled and assimilated," Everett told Congress.

"The flow of chemical materials into our waters is another matter. There are too many insidious contaminants entering our estuaries, causing genetic harm and poisoning our Earth, turtles and seafood."

The harmful chemicals, he said, creep into the food supply and "directly impact us as well."

Soon after the April 20 oil rig blast, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Coast Guard gave BP the greenlight to spray the dispersant on the water's surface and to test it almost a mile under the sea. The chemical was pre-approved for use in the National Contingency Plan (NCP) Product Schedule.

EPA declares that it has "not given authorization for the full scale use of dispersants underwater beyond initial tests to determine its effectiveness." But that could soon change.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told reporters on Wednesday that so far 28,709 gallons of dispersants had been discharged in the seabed for testing purposes. Jackson said the agency is now waiting on results to determine the chemical's effectiveness in decomposing crude at those depths. Two earlier attempts to test the site failed, she said.

"The effect of underwater dispersant still is unknown," Jackson added.

Working with EPA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said it was examining water samples on the seafloor near the leak.

On the sea surface, the results of EPA's most recent water samples, gathered from April 30 to May 5, showed that "water quality does not pose increased risk to aquatic life."

Speaking to the subcommittees this week, Jim Jones, deputy assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, conceded that the dispersant being deployed "has toxicity associated with it" and that "damage has been done."

He called the tests an "environmental trade-off" between long-term harm to offshore wildlife and fragile lands if the spill were to wash ashore, and potential shorter-term damage to some sea life.

Mitchelmore, said the trade-off is simply the "protection of one habitat...at the cost of another."

"In this case, the protection of shoreline species at the expense of organisms residing in the water column and potentially also those at the seabed," she added.

In regard to Corexit, Mitchelmore said, "limited prior toxicological information exists to fully assess risks to exposed organisms."

But both oil and oil spill dispersants are known to cause a variety of health effects in animals, she added, "including death and a variety of sublethal impacts including reduced growth, reproduction, cardiac dysfunction, immune system suppression, carcinogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic effects and alterations in behavior."

Jackson said that Corexit is at most one-tenth "as toxic as oil."

Fishing advocacy groups, meanwhile, such as the eight-state Southern Shrimp Alliance (SSA), are fearful of long-lasting effects of a chemical that could eat away at their livelihoods.

"SSA welcomes testing sediments in the water column as a good first step, but fear the 'act now, check later' approach being taken with dispersants," said John Williams, the group's executive director. "These chemicals relocate the oil from the shores to the water column where it will be spread by currents to vital reproductive grounds throughout the western Gulf of Mexico."