Question: I haven't heard much about the health impact of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. What are the dangers of visiting or living in the area or working on the clean-up? I did hear that almost all the workers on the Exxon Valdez clean-up in 1989 are now dead. True?

Answer: At this writing, the gushing well is apparently no longer flowing, but I wish we knew more about how the oil spill will ultimately affect the health of people who live in the area and those who are working on the clean-up. Unfortunately, we know very little about the long-term effects of contact with crude oil.

I also heard the rumor that most of the clean-up workers on the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill were now dead, but I doubt it's true. Kerry Kennedy, president of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, made that claim during an appearance on CNN. I haven't been able to track down the source of her statement, and I can find no scientific studies documenting the long-term physical health effects on human beings of that oil spill in Alaska. However, a 1993 study on the mental health impact of the Exxon Valdez spill showed increased rates of anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder among area residents. Read the rest of this entry »

A relatively new type of El Niño, which has its warmest waters in the central-equatorial Pacific Ocean, rather than in the eastern-equatorial Pacific, is becoming more common and progressively stronger, according to a new study by NASA and NOAA. The research may improve our understanding of the relationship between El Niños and climate change, and has potentially significant implications for long-term weather forecasting.

Lead author Tong Lee of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Michael McPhaden of NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, measured changes in El Niño intensity since 1982. They analyzed NOAA satellite observations of sea surface temperature, checked against and blended with directly-measured ocean temperature data. The strength of each El Niño was gauged by how much its sea surface temperatures deviated from the average. They found the intensity of El Niños in the central Pacific has nearly doubled, with the most intense event occurring in 2009-10. Read the rest of this entry »

IT IS time to start asking the hard questions. Countless people in flood-stricken Pakistan have lost families and livelihoods. Who can they hold responsible and turn to for reparations?

Less than a decade ago, these questions would have been dismissed outright. "Many scientists at the time said that you can never blame an individual weather event on climate change," says Myles Allen of the University of Oxford. But a small meeting of scientists in Colorado last week – organised by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, among others – suggests the tide is turning.

The aim of the Attribution of Climate-Related Events workshop was to discuss what information is needed to determine the extent to which human-induced climate change can be blamed for extreme weather events – possibly even straight after they have happened.

Assigning blame in this way is not without precedent. In 2004, Allen and his colleagues showed to a high level of confidence that human greenhouse gas emissions had at least doubled the risk of the European heatwave of 2003 occurring.

Read more on NewScientist.com

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill has revealed a previously unknown type of oil-eating bacteria, which is suddenly flourishing.

Scientists discovered the new microbe while studying the underwater dispersion of millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf following the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

And the microbe works without significantly depleting oxygen in the water, researchers led by Terry Hazen at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory reported Tuesday in the online journal Science Express.

Read more on WashingtonPost.com

Americans are using less energy overall and making more use of renewable energy resources.

The United States used significantly less coal and petroleum in 2009 than in 2008, and significantly more wind power. There also was a decline in natural gas use and increases in solar, hydro and geothermal power according to the most recent energy flow charts released by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

"Energy use tends to follow the level of economic activity, and that level declined last year. At the same time, higher efficiency appliances and vehicles reduced energy use even further," said A.J. Simon, an LLNL energy systems analyst who develops the energy flow charts using data provided by the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration. "As a result, people and businesses are using less energy in general." Read the rest of this entry »

A new simulation of oil and methane leaked into the Gulf of Mexico suggests that deep hypoxic zones or "dead zones" could form near the source of the pollution. The research investigates five scenarios of oil and methane plumes at different depths and incorporates an estimated rate of flow from the Deepwater Horizon spill, which released oil and methane gas into the Gulf from April to mid July of this year. Read the rest of this entry »

US researchers from the US-based Sea Education Association (Sea), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of Hawaii  described plastic as a "major contaminant" and suggest the volume of plastic appeared to have peaked in recent years.

The impacts caused by plastic debris include:

• sea animals becoming entangled
• seabirds and other marine creatures eating the plastic
• the debris being used as a "life raft" by some species to reach areas outside their normal distribution range

Read more on BBC.co.uk

Also read: Ocean Garbage Patch Still a Mystery

Dear EarthTalk: Is the dairy industry really trying to stop soy milk makers from calling their products "milk?" They must feel very threatened by the preponderance of soy milks now available in supermarkets.
– Gina Storzen, Weymouth, MA

Indeed, just this past April the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), a trade group representing dairy farms, petitioned the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to crack down on what it calls "the misappropriation of dairy terminology on imitation milk products." NMPF has been asking for such a ruling for a decade, and argues that the soy industry's "false and misleading" labeling is now more common than ever.

The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) would
like to stop soy drinks from being labeled "milk,"
arguing that the terminology is misleading. Soy
proponents argue, however, that consumers know the
difference between soy milk and dairy milk, that soy
milk is less fatty than dairy milk, and that NMPF's
efforts are a ploy to hurt the soy industry, which is
rapidly gaining market share at the expense of
dairy products.
Photo credit: Timothy Valentine, courtesy Flickr

According to NMPF president and CEO, Jerry Kozak, the FDA has let the issue slide so that the meaning of 'milk' and even 'cheese' has been "watered down to the point where many products that use the term have never seen the inside of a barn."

Furthermore, Kozak adds, the use of "dairy terminology" on non-dairy products can lead people to think they are eating healthier than they really are, especially because non-dairy products "can vary wildly in their composition and are inferior to the nutrient profile of those from dairy milk."

The website FoodNavigator-USA.com reports that on the other side of the Atlantic, the European Dairy Association (EDA) has also called for the term 'soy milk' to be replaced with 'soy drink'. EDA also suggests other options including 'soy beverage', 'soy preparation' and 'soy-based liquid'. It's no wonder the soy industry isn't quick to give up the milk moniker, given how catchy the alternatives could be! Read the rest of this entry »

The floods battered New England, then Nashville, then Arkansas, then Oklahoma – and were followed by a deluge in Pakistan that has upended the lives of 20 million people.

The summer's heat waves baked the eastern United States, parts of Africa and eastern Asia, and above all Russia, which lost millions of acres of wheat and thousands of lives in a drought worse than any other in the historical record.

Seemingly disconnected, these far-flung disasters are reviving the question of whether global warming is causing more weather extremes.

Read more on NYTimes.com

An NCAR model of magnetic flux below the Sun's surface, developed by Mausumi Dikpati and colleagues, shows the extended reach of flux transport during the solar cycle that ended in 2008 (right), compared to the previous cycle (left). The larger loop is believed to be related to the extended duration of the cycle. (Image courtesy UCAR.)

A new analysis of the unusually long solar cycle that ended in 2008 suggests that one reason for the long cycle could be a stretching of the Sun's conveyor belt, a current of plasma that circulates between the Sun's equator and its poles. The results should help scientists better understand the factors controlling the timing of solar cycles and could lead to better predictions.

The study was conducted by Mausumi Dikpati, Peter Gilman, and Giuliana de Toma, all scientists in the High Altitude Observatory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and by Roger Ulrich at the University of California, Los Angeles. It appeared on July 30 in Geophysical Research Letters. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, NCAR's sponsor, and by NASA's Living with a Star Program.

The Sun goes through cycles lasting approximately 11 years that include phases with increased magnetic activity, more sunspots, and more solar flares, than phases with less activity. The level of activity on the Sun can affect navigation and communications systems on Earth. Puzzlingly, solar cycle 23, the one that ended in 2008, lasted longer than previous cycles, with a prolonged phase of low activity that scientists had difficulty explaining. Read the rest of this entry »