Natural gas used in homes contains hazardous air pollutants shows Boston-area study by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Policymakers and individuals can act to mitigate potential health risks from natural gas

Peer-Reviewed Publication

HARVARD T.H. CHAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Boston - Every day, millions of Americans rely on natural gas to power appliances such as kitchen stoves, furnaces, and water heaters, but until now very little data existed on the chemical makeup of the gas once it reaches consumers. 

A new study finds that natural gas used in homes throughout the Greater Boston area contains varying levels of volatile organic chemicals that when leaked are known to be toxic, linked to cancer, and can form secondary health-damaging pollutants such as particulate matter and ozone. The research by the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, PSE Healthy Energy, Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER), Gas Safety Inc., Boston University, and Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET) was published in Environmental Science & Technology.

“It is well-established that natural gas is a major source of methane that's driving climate change,” said Drew Michanowicz, Visiting Scientist at Harvard Chan C-CHANGE and Senior Scientist at PSE Healthy Energy. “But most people haven’t really considered that our homes are where the pipeline ends and that when natural gas leaks it can contain health-damaging air pollutants in addition to climate pollutants.”

Researchers conducted a hazard identification study, which evaluated whether air pollutants are present in unburned natural gas, but did not evaluate human exposure to those pollutants. Between December 2019 and May 2021, researchers collected over 200 unburned natural gas samples from 69 unique kitchen stoves and building pipelines across Greater Boston. From these samples, researchers detected 296 unique chemical compounds, 21 of which are federally designated as hazardous air pollutants. They also measured the concentration of odorants in consumer-grade natural gas – the chemicals that give gas its characteristic smell – and found that leaks containing about 20 parts per million methane may not have enough odorant for people to detect them. The samples were taken from the territories of Eversource Gas, National Grid, and the former Columbia Gas, who together provide service to 93% of Massachusetts gas customers.

Key findings: 

• Consumer-grade natural gas supplied to Massachusetts contains varying levels of at least 21 different hazardous air pollutants, as defined by the U.S. EPA, including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene, and hexane.
• Concentrations of hazardous air pollutants in natural gas varied depending on location and time of year, with the highest concentrations found in the winter. 
• Based on odorant concentrations, small leaks can be undetectable by smell - leaks up to 10 times naturally occurring levels may be undetectable, equating to a methane concentration of about 20 parts per million. 

When gas leaks occur, even small amounts of hazardous air pollutants could impact indoor air quality because natural gas is used by appliances in close proximity to people. Persistent outdoor gas leaks located throughout the distribution system may also degrade outdoor air quality as precursors to particulate matter and ozone. 

“This study shows that gas appliances like stoves and ovens can be a source of hazardous chemicals in our homes even when we’re not using them. These same chemicals are also likely to be present in leaking gas distribution systems in cities and up the supply chain,” said Jonathan Buonocore, co-author and Research Scientist at Harvard Chan C-CHANGE. “Policymakers and utilities can better educate consumers about how natural gas is distributed to homes and the potential health risks of leaking gas appliances and leaking gas pipes under streets, and make alternatives more accessible.”

The researchers share actions that policymakers and individuals can take to mitigate health risks posed by natural gas used in homes.

Policy Actions:

• Gas pipeline companies could be required to measure and report more detailed information on the composition of natural gas, specifically differentiating non-methane volatile organic compounds such as benzene and toluene.
• Gas utility providers could be required to routinely measure and report natural gas odorant content to customers similar to informational postings often produced by interstate gas pipeline companies.  
• State regulations could require direct measurement of leaked, unburned natural gas in ambient air to be included in emissions inventories and to better determine public health risks. 
• The Consumer Product Safety Commission has the authority to set performance standards for gas stoves and ventilation hoods to limit air pollutant emissions.
• Home inspectors and contractors could be required to perform natural gas-appliance leak detection surveys or to measure for ppm-range methane, similar to radon tests done prior to the completion of a real estate transaction. 
• Given the importance of odorants in detecting gas leaks, federal natural gas odorization regulations could be updated so that natural gas is odorized to meet much lower detection levels than the current 1/5th the lower explosion limit (detectable at ~1% methane).

Individual Actions:

• Because small leaks may evade our sense of smell, getting an in-home natural gas leak detection survey performed by a licensed plumber or heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) contractor can verify that no small leaks are present.
• Increasing ventilation is one of the most accessible and important actions to reduce sources of indoor pollution. Opening windows and turning on a vent that exhausts to the outside when cooking are simple steps that can lower the risk of indoor exposure. 
• If you smell gas, exit the building and then immediately call your gas company to assess whether there is a leak in or nearby your home.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c08298

***

About Harvard Chan C-CHANGE

The Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health (Harvard Chan C-CHANGE) increases public awareness of the health impacts of climate change and uses science to make it personal, actionable, and urgent. Led by Dr. Aaron Bernstein, the Center leverages Harvard’s cutting-edge research to inform policies, technologies, and products that reduce air pollution and other causes of climate change. By making climate change personal, highlighting solutions, and emphasizing the important role we all play in driving change, Harvard Chan C-CHANGE puts health outcomes at the center of climate actions. To learn more visit https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/.

 

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JOURNAL

Environmental Science & Technology

DOI

10.1021/acs.est.1c08298 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Home is Where the Pipeline Ends: Characterization of Volatile Organic Compounds Present in Natural Gas at the Point of the Residential End User

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

28-Jun-2022

Gas Piped Into Homes Contains Benzene

 

and Other Risky Chemicals, Study Finds

While the concentrations are low, the chemicals are

potentially dangerous and some are linked to cancer risk, 

the researchers found.

For the study, researchers collected samples of unburned natural gas from kitchen stoves.

Credit...Brett Tryon

By Elena Shao

NEW YORK TIMES
June 28, 2022

The natural gas delivered to homes contains low concentrations of several chemicals linked to cancer, a new study found. Researchers also found inconsistent levels of odorants — substances that give natural gas its characteristic “rotten egg” smell — which could increase the risk of small leaks going undetected.

The study, which was published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, adds to a growing body of research that links the delivery and use of natural gas to detrimental consequences for public health and the climate.

Most prior research has documented the pollutants present where oil and gas extraction takes place, but there are “fewer studies as you work your way down the supply chain,” said Drew Michanowicz, the lead author of the study, looking at “where we actually use it, in our homes.”

Over 16 months, researchers collected 234 samples of unburned natural gas from 69 homes in the Boston metropolitan area that received natural gas from three suppliers. They found 21 “air toxics” — an Environmental Protection Agency classification of hazardous pollutants known or suspected to cause cancer, birth defects or adverse environmental effects — including benzene, which was detected in 95 percent of the samples.

Short-term exposure to high levels of benzene in particular could lead to drowsiness, dizziness, headaches and irritation of the eyes and skin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Longer-term exposure can increase the risk of blood disorders and certain cancers like leukemia.

The highly flammable chemical is colorless or light yellow, and is found in products made from coal and oil including plastics, resins and nylon fibers, and also some types of rubbers, dyes and pesticides. It is also regularly found in vehicle exhaust, tobacco smoke and gasoline.

The concentrations of benzene that the researchers found in the natural gas samples were “much lower compared to the amount in gasoline,” Dr. Michanowicz said on Friday during a conference call with reporters. Even so, he said, the finding is concerning since “natural gas is used so widely in society and in our indoor spaces.”

Americans spend more than 90 percent of their time indoors, according to the E.P.A., where concentrations of some pollutants can range from two to five times as high as outdoor concentrations.

Benzene is a carcinogen, and exposure over time adds up, leading some experts to suggest that there is no safe level of exposure.

The researchers said that the goal of their study was to identify the presence and concentration of certain hazards, and that more research is needed to understand the health risks.

“The largest sources of benzene in most people’s lives are gasoline from cars and smoking,” said Rob Jackson, an earth scientist at Stanford University who did not work on the study. “On the other hand, any unnecessary benzene in your home is just too much.”

The unburned natural gas also contained inconsistent levels of odorants, or substances that give off a perceptible smell, the researchers said. Methane, the main component of natural gas, is odorless, so odorants are routinely added to help detect leaks.

“If there’s less odorant in the natural gas stream, there is a higher potential for larger leaks to exist without a smell to them,” Dr. Michanowicz said in the Friday call.

When released into the atmosphere unburned, methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas. It can warm the planet more than 80 times as much as the same amount of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Oil and gas companies have come under fire in recent years for often large-scale, invisible releases of methane.

Across the country, a growing number of cities are trying to phase out natural-gas hookups to homes and businesses in favor of electric alternatives, mostly citing the emissions impact of continuing to burn fossil fuels.

The new research suggests that natural gas leaks aren’t just releasing methane, but also air toxics that could be detrimental to public health, said Curtis Nordgaard, a pediatrician and study co-author. “We might want to rethink those leaks as not just a climate issue, but a health issue,” he said.

Dr. Nordgaard is a senior scientist at PSE Healthy Energy, a nonprofit research institute focused on the public health and climate effects of energy production, as is Dr. Michanowicz.

With this study, the researchers said they hoped to fill a gap in the availability and transparency of gas composition data. Pipeline operators and gas suppliers in the United States generally test the composition of gas, consistent with recommendations from the North American Energy Standards Board, an industry organization that sets standards for the natural gas and electricity marketplace.

However, the gas composition tests usually measure only the 16 most abundant constituents of natural gas. That list doesn’t include some of the components the researchers identified, like benzene.

“Punch-drunk slugnuts” and the language of violence: Tracing the impact of sports slang on modern perceptions of neurodegenerative disease

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS JOURNALS

Throughout the twentieth century, being “punch drunk” was a commonly encountered condition—one denoted by an equally pervasive term. Similar turns of phrase, like “slugnutty” and “punchy,” persisted for decades in books, newspapers, and magazines. Even today, “punch-drunk,” “goofy,” and “slaphappy” can be found scattered across different media.

This slang originated among working-class populations in the United States and Britain to mock the diminished mental and physical capacity of an individual who had received too many blows to the head. “Punch-drunk slugnuts” exhibited mental decline, grogginess, irritability, and slurred speech.

In “Punch-Drunk Slugnuts: Violence and the Vernacular History of Disease,” published in Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society, Stephen T. Casper, professor of history at Clarkson University, illustrates how slurs and insults characteristic of a violent interwar culture served as descriptors of debilitating head trauma, and how this language was incorporated into medicine. Casper examines the role slang terms—many associated with the world of contact sports—played in conceptualizing and treating brain injuries and resulting neurological illnesses. Given widespread observation of head trauma and its effects, colloquialisms allowed the illness to be recognizable. At the same time, they inhibited its conceptualization as a serious disease requiring medical intervention.

Casper’s analysis draws on various sources containing vernacular terms to describe damage from repetitive brain injuries, including interviews from the Folklore Project by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), literary descriptions, journalistic pieces, court documents, autobiographical accounts, and medical texts.

Medical professionals studying brain injuries and neurodegenerative disease established connections between their observations and slang circulating in the public sphere. Beginning with Harrison Martland’s essay “Punch Drunk” in 1928, subsequent clinical research included slang terms. Use of this vernacular, in turn, led to the classification of neurological disease induced by repetitive head trauma as “chronic traumatic encephalopathy.” However, the colloquialisms’ myriad connotations allowed for ambiguity in diagnosing the disorder and prevented it from achieving medical legitimacy.

Tracing the history of this vernacular economy reveals a culture that stigmatized sufferers and normalized male violence.

Sports presented a venue where brain injuries were visible, but attempts to medicalize trauma symptoms were challenged. Head trauma was a regular occurrence in high-contact sports, like football and boxing, but the everyday nature of injury was used to downplay its severity. Popular conceptualizations of sports at the time, especially boxing, were predicated on the relationship between masculinity, honor, and violence. Athletes were expected to withstand pain, embody stoicism, and inflict violence as a measure of masculinity. Inability to do so was viewed as a deficiency in one’s manhood. “Punchy” individuals who lost their athletic prowess were objects of derision and fell in social standing. Rather than acknowledge that repeated trauma caused deterioration, society employed racist, classist, and eugenic rationales, casting “punch-drunk slugnuts” as inherently inferior, as subpar fighters, and as dull-witted well before their injuries.

Accepting the affliction as a disease and treating these individuals, Casper argues, would have constituted a critique of mainstream culture and placed blame on its violent practices.

While highlighting the history of impact-related neurodegenerative disease and its lexicon, Casper also elaborates on “a disease population experience that fought against its own discovery” and how tendencies to dismiss the effects of recurrent head trauma continue today. 

“Having originated from culture, been contested by culture, and remade by culture, the disease’s treatment demanded an impossible unmaking of culture. From its rough linguistic and anthropological origins to the uncovering of its biological specificity, the history of this disease traces our chronology of normal violence as entertainment, reveals its legacies in donated brains, and, above all, foretells tragic futures.”

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JOURNAL

Isis

DOI

10.1086/719720 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Content analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Punch-Drunk Slugnuts: Violence and the Vernacular History of Disease

Stephen T. Casper discloses that he is retained by plaintiffs as an expert witness in medical history in pending concussion litigation involving American football, hockey, soccer, and rugby. He is a member of the Repercussions Group. He receives honoraria for lectures, as well as book royalties from the University of Manchester Press and Rochester University Press.

Why aren’t brain injuries taken seriously?

WWI helmets protect against shock waves

WHAT THEY CALL CONCUSSION OR SERIOUS BRAIN TRAUMA WAS ONCE KNOWN AS SHELL SHOCK AND LAST CENTURY DURING THE BIG ONE WWI IT WAS AN EXECUTABLE OFFENSE ON THE BATTLEFRONT FOR COWARDICE

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=WWI

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=SHELL+SHOCK

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=BATTLE+FATIGUE

More than 300,000 civilians killed in Syria’s conflict: UN

June 29, 2022

AP – The first 10 years of Syria’s conflict, which started in 2011, killed more than 300,000 civilians, the United Nations (UN) said yesterday – the highest official estimate to date of conflict-related civilian deaths in the country.

The conflict began with anti-government protests that broke out in March 2011 in different parts of Syria, demanding democratic reforms following Arab Spring protests in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya and Bahrain that removed some Arab leaders who had been in power for decades.

However, it quickly turned into a full-blown civil war that killed hundreds of thousands and destroyed large parts of the country.

Yesterday’s report published by the UN Human Rights Office followed what it said were rigorous assessment and statistical analysis of the available data on civilian casualties.

According to the report, 306,887 civilians are estimated to have been killed in Syria between March 1, 2011 and March 31, 2021 because of the conflict.

The figures released by the UN do not include soldiers and insurgents killed in the conflict; their numbers are believed to be in the tens of thousands. The numbers also do not include people who were killed and buried by their families without notifying authorities.

Residents walk through the destruction of the once rebel-held Salaheddine neighbourhood in the eastern Aleppo, Syria. PHOTO: AP

“These are the people killed as a direct result of war operations. This does not include the many, many more civilians who died due to the loss of access to healthcare, to food, to clean water and other essential human rights,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet.

The report, mandated by the UN Human Rights Council, cited 143,350 civilian deaths individually documented by various sources with detailed information, including at least their full name, date and location of death.

Statistical estimation techniques were used to connect the dots where there were missing elements of information. Using these techniques, a further 163,537 civilian deaths were estimated to have occurred.

“The conflict-related casualty figures in this report are not simply a set of abstract numbers, but represent individual human beings,” Bachelet said. She added that the work of civil society organisations and the UN in monitoring and documenting conflict-related deaths is key in helping families and communities establish the truth, seek accountability and pursue effective remedies.

The estimate of 306,887 means that on average, every single day, for the past 10 years, 83 civilians suffered violent deaths due to the conflict, the report said.

It was based on eight sources of information – including the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies, the Center for Statistics and Research-Syria, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Violations Documentation Center.

New technology turns the whole fish into food

by Laila Dam and Mia Halleröd Palmgren, Chalmers University of Technology

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

In the meat industry, it's common practice to turn the whole animal into food products. In the fish industry, over half of the weight of the fish ends up as side-streams which never reach our plates. This takes a toll on the environment and is out of step with Swedish food and fisheries strategies. Now, food researchers at Chalmers are introducing a new sorting technology that means we get five good cuts from fish and not just the filet. A herring processing plant on Sweden's west coast is already implementing the new method.

When the filet itself is removed from a fish, valuable side-streams remain, which can be turned into products such as nuggets, mince, protein isolates or omega-3-rich oils. Despite such great potential, these products leave the food chain to become animal feed or, worst case, get discarded. To exploit valuable nutrients and switch to more sustainable procedures, the way we process fish needs to change.

All cuts are treated with care

"With our new sorting method, the whole fish is treated with the same care as the filet. The focus is on preserving quality throughout the entire value chain. Instead of putting the various side-streams into a single bin to become by-products, they are handled separately, just like in the meat industry," says research leader Ingrid Undeland, Professor of Food Science at the Department of Biology and Biological Engineering at Chalmers.

The research was conducted as part of an international project called Waseabi. The Chalmers researchers recently published their results in the scientific journal, Food Chemistry.

"Our study shows that this type of sorting technology is important, particularly as it means we can avoid highly perishable side-stream cuts being mixed in with the more stable cuts. This new method brings fresh opportunities to produce high-quality food," says Chalmers researcher Haizhou Wu, first author of the scientific article.

'The interest is there'

The new sorting method for separating the five different cuts is being introduced at one of the partner companies in the research project. Fish processing company, Sweden Pelagic in Ellös on the island of Orust is already using parts of the method in its production and has had good results.

"The sorting technology gives us many more opportunities to develop healthy, new and tasty foods and to expand our product range. This year, we estimate we'll produce around 200-300 tons of mince from one of the new cuts and we aim to increase that figure year on year. The interest is there, in the food industry and public meal production segments like school catering," says Martin Kuhlin, CEO of Sweden Pelagic.New dipping solution turns the whole fish into valuable food

More information: Haizhou Wu et al, Lipid oxidation in sorted herring (Clupea harengus) filleting co-products from two seasons and its relationship to composition, Food Chemistry (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2021.131523

Journal information: Food Chemistry 

Provided by Chalmers University of Technology 

TRANSFOODS VS CISFOODS

Who trusts gene-edited foods? New study gauges public acceptance

by Iowa State University

Scientists are running outdoor field trials this summer to test a gene-edited tomato variety 

that could provide a new dietary source of vitamin D. 

Credit: Amy Juhnke/Iowa State University

Through CRISPR and other gene-editing technologies, researchers and developers are poised to bring dozens—if not hundreds—of new products to grocery stores: mushrooms with longer shelf lives, drought-resistant corn and bananas impervious to a fungus threatening the global supply. A few, including a soybean variety that produces a healthier cooking oil, are already being sold commercially in the U.S.

Advocates say gene editing is faster and more precise than traditional crop breeding methods. It can address rapidly evolving challenges to produce food and benefit consumers. Critics argue this new technology could create unintended consequences and that government agencies must address the shortcomings of current regulation. Under current federal law, gene-edited foods do not need to be labeled.

Given the backlash over transgenic engineering for genetically modified organisms (GMOs), there's a lot of speculation over whether the public will accept gene-edited foods, even though the process to create them is different.

A new study from Iowa State University is the first to gauge public acceptance of gene-edited foods using a nationally representative sample of 2,000 U.S. residents. The researchers surveyed participants to understand if they would eat or actively avoid gene-edited foods; and to understand the factors that shape their decisions. The researchers plan to repeat the survey every two years for the next decade to track how public attitudes on gene-edited foods will shift as more products come onto the market.

"Right now, there are a lot of people in the middle. They have not fully made up their mind about gene-edited foods, but as they learn more about the technologies and products, they will likely move to one side of the issue. I think it will depend on their consumer experience—what kind of messaging they trust and who sends it, as well as what products they encounter," said Senior Research Fellow Christopher Cummings.

Cummings co-authored the paper published in Frontiers in Food Science and Technology with David Peters, a professor of sociology and a rural sociologist with ISU Extension and Outreach.

Social factors drive decisions

The researchers found a person's likelihood of eating or avoiding gene-edited foods is primarily driven by their social values and how much they trust government, industry and environmental groups.

"Food industry experts tend to have the mindset that people make decisions about food based on the cost, appearance, taste and nutritional content. But our study shows that when you have a new technology that people are not familiar with, other factors play a much bigger role, especially people's social and ethical values, and whether they trust government and industry to protect them," said Peters.

The study reveals people who are more willing to eat raw or processed gene-edited foods generally view science and technology as a primary means to solve society's problems. They place a high level of trust in government food regulators and the agriculture biotechnology industry and generally do not have strong beliefs about how food should be produced. They also tend to be younger (Generation Z and millennials under 30 years of age) with higher levels of education and household incomes.

By contrast, the people who are more likely to avoid eating raw or processed gene-edited foods are more skeptical of science and technology. They place greater value on the way their food is produced, saying ethics play an important role, and rely more on their own personal beliefs or environmental groups rather than government and industry. People in this group also tend to have lower incomes and be more religious, older and female.

Around 60% of the women in the survey said they would be unwilling to eat and purposely avoid gene-edited foods.

Cisgenic engineering (gene-edited foods)

With cisgenic engineering, scientists use tools like CRISPR-Cas, ZFN or TALEN to tweak a specific section of DNA in a plant or animal, or replace it with genetic material from a sexually compatible species. The genetic change is passed on to its offspring, like traditional breeding.

The technology is newer than transgenic engineering; the first gene-edited food to enter the marketplace, a soybean variety for cooking oil free of transfats, was March 2019. Under current federal law, gene-edited foods do not need to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and labeling is voluntary.

Transgenic engineering (GMOs)

With transgenic engineering, scientists insert genes from another species or genes that were made synthetically into the genome of a plant or animal.

The technology emerged in the 1990s and slowly came onto the market in the early 2000s. Most of the GMO crops grown in the U.S. are for livestock feed, but some make their way directly into human diets, primarily through cornstarch, corn syrup, corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil and granulated sugar.

GMOs are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Agriculture, and as of January 2022, GMO foods are required by federal law to include a "Bioengineered" or "Derived from Bioengineering" label.

"Current regulations say gene-edited foods are analogous to traditional selective breeding and therefore, do not fall under the same review process as GMOs. But some consumer groups, trade organizations and environmental groups disagree," said Cummings.

He added, several European Union countries have already put out strong declarations that they will not accept gene-edited foods.

"As academic professionals and public opinion scholars, we're well positioned to be third-party arbiters and report the facts for how the public understands—and comes to make decisions—about the foods they choose to accept or avoid."

Gene Edited Foods Project

Peters and Cummings are part of an interdisciplinary team of experts from ISU and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) trying to answer:

• What are the social and ethical considerations surrounding gene-edited foods?
• How do stakeholders differ in their views of gene-edited foods?
• How should gene-edited crops and foods be governed and regulated?
• Which organizations do the public trust to govern gene-edited foods?
• How are gene edited foods portrayed in the media?

"We want to work with government regulators, environmental groups, consumer groups and the food industry to come to some common framework that doesn't stifle innovation but still gives consumers the right to know how their food is made," said Peters.

In another study expected to be published this year, Peters and Cummings found 75% of the American public agree there should be a federal labeling law for gene-edited foods, regardless of whether or not they plan on buying or avoiding them.

The researchers hosted a deliberative workshop earlier this year to bring diverse stakeholders together to discuss public engagement and governance issues as well as potential avenues for a voluntary certification process and label for gene-edited food developers.

"The worry is that if more of these gene-edited foods move onto the marketplace and consumers don't know, there will be a backlash when they find out," said Peters. "Ag biotech companies who support voluntary labels want other companies to follow suit. The hope is that labels will improve transparency and instill trust among consumers, avoiding any potential backlash or opposition to the technology."

Gene-edited food quietly arrives in restaurant cooking oil

More information: Christopher Cummings et al, Who Trusts in Gene-Edited Foods? Analysis of a Representative Survey Study Predicting Willingness to Eat- and Purposeful Avoidance of Gene Edited Foods in the United States, Frontiers in Food Science and Technology (2022). DOI: 10.3389/frfst.2022.858277

Provided by Iowa State University 

Wild tomato genome will benefit domesticated cousins

by Michael J. Haas, Cornell University

Solanum lycopersicoides, shown here in growing in a BTI greenhouse, harbors genes that 

could improve tomatoes and other crops. Credit: Susan Strickler/Provided

A team of researchers has assembled a reference genome for Solanum lycopersicoides, a wild relative of the cultivated tomato, and developed web-based tools to help plant researchers and breeders improve the crop.

Solanum lycopersicoides (S. lycopersicoides) harbors a gene making the plant resistant to a particular strain of bacterial speck disease. The gene could be introduced into cultivated tomatoes to protect them from the pathogen.

That discovery led Boyce Thompson Institute researchers to sequence the plant's genome and create online resources to facilitate the discovery of more genes that could improve tomatoes.

"There wasn't even really a discussion about whether to sequence Solanum lycopersicoides, it was just obvious to do it," said Susan Strickler, director of the BTI Computational Biology Center (BCBC). Strickler is co-corresponding author of the paper describing the S. lycopersicoides genome, which was published in The Plant Journal on May 18.

Wild relatives of crops are becoming increasingly valuable to plant researchers and breeders. During the process of domestication, crops tend to lose many genes, but wild relatives often retain genes that could be useful—such as genes that confer resistance to drought and disease.

In their study, the researchers demonstrated the value of the new genome by finding several candidate genes associated with compounds—phenolics and carotenoids—that contribute to the species' color, flavor and nutrition, as well as other genes associated with disease resistance.

Perhaps more importantly, a larger goal of the project was to make the S. lycopersicoides reference genome as widely accessible and useful to the scientific community as possible.

"These kinds of data are added to the National Center for Biotechnology Information repository as a general requirement, and that's important, but not everyone is a bioinformaticist or has access to bioinformatics resources to analyze the data," said Adrian Powell, assistant director of BCBC and a first author on the paper.

"To increase access and ease of exploring the genome, we developed web-based tools and components that researchers beyond our project team could use and add to," he said.

One tool is a S. lycopersicoides genome browser available on the Sol Genomics Network website, which serves as community resource and repository for tomatoes and other species in the Solanaceae family. Powell said the browser can aid early exploratory studies of the wild tomato species as well as more advanced studies.

Another tool is an S. lycopersicoides expression atlas, which allows users to analyze RNA sequencing data and visualize which genes are expressed in different plant tissues and under different conditions. "The atlas is based on code first developed for the cultivated tomato, but now we have a version for the wild species," Powell said.

These tools, combined with the new reference genome, will help researchers analyze hybrids of the wild tomato and cultivated tomato more readily than they could before, and they will also help researchers who are studying the wild species for its own sake, he said.

For example, the reference genome could facilitate genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on multiple S. lycopersicoides accessions, to assess genetic diversity of the species and identify candidate genes for the traits breeders might want to introduce into cultivated tomatoes, such as drought tolerance, Powell said.Genome sequences for two wild tomato ancestors

More information: Adrian F. Powell et al, A Solanum lycopersicoides reference genome facilitates insights into tomato specialized metabolism and immunity, The Plant Journal (2022). DOI: 10.1111/tpj.15770

Journal information: The Plant Journal 

Provided by Cornell University 

Can beavers catch chronic wasting disease?

by Adrianna MacPherson, University of Alberta

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is an infectious disease that affects the central nervous systems of animals, typically affecting cervids such as deer, elk and moose.

"CWD is always fatal. There's no cure, there are no treatments," says Debbie McKenzie, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences.

CWD is increasing its geographic range as well as its prevalence. It is affecting populations in a wider range, while animals in areas with a history of CWD are being infected in higher numbers. Gathering data is the first step to stopping the spillover of the disease from cervids to other animals.

Researchers at the U of A examined potential transmission to beavers, and found that they do appear susceptible to chronic wasting disease, according to a recent study published in Biology.

CWD first began appearing in the 1960s in small areas of Colorado and Wyoming, explains McKenzie. It's now in 30 states in the United States as well as three provinces. The prevalence is skyrocketing, within regions, too. Some areas near the Alberta-Saskatchewan border report rates of infection around 50 percent, and in areas around Swift Current, Sask., 85 percent of mule deer bucks test positive for CWD.

"As it expands, more deer are exposed, and more of the landscape becomes contaminated," says McKenzie.

The susceptibility of other animals is important information because they have the potential to spread the disease. For example, if CWD were to jump into caribou populations, the geographical spread would amplify since caribou are migratory.

McKenzie and her team decided to start by examining beavers. "There's a lot of overlap between beavers and deer, particularly at water sources," McKenzie says. Additionally, deer will often rub against or urinate on trees that beavers use, making it likely that beavers could be exposed.

CWD is a prion disease, a family of diseases characterized by misfolded proteins. Other prion diseases include bovine spongiform encephalophy (BSE, or mad cow disease). In collaboration with David Westaway and his team, McKenzie created a beaver analog in a lab model to study how an actual beaver might respond to infection with strains of prion protein from sources such as deer, elk, hamsters and mice. She was able to see which strains were infectious and which left the beaver analog unaffected.

The results were surprising. "We had no idea if CWD or any prion would go into beavers, so we basically took everything we had and tested it," says McKenzie. "We were absolutely astounded that nearly every strain showed infection."

Interspecies transmission complicates matters further, McKenzie explains. For example, there may be a strong species barrier preventing transmission between two particular species, but if a third species were to become infected, those previously unaffected species might become much more susceptible to infection from that third species.

"In terms of managing the disease, that's a critical component because even if you could come up with a strategy to manage CWD in deer, if it's in other species, it's going to make it that much more difficult to control."

As for humans becoming infected, McKenzie says there have been no reported cases of CWD infecting humans. However, she advises that the high prevalence and geographical expansion means that those who hunt may want to take safety measures.

"If you hunt and are going to eat venison, get your animal tested. If it's positive (for CWD), don't eat it, because we just don't know the potential impact," McKenzie says.

Though there are other prion diseases that affect humans, researchers and medical professionals aren't yet familiar with how CWD might present in human populations.

McKenzie and her team are planning to look at susceptibility of transmission into pronghorn antelope populations next. They're also examining environmental factors of CWD. For example, they want to find out whether and how prion proteins can be detected in the soil, and how long these infectious proteins remain in the soil.Breakthrough in chronic wasting disease research reveals distinct deer, elk prion strains

More information: Allen Herbst et al, Susceptibility of Beavers to Chronic Wasting Disease, Biology (2022). DOI: 10.3390/biology11050667

Provided by University of Alberta 

Seismic noise analysis could help monitor potential hazards in active mine

Date: June 28, 2022

Source:

Seismological Society of AmericaSummary:An active underground mine can be a seismically noisy environment, full of signals generated by heavy machinery at work and induced seismicity. Now, researchers working with data from a longwall coal mine demonstrate a way to extract and separate the signals generated from mining activity from the background seismic noise of the area.

FULL STORY

An active underground mine can be a seismically noisy environment, full of signals generated by heavy machinery at work and induced seismicity. Now, researchers working with data from a longwall coal mine demonstrate a way to extract and separate the signals generated from mining activity from the background seismic noise of the area.


This method, described in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, could be useful in monitoring seismic events and the structural integrity of the mine as operations continue, according to Santiago Rabade, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Utah, and colleagues.

Longwall coal mines are underground mines where a large wall or slice of coal is removed in miles-long panels. The researchers used data collected over one month from a 17-geophone array on the surface one such mine. The array was originally set up to record seismicity of the mine and seismic ambient noise over time, looking for potential subsurface changes.

Rabade and colleagues first used a cross-correlation method, which compares signals from each geophone station against each other within 5-minute windows. They identified two distinct groups of waveforms in the 1-5 Hz frequency range -- one containing strong and coherent signals and one without these signals.

After further analysis, the researchers could separate windows of time characterized by the strong coherent signals from those without the strong signals. They determined that the strong signal time windows were consistent with the progression of mining, while the other windows demonstrate the persistent seismic background noise that was expected for the region.

The researchers then used a location method on the mining-dominated windows to determine their sources. Their results over 24-hour and 5-minute time scales matched well with the position of the overall longwall operations and the location of recorded seismic events. The method makes it possible to "find different sources occurring simultaneously if they are coherent enough," said Rabade.

Rabade said the researchers haven't investigated whether the method could locate different types of individual machinery. "We think the location obtained from the time windows with mining activity is dominated by the signals emerging from the longwall shearing machine."

While the location method they used has been applied previously to track hydrothermal and volcanic tremors, he said the full workflow described in the BSSA study "can be a powerful tool to monitor real-time seismic sources in many active environments, for example, mines, volcanoes, geothermal or hydrothermal systems, fracking or wastewater injection sites, or oil and gas extraction areas."

While the researchers used one month of data to develop and test their method, Rabade said their process could be accelerated in future monitoring applications.

Journal Reference:Santiago Rabade, Sin-Mei Wu, Fan-Chi Lin, Derrick J. A. Chambers. Isolating and Tracking Noise Sources across an Active Longwall Mine Using Seismic Interferometry. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 2022; DOI: 10.1785/0120220031

Rock samples from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover contain key ingredient of life

By Samantha Mathewson 

published about 24 hours ago

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity collected rock samples from the Yellowknife Bay

 formation of Gale crater. 

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

Martian rock samples collected by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover show signs of key ingredients for life as we know it on Earth.

The venerable Curiosity Rover drilled samples from Gale crater, the site of an ancient lake on Mars. Using these samples, scientists were able, for the first time, to measure the total amount of organic carbon in Martian rocks, according to a statement from NASA(opens in new tab).

Organic carbon, which is carbon bound to a hydrogen atom, is a prerequisite for organic molecules created and used by all known forms of life. However, organic carbon can also come from non-living sources, such as meteorites and volcanic eruptions. While previous studies have detected organic carbon in smaller quantities in Martian rock samples, the new measurements provide insight into the total amount of carbon in organic compounds.

Related: Stunning Mars photos by the Curiosity rover show ancient climate shift

 VIDEO https://cdn.jwplayer.com/previews/QDBHjbSW

"Total organic carbon is one of several measurements [or indices] that help us understand how much material is available as feedstock for prebiotic chemistry and potentially biology," Jennifer Stern, lead author of the study and a space scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in the statement. "We found at least 200 to 273 parts per million of organic carbon. This is comparable to or even more than the amount found in rocks in very low-life places on Earth, such as parts of the Atacama Desert in South America, and more than has been detected in Mars meteorites."

Today, Mars is not a suitable environment for life, but there is evidence to suggest the Red Planet was more Earth-like billions of years ago, with a thicker atmosphere and liquid water on its surface — key ingredients for life as we know it on Earth.

The Martian samples were collected from 3.5-billion-year-old mudstone rocks in the Yellowknife Bay formation of Gale Crater, which Curiosity has been exploring since 2012. Scientists think that the sediment was formed through physical and chemical weathering of volcanic rocks, before settling to the bottom of the lake.

The rover analyzed the fragments using its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, which uses oxygen and high heat to convert the organic carbon in the samples into carbon dioxide. From the amount of carbon dioxide produced, the instrument calculates how much organic carbon was in the original sample and tells the exact isotope ratio, which helps scientists understand the source of the carbon, according to the statement. Isotopes are forms of the same chemical element that differ in the number of neutrons in their cores.

"In this case, the isotopic composition can really only tell us what portion of the total carbon is organic carbon and what portion is mineral carbon," Stern said. "While biology cannot be completely ruled out, isotopes cannot really be used to support a biological origin for this carbon, either, because the range overlaps with igneous (volcanic) carbon and meteoritic organic material, which are most likely to be the source of this organic carbon."

However, in addition to organic carbon, the researchers identified other signs suggesting Gale crater may have once supported life, including the presence of chemical energy sources, and chemical compounds such as oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur and low acidity.

"Basically, this location would have offered a habitable environment for life, if it ever was present," Stern said in the statement.

Their findings were published Monday (June 27) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

RELATED STORIES: 

 

— NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars is watching the clouds drift by and they're beautiful

— Possible sign of Mars life? Curiosity rover finds 'tantalizing' Red Planet organics

— NASA's Curiosity rover shares spectacular views of Mars

Samantha Mathewson (opens in new tab)

Contributing Writer
Samantha Mathewson joined Space.com as an intern in the summer of 2016. She received a B.A. in Journalism and Environmental Science at the University of New Haven, in Connecticut. Previously, her work has been published in Nature World News. When not writing or reading about science, Samantha enjoys traveling to new places and taking photos! You can follow her on Twitter @Sam_Ashley13

Identifying bird species by sound, an app opens new avenues for citizen science

by Public Library of Science

Researchers have developed the BirdNET App, where people can easily participate in bird

 research and conservation. Credit: Ashakur Rahaman, Yang Center/Cornell Lab of

 Ornithology (CC-BY 4.0, creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

The BirdNET app, a free machine-learning powered tool that can identify over 3,000 birds by sound alone, generates reliable scientific data and makes it easier for people to contribute citizen-science data on birds by simply recording sounds

An article publishing June 28 in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Connor Wood and colleagues in the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, U.S., suggests that the BirdNET app lowers the barrier to citizen science because it doesn't require bird-identification skills to participate. Users simply listen for birds and tap the app to record. BirdNET uses artificial intelligence to automatically identify the species by sound and captures the recording for use in research.

"Our guiding design principles were that we needed an accurate algorithm and a simple user interface," said study co-author Stefan Kahl in the Yang Center at the Cornell Lab, who led the technical development. "Otherwise, users would not return to the app." The results exceeded expectations: Since its launch in 2018, more than 2.2 million people have contributed data.

To test whether the app could generate reliable scientific data, the authors selected four test cases in which conventional research had already provided robust answers. Their results show that BirdNET app data successfully replicated known patterns of song dialects in North American and European songbirds and accurately mapped a bird migration on both continents.

People can easily participate in bird research and conservation through the recently 

developed BirdNET App. Credit: Stefan Kahl, Yang Center/Cornell Lab of Ornithology 

(CC-BY 4.0, creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Validating the reliability of the app data for research purposes was the first step in what they hope will be a long-term, global research effort—not just for birds, but ultimately for all wildlife and indeed entire soundscapes. Data used in the four test cases is publicly available, and the authors are working on making the entire dataset open.

"The most exciting part of this work is how simple it is for people to participate in bird research and conservation," Wood adds. "You don't need to know anything about birds, you just need a smartphone, and the BirdNET app can then provide both you and the research team with a prediction for what bird you've heard. This has led to tremendous participation worldwide, which translates to an incredible wealth of data. It's really a testament to an enthusiasm for birds that unites people from all walks of life."

The BirdNET app is part of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's suite of tools, including the educational Merlin Bird ID app and citizen-science apps eBird, NestWatch, and Project FeederWatch, which together have generated more than 1 billion bird observations, sounds, and photos from participants around the world for use in science and conservation.Bird call app downloaded one million times worldwide—now available for IOS devices

More information: The machine learning–powered BirdNET App reduces barriers to global bird research by enabling citizen science participation, PLoS Biology (2022). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001670

Journal information: PLoS Biology 

Provided by Public Library of Science