REPUBLICAN IN DEMOCRAT CLOTHING

'Come to grips with facts': Manchin prods environmentalists to back oil, gas pipelines


Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., speaks during a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing on the nomination of Rep. Debra Haaland, D-N.M., to be Secretary of the Interior on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2021. 

By Haris Alic - The Washington Times - Friday, March 5, 2021

Sen. Joe Manchin III on Friday knocked President Biden for canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and urged environmental activists and fellow Democrats to make peace with oil and natural gas pipelines.

“We need to come to grips with facts,” said Mr. Manchin, the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “I’ve said this, ‘everybody is entitled to their opinion, they’re just not entitled to create [their] own facts to support their own opinion.”

Mr. Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat who is his party’s most conservative member in Senate, said pipelines are the safest alternative to transporting large amounts of crude oil and natural gas, which the U.S. economy heavily relies upon.

“I’ve seen the devastating effects [of transporting oil and gas] by rail and by road, and a pipeline is the best way to move this product,” he said. “And it’s going to come in, we need that heavy crude.”

Mr. Biden on his first day in the Oval Office revoked permits for the Keystone XL, which would extend the pipeline to carry 800,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta, Canada, to refiners on the Texas Gulf.

The decision was heralded by climate change groups, who say the pipeline would harm the environment. Republicans blasted the move for killing American jobs and threatening energy independence.

Mr. Manchin also stressed the impact of U.S. energy policy on geopolitical concerns. The senator said it is better to import energy from Canada than from countries such as Venezuela that are “oppressing their people.”

Tester and Daines seek reauthorization of Keystone XL

Montana's two U.S. senators are both pushing legislation to override President Biden's anti-pipeline order.

by Amanda Eggert

MONTANA FREE PRESS

03.05.2021

Both of Montana’s U.S. senators are working angles in Congress to overturn President Joe Biden’s decision to nix the Keystone XL pipeline.

On Friday, Democrat Jon Tester introduced an amendment that would include reauthorization of the pipeline in the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package the U.S. House passed last week. Senate deliberations on that package are expected to go well into Friday evening. Due to changes the package has undergone in recent days, the measure will likely require another round of approval from the U.S. House before it reaches Biden’s desk. 

According to a press release from Tester’s office, the senator wants the Biden administration “to reverse their decision to cancel the permit and come back to the table to sit down with stakeholders — including TC Energy and Montana’s Tribes — to chart a path forward on the job-creating project together.”

If passed, the amendment would require Biden to review and approve a permit for the pipeline within 60 days. 

“When I disagree with my party, I tell them the truth, and the truth is that the jobs and tax revenue Keystone will create would provide a critical boost to the folks that live and work in rural Montana,” Tester said in the release. “I’ll continue working with Republicans, Democrats, and all interested stakeholders to move this project forward.”

Keystone XL is one policy area where Tester and Republican Sen. Steve Daines have generally agreed. Tester and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin were the only Senate Democrats to side with Republicans when Daines introduced a largely symbolic measure affirming the Senate’s support for the pipeline project last month. An amendment Daines’ introduced during a complicated Senate budget process narrowly passed before being pulled from a later amendment by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, that passed. 

Earlier that same week, Daines introduced the “Keystone XL Pipeline Construction and Jobs Preservation Act,” a short bill that seeks to authorize EC Energy to construct the pipeline without a presidential permit. It’s been co-sponsored by 17 Republican senators. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has not set a date to debate the measure.

“Senator Daines is pushing to get a hearing on his bill, and to get it across the finish line to support Montana jobs and families,” Daines press secretary Katherine McKeogh wrote in an email to Montana Free Press March 2. “Unfortunately, Democrats are in control of the Senate, so they schedule committee hearings. This is why it’s so important to have Senator Tester join this bill and urge his colleagues on the committee to take it up — for the good of the Montana way of life and Montana jobs.” Tester is not currently a sponsor of the measure. 


Other prominent politicians in the state have pressured the Biden administration to reverse course on Keystone XL, including U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale and Gov. Greg Gianforte. On Feb. 9, Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen co-signed a letter with 13 colleagues across the U.S. urging Biden to reauthorize the project.

The climate change impacts of extracting and burning Canadian tar sands oil were central to Biden’s decision to revoke the cross-border permit issued by his predecessor Donald Trump in 2017.

When issuing the executive order Jan. 20, Biden said Keystone XL, “disserves the U.S. national interest” and called for a shift to a clean-energy economy to fight climate change. 

 

Chimpanzees without borders

A new large-scale study uncovers recent genetic connectivity between chimpanzee subspecies despite past isolation events

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY

Research News

 

IMAGE: CHIMPANZEE DUNG SAMPLES WERE COLLECTED ACROSS AFRICA TO DETERMINE IF POPULATIONS WERE RECENTLY CONNECTED DESPITE HISTORICAL BARRIERS TO GENE FLOW. view more 

CREDIT: © PANAF

Researchers from the Pan African Programme: The Cultured Chimpanzee (PanAf) at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) and a team of international researchers, collected over 5000 fecal samples from 55 sites in 18 countries across the chimpanzee range over 8 years. This is by far the most complete sampling of the species to date, with a known location of origin for every sample, thus addressing the sampling limitations of previous studies. "Collecting these samples was often a daunting task for our amazing field teams. The chimpanzees were almost all unhabituated to human presence, so it took a lot of patience, skill and luck to find chimpanzee dung at each of the sites," explains Mimi Arandjelovic, co-director of the PanAf and senior author of the study.

Jack Lester, first author of the study, explains: "We used rapidly-evolving genetic markers that reflect the recent population history of species and, in combination with the dense sampling from across their range, we show that chimpanzee subspecies have been connected, or, more likely, reconnected, for extended periods during the most recent maximal expansion of African forests."

So although chimpanzees were separated into different subspecies in their distant past, prior to the rise of recent anthropogenic disturbances, the proposed subspecies-specific geographic barriers were permeable to chimpanzee dispersal. Paolo Gratton, co-author of the study and researcher at the Università di Roma "Tor Vergata" adds: "It is widely thought that chimpanzees persisted in forest refugia during glacial periods, which has likely been responsible for isolating groups of populations which we now recognize as subspecies. Our results from fast-evolving microsatellite DNA markers however indicate that genetic connectivity in the most recent millennia mainly mirrors geographic distance and local factors, masking the older subspecies subdivisions."

Furthermore, "these results suggest that the great behavioural diversity observed in chimpanzees are therefore not due to local genetic adaptation but that they rely on behavioural flexibility, much like humans, to respond to changes in their environment," notes Hjalmar Kuehl, co-director of the PanAf and researcher at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv).

The team also observed signals of reductions in diversity at some sites that appeared to be associated with recent anthropogenic pressures. In fact, at some locations PanAf teams visited no, or few, chimpanzees were detected despite recordings of their presence within the last decades. "Although not unforeseen, we were disheartened to already find the influence of human impacts at some field sites where genetic diversity was markedly lower than what we expected," says Jack Lester.

These results highlight the importance of genetic connectivity for chimpanzees in their recent history. "Every effort should be made to re-establish and maintain dispersal corridors across their range, with perhaps special attention to trans-national protected areas," notes Christophe Boesch, co-director of the PanAf and director of the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation. Chimpanzees are known to be adaptable to human disturbance and can survive in human-modified landscapes, however, habitat loss, zoonotic diseases, bushmeat and pet trades are all threats to chimpanzee survival. These results warn of future critical impacts on their genetic health and viability if habitat fragmentation and isolation continue unabated.

Original publication:

Jack D. Lester et al.
Recent genetic connectivity and clinal variation in chimpanzees
Communications Biology, 5 March 2021

CAPTION

As the chimpanzees were not habituated to human presence, scat samples were used as sources of DNA for the study. Here a chimpanzee from one of the study areas is recorded by a PanAf camera trap. At the Chimp&See (http://chimpandsee.org) citizen science project, all PanAf videos can be viewed and annotated.

CREDIT

© PanAf

 

Humans evolved to be the water-saving ape

New study suggests humans evolved to run on less water than our closest primate relatives.

DUKE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

DURHAM, N.C. -- When you think about what separates humans from chimpanzees and other apes, you might think of our big brains, or the fact that we get around on two legs rather than four. But we have another distinguishing feature: water efficiency.

That's the take-home of a new study that, for the first time, measures precisely how much water humans lose and replace each day compared with our closest living animal relatives.

Our bodies are constantly losing water: when we sweat, go to the bathroom, even when we breathe. That water needs to be replenished to keep blood volume and other body fluids within normal ranges.

And yet, research published March 5 in the journal Current Biology shows that the human body uses 30% to 50% less water per day than our closest animal cousins. In other words, among primates, humans evolved to be the low-flow model.

An ancient shift in our body's ability to conserve water may have enabled our hunter-gatherer ancestors to venture farther from streams and watering holes in search of food, said lead author Herman Pontzer, associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University.

"Even just being able to go a little bit longer without water would have been a big advantage as early humans started making a living in dry, savannah landscapes," Pontzer said.

The study compared the water turnover of 309 people with a range of lifestyles, from farmers and hunter-gatherers to office workers, with that of 72 apes living in zoos and sanctuaries.

To maintain fluid balance within a healthy range, the body of a human or any other animal is a bit like a bathtub: "water coming in has to equal water coming out," Pontzer said.

Lose water by sweating, for example, and the body's thirst signals kick in, telling us to drink. Chug more water than your body needs, and the kidneys get rid of the extra fluid.

For each individual in the study, the researchers calculated water intake via food and drink on the one hand, and water lost via sweat, urine and the GI tract, on the other hand.

When they added up all the inputs and outputs, they found that the average person processes some three liters, or 12 cups, of water each day. A chimpanzee or gorilla living in a zoo goes through twice that much.

Pontzer says the researchers were surprised by the results because, among primates, humans have an amazing ability to sweat. Per square inch of skin, "humans have 10 times as many sweat glands as chimpanzees do," Pontzer said. That makes it possible for a person to sweat more than half a gallon during an hour-long workout -- equivalent to two Big Gulps from a 7-Eleven.

Add to that the fact that the great apes -- chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans -- live lazy lives. "Most apes spend 10 to 12 hours a day resting or feeding, and then they sleep for 10 hours. They really only move a couple hours a day," Pontzer said.

But the researchers controlled for differences in climate, body size, and factors like activity level and calories burned per day. So they concluded the water-savings for humans were real, and not just a function of where individuals lived or how physically active they were.

The findings suggest that something changed over the course of human evolution that reduced the amount of water our body uses each day to stay healthy.

Then as now, we could likely still only survive a few days without drinking, Pontzer said. "You probably don't break that ecological leash, but at least you get a longer one if you can go longer without water."

The next step, Pontzer says, is to pinpoint how this physiological change happened.

One hypothesis, suggested by the data, is that our body's thirst response was re-tuned so that, overall, we crave less water per calorie compared with our ape relatives. Even as babies, long before our first solid food, the water-to-calories ratio of human breast milk is 25% less than the milks of other great apes.

Another possibility lies in front of our face: Fossil evidence suggests that, about 1.6 million years ago, with the inception of Homo erectus, humans started developing a more prominent nose. Our cousins gorillas and chimpanzees have much flatter noses.

Our nasal passages help conserve water by cooling and condensing the water vapor from exhaled air, turning it back into liquid on the inside of our nose where it can be reabsorbed.

Having a nose that sticks out more may have helped early humans retain more moisture with each breath.

"There's still a mystery to solve, but clearly humans are saving water," Pontzer said. "Figuring out exactly how we do that is where we go next, and that's going to be really fun."

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This research was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (BCS-0643122, BCS-1317170, BCS-1440867, BCS-1440841, BCS-1440671), the United States Agency for International Development (APS-497-11-000001), the National Institutes of Health (R01DK080763), the John Templeton Foundation, L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation (Gr. 8670), the University of Arizona, Duke University, and Hunter College.

CITATION: "Evolution of Water Conservation in Humans," Herman Pontzer, Mary H. Brown, Brian M. Wood, David A. Raichlen, Audax. Z.P. Mabulla, Jacob A. Harris, Holly Dunsworth, Brian Hare, Kara Walker, Amy Luke, Lara R. Dugas, Dale Schoeller, Jacob Plange-Rhule, Pascal Bovet, Terrence E. Forrester, Melissa Emery Thompson, Robert W. Shumaker, Jessica M. Rothman, Erin Vogel, Fransiska Sulistyo, Shauhin Alavi, Didik Prasetyo, Samuel S. Urlacher, and Stephen R. Ross. Current Biology, March 5, 2021. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.02.045

Coastal changes worsen nuisance flooding on many U.S. shorelines, study finds

Nuisance flooding causes problems such as submerged roads and overloaded stormwater systems.

UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA

Research News

 

ORLANDO, March 5, 2021 - Nuisance flooding has increased on U.S. coasts in recent decades due to sea level rise, and new research co-authored by the University of Central Florida uncovered an additional reason for its added frequency.

In a study appearing today in the journal Science Advances, researchers show that higher local tide ranges, most likely from human alterations to coastal areas and estuaries, has increased the number of nuisance flooding days in many coastal locations in the U.S.

Coastal nuisance flooding is considered to be minor flooding from the seas that causes problems such as flooded roads and overloaded stormwater systems, which can be major inconveniences for people and provide habitat for bacteria and mosquitoes.

Changes to local tide range often occur in coastal areas and estuaries when channels are dredged, land is reclaimed, development occurs, or river flows change. This can cause tide ranges, defined as the height difference between high tide and low tide, to increase in some areas and decrease in others.

The study found that out of the 40 U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tidal gauge locations used in the study that dot the continental U.S. coastlines, nearly half had more nuisance flooding days because of higher local tide ranges.

"It's the first time that the effects of tidal changes on nuisance flooding were quantified, and the approach is very robust as it is based purely on observational data and covers the entire coastline of the U.S. mainland," says study co-author Thomas Wahl, an assistant professor in UCF's Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering.

The researchers performed the study by using tidal gauge data at 40 locations along the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific coasts spanning at least 70 years of data. They compared water levels at the locations based on two different scenarios - one in which tidal range never changed and one where it did.

This allowed them to see how often nuisance floods occurred or were prevented over time because of tidal changes.

They found that nuisance flooding increased because of tidal changes in about half the locations, decreased in a fourth of the locations, and was not changed in the remaining quarter of locations.

For example, in 2019, Cedar Key, Florida, received about 23 additional nuisance flooding days because of increased tidal range, while Washington, D.C., had about 42 fewer due to decreased tidal range.

"Seeing how many nuisance flooding events occurred in the past and are happening today simply because of tidal changes should be motivation for us to keep alterations to sensitive estuarine systems at a minimum as to not further exacerbate the problem, which we already face because of sea level rise," Wahl says. "We should at least be aware of these potentially negative impacts in the planning phase of alteration projects, and it might even be possible to reverse some of the negative impacts from past decisions."

"While a few individual instances of these minor flooding events do not cause too many impacts, the cumulative impacts of frequent events can become very large," Wahl says. "Hence, understanding what drives the changes in nuisance flooding is very important."

The study's lead author, Sida Li, is a visiting student in UCF's Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering and the National Center for Integrated Coastal Research.

###

The work was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Wahl earned his doctorate in civil engineering from the University of Siegen, Germany, and joined UCF's Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering, part of UCF's College of Engineering and Computer Science, in 2017. He is also a member of UCF's National Center for Integrated Coastal Research.

 

'Fungal ghosts' protect skin, fabric from toxins, radiation

Inspired by fungus, new form of synthetic melanin acts as natural detoxifier

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

Research News

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IMAGE: FUNGAL GHOSTS ARE CREATED BY ETCHING BIOLOGICAL MATERIALS FROM FUNGAL CELLS. view more 

CREDIT: NATHAN GIANNESCHI LAB / NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

The idea of creating selectively porous materials has captured the attention of chemists for decades. Now, new research from Northwestern University shows that fungi may have been doing exactly this for millions of years.

When Nathan Gianneschi's lab set out to synthesize melanin that would mimic that which was formed by certain fungi known to inhabit unusual, hostile environments including spaceships, dishwashers and even Chernobyl, they did not initially expect the materials would prove highly porous-- a property that enables the material to store and capture molecules.

Melanin has been found across living organisms, on our skin and the backs of our eyes, and as pigments for many animals and plants. It also plays a role in protecting species from environmental stressors. Turtle-headed sea snakes' stripes darken, for example, in the presence of polluted water; moths living in industrial areas turn black as their cells absorb toxins in soot. The researchers wondered whether this type of biomaterial could be made more sponge-like, to optimize these properties. And, in turn, whether sponge-like melanins existed already in nature.

"Melanin's function isn't fully known all the time and in all cases," Gianneschi, the corresponding author on the study, said. "It's certainly a radical scavenger in human skin and protects against UV damage. Now, through synthesis we've happened upon this exciting material that very well may exist in nature. Fungi might make this material to add mechanical strength to their cells, but is porous, allowing nutrients across."

The study will be published Friday, March 5, in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Gianneschi is the Jacob and Rosaline Cohn Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. With appointments in the materials science and biomedical engineering departments in the McCormick School of Engineering, Gianneschi also is associate director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology.

The ability to create this material in a lab is encouraging for a number of reasons. In typical non-porous materials, particles adsorb only superficially on the surface. But porous materials like allomelanin soak up and hold undesirable toxins while letting good stuff like air, water and nutrients through. This may allow manufacturers to create breathable, protective coatings for uniforms.

"You're always excited by discovering something that's potentially useful," Gianneschi said. "But there's also the intriguing idea that by discovering this, maybe more materials like this exist out there in biology already. There aren't many examples where chemical synthesis leads to a biological discovery. It's most often the other way around."

Naneki McCallum, a graduate student researcher in the lab and first author on the paper, had noticed that under the right conditions, melanin appeared to be hollow, or could be made to contain what looked like voids by electron microscopy. When the team came across the synthetic material, they began experimenting with porosity and selectivity of the materials for adsorbing molecules in those voids.

In a key demonstration, the team, working with researchers at the Naval Research Laboratory, was able to show that the new porous melanin would act as a protective coating, preventing simulants of nerve gas from getting through. Inspired by this result, they then isolated naturally occurring melanin from fungal cells. This was done by etching away biomaterial from within, leaving a shell containing melanin. They call these structures "fungal ghosts" for the elusive, hollow shape's "Casper"-like quality. The material, derived from fungi could also, in turn be used as a protective layer in fabrics. Remarkably, the material stays breathable, allowing water to pass, while trapping toxins.

Another benefit to this material is its simplicity, as it's easily produced and scaled from simple molecular precursors. In the future, it could be used to make protective masks and face shields and has potential for applications in long distance space flight. Coating materials in space would allow astronauts to store toxins they're breathing out while protecting themselves from harmful radiation, making for less waste and weight.

It's also a step toward selective membranes, a highly complex field of study that aims to take compounds like water and allow healthy minerals to pass through while blocking heavy metals like mercury.

"Fungi can thrive in places where other organisms struggle, and they have melanin to help them do it," McCallum said. "So, we ask, what are the properties that we can harness by recreating such materials in the lab?"

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The study was supported by a MURI through the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR FA9550-18-1-0142) and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (HDTRA1-19-19-1-0010).

The paper is titled, "Allomelanin: A Biopolymer of Intrinsic Microporosity."

Food security: Irradiation and essential oil vapors for cereal treatment

A combined treatment of irradiation and essential oil vapors could effectively eliminate insects, bacteria and mold in stored grains

INSTITUT NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE - INRS

Research News

 

IMAGE: INRS PROFESSOR MONIQUE LACROIX IS AN EXPERT IN SCIENCES APPLIED TO FOOD, SUCH AS IRRADIATION. view more 

CREDIT: CHRISTIAN FLEURY (INRS)

A combined treatment of irradiation and essential oil vapors could effectively destroy insects, bacteria and mold in stored grains. A team from the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), led by Professor Monique Lacroix, has demonstrated the effect of this process on insects affecting rice. The study was published in the Radiation Physics and Chemistry journal.

Microorganisms and insects are the main enemies of stored grains. Currently, the food industry uses fumigants to destroy them. However, these compounds, which evaporate or decompose into gases into air or water, are threatening human health and the environment. "When grain is fumigated, a small amount of gas is absorbed by the grain and released into the atmosphere. For food irradiation, the treatment is physical. If "new molecules" are produced, they are no different than those produced by normal processes applied to food, such as heat," says Professor Monique Lacroix.

Food irradiation refers to the exposure of food to ionizing radiation, including gamma rays and X-rays. The research team has determined the effectiveness of these two processes, both with and without essential oils.

Increasing radiosensitivity

The study aimed at testing whether the energy level of the irradiation source with variable flow rate could affect the dose (or treatment time) needed to kill 90% of insects or molds. The research team showed that gamma rays were more effective against insects than X-rays. In addition, a higher dose rate with gamma rays proved to be more effective than a low dose rate. Moreover, by adding eucalyptus and tea tree essential oils, the effectiveness significantly improved. "With the addition of essential oils, the dose needed was four to six times smaller depending on gamma dose rates. In fact, oils increase the sensitivity of insects to radiation" says Professor Lacroix.

Similar results can be seen for bacteria and moulds, even though they are more resistant to radiation. According to a previous study, microorganisms' sensitivity to irradiation increased by about 1.5 times with the addition of thyme and oregano essential oils.

The team also conducted experiments with essential oil vapors diffused in 5 kg bags of rice. In the future, the team would like to test the process in an industrial setting, through partnership with companies.

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About the study

The article "Radiosensitization of rice weevil Sitophilus oryzae using combined treatments of essential oils and ionizing radiation with gamma-ray and X-Ray at different dose rates", by Farah Hossain, Peter Follett, Shiv Shankar, Tofa Begum, Stephane Salmieri and Monique Lacroix, was published in the Radiation Physics and Chemistry journal. The study received financial support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Ministère de l'Économie et de l'Innovation and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

About INRS

INRS is a university dedicated exclusively to graduate level research and training. Since its creation in 1969, INRS has played an active role in Quebec's economic, social, and cultural development and is ranked first for research intensity in Quebec and in Canada. INRS is made up of four interdisciplinary research and training centres in Quebec City, Montreal, Laval, and Varennes, with expertise in strategic sectors: Eau Terre Environnement, Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications, Urbanisation Culture Société, and Armand-Frappier Santé Biotechnologie. The INRS community includes more than 1,500 students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty members, and staff.

Uncovering hidden forever chemicals

New tool finds and fingerprints previously undetected PFAS compounds in watersheds on Cape Cod

HARVARD JOHN A. PAULSON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCES

Research News

 

Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) found large quantities of previously undetectable compounds from the family of chemicals known as PFAS in six watersheds on Cape Cod using a new method to quantify and identify PFAS compounds. Exposures to some PFAS, widely used for their ability to repel heat, water, and oil, are linked to a range of health risks including cancer, immune suppression, diabetes, and low infant birth weight.

The new testing method revealed large quantities of previously undetected PFAS from fire-retardant foams and other unknown sources. Total concentrations of PFAS present in these watersheds were above state maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) for drinking water safety.

"We developed a method to fully capture and characterize all PFAS from fire-retardant foams, which are a major source of PFAS to downstream drinking water and ecosystems, but we also found large amounts of unidentified PFAS that couldn't have originated from these foams," said Bridger Ruyle, a graduate student at SEAS and first author of the study. "Traditional testing methods are completely missing these unknown PFAS."

The research will be published in Environmental Science & Technology.

PFAS -- per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances -- are present in products ranging from fire retardant foams to non-stick pans. Nicknamed "forever chemicals" due to their long lifespan, PFAS have been building up in the environment since they were first used in the 1950s.

Despite the associated health risks, there are no legally enforceable federal limits for PFAS chemicals in drinking water. The Environmental Protection Agency's provisional health guidelines for public water supplies only cover PFOS and PFOA, two common types of PFAS. Massachusetts, along with a few other states, has gone further by including six PFAS in their new MCLs in drinking water. But there are thousands of PFAS chemical structures known to exist, several hundred of which have already been detected in the environment.

"We're simply not testing for most PFAS compounds, so we have no idea what our total exposure is to these chemicals and health data associated with such exposures are still lacking," said Elsie Sunderland, the Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Chemistry at SEAS and senior author of the paper.

The standard testing methods used by the EPA and state regulatory agencies only test for 25 or fewer known compounds. The problem is the overwhelming majority of PFAS compounds are proprietary and regulatory agencies can't find what they don't know exist.

The new method developed by Sunderland and her team can overcome that barrier and account for all PFAS in a sample. CSI: PFAS

PFAS are made by combining carbons and fluorine atoms to form one of the strongest bonds in organic chemistry. Fluorine is one of the most abundant elements on earth but naturally occurring organic fluorine is exceedingly rare -- produced only by a few poisonous plants in the Amazon and Australia. Therefore, any amount of organofluorine detected in the environment is sure to be human made.

PFAS compounds found in the environment come in two forms: a precursor form and a terminal form. Most of the monitored PFAS compounds, including PFOS and PFOA, are terminal compounds, meaning they will not degrade under normal environmental conditions. But precursor compounds, which often make up the majority of PFAS chemicals in a sample, can be transformed through biological or environmental processes into terminal forms. So, while the EPA or state agencies may monitor PFAS concentrations, they still are not detecting much of the huge pool of PFAS precursors.

That's where this new method comes in.

The researchers first measure all the organofluorine in a sample. Then, using another technique, they oxidize the precursors in that sample and transform them into their terminal forms, which they can then measure. From there, the team developed a method of statistical analysis to reconstruct the original precursors, fingerprint their manufacturing origin, and measure their concentration within the sample.

"We're essentially doing chemical forensics," said Sunderland.

Using this method, Sunderland and her team tested six watersheds on Cape Cod as part of a collaboration with the United States Geological Survey and a research center funded by the National Institutes of Health and led by the University of Rhode Island that focuses on the sources, transport, exposure and effects of PFAS.

The team focused on identifying PFAS from the use of fire-retardant foams. These foams, which are used extensively at military bases, civilian airports, and local fire departments, are a major source of PFAS and have contaminated hundreds of public water supplies across the US.

The research team applied their forensic methods to samples collected between August 2017 and July 2019 from the Childs, Quashnet, Mill Creek, Marstons Mills, Mashpee and Santuit watersheds on Cape Cod. During the collection process, the team members had to be careful what they wore, since waterproof gear is treated with PFAS. The team ended up in decades-old waders to prevent contamination.

The sampling sites in the Childs, Quashnet and Mill Creek watersheds are downstream from a source of PFAS from fire retardant foams -- the Quashnet and Childs from The Joint Base Cape Cod military facility and Mill Creek from Barnstable County Fire Training Academy.

Current tests can only identify about 50 percent of PFAS from historical foams -- products that were discontinued in 2001 due to high levels of PFOS and PFOA -- and less than 1 percent of PFAS from modern foams.

Using their new method, Sunderland and her team were able to identify 100 percent of all PFAS compounds in the types of fire-retardant foams that were used for decades at Joint Base Cape Cod and Barnstable County Fire Training Academy.

"Our testing method was able to find these missing compounds that have been used by the chemical industry for more than 40 years," said Sunderland.

The tests also revealed huge quantities of PFAS from unknown sources.

"Our accounting of PFAS from firefighting foams could not explain 37 to 77 percent of the organofluorine that we measured," said Ruyle. "This has huge ramifications for not only our understanding of human exposure but also for how much PFAS is discharging into the ocean and accumulating in marine life."

To follow up on these findings, Ruyle is currently working with NIH to identify some of the health impacts of PFAS from contemporary firefighting foams using toxicology studies. Sunderland's team is continuing to study the unknown PFAS to better identify their sources and potential for accumulation in abundant marine food webs on Cape Cod.

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This paper was co-authored by Heidi Pickard, Denis LeBlanc, Andrea Tokranov, Colin Thackray, Xindi Hu and Chad Vecitis.

It was supported by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Superfund Research Program (P42ES027706) and the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP ER18-1280). Participation by Andrea Tokranov and Denis LeBlanc was supported by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Toxic Substances Hydrology Program.

Fine particulate matter from wildfire smoke more harmful than pollution from other sources

Researchers call for revisions to air-quality monitoring guidelines to consider the sources of emissions

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN DIEGO

Research News

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 Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego examining 14 years of hospital admissions data conclude that the fine particles in wildfire smoke can be several times more harmful to human respiratory health than particulate matter from other sources such as car exhaust. While this distinction has been previously identified in laboratory experiments, the new study confirms it at the population level.

This new research work, focused on Southern California, reveals the risks of tiny airborne particles with diameters of up to 2.5 microns, about one-twentieth that of a human hair. These particles - termed PM2.5 - are the main component of wildfire smoke and can penetrate the human respiratory tract, enter the bloodstream and impair vital organs.

The study appears March 5 in the journal Nature Communications by researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at UC San Diego. It was funded by the University of California Office of the President, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Alzheimer's Disease Resource Center for Advancing Minority Aging Research at UC San Diego and theOffice of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

To isolate wildfire-produced PM2.5 from other sources of particulate pollution, the researchers defined exposure to wildfire PM2.5 as exposure to strong Santa Ana winds with fire upwind. A second measure of exposure involved smoke plume data from NOAA's Hazard Mapping System.

A 10 microgram-per-cubic meter increase in PM2.5 attributed to sources other than wildfire smoke was estimated to increase respiratory hospital admissions by 1 percent. The same increase, when attributed to wildfire smoke, caused between a 1.3 to 10 percent increase in respiratory admissions.

Corresponding author Rosana Aguilera said the research suggests that assuming all particles of a certain size are equally toxic may be inaccurate and that the effects of wildfires - even at a distance - represent a pressing human health concern.

"There is a daily threshold for the amount of PM2.5 in the air that is considered acceptable by the county and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)," said Aguilera, a postdoctoral scholar at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "The problem with this standard is that it doesn't account for different sources of emission of PM2.5."

As of now, there is not a consensus as to why wildfire PM2.5 is more harmful to humans than other sources of particulate pollution. If PM2.5 from wildfires is more dangerous to human lungs than that of ambient air pollution, the threshold for what are considered safe levels of PM2.5 should reflect the source of the particles, especially during the expanding wildfire season. This is especially relevant in California and other regions where most PM2.5 is expected to come from wildfires.

In Southern California, the Santa Ana winds drive the most severe wildfires and tend to blow wildfire smoke towards populated coastal regions. Climate change delays the start of the region's rainy season, which pushes wildfire season closer to the peak of the Santa Ana winds in early winter. Additionally, as populations grow in wildland urban interface areas, the risks of ignitions and impacts of wildfire and smoke increase for those who live inland and downwind.

Coauthor Tom Corringham points to the implications for climate change: "As conditions in Southern California become hotter and drier, we expect to see increased wildfire activity. This study demonstrates that the harm due to wildfire smoke may be greater than previously thought, bolstering the argument for early wildfire detection systems and efforts to mitigate climate change."

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The collapse of Northern California kelp forests will be hard to reverse

Most of Northern California's kelp forest ecosystem is gone, replaced by widespread 'urchin barrens' that may persist long into the future, according to a new study

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SANTA CRUZ

Research News 

IMAGE: SATELLITE IMAGES SHOW THE DRAMATIC REDUCTION FROM 2008 TO 2019 IN THE AREA COVERED BY KELP FORESTS (GOLD) OFF THE COAST OF MENDOCINO AND SONOMA COUNTIES IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA. view more 

CREDIT: MEREDITH MCPHERSON

Satellite imagery shows that the area covered by kelp forests off the coast of Northern California has dropped by more than 95 percent, with just a few small, isolated patches of bull kelp remaining. Species-rich kelp forests have been replaced by "urchin barrens," where purple sea urchins cover a seafloor devoid of kelp and other algae.

A new study led by researchers at UC Santa Cruz documents this dramatic shift in the coastal ecosystem and analyzes the events that caused it. This was not a gradual decline, but an abrupt collapse of the kelp forest ecosystem in the aftermath of unusual ocean warming along the West Coast starting in 2014, part of a series of events that combined to decimate the kelp forests.

Published March 5 in Communications Biology, the study shows that the kelp forests north of San Francisco were resilient to extreme warming events in the past, surviving other strong marine heatwaves and El Niño events. But the loss of a key urchin predator, the sunflower sea star, due to sea star wasting disease left the kelp forests of Northern California without any predators of sea urchins, which are voracious grazers of kelp.

"There were a lot of disruptions at one time that led to this collapse, and the system now persists in this altered state," said first author Meredith McPherson, a graduate student in ocean science at UC Santa Cruz. "It's a naturally dynamic system that has been really resilient to extreme events in the past, but the die-off of sunflower stars caused the resilience of the ecosystem to plummet. As a result, the kelp forests were not able to withstand the effects of the marine heatwave and El Niño event combined with an insurgence of sea urchins."

The researchers used satellite imagery from the U.S. Geological Survey's Landsat missions going back to 1985 to assess historical changes in kelp forest canopy cover.

Bull kelp is the dominant canopy-forming kelp species north of San Francisco Bay, while giant kelp is dominant to the south. Both species thrive when strong upwelling of cold, deep water brings nutrients to the surface along the coast. Marine heatwaves and El Niño events suppress coastal upwelling, resulting in warm water and low nutrient conditions in which kelp grows poorly.

"There have been big changes before, when a strong El Niño has reduced the kelp canopy dramatically, but in the past it's always come back," said coauthor Raphael Kudela, professor and chair of ocean science at UC Santa Cruz. "The loss of resiliency is what made this time different--the combination of ocean warming and the loss of the sea stars allowed the urchins to take over."

Sea star wasting disease first appeared in 2013, affecting all types of sea stars along the West Coast. The sunflower sea star was among the hardest hit species and was recently was listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Late 2014 saw the advent of an unusual marine heatwave in the Northeast Pacific which became known as "the blob" as it spread down the West Coast in 2015. A strong El Niño event began to develop around the same time, bringing warm water up the coast from the south. The warm water coincided with an increase in sea urchin populations along the North Coast.

"The alignment of all of those events resulted in an incredibly dramatic loss of kelp," Kudela said.

Kelp forests declined all along the California coast, but not to the same extent as in Northern California. Bull kelp is an annual species that regrows each year, which may make it more sensitive to these stressors than giant kelp. But another critical difference in Northern California is the absence of other urchin predators such as sea otters, which have enabled patches of healthy kelp forest to persist in Monterey Bay, for example.

"Sea otters haven't been seen on the North Coast since the 1800s," McPherson said. "From what we observed in the satellite data from the last 35 years, the kelp had been doing well without sea otters as long as we still had sunflower stars. Once they were gone, there were no urchin predators left in the system."

What that means for the future, she said, is that the prospects for recovery of the Northern California kelp forests are poor unless sunflower sea stars or some other urchin predator returns to the system. Even if temperature and nutrient conditions are good for kelp growth, new kelp plants will have a hard time getting established in the midst of the urchin barrens.

There have been some efforts to have divers manually remove urchins from selected areas and see if that can help the kelp to recover, led by the Reef Check California Program (which contributed subtidal survey data for the study). An outbreak of sea urchin disease could also potentially lead to mass mortality of urchins and give the kelp a chance to recover. In the absence of some mechanism to reduce the urchin populations, however, it will be hard to restore and maintain the kelp forests, according to McPherson.

"There's a lot of research and discussion now about the best management strategies for the future," she said. "It's important to understand and monitor the whole system. If we're going to undertake restoration efforts, we need to make sure to do it when the temperature and nutrient conditions are right for the kelp."

Kudela said ocean temperatures are beginning to cool down along the coast, after remaining above normal since 2014. "This year we are finally seeing ocean temperatures starting to cool off, so we're hoping that it reverses naturally and the kelp is able to take off again," he said. "There's really not much we can do except to keep monitoring it. Of course, the long-term solution is to reduce our carbon emissions so we don't have these extreme events."

CAPTION

Bull kelp (seen here at Pescadero Point) is the dominant species of canopy-forming kelp in Northern California.

CREDIT

Steve Lonhart/NOAA, MBNMS

In addition to McPherson and Kudela, the coauthors of the paper include Mark Carr, professor and chair of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz; Dennis Finger at UC Berkeley; Henry Houskeeper at UC Santa Cruz (now at UCLA); Tom Bell at UC Santa Barbara; and Laura Rogers-Bennett at UC Davis. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.

CAPTION

Most of the kelp forest ecosystem in Northern California has been replaced by urchin barrens like this one in a popular dive spot.

CREDIT

Katie Sowul/CDFW)