Gayathri Vaidyanathan :: » Greenwire

Food Insecurity Looms in Parched Horn of Africa

vaidyg — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 12:33:40 +0000

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — A drought in the Horn of Africa, triggered by the same La Niña episode that caused massive flooding in Australia last year, is plunging millions of pastoralists closer to food insecurity.

Parts of Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and eastern Uganda are most affected. The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that 8.4 million people are in need of food aid in the region, according to spokesman David Orr. Thousands of livestock have already died in Kenya and Ethiopia from animal diseases associated with the drought. The severity this year will depend on the rainy season between March and May.

A drought for the record books

Unlike more instantaneous natural disasters such as earthquakes, drought progresses slowly like a drumbeat. There is an apex, usually around the ninth month when the numbers of cattle dying rises drastically. The numbers depend on how poor the rainfall is, and meteorologists have so far predicted below-average rainfall for 2011 in eastern parts of the Horn.

Predictions of the current drought depend on ocean temperatures. A La Niña episode, caused by cooling ocean surface temperatures, began in the central Pacific Ocean in July 2010. Temperatures lowered by 1.5 to 1.6 degrees Celsius, changing ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns.

In historical terms, this episode has been among the strongest in a century, according to the World Meteorological Agency. The system unleashed massive flooding in Australia and Southeast Asia. In East Africa, it caused a dry spell between October and December 2010. It was the driest short rain season in 30 years.

“It is too early to say yet, although the general view is [the rains] look like being quite poor in certain parts of Somalia and Ethiopia,” said Orr. “Combined with conflict and rising food prices in Somalia, this could be particularly serious in that country.”

The WFP is continuing its normal operations of providing a food basket of cereals to the regions but is underfunded by 56 percent for the April to September period, Orr said.

Read at Greenwire/NYT

Study: Human Exposure to BPA ‘Grossly Underestimated’

vaidyg — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 22:12:35 +0000

Americans are likely to be exposed at higher levels than previously thought to bisphenol A, a compound that mimics hormones important to human development and is found in more than 90 percent of people in the United States, according to new research.

U.S. EPA says it is OK for humans to take in up to 50 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight each day. The new study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, suggests that we are exposed to at least eight times that amount every day.

“Our data raise grave concern that regulatory agencies have grossly underestimated current human exposure levels,” states the study.

The study also gives the first experimental support that some BPA is likely cleared at similar rates in mice, monkeys and humans, making it possible to extrapolate health studies in mice to humans.

Despite decades of research, questions about BPA have lingered and recently become politicized. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) hopes to add an amendment to the “FDA Food Safety Modernization Act,” currently under consideration in the Senate, banning the chemical from children’s food and drink packaging. Republicans and industry representatives have been averse, saying that research has not shown conclusively that the chemical is harmful.

Hormones are essential during development and can determine, among other things, a child’s gender. BPA, since it mimics estrogen, is an “endocrine disrupter,” according to Thomas Zoeller, a biology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. And amazingly, BPA has the ability to bind to not one, but three receptors — the estrogen, the male hormone and the thyroid hormone receptors, Zoeller said.

EPA Developing Tool to Assist in Enviro Justice Initiative

vaidyg — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

July 30 — U.S. EPA is working on a coarse screening tool as part of its “environmental justice” initiative to help its employees spot pockets of people whose health has suffered disproportionally over the years.

The Environmental Justice Strategic Enforcement Assessment Tool uses a complex combination of census data, a respiratory hazard index, poverty levels, toxic emissions, infant mortality, an index of documented pollution events and other such numbers to assign a score to a geographical area.

The end result will be a national database that will identify small tracts of people as unfairly affected over the years. Officials can take the score into consideration while making land-use and permit decisions, reducing chances of human judgment errors. Officials stressed that the tool was only a starting point, and other information would also be used to make decisions.

The tool is being developed to assist the agency in its quest to help officials take into account concerns of minorities, low-income and indigenous communities while they prepare rules, issue permits and seek compliance. The interim guidance on the issue, released Monday, will go for assessment to the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC), a council put together by EPA in 1992 to address environmental justice issues.

Dengue Re-emerges in U.S., Spurring Race for Vaccine

vaidyg — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:03:00 +0000

June 28 — For the first time in more than 65 years, dengue has returned the continental United States, according to an advisory the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued in late May. While a few cases were reported earlier, they were primarily in Americans who had caught the virus abroad or at the Texas-Mexico border.

The upsurge is not unexpected. Experts say more than half the world’s population will be at risk by 2085 because of greater urbanization, global travel and climate change. Over the past 30 years, a global outcry against using the pesticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or DDT, has led to the resurgence of the mosquito, a voracious consumer of human blood and carrier of infectious disease.

Epidemics have become routine in Latin America, a continent on the verge of becoming highly endemic. Outbreaks are today raging in Brazil, Guatemala and other nations. Thailand, within a week of its annual dengue season this year, has already reported 18,000 cases and 20 deaths, according to the Ministry of Public Health.

High-Speed Rail Will Spur Growth in Hub Cities, Says Mayors Report

vaidyg — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:00:00 +0000

June 14 – Billions of dollars of new business and tens of thousands of jobs will flow to four hub cities — Los Angeles, Chicago, Orlando and Albany, N.Y. — where plans for major high-speed rail networks are located, according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Their report, released in Oklahoma City today, is the first attempt to put numbers on the widely held belief that high-speed rail can stimulate local economies and act as a driver of growth. The Obama administration has invested $8 billion in federal stimulus money to create 13 high-speed rail corridors.

The benefits of traveling between 110 and 220 miles per hour will mean better connectivity, shorter travel times and new development around train stations, according to the report. The changes will create 150,000 new jobs and some $19 billion in new businesses by 2035.