• Tracking spilled oil

    A newly developed computer model holds the promise of helping scientists track and predict where oil will go after a spill, sometimes years later. Scientists developed the model as a way of tracking the movement of sand and oil found along the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The new tool can help guide clean-up efforts, and be used to aid the response to future oil spills.

  • Floods caused lead poisoning in U.K. cattle

    Massive floods in England and Wales have forced thousands to evacuate their homes and destroyed railways and roads. Scientists say the U.K. floods of recent years carry yet another danger with them: lead poisoning. Silage cut from fields soon after they were inundated in the 2012 floods and then fed to cattle raised the lead levels in the animals, killing some of them. Blood samples taken from cattle showed that all of them had lead levels beyond the safe limit for human consumption. An autopsy carried out on one of the casualty animals found lead concentrations 79 times the safe level in its kidney. The contaminated material is thought to originate from historical metal mining in the area. Scientists say a number of river catchments throughout England and Wales face a similar risk.

  • Most of Libya’s chemical weapons destroyed

    When Libya joined the Chemical Weapons Convention in December 2003, it reported to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) that it was operating three chemical-weapons production facilities, and that it had produced a total of twenty-five tons of sulfur mustard gas, 3,563 bombs with warfare agents, and 1,390 tons of precursor materials. Over the next eight years, these chemical weapons stock were systematically destroyed under international supervision. The work was halted between February and November 2011 – the beginning of the rebellion against Qaddafi and his departure from power – and resumed in early 2012. OPCW announced than on 26 January 2014, work on destroying Libya’s mustard gas has been completed. The question is whether the Qaddafi regime was truthful in its 2003 declaration – or whether there are still stocks of chemical agents stashed somewhere in desert caches.

  • NSF rapid response research grants to fund study of West Virginia chemical spill

    On 9 January 2014, crude 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM), a chemical primarily used to clean coal, leaked from a storage tank near Charleston, West Virginia, and bled into a river upstream of a water-treatment plant. As a result, about 15 percent of the state’s residents were advised not to drink the water. Better to understand the properties of the chemical that contaminated the drinking water, and the plumbing and water-treatment systems surrounding the area, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Rapid Response Research (RAPID) grants to research teams at three universities. These grants also will provide STEM learning opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students on the research teams.

  • Growing body of evidence connects lead’s deleterious effects to criminal behavior

    Violent crimes had reached an all-time high in the United States in the early 1990s, but by the end of the decade, the homicide rate had plummeted by more than 40 percent. Many theories were offered to explain this dramatic decline, but a new explanation is gaining credence: the banning of lead from gasoline and paint in the early 1970s. Babies born post-ban were exposed to far less lead – with its proven contribution to lowering IQ and causing attention problems and antisocial tendencies — and twenty years on, these babies became young adults who committed fewer crimes than their predecessors.

  • The 9 January chemical leak in West Virginia is the latest in a long history of industrial accidents

    The chemical spill that affected the water source in nine West Virginia counties in early January is part of a long history of industrial accidents resulting from the concentration of chemical and coal-mining operations in the region. The 9 January spill, which saw coal-cleansing chemical which leaked from Freedom Industries’ storage tank into the Elk River, leaving more than 300,000 residents without access to clean tap water for days, is the latest in a history of pollution which has poisoned groundwater, spewed toxic gas emissions, and caused fires and explosions.

  • Federal, state chemical safety agencies increasingly hampered by budget cuts

    The budgets of state and federal agencies tasked with responding to the Elk River chemical spill have recently been cut, and these cuts have limited these agencies’ ability to prevent or respond to disasters such as the water crisis in West Virginia. “We do less,” said a CDC financial official, when asked the results of cuts. “What [the CDC director] has often been quoted as saying is that threats are not going down and so it is concerning to not be able to grow with the public health threats.”

  • Deepwater Horizon: Identifying harmful elements of persisting oil

    Scientists are unraveling the composition of persisting oil residues collected from Gulf of Mexico beaches following the Deepwater Horizon disaster, insisting on further assessment of the toxic impact of these chemical remnants on the marine ecosystem. A new study targeted the most abundant compounds in the residual oil, dissecting their composition with unprecedented accuracy. This is important for understanding the environmental impact of persisting oil remnants, because ecotoxicologists have demonstrated that all three chemical groups can be harmful to living organisms. More worrisome, relatively little is known about the broader toxicity of saturates and oxygenated hydrocarbons in the marine ecosystem, like the Gulf of Mexico —where there are 223 offshore oil rigs — even though these compounds constitute most of the persisting oil.

  • Using pencil and paper to detect hazardous chemicals

    Three students from Northwestern University have proven that pencils and regular office paper can be used to create functional devices that can measure strain and detect hazardous chemical vapors. The project originated during a discussion about the conductive properties of graphene, a one-atom thick layer of carbon that can be parsed from regular pencil lead.

  • Turkeys inspire smartphone-capable early warning system for toxins

    Some may think of turkeys as good for just lunch meat and holiday meals, but University of California, Berkeley bioengineers saw inspiration in the big birds for a new type of biosensor which changes color when exposed to chemical vapors. This feature makes the sensors valuable detectors of toxins or airborne pathogens. The technology can be adapted so that smartphones can help analyze the color fingerprint of the target chemical. In the future, it could potentially be used to create a breath test to detect cancer and other diseases.”

  • Carbon nanotube sponge helps in water clean-up

    A carbon nanotube sponge capable of soaking up water contaminants, such as fertilizers, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals, more than three times more efficiently than previous efforts has been presented in a new study published today. The carbon nanotube (CNT) sponges, uniquely doped with sulphur, also demonstrated a high capacity to absorb oil, potentially opening up the possibility of using the material in industrial accidents and oil spill clean-ups.

  • Toxins-breathing bacteria to help industry, environment

    Preliminary tests suggest that the bacteria could be used to remove these pollutants from the wastewater and protect the surrounding ecosystems. Buried deep in the mud along the banks of a remote salt lake near Yosemite National Park are colonies of bacteria with an unusual property: they breathe a toxic metal to survive. Researchers believe that this unusual organism may one day become a useful tool for industry and environmental protection – for example, the bacteria could be used simply to clean up the water, but it might also be possible for the bacteria to help humans recover and recycle the valuable elements in the water.

  • Aging natural gas pipelines leak under Washington, D.C. streets

    More than 5,893 leaks from aging natural gas pipelines have been found under the streets of Washington, D.C., a team of researchers finds. A dozen of the leaks could have posed explosion risks, the researchers said. Some manholes had methane concentrations as high as 500,000 parts per million of natural gas — about ten times greater than the threshold at which explosions can occur.

  • Small, portable, fast TLC unit for explosives, drugs analysis

    Field Forensics of St. Petersburg, Florida, unveiled its microTLC, a portable and easy to use solution for pre-screening and presumptive identification of drugs and explosive mixtures. Thin layer chromatography (TLC) is an established laboratory procedure which identifies compounds belonging to the same general chemical class. The microTLC makes it possible for both laboratory and field analysis to be performed by first responders and forensics scientists.

  • Survey of deep-sea chemical munitions dump off California finds no chemical weapons

    Since the Second World War, U.S. nautical charts have shown seven “chemical munitions dumping areas” along the Pacific Coast between San Francisco and the Mexican border. Little or no information, however, is available about the amount, location, or nature of the materials that were dumped at most of these sites. Researchers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) conducted a detailed survey of one supposed deep‐water dump site off Southern California, and found that it contained no chemical munitions. The researchers conclude that not all sites marked as chemical munitions dumps may actually have been used for this purpose.