• 3,000 chemical-filled barrels washed into major northeast China river

    Severe floods in China’s Jilin Province carried about 3,000 barrels containing toxic chemicals into the Songhuajiang River in Jilin City; in addition, 4,000 empty barrels containing chemical residues were also washed into the river — a major source of drinking water and fishing; each chemical-filled barrel contains about 170 kilograms of chemicals

  • Radiation concerns dog full-body scanners

    By the end of 2014, TSA will install between 1,950 and 2,200 full-body scanners at checkpoints in all 450 commercial airports in the United States; TSA buys scanners which use two technologies — backscatter X-ray and millimeter wave; since backscatter technology raises persistent worries about radiation, some want to know why TSA should not buy only millimeter-wave scanners

  • HHS seeks comments on bioterror select agents list

    The biennial review required by the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 is under way; comments about biological agents or toxins that should be added or removed are due by 20 August

  • Scientists: Oil spill's "grim reshuffle" of Gulf food web may destroy region's fishing industry

    The initial impact of the BP disaster on the maritime food chain in the Gulf are already apparent; scientists warn that if such impacts continue, they will result in a grim reshuffling of sea life that could over time cascade through the ecosystem and imperil the region’s multibillion-dollar fishing industry

  • Bioterrorism experts criticize cuts in BioShield to pay for teacher retention

    In order to find funds which would prevent teacher layoffs, House Democrats craft an appropriations bill which takes $2 billion from a bioterrorism emergency program; security experts criticize what they call a lack of foresight

  • Obama heralds Food Safety Act

    President Obama had an organic vegetable garden planted at the White House, and since taking office has been pushing a more aggressive approach to food safety; the administration’s approach is encapsulated in the Food Safety Modernization Act, which would give the U.S. government more effective tools to monitor food safety

  • Keeping water clean by using sound to filter bacterial spores

    Acoustic trapping can remove bacterial spores from water, according to a new set of experiments funded by the U.S. Army; the idea is to allow the water to flow through a cavity in which a transducer sets up an acoustic standing wave

  • Finding a smallpox vaccine for the event of a bioterror attack

    Smallpox is a potentially fatal and highly contagious infectious disease, estimated to have killed between 300 million and 500 million people in the first half of the twentieth century; the world was declared free of smallpox in 1980 — concern about the use of smallpox by bioterrorists spurs new research into vaccines

  • Media reports influence the severity of pandemics

    Up-to-date media reports about the way an infectious disease is spreading could dramatically reduce the severity of an outbreak, according to a new mathematical model; there is a problem though: if the reports are untrue or exaggerated, then the next pandemic may be deadlier because people may not believe the media reports

  • Scientists: Full-body scanners' radiation underestimated, could pose cancer risk

    More and more scientists express their unease with the amount of radiation to which passengers are exposed as they are screened by full-body scanners at airports; experts say radiation from the scanners has been underestimated and could be particularly risky for children; they say that the low level beam does deliver a small dose of radiation to the body, but because the beam concentrates on the skin — one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the human body — that dose may be up to 20 times higher than first estimated

  • Calls in Canada for better protection against fertilizer bomb threat

    The Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers wants a comprehensive plan of action to prevent agricultural supplies such as fertilizers from becoming tools of terrorists; the association calls for an “integrated crop input security protocol” for Canada’s 1,500 agri-retail sites; this plan would include perimeter fencing, surveillance and alarm devices, lighting, locks, software, and staff training in various security techniques, at retail outlets; estimated cost: $100 million

  • Vast cleanup of Plum Island land since 2000

    DHS plans to sell Plum Island and replace its bio-research facilities with a brand new BioLab in Manhattan, Kansas; documents show that since 2000 there have been extensive efforts to remove vast amounts of waste and contaminants — hundreds of tons of medical waste, contaminated soil, and other refuse — from the island

  • Researchers sequence the human body louse

    As well as irritations from infestations with body lice or the closely related human head lice, the body louse may carry harmful bacteria that cause epidemic typhus and are classified as a bioterrorism agent; U.S. and Swiss scientists have sequenced the louse genome — a major step toward controlling the disease-vector insect

  • Emergent sells anthrax vaccine to U.S. allies

    European countries, worried about bioterror attacks, are working on a plan to stock vaccines regionally — a Baltic stockpile, a Nordic stockpile, and so on would help in covering countries that have not expressed a desire to form their own stockpiles; a Maryland-based companies is providing these European countries with anthrax vaccine

  • North Carolina prepares for bioterrorism, epidemics

    North Carolina universities and state and federal agencies create the new North Carolina Bio-Preparedness Collaborative; the idea is to use computers to link all the disparate forms of data collected by various agencies quickly to root out indicators of new disease, or food-borne illness, or, in a worst-case scenario, an attack of bio-terrorism