Around The Web
Giant anteater and jaguar in rare battle – camera-trap video
Camera -trap footage shows a giant anteater going toe-to-toe with a jaguar in the Gurupi Biological Reserve in the Brazilian state of Maranhão. The video was filmed by the Brazilian National Research Centre for Carnivore Conservation in September 2016 as part of a survey on jaguars
Continue reading...Our technology can clean up air pollution hotspots | Letter
Professor Lewis’s analysis of ways to tackle air pollution (10 ways to beat air pollution: how effective are they?, theguardian.com, 15 February) is disappointingly dismissive of technology that can work in bus shelters or other pollution hotspots. While these solutions can’t clean an entire atmosphere, there are places where they can make a huge difference and it would be shortsighted to sweep them aside.
Tests at King’s College London have independently verified that our technology can clean the air of dangerous and pervasive nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter in pollution hotspots. It can reduce exposure to pollution in bus shelters, tube stations, and potentially hospitals or schools, by up to 80%. The mixing of the atmosphere does not therefore “completely outweigh the benefits” as Professor Lewis claims.
Continue reading...Thousands of spills at US oil and gas fracking sites
Lemur facial recognition tool developed
Hospital saves dehydrated baby hippo at Cincinnati Zoo
Heathrow protest by climate activists causes delays on M4
Campaigners chain themselves to a vehicle, blocking motorway tunnel leading to airport and causing lengthy delays
Climate activists protesting against Heathrow’s planned third runway caused lengthy delays on the M4 by blocking a tunnel leading to the airport.
Campaigners for Rising Up used three cars to close the tunnel leading from the motorway to Heathrow Terminals 1, 2 and 3 at about 8.25am on Tuesday. Three protesters chained themselves to one of the vehicles, which had a banner reading: “No new runways”.
Continue reading...What future for E numbers after Brexit?
‘Insane’ camera trap video captures rare battle in the Amazon
Without camera traps we would never be privy to two endangered species sparring in the remote Amazon rainforest.
As darkness descended over the Peruvian Amazon in 2006, my wife and I listened spellbound while our guide told us the grisly story of the jaguar and giant anteater.
Eyewitnesses, our guide insisted, had found the two foes dead together, embracing like lovers but in mutual destruction – the jaguar’s jaw still drooped around the anteater’s neck where it had pierced its prey’s artery and the anteater’s ten-centimeter-long claws still embedded in the big cat’s flanks. Later, after the spell – and liquor – wore off, I thought it was probably a tall tale, something to tell tourists after the sun sets over the world’s greatest jungle and you’ve all had a few too many. But an incredible new camera trap video proves I may have been wrong to doubt.
Continue reading...Albanese on Netanyahu visit and fixed terms for parliament
Glimpse of a landscape fashioned by birds
Blackwater Carr, Norfolk Once you are attuned to this avian tree propagation, it becomes a pleasure to find other instances
Although I am in my 50s I still take a child’s pleasure in climbing trees. This particular ascent, however, had purpose, because a hawthorn formerly trapped under a sallow thicket has been steadily freed by felling operations. One last large willow branch had to be severed before my overtopped bush could move into the sunlit uplands of the open glade that I have created around it.
There are four hawthorns and one small holly honoured in this fashion. They receive preferential treatment partly because they are rare on my patch, but also because I cherish the idea that they are bird sown. I like to imagine the scenario that explains their presence in a sallow jungle: the fruit-filled blackbird, perhaps, that returned night after night to roost and deposited the undigested hawthorn and holly seeds that it had eaten during the day. Out of its shower of creative manure there eventually arose my new bushes.
Australian retail electricity price guid – state by state
Trump's potential science adviser William Happer: hanging around with conspiracy theorists | Graham Readfearn
The Princeton atomic physicist is no climate scientist – and he’s pushing the same old denier myths
William Happer is a physicist at Princeton University – one of those US academic institutions with brand recognition for academic excellence that travels the globe.
Happer is well known for his contrarian views (that’s the polite term) on human-caused climate change.
Continue reading...SA power bills rose less in past decade than coal states
Frydenberg on blackouts: No mention of failing network, gas, software
Queensland regulators want battery storage out of homes, garages
Mount Isa contamination 'within guidelines' but residents told to clean their homes
After an 11-year wait, Mount Isa Mines has released the official report into the lead contamination that has blighted the city for decades.
The report, commissioned by the mine’s owner, Glencore, and produced by researchers at the University of Queensland, says that household dust contaminated by airborne lead from the mining and smelting operations is the dominant source of the city’s exposure.
In some aspects this marks an important shift in the industry’s acceptance of the problem. Yet the report goes on to argue that Mount Isa residents are nevertheless responsible for keeping themselves, their houses and their children free from dust, thus putting the onus back on them to avoid exposure to the contamination.
A history of excusesThis is the latest iteration in the decade-long evolution of Mount Isa Mines’ arguments rebutting research that linked the contamination to its mining and smelting operations.
Back in 2007, when owned by Xstrata, Mount Isa Mines stated that the contamination was “naturally occurring”. We have previously termed this the “miner’s myth” – the idea that contamination surrounding a mine is a product of natural geology and weathering rather than the mining activity itself.
Before Mount Isa Mines was taken over by Glencore in 2013, the company admitted that Mount Isa was affected by “industrial mineralisation” (industry-speak for contamination from emissions), but also said that the contamination was partly due to natural sources in the city’s soils and rocks.
We and our colleagues have produced more than 20 studies documenting environmental contamination and its management in the Mount Isa region, dating back to 2005 when the Leichhardt River, which supplies drinking water to Mount Isa, was found to be contaminated with lead and other metals. Since then, we have detailed contamination in local sediments, water and soils, and used isotope fingerprinting to pinpoint the likely source; none of this research was mentioned in the new report.
Despite the welcome admission that the company is indeed contaminating Mount Isa, the report caveats this by saying that the risk of direct inhalation of lead emitted into the air is low. It states that exposure arises mainly when children are exposed to lead-contaminated surfaces in their homes – chiefly carpets. For Mount Isa families, these comments do not fully encapsulate the real challenges they face in protecting themselves and their families.
Passing the buckThe report offers the following advice to residents attempting to keep their exposure as low as possible:
keep a “clean home environment”
consider replacing carpets with timber or other hard floors, and clean them with phosphate-based agents
wash childrens’ hands frequently and before meals, and encourage very young children not to suck non-food items
wash all homegrown fruit and vegetables, and peel root vegetables, before cooking and/or eating.
The implied argument is essentially that, despite the contamination, if you do the right thing (such as keeping your house clean) there is no problem.
The obvious rebuttal to this is that if there were no industrial lead in the community, there would be no problem at all. The root cause of the issue is not the natural hand-to-mouth behaviours of children but the pervasive, persistent and permanent arsenic, cadmium and lead contamination that penetrates everything they touch: clothes, toys, food, floors and furnishings.
The rates of lead dust deposition are such that that people living closest to the smelters would have to wash their backyards and indoor surfaces several times a day to keep toxic dust levels within acceptable guidelines. Cleaning one’s house more than once a day, especially if working or looking after little children, is nearly impossible to maintain even over a few days, never mind a lifetime. While the advice to keep houses, hands and surfaces is not unreasonable in itself, the evidence suggests that it is little use in preventing lead exposure.
How serious is the exposure?Mount Isa’s schoolchildren are performing well below the national average, according to standardised testing data from the first full year of school. Similar outcomes have been seen in Broken Hill, another of Australia’s major lead mining towns. Children in North Mount Isa, the area nearest the smelter, did worse than in other areas of the city.
Mount Isa’s children have an average blood lead level of about 35 parts per billion – about three times higher than normal. A 2015 study of children from Broken Hill and Port Pirie showed that a increase in blood lead from 10 to 100 parts per billion can reduce IQ by 13.5 points. Relevantly, low exposures cause proportionally more harm, which is why it is important for children to be protected from any lead contamination at all.
The report is clear that exposure happens as a result of contamination released into the air, which later settles as dust:
The major source of lead exposure is via ingestion in the community and is from air particulates (<250µm diameter) that are on the ground from deposition as fallout.
However, it goes on to say that the mine cannot be directly faulted for this, because the average rate of airborne emissions is within the guidelines outlined in its environmental permit. The report suggests that its modelled blood lead values do not match the actual values on children because they may be exposing themselves to extra lead by ingesting dirt, or through other sources such as lead-based paint, leaded petrol, or lead-acid batteries.
But this rationale fails to take into account the short-term spikes in emissions, which cause depositions that accumulate in soils and dusts, which in turn cause elevated blood lead exposures in children. The question could easily be answered by comparing the isotopic composition of lead from blood samples with that from the mine’s emissions. Disappointingly, the Glencore report did not undertake this critical analytical step to link environmental sources to actual exposures in children.
Another setbackAuthorities have been aware of lead emissions from the Mount Isa smelter since the early 1930s. It was always a fanciful notion to suggest that emissions were not finding their way across the city and into homes, and that the contamination was somehow natural.
Intensive air monitoring in the community has continued for at least the past 40 years. Blood lead surveys and internal memos, along with environmental assessments from various government agencies, have provided significant prior knowledge of the nature, extent and cause of the problem. In 2010, Queensland’s chief medical officer Jeanette Young told The Australian newspaper:
I do know the cause; it is emissions being released from the mine. If you think where it is coming from, it is coming from emissions from the smelter that are going up in the air and they are depositing across the town fairly evenly.
Thus, in this sense, the latest study merely represents confirmation of what many people already knew.
Yet despite this overdue acknowledgement of the problem, the report implies that Glencore is not taking full ownership of the issue. The overriding message to Mount Isa’s residents is that it falls to them to keep themselves free from dangerous contamination.
In this sense, this is yet another setback in improving the living conditions for the community of Mount Isa, particularly young children who are the most vulnerable to the adverse and life-long effects of lead exposure.
Mark Patrick Taylor is affiliated with: Broken Hill Lead Reference Group. LEAD Group Inc. (Australia). NSW Government Lead Expert Working Group - Lead exposure management for suburbs around the former Boolaroo (NSW) Pasminco smelter site, Dec 2014–ongoing. Appointed by NSW Environment Minister to review NSW EPA’s management of contaminated sites, October 2015–ongoing. Macquarie’s VegeSafe project receives funding support via voluntary donations from the public and cash and in-kind support for a broader evaluation of the use and application of field portable XRFs OIympus Australia Pty Ltd and the National Measurement Institute, North Ryde, Sydney. In addition, MP Taylor has previously provided evidence-based expert report and advice for Slater and Gordon Lawyers in regard to their court action against Mount Isa Mines.
Chenyin Dong is funded by the international Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship (iMQRES) and New South Wales Environmental Protection Authority scholarship (MQ9201600680).
Paul Harvey receives funding from a Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship (MQRES).
Why new coal? Solar towers + storage beats it on all counts
Arena to give EnergyAustralia grant to investigate pumped hydro storage project
Malcolm Turnbull says technology ‘mature and cost-effective’ as Australian Renewable Energy Agency grant announced
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) has approved a $450,000 grant to EnergyAustralia to investigate a pumped hydro energy storage project off South Australia as the state’s energy mix continues to cause a political storm.
The grant will cover a feasibility study into a Spencer Gulf project that the company says has a capacity to produce about 100 megawatts (MW) of electricity with six-to-eight hours of storage.
Continue reading...The anatomy of an energy crisis – a pictorial guide, Part 2
EnergyAustralia outlines plans for 100MW pumped hydro plant in SA
Pages
