Climate Change-North Pole

10/26/09

!!! ALERT !!! Event exciting : Methane hydrate melting of the ocean depths Description:Methane Gas Rise

At the bottom of the Arctic Sea lie vast deposits of methane gas trapped in frozen, icy forms called methane hydrates, and climate scientists would very much prefer that it remains trapped down there.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, and some researchers worry that a warming ocean may melt the icy structures, allowing the gas to travel up through the water to the atmosphere, where it could further contribute to global warming. Now, scientists who have been scanning the seas for signs of trouble say they may have found some.

The researchers spotted 250 plumes of methane gas bubbling up through the sea north of Norway. The region where the team found the plumes is being warmed by the West Spitsbergen current, which has warmed by 1 C over the past 30 years.

"Hydrates are stable only within a particular range of temperatures," says [study coauthor Tim] Minshull. "So if the ocean warms, some of the hydrates will break down and release their methane". However, the scientists couldn't prove that the methane is being released as a direct result of the warming, and say it's possible there have always been methane seeps like these.

The plumes, reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, were detected using a kind of sonar that is typically used by biologists searching for shoals of fish. All of the gas plumes spotted by the researchers dissolved into the water before reaching the ocean's surface, meaning that bubbles of methane weren't escaping into the atmosphere to contribute to global warming.

Just because it fails to reach the surface doesn't mean the methane is harmless, though, as some of it gets converted to carbon dioxide. The CO2 then dissolves in seawater and makes the oceans more acidic. It isn't yet clear how the plumes relate to global warming, or whether similar plumes are escaping from the seabed elsewhere in the Arctic.

But lead researcher Graham Westbrook says the findings should be considered a serious warming sign. "If this process becomes widespread along Arctic continental margins, tens of megatonnes of methane a year -- equivalent to 5-10% of the total amount released globally by natural sources, could be released into the ocean" [BBC News], he says. MB Bradbury
Contributing Reporter
Viewzone.com

10/26/09

Event: Biological Hazard Location: USA State of Idaho American Falls Reservoir and Great Salt Lake Utah Situation The number of dead birds at the American Falls Reservoir is climbing. On Wednesday, Idaho Fish and Game believes they've collected at least 10,000 birds over the last week.

Fish and Game experts believe the culprit is botulism. They said it's the biggest outbreak they've ever seen. 20 people spent the day picking up dead birds on the north shore of the reservoir where they've seen the biggest number of infected ducks. One, two, ten? The numbers are adding up quickly, but how many exactly we'll never know.

"There are tens of thousands of birds potentially affected. Anybody's guess. We've got a lot of territory that we're not going to be able to cover and a lot of birds that we're never going to find," said Mark Drew, Idaho Fish and Game. The goal is to figure out how big this outbreak really is something which most likely started under hot environmental conditions and low water levels.

"We just get this cycle where birds die and flies lay eggs in them and maggots get produced and more ducks feed on those and it just keeps going and going and going," said Drew. Each of these bags has at least 50 dead birds inside and it's just a shocking statistic.

Fish and Gamers say they're not sure when it will stop. "The birds affected with botulism, they can't fly, they're lethargic, they're very weak and they can't swim very well," said Drew. Susan Werner has been picking up the ducks for the last few days. She's found it difficult to watch these birds suffer. "It's hard work. It's rather dawning to pull into a beach and have it literally covered with dead ducks.

There's certainty more birds dead or dying than I expected to see," said Susan Werner, Idaho Fish and Game. But, their work isn't finished, every day is a race to try and find more infected birds before they spread the bacteria. Fish and Game has sent some of the birds to Boise for testing to make sure it is botulism. The rest will be going to the landfill.

This isn't the only place effected by this problem; the Great Salt Lake has apparently been hit as well with a death toll of more than 20,000 birds.

Man riding horse sucked into black hole in France!!

10/27/09

Event: Biological Hazard--Algae Sludge
Location: France Cotes-d Armor Five beaches Situation

It should have been a perfect day for Vincent Petit, finishing up an afternoon gallop on a wide expanse of beach along a pastel-colored bay. Instead, he and his mount were sucked into a hole of noxious black sludge. The horse died within seconds, the rider lost consciousness and a dirty secret on the Brittany coast reverberated across France -- decaying green algae was fouling some of its best beaches.

A report ordered by the government after the accident found concentrations of hydrogen sulfide gas emitted by the rotting algae were as high as 1,000 parts per million on the beach where the horse died -- an amount that "can be fatal in several minutes." There had been signs of a crisis for years in this idyllic corner of Brittany. But scaring away tourists was in no one's interest, including the farming industry -- the region's economic backbone -- whose nitrate-packed fertilizers power algae blooms. So, while tongues wagged, folks whispered and acrimony grew, an official hush prevailed. It took the death of the horse to bring the problem into the open. Decaying ulva algae threatens other beaches around France and the world, from the United States to China, experts say. Last year, the Chinese government brought in the army to remove the slimy growths so the Olympic sailing competition could be held. In Brittany's Cote d'Armor region, conditions are perfect for its spread — sunlight, shallow waters and flat beaches. Chemical and natural fertilizers like pig excrement, loaded with nitrates and phosphorous, have saturated the land, spilling into rivers and the ocean, feeding the algae that then proliferate. Harmless while in water, the algae form dangerous gases -- notably hydrogen sulfide, with its characteristic rotten-egg smell -- when they wash up on land and decay.

A white crust forms and traps the gases, which are released when stepped on or otherwise disturbed. Over time, putrefied algae turns sand into a black silt muck, sometimes containing pockets of poison gas.

On July 28, Petit, a 28-year-old researcher in a state-run virology lab, had just finished riding his thoroughbred Sir Glitter, a retired racehorse, on the Saint-Michel-en-Greves beach, when the two were suddenly mired in muck as he led the horse on foot in search of a place to cross a stream running through the sand. 'The horse and I slid in,' said Petit, who is also trained in veterinary studies. 'A horse in that situation is in an enormous panic, but he didn't have time to struggle.' Petit said he watched horrified as his horse stopped breathing and died within about 30 seconds, then he himself passed out. Petit was pulled from the mire by a bulldozer shovel after a man who witnessed the accident gave the alert. The horse is only the latest victim of the algae's noxious fumes. A man was found dead on the same beach two decades ago, his arm sticking out from a pile of algae. Another man fell into a four-day coma after cleaning algae 10 years later. And last year, two dogs died while romping on an algae-covered beach 60 miles to the east.

At Grandville beach, where the dogs died, putrefying algae has turned the sand to blackened silt, spotted with green swampland and white crusty clumps of algae in decay. The stench of hydrogen sulfide hangs heavy in the area, where people occasionally show up to gawk at the ruined beach. 'Once you could swim here. Now, it's no longer a beach, it's a garbage dump,' said Andre Ollivro, a founder of Halt the Green Tide, one of several ecology groups that has warned of the algae peril as bad blood built with farmers. After the dogs died, scientists at CEVA, a state-run institute that tracks algae in France, began protecting themselves with hand-held instruments to measure hydrogen sulfide, said agency official Sylvain Ballu. Ballu said he found 500 parts per million of hydrogen sulfide in the area where the dogs died.

Solving the problem will take far more than cleaning algae from beaches. Water in the affected region currently measures 32-33 milligrams per liter of nitrate -- compared to a normal level of 5 milligrams, said Alain Menesguen, a biologist with the French Institute for Exploitation of the Sea. Some rivers reach 60-70 milligrams and the ground water in some areas reaches 100 milligrams, he said. 'We've reached saturation,' he said. Returning to normal levels will require huge changes in the agricultural sector without seeing any immediate drop in the algae mass. 'This is very difficult for farmers and politicians to accept,' Menesguen said. Solange Le Guen, who raises 80 cows on a farm planted with corn, wheat and other crops in the hills behind Saint-Michel-en-Greve, says farmers aren't the only ones to blame. Fault also lies with water purification plants located too close to the ocean, she said. She conceded, when pressed, that 'people have abused' fertilizers. 'We were badly advised,' she said. For Petit, it comes down to assuring some good comes from the tragedy and his scrape with death. 'I'm trying to do everything so that my horse didn't die for nothing, that this won't just end as a simple accident,' he said. 'It could have been worse, for me.'

Michael Bradbury
Veiwzone Reporter

10/27/09

Area: USA, State of Alaska, Chukchi Sea

!!! ALERT !!!

The name of Hazard: Unidentified Biological Subtance--event happened 07/15/09

Description:
It’s a scene straight out of “The Blob.” A giant mass of goo has formed and is moving through the Chukchi Sea in Alaska.

Hunters first noticed the slime early last week, the Anchorage Daily News reports. The substance is dark and thick and can be seen for miles in the sea. The Coast Guard is sure the mystery gunk is a biological creation and has ruled out an oil spill or hazardous substance.

But the goo remains a puzzle, as Alaskans can’t remember seeing anything similar before, the ADN reported. 'That’s one of the reason we went out, because in recent history I don’t think we’ve seen anything like this,' Gordon Brower, a spokesman for North Slope Borough’s Planning and Community Services Department, told the ADN. 'Maybe inside lakes or in stagnant water or something, but not (in the ocean) that we could recall' The goo has a distinct odor to it as well, Brower said.

The gunk is being tested in a lab and Brower believes it to be a naturally occurring phenomenon most likely a giant algae bloom.

Michael Bradbury
Viewzone Reporter

10/28/09

Picture this: A 30 foot wide asteroid hits Earth and explodes in the atmosphere with the energy of a small atomic bomb.

Frightened by thunderous sounds and shaking walls, people rush out of their homes, thinking that an earthquake is in progress. All they see is a twisting trail of debris in the mid-day sky. This really happened on Oct. 8th around 11 am local time in the coastal town of Bone, Indonesia. The Earth-shaking blast received remarkably little coverage in Western press, but meteor scientists have given it their full attention.

'The explosion triggered infrasound sensors of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) more than 6,000 miles away,' report researchers Elizabeth Silber and Peter Brown of the Univ. of Western Ontario in an Oct. 19th press release. Their analysis of the infrasound data revealed an explosion at coordinates 4.5S, 120E (close to Bone) with a yield of about 50 kton of TNT. That's two to three times more powerful than World War II-era atomic bombs. The asteroid that caused the blast was not known before it hit and took astronomers completely by surprise. According to statistical studies of the near-Earth asteroid population, such objects are expected to collide with Earth on average every 2 to 12 years. 'Follow-on observations from other instruments or ground recovery efforts would be very valuable in further refining this unique event,' say Silber and Brown.

Michael Bradbury
Viewzone Reporter

10/29/09

Area: USA, State of Washington, Olympic Peninsula coastal area
Damage level: Heavy
A slimy foam churning up from the ocean has killed thousands seabirds and washed many others ashore, stripped of their waterproofing and struggling for life.

The birds have been clobbered by an unusual algae bloom stretching from the northern Oregon coast to the tip of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. 'This is huge,' said Julia Parrish, a marine biologist and professor at Washington State University who leads a seabird monitoring group.

'It's the largest mortality event of its kind on the West Coast that we know of.' The culprit is a single-cell algae or phytoplankton called Akashiwo sanguinea.

Though the algae has multiplied off the coast of California before, killing hundreds of seabirds, the phenomenon has not been seen in Oregon and Washington and has never occurred on the West Coast to this extent, Parrish said.

'We're getting counts of up to a million cells per liter of water,' she said. 'Think about that. That's pretty dense.' Marine biologists said it is not clear why the algae are multiplying, though they do flourish in warm weather. Recent storms could have contributed to the problem, with crashing waves breaking them up. The algae get whipped by the surf into something akin to a sticky soap which looks like the top of a root beer float. The foam can be deadly to seabirds because it washes off the natural oils that keep them waterproofed. Without that protection, they get cold, wet, eventually dying of hypothermia. When they wash ashore, they are covered in foam.

'It looks like they're lying in a sea of bubble bath,' said Greg Schirato, regional wildlife program manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. He said thousands had died. This algal bloom, unlike the toxins produced by blue-green algae, poses no threat to humans or pets. But the bloom could kill fish by clogging their gulls, said Zachary Forster, phytoplankton specialist at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. 'We haven't seen any instances of that,' Forster said.

The first seabird die-off in the Northwest occurred in mid-September, with swarms of dead and dying birds washing up on beaches around Kalaloch on the Olympic Peninsula. At least a thousand scoters or sea ducks, were killed, Parrish said. 'Then it subsided and we thought it was over, but it started up again,' she said. This time Oregon was hit as well. On Tuesday, birds flooded ashore on the Long Beach peninsula and on beaches as far south as Cannon Beach, prompting an outpouring of calls to the Wildlife Center of the North Coast near Astoria.

The center, the only wildlife rehabilitation facility serving the northern Oregon and Washington coasts, is working around the clock treating more than 500 birds. 'We're in an emergency crisis mode,' said Dr. Virginia Huang, president of the center's board. Not only are volunteers retrieving struggling birds in northern Oregon and Long Beach, but officials from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife are also trucking them in from the Olympic Peninsula. Barbara Linnett, a volunteer at the wildlife center, said the majority of seabirds that have poured in are Common Murres, Common Loons, Red-throated Loons and grebes. The center feeds them vitamins and fluids to hydrate them, then puts them in shallow pools of water.

Swimming in clean water -- and preening -- helps the seabirds rebuild their waterproofing. Linnett hopes some of the birds can be released in a few days. In the meantime, marine biologists from Oregon, Washington and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service are watching conditions closely, hoping that this was a freak event. The last time it occurred was in 2007 in Monterey Bay, when hundreds of seabirds were killed. 'That event enabled us to figure out what is happening here,' Parrish said. Michael Bradbury
Viewzone Reporter

10/29/09

Area: USA, State of Washington, Puget Sound area Description: Red Tide Most shellfish areas on North Puget Sound, including all of Whatcom and San Juan counties and as far south as the northern end of Whidbey Island, are off-limits for recreational shellfish harvesting because of dangerous levels of marine biotoxins - 'red tide' - capable of causing paralysis or even death if consumed.

Besides shellfish harvesting areas in Whatcom and San Juan counties, the state Department of Health has closed Deception Pass, Fidalgo Bay, Samish Bay, Sinclair and Cypress Islands in Skagit County to the harvesting of clams, oysters, mussels, scallops, geoduck and other mollusks, according to a health department bulletin released on Thursday. The northern part of Whidbey Island, from Keystone Harbor on the west to Strawberry Point on the east, including Deception Pass, are on the closure list.

The red tide biotoxins that cause paralytic shellfish poisoning have been detected at levels as much as 100 times higher than the established closure level in shellfish samples collected from north Puget Sound, said Frank Cox, of the state Department of Health's shellfish program. Biotoxins have also been detected in Discovery Bay in Clallam and Jefferson counties, prompting a shellfish harvest closure, there, too. The health department said toxin levels in Discovery Bay weren't as high as those found in north Puget Sound, but should also be taken seriously. Warning signs have been posted at popular shellfish beaches, warning people not to harvest from the closed areas.

Shellfish recently harvested from closed areas should be discarded and not eaten, the health department said. Crab is not included in the closure, but 'crab butter, the white-yellow fat inside the back of the shell of a large crab, which some consider a delicacy and is often added to dressings and sauces served with crab, should be discarded, the health department said. Only the crab meat is safe to eat.

The health department said commercially harvested shellfish currently on the market have been thoroughly tested and are safe to eat. Marine biotoxins, produced by naturally occurring algae that tend to be more common during the warmer months of the year, are not destroyed by cooking or freezing, and can be life threatening. Symptoms can appear within minutes or hours of eating contaminated shellfish. They usually begin with tingling lips and tongue, moving to the hands and feet, followed by difficulty breathing. Anyone with symptoms should seek medical help immediately.

Michael Bradbury
Viewzone Reporter

10/29/09

Event: Enviroment Pollution
Location: Madagascar Province of Toliara Faux Cap coastal areas
Event date: 09/06/09

Situation

A ship carrying toxic waste sunk off the coast of Madagascar, and thousands of tons of refuse were emptied into the rich marine ecosystem. The wreck has had devastating effects on the sea life and the health of people who live inland--causing whales to mysteriously beach in greater numbers, and afflicting the locals with grave respiratory and skin diseases.

The Gulser Ana, a Turkish shipping vessel, ran aground in the southernmost point of Madagascar. It then slowly leaked its load--39,000 tons of raw phosphates, 568 tons of fuel, and 66 tons of diesel--into the Indian Ocean.

It just so happened that the spot where the accident occurred was a whale reproduction and migratory corridor zone, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature. To make maters worse, the accident happened in the smack dab middle of mating season, and the spill was making people ill as well.

Calling the spill an 'ecological disaster', WWF headed down to compile a report on the consequences of the spill--and the results aren't pretty. The report also found that there are oil clumps covering 30 kilometers of beach, and that 20,000 people have been affected by the spill, whether by illness or a loss of livelihood.

Fishing has been banned, due to the toxicity of the waters, and many of the local inhabitants depended on fishing for income. Still worse, those working on cleaning up the spill are woefully unprepared--they're doing so without wearing any sort of gear to protect them from the toxic waste, and are using thin plastic bags that burst easily.

Michael Bradbury
Viezone Reporter

10/30/09

Event: Biological Hazard

Location: USA State of North Carolina Neuse River, Between Black Beacon Point and Carolina Pines

Situation

More fish are still going belly up in the Neuse River. Riverkeeper Larry Baldwin tells Nine On Your Side he found more dead fish up and down the Neuse River yesterday. He says the numbers were lower than in recent weeks, but the size of the dead Menhaden he's finding is getting larger. Baldwin says volunteers and staff will survey the waters again today to see if any more surface. He estimates more than 50 million fish have died.

Area: Puerto Rico, Capital City area, Bah'a de San Juan

Damage level: Heavy (Level 3)

Description

Thousands of dead fish are washing up on the shores of a lagoon in Puerto Rico's capital. Javier Laureano of the San Juan Bay Estuary Program says the deaths are not related to an explosion at a nearby fuel depot that burned for two days before the fire was put out this weekend.

Laureano said Monday that the tilapia, sardines and other fish suffocated because of poor water circulation in San Jose Lagoon. He says the lagoon had another big fish kill about 18 months ago. The fish have been washing ashore near one of San Juan's most heavily populated areas since Friday. The U.S. Caribbean territory's Department of Natural and Environmental Resources is organizing a cleanup this week.

Michael Bradbury reporting for Viewzone.

11/01/09

Event: Epidemic Hazard
Location: Ukraine MultiStates Ternopil, Lviv, Zakarpattya, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblasts

Number of Deads: 53 person(s)
Number of Infected: 184919 person(s)

Situation

Ukraine's president has asked the international community for help dealing with a flu epidemic that the country's Health Ministry said on Sunday has killed 53 people. 'The current threat to the national security of Ukraine, which we cannot offset by just our own efforts, requires me to turn to our closest friends and strategic partners for emergency assistance,' Viktor Yushchenko said in a letter posted on the presidential administration web site.

Letters were sent on Sunday to the leaders of Belarus, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Russia, Romania, Slovakia and the United States, as well as to the European Commission president and secretary general of NATO. 'In the letters, Viktor Yushchenko also contains a list of the medicines and medical equipment that are necessary first of all for our nation to effectively counter the spread of epidemic influenza,' a statement on the site said. Ukraine has already received offers of assistance from Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Russia and Poland, including for the delivery of vaccines and medical masks. The Health Ministry said the 53 people had died from influenza or acute respiratory infections, but it was not clear how many of the deaths were related to the H1N1 virus. There was an outbreak of swine flu in western Ukraine in the middle of the week, but recent data only confirmed 13 cases and one death.

The ministry said that 184,919 people were sick with flu or colds, with 7,383 requiring hospitalization, 123 in serious condition. The government has announced quarantine in nine areas in western Ukraine, and banned public events across the country and closed schools. A team of experts from the World Health Organization is due in the country on Monday. 'In response to the request from the Minister of Health of the Ukraine, WHO is deploying a multi-disciplinary team of experts to assist national authorities in mitigating the impact of the pandemic,' the WHO said on Sunday in a statement on its web site.

Michael Bradbury reporting for Viewzone

11/02/09

Area: China, Yunnan province, Xiangyun counties

Number of Injured person(s): 28
Damage level: Heavy (Level 3)
Affected person(s): 280000

Description

A magnitude 5.0 earthquake rumbled through China's Yunnan province Monday, injuring 28 people and collapsing 1,000 homes, officials said. The pre-dawn quake struck Binchuan and Xiangyun counties in Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture. The earthquake affected more than 280,000 people, damaged more than 30,000 homes and killed more than 430 farm animals, Yunnan Provincial Civil Affairs Department said in a statement.

Michael Bradbury reporting for Viewzone

11/03/09

Biological Hazard - Australia

Area: Australia, State of Queensland, North Stradbroke Island area

Description--GREAT WHITE SHARK

A giant shark that could be up to 20 feet long has sent shockwaves across Australian beaches after a great white was nearly bitten in half. A stunning picture shows a 10 feet predator thrashing about with two massive chunks missing on either side of its body, off the Queensland coast.

Experts said its rival may be 20 feet long, judging by the size of the huge bites. The great white was savaged after it got snared on a drum line — a baited hook attached to a buoy — near North Stradbroke Island, east of Brisbane. The wounded creature was still alive when a crew hauled it onto a boat, close to Deadman's Beach. 'It certainly opened up my eyes. I mean the shark that was caught is a substantial shark in itself,' Queensland Fisheries' Jeff Krause told Australia's Daily Telegraph.

Swimmers have been warned to stay out of the water near the island. The attack also worried many at a nearby tourist Mecca: Surfers Paradise, south of Brisbane. Surfer Ashton Smith, 19, of the Gold Coast, told the Courier Mail: 'I've heard about the big one lurking. Every surfer is always cautious over here.' Drum lines and shark nets are used to defend swimmers from sea predators, but they have been criticised for occasionally trapping migrating whales.

Fisheries minister Tim Mulherin told the Mail that the capture of the bitten shark — and the indication of a larger one feeding in the area — bolstered the decision to keep defenses in place. He added there were no special plans to hunt the attacking shark but contractors had reset the drum lines.

Michael Bradbury reporting for Viewzone

11/04/09

!!! ALERT !!!

Number of Infected person(s): 8

Description: Flea Bites Eight people in Long Beach were recovering Saturday after being hospitalized with a rare form of typhus that's spread by fleas. Of the eight people who contracted the disease, five were male. Patients' ages ranged from less than 1 year old to 59 years old, said John Holquin, epidemiologist with the city's Department of Health.

The last four cases were diagnosed in September, and the remaining four were diagnosed in July and August. Last year, two cases of flea-bourne typhus were reported, but health department officials could not explain this year's increase. 'This is a rare disease,' said city Health Officer Dr. Helene Calvet, describing murine typhus. 'The vast majority of the population is not going to come in contact with this disease or come down with it.' The disease is treatable with antibiotics and most people recover.

Murine typhus is spread by fleas that have hosted on infected cats, opossums, raccoons, rats and other rodents. Common symptoms include high fever, severe headaches, body aches and and rash. It can result in severe illness and hospitalization, but rarely causes death. it is not spread person-to-person.

While biting people, the fleas expel their feces, which contain the bacteria that causes the disease. The fleas' excrement enters the body through the bite wound or from a person scratching the bite area. In 2007, nine cases were reported. Most flea-borne typhus cases occur in Southern California, south Texas and Hawaii, according to the health department Web site. Health officials say keeping pets' flea problems is the best strategy for preventing the spread of the disease. Pets may be exposed to fleas that may have been carried by possums or rodents.

Keep your pets clean.....

Michael Bradbury reporting for Viewzone

11/04/09

Area: Switzerland, Alps, Alp\'s glaciers

!!! WARNING !!!

Damage level: Heavy

Description: Glacier melt-off releasing 1000's of year old organic bio-toxins.

Swiss researchers have found that Alpine glaciers melting under the impact of climate change are releasing highly toxic pollutants that had been absorbed by the ice for decades. They warned in a study abstract published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology that it could have a 'dire environmental impact' on 'pristine mountain areas' as global warming accelerates.

Much of the pollution was dumped on Europe's biggest mountain range by atmospheric currents from further afield, according to the researchers at three Swiss scientific institutes. Their study of layers of sediment from an Alpine lake formed by a hydroelectric dam built in central Switzerland in 1953 revealed 'sharp' build-ups of now banned chemical compounds from industry and farming, including dioxins and pesticides like DDT. 'We can confirm with the help of these layers that, in the 1960s and 1970s, POPs (Persistant Organic Pollutants) were produced in great quantities and were also deposited in this Alpine lake,' said one of the authors, Christian Bogdal, of the Swiss Federal Laboratory for Materials Testing and Research.

But while the concentration of POPs fell after the 1970s as many of those compounds were banned, the scientists found an unusual resurgence in more recent sediment from the past 10 to 15 years.

They concluded that the lake, the Oberaarsee, was largely fed by water from a nearby melting glacier that was releasing pollutants at a level comparable to when the compounds were still in use. 'At this stage our study indicates that accelerated glacier melting due to global warming may also account for enhanced release of legacy organic pollutants at historically high levels,' according to the full study. One of the scientists, Peter Schmid, told AFP on Wednesday that their findings were replicated at two other glacial lakes in the Swiss Alps. But another lake that was not fed by glaciers did not show any increase in the compounds.

The authors said that that it was the first time that glaciers were demonstrated to be a secondary source of such pollution. Production and use of POPs was banned or restricted under an international treaty in 2001, although several major industrialised nations such as the United States had started to outlaw them in preceding decades. They are regarded as very durable and carcinogenic, and in some instances can be absorbed through the skin. Their release in an Alpine setting could lead to 'short but intense pulses' of pollution in spring and summer, the scientists concluded. That could affect drinking water in Alpine huts, the food chain through fish from nearby lakes, irrigation facilities and even artificial snow on ski slopes.

The Alps are commonly known as the water tower of Europe, as the source of major rivers such as the Rhine and Rhone. Schmid cautioned that more research was needed to determine the pathways of the POPs in the Alps and how much they retained their toxicity.

Michael Bradbury reporting for Viewzone

11/05/09

Area: USA, State of Texas, About a mile north of Bushland

Number of Injured person(s): 3

Description: Natural Gas Line Explosion

A natural gas pipeline explosion shook homes, melted window blinds and shot flames hundreds of feet into the air early Thursday near Amarillo, authorities said. Three people were injured in the blast, which was reported around 1 a.m. about a mile north of Bushland.

The fire was contained by 5:30 a.m., said Potter County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Roger Short. Those injured suffered burns and were taken to Northwest Texas Hospital in Amarillo, Short said. He didn't provide details. The cause of the explosion hasn't been determined. 'My home is about 20 miles something away and I could see the flames from my home, and that's substantial. The flames were huge,' Short told The Associated Press, 'You could her the roar of the flames 20 miles away!'

Gas was shut off to the line and most evacuated residents were being allowed to go home by 5:30 a.m., Short said. One house was destroyed and several others were damaged, he said. 'The heat onto the homes, it did a lot of damage. You could see blinds inside the homes that were melted, it was hot, it was very hot,' Short said.

Bushland Middle School principal Mark Reasor said about 60 people who were evacuated took shelter at the school, but were returning home before dawn. He said classes would start one hour late. Crews from El Paso Natural Gas and Atmos Energy were at the scene. Bushland is a town of about 1,500, located 15 miles west of Amarillo.

Michael Bradbury reporting for Viewzone