For the third year in a row, Bakersfield, California ranks as the nation’s second smoggiest city in America. Coming in just behind Los Angeles, Bakersfield is also the second most ozone-polluted cities.

But, that’s not all. Bakersfield has now moved into first place as the city with the most fine particulate pollution. According to an annual American Lung Association (ALA) report, which ranks America’s cities with the unhealthiest air, Bakersfield was third behind Pittsburgh and Los Angeles last year.

The ALA reports that, while America’s air has gotten somewhat better over the last 10 years, many cities still suffer from severe air pollution problems. In fact, despite progress in cutting air pollutants and a booming “green” movement, almost every major metropolitan area is fraught with considerable air pollution.

The ALA rates cities on three primary criteria: ozone, short-term particle spikes and long-term particle averages. Each group of ratings is based on statistics collected from the years 2005 through 2007 at monitoring stations maintained by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Los Angeles, Fresno and Bakersfield, all in California, had the dubious distinction of being on the top 10 list of all three categories.

Air pollution has become a major threat to human health. This is especially evident when you consider that roughly 60 percent of Americans are currently breathing air dirty enough to send people to emergency rooms across the country, to shape how children’s lungs develop and to kill through the development of serious respiratory illnesses.

The ALA’s annual report states that of the 25 cities with the worst ozone pollution problems, 16 recorded higher ozone levels when compared with last year. A dozen of the 25 cities with the worst average particle problems, which include microscopic soot, diesel exhaust, various chemicals, metals and aerosols, experienced a spike in these pollutants.

Another four cities showed no change and, thankfully, nine cities actually showed some improvement. And, of the 25 worst, 13 cities recorded more days of severe spikes in particle pollution than they had last year.

But, what contributes to the pollution problems in these 25 cities with the worst air pollution? Let’s look at Bakersfield.

It has been over a decade since the first reports of the growing air pollution that is still threatening the United State’s most diverse and productive farm counties in California’s Central Valley. The reasons for the advances in air pollution are manifold and include mist from fertilizers and pesticides and dust from tractors that help grow half of our nation’s produce.



Bakersfield photo: A Polluted Sunset by andy castro, via Creative Commons

However, other factors also contribute to the rising air pollution. The meteorological conditions and topography of the region only make matters worse, and they also make the problem very difficult to solve.

Bakersfield is boxed in on three sides by mountains. Inversion layers, which act as a lid on the air and hold the pollution close to the ground, are present in both winter and summer. There is little or no wind to take the pollution elsewhere, so it just sits over the city.

Bakersfield’s Kern County also ranks as the worst county in average annual particulate pollution. However, some efforts to reduce the toxic air pollution have been made.

According to the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, the county has been able to reduce stationary sources of pollution by 80 percent since 1980. This has been accomplished through various measures, including regulations on oil processing and, in 2003, restrictions on wood-fueled fires. Additional farming regulations, which reduce the number of harvesting machines as well as the number of trips made through the fields, have also helped.

Despite these accomplishments, county officials now say they need state and federal assistance in controlling the heavy-duty trucks that pass through on Interstate 5 and Highway 99. These semi-trucks, cut east to west hauling produce from farms to packaging facilities, fall outside the county’s regulatory authority.

To date, air pollution controls have cost Kern County businesses approximately $40 billion. This $40 billion is split between to important plans – one aimed at reducing particulate matter by 2015 and another plan aimed at reducing ozone by 2023.

However, the financial cost of noncompliance with federal pollution standards may be much more. Being out of compliance with federal Environment Protection Agency standards costs Kern County $2 billion in forfeited federal highway funding and puts a dent in its ability to attract more businesses to the area.

There are other intangible costs that are just as important as the strictly financial costs. The ALA emphasizes the poor and deteriorating lung capacities of the young people who are growing up in such dirty, polluted environments. A University of California Fullerton Study estimated the economic cost of not meeting EPA air standards for the southern California region, which includes all of Los Angeles, at $6 billion per year in health-related costs as well as premature deaths.

So, while it does require huge amounts of money to clean up the air, massive amounts of money are already being paid out for the declining health of young people, increased medication usage, and shortened lives. The ALA is working with local governments and promoting partnerships between the county, state and federal authorities, but much more needs to be done.

This year, 12 more California counties received failing grades than did last year in terms of air quality. This reflects, in part, the tighter national ozone standards adopted in 2008. The ALA’s State of the Air 2009 Report also found that six out of every 10 Americans live in areas where pollution levels actually endanger their lives.

This means that despite an ever-growing “green” movement that is sweeping across the United States, the ALA’s report indicates that the air in many American cities became even dirtier since last year’s report.

THE REAL COST

There is now data and research that indicates that ozone is more destructive than originally believed. Because of this, in March 2008, the EPA lowered the standard needed for ozone levels to trigger an unhealthy rating.

Ozone, the gas that forms a major component of smog, is created by tailpipe emissions that are cooked by the sun, heat up and form triple molecules of oxygen. These molecules are much less stable than conventional oxygen and are much more damaging to our respiratory systems.

Respiratory problems are a very natural and scientifically established result of air pollution. Polluting particles in the air can especially cause health problems in children, the elderly and the infirm. Additionally, air pollution can aggravate asthma symptoms and worsen allergies.

However, respiratory problems are not the only health issues that can be brought on or aggravated by breathing polluted air. If the pollution is heavy enough and if a person is chronically exposed to the polluted air, serious health problems, including cancer and heart disease, can result from the toxins constantly breathed in through the air.

Look at Los Angeles, which has a lethal combination of heavy traffic, sunshine and heat. Last year, the city had 195 days where the ozone levels were high enough to be unhealthy for sensitive members of the population. On another 55 days, the ozone level was unhealthy for everyone, and on 11 days, the ozone in the air was rated “very unhealthy.”

Particle emission pollution is generated primarily by diesel engines, coal-fired power plants and the burning of wood and other combustible fuels. For California’s coastal cities, much of their pollutants come from ships coming into port. In fact, sea-fairing vessels contribute significantly to both particle and ozone emission air pollution.

Whatever the source, some states are taking very aggressive action in an attempt to combat the problem of air pollution. New York and Washington have been successful in reducing air pollution drastically over the past 10 years, and California is introducing cleaner diesel fuel for everything from semi-trucks to large ships.

There has been some criticism of the ALA’s air quality report because the findings are based on where the EPA monitoring stations are located. In Pittsburgh, for example, one monitoring station sits close to the largest coke plant in the United States. Coke is an important ingredient in the steel manufacturing process and is made by baking coal, which produces large amounts of ash and other toxic particles.

It is not a surprise then that Pittsburgh had the highest recorded number of particle pollution spikes, which are jumps in the number of particles in the air that can last for many hours or even days.

However, it is important to note that the findings are supposed to capture the worst cases of air pollution for each metropolitan area because that is what will have the most negative impact on a population’s health. So, it is actually appropriate to locate monitoring stations where the air pollution problems are most acute and potentially damaging.

While air pollution is a chronic problem across the United States, there are still some places where a taking a fresh breath is just that…a fresh breath.

The healthiest cities list mostly consists of cities in the vast-open spaces of the nation’s heartland. These areas are typically far from heavy industry and massive traffic jams. Cheyenne, Wyoming has the lowest long-term particle average, followed closely by Santa Fe, Honolulu and Great Falls, Montana.

The lowest, in fact almost non-existent, ozone levels were discovered in Billings, Montana, Carson City, Nevada and Fargo, North Dakota. Interestingly, only two eastern cities were on any of the three least-polluted lists. Portland, Maine had among the lowest spikes in particle emissions, and Port St. Lucie, Florida had among the lowest ozone levels.

However, the fact remains, many of us are still not breathing clean air. According to the ALA, six out of every 10 Americans, or 186 million people, currently live in communities where the air they breathe endangers their lives. As a nation, we obviously still have a long way to go.

On January 30, 2000, a toxic chemical spill destroyed wildlife, devastated fish stocks and threatened the water supplies of nearly 2.5 million people in central Eastern Europe.

Romania’s Somes River, Hungary’s Tisza River and Yugoslavia’s Danube River, which is Europe’s largest waterway, were each catastrophically polluted. The toxic spill eventually reached the Black Sea and affected Romania, Hungary and, to a lesser extent, Serbia and Montenegro.

The spill began when the dam containing toxic waste material from the Baia Mare Aurul gold mine in North Western Romania burst and released roughly 3.5 million cubic feet (100,000 cubic metres) of waste water, heavily contaminated with cyanide, into the Lapus and Somes tributaries of the river Tisza, which is a tributary of the great Danube River.

Cyanide is extremely toxic and lethal to humans and animals, even in very small doses. It works by making the body unable to use life-sustaining oxygen. The cyanide-laced water continued to flow and soon reached the Danube, which flows through Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania.

At this point, the cyanide reached a deadly density of 800 times the accepted maximum safe level. The situation was going from bad to worse because Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania all get drinking water from the Danube. (As a point of reference, the American standard as regulated by the Environmenal Protection Agency allows 0.2 parts cyanide per 1 million parts water (0.2 ppm) in U.S. drinking water.)

Loyola de Palacio, the European Union Commissioner for Transport and Energy, called the cyanide spill “a catastrophe of European dimensions.”

Officials from Hungary called the spill Europe’s worst ecological disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant calamity in the Ukraine. Shortly after this disaster, Hungary’s Tisza River was officially declared a dead river.

In fact, Hungarian towns along the Tisza were forced to ban the use of water, fishing and the selling of fish. While this move seriously threatened the livelihoods of many fishermen, authorities appeared to have no other choice. For the townspeople who lived along the Tisza, large amounts of emergency water had to be brought in because of the deadly contamination.

At the time of the spill, Serbia’s Environment Minister Blazic was quoted as saying, “The Tisza has been killed. Not even bacteria have survived.” Although the chemical was gradually being diluted by the river water and was beginning to lose some of its lethal effect, over the next weekend hundreds of dead and dying fish were reported collecting at the junction of the Danube and Tisza. This is an area just 50 kilometres upstream from the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade.

The allowable maximum of cyanide per liter of water is 0.1 milligram. By this time, at the Hungarian town of Szeged, which borders Yugoslavia, the cyanide level was 1.1 milligrams per liter. Roughly 300 tons of dead and dying fish were removed from the river and disposed of.

However, Hungary estimates that the overall fish kill throughout Hungary was 1,240 tons. Other wildlife, including Mute Swans, Black Cormorant, horses, foxes and various other carnivores as well as other domesticated animals were also affected by this toxic spill.

Following the Baia Mare cyanide spill, various environmental assessments were carried out by several international organizations to determine the affect this spill had on the Tisza River and its tributaries.

According to these reports, acute effects were noted wherever the cyanide plume passed along the Tisza river system. Along with the dead fish, plankton and macrozoobenthos were also discovered.

The spill also drastically increased the existing heavy metal contamination of soil sediment, especially including copper, lead and zinc.

Despite the increased heavy metal pollution, it does appear that the Tisza River Basin’s ecosystem is trying to regenerate itself, and much of the wildlife is also recovering along the Tisza and its tributaries.

According to a report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), more dedicated action is necessary in addressing the environmental “insecurities” and threats to the region, which includes Romania, Ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia and Montenegro.

The report also points specifically at the mining industry. In the wake of the Baia Mare cyanide spill, the mines, both active and inactive, are still considered sources of potential accidental pollution. They are singled out by the new UNEP report for special and close monitoring and attention.

Despite a recovering ecosystem, some of the pollution and heavy metal contamination along the Tisza River still remain and more needs to be done to clean up the water as much as possible.

International experts indicated that the main cause of the Baia Mare cyanide spill is a combination of design defects in the facilities, unexpected operating conditions and bad weather. Whatever the cause, this toxic spill certainly exacerbated the serious pollution problems this region has been facing for years.

Snakehead fish are large, freshwater predators from the Channidae family that are native to Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia and various locations throughout Asia. These fish are plentiful in their native waters as there are some 28 varieties of snakehead fish.

The snakehead fish is very unique and different from the average fish. While they are similar, in body-type, to muscular eels, some snakehead varieties can grow to at least four feet in length. This fish got its name because of its stereotypically flat, snake-like head and toothed mouth.

What really make the snakehead so unique is its voracious appetite and its ability to breathe air. This fish is so adaptable, in fact, that it can travel short distances across land and live for short stents of time out of the water.

While there have been reports of snakeheads attacking and killing humans, they usually settle for fish, amphibians and small mammals. However, at least one species of snakehead, the Channa micropeltes, has been known to attack people when they approached the snakehead’s nest or their young.

Photo by Brian Gratwiche via Creative Commons

Over the years, these superb predators have found their way into the lakes and rivers of the United States, and this is where the problem of introducing a very adaptable, fierce predator into a new environment begins. The northern snakehead, or Channa argus, have been brought into the United States for two main reasons. There were going to be used as freshwater aquarium fish and as a specialty food.

It is reported that the northern snakeheads found in American waters are either illegally stocked in an effort to establish a local food source or aquarium owners eventually released the fish after they no longer wanted to or could care for them properly. Once introduced into their new homes, these fish tend to flourish.

Photo by marcuspajp via Creative Commons

In fact, there are several species of Channidae that can tolerate a wide range of water temperatures. So, neither the warm waters of the south nor the cold waters of the north would prevent many snakeheads from becoming an established, yet undesirable, new resident.

Once established, these fish can expand their range by swimming to adjoining waterways or can even move short distances over land to nearby sources of water. The adaptability of these fish is not the only thing that makes them such a threat. The northern snakehead also breeds extremely easily.

Combine the northern snakehead’s adaptability, carnivorous appetitive, the ability to move over land and a lack of natural enemies, and you end up with a real and present threat to American waterways and the indigenous species of aquatic life that resides in these waters.

While this might not seem like a very significant environmental threat, the impact of releasing a pet snakehead or a food fish into local waters where that fish is not native is real.

Photo by Ton MJ via Creative Commons

With no natural enemies in U.S. waters, the snakehead’s prolific breeding habits and hardy constitutions create a real potential for snakehead fish to multiply and destroy entire populations of fish and amphibians in the waters in which they are released. Many of these fish and amphibians are already on the endangered species list, and the snakeheads can only make things worse.

Consider this: At all stages of life, the northern snakehead competes with native fish and other aquatic wildlife for food. Native fish and wildlife populations, which already rely upon smaller fish, crustaceans, frogs, snakes, lizards and young waterfowl, will have to compete with these top-predators, and this could put them in great danger.

If snakeheads become established in a specific body of water, they can disrupt the ecosystem’s predator-prey balance. This can be catastrophic for native species.

Additionally, when a new species is introduced to an already established body of water, there is always the potential of the species bringing new diseases and parasites along with it. And, it does not appear that only large populations of snakeheads create environmental problems for American waterways. Even just one snakehead poses a threat because of its voracious feeding behavior.

In 2002, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service added snakeheads to the list of “injurious fish.” This means that snakeheads are prohibited from being imported into the United States.

Many states now even prohibit the possession of live snakeheads. However, these bans have not completely stopped illegal snakehead-activities, which have been recorded in most of the states where bans are in place. It is also reported that snakeheads can still be obtained over the internet.

Photo by Yai&JR via Creative Commons

If snakeheads are found in the wild, the only means of eradicating the population would involve the complete eradication of the fishery with a piscicide, a chemical substance which is poisonous to fish. While this can be effective in small, isolated bodies of water, it does not generally work in large lakes or river systems.

This is what officials in Crofton, Maryland decided to do when northern snakeheads were discovered by anglers in 2002. This first Maryland snakehead was a long, skinny fish about 18 inches from end to end.

Photo by wharman via Creative Commons

Because the fisherman didn’t recognize the strange fish, he took a picture of it and put it back in the pond. Later, he gave the photo to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Sure enough, the fish was identified as a snakehead.

It wasn’t until another angler caught a snakehead in the same pond and netted some babies that officials really became concerned. Their concern was based on the fact that a heavy rain could possibly wash some snakeheads from the pond and into a nearby river, which runs through a National Wildlife Refuge and on to the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in North America. Because of this, authorities acted quickly.

To eliminate the snakehead menace, Maryland wildlife officials dumped the piscicide rotenone into Crofton Pond. This succeeded in killing all of its fish. Six adult snakeheads and greater than 1,000 juveniles went belly-up, along with all of the pond’s native fish.. They thought the snakehead problem was solved.

Two years later, northern snakeheads reared their heads again, and this time they showed up in the Potomac River. Experts worried that snakeheads in the Potomac, by eating other fish or out-competing them for food, could drive down numbers of more desirable species, such as largemouth bass and shad.

Poison just wasn’t an option this time. You can dump poison in a little, enclosed pond, but you can’t very easily contaminate the entire Potomac in order to kill the snakeheads. It’s a wide, shallow river that originates in West Virginia and runs 380 miles before emptying into the Chesapeake Bay.

The Bay fuels the region’s economy through recreation and fishing. Snakeheads couldn’t survive in the mildly salty water of the Bay, but they could scarf down shad, fish that spawn in the Potomac and other freshwater tributaries. The complete eradication of the snakehead population would be nearly impossible.

To date, northern snakeheads have been found in U.S. waters in several states. One example was a snakehead that was hooked in North Carolina’s Paw Creek. This fish weighed 12.5 pounds and measured about 31 inches.

Because it is illegal to return a live snakehead fish to an American body of water, the fish was turned over to the Wildlife Resources Commission. However, this was not the first, and probably not the last, time a northern snakehead fish was caught in North Carolina.
Snakeheads have been caught in this area in 2002 and 2007. And, Paw Creek is an environmentally-dangerous place to have these fish because it straddles two lakes giving the injurious fish a lot of room to expand and invade.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Fisheries staff also responded to a report by a local angler of an invasive species in Catlin Creek near Ridgebury Lake in the town of Waywayanda.

The DEC recognized the danger of an infestation of northern snakehead fish. Left unchecked this predatory, invasive fish can rapidly expand its population and territory with real and negative economic impacts to the Hudson River watershed fisheries. Not to mention the fact that it can cause potentially irreversible harm to the rare and endangered species in the area.

Because of this threat, the DEC took immediate action in an attempt at containing the snakehead spread by erecting temporary fish barriers in Catlin Creek. DEC determined that swift action to eradicate this species is essential in protecting the native fish and amphibian populations and in preventing any further expansion of Northern Snakeheads beyond the headwaters of Catlin Creek.

It doesn’t appear that there is a quick fix to the Northern Snakehead problem. The key to managing snakeheads is to prevent them from becoming an established species in the first place. This may be difficult since they are already in U.S. waters and there numbers seem to be on the rise.

Photo credit: Hot Raw Sewage by Trey Ratcliff

Of course, steroids have long been in the spotlight as numerous professional athletes admit to using steroids as a shortcut to enhancing their performance and helping them achieve victory over their fellow athletes. The term “steroid,” however, actually encompasses a relatively large class of biological molecules.

These molecules include virtually anything the body makes from the parent molecule, cholesterol. Most happen to be hormones or intermediate chemicals in hormone synthesis and metabolism, or synthetic drugs that imitate hormones or interfere with natural hormone action.

Steroids include such chemicals as the anti-inflammatory hormone cortisol (hydrocortisone), which is typically added to medicated skin creams. Synthetic varieties of cortisol are also the active ingredients in organ transplant anti-rejection drugs and asthma inhalers.

Additionally, the primary sex hormones are also considered steroids. Estradiol, the main natural form of active estrogen, and progesterone dominate in women. For men, testosterone, the main natural form of active androgen, dominates. In fact, it is testosterone and other natural and synthetic varieties of androgens that are the main steroids used for muscle enhancement by athletes.

While it has long been known that these male forms of anabolic steroid drugs cause liver cancer, the news has not been spread about the environmental consequences of oral contraceptives (“the Pill”), levonorgestrel (“the morning-after pill”), and mifepristone, or RU-486, (“the abortion pill”). That fact is that all of these synthetic chemicals are also all steroids. These chemicals are actually the same sort of synthetic anabolic steroids that are illegal for professional athletes to take. The difference is that they are anabolic for female tissues, like breast tissue, rather than muscle.

In wasn’t until 2006 that the World Health Organization acknowledged that the estrogen-plus-progestin drugs, which include birth control pills and combination hormone replacement drugs, like Prem-Pro, do have the potential to cause cancers in the breast, cervix and liver.

And, here lies the connection between these synthetic drugs and the part they play as environmental pollutants. It is not common knowledge, but it is fact, that in order for contraceptive steroids to function effectively as pills, they must be non-biodegradable, at least by the human liver. The liver is the first stop for any substance absorbed through the digestive tract before it enters the body’s blood circulation.

In fact, it is one of the liver’s jobs to metabolize, or break down, all substances in order to detoxify them before they can adversely affect the rest of the body. Because of this, these drugs must interfere with the liver’s normal function. While this is true of many oral medications, how many prescription drugs are taken daily for decades by hundreds of millions of women worldwide?

Because of this massive use of synthetic contraceptives, there is a substantial percentage of the worldwide human population who excretes significant quantities of synthetic, carcinogenic and largely non-biodegradable female sex steroid drugs into the environment every day.

photo credit: elbisreverri

This situation is only complicated by the fact that out of all the steroid hormones that act within our bodies, the estrogens are by far the most potent. And, it is important to note that even the monthly highest level of estradiol in a non-pregnant woman’s bloodstream is measured in parts per trillion. Additionally, the most common form of estrogenic steroid drug found in many oral contraceptives, 17-alpha ethinyl estradiol (EE2), is even more potent than estradiol.

For over a decade now, EE2 has actually been showing up in waste water, groundwater and streams that are downstream from major metropolitan areas. There is mounting, creditable research and evidence that documents this contamination. This contamination is beginning to have significant affects on the reproductive function and is feminizing fish and other wildlife.

With this mounting contamination comes a worldwide effort to find ways to remove EE2 and other estrogenic contaminants from our water supplies. Put simply, the chemical inactivation of EE2 is quite simple. In effect, the same types of techniques used to purify our drinking water, such as ozone and ultraviolet light treatment, will work, however most see treating raw sewage by these methods as extremely impractical.

So, while there has been significant research in the area of synthetic contraceptive pollution, much of the research findings are not yet widely know. Even though the World Health Organization has acknowledged the carcinogenicity of synthetic contraceptive steroids, is still hardly mainstream knowledge.

The fact remains, however, that our health and the health of our environment, is being affected by the excreted amounts of these steroids. For years now, reports have also been growing from around the world that the massive amounts of synthetic birth control hormones being pumped into the water systems through sewage outflow is changing the sex of many types of fish.

Going back as far as 2002, the UK Environment Agency issued warnings that fish stocks in several British rivers were showing signs of gender ambiguity as a direct result of high levels of estrogen in the water. A survey of 1,500 fish at 50 river sites found more than a third of males also displayed female characteristics.

photo credit: Joseph Wu

Roughly two years ago, scientists at University of Colorado found that out of 123 fish caught in Boulder Creek, which is downstream from the Boulder sewage treatment plant, 101 were female, 12 were male and 10 had both male and female characteristics.

And, more recently, University of Pittsburgh research scientists investigated fish populations in the Allegheny River near storm sewer outflow pipes and discovered the same types of deformations. This is noteworthy as that region is dependent upon the Allegheny system for clean and safe drinking water.

Dr. Conrad Daniel Volz from the University of Pittsburgh Center for Environmental Oncology even warned that this significant rise in steroid hormones in drinking water throughout the Pittsburgh area is a real threat to human health. Numerous studies have now shown a link between contraceptive estrogen and hormone problems and cancers, including testicular and breast cancers.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that other study results have also shown ambiguous gender in as much as 85 percent of the catfish caught on the Allegheny, Ohio and Monongahela rivers. In fact, chemicals extracted from 25 randomly sampled fish caused the growth of estrogen-sensitive breast cancer cells cultured in a laboratory, out of which 11 produced very aggressive cancers.

Of course, scientists and environmental groups alike are very careful to avoid making recommendations for restricting artificial contraceptives.

As we all know, most of us would not take kindly to the suggestion of restricting or banning hormonal contraceptives. In today’s modern world, it has become not just an issue of economic necessity, but also an issue of personal choice and freedom.

However, while estrogenic chemicals are affecting and altering the reproduction and gender of aquatic life, it should be natural to wonder what lasting and long-term affects these popular drugs are having on the future reproductive ability of humans.

It seems a cocktail of dangerous chemicals are leaking into our fresh water supply, and we all need to consider tougher safety margins and practices that will better protect the planet and all who live on it, both the wildlife and humans.

In the 1920s, farmers succeeded in conquering The Great Prairie Plains of the Midwest. The plains were then transformed into the “amber waves of grain” we know today. However, this transformation came with a heavy price.

In fact, the agricultural triumph over The Plains was the tipping point that changed a typical La Nina-type drought cycle into an enormous environmental disaster that we now know as the Dust Bowl.

Depending on where you are in the world, a drought can have different meanings. According to the United States Weather Bureau, a drought is a period of 21 or more days during which rainfall is no more than 30 percent of the average rainfall for a specific geographical area at a designated time of year. 

The Dust Bowl was an area in the United States that experienced an extended and intense period of drought, which lasted from 1931 until 1939. The states that made up the Dust Bowl were Kansas, southeastern Colorado, northeastern and southeastern New Mexico, and the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma. 

Throughout the Dust Bowl, soil from roughly 150,000 square miles of farmland was blown by the wind into huge dust storms. Immense clouds of dust filled the sky as far east as New York City, New York and Baltimore, Maryland.

While the Dust Bowl occurred during a period of drought, researchers know that the Dust Bowl drought, while much hotter and drier than a typical drought, did not fit the profile of the periodic droughts that generally hit farther to the south. Actually, while regular climate oscillations may have triggered the initial drying, the contribution of human land degradation played a big part in this atypical disaster.

In the absence of modern agricultural techniques, large-scale crop failures at the drought’s onset reduced vegetation cover, which only exacerbated the heat. Then, the resulting dust storms brought on by the badly eroded croplands also affected the atmospheric moisture content enough to further intensify drought conditions.

In 1931, dust from the seriously over-plowed and over-grazed prairie lands began to blow. And, it continued to blow for eight long, dry years.

As the storms blew across the plains, it came in a yellowish-brown haze from the South and in rolling walls of black from the North. This just wasn’t any wind, this dust-filled wind made even the simplest acts of life difficult. Taking a walk, eating a meal and breathing were no longer easy and they couldn’t be taken for granted.

Most children wore dust masks to and from school, people started hanging damp sheets over windows in feeble attempts at stopping the dirt and farmers could only watch as their valuable crops were blown away. The agricultural devastation that resulted from the Dust Bowl windstorms helped to lengthen The Great Depression, whose effects were already being felt worldwide. 

During the years of normal rainfall, the grasslands in the Dust Bowl states had been deeply plowed and the land had produced bountiful crops of wheat. However, as the drought of the early 1930s worsened, farmers continued plowing and planting, even thought very little could thrive in the parched soil.

The ground cover that once held the soil in place was now gone. The winds had whipped across the fields pulling billowing clouds of dust and dirt into the skies often reducing visibility to just a few feet. The skies would be darkened for days, and it became common for even the most well-sealed homes to have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some of the hardest hit areas, dust drifted like snow and covered whatever was in its path, including farmsteads, cars and city streets.

In 1932, there were 14 reported dust storms, also referred to as “black blizzards” or “black rollers.” As conditions worsened, in 1933, the number of black blizzards jumped to 38. These devastating dust storms spread from the Dust Bowl area and affected the entire country. The extensive drought that accompanied the dust storms is said to be the worst drought in United States history because it covered over 75 percent of the country and severely affected 27 states.

The Yearbook of Agriculture for 1934 says, Approximately 35 million acres of formerly cultivated land have essentially been destroyed for crop production; 100 million acres now in crops have lost all or most of the topsoil; 125 million acres of land now in crops are rapidly losing topsoil.

Because this ecological and human disaster caused millions of acres of farmland to become useless, hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes. These people became known as “Okies” because so many of them came from Oklahoma. Countless Okies migrated to California and other states in hopes of better living conditions and jobs.

However, what they found were economic conditions little better than those they had left behind in the Dust Bowl. Because they didn’t own land and had no home, many people traveled from farm to farm picking fruit and working in the fields for only starvation wages.

With no rain clouds in sight, the drought continued and so did the Dust Bowl storms. On Sunday, April 14, 1935, the worst black blizzard occurred, causing extensive devastation and turning the day to night.

Shortly after Black Sunday, the United States Congress declared soil erosion “a national menace” and established the Soil Conservation Service in the Department of Agriculture. The SCS developed extensive conservation programs, which helped to retain topsoil and prevent irreparable damage to the land.

Farming techniques, including strip cropping, terracing, contour plowing, crop rotation and cover crops were promoted. Farmers were now paid to practice soil-conserving farming techniques.

The SCS and these new land-friendly farming techniques was a great step in the right direction, but the storm was not over yet. By the end the year, experts estimated that about 850,000,000 tons of topsoil had blown off the Southern Plains during 1935 alone. The fear was that if the drought continued, the total area affected would increase from 4,350,000 acres to 5,350,000 acres by the spring of 1936.

Because the Dust Bowl black blizzards raged on and the drought continued, President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated the Shelterbelt Project in 1937, which called for large-scale planting of trees across The Great Plains, stretching in a 100-mile wide zone from Canada to northern Texas. The goal was to protect and preserve the land from erosion.

Native trees, including green ash and red cedar, were planted along fence rows separating properties, and the farmers were paid by the government to plant and cultivate these trees. Ultimately, the project cost roughly 75 million dollars over 12 years, and had somewhat limited success.

However, as time passed, even thought the drought continued, further land conservation efforts began to make progress. The extensive work re-plowing the land into furrows, planting trees in shelterbelts and other conservation methods had finally resulted in a 65 percent reduction for soil blowing.

In the fall of 1939, after nearly a decade of drought, the rain finally came. This brought an end to the black blizzards of the Dust Bowl and allowed The Plains to recover and once again become golden with wheat.

In today’s ever-changing world, in areas where vegetation loss often leads to increased wind erosion, it appears that history could repeat itself and we could experience Dust Bowl-type droughts again in the future.

Researchers with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center report that, although it is not possible to predict the exact time, history suggests that another great drought could certainly occur in the future.

The first step for anyone wanting to predict the risk of a future catastrophic climate event is to look at past occurrences. Unfortunately, however, good rainfall records only go back about 100 years, and accurate atmospheric records only exist for the last 50 years.

With that said, historical measurements do suggest that droughts have been a fairly regular event in this country. North America experienced a dry spell during the 1950s and another in the late 1980s. NASA’s research suggests that there was almost a drought in the 1970s, but for some reason it did not happen.

On a much longer timetable, sediment records, tree rings and other alternative evidence of climate change suggest that The Great Plains has actually weathered multiple droughts, which lasted significantly longer than the Dust Bowl.

These severe droughts appear to have happened once or twice a century over the last 400 years. Some evidence even points to droughts lasting over a decade during the late 13th and 16th centuries, which were much more devastating than the droughts of the 20th century.

It seems that history indicates that we can expect much worse than the 1930s Dust Bowl in the future, but knowing when and where remains anyone’s guess.

For the people of the densely populated city of Bhopal, India, December 2 and 3 of 1984 mark a very dark anniversary — a time that left thousands dead and thousands more deathly ill and clinging to life. 

It all started in the late 1970s when Union Carbide India Limited constructed a pesticide plant in Bhopal. Their initial goal was to produce pesticides that would help increase production on local farms. However, the sale of pesticide did not pan out and the plant soon began losing money.

Then in 1979, the factory began producing huge amounts of the highly toxic methyl isocyanate, or MIC, because it was a cheaper way to make a pesticide known as carbaryl. In an attempt to further trim the company’s budget, employee training and factory maintenance were radically cut.

This is when many factory employees began complaining about working in potentially dangerous conditions. Many warned of possible deadly disasters, but management appeared to turn a deaf ear to these warnings.

Late in the evening of December 2, 1984, something began going desperately wrong in storage tank E610. E610 just happened to be the tank that contained some 40 tons of MIC. Water leaked into the tank, which ultimately caused the MIC’s temperature to rise dangerously high.

Some sources report that water actually leaked into the tank during a routine cleaning of a pipe, and the safety valves inside the pipe were faulty. The Union Carbide company claims that a saboteur placed water inside the tank. To date, there is still no proof to back up the company’s claim. It has further been posed that some of the workers may have thrown water on the tank once it began overheating, not realizing they were only making matters worse.

Whatever the cause, by 12:15 in the morning on December 3, MIC fumes began leaking from E610. There should have been six safety features, which would have either prevented the leak in the first place or, at the very least, contained it. Each of the six safety features failed that night.

The cause of the incident has been extensively researched. As water began causing the exothermal reaction, which released an amount of gas big enough to open the safety valves, the scrubbers failed. Under safe working conditions, the scrubbers would intercept any escaping gas.

Research also shows how factory personnel neglected numerous safety procedures. There were no valves to prevent water from entering the storage tanks in the first place, and the cooling installation of the tanks and the flaring installation that might have burned the escaping gas were also out of order.

In short, compared to its other locations, safety was very low on the priority list for this Union Carbide factory. As is often the case, imperative safety procedures were neglected because of budget cuts.

An estimated 27 tons of MIC gas escaped from E610 and began spreading across the densely populated city of roughly 900,000 people. In an attempt to warn the citizens of Bhopal, a warning siren was turned on; however, it was quickly turned off again to prevent people from panicking.

So as the gas began and continued to leak from E610, most Bhopal residents slept. Many only awoke when they heard other family members coughing and trying to get their breath, or when they found themselves choking on the mysterious, noxious gas.

It is reported that many people felt severe burning in their throats and eyes as they frantically got out of their beds. Some even choked on their own bile, while others fell to the ground in anguish and pain.

As panic ensued, thousands of people ran from their homes, but they did not know where to go for safety and help. Many families were separated in the mass confusion, and numerous people fell to the ground, became unconscious and were then trampled.

It is important to note that estimates of the death toll vary greatly. Most sources, however, report that at least 3,000 people died from immediate exposure to the gas, with higher estimates going up to 8,000. In 14 years following this terrifying and deadly disaster, about 20,000 more people have died from damage caused by the MIC gas.

Yet another 120,000 people are still living every day with the effects and fallout from being exposed to MIC. These people suffer from various ailments, including blindness, extreme shortness of breath, cancers, birth deformities and early onset of menopause.

To date, chemicals from the pesticide plant and from the leak have infiltrated the water system and soil near the old factory. Because of this, people who live near the factory site are still being poisoned.

Just three days after the disaster, the chairman of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson, was arrested. When he was released on bail, he fled the country. Although his whereabouts were unknown for many years, he was eventually discovered living in the United States with one home in the Hamptons in New York and another in Florida. Anderson continues to be wanted in India for culpable homicide for his role in the Bhopal disaster.

One of the worst parts of this tragedy is actually what has happened in the years following that fateful night in 1984. Although Union Carbide has paid some restitution to the victims, the company claims they are not liable for any damages because they blame a saboteur for the disaster and claim that the factory was in good working order before the gas leak. The victims of the Bhopal gas leak have received very little money. Many of the victims continue to be in poor health and are unable to work.

Union Carbide was accused of deliberate evasion of regular safety procedures. During legal proceedings, where victims demanded compensation, solid evidence was shown that proved Union Carbide used untested technology in the Bhopal factory on a regular basis. In fact, when the gas leak occurred local physicians were not told anything about the gas. This resulted in a serious delay in getting proper treatment for exposure and developing emergency safety measures.

After long legal proceedings, in February 1989, a settlement was achieved. Union Carbide promised to pay 470 million dollars in compensation, but only a small part of this compensation was ever paid to the survivors.

However, Union Carbide states on its website that it paid the full settlement to the Indian government within 10 days time. In 2004, the Supreme Court forced the Indian government to pay the remaining 330 million dollars compensation to the victims and their families.

Eventually, Union Carbide sold the Indian factory to a battery maker. Then, in 2001, Dow Chemical Company took control of Union Carbide. This takeover led to discussions on who should be responsible for cleaning up the tons of poisonous waste that is still present.

Environmental activists are trying to convince Dow Chemical Company to clean up this massive toxic mess, which could lead to serious nervous system failure, liver and kidney disease, and cancer for many years to come.

December 3, 1984 will likely always be memorable for the city of Bhopal in Madya Pradesh county, India. The day when a cloud containing at least 15 metric tons of methyl isocyanate covered an area of Bhopal of more than 30 square miles.

Approximately 100,000 people still suffer from chronic disease related to gas exposure, and ten more people die from this exposure every year. This event is now known as the worst industrial environmental disaster to ever have occurred.

Today, the location is still polluted with thousands of tons of toxic chemicals, such as hexachlorobenzene and mercury. These chemicals are stored in open barrels. Rainfall causes rinsing out of pollution to local drinking water sources. Research also shows that some wells still contain up to 500 times the legal limit of these toxins.

In the 1930s and 1940s people and businesses did not pay a lot of attention to what happened to toxic chemicals produced during industrial processes. While there have long been regulations for the handling of these dangerous chemicals, enforcement of these laws was virtually nonexistent or haphazard at best.

Large corporations, such as Hooker Chemical and Plastics Corporation in Niagara Falls, New York, made a variety of chemicals, pesticides and plastics. This type of company would typically seal the contaminated substances in 55-gallon metal drums and leave them someplace nearby.

For Hooker, Love Canal was a convenient place to store these metal drums.

The Love Canal neighborhood is in the southeast section of the La Salle area of Niagara Falls, New York. The neighborhood spans 36 square blocks in the southeastern corner of the city, along 99^th Street and Read Avenue. Two bodies of water, Bergholtz Creek and Niagara River, define the northern and southern boundaries of the neighborhood.

Love Canal was the dream of William T. Love, an 1890′s entrepreneur who wanted to develop a planned industrial community, Model City. Love’s idea was to take waters from the Niagara River and reroute it around the Niagara escarpment in order to produce cheap hydroelectric power.

Love’s dream was not to be and Model City was never constructed. However, work on the canal to transport waters from the Niagara River did happen. In 1942, Hooker Chemical and Plastics Corporation purchased the Love Canal site. This is where the contamination of Love Canal began.

Between 1942 and 1953 Hooker Chemical disposed of roughly 22,000 tons of mixed chemical wastes into Love Canal, all while children swam and played nearby. Eventually, Hooker stopped using this dumping site and the land was sold to the Niagara Falls School Board for a price of $1.00.

In 1955, the 99^th Street Elementary School was built on Love Canal property and was opened to students. Subsequent housing development of the area brought hundreds of families to this suburban, blue-collar neighborhood along the Love Canal.

As time passed, the neighborhood continued to flourish, as families found the idea of building a new home so close to an elementary school appealing. But, there were problems.

Many homeowners began noticing that their basements leaked. Some families started smelling strange chemical smells and seeing oddly-colored water in their basements. Unfortunately, only a few knew about Hooker’s history of chemical dumping.

A startling symptom that something was not right in the Love Canal neighborhood occurred in 1974, when one family’s backyard swimming pool rose two feet out of the ground. When the pool was removed, blue, purple and yellow chemicals quickly flooded in where the pool had been.

By 1977 and after two years of uncharacteristically heavy rain and snowfall, the former canal was turning into a marshland. With high groundwater levels, portions of the Hooker landfill subsided, 55-gallon drums surfaced, ponds became tainted, basements began to ooze an oily residue, and noxious chemical smells permeated the neighborhood.

Physical evidence of chemical corrosion of sump pumps and permeation of basement cinderblock walls was also obvious. Chemicals were now noticeably seeping into the surrounding streams and soil. City officials looked into different ways of dealing with this ever-growing pollution problem, but determined that the cost was too high and the project ended up being bogged down in red tape.

By this point, many residents were concerned. Not only were they concerned about health issues, they were worried about the plummeting value of their homes. Those who tried to sell their homes, couldn’t sell.

Something finally had to give. So, in August 1978 the results of local, state and federal testing of the air and water in Love Canal basements were made public. State Health Commissioner, Dr. Robert Whalen, made it known that Love Canal was a great and imminent peril to the health of the public.

He suggested that pregnant women and children under the age of two, whose homes abutted one end of the canal, leave their homes. Apparently, the studies provided indisputable evidence of an unusually high rate of birth defects and miscarriages.

This announcement not only enraged homeowners, it left them frightened and discouraged. Many residents made the conclusion that adults and older children throughout the neighborhood

might also be in at risk. It was at this time that the residents took things into their own hands. They organized the Love Canal Homeowners Association to inflict added pressure on officials to buy their contaminated homes.

Lois Gibbs was elected president of the Association. Gibbs, a 27-year-old housewife who lived just two short blocks away from the canal, had a tremendous gift for organizing residents and keeping the Love Canal crisis in the news.

Not long after the birth of the Associations, President Jimmy Carter declared Love Canal a federal disaster site. This proclamation freed up funds for residents of the south end of the canal to relocate. This was great for these families; however, those families living in surrounding areas were left unable to move.

This outraged many because of the mounting evidence of elevated rates of cancer and other serious illnesses. Residents throughout the community began methodically testing substances in their homes, area streams and soil. What they found was a staggering list of dangerous chemicals. Some of the compounds detected were C-56 (a carcinogenic pesticide), toluene, benzene, and even PCBs (a known toxic chemical).

Subsequent studies conducted by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry revealed a frighteningly long list of 421 chemical records for water, soil and air samples in and around the Love Canal neighborhood.

Gibbs decided to conduct a systematic and thorough health survey of all residents outside the approved evacuation area. What she found was not surprising. The survey turned up high rates of bladder and kidney ailments, miscarriages, birth defects and nervous disorders.

After six more months, the state finally agreed to pay for pregnant women and those with small children to be relocated to temporary homes, but it stipulated that these families were to return to Love Canal when their children were older. Frustrated and angered by this temporary relocation, residents continued to write letters, sign petitions and conduct public demonstrations to maintain public awareness of the crisis at Love Canal.

Finally, in 1980, the state of New York publicly confirmed what many residents had long suspected. Among the poisonous chemicals found at Love Canal was dioxin, one of the most intensely toxic substances ever created.

With this announcement, the state had no other choice and agreed to buy the nearby homes. After two years of worrying, activism and continued chemical exposure, the remaining homeowners were finally allowed to leave. This, however, wasn’t the end of the Love Canal story.

Only a decade had passed before the government put some of those very same houses on the market again. A new community of homeowners moved in despite the pollution controversy and debate about whether the Love Canal site was still dangerously contaminated with potentially deadly waste.

Today, 30 years after the pollution crisis, Love Canal is really two areas. Secure behind chain link fence, there is the capped dumpsite that once held entire streets of houses. And, just across the street and to the north is a reborn neighborhood called Black Creek Village. The Village is full of homes that were rehabilitated and sold by the state-formed Love Canal Revitalization Agency.

While the Love Canal environmental catastrophe may not be the worst hazardous waste site the world has ever seen, it is one of America’s most notorious. What transpired at Love Canal led to the development of the federal Superfund program, which aids in the cleanup of toxic waste sites that could pose significant risks to the health and well-being of those living, working and playing around these sites.

View Larger Map