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.

But, the vast reservoir was built for far more than recreation. In fact, the massive Hoover Dam, which was completed in 1935, provides this desert region and surrounding states with a reliable water supply from the Colorado River as well as an excellent and inexpensive source of electricity.

Covering the state lines of Arizona and Nevada, Lake Mead stores water from the vast Colorado River, which runs through a whopping seven states – Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. So, to say that Lake Mead and the irreplaceable Colorado River are important to the citizens of the western states, would be a huge understatement.

However, for the past decade Lake Mead has been battling the worst 10-year drought in recorded history along the Colorado River, which feeds the 110-mile-long reservoir.

Since 1999, Lake Mead has dropped about 1 percent a year. It is estimated that by 2012, the lake’s surface could fall below the existing pipe that delivers 40 percent of Las Vegas’s water.

In 2000, the water level at Lake Mead was 1,214 feet, close to its all-time high, but it has been dropping ever since. When Lake Mead was built during the 1920s and 1930s, the western United States was experiencing one of the wettest periods of the past 1,200 years.

Even today, our so-called drought is still wetter than the average precipitation for the area averaged over centuries. In other words, for the past 75 years, we’ve had more moisture than we ever realized. And, we definitely took it for granted.

Farmers have been growing rice by flooding arid farmland with water from Lake Mead,  desert community residents have been maintaining lush front lawns, and avid golfers depend on green, healthy courses in areas where temperatures typically exceeds 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the summer.

A combination of a solid demand for Lake Mead’s thirst-quenching water and an ever-changing climate has resulted in a 100 foot drop in Mead’s water level since 2000. While that might not look like a great deal of water loss because it is just 10 percent under the lake’s 1983 high water mark, we have to remember that Lake Mead is like a martini glass.

The vast reservoir is wide at the top but narrow at the bottom. So that 10 percent loss of water actually represents a loss of half of Lake Mead’s water supply. This huge loss happened in just nine years – The lake went form 96 percent capacity to roughly 43 percent.

Amazingly, when full, Lake Mead can hold an astonishing 9.3 trillion gallons of water. This is an amount equal to the water that flows through the Colorado River in a two-year period.

And, this is water that is put to good use. Lake Mead’s life-sustaining water is used for many things. It irrigates a million acres of crops throughout the western United States and Mexico, and the reservoir supplies water to tens of millions of people.

The massive and mighty Hoover Dam generates enough electricity to power approximately a half-million homes. But that’s not all. The power from Hoover Dam is also used to transport water up and across the Sierra Nevada Mountains on its way to Southern California.

But, however, the lake continues to shrink. Lake Mead’s water level fell 14 feet last year, and the Bureau of Reclamation has projected the level will drop 14 more feet this summer. That will bring it perilously close to 1,075 feet, the point at which the federal government can step in and declare a drought condition, forcing a reduction of 400,000 acre-feet drawn from Lake Mead per year.

A typical Las Vegas home uses a half acre-foot of water per year, so such a reduction would be equal to turning the tap off for 800,000 households.
Going beyond the implications for residents living in areas supplied by Lake Mead, the water loss has ramifications for the local economy too. It was recently estimated that Lake Mead National Recreation Area, along with affiliated marine operators, were losing some where in the neighborhood of three million dollars for every ten foot of lake lost to this devastating drought.

Currently, Lake Mead’s water level is hanging close to 1095.26 feet above sea level. The end-of-year projection is now predicting that Lake Mead will drop several more feet below its current level. This is a huge loss considering the lake is considered full at 1,219 feet.

The year 2009 started out well as officials projected that Lake Mead could receive an additional one million acre-feet of water based on the snowpack in the Rocky Mountains. Unfortunatly, however, the thaw did not translate into the expected runoff, and Lake Mead and the Colorado River’s water shortage problem marched on.

In 2008, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography issued their “When Will Lake Mead Go Dry?” report. The report said there is a 50 percent chance that Lake Mead will dry up by the year 2021. If this happens, it could mean no more water, no more pumping and no more electricity for many, many people.

There is, however, some good news. Strong conservation efforts are helping this serious condition. For example, Southern Nevada has significantly reduced its water draw from 325,000 acre-feet a year in 2000 to 265,000 acre-feet in 2009. Even with this reduction, the grand Colorado River still remains over utilized.

This is easy to see when you consider that millions of acre-feet of H20 are rushed to California, Nevada, and Mexico each year. This continually drains and strains both Lake Mead and neighboring Lake Powell faster than either lake can be replenished.

Some of the conservation solutions and suggestions include “grass buyback” programs to convince residents of the benefits of installing drought-tolerant landscaping, tax incentives for swimming pool-covers as well as the inevitable water rate hikes.

One of the more radical ideas involves pumping water from the eastern United States, where many regions’ rivers have been inundated with extensive flooding, over the Rockies to the western, sweltering states. Another interesting proposal lies beyond the shores of California, where there is a vast, open ocean of water available for desalinization.
While these are possibly viable alternatives, the power and financial requirements for either proposal would be enormous.

Whatever the solution to the Lake Mead water crisis is, it is likely not going to be a simple one. If the drought-like conditions continue, action will likely need to be taken sooner rather than later in order to save the reservoir.

It might be discovered that the money and time it will take to quench the western United States’ thirst are like the water supply. They are all running short.

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.

The land of the Somali people, much of it arid and inhospitable, has been close to civilization and international trade for thousands of years.

Situated on the Horn of Africa, jutting out into the India Ocean, Somalia’s harbors are natural ports of call for traders sailing to and from India. Somalia’s coastline is frequented by many foreigners, in particular Arabs and Persians. But, in Somalia’s interior, the Somali are on their own.

Most urban households use charcoal for everyday cooking. It has been estimated that some families use a full sack of charcoal every four days due to their large family size. And, with this exacerbated charcoal use comes a significant amount of environmental fallout.

Because of an insufficient and cheaper alternative to charcoal and a large former refugee population, tree felling and a great dependence on charcoal in the self-declared republic of Somaliland are adversely affecting the environment. A 2007 study by the Academy for Peace and Development reports that greater than 2.5 million trees are felled each year and burned for charcoal in Somaliland. The report further stated that each household in Somaliland consumes an average of 10 trees a month.

Considering this extensive use of trees, the serious affects of deforestation should be noted. Deforestation not only exacerbates soil erosion, it also reduces rainfall availability. In addition, trees are a vital component in carbon fixing, which is the natural process of reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Interestingly, the demand for charcoal remains very high, despite charcoal prices going up since 1991 with the resettlement of former refugees. Roughly 10 years ago, one sack of charcoal cost Somalis only about 5,000 Somaliland shillings, or 0.76 US dollars, but now the price is about 30,000 Somaliland shillings, or 5 US dollars. And, this price is only aggravated by rainfall, because when it rains, the trees become wet and the charcoal becomes more expensive.

It is not difficult to see that the ever rising gas prices have helped to encourage charcoal use. In past years, gas was actually cheaper than charcoal, but the price has increased dramatically. Now, one liter of gas costs approximately 4,000 Somaliland shillings or 0.61 US dollars, which is up from 1,500 Somaliland shillings or 0.23 US dollars.

Nowadays, charcoal is even the preferred fuel in hotels, which obviously consume even larger quantities of this valuable and environmentally important commodity. It has been estimated that some hotel chefs even use a full sack of charcoal for a single day’s cooking.

It is no wonder that researchers have determined that one of the main driving forces of African deforestation is the need for fuel.

It is also estimated that in sub-Saharan Africa, only 7.5 percent of the rural population has access to electricity. A 2009 report on the state of the world’s forests reports that “as household incomes and investment in appropriate alternatives remain low, wood is likely to remain an important energy source in Africa in the coming decades.”

Going back as far as forecasts made in 2001, it was suggested that there will be a 34 percent increase in wood fuel consumption from 2000 to 2020. However, as the price for fuel continues to rise, this increase is likely to be even greater. In other words, the share of wood fuel in the total energy supply is likely to decline, while the number of people dependent on wood for fuel and energy is likely to grow.

The report goes on to say that “the forest situation in Africa presents enormous challenges, reflecting the larger constraints of low income, weak policies and inadequately developed institutions.”

With this ever-increasing demand for fuel, many environmentalists are concerned that the trade in charcoal will eventually wipe out some species of trees. For example, one species of trees used for charcoal production is the Acacia bussei tree, which can produce between eight to 10 sacks of charcoal per tree. Researches are worried because the Acacia is the most preferred tree specie for charcoal production, timber and fencing, and its extensive use could force it to the brink of extinction in the Somaliland territories.

Efforts are being made, however, to stop or slow down the felling of Somaliland trees. On April 30, 2009, concerned with the impact of charcoal burning on the environment, Maroodi Jeeh, regional governor of Hargeisa (a city in the northwestern Somaliland region of Somalia), banned trade in charcoal as well as the burning of trees. Other attempts at protecting the environment have included the introduction of gas stoves and solar cookers in the main urban centers of Burou, Las-anod, Gabiley, Wajalea and Borama.

Since January, Somgas Company has been supplying gas to residents. A typical household uses an 11-kilogram cylinder for approximately six weeks. Although initial gas and cylinder prices remain high, an 11-kilogram gas cylinder plus gas costs $44.50 and is recharged at just $19.
This is certainly not expensive compared with the monthly charcoal consumption of about $15 for three 20-kilogram sacks of charcoal per household. (The gas cylinders range from two to 22 kilograms.)

According to Somaliland’s Ministry of Pastoral Development and Environment, there is still great cause for concern, even though charcoal consumption fell in 2008 compared with 2007.

Mohamoud Ibrahim Mohamoud currently heads the forestry section in the ministry. He says he is concerned about environmental degradation caused by the charcoal trade, and is working with several organizations to search for alternatives to charcoal energy. The problem that seems to drive the tree felling and forest burning for charcoal is the poverty throughout the countryside and the high demand for charcoal energy in the urban areas.

Overall, the demand for charcoal appears to be increasing daily and the burning of trees is also increasing. But, many leaders and environmentalists are now trying to encourage awareness and education among the people of Somalia and give them other sources of income, such as helping young people become involved in alternative activities such as bee-keeping.

It is obvious that other sources of income and further education and research are needed if the problem of deforestation and charcoal burning will be successfully addressed and redirected in Somalia.

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.