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Posts tagged with "Pollution"

Nigerian Oil Spills - Again

Tuesday, December 27, 2011 11:03:23 AM

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Last year I wrote a post about the incredible large number of disastrous oil spills in Nigeria. This year saw the biggest oil spill in 13 years. The good news is that it has now been contained before reaching the West African coast. About a week ago a line from Royal Dutch Shell PLC spilled something like 40,000 barrels, or say 1.68 million gallons crude oil into the Atlantic Ocean. Clearly oil pollution in oil-stained Nigeria after more than 50 years of production still remains one of the worst pollution problems in the world.

The present leak was discovered on 20 December 2011, and came from a break in a flexible line about 360 meters out from the vessel that sends oil to tankers. At that time it had probably spewed for hours before being noticed.

Pollution from spilled oil stains Nigeria’s Niger Delta region, with crude oil lapping against beaches and leaving a black ring around creeks in an area about the size of Portugal. Possibly as much as 550 million gallons of oil poured into the delta during Shell's roughly 50 years of production in Nigeria a rate roughly comparable to one Exxon Valdez disaster per year.



PS of 28 December 2011:
An environmental group said yesterday that an oil slick had approached Nigeria's coastline after the Shell spill last week - although Shell insisted that its spill had been largely dispersed. See http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-oil-nigerian-coast-major-shell.html



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Evolution of Oxygen Depletion in the Baltic Sea

Thursday, February 17, 2011 2:44:24 PM

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Although oxygen depletion in the Baltic Sea was much wider spread one thousand years ago than it is today, all is not well. Before you shout with joy over the “improvement”, please notice that we had a relatively warm period - the Medieval Warm Period - one thousand years ago, and that the sea surface temperature of the Baltic Sea was slightly warmer then. During “the Little Ice Age” the climate cooled and the rate of oxygen depletion decreased. At present the sea surface temperature is rising and …



So the bad news is
  1. that the extent of oxygen depletion was already a big problem in the Baltic Sea a thousand years ago, despite minimum interference from human activities.
  2. that global warming most probably leads to increased oxygen depletion.

Some estimates suggest that climate change in the Baltic Sea area causes sea surface temperatures to rise, increases winds and shortens the ice-cover season. Combined with rapid population growth and increased use of marine and coastal areas the forecast for the future becomes discouraging.

The Baltic Sea may really live up to the title of the “Nordic Dead Sea” if nothings really drastic is done.





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Catastrophic Mercury Levels in the Philippines

Tuesday, January 4, 2011 9:42:25 AM

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Somewhere between 200 and 500 tons of mercury is discharged every year into the Philippine environment from small scale gold mining. If this continues without any cleanup it may lead to the death of hundred of thousands of people within few years - not to mention a shameful increase in handicapped newborns. In some gold mining areas around 40% of the population is already suffering from mercury poisoning.

There may be two ways to improve the situation:
  1. Replace mercury with borax to refine gold in small scale mining.
  2. Clean up tailings on an industrial scale could lead not only to the recovery of large amounts of commercially valuable mercury, but also to extraction of a lot of gold still existing in the tailings due to the less efficient small scale mining methods.

Supporting the Philippine economy, improving the health standard, and reduce the environmental contamination, all at the same time seems a good idea.



In Danish:
http://videnskab.dk/composite-5314.htm

In Norwegian:
http://www.forskning.no/artikler/2010/oktober/267383



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Overfertilisation of Baltic Sea Makes Algal Blooms More Toxic

Thursday, December 16, 2010 9:10:52 AM

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Research at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden shows that continued eutrophication of the Baltic Sea, combined with an ever thinner ozone layer, is favouring more toxic algal blooms. Algal blooms are the result of an excess of nutrients, particularly phosphorus. Bright green blooms like those shown on the satellite image below are a result of blue-green algae, which are actually bacteria, namely cyanobacteria.



Surface blooms of cyanobacteria have increased in both frequency and magnitude in the Baltic Sea in recent decades, and researchers are divided on the cause. There are several species of cyanobacteria, that can form surface blooms in the Baltic Sea, and which species ends up dominating a bloom depends partly on how they deal with an increased amount of ultraviolet light and a shortage of nutrients. The cyanobacteria Nodularia spumigena is most toxic when there is little nitrogen in the water but sufficient amounts of phosphorus. Wastewater is to a large extent treated before it flows into the Baltic Sea with processes that concentrate on removing nitrogen. This can make cyanobacterial blooms more toxic. Wastewater therefore needs to be cleared of both nitrogen and phosphorus.

It has been a key question in ecology whether primary production is controlled by nutrient and/or light (bottom-up), or by grazers (top-down). Bottom-up and top-down factors are greatly dependent on each other, but a eutrophic system such as the Baltic Sea, is supposed to be more strongly controlled by bottom-up factors. The new Swedish study is (therefore) focusing on bottom-up factors. (Eutrophic water is water with high primary productivity due to excessive nutrients. Primary production is principally the production of organic material through photosynthesis).

According to the study discussions concerning further increase of nitrogen removal in sewage treatment, should take into account that this may lead to increased toxicity during the Nodularia spumigena blooms. The results suggest that the highest concentrations of the toxin called nodularin (produced by Nodularia spumigena) during a Nodularia spumigena bloom may occur during the initiation of the bloom when phosphorus is still present in excess while nitrogen is limited and when filaments are found deeper in the water column not exposed to ultraviolet radiation.

Reference:
Malin Mohlin
On the Ecophysiology of Baltic Cyanobacteria, Focusing on Bottom-up Factors
Download Ph.D. thesis as pdf-file here

Ecophysiology (from Greek οἶκος, oikos, "house(hold)"; φύσις, physis, "nature, origin"; and -λογία, -logia) or environmental physiology is a biological discipline which studies the adaptation of organism's physiology to environmental conditions. Physiology deals with the normal (chemical or physical) functions of living organisms and their parts.



In Swedish:




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Thallium Pollution, China

Sunday, October 24, 2010 7:07:48 PM

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Sometimes it is a bit difficult to find out what is behind breaking news in the media. On 22 October 2010 it was reported that a smelter in China had to stop its production because it was polluting a river with thallium. Now that is really bad, and the media rightly explained how toxic thallium is. Fine so far.

But what was the smelter “smelting”, and why would that lead to a thallium spill?

The Shaoguan smelter (behind the pollution) has an annual production of 200,000 tons of zinc and 100,000 tons of lead, and that explains the source, I should say, as thallium occurs (in trace amounts) in the chief ore of zinc, sphalerite (also known as zincblende - (Zn,Fe)S - zinc-iron sulphide), and some other ores with iron. When the zinc ore is leached, the leach product may contain things like: cadmium, copper, arsenic, antimony, cobalt, germanium, nickel, and indeed thallium. (A nice cocktail of stuff that nobody would like to consume!). Even trace amounts add up to appreciable levels at production plants of this size.

The reasonable thing to do is of course to extract arsenic and thallium as by-products, and sell them with a profit (yes these elements are commercially interesting!), which I would also guess that the owners of the Shaoguan smelter normally do.

The trace elements in zinc and lead ores are one of my worries about the probable opening of a zinc mine in the northernmost part of Greenland - see my post on the Most Northerly Zinc Mine. The smelting will of course take place somewhere else, but how much of the pollutant elements will be released to the local environment during the mining? 0%?





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Nigerian Oil Spills

Thursday, July 22, 2010 2:03:42 PM

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In oil-rich Nigeria the oil sector provides 95% of foreign exchange earnings and about 80% of budgetary revenues. It is a dirty business. Oil has brought incredibly huge environmental burdens and political unrest to the country. Oil keeps flowing into fields, rivers and lakes in the Niger Delta, where Western companies have been drilling for oil for half a century. A 2006 report compiled by international environmental groups and the Nigerian government estimated that on average, a spill the size of the Exxon Valdez has been occurring each year in the past fifty years. The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is small beer compared to the ongoing oil spills in Nigeria. The spill in the Gulf of Mexico is hopefully as good as stopped by now and in something like ten years time most of the wounds will have healed, but in Nigeria it still goes on with no end in sight.

An increasing number of people in Nigeria suffer from the endless oil spills. Is it worth to mention that U.S.A imports roughly 10% of its oil from Nigeria (or is it in fact more?). Big Western oil companies including BP, Shell and Exxon Mobile operate in Nigeria - leading to spills at an estimated 2000 contaminated sites. Although some of the spills are no doubt caused by vandalism and terrorism (you may ask why), not only the Nigerian government, but also the oil companies ought to live better up to their responsibilities.

Forest and farmland are covered in a sheen of greasy oil. Drinking wells are polluted. Fishermen have lost nets, huts and fishing pots. On 1 May 2010 a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline spilled more than a million gallons into the Niger delta over seven days before the leak was stopped. The oil companies and the government keep it a secret how much oil is spilled in the Niger delta each year. Two major independent investigations over the past four years suggest, however, that as much is spilled at sea, in the swamps and on land every year as has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico so far.

Can we trust the oil companies? Are they behaving recklessly when drilling for oil in poor countries like Nigeria? (or elsewhere for that matter!)

Big oil spills are no longer news in Nigeria. Who cares?



PS of 27 July 2010:
This CNN video tells it better than I am able to - view it
http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2010/07/25/gps.what.world.7.25.cnn.html



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Effects of Mercury in Oceans Worse than in Freshwater

Tuesday, June 29, 2010 9:39:46 AM

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Freshwater concentrations of mercury are far greater than those found in sea-water. Nevertheless saltwater fish and shellfish pose a more serious health threat to humans who eat them.

Mercury primarily enters the environment through coal combustion, gold production, and volcanic eruptions, but also via other minor sources. The air-borne mercury from these sources eventually lands on lakes or oceans and can remain in the water or sediments.

The most toxic forms of mercury are its organic compounds (molecules containing carbon, C), such as methylmercury (CH3Hg+). Methylmercury is soluble in water. Methylmercury acts differently in sea-water and freshwater.

In freshwater it tends to become attached to dissolved organic matter. As such it is readily broken down by sunlight (a.o. into inorganic mercury).

In sea-water it tends to become attached onto chloride (Cl- - remember that salt is sodium chloride, NaCl). When it is tightly bonded to chloride it is not so easily degraded by sunlight. It becomes easily digested by marine animals, where it accumulates, and the concentration gets higher and higher up through the food chain, where we, the humans, sit on top.

Though the concentrations may be smaller in seawater, mercury accumulates more readily in the tissues of organisms that consume it. The lifetime of methylmercury is much longer in the marine environment. Because fish and shellfish have a natural tendency to store methylmercury in their organs, they are the leading source of mercury ingestion for humans.

Reference:
Zhang & Hsu-Kim
Photolytic degradation of methylmercury enhanced by binding to natural organic ligands
Nature Geoscience
Published online: 27 June 2010
doi:10.1038/ngeo892

See also my posts on Mercury in the Ocean and Mercury Pollution and the Mercury Geochemical Cycle.





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Positive Lake Atitlan News

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 9:51:22 AM

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Last year I published a couple of posts about Lake Atitlan and the pollution of this (once oh so) beautiful lake as testified by the NASA image below of harmful bloom in the lake.



I am now happy to say that something is being done about it.

The lake’s water is contaminated with watershed runoff and waste water, which contributes to increased algae growth and suitable conditions for bacteria and pathogens such as, Escherichia coli and Giardia that can proliferate and enter untreated drinking water. In 2009, the Global Nature Fund designated Guatemala’s Lake Atitlan as its “Threatened Lake of the Year.”

Scientists from the University of Nevada, Reno, DRI, Arizona State University and University of California are working to find solutions to the algae blooms that have assailed the ecosystem and the drinking water source for local residents. They work with local scientists to develop strategies based around the idea that the solution to the algae problem is to address the sources of nutrient loading into the lake, so water going into the lake will be as clean as possible.

The scientists have useful experience from Lake Tahoe, on the border of Nevada and California, which is very similar in size and character, but is far better environmentally protected. The international collaboration can help move the management forward by decades by using the lessons learned at Tahoe where water quality management began 40 years ago.

The American team of fisheries ecologists, limnologists, water quality experts and wetlands scientists teamed with about 20 scientists, engineers and students from Guatemala to set up a lab and monitoring infrastructure for the lake, to build on the research that began and has continued intermittently since the 1970s.





Academics

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Pollution, Climate Change, Oceans

Tuesday, June 22, 2010 8:45:21 AM

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The latest issue of Science (19 June 2010) has a special section on Ocean Change. There is, as you might imagine, a lot of interesting reading in there - for me at least. A paper that I find everybody ought to read is on “The Growing Human Footprint on Coastal and Open-Ocean Biogeochemistry”. I would have liked to quote at least 90% of the text, but that is of course out of the question. Actually it is terrifying reading. What we do to the oceans is close to suicidal.

The author reviews and evaluates the total impact of climate change, carbon dioxide, pollution and other human-related phenomena on the world’s oceans and considers what the future might hold.

I shall restrict myself to the abstract:

“Climate change, rising atmospheric carbon dioxide, excess nutrient inputs, and pollution in its many forms are fundamentally altering the chemistry of the ocean, often on a global scale and, in some cases, at rates greatly exceeding those in the historical and recent geological record. Major observed trends include a shift in the acid-base chemistry of seawater, reduced subsurface oxygen both in nearshore coastal water and in the open ocean, rising coastal nitrogen levels, and widespread increase in mercury and persistent organic pollutants. Most of these perturbations, tied either directly or indirectly to human fossil fuel combustion, fertilizer use, and industrial activity, are projected to grow in coming decades, resulting in increasing negative impacts on ocean biota and marine resources.”



As the optimist I usually am, I looked desperately for something positive. And, well, human combustion sources and increased cloud-water acidity are increasing soluble iron input to the ocean. Models suggest that such iron deposition could have a positive impact on productivity in the North Pacific, equatorial Pacific, and Southern Ocean, where phytoplankton so far are limited by iron, but ... well ... direct observations in this direction are lacking.

Ocean uptake of carbon dioxide, ocean acidification, coastal hypoxia (“dead zones”), open-ocean oxygen depletion, fertiliser runoff, global spread of industrial pollutants, its all treated in that one paper, and the conclusions are bad.

A deeper understanding of human impacts on ocean biogeochemistry is essential if the scientific community is to provide appropriate and timely information to the public and decisionmakers on pressing environmental questions.





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Gulf Oil Spill. Could it Happen in the North Sea?

Saturday, June 12, 2010 7:34:54 AM

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Reading all the bad news about the Mexican Gulf, I (and many others with me) of course ask myself, if a similar thing could happen in Europe, and more explicitly in the North Sea, which you cannot cross without seeing several oil rigs. Some 600 platforms operate in the region around Britain, Denmark, Germany, and Norway.

The answer is that I don’t know, but have my worries. The so far very low number of inspections will of course be increased, but is that enough. It is hard to get any reliable data. Here are a few I have on third or fourth hand, mainly from environmentalists, and I have no way of verifying them, so just see them as rough indicators.

In 2007 15 accidents lead to 4.55 million litres oil spill into the North Sea. Of course the sea has enormous self-cleansing potentials, but I don’t know how much it can swallow without serious negative results.

Pipes on the sea bottom leak now and then. This has been estimated at 12,000 to 19,000 barrels per day - or something like 2-3 million litres per day (Today I just read this heading: “New BP oil spill flow estimates: 20,000 to 40,000 barrels per day” - in the Mexican Gulf that is - and thus much less than the original 8 million litres per day). The daily oil production also leads to a flow of about 11 million litres per day into the North Sea, a small part of which is oil.

A terrible lot of oil is also illegally discharged by ships, probably something like 10,000 tonnes per years. Some 100,000 ships cross the region per year.

No doubt the oil industry will claim that these estimates are too high, and maybe they are, I don’t know, but I think that there is enough to worry about. And this is only the “normal” daily spill. How about a real large blow-out? Are the North Sea operators sufficiently prepared for that? (In the Mexican Gulf BP obviously wasn’t!). There is no reason to believe that the European rules are more stringent than the American. Inspection is also scarce up till now. UK has something like 3 to 5 inspectors for 200 installations, and the situation in Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands is similar.

I think that there is a lot of work to be done to improve the preparedness, and I am even more worried about the pristine environment in the Arctic, where oil production is about to take off.

Oil people: please act with prudence!





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