Category: Environmental

Oily liars

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Charlie Pierce on the 84,000 gallons of tar sands oil that spilled in Arkansas last week:

The Arkansas spill was the second accident of the week and, regarding the first of them, a train wreck in northern Minnesota, the people running the railroad refused to say whether what spilled was tar-sands oil at all, and put out a statement on which local Minnesota environmental officials called bullpucky almost immediately.

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd, the country’s second-largest railroad, said the company was investigating the incident. CP Spokesman Ed Greenberg said only one 26,000-gallon tank car had ruptured, adding it was a mixed freight train carrying crude and other materials. The company did not comment as to what kind of crude the train was carrying. But Minnesota Pollution Control Agency spokesman Dan Olson said up to three tank cars were ruptured and an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 gallons – or 475 to 715 barrels – leaked out.

I’m sure Canadian Pacific is not trying to bury the words “tar sands” in regards to this spill so that TransCanada, the company that’s waiting to build the Keystone XL pipeline, wouldn’t find itself with some inconvenient headlines to which it might have to respond. I also believe in the practical benefits of sunbathing in Nunavit in the middle of February.

TransCanada is no different from Exxon, which is no different from Shell — which, as kindly Doc Maddow has been pointing out, is having the devil’s own time keeping track of its wandering oil rigs in the Chukchi Sea. It lied. It lies. It will lie again. (Also, as we always point out on this issue, there’s already one Keystone pipeline, and it’s already leaked all over the landscape.) That is what the president is being asked to invite into the country. Just so we’re all still clear — which, apparently, cannot be said any more of several rivers in Arkansas.

Making earthquakes

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Seems like we just don’t care what companies to the environment anymore!

A new study in the journal Geology is the latest to tie a string of unusual earthquakes, in this case, in central Oklahoma, to the injection of wastewater deep underground. Researchers now say that the magnitude 5.7 earthquake near Prague, Okla., on Nov. 6, 2011, may also be the largest ever linked to wastewater injection. Felt as far away as Milwaukee, more than 800 miles away, the quake—the biggest ever recorded in Oklahoma–destroyed 14 homes, buckled a federal highway and left two people injured. Small earthquakes continue to be recorded in the area.

The recent boom in U.S. energy production has produced massive amounts of wastewater. The water is used both in hydrofracking, which cracks open rocks to release natural gas, and in coaxing petroleum out of conventional oil wells. In both cases, the brine and chemical-laced water has to be disposed of, often by injecting it back underground elsewhere, where it has the potential to trigger earthquakes. The water linked to the Prague quakes was a byproduct of oil extraction at one set of oil wells, and was pumped into another set of depleted oil wells targeted for waste storage.
Continue reading “Making earthquakes” →

Oh dear

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

They’re assuming it wasn’t stolen, but merely “misplaced.” And I’m not assuming they’re telling the truth, because they rarely do when there’s a problem:

A virus that authorities worry could easily be weaponized as an aerosol went missing from a medical research facility in south Texas, an official at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston said Saturday.

About a quarter of a teaspoon of frozen viral material went missing last Wednesday, UTMB President David L. Callender explained in prepared text. The virus is an exotic strain from south America called Guanarito, which can cause a life-threatening condition that includes fever, convulsions and hemmhoraging.

The disease is usually spread to humans through rodent feces or urine, and a 2008 study published in the journal Virology found that it killed 23.1 percent of its 618 Venezuelan hosts between Sept. 1989 and Dec. 2006. It is not likely capable of spreading from human to human.

Nevertheless, the Centers for Disease Control considers Guanarito virus to be a Biosafety Level 4 risk, the most elevated level due to its potential to be weaponized by terrorists as an aerosol, and labs that store the material are held to rigorous safety standards.

“This is the first time that any vial containing a select agent has been unaccounted for at UTMB,” Callender’s statement explained. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was notified immediately, and UTMB simultaneously began a rigorous process to ensure the safety of its researchers, employees and the community. UTMB has confirmed that there was no breach in the facility’s security and there is no indication that any wrongdoing is involved.”

Tip courtesy of Thomas Soldan

Reminder

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Link:

Arnie Gundersen, Fairewinds’ chief engineer: Since I’ve been talking about Fuksuhima, I got an email that brought me to tears.

It was a woman who was in 10th grade at the time of the [Three Mile Island] accident. She was in chemistry and they were studying radiation and they had a Geiger counter hanging out the window for the entire semester.

They walk into the class at 10:00 in the morning of the accident and the Geiger counter is pegged.

So the teacher goes to phone as a responsible citizen, he calls Governor Thornburgh and tells him, “Look, I’m in Middleburg, I’ve got a pegged Geiger counter here. What should I do?”

Gov. Thornburgh’s office told this high school teacher, “Don’t do anything, we know all about it.”

So they kept the kids in school, and who got evacuated were the parents of the people who worked at the power plant, they all came by and grabbed their kids and got out of there. And the kids that didn’t have the inside scoop wound up staying in that town and got high exposures.

So do I think my country’s going to be any different than the Japanese? No way.

Wheee

~ susie

I’m sure it’s all going to be fine!

The Environmental Protection Agency says that an area larger than previously thought has been affected by the toxic chemical TCE at an underground Superfund site and has been “leeching into the air” in two specific spots, reported NBC Bay Area.


The area, located in Moffet Field and Mountain View in California, is roughly a mile and a half long and a half mile wide.


Superfund is a government program that addresses “abandoned hazardous waste sites,” according to the EPA’s website.


While the EPA cleaned the area previously, they now admit they missed a few “hot spots.”


“What’s most troubling about this news is that EPA officials admit they don’t know how long this underground chemical plume has been leeching into the air of two different hot spots,” said reporter Stephen Stock.


“The highest T-C-E levels that the EPA measured in ground water in the area reached 130,000 parts per billion. The EPA considers anything over 5 parts per billion unsafe,” the NBC affiliate reported. The EPA says it will take decades to clean the groundwater.


“Once we found these concentrations, which were surprising, we took immediate action,” said Superfund Site Manager Alana Lee.


A California cancer organization found that residents who lived in the area had higher than normal rates of specific cancers between 1996 and 2005.


Since the EPA found the chemical in the air in two homes where residents may have been breathing it in for some years, it has finished a ventilation system for one home and is working on finishing the other.