Daily Science Dose

Actually, no. In the case of the Tibetan glaciers, no radioactive isotopes in ice cores is a bad thing. The radioactive particles were a good way to date ice cores — in that radioactive particles are useful in rather accurate dating methods, and also that these particular

radioactive isotopes were from a definite point in time and if the isotopes are not there, it may just mean that ice has not been accumulating on many of the Himalayan glaciers for quite some time now.

Science Daily ran a story about a joint US-China research team that studies ice cores, and in particular four ice cores drilled in 2006 from the Naimona’nyi glacier about 19,000 feet up in the Tibetan plateau. Seems that in years past, core from different glaciers around the world, radioactive isotopes are always around in the area of the ice that accumulated in the 1950’s and 1960’s — The Nuclear Age.

From Science Daily:

The Beta radioactivity signals – from strontium90, cesium136, tritium (hydrogen3) and chlorine36 – are the remnants of radioactive fallout from the 1950s-60s atomic tests. They are “present in ice cores retrieved from both polar regions and from tropical glaciers around the globe and they suggest that those ice fields have retained snow (mass) that fell during the last 50 years,” he [Lonnie Thompson, distinguished university professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University and a researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center] said.

“In ice cores drilled in 2000 from Kilimanjaro’s northern ice field (5890 meters high), the radioactive fallout from the 1950s atomic test was found only 1.8 meters below the surface.

“By 2006 the surface of that ice field had lost more than 2.5 meters of solid ice (and hence recorded time) – including ice containing that signal. Had we drilled those cores in 2006 rather than 2000, the radioactive horizon would be absent – like it is now on Naimona’nyi in the Himalayas,” he said.

Yeah, this may not be a good sign. And is is only me or is anyone else worried about where all that cesium-136 and strontium-90 has ended up?

But as the researchers worry, as well as many a climatologist, if the Himalayan ice cap, known as the Third Pole, is not accumulating ice or retaining some top-side ice at least, 500 million people are royally screwed. The Himalayan ice fields are a huge source of fresh water, a reservoir that ensures the survival of the people of the Indian sub-continent in addition to China and Southeast Asia.

Water wars, people, it will happen, and sooner than we think.

natural resources, water, China, US, glaciers, ice, third pole, Asia, Tibetan Plateau, Himalayas, radioactivity, radioactive isotopes, strontium, cesium, nuclear testing, nuclear age, war

Did you know that the present time is already considered one of the great mass extinctions? Humans seem to be the major culprit in this, the Holocene extinction event, but scientists have recently began surmising that a similar extinction 251 million years ago was caused by the same thing. But with no humans around 251 million years ago, what is it that I am talking about — yep, carbon dioxide.

The Christian Science Monitor published an article this last week detailing the current hypotheses of a team of researchers and scientists from multiple disciplines.

Now scientists are rethinking another of earth’s great die-offs. The end-Permian extinction 251 million years ago was the worst of earth’s five mass extinctions. Ninety percent of all marine life and 70 percent of terrestrial life disappeared. It took five million years, perhaps more, for the biosphere to recover.

But while the die-off was uniquely devastating, evidence of a single cataclysmic event, like an asteroid strike, hasn’t been found in the geological record. Scientists now suspect that “the mother of all mass extinctions” was of Earth’s own making. And the more they learn about it, the more parallels they see to today’s world: A bout of greenhouse-gas-induced global warming, much like today’s, set off a chain of events that culminated in oxygen-depleted oceans exhaling poison gas.

It seems that increased volcanic activity started burning through coal beds, releasing enormous amounts of carbon dioxide — something we humans are doing, we are like little volcanoes, I guess. The Earth’s population at the time was already stressing the system, and when the extra CO2 entered the atmosphere, it lead to warmer seas (sounds familiar). The warmer seas lead to increased weathering and erosion, which washed nutrients into the oceans, thus leading to algae blooms (again, familiar). When the algae dies, the decomposition process requires oxygen, effectively starving the water of oxygen. When water does not have enough oxygen, many organisms cannot live in that water, except for anaerobic organisms that breathe in sulfates and give off hydrogen sulfide as exhalation. Hydrogen sulfide is poisonous to us oxygen-loving organisms.

And the lessons for today? At the Permian boundary, “you’re in a state of gradual warming, then as you approach that boundary, the warming in­­creases dramatically,” says Jeff Kiehl, a senior scientist at the Na­­­tion­­­al Center for Atmospheric Re­­search in Boulder, Colo. “It wasn’t a linear warming.” Says Professor Kump: “This shows us what could happen if we push the system too hard…. We don’t know where the intermediate thresholds are.”

We’re still some way from the atmospheric CO2 levels hypothesized at the end-Permian extinction – which were perhaps 10 times preindustrial levels, or 2,800 ppm. Yet, according the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, if trends continue we’re still approaching 1,000 ppm of CO2 by 2100. That’s not Permian-extinction levels, but it would be the highest CO2 concentration in 80 million years, and a level at which both ocean anoxia and lesser extinctions have occurred.

This theory on what lead to the “great dying” at the transition between the Permian and Triassic periods (the extinction event is called the Permian-Triassic extinction event, appropriately enough) has been bouncing around for a while now, once scientists started questioning the evidence of the Killer Asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs. It seems that despite the asteroid’s impact and subsequent devastation, many big dinosaurs stuck around for quite some time afterward. When the asteroid impact theory gained popularity, some scientists felt that all of our many mass extinctions throughout Earth’s history were caused by otherworldly impacts, but not all the evidence added up.

Until fossil records started showing evidence of little sulfide-emitting organisms, and then scientists started looking at the Permian-Triassic more carefully.

From a Scientific American article from 2006:

But the biomarkers in the oceanic sediments from the latest part of the Permian, and from the latest Triassic rocks as well, yielded chemical evidence of an ocean-wide bloom of the H2S-consuming bacteria. Because these microbes can live only in an oxygen-free environment but need sunlight for their photosynthesis, their presence in strata representing shallow marine settings is itself a marker indicating that even the surface of the oceans at the end of the Permian was without oxygen but was enriched in H2S.

Also, the P-Tr event is marked by volcanic activity in Siberia, of all places, and only a couple of months ago, scientists discovered that large amounts of methane are leaking from the Siberia Seabed. Hmm, methane is a greenhouse gas that has 20 times the power to trap heat that carbon dioxide does, and if that “leak” continues, well, estimates that 50 percent of all species will go extinct in the next century may not be too far off the mark.

extinction, mass, permian, triassic, dinosaurs, humans, mammals, volcanic activity, volcanoes, asteroid, impact, Siberia, methane, carbon dioxide, population stress, warming seas, sulfides, oxygen, algae bloom, anaerobic, greenhouse gas, global warming

Ah, again, I write about coal. This time it is good news indeed.

The Environmental Protection Agency has had to swallow its own hot air over new coal-fired power plants. This week, the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board (kind of an independent oversight) decided that the EPA had no reason to not regulate carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants.

This all started when the Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide (CO2) is indeed a pollutant last year. As such, and as all pollutants, the EPA has a responsibility to regulate the amount of said pollutant into our environment. However, the EPA (with the Bush-appointed Stephen Johnson — booooo!) didn’t seem to see why it should bother to regulate the coal industry and its lobby (or any other industry that emits CO2), as Big Coal is Big Biz, and we all know that when the environment and Big Biz are competing for George W. Bush’s attention and favor, Big Biz will always win.

But cooler and smarter and fairer heads have prevailed. Now, over 100 coal plants that are in the pre-production process across the US, have to rethink their business plan and their blueprints. Any new coal-fired power plant will have to take its CO2 emissions into account, which essentially means that it is doubtful that the US will see new coal plants anytime soon.

The Sierra Club had originally sued to stop the construction of Deseret Power’s Bonanza Generating Station in Vernal, Utah, part of their nationwide campaign to stop new coal. The 110-megawatt plant, which received its EPA permit in July 2007, would have emitted 3.37 million tons of CO2 a year — the equivalent to putting another 660,000 cars on the road. In detail, Thursday’s decision means that any new air pollution permits for coal plants will require that Best Available Control Technology (BACT) be used to reduce CO2 emissions, the same criteria currently used for other pollutants, like sulfur dioxide or soot. BACT requires companies involved in power plants to use the best available technology to control pollutants — it’s a tool to keep pollution controls up to date as both safety technology and our understanding of pollution impoves. In the past, CO2 wasn’t affected by BACT because the EPA didn’t recognize it as a pollutant. This decision changes that.

Right now, however, there is no definition of BACT for CO2, and environmentalists estimate it will take six months to a year to figure that out. In the meantime, all other coal plants in the permitting process, or stuck in the courts, will be frozen. Over the longer term, it’s possible that new coal plants may be impossible to certify at all until a technology exists to greatly reduce or sequester carbon emissions from coal plants — and currently none has been proven. “The decision says the EPA can’t ignore CO2,” says Nilles. –Time

It is nice to see this kind of justice happen, not only in regards to keeping more coal plants from being built, but also that George W. Bush’s plans to gut the EPA’s protections in regards to CO2 are being frustrated — well, finally.

Still, it doesn’t help that China and India are building coal plants. Check out this graphic below for a wake up call. Click on the image to see the details better.

EPA, environment, coal, power, plants, coal-fired, carbon dioxide, CO2, pollution, George Bush, George W Bush, China, India

The title may not refer to you, as an individual, unless you happen to be a owner of a coal mine, but what some may see as a blight on the environment — a coal mine — the Dutch have converted into a geothermal power plant.

Your basic geothermal power plant

From a story on Energy Daily:

Claimed by its originators to be the world’s first such energy generator, the “Mine Water Project” in the south-western Limburg province went into operation last month, heating some 350 homes and businesses in a newly built neighbourhood in Heerlen.

It emits 55 percent less polluting carbon dioxide than other water heating systems.

“The global energy question can no longer be solved with fossil fuels,” Christion Cornips, executive of the residential company Weller that initiated the project, told AFP.

“Energy shortages have to be addressed at a local level, and mine water is an example of that.”

The project saw five new wells being drilled into the ground at five different locations. The wells reach depths of 700 metres (2,300 feet), from which are pumped nearly 80 cubic metres (2,800 cubic feet) of water per hour.

“The water temperature measures 32 degrees C (89 degrees F) at the bottom (of the well) and 28 degrees when it arrives at the surface,” explains Jan-Jaap van Bergermeer, who supervises the project.

What does this mean? It means that the areas of this world that may not have their own inherent potential for geothermal energy production may be able to fake it — if the area happens to have some deep mines.

The Province of Limburg and its former coal mines.

It’s quite simple. When you get past a certain depth down in the Earth’s surface, things start getting hotter. The closer to the Earth’s mantle, the hotter it becomes, and we humans can use that heat in the form of geothermal energy. We take the heat (thermal) from the Earth (geo) and we use that heat, better thought of here as potential energy to create steam. The steam, due to its expansive nature, takes its potential heat energy and turns a turbine, thus converting the potential energy to kinetic energy, which creates electrons to flow through power lines, and voila, electricity! Ok, that is a really simplified explanation, but give me a break, I teach kids and I try to make things understandable for everyone involved in this silly little muddle called Daily Science Dose.

The Dutch Province of Limburg was once a prosperous coal-mining region, but coal became more and more expensive to mine in that part of Europe, as the government did not artificially make coal more competitive with other energy sources with the help of subsidies, as in the United States.

The Minewater Power Plant is not quite at the point where it is generating electricity, but instead employs the heat from the water to heat radiators in homes. Scientists had discovered that water had seeped into the abandoned mines over time, and that water was hot. 89 degrees Fahrenheit at the bottom, and a bit cooler at the surface. The Minewater Power Plant pumps up the hot water, pumps it through pipes to heat residential water systems that run radiators in 350 homes in a small neighborhood in the Netherlands.

The flip side of the Minewater Power Plant is that homes can also be cooled by the same methods, the difference being that cool water in shallower wells is used instead of the hot water from almost a half-mile below the Earth’s surface.

When you think about how much energy is used to heat and cool buildings, it can be quite a lot of non-renewable resources used and a whole lotta carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere. So even if these minewater projects are feasible in former (soon to be former when the coal runs out) coal mining regions, it could still cut into conventional energy demand and conventional energy pollution.

Dutch, geothermal, energy, electricity, coal, mine, mining, abandoned mines, Limburg, power, Minewater power plant, pollution, carbon dioxide

Ok, that is a bit misleading, I admit, but scientists have discovered a fungus in South American that produces octane and other hydrocarbons that are also found in petroleum.

Gary Strobel, a plant pathologist at Montana State University, happened upon a fungus growing on an Ulmo tree in Patagonia. When he and other researchers grew the fungus in their lab, they found that the fungus “exhaled” the same hydrocarbons that are found in diesel fuel.

From Science:

After discovering the new fungus wedged between cells in a stem from an Ulmo tree (Eucryphia cordifolia), Strobel and colleagues cultured the organism, collected the gaseous compounds it produced, and ran the compounds through a mass spectrometer to identify them. When he saw the printout, Strobel says, “every hair on my body stood up.” The list included octane, 1-octene, heptane, 2-methyl, and hexadecane–all common components of diesel fuels.

Although other microbes are known to make individual volatile hydrocarbons common in fuels, Strobel says none can match the synthetic repertoire of G. roseum, which makes a staggering 55 volatile hydrocarbons: “No one has ever observed anything like this with any microbe before.” He suspects that the fungus produces the hydrocarbon stew to inhibit other organisms from growing nearby.

So this little fungus gives off these noxious fumes in order to carve out a nook for itself to live, and this “perfume” just happens to be the same stuff that we humans rely on for transportation needs. My question is naturally, if we do find a way to harness this octane brew, will it still burn off into carbon dioxide?

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Seriously, this is pretty neat, that a small microorganism can produce gasoline and jet fuel, but how is producing renewable fuels that are burned and give off carbon dioxide among other gases help us in the long run? I agree that these fuel-producing microbes could alleviate “peak oil” and great loss we will all suffer when the eventual day comes when we run out of oil. But unless scientists can also find a microbe that can turn carbon dioxide into oh, let’s say, oxygen, I don’t see how these new biofuels, renewable or not, can help mitigate all that carbon dioxide we all have had a hand in pumping into Earth’s atmosphere.

However, to play the positive side of Lulu, this new fungus could provide impetus for people to preserve what little undisturbed wilderness we have left on this planet. If this little fungus was growing on a tree in Patagonia, who knows what is growing on trees in Canada’s arboreal forest, or the rainforess of Borneo. We could wipe out these trees and forests and other undisturbed ecosystems before we have the opportunity to stumble upon little hydrocarbon-producing fungi.

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I found this interesting, and disturbing, considering the amount of Pollock that we Americans consume. Recent studies are showing that Alaskan Pollock is moving to colder Russian waters.

This is from the LA Times.

Pollock spawn each winter near the Aleutian Islands and then follow their food north as waters warm in the spring. But the food has shifted farther north with receding sea ice, and now pollock, which follow the northwesterly contour of the continental shelf, are shifting their range ever closer to Russian waters.

Scientists who help manage the fishery are confirming what fishermen report: The fish disappear from the Aleutians area each summer and can mostly be found near Russia.

Every June and July, federal scientists trawl a grid pattern in the Bering Sea in an area about the size of California. Counting the fish caught in these trawls and matching them against sonar readings, they estimate the size of fish stocks. These assessments help set limits on the next year’s catch to safeguard spawning stock.

An analysis of 25 years of surveys showed that the ranges of most fish are shifting north as the ice and cool water have retreated, said Franz J. Mueter, a fisheries oceanographer at the University of Alaska.

“What we found confirmed the obvious,” Mueter said. “As waters warm, a lot of fish on the eastern Bering Sea shelf are moving north.”

Not all scientists agree. Some suggest that other factors need further study, including different migration patterns of older and younger fish, whether trawl data provide a complete picture of fish populations, and whether these waters are becoming overfished despite the Marine Stewardship Council’s eco-label certifying that the pollock fishery is managed sustainably.

So the implications of fewer pollock are many, indeed. Firstly, yeah, Americans eat a lot of the stuff, in fast-food, fishsticks (after all the cod disappeared), and imitation crab and lobster. Second, if the fish move to Russian waters, US fisherman will not be catching the pollock, thus putting more strain on other fisheries and the local Alaskan economy. What happens when the US is forced to import more fish? Also, with less fish being caught, prices will most likely go up, like the prices of just about everything lately. More still, do the Russians take fish stocks as seriously (and I can barely keep a straight face writing that) as the Americans? Sure, some scientists were allowed over the border now, but what happens in the future, especially if relations with the Russians continue to become chilly. Not only that, but what will happen to the Stellar sea lion as the pollock are a major part of their diet? Will they also follow the fish, and if so, will they continue to be as protected as they are in Alaskan waters? Yeah, there are lots of problems here.

Also, what of the larger implication of migrating fish stocks due to warming? How many other species will move out of US waters as we continue to pump carbon into the air and water? As it is right now, there a fewer and fewer fish that are considered “good choices” by environmental groups and oceanographic institutes across the world. Pollock is already in trouble as a commercial fish stock, despite many groups saying that it is sustainable, with recent reports that the recovery of the stocks is not going as swimmingly (couldn’t resist) as possible.

This is just more bad news for fish and the people and others predators who love to eat them.

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You may have heard something about India and China and the threat of their current industrialization and how that industrialized pollution in the way of increased emissions of greenhouse gases will affect the world’s climate. It is true that this is and will be a huge problem for all of us, but another issue with industrialization is the more localized pollution that comes with it.

Image by Nicolle Rager Fuller, National Science Foundation

India and China are playing catch-up with the rest of the industrialized world. That is one of the Bush’s administrations sticky points when it comes to not signing on to the Kyoto Protocol for all these years. Why should the US and Europe bother to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions when China and India are just starting to pump millions of tons of carbon into the air (and water) via new yet inefficient coal-fired power plants? I know, the admin’s attitude is mind-boggling and childish, but I didn’t vote for him, so it’s not like I can apologize for him and his handlers here. Instead of the US perhaps leading the innovation and technological boom in green industries and then exporting that technology and equipment to India and China, both the US economy would be doing well and China and India could go “green.” But no matter, I don’t have the space here to ruminate on the topic today.

India and China are currently heavily reliant on coal (so is the US, if you care to know). The problem with coal is that it is very dirty in addition to releasing tons of carbon upon being burned. Coal creates “brown clouds,” that is localized pollution of tiny soot particles that collect and act like their own mini-greenhouse.

Last year, National Geographic News covered a new study on these brown clouds.

But the latest study suggests that aerosols can be responsible for regional warming. Specifically, the clouds of aerosols over India enhance atmospheric warming there by 50 percent.

“We found this brown cloud can cover the entire North Indian Ocean, an area the size of the continental United States,” said lead author Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a climate scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

The haze of brown clouds over the region can be up to two miles (three kilometers) thick, Ramanathan said.

And the haze touches the lower parts of the glaciers in the Himalaya mountain range, said study co-author David Winker, principal investigator of the CALIPSO satellite at NASA’s Langley Research Center.

This suggests that the brown clouds may be contributing to glacial melting in the Himalaya.

Now there are differences in aerosols. Some are light colored and some dark. It is the dark aerosols that are the contributors to these brown clouds.

Brown clouds contain dark aerosols such as soot that are released into the atmosphere by burning organic matter.

These particles absorb solar energy and then release it to the surrounding air as heat.

Natural forces such as forest fires can create soot, but so can human actions such as burning fossil fuels.

…

But unlike greenhouse gases, light and dark aerosols are not distributed uniformly throughout the globe, said Peter Pilewskie, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder who was not involved in the study.

Averaging the effects of aerosols worldwide masks regional processes that “we need to truly understand when we put all the pieces of the planet together,” Pilewskie said.

Why does this all matter? The Himalayan ice cap is vital to the survival of China, India, and all their neighbors. And this ice cap, a network of thousands and thousands of glaciers, is melting, and fast.

The 15,000 Himalayan glaciers that create the “Water Tower of Asia” — the largest block of fresh water outside the Polar Ice Caps — have been melting forever. But they are suddenly melting so fast that they are drying up. It will take decades, but at the rate the earth is warming, they may simply disappear.

“Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world,” the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned last year. “If the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.”

If you are bothered by the “oil wars” we see today, just wait for the “water wars” of the future.

India, China, global warming, climate change, pollution, brown clouds, aerosols, greenhouse gases, industrialization, coal, power, energy, air pollution, soot, National Geographic, National Science Foundation

You may have heard of a strain of encephalitis: the West Nile Virus, with West Nile encephalitis being the most severe form. West Nile is actually a form of Japanese Encephalitis, a mosquito-borne disease that causes inflammation of the brain. There are other strains of encephalitis including Saint Louis (named for the American city where it was first diagnosed in 1933), La Crosse, Western and Eastern Equine, and tick-borne encephalitis.

The danger with encephalitis is that with other “vector-borne” or mosquito-borne diseases is that mosquito populations are generally held in check by cold winters around the world. Most mosquito-spread illnesses are mitigated by climate, but as we see the world warming up, tropical zones spreading into previously temperate areas, and winters becoming milder and wetter, mosquitoes that carry diseases are finding favorable conditions in more and more places.

Mosquito babies love stagnant water.

As far as the individual strains of vector-borne encephalitis go, they are all quite similar, as the virus is spread from an infected bird or mammal, and the animal’s blood carried by a mosquito will enter the bloodstream of the mosquito’s next victim, possibly a human. The virus, a flavivirus much like Malaria, will then enter the human’s bloodstream, and start to cause all sorts of damage if the disease becomes severe enough. Many times, the human host will not experience severe symptoms, maybe a headache with a fever. Severe symptoms can include neck stiffness, stupor, disorientation, coma and convulsions. Some cases result in death, up to 60% for Japanese encephalitis, but usually death occurs in older people and children. St. Louis encephalitis has a possible death rate of 5 to 30%.

Treatment for encephalitis is important, despite there being no specific medication to treat the disease. Severe cases are hospitalized, and support treatment is given. There is no vaccine currently approved by such health organizations as the Centers for Disease Control.

Another problem with some strains of encephalitis, like the La Crosse Strain, is that people are moving into areas that were previously left unpopulated, such as rural and wilderness areas in the Great Lakes region of the United States and into the hardwood forests of Midwest. Luckily, the La Crosse strain is still considered rare, but in areas of the world where growing populations are requiring more and more space, like Asia, encephalitis is more common.

The range of Japanese Encephalitis

Historical data of occurences of St Louis Encephalitis in the US from 1964.

West Nile cases in the US during 2008.

With a warming world, mosquitoes can be expected to not only survive winters, but find more favorable habitats. With global warming, precipitation increases. With more rain, both in quantity and incidence of storms, water will pool up and most likely not have the time to dry up. This water is like an invitation to mosquitoes. In the grand scheme of things, usually the same watering holes that host mosquito families will host frogs and other creatures that eat the mosquitoes. But mosquitoes can find a home in much smaller pools of standing water, and frogs need water that is more established as their life cycles take longer to move from tadpole to frog. More rain means more mosquitoes without the necessary increase in frogs. And don’t forget…the research lately has been showing that frogs are experiencing their own set of problems and a decrease in their numbers around the globe.

As with most arboviruses (arthopod-borne), it is important to avoid mosquito bites. Wear insect repellant, build bat boxes around your yard, wear long sleeves and pants when outside, avoid having standing water around your house and yard (even birdbaths and little ponds). Check out the CDC website for more information.

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We have been looking at the danger posed by once-tropical diseases spreading into more temperate zones as the world warms. Hey, that may be a good idea for a new soap opera, As the World Warms. Just remember, you heard it her first.

First we looked at Malaria and Dengue Fever, and today’s topic is our not-so-friendly stomach flora, Cholera.

The yellow areas are local cholera outbreaks, and the black dots represent imported reported cases. I believe Alaska is only colored yellow due to it being part of the US.

Cholera is a water-borne and food-borne (as water is a major component in food production) disease that is spread by the Vibrio cholerae bacterium. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), cholera has not been present in the industrialized nations in 100 years, other than the rare case of a traveler returning to a non-cholera country from a nation where cholera is common, for instance India and Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, cholera is currently at “pandemic” status in the poorer parts of the world

The major problem with getting cholera is that the bacterium causes an intestinal infection which leads to diarrhea. The problem with diarrhea is of course dehydration. If your body er, uh, ejects too much fluid before that fluid can be replenished, you can die. Remember in high school US history classes, when you were studying any of the major wars, and it would come up that not every casualty was due to violence, but that some soldiers died from things like dysentery. Dysentery is a severe intestinal infection that also causes rather horrible diarrhea…a terrible way to die.

Cholera is easily treated, but that treatment is important to get in the first few hours if the infection is bad enough. But what is bad enough, and how do I know if I get it, you may be asking. Hopefully, you will never have to worry about cholera — at least not in the industrialized world. Effective sewer systems and water treatment processes have for the most part eliminated the presence of cholera in the US and Europe, although the bacterium can exist in these areas. Some people get cholera from eating raw seafood from the Gulf of Mexico, but the chances for that are fairly low, so I don’t want you to panic. I write about cholera because of the relationship between cholera (and other tropical diseases) and a warmer world.

Cholera is commonly associated with higher sea temperatures.

From the Environmental Protection Agency’s page on climate change:

…algal blooms could occur more frequently as temperatures warm — particularly in areas with polluted waters — in which case diseases (such as cholera) that tend to accompany algal blooms could become more frequent.

Also, warmer waters accompany rising sea levels, which could flood areas and contaminate water meant for agricultural uses and drinking water. Higher need for potable water due to increased population may also strain sewer systems and treatment plants efficacy. I promise I am not trying to scare you, but a warmer climate can change the playing field when it comes to combating pandemics like cholera.

Here is a cute little rule of thumb when choosing water and food when traveling, or when the US turns tropical.

Boil it, cook it, peel it, or forget it.

tropical disease, diseases, cholera, malaria, dengue fever, Centers for Disease Control, CDC, pandemic, dehydration, India, Africa, US, Gulf of Mexico, World Health Organization, sewer system, water treatment, water, travel, algal blooms, sea level rise, climate change, global warming

This is post is part of a series that is looking at the impending danger of tropical diseases moving into temperate areas. The cause of this migration is the actual movement or rather expansion of the tropics themselves, thanks to global warming and climate change.

Dengue Fever

Dengue fever is also spread by a mosquito, much like malaria. In dengue fever’s case it is the Aedes mosquito that transmits the four different strains of the flavivirus. For the most part, dengue is not super-serial, er, i mean super serious (accidental channeling of the South Park version of Al Gore, sorry), but can become serious in two ways. Dengue is more than capable of *ahem* going viral (goodness, I am full of mischief today), that is becoming an epidemic or even worse, a pendemic; or it may become a more dangerous case of Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever. The ‘hemorr-’ prefix is not usually a good one, referring to hemorraging blood.

Dengue symptoms include severe headaches, severe muscle and joint pain, and a red rash that can cover the entire body. Sometimes there can be gastrointestinal distress (I love that phrase) as well. If the fever gets bad enough, that is when the hemorraging starts, and finally you die. Ok, that was glib, but death does occur in about 5% of untreated cases, one percent for those who do receive proper medical care.

Dengue fever breaks out in most places, and is endemic to the United States, mostly in the South. Epidemics break out here and there in tropical countries every so often, being recorded as far back at the late 1700’s. And why the 1700’s? Because that’s when Europeans colonized the tropics, and our history is Euro-centric, obviously, because I will bet you dollars to doughnuts that dengue has been around a long, long time. No matter here as I am not letting myself continue on my diatribe about “history.” Moving on…

Dengue Fever breaks out enough to affect 50 to 100 million people around the world. Only a few hundred thousand get dengue hemorrhagic fever. Usually these cases happen in the tropics, or maybe among travelers that had visited tropical climates. However, the tropical bands that circle this planet between what had traditional been the two “Tropics” of Cancer and Capricorn are spreading north and south into sub-tropical regions and those subtropical regions are likewise spreading up into temperate zones. This may not seem like a big deal to you there in Minnesota, and will hopefully never be a big deal, but just think about how much hotter and wetter your summers have been in the last twenty years? Wetter and hotter means more mosquitoes. No, but seriously, it may not be a big deal for those of you living above the 35th parallel (or south of it in the Southern Hemisphere), but things only seem to be getting hotter…

I’ll break it down for you. If it doesn’t freeze in the winter, the terrori– mosquitoes win.

By the way, the Centers for Disease Control think that dengue is pretty dengue serious. Oh my, what is wrong with me today?

In 2005, dengue is the most important mosquito-borne viral disease affecting humans; its global distribution is comparable to that of malaria, and an estimated 2.5 billion people live in areas at risk for epidemic transmission (Figure 4). Each year, tens of millions of cases of DF occur and, depending on the year, up to hundreds of thousands of cases of DHF. The case-fatality rate of DHF in most countries is about 5%, but this can be reduced to less than 1% with proper treatment. Most fatal cases are among children and young adults.

Many more cases probably go unreported each year because surveillance in the United States is passive and relies on physicians to recognize the disease, inquire about the patient’s travel history, obtain proper diagnostic samples, and report the case. These data suggest that states in southern and southeastern United States, where Ae. aegypti is found, are at risk for dengue transmission and sporadic outbreaks.

Here’s Figure 4.

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Yesterday, I started a series of posts on tropical diseases that are spreading into areas that until recently had not been present or at least not typically present, like North America and Europe. In short, tropical zones are spreading into previously temperate areas and bringing tropical diseases with them.

Malaria kills over one million people a year, mostly in tropical areas like Sub-Saharan and Equatorial Africa. However, according to the Centers for Disease Control, 300 to 500 million people suffer from malaria every year. Symptoms include fever, chills, headaches, vomiting, and sometimes seizures in young children. The earlier that malaria is diagnosed and treated, the better the chances for a full recovery. But as malaria is not seen in such places like Michigan and New Jersey, the symptoms are often mis-diagnosed, meaning that the disease will not be treated properly and the chances of more severe consequences increase. When malaria is left untreated, victims can experience kidney failure, cardiovascular collapse, and slip into a coma. People that don’t live in malaria-prone areas are at higher risk as they have no immunity to the disease. Pregnant woman, children, and anyone with a compromised immune system are also at increased risk of more severe cases of malaria.

Malaria is spread by Plasmodium (Plasmodium falciparum or Plasmodium vivax) parasite carried by the Anopheles mosquito from human host to human host.

This is what is looks like when the parasite starts attacking your red blood cells.

Malaria can be treated with several drugs, and treatment should start within 24 hours of the appearance of the first symptoms. So you can see why proper diagnosis is so important. However, scientists are finding that plasmodium parasites are becoming resistant to many of the older drugs currently on the market mostly in poorer countries and areas of the world afflicted by malaria. Malaria prevention by way of mosquito control is touted as the best way to combat the disease, but now that the range for the anopheles mosquito is spreading, this is becoming increasingly difficult.

Here is a map that shows the classic range of malaria.

But as the world warms, and winters become milder, warmer, and wetter, the necessary cold temperatures that kill off the mosquito populations in temperate areas are not quite effective and becoming less so in the fight to keep malaria at bay in temperate North America and Europe. Malaria had been endemic to North America, but stringent preventive measures have effectively wiped out the disease in the US. But with the looming danger of global warming trends, malaria may be posed to once again be endemic in the US.

By the way, quinine is one of the oldest medicines for treating malaria. Quinine comes from the bark of the cinchona tree, native to South America. Quinine was first made into a powder by the French for ingestion, but really hit its mark when the British mixed it with soda water (and gin, of course). You could say that quinine is what made colonization of certain parts of the world possible, as Africa was once called the “white man’s grave.”

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You may remember years ago when SARS broke out and with it fears that this disease could spread with human hosts as they traveled across the globe? Well, it is true that diseases can spread through the human hosts in this age of trans-global travel, and if that happens, it can be dangerous. But something else is happening to spread diseases that just don’t exist everywhere.

Tropical diseases don’t usually show up in places like Europe and North America, but they are starting to, and this problem may get worse before it gets better.

At the heart of the problem is that it is the tropics themselves that are on the move, and with them come certain insect-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.

I had written on tropical diseases moving into Europe back in January. And now, I have run across more bad news and this time it is coming from the World Health Organization. The Nobel-prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has already noted that more and more people will be afflicted by tropical diseases, and why? Global warming and climate change. The warmer parts of the world, where many lethal diseases thrive, are expanding their range into formerly temperate regions. And with milder winters, insects and other disease-carrying organisms are not killed off during winter months, and thus expanding their range every year.

A study published last December in Nature Geoscience reported that tropical zones are moving at a much faster rate than computer models had predicted.

Scientists have found that, during the past 25 years the equatorial region classified as climatologically tropical has expanded polewards by about 172 miles which has meant that a further 8.5 million sq miles of the Earth are now experiencing a tropical climate, compared to 1980.

The study was carried out by Dian Seidel of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington, her colleagues from the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and the universities of Washington in Seattle and Utah in Salt Lake City.

They found that, during the past quarter-century, the area defined as tropical, based on a list of five recognised climatological criteria, has moved further north and south by about 2.5 degrees of latitude, or about 172 miles in total in both directions. That is greater than the predicted shift of 2 degrees by 2100 predicted under the “extreme scenario” envisaged by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. –The Independent

What is a “tropical” region? Of course, we think of palm trees and mai tais, but that is really not what we are talking about when we discuss tropical diseases. Tropical regions receive more sunlight than anywhere else. If you need a simple definition, you can use a globe and check out the area between the “Tropics” of Cancer and Capricorn. But scientifically-speaking, the tropics are wetter. Warmer air can hold more moisture, and the tropics have the hottest air thus the wettest air. As you move away from the tropics, air cools and thus the “sub-tropics” have less moisture in the air. Meanwhile, that moisture has fallen somewhere before hitting the sub-tropics. So not only is the air in the tropics wet, but there is an awful lot of precipitation in the tropics. That much water can create very inviting environments for such disease-carrying insects like the mosquito.

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