New Tool Helps Great Lakes Cities, Businesses Predict Harmful Algae Blooms

Last year’s record-setting Lake Erie algae bloom hurt many tourism businesses like charter fishing and resorts that depend on clean water and beaches. The high concentrations of toxins from the blue-green algae also meant cities like Toledo had to spend more money to clean up drinking water. This summer, federal researchers unveiled a new tool for forecasting seasonal algae blooms. Independent producer Karen Schaefer reports that scientists are hoping it can help cities and businesses across the Great Lakes and the nation plan ahead.

SCHAEFER:  This year, the thick ooze of green slime that coated docks and bays in western Lake Erie in 2011 is gone. That’s largely thanks to the drought, which reduced rainfall and nutrient runoff from farms and cities. But National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researcher Rick Stumpf was taking no chances back in July, when he tested the water near Put-in-Bay in Lake Erie for chorophyll and phycocyanin, the pigment that’s produced by toxic blue-green algae.

STUMPF: This is a porometer…We get a bucket, pour it in here and we get a reading…So first I’ll test for chlorophyll. And it’s reading. Reading…

SCHAEFER: Stumpf is demonstrating how local data collectors at Ohio State University’s Stone Lab will be testing the water for signs of the algae bloom in coming years.

STUMPF: We came up with one microgram of chlorophyll, which is low – which is not surprising considering how clear the water is. Now I’ll read for phycocyanin. Reading.. Reading…

SCHAEFER: Harmful algae has been once again plaguing Lake Erie. But last year’s bloom was literally off the charts, as bad or worse than the 1970′s, when Lake Erie was unofficially declared “dead.” Mark Monaco, director for NOAA’s Center of Coastal Monitoring and Marine Assessment, says blue-green algae, also known as cyanobacteria, emits harmful toxins that last year exceeded public health warnings.

MONACO: Some of the concentrations we’ve seen in the lake last year, you probably wouldn’t want your dog swimming in it, based on World Health Organization recommendations. In addition to the economic impact of people not going to the beach and people not wanting to put their lure into the green slime. This isn’t just a fun little science study, these have real economic impacts on how people use the lake.

SCHAEFER: Using ten-years of water quality data from Heidelberg University in Ohio, along with satellite photos showing previous blooms, NOAA scientists predicted that this year’s Lake Erie algae would be only a tenth the size of the 2011 record. And they were right. Rick Stumpf says this is NOAA’s first national attempt at a seasonal algae forecast. He believes local businesses will benefit from the advance notice.

STUMPF: It provides an opportunity for planning, for governments to plan to decide what resources to use, if it’s a utility, if it’s a person planning for vacation, if it’s charter boat captains, so they have some idea what to expect in a season. And we’ve heard from various managers how it’s an incredibly important thing, because given the budget challenges that state and local governments have now.

SCHAEFER: Recreational businesses like Cedar Point, a Lake Erie amusement park, say they’re thrilled to have a tool that that lets them alert consumers to beach closings and swimming prohibitions. But Jeff Reutter, head of Ohio’s Sea Grant program, believes it’s equally important that the new forecasting tool applies to other algae-infested areas, from Traverse City, Michigan and Green Bay, Wisconsin, to the Potomac River, Chesapeake Bay, and parts of Florida and Texas.

REUTTER: There are many other places, not just in Ohio or across the country, but around the world, where the same information ought to be applicable. In some places…it will be where people like the NOAA guys can take their model, make a few tweaks to it, and make it work in a totally different ecosystem.

SCHAEFER: NOAA scientists say what will make this Lake Erie model work in different places, including smaller inland lakes, is the systematic collection of water quality data over a period of years. They believe that local data will not only help in assessing harmful algae blooms, but will also assist in monitoring other ecological impacts, such as climate change. For Great Lakes Echo, I’m Karen Schaefer.

By Karen Schaefer@greatlakesecho.org

The Right to Clean Water

It’s natural for those of us who live in this part of the state to assume that all Californians enjoy clean drinking water, just as we do. But that’s simply not the case, which is why the State Legislature passed and Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed AB 685, the Human Right to Water measure. It’s part of a package of laws passed and signed since 2011 that codify the public’s right to have access to clean water.

In August 2010 the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water, Catarina de Albuquerque, issued a report citing a host of alarming clean-drinking-water shortages in California, most of them in the poorest areas of the San Joaquin Valley. The report noted that more than 250,000 families were reliant for drinking water on shallow wells contaminated by agricultural-chemical toxins. Many of them were spending as much as 20 percent of their meager incomes to purchase bottled water.

Calling passage of the bill an “inspiring example” for governments everywhere, de Albuquerque noted that with the new law, water and sanitation will be placed at the center of public-policy formulation to ensure that all people in California have access to affordable, accessible, acceptable and safe water and sanitation in sufficient amounts to protect their health and dignity.

It’s one thing to establish a policy and quite another to put it in action, however. Getting clean water to those without it will take work and cost money. Now that people have a legal right to clean water, it will be up to water providers and state and local governments to come up with a comprehensive plan for making it accessible and to set up a special fund for that purpose.

newsreview.com

2011 Reed Elsevier Environmental Challenge 1st Prize Winner

Recipient of the $50,000 first prize, the Tagore-SenGupta Foundation installed an arsenic groundwater removal system using locally available chemical compounds and reusable sand filters in remote villages and schools in Cambodia.

Mercury Found in Camp Lejeune Water Plant Pipe

Camp Lejeune, the coastal Marine base with a history of problems with its drinking water, shut down one of its water treatment plants after about 8 pounds of the type of the mercury found in thermometers was discovered last week in a pipe in the facility.

Elemental mercury was found Saturday in the pipe at Hadnot Point Water Treatment Plant during maintenance, base spokesman Nat Fahy said Friday. Tests conducted after the discovery showed none of the elemental mercury in the water, Fahy said.

The plant will stay offline during repairs that include inspecting the entire plant for mercury. Areas that normally get their water from Hadnot Point will instead be serviced by the Holcomb Boulevard plant.

About 1 pint of mercury, weighing 8 pounds, was found, Fahy said. A likely source is water pressure meters containing elemental mercury that were removed from the plant in the 1980s and replaced with digital meters.

Elemental mercury is found in items such as thermometers and fluorescent bulbs. The Environmental Protection Agency says it’s generally not found in elevated levels in drinking water, and Fahy said any impact on human health is remote since this form of mercury doesn’t dissolve in water.

It’s also very dense, 10 times heavier than water.

Health officials believe as many as 1 million people may have been exposed to tainted groundwater at the base over several decades. In August, President Barack Obama signed a bill into law providing health benefits to Marines and family members exposed to contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune from 1957 to 1987.

Documents show Marines leaders were slow to respond when tests in the early 1980s showed higher than normal levels of contaminates in groundwater at the base, likely caused by leaking fuel tanks and an off-base dry cleaner.

By Martha Waggoner@ap.org

Water Matters

Earth is known as the blue planet because of the vast quantities of water that predominate the surface of the planet. It is surmised that life began in those waters. Regardless of how true that assertion is, the fact is that life on this planet is made possible through a combination of factors amongst which water is as critical as say oxygen or sunlight that is filtered to warm the earth without burning it. So having over 70 per cent of the planet's surface covered in water sounds good except that life is sustained on earth through freshwater and all the seas and oceans of the world are filled with saline water. And unlike the seawaters, freshwater is shrinking commodity. 

Of the 71 per cent water covering the planet's surface, only 3 per cent is non saline. And that 3 per cent is distributed across the forms; glaciers , rivers, lakes and ground water. Not only is the human body composed primarily of water but water is one of the fundamental premises for life on earth across life forms; birds, bees and all things that breathe need water. Unfortunately, so do all other things such as agriculture and industry. Simply put, life is water intensive . Possibly the biggest problem we face is one that is entirely man made: pollution of water sources. Urban centres in India and in many other countries are faced with the mammoth task of not only providing access to clean drinking water but of dealing with the waste that is generated. Statistically, one of the biggest challenges in development around the world is posed by the need to provide everyone with access to clean water for consumption . Its lack equals a whole lot of diseases. A disproportionately large number of deaths can be related to water : lack of clean drinking water and sanitation is now the single largest cause of illness worldwide. It is estimated that by 2020, more people will have died due to water borne diseases and the lack of clean water than the HIV/AIDS pandemic. 

The increasing pollution of our rivers, the overdrawing of water from underground sources which is leading to the lowering of the water table alarmingly, and the constantly increasing demand for access to clean water are all leading to a very severe crisis in the making - water scarcity. So how do we work towards averting that crisis even as we deal with the developmental challenge of providing people with access to clean water? 

Conserve water 
Every drop conserved is, in the long run more valuable than oil. So, make sure that your taps don't run while you brush your teeth, dripping taps should be fixed immediately and in every activity of daily life that needs water be conscious of how much you actually need and how much you waste thoughtlessly. Remember , water is a finite resource ; it will disappear thanks to our interruption of the water life cycle and when that happens you will regret every drop you wasted . On a more optimistic note, if each of us who are lucky enough to have access to running water around the clock undertook to reduce our consumption by a mere 1 litre per day (which, if you actually work it out, is less than the amount you waste in a day), it could make a substantial difference. It would ease the strain on the infrastructure and allow more people access to clean water since the same quantity would be able to serve more people. 

Rainwater harvesting 
It is perhaps the simplest way of not only conserving water but of saving the planet in the long run. Rainwater harvesting is a method of channelling rainwater under the ground, allowing for the replenishment of the ground water table. In urban areas, as a result of concretisation and tarred surfaces , most of the water runs off into the sewage system instead of soaking into the earth. Given that it is our abuse of the water resources that is causing a crisis , it is our duty to do everything that we can to help the water cycle. And rainwater harvesting is amongst the easiest of solution. While it is now mandatory for government buildings, it can easily be implemented at the level of individual households too. And only then can it become effective. The problem is immediate, and if the solutions are not immediate then the future looks extremely dry. 


timesofindia.com

Drinking Water Contamination a Concern

Each year, 850 billion gallons of wastewater enters the U.S. public drinking water supply because of aging or inadequate water systems. That’s equivalent to 13.6 trillion eight-ounce glasses.

When we turn on the tap most of us assume that what comes out is safe to drink. It’s an advantage of living in a first world country where our cities’ water is carefully monitored and our rural areas are regularly checked for contaminants. However, according to George Washington University’s Face the Facts initiative, drinking water contamination is a reality. Each year, 850 billion gallons of wastewater enter the U.S. public drinking water supply because of aging or inadequate water systems. That’s equivalent to 13.6 trillion eight-ounce glasses.

The EPA says U.S water systems need $500 billion in maintenance and new capital investment by 2020. So what does that mean for us?

According to the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service there are four general groups of contaminants that can end up in our water: microbial pathogens (bacteria, parasites, and viruses), organics (pesticides, solvents, degreasers, and trihalomthanes), inorganics (heavy metals and other compounds), and radioactive elements.  Generally speaking, many of these contaminants are found in our average drinking water, but they are in such a minute dose that the water is considered safe to drink by  the EPA.

The Centers for Disease Control have identified a number of diseases that are possible through contaminated water in public water systems. The number one health issue associated with drinking contaminated water is campylobacteriosis. It is an infectious disease caused by bacteria that may be found in public water sources. It causes diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain, and fever within two to five days of exposure and typically these symptoms may last up to a week. This disease can also be life threatening in people with compromised immune systems (such as the very young or the very old).

Other health concerns from drinking contaminated water include E. coli, hepatitis A, and salmonella all of which can be life threatening if untreated or undiagnosed. 

It’s not just our drinking water that is at risk. Those same contaminants in our drinking water can wreak havoc on our crops. The U.S. National Library of Medicine has researched the effects of using contaminated water on crops and these studies showed high levels of microbial contamination in vegetables irrigated with wastewater.

While the United States enjoys some of the safest water in the world, the effects of these billions of gallons of wastewater entering our public water supply can impact the quality of fruits and vegetables across the entire country. Even for those whose water is safe.

Testing the quality of your water has never been easier though. Most major hardware stores (like Lowe’s or Home Depot) offer water testing clinics or provide kits that allow consumers to test the quality of their home water for themselves. These may be necessary investments in the future if the treatment of our wastewater does not become a more pressing concern.

voxxi.com

China's Yangtze River Runs Mysteriously Red

China's Yangtze river, the third longest in the world, turned red on Thursday afternoon, state television reported.

State broadcaster CCTV said that the environmental protection bureau in Chongqing had ruled out the possibilities of industrial and sewage pollution causing the river to turn red.

"It's not a problem," one boatman said in Chongqing. "The water colour is within the normal range. For us boatmen, the colour just means the river is washing its water.

"But the colour this year is redder and darker," he added.

Investigations are still underway but authorities said silt deposits brought in by floods from upstream were a likely cause for the color.


todayonline.com

Students Create Low-Cost Biosensor to Detect Contaminated Water in Developing Nations

This shows 2012 ASU iGEM team members and summer assistants: (back, L-R) Carlos Alvarado, Ethan Ward, Melinda Jenner (summer assist.), Hyder Hussein, Ryan Muller, Joe Barth (summer assist.); (front, L-R) Nisarg Patel, Amanda Ispas, Madeline Sands, Ellen Qin, and Abhinav Markus.

Diarrheal disease is the second leading cause of death in children under five years old — killing as many as 1.5 million children worldwide every year. These startling statistics from the World Health Organization (2009) point to the reason why a group of undergraduate students from Arizona State University is working to develop a low-cost biosensor — a simple device that would detect contaminated drinking water.

An interdisciplinary team of nine students is participating in the 2012 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition — a prestigious global event that challenges students to design and build simple biological systems made from standard, interchangeable parts.

The ASU team started its research during the summer to prepare for the competition. Its goal is to create a user-friendly, DNA-based biosensor that can detect major pathogens. The low-cost device would be used in the field rather than in a laboratory.

"We are developing a biosensor that will detect pathogenic bacteria, such as Shigella, Salmonella, and E. coli, that cause diarrhea," said Ryan Muller, an undergraduate student in ASU's School of Life Sciences and an iGEM team leader. "Ideally, you would use our biosensor to check different water supplies in third world countries to determine whether the water is safe to drink."

The team is working on two biosensor designs.

"The first one targets DNA," explained Nisarg Patel, a molecular biosciences and biotechnology major in School of Life Sciences, as well as a political science major. "Since each type of pathogen has different DNA, we want to create complementary sequences — sequences that match a specific DNA. We will take bacterial samples from the water, pull out the DNA and check whether it complements our DNA probe. If it does, it will produce a color response and then we'll know that the water is contaminated."

Made for portability, Patel said the second design tests the membranes of bacteria. When using the device to test water, if certain proteins attach to a bacterial membrane, the sample will turn blue — indicating the water is contaminated with a pathogen and would not be safe to drink.

"The advantage of this design over previous designs in the field lies in the cheap production of probes and the enzymatic chain reaction," said Abhinav Markus, a biomedical engineering student in Ira A Fulton Schools of Engineering. "Samples can be tested in the field with minimal cost and high sensitivity."

When the ASU iGEM team first met this summer, Madeline Sands, an anthropology major in the university's School of Human Evolution and Social Change, pitched the idea to build a low-cost biosensor. Sands previously traveled to Guatemala as part of an ASU field experience. There, she conducted community health research under the direction of Jonathan Maupin, a medical anthropologist. Sands realized that contaminated water presents a serious health problem for developing countries.

"With constant earthquakes, landslides and rains in Guatemala, it can often be difficult to determine if a water source is contaminated," said Sands. "My time there made it clear that having a way to detect contaminated water could lead to a further reduction in the incidence and morbidity of diarrhea."

In October, the team will present its device during the iGEM regional competition at Stanford University. If successful, they will move on to the global competition in November at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

sciencecodex.com

Egypt: Monufiya's Contaminated Water and Low Supply

Residents of Sansaft, a village in Monufiya Governorate, are suffering from an epidemic of severely contaminated local water supplies. Reports of the outbreak began to surface on Tuesday, just after Eid al-Fitr, as residents began rushing to local hospitals after falling ill.

The Health Ministry says dozens checked into public hospitals, with symptoms of severe abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting. But residents claim the poisoned water has afflicted thousands to differing degrees.

One 70-year-old Sansaft resident, Om Abdel Naby Ghoneim, died a few days ago. Locals blame her death on the contaminated water, but the Health Ministry says it was “age-related.”

Quick analyses of the village’s water station were done at a local hospital, confirming that it was polluted, though detailed studies have not yet taken place.

As a result of the outbreak, continuous protests at water sanitation facilities and government offices have blamed these institutions for the epidemic, amid several altercations with officials. In one instance, protesters held Health Minister Mohamed Mostafa Hamed and Governor Ashraf Helal in a hospital room for an hour, holding a bottle of brackish-looking water and chanting, “Drink it! Drink it!” until the police set them free.

To alleviate protests, the governorate has been providing residents with large containers of water and bottled water for consumption. But it still remains unknown why Sansaft residents have been falling ill since Eid.

“It is strange that it has broken out so suddenly,” says Ahmed Shaaban, vice president of the National Research Center. “Detailed studies need to be done to all water supplies.”

He explains that a handful of contamination cases are normal, but not thousands in a couple of days.

One resident told Al-Masry Al-Youm that during Eid, while sanitation station workers were away, residents reconnected their pump to the government station instead, which proved unfit for human consumption.

Another National Research Center spokesperson, who wanted to remain anonymous, says it is likely that a harmful virus entered several local water outlets at the same time.

But despite the whole country experiencing water contamination issues, why has Monufiya’s water been hit so severely?

Experts say the problem is nothing new for Monufiya Governorate, and this outbreak is simply the latest and worst case.

Mohamed Fathy, plant pathology professor at Monufiya University and organic waste management specialist, says the problem stems from the governorates’ general lack of sewage systems and waste infrastructure.

“Monufiya has the worse waste management infrastructure in all of Egypt,” he says, adding that almost 90 percent of Monufiya villages do not have access to proper infrastructure.

Therefore, most farmers and villagers, with poor education concerning waste management, will dump their septic tank contents in canals and rivers or bury them in the soil.

“Monufiya has many small farmers, so human waste and hazardous chemical waste from farms, plus all the ordinary waste, leak back into the farmland, and then into the water supplies,” he says.

“What the residents of Sansaft are protesting, whether they realize it or not, is decades of no infrastructure or education, which is then actually the government’s fault,” says Fathy. “The solution will need to come from many angles, not just cleaning the water in question.”

Shaaban says Health Ministry officials have said extensive research is being done, but the National Research Center has not yet been asked to do any. The Health Ministry was unable to comment.

But, despite health officials quickly rushing to provide residents with bottled water in the interim, another problem has arisen.

In June, Health Ministry officials conducting their monthly tests of various local bottled water companies ordered the shutdown of seven brands after finding pollutants in their well waters.

Alpha, Hadir, Seway, Aqua Delta, Tiba Aqua Mina and Aqua Soteir’s production lines were closed down, considerably reducing the availability of bottled water for consumers, which hit particularly hard during Ramadan.

Shaaban explains that these companies’ water did not comply with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) safety guidelines, falling under the quality parameters of the international organization.

“These parameters concern the chemical groups’ composition, the bacteriological parameters and the presence of parasites, amoebas, viruses, organic metals or volatile organic compounds in the water,” he says.

The WHO, in its water safety guidelines, puts a primary emphasis on preventing or reducing the entry of pathogens into water sources. Officials found protozoa in the bottled water samples, transmitted by fecal cysts of contaminated water.

Shaaban says pollution from nearby sources of wastewater discharges from septic tanks and agricultural waste water caused this parasite to be found in the well water, and later in the bottled water.

Another problem is the shallowness of the wells. “A lot of companies have rather shallow wells — between 50 and 300 meters below ground — when pure, healthy water is found much deeper,” he says.

With seven mineral companies off the market, providing customers with sufficient, “safe” bottled water has turned out to be an impossible mission.

Despite a recent declaration by the health minister asserting that the remaining companies would manage to supply the market, shops and supermarkets nationwide have struggled to meet the demand.

Waheed Tharwat is the owner of a usually well-stocked grocery store in Dokki. The fridges at the back of the shop are crammed with sodas, juices and even imported fresh cream, but the shelf reserved for water bottles is completely empty.

“I received one box of water yesterday that I bought for LE36,” he says. “I buy each bottle for LE3, it’s enraging. The supply is extremely random — every day, I give a call to the Nestle supplier, and every day he promises to come. But he rarely does.”

Nestle’s two brands of bottled water, Baraka and Nestle Pure, have passed Health Ministry inspections and are considered safe.

But despite being Egypt’s largest bottled water company and holding about 50 percent of the market, it is unable to comply with the recent spike in demand.

“The market for bottled water in Egypt grows by 20 percent each year,” says one Nestle official who wishes to remain anonymous. “And it has become one of the most dynamic sectors of the food and beverage industry.”

He says that since the seven companies were shut down, Nestle has increased its production. But it cannot cover the whole market and would need two years to do so.

The 175-meter deep Nestle well is located in Banha, the capital of Qalyubiya Governorate in the Delta. The official says the well water there is tested once or twice a month by a Health Ministry team.

“We also run weekly water quality tests through our quality engineers and send the results to Switzerland to Nestle’s head office,” he adds.

It is not possible at this stage to predict when the bottled water supply will return to normal, in a country in which 1 million water bottles are sold every day.

Despite the contamination of tap water in Monufiya Governorate, Shaaban still says people living in major cities can consume tap water.

“But no one in the Delta should drink tap water. The derelict state of the infrastructure makes it too risky,” he stresses.

He says that, in terms of home filters, the safest option is an ultraviolet filter, which kills the bacteria.

“The normal filter is not a safe option because when the water flow stops, bacteria and microorganisms multiply and accumulate in the distribution system. When opening the tap, all these particles will be flushed in the glass, and this is hazardous to health.”

egyptindependent.com

Hundreds of people in the Egyptian town of Menoufia have fallen ill after drinking contaminated water. As patients with similar symptoms - severe vomiting and diarrhoea - fill hospitals , many locals say the government is not doing enough to provide proper treatment for those affected. Experts are seeking the cause of the contamination. But the problem reflects years of neglect for basic infrastructure in the country. Jacky Rowland reports from Menoufia.

UK Mobilizes Aid as Cholera Sweeps Sierra Leone

The UK government has activated a £2 million emergency plan to help tackle a cholera epidemic sweeping through Sierra Leone.

The Department for International Development (DfID) says it is using a network that includes private businesses and specialist aid organisations to deliver emergency medical, water and sanitation assistance to
affected people in the west African state.

So far, some 200 people have died and 12,000 have been infected by the water-borne disease, which causes severe vomiting and diarrhoea and can kill within hours if left untreated.

It is the first time the UK has used the network, called the Rapid Response Facility, since it was established in March.

Save the Children, International Rescue Committee, Oxfam, Concern, Care International and the British Red Cross have mobilised as part of the emergency response.

The DfID plans to help provide clean water and sanitation to nearly two million people as well as direct treatment for up to 4,500 people affected by the disease. Anti-cholera drugs and water 
purification kits will also be shipped to Sierra Leone.

DfID Secretary Andrew Mitchell said: “The cholera epidemic in Sierra Leone is fast becoming a crisis, with millions potentially at risk.

“The UK is – for the first time – activating the Rapid Response Facility, its network of private sector and aid experts to make sure we get aid to where it is needed, fast.

“We will monitor closely to make sure every penny of British aid supports those in dire need.”

The department’s private sector partners will supply the majority of the aid organisations’ relief supplies and logistics in the coming days.

Cholera has spread quickly across West Africa, getting significantly worse in the last few weeks, with almost half those infected in Sierra Leone – the worst epidemic in the country for two decades. The outbreak has been most severe in the capital, Freetown, which has a mix of poor sanitation, high population density and limited health services.

Save the Children said aid agencies face a race against time to get preventative measures in place before the crisis reaches its expected peak in three weeks’ time.

It said ten of Sierra Leone’s 13 districts are affected by the disease and it is responding by assisting government treatment units, providing clean water and increasing the number of community health workers.

Heather Kerr, Save the Children’s country director for Sierra Leone, said: “If we can’t get this outbreak under control quickly and comprehensively, it has the potential to kill many more children. Children die very quickly from cholera if they don’t receive immediate medical help.

“The sheer volume of people who are contracting 
the disease means that aid agencies need more funding now to respond more efficiently to this devastating outbreak.”

scotsman.com

Last week Sierra Leone declared a national emergency following a cholera epidemic that has killed at least 176 people since January. The water-borne disease is also sweeping through neighbouring Guinea and has been recorded in other countries in West Africa.

Cholera Epidemic Envelops Coastal Slums in West Africa

                                             The shore of a quarter in Freetown, Sierra Leone, was littered with trash.

A fierce cholera epidemic is spreading through the coastal slums of West Africa, killing hundreds and sickening many more in one of the worst regional outbreaks in years, health experts said.

Cholera, transmitted through contact with contaminated feces, was made worse this year by an exceptionally heavy rainy season that flooded the sprawling shantytowns in Freetown and Conakry, the capitals of Sierra Leone and neighboring Guinea.

In both countries, about two-thirds of the population lack toilets, a potentially lethal threat in the rainy season because of the contamination of the water supply. Doctors Without Borders said there had been nearly twice as many cholera cases so far this year as there were in the same period in 2007 in Sierra Leone and Guinea, when it said the area experienced its last major outbreak.

Already, more than 13,000 people suffering from the disease’s often fatal symptoms — diarrhea, vomiting and severe dehydration — have been admitted to hospitals in the two nations’ capitals, and 250 to 300 have died, Doctors Without Borders said.

In Sierra Leone, the government declared the cholera outbreak a national emergency last week, while aid workers in Guinea said the outbreak was unlikely to have reached its peak yet. Both countries have been wracked by years of civil and political unrest, with Sierra Leone still recovering from a decade of bloody civil war that drove thousands from rural areas into the city’s slums, and with Guinea emerging from a half-century of often brutal dictatorship.

Rains have already contributed to cholera deaths in the landlocked nations of Mali and Niger as well, health officials said.

Aid workers said the number of cases of the highly contagious disease continued to increase, particularly in Freetown, where most live in slums and children swim in polluted waters. Often, patients arrive at treatment centers in poor condition.

“They come barely conscious because they are severely dehydrated,” said Natasha Reyes Ticzon, a cholera field coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Freetown. “We’ve had some deaths because they come too late.”

There have been more than 11,600 cholera cases in Sierra Leone since January, at least 216 of them fatal, according to the country’s health minister, Zainab Bangura. More than 1,000 new cases a week are being recorded in Freetown, health officials said.

In Guinea, there have been 80 deaths out of 2,700 cases so far.

“There has been heavy rain throughout the past month, and this is not helping,” said Danicel Mouqué of Doctors Without Borders in Conakry. The houses of cholera patients are being sprayed with chlorine to stem the spread of the disease, Mr. Mouqué said.

In the 14 countries of West and Central Africa there have been 40,799 cholera cases this year, and 846 deaths, with over half the reported cases originating in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Unicef said those figures were comparable to the regional totals for 2011, when there were more than 105,000 cases and nearly 3,000 deaths in what was considered to be one of the greater region’s worst cholera epidemics.

Whereas last year’s epidemic was focused on the Lake Chad area of Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad and Niger, this year it is concentrated on the coast.

As in Freetown, sanitary conditions in Conakry are poor. “Garbage collection is highly irregular. There are piles of garbage everywhere,” said Dr. Sakoba Keita, the Guinean government official in charge of fighting against diseases. For now, officials are working to contain the epidemic, even while acknowledging that a long-term resolution remains elusive in this impoverished region.

“If your area is flooded with rainwater, and if people are defecating in the open, it will get into the water supply,” said Jane Bevan, a regional sanitation specialist for Unicef. “We know governments have the money for other things. I’m afraid sanitation is never given the priority it deserves.”

By ADAM NOSSITER@The New York Times: Africa

The Clean Water Access Initiative Project Indonesia

In addressing the global water crisis, Action Against Hunger believes in the power of partnership. To illustrate this, we invite you to watch a video of the first project in our three-year collaboration with Tyco International—a clean water system we're building in Indonesia's impoverished Nusa Tenggara Timur province:


The Clean Water Access Initiative is focused on providing safe drinking water and sanitation to impoverished communities threatened by malnutrition and water-borne diseases. Tyco has committed more than $2 million in resources over the next three years, as well as emergency funds to enable ACF to respond quickly to natural disasters, including earthquake-ravaged Haiti, flood-inundated Pakistan, and more recently, drought-stricken Kenya.

The Clean Water Access Initiative's first project, in Indonesia's Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT) province, is already underway. Working with ACF staff and local community leaders, Tyco's regional teams are helping to plan and construct a new system to improve access to safe water for 40,000 people. In addition to providing technical expertise, Tyco contributed $250,000 in funding and donated 36 miles of polyethylene pipes and fittings from its facility in Jakarta while local Tyco engineers provide training and oversight during installation. At the same time, ACF is dedicating resources toward an educational program to improve local hygiene practices, training local authorities on the design and maintenance of water supply infrastructures, and monitoring the sustainability of the water system.

The need is great. NTT Province is among the poorest in Indonesia. While the rest of the country advances towards national and international development goals, NTT Province lags behind due to a difficult mix of isolation, limited natural resources, and poor local governance. In one of the NTT districts, a third of the households need more than 30 minutes to retrieve water by hand—requiring two or three trips by foot each day—and nearly two-thirds of water sources remain unprotected.

We're thrilled to be leveraging Tyco's industry-leading people, products, and services—in combination with our experience designing and implementing rural water systems—in this partnership.

Bacteria in Tap Water can be Traced to the Water Treatment Process

                                                      Which pathogens are in your drinking water?


Most of the bacteria that remain in drinking water when it gets to the tap can be traced to filters used in the water treatment process, rather than to the aquifers or rivers where it originated, University of Michigan researchers discovered.

The study—a unique, broad-based look at Ann Arbor's water supply from source to tap—could open the door to more sustainable water treatment processes that use fewer chemicals and, as a result, produce lower levels of byproducts that may pose health risks. Eventually, the work could enable engineers to control the types of microbes in drinking water to improve human health like "live and active cultures" in yogurt, the researchers say. The research, led by Lutgarde Raskin, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, is published online in Environmental Science & Technology and will appear in a forthcoming print edition. Over six months, the researchers sampled water at 20 points along its path from groundwater and Barton Pond sources to residents' faucets and several more places in the water treatment plant. They harvested bacteria from each sample and sequenced their DNA. Tap water is teeming with bacteria despite the intensive filtering and disinfection that occur in most of the developed world. That's not necessarily a problem, the U-M researchers say. It could be an opportunity. "A major goal right now in drinking water treatment is to kill all bacteria because there's the perception that all bacteria are bad. But there's a good bit of scientific literature that says there are good bacteria, innocuous bacteria and bad bacteria. If we can better understand the types of bacteria in the microbial community from source to tap and what processes control it, perhaps we can be more effective at controlling which ones get through," said Ameet Pinto, a lecturer at the University of Glasgow who worked on this project as a postdoctoral researcher in Raskin's lab. Most previous drinking water studies have focused more narrowly on disease-causing pathogens, Pinto said. But bacteria such as Legionella, Salmonella, and E. coli don't exist in isolation. Their fate is influenced by the microbial community around them. "The more critical questions are 'Where do they come from?' and 'What determines which ones survive treatment and end up in our drinking water?' These questions have not been systematically asked until now," Pinto said.

The study found that the "activated carbon filters" commonly used to remove suspended particles play a significant role in determining which bacteria are most prevalent in treated drinking water. The relative abundance of Alphaproteobacteria, for example, was found to be around 6 percent in source water, but 38 percent on the filters, and 23 percent of the bacterial community at the tap. This pattern occurred despite regular filter cleaning. These mostly harmless bacteria were able to form biofilms on the filters, slough off into the water and survive the disinfection process. Water suppliers typically add chemicals such as chlorine to drinking water, but these disinfectants can react with naturally-occurring substances in the water to form potentially harmful byproducts, according to the EPA. Many of these byproducts themselves are regulated. "Disinfection can form harmful chemicals in drinking water," said Chuanwu Xi, associate professor of environmental health sciences in the School of Public Health, who participated in this study. "If we can get away with not using so many chemicals and prevent the formation of these byproducts, we should think about limiting their use." The researchers suggest that these filters could serve as early indicators of the presence of beneficial and disease-causing bacteria. They could be regularly tested, and pathogens might be contained there to prevent them from reaching the distribution system. The filters also could potentially be re-engineered to support the growth of beneficial or neutral bacteria. "We hope to begin research to explore how to improve public health by engineering drinking water treatment plants to impact the drinking water microbiome, perhaps by promoting growth of beneficial microbes that outcompete pathogenic microbes," Raskin said. "We think it is feasible to do this in the long run." "Current regulations and engineering practices focus on removing chemical and microbial contaminants from the source water to provide safe and clean water and protect the public from waterborne diseases," Xi said. "In addition to the protection we have already, there is potential to add benefits to the water we consume everyday for improving our health, for example, by having a positive impact on the microbial community in the human gut. More research is needed to evaluate this potential beneficial impact when we move in that direction."
phys.org

Documents Reveal Details of Camp Lejeune's Toxic Water

Thousands of newly released documents about water contamination at Camp Lejeune add to the evidence that the military long knew about tainted tap water blamed for deaths and illnesses among Marines and their families, and that officials covered up the information for years, a North Carolina congressman said Friday.

"For the last 30 years, instead of saying there could be health effects and or even we don't know what the health effects are, they've minimized it," said Democratic Rep. Brad Miller.

On Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., released more than 8,500 Department of Defense documents relating to the water contamination that continued at the base for decades. The release came the same week the Senate approved a bill to provide health care for Marines and their relatives who suffered because of the contamination. The bill covers Marines who lived or worked at the base from Jan. 1, 1957, to Dec. 31, 1987.

The House is expected to consider the amended bill by early August, Miller said. The Camp Lejeune provision is part of a larger bill about veterans' issues.

Water supplied to Camp Lejeune's main family housing areas was contaminated by dry cleaning solvents and other sources from the 1950s until 1987. Health officials believe as many as 1 million people may have been exposed to tainted water. Among them was Janey Ensminger, who was 9 when she died of leukemia in 1985. The bill providing health care for the victims is named after her.

Since her death, her father has pushed to uncover information about the contamination. Jerry Ensminger, a retired Marine who lives in Elizabethtown, N.C., has started combing through the documents and said he has already found one from 1985 that describes trichloroethylene - or TCE - as toxic. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency didn't classify TCE as a known cause of cancer in humans until last September.

The Marines have said for years they didn't know at the time that TCE was harmful because it wasn't included in the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, Ensminger said. "Yet they had it classified as toxic in their own documents and they're still lying about it," he said. "They classified it as a toxin, and yet it was OK for us to drink it?"

He added, "It's just appalling, their behavior up through today. The facts are, they have all these documents, and they knowingly poisoned their own people."

Capt. Greg Wolf, a Marine Corps spokesman, said the Marines don't talk about pending legislation, but will do whatever lawmakers and the president ask them to do. The Marines had no comment on the documents released this week, he said.

It's not immediately clear what may be new in the 8,000 pages of documents. Some are related only tangentially to the toxic water probe. For example, a document from the 1980s outlines steps to sanitize kitchen supplies. It appears to have been included because one of the solvents used as a cleaner can break down into a toxic pollutant in drinking water.

Ensminger called on Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., to hold a hearing of the emerging threats subcommittee, which she chairs as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "What more serious emerging threat to national security is there than leaders of our military poisoning their own people and lying to hide it?" he asked.

A Hagan spokeswoman said the senator supports a hearing before the full committee.

Even within the last three years, Miller said, the Marines and the Department of the Navy have resisted providing documents that could help people who have told him they would have sought medical care at the earliest symptoms had they known they were in danger.

Instead, they waited and many now face a grim prognosis, he said. "There really are consequences to wanting this to go away and not admit this is a problem," he said.

Ensminger said he believes the Marines knew the base residents would move on and assumed that if they got ill, they wouldn't connect their health to the contaminated water. 

"They weren't counting on one angry parent and the Internet," he said.

 Camp Lejeune documents released by Senate Judiciary Committee: -http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/CampLejeuneIndex.htm

By Martha Waggoner@Associated Press