http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/02/21-0

Please find attached and below an overview of the outcomes of the Health and Energy Policy Roundtable and Workshop in Canberra last week. You will see there has been a decision to form a new collaborative network of health groups to work together to raise awareness of the health implication of current energy and minerals policy in Australia. This includes the development of a joint Position Statement on Health and Energy and a campaign featuring health professional clean safe renewable energy and highlighting the risks to health from coal and coal seam gas.

Signatories to this work so far include over 70 health groups, with two umbrella groups represented (Climate and Health Alliance and National Rural Health Alliance).

If you would like to also sign the statement and participate in this work, please contact Fiona Armstrong, CAHA Convenor convenor@caha.org.au or 0438900005.

_________________________

Health groups call for urgent action to address health risks from coal and coal seam gas

A new collaborative network of health organisations has agreed to joint action to raise awareness of the adverse health effects of Australia’s current minerals and energy policy at a meeting in Canberra this week.

Hosted by five national health organisations, the Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA), Climate and Health Alliance (CAHA), National Rural Health Alliance (NRHA), Climate Change Health Research Network (NCCARF-ARN), Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association (AHHA), the Health and Energy Roundtable was attended by energy experts, community activists and health professionals, including doctors, physicians, nurses, physiotherapists and GPs, from dozen of organisations around the country.

A statement from the groups at the meeting, including the lead groups and joined by Cancer Council Australia, Heart Foundation, Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY), National Toxics Network (NTN), Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA), and New South Wales Nurses and Midwives Association (NSWNMA), signalled an intention to work together collaboratively to highlight the adverse health impacts and environmental damages associated with current minerals energy policy, particularly those relating to coal and coal seam gas.

“The risks to human health from energy and resources policy are not being well accounted for in current policy decisions,” the joint statement said.

“Significant policy reform is needed to ensure health and wellbeing is not compromised by policy decisions in other sectors. Recognising the importance of the social and environmental determinants of health is an important part of that.

“The overriding concern is that climate change is being driven by energy choices and minerals policies that privilege and prioritise the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels over safer, healthier, lower emissions, renewable energy resources.

“The local health impacts from coal mining, transportation and combustion are also a significant concern, and communities living in proximity to these activities are experiencing adverse social impacts, such as loss of amenity, displacement, and loss of social capital as well as facing increased risks of respiratory disease, heart disease, and lung cancer.

“The rapid expansion of the fossil fuel (coal and unconventional gas) industries in Australia demands these issues be urgently addressed.

There were also serious concerns raised about the availability of data and support for health research on the issue.

“A lack of monitoring and inadequate investment in research means there is grossly insufficient data available in Australia on health impacts to inform policy decisions. Research from international sources suggests major cause for concern in terms of exposure to pollution of water and air – these impacts need to be evaluated here in Australia.

“The health impacts of minerals and energy policy must be an area of research priority that is given significant levels of independent funding, and there needs to be greatly increased surveillance and monitoring to ensure sufficient data collection on which to base this research.”

The meeting identified a need for education for health professionals and the community more broadly around the health implications of energy policy choices, and encouraged health professionals across all disciplines to advocate for minerals, energy and climate policies on the basis of health.

“Health professionals have an important role to play in educating decision makers and the community about the health implications of energy choices and the health implications of climate change.”

The joint statement calls for precautionary approaches to policy and for the intergenerational consequences of decisions made now to be considered.

“The local and global effect of fossil fuel use on health and wellbeing is an immediate problem as well as an issue of intergenerational equity, with the exploitation of these resources causing irreversible harm to Earth’s systems, compromising the health and security of future generations.”

The groups have committed to work together and develop a framework for joint advocacy and announced plans for a campaign featuring health professionals calling for an urgent transition to safe, clean, renewable energy supply systems that do not contribute to global warming or harm human health and wellbeing.

The groups also announced an intention to develop a joint position statement on the health effects of Australia’s minerals and energy policies to inform public discussion about balancing the benefits and harms of our mineral and energy choices, specifically issues such as unconventional gas, coal exports and renewable energy.

For further information, contact Fiona Armstrong, CAHA Convenor convenor@caha.org.au or 0438900005.

Convenor, Climate and Health Alliance
W: www.caha.org.au
M: 0438 900 005
E: convenor@caha.org.au
T: @healthy_climate

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Environment/2013/01/07/20478186.html

By Jessica Hume, Parliamentary Bureau

The Athabasca river runs through the city of Fort McMurray, Alta., in this file photo. REUTERS/Todd Korol

OTTAWA – A new study suggests aquatic toxins close to the Athabasca River have increased dramatically and simultaneously with oilsands development there, contradicting earlier government assertions the contamination was naturally occurring.
Calling the data a “smoking gun”, lead scientist and Queens University professor John Smol explained that, unlike previous studies that relied on insufficient historical data and so produced mere “snapshots” of contaminants in a given area at a given time, the new research used core samples of lake sediment from before oilsands development in the area began.

“The sediment is like a history book, and what it shows clearly is that the rise in PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) started in the ’60s in lockstep with oilsands development,” Smol said. “But it also shows undeniably that the contamination is not natural and that it’s showing up as far as 90 km away.”

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/12/coral-reefs-could-be-decimated-b.html

by Eli Kintisch on 20 December 2012, 1:15 PM | 1 Comment

Barrier falling. Oceanographers have blamed bleaching of Porites coral from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef on warming water temperatures, ocean acidification, and pollution.
Credit: Louis Wray/Creative Commons

Nearly every coral reef could be dying by 2100 if current carbon dioxide emission trends continue, according to a new review of major climate models from around the world. The only way to maintain the current chemical environment in which reefs now live, the study suggests, would be to deeply cut emissions as soon as possible. It may even become necessary to actively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, say with massive tree-planting efforts or machines.

The world’s open-ocean reefs are already under attack by the combined stresses of acidifying and warming water, overfishing, and coastal pollution. Carbon emissions have already lowered the pH of the ocean a full 0.1 unit, which has harmed reefs and hindered bivalves’ ability to grow. The historical record of previous mass extinctions suggests that acidified seas were accompanied by widespread die-offs but not total extinction.

To study how the world’s slowly souring seas would affect reefs in the future, scientists with the Carnegie Institution for Science in Palo Alto, California, analyzed the results of computer simulations performed by 13 teams around the world. The models include simulations of how ocean chemistry would interact with an atmosphere with higher carbon dioxide levels in the future. This so-called “active biogeochemistry” is a new feature that is mostly absent in the previous generation of global climate models.

Using the models’ predictions for future physical traits such as pH and temperature in different sections of the ocean, the scientists were able to calculate a key chemical measurement that affects coral. Corals make their shells out of the dissolved carbonate mineral known as aragonite. But as carbon dioxide pollution steadily acidifies the ocean, chemical reactions change the extent to which the carbonate is available in the water for coral. That availability is known as its saturation, and is generally thought to be a number between 3 and 3.5.

No precise rule of thumb exists to link that figure and the health of reefs. But the Carnegie scientists say paleoclimate data suggests that the saturation level during preindustrial times—before carbon pollution began to accumulate in the sky and seas—was greater than 3.5.

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The models that the Carnegie scientists analyzed were prepared for the major global climate report coming out next year: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. The team compared the results of those simulations to the location of 6000 reefs for which there is data, two-thirds of the world total. That allowed them to do what amounted to a chemical analysis of future reef habitats.

In a talk reviewing the study at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union earlier this month, senior author and Carnegie geochemist Ken Caldeira showed how the amount of carbon emitted in the coming decades could have huge impacts on reefs’ fates. In a low-emissions trajectory in which carbon pollution rates were slashed and carbon actively removed from the air by trees or machines, between 77% and 87% of reefs that they analyzed stay in the safe zone with the aragonite saturation above 3.

“If we are on the [business as usual] emissions trajectory, then the reefs are toast,” Caldeira says. In that case, all the reefs in the study were surrounded by water with Aragonite saturation below 3, dooming them. In that scenario, Caldeira says, “details about sensitivity of corals are just arguments about when they will die.”

“In the absence of deep reductions in CO2 emissions, we will go outside the bounds of the chemistry that surrounded all open ocean coral reefs before the industrial revolution,” says Carnegie climate modeler Katharine Ricke, the first author on the new study.

Greg Rau, a geochemist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, says the work sheds new light onto the future of aragonite saturation levels in the ocean, also known as “omega.” “There is a very wide coral response to omega—some are able to internally control the [relevant] chemistry,” says Rau, who has collaborated with Caldeira in the past but did not participate in this research. Those tougher coral species could replace more vulnerable ones “rather than a wholesale loss” of coral. “[But] an important point made by [Caldeira] is that corals have had many millions of years of opportunity to extend their range into low omega waters. With rare exception they have failed. What are the chances that they will adapt to lowering omega in the next 100 years?”

Special thanks to Doug Fenner and the NOAA Coral-list.

Article first published online: 26 JUL 2012

DOI: 10.1111/j.1755-263X.2012.00265.x

Volume 5, Issue 6, pages 478–485, December 2012

Keywords:

Aquarium trade;
coral trade;
curio trade;
coral triangle;
marine policy
Author Information

1 New England Aquarium, John H. Prescott Marine Laboratory, Boston, MA, USA
2 Roger Williams University, Department of Biology and Marine Biology, Bristol, RI, USA
3 Boston University Marine Program, Department of Biology, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
4 Conservation International, Arlington, VA, USA

*Andrew L Rhyne, Department of Biology and Marine Biology, Roger Williams University, One Old Ferry Road, Bristol, RI 02809, USA. Tel: 401 254-5750; Fax: 401 254-3310. E-mail: arhyne@rwu.edu

Editor  Dirk Roux

Publication History

Issue published online: 11 DEC 2012
Article first published online: 26 JUL 2012
Accepted manuscript online: 2 JUL 2012 03:52PM EST
Received 5 March 2012, Accepted 12 June 2012

Abstract

The international trade in corals used to be primarily a curio trade of dried skeletons, but now focuses on live corals for the marine reef aquarium trade. The trade is still rapidly evolving, creating challenges including the addition of new species that outpace effective management strategies. New species in the live coral trade initially command high prices, but as they become common the price radically decreases with feedback effects to the trade. To understand these trends, 21 years of live coral import data for the United States were assessed. Trade increased over 8% per year between 1990 until the mid-2000s, and has since decreased by 9% annually. The timing of the peak and decline varies among species, and is a result of the rising popularity of mini-reef ecosystem aquariums, the global financial crisis, and an increase in aquaculture production. The live coral trade offers opportunities for coral reef ecosystem conservation and sustainable economic benefits to coastal communities, but realization of these externalities will require effective data tracking.

Special thanks to Coral-list

http://summitcountyvoice.com/2012/12/10/environment-traces-of-deepwater-horizon-oil-causes-deformities-swimming-deficencies-in-gulf-fish/

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Bob Berwyn

An explosion and subsequent fire on BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico led to the biggest oil spill on recornd in U.S. coastal waters. Photo courtesy U.S. Coast Guard.

Study shows that sunlight intensifies the impacts of PAHs
By Summit Voice

FRISCO – In yet another sign that BP’s spilled Deepwater Horizon may have long-lasting impacts on Gulf ecosystems, a team of researchers said last week that even low-level, short-term exposure to traces of oil remnants causes deformities and impairs the swimming ability of fish.

The research was led by scientists with the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science. The school is a leader in the field of marine toxicology and used a state of the art hatchery to study the effect of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) on various species of fish, including cobia and mahi mahi.

PAH’s are toxic components of oil that are released from oil into the water column. The team also studied the effects of photo-enhanced toxicity, or the impact of sunlight on the potency of the toxic compounds found in the oil from the DWH spill.

A previous study by Smith University scientists showed similar impacts to fish during embryonic stages of development.

“We found that in more sensitive species the photo-enhanced toxicity could account for up to a 20-fold higher sensitivity,” said Dr. Martin Grosell, professor and associate dean of graduate studies for the Rosenstiel School. “This is an important part of the equation because it means that traditional toxicity testing performed under laboratory conditions will tend to underestimate the toxicity that might have occurred in the natural environment under the influence of sunlight,” he added.

The team collected freshly fertilized eggs from mahi mahi made available via UM’s Aquaculture Program, and exposed the embryos to low levels of different types of water mixed with DWH oil. In species like mahi mahi just 2 to 6 micrograms of total PAHs per liter of seawater were observed to reduce hatch rates and survival, and to result in impaired cardiac development.

The lab also tested newly hatched fish, observing them for deformities resulting from exposure to oiled seawater. Many hatchlings showed subtle heart abnormalities after only trace oil exposures in the egg that lasted only a day or so. After a month of raising these fish in clean water, the team put the resulting juveniles through the paces on their “fish treadmill” and they could only swim about 70 percent as fast as those that had never been exposed to oil.

“The severely reduced swimming performance we saw could impact the ability of these fish to catch sufficient prey, avoid predation, or travel the long distances that some migratory species require for survival,” Grosell said.

Other researchers included Andrew Esbaugh, Ed Mager, Charlotte Bodinier, as well as UM Professor and Aquaculture Program Director Dr. Daniel Benetti, Hatchery Manager Ron Hoenig and Graduate Student John Stieglitz, along with collaborators from NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and the University of North Texas.

Special thanks to Richard Charter