Tests suggest oil dispersant washing up on Alabama beaches

By Ben Raines, Press-RegisterTuesday, August 03, 2010, 5:00 AM  The stained, brown water seen washing up in pockets along Alabama beaches for the last two weeks appears to contain the dispersant widely used on oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill, according to a preliminary analysis. The Press-Register collected samples from multiple locations along the Fort […]

Oil disaster causes persistent public health crisis: Large number of children with medical and psychological problems

  Washington (AFP) Aug 3, 2010 – Oil is no longer spewing from the ruptured BP oil well but the disaster is far from over for families who live along the US Gulf coast, and their kids in particular, a major study said Tuesday. Of 1,200 coastal residents surveyed last month by researchers at the […]

New garbage patch discovered in Indian Ocean — ‘The world’s oceans are covered with a thin plastic soup’

By Lori BongiornoTue Aug 3, 6:58 pm ET Scientists previously mapped huge floating trash patches in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, but now a husband-wife team researching plastic garbage in the Indian Ocean suggest a new and dire view. “The world’s oceans are covered with a thin plastic soup,” says Anna Cummins, cofounder of 5 […]

Image of the Day: Smoke over Western Russia, 2 August 2010

Hundreds of fires burned across western Russia on August 2, 2010, but it is the smoke that conveys the magnitude of the disaster in this true-color image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Dense gray-brown smoke extends across the width of this image, a distance of about 1,700 kilometers (1,000 […]

Coalmine discharge fouls Australia’s Georges River

By BEN CUBBY, ENVIRONMENT EDITORAugust 4, 2010 CONTAMINATED water from a coalmine is flowing into the Georges River, south of Sydney, at levels that are toxic to aquatic life, an independent water quality report has shown. A plume of saline water stretched along the river for 15 kilometres from the discharge point of an underground […]

Oil spill dispersant could damage coral populations

By Sujata Gupta03 August 2010, 17:45 Coral populations in the Gulf of Mexico could fall because of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster – from contact not with oil but with the dispersant that’s supposed to get rid of it. Laboratory tests suggest that Corexit 9500A, the dispersant used by BP to tackle the largest […]

Mediterranean marine life in greatest peril, census shows

Bombs, the invasion of alien species and pollution among threats facing fish in the enclosed sea, according to study By Alok Jha, www.guardian.co.uk Monday 2 August 2010 21.05 BST Marine life in the Mediterranean faces the greatest risk of damage and death, the Census of Marine Life shows. “Enclosed seas have the risk that, when […]

Oil-soaked waste worries landfills’ neighbors

By LESLEY CLARK AND FRED TASKER – McClatchy Newspapers08/01/10 MOUNT VERNON, Ala. — At a sprawling landfill some 50 miles from the oil-spotted coastline, trash bags brimming with tar balls, oil-soaked boom, sand and tangles of sea grass are dumped. Though workers in the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history wear protective gloves and coveralls […]

Everglades on UNESCO danger list as development reduces water flow 60 percent

  BBC31 July 2010 A UN panel has added Florida’s Everglades National Park and Madagascar’s tropical rainforest to a list of world heritage sites at risk. Unesco’s World Heritage Committee said development in the Everglades had caused water flow to fall 60% in the wetland, a major wildlife sanctuary. The pollution level there was so […]

Gulf of Mexico ‘dead zone’ largest on record, overlaps BP spill zone

  By Deborah Zabarenko; editing by Doina ChiacuMon Aug 2, 2010 1:36pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) – This year’s low-oxygen “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico is one of the largest ever, about the size of Massachusetts, and overlaps areas hit by oil from BP’s broken Macondo well, Louisiana scientists report. The area of hypoxia, […]

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