HOW DO I GET ME SOME OF THIS

There's apparently some disease called "Auto-brewery syndrome." If you have this disease, you can brew beer in your belly and get yourself good and drunk...without drinking a drop of alcohol!

According to NPR:

A 61-year-old man — with a history of home-brewing — stumbled into a Texas emergency room complaining of dizziness. Nurses ran a Breathalyzer test. And sure enough, the man's blood alcohol concentration was a whopping 0.37 percent, or almost five times the legal limit for driving in Texas.

There was just one hitch: The man said that he hadn't touched a drop of alcohol that day.

"He would get drunk out of the blue — on a Sunday morning after being at church, or really, just anytime," says Barabara Cordell, the dean of nursing at Panola College in Carthage, Texas. "His wife was so dismayed about it that she even bought a Breathalyzer."

Other medical professionals chalked up the man's problem to "closet drinking." But Cordell and Dr. Justin McCarthy, a gastroenterologist in Lubbock, wanted to figure out what was really going on.

So the team searched the man's belongings for liquor and then isolated him in a hospital room for 24 hours. Throughout the day, he ate carbohydrate-rich foods, and the doctors periodically checked his blood for alcohol. At one point, it rose 0.12 percent.

Eventually, McCarthy and Cordell pinpointed the culprit: an overabundance of brewer's yeast in his gut.

That's right, folks. According to Cordell and McCarthy, the man's intestinal tract was acting like his own internal brewery.

The patient had an infection with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Cordell says. So when he ate or drank a bunch of starch — a bagel, pasta or even a soda — the yeast fermented the sugars into ethanol, and he would get drunk. Essentially, he was brewing beer in his own gut. Cordell and McCarthy reported the case of "auto-brewery syndrome" a few months ago in the International Journal of Clinical Medicine.

Kind of awesome, huh? Kind of horrifying, too, but still awesome.

If enough college freshmen get wind of this, we may have a Saccharomyces cerevisiae pandemic on our hands.

"I was skimming this article and made me think about your conspiracy theory/'how we are all going to die' blog"

One of my favorite things about having this blog, even though I basically stopped posting anything on it for a very long time*, is that my friends periodically forward me articles that they think I might find interesting. In pretty much every case, the forwards are exactly the type of thing I'm interested in, and also the type of thing I would blog about, if I ever blogged.

WELL. Here I am blogging for 30 straight days, so what better time to highlight some of the articles people have sent my way? This should hopefully encourage people to keep sending me stuff, because even though I don't always respond, I do always read the messages and the articles and I always appreciate the thought. (And just as an FYI, I'm happy to return the favor and send out dire news via email as well, if you're into that sort of thing. I've got over 200 articles bookmarked to read/blog about someday, so if you let me know what kind of bad news you like, boy oh boy can I forward you some stuff about it!)

But I digress. Without further ado, let me start makin' my favorite thing--a list!

---------

1. From my favorite undergrad worker bee/research assistant I've received several interesting articles in emails all appropriately titled "for your blog." For example:

I was skimming this article and made me think about your conspiracy theory/"how we are all going to die" blog. 

(He hasn't read a word of this blog, but he's already decided I'm crazy, apparently!) Shortly after the above link, he also sent along, with no comments whatsoever (apparently my interest for the article speaks for itself):

NYTimes: Tea, Sugar and Death: Cafe Groups Ponder the End - An informal group discusses philosophical thoughts on dying at a monthly gathering in New York called Death Cafe, one of many such get-togethers around the country.

After I received that first link he sent along, I read the whole article and then went out and bought the book that the article was based on. I enjoyed the book immensely, but I have to say, if you read the article in full you basically get the main gist of the book, and with a lot less repetition to boot. When I told the worker bee I was reading the book, and that it was making me think about what "food" really is, he sent me back this pithy remark: "Food is a scary thing. And yet I just keep on eating all of it." Isn't he so cute.**

2. My friend Tiffani also often sends me amusing emails with dire links, and since I know Tiffani reads this blog, I want to say directly to her: Thank you, I do dearly love all the emails you send me. Recently, there was the gem of an email with the subject line: "Good news on the flu front!", which then went on to say

just kidding. why would i send good news about the flu? and is there even such a thing?
(Link)

That article that she forwarded along was suuper terrifying (so I obviously highly recommend reading it). Basically, it describes how average sanitary habits are NOT SUFFICIENT to stop the spread of norovirus, which "is the most common cause of acute gastroenteritis -- stomach upset -- in the United States," as well as "the most common cause of foodborne-disease outbreaks." How do you get norovirus, and how do we seem to not be able to get rid of it? I'm glad you asked:

Hand-washed dishes are especially likely to carry the virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says in its website -- which could be one reason norovirus causes so many outbreaks on cruise ships. “You cannot get the water hot enough if you wash by hand,” says Aiello.

Norovirus is spread fecally -- in the poop -- and that means it can get into laundry. Studies show that fecal matter spreads even in ordinary laundry, so if someone is sick, it’s important to use very hot water and bleach to destroy virus that could be on any clothing, sheets or towels.

And regular cleaner won’t get the virus off surfaces. CDC recommends using bleach, including chlorine bleach or hydrogen peroxide.

Complicating the problem, most restaurant workers don’t get paid sick leave, so if they miss work, they don’t get paid. This means many workers come in sick, and they can spread the virus to hundreds of customers. Food handlers, dishwashers, even staff who bus and clear tables, all can spread the germ.

The problem extends to the home, too. There, Aiello said, several factors make it hard to keep one sick family member from infecting others. "It could be the door handle. It could be the toilet tank cover. Some studies show it can be aerosolized. If you throw up and then flush the toilet, how much of the spray gets into the air?" she asked. One study last year showed how the virus spread on a plastic bag that had been in a bathroom where a norovirus patient threw up.

Ugh. But hey, speaking of getting sick on cruise ships, there was another message Tiffani sent me recently, which exclaimed:

First, calamities took cruises away from me... now they are taking hot air balloon rides?! What is going to be left? Sitting on grass and hoping you don't get hit by a meteor? (Link)

Thankfully, I'm happy to report that Tiffani's last resort--sitting on grass and hoping you don't get hit by a meteor--is no longer something we have to worry about. That's because of what I'm about to describe, which comes courtesy of a coworker who I probably ill-advisedly told about this blog.

3. There is something called "DoomsDay Dwellings." In June, my coworker sent me an email pointing me to maybe the best site on the internet, which promotes the Dwellings, and she noted:

Why buy a used house when you can build one of these and be prepared for the apocalypse?   Designed to withstand fire, social unrest, shrapnel, governmental collapse, and earthquakes (optional). http://www.doomsdaydwellings.com/
The "Genisis" model comes with a "Civilization Generator".

The website for these Dwellings is very much worth a perusal. If you don't want to click away from my blog and get lost in the epicness of DoomsDay Dwellings though, I'll list just some of the things that the fanciest Dwelling (GENISIS: 6 Adults and 9 Children  - 10 years of indoor food, air, water, power  + Civilization Generator) allegedly protects you against:

• Double Dip Recession / Depression  [Huh? Does the house come with its own economy?]

• Gas Shortage / Peak Oil 
• Drought / Famine 
• Cyber Warfare that Destroys the Grid
• Social Unrest / Large Scale Riots
• Government Collapse [In your DoomsDay Dwelling, the government will never collapse!]
• EMP Burst / Solar Flare
• Pandemic
• Earthquake (Optional)
• Volcanic Disruption [Is that different from a volcanic eruption?]
• Minor Climate Change - Excluding Major Flood Zones [Aren't major flood zones like, the first places that might need a DoomsDay Dwelling?]
• Magnetic Field Rotation [????]
• NBC Explosion < 1 Mile Away [not really sure what an NBC explosion is; I'm assuming it doesn't involve the TV network]
• Total Environmental Collapse [but only "minor" climate change...]
• Non-direct Meteorite Impact 
• WWIII - Nuclear War [Only if the nuclear bombs do not have a "direct" impact, I assume]
• The end of the Civilization as we know it [Don't worry, the genesis model comes with that handy Civilization Generator, so humanity won't die out on your watch]

Truthfully, I would totally like to own one of those DoomsDay Dwellings, just in case things spiral out of control out there. Unfortunately, I am pretty sure that I do not have (and never will have) nearly enough money to afford my own self-burying bunker. Based on the research I've been doing lately, the amount of money I have available to purchase a dwelling in the area in which I currently live seems to be able to get me approximately two bedrooms, one bathroom, and no special doomsday protection whatsoever. Alas alack.

4. Finally, I would be remiss if I did not give a hat tip to Jessie, who's sent me too many links to even remember. Recently, she notified me that "Everything is trying to kill us," and she sent along this link, which totally made me sad, since I really really want a treadmill desk. But more interestingly, she also sent along this article about Greek Yogurt, which is quite interesting. It was the second thing I'd read about how hard it is to get rid of the whey that's produced as Greek yogurt is strained (there's whey too much of it!***), and it was the final straw that made me stop eating Greek Yogurt. Of course, the first straw that made me stop eating Greek Yogurt was the realization that I just don't like it very much. I prefer a runnier, more sour yogurt (like the kind they have in Bulgaria. In case you care...).

I suppose I could go on and on with this list, but lucky for you I'm running out of time. I've got to be off to my tennis lesson! I can't wait to go smash balls for 90 minutes. Hopefully those two Russian chicks from last week show up and shriek just as much as last time when I hit the ball to them...that was fun.

Day 2, complete!

---------------------------
*Not intentionally, it just kept (not) happening.
**I am not coming on to him. I mean cute in a precious kind of way. Not that this kid reads my blog. We just talk about it sometimes.
***Ba-dum ching!

Not dead, just restin'

Hello, friends and strangers. It was recently brought to my attention that I haven't been doomsday prophesying very much at all this year. Rest assured I haven't stopped reading about horrible things; I've just stopped writing about them. Things are busy, you know. I got promoted at work, my car got covered in tar, and to get it off I had to coat the entire thing with peanut butter and then rinse it off (which took even longer than you might expect), I've joined a bunch of "sports" leagues, as well as a wine tasting club, and now I'm thinking about moving, or maybe even buying a place. But those are all excuses and distractions from the real meat of this post, which is supposed to be a bunch of links to articles that recently caught my attention.

As I'm sure the world is clamoring for more of my overreactions to things that I read, I won't make any further ado.

1. The bees are still dying in droves. It might be due to pesticides. You should worry because we need the bees to pollinate our food!

Annual bee losses of 5 percent to 10 percent once were the norm for beekeepers. But after colony collapse disorder surfaced around 2005, the losses approached one-third of all bees, despite beekeepers’ best efforts to ensure their health.Nor is the impact limited to beekeepers. The Agriculture Department says a quarter of the American diet, from apples to cherries to watermelons to onions, depends on pollination by honeybees. Fewer bees means smaller harvests and higher food prices.

Related: Beekeepers are suing the EPA over insecticides.

A year after groups formally petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), four beekeepers and five environmental and consumer groups filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court against the agency for its failure to protect pollinators from dangerous pesticides.  The coalition, represented by attorneys for the Center for Food Safety (CFS), seeks suspension of the registrations of insecticides that have repeatedly been identified as highly toxic to honey bees, clear causes of major bee kills and significant contributors to the devastating ongoing mortality of bees known as colony collapse disorder (CCD).  The suit challenges EPA’s ongoing handling of the pesticides as well as the agency’s practice of “conditional registration” and labeling deficiencies.

2. Speaking of modern farming ruining everything, toxic algae bloomed like crazy all over Lake Erie in 2011 because the lake was overloaded with phosphorous and other nutrients from fertilizer and other agricultural runoff. Apparently, we can expect similar events in the future if farming practices aren't changed.

In 2011, Lake Erie experienced the largest algae bloom in its recorded history. At its peak in October, the mat of green scum on the lake’s surface was nearly four inches thick and covered an area of almost 2,000 square miles. That’s three times larger than any other bloom in the lake, ever. Plus it was toxic. Now research shows that such an event may become increasingly common.

3. A vial containing a virus that can cause hemorrhagic fever has gone missing from a research facility in Galveston. Let me repeat that: a vial containing a virus that can cause hemorrhagic fever has gone missing from a research facility in Galveston. Oh hey, where'd I put that hemorrhagic fever? I hope it's not at the bottom of my purse with my car keys.

4. Oh man, did you know that Visine, if swallowed, acts as a neurotoxin?

Used as directed, [eyedrops] may indeed give you that clear-eyed look but that’s mostly due to the constriction of blood vessels in the eye. Internally they also induce vasoconstriction (as Toxnet calls it).  The resulting symptoms...include rapid heart beat, nausea, blurred vision, drowsiness, convulsions. The Toxnet entry, based partly on cases of children who  swallowed a bottle of eyedrops or nosedrops left carelessly on a table or counter,  notes that “drowsiness and mild coma” often alternate with periods of thrashing and hyperactivity.

Remind me to keep eyedrops out of the reach of anyone who might be mad at me.

5. "Just because shit is depressing or horrible, doesn’t mean you can’t laugh about it with blood in your mouth." Natalie Dee is awesome.

6. Cow pee spreads antibiotic resistance through the soil. Chew on that. Or don't.

7. Venice flooded like crazy late last year. Is this a portent for the world to come? Survey (of me only) says yes.

8. No more letting Timmy chew on the dirt! Seems like lead is getting into kids' blood, from the soil.

While homeowners have learned over the years how to better manage old, peeling lead paint, the lead that was in gasoline was deposited on the ground and is still scattered throughout soils in many postindustrial U.S. cities. Kids still play in that dirt, and little kids may even eat it on occasion.

In a February paper published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, McElmurry and a team of economists and urban health specialists argue that the seasonal fluctuation of children's blood lead levels seen in industrial cities like Detroit indicate that kids are exposed to lead from contaminated soil that turns into airborne dust in the summertime.

Boston was mentioned in the article, so I'm especially alarmed at this one. I'm glad I don't have a kid...I'd be terrified about him or her breathing the air during summer!

----------

It's Friday, yay.

All Men are Mortal, and All Fruit Flies Are Boozers

Well, I'm sorry to say I haven't particularly cheered up as of late...I even flew myself all the way to California in the hopes that a change of pace (and some friend time) would make me feel better, and I continued to mope while I was there because everything is terrible and we're all gonna die and I'm gonna die alone and I am the worst. But I have been doing a lot of thinking about how to make life a little more enjoyable and I guess a good start is some edjumucation. I do like learning me some new things! Like these random tidbits I've stumbled across lately:

• Fruit flies seek fermenting fruit to keep wasps away.
• There is a contest for Oddest Book Title, and one of the books on the shortlist this year is God's Doodle, and I'll let you click on that link to find out what "God's doodle" is.
• Crying in space is hard to do.
• Thomas Edison invented LOLCats?
• The world is in need of portable fish authenticity tests...beware your sushi!
• Oh god, prairie dogs have the black death.
• Dolphins might call each other by name. Amazing.
• Holy moly look at these giant bird nests! I wouldn't want to stand under any of those...
• Note to self: do not store your gun magazine (should you ever be in possession of one) in the oven.
• OMG the world's soil is running out.
• And the pièce de résistance: Can you eat your own poop? Spoiler alert: Yep. Second spoiler alert: there is a word meaning "eating poop" and this word is "coprophagy." 

In some more existential crisis news, I recently read All Men are Mortal, by Simon de Beauvoir. It was an odd book that I don't particularly recommend, but I mention it because it was more or less a meditation on immortality, and therefore on mortality, and on what makes a life meaningful. The main message I took from the novel is that individual lives are relatively meaningless and can make little impact (even immortal ones) and in the aggregate humans are constantly repeating their errors...but at least humans are mortal and get to die. So let this serve as a note to self: life might be pointless, but at least you'll die some day!

And hey look, this is topical:

As is this (from one of my favorite new (to me) blogs).

And this:

Via

Finally, to finish this long ramble, I can't wait to teach my nephew about what goats actually sound like:


1:24 is obviously the best part of this compilation.

We're all gonna die...but how?

Thanks to anonymous for the link to this delightful interactive infographic from the Guardian, detailing how people die in various areas of the world. The data are drawn from a study that recently came out in The Lancet, which has compiled cause of death data from 187 countries, for the period 1980-2010. Creating the dataset for the study was a notable undertaking in and of itself, apparently involving 500 researchers in 50 countries. [Sounds like a nightmare...In my job I can barely manage to corral comparable data from 5 different people, let alone 500.]

Anyway, if you want to find out how people die in various places, have yourself a look-see at the infographic aforementioned. There's also a short accompanying article containing even more fun death data.

I may or may not have spent many minutes last week clicking around to find out fun death statistics, such as where one is most likely to die from unintentional injuries like poison, fire, drowning, falling, medical mistakes, and of course, "mechanical forces" and "animal contact" (answer: Eastern Europe).

[What I want to know is (a) What constitutes "mechanical forces" and (b) Do people actually die from "animal contact"? If so, that totally justifies my fear of touching any animal ever.]

And speaking of fire, this 1830's children's book should scare you away from playing with it. Maybe they should reprint it for the more fire-prone areas of the world? (Western Sub-Saharan Africa, I'm looking at you...)

Via this delightful page of moralistic children's books from the 1830's

In which I reveal that the idea for this blog was stolen from my 14-year-old self

While shelving some books on my bookshelf this morning I (re)discovered my 9th grade current events journal from the fall of 1995, and I immediately abandoned my tidying task to peruse the little time capsule. Reading through the current events I chose to chronicle, I (re)realized that the journal is basically a paper version of this blog.* Take, for example, the following entry from 10/26/95:**

Each of the entries in this journal end with a paragraph about how the story affects me, which was clearly part of the assignment. I often interpreted this part of the assignment as "this affects me because it could happen to me and I could die."

It's like I set the stage for this blog 17 years ago! It's nice to know I still have a teenage enthusiasm for the world.

-------------


*I had had these epiphanies for the first time last December, when I discovered for the first time that I had this journal in my apartment. I read aloud many of my favorite entries to Jessie and Evan, who were visiting me at the time, and we all agreed my 14-year-old self was pretty much a direct predecessor of my current self, but also a cheeky little bastard. That last part didn't stick with me over time. Ahem. Right?
**Sorry about the somewhat low quality of the pictures. I took them with my new cellphone (!I am finally free from my old crappy phone!) under sub-optimal lighting conditions.

Oh Great, now my lightbulbs are giving me cancer and we are all going to get incurable gonorrhea

Sarcastic thanks, NPR, for putting me on high alert about two disparate but equally distressing issues (in the sense that--knock on wood--neither is likely to affect me much, but they could): UV exposure from compact flourescent light bulbs (CFLs), and antibiotic-resistant Gonorrhea.

Let's take each of these issues in turn.

1. CFLs = Cancer?

A study has just been published in the journal Photochemistry and Photobiology (scintillatingly entitled "The Effects of UV Emission from Compact Fluorescent Light Exposure on Human Dermal Fibroblasts and Keratinocytes In Vitro") that's been taken up by the popular press a bit, mostly because the science translates immediately and obviously into FEAR AND CONCERN (enter: me).  In the study, researchers from SUNY Stony Brook used in vitro skin cells and a variety of CFL bulbs they picked up at the store to demonstrate that many of the CFLs, despite claims of safety, emit the the type of UV light that can lead to skin cancer (or at least skin cell damage). I'll let the researchers themselves describe the study (or go read it yourself in the open-access (!) article):

In this study, we studied the effects of exposure to CFL illumination on healthy human skin tissue cells (fibroblasts and keratinocytes). Cells exposed to CFLs exhibited a decrease in the proliferation rate, a significant increase in the production of reactive oxygen species, and a decrease in their ability to contract collagen. Measurements of UV emissions from these bulbs found significant levels of UVC and UVA (mercury [Hg] emission lines), which appeared to originate from cracks in the phosphor coatings, present in all bulbs studied. The response of the cells to the CFLs was consistent with damage from UV radiation...No effect on cells...was observed when they were exposed to incandescent light of the same intensity. [From the abstract]

Despite claims (not having the UV emission), our measurements of emissions spectra from CFL bulbs, indicated significant levels of UVA and UVC. The amount of emissions varied randomly between different bulbs and different manufacturers. CFL bulbs work primarily through the excitation of Hg vapor that has fluorescence with the characteristic wavelength of 184 and 253 nm (UVC) and 365 nm (UVA;12). The enclosure of the bulbs is coated with different types of phosphors, which absorb the X-ray emissions and fluoresce within the visible range. CFLs consist of tightly coiled small diameter tubes; this introduces larger stresses in the fluorescent coating, and causes cracks or uncoated areas, whose location and number varied greatly. Closer examination of some of these commercially available bulbs showed multiple defects in their coating, thus allowing UV-light emission.

...Taken together, our results confirm that UV radiation emanating from CFL bulbs (randomly selected from different suppliers) as a result of defects or damage in the phosphorus coating is potentially harmful to human skin. [Both paragraphs above from the conclusion, bold emphasis added by me]

You can read more here, in an informative and slightly hilarious article (mostly for its final sentence) from some news outlet on Long Island. Or bask in the probably brain-cancer-causing glow of fox news (GOODBYE, EPIDERMIS!).

On the less dire side, I should probably mention that I heard on the radio that staying several feet away from open CFL bulbs and/or using lamp shades, can pretty much mitigate your UV exposure.

2. And now for something completely different. Gonorrhea...that you can't cure.

Your skin is not the only organ you should be worrying about. Just when I was looking for an excuse to use the following animated GIF, NPR gave me one in the form of this article about antibiotic resistant gonorrhea. Apparently, the CDC has recently issued new guidelines about the treatment of gonorrhea, to try to stall the (probably inevitable) resistance of the disease to all antibiotics we know about.

Yeah, that's right. We are well on our way to having a strain of gonorrhea going around that is resistant to all known antibiotics. They've already seen it in Japan, and in Europe to some extent, and things are not looking very good in the US at the moment. You may or may not know this, but back in the 1970's you could pop a little penicillin and get rid of your gonorrhea, no problem. That is far from true any more.

As NPR reports:

"Gonorrhea used to be susceptible to penicillin, ampicillin, tetracycline and doxycycline — very commonly used drugs," said Jonathan Zenilman, who studies infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins.

But one by one, each of those antibiotics — and almost every new one that has come along since — eventually stopped working. One reason is that the bacterium that causes gonorrhea can mutate quickly to defend itself, Zenilman said.

"If this was a person, this person would be incredibly creative," he said. "The bug has an incredible ability to adapt and just develop new mechanisms of resisting the impact of these drugs."

Another reason is that antibiotics are used way too frequently, giving gonorrhea and many other nasty germs too many chances to learn how to survive.

"A lot of this is occurring not because of treatment for gonorrhea but overuse for other infections, such as urinary tract infections, upper respiratory tract infections and so forth," Zenilman said.

It got to the point recently where doctors had only two antibiotics left that still worked well against gonorrhea — cefixime and ceftriaxone.

But on Thursday, federal health officials announced that one of their worst fears had come true: Evidence had emerged that gonorrhea had started to become resistant to cefixime in the United States.

"We're basically down to one drug, you know, as the most effective treatment for gonorrhea," Bolan said.

Cefixime and ceftriaxone are in the same class of antibiotics. That means it's only a matter of time before ceftriaxon goes, too, she says.

"The big worry is that we potentially could have untreatable gonorrhea in the United States," Bolan said.

That's already happened in other countries. Totally untreatable gonorrhea is popping up in Asia and Europe.

So the CDC declared that doctors should immediately stop using the cefixime.

"We feel we need to a take a critical step to preserve the last remaining drug we know is effective to treat gonorrhea," Bolan said.

About 700,000 Americans get gonorrhea every year. If untreated, gonorrhea can cause serious complications, including infertility and life-threatening ectopic pregnancies.

"I think it should be a real clarion call to every American that we've got a looming public health crisis on our hands and potentially hundreds of thousands of cases of untreatable gonorrhea in this country every year," said William Smith, who heads the National Coalition of STD Directors.

Let this be your PSA for the day: Try to avoid the clap if at all possible, or you may have it FOR LIFE.^*

Ladies aged 19 to 24, or anyone in the middle/southern middle of the country, I'm looking at you.^**

---

^{* I had to Google "nicknames for gonorrhea" to make sure the clap wasn't a nickname for some other STD, and stupidly, I did so on my work computer, so now I'm mildly worried I'm going to get a visit from HR or health services one of these days asking about my recent Googling activity.
**When "researching" antibiotic resistant gonorrhea for this blog post, I came upon the CDC's census of diseases in the US (aka "Summary of Notifiable Diseases") and I find myself morbidly fascinated. I may make a visualization of these data one day when I have some free time.***
*** I started this blog entry in the middle of last week and am only now finishing it. And there's very little writing in the damn thing--mostly cutting and pasting. How do i have so much less free time than I used to have? I'm going to need to quit my job to get back to blogging.}

The many ways everything is going to pot

Things are heating up on the dissertation front, and I am a big ball of stress. What better way to let out some steam than to direct y'all to a bunch of links covering various areas in which we are doomed?

1. The cost of creativity?
2. Mysterious infectious disease is WIND-BORNE, oh god.
3. Remember the arsenic in our apple juice? Well, add chicken to the list of arsenic-contaminated food items.
4. Sitting is really not good for you. Makes me so sad that my job is to sit in one place all day long.
5. Ever wonder what's in your cosmetics and other personal care products? No? Maybe you should.
6. The government fails me yet again, provides fuel to my desire to move to the prairie and live as a farmer.
7. Fast Food makes you depressed?
8. Turns out cola is bad for you for more reasons than sugar/fake sugar (depending on your preferred level of diet-ness). It's full of cancer, too!
9. Is Google turning evil? Maybe.
10. And now for some good news: Booze is good for problem-solving.

Happy Passover and Easter and whatnot.

Oh god, oh dear god.

Stop the presses: Contagion is coming true.

Well, in ferrets at least. Yep. Seems as if a mad Dutch scientist has created a strain of bird flu that can be transmitted from ferret to ferret without direct contact--through the air. This is terrifying the scientific community, as the avian flu was one of the most deadly ever recorded in humans--it killed six in ten who contracted the virus. The only saving graces preventing the bird flu from spiraling out of control and killing 60% of the earth's population (both in 2006 when it was all the rage, and now) are (a) the lucky fact that, so far, the only way people have contracted bird flu is from birds themselves, and (b) the lucky fact that that the virus spreads very inefficiently, binding to cells only very deep in human lungs.

Because bird flu is so deadly (once contracted), many scientists have been concerned that it could mutate into a strain that is easily spread from human to human via coughs and sneezes and whatnot. Enter Ron Fouchier, Dutch researcher at Erasmus Medical Center, who embarked on a course of research that has lead to the existence of a bird flu strain that can be easily spread from human to human via coughs and sneezes and whatnot.

Scientific American describes the research as follows:

To help answer [the question of whether bird flu could ever morph into a disease that can spread among people, via a cough or sneeze, by attaching to nasal or tracheal membranes, as the seasonal flu does], Ron Fouchier...and his team "mutated the hell out of H5N1" and looked at how readily it would bind with cells in the respiratory tract. What they found is that with as few as five single mutations it gained the ability to latch onto cells in the nasal and tracheal passageways, which, Fouchier added as understated emphasis, "seemed to be very bad news."

The variety that they had created, however, when tested in ferrets (the best animal model for influenza research) still did not transmit very easily just through close contact. It wasn't until "someone finally convinced me to do something really, really stupid," Fouchier said, that they observed the deadly H5N1 become a viable aerosol virus. In the...experiment, they let the virus itself evolve to gain that killer capacity. To do that, they put the mutated virus in the nose of one ferret; after that ferret got sick, they put infected material from the first ferret into the nose of a second. After repeating this 10 times, H5N1 became as easily transmissible as the seasonal flu.

The lesson from these admittedly high-risk experiments is that "the H5N1 virus can become airborne," Fouchier concluded—and that "re-assortment with mammalian viruses is not needed" for it to evolve to spread through the air. And each of these mutations has already been observed in animals. "The mutations are out there, but they have not gotten together yet," Osterhaus said.

Think we're safe because this flu has so far only infected ferrets? Bad news on that front. As ScienceInsider notes:

Ferrets aren't humans, but in studies to date, any influenza strain that has been able to pass among ferrets has also been transmissible among humans, and vice versa, says Fouchier: "That could be different this time, but I wouldn't bet any money on it."

Hence the title of this post: Oh god, oh dear god. I think it is high time to invest in some emergency face masks (designer, if you must), and to perfect the art of the antiflu elbow-bump (endorsed by Nobel Laureates!).

Thanks to Mahdroo for the tip on this one.

***

In other news, it seems I may have jumped on this honey-not-being-honey bandwagon a little too early. (Thanks to Anonymous for pointing this out.) I still think it makes sense to buy locally-produced honey, though...if you ask me. Which nobody did--but hell, it's my blog, eh?

Halt your eating!

People, I have news: It might not be safe to eat anymore.

Surely by now you've heard of the listeria outbreak linked to cantaloupes grown at Jensen Farms in Colorado? It's one of the most deadly food-related outbreaks of all time (read: in the history of keeping such statistics), with somewhere from 13 to 16 people (depending on where you get your numbers) already dead and many more sickened. Although listeria is not commonly found in fruit (but rather animal products like meat and cheese), it is a rather scary pathogen because it doesn't slow its growth in low temperatures--meaning that if you put a tainted product in your refrigerator, the bacteria just keep reproducing. Listeria is also scary because once in your body, it is "aggressive in escaping the gastrointestinal tract" and can rapidly spread to places you really don't want it to go--like your spinal cord. (Typing that, I am reminded of this gem, which is completely unrelated except in its spinal reference and in its reference to deli meats, which are commonly contaminated with listeria.)

So far, the burden of death from listeria infections has primarily been borne by an elderly population, prompting a rather hilarious (to me) comment in the New York Times from some Seattle lawyer who "represents victims of food-borne illness" (what a happy job, btw):

This outbreak [of listeria linked to cantaloupes] might turn out to be especially deadly simply because cantaloupe is a food eaten by many older people.

"Sometimes in outbreaks, it’s the population that’s consuming the food that drives the numbers...In this instance, you’ve got a lot of people 60 and older who are consuming cantaloupe."

Read: Old people love cantaloupe. Really? I thought it was a favorite among people of all ages...or maybe I'm just old at heart, because I love the stuff.

Anywho, it's scary enough that cantaloupes are contaminated and that people are dying simply because they wanted to include some fresh fruit in their diet....but what's even more terrifying is what comes to light after some innocent googling for "listeria cantaloupes." For instance, this morning I learned almost by happenstance about the following pathogens lurking in foods that could be in your house right now (she says ominously):

• Organic grape tomatoes contaminated with salmonella (September 28, 2011) (more info here)
• Ground turkey contaminated with salmonella (September 11, 2011)
• Ground beef contaminated with E. coli (Sep 27, 2011) (more info here)
• And if you're reading this from Canada, beware of your ham - it could be contaminated with listeria!

Those are just a few of the stories I stumbled upon as I was "researching" the cantaloupe-listeria thing. I could probably find many more if I tried (the FDA keeps a running list!), but I think I'm plenty terrified already. I don't want to eat anything, ever again. Hence my blanket statement declaring it unsafe to eat.

(Brief aside: here's the best recall I've read about this morning: Pepperidge Farm has recalled a batch of their Baked Naturals Sesame Sticks because of the "possible presence of small, thin pieces of wire" in the sticks. Apparently "a small number of consumers have reported minor scrapes in and around the mouth." What...the...how does that even happen?)

Food pathogens are probably the number one reason why I'm so mistrustful of the industrial food system in this country (although now I'm worried about wires in my crackers as well!). Perhaps it is time to set in motion the plan that a friend and I concocted a few years ago for an organic farm off the grid in Montana. We haven't yet resolved our issues about whether or not we will eat the animals we tend on the farm (I say yes, she says no), but we could definitely get started with the veggies. No listeria for us!

Picasa's online photo editor is suuuper fun to play with.

Contagion = This blog times a million

Perhaps ill-advisedly, I saw Contagion over the weekend and omg I never want to touch anyone or anything ever again. I spent most of the movie curled in a fetal position, stressing out, and I walked out of the theater with a very strong desire to build a virus-proof underground shelter stocked with food, water, firearms, ammunition, and a BSL-4 grade biohazard suit. It's been a few days and I still have that urge, so perhaps I will spend my 30th birthday weekend (coming up too damn soon) preparing for the next global pandemic. Orrrrr....i'll spend it drinking wine. Only time will tell.

A professor at Columbia, who consulted on Contagion (and actually invented the film's (unnamed) disease (drawing from an real life bat-->pig-->human disease jumping example)) recently wrote an interesting op-ed piece about the film in the NYT that's worth a read. It describes the reality behind the film's fiction, which I think is important to consider, because it's far too easy to dismiss a fictional star-studded film as hyperbole when it's too hard or scary to face the real truths it brings to light.

***

Unrelated except in its apocalypse reference: Netflix would like to apologize for the inadvertent apocalypse.

Seriously, this stuff is much more compelling than DARE ever was...

First I find out that cocaine can melt your face off, and now I learn that heavy use of marijuana can increase your chances of getting schizophrenia, especially if you use it during adolescence. What! Maybe drugs actually are bad for you!

A recent piece in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews has reviewed the scientific literature linking cannabis use and adult-onset psychosis/schizophrenia. Distressingly, the piece convincingly argues--using a number of different streams of research (particularly epidemiological (prospective and retrospective) and animal research)--that use of marijuana, at any point in life but particularly during adolescence, is linked (potentially causally?) to "schizophrenia outcomes." Indeed, pretty much all of the reviewed research on the topic that used human subjects, both from Western and non-Western populations, has shown that smoking the giggle weed is associated with a two- to three-fold increase in the risk of developing schizophrenia. The amount/extent of use is a factor as well--in one study of Swedish army conscripts, those who were heavy ganja users at the time of conscription were more than SIX TIMES as likely as non-users to receive a diagnosis of schizophrenia during the 27-year study period.

During adolescence, it is thought that cannabis use interferes with the development of neuronal networks, causing permanent brain changes that raise the likelihood of developing paranoia and schizophrenia. Studies in rats have shown that immature rats are more sensitive to the cognitive effects of cannabis, and that the "detrimental effects of acute cannabinoids on behavior are greater during puberty compared to adulthood." In an imaging study of human adolescents who had "long-term use of cannabis" (side note: how long could that term possibly be?), it was found that cannabis use "was associated with gyrification abnormalities in the cortex, suggesting that early cannabis use affected normal neurodevelopment." That does not sound good.

At this point I should probably pause to point out the obvious fact that smoking the jive stick won't necessarily give you schizophrenia--there are many other factors at play as well. To quote the article I read, "cannabis use is clearly not an essential or sufficient risk factor [for psychotic illness] as not all schizophrenic patients have used cannabis and the majority of cannabis users do not develop schizophrenia." Nevertheless, there is "a developmental link between cannabis and increased vulnerability to behavioral and cognitive impairments."

So here's my advice (kids, listen up): You may not think smoking the Mary J is a big deal now, but you'll be changing your tune when you start hearing God, the Devil and Zeus all talking to you at once, convincing you you can fly and that your coworker is poisoning your lunch. Just saying. You should probably wait to inhale until you're a bit older.*

***

In high school, my best friend and I were convinced that Vladimir and Estragon (protagonists in Becket's Waiting for Godot), were super stoned. Why else did they keep waiting/forgetting they were waiting for Godot?

***

In other crazy drug-related news, a bunch of people (in Texas and Seattle, according to this article, but California has this issue as well) have recently gotten botulism from black tar heroin. Yes, BOTULISM. The canned food disease. (Evidently this is old news...but it's new news to me, as everything I know about heroin I learned from watching Intervention, and none of the heroin addicts (that I've seen so far) have had to be hospitalized due to botulism.) Most of the heroin-related botulism cases come from wounds associated with injection sites.

(Aside: Remarkably, people have been known to get MULTIPLE CASES of "wound botulism" (as the medical literature calls it) at their heroin injection sites. You'd think once would be enough to learn your lesson, but apparently not!)

Another even more dire potential complication of black tar heroin use is necrotizing fasciitis (aka flesh-eating bacteria), one of the only diseases I can't even read about because it is so utterly terrifying. (Seriously. I didn't even look at the text of that Wikipedia article I just linked to; I don't want nightmares tonight!) There is no way to get rid of botulism from heroin (I have no idea if the flesh-eating bacteria is get-riddable, but let's just assume no), so it's probably best to stay away from the black tootsie roll. Aaaand...that's all I have to say about that.

This has been your PSA for the day. Stay away from the drugs, kiddos.

***

*This is by no means an endorsement of smoking weed or any other illegal substances.

No more swimming, I guess

First the ocean, now freshwater...is nowhere safe to swim?*

Always on the lookout for a nicely terrifying story for this blog, my good friend Tiffani just alerted me to this doozy:

Brain-eating amoebas blamed in three deaths

Yup, you read right. Apparently, there's a amoeba that lives in "warm freshwater" (mostly lakes, rivers, and hot springs...but also improperly sanitized swimming pools) that can travel up your nose, into your brain, and cause your death within 1-12 days (according to the CDC, an outfit I tend to trust).

The unfriendly little organism that is capable of such feats is called Naegleria fowleri, and it's made national news this week because it has killed three people this summer--so far. That's quite a lot, considering that only 32 cases were reported to the CDC in the decade spanning 2000-2010. (Actually, maybe the number of 2011 deaths is not "a lot"...more like an average amount. But I'm still worrying.)

CNN describes in simple terms what the Naegleria fowleri does:

The amoebas enter the human body through the nose after an individual swims or dives into warm fresh water, like ponds, lakes, rivers and even hot springs. ...When an amoeba gets lodged into a person's nose, it starts looking for food. It ends up in the brain and starts eating neurons. The amoeba multiplies, and the body mounts a defense against the infection. This, combined with the rapidly increasing amoebas, cause the brain to swell, creating immense pressure. At some point, the brain stops working.

Um....YIKES.

What you are probably wondering at this point (because I sure was wondering!) is what the symptoms of an amoebal takeover of your brain are. I'll tell you. Well, I'll let the CDC tell you:

Initial symptoms...start 1 to 7 days after infection. The initial symptoms include headache, fever, nausea, vomiting, and stiff neck. Later symptoms include confusion, lack of attention to people and surroundings, loss of balance, seizures, and hallucinations. After the start of symptoms, the disease progresses rapidly and usually causes death within 1 to 12 days.

It's like you think you have meningitis, but nope! The news is much worse! Just when you thought it couldn't possibly be worse.

What's most terrifying about the menace of Naegleria fowleri is not necessarily that it exists (though this is frightening indeed), but that a) it is 95% lethal (only ONE person in the US has survived an infection), and b) infection incidence increases when weather gets hot for long periods of time, and um, Global Warming, anyone?

So there you have it: Swimming in warm freshwater can lead to your death via an amoebal brain swarm. This has been your scary public service message of the day. You're welcome!

Also look! A diagram!

*I should probably say "safe and pleasant," as I suppose chlorinated and saltwater pools are a fairly safe swimming option. But swimming pools are icky.

Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Turns out avoiding the sun altogether is perhaps just as dangerous* as cultivating a deep dark tan. Indeed, while too much sun exposure can give you skin cancer, it seems that that too little sun exposure (whether achieved by using too much sunscreen or by staying indoors) can lead to rickets, a disease associated with Vitamin D deficiency (and pirates). AKA, a disease about which I have made a mental note to ask my doctor, specifically concerning whether a diagnosis test exists, and if so, whether it (or hypochondria) is covered by my insurance.

But I digress. Here's what I wanted to talk about: A recent piece in the Journal of Family Health Care (which I found out about here) has noted that there's been an unexpected worldwide increase in rickets cases in recent years. Such an increase is unexpected, given our modern-day learnin' and all, and in this case it's doubly unexpected because the increase has been found in landlubbers from all socioeconomic classes (and children especially). Why is this happening? One word: Sun. Or actually three words: Not enough sun. Yep, because sun exposure is an important source of Vitamin D, in avoiding the sun (or preventing your skin from absorbing Vitamin D-enhancing rays) you drastically** increase your chances of rickets. As the author of the rickets piece notes in his or her abstract (sadly, my institution does not subscribe to the publication so I couldn't read the full text; also I was too lazy to find out the gender of the author):

...the advice in recent years for children to wear a high factor sunscreen and remain covered up while playing outdoors [is] partly felt to be behind the reason for [Rickets'] re-emergence...A tendency for children to stay indoors and watch TV or play on computer games, rather than play outside when the sun is shining, is arguably also another contributing factor.

This isn't just idle speculation, I should point out. There's actually been a recent, highly publicized case of a British child getting rickets because her mother was too diligent with the sunscreen. !!!!

So there you have it: Sun = Cancer. No Sun = Rickets. Just the wrong amount of Sun and No Sun = Rickets AND cancer. Happy Tuesday.

*Where "dangerous" is loosely defined
**Where a "drastic increase" is defined as "an increase of some extent that is unknown to me and may be small"

Oh, god! Why am I so tall!

This just in: Tall people get cancer at higher rates than short people. Apparently this is already known in the epidemiological world, but it's news to me (Shocking news! Time to panic news!).

A study just released in the Lancet looked into the impact of height on the development of several common cancers, and found a significant and positive association between height and cancer incidence that was consistent across genders and cultures. For a large sample of British women, they also found a "clear and highly significant trend of increasing cancer risk with increasing height" even after controlling for confounding factors like age, region, socioeconomic status, smoking, alcohol intake, body-mass index, strenuous exercise, age at menarche, parity, and age at first birth. Just look at this graph of adjusted relative risks (RRs) per 10 CM in height and 95% floated confidence intervals (FCI) for total incident cancer (among the British women), by height (in CM). Not that I have a full grasp on what is actually graphed here, but the trend is clear: more height, more cancer.  I've helpfully pointed out the relative risk (odds?) of cancer for my own height. It's at the top of the graph! Oh god!

The authors of this study offer several possible explanations as to why tall people get more cancer:

The similarity of the height-associated RR for different cancers and in different populations suggests that a basic common mechanism, possibly acting in early life, might be involved. Adult height reaches its maximum between the ages of 20 and 30 years. Variation in height relates to genetic and environmental influences acting mostly in the first 20 years, or so, of life; environmental factors, including childhood nutrition and infections, are believed to predominate. Hormone levels, especially of growth factors such as insulin-like growth factors (IGFs), both in childhood and in adult life, might be relevant. Circulating levels of IGFs in adulthood and childhood affect cancer risk; IGF-I levels in childhood and adolescence are strongly related to skeletal growth, and levels in adulthood, although less strongly, to adult height.

Another possibility is that height predicts cancer risk because taller people have more cells (including stem cells), and thus a greater opportunity for mutations leading to malignant transformation. Height might thus be related to cancer risk through increased cell turnover mediated by growth factors, or through increased cell numbers. The relation between height and cancer risk might underlie part of the difference in cancer incidence between populations, and changes in cancer incidence over time. Adult height in European populations has increased by about 1 cm per decade throughout the 20th century. The increase in adult height during the past century could thus have resulted in an increase in cancer incidence some 10–15% above that expected if population height had remained constant. This assumes, of course, that the effect of height is independent of changes in other risk factors.

I do not like this. Not one bit.  It's like I'm being punished for drinking all that milk and eating all those vegetables while I was growing up. Bah!

The world, she is a dangerous place

If I were mother earth, I'd be pretty pissed off at humankind. And if I believed in a mother earth, I'd totally believe she's pretty pissed off. I mean, how else would you explain the glut of tornadoes in the south? That's clearly retribution for the fact that there's still a giant hole in the ozone layer (Side note: Is it shocking that until recently I did not realize that the ozone hole is still a problem?). Or, you know, the tornadoes might just be retribution for climate change in general. Or not. We don't know.

This is actually what I'm most concerned about in general: We don't know. All things considered, caveatting this statement with my rudimentary understanding of science and nature, we barely know anything about the ultimate consequences of what we're doing to the world. Even scarier, if my friends are at all representative of most people, we don't much care to know. I can't tell you the number of times I've tried to tell someone something about disease or climate change or death or disaster (I'm a great person to invite to parties, by the way) only to hear, 'I don't want to know! Stop talking!' People: Ignorance may be bliss, but complacency kills. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence! (Side note: I'm getting a lot of new catch phrases from the reading I've been doing for this blog. I like it. Almost time to make a cartoon about me! ...Or unfriend me, as the case may be.)

Related: Want to know where (in America) you are most likely to die from weather-related incidents? There's a map for that! (Ha, good pun, self.)

****

In non-weather related news, I learned yesterday about some new ways to contract illness and/or get paralyzed:

1. Touching armadillos = leprosy.

Yep, according to a study that I read about on the NPR website, touching raw armadillo meat can give you leprosy. Finally, vindication for my fear of touching raw meat! Not that I've ever touched raw armadillo. But that would fall under my "ew" category just as much as chicken and beef. (Funniest part of the NPR article: right after warning you to avoid touching armadillo, they link to an armadillo chili recipe on some website...called yumyum.com.)

Related: Want to know where the most cases of leprosy occur in the US? There's a map for that too! (Less funny pun the second time, but still a true statement.)

2. Trying surfing for the first time = paralyzed.

While idly surfing the net last night, I came across a website I probably shouldn't know about called OMG Facts. One of the facts that I read actually did make me go OMG, so I shall share it with you: There's a documented medical condition called surfer's myelopathy, in which, when you try surfing for the first time, you could end up paralyzed. (To be fair, the condition can actually be caused by any activity in which you hyper-extend your back, but is most often (or most sensationally?) caused by surfing for the first time. I know! OMG, right??)

I don't want to sound alarmist (ha! of course I do!), but my discovery of this disorder means I am likely never to go in the ocean again. Not that I often go in it at the moment--I am already scared of the ocean, what with jellyfish and sharks and weird fish and all. AND, believe it or not, I have already been kind of worried about ocean-related paralysis, thanks to the "community water safety" segment I had to take in my 12th grade gym class (taught by Ms. Miller, she of the four-inch-long bedazzled fingernails). I vividly remember sitting in the humid pool room, on the bleachers, watching a video in which a man describes (and an actor reenacts) running into the ocean, encountering a wave, and ending up paralyzed (here's a similar story). The lesson I learned from this video was not to be careful, but rather to avoid the ocean at all costs. At that point in my life I had only ever been swimming in the ocean once (actually, the gulf of Mexico), and I found it to be an extremely unpleasant, salty experience. So avoiding the ocean, which I've done fairly successfully since 12th grade (three Hawaii trips excluded), really isn't too difficult for me. I might live in Los Angeles, but I think I've gone within an eighth of a mile of the ocean maybe ten times in the five years I've been here. Do I want to go to the beach? You mean, do I want to sit out on a swath of sand with hoards of people, roasting in the cancerous sun, sand getting in everything, wind whipping the pages around on the book I'm trying to read, with the risk of paralysis (or shark bite) if I try to get in the water? I'll pass, thanks.

With that happy thought, I wish you a tornado-, paralysis- and armadillo-free weekend! XOXO.

Did you know armadillos can swim? Me neither!

More like speed-up-the-spread-of-communicable-diseases day

Apparently today is national high-five day...I know, I didn't know such a thing existed either. Yet it does. It even has a logo.

I think I will refrain from partaking in the high-fiving festivities. If there's one motto that defines my general queasiness of touching anything, it's "Who knows where people's hands have been?" I shudder just thinking of the palms of the most prolific high-five whores.


Air fives are more my style.

Peru, 2007

And you thought traffic was simply annoying

Remember when I posted a study suggesting that breathing might kill you?  Well, it turns out it might also (or alternately) give you brain damage.  Breathing in traffic, that is.

A study recently published in the journal Environmental Health and reported on in Time and the Los Angeles Times has discovered that freeway air pollution can cause brain damage in mice.

(Ain't that just swell, says the girl living in the city of a million freeways.)

In the study in question, researchers at USC exposed mouse-brain cells in test tubes and live mice to air laced with nanoparticles akin to those resulting from "burning fossil fuels and bits of car parts and weathered pavements" (to quote Time). These nanoparticles are truly nano, perhaps one-thousandth the width of a human hair. You can't see them, and more jarringly, your car can't filter them out of the air you're breathing. After only 10 weeks and 150 hours, "Both the in vitro brain cells and the neurons in the live mice showed similar problems, including signs of inflammation associated with Alzheimer's disease and damage to cells associated with learning and memory" (quoting Time again).

One of the major concerns coming out of this research is for the development of  children living and attending school near highways.  For not only could young people's brain functioning be altered by the nanoparticles constantly found in the air they breathe, but freeway pollution may be in part responsible for autism, and lung development could be stunted by breathing pollution as well.  And that's just what I found out by clicking on USC press releases. Imagine what researchers at other schools are discovering about the dangers of breathing!

What's to be done?  To quote the team that looked at the mouse brains, "That's a huge unknown."

I suppose not living in Los Angeles, Phoenex or Bakersfield would be a good start. Also, stay away from China.

And if you live near a freeway, think about moving! 

(Or I suppose you could look into these attractive partial solutions offered by Amazon.com.)

We're all Gonna Die presents: The Top 10 Environmental Disasters of All Time, brought to you by TIME

Someone at Time Inc. apparently really likes making top ten lists. (Side note: how do I get that job?) Happily (by which I mean horrifically), one that I stumbled upon yesterday seems ideal fodder for this blog, so I shall re-post it here as filler while I work on my next book recommendation.

Without further ado, let's explore the TOP 10 ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTERS....as of May 2010.*  (Okay, a little more ado...I do want to clarify, because Time does not, that these are the top 10 man-made disasters. So of course we should be extra terrified.)

1. Chernobyl: 1986 explosion of a nuclear power plant in Ukraine "that sent massive amounts of radiation into the atmosphere, reportedly more than the fallout from Hiroshima and Nagasaki." (Side note: A recent episode of This American Life has some strikingly sad stories about the fallout from Chernobyl. (Pun intended?))
2. Bhopal: 1984 accident at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India that resulted in 45 tons of poisonous methyl isocyanate escaping from the facility, killing 15,000 and affecting more than half a million people.
   
3. Kuwaiti Oil Fires: In 1991, Saddam Hussein sent men to blow up Kuwaiti oil wells, and approximately 600 were set ablaze.  The resulting fires, "literally towering infernos," burned for seven months. Writes Time, "The Gulf was awash in poisonous smoke, soot and ash. Black rain fell. Lakes of oil were created."
   
4. Love Canal: In the 1940's and 1950's, a company near Niagara Falls, NY buried 1,000 tons of toxic industrial waste under the town of Love Canal. Subsequently, a town was unwittingly built on top of the waste dump, and "over the years, the waste began to bubble up into backyards and cellars." By 1978, the problem was so bad that hundreds of families had to sell their homes to the government and evacuate the area.
5. The Exxon Valdez: In 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground Alaska's Prince William Sound, spilling 10.8 million gallons of oil into the water.  This disaster taught schoolchildren (like me at the time) that dish detergent could clean oil off animals. Also, oil spills are bad.
6. Tokaimura Nuclear Plant: 1999 nuclear accident in a facility northeast of Tokyo, Japan, which was the result of workers improperly mixing a uranium solution. I suspect that the newer Japanese nuclear explosion might top this one, but we may never know since Time has already made its "Top 10 environmental disasters" list.
7. The Aral Sea: In the 1960's, the Soviet Union ill-advisedly started piping water out of the Aral Sea. By 2010, the Aral had shrunk 90%, and, writes Time, "what was once a vibrant, fish-stocked lake is now a massive desert that produces salt and sandstorms that kill plant life and have negative effects on human and animal health for hundreds of miles around. Scores of large boats sit tilted in the sand — a tableau both sad and surreal." I hate to say it, but this kind of reminds me of what Easter Island did to itself...
8. Seveso Dioxin Cloud: 1976 explosion at an Italian chemical plant that released a giant cloud of dioxin that settled on the town of Seveso.  Writes Time, "First, animals began to die...One farmer saw his cat keel over, and when he went to pick up the body, the tail fell off. When authorities dug the cat up for examination two days later, said the farmer, all that was left was its skull." Today, there are giant underground tanks that "hold the remains of hundreds of slaughtered animals."
9. Minamata Disease: This is the one that terrifies me the most, possibly because of the coverage of the disease in The Cove, and partly because I think we are all contaminated with Mercury these days. Minamata Disease is the result of "industrial poisoning of Minamata Bay by the Chisso Corp.....As a result of wastewater pollution by the plastic manufacturer, large amounts of mercury and other heavy metals found their way into the fish and shellfish that comprised a large part of the local diet. Thousands of residents have slowly suffered over the decades and died from the disease." Mercury is BAD NEWS, people. Bad. News.
   
10. Three Mile Island: 1979 partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor near near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I think this one made Time's list only because it happened in America. To quote the listmaker, "The ironic thing is that while it has become known as one of America's worst nuclear accidents, nothing much really happened. No one died, and the facility itself is still going strong." Time, may I suggest you replace this with something more dire?

If you think this list of the top 10 environmental disasters is in the wrong order, Time invites you to create your own list of horrible tragedies. Fun for the whole family!

The Aral "Sea"

 *Full disclosure: I'm pretty sure Time magazine just picked ten (mostly) horrific disasters to talk about; there's certainly no guarantee that more horrible things haven't happened.