The paper reference is M. Kuo, D. J. Poxson, Y. S. Kim, F. W. Mont, J. K. Kim, E. F. Schubert, and S. Lin, "Realisation of a near-perfect antireflection coating for silicon solar energy utilisation", Opt. Lett. 33, 2527-2529 (2008), doi:10.1364/OL.33.002527.

The abstract can be read at:

http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ol/abstract.cfm?URI=ol-33-21-2527

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South Africa: Unknown Virus Outbreak Contained

A lethal and previously unknown virus that causes fatal haemorrhagic fever in humans has been identified in southern Africa after it killed four people in Johannesburg. Confirmation that it is a new virus was made by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa and by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, USA.

The virus is a member of the arenavirus family, which also includes the agents that cause Lassa fever in West Africa and several South American fevers. It is relatively rare to discover a new virus fatal to humans, previous examples being the SARS coronavirus in 2002 and the sin nombre hantavirus in 1993. Arenaviruses are common in rodents and infection can be transmitted by their dried urine or inhaled as a dust.

The first victim was a safari tour booker in Lusaka, Zambia, who fell ill in September and was airlifted to Johannesburg. She infected the paramedic who accompanied her and a nurse tending her at the Morningside Medical Clinic in Johannesburg. The fourth victim was a woman who cleaned the room in the clinic where the first patient died. A fifth person, another nurse at the clinic, was described as being in critical condition but responding to early treatment with the antiviral drug Ribavirin.

The health authorities stated there were no further reported cases and believe the outbreak has been contained.

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Philippines: Another Offshore Ferry Disaster

On 4th November 2008, the ferry “MV Don Dexter Cathlyn” was overturned by strong winds and waves while en route from Dimasalang to Bulan in Sorsogon Province in the central Philippines. The ship foundered 5 km off Branagay Magcaragit on Masbate Island. The coastguard reported that 40 people were killed, 11 of them children. The Philippine Red Cross said that by the next day more than 100 passengers had been rescued, but at least a dozen people were still missing, including all the crew. Some 27 injured survivors were taken to the Espinosa Memorial Hospital in Dimasalang. The ship's manifest listed 119 passengers, but no reliance can be placed on such registers. Inter-island ferries in the Philippines are notorious for overloading with passengers and cargo, and for violating maritime safety laws.

It was expected that charges would be brought against the owner of the ship because it had sailed without the required clearance and may have been overloaded. The vessel was not inspected by the coastguard before sailing as the operator of the ship failed to notify that it was leaving port. The ferry operator was arrested and held in the custody of PCG Masbate.

Despite the disastrous record of Philippine shipping companies, no company has ever been closed down by the Government as the result of losing a ship and drowning large numbers of passengers. Sulpicio Lines Inc., the company that owns the “Princess of the Stars” ferry which sank in June 2008 with the loss of 800 lives, remains in operation despite evidence of negligence. Ships owned by Sulpicio Lines have figured in several of the worst maritime disasters in the country.

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Australia: Workplace Accident Destroys a Company

On 5th November 2008, Bazmac Pty, trading as Omni Bedding, was fined Au $360,000 by Victoria County Court following an accident at its factory premises in Braybrook, Melbourne, in April 2007. The incident involved a female worker who lost 40% of her hair in an unguarded cotton folding and carding machine. The worker stooped to inspect the source of a noise being emitted by the machine, which combs out fibre from cotton bales, when her long hair caught in the rotating spindle. The woman’s hair was torn from her scalp as her head was drawn towards the spindle. She has since undergone five multiple skin graft operations as the result of her injuries.

The company pleaded guilty to failing to provide and maintain plant that is safe and without risks to health and safety; failing to provide the necessary information, instruction, training or supervision; and three counts of failing to ensure a risk was eliminated or reduced. The judge said in sentencing that it was a gross failure by the company to comply with workplace safety standards. The company went into liquidation.

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International: EU Global Warming Limit Not Achievable

A pre-publication release by the International Energy Agency (IEA) on 7th November 2008 of its annual publication, World Energy Outlook, warned that the European Union target to limit warming of the planet to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, set by the EU Council of Ministers in 1996, might not be technically achievable. The report concludes that even ignoring the debate about political feasibility it is uncertain whether the scale of the transformation envisaged is even technically possible, as the scenario assumes broad development of technologies that have not yet been proven.

The implication is that the world may have to accept higher warming limits than targeted by the EU since 1996, and prepare for such consequences as more droughts, floods and rising sea levels. The UN climate panel (IPCC) said in 2007 that for an average global temperature rise above 3 degrees, hundreds of millions of people would be exposed to increased water shortages. The IEA is the energy adviser to 28 industrialised countries. It writes that stronger action to fight climate change will involve rapidly escalating costs to deploy expensive, untested technologies, such as carbon scrubbers, and even the abandoning of assets such as high-carbon, coal- burning plants. The IEA states that the reality of the cost of early capital retirement of polluting assets must be faced in order to deliver deep cuts in emissions.

The IEA document analyses two scenarios to limit warming to 2 degrees and 3 degrees, and estimates that they would cost about $180 and $90 per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions respectively. The present EU carbon price is about €18 (US $23.20) and accounts for about one fifth of European consumer electricity prices.

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Ireland: Under-Reporting Workplace Injuries, Deaths and Diseases

At a National Safety Representatives’ Conference held in Dublin by the Health and Safety Authority (HSA), the government safety body, the trade union SIPTU claimed that the number of work-related deaths in Ireland exceeds the official figures and called on the Government to acknowledge the situation.

Ireland’s official statistics average around 60 workplace fatalities per year, but the International Labour Organisation statistics give the figure as approximately 1,400 deaths per year. The discrepancy arises from the HSA counting only those workers killed as the result of an accident inside a workplace. They omit deaths caused by work-related illnesses and diseases, and exclude work-related deaths caused by road traffic accidents.

SIPTU also criticised workplace inspections, stating that in a survey of its own it found that 65% of its safety representatives reported that their employer had prior knowledge that the HSA was going to carry out a workplace inspection, despite there being no legislative requirement upon the HSA to give prior notice of such inspections. In addition, with 200,000 workplaces and 14,000 inspections a year, a workplace in Ireland can on average expect a visit once every 14.5 years.

The trade union claimed that according to recent Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures the number of working days lost due to work-related illnesses and diseases had grown from 1.3 million in 2003 to 1.7 million in 2006, with the final figure for 2007 expected to be even higher. The Government was urged to make it mandatory to report all work-related illnesses and diseases that cause more-than-three-day absences from work.

The HSA responded that it had recently commissioned an expert group to draw up a national strategy on workplace health and well-being, and there were plans to improve the system of reporting and recording workplace illnesses.

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UAE: Oversize Ecological Footprint

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) biennial Living Planet Report 2008 states that despite having a relatively small population the UAE has maintained its position as the nation with the world’s largest ecological footprint.

An ecological footprint is a measurement of human demand on the biosphere in terms of the area of biologically productive land and sea required to provide the resources used, and to absorb the waste produced. It is described in terms of a global hectare, defined as a hectare with global average ability to produce resources and absorb waste.

The WWF report, published in early November 2008, gives the UAE ecological footprint as 9.5 global hectares per person, against a globally available biocapacity of 2.1 hectares. The global average is 2.7 hectares.

However, it is an improvement since publication of the WWF 2006 report, which recorded the UAE footprint as 11.9 global hectares. The report reaffirms the need for the construction sector to address issues of sustainability. The UN Environment Programme Regional Office for West Asia has said that the construction industry at present creates 30% of the world’s waste.

Despite the dry and arid climate of the GCC nations, the UAE has launched a number of initiatives and introduced new regulations in the areas of the development of green building codes, public transport, environmental education and awareness campaigns, and guidelines for more resource use awareness.

The WWF’s 2008 report can be downloaded from:

http://assets.panda.org/downloads/living_planet_report_2008.pdf

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Haiti: Pupils Killed in School Building Collapse

On 7th November 2008, the Civil Protection Service reported that at least 92 people were killed and 150 others injured when the three-storey College La Promesse church school collapsed. The building is located in a shanty-town on the outskirts of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.

Local authorities said more than 500 students aged between three and 20 were in the school when the accident happened. By the following day some 35 survivors had been rescued, but the death toll was expected to rise. A 40-member rescue team with sniffer dogs were joined by a UN peacekeeping force in searching for survivors, along with French fire-fighters from Martinique and helicopters from the neighbouring Dominican Republic.

The building was described as substandard and had been badly rebuilt by the owner himself after a partial collapse eight years ago. The church school had been constructed with hardly any structural steel or cement to hold its concrete blocks together, but although it did not meet official standards no enforcement action had been taken. The owner, who is also the church minister, was arrested by the police.

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China: Careless Welding and Fire Risk

An indoor sports stadium under construction in Jinan, capital of the eastern Chinese province of Shandong, caught fire on 11th November 2008 for the second time in four months. The stadium is part of an Olympic sports centre intended for the 11th National Games of China to be held this year. The National Games are China's biggest sporting event and are held every four years.

A fire in July was caused by welding sparks and spread to around 3,000 square metres of the structure. The latest fire was attributed to either faulty electrical circuits or careless electric welding. Waterproof materials on the roof ignited first and the blaze spread over an area of 1,000 square metres. More than 200 fire-fighters with 44 fire engines fought the blaze for four hours before bringing it under control.

No casualties were reported but fire damage is likely to delay the project for at least two months.

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Kyrgyzstan Government Ponders Radioactive Waste Legacy

A Soviet-era dump containing 450,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste lies around 2 km from Min-Kush in Naryn Province, central Kyrgyzstan, close to the River Tuyuk-Suu. Uranium waste was dumped at Tuyuk-Suu between 1959 and 1963, but the facilities have not been maintained since. The area is mountainous and earthquake-prone. The Kyrgyzstan Ministry of Emergencies announced their concerns in November 2008 that torrential rain could trigger potentially devastating landslides which could change the course of the River Tuyuk-Suu and destroy the vast waste dump, contaminating the river.

The Kyrgyz Prime Minister was quoted by the Kyrgyzstan AKIpress news website on 5th November 2008 as saying that the many toxic radioactive waste dumps left in the country by the Soviet Union are located in areas prone to earthquakes and landslides. Thus they pose an environmental safety hazard to Kyrgyzstan and a contamination threat to the whole Central Asian region. If radioactive waste were to be washed into the River Tuyuk-Suu, contamination would flow via other rivers into the River Syrdarya, a trans-border river that flows through Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.

Some 6,500 hectares of land in Kyrgyzstan have been exposed to radioactive contamination. The country has 92 hazardous waste dumps holding 254 million cubic metres (475 million tonnes) of waste, including radionuclides and other toxic substances. In addition, abandoned mines, untreated tailings dumps and untreated rock debris pose a risk. The United Nations Development Programme has estimated that the most urgent clean-up measures necessary to render the tailings safe would cost up to US $40 million.

The most practical measures would not involve disturbing the radioactive waste by moving it. Instead there are proposals to engineer river beds and strengthen the retaining dams holding the waste to prevent uranium seepage.

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Japan: Carbon Emissions at Record Level

Japanese greenhouse gas emissions rose by 2.3% to a record high in the year to March 2008, putting the world's fifth-largest carbon dioxide producer at risk of an embarrassing failure to achieve its Kyoto target over the next four years. The increase was due to the closure of the country’s biggest nuclear power plant after an earthquake, which forced the utilities to meet demand by burning more coal, oil and natural gas.

Ministry of the Environment statistics published on 12th November 2008 show that emissions rose to 1.371 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent in the last Japanese fiscal year, after a 1.3% decline the previous year. If Japan seeks to cut its emissions by the estimated 13.5% necessary to achieve its 2008-2012 target set under the Kyoto Treaty, it will have to impose a mandatory cap or a carbon tax on emissions instead of its present policy of controlling carbon emissions through voluntary measures. Japanese utilities will also have to increase the quantity of the UN carbon offsets they purchase, which may drive up global carbon credit prices.

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Canada: Placing a Value on a Resource

On 10th November 2008, the Canwest News Service reported that a research organisation based in Ottawa called the Canadian Centre for the Study of Living Standards (CCSLS) had placed a value of $1.5 trillion on the Alberta oil sands, more than four times the official estimate. The official assessment by Statistics Canada is $342 billion, but the organisation claims the federal agency has underestimated the amount of oil the sands contain, contending that the Statistics Canada estimate of 22 billion barrels is "very small compared to those obtained using more appropriate definitions". CCSLS maintains the true amount is 173 billion barrels.

However, the argument put forward is largely invalidated by the social and environmental costs resulting from mass water wastage, pollution from tailings and the emission of very large quantities of greenhouse gases from excavation and processing. Canada accepted a target under the Kyoto treaty to reduce carbon emissions by 6% from 1990 levels by 2008-12, but in fact its emissions have increased by more than 25% due to exploitation of the Alberta oil sands.

An additional factor is that at a market price below around $100 a barrel, neither oil sands nor oil shale are economic to work.

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Hungary: Large-Scale Carbon Trading

The Hungarian Ministry of Environment and Water announced on 13th November 2008 that Spain had purchased rights from Hungary to emit 6 million tonnes of greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol emissions trading scheme. It was the largest single sale of its kind in the world so far. The Spanish Government plans to buy 159 million tonnes of carbon credits and offsets over the next four years in an effort to meet its emissions reduction target under the Kyoto Treaty.

The Kyoto Protocol allows industrialised countries to meet their greenhouse gas targets by buying emissions credits under three different trading schemes. Nations below their emissions targets may sell excess quotas to other signatories in the form of credits called Assigned Amount Units (AAUs). Another scheme allows developed countries to invest in clean energy projects in less developed nations and in exchange receive offsets called Certified Emission Reductions (CERs). The third scheme permits richer countries to buy offsets called Emission Reduction Units (ERUs) from similar projects in former communist countries.

The Spanish intend to obtain as many CERs as possible and the remainder in the form of AAUs and ERUs. In the same week the Portuguese Government arranged to purchase $15 million in CERs through one of its funds. In September, Hungary sold Belgium two million AAUs for an undisclosed price. Latvia, Russia and Poland are in similar discussions with such countries as Ireland and Japan.

The problem with such trading is that the credits are not generated as the result of investment in clean energy; instead they provide a cheap way for countries to meet their commitments under Kyoto without taking any further action to reduce carbon emissions. In the case of Hungary, under a caveat known as a Green Investment Scheme agreement, it will invest the proceeds of its trades in energy efficiency measures in residential and public sector buildings, subject to an audit scheme.

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USA: EPA Ruling Puts the Brake on Coal Burning

On 17th November 2008, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Appeals Panel rejected a permit issued by its Denver office for a new coal-fired power plant in Utah over the issue of its greenhouse gas pollution, placing in question the future of new coal plants that do not curb their emissions. The Panel said its Denver office had failed to adequately support a decision to grant the plant a permit without requiring the best available controls to limit carbon dioxide. The applicant, a consortium of six companies called Deseret Power, wants to build a 110-megawatt plant on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation near Bonanza.

The EPA decision after its review of the regional permit has implications of national scope and puts into question the fate of dozens of planned coal-fired power plants in the USA. In 2007, the US Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide should be regulated by the EPA as a pollutant under the American Clean Air Act.

Coal-burning plants generate around a third of American carbon dioxide pollution, about the same amount as its road vehicles. Some 25 coal plants are under construction across the United States, and another 20 projects have been permitted or are near construction. More than 60 have been announced or are in the early stages of development. None of the commercial-scale plants have planned to include equipment to capture and store carbon emissions. The ruling is therefore certain to be challenged by further lawsuits, and will lead to considerable delay in the building of coal plants.

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France: Power Grid Company Fined for Radiation Leakage

The issue of whether electromagnetic field leakage from high-voltage power transmission lines has an adverse effect on living tissue is controversial. On 17th November 2008, a court in Tulle, south-west France, ruled that the state-owned power grid company RTE, a subsidiary of EDF, must pay €390,000 (US $493,200) in compensation to a farmer on the grounds that a high-voltage line caused his animals to fall sick. The ruling sets a legal precedent in France and RTE said it would appeal against the decision to prevent a flood of similar claims.

RTE had placed a high-voltage line above the farm in the village of Latronche in the Department of Corrèze in 1943 to transport electricity from the nearby hydroelectric dam at L'Aigle, but cows and pigs showed worsening health problems when a fifth turbine was added to the dam in the late 1980s. It was alleged that piglets died, 50 dairy cows developed ulcers and bleeding, and heifers displayed muscular paralysis. The high-voltage line was located 30 metres away from the farmhouse and also caused respiratory problems for the three people living there. It was claimed that the human symptoms ceased when the family moved into a caravan further away from the site.

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Ireland: Waste Management Crisis Approaches

The Republic of Ireland is facing a serious waste disposal problem as it is dumping three million tonnes of waste to landfill each year and has only around 25 million tonnes of total landfill capacity remaining nationwide. According to Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data, nearly one-third of the 35 licensed landfills in the country will be full within two years. Eleven waste dumps could be forced to close by 2011, with a further four facing closure by 2014. Two new “super-dumps” coming on stream at Bottlehill in County Cork and at Drehed in County Kildare will provide enough capacity for only another ten years.

The EPA considers that the situation will be aggravated by its projections for waste generation, as it estimates the amount of waste generated by each person will rise from 0.84 tonnes in 2006 to 1.15 tonnes per person by 2020. Municipal waste from households and commercial activities is expected to rise by 4% per year for the next decade, resulting in a 60% increase in the landfilling of municipal waste by 2025. Two-thirds of municipal waste is biodegradable.

In 2010, the Government will have to comply with the EU Landfill Directive, which obliges member states to reduce the amount of biodegradable municipal waste sent to landfill by nearly 50%. Citizens are likely to face additional taxation arising from total fines of up to €240 million for non-compliance.

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India: Pollution Management in Decay

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) is the official body for regulating environmental standards in India. It is an autonomous body controlled by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, and was created under the Indian Water Act. Most of its members are ministry representatives, but according to a report presented in late October 2008 by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, it has been “reduced to a near-defunct body”.

The organisation has been deprived of enforcement powers and has such a serious shortage of qualified technical staff that its boards are unable to function efficiently in the management and planning of pollution control activities. Although the CPCB does have enforcement powers, its decisions can be overruled by the central government in certain cases, making its position untenable.

The parliamentary report also raised concerns about CPCB data on air and water quality monitoring, because such hazardous pollutants as volatile organic compounds, ozone and aromatic hydrocarbons were not being measured. The Committee found that of 332 monitoring stations in the country, several were not operational and the data sets are not updated regularly. There is no central agency to set standards for emissions, and even if standards are finalised by a technical body, the relevant ministry delays notification of them.

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China: 21 Workers Killed in Tunnel Collapse

On 15th November 2008, a 75-metre section of a subway tunnel under construction collapsed in the Zhejiang Province capital of Hangzhou. Eight workers were killed and 11 were injured. Another 13 workers were buried under silt and rubble, but five days later rescue attempts were abandoned without recovering any of the missing.

The state news agency Xinhua reported that the subway project contractor is China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group Co. Ltd. The dead and missing workers were mostly farmers from the eastern Anhui Province and apparently received little training before they started work on the tunnel. The State Council Work Safety Committee said in a report issued on 19th November that poor government surveillance and poor construction safety management were to blame for the accident.

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International: Proposals to Regulate Ship-Breaking

The EU Environment Commission issued a statement on 19th November 2008 containing proposals for a new international convention on ship-breaking. Between 200 and 600 large merchant ships are dismantled every year in order to recover and recycle scrap metal. Those ships removed from service in Europe are usually broken on beaches in such countries as India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. While ship-breaking does create thousands of jobs, the lives of workers are being put at risk by the deplorable conditions and coastal areas are being polluted by toxic waste seepages. The workers are exposed to asbestos and other hazardous materials, and there is a high accident rate. The Commission notes that in 2006 the decommissioned French warship “Clemenceau” was rejected from Indian waters because it contained an estimated 270 tonnes of asbestos and other toxic substances.

The International Maritime Organisation is preparing a globally binding convention to provide comprehensive control and enforcement on safe ship recycling. Negotiations are due to finish by May 2009, but it is not expected to enter into force before 2015. There is some urgency in dealing with the situation as some 800 single-hull oil tankers are currently being phased out and will soon be banned; all will probably be sent to breakers in South Asia, but they should be dismantled under the highest possible safety standards and more rigorous supervision.

In the meantime the EU Executive Commission has proposed measures which include:

• Technical assistance and support to developing countries for safety training and basic infrastructure for environmental and health protection.
• Enforcement of waste shipment rules and more checks at European ports.
• Establishing a list of ships ready for scrapping.
• Certification and mandatory inventories of hazardous materials onboard hulks.
• Making warships and other government vessels subject to EU rules for clean dismantling, if not covered by the convention.

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Italy: Senior Management Face Murder Charges

On 17th November 2008, the Italian news agency Apcom reported that a court had ordered a trial on murder and manslaughter charges against six defendants, all of whom were employed in senior management roles at the Turin plant of the German steelmaker, ThyssenKrupp AG. The accused include the Chief Executive Officer. The charges include manslaughter and criminal omission of anti-accident measures, and follow a fire at the northern Italian plant in 2007 in which seven workers died.

The trial was ordered to begin on 15th January 2009 and will be the first time that workplace deaths in Italy have led to murder charges. If convicted, the defendants face at least 21 years in prison.

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UAE: Waste Management Health Risk in Dubai

Dubai now has around 1.3 million inhabitants and the Jumeirah district is regarded as a leading tourist resort in the Middle East. Due to a rather alarming oversight, however, the emirate has no infrastructure in place to deal with the safe treatment and disposal of sewage, a problem that has resulted in potential exposure to serious water-borne diseases, such as cholera, typhoid and hepatitis.

Human waste is deposited in the septic tanks of individual buildings, from where it is collected daily by a fleet of 10,000 road tankers and driven to the only sewage treatment plant available at Al-Awir, located in the desert. The plant has only 40 discharge pumps, so the tanker drivers face a 10- to 18-hour queue to discharge their loads. In consequence, they resort to the practice of illegally dumping the effluent in the desert, in lorry parks, or into storm drains. The storm drains are open ditches designed to accommodate infrequent rainfall and occasional flash flooding in the hinterland. The raw sewage dumped into them is flushed to inshore waters, where it causes contamination and beach pollution with sludge. Reports indicate that levels of faecal contamination in coastal waters used by tourists have already reached dangerous levels, preventing sailing and swimming.

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India: Industrial Development Forces New Treatment Plant

The government of the state of Himachal Pradesh announced on 24th November 2008 the opening of a new Rs 340 million waste treatment plant in the industrial area of Baddi in Solan district, with a capacity of 36,000 tonnes annually. The plant is intended to deal with the safe disposal of hazardous industrial waste produced by more than 1,200 facilities, including chemical waste from pharmaceutical, pesticide and chemicals manufacture, as well as paper mills in the Barotiwala and Nalagarh industrial belt.

The situation arose as the result of a government industrial development scheme launched in 2003 which lured more than 900 companies to set up plants in Himachal Pradesh. The hazardous waste disposal problem was not foreseen at the time.

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USA: Chemical Facilities at Risk

A report entitled Chemical Security 101, published in November 2008 by the Centre for American Progress, identifies 101 American chemical manufacturing and water treatment facilities that would cause massive casualties in the event of an accident or terrorist attack, placing more than one million people at risk. The report claims that if the listed facilities used alternative chemicals or processes then the potential casualties might be far smaller.

The document is based on an analysis of risk management plans that chemical facilities submitted to the US Environmental Protection Agency in October 2008, and uses information not made publicly available by the Department of Homeland Security.

The hazardous chemical substances mentioned include more than 300 installations manufacturing or using chlorine, hydrofluoric acid, and various sulphur-containing chemicals. For each listed facility the report suggests alternative chemicals and processes that would mitigate safety concerns and reduce the risk of a terrorist attack. For example, 30 bleach plants could reduce risk to some 50 million people by generating chlorine onsite without rail shipment and bulk storage; facilities mentioned include the Clorox Company in Los Angeles, which puts over 5.5 million people in danger. Similarly, 15 water utilities could remove danger to 17 million people by converting from chlorine (or sulphur dioxide) gas to alternatives that include liquid bleach or ultraviolet light, including the Howard Curren wastewater plant in Tampa, Florida, which places more than one million people in danger.

The report recommends that the US Congress impel the use of safer technologies by requiring chemical installations to assess feasible alternatives and carry liability insurance.

The report can be downloaded from:

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/11/pdf/chemical_security.pdf

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Australia: Child Drowned after Inflatable Dam Ruptures

After a week of heavy rain in the Australian state of Queensland an inflatable dam burst, killing a four-year-old girl. Such devices consist of a very large, inflatable, sausage-shaped tube clamped to a concrete sill. The dam was being used to increase the capacity of the Bedford Weir, near Blackwater in central Queensland, when it ruptured and released around 6,000 megalitres of water. The girl had been swimming with her mother and two other adults near the base of the weir when the dam failed. All three adults were swept away down the MacKenzie River but survived.

The state authorities and the operator said that the dam had passed safety tests only days before the incident on 23rd November 2008.

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International: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise to Record Levels

The Atmospheric Environment and Research Division of the United Nations World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) published its fourth annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin on 25th November 2008 at:

http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/arep/gaw/ghg/documents/ghg-bulletin-4-final-english.pdf

The WMO bulletins represent the consensus of a consortium of networks and report on the latest trends and atmospheric burdens of the most influential and long-lived greenhouse gases, as well as providing a summary of the contributions of the lesser gases.

This year’s report finds that global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) reached record high levels in 2007, symptomatic of a long-term, steadily rising trend that shows no sign of levelling off. Methane (CH₄), a more aggressive greenhouse gas than CO₂, showed its largest annual increase in a decade. These three major gases contribute around 88% of the increase in radiative forcing of the atmosphere by changes in long-lived greenhouse gases occurring since the beginning of the industrial age (1750).

The WMO also found that levels of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons have continued their slow decrease, the result of emission cuts introduced under the 1987 Montreal Protocol which aims to protect the shielding layer of the atmosphere that blocks harmful solar rays. The phase-out of ozone-depleting substances under the Montreal Protocol has in addition had a positive effect on climate.

The UN has warned repeatedly that high atmospheric levels of the radiation-trapping greenhouse gases emitted by factories, cars and agriculture will lead to rising sea levels, more frequent and severe storms, more heatwaves and more droughts.

The current Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 and has been rendered ineffective because the United States refused to ratify the original accord, and the rapidly industrialising nations of China and India were not subject to emissions targets. A new international climate pact is expected by the end of 2009, perhaps this time with the co-operation of America and China.

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Ghana: 21 Killed in Road Tanker Explosion

At least 21 people were killed when a road tanker carrying fuel exploded near the town of Techiman in the Brong-Ahafo region, around 300 km north-west of the capital, Accra. The vehicle broke down on the road and local people attempted to scoop up spilt fuel using any available small containers. The truck exploded and the crowd was engulfed in a fireball. The fatalities included a soldier who had stopped his car and was trying to disperse the crowd. The dead were burnt beyond recognition and another 50 people were taken to hospital with severe burns.

Such incidents are frequent in West Africa. A similar event took place in northern Cameroon in August 2008; and in 2007 some 98 people died as they tried to scoop up fuel from a broken down tanker in Kaduna State, Nigeria.

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India: Wettest Place on Earth Runs Short of Water

The town of Cherrapunji (now called Sohra), located in the East Khasi Hills district in the state of Meghalaya, has a yearly rainfall average of 11,430 mm, making it and the nearby town of Mawsynram, average rainfall 11,873 mm, the wettest place on Earth in terms of rain. Cherrapunji holds two Guinness world records: for receiving the maximum amount of rainfall in a single year of 22,987 mm, between August 1860 and July 1861; and for receiving the maximum amount of rainfall in a single month of 9,299.96 mm in July 1861. The unusually high rainfall at Cherrapunji is attributed to the physical relief of the region and the interaction of its land form with monsoon clouds.

However, in November 2008 the Indian media reported that Cherrapunji is suffering from an acute water shortage. The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) is assisting the Meghalaya government to investigate the causes by means of technical assessments on the status of river catchments in Meghalaya, and social and institutional analysis of the forces that have led to what is described as the economic scarcity of water. TERI will assist the Rain Water Harvesting Mission, an organisation formed by the state government, to combat the shortage of surface water. One component of the study will be to develop a strategy for rain-water harvesting. The overall aim is to submit a project report on tackling the situation through effective management and conservation measures.

Several underlying causes have already been suggested: random large-scale destruction of forests has made perennial springs run dry; there is a reliance on traditional historic rain-water storage systems; and a peculiar land tenure system coupled with destructive and unregulated coal mining and stone quarrying, which has depleted water levels in the perennial catchments of the state. These factors are interacting with a decline in the amount of potable water caused by changing rainfall patterns and inadequate precipitation associated with global warming and climate change.

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International: Brown Clouds Over Major Cities

A research report entitled Atmospheric Brown Clouds was published in November 2008 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The report is available online at:

http://www.unep.org/pdf/ABCSummaryFinal.pdf

Atmospheric brown clouds (ABCs) are the dirty brown haze of pollution, often up to three kilometres thick, which stretches from the Arabian Peninsula to China and the western Pacific Ocean. The study finds that the clouds have blocked up to 25% of sunlight in many cities, with Guangzhou in southern China among several cities to record more than 20% reduction in sunlight since the 1970s. Other large cities threatened by ABCs include Bangkok, Beijing, Cairo, Dhaka, Karachi, Kolkata, Lagos, Mumbai, New Delhi, Seoul, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Tehran. Similar clouds are also found in parts of Europe and on the eastern seaboard of the United States, but are less dangerous because winter rains and snow wash them away.

The report identifies five regional hotspots for ABCs, defined as regions where the annual mean anthropogenic aerosol optical depth (AOD) exceeds 0.3 and the percentage of contribution by absorbing aerosols exceeds 10% (absorbing AOD > 0.03). They are Eastern China; the Indo-Gangetic plains in South Asia from eastern Pakistan across India to Bangladesh and Myanmar; South-East Asia, covering Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam; Southern Africa extending southwards from sub-Saharan Africa into Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe; and the Amazon basin in South America.

The enormous brown haze is created by human activities and is a mixture of ozone, black carbon and soot particles released by the burning of fossil fuels and biofuels. It contains a variety of aerosols, carcinogens and the very small particles linked to respiratory diseases and cardio-vascular problems.

According to the report, the toxic clouds could be responsible for the deaths of 340,000 people every year in China and India. The brown clouds also threaten the massive Hindu Kush-Himalaya-Tibetan glaciers, which are retreating at an unprecedented rate; the glaciers and snow packs are expected to shrink by as much as 75% before the year 2050. Chinese glaciers have shrunk by 5% since the 1950s. The disappearing glaciers threaten the water supplies to millions of people far downstream who depend on rivers to drink and irrigate their crops.

The report argues that the brown clouds may alter the conventional climate change scenario. Although they are composed of black carbon and soot particles which absorb sunlight and heat the air and other gases, they contain other particles, such as sulphates, which reflect sunlight and hence cool the Earth’s surface. The authors conclude that the brown clouds may be damping the rise in global temperatures by 20% to 80%.

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Vietnam: Hose Rupture Causes Offshore Oil Spill

On 26th November 2008, the state oil company Petrovietnam announced that an oil spill had taken place at the Dung Quat oil refinery, the only refinery in the country and not yet fully operational. The new 140,000 barrels per day capacity plant is located in Quang Ngai Province on the central coast, and the incident happened when an offshore cargo hose damaged by strong winds and heavy rain ruptured while transferring 52,500 tonnes of diesel from the Singaporean tanker “Eagle Milwaukee”. The diesel fuel is intended to be used in a test-run operation before switching to crude oil.

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New Zealand: Emissions Trading Market Fails Before it Starts

A change of government on 8th November 2008 threw into chaos the New Zealand fledgling carbon emissions trading market only a few weeks before it was due to start operating. The scheme was intended to be the first carbon cap-and-trade scheme outside Europe and had been designed to help the country meet its obligations under the Kyoto climate change protocol. The incoming government chose to announce a review of the scheme, creating uncertainty for the market participants and delaying implementation by several years. A two-year delay would mean the New Zealand scheme starting at the same time as the proposed Australian scheme, thus New Zealand would lose any first move advantage. The new New Zealand Government has also decided to question the science behind climate change as part of its review.

At the same time, the UN Climate Change Secretariat released data which showed that New Zealand had the sixth highest growth in emissions out of 40 industrialised countries between 1990 and 2006. New Zealand greenhouse gas emissions grew by 25.7% in the period. Under the terms of the Kyoto Protocol, New Zealand agreed to show no emissions increase from 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.

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China: Coal Mine Blast Attributed to Cigarettes

On 27th November 2008, the Chinese state news agency Xinhua cited a local authority investigation report which found that an underground coal mine blast on 29th October, which killed 29 miners in the Yaotou mine of Chengcheng County in Shaanxi Province, was caused by cigarette smoking in the shaft. The investigation also revealed that the mine ventilation system was blocked before the incident, leading to an accumulation of methane gas. Of the entire work shift of 36 men, only seven survived. The mine, which has a production capacity of 330,000 tonnes a year, had a full set of valid safety licences. The vice-governor of Shaanxi ordered that coal mine management procedures be tightened following the accident.

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Amazonia: Up in Smoke

A research paper by N. Golding and R. Betts published in the journal Global Geochemical Cycles, Vol. 22, GB4007, reference doi:10.1029/2007GB003166, 2008, (abstract at http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007GB003166.shtml) reaches the conclusion that fires fanned by drought and deforestation could consume much of the Amazon rainforest by the 21st century. Many previous studies based on computerised climate models have projected worsening dry seasons in the Amazon, but the impact of fire risk and its interaction with deforestation has received less attention.

The UK-based authors combined a global climate model with a fire danger index to simulate changes in fire risk in the Amazon until 2090. According to their model an area of high fire risk could spread along south-east Amazonia by the early 2020s; and by the 2080s at least half, and maybe up to 90%, of the Amazon rainforest will lie in the danger zone. The risk is compounded by growing areas of high fire risk in eastern Amazonia overlapping with expanding areas of slash-and-burn forest clearing, increasing the chance that intentional fires will spread.

The researchers warn that if their simulated regional climate changes hold true and deforestation is allowed to continue, the entire eastern portion of the rainforest could be at risk by 2080. The loss of forest cover might further intensify regional droughts and destroy one of the largest carbon sinks on the planet.

On 29th November 2008, the Brazilian Government described as unsatisfactory the results of a recent satellite imagery analysis by the National Institute for Space Research which found that destruction of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil had accelerated for the first time in four years; 11,968 sq km of land was cleared to July 2008, nearly 4% higher than the year before.

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European Union: 13 Pesticides Identified as Food Health Risk

The food risk assessment agency, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which is based in Parma, stated on 24th November 2008 that it had identified 13 substances whose use should be reduced in growing fruit and vegetables to protect human health. EFSA is at present risk-assessing 300 active substances, including chemicals and micro-organisms, used in pesticides across the European Union countries to establish whether the existing maximum residue levels (MRLs) are safe for human consumption. EFSA was asked by the European Commission to assess the safety of 15 active substances, and expressed concern in 13 cases. See:

http://www.efsa.europa.eu/EFSA/efsa_locale-1178620753812_1211902194715.htm

The agency proposed lower MRLs where it found safety concerns and also for substances where there were not enough data available to prove the safety of the current levels, or where active substances not authorised for use in the European Union were present as residues on or in imported food and feed.

The European Union is reviewing pesticide laws, prompted by growing concern about the effects of chemical use on consumers. EFSA began to co-ordinate the review of MRLs for pesticides in 2008 and aims to complete it by the end of 2010. From 2009 it will make annual reports on actual consumer exposure to pesticides. The approach taken by EFSA is based on internationally recognised methodology and takes into account different food consumption patterns and products available across the EU. EFSA verifies that exposure levels are safe for all consumers, including potential vulnerable groups such as young children, the elderly and vegetarians. The actual exposure of consumers to pesticides will be evaluated in the EFSA Annual Report on Pesticide Residues.

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International: Cancer Risk from Industrial Organic Solvents

Italian research published in November 2008 by Adele Seniori Constantini and colleagues of the Centre for Study and Prevention of Cancer found that an increased risk of chronic lymphoid leukaemia is associated with workplace benzene exposure. The reference is American Journal of Industrial Medicine, Volume 51, Issue 11, November 2008, pages 803-811, reference DOI:10.1002/ajim.20592. Two other hydrocarbon-based industrial chemicals, xylene and toluene, were also found to be associated with greater chronic lymphoid leukaemia risk. Benzene is a known carcinogen used in the manufacture of plastics, synthetic rubber, dyes and drugs. It has long been established that exposure causes acute myeloid leukaemia, but its association with multiple myeloma and chronic lymphoid leukaemia risk was less clear.

The team carried out a population-based, case-control study to investigate and identify all cases of blood and lymphatic cancers diagnosed in people 20 to 74 years old between 1991 and 1993 in 11 regions in Italy, including a total of 2,737 malignancies. They studied 586 cases of leukaemia (and 1,278 population controls) found in seven of the regions, comparing chemical exposures for the ill individuals to those for 1,278 controls, based on occupation. There was no association between acute myeloid leukaemia and benzene, probably because the disease develops within a relatively short time after exposure and the cases were diagnosed about 30 years after the use of benzene in industrial materials was limited to 2% by a law passed in 1963. The researchers did find a link between multiple myeloma (MM) and chronic lymphoid leukaemia and benzene exposure (263 cases of MM with 1,100 population controls).

Overall, medium to high levels of benzene exposure nearly doubled the risk of these two blood cancers. The more intense exposure was and the longer it lasted, the greater the risk. Exposure to medium to high levels of benzene for more than 15 years increased a person's chronic lymphoid leukaemia risk 4.7-fold, while the same degree of exposure to xylene more than tripled risk. Similar exposure to toluene boosted chronic lymphoid leukaemia risk 4.4-fold. However, the increased risk for multiple myeloma was seen only with benzene, not with exposure to the other two chemicals.

The conclusion was that the findings were in agreement with the hypothesis that acute myeloid leukaemia risk following benzene exposure declines in time while chronic lymphoid leukaemia and multiple myeloma risks are not seen until a longer latency period has passed.

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South Africa: Lack of Investment Leads to Water Crisis

A senior researcher in water resource management for the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was suspended from his job in late November 2008 for attempting to read a paper before a CSIR conference on drinking water quality. The man intended to argue that South Africa is on the verge of a significant crisis in the water sector that is likely to fan social instability and constrain future economic development.

He is not the first critical voice to be suppressed by the Water Affairs and Forestry Ministry; earlier in 2008 other water management specialists warned that water supply in South Africa is already under stress because of lack of investment for nearly 20 years, declining water infrastructure and lack of skilled personnel.

The controversial paper, circulated internally at the CSIR weeks before the conference, concludes that the Government must either accept that the development targets of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa are unattainable, or launch a radical rethink of how to mobilise science, engineering and technological capacity.

A significant proportion of South African municipalities have no civil engineering professional support, particularly in rural areas; and deteriorating drinking water quality arising from eutrophication in rivers and dams and lack of ability to adapt water treatment processes and plant to remove microcystins, endocrine-disrupting chemicals and antiretroviral medication have already caused disease outbreaks affecting thousands.

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Iraq: Soil Renovation in the Fertile Crescent

At present, Iraq imports almost all of its food, paying for it with money from oil exports and consuming much of the Government's budget. On 1st December 2008, the Iraq Water Resources Ministry began a project that is intended to flush out excess salinity from 2.5 million hectares of land in the centre and the south of the country, cleansing rivers and renovating dying soils in what was once part of the area known as the Fertile Crescent.

Centuries of inefficient irrigation have caused vast areas of productive farmland to become saline. The irrigation water used was slightly saline and due to faulty drainage the salts accumulated in the soil over time, rendering it infertile. To reverse salinisation in groundwater it is necessary to pump out contaminated underground reservoirs and allow them to refill with freshwater.

A groundwater pumping station in Nassiriya, 300 km south-east of Baghdad, was started in the 1980s, but war with Iran and then UN sanctions in the 1990s made it impossible to complete it. The new phase of operations, which also includes renovation of 90,000 km of drainage and irrigation channels, will help to improve the quality of water in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, but will take several years to complete.

Iraq’s rainfall in 2008 fell to around 30% of average, triggering severe drought and placing additional strain on water resources.

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International: Resource Limitations to Green Energy

Much of the information released to the media by governments and multinational companies on the subject of their future plans for carbon-free energy is essentially rhetoric based on a failure to understand basic resource limitations. Limitations on growth is not a new idea; the Club of Rome published a seminal work on the topic more than 30 years ago (D. H. Meadows, D. L. Meadows, J. Randers, W. W. Behrens, 1972, The Limits to Growth, Pan Books Ltd). Some current examples are outlined here.

Lithium ion batteries reached commercial-scale production in the early 1990s, since when demand for and use of the technology has grown rapidly. Such devices as watches, cameras, laptop computers, cell (mobile) phones, Blackberrys and iPods rely on lithium batteries to power them. Between 2003 and 2007, industrial demand for lithium doubled to around 80,000 tonnes per year. Unfortunately, known global reserves of lithium are limited. The metal is difficult to extract and hazardous to process, and it is restricted in occurrence to small areas in South America. Proposals by the major vehicle manufacturers to install lithium ion batteries in cars to mass-produce emissions-free electric vehicles are simply not viable, because to power one car would require batteries containing around 100 times as much lithium as a laptop. The American Tesla electric sports car is powered by the equivalent of 6,000 lithium laptop batteries. On current calculations there are around four million tonnes of lithium in the world that can be economically extracted, but production cannot possibly be expanded to meet the foreseeable demands of the vehicle manufacturers. Whatever they may claim, the car makers have no choice but to use heavier and less efficient nickel batteries if they intend to produce electric vehicles.

It seems as though nearly every government in the world has decided to build new nuclear power generation plants. According to the World Nuclear Association, 237 new nuclear reactors are due to be built before 2030. In reality this will not happen. There is only one source for reactor cores, the Japan Steel Works (JSW) forge on Hokkaido, where in a virtual monopoly situation the world’s reactor cores are made from individual 600-tonne steel ingots. The highly specialised output of JSW is limited to four reactor cores per year. The company (which also makes samurai swords) has found itself under extreme pressure from potential customers and is investing heavily to double its output, but even that will not open the bottleneck.

In China there is a major problem in developing wind power generation. They cannot find enough specialised gearboxes or bearings to produce the number of wind turbines they need. Those components are made in Germany, where the manufacturers cannot satisfy current demand. The escalating selling price and profitability of wind turbines will encourage manufacturers to train new personnel and invest in new plant, solving the component supply crisis for wind energy within a few years.

The Czech Vitkovice Group announced in 2007 that its heavy machinery division could upgrade facilities to produce heavy nuclear forgings in two years, but the engineering constraints of working the giant Japanese steel ingots are unlikely to be resolved in time to prevent further climate deterioration.

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UAE: Mobile Plant Fatality

In November 2008, a fatality resulted when the operator of a motor grader engaged on base course preparation reversed his machine on a road construction site forming part of the Dubai-Fujairah highway over the Hajar Mountains. The driver overshot a ledge adjacent to his working area and the machine fell 20 metres down a slope, killing the operator. There was no banksman present to guide the movement of the machine. A qualified operator would have insisted on having a trained banksman present under what were clearly high-risk working conditions.

Since motor graders (also called road graders) are complex machines to manoeuvre, they require an experienced driver and frequent maintenance checks on safety equipment (some machines are even fitted with GPS systems). A work site with hazardous excavations or natural drops should be clearly marked at its edges with barriers and/or high-visibility markers that are in place both day and night. What controls the placing of safety barriers depends on the size and weight of the mobile plant, the angle of any adjacent slopes and the nature of the subsoil. A heavy mobile plant unit moving too close to the edge of a slope or drop may trigger the subsoil to collapse at some distance from the edge.

Construction is one of the most demanding and dangerous work sectors in every country of the world, and even in Europe it has an alarming record of accidents and injuries. The European Union Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) has a web page offering advice to employers and employees on the most common risks and how to prevent them at:

http://osha.europa.eu/en/sector/construction

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Saudi Arabia: Melamine Found in Chinese Milk Powder

In early December 2008, the Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA) in Bahrah Municipality, which lies to the east of Jeddah, seized consignments of Nestlé Cerelac cereal and Nesvita Pro-Bone milk powder manufactured in China that had been found to be adulterated with melamine. Food safety testing on the products had revealed them to be “highly contaminated”.

Traces of melamine were found in tins of Nesvita Pro-Bone milk powder from four different production dates in 2007 and 2008, according to the SFDA website ( http://www.sfda.gov.sa). The tainted powder was discovered in a random survey of 52 samples of imported products containing milk powder. The sampling also found that Apollo Chocolate Wafer Cream snack bars manufactured in Malaysia contained melamine.

The Nestlé headquarters in Switzerland stated that the milk powder had been withdrawn from the Saudi market after a Saudi Government request for a precautionary recall in mid-October while testing was being carried out.

The World Health Organisation has not set a tolerable daily intake for melamine because a “safe” level of chemical contamination has not been determined. At present the recommendation is not to exceed consuming 0.2 mg per kilogram of body weight. The tolerable daily intake of cyanuric acid, a related substance, is 1.5 mg per kg of body weight. However, when both contaminants are present in food, the toxic effect is greater than merely additive. In November 2008, the US Food and Drug Administration decided that melamine concentrations below one part per million are safe in baby formula products offered for sale in the United States.

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European Union: Dioxin-Contaminated Meat in Ireland

The European Commission announced on 7th December 2008 that it was keeping a close watch on the finding that pork meat produced in the Republic of Ireland had been contaminated with dioxin. Analytical results revealed the presence of very high levels of dioxins in pork meat of around 100 times the European Union (EU) maximum level. Preliminary evidence indicated that the problem is likely to have started in September 2008 with contaminated animal feed. Routine government safety testing first detected the presence of the substance, which has been banned for 30 years. All possibly contaminated animal feed was immediately blocked. The contaminated feed was provided to ten pig farms which between them produce around 10% of the total supply of pigs in Ireland. After slaughter the meat was sent to meat processing plants which are responsible for about 80% of the total supply of pork meat and pork meat products from Ireland.

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) said that the source of the contamination was probably diesel oil that had found its way from a hot air drier into the recycled bread and dough used to make pig feed in the County Carlow factory of Millstream Power Recycling Ltd. The FSAI reported finding dioxin levels in meat samples that were between 80 and 200 times above the legal limit.

The Irish authorities decided on 6th December to recall from the market all pork products manufactured from pigs slaughtered in Ireland. Possibly contaminated pork meat and pork meat products had been distributed to 21 other countries, including Japan, Germany, Russia, France and the United States.

Besides being distributed to pig farms, the contaminated feed was fed to some 50 cattle herds. Three cattle herds in the Republic tested positive for dioxin (at three times the EU safety limit) and another eight herds in Northern Ireland were also reported positive. All the affected farms were placed under restriction to prevent any more non-compliant meat from entering the food chain. Another effect of the dioxin scare was the temporary closure of at least two meat processing plants in the Irish Republic, resulting in nearly 1,400 workers being laid off.

Since Ireland is unable to store the 30,000 tonnes of recalled pig meat and pig meat products, the European Commission moved to provide an aid scheme that will allow the storage of suspect meat for six months at EU expense. The authorities decided not to withdraw beef or beef products from the market despite possible exposure to the contaminated feed.

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USA: Defective Welding Causes Catastrophic Tank Failure

The United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) announced on 9th December 2008 that it is to conduct a full investigation into the causes of a disastrous fertiliser tank collapse at the production facility of Allied Terminals in Chesapeake, Virginia. The incident took place on 12th November 2008 and involved the collapse of a two-million-gallon-capacity liquid storage tank which contained an aqueous solution of urea and ammonium nitrate fertiliser. Two contract workers were seriously injured, and two members of the public who tried to aid the injured men received hospital treatment for exposure to ammonia vapour. The spillage overtopped a containment dike and flooded sections of a nearby residential neighbourhood, requiring on-going remediation of the soil. At least 200,000 gallons of spilled fertiliser could not be accounted for and some reached the nearby Elizabeth River, which flows into Chesapeake Bay.

The CSB expressed concern that immediate steps should be taken by Allied Terminals to safeguard three other nearby fertiliser storage tanks from possible failure due to defective welding on the tank walls. The potential for collapse of even one large tank posed an unacceptably high risk of causing substantial property damage or a number of injuries or deaths among the general public. The CSB wanted the hazard presented by the remaining tanks dealt with by lowering the maximum safe fill height, and employing an independent qualified tank engineering contractor to assess their safety. An engineering analysis should be conducted within 30 days and its results provided to the city authorities. The CSB also recommended that Allied Terminals develop and implement a corrective action plan for dealing with any deficiencies found in the tanks.

The welding that failed was carried out in 2006 as part of a project to strengthen four large fertiliser tanks, originally constructed in 1929, by replacing vertical riveted seams. The CSB found that defective welding had resulted in incomplete penetration of the welding metal into the joints, leading to the tank being weakened. It failed when liquid was raised to a level slightly below the recommended safe fill height. The three adjacent tanks were welded during the same time period and thought likely to have similar defects, including insufficient reinforcement, porosity and weld undercut that could cause them to fail.

Allied Terminals stated that before the tank failure took place it had hired HMT Inspection, a Texas-based tank engineering company, to examine each tank in accordance with existing industry safety guidelines for petroleum tanks. HMT did not identify the welding defects that led to the recent failure. The CSB pointed out that in the USA, no federal, state or local agency has clear regulatory and enforcement responsibility for the safety of non-petroleum, above-ground storage tanks, despite the obvious hazard such tanks can pose. The CSB drew attention to similar cases of regulatory oversight which contributed to storage tank accidents, such as a sulphuric acid tank collapse in 2001 at the Motiva oil refinery in Delaware City, Delaware. In that incident one worker was killed and eight others injured, and the Delaware River was polluted.

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European Union: Incandescent Light Bulbs to be Banned

The standard incandescent light bulb has barely changed since it was first produced commercially by Thomas Edison in 1879, and energy-efficiency design improvements reached a limit around 50 years ago. On 8th December 2008, a European Union expert panel recommended to the EU Presidency that incandescent light bulbs be phased out between September 2009 and September 2012. The proposals will be studied by the European Parliament and member states, and if no objection is raised they could be adopted in a fast-track procedure by the end of March 2009.

European households could initially save up to €50 per year by switching to more efficient halogen, LED and fluorescent CFL lamps. Greater savings are likely as increasing demand lowers the cost of these longer-lasting but at present more expensive bulbs.

The most efficient CFL bulbs are manufactured in China, so the proposal could lead to the loss of 2,000 to 3,000 EU jobs, mostly in Eastern Europe. However, the EU could save between €5 and €10 billion on energy bills.

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UAE: Masdar City Development

Citizens of the United Arab Emirates emit more greenhouse gases per head of population than any other people on Earth. Abu Dhabi overlies around 80% of proven global oil reserves, which at current extraction rates will provide an income for nearly a century. In 2006, the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company announced the Masdar Initiative (see http://www.masdaruae.com), a project to construct a sustainable zero-emissions, clean-energy population centre in the desert. The initial phase of the project, underwritten with US $15 billion in funding from the Government of Abu Dhabi, was to set up a research institute to develop environmental technologies, the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST); an investment arm to commercialise and deploy the results; and to build an environment-friendly city to house the two bodies and test their ideas.

Masdar City, which lies alongside Abu Dhabi International Airport around 17 kilometres east-south-east of Abu Dhabi City, is the world’s most ambitious sustainable development with the aim of being the first zero carbon, zero waste, car-free city powered entirely by renewable energy sources. According to the Mubadala Development Company, Masdar is intended to become a global manufacturing hub for such technologies as solar power and desalination; and with an eventual population of 40,000 spread over six square kilometres, it will emit no greenhouse gases and produce no waste. Under the guidance of its investment arm, Masdar City is intended to run on a commercial basis, in conjunction with other companies.

The location of Masdar City in a harsh desert environment places considerable demands on technology. In order to reduce emissions it must be highly energy-efficient and water must be recycled to reduce the need for desalination. There are proposals for dew condensation collectors, rainwater harvesting and electronic monitoring for possible pipeline leakages. The city is built on a raised platform with pipelines and other infrastructure beneath it. Public green spaces will be occupied by succulent plants rather than the European-style lawns and flower gardens currently fashionable in the GCC. There will be no private cars; instead public transport will be based on a rail track personal rapid transit system. The layout and design of the city will control the flow of winds through its structure, with roofing and canopy space devoted to solar panels in a variety of designs. It is also proposed to install wind turbines, solar water heaters and small waste incinerators. Algae ponds will eventually produce biofuel. It is claimed that the carbon dioxide emissions associated with construction will be sequestered in the city vegetation and offset by exports of surplus green energy.

Masdar and the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company will benefit from a recent change in the UN Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) policy, discussed at the climate change conference in Poznan, Poland, that will sanction the capture and storage of carbon dioxide as a tool to fight global warming. Masdar expects to receive income from the sale of carbon credits to help pay for a CCS project to pump carbon dioxide gas through 300 km of pipelines from a steel mill, a conventional power plant and a hydrogen power plant on industrial sites in Taweelah, and eventually a new aluminium smelter, into old oil wells south-west of the capital. It will receive an additional revenue stream from the modified CDM that will improve the economic viability of the project.

It is hoped that the city will produce more energy than it consumes, but curiously enough only 80% of the energy sources the city will require have so far been identified. The city will not produce sufficient energy to power itself at night and will import electricity from the Abu Dhabi natural gas-fired grid. It is suggested that this will be balanced by exporting excess solar power back to the grid during daylight.

Abu Dhabi is also constructing a Formula One racetrack and a Ferrari-themed amusement park adjacent to Masdar City; and nearby it is building what will be the largest aluminium smelter in the world.

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Australia: Vast Camel Herd Threatens Desert Ecosystem

Camels were introduced to Australia as pack animals for the Outback in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but were released into the wild as rail and road travel became more widespread. As is often the case, the introduced species had no predators, adapted well and has now become invasive.

On 9th December 2008, a report to the Federal and State Governments was published by the Desert Knowledge Co-operative Research Centre, a section within the Northern Territory Department of Natural Resources, Environment, the Arts and Sport. The research found that a herd of wild camels at least one million strong is ravaging a vast region of 3.3 million square kilometres in the heart of Australia, representing an area equivalent to around one third of the continent. The huge herd is inflicting major damage on fragile desert ecosystems, scarce water supplies, rare plants and animals, Aboriginal cultural resources, remote communities and pastoral enterprises across the continental inland area.

The scale of the damage has gone largely unnoticed so far because the interior is so sparsely populated by people. The current feral camel herd is doubling in size every nine years, or by around 80,000 animals per year, and the present figure of one million animals is a conservative estimate.

The authorities point out that Australian camels do have some positive aspects as a potential source of meat, tourism and weed control, but only if their population is managed in a controlled way. Fencing areas is too costly on a large scale and no other practical management solutions have yet been presented, other than shooting the camels and eating them.

Other animals listed by the Department of the Environment as being of "significant concern" include feral horses, donkeys, pigs, European wild rabbits, European red foxes, cats, goats and cane toads.

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International: 30-Year Plot of Increasing Global Temperature

Graphs released by the Earth System Science Centre at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, USA, in December 2008 demonstrate that the atmosphere of the Earth has warmed by an average of about 0.72 degrees Fahrenheit or 0.4C over the past 30 years, based on data collected from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) satellites.

However, the planetary study of climate change since 1978, when satellite sensors first began to track the global climate, does not show a uniform pattern of warming. Although some features are anomalous, less than 20% of the planetary surface has not shown any measure of mean temperature increase.

The fastest warming area of the planet is near the Northern Atlantic and Arctic oceans. The greatest warming has been in Greenland, where temperatures have risen as much as 4.60 F in 30 years. In the same period the Antarctic cooled by as much as Greenland has warmed.

The monthly pattern of temperatures on the 30-year graph shows a series of warmer than normal months following the major El Niño Pacific Ocean warming event of 1997-1998. The frequency of La Niña Pacific Ocean cooling events is also increasing and another was reported to be developing in January 2009.

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Russia: Explosives Handling Accident Kills Work Shift

An underground explosion and fire took place in a mine owned by Apatit OAO near Kirovsk in the Murmansk region, around 900 km north of Moscow, on 11th December 2008. According to the Russian Emergencies Ministry at least 12 people were killed by the explosion and five were seriously injured. This left one member of the work shift unaccounted for. An operation to recover the missing worker was hampered by high temperatures in the mine. It was reported that the workers were laying explosives in preparation for a controlled blast planned for 15th December when their explosive mix detonated accidentally. The Russian mining safety authority Rostekhnadzor announced that it would investigate the blast at the Rasvumchorrsky mine.

Apatit OAO (Apatit JSC) is a Russian company engaged in the extraction of phosphate minerals for the manufacture of chemicals and fertilisers. The company produces apatite concentrate, nephelynic concentrate, phosphate fertilisers and ammophos. The Murmansk Oblast Kola Region is a major industrial centre producing apatite, nickel, copper and cobalt, and a mining area for iron, aluminium, titanium, zirconium, rare-earth elements and other rare metals, as well as dimensional stone.

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International: Population Growth and Carbon Emissions Growth

An important but usually ignored factor in reducing the burden of greenhouse gases emitted to the atmosphere by human activity is the stabilisation of the physical number of human beings on the planet. Governments are reluctant to address the topic of uncontrolled human population growth, despite population pressure being a major driving force behind the increase in carbon emissions, in the form of ever greater demands upon resources and energy. The global population is expected to reach more than nine billion by 2050, or three times what it was in 1960.

In December 2008, the United Nations (UN) climate conference in Poznan, Poland, considered only the setting of carbon emissions targets and funding renewable energy projects. The UN reasoning is that proposing policies on population growth would provoke argument between rich and poor nations over who is responsible for global warming. The developing world would oppose introducing population into the discussion on the grounds that it would hold them accountable for a problem they blame on the West. In addition, Catholic and Muslim countries are opposed to population policies as they might increase support for abortion and birth control.

Research has suggested that slowing population growth would make it easier to solve the climate crisis. A crucial element lies simply in understanding the role that population plays in the increase in emissions. There is substantial evidence showing a strong correlation between a country's economic growth and its emissions. Population control is not an excuse for coercive family planning policies, but by slowing population growth it is possible to reduce emissions significantly and enable society to cope better with adverse climate change. Another population factor is economic migration, urbanisation and the growth of megacities in China and India, which could increase emissions by up to 70% by 2100.

It is thought that eventually the international community will have to accept that a more rapidly rising population will make it far more difficult to curb climate-damaging emissions.

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Bahrain: Stiffer Penalties Proposed for Work Safety Infringement

In the year to December 2008, a total of 37 construction workers died in work-related accidents in Bahrain, despite the introduction of a ban on midday summer work in 2007, that two-month period being the peak time for heat-stress-induced fatal accidents.

On 11th December 2008, it was reported that the Bahrain Labour Ministry subcommittee for occupational safety had proposed to the Minister that harsher penalties should be imposed on rogue contractors for violation of safety regulations, because the existing penalties for infringement are not sufficient to discourage poor safety practice.

Serious workplace accidents are not dealt with under criminal law and the present maximum penalty that a contractor can face for safety infringement is BHD 300, or US $795 per worker injured. The proposed amended penalties would include imprisonment.

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European Union: Contentious Agreement on Carbon Emissions

In December 2008, European Union leaders agreed a deal on tackling global climate change which they claimed would see EU greenhouse gas emissions fall 20% below 1990 levels by 2020. It was decided that the nine eastern European member states with low GDP per capita and dependent upon coal as an energy source will receive free carbon emissions permits under the next phase of the European trading scheme equal to 70% of their current average annual emissions until 2020. The EU agreed that 300 million permits, with a value of around €5 billion, would be targeted at carbon capture and storage technology.

Overall the agreement still leaves emissions-intensive industries such as power generation, the steel, cement and aluminium industries free to take no action other than buying offset carbon credits abroad. At present they receive free emissions allowances and from 2013 may buy up to 30% of their allowances. They will also be able to apply for exemptions to grant them up to 100% free emission permits even after 2020.

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International: Record Arctic Ice Melting in 2008

At the Autumn 2008 meeting of the American Geophysical Union held in December in San Francisco, California, researchers from the International Siberian Shelf Study presented evidence of a record amount of ice melting in northern and south-western Greenland; and the widespread release of methane gas from formerly frozen deposits off the Siberian coast.

In most summers, temperatures in the marginal regions of Greenland rise only enough to permit melting on ten to 15 days on average. However, microwave data collected by a US defence meteorological satellite revealed that in 2008 the melt period totalled 35 days. In consequence, Greenland is estimated to be losing hundreds of billions of tonnes of ice every year.

Field studies in 2008 detected methane gas bubbling from the sea floor over hundreds of square kilometres in the Laptev and East Siberian Seas. The methane concentrations in seawater were up to 200 times higher than the background levels. Methane releases from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf appear to be increasing. The Arctic permafrost contains trillions of tonnes of methane trapped in the form of gas hydrates or clathrates. The permafrost, both on land and submerged under seawater, could be on the threshold of melting.

Computer climate models suggest that greenhouse gases should warm the Arctic far more than other areas of the world because the loss of sea ice allows heat to penetrate the oceans, increasing regional temperatures and causing further melting.

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New Zealand: Toxic Spray Used Near School

In November 2008, the toxic insecticide Thionex was used by the citrus grower Kerifresh to spray 8.4 hectares of mandarin trees near Taipa Area School in Taipa, a town on the coast of North Island, to control an infestation of Australian citrus whitefly. Thionex is banned in 55 countries as its active ingredient is endosulfan.

The incident was investigated by the Northland District Health Board following complaints by school teachers and students reportedly suffering from headaches, tiredness, eye irritation, skin reactions and respiratory problems. The Public and Population Health Unit of the Board reported on 17th December 2008 that it had found no endosulfan contamination in either soil or foliage samples collected near the orchard, nor did blood and urine samples test positive. The Board said it was inappropriate for Kerifresh to use endosulfan close to a school and houses with young children, and also close to the sea.

Endosulfan was described as being under review by the New Zealand Environmental Risk Management Authority because of its known toxicity, especially in water environments, and known health effects. The semi-volatile substance has been linked to breast cancer, is a hormonal disruptor and can drift long distances as a mist or on dry dust particles and enter food chains. To control spray drift it can only be used safely with an extensive marginal buffer zone.

Kerifresh said that the use of endosulfan was an emergency measure to control a pest invasion that threatened the 40-hectare orchard’s viability; it was the only effective agrichemical for controlling the insect infestation.

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USA: Helicopter Lost in Gulf of Mexico

On 12th December 2008, the US Coast Guard was alerted after a Rotorcraft Leasing Co. helicopter flying out from Broussard in Louisiana failed to report in as scheduled. The helicopter had five people onboard and was flying to an unmanned oil platform about 18 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. A Coast Guard rescue helicopter crew found three bodies and debris in the water about two miles off the Texas coast. A spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington said investigators would work with the Federal Aviation Administration to determine the cause of the crash.

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USA: Plans to Mass-Produce Lithium Automobile Batteries

The world supply of lithium is insufficient to cope with planned expansion of its use in lithium-ion automobile batteries, which require three orders of magnitude more lithium per unit than a computer. Regardless of this, US companies aim to mass-produce a lithium battery for road vehicles.

On 18th December 2008, it was announced by the Argonne National Laboratory, a government laboratory near Chicago, that it had formed the National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Battery Cell Manufacture, comprising an alliance with 14 US companies with expertise in batteries and advanced materials. The companies include Johnson Controls-Saft Advanced Power Solutions, a joint venture of Johnson Controls Inc. and France's Saft Groupe SA, and 3M Co.; ActaCell, All Cell Technologies, Altair Nanotechnologies Inc., Eagle Picher Industries Inc., EnerSys, Envia Systems, FMC Corp., MicroSun Technologies, Mobius Power, SiLyte, Superior Graphite, and Townsend Advanced Energy.

The alliance intends to secure $1 billion to $2 billion in US Government funding over the next five years to build a manufacturing facility with an "open foundry" for the participants to pursue the goal of perfecting lithium-ion batteries for cars.

On 29th December 2008, a report in the Nikkei Business Daily said that the Nissan Motor Co. and NEC Corp. of Japan will invest at least $1.1 billion to make lithium-ion batteries for about 200,000 electric and hybrid cars annually in 2011 or later. Nissan, NEC and NEC Tokin Corp. have formed a joint venture to start manufacturing lithium-ion batteries from 2009, with an initial capacity of 13,000 units per year, to be used in forklifts. The companies plan to ramp up annual capacity gradually to supply 65,000 units in 2011 for use in Nissan's in-house hybrid car and electric vehicles due in 2010. The venture, Automotive Energy Supply Corp. (AESC), was said to be considering setting up factories in the United States and Europe.

At present, hybrid vehicles such as the Toyota Motor Corp. Prius model use a nickel metal hydride battery. Lithium batteries are considered to be the next technological leap forward for electric-powered vehicles as they can be recharged from a wall socket like a computer battery. Unfortunately there will never be enough lithium available to justify the manufacture of such vehicles.

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USA: Nanotechnology Strategy Attacked

In December 2008, the US National Research Council (NRC) published a highly critical report on what it describes as serious shortfalls in the strategy of the Bush administration to better understand the environmental and health and safety risks of nanotechnology, and to effectively manage those risks. The report, entitled Review of Federal Strategy for Nanotechnology-Related Environmental, Health, and Safety Research, argues for a significant review of the Bush national strategic plan, known as the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI).

The NRC criticises the present NNI plan for failing to identify important areas that should be investigated, for example nanomaterials and human health should include a comprehensive evaluation of how nanomaterials are absorbed and metabolised by the body and how toxic they are at realistic exposure levels. The plan fails to note the current lack of studies on how to manage consumer and environmental risks, including how to manage accidents and spills or mitigate exposure through consumer products.

The NNI strategy does not adequately incorporate input from industries that produce and use nanotechnologies, environmental and consumer advocacy groups, and other stakeholders, which is necessary to identify deficiencies in research strategies. Also accountability is lacking in that, although such agencies as the National Institutes of Health, US Environmental Protection Agency, and US Food and Drug Administration are given regulatory roles, there is no single organisation or person that will be held responsible for whether the national strategy delivers results.

The NRC notes that federal funding to specifically address nanotechnology-related environmental, health and safety issues is actually far less than indicated in the NNI plan and may be inadequate. Less than half of the research projects described in the plan will ultimately yield useful data to support regulatory decision-making.

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China: Melamine Scandal Widens

The Chinese state media reported on 31st October 2008 that the toxic chemical melamine was being routinely added to Chinese fish and animal feed to boost the protein readings by deception, spreading contamination throughout the food chain. In 2007, thousands of dogs and cats in America became sick or died after being fed pet foods made with melamine-laced ingredients from China.

The present melamine scandal began in early September 2008, when at least six Chinese babies were killed by adulterated milk and 294,000 more became ill. The company at the centre of the scandal, Sanlu, was declared bankrupt and its major foreign partner, the Fonterra conglomerate of New Zealand, was forced to write off a $114 million investment. Sanlu allegedly delayed revealing the practice even after the outbreak of sickness among babies, which forced Fonterra to alert the Beijing government.

The news agency Xinhua reported that the criminal trials of 17 people, including the former chairwoman of the Sanlu Group and three other senior executives, began on 24th December 2008 before the Shijiazhuang Intermediate People’s Court. The accused are charged with endangering public safety and could face sentences ranging from ten years in prison to the death penalty. The offences concern the illegal manufacture and sale of 200 tonnes of "protein powder", composed mainly of melamine and malt dextrin (a food additive made from starch), of which they sold 110 tonnes to milk producers between November 2007 and August 2008.

Early withdrawals and bans on dairy products made from Chinese milk in neighbouring countries were widened when the authorities in Hong Kong reported that melamine had also been detected in Chinese eggs, probably derived from melamine-laced feed given to hens. According to China Daily and the Nanfang Daily the animal feed industry had agreed to use the chemical to reduce production costs while maintaining the protein count for quality inspections. At the time the authorities did not know what other types of food might contain melamine.

In December 2008, concerns were raised that seafood from China may also be contaminated with the industrial chemical. China is the world's largest producer of farm-raised seafood, exporting billions of dollars’ worth of shrimp, crab, squid, catfish, tilapia, eel, salmon and other fish. According to the US Department of Agriculture the USA imported around $2 billion of seafood products from China in 2007, almost double the volume of four years earlier.

Laboratory studies of melamine-fed catfish, trout, tilapia and salmon by the Animal Drugs Research Centre of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found that fish tissues had melamine concentrations up to 200 parts per million, which is 80 times the maximum tolerable amount set by the FDA for safe consumption. In cows and pigs the melamine is excreted through the kidneys, leaving no trace in muscle or meat tissues; but in fish that have been fed on the toxic substance, their edible flesh still contains significant residues.

Since 2007, the FDA has been restricting the entry of imported shrimp, catfish, dace, eel and basa from China unless shipments come with an independent laboratory report certifying the seafood is free from a variety of antibiotics and such substances as the suspected carcinogen malachite green, which some Chinese fish farms use to control disease. However, melamine is not on the list of FDA additives and the agency does not currently require seafood products imported into the USA to be screened for its presence.

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Australia: Cadbury Misplaces Nuclear Waste

Cadbury Schweppes Pty Ltd operates a beverage manufacturing plant in Tullamarine, near Melbourne, which produces soft drinks and employs over 400 people. In late November 2008, the company misplaced two pieces of radioactive equipment that have not been recovered and whose whereabouts remain unknown.

The equipment contained the radioactive source for electron backscattering tests used to check the level of soft drink in cans on the production line. Somebody unaware of the contents put the radioactive equipment out for recycling, after which it was sent to a scrap metal yard in Altona North.

The federal authorities were notified and the Department of Human Services (DHS) conducted an urgent investigation and search that took several weeks. By late December, the radioactive sources had still not been found and were presumed to have been either smelted down and sent to China, or buried in a landfill.

The DHS claimed that the missing radioactive material would pose no risk to human health or the environment if it was buried in a landfill. No comment was made on possible health concerns for anyone who might have been exposed during transportation or near the smelter, if that was its fate. The DHS is considering taking legal action against Cadbury Schweppes Pty.

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China: Workers Killed in Steel Plant Explosion

On 30th December 2008, 44 workers were near a blast furnace at the Ganglu Iron and Steel Co. plant in Zunhua City, Hebei Province, when an explosion ventilation panel on the gravity dust filter of the furnace burst, releasing carbon monoxide gas. Two of the workers who inhaled the gas were killed instantly, and another 15 died later. The surviving 27 workers were treated at several local hospitals and their condition was described as stable.

The blast furnace was shut down after the accident and no further leaks were reported. The local authorities ordered the company to halt production. The plant was built in 2001 and lies around 150 km east of Beijing. It employs around 7,000 people and has an annual output of three million tonnes of steel products.

The Chinese Administration of Work Safety commented that safety inspections and safety audits should be increased at such premises.

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USA: Oil Refinery Fire in Alaska

The Arctic Slope Regional Corporation announced that the 48,000-barrel-per-day Petro Star refinery near Valdez in Alaska had been shut down indefinitely after a fire broke out on 28th December 2008, damaging the processing facility and associated piping. The company was seeking an exemption to Environmental Protection Agency restrictions that limit output at its oil refinery near Fairbanks as a means of compensating for the lost production near Valdez.

There were no injuries in the fire and the cause has yet to be determined, according to Arctic Slope and Valdez city officials. The fire was extinguished within two hours in very rough weather. The state Department of Environmental Conservation estimated the volume of spilled crude oil at around 200 gallons, with as much as 8,000 gallons of fire-fighting water frozen on the site and slightly contaminated with oil.

The Valdez refinery draws its input of crude from the nearby Trans Alaska Pipeline and produces 13,000 barrels of product daily, including 9,300 barrels of jet fuel, 3,200 barrels of diesel, and 300 barrels of a fuel used to generate electricity by the local Valdez utility. The rest of the residual crude is pumped back into the Trans Alaska Pipeline system. The Valdez refinery sends jet fuel to Anchorage, where it is used at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport and at Elmendorf Air Force Base.

Arctic Slope Regional Corporation is based in Barrow and owned by the Inupiat Eskimos of the North Slope. It is one of 13 regional native corporations established by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act 1971.

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International: Honey Laundering and Health Risk

In 2006, honey bee colonies began to decline and disappear across much of the Western world. There are thought to be multiple factors causing bee deaths, the phenomenon being known as Colony Collapse Disorder. The role of bees in fertilising food crops is of far greater importance than their production of honey; a recent study by the Journal of Economics found that the annual value of insect pollination is $215 billion, representing around 9.5% of global agriculture trade.

However, according to the American National Honey Board, the USA is one of the world’s biggest honey consumers, buying up to 200 million kilos every year. Two years ago the USA was able to produce almost two thirds of all its honey, but that has fallen to one third. Current retail prices for honey traceable to a reputable source are around $9.70 per kilo, a significant rise on a few years ago.

A rising price in a restricted supply market has attracted the attention of international smugglers based in China, where at present there is no apparent shortage of honey. The method they use is to ‘launder’ drums of Chinese honey by exporting it to a distributor in another country, where the product is re-packaged and re-exported under a misleading label that conceals its true source. Such shipments have been routed to Western countries through India, Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia and Thailand. The product is often labelled falsely as being of Polish or Russian origin. Food processing companies that incorporate honey in their products are less concerned about origin than price. The reason for the subterfuge is to avoid health and safety checks and import fees, and in the case of the USA and some other countries to evade the special tariffs imposed on Chinese food products ‘dumped’ on the market at below the cost of production.

The illegal trade is of concern to health officials in view of the tainted food products from China that have dominated news headlines recently. A more immediate concern is the action first taken by Chinese beekeepers in 1997, when a bacterial epidemic almost wiped out Chinese beehives. The beekeepers did not destroy infected hives; instead they treated them with Chloramphenicol, a toxic antibiotic which is known to cause aplastic anaemia, bone marrow suppression and leukaemia in humans. The use of Chloramphenicol was later banned by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture, but there is evidence from tests conducted by American health officials that it is still in use, along with two other antibiotics known as Ciprofloxacin (which may cause Achilles tendon rupture and kidney failure in mammals) and Enrofloxacin (thought to be less harmful to people). All these substances were detected in imported honey.

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Tanzania: Government Crackdown on Polluting Factories

Following inspections in December 2008 by environment officers from the Minister of State in the Vice President's Office, the Tanzania Breweries and Sunflag Textile Mill were directed to suspend operations. In early January 2009, the Government ordered the closure of Karibu Textile Mill in Dar es Salaam because it had demonstrated poor control over its waste effluent. It also ordered the National Environmental Management Council to carry out an environmental audit of industrial plants in Arusha, the northern city below Mount Meru, that were suspected of breaching environmental regulations.

A few days later the Arusha Municipal Council ordered the closure of Mount Meru Millers, an edible oil processing plant, for failure to control atmospheric emissions. The oil processing plant is located near the suburb of Njiro and had been discharging pungent gases and particulate soot from its boiler. In addition, untreated contaminated water was discharged by the mill via a watercourse running through nearby residential areas. The Office of Municipal Health ordered the mill management to install new machinery to reduce emissions, in particular a new boiler, and to overhaul their remaining equipment so that it conforms to environmental, health and safety regulations. The mill had been closed following identical complaints of poor effluent management in 2006, and had done nothing since to remedy the situation.

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Angola: Border Closed to Prevent Epidemic

On 5th January 2009, the Angolan Health Ministry closed part of its north-eastern border where the provinces of Moxico, Malange, Uige and Luanda Sul lie adjacent to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The move was to prevent the contagious Ebola virus from spreading into the country. The Angolan authorities banned all trade and movement of people from the diamond-rich province of Lunda Norte to the DRC, where an epidemic of Ebola has infected around 40 people, including 13 deaths, since November 2008. It is the fourth outbreak since 1976.

The outbreak of Ebola, a viral haemorrhagic fever related to Marburg virus, which causes vomiting, diarrhoea and internal and external bleeding, is believed to have taken place in the DRC Western Kasai province. There is no known cure and the disease has a mortality rate of 50%. Ebola is believed to be a zoonotic virus (that is, one transmitted by or shared between animals and humans) with its natural host reservoir being the fruit bat; it can have a devastating effect on humans and has also decimated the population of Western Lowland Gorillas in Central Africa.

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Nigeria: Motorcyclists Evade Road Safety Law

According to the Nigerian Federal Road Safety Commission more than 4,000 people die on the roads every year and 20,000 are injured. In Nigerian cities almost every collision involves motorcycle taxis, the number of which has increased dramatically in recent years. Their drivers are usually untrained and illiterate and they are regarded as a menace by other road users. They were banned from the capital city, Abuja, in 2006.

On 1st January 2009, a new law came into force which compels motorcycle riders and their passengers to wear safety helmets, and allows the motorcycles of offenders to be impounded. However, motorcyclists have been attempting to evade the law by wearing improvised helmets made from dried pumpkin shells on their heads. The authorities were not amused and in a few days arrested thousands of offending motorcyclists.

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Japan: Engineers Look for Bird Strike Solution

Following the loss of nuclear power generating capacity due to the inadequate design and siting of nuclear plant, the operators of wind turbines in Japan have come under pressure to improve the earthquake resistance of their structures. More recently they have had to deal with another natural hazard, for endangered species of birds are flying into their turbine blades.

The bird strike problem has become so serious that measures to protect the birds are slowing the spread of wind power as a source of electricity generation. Over the past three years, government plans to build wind farms in the prefectures of Hokkaido, Nagano, Shizuoka, Mie, Fukui, Shiga, Tottori, Okayama and Shimane have been suspended, delayed or scaled down in order to protect endangered raptorial birds, including golden eagles, known to inhabit 13 of the proposed sites. One of the sites, located at Iwami in Tottori Prefecture, was expected to become the largest Japanese wind farm, with 32 turbines generating around 80,000 kilowatts; but the number of turbines is now thought likely to be drastically reduced.

Some 14 protected raptors, both golden and white-tailed sea eagles, have died at functioning wind power sites after flying into the turbine blades. The Environment Ministry is reported to be compiling guidance plans to be published in the next fiscal year on the selection of appropriate sites for wind farms.

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India: Pollution in Metropolitan Areas

According to government-based statistics released in January 2009 by the Scientific and Environmental Research Institute, the city of Kolkata is the most polluted metropolitan area in India, as measured by readings of suspended particulate matter (SPM). The SPM figure of 511 compares with 322 for Mumbai and 234 for Delhi. Chennai was rated fourth in terms of pollution at 176. The level of particulates recorded for Kolkata represents an unacceptable risk to health.

SPM refers to very small particles of solids or liquids that may be dispersed through the air from combustion processes, industrial activities or natural sources (unlike an aerosol, which refers to solids and the gas together). Increased levels of SPM in the air are linked to such health hazards as heart disease, respiratory disease and lung cancer.

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Canada: Syncrude Faces Environmental Charges

On 7th January 2009, three environmental groups (Ecojustice, the Sierra Club and Forest Ethics) persuaded the Alberta Provincial Court in Edmonton to charge the largest Canadian oil sands producer under the Migratory Birds Convention Act with causing the deaths of 500 ducks in April 2008. The flock of waterfowl died when they landed on a toxic tailings pond. The unusual move was initiated after the federal and Alberta governments delayed taking any action against Syncrude. By the time the present case is heard, migratory birds will be flying back across the area and they may therefore still be at risk.

Syncrude mines the tar sands in huge open pits and separates out the heavy crude using hot water and chemicals. The toxic waste residue is pumped into vast tailings ponds. The company, a joint venture consisting of Canadian Oil Sands Trust, Imperial Oil Ltd and five other partners, deters birds from the ponds with noise guns that simulate cannon blasts. Syncrude said a late winter storm delayed deployment of the sound cannons last April, encouraging the ducks to set down on the poisonous body of water. The deaths of waterfowl on such a scale had never happened before.

The maximum penalty faced by Syncrude on conviction is C $300,000 (US $250,000).

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