21 October 2010
Oil Spill Aftermath
Environmental Science and Corporate Responsibility
Recovering from the explosion and spill that resulted in 4.9 million barrels of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico — a wound in the earth that could not be staunched for nearly three months — requires our best minds. Discover Cal offers perspectives from Berkeley experts about the effects on the environment and efforts to make oil companies more careful, accountable, and socially responsible.
Speakers include:
Terry Hazen is head of the Ecology Department, Center for Environmental Biotechnology, Microbial Communities Department at the Joint BioEnergy Institute.
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Posted by Pinar Aybar at 0:02
23 January 2004
Researcher Helps Communities Challenge Polluters
by Kelly Hill
In New Sarpy, Louisiana, residents live near and downwind from three petrochemical plants. Each year, the refineries release tons of pollution into the air and water of the surrounding communities.
While most of the releases are permitted by law, regulations limit them (by both amount and kind) to protect public health. But nearby residents may be the first to notice when an unhealthy level of chemicals is released. The companies don’t always agree, dismissing residents’ complaints of odor and illness as attributable to other causes.
College of Natural Resources Assistant Professor Dara O’Rourke is helping residents back up their complaints with science. His recent research is intended to assess whether environmental regulation can be democratized, in order to become more transparent and effective.
He examined situations with the Shell and Orion facilities in New Sarpy; with an Exxon refinery in Chalmette, Louisiana; and in the Greenpoint-Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, which has a pollution problem caused by the many trash-transfer stations for waste coming from Manhattan.
In each place, residents worked with local nonprofit groups to use various methods of monitoring to try to keep track of contaminants in their environment. Since the citizens had little or no technical expertise, the sampling ranged from low-tech to high-tech.
Sometimes residents kept written “sniffer logs†in which they
recorded the time, date, and locations where they smelled odd odors, and also recorded any resulting physical symptoms, such as watery eyes, nausea, or respiratory ailments.
O’Rourke said that although the sniffer logs are low-tech, companies have been known to cut the number of releases simply because they know the releases are being tracked.
Some communities have formed “bucket brigades†of residents trained to use a five-gallon paint bucket, a pump, and a sterile bag to grab air samples whenever they suspect a toxic release has occurred. [Berkeleyan Editor’s note: Similar “brigades†have been formed in the East Bay communities of Richmond,
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 0:32
15 April 2009
From Toxic Goop to Worm Poop
It looks like Thomas Azwell -- a graduate student whose work crosses disciplanary boundaries from Society and Environment, where he is pursuing his Ph.D., to microbial biology, where he works closely with plant biologist Norman Terry -- might be on to something with his army of worms.
Azwell has developed a promising approach to safe disposal of oil spill waste (see 2:00 mark in video.)
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Posted by Cyril at 6:12
05 June 2009
The Climate Gap (with Podcast)
| Hear the podcast from NPR's Living On Earth. |
"Climate change does not affect everyone equally in the United States," says Rachel Morello-Frosch, Associate Professor of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, and of Public Health at UC Berkeley and lead author of a new report on climate change. The report, The Climate Gap looks at the unequal harm climate change will have in the United States on people of color and the poor. Droughts, heat waves, poor air quality, floods, higher prices for basic necessities, and other challenges of climate change will have a disproportional impact on people of color and the poor.
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Posted by lauralyn at 3:14
27 May 2009
Uncovering the complex relationship between the forest and the atmosphere
This month, Nature profiles atmospheric chemist Allen Goldstein, (link - Nature subscription required | PDF - open access) who specializes in interpreting the scents of the forest. Goldstein has built his career on finding and characterizing some of the more elusive airborne chemicals in nature. For 10 years at the Blodgett Forest Research Station his team has described more than a dozen plant-released compounds that no one had previously measured or, in some cases, even known existed in the atmosphere.
The article expands upon themes we covered in the Fall 2007 issue of Breakthroughs magazine.
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Posted by Cyril at 5:39
02 January 2009
Household Exposure To Toxic Chemicals Lurks Unrecognized
Although Americans are becoming increasingly aware of toxic chemical exposure from everyday household products like bisphenol A in some baby bottles and lead in some toys, women do not readily connect typical household products with personal chemical exposure and related adverse health effects, according to research from the December issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. Rachel Morello-Frosch, an epidemiologist and environmental health scientist within ESPM and the School of Public Health, is a co-author of the study.
“People more readily equate pollution with large-scale contamination and environmental disasters, yet the products and activities that form the backdrop to our everyday lives — electronics, cleaners, beauty products, food packaging — are a significant source of daily personal chemical exposure that accumulates over time,†said Brown University sociologist Rebecca Gasior Altman, lead author of the study.
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Posted by Cyril at 5:42
10 July 2008
Genes could solve pollution mysteries
Researchers have for the first time identified environmental pollutants by looking at the genes of a small, freshwater crustacean. This new gene-based technique could lead to better and faster lab tests for pinpointing pollutants in contaminated ecosystems.
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Posted by Cyril at 9:14
10 March 2008
New analysis shows alarming increase in expected growth of China's carbon dioxide emissions
The growth in China's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is far outpacing previous estimates, making the goal of stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases even more difficult, according to a new analysis by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, and UC San Diego.
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Posted by Cyril at 5:53
15 January 2008
The Power of Green Algae
Professor Tasios Melis is unlocking the chemical power of green algae to create clean hydrogen fuel that eliminates air-polluting fossil fuels in its production. Check out "Power of Green," a segment from Fueling America, the latest episode of USDA CSREES video magazine.
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Posted by Cyril at 9:16
01 August 2007
China's Chance to Lead
This op-ed, by Assistant Professor Max Auffhammer and UCSD economist Richard Carson, originally appeared in the Washington Post on August 2, 2007.
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Posted by Cyril at 3:20
14 March 2007
Mine Runoff Continues To Provide Clues To Microbial Diversification
Pink slime at the surface of water trickling through an old mine in California is proving to be a treasure for researchers in their quest to learn more about how bacterial communities exist in nature.
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Posted by Cyril at 0:44
22 February 2007
Auffhammer's "Brown Cloud" study named "Paper of the Year" by PNAS
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has awarded the Cozzarelli Prize to ARE assistant professor Max Auffhammer and his co-authors for their 2006 paper showing that reductions of human-generated 
air pollution could create unexpected agricultural benefits in one of the world's poorest regions.
Auffhammer, along with co-authors from UC San Diego, analyzed historical data on Indian rice harvests and found that harvests would have been 20 to 25 percent higher during some years in the 1990s if certain negative climate impacts had not occurred.
Just six papers, out of the 3,300 research articles published in PNAS in 2006, were chosen for the Cozzarelli prize.
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Posted by Cyril at 4:50
19 January 2007
Relying on Berkeley research, California establishes groundbreaking carbon standard for fuels
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has issued an executive order calling for California to establish the world's first carbon standard for transportation fuels. (Read about it in the Governor's op-ed here.)
Relying on research by David Roland-Holst, adjunct professor in ARE, the governor writes:
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Posted by Cyril at 1:20
02 January 2007
Shotgun sequencing finds nanoorganisms
 |
| The smallest form of life known to science could fit into the period at the end of this sentence. |
For 11 years, Jill Banfield has collected and studied the microbes that slime the floors of mines and convert iron to acid, a common source of stream pollution around the world.
Imagine her surprise, then, when research scientist Brett Baker discovered three new microbes living amidst the bacteria she thought she knew well. All three were so small - the size of large viruses - as to be virtually invisible under a microscope, and belonged to a totally new phylum of Archaea, microorganisms that have been around for billions of years.
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Posted by Cyril at 6:24
20 December 2006
New study shows promise of genomics in monitoring environmental toxicology
A new study led by researchers from the Department of Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology identifies specific gene expression changes in a species of water flea in response to contaminants, lending new support for the role of toxicogenomics in environmental monitoring.
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Posted by Cyril at 9:57
05 December 2006
Reducing pollution could increase rice harvests in India
Reductions of human-generated air pollution could create unexpected agricultural benefits in one of the world's poorest regions, according to new research by Maximilian Auffhammer, assistant professor of agricultural resources and economics, and his collaborators.
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Posted by Cyril at 1:06
14 August 2006
Sickened Iraq Vets Cite Depleted Uranium
An Associated Press news story that appeared today in over 100 sources nationwide quotes ESPM doctoral student Dan Fahey on the health effects of depleted uranium ammunition on U.S. veterans.
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Posted by Cyril at 4:32
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