Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.96L.971104095531.20959J-100000@fox.ksu.ksu.edu> Date: Tue, 4 Nov 1997 10:53:50 -0600 From: kerry <mailto:astingsh@KSU.EDU> Subject: Cholera and global warming To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
John wrote, > Check the work of Rita Colwell of the Marine Biotechnology Center of the
> University of Maryland (she is also the past president of the American
> Association for the Advancement of Science).
>
Thanks for the tip! I found a couple of interesting cites:============= http://www.the-scientist.library.upenn.edu/yr1996/mar/notebook_ 960304.html
FILTER FAUX PAS (The Scientist, Vol:10, #5, pg.30, March 4, 1996) (Copyright ), The Scientist, Inc.)
The Baltimore Sun is very sorry about an error it made in reporting on the talk given by Rita R. Colwell, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and president of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, at AAAS's annual meeting last month. Colwell spoke of her past 25 years of work on the cholera-causing bacterium, Vibrio cholerae. One of her group's findings is that the organism, which survives in brackish water and estuarine environments, is associated with zooplankton, especially attaching to chitinous copepods. Because the disease is a great public health menace, especially in areas where sanitation is poor and clean water unavailable -- like Bangladesh and some of the South American slums -- mere filtration of the water may stop spread of the disease. Colwell and colleagues found in laboratory studies that by folding cloth used to make saris -- the flowing garments worn by Southeast Asian women -- four times, and putting this filter over the pipe that is the water source, 90 percent of the vibrio is retained in the makeshift filter, leaving the water with a noninfectious dose of bacteria. Colwell's statement was transmogrified in the Baltimore newspaper in a most peculiar fashion: "They believe that if women wrap the material -- called saris -- around themselves four times, they can filter out the vast majority of copepods" (D.K. Sugg, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 11, 1996, page 7A). The paper quickly printed a retraction (Feb. 13, 1996, page 2). "In view of the highly technological society that we live in, the reporting on science needs to be at a much higher level than was demonstrated in this article," Colwell laments to The Scientist. Colwell and colleagues hope to field-test their filter -- not the Baltimore Sun's filter -- in the near future.
====== Scientific Community Recognizing Link Between Ecology And Health
http://www.the-scientist.library.upenn.edu/yr1996/mar/climate_9 60304.html
[...] "An aspect of infectious diseases which has not been considered until recently are environmental factors," said Rita Colwell in her president's lecture, "Global Change: Emerging Diseases and New Epidemics," at last month's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Baltimore. "In general, since most emerging disease agents are not new, but are existing pathogens of animals or humans that have been given opportunities to infect new host populations, environmental and social changes -- especially those resulting from human activities, which accelerate pathogen traffic -- need to be defined."
Patz contends that "these issues are so complex; unless we take an integrated, interdisciplinary approach, we're not going to get very far" in understanding the contribution of the various factors causing infectious-disease outbreaks.
============= And there are other considerations:
The Scientist -- October 16, 1995 http://www.the-scientist.library.upenn.edu/yr1995/oct/notebook_951016.h
Greenhouse gamble
A number of abundantly available raw minerals-or even cement-could be used to combat the rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide responsible for the so-called greenhouse effect, thought to be slowly raising global temperatures, according to a Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist. Klaus Lackner, a fluid dynamics researcher at the lab, says the key could be to chemically combine the carbon dioxide with magnesium oxide or calcium oxide to form stable limestone, dolomite, or magnesite. These reactions already occur naturally, locking away large amounts of carbon dioxide over time - eons, in fact, too much time to be very helpful. Lackner suggests several ways to speed up the reactions to rates comparable to those at which industrial society is creating excess carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels. For example, carbon dioxide from a coal-burning plan could be pumped into pulverized, heated rock. The resulting carbonation would create a carbon-dioxide-binding mineral, which could then be used to fill the holes from which the rock was originally taken. The substantial energy released by the process could be used to heat the rock to keep the reactions going, Lackner notes. Or carbon dioxide could be pumped into underground deposits of porous magnesium- or calcium-bearing rock for reaction there, although the injection wells might be prone to clogging. Another more expensive, but more chemically efficient, approach would be to leach magnesium and calcium from mineral deposits using hydrochloric acid, recycling the acid for continuous use. Lackner acknowledges that the costs of producing electricity with such exotic carbon-dioxide scrubbers would be about double current levels. However, he notes, economic and political pressures to reduce global warming could increase to a point where the costs become acceptable. Perhaps the time has come for a cost-benefit analysis to compare Lackner's ideas with other high-tech proposals to counter the greenhouse effect -- such as one recent suggestion to fertilize the sea with iron to encourage carbon-devouring algae blooms. =========