Highly Radioactive Particles From Fukushima Mapped

A recent study published in the scientific journal "Chemosphere,"
involving scientists from Japan, Finland, France, and the United
States, addresses these issues.

The team, led by Dr. Satoshi Utsunomiya, Ryohei Ikehara, and Kazuya
Morooka of Kyushu University, a prestigious research school in
Fukuoka, Japan, developed a method in 2018 that allows scientists to
quantify the amount of cesium-rich microparticles in soil and sediment
samples.

They have now applied their method to a wide range of soil samples
taken from within, and outside, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
exclusion zone, and this has allowed them to publish the first
quantitative map of cesium-rich microparticle distribution in parts of
Fukushima region.

The map shows three regions of interest within 60 kilometers from the
Fukushima Daiichi site

Dr. Utsunomiya said, "Using our method, we have determined the number
and amount of cesium-rich microparticles in surface soils from a wide
range of locations up to 60 km from the Fukushima Daiichi site. Our
work reveals three regions of particular interest."

"In two regions to the northwest of the damaged nuclear reactors, the
number of cesium-rich microparticles per gram of soil ranged between
22 and 101, and the amount of total soil cesium radioactivity
associated with the microparticles ranged from 15–37 percent," said
Dr. Utsunomiya.

"In another region to the southwest of the nuclear reactors, 1–8
cesium-rich microparticles were found per gram of soil, and these
microparticles accounted for 27–80 percent of the total soil cesium
radioactivity," he said.

Professor Gareth Law from the University of Helsinki, a co-author of
the study, said that the paper "reports regions where the cesium-rich
microparticles are surprisingly abundant and account for a large
amount of soil radioactivity."

"This data, and application of our technique to a wider range of
samples could help inform clean-up efforts," Law said.



Reference:
Abundance and distribution of radioactive cesium-rich microparticles
released from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the
environment, Ryohei Ikehara, Kazuya Morooka, Mizuki Suetake, Tatsuki
Komiya, Eitaro Kurihara, Masato Takehara, Ryu Takami, Chiaki Kino,
Kenji Horie, Mami Takehara, Shinya Yamasaki, Toshihiko Ohnuki, Gareth
Law, William Bower, Bernd Grambow, Rodney Ewing, Satoshi Utsunomiya.
2019. Chemosphere, Volume 241, February 2020, 125019

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2019.125019

This humidity digester breathes in atmospheric water and exhales energy

(ScienceDaily) Integrating a super moisture-absorbent gel with light-active materials, researchers in Singapore have developed a humidity digester to dry the ambient air while generating energy. The method, presented November 20 in the journal Joule, is a green alternative to air conditioners with a trick -- pulling water out of thin air.

Like plants, artificial photosynthetic devices, also known as photoelectrochemical (PEC) systems, feed on light and water to generate energy. This phenomenon inspired the researchers to integrate light-active materials and super-hygroscopic hydrogels. The hydrogels based on zinc and cobalt can harvest more than four times their weight of water from humid air. The humidity digester can reduce relative humidity by 12 percent and generate a low current under ambient light.

Read full:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191120121149.htm

A secretive startup backed by Bill Gates has achieved a solar breakthrough aimed at saving the planet.

CNN -  Heliogen, a clean energy company that emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday, said it has discovered a way to use artificial intelligence and a field of mirrors to reflect so much sunlight that it generates extreme heat above 1,000 degrees Celsius.

Essentially, Heliogen created a solar oven — one capable of reaching temperatures that are roughly a quarter of what you'd find on the surface of the sun.

The breakthrough means that, for the first time, concentrated solar energy can be used to create the extreme heat required to make cement, steel, glass and other industrial processes. In other words, carbon-free sunlight can replace fossil fuels in a heavy carbon-emitting corner of the economy that has been untouched by the clean energy revolution.

"We are rolling out technology that can beat the price of fossil fuels and also not make the CO2 emissions," Bill Gross, Heliogen's founder and CEO, told CNN Business. "And that's really the holy grail."

Heliogen, which is also backed by billionaire Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, believes the patented technology will be able to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industry. Cement, for example, accounts for 7% of global CO2 emissions, according to the International Energy Agency.

"Bill and the team have truly now harnessed the sun," Soon-Shiong, who also sits on the Heliogen board, told CNN Business. "The potential to humankind is enormous. ... The potential to business is unfathomable."

Heliogen, backed by Bill Gates, has achieved a breakthrough that could allow cement makers to transition away from fossil fuels. The company uses artifical intelligence and an array of mirrors to create vast amounts of heat, essentially harnessing the power of the sun.

"You've ended up with technologies that can't really deliver super-heated systems," said Olav Junttila, a partner at Greentech Capital Advisors, a clean energy investment bank that has advised concentrated solar companies in the past.

Read full at:

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/19/business/heliogen-solar-energy-bill-gates/index.html

Iowa wind farm sending many giant blades to landfills, will create over one million tons of fiberglass

"Landfills are really struggling to manage them, and they just decide they can't accept them...."

Bill Rowland, president of the Iowa Society of Solid Waste Operations, said he's unsure

"we as a society" considered what would happen to the blades as older turbines are repowered.

"There wasn't a plan in place to say, 'How are we going to recycle these?' 'How are we going to reduce the impact on landfills?'" said Rowland, director of the Landfill of North Iowa near Clear Lake...

According to the article, one U.S. Department of Energy researcher told the Des Moines Register that wind energy will create over one million tons of fiberglass and other composite waste,

adding that "The scale of the issue is quite large... And it's a larger sustainability issue."

Read full at:

https://www.staradvertiser.com/2019/11/16/breaking-news/iowa-wind-farm-sending-many-giant-blades-to-landfills/

Wisconsin Announces Multi-Agency Coordinating Council for PFAS, Begins Process for Additional PFAS Rulemaking

(Michael Best & Friedrich LLP) Today, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) began the process of implementing another priority in Governor Evers' Executive Order #40 by creating the Wisconsin Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) Action Council or "WisPAC." The Council will be led by DNR and will coordinate PFAS-related activities among state agencies and develop a PFAS plan of action for the state. DNR Secretary Preston Cole began today's kick-off meeting by emphasizing that DNR has a "responsibility to the public to get this right" and, in order to do so, will be engaging in a public process to solicit input from all interested parties.

WisPAC's Charge

WisPAC's Coordinating Council is chaired by DNR Secretary Cole and includes a long list of additional state agencies and related affiliates members – fifteen of them as of now – including the Wisconsin Department of Administration (DOA), Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP), Children and Families (DCF), Commissioner of Insurance, Corrections (DOC), Health Services (DHS), Military Affairs (DMA), Public Institution (DPI), Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC), Revenue (DOR), Safety and Professional Services (DSPS), State Laboratory of Hygiene (WSLH), Transportation (DOT), Veteran Affairs (WDVA) and the UW System.

As announced, this group will:

• Create a multi-agency PFAS action plan
• Develop protocols to inform educate and engage the public
• Identify likely sources and add to action plan
• Find best practices for PFAS sources and add to action plan
• Develop standard, cost-effective and effective testing & treatment protocols with stakeholders
• Engage academic institutions and other experts
• Explore funding avenues to assist state & local governments, private parties

Read full from (Michael Best & Friedrich LLP)

NASA finds that Californians’ TRASH emits far more methane into the atmosphere than cattle ranches… should we ban trash services to solve the global warming problem?

NASA scientists are helping California create a detailed, statewide inventory of methane point sources — highly concentrated methane releases from single sources — using a specialized airborne sensor. The new data, published this week in the journal Nature, can be used to target actions to reduce emissions of this potent greenhouse gas.

Like carbon dioxide, methane traps heat in the atmosphere, but it does so more efficiently and for a shorter period of time. Scientists estimate that most methane emissions in California are driven by industrial facilities, such as oil and gas fields, large dairies and landfills. To help reduce methane's impact on climate, the state has made cutting human-caused emissions a priority. But in order to cut these hard-to-detect emissions, they have to be measured and the sources identified.

NASA, through partnerships with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the California Energy Commission, set out to do just that. Over a two-year period, a research team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, flew a plane equipped with the Airborne Visible InfraRed Imaging Spectrometer - Next Generation (AVIRIS-NG) instrument over nearly 300,000 facilities and infrastructure components in those sectors. The instrument can detect plumes of methane in great detail. Each pixel covers an area of about 10 feet (3 meters) across, which allows scientists to see even small plumes that often go undetected.

The team identified more than 550 individual point sources emitting plumes of highly concentrated methane. Ten percent of these sources, considered super-emitters, contributed the majority of the emissions detected. The team estimates that statewide, super-emitters are responsible for about a third of California's total methane budget.

Emissions data like this can help facility operators identify and correct problems — and in turn, bring California closer to its emissions goals. For example, of the 270 surveyed landfills, only 30 were observed to emit large plumes of methane. However, those 30 were responsible for 40 percent of the total point-source emissions detected during the survey. This type of data could help these facilities to identify possible leaks or malfunctions in their gas-capture systems.

"These findings illustrate the importance of monitoring point sources across multiple sectors [of the economy] and broad regions, both for improved understanding of methane budgets and to support emission mitigation efforts," said the lead scientist on the study, Riley Duren, who conducted the work for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Read full at NASA:

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2930/a-third-of-california-methane-traced-to-a-few-super-emitters/

22 million gallons of nuclear waste under a concrete dome on a Pacific Island sinking into the land and the ocean.

The Los Angeles Times has a harrowing new story about Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Japanese forces invaded the small Pacific nation and its residents during World War I, and the United States did the same during World War II under that classic guise of "liberation." But the US was hardly acting altruistically, at the time nor since then. The islands' location made it a prime strategic military base in the Pacific. It was also isolated enough to make it a convenient nuclear testing site—if you disregarded the 72,000 people who lived there, of course.

Between 1946 and 1962, US military experiments produced 108 megatons of nuclear yield in the Marshall Islands— about 80% of the country's total radioactive waste output from nuclear testing. That's the equivalent 1.6 atomic bombs dropped every day for 12 years. And after the US decided to gradually cede control of the land back to the Marshallese people, we just kind of … left it all behind.  We were kind enough to pour a bunch of concrete on top of the 22 million gallons of nuclear waste left behind on one specific island, creating the Runit Dome.

But that dome is still there. And the concrete is starting to crack. And sea levels are rising rapidly, particularly in the Pacific, further accelerating that erosion process. Now the Dome—affectionately and appropriately called "The Tomb" by the locals—is threatening to leach all of that nuclear waste into the land and the ocean.

Read full at:

https://boingboing.net/2019/11/12/theres-22-million-gallons-of.html

"We Have No Reason to Believe 5G Is Safe" - Scientific American

The telecommunications industry and their experts have accused many scientists who have researched the effects of cell phone radiation of "fear mongering" over the advent of wireless technology's 5G. Since much of our research is publicly-funded, we believe it is our ethical responsibility to inform the public about what the peer-reviewed scientific literature tells us about the health risks from wireless radiation.

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently announced through a press release that the commission will soon reaffirm the radio frequency radiation (RFR) exposure limits that the FCC adopted in the late 1990s. These limits are based upon a behavioral change in rats exposed to microwave radiation and were designed to protect us from short-term heating risks due to RFR exposure.  

Yet, since the FCC adopted these limits based largely on research from the 1980s, the preponderance of peer-reviewed research, more than 500 studies, have found harmful biologic or health effects from exposure to RFR at intensities too low to cause significant heating.

Citing this large body of research, more than 240 scientists who have published peer-reviewed research on the biologic and health effects of nonionizing electromagnetic fields (EMF) signed the International EMF Scientist Appeal, which calls for stronger exposure limits. The appeal makes the following assertions:

"Numerous recent scientific publications have shown that EMF affects living organisms at levels well below most international and national guidelines. Effects include increased cancer risk, cellular stress, increase in harmful free radicals, genetic damages, structural and functional changes of the reproductive system, learning and memory deficits, neurological disorders, and negative impacts on general well-being in humans. Damage goes well beyond the human race, as there is growing evidence of harmful effects to both plant and animal life."

The scientists who signed this appeal arguably constitute the majority of experts on the effects of nonionizing radiation. They have published more than 2,000 papers and letters on EMF in professional journals.

The FCC's RFR exposure limits regulate the intensity of exposure, taking into account the frequency of the carrier waves, but ignore the signaling properties of the RFR. Along with the patterning and duration of exposures, certain characteristics of the signal (e.g., pulsing, polarization) increase the biologic and health impacts of the exposure. New exposure limits are needed which account for these differential effects. Moreover, these limits should be based on a biological effect, not a change in a laboratory rat's behavior.

The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified RFR as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" in 2011. Last year, a $30 million study conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) found "clear evidence" that two years of exposure to cell phone RFR increased cancer in male rats and damaged DNA in rats and mice of both sexes. The Ramazzini Institute in Italy replicated the key finding of the NTP using a different carrier frequency and much weaker exposure to cell phone radiation over the life of the rats.

Based upon the research published since 2011, including human and animal studies and mechanistic data, the IARC has recently prioritized RFR to be reviewed again in the next five years. Since many EMF scientists believe we now have sufficient evidence to consider RFR as either a probable or known human carcinogen, the IARC will likely upgrade the carcinogenic potential of RFR in the near future.

Nonetheless, without conducting a formal risk assessment or a systematic review of the research on RFR health effects, the FDA recently reaffirmed the FCC's 1996 exposure limits in a letter to the FCC, stating that the agency had "concluded that no changes to the current standards are warranted at this time," and that "NTP's experimental findings should not be applied to human cell phone usage." The letter stated that "the available scientific evidence to date does not support adverse health effects in humans due to exposures at or under the current limits."

Read full at:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-have-no-reason-to-believe-5g-is-safe/

Severe lung disease characterized by lymphocytic bronchiolitis, alveolar ductitis, and emphysema (BADE) in industrial machine‐manufacturing workers

Previously healthy male never smokers, ages 27 to 50, developed chest symptoms from 1995 to 2012 while working in the facility's production areas. Patients had an insidious onset of cough, wheeze, and exertional dyspnea; airflow obstruction (mean FEV1 = 44% predicted) and reduced diffusing capacity (mean = 53% predicted); and radiologic centrilobular emphysema. Lung tissue demonstrated a unique pattern of bronchiolitis and alveolar ductitis with B‐cell follicles lacking germinal centers, and significant emphysema for never‐smokers. All had chronic dyspnea, three had a progressive functional decline, and one underwent lung transplantation. Patients reported no unusual nonoccupational exposures. No cases were identified among nonproduction workers or in the community. Endotoxin concentrations were elevated in two air samples; otherwise, exposures were below occupational limits. Air flowed from areas where machining occurred to other production areas. Metalworking fluid primarily grew Pseudomonas pseudoalcaligenes and lacked mycobacterial DNA, but 16S analysis revealed more complex bacterial communities.
Conclusion

This cluster indicates a previously unrecognized occupational lung disease of yet uncertain etiology that should be considered in manufacturing workers (particularly never‐smokers) with airflow obstruction and centrilobular emphysema. Investigation of additional cases in other settings could clarify the cause and guide prevention.

Read full here:
https://doi.org/10.1002/ajim.23038

Artificial intelligence: Implications for the future of work and cognitive decision support systems (DSSs).

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a broad transdisciplinary field with roots in logic, statistics, cognitive psychology, decision theory, neuroscience, linguistics, cybernetics, and computer engineering. The modern field of AI began at a small summer workshop at Dartmouth College in 1956. Since then, AI applications made possible by machine learning (ML), an AI subdiscipline, include Internet searches, e‐commerce sites, goods and services recommender systems, image and speech recognition, sensor technologies, robotic devices, and cognitive decision support systems (DSSs). As more applications are integrated into everyday life, AI is predicted to have a globally transformative influence on economic and social structures similar to the effect that other general‐purpose technologies, such as steam engines, railroads, electricity, electronics, and the Internet, have had. Novel AI applications in the workplace of the future raise important issues for occupational safety and health. This commentary reviews the origins of AI, use of ML methods, and emerging AI applications embedded in physical objects like sensor technologies, robotic devices, or operationalized in intelligent DSSs. Selected implications on the future of work arising from the use of AI applications, including job displacement from automation and management of human‐machine interactions, are also reviewed. Engaging in strategic foresight about AI workplace applications will shift occupational research and practice from a reactive posture to a proactive one. Understanding the possibilities and challenges of AI for the future of work will help mitigate the unfavorable effects of AI on worker safety, health, and well‐being.

Read full at: https://doi.org/10.1002/ajim.23037

Draft Risk Evaluation for Methylene Chloride for TSCA

In the October 2019 draft risk evaluation for methylene chloride (MC), EPA reviewed a suite of potential MC exposures and made initial determinations on risk. These preliminary determinations may change as EPA's evaluation becomes more refined through the public comment and peer review processes. Below are the draft risk evaluation and supporting documents for MC. 

The public will have an opportunity to comment on the draft risk evaluation for 60 days until December 30, 2019, in docket EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0437. EPA will also hold a peer review meeting of EPA's Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC) on the draft risk evaluation for this chemical's conditions of use on December 3-4, 2019. 

Read about the steps EPA is taking in the risk evaluation process for MC.

Learn more about EPA's risk evaluation process.

DOE Announces $24.9 Million Funding Selections to Advance Hydropower and Water Technologies

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced selections for up to $24.9 million in funding to drive innovative, industry-led technology solutions to advance the marine and hydrokinetics industry and increase hydropower's ability to serve as a flexible grid resource. Innovative water power technologies have the potential to increase the affordability of hydropower and marine energy. Selected projects will also strengthen U.S. manufacturing competitiveness and build on department-wide initiatives to improve the capability of technologies to deliver value to the grid.

Projects were selected across four Areas of Interest (AOI)—Hydropower Operational Flexibility, Low-Head Hydropower and In-Stream Hydrokinetic Technologies, Advancing Wave Energy Device Design, and Marine Energy Centers Research Infrastructure Upgrades.

"Hydropower is a valuable national resource and these technologies will make it an even more competitive clean energy option to invest in the Blue Economy," said Under Secretary of Energy Mark W. Menezes. "These awards are another example of this Administration reaffirming its commitment to an 'all-of-the-above' energy policy to the benefit of the entire nation."

Read full at:

https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-announces-249-million-funding-selections-advance-hydropower-and-water-technologies