The 2011 Fukushima Disaster

            My 17^th birthday was very memorable, although that had little to do with my birthday and more to do with the coinciding disaster that would shape the future of nuclear industry.  March 11^th 2011:  I remember waking up early to check the news for local school closings, crossing my finger for a snow day because of the big winter storm that happened in the wee hours of the morning.  I got one great birthday present when I saw that we in fact did not have school, but this excitement was tempered by the news of an earthquake in Japan.  I saw a side tab on the news site that showed the epicenter of the quake.  My birthday then became a horrible waiting game as I continually checked for updates.  The tsunami followed soon after and the human devastation was miserable.  The flooding of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant held serious implications for the promise of nuclear energy.

            The earthquake and tsunami hit hard at the nuclear plant.  The 46 foot high storm surge easily breached the low 33 foot seawall protecting the plant.  TEPCO, the company that owned the plant, admitted that in 2012 that it had ignored years of serious safety warnings from regulators and investigators, including ignoring the recommendations of a 2008 study that concluded the plant needed higher seawalls and further protection for the risk of a tsunami like the one that eventually hit.  They had even falsified safety records in the 1970’s to escape scrutiny.  The independent commission which investigated the disaster concluded that because of unwise placement of the plant and unsafe construction, the disaster is truly “manmade” regardless of the tsunami’s inevitability. 

The earthquake damaged several of the reactors and the flooding from the tsunami destroyed the generators that were keeping the failed reactors from melting.  Several of the reactor cores have still not be recovered from where they melted through the concrete of the plant’s foundation.  Towns and population centers surrounding the nuclear site were evacuated: 134,000 on the first day and then an additional 354,000 on the fourth day as safety concerns grew.  The receding seawater carried with it immeasurable amounts of radioactive particles back out to the Pacific Ocean, where current have diffused them and scattered them over the ocean.  Many of the cooling pools still leak uncontrollably into the ocean, meaning that the radiation risk is persistent and widespread.  Fishing is still banned in the area around the disaster site and fish still have nearly as high levels of radioactive cesium concentrated in them as when the meltdown first happened.  Some have had levels over 250 times higher than the safety level set forth by the government.  Luckily, the radioactivity that eventually reached California shores are at levels virtually identical to the normal background levels of radiation in the ocean.  The World Health Organization estimates that the risk for many cancers went of significantly for those near the site, including increased risk (7%) for leukemia in males and an increased risk (76%) of thyroid cancers for women.  Wildlife has been seriously and adversely affected as well: bird populations have plummeted and radioactivity has been detected in moneys’ blood in Japan.  Childhood obesity levels have been on the rise in Japan as well as worried parents refuse to let their children play outside for long periods of time for fear of radiation exposure.

            The political and economic results of the Fukushima disaster are global in scope.  Japan immediately abandoned its nuclear program.  It is a contentious issue today as lawmakers move closer and closer to reinstituting it amidst public fear, uncertainty and anger at the very industry and lack of oversight that caused the disaster.  Germany, a nuclear powerhouse, decided to phase out its expansive nuclear program by 2022 and a public referendum in Italy showed that 94% of voters opposed building any new plants.  This disaster continues to shape the politics and economic viability of nuclear power plants all over the world.  The International Atomic Energy Agency halved its estimate of how many nuclear power plants would be built by 2035 once the Fukushima disaster occurred.  Fishing industries across Japan’s eastern seaboard have suffered heavily because of the danger of contaminated fish. 

            The disaster is the second largest nuclear disaster in history, although it is thankfully smaller than Chernobyl.  Its impact on global nuclear politics is not however, and it may prove to be the defining event for them as we move further into the future.    

Sources:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/birds-are-tailspin-four-years-after-fukushima-180955134/?no-ist   

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/24/japanese-monkeys-abnormal-blood-linked-to-fukushima-disaster-study

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2013/fukushima_report_20130228/en/

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/fukushima

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Anti-vaxxers

Vaccines: helping to eradicate terrifying, fatal diseases since 1796

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The largest measles and whooping cough outbreaks in the past 50 years are taking place in California and 17 other states thanks to the anti-vaxxer movement.[1]  Ironically, these diseases are especially prevalent in rich areas of the state.  As Jeb Lund opines in his Rolling Stone editorial, “if you're doing well enough, your bad decisions will probably only hurt someone else.”[2]  And he’s exactly right: choosing not to vaccinate your child against historically common, dangerous, and costly epidemic diseases comes from a position of privilege in which one’s opinion is weighed against and valued over others’ safety.  That’s what makes this movement especially insidious.  Beyond all the misplaced paranoia regarding “Big Pharma,” completely refuted claims of autism risks,[3] or aspirations for “natural” parenting, this problem is rooted in a very dearly-held American value.  Anti-vaxxer’s personal freedom of choice has led to a public health nightmare that affects not just their own children but children of others.  Interestingly, the insistence of personal freedom outweighing the public good was the impetus for previous waves of the anti-vaccination movement. 

This issue has continually reared its ugly head ever since Edward Jenner’s first vaccine in 1796.[4]  England’s medical community quickly realized the potential that compulsory vaccination had for public health initiatives and in 1853 the country instituted The Vaccination Act.  Arguments against it along with occasionally violent protests immediately erupted.  This original anti-vaccination movement employed rhetoric uncannily similar to today.  Likewise, the medical experts of the day reacted similarly to today.  Expressing frustration, the editorial staff of the British Medical Journal published this in 1869:

                “We fear it is not possible for any argument or any form of suasion to stay the tide of folly and ignorance which is now raging against one the most beneficent discoveries ever permitted to man. The chief actors in the anti-vaccination movement are men upon whom all statements of fact and argument would be wasted.

    The platform spouters on this question are beyond our hope, and almost beyond our pity. They must be left to hug their darling folly; but for their deluded followers we do feel real commiseration. The arguments which the agitators so boldly state are very specious; they refer to matters concerning which their hearers have no real experience; and they seem to be supported by a certain class of facts.

    Numerous excellent pamphlets and tracts have been published, with the hope of enlightening the public mind. It is most unfair to those who have readily adopted the chance of immunity which vaccination gives, that they should be exposed to risk on account of their less careful or crotchety neighbours. If the immunity were absolute and life-long, we might perhaps afford to let the foolish part of the community do as it likes; but, unfortunately, such is not the case.”   

Many of the anti-vaxxers were concerned with intrusive government action on civil liberty.  Misinformation abounded, faulty statistics quickly spread, and irrational distrust of the medical government grew.[5]  Hmm, sounds familiar…

There’s one glaring difference between then and today.  The “Big Pharma” that today’s detractors continually cite was not present in mid-19^th century England, yet the same fears plagued the country.  Right or wrong, the anti-vaccination movement predates large drug companies.  This is indicative of the movement’s shoddy logic base.  Lynchpin arguments of the contemporary movement, like “Big Pharma,” are completely absent from the original movement yet today’s abstaining parents hold the same apprehensions and haughty claims of medical concurrence.  In an anti-vaxxer’s mind,  one’s personal fears, misguided or not, should or at least be allowed to take precedence over statistically proven society benefits.  And so the modern United States is facing outbreaks of once conquered diseases.  Let’s hope polio and smallpox don’t come back like the measles and whooping cough has.     

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[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/should-anti-vaxxers-be-shamed-or-persuaded/385109/

[2] http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/anti-vaxxers-enjoying-the-privilege-of-putting-everyone-at-risk-20150219

[3] http://www.vocativ.com/culture/science/no-link-autism-and-vaccines-mmr/

[4] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/

[5] http://io9.com/19th-century-documents-show-how-little-the-anti-vaxxers-1658381223

 

Antibiotics in our Meat

Perhaps more dangerous than we thought...

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A series of food shortage riots and protests in the early twentieth century led American farmers, especially livestock and meat producers, to seek ways to bolster their production output that would match exponentially rising demand.  After food crises during WW I, farmers employed various natural growth enhancers including cod liver oil and fish meal which provided animal protein in livestock feed to lead to heavier animals at butchering maturity.  These were expensive and had to be imported.  Once World War II erupted, these imported ingredients became unavailable so the federal government pushed for further research into growth enhancers for meat production.  Plant-based protein still proved to be insufficient in boosting animal growth.  Serendipitously, the addition of vitamin B 12 from residues of antibiotic production into animal feed led to animals growing 50% faster than the control group.  However, the researchers at the Lederle laboratories soon realized that it wasn’t the B 12 so much as the trace amounts of the antibiotic Aureomycin still present in the refuse that was enhancing the growth so much.  Some possible explanations have since surfaced, including that the drug kills intestinal flora allowing the animal to absorb all of its feed’s nutrients for itself.[1]  The post-war boom of the 1950’s once again led to high unprecedented demand for meat.  This decade saw the introduction of antibiotics as a crucial part of the nation’s agricultural system and worked it did.  So well, in fact, that farmers and scientists began claiming it as the ultimate solution to food production and that we could kiss protein shortages goodbye.  Soon after though, Japanese and American researchers began linking increased sub-therapeutic, growth-inducing antibiotic use to resistant bacteria so dangerous that it could lead us back to an era where antibiotics were non-existent for medicine.[2]

            In 2011 the United States devoted 80% of all its antibiotics (by weight) to livestock production.[3]  17 million tonnes of antibiotics are used in sub-therapeutic doses strictly to speed up and enhance animal growth for the meat industry.  Eventually, the antibiotics lead to resistant microbes in the meat and also in humans after consumption of the meat.  This poses serious public health risks, not just because of resistant bacteria but also the un- or under-researched side effects the accumulation of these drugs in humans can cause.  The European Union and Canada have since banned the use of antibiotics for non-medical uses, and even the World Health Organization has warned that farmers should drastically reduce their use to protect public health.  It is still completely legal in America to do so and is the industry standard for meat production.  Meat producers argue that the cheap, plentiful meat that antibiotics make possible outweigh the risks and that those risks are not studied enough to warrant banning its use.  Many studies have revealed that bacteria like salmonella are prevalent in roughly 20% of ground beef and that 84% of that salmonella was drug-resistant.  This poses very immediate risks to consumers.  America needs to decide whether to err on the side of caution or profit. 

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[1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/safe/overview.html

[2] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/09/03/riots-rage-and-resistance-a-brief-history-of-how-antibiotics-arrived-on-the-farm/

[3] http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/07/what-usda-doesnt-want-you-know-about-antibiotics-and-factory-farms

Nanotechnology in Our Lives

One day this might not just be ordinary corduroy... 

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          The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies recently inventoried common consumer products in the country and tallied a staggering 1,600 products which contain nanoparticles, which are defined as particles between one and 100 billionths of a meter in diameter.  And this inventory is not even comprehensive, leaving one to imagine how many other products also contain such materials.[1]  Clearly, nanotechnology is fast-becoming an integral part of our daily lives.

            Many common applications of nanotechnology are found in some of our clothing.  Fabric can be impregnated with anti-microbial silver nanoparticles where their positive charge prevents bacterial cells from multiplying.  The particles’ minuscule size means that the fabric remains soft and pliable.  Silica nanoparticles can be sprayed on cloth and other surfaces to create an ultra-hydrophobic layer.  This layer causes any water to bead and roll of the surface rather than penetrating it which waterproofs it more effectively than any other method.  Nanotechnology can provide further protection from the elements in our clothing by providing UV-protection.  Light-scattering titanium dioxide along with zinc oxide can be embedded in the material to prevent sun damage to both skin and fabric.  Additionally, these nanoparticles conduct electricity and so help disperse static charge and prevent uncomfortable shock.  Some researchers convey concern over these particles, particularly silver.  Studies have shown that it leaches from the fabric via sweat.  The anti-microbial properties of silver nanoparticles can seriously disrupt biotic processes.  Concerned scientists propose that once it is widely used in clothing, very high concentrations of the substance will be present in waste water and runoff leading to serious environmental problems for susceptible aquatic life.  These researchers warn that the commercialization of nanotechnology is continuing at a speed far ahead of crucially important research into its potential risk.[2]  Fabrics of the future may be made out of nano-filaments and materials instead of just being embedded with them for specific uses.

            Nanotechnology is also drastically changing the electronics, computer, and medical fields.  Conductive ink made from metallic nanoparticles allow for conductive circuits to be literally drawn anywhere.  Disposable, flexible and cheap paper drawn circuitry may be near.  Graphene and other superconductors will revolutionize computer technology.  Even medication may be delivered via site-specific nanoparticles, allowing for much smaller, much more effective and much safer doses of medicine for patients.  Nanobots operating within the body could even act as an army of miniature surgeons, performing medical procedures on a scale unattainable by human doctors.[3]  However, the safety of these technologies needs to be seriously studied and analyzed before we implement them in the consumer market.  The human and environmental risks may be far larger than we've anticipated. 

           

                              

           

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[1] http://www.nanotechproject.org/cpi/

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/science/small-world/2014/feb/14/nanotechnology-clothes-nanoparticles

[3] http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-11/7-amazing-ways-nanotechnology-changing-world