On Mount Olympus, Mercury is the Roman god with power over commerce and communication and all things speedy. Mercury is the fastest and smallest planet in the solar system and the closest to the sun. And here on Earth, mercury is a substance that can kill you. So it’s troubling to discover just how many items in your own home contain mercury.

Mercury

Mercury is an element that occurs naturally as a silver-colored liquid (hence the obsolete name quicksilver). It can evaporate, becoming an invisible, odorless, toxic vapor. Exposure to elemental mercury is usually the result of breaking products and devices that contain it. When mercury combines with inorganic chemicals, it forms salts that are used in photography and as a wood preservative and fungicide. Combined with organic chemicals, it forms the highly toxic methylmercury, which is the form found in seafood. Mercury is an environmental pollutant released by coal power plants, among other industrial sources.

A neurotoxin that can be inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through the skin, mercury has severe health effects. Unborn infants are the most vulnerable to methylmercury, with impacts to cognitive thinking, memory, attention, language, fine motor skills, and visual-spatial skills. Adults exposed to high levels of methylmercury can experience vision loss, muscle weakness, and motor impairment. Exposure to elemental mercury can cause tremors, mood swings, headaches, neuromuscular problems, and diminished mental function. Acute exposure can be fatal.

Mercury Safety

To help reduce mercury pollution, find out if your electricity comes from coal power and if it does, try to find a safer source — either through a green power program from your utility or other energy provider or by installing solar panels (although these contain many other toxic materials). To reduce your personal exposure, learn how to eat seafood safely; how to safely handle and properly recycle any products you already own that contain mercury; and look for mercury-free alternatives to the following products.

Batteries and Bulbs

Since 1996, mercury has been prohibited in the United States in all batteries except button cell batteries and mercuric oxide batteries. Button cell batteries are used in small electronic devices like watches and do not pose a risk during use. However, they are a choking risk for small children and if swallowed, can cause serious internal damage and even death. Button batteries must be recycled because mercury can be released when they are incinerated or landfilled, which is illegal in some areas. If local recycling is not available you can use a mail-in recycling program. Once you’ve recycled your old batteries, consider switching to rechargeables. Mercuric oxide batteries are produced for military and medical equipment that most households will not encounter.

Although compact fluorescent lightbulbs are much more energy-efficient and longer-lasting than old-fashioned incandescent bulbs, they are among the types of lightbulbs that contain small amounts of mercury. That means they need to be handled carefully to avoid breakage; if a CFL bulb does break, it must be cleaned up carefully. Bulbs that contain mercury cannot be placed in the trash. They must be recycled. Consider replacing CFL bulbs with LEDs.

Thermometers and Thermostats

Safely cleaning up a broken mercury thermometer is not easy, and there’s little reason to take the risk. Not all thermometers contain mercury. If there is no liquid in the thermometer (for example, digital thermometers and most meat thermometers) or if the liquid in a thermometer bulb is any color other than silver, the thermometer does not contain mercury. Even if the liquid is silver, it might not be mercury. If you have a mercury thermometer, it’s best to recycle it and replace it with a safer option.

New digital and electromechanical thermostats do not contain mercury, and many states ban the sale of thermostats that do. But many older thermostats contain about 3 grams of mercury in their switches. Remove the front plate of your thermostat and look for small glass bulbs inside to determine if yours contains mercury. The switches do not pose a risk while in use but should be disposed of as household hazardous waste.

Electronics

Mercury is used in LCD screens and monitors. It is also used in laptop screen shutoffs. Televisions manufactured before 1991 may also contain mercury switches. These electronic products also contain many other toxic materials and should not be disposed of as garbage. Although recycling electronics is not always easy, it’s important to do so. TCO Certified technology products do not contain mercury but may not be available for all of these electronics.

Old Stuff

Like many toxic materials, mercury use was much more widespread in the past. Beware of antique barometers, clock pendulums, mirrors, vases, and organs. Older electric appliances from chest freezers to space heaters may contain mercury switches and pilot light sensors. Vehicles manufactured before 2003 may also contain mercury switches or relays and wheel balancers. These older products may need to be treated as household hazardous waste, go to a specialized recycler, be dismantled by a specialist, or be returned to the manufacturer. Safely disposing of mercury-containing products can require a lot of time and effort, but mercury is a material with toxicity severe enough to warrant extreme caution.

The researchers studied ten agricultural landscapes near Göttingen, each containing three winter wheat fields: one organic field, one conventional field with flower strips, and one conventional field without flower strips. For two years, the abundance of wild bees was recorded at the edges of each of these thirty fields. The results showed that a simple comparison of the data sampled at specific sites could lead to the conclusion that conventional fields with strips of flowers might attract many more bees than organic fields but this is not the full story.

“When we looked more closely, this did not give us a complete picture because it did not take into account that flower strips only cover about five percent of conventional fields which has significantly fewer bees overall than the organic farmland,” explains Professor Teja Tscharntke, Department of Agroecology at Göttingen University. Dr Péter Batáry, group leader at the Centre for Organic Research in Vácrátót, Hungary goes onto say: “In short, organic farming, which typically has more wild plants than conventional fields, is actually more successful than conventional fields with flower strips in promoting bees.”

The missing piece of the jigsaw is the fact that fields of grain in organic farming yield only half the harvest of conventional farming. When the loss in wheat yield is taken into account, a ten-hectare area of organic farmland should be compared to five hectares of conventional farmland plus five hectares of flower strips, which would lead to 3.5 times more bees but the same yield. In this scenario, organic farming would not be the best way to support wild bees.

“These data and considerations show that different benchmarks and criteria should be taken into account when evaluating agri-environmental measures. It is only when we take into account the area along with the yield together with the type of farming that we can achieve a balanced understanding of the ecological and economic effectiveness of environmental measures,” the authors say.

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Göttingen. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Researchers at the University of Portsmouth have discovered that rates of shipping in the North East Atlantic area rose by 34 per cent in a five-year period. Even more noticeable, and of major concern to scientists, is the rate of shipping growth in Marine Protected Areas. Analysis of vessel movements in these delicate environments shows an increase of 73 per cent in the same time period.

The report, which was published in Marine Pollution Bulletin, is the first detailed survey of shipping activity in the North East Atlantic. Researchers used data from over 530 million vessel positions recorded by Automatic identification Systems (AIS). They looked at the change in shipping between 2013 and 2017 across ten distinct vessel types. In total the study area covered 1.1 million km², including waters off Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and the UK

Lead author, James Robbins from the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Portsmouth, said: “This change is likely to put more pressure on the marine environment, and consequently may have implications for the conservation of exposed and at-risk species. Renewed monitoring effort is needed to ensure that protective measures are adequate to conserve species under threat in a changing environment, where the footprint of human activities is expanding.”

This increase in traffic in marine protected areas, may have implications for the very species that these areas are designated to protect. Shipping can have a wide variety of impacts on the marine environment, with some of the strongest concerns related to the spread of non-indigenous species, noise, chemical, and air pollution, collisions with wildlife, and marine litter.

Shipping has been found to be a likely method of unintended movement for more than half of non-indigenous species in European waters (Katsanevakis et al., 2013). Once introduced, the species can become established and invasive, often having a negative impact on the ecosystems they invade. Invasive species are recognised by the Convention on Biological Diversity as one of the biggest threats to global biodiversity.

Dr Sarah Marley, Visiting Researcher at the University of Portsmouth and Lecturer at Scotland’s Rural College, said “Shipping is the most widespread human activity in our oceans, carrying a multitude of threats — from subtle impacts like underwater noise pollution to dramatic outcomes when ships hit whales. We need to understand when and where shipping occurs in order to best mitigate these risks.”

Some of the greatest shipping increases were found in areas close to the Spanish coast. The Espacio Marino de la Costa da Morte saw a rise of 413 per cent in vessel activity. It is an area designated to protect seabirds. Several areas surrounding the Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland also saw increases in shipping. There was a growth of 463 per cent around the Inner Hebrides and the Minches, a zone designated to protect harbour porpoises. The Vadehavet med Ribe Å, Tved Å og Varde Å vest for Vard off the coast of Denmark, where fish, seals and harbour porpoises are protected saw a 443 per cent increase in ship movements.

Researchers at the University of Portsmouth are calling on policy makers to closely monitor shipping increases. They believe that as human population growth drives further development and international trade, it is likely that shipping will continue to intensify. Current predictions are for a global increase of between 240 per cent and 1209 per cent by 2050.

Professor Alex Ford, from the University’s Institute of Marine Sciences, said: “Given the well-documented impacts that shipping can have on the marine environment, it is crucial that this situation continues to be monitored — particularly in areas designated to protect vulnerable species and ecosystems which may already be under pressure.”

Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior research scientist and head of the Climate Impacts Group at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, received the 2022 World Food Prize from the World Food Prize Foundation on May 5. According to the World Food Prize Foundation, the World Food Prize is a prestigious international award conceived as the “Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture” with a mission to elevate innovations and inspire action to sustainably increase the quality, quantity, and availability of food for all.

Rosenzweig was selected for the award for her research to understand the relationship between climate and food systems and forecast how both will change in the future. Her modeling work has provided a foundation for decision-makers around the world to create strategies to mitigate climate change and adapt our food systems to a changing planet, which has helped communities worldwide address the consequences of Earth’s changing climate.

“I am thrilled and honored to receive the World Food Prize this year because food systems are now emerging as a key component of climate change,” said Rosenzweig.

Rosenzweig has been a research scientist at NASA GISS and head of the Climate Impacts Group since 1994. Her research focuses on improving models and assessments of how climate change will affect agriculture and the food supply in the future. In addition, she uses data from NASA satellites and models to study agricultural regions around the world and how they are changing. Rosenzweig has previously served as coordinating lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 and the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land in 2019.

She is also a co-founder of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP), an international project using climate science, crop modeling, and economic modeling to understand crop yield and food security in a changing climate. Over 1,000 researchers from developed and developing nations have partnered with AgMIP to improve agricultural models and techniques to assess the future impacts of climate change on agriculture and food systems both regionally and globally. Through AgMIP, Rosenzweig has worked on research projects studying the effects of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide on crops as well as quantifying greenhouse gas emissions released through food production.

“I’m proud of Dr. Rosenzweig’s dedication to improving agricultural models and capabilities that improve life around the globe,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “On behalf of the entire NASA community, I want to congratulate her on this accomplishment. As our climate changes, NASA will continue working to understand the impact of more intense weather events that increasingly strain the worldwide food supply. We’ll continue to support scientists like Dr. Rosenzweig as we plan for the future in a changing climate.”

Scientists like Rosenzweig are already using agricultural data from NASA’s fleet of Earth-observing satellites to understand food production and security in a changing climate. Modeling drought, water availability, changing surface temperature, and other factors helps scientists like Rosenzweig understand crop yields and how they are changing. In the future, NASA’s upcoming Earth System Observatory will provide more key information to guide understanding of how climate change impacts food and agriculture.

“Congratulations to Dr. Rosenzweig on this accomplishment,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA GISS. “This award and Dr. Rosenzweig’s work is a great example of the value of NASA’s research to help people around the world and in meeting our mission to innovate for the benefit of humanity.”

For more information about the World Food Prize visit: https://www.worldfoodprize.org/

For more information about Cynthia Rosenzweig: https://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/crosenzweig.html

Research published in the journal Science of the Total Environment found that differences in exposure to fine and ultrafine particle pollution could be reduced between 20 and 40% in 2050 if solar, wind and electric sources were used rather than fossil fuels.

The findings factor in California’s ban on the sale of new gas-powered passenger vehicles beginning in 2035 and illustrate the need to focus beyond transportation pollution, which has been a significant source of climate-damaging emissions.

“Even though transportation pollution has been largely decreased by 2050, the other sectors will still be important,” said Yiting Li, a Ph.D. candidate in atmospheric sciences who is the first author on the journal article.

Energy, climate and emissions

The UC Davis researchers analyzed future energy use and emissions scenarios in four regions — the San Francisco Bay area including Sacramento, San Joaquin Valley, Los Angeles and San Diego. The energy scenarios ranged from business as usual to strict reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

All California residents benefitted from improved air quality when low-carbon fuels, carbon capture or other actions were adopted, the analysis showed.

The analysis also showed that adopting low-carbon fuels can help address some of the historical imbalances in air pollution exposure. For example, Black residents experience higher levels of pollution than white residents in Los Angeles, but the detailed analysis carried out in the study showed that using larger quantities of low-carbon fuels reduced those exposure disparities. Similar results were found in other regions, with the groups living closest to the urban cores benefitting the most.

“Not only does it improve air quality, but it also shrinks the disparity among different groups,” said Michael Kleeman, the study’s senior author and professor of civil and environmental engineering who is also a member of the Atmospheric Science Graduate Group and the Institute for Transportation Studies. “It levels the playing field for all California residents.”

Environmental justice and low carbon fuels

Knowing this information can help round out policy discussions about cutting pollution levels by incorporating environmental justice aspects, the researchers said.

“We often talk about low carbon fuels and greenhouse gas reductions, but there’s not a lot of talk about public health,” Kleeman said. “The public health benefits associated with low carbon fuels should be a part of these conversations.”

The study also estimated that adopting low-carbon fuels would prevent thousands of deaths in California each year through improved air quality. In economic terms, the total public health benefits were estimated to be approximately $20 billion annually.

Anikender Kumar and Yin Li from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering also contributed to the analysis.

Funding for the research came from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of California – Davis. Original written by Emily C. Dooley. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Because we shouldn’t only act for the Earth on April 22, Earth911 is honoring the 52 years that Earth Day has been inspiring action with 52 Actions for the Earth. The Earth Day theme this year is investing in the planet. Each week from Earth Day 2022 to Earth Day 2023, we will share an action you can take to invest in the Earth and make your own life more sustainable.

This week, you can invest in the Earth by protecting bees.

Action: Dispose of Pesticides

Benefits of Bees

Honeybees contribute to the pollination of 84% of the crops grown for human consumption (a third of all the food we eat) as well as many crops grown for livestock. The commercial value of honeybees in the U.S. alone has been estimated at over $15 billion per year. Meanwhile, native bumblebees and solitary bee species are even more efficient pollinators of wildflowers and native plants. Bees are a keystone to both agriculture and ecosystems.

Colony Collapse

But populations of honeybees have dropped a shocking 90% since the ‘90s due to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Although the mass die-off seems to have stopped, numbers are still low, and it will take years to rebuild the honeybee population to healthy levels. The causes of CCD are still unexplained, but researchers think it results from a combination of stressors including parasites and pesticide use.

CCD only affects European honeybees, but nearly a quarter of native bee species are also experiencing population declines and range reductions. Native bee species are being affected by habitat loss and fragmentation as well as – you guessed it – pesticides.

Pesticide Pollution

You don’t need to keep your own hive or convert your lawn into a wildlife habitat (although those are both great things to do) to help bees of all kinds thrive. The most important thing you can do to support bee populations is to eliminate pesticides from your garden. A class of pesticides called neonicotinoids is particularly harmful to bees and many of them have been banned in the European Union. They are still permitted in the U.S. despite repeated attempts to ban them. Although still legal, EPA advises homeowners against their use and proposes to ban the use of one of them, imidacloprid, on residential lawns and turf.

Clean Up Your Pesticides

For the benefit of bees (and humans and other wildlife), home gardeners should look for nontoxic pest control alternatives and practice organic gardening.

This week, go through your basement, garage, or garden shed and collect all the pesticides. Check their ingredients lists for the following:

• acetamiprid
• clothianidin
• dinotefurandis
• imidacloprid
• thiamethoxam
• sulfoxaflor
• flupyradifurone
• fipronil

Do not dispose of these pesticides in the trash. Contact your local solid waste utility and follow their policy for disposal of household hazardous waste (HHW). Many municipalities will collect HHW for free; elsewhere, companies like Clean Harbors and Waste Management accept HHW for a fee. If there is no safe local disposal program where you live, use up the rest of the pesticide by following the directions carefully. Then recycle the empty container.

At the time of their collection, these specimens were key to proving that some mammals lay eggs — a fact that changed the course of scientific thinking and supported the theory of evolution.

This unique collection had not been catalogued by the Museum, so until recently staff had been unaware of its existence. The exciting find was made when Jack Ashby, Assistant Director at the Museum, was doing research for a new book on Australian mammals.

“It’s one thing to read the 19^th century announcements that platypuses and echidnas actually lay eggs. But to have the physical specimens here, tying us back to that discovery almost 150 years ago, is pretty amazing,” said Ashby.

He added: “I knew from experience that there isn’t a natural history collection on Earth that actually has a comprehensive catalogue of everything in it, and I suspected that Caldwell’s specimens really ought to be here.” He was right: three months after Ashby asked Collections Manager Mathew Lowe to keep an eye out, a small box of specimens was found in the Museum with a note suggesting they were Caldwell’s. Ashby’s investigations confirmed this was indeed the case.

Until Europeans first encountered platypuses and echidnas in the 1790s, it had been assumed that all mammals give birth to live young. The question of whether some mammals lay eggs then became one of the biggest questions of 19^th century zoology, and hotly debated in scientific circles. The newly discovered collection of little jars represents the huge scientific endeavour that went into solving this mystery.

“In the nineteenth century, many conservative scientists didn’t want to believe that an egg-laying mammal could exist, because this would support the theory of evolution — the idea that one animal group was capable of changing into another,” said Ashby.

He added: “Lizards and frogs lay eggs, so the idea of a mammal laying eggs was dismissed by many people — I think they felt it was degrading to be related to animals that they considered ‘lower life forms.'”

The newly discovered collection includes echidnas, platypuses and marsupials at varying life stages from fertilised egg to adolescence. Caldwell was the first to make complete collections of every life stage of these species — although not all of the specimens have been found in the Museum.

For 85 years, European naturalists had been attempting to find proof that platypuses and echidnas lay eggs — including by asking Aboriginal Australians — but any results they sent home were ignored or dismissed.

William Caldwell was sent to Australia in 1883 — with substantial financial backing from the University of Cambridge, the Royal Society and the British Government — to resolve the long-standing mystery.

In an extensive search Caldwell collected around 1,400 specimens with the help of a large group of Aboriginal Australians. In 1884 the team eventually found an echidna with an egg in her pouch, and a platypus with one egg in her nest and another just about to be laid.

This was the definitive proof Caldwell had been looking for, and the news was sent around the world. The colonial scientific establishment was apparently only willing to accept this result now that it had been confirmed by ‘one of their own’.

Ashby says that over the last two centuries, scientists have consistently belittled Australian mammals by describing them as strange and inferior. He believes that this language continues to affect how we describe them today, and undermines efforts to conserve them.

“Platypuses and echidnas are not weird, primitive animals — as many historic accounts depict them — they are as evolved as anything else. It’s just that they’ve never stopped laying eggs,” he said, adding, “I think they’re absolutely amazing and definitely worth valuing.”

The quill-covered echidnas are the most widespread mammal in Australia. They cover the whole continent and have adapted to live in all climates — from snow-covered mountains through to the driest deserts.

Platypuses are one of the only mammals that can detect electricity, and one of the only mammals to produce venom. With a tail like a beaver, a flat bill, and webbed feet like a duck, when the first specimens were brought to Europe people thought they were fakes that had been sewn together.

Both platypuses and echidnas have a unique combination of traits that 19th century scientists thought should only exist individually in either mammals, reptiles or birds. This made them central to debates around evolution.

Ashby’s new book, Platypus Matters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals, is published in the UK on 12 May, 2022 by Harper Collins.

“Coral reefs are an essential ecosystem on our planet,” said Andrea Grottoli, co-author of the study and a professor in earth sciences at the Ohio State University. “Coral reefs are really important for humans in that they provide protection to coastlines from erosion and storms, and they’re essential for certain services like tourism and other parts of the economy.”

The study, published in the journal Global Change Biology, advocates for the use of mesoscale sanctuaries, or areas that can stretch thousands of miles, often across national boundaries, to protect these ocean environments.

“Global warming is the No. 1 threat to coral reefs right now,” Grottoli said. “So when we think about coral reef conservation, we can’t limit ourselves to arbitrary geographic boundaries.”

Providing a “continuum of conservation” would benefit reefs immensely, Grottoli said. But because conservation policies differ between various governments and politicians, that can make it hard to protect the environment.

Although coral reefs occupy less than 0.1% of the surface area in Earth’s oceans, about 30% of all marine species are in some way associated with them, Grottoli said. But due to the stress of rising sea temperatures, coral reefs all over the world have experienced higher rates of coral bleaching, or the visible paling of the coral surface.

Under coral bleaching, the animal’s skeleton, once obscured, becomes visible, and effectively turns the creature a faded, ghostly white. Although bleached coral is not immediately dead, it can lead to mass mortality. Researchers say mass bleaching events are an indicator of an ecosystem’s declining health.

Many people may be most familiar with coral via the Great Barrier Reef, a complex coral system so large that the living structure can be spotted from space. Located just off the coast of Australia, upwards of 2 million tourists visit the region each year. The attraction brings in an annual estimated economic value of about $36 billion.

Yet despite being the world’s most protected marine area, the GBR was recently hit by another mass bleaching event, the fourth time in only six years.

While climate change has undoubtedly contributed to the increases in frequency and intensity of these events, warming seas are also changing the composition and architectural complexity of coral reefs. “Under this reality, the future of coral reefs may appear grim,” the paper said.

But there is some good news. Even as the global population of coral dwindles, the genetic diversity of coral species helps ensure that some corals may be able to adapt and recover. And while there is an urgent need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, the study also suggests that in the meantime, we need to take broad transdisciplinary approaches to creating both local and large-scale ocean sanctuaries.

Grottoli believes much of the heavy lifting of saving coral will happen through education.

“People who understand coral reefs, and who understand the value of coral reefs, are much more likely to do something to help protect them,” she said. “If you don’t know anything about coral, and you’ve never seen one, how can you have any empathy or feel any connection to that ecosystem?”

In her role as president of the International Coral Reef Society, Grottoli and her colleagues even put together a series of actions individuals can take at home to help scientists’ conservation efforts.

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Ohio State University. Original written by Tatyana Woodall. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.