Miscellaneous Articles
The Hidden Health Costs of Transportation
Washington, D.C., May 19, 2010–The American Public Health Association (APHA) today released The Hidden Health Costs of Transportation, a new publication that addresses how our nation's current transportation system contributes to today's soaring health costs and impedes progress toward improving public health.
Chief among those costs are U.S. traffic fatalities and injuries, which remain unacceptably high. In March 2010, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration revealed a statistical projection that shows that roughly 33,963 people died in traffic crashes in 2009. Furthermore, according to the American Automobile Association, traffic crashes cost an astounding $164.2 billion each year, or roughly $1,051 per person annually. Some of the more hidden costs of transportation include physical inactivity, rising asthma and obesity rates in both adults and children, and degraded air quality. All are increasing to staggering levels and negatively impacting Americans.
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Liquid Method: Pure Graphene Production
ScienceDaily (June 1, 2010) - In a development that could lead to novel carbon composites and touch-screen displays, researchers from Rice University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology today unveiled a new method for producing bulk quantities of one-atom-thick sheets of carbon called graphene.
The research is available online in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
When stacked together, graphene sheets make graphite, which has been commonly used as pencil lead for hundreds of years. It wasn't until 2004 that stand-alone sheets of graphene were first characterized with modern nanotechnological instruments. Since then, graphene has come under intense scrutiny from materials scientists, in part because it is both ultrastrong and highly conductive.
"There are high-throughput methods for making graphene oxide, which is not as conductive as graphene, and there are low-throughput methods for making pure graphene," said lead co-author Matteo Pasquali, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and chemistry at Rice. "Our method yields very pure material, and it is based on bulk fluid-processing techniques that have long been used by the chemical industry."
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Scope of Oil Spill Seen through Infrared Camera
CBS News Exclusive: Infrared Imagery Shows that Oil Slick Waters Stretch for Thousands of Miles in Gulf of Mexico
CBS News investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports from a helicopter 3,000 feet above the Gulf of Mexico, an hour off the coast of Louisiana at the site of the Deepwater disaster. To the naked eye, the scene of the massive spill appears on the surface to be an expanse of deep blue water, marked by boats.
But in the very same area, shot exclusively for CBS News with an infrared camera, the Gulf surface is dark an ominous as far as the eye can see - and that darkness is oil.
Chris Zappa is an oceanographer at Columbia University, specializing in the use of infrared imagery. He can tell it's oil because it reflects at a cooler temperature than the open ocean.
On Thursday CBS News spent three hours flying over the spill zone, matching shots from our camera with those taken by Rob Raymer of FLIR, a company that makes this infra-red camera similar to ones used by the military.
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Polymer-Based Filter Successfully Cleans Water, Recovers Oil in Gulf of Mexico Test
ScienceDaily (June 8, 2010) - In response to the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, a University of Pittsburgh engineering professor has developed a technique for separating oil from water via a cotton filter coated in a chemical polymer that blocks oil while allowing water to pass through. The researcher reports that the filter was successfully tested off the coast of Louisiana and shown to simultaneously clean water and preserve the oil.
Di Gao, an assistant professor and William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering in Pitt's Swanson School of Engineering, created his filter as a possible method to help manage the spreading oil slick that resulted from the April 20 explosion of BP's "Deepwater Horizon" drilling platform. Gao has submitted his idea through the Deepwater Horizon Response Web site managed by the consortium of companies and government agencies overseeing the disaster response.
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Gulf Oil Spill Could Widen, Worsen 'Dead Zone'
ScienceDaily (June 8, 2010) - While an out-of-control gusher deep in the Gulf of Mexico fouls beaches and chokes marshland habitat, another threat could be growing below the oil-slicked surface.
The nation's worst oil spill could worsen and expand the oxygen-starved region of the Gulf labeled "the dead zone" for its inhospitability to marine life, suggests Michigan State University professor Nathaniel Ostrom. It could already be feeding microbes that thrive around natural undersea oil seeps, he says, tiny critters that break down the oil but also consume precious oxygen.
"At the moment, we are seeing some indication that the oil spill is enhancing hypoxia," or oxygen depletion, Ostrom said. "It's a good hint that we're on the right track, and it's just another insult to the ecosystem -- people have been worried about the size of the hypoxic zone for many years."
The dead zone is believed to stem from urban runoff and nitrogen-based fertilizers from farmland swept into the Gulf by the Mississippi River. Higher springtime flows carry a heavier surge each year, nourishing algae blooms that soon die and sink. Those decay and are eaten by bacteria that consume more oxygen, driving out marine life and killing that which can't move, such as coral. The dead zone can grow to the size of a small state.
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Multi-Billion Dollar Oil Pipeline Project Moving Through Kansas
A $12 billion oil pipeline project is moving through Kansas. Construction has started on the Keystone Pipeline that will eventually move oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. The United States gets more oil from Canada than anywhere else and this pipeline is supposed to make that process easier.
"We're like a trucking company, we get the oil from point A to point B," said Keystone's spokesman Jim Prescott. To get between those points, they need land in Kansas. Early phases of construction are underway in Marion County and will continue south to the Oklahoma line. "This is part of a 4,000 mile pipeline system that will bring 1 million barrels of oil a day to the US," Prescott said.
A hundred miles of pipe is sitting in Augusta right now, the project headquarters. Once construction ramps up in the next month or so, it will all be put underground. "This is a major job. We'll have between 600-700 workers on this project when we're fully manned up," said Jimmy Lovell. He's with Sheehan Pipeline, the contractor building the section in Kansas. They chose Augusta as the hub because it's a halfway point for this section of the pipeline.
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The Next Drilling Disaster?
A tour of Dimock, Pennsylvania, with Victoria Switzer is a bumpy ride over torn-up roads, around parking lots filled with heavy machinery and storage tanks, and past well pads that not long ago were forests. The winter here was quiet, but with the thawing ground came the return of the rigs, the trucks, the constant noise and lights of a twenty-four-hour-a-day gas drilling operation. "It's a modern-day Deadwood out here," Switzer says, likening the activity to the gold rush. "No rules, no regs, just rigs."
The "occupation," as she calls it, hasn't just transformed Dimock into an industrial hub; it has also damaged the local water supply and put residents' health at risk. After a stray drill bit banged four wells in 2008, Switzer says, weird things started happening to people's water: some flushed black, some orange, some turned bubbly. One well exploded, the result of methane migration, and residents say elevated metal and toluene levels have ruined twelve others. Then, in September 2009, about 8,000 gallons of hazardous drilling fluids spilled into nearby fields and creeks. The contamination and related health problems have prompted fifteen families to file suit against Cabot Oil and Gas, the primary leaseholder in the area, alleging fraud and contract violation and seeking to stop the damage from spreading.
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Experts: Gulf Workers' Levels of Chemical Exposure May Be 'Perfectly Legal, but Not Safe'
When we—and others—have asked about the health concerns of cleanup workers [1] in the Gulf, BP's response has been that extensive air sampling is being done, and that none of the samples have shown levels of chemical exposure that go beyond federal exposure limits [2] set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
That may be true. What the company doesn't mention, however, is that some of the samples [3] [PDF] have come back with exposure levels that exceed different federal limits—limits set by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, an agency that's part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Another (Sigh) Increase in Estimate of Oil Flow
As we've pointed out, there has been a steady stream [1] of criticism for the official estimates on the amount of oil coming from the geyser under the Gulf of Mexico. Even when initial estimates of 1,000 and 5,000 barrels were shattered [2] by the second round of official estimates, 12,000 to 19,000 barrels, the criticism did not abate [3].
And for good reason. The latest official estimates place the spill at double even that rate – 25,000 to 30,000 barrels a day. As The New York Times points out, that's means a spill the size of the Exxon Valdez is dumping into the Gulf every eight to 10 days [4]. And that measurement was made before the pipe was cut to allow placement of a cap to recapture some of that oil: BP and other officials have said the cut could have increased the flow by as much as 20 percent. (The cap is apparently capturing about 15,000 barrels a day.)
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Transocean Stonewalls Congress On 'I'm Not Hurt' Forms Signed By Rig Workers
A Democratic congressman is demanding more information from drilling giant Transocean about the forms signed by Deepwater Horizon rig workers stating they were not hurt and were not witnesses of the explosion that brought down the rig April 20.
Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) has fired off a letter to Transocean calling its response to his earlier request for information on the forms insufficient.
As TPMmuckraker has previously explained, some rig workers have said they felt coerced into signing the forms that were presented to them at a hotel after they were brought ashore following the explosion. Lawyers say that such forms could later be used in court against workers filing claims or acting as witnesses.
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Boehner Falsely Claims The Bush Tax Cuts Led To Jobs And Growth, Not Deficits
Earlier today, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) told TPMDC that he thinks it's appropriate for taxpayers to foot at least part of the bill for cleaning up BP's oil spill in the Gulf. But that wasn't his only misstep today, as he also managed to produce the absurd claim that the Bush tax cuts didn't help produce the deficits that the country is currently facing, but that they actually boosted growth and employment:
"It's not the marginal tax rates…that's not what led to the budget deficit," he told reporters, adding, "The revenue problem we have today is a result of what happened in the economic collapse some 18 months ago"…He also said that slashing marginal tax rates has actually buoyed revenue levels. "We've seen over the last 30 years that lower marginal tax rates have led to a growing economy, more employment and more people paying taxes," he said.
There's so much wrong here that it's hard to know where to begin. But for starters, the Bush tax cuts played a huge role in our short-term deficit, and they are one of the primary drivers behind our long-term deficits. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out, the Bush tax cuts will cause $3.4 trillion in deficits over between 2009 and 2019.
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Murkowski’s Big Oil Bailout Bombs
NRDC's Beinecke: The Senate Votes in Favor of Science, Oil Savings, and Climate Action
Today the Senate rejected Senator Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) big oil bail out resolution that would have blocked new fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards for vehicles. The motion to proceed to her resolution, S.J. Res. 26, failed on a vote of 47-53.
It failed on a mostly party line vote, with all Republicans voting with big oil, and all but six Democrats voting against it. The Democrats who voted to block efforts to save oil and reduce pollution were:
* Evan Bayh IN
* Mary Landrieu LA
* Blanche Lincoln AR
* Ben Nelson NE
* Mark Pryor AR
* Jay Rockefeller WV
It was particularly disappointing that Senators Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Susan Collins (R-ME) voted for the big oil bail out bill. Both have cosponsored bills to reduce global warming pollution, but bowed to pressure from big oil and the Senate Republican leadership. Incredibly, Senator Collins published an op-ed this morning that said
"We must …reduce our dependence on foreign oil."
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Offshore accidents bring few penalties
Federal inspectors collect only 16 fines in nearly 400 investigations
In the five years before the Deepwater Horizon exploded, federal investigators documented nearly 200 safety and environmental violations in accidents on platforms and rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, describing a stunning array of hazards that resulted in few penalties.
Workers plunged dozens of feet through open unmarked holes. Welding sparked flash fires. Overloaded cranes dropped heavy loads that smashed equipment and pinned workers. Oil and drilling mud fouled Gulf waters. Compressors exploded. Wells blew out.
And yet, in their investigations of nearly 400 offshore incidents, Minerals Management Service officials failed to travel to one-third of the accident scenes, collected only 16 fines and did not investigate every blowout as their own rules require.
BP, the region's leading offshore oil producer, reported more accidents and blowouts than any other oil company operating in Gulf waters, followed by Chevron, the region's third largest off-shore oil producer.
BP has had at least 47 since 2005; Chevron 46, based on a Houston Chronicle review of accidents investigated by MMS in the last five years and a decade of government reports on blowouts of oil wells.
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