Monthly Archives: March 2018

A Blue Vision: A Bright Future For Our Oceans Lecture

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On February 12th, the South Carolina Aquarium hosted a lecture called “A Blue Vision: A Bright Future for Our Oceans”. The lecture was given by David Helvarg, an author of several books including “Blue Frontier: Dispatches from America’s Ocean Wilderness”, a journalist, and the executive director of a marine conservationist activist organization called Blue Frontier Campaign. Upon arriving, guests were guided to the Great Ocean Tank where the lecture took place. The room featured a variety of sea creatures including eels and fish. The setting of the lecture was moving, given that the lecture was about issues endangering the ecosystems in which the animals around us that are in the wild rely on. Guests were also provided with complementary food and refreshments upon their arrival. The food selection mainly included healthy and organic options. The food was served on biodegradable plates while the refreshments were served using recycled and plastic-free cups.

During the time when guests were arriving to the aquarium and many of us were enjoying our refreshments, I had a chance to talk with a few of the attendees who regularly attend the environmental lectures hosted at the aquarium. It was interesting to talk with some of them, as I got to understand some of their backgrounds and why environmental activism was so significant to them. The audience contained approximately 30 people varying in age. Though age is not important in this context, it was encouraging to see how environmental activism can appeal to people of all different ages.

Roughly half-an-hour after providing guests with food and refreshments, Helvarg was introduced to the podium to give his lecture. Helvarg, an environmentalist who specializes in marine conservation, gave an hour-long presentation discussing critical issues that are impacting the sustainability of the oceans. His presentation was effective at conveying his passion, as he shared stories about how the oceans have impacted him and others. He also shared how human impacts have disrupted many of the functions of the oceans. As discussed in class, for example, the bleaching of coral reefs has had damaging effects on many parts of the world in recent years, and without change this may as well continue to happen. Other issues discussed included offshore drilling (as that is a hot-topic here in South Carolina) and rising sea water levels. The large take-away from his lecture was that the ocean impacts people and other species all throughout the world, and without its functions, future life on Earth could be jeopardized.

Promotional Picture for the March for the Ocean Walk

As the abundance and significance of impacts impacting the world’s oceans mount, Helvarg and other organizations have been driven to sponsor and arrange a walk in Washington, DC called March for the Ocean. The purpose of the walk is to influence Congress to enact policies that would guard our oceans, as the sustainability of the Earth’s oceans is fundamental. The walk is set to occur on Saturday, June 9th 2018. June 9th is a significant date for marine conversationalists as it marks the start to World Ocean Weekend. If you are interested in becoming involved, you can visit the campaign’s website by clicking this link: https://marchfortheocean.org/. If you also want to participate but cannot travel to Washington DC, there are other ways you can contribute to their cause listed on their website.

Water Missions Tour

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For my global health class this semester, we had the opportunity to tour the Water Missions facility here in Charleston. Water Missions is based on Christian Values and they provide water treatment systems to developing countries that don’t have access to clean water. It was founded in 1998 right after Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras. Upon receiving requests for multiple water treatment systems for Honduras, two environmental engineers, Molly & George Green, took action to build a water treatment system. Upon arrival to Honduras, they were shocked by what they saw. The river that went through the village was contaminated with feces and harmful bacteria. The people had come to call it “The River of Death” due to the fact that everybody who drank from it, died. After the Greene’s had installed the new water system, people were still hesitant to try it which caused Molly to drink from the hose herself to prove to the people that it was safe.

Going to this place was inspiring. My Professor had actually worked for this company by conducting research for many years on the effects of their systems on different developing countries. When you go into the facility where they build these systems, the room is covered in flags of all the countries that Water Missions has helped. To date, they have helped 3,000 communities internationally.

Following every natural disaster, Water Missions partners up with FedEx to ship their water treatment systems to the countries in need. Many people don’t realize how extreme the global water crisis is. Billions of people are forced to drink dirty water everyday. This foundation is working to provide as many people as possible, clean water sources.

 

Event- CSA Presentation

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A few weeks ago in class we were introduced to Brian from Lowcountry Local First. He shared the idea of “CSAs” to us. I also recently had the opportunity to create a presentation with my internship with MUSC Sustainability on CSAs available in the Lowcountry! I will link the presentation below if you want to watch me in action!
So, what is a CSA? CSA is an acronym for Community Supported Agriculture, where members of the community purchase a “share” of a farm in order to support a local farmer. In return, the farmer gives the community member fresh produce that was grown directly from the farm.
CSA’s are a great way to support local agriculture while getting extremely fresh produce, sometimes even straight to your door. With a CSA, you are subscribing to a produce box which you can customize to your needs. Many farms have various sizes and time ranges for their boxes. While most CSAs are fruit and vegetable focused, there are even a few in the Lowcountry that provide meat and fish like Abundant Seafood!
CSA’s are sustainable for many reasons. First, you are supporting local farmers! This keeps local economy thriving and makes you feel good about where your money is going. Second, you know what’s going into your food. You are able to visit the place that your food is being grown and see the care going towards it. Third, your food will be traveling much less than produce grown in a grocery store, which is a big contender of pollution. Lastly, you are getting food at the peak of its freshness. Sure, you may not be getting your favorite berries in the middle of summer, but you will be getting the most incredible tomatoes at peak freshness!
Two of my favorite CSAs that I researched were Compost in my Shoe and Hudson Family Farm Bounty Box. Compost in my Shoe has an extensive list of drop-off areas, along with many add-on items to their already large boxes! These add-on items include honey and eggs straight from their farms as well. The Hudson Family Farm Bounty Box also has a ton of options for how big of a box you may want!
If you would like more information on CSAs or would like a recommendation on what share would suit you and your budget best, please do not hesitate to reach out!

Chocolate Yummm

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For this blog post I wanted to write about my experience at Meatless Monday! I had never been to to Marty’s place and didn’t know what to expect. They had set up a presentation in the corner of the corner of the eating area with Bethany Nunn, chocolatier as the main speaker. Before she spoke a couple guest speakers spoke of upcoming events and sustainability opportunities. I chose this presentation to go to because I have honestly loved chocolate and candy all my life and always have had interest in the process of making good, real ingredient sweets. When Bethany stood to speak I became even more excited, she was a tall, beautiful young women who also loved sweets and creativity just like me. Originally I imagined a women in her 60’s coming to talk about chocolate in possibly a boring way but in reality it was a women very relatable to me. She first started out talking about what drove her towards chocolatier and how it evolved into actually making the chocolate herself in house. Bethany went on to tell the story of how chocolate is made step by step from receiving the cocoa bean from sustainable farms and then roasting them, de shelling them, and then grinding down the cacao down to then be able to add ingredients to make it a decadent chocolate. Being a chocolatier means just adding the ingredients to the cacao to make unique chocolate. She took it a step further by processing the raw ingredients herself. She spoke of how someday she hope to be able to grow the cocoa locally to become totally self sustaining. The weather conditions just aren’t right to be successful at the moment. Green houses may be her solution to that problem.

Something else that Bethany does different than other chocolate makers is she creates a no waste zone with her work. When making chocolate you don’t use the whole bean but just a small amount, so to be innovative she used the sort of shell or husk to produce and sell her own tea. I thought this was a wonderful idea, not only is she using eco friendly methods but she is also making pure profit off of this new invention using the “unwanted” part of the cocoa bean.

Throughout the presentation She passed out things to try including the roasted cacao beans (which were pretty disgusting) as well as pure, no sugar added chocolate (also pretty gross) and then a couple of flavors of her chocolate. She explained how sensitive chocolates are to their surroundings and how a piece of lavender chocolate that I just ate was only flavored by sitting in a room next to the lavender flower for a certain amount of time. That was so interesting to me because it was so full of flavor. I was really glad I went to this talk for it ended up being much more exciting and interesting than I had thought. She showed that with not much extra effort one can really make a business sustainable and friendly to our planet, we need more business owners like Bethany.

China Strives to help the Giant panda

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The giant panda has been seen as an unofficial mascot of china. They live in bamboo forest, which are threatened by china’s rapid population growth and industrialization. The loss of habitat along side with poaching has caused the panda population to decrease. China’s government is stepping in by creating national park. This will not only help pandas but also the people living in and around the new park.

The Giant Panda is in the bear family and are one of the only completely herbivore bear species. They live in bamboo forest in the western most part of China although historically they could be found all over china. Each panda has a large home range, which makes the fact that bamboo forest is on the decline a major problem. There are only 1,864 pandas left in the wild and 300 in captivity. Due to an extremely slow reproductive rate, it makes every panda very important. China strictly controls all of the pandas in captivity and in the wild. Poachers are a big problem due to them having such a volatile population. The introduction of the new 1.5 billion dollar state park will allow the population to grow. The park will be around 5 million acres, which makes it two times the size of Yellowstone. The park will also provide the 170,000 people who inhabit the land new job opportunities. The area now is struck by poverty and theses new jobs act as another driver for the national park. It is going to be built in the Sichuan Province, which allows gene flow throughout the panda population. They are hoping to be finished by 2023.

I believe that this is a huge step in the right direction. This can help not only the pandas but also the people. I know for governments to invest in state parks there are always alternate motives other than conservation. The 170,000 poverty struck people who will have new job opportunities paired turning a poor area into a tourist hotspot, makes it a better investment for the Chinese government. The addition of the new panda territory will be a long-term success in my opinion. The one question I have is how will the park run when there will be a small population of pandas initially. I understand 50 years down the road that it will be a must visit place once a steady population is present.

This all comes with the responsibility we have as people to conserve species that we have affected. The use of national parks is very usefully for governments and people who live around it. I believe with people focusing on lowering their ecological footprint, lowering the population and establishing designated areas to make sure species are safe from extinction are important if we want our kids to see the Earth as we see it today. The use of national parks have been useful in helping endangered species like the bison and the grey wolf, it will be interesting if the giant panda can also be a success story.

 

Press, The Associated. “China to Build Massive $1.5 Billion Panda Conservation Area.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Mar. 2018, www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/03/08/world/asia/ap-as-china-panda-conservation.html.

Small Town Vs. Chemical Giant

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Ben Sackler

 

On March 6th, 2018, National Public Radio (NPR) came out with an article titled “After Decades of Air Pollution, a Louisiana Town Rebels Against a Chemical Giant.” The article highlights the town of St. John the Baptist Parish, specifically a man named Robert Taylor. In 1969, the chemical giant Dupont opened a plant in St. John the Baptist Parish due to its proximity to the Mississippi River and cheap land.

Dupont is a plant that produces the chemical chloroprene, which is the main ingredient in neoprene, a rubbery material that appears in wetsuits, computer sleeves, and other artificial products. The environmental determinants to this area since Dupont has opened have been extreme. At this point in time, the five census tracts that surround the Dupont plant have a cancer risk that is 700 times more than the national average in one tract. This is good for the highest cancer risk in the entire nation. Here is a graphic to portray this information:

The narrative in the town until recent times was relatively defeating. The town acknowledged that the large increase in cancer rates within the area was directly related to the Dupont plant. However, the people of St. John the Baptist Parish are typically poor, and felt as though they didn’t stand a chance against a large chemical giant such as Dupont. Robert Taylor, a resident of the town who is spearheading the current advocacy against Dupont, is quoted in the article, saying, “What’s wrong with y’all? Ya’ll trying to fight DuPont? Y’all crazy? You can’t win fighting DuPont!”

This narrative draws many similarities to what happened in Warren County, North Carolina, in 1982. Environmental justice marches took the streets of Warren County following long-term environmental injustice experienced in the area. A PCB landfill was placed in the area against the will of the residents, and there was nothing that could be done by the residents to solve the problem. Severe health problems were experienced by community members. Warren County was 97/100 poorest areas in North Carolina at the time, and 75% African American. St. John the Baptist Parish is also a low income area that has majority African American residents. These similarities express the fact that big business and government selfishly discriminate against low income communities who are typically minorities, in order to make their own money and not receive backlash from people who may have the power to overturn what their goal is.

Just like how Warren County eventually achieved change because of their recognition that they were being discriminated against because of who they are, and got help externally from people who also identified this injustice, St. John the Baptist Parish also got external help after internal realizations. Wilma Subra, the lead technical advisor for the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, contacted Robert Taylor, and Taylor became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit led by him and Subra in an effort to reduce pollution from Dupont. Taylor acknowledged he was the one who had the knowledge of how detrimental Dupont had been to the community, and Subra was the one who had the governmental power and influence to make change. When this knowledge and power come together, just like they did in Warren County, success occurs.

This issue is relevant today because Taylor has led efforts to reform in recent months. In result of the lawsuit, Dupont recently released that they are promising an 85% decrease in chloroprene emissions. Taylor also recently created a group called the “Concerned Citizens of St. John Baptist the Parish,” and they march weekly to show their discontent and anger about current conditions relating to Dupont. Taylor and the town residents are especially angry because of President Trump’s threat to end the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), which is run through the EPA, and was the program that exposed Dupont for their environmental health detriments. Republicans claim IRIS is failing, however, residents of the town don’t agree. Although NPR is seen to be a more liberal news source, the article is not wrong in acknowledging the fact that many Republicans would like to go on without IRIS.

This story highlights the poor relationship between big businesses and government, and communities of low income and minorities. Environmental racism and discrimination is an issue that is so important because often times, these residents don’t get the opportunity to make their voice heard; they must rely on others.

Speaker Event

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The talk I attended was called Race, place, and the de-gentrification of Nature Conservation in the south. The talk I attended was given by Dr. Drew Lanham. He is a professor at Clemson and studies natural wildlife. He studies also include the integration of race in nature. The talk he gave was a derivative of this connection on race in nature conservation in the south. The talk first started off Dr. Drew Lanham playing the song Mercy Mercy Me by Marvin Gaye. I found this to be a successful tactic to get me, as an audience member, engaged and wanting to know the connection between the song and the what the talk is about. The songs lyrical meaning is on the topic of ecology and what the world use to be compared to what it has become. Dr. Drew Lanham explained how this song was interesting because even when it was written, in 1971, it was evident that the world was changing for the worst concerning nature conservation. He then went on to explain how we as people survive and thrive through water. It was explained that we need water to make it through everyday life whether we realize it or not. He asked the question, “what is your water?” What he meant by this question was is the thing you need to survive and thrive every day. He then brings in the topic of race with water by mentioning that we are all connected to water whatever the past may be. Water was and has been the source of life for every race. He states that we must feel our way through this issue of race, “we must work for the wild things, wild place, and water.” He ended his talk with an excerpt from his book that deals with his personal connection to water. He explains the story of remembering his father gathering water from their fresh spring well. After years past his father fell ill and died. He and his mother had to find a new source of water. The pipe they had to put in place to get the water out of had a worst taste and consistency compared to the fresh water his father had gathered from the well all those years. They no longer had access to the main thing that should’ve been provided to them. Instead, he and his mother were left to uses a unnatural source of water. This is the point in his life that he explained him realizing how important water is and its impact of life. The one thing I learned from this talk was the impact that society has on water. I never realized that what we have going on in our society can largely affect the nature surrounding us. To me, nature and societal interactions was two separate ideas. I found his explanation of the two ideas working together very interesting. He ended his talk with a quote I found very important to remember when connecting society to nature. He said, “think about your ties to water and your policy.”

Alexis Waters-Peterson

Oil Versus Limestone

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  Oil Versus Limestone
As a consumer and a surfer one of the most important products to me is a wetsuit. I don’t buy these regularly but the multitude of different professions and hobbies that require one creates a wide scale demand. This demand creates experimentation with the different materials and chemicals which certainly have their implications on the environment. The most common material used in wetsuits is neoprene.
Neoprene is a synthetic rubber based material which is now being produced on the industrial scale. Neoprene is so popular because it was the first synthetic rubber developed with a unique balance of physical and chemical properties. It has good weather and ozone resistance, aging resistance, low flammability, strength, and adhesion to many substances. For these reasons neoprene can be used in many different areas and has taken over the rubber industry.
As the possibilities of neoprene increase the possibilities of adverse effects to the environment increase. The highest potential for release into the environment lies within the transfer, manufacture, and storage process. The two types of neoprene are limestone neoprene and oil based neoprene. Oil based neoprene is commonly made from polychloroprene rubber chips which are melted and mixed together with carbon black and baked in an oven until it expands to make a foamed rubber. The chips themselves are made from chloroprene monomers which are reacting small molecules. These molecules produce the macromolecules that make up rubber. In the 1960’s limestone neoprene  was developed by Japan’s Yamamoto Corporation to convert calcium carbonate from limestone into chloroprene rubber chips, resulting in limestone neoprene. Limestone neoprene is favorable for several reasons; one being it is much less dense than oil based neoprene. This produces a more impermeable, more durable, more stretchy, lighter weight, and warmer wetsuit.
The most common method used to make neoprene is derived from petroleum. The many implications of this oil based product on the environment include the release of gases and synthetic chemicals into the air. Oil exploration, drilling, and extraction result in crude oil spills that have a direct and noticeable effect on the health the surrounding ecosystem. Both oil based and limestone wetsuits are nonrenewable resources that end up in a landfill somewhere.
The other method which is less commonly used is derived from limestone. The limestone is mined, crushed, and fed into a furnace at extremely high temperatures. This process is energy intensive but significantly reduces dependence on oil based products. A limestone spill is also much easier to clean up then an oil spill. Limestone based wetsuits might slightly reduce environmental impacts for a significant reduction in impact neoprene itself must be replaced by another material. The evaporation of chemicals used in adhesives and solvents must be replaced by a new innovative approach to minimizing environmental footprint.

Drug Disposal And Its Effects On Environment

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Have you ever wondered what to do with your prescription bottle/container that has some medication left? The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) periodically hosts National Prescription Drug Take-Back events where collection sites are set up in communities nationwide for safe disposal of prescription drugs. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has developed guidelines to dispose medication responsibly through the Take Back program. If people do not have access to that program, he or she can just throw out unused medications, but there is also a list known as the “flush list” where excess medicines from this list should be flushed for public safety. Product formulations listed on the most current version of the flush list contain the following 13 active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs): buprenorphine, diazepam, fentanyl, hydrocodone, hydromorphone, meperidine, methadone, methylphenidate, morphine, oxycodone, oxymorphone, sodium oxybate, and tapentadol. Characterizing by their effects, the thirteen APIs can be broken down into one benzodiazepine (diazepam), one respiratory and central nervous system stimulant (methylphenidate), one central nervous system agent (sodium oxybate), and the remainder being opioids. Out of all items on the flush list, opioids are dominating the list. Perhaps it has been done so reduce the accidental ingestion by children. We are in the midst of opioid epidemic so quickly disposing excess opioids is highly recommended to avoid non-medical use of opioids by adolescents or accidental ingestion of sodium oxybate by children, which can result in rapid sedation. Pets are also at an elevated risk to these potentially hazardous medicines.

These APIs are listed in the flush list due to their severe toxicity and documented poison cases. But a large problem remains: even when flushed as it can remain in and poison our water system and soil. The effect of the existence of these APIs in the environment on human health is not yet fully understood, but researchers are assuming that this has a negative impact on health and are demanding an alternative to flushing these pharmaceutical ingredients.

Recently endocrine  disrupting compounds are also found in the drinking water. And Drinking water which serves or about 28 million people were tested for fifty-one different kinds of drugs  by  Mark J. Benotti, Rebecca A. Trenholm, Brett J. Vanderford, Janie C. Holady, Benjamin D. Stanford and Shane A. Snyder. Water was contaminated with not only different kinds of drugs but also other organic compound which is definitely pose risk for plant or animal  plankton, fish and human as well. Pharmaceutical compond such as atenolol, atrazine, carbamazepine, estrone, gemfibrozil, meprobamate, naproxen, phenytoin, sulfamethoxazole, TCEP, and trimethoprim were found.  Researchers also stated :

“The typical compound concentrations were less than 10 ng/L for these top eleven with an exception for sulfamethoxazole at 12 ng/L, However, TCEP levels at one drinking water treatment plant was detected to be at an absurdly high level of 120 ng/L, showing wide variance in these concentrations. Atenolol, atrazine, DEET, estrone, meprobamate, and trimethoprim can also serve as indicator compounds to represent potential contamination from other pharmaceuticals and EDCs and can gauge the efficacy of treatment processes.”

As mentioned earlier, FDA  suggested guidelines about disposing drugs in household trash. It says to mix the capsule/tablet with cat litter or used ground coffee and put the mixture in a sealed plastic bag. Any personal information on the medication must be scratched off before disposing the original medicine packaging container.

If anyone is interested to know how to dispose drugs, he or she may visit the following link.

https://www.fda.gov/Drugs/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/BuyingUsingMedicineSafely/EnsuringSafeUseofMedicine/SafeDisposalofMedicines/ucm186187.htm#Flushing

A hot line is available for the consumer to provide information about disposal of drugs .Consumers may directly call 18008829539 to get DEA Office of Diversion Control’s Registration Call Center to reach the drug collector in the surrounding area. Although there is no evidence that the presence of in nature in significant amount and contributing to ecotoxicology, we hope that all our unused medication can be disposed and stored safely in certain areas so that they will not pose any threat to the environment or to the public.

 

Source:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28787777

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969717313773?via%3Dihub

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es801845a

 

 

Food Inc.

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This documentary was extremely eye-opening! The overall documentary was about the Food System and the things that are “hidden” from us (regular society), and that these things that are swept under the rug or misconstrude are effecting our health dramatically. It also explains how the Food System is in fact a huge system that is corrupted with government lobbying and subsidies. The main takeaway that I got from the film is that America is more concerned with revenue than its peoples well-being. I’ve seen this hold true before in other situations other than the Food System, like our Medical and Insurance System. Before the Affordable Care Act, people were turned away from insurance companies and were left either to die or go completely bankrupt from medical bills. The ACA has helped with this issue, but Americans are still going bankrupt from medical bills while this is not the case in other countries and their people are way healthier.

The documentary begins with showing the truth behind where our food comes from, and how this pretty picture of a farm is no where near what farms look like nowadays. Now our food comes from Industrial Farms, which are basically assembly lines where food is produced quickly and cheap. As we are walking down the isles we would like to think that we have so many options to choose from when in reality the industry is monopolized by 4 big indsutry farm companies. The meat is the same quality meat as fast food restuarants being that these restaurants are the biggest buyers from industry farm companies. The animals in these farms never see the light of day and are kept in small unsanitary conditions putting our food and the workers who work there at risk for disease.

The documentary goes on to discuss how we regulary genetically modify the meat and produce that we consume. Chickens grow way larger now making them less healthy for consumption but cheaper. Also corn is so cheap in the states that we use it for EVERYTHING. We feed it to our livestock and make it in to sugar and other products so that they can be cheaper. Most produce that is out of season but are being sold year round in grocery stores are genetically modified. A major issue with feeding cows corn is that they can not digest it properly causing a disease known as E. Coli. Many have lost their lives due to this sickness and there has even been a movement to pass a law restricting cows from being fed corn (Kevins Law), but it has not passed.

Then the question becomes why don’t our legislators do something about this? How come nothing changes? And the answer is lobbying. These large food companies have a lot of say in what passes and what doesn’t when it comes to food restrictions and laws, because they are essentially paying the legislators. Another reason is that many of our legislators also serve on the boards for these large food companies or organizations like the FDA.

Overall this film was very informative yet also kind of discouraging. Peronally, I feel like not many people are aware of these issues and this is what needs to be told in order for a change to take place.