Category: 03 Environmental Degradation

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Pakistan Medical Resource Finder, Millions at Risk of Fatal Diseases

02 Infectious Disease, 03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Health, Geospatial, International Aid, Technologies

http://pakistan.resource-finder.appspot.com

This is a good idea/resource that needs a great deal of additional information and mobile SMS access.

Thanks to those posting at the Ushahidi Twitter feed

Related:
+ Epidemic advisory situation report
+ Crisis Commons Wiki on Pakistan Floods
+ Sahana Foundation Flood Response Resources
+ Pakreport.org
+ Crisis mappers
+ Praecipio International | An Institute for Warning Analysis
+ Biosurveillance (and the twitter feed)
+ 3.5 million Pakistan kids at risk of fatal diseases
+ Map of Pakistan flooding
+ Mismanagement of rivers, farms contributed to large flooding
+ UN Pakistan Floods Emergency Response Plan August 2010

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President’s Cancer Panel Report, Pharma Trace Contamination of Freshwater Supplies

03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Health, 12 Water, Corporations, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

This year's report focuses primarily on environmental factors that contribute to cancer risk. According to the report, pharmaceutical drugs are a serious environmental pollutant, particularly in the way they continue to contaminate waterways across the country.

2008–2009 Annual Report from the President’s Cancer Panel
REDUCING ENVIRONMENTAL CANCER RISK: What We Can Do Now (240 pages)

According to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study conducted back in 2002, antidepressants, blood pressure and diabetes medications, anticonvulsants, oral contraceptives, hormone replacement therapy drugs, chemotherapy drugs, antibiotics, heart medications and even codeine are all showing up in the water supplies of American cities. This study was the first national-scale evaluation of pharmaceutical drug contamination in streams, and roughly 80 percent of the streams tested were found to be contaminated as well.

Continue reading “President's Cancer Panel Report, Pharma Trace Contamination of Freshwater Supplies”

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Graphic: “The True Cost of Coal”

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 07 Health, 10 Security, 12 Water, Civil Society, Earth Intelligence, Graphics, Peace Intelligence, True Cost, True Cost

See the graphic and the process by the Beehive Design Collective

After two years of collaborative research, storysharing, metaphor crafting, and meticulous illustrating, the bees have completed an epic illustration about mountaintop removal coal mining.

See the graphic and process by the Beehive Design Collective

Related:
+ True Cost Meme
+ True Cost T-Shirt

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Dangers in the Dust: Inside the Global Asbestos Trade

02 Infectious Disease, 03 Environmental Degradation, 04 Education, 07 Health, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Civil Society, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, True Cost

Center for Public Integrity link associated with BBC & the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
BBC page on asbestos industry hazards

Related:
Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Poisons, Toxicity, Trash, & True Cost

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U.S. Geological Survey: Twitter Earthquake Detector (TED)

03 Environmental Degradation, 10 Security, Citizen-Centered, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Geospatial, Geospatial, Government, Graphics, Media

People can receive earthquake data from the @USGSTED Twitter account. The site sends maps of earthquake zones to account holders.

U.S. Geological Survey: Twitter Earthquake Detector (TED)

Sample map output from the Twitter Earthquake Detector prototype project.

The U.S. Geological Survey is using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support a student who’s investigating social Internet technologies as a way to quickly gather information about recent earthquakes.

In this exploratory effort, the USGS is developing a system that gathers real-time, earthquake-related messages from the social networking site Twitter and applies place, time, and key word filtering to gather geo-located accounts of shaking. This approach provides rapid first-impression narratives and, potentially, photos from people at the hazard’s location. The potential for earthquake detection in populated but sparsely seismicly-instrumented regions is also being investigated.

Social Internet technologies are providing the general public with anecdotal earthquake hazard information before scientific information has been published from authoritative sources.  People local to an event are able to publish information via these technologies within seconds of their occurrence. In contrast, depending on the location of the earthquake, scientific alerts can take between 2 to 20 minutes. By adopting and embracing these new technologies, the USGS potentially can augment its earthquake response products and the delivery of hazard information.

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Oil-Separating Centrifuges as Partial Relief for Gulf Oil Spill

03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, Commerce, Corporations, Government
Article link

Can Kevin Costner's Machines Really Help the Gulf Cleanup?

The oil-separating centrifuges will work, but they would have worked better months ago

By Dave Levitan  /  July 2010

14 July 2010—After 85 days, the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is now partially contained, and relief wells to stem the flow are inching closer to completion. Once the leak is fixed, the focus will shift to removing the oil that’s already in the water. The actor Kevin Costner has appeared on TV and in front of the U.S. Congress to tout his oil cleanup machines, but can they actually make a dent in the still-spreading environmental disaster?

Costner’s testimony on 9 June may have provided comedic fodder for late-night talk-show hosts, but according to David Meikrantz, a chemical engineer at Idaho National Laboratory who developed the technology in the early 1990s, the machines are no joke. He says there is no reason that the devices, essentially liquid-liquid separation centrifuges, shouldn’t work in the Gulf. They performed so well in BP’s initial tests that as many as 32 of them could be spinning in the Gulf in the coming weeks. But even though the technology is proven, Costner’s devices are no silver bullet.

Full article here