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Showing posts from June, 2010

Open the levees and let the Mississippi go....

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An interesting post from Water Wired:  Historian   Douglas Brinkley , author of the excellent chronicle of Hurricane Katrina,   The Great Deluge ,  wrote an   Op-Ed   for the   Financial Times   last week (you may need to complete a free registration to read it) titled,   To Save the Gulf, Free the Mississippi . Brinkley wants  BP  to deposit $20B in an escrow account, along with an additional $8B letter of credit. Besides paying claims, this fund would also finance a scheme to remove oil from Louisiana's wetlands. He advocates literally opening the floodgates and allowing the  Mississippi River  to flush the wetlands of oil. Here are the relevant paragraphs: But BP’s escrow billions should not go merely to paying lost wage claims to the charter boat operators, fisherman, motel owners, and seaside restaurateurs whose livelihoods have suffered. The money will also be needed for the US Army Corps of Engineers to open up the floodgates at the mouth of the Mississippi River and

Imperial county exploratory water sampling trip and meeting with the Calexico New River Committee

On June 11 and 12, Diane, Kristen, and I made an exploratory trip to meet with Miguel Figueroa and to sample the water quality of Imperial county rivers and canals.  Miguel of the Calexico New River Committee  gave us a great tour of some interesting spots on the New River around Calexico. This river is reported to be heavily polluted as it flows across the international border in the heart of Mexicali/Calexico.    There was a small amount of E.coli indicator in the Alamo river as it flowed across the international border. We found no other E.coli in rivers, irrigation canals, or irrigation drainage ditches except for one canal north of Brawley near Hwy 111 which also had 1 E.coli / ml.  Our sampling was by no means a representative sample of irrigation canals or the rivers of Imperial county. We were unable to obtain a sample of the new river. These data suggest that further study would be useful to discover if fecal pollution is indeed a problem in irrigation canals.  If you are

Contaminated reusable grocery bags

The media really picked up on this story . Only ~5% of everyone surveyed in Loma Linda wash their grocery bags. Dr. Germ really knows how to spark the public's interest in hygiene! Most foodborne illnesses are believed to originate in the home. Reuse of bags creates an opportunity for cross contamination of foods. The purpose of this study was to assess the potential for cross contamination of food products from reusable bags used to carry groceries. Reusable bags were collected at random from consumers as they entered grocery stores in California and Arizona. In interviews it was found that reusable bags are seldom if ever washed and often used for multiple purposes. Large numbers of bacteria were found in almost all bags and coliform bacteria in half. Escherichia coli were identified in 12% of the bags and a wide range of enteric bacteria, including several opportunistic pathogens. When meat juices were added to bags and stored in the trunks of cars for two hours the number o

Contaminated reusable grocery bags

The media really picked up on this story . Only ~5% of everyone surveyed in Loma Linda wash their grocery bags. Dr. Germ really knows how to spark the public's interest in hygiene! Most foodborne illnesses are believed to originate in the home. Reuse of bags creates an opportunity for cross contamination of foods. The purpose of this study was to assess the potential for cross contamination of food products from reusable bags used to carry groceries. Reusable bags were collected at random from consumers as they entered grocery stores in California and Arizona. In interviews it was found that reusable bags are seldom if ever washed and often used for multiple purposes. Large numbers of bacteria were found in almost all bags and coliform bacteria in half. Escherichia coli were identified in 12% of the bags and a wide range of enteric bacteria, including several opportunistic pathogens. When meat juices were added to bags and stored in the trunks of cars for two hours the number of

Solar Water Disinfection and the BPA Plastic Panic

A May 31 article in the New Yorker is titled "The Plastic Panic" .  It discusses the dangers of  Bisphenol A  (BPA) and our government's response to plastics.  Although BPA commonly found in nalgene bottles is a health hazard when heated, I have not seen evidence against consuming water heated in polyethylene terphalate (i.e. PET or coke bottle plastic type 1). For this reason I still promote Solar Water Disinfection (SODIS) in used PET or glass bottles. The method was featured in the February National Geographic on Water and is described on by the EAWAG group in Switzerland. This first study listed in the PET bottle research section of the SODIS website is a recent investigation of SODIS and plasticizers . The study shows that plasticizers in solar disinfected bottles are never more than the amount in newly purchased bottled water. Is there a health effect? The EAWAG group in Switzerland is still searching. One problem the recent New Yorker article mentions is th

Lunch: Solar Box Cooked Eggs

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As a gift, Sophea built a solar box cooker for work. This is an ideal lunch cooker. Its small, cute, and can handle one pan of lunch. Instead of using a microwave for that pasta you bring for lunch, why not use a solar cooker? Put the pasta in the solar cooker when you get to work, and by lunch, your food will be sizzling and hot.  The solar cooker can boil water and will keep things warm for a long time.  Also, you never have to worry about things burning in the solar cooker.  I built this one from a styrofoam box, an old scanner's glass (from LLU SPH), aluminum foil, blue masking tape, and some Arizona license plates spray painted black.   Two hour cooked eggs for Lunch on June 1st, 2010 I use it as an alternative to microwave ovens.  I use microwaves for lunch at work, but my soup usually spatters and I have to clean  up the microwave. With a personal solar box cooker you don't have to worry about that. You also never have to wait in line to microwave your food.  Ther