Palau bans 'reef-toxic' sunscreen

Yahoo – AFP, Bernadette Carreon, January 1, 2020

Reefs all over the world are being affected by the toxins in sunscreens (AFP Photo/
DONALD MIRALLE)

Koror (Palau) (AFP) - Palau's pioneering ban on "reef-toxic" sunscreens took effect Wednesday as the tiny Pacific island nation introduced strict environmental measures that also include one of the world's largest marine sanctuaries.

"We have to live and respect the environment because the environment is the nest of life, and without it nobody in Palau can survive," President Tommy Remengesau told AFP as the new laws took effect.

Palau, which lies in the western Pacific about halfway between Australia and Japan, is renowned for its marine life and is regarded as one of the world's best diving destinations, but the government is concerned its popularity is coming at a cost.

Remengesau said there was scientific evidence that the chemicals found in most sunscreens were toxic to corals, even in minute doses.

With Palau's popular dive sites regularly packed with tourists there were concerns a build-up of these chemicals would irreparably harm the reefs.

From New Year's day, any reef-toxic sunscreen imported or sold in Palau will be confiscated and the owner will be fined US$1,000.

"When science tells us that a practice is damaging to coral reefs, to fish populations, or to the ocean itself, our people take note and our visitors do too," Remengesau said.

Map locating Palau. The tiny Pacific island nation's pioneering ban on 

"reef-toxic" sunscreens took effect on New Year's Day (AFP Photo/Gal ROMA)

"Toxic sunscreen chemicals have been found throughout Palau's critical habitats, and in the tissues of our most famous creatures.

"We don't mind being the first nation to ban these chemicals, and we will do our part to spread the word. With better education and awareness, more jurisdictions will have the confidence to take this necessary action.

"The science is clear, and once that message has spread, we will be the first of many."

Along with the sunscreen ban, Palau’s much-touted marine sanctuary came into effect on January 1, closing 80 percent of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) to fishing and other marine activities including mining and shark finning.

"It is a very ambitious and worthy goal for Palau's future," Remengesau said. The marine sanctuary prohibits commercial fishing in about 500,000 square kilometres (190,000 square miles) of ocean.

The legislation also requires most foreign fleets working in the limited fishing area to land their catch in Palau and then pay an export tax.

Environment Minister Umiich Sengebau said the law ensures Palau has first rights to purchase fish caught in the area to satisfy the local demand before exports are allowed.

Remengesau said the ban was needed to "let the ocean heal" after years of mass commercial fishing in the Pacific that has seen stocks of some species such as bluefin tuna fall to critical levels.

It follows Palau's establishment of the world's first shark sanctuary in 2009 to prevent finning -- a practice that sees fish have their fins hacked off before they are thrown back into the sea to die.

Papua New Guinea shutters polluting Chinese plant

Yahoo – News, 24 October 2019

Papua New Guinea has ordered a Chinese nickel plant closed after hazardous
liquid was released into sea, turning parts the surrounding coastline red

Papua New Guinea said Thursday it had ordered the indefinite closure of a multi-billion dollar Chinese-owned nickel facility that spewed potentially toxic red slurry into the sea.

The Mineral Resources Authority said it had ordered owners of the Ramu Nickel refinery to "shut down its processing operations" as of Monday October 21.

The facility is run by the state-owned China Metallurgical Group, which mines and processes nickel, a metal widely used in batteries, including for electric cars.

In late August, the plant's mechanism for dealing with slurry failed, sending hazardous liquid into the Bismarck Sea and turning parts the surrounding coastline ochre red.

Earlier this year the China Metallurgical Group asked Papua New Guinea officials visiting Beijing to approve plans to expand production capacity.

The Mineral Resources Authority now said the company had been "ordered to cease operations because it has failed to adequately" fix a string of defects spotted during the investigation.

They included poor spillage containment systems, inadequate maintenance and "incompetency of operators".

Ties between Beijing and the resource-rich Melanesian nation have been growing apace, but there have been repeated tensions over standards at some minerals and infrastructure projects.

Indonesia to send 210 tonnes of waste back to Australia

Yahoo – AFP, July 9, 2019

The eight containers seized in Surabaya city should have contained only waste
paper, but authorities also found hazardous material and household trash,
including used diapers (AFP Photo/Juni Kriswanto)

Jakarta (AFP) - Indonesia said Tuesday it would send more than 210 tonnes of garbage back to Australia, as Southeast Asian nations push back against serving as dumping grounds for foreign trash.

The eight containers seized in Surabaya city should have contained only waste paper, but authorities also found hazardous material and household trash including plastic bottles and packaging, used diapers, electronic waste and cans, a spokesman for the East Java customs agency told AFP.

Following the inspection the Indonesian environment ministry recommended "the items be re-exported," the agency said in a separate statement Monday.

"This is done to protect the public and Indonesian environment, especially in East Java, from B3 waste," it added, referring to hazardous and toxic materials.

Australian company Oceanic Multitrading sent the waste to Indonesia with help from Indonesian firm PT. MDI, authorities said.

China's decision in 2018 to ban imports of foreign plastic waste threw global recycling into chaos, leaving developed nations struggling to find places to send their waste.

Southeast Asian nations are pushing back against serving as dumping grounds 

for foreign trash (AFP Photo/Juni Kriswanto)

Huge quantities of rubbish have since been redirected to Southeast Asia, but opposition to handling exported trash is growing in the region.

Indonesia announced last week it was sending back 49 containers full of waste to France and other developed nations.

In May, neighbouring Malaysia announced it was shipping 450 tonnes of imported plastic waste back to its sources, including Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The Philippines, meanwhile, returned about 69 containers of rubbish back to Canada last month, putting an end to a diplomatic row between the two countries.

Global concern over plastic pollution has been spurred by shocking images of waste-clogged rivers in Southeast Asia and accounts of dead sea creatures found with kilos of refuse in their stomachs.

Around 300 million tonnes of plastic are produced every year, according to the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), with much of it ending up in landfills or polluting the seas, in what has become a growing international crisis.

Siren sounds on nuclear fallout embedded in melting glaciers

France24 – AFP, 10 April 2019

The team found manmade radioactive material in all 17 glaciers sites they surveyed (AFP)

Vienna (AFP) - Radioactive fallout from nuclear meltdowns and weapons testing is nestled in glaciers across the world, scientists said Wednesday, warning of a potentially hazardous time bomb as rising temperatures melt the icy residue.

For the first time, an international team of scientists has studied the presence of nuclear fallout in ice surface sediments on glaciers across the Arctic, Iceland the Alps, Caucasus mountains, British Columbia and Antarctica.

It found manmade radioactive material at all 17 survey sites, often at concentrations at least 10 times higher than levels elsewhere.

"They are some of the highest levels you see in the environment outside nuclear exclusion zones," said Caroline Clason, a lecturer in Physical Geography at the University of Plymouth.

When radioactive material is released into the atmosphere, it falls to earth as acid rain, some of which is absorbed by plants and soil.

But when it falls as snow and settles in the ice, it forms heavier sediment which collects in glaciers, concentrating the levels of nuclear residue.

The Chernobyl disaster of 1986 -- by far the most devastating nuclear accident to date -- released vast clouds of radioactive material including Caesium into the atmosphere, causing widespread contamination and acid rain across northern Europe for weeks afterwards.

"Radioactive particles are very light so when they are taken up into the atmosphere they can be transported a very long way," she told AFP.

"When it falls as rain, like after Chernobyl, it washes away and it's sort of a one-off event. But as snow, it stays in the ice for decades and as it melts in response to the climate it's then washed downstream."

The environmental impact of this has been shown in recent years, as wild boar meat in Sweden was found to contain more than 10 times the safe levels of Caesium.

'A mark we've left'

Clason said her team had detected some fallout from the Fukushima meltdown in 2011, but stressed that much of the particles from that particular disaster had yet to collect on the ice sediment.

As well as disasters, radioactive material produced from weapons testing was also detected at several research sites.

"We're talking about weapons testing from the 1950s and 1960s onwards, going right back in the development of the bomb," she said. "If we take a sediment core you can see a clear spike where Chernobyl was, but you can also see quite a defined spike in around 1963 when there was a period of quite heavy weapons testing."

One of the most potentially hazardous residues of human nuclear activity is Americium, which is produced when Plutonium decays.

Whereas Plutonium has a half-life of 14 years, Americium lasts 400.

"Americium is more soluble in the environment and it is a stronger alpha (radiation) emitter. Both of those things are bad in terms of uptake into the food chain," said Clason.

While there is little data available on how these materials can be passed down the food chain -- even potentially to humans -- Clason said there was no doubt that Americium is "particularly dangerous".

As geologists look for markers of the epoch when mankind directly impacted the health of the planet -- known as the Anthropocene -- Clason and her team believe that radioactive particles in ice, soil and sediment could be an important indicator.

"These materials are a product of what we have put into the atmosphere. This is just showing that our nuclear legacy hasn't disappeared yet, it's still there," Clason said.

"And it's important to study that because ultimately it's a mark of what we have left in the environment."

France reverses car tyre sea sanctuary -- an environmental flop

Yahoo – AFP, Vincent-Xavier MORVAN, September 23, 2018

Ten thousand tyres are set to be lifted out of the sea by the divers and boat crew
over the next few weeks, with the remaining 12,500 extracted in the second
quarter of 2019 (AFP Photo/VALERY HACHE)

Vallauris (France) (AFP) - What seemed a like a crazy idea turned out to be just that: a 1980s experiment that saw 25,000 car tyres dumped into the crystal-clear waters of the Mediterranean to create a sanctuary for sealife off the French coast is being cleaned up after it was found to be polluting.

Since the start of last week, divers and a specially equipped boat with lifting gear have been fishing out hundreds of the old loops of rubber about 500 metres (1,600 feet) from an exclusive coastline between the towns of Cannes and Antibes.

The original vision, backed by local French authorities at the time and fishermen, was that the tyres would become populated by coral and other sea creatures in a conservation area where fishing was off limits.

In France, the idea of a "tyre reef" was tried only here, but a local academic working on the clean-up operation said authorities in other countries, particularly the United States, had tried the same failed idea.

"We hoped (back in the 1980s) that we could restore aquatic life there, but it didn't work," the deputy mayor of Antibes, Eric Duplay told AFP. "It turns out that the tyre reef was not a prolific place for biomass."

Denis Genovese, the head of an association of local fishermen, confirmed that most Mediterranean lifeforms had shunned the idea of living inside mad-made products manufactured out of rubber, resins, oil and other chemicals.

Divers and a specially equipped boat with lifting gear have been fishing out hundreds

 of the old rubber tyres 500 metres (1,600 feet) from an exclusive coastline between

the French resorts of Cannes and Antibes (AFP Photo/VALERY HACHE)

Leaking toxic chemicals

Sedentary creatures such as the local scorpion fish didn't use them, Genovese said, while "grouper fish, conger eels and sea bream swim around them, but no species really got used to it".

Worse, a study in 2005 by researchers at the University of Nice showed that the tyres were leaking toxic chemicals into the environment, including heavy metals, which are a threat to human life.

Authorities were also worried that the tyres could degrade further, nearly 40 years after they sank to the seabed, and break up into smaller pieces which would be a risk for nearby seagrass meadows.

In 2015, a first mission to remove 2,500 tyres was undertaken to show that they could be extracted safely, with the work underway at the moment a second and more important phase of the clean-up operation.

Around 10,000 are set to be lifted by the divers and boat crew over the next few weeks, with the remaining 12,500 extracted in the second quarter of 2019.

Regeneration hopes

AFP hopped aboard the vessel last week to watch the progress in action as dozens of a tyres were hauled from the sea, with the luxury holiday villas of the French Riviera visible on the coastline behind.

Local French authorities and fishermen hoped back in the 1980s that the tyres 

would become populated by coral and other sea creatures in a conservation area 

where fishing was off limits (AFP Photo/VALERY HACHE)

The Saudi royal family own a huge villa on a small stretch of beach opposite the site, which was the focus of a scandal in 2015 when King Salman tried to privatise the sand for his holiday and caused an uproar among locals.

The fine white sand is a problem for the clean-up team of divers, which struggle with low visibility as they find the tyres and thread them on to wire cables which are then lifted to the surface.

"In the morning, it's easy, the water's clear," crew member Morgan Postic on board the Ocea vessel said. "But as we stir it all up down at the bottom, you can't see anything and it gets much more complicated."

The tyres will be sent to the nearby city of Nice and then to recycling centres where they will be broken up into granules that can be used in construction projects.

"After that we'll leave the seabed to restore itself naturally and we'll continue to monitor with censors," said marine scientist Patrice Francour from the University of Nice, who is working on the issue.

Francour said the clean-up would end France's one and only experiment with a "tyre reef", but that other countries still had to deal with the legacy of the failed idea, notably the United States.

A million euros has been provided by the French state to finance the French clean-up, while French tyre company Michelin has contributed 200,000 euros (235,000 dollars).

Hoping for a fresh sea breeze aboard a cruise ship? Better hold your nose!

French TV journalists have secretly measured the air quality on a cruise ship. The results are devastating: The air is significantly worse polluted than it would be in thick urban traffic.

Deutsche Welle, 26 January 2017

Cruises are increasingly popular among today's tourists. They offer relaxation with 24-hour service for stressed out office workers.

Forget about searching for the perfect, pristine beach - which most people will never find, anyhow. Instead, just go to the pool on the upper deck, enjoy some tasty drinks and take in breathtaking views of the ocean from high above. For people who need less contemplation, cruises offer theater and show performances, generous meals, bars and shopping opportunities.

That doesn't mean you're in for a boring vacation: Adventure comes as part of the risk free deal. Even frail seniors can now feel like mystic characters such as Long John Silver from Treasure Island or real explorers like Roald Amundsen - be it by cruising the romantic Carribean, visiting savage South Sea islands or admiring polar bears on impenetrable arctic shores. Finally you can do something for your health by going to the ship's gym and getting a good work out.

Tourists want to enjoy themselves - and the fresh sea breeze.

But you better think twice about taking a deep breath. The German Environmental Association "Naturschutzbund Deutschland"(NABU) now warns that it is more likely you inhale polluted air than a fresh breeze. NABU says that it cannot recommend any of the large European cruise ships.

"Pamphlets lead you to believe that there are blue skies and white ships - a dream-like setting," Daniel Rieger, who is in charge of transportation policies at NABU, said. "The truth is that clouds of black soot are emitted from the funnels."

Measuring results are worse than expected

Recent measurements of actual air quality onboard a cruise ship seem to support NABU's view. French TV journalists from broadcaster France 3 conducted covert measurements while on a cruise. They boarded a ship in Marseille for a cruise of the Mediterranean.

Results show that "the shipping companies are exposing their travelers to high concentrations of harmful substances," NABU managing director Leif Miller concluded.

Even environmentalists were surprised by the high concentrations that the journalists detected. Right after leaving Marseille, air pollution was roughly 200 times that of a heavily trafficked urban street.

Besides fine dust and soot, the combustion of marine diesel fuel and heavy oil also set free other harmful substances such as nitrogen oxides and heavy metals.

Former captain and ship broker Helge Grammerstorf, who is the German national director of the Cruise Lines International Association CLIA, defends his industry. He told the daily "Hamburger Abendblatt:" "We don't know these measurements. The claim is completely unsubstantiated."

Grammerstorf argues that the measurements were taken only selectively and that one would need to run a more systematic test to collect data over a longer time period.

Hardly noticeable for passengers

"The passengers can only smell or see the particles before they get mixed up with the ambient air," NABU spokesman Rieger said after the France 3 test results were published.

He argued that it wouldn't take the shipping companies much to change the pollution and to increase comfort. "Even switching from marine diesel fuel or heavy oil to regular road diesel fuel would make a big difference," he said.

In addition, it wouldn't be too hard to install effective exhaust cleaning systems, according to NABU. Such systems have long existed with established standards for trucks and trains.

"The question is whether the industry deliberately looks the other way," Dietmar Oellinger - NABU's transport expert - said.

He suggested that the tests taken by the French journalists were merely an example and could possibly be representative for the entire cruise ship industry.

"The reality is black soot from the chimneys," NABU environmentalists say.

"We should ask how much more proof the industry needs before they finally take action," Oellinger said.

Some cruise lines have pledged to install particle filters, but so far, there are none in use.

Covert measuring only in the harbor

Previously, NABU has only had the opportunity to measure harmful ultra fine dust particles in the air around cruise ships in harbors. They have done so in Hamburg, Venice and the north-eastern German city of Rostock-Warnemünde. The ship owners did not allow the environment agency to take measurements on board, Daniel Rieger said.

The results were devastating nonetheless: In all cases the ships were burning off heavy oil. Four of five ships were not equipped with any exhaust gas cleaning or they were only fulfilling the lowest legal standard for northern Europe - a system that only reduces sulfur oxide emissions.

Technical solutions to reduce particle and nitrogen oxide emissions have long been on the market, though. Therefore, NABU argues, not implementing them is largely due to greed. It would cost money to install the system and furthermore require the companies to use more expensive types of fuel.

Almost as dangerous as asbestos

The German Lung Foundation already recommended several years ago that people with chronic respiratory diseases only stay on certain parts of the deck when on a cruise ship and thus avoide breathing in the ship's exhaust.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has concluded that diesel exhaust is just as carcinogenic as asbestos. The ultrafine particles, which are smaller than 0.1 micrometer can get into the smallest pulmonary alveoli and from there into the blood stream and other organs.

NABU manager Leif Miller argues it's cynical that the cruise ship companies "pay huge sums to improve entertainment and gastronomical services on board, but save as much as they can when it comes to environmental protection."

Meanwhile, in Germany the cruise ship industry is getting ready for the next season: In Warnemünde, Hamburg and Kiel alone, more than two million passengers are expected to board the giants of the seas in 2017.

Related Articles:

Maritime countries agree first ever shipping emissions regulation

Dutch ports to reward environmentally ‘clean’ ships

Shipping to steer cleaner carbon course

Antarctic nations plan tough new shipping controls

Proposal mandates stricter pollution controls for ships

The 16 Ships Create As Much Pollution As All Cars in The World

Brazil to sue dam spill mining companies for $5.2 bn

Yahoo - AFP, Damian Wroclavsky with Laura Binilla in Rio de Janeiro

Brazil's government says it will sue mining giants BHP Billiton and Vale for $5.2

 billion in clean-up costs and damages after the deadly collapse of a waste water

dam at an iron-ore mine (AFP Photo/Fred Loureido)

Brasília (AFP) - Brazil's government said Friday it will sue mining giants BHP Billiton and Vale for $5.2 billion in clean-up costs and damages after the deadly collapse of a waste water dam at an iron-ore mine.

Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said a lawsuit would be filed demanding that the companies and mine operator Samarco, which they co-own, create a fund of 20 billion reais. The money would go to environmental recovery and compensation for victims.

"There was a huge impact from an environmental point of view," Teixeira said at a press conference in the capital Brasilia.

"It is not a natural disaster, it is a disaster prompted by economic activity, but of a magnitude equivalent to those disasters created by forces of nature."

The suit will be filed on Monday, Attorney General Luis Inacio Adams said.

At least 13 people died and some 11 remain missing from the flood of mud and waste water triggered by the breaking dam at the Samarco iron ore mine near Mariana in southeastern Brazil on November 5.

The deluge swept down the River Doce to the Atlantic, sparking claims of major contamination, although the mining companies insist there is no serious pollution.

The fund being demanded by the government would dwarf initial estimates by Deutsche Bank that a clean-up could cost about $1 billion.

Adams said that the companies would be asked to pay the amount out gradually, as a percentage of their profits.

"The measure should guarantee long-term financing for actions to revitalize the (river) basin," Adams' office said in a statement.

Cooperation or denial?

Adams said he hoped the powerful corporations -- BHP Billiton is the world's biggest miner and Vale is the world's biggest iron ore specialist -- would cooperate with the government. Both have said they want to meet their obligations.

"The scale of the damage is very big but the companies have announced measures that show they are interested in repairing their image," Adams said.

Teixeira described the environmental impact as devastating and difficult to repair.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff will attend the UN Climate Conference

 - COP21 - in Paris, where host of the summit, French Foreign Minister Laurent 

Fabius, has said he was counting on Brazil to help seal a global pact (AFP 

Photo/Evaristo Sa)

"What was lost there is lost. The biological chain that was broken will not be put back together in any way as it was before. We have to create conditions so that nature establishes new ecological conditions," she said.

Earlier Friday in Rio de Janeiro, Vale announced a compensation fund, but did not give figures. Executives also sounded a defiant note, rejecting allegations that the River Doce has been badly polluted.

Vania Somaville, director of human resources, health and safety at Vale, told a press conference that lead, arsenic, nickel and chrome had been detected at some points along the river.

However, Somaville argued that the potentially dangerous contaminants were not carried there by the waste water from the mine.

"They were (already) there at the edges or in the bed of the river" and were disturbed in the flood, she said.

"The good news is that these materials did not dissolve in the water" and are now diminishing, she said.

This was in stark contrast to a report by two UN experts on Wednesday accusing the corporations and the Brazilian government of failing to respond to a toxic disaster.

The UN's special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, John Knox, said the equivalent of "20,000 Olympic swimming pools of toxic mud" spewed into the River Doce.

CEO on the defensive

Vale's CEO, Murilo Ferreira, has been criticized by environmental activists for what many saw as his slow response to the disaster and his attempt to distance himself from the tragedy by saying that Vale was only a shareholder in Samarco.

He told journalists Friday in a breaking voice that "the disaster has been extremely painful" for him and other executives.

"My soul is saddened and disturbed... We are very worried that there are 5,200 people who don't know what the future holds," he said, referring to the many jobs suspended in and around Samarco after the accident.

However, Ferreira once more sought to draw a distinction between Vale and the Samarco operation, saying that help was being offered only out of "solidarity."

"In four years I was never at the Samarco offices in Mariana," he said. Until the accident "I didn't know them... We don't know who their clients are or their prices."

Pearl Jam donates concert proceeds to Brazil mine victims

Yahoo – AFP, 21 Nov 2015

Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam performs during the fourth annual Global Citizen
 Festival in Central Park Manhattan on September 26, 2015 in New York
 (AFP Photo/Kena Betancur)

Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - US rock group Pearl Jam donated proceeds from a concert in Brazil to victims of a toxic mining spill that killed 12 people and was the country's worst environmental disaster.

The group's singer Eddie Vedder interrupted a show Friday night in Belo Horizonte, capital of the southeast state of Minas Gerais -- where the disaster occurred November 5 -- and called for the mining company involved to be severely punished.

As seen on a video on the news website G1, the group got a standing ovation when Vedder said the take from that concert would go to victims of the disaster.

It struck when a dam collapsed at the waste reservoirs of an iron ore mine, unleashing a torrent of yellowish muck that all but buried a village, left 280,000 people without water and smothered thousands of fish, turtles and other animals.

Besides the 12 dead, another 12 people remain missing.

The mining facility is owned by Samarco, a joint venture between the mining giants BHP Billiton of Australia and Vale of Brazil.

Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said Friday it was the worst environmental disaster in Brazilian history and that it will take 30 years to clean the basin of the Doce River, into which the sludge flowed.

Samarco has already been hit with damages, fines and frozen funds totalling more than $400 million.

Related Article:

Australia's Barrier Reef 'risks becoming dumping ground': WWF

Dead fish near Tianjin not caused by the blasts: local official

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2015-08-21

Dead fish at a section of the Hai river, Aug. 20. (Photo/CNS)

The cause of death of the large number of dead fish spotted in the water near Tianjin's Tanggu district was not cyanide poisoning, as the media had previously speculated, but poor quality water, according to a local environment monitoring center, cited by local newspaper Tianjin Daily.

The center examined the water at a section of the Hai river in Tanggu on Thursday and the examination showed the fish had died due to poor quality water, according to the center's chief Deng Xiaowen during a press conference, as cited by Guangzhou-based news web portal NetEase.

The area is around six kilometers from the blast site of two explosions that occurred just before midnight on Aug. 12 at the Ruihai Logistics' warehouse, which houses hazardous chemicals. The explosions and the resulting fires killed at least 114 people with 69 people still missing.

Internet users who are familiar with the area said dead fish are often seen after the river's floodgates open, allowing saltwater in the sea to mix with freshwater in the river. The fish, which live in the sea, cannot adapt to the changes in salinity in the water and die.

The warehouse where the blasts took place stored about 40 substances across seven categories, including around 1,300 tonnes of oxide compounds, mainly potassium nitrate and ammonium nitrate; 500 tonnes of inflammable materials, consisting of metallic sodium and magnesium; and 700 tonnes of highly toxic substances, mainly sodium cyanide and caffeine, said Tianjin vice mayor He Shushan.

Related Article:

Chinese prosecutors announce probe into deadly warehouse blasts

US Supreme Court rejects BP challenge to Gulf settlement

Yahoo – AFP, 8 Dec 2014

The US Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear energy giant BP's challenge to a settlement ordering it to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to businesses hurt by the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

BP had argued that losses claimed by the companies after the disaster "were not fairly traceable to the spill," and sought a review of the settlement by the US high court.

But the nine justices, after a closed door hearing, issued a decision rejecting the company's request.

"The petition... is denied," the court said.

The Mobile, Alabama Chamber of Commerce, the US Chamber of Commerce and a federation of German industries, had filed briefs in support of the companies involved in the settlement.

According to a study published in October, as many as two million barrels of crude oil streamed into the Gulf of Mexico, decimating the wildlife and devastating the ecology of a region heavily dependent on the seafood and tourism industries.

A BP spokesman expressed regret Monday over the Supreme Court decision.

Company spokesman Geoff Morrell said in a statement that new accounting rules "will improve the program's compliance with the terms of the settlement agreement."

But Morrell said BP continues to feel that the problem for which it sought relief from the US high court persists.

"We... remain concerned that the program has made awards to claimants that suffered no injury from the spill -- and that the lawyers for these claimants have unjustly profited as a result," Morrell added.

"On behalf of all our stakeholders, we will therefore continue to advocate for the investigation of suspicious or implausible claims and to fight fraud where it is uncovered."

The April 20, 2010 blowout of an offshore oil rig caused the largest marine oil spill in US history, with millions of barrels of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico before the leak was finally capped July 15.

Under the settlement, BP has so far paid out $36.3 billion in fines and compensation to individuals, companies and local authorities and for clean-up operations on the US coastline.

After pleading guilty in court, BP was ordered to pay a record $4.5 billion fine.

In September, a federal judge in Louisiana found the British company guilty of "gross negligence," opening it up to additional fines of up to $18 billion.

High levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria found in Asian farmed fish

DutchNews.nl, Friday 07 November 2014

(NOS)

Spot checks of fish and prawns which have been farmed in Asia found that half contain bacteria which is resistant to antibiotics, according to animal rights organisation Wakker Dier.

The foundation had 43 samples of Asian fish and prawns tested for bacteria. One prawn sample was even found to have ESBL, an enzyme which prevents many antibiotics from working. It has previously been detected in meat but never before in fish, Wakker Dier said.

Campaign leader Hanneke van Ormondt says fish such as tilapia and pangasius are raised in giant tanks in Vietnam and Thailand and given huge amounts of antibiotics to combat illness. Antibiotics are also used to stimulate the fish to grow more quickly, she said.

Checks

If the fish is not properly cooked, the bacteria can also have an impact on human health by stopping antibiotics from working.

The Dutch food safety body NVWA said in 2009 there should be a proper system of checks on fish but this has not yet been developed, broadcaster Nos says.

A spokesman for the food retailers' association CBL said this is now a priority. ‘We are going to increase our checks on fish farms and make it clear they should use fewer antibiotics,’ a spokesman told Nos.

Sea cucumber farming hurting Bohai Bay's marine life

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2014-09-11

A sea cucumber. (File photo/CFP)

The considerable amount of quicklime and antibiotics used in sea cucumber farming has severely polluted northern China's Bohai Bay, pushing a lot of marine life to the brink of extinction.

Sea cucumber farmers harvest once every five years on average. They drain the water, collect the matured sea cucumbers and then use quicklime as an anti-bacterial agent to "clean up" the mud in the fishing grounds. The quicklime, together with all other waste materials, is released without any treatment into the ocean.

The corrosive chemicals commonly used in sea cucumber farming pose a threat not only to marine species but also to migratory seabirds. Every time sea cucumber farmers discharge wastewater into the ocean, dead fish can be found floating in surrounding waters.

Another serious source of pollution comes from the antibiotics used for sea cucumber cultivation. To reduce the mortality rate of sea cucumber larvae, sea cucumber farmers use anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial agents to protect the larvae against disease.

They also use other chemicals to kill marine species that might compete for food, which has further worsened the quality of seawater in surrounding areas.

A reporter from the state-run China News Service who visited a sea cucumber farm saw the ground littered with empty cylinders and bottles which had previously contained antibiotics and chemicals. He said it was shocking to bump into these "marine life killers" everywhere.

The sea cucumber farming industry has developed rapidly over recent years due to the pursuit of economic interests from the Liaodong peninsula to the Shandong peninsula. All the wetlands have been transformed into sea cucumber farms, some of which are even encroaching upon the National Ocean Reserve area. The eutrophication of the surrounding ocean is so serious that even mullet and shrimps have disappeared from the area.