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Shuttered windows are a permanent fixture in Salinas, an industrial town on Puerto Rico’s southeast coast that is considered one of the U.S. territory’s most contaminated regions.

For years, toxic ash and noxious chemicals from coal-fired and thermoelectric power plants have enveloped this community, and residents have complained about health problems ranging from cancer to Alzheimer’s.

Then last year, a bombshell: Officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency traveled to Salinas to announce that the town also has one of the highest concentrations of ethylene oxide, a cancer-causing gas, in a U.S. jurisdiction.

“We’re fighting a lot of battles,” said José Santiago, a 74-year-old retiree.

Emboldened by the attention that the federal government has put on Salinas, Santiago and others are demanding a huge clean-up and penalties for those contaminating the region.

“I will keep fighting until I die,” said Elsa Modesto, a 77-year-old retiree who has not missed a single EPA meeting since last year’s announcement. “I want to know what’s in the environment.”

Puerto Rico ranks 22nd out of 56 U.S. states and territories based on total managed waste released per square mile, at 4.2 million pounds. Six of the top 10 municipalities in that category are in Puerto Rico’s southern region, with Salinas ranked sixth, according to data obtained from the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory.

Salinas also has one of the highest incidence rates of cancer in Puerto Rico, with 140 cases reported in 2019, the newest figures available from the island’s Central Registry of Cancer. Salinas has a higher rate than the neighboring town of Guayama, where cases of cancer and other diseases have increased since the coal-fired power plant began operating there in 2002, said Dr. Gerson Jiménez, director of the Menonite Hospital who has testified in public hearings and called for the closure of the plant.

“Medical doctors who work in the southeast area of Puerto Rico have noticed that since the AES Corporation began operating in Guayama, there has been a significant increase in diseases of the respiratory tract, urinary tract, as well as a significant increase in diagnoses of various types of cancer,” he testified at one hearing.

The level of contamination has prompted the EPA for the first time to test air and groundwater in Puerto Rico’s southeast region, with Administrator Michael Regan saying that low-income communities and communities of color have suffered unjustly for decades.

Salinas is a town of nearly 26,000 people—of which 28% identify as Black—with a median household income of $18,000 a year. More than half of its population is poor, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The town is nestled between the coal-burning power plant, two of the island’s largest thermoelectric plants and other industries, including a company that produces thermoset composites, a material used in major appliances like refrigerators. That company, IDI Caribe Inc., is the facility that releases the most emissions in Salinas, according to the EPA.

Overall, styrene and ethylene oxide, a carcinogenic gas, are the top two chemicals released into the air and water in Salinas, officials say. Salinas and Guayama also have sulfur dioxide levels that exceed new standards.

Meanwhile, a study by Puerto Rico’s Chemistry Association published in late 2021 found the presence of heavy metals linked to coal in potable water in Salinas. The amounts found did not exceed regulatory limits.

Scientists doing that study were forced to collect samples from individual homes because the government’s water and sewer company at the time blocked access to aquifers that residents in the southeast rely on, environmental activist Víctor Alvarado said. Since then, legislators have approved a law that requires the company to provide access for testing.

Salinas also is home to Steri-Tech, the company that uses ethylene oxide to sterilize medical equipment. It is a colorless, flammable gas that has a slightly sweet odor and is used to clean about 20 billion sterile medical devices a year. The EPA says short-term exposure to the gas does not appear to pose risks, but long-term or lifetime exposure can cause lymphoma, breast cancer and other illnesses.

Steri-Tech reported two explosions—one in October and the other earlier this month—that frightened residents and raised concerns about whether any toxic chemicals were released.

“My house shook!” said Lillian Melero, a 60-year-old retiree who recalled that the explosion broke a neighbor’s windows.

Meleroe said she wants answers from federal officials about the contamination in her town. “They write down a lot of things, but I haven’t seen any changes,” she said.

Hoping to lessen his exposure, Santiago, the retiree who lives a few blocks from Steri-Tech, not only closes his windows but also has planted avocado trees, small palm trees and a bougainvillea with bright orange and fuchsia flowers seeking to prevent ethylene oxide and other contaminants from seeping into his home.

Those measures have a limited effect, however, and residents continue frustrated that their complaints about contamination have been ignored for years.

Tired of fighting pollution at a local level and getting no response, community leader Wanda Ríos sought help from higher up.

“I stop this at a federal level,” she said. “I don’t waste my time here in Puerto Rico.”

She said that several people in La Margarita, a neighborhood of some 100 people sitting next to Steri-Tech, have died of cancer, including a married couple and others who formed part of the association of residents she founded in recent years. Ríos added that Steri-Tech has organized recent health workshops for residents.

On Wednesday evening, some two dozen residents of Salinas gathered to hear the results from air samples that the EPA took last year, announcing that it found extremely high concentrations of ethylene oxide in some areas. One area had 121 micrograms per cubic meter of air—more than 400 times higher than the U.S. national average of .30 micrograms.

Richard Ruvo, an EPA air and radiation director, said Steri-Tech’s equipment filters 99% of its emissions, but that it’s not enough: “We know more has to be done to reduce those emissions.”

Officials said the company is working on installing equipment that will filter 99.9% of emissions, but it’s not clear when that will occur. Ruvo added that other measures to reduce emissions are part of confidential discussions with the company.

Andrés Vivoni, a representative with Steri-Tech, did not return a message seeing comment.

As the conversations behind closed doors continue, the EPA has pledged stricter regulations of toxic air emissions nationwide by the end of the year. That has been hailed by many in Puerto Rico, which has one of the highest asthma rates in a U.S. jurisdiction and whose power generation system is 97% based on fossil fuels.

Karilyn Bonilla, who is from the La Margarita community and has been mayor of Salinas for a decade, said she understands the concerns over pollution. Although she has been the target of protests organized by frustrated residents, she said she is pushing for corrective measures.

“It’s been a struggle of many years,” she said.

© 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Declines in populations of big carnivores like lions, tigers and wolves may be driven more by rapid human economic development than habitat loss or climate change, according to a new study Tuesday.

The researchers hope the findings could help to improve policies for protecting carnivore populations, which have been driven to the brink of extinction in many parts of the world.

The study found that faster economic development was linked to a quicker decline in carnivore populations.

“In the midst of rapid development, people appear to become less tolerant of carnivores, conflicts explode, and we suspect that incidences of poaching and persecution rocket,” lead author Thomas Johnson said in a press release.

Some carnivores are poached for their meat or for the wildlife trade, while others like lions may be killed if they pose a threat to someone’s livelihood—such as their cattle—or their life, Johnson told AFP.

“These human elements are actually having a far greater impact than the habitat loss elements,” Johnson said.

Traditionally, habitat loss has been considered the primary threat to carnivore populations, but the researchers said that was “dwarfed” by human development.

The study, published in Nature Communications, concluded that as human communities become wealthier and socioeconomic growth slows, carnivore populations can recover.

The authors said this was partly due to better habitat protection, but mainly because people start to care more about the animals and have less of a desire—and need—to kill them.

“What you want is this growth to slow before [the carnivore population] completely vanishes, so there’s at least an opportunity to recover,” Johnson said.

Wolf rebound

Grey wolf populations have already rebounded in Europe, growing 1,800 percent since the 1960s thanks to an improved quality of life and slower economic development on the continent, according to the researchers from the University of Reading.

That recovery is not only happening in protected parks but also in wild areas.

Brown bears and lynxes are also starting to recover in Europe, Johnson said, while tiger populations in India have similarly started to rebound.

But several parts of Africa did not support the overarching findings—the continent has not seen rapid development but its carnivore populations have declined—and Johnson said this may be because much of the population decline occurred decades ago under colonial regimes.

The findings present an inherent tension between prioritising human development versus protecting carnivores, and Johnson suggested that wealthier nations—responsible for much of large carnivore decline—could support less developed nations through targeted financial support.

This could include paying communities in biodiversity hotspots enough to earn a living, while promoting conservation.

“If you lock people into poverty, people will never live alongside biodiversity,” Johnson said, adding that he hopes policy will move beyond treating carnivore loss as a narrow issue.

“My real hope is we start thinking about this as a socioeconomic problem, as well as an environmental problem.”

The work looked at 50 species of carnivores in over 80 countries over the last 50 years.

Carnivore populations have seen dramatic declines globally in the last century, with lions and tigers absent from more than 90 percent of their historic range.

In the United Kingdom, many local carnivore species such as lynx, wolf and bear have already been hunted into extinction.

© 2023 AFP

The specks are tiny. No, really tiny. Smaller than the diameter of a hair. But they hold billions of years of history that reveal some of the secrets of asteroids.

The three minute particles from an asteroid called Itokawa show some of these space rocks are vastly older than was thought, and are much tougher.

And that could mean we need bolder ways to prevent catastrophic collisions with Earth, according to research published Tuesday.

The three samples were collected in 2005 from the peanut-shaped Itokawa, some 300 million kilometers (186 million miles) from Earth.

It took the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa five years to return them to Earth, along with hundreds of other particles from Itokawa, and scientists have been analyzing them for clues ever since.

Fred Jourdan, professor at Curtin University’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, wanted to see what the specks could reveal about the age of rubble-pile asteroids like Itokawa.

These form when solid asteroids collide and the resulting fragments assemble into new structures.

Solid asteroids are thought to have a lifespan of several hundred million years, and are gradually ground down by constant collisions.

But rubble-pile asteroids have a very different structure, composed of rocks, dust, pebbles and a void, and held together by the gravitational pull of their various components.

“It’s like a giant space cushion, and cushions are good at absorbing shock,” Jourdan said.

To find out just how good, the team analyzed crystal structures in the samples, looking for deformations caused by the impact that created Itokawa.

And they dated the samples by measuring the decay of potassium into argon.

The methods suggest Itokawa was formed by an asteroid collision at least 4.2 billion years ago, ten times older than solid asteroids of similar size are predicted to be.

“We were really surprised,” said Jourdan.

“I mean that’s really, really old, and I’m sure some of my colleagues are not even going to believe it.”

Rubble-pile asteroids are so resilient to the constant battering they face that they are likely to be much more abundant than previously assumed, the research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes.

That might mean we need new ways to tackle such asteroids on a collision course with Earth, Jourdan said.

NASA’s recent DART test showed asteroids like Itokawa can be nudged off course, but that would likely require a lead time of several years.

An asteroid just weeks from colliding with Earth would require a different approach, and Jourdan argues a nuclear blast might be needed.

“It’s not ‘Armageddon’-style,” blowing it up, he hastens to add, referring to the 1998 sci-fi movie.

“The shockwave should push the asteroid out of the way.”

It is a far-reaching conclusion to draw from such tiny specks of dust, but each particle is analyzed at the atomic level.

“We can get big stories like that out of (something) very, very small, because those machines, what they’re doing, is the measuring and counting of atoms,” Jourdan said.

“Every grain has its own story to tell.”

© 2023 AFP

Authorities in Chile on Saturday raised the alert level and limited access to the area around the Lascar volcano, after an increase in seismic activity raised fears of a possible eruption.

The volcano lies in an area near the Bolivian border that is sparsely inhabited but is one of northern Chile’s most geologically active regions.

Following “an increase in seismicity,” the National Geology and Mining Service has raised the alert level for Lascar from yellow to orange.

Amid heightened seismic activity, the agency predicted “eruptive pulses with columns exceeding five kilometers in height,” with blocks of pumice being projected and ash spread over a wide area.

The orange alert will bring increased technical monitoring of the volcano and measures to protect surrounding towns including the popular tourist destination of San Pedro de Atacama, some 70 kilometers away.

In addition, a security perimeter around the crater will be extended from five to 10 kilometers, restricting access.

The Lascar volcano, which reaches up to 5,592 meters (18,350 feet), lies some 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) north of capital Santiago. It last erupted in 1993.

The Villarrica volcano in the south, one of Chile’s most active, is also currently under surveillance.

© 2023 AFP

Using ultraviolet germicidal radiation (UVGI) to disinfect indoor spaces is a demonstrably effective way of deactivating various pathogens (including the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus). It deactivates bacteria and viruses by exposing them to high-energy UV radiation through the use of UV lamps.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the need to disinfect large quantities of both air and various surfaces, hospitals, among other operators, have recently increased the use of UVGI disinfection robots. However, the method may have previously unexplored indirect adverse effects on people. These effects relate to reduced indoor air quality caused by the UV radiation used.

“To our knowledge, we conducted the first experimental study of the effects of UVGI devices on indoor air quality,” says Doctoral Researcher Frans Graeffe from the University of Helsinki’s Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR).

“We focused on the effects of UVGI disinfection robots on indoor air quality to better understand the potential adverse effects.”

Switching on UV lamps for disinfection considerably increased concentration of gases and small particles

Solar ultraviolet radiation enables most of the chemical reactions occurring in the atmosphere, including the formation of oxidizers such as ozone (O₃) and the hydroxyl radical (OH). Bringing UV radiation indoors in the form of UVGI disinfection robots makes it possible for outdoor reactions to take place indoors. Reactions caused by radiation can form a range of gases and small particles that, when inhaled, are harmful to human health. High particle concentrations have been associated with several diseases (e.g., respiratory diseases).

“We brought a UVGI device used in hospitals to the aerosol physics laboratory at the University of Helsinki where, utilizing spectrometers and other modern measuring equipment, we were able to measure the concentration, size and chemical composition of the gases and small particles formed,” Graeffe says.

“Our measurements clearly show that every time the UV lamps were switched on, as the disinfection was initiated, the amount of both gases and small particles increased considerably.”

Although both particle and gas concentrations started to decrease, for example, through ventilation, immediately after the UV lamps were switched off, the concentrations returned to their original levels only until 30 to 40 minutes later.

“After disinfecting the room, it would be better to wait for a while before entering, or to enter wearing protective gear, such as a sufficiently effective respirator,” Graeffe says.

Because of the complexity of the formation of gases and small particles caused by UV lamps, the results cannot be applied directly to different environments. The effect of various UVGI devices on air quality depends at least on the intensity, duration and wavelength of the UV radiation emitted by the device, as well as the size, ventilation and air quality of the space to be disinfected.

A similar UVGI solution is now also increasingly used in private and public spaces. Even though the radiation in such cases is less intense than that emitted by the device tested, the irradiation last longer.

Based on the findings, the effects on air quality must be further investigated before the use of such devices becomes widespread, in order to understand how different UVGI devices affect indoor air quality and how their benefits (control of viruses) compare with their adverse effects (degradation of air quality).

The research is published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters.