• Deadly Tanker Explosion Spreads Oily Slick on Atlantic
  
• U.S. Renounces Use of Persistent Landmines After 2010
  
• Crisis Levels of Lead in Washington, DC Tap Water
  
• Ford Threatens to Sue Over Pinocchio Ads
  
• Forest Protection Act Empowers Tribes
  
• Hawaii Law Proposed to Regulate Cruise Ship Waste
  
• Stress Plus Chemicals Equals Brain Damage
  
• At the Oscars: Red Carpet, Green Cars
  

Deadly Tanker Explosion Spreads Oily Slick on Atlantic

The "Bow Mariner" with 27 people on board radioed the Coast Guard shortly after six pm to report the explosion. Nine people are accounted for – six survivors and three dead - before the search was suspended Sunday night.

Coast Guard aircrews operating a C-130 airplane, and three helicopters were engaged in the rescue. A 47 foot motor lifeboat and two Coast Guard patrol boats attended to the scene of the explosion in international waters.

Hopes for more rescues faded as darkness fell. The six survivors who were recovered from the water were taken to Norfolk Sentara Hospital. Three were released Sunday. The others are in good condition and could be released Monday morning, hospital officials said.

The Singapore flagged vessel was travelling from New York to Houston with 3.5 million gallons of ethanol on board. The Coast Guard says any pollution effects from this incident will be addressed after daybreak today.

Industrial ethanol is used in solvents, toiletries and cosmetics, coatings and inks, detergents and household cleaners.

Coast Guard officials said that most of the ethanol from the tanker has evaporated, but fuel from the ship's storage tanks has formed an oil slick over nine square miles of the Atlantic.

The Coast Guard says the "Bow Mariner" was carrying 48,000 gallons of stored diesel fuel and 193,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil. Marine scientists using computer models believe the spill will be carried out to sea rather than showing up on Atlantic shores.

U.S. Renounces Use of Persistent Landmines After 2010

"Indiscriminate use of persistent landmines by undisciplined armies, irresponsible governments and non-state actors has maimed tens of thousands of children and created widespread problems across the globe that have reached crisis proportions in several nations within the last decade. The U.S. shares common cause with all who wish to undo this harmful legacy of conflict," Bloomfield said in a statement.

"Under the new policy, after 2010, the U.S. will no longer use persistent landmines of any type, on any battlefield, for any purpose, anywhere in the world," said Bloomfield. "Between now and then, use of persistent landmines will require presidential authorization."

Under the new policy, within a year the United States will "discontinue forever" the use of any mines that are non-detectable to conventional metal detectors, he said.

In addition, President George W. Bush has directed a 50 percent increase in the State Department's 2005 humanitarian mine action budget over baseline levels of fiscal year 2003, for a new total of $70 million per year. Bloomfield points out that this amount is nearly twice that of the next largest donor.

The 1999 Ottawa Convention, to which the United States is not a signatory, prohibits the use of anti-personnel landmines, but does not cover the class of more powerful anti-vehicle landmines, Bloomfield pointed out. As of February 1, 2004, there were 135 States Parties to the Convention.

He maintains that the United States needs mines during current conflicts, but wants to ensure that they do not persist after conflicts are ended. "The convention's ban on all anti-personnel landmines would have denied our military the needed capabilities currently provided by mines that leave no enduring hazard on the battlefield," Bloomfield said.

Using new technology to render the mines inert, after 2010 any landmines used by U.S. forces will become inert after a determined time period, "measured in hours or days, not years or decades," he explained. "The technology to do this exists now and has been proved, with no failures in more than 60,000 tests."

Bloomfield maintained that U.S. landmine policy is a step beyond the Ottawa Convention. "The President's new policy will end the use of landmines that are persistent, non-metallic, or both, while the Ottawa Convention permits landmines that are powerful enough to destroy a vehicle, including persistent and undetectable versions and those with anti-handling devices that can be triggered by people," he said.

Governments, international organizations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other members of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, as well as the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and other civil society representatives from all over the world, will gather in Nairobi, Kenya on November 29 to take stock of the progress made towards the global elimination of anti-personnel mines since the Convention entered into force.

The United States funded the first demining operations in Afghanistan in 1988 and has since been the world's largest donor, providing almost $800 million to clear mines and help civilians in 46 countries or territories.

Bloomfield maintains that regardless of its status as a non-Party to the Convention, no country does more than the United States to support humanitarian mine action, including landmine clearance, mine risk education and victim assistance.

Crisis Levels of Lead in Washington, DC Tap Water

At a press conference at the Plymouth Congregational Church in Northeast DC, the coalition, Lead Emergency Action for the District (LEAD), called for authorities to take 10 specific emergency steps to address the problem.

They demanded that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other federal and local officials better protect Washington residents from lead contamination in their drinking water.

"DC residents are outraged by the feeble local and federal response to our lead crisis," said Erik Olson, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a national conservation group and member of LEAD.

"We have the Keystone Cops at EPA regulating the Three Stooges: the Water and Sewer Authority, the Army Corps of Engineers and the DC Health Department. They're all pointing fingers at each other while DC citizens are bewildered and legitimately worried about their families' health," Olson said.

It took until last Wednesday for the Water and Sewer Authority (WASA) to warn that pregnant women and children under six should not drink tap water if they have lead service lines, advice the coalition called "too little too late."

Lead can affect almost every organ and system in your body, according to the federal agency responsible for toxics, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). The most sensitive is the central nervous system, particularly in children. Lead also damages kidneys and the reproductive system. "A child who swallows large amounts of lead may develop blood anemia, severe stomachache, muscle weakness, and brain damage," the ATSDR says.

The coalition wants the EPA and Congress to help WASA and the District of Columbia government fund home treatment units or bottled water for pregnant women and children under the age of six in households that have lead service lines or lead in drinking water at levels above the EPA "action level."

The coalition also denounced WASA's recent test of lead levels in 752 fountains and faucets at 154 D.C. public schools as "incompetent at best, and willfully misleading at worst."

WASA officials conceded that they generally ran water for 10 minutes before testing for lead, which flushed out the high lead levels in virtually all cases. Such an approach is contrary to standard EPA and scientific lead testing protocols, according to LEAD, and gave District parents a false sense that there is no lead problem in schools.

The LEAD coalition is demanding that the EPA "immediately take enforcement action against WASA to protect District residents, and should initiate a full criminal and civil enforcement investigation."

The EPA should order the Water and Sewer Authority to conduct scientifically sound tests at houses and apartments around the city, the coalition said.

In addition, the EPA should order WASA to clearly inform the public about the extent of the lead service line problem, release all local test results, and candidly discuss lead's health effects and other water problems.

The EPA must order the Army Corps of Engineers' Washington Aqueduct to aggressively treat DC drinking water to reduce lead leaching. The agency should arrange an independent review of the corrosion control plan, and establish deadlines for completing the review and implementing its recommendations.

The Water and Sewer Authority must ensure that all drinking water fountains and faucets in DC schools and day care centers are adequately retested within two weeks.

"Unless the federal and local governments take the steps demanded by Lead Emergency Action for the District coalition, we are headed for a series of water crises that will severely threaten public health and further undermine public confidence," said Olson. "It's time for our public officials to stop pointing fingers and start cleaning up the problem. It's time for candor, not a coverup."

Ford Threatens to Sue Over Pinocchio Ads

That unlawful conduct is libel, which is false and malicious publication printed for the purpose of defaming a living person

Bluewater began running ads in national publications this month including "The New York Times," "Mother Jones," "E Magazine," and "The New Republic." The ads, which Bluewater says are supported by "nearly three dozen" environmental organizations, accuse Bill Ford of breaking a pledge he made in 2000 to increase the fuel mileage of Ford’s popular lineup of sport utility vehicles by 25 percent by 2005.

The ads feature a drawing of Ford with a long nose, and the words, “Bill Ford Jr. or Pinocchio? Don’t Buy His Environmental Rhetoric. Don’t Buy His Cars.”

The letter sent last week by the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, says, “[Y]our personal attacks on Mr. Ford are gratuitous and offensive, well beyond the scope of responsible civil public dialogue, and strong evidence that you made the misrepresentations with malice.”

Russell Long, director of Bluewater Network, and the author of California’s landmark law to reduce vehicle greenhouse gas emissions said, “The day Mr. Ford’s broke his pledge to increase fuel mileage was tragic for the environment, but trying to stifle the free speech rights of our citizens isn’t going to solve anything."

Last June at Ford’s centennial, Bluewater Network agreed to hold negotiations with Ford officials in return for temporarily withholding their ad campaign. Negotiations broke down on January 1, 2004.

Forest Protection Act Empowers Tribes

Every fire season, wildfires jump from U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land onto Indian reservations. Last summer, at least 18 reservations were invaded by fire from adjacent federal public forest lands. In last fall's fires in southern California, 11 reservations were burned, two were completely burned over, and a number of lives were lost.

The Pombo-Feinstein legislation authorizes the secretaries of agriculture and interior to enter into agreements with tribes to conduct land management activities on Forest Service and BLM lands adjacent to Indian trust land and Indian communities where the public land poses a fire, disease or other threat.

This authority supplements existing laws, such as stewardship contracting, and is intended to result in tribes proposing and carrying out tribal forest protection projects, including such actions as hazardous fuels removal and thinning.

"This bill gives Native American tribes the chance to defend themselves and their ancestral lands from catastrophic fires by involving them in brush clearing projects on federal lands near their reservations," Senator Feinstein said. "I am determined to give the tribes of my state and from around the country the opportunity to prevent tragedies like those we have seen in recent years from recurring."

The Tribal Forest Protection Act is supported by the Intertribal Timber Council, the Council of Energy Resource Tribes, as well as individual tribes, including the Tule River Tribe, the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians, the Mescalero Apache and Jicarilla Apache Tribes and more.

"The Healthy Forests Restoration Act focused needed attention and assistance on serious problems concerning forest health, particularly the explosive build-up of hazardous fuels in federal forests," Chairman Pombo said. "We emphasized community participation and protection in that bill, and that is exactly what we are doing for tribes in this new legislation."

The bills also authorize the secretaries to give particular consideration to unique circumstances and factors presented by tribal forest protection proposals. Because these proposals are for lands adjacent to trust land, these unique factors could include the federal trust responsibility, tribal off-reservation treaty rights, cultural and traditional interests, and the tribe's history of stewardship.

Senate cosponsors of the legislation include Pete Domenici, a New Mexco Republican who chairs the Senate Energy Committee, and Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Colorado Republican who chairs the Committee on Indian Affairs.

Hawaii Law Proposed to Regulate Cruise Ship Waste

Now a bill is before the state Senate Ways and Means Committee to regulate cruise ship pollution through discharge limits, an inspection program, a berth fee, and penalties for violations.

The state lacks enforceable laws to protect coastal air and waters, and last year's Memorandum of Understanding between Northwest Cruise ShipAssociation and the state of Hawaii has proven to be ineffective, state environmental groups say.

Hawaiian environmental groups such as The Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance (KAHEA), support the new legislation, and are lobbying to raise support for it. They like the provisions that would set quantifiable pollution limits on wastewater and air discharges, specify when, or where, and under what conditions discharges can happen, create an inspection program to verify compliance, set up a berth fee to fund an inspection program; and set penalties for non-compliance.

Cruise ships idle their large engines while in port. In one day, one cruise ship produces diesel exhaust equivalent to the exhaust of 12,000 cars, KAHEA says.

Floating resorts the size of small cities dump everything from human waste, styrofoam, rubbish, photo processing and dry cleaning chemicals to oily bilge water and ballast water, which may contain invading species, directly into the ocean.

By contrast, in July 2001 Alaska enacted a law regulating cruise ship and ferry waste streams. The law establishes the Commercial Passenger Vessel Environmental Compliance Program within the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. The regulations to implement the program were effective as of November 15, 2002.

As a result cruise ship companies are competing with one another to see which can keep Alaska's environment the cleanest.

Stress Plus Chemicals Equals Brain Damage

Even only 28 days worth of exposure to specific chemicals - when combined with stress - was enough to cause widespread cellular damage in the brain and liver of rats, said Mohamed Abou Donia, Ph.D., a Duke pharmacologist and senior author of the study.

Results of the study were published in the February 27 issue of the "Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health."

Abou Donia's study was designed to reproduce the symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome, a disorder marked by chronic fatigue, muscle and joint pain, tremors, headaches, difficulties concentrating and learning, loss of memory, irritability and reproductive problems. The Gulf War Syndrome symptoms have been difficult to explain because veterans outwardly appear healthy and normal, said Abou Donia. Likewise, the chemically exposed animals in Abou Donia's studies looked and behaved normally.

But 10 years of neurologic research has revealed widespread damage to the brain, nervous system, liver and testes of rats exposed to 60 days of low-dose chemicals - the insect repellant DEET, the insecticide permethrin, and the anti-nerve gas agent pyridostigmine bromide.

These are the same drugs that the soldiers received during the 1990 - 1991 Persian Gulf War, and Abou Donia's rats were exposed to the same levels - in weight adjusted doses - as the soldiers were reportedly given.

Now, Abou Donia has demonstrated that the combination of stress and short-term exposure to chemicals can promote cellular death in specific brain regions and injury to the liver.

The chemical trio combined with stress caused damage to portions of the brain where its protective blood-brain barrier was still intact.

The latter finding suggests that the chemicals permeated the protective barrier in one region, then leaked into other regions of the brain where the barrier remained intact. The ability of chemicals to leak from one area of the brain to another holds the potential for much greater damage to occur to the entire brain.

Brain regions that sustained damage in this study were the areas that control motor and sensory function, learning and memory, and gait and coordination of movements.

Abou Donia's team found a significant number of dead or dying brain cells in all of these brain regions, as well as major alterations to brain chemicals that are necessary for learning and memory, muscle strength and body movement. Stress alone caused little or no brain injury in the rats, nor did the three chemicals given together in low doses for 28 days.

"But when we put the animals under moderate stress by simply restricting their movement in a plastic holder for five minutes at a time every day, the animals experienced enough stress that it intensified the effects of the chemicals dramatically," said Abou Donia.

Soldiers in the Gulf War were likely under stress 24 hours a day for weeks or months at a time, a scenario which could explain the origins of their diverse physical and cognitive complaints, said Abou Donia.

In addition to brain injuries, the Duke study found unexpected damage to the liver. Liver cells also showed reduced activity of an important enzyme, BuCHE, that helps rid the body of some toxic substances. Neither stress by itself nor chemicals alone had any impact on BuCHE levels, but the combination did.

Such liver damage can reduce its ability to rid the body of toxic substances, its primary function as a vital organ. The less effectively the liver filters out toxic substances, the more the chemicals can concentrate in the brain and nervous system.

Finally, the study showed that stress plus chemicals increased the amount of destructive molecules in the brain called reactive oxygen species - also known as oxygen free radicals, produced by the body as it metabolizes substances in the presence of oxygen.

Reactive oxygen species attack DNA, RNA and proteins, causing cellular and membrane damage. Normally, the body removes these chemicals from the body and the brain. But excessive production of reactive oxygen species can overwhelm the body's ability to dispose of them.

At the Oscars: Red Carpet, Green Cars

Given the increasing threat of climate change, these stars chose to take a step towards reducing dependence on fossil fuels, steming global warming, and creating a more sustainable planet said organizer of the event Global Green USA.

Castle-Hughes, the youngest ever nominee for Best Actress for her role in "Whale Rider," decided to forgo a glamorous limo ride to her first awards show to make a statement. "Even though I am not old enough to drive, I am old enough to know that the environment is in danger," says Castle-Hughes. "By taking a hybrid car to the Oscars, I can show my support for helping our planet."

"Alternative fuel vehicles not only help consumers save money at the gas pump, they play a significant role in addressing major issues facing the world today. These include conservation of natural resources, reducing air pollution, stemming climate change and reducing tensions in the Middle East," said Matt Petersen, president of Global Green USA, organizer of the 2nd annual campaign to promote hybrid cars at the Oscars.

Greenfeet provided merchandise as “thank-you’s” to the celebrities, said company founder and president Valerie Reddemann. Items include a hemp back pack, Soappuccino, Feather Falls Soap and a neck pillow made from organic cotton and pure wool.

“By supporting the efforts of public figures to educate the public about leaving smaller, greener footprints on the earth, it supports our mission of teaching people to create toxin free, natural personal spaces,” says Reddemann.