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Nitrate News -- June, 1999

Airborne hog farm gases linked to excessive ocean algae (Environmental News Network, Wednesday, June 30, 1999)By Bruce Henderson, The Charlotte Observer, N.C. Nitrogen wafting into the air from North Carolina hog farms and other sources is becoming a global pollutant linked to harmful algae blooms in oceans, UNC Chapel Hill scientists say in a report to be published today. The scientists say airborne nitrogen from farms, cities and industries accounts for about half the nitrogen deposited in the North Atlantic. "It is the first time that atmospheric nitrogen has been found to be a regional and global source of pollution," said Hans Paerl, a professor at UNC's Institute of Marine Sciences. "Before, it had only been proven that nutrient runoff had contributed to pollution in coastal waters. We also found a strong ... link between water in areas with high amounts of atmospheric nitrogen and harmful algae blooms." A paper Paerl co-wrote with UNC graduate student David Whitall will appear today in Ambio, the journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Algae blooms strip oxygen from water as they decompose, sometimes killing fish and shellfish. Some forms are toxic to marine life. Paerl and Whitall said growing N.C. hog numbers -- now 10 million -- have increased the nitrogen evaporating into the air as ammonia from waste lagoons and spray fields. Winds can carry the ammonia miles downwind until rain drops it into estuaries and the open ocean. The Environmental Defense Fund has estimated 25 percent of the nitrogen in North Carolina's nutrient-polluted Neuse River falls from the sky. Research has shown the same trend in Western Europe, with increasing airborne nitrogen linked to algae blooms in the Baltic and North seas. Those trends are expected to worsen as American and European populations continue to grow along coastlines, the scientists said. Copyright 1999, The Charlotte Observer, N.C. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, All Rights Reserved

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