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Nitrate News -- September, 1999

Carcasses and Sewage Create NC Threat (NY Times, By The Associated Press, September 20, 1999) TARBORO, N.C. (AP) -- Rotting livestock carcasses and floating sewage created a mounting public health threat Monday across eastern North Carolina, still flooded days after Hurricane Floyd forced tens of thousands of people from their homes. At least 34 people were confirmed dead in North Carolina, with the number expected to climb. ``As the waters go down, we certainly do expect there will be more individuals found,'' said Dr. John Butts, state medical examiner. And still more rain lay ahead. With about 6,500 people already in shelters and 1,500 others believed stranded, forecasters said 1 to 2 inches of rain from Tropical Storm Harvey could fall beginning Monday night, enough to cause new flooding and keep the rivers high. Floodwaters have virtually shut down the eastern third of North Carolina, an area of 18,000 square miles and 2.1 million people. State officials said 30,000 homes were flooded and 1,600 damaged beyond repair. The damage may exceed the $6 billion total for Hurricane Fran in 1996, North Carolina's costliest natural disaster. President Clinton toured Tarboro, one of the hardest-hit towns in an area drenched by 28 inches of rain from two hurricanes in two weeks. ``I urge you to keep your spirits up and know we're going to be with you every step of the way,'' Clinton told 500 people in this historic town of 11,000, flanked by tobacco and cotton fields. He also announced loans to help farmers rebuild and replace lost livestock. ``When things like this happen to some of us, we know they could happen to all of us,'' the president said. ``We know we have a responsibility as members of the American family to help you get back on your feet again. Thomas Andrews, 76, of Tarboro, said: ``If they can do all this, it will be well worth it. I've never seen this much devastation in Tarboro and Edgecombe County in all my life.'' Health officials worked to stave off disease, which became a growing threat because of hundreds of thousands of dead hogs, chickens and turkeys, drinking water tainted by overflow from sewage plants and animal waste lagoons, and floodwaters fouled by fuel, farm chemicals and manure. ``There are a large number of different risks out there right now,'' said Johanna Reese of the state Division of Environmental Health. ``The most immediate one we have is lack of safe drinking water.'' Contaminated water could cause a host of gastrointestinal illnesses, and dehydration from severe vomiting or diarrhea could be fatal in children, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems, Reese said. ``A lot of these people are down already. They're already weak, so they're at a greater risk,'' she said. National Guard helicopters and trucks delivered clean drinking water to several counties. Crews in Jones County brought in two industrial-size incinerators so workers on Tuesday could begin burning the hog carcasses whose stench has filled the air. Some of the animals had been dead five days and could become a breeding ground for disease. Ronnie Jordan, a contractor hired to destroy carcasses in Jones County, said he was told there were 100,000 dead hogs and a half-million dead chickens that needed to incinerated. State health officials also recommended that residents get tetanus shots to protect them from infection from the filthy floodwater and wash up with hot, soapy water if they come in contact with it. Health officials also warned that mosquitoes will be out in force because of all the standing water and could spread deadly encephalitis. State officials began hauling 98 large campers into a Tarboro park to temporarily house the homeless and planned to supply them with water, sewer and electricity. ``The state of North Carolina will probably be the biggest landlord in Edgecombe County within the next few days,'' said Richard Moore, state public safety director. He said more than 1,000 campers and mobile homes may be needed. Gov. Jim Hunt appealed for donations. ``I'm asking that everyone in America help eastern North Carolina,'' he said. ``We have been hit by a terrible blow.'' Sales of flue-cured tobacco have been suspended to give farmers time to recover. Most of the region's tobacco processing facilities are in the eastern third of North Carolina most severely affected by flooding. Interstate 95 reopened in North Carolina for the first time since Thursday, but about 300 other roads remained closed, either because they still were under water or were washed out. In some cases, relief workers sent to help the flood victims found themselves fleeing the floodwaters. A Salvation Army supply truck was stranded Sunday night in Goldsboro after waters swamped a highway. Along the still-rising Neuse River, a Kinston hotel was evacuated Monday because of the floodwaters, and Red Cross workers staying at the hotel were among those forced out.

Factory farms come under scrutiny (Environmental News Network, By John Roach, Monday, September 20, 1999) Factory farms have come under the scrutiny of public health professionals and environmental groups for the pollution and disease associated with the 2.7 million pounds of manure they produce each year. The Center for a Livable Future at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, Md., launched a program Sept. 9 to study and evaluate the effects of breeding large numbers of food animals in concentrated lots — in other words, factory farms. "The way that we breed animals for food is a threat to the planet. It pollutes our environment while consuming huge amounts of water, grain, petroleum, pesticides and drugs. The results are disastrous," David Brubaker, the project's director said in a statement. Manure from factory farms has been linked to diseases such as E. coli, listeria, and cryptosporidium. A hog farm with 5,000 animals produces as much fecal waste as a city with 50,000 people, yet the disposal methods are primitive and lead to disease, said Brubaker. "The current system is totally dysfunctional," he added in a telephone interview. "The real costs are not reflected in the price of the chicken. "The cleanup costs associated with the water and air pollution caused by factory farms are paid for by taxpayers in the form of new water treatment plants and visits to the doctor. The industry needs to be regulated in way that forces it to pick up the tab for its pollution, said Brubaker. The Sierra Club weighed in against factory farms on Sept. 15 with the release of a report on how tax breaks and other federal incentives pave the way for factory farms to move into and pollute rural neighborhoods. While tax breaks and incentives for big industry to move into rural communities and spur the economy is not a new practice, factor farms "don't bring any economic benefits but actually cause economic hardships and pollution," said Ken Midkiff, co-chair of the club's Clean Water Campaign. "The big problem in all of this is concentration," he said. "That many animals in one place just magnifies any problem that exists." The solution to this problem, said Midkiff, is to return livestock production back to the family farmer. Currently, a few companies control the entire poultry industry and there are no independent producers. "You either work directly for the companies or are under contract for them," said Midkiff. He maintains, however, that the current monopoly situation can be changed by government policies that promote self-sustainable, independent producers instead of promoting factory farms. As a nutritionist, Brubaker takes a slightly different tack. He believes that Americans' eat too much meat. "If people ate less meat and demanded it was produced in a way that was sustainable, it would open a way for the small guys to get back in the game." Copyright 1999, Environmental News Network, All Rights Reserved Also see Sierra Club report on factory farms: http://www.sierraclub.org/cafos/report99/

FUTURE OF CHESAPEAKE BAY GRASSES UNCERTAIN (GREENLines Issue #964; GREENLines, Wednesday, September 15, 1999 from GREEN, the GrassRoots Environmental Effectiveness Network.)* A report by ABC News 9/7 says, "The future of bay grasses, an indicator of the health of the bay, remains murky." Covering a half-million acres around the turn of the century the grass beds now cover some 63,490 acres. "While grasses in the upper bay increased 3% last year, the mid- and lower bay lost 5% to 14%. Population growth and too many nutrients flushed into the Bay from farming and poultry operations means "that bay grasses in some areas may never come back."

*GREEN is a project of Defenders of Wildlife designed to serve grassroots wildlife and wildlands advocates. GREEN policy positions do not necessarily represent those of Defenders of Wildlife. (c) GREEN/Defenders of Wildlife 1999

Gulf dead zone worries scientists, fishing industry (Bill Hanna, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas Wednesday, September 8, 1999) By Fifteen miles out in the Gulf of Mexico, schools of fish — sheepshead, drum, even a few snapper — make their homes amid the massive steel legs of an offshore oil rig. From the deck of the research vessel Pelican, the marine life appears abundant and the water remarkably clear. Only a skyline of oil platforms off the Louisiana coast mars the pristine seascape. But as scuba divers plunge into the ocean and swim to the base of the hulking oil platform, they disappear into a layer of murky water. Below the turbid water, a sickly looking jellyfish is the only sign of life. The divers have entered the Dead Zone, a swath of water nearly the size of New Jersey, stretching from the Mississippi River delta to the Texas-Louisiana border. Monitoring devices at the base of the platform confirm what the researchers' eyes tell them — there isn't enough oxygen in the water at a depth of 65 feet for fish to survive. The oxygen-depleted area, known to scientists as a "hypoxic" zone, has not yet had an economic effect on the $680 million Gulf fisheries industry, but officials are watching the growing Dead Zone with alarm. "It's 7,000 square miles of trollable space lost to shrimpers — regardless of what state they're from," said Wilma Anderson, executive director of the Texas Shrimp Association. "Shrimp don't follow manmade boundaries, and neither do shrimpers. It's an area that's essentially off-limits to us." The Dead Zone is fed by the Mississippi River, which drains farmlands, prairies and cities from the Appalachians to the Rockies. The zone first captured national attention in 1993 — the year of the last great Mississippi River flood — when its size doubled. Scientists say that runoff from the nutrient-rich Mississippi River watershed, which encompasses about 40 percent of the United States, triggers a complex series of events that has caused the zone to expand. Nitrogen-rich fertilizer tops the list of factors believed to contributing to the zone's growth. Hypoxia, or oxygen depletion, occurs when excess nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, accumulate in a body of water and cause algae to flourish into algal blooms. These blooms thrive on nitrates and phosphates and deplete the water of nearly all dissolved oxygen. The theory is strongly challenged by farm groups, which point to other factors cited by scientists for creation of the Dead Zone. These include the containment of the river within levees, loss of wetlands to development and the interaction of fresh water with salt water. This summer, the constantly changing Dead Zone covered 7,700 square miles, the biggest it has ever been. One of the divers, Nancy Rabalais, a marine biologist who has studied the Dead Zone since 1985, has been trying to understand the forces that cause the oxygen-deprived area to expand and how to control it. But as research data indicate a link between fertilizer runoff in the Midwest and expansion of the zone, the debate has become increasingly strident and political. A White House Task Force is preparing a report that is expected to be released in the spring. While the debate has raged in Congress, in the Farm Belt states and on the Louisiana coast, Texas has been largely on the sidelines. Texas officials contend that the conditions causing the zone are unique to the Louisiana coast. "We don't have a dog in this hunt," said Bruce Moulton, a technical specialist with the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. Moulton also serves on the advisory panel of the Gulf of Mexico Program, a multiagency group set up to encourage cooperation on Gulf environmental issues. Not all Texas officials agree. Larry McKinney, senior director of aquatic resources for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said the state would be foolish to ignore the Dead Zone. "We do have a dog in this hunt," McKinney said. "Now that dog may be far off and not at the top of my plate, but this dog could get big in a hurry. And if it gets bigger, the currents are going to bring it farther toward Texas. There's not much we can do as a state on our own — it's too big an issue for any one state to tackle alone — but I would be very interested in working with the federal government." Rabalais, a Texas native and a professor for the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium in Cocodrie, has not had the time or the funding to monitor Gulf waters off the Texas coast, but she said Texans should be concerned. This year, for example, her eight-day survey of the Dead Zone stopped at Sabine Pass for lack of time. It's likely, she said, that the zone extended farther west along the Texas coast. Aboard the 105-foot Pelican, operated by the Louisiana consortium, Rabalais and her team of scientists were making their monthly cruise to nine offshore monitoring sites that extend about 30 miles into the Gulf. At each of the stations, tests showed that the dissolved oxygen level was close to 2 milligrams per liter, the level at which marine life is scarce. At some stations, readings were nearer to 1 milligram per liter, the level at which fish will die. Close to shore, the oxygen-depleted zone may be only a couple of feet deep. Farther out to sea, the band may be much thicker. What all this means to the Gulf's fisheries — which account for about 40 percent of all commercial fish brought to U.S. shores, including much of the nation's shrimp — is as murky as the Gulf's waters. Shrimpers in both Louisiana and Texas have mixed opinions about whether the zone affects them. "Mother Nature makes our shrimp — you can't predict it," said Rocky Pavia, captain of a large shrimp boat based in Port Arthur. Pavia and other longtime shrimpers are worried as much about increased competition from Vietnamese shrimpers as they are about the Dead Zone. On the docks of Cocodrie, a small fishing town two hours southwest of New Orleans, shrimpers who fish for white and brown shrimp in Louisiana's rich estuaries and offshore reported mixed results in late August. Shrimper James Blanchard of Houma was practically giddy after returning from two weeks at sea with 12,000 pounds of shrimp caught off Louisiana's barrier islands. "The last nine or 10 days we had all we could handle," Blanchard said. "It was around the clock. We were doing so good that I really ought to head right back out, but I'm going home for a few days' rest." Blanchard's success would seem to indicate that the Dead Zone poses little problem. But Rabalais said Blanchard's haul shows that the Dead Zone is forcing shrimp into different areas and keeping them from reaching deeper waters, where they would grow larger. "Normally, they would be out deeper in the Gulf, but they are being trapped along the shore," Rabalais said. "They aren't reaching deeper water, and the shrimpers can just camp along the beach and catch them. The shrimp don't have anywhere else to go." The zone currently extends into the spawning grounds of some species of shrimp, which then move into the estuaries, mature, and head back out to sea. Although there has been no drop-off in the shrimp catch, scientists warn that it could come very suddenly. In Texas, there hasn't been enough research to determine the location of low-oxygen areas. But Don Harper, a marine biologist at Texas A&M University at Galveston, said he believes there are oxygen-depleted areas off the upper Texas coast about every other year. During a seven-year study, 1977 to 1984, Harper twice found hypoxic zones as far south as Freeport and found evidence suggesting that they could have been present in two other years. "The coastline of Texas is so huge it depends on what part of Texas you're talking about," Harper said. "If you're talking Brownsville, where I don't think it ever happens, the impact is probably nothing. But if you're talking the upper Texas coast, where conditions are more favorable, like Galveston, Sabine Pass — or from Matagorda Bay all the way up — you're talking a potentially huge economic impact." There are many who do not agree with the conclusions of Rabalais and other scientists on what causes oxygen depletion. Six assessments compiled for the White House task force have been criticized by fertilizer and farm groups, as well as Midwestern states, for suggesting a reduction in fertilizer use by 20 percent. "The federal assessments focused narrowly on a single cause of Gulf hypoxia and failed to prove the stated hypothesis," the Fertilizer Institute said in response to the task force's findings. "Thus, they serve as interesting scientific inquiry but fail to provide a foundation for regulatory efforts to `solve' hypoxia." Illinois Gov. George H. Ryan took a similar tack. In a July 27 letter, he said the reports "do not present a clear cause-effect relationship between fertilizer use and hypoxia in the Gulf." Larinda Tervelt-Norton, who is co-chairman of a nutrient enrichment focus team for the Gulf of Mexico program, said the White House group may not reach any clear-cut conclusions about the cause of the Dead Zone. "I'm not sure there's going to be a consensus," Tervelt-Norton said. "It's going to be what are our options, how are we going to move forward." The Gulf of Mexico is not the only body of water with oxygen-depleted zones. Scientists say about one-third of the Baltic Sea is hypoxic. Nitrogen and phosphorus have also posed a threat to the Chesapeake Bay, which is bordered by Maryland and Virginia and takes runoff from Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, Delaware and the District of Columbia; Long Island Sound, which borders Connecticut and New York; and Sarasota Bay in Florida. For Rabalais, who was born in Wichita Falls and lived in Corpus Christi before moving to Louisiana, studying the Dead Zone has consumed much of her 49 years. Commuting between her home in Baton Rouge and Cocodrie, she stays at the university several days at a time poring over data. Almost every month, she hits the Gulf to check the nine stations that collect data on the changing nature of the Dead Zone. Prone to seasickness, she battles rough seas to gather research and dives to check the monitoring sites. Her research has shown that the Dead Zone expands in the summer and contracts in the winter. Weather systems such as cold fronts and hurricanes can affect the cycle of expansion and contraction. Before this year, many people believed that the zone would not expand unless there was a major flood on the Mississippi. But Rabalais' weeklong survey of the Gulf in July found that it had grown larger than ever. She said she believes the Mississippi River was running higher than normal during most of the winter, but is waiting for river data to confirm her theory. Since she sounded the warning in 1993, Rabalais has had to deal with her share of criticism. To many agriculture-based groups who oppose suggestions that farm runoff is to blame, she has become the personification of the problem. At town hall meetings, she has been heckled and shouted down. But she has also won converts in unexpected ways. Cooling off from the August heat inside the Pelican's air-conditioned laboratory, she recalled a group of farmers who were not persuaded by her research when they came on board the research ship this summer. Mounds of data and research papers would not change their minds, she said, but a computer screen did. Once they saw the oxygen readings drop as the gauges got closer to the ocean floor, they grasped the concept. "The research has been reviewed by my peers, but that chart seemed to make all of the difference," Rabalais said. "I guess they had to see it to believe it. "But that's why I'm convinced, in the end, the science will win out. The numbers don't lie. We didn't make this up, and it's a problem that's got to be dealt with." Copyright 1999, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, All Rights Reserved, All Rights Reserved

Lingering Hazards Cover Carolina Sea of Trouble (NY Times, By DAVID FIRESTONE September 22, 1999) WINSTON, N.C. -- There were whitecaps on the water rushing through the lobby of the Best Western Riverview Hotel -- a name that no longer signifies a choice location -- but Fire Chief Greg Smith noticed something even more ominous floating behind the building this afternoon: a large tank of liquid propane, about to break loose from its moorings. If the tank ruptured, it would spill its contents into the vast plain of water covering large sections of eastern North Carolina. If it found an ignition source, the consequences could be worse. The chief radioed for a National Guard boat to secure the tank, but he knew it was a losing battle. "We've got tanks like that floating all over the county," he said. "We've got water flowing right through gas station storage tanks. And who knows what else is coming from the hog farms. You set one foot in that water, and your health is at risk." The historic flood that crept in after Hurricane Floyd is now known to have killed 37 people in North Carolina, and left about 6,000 homeless. Although most of those who were trapped by the floodwaters have been rescued, the state now faces an environmental problem with enormous and long-term consequences. The water has risen so high, and in so many places, that the number of contaminants drifting downstream toward the ocean is impossible to guess. The health problems could linger long after the water begins to recede later this week. "At this point, we can't even imagine the environmental consequences," said Richard Slozak, the city manager of Goldsboro, 35 miles west of here. "I just flew over the area, and I could see any number of large petroleum spills, thousands of dead animals and their waste, you name it, it's in the water. Our own city is pumping raw sewage right into the water." That's because the city's sewage treatment plant, designed to withstand a flood the size of the one in 1929, is now mostly under water and has stopped functioning. As a result, whenever anyone in town flushes a toilet, waste leaves the sewer system untreated and becomes part of the floodwaters. The same thing has happened here in Kinston, a city of 25,000, where the second of two waste-water plants went under earlier on Tuesday, and state officials said at least seven or eight more counties have also lost their plants. Kinston officials on Tuesday urged factories to stop discharging waste water -- which may require some of them to shut down for several days -- and also suggested that residents not use their plumbing as often as normal. Public safety workers around the state got tetanus boosters on Tuesday, and anyone making any contact with the water was advised to wear gloves and boots. In some larger cities, the drinking water systems were still safe, but in rural areas residents were told not even to turn on the tap. Although there have been no outbreaks yet of E. coli, cholera or typhoid, the flood is only three days old, and the risk gets greater the longer the water stays high and full of animal remains. The state says that 2.5 million chickens, 500,000 turkeys and 100,000 hogs have drowned in the last four days, and the Agriculture Department began distributing portable incinerators today to help farmers dispose of those carcasses that have not floated away. In some areas, the water receded a bit on Tuesday, but a sporadic rain through the day and the likelihood that dams upstream will have to release some water later this week kept the threat high. The state emergency management office said that many more bodies were expected to be found once crews were able to examine houses and cars now under water. About 1,600 homes were ruined, and 6,000 people remain in shelters tonight. As bad as it is, the bacterial contamination from farms and sewers is considered only a short-term problem. The lasting effects of chemicals and petroleum swirling through farmland and business districts could take many years to clean up. An Occidental Chemical plant near Wilmington spilled more than a million gallons of waste water that might have contained chromium, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency said today, and mercury may have spilled from a nearby containment pond. Water is also flowing freely through junkyards, warehouses of farm pesticides and underground storage tanks. Environmental officials were particularly concerned about the lasting effects on wildlife and coastal fisheries once the pollutants flow downstream to the ocean. "This is devastating not just for our water quality but for the whole coastal environment," said Don Reuter, a spokesman for the state's Department of Environment and Natural Resources. "It's such a hodgepodge mix of all these different pollutants that it's a real significant mess. The diversity of the state's ecology is so tremendous, and we're just hoping the losses are not so severe that we don't get to see a restoration."

Red Tide Leads to the Closing of Most Beaches on Fire Island (NY Times, ANDY NEWMAN, 13Sep99) A red tide in the ocean off Fire Island prompted officials to close most beaches there to swimmers Sunday afternoon. Tests indicated that the tide was caused by a large bloom of plankton, Suffolk County health officials said. If the plankton, called mesodinium rubrum, remained at high levels Monday morning, the waters might stay closed to swimmers for another day because of the remote possibility that they could have an allergic reaction, said Robert Waters, an associate public health sanitarian for the Suffolk County Department of Health Services. "It's a foreign protein," Waters said, "and if it's in such a large concentration and the surf is beating it up and forming an aerosol, you can breathe some of this in, and I would suspect there is some chance that you might have an allergic reaction to it. I told the superintendent of the beach at Robert Moses State Park, 'If it's still a deep red color, keep it closed. You just don't know what you're dealing with.'" The red tide turned the water blood-red from the shore to about 100 yards out, Waters said. After it was spotted at 2:45 P.M., officials closed Robert Moses State Park on the western end of the island. Most of the other beaches east of the park were also closed, said Officer Walter Solntzeff of the Suffolk County police. Robert Nuzzi, a marine biologist for the county, said mesodinium rubrum is part animal and part plant. It is a ciliate -- a type of animal -- that has algae living inside it. Scientists do not know what causes mesodinium to reproduce periodically in large numbers and cause red tides like Sunday's, Dr. Nuzzi said.

The Land of Milk, Honey, Water by Tania Hershman 3:00 a.m. 30.Sep.99.PDT JERUSALEM -- Water is the stuff of life, but for Turkey's earthquake survivors it can be deadly. "People are dying from the polluted water," says Amnon Sherf, general manager of Atlantium, an Israeli company that has joined the Turkey earthquake relief effort with a new laser-based water disinfection method. Tens of thousands of people lost their lives as buildings crumbled under the force of the 7.4-magnitude quake in northern Turkey in August. However, the still-trapped bodies, sweltering summer heat, and open sewage pipes mean the danger is far from over for the hundreds of thousands who survived. When the earthquake struck, Israel sent supplies and an army field hospital, but Atlantium saw another way to help. While water shortage is one of the Middle East's gravest concerns, in Turkey this is not the case. "What is ridiculous is that there is a lot of water," says Sherf. But people simply can't drink it. Samples sent to Atlantium contained huge quantities of bacteria and viruses, including those that cause polio, typhoid, and cholera. Atlantium began building the first industrial version of the technology it had been developing in the labs: Exterma 18. Exterma 18 can purify up to 1,500 liters of water per hour. The water is then sealed in half-liter plastic bags to avoid re-contamination. Exterma 18 works a bit like Space Invaders: Bacteria are zapped by short pulses of light produced by a high-powered laser. The laser light travels down waveguides to the destination area and then software controls the firing of the pulses at high frequency. The bacteria and viruses are not actually destroyed by the light pulses; rather, their DNA is altered so that they are unable to multiply. "We call the water that has been purified Atlantium BIO-water," says Zamir Tribelsky, Atlantium's chief scientist. He claims that BIO-water is healthier for humans because, in contrast to water whose bacteria has been filtered out or killed, the presence of the bacteria, albeit impotent, boosts the immune system. One of the other benefits of laser-based disinfection is that it does not produce any toxic by-products -- unlike chlorine, the most commonly used disinfectant. There are nonchemical alternatives to chlorine, the most popular of which shines ultraviolet lamps into the water to kill the bacteria and viruses, but Atlantium says such systems take up a great deal of space and are expensive to install and to clean. Atlantium believes that Exterma 18, which meets the water purification standards set by the FDA and the Environmental Protection Agency, will be of use in other disaster areas, not just earthquake zones. "The Red Cross and the World Bank are very, very interested," says Sherf of the system, which fits on the back of a truck and can be up and running in one hour. The patent-pending technology upon which Exterma-18 is based can also deactivate bacteria and viruses in other liquids and in gases -- including air -- with just an adjustment of the laser wavelength. Atlantium is hoping it will find applications in hospitals to disinfect medical equipment and even blood, as well as in such sectors as the impurity-obsessed semiconductor industry. For the Turks, though, drinking water is the prime concern. "It is an excellent device," said Hakan Abaci, a representative of the Turkish Ministry of Industry and Trade. "It is exactly what we need. There are other purification technologies but they are more difficult to assemble. And they are not enough because the infrastructure is heavily damaged. This will help a lot."

USDA adopts more accurate E. coli test for raw meat (Environmental News Network, Saturday, September 11, 1999 By Reuters) Following one of the worst outbreaks of E. coli 0157:H7 contamination in U.S. history, the Clinton Administration said Friday that federal meat inspectors would immediately begin using a more accurate method of detecting the deadly bacteria in raw meat. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said the new method of detecting E. coli in raw meat was about four times more sensitive than previous methods, increasing the chances of the government finding low levels of the bacteria in meat. The announcement came as health officials investigate the outbreak late last month at an upstate New York county fair that killed a toddler and left 10 other children with kidney failure. Nearly 500 cases are suspected of being caused by contaminated well water at the fair in Greenwich, N.Y. in late August. Health officials said 51 people were hospitalized because of infection with the bacteria that can cause bloody diarrhea and death. Scientists believe that consuming as few as 100 E. coli 0157:H7 cells can cause infection with the potentially deadly disease. Federal meat inspectors routinely test samples collected from meat-packing plants and from about 100,000 grocery stores, butcher shops and other businesses that grind beef regularly. New York health inspectors were still trying to pinpoint the cause of the outbreak of E. coli 0157:H7, but theorized that well water at the fairgrounds may have been contaminated by runoff from a nearby dairy barn. E. coli naturally occurs in cattle intestines, and does not sicken the animals. The bacteria is destroyed by cooking raw beef to at least 160 degrees Fahrenheit. An estimated 20,000 people are sickened with E. coli annually, resulting in more than 250 deaths, according to federal data. Copyright 1999, Reuters, All Rights Reserved

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