A recent study shows that beach sand contains pathogens (bacteria) that pose a risk to adults and children and can cause illness and disease, such as skin infections and gastrointestinal (GI) disorders.

The U.S.’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has formulated guidelines that determine when the pathogen levels are high enough to be dangerous for swimmers in both fresh water and sea water, but has not done so for recreational beaches. Researchers at the University of Miami and Northern Illinois University are beginning to rectify this by producing their own guidelines.

As the EPA monitored water containing fecal indicator fecal bacteria (FIB), so did the researchers because it poses as a large threat to humans (diseases such as E. coli are caused by feces-contaminated water). FIB comes from direct sewage spills and from dog and bird feces and would indicate the presence of pathogens of multiple virus strains.

“Infectious risks vary in different microorganism,” Tomoyuki Shibata tells the University of Miami. Shibata is the assistant professor in the Public Health Program and Institute for the Study of the Environment, Sustainability, & Energy at Northern Illinois University.

The researchers focused on studying sand from recreational beaches (mostly in Florida and California) because it would pose the most amount of threat to people.

In four steps, using reference pathogen guidelines from the EPA, the researchers essentially produced mathematical models, and computer simulations and measurements – per each gram of sand – of the disease-inducing pathogens to determine if the level of pathogens in the beach sand would go over the EPA’s guidelines. It turned out that it did. One fingertip dipped in the sand and inserted in the mouth contains enough FIB to cause GI. According to the researchers’ report, 19 out of 1000 beachgoers would be infected with GI.

Children would especially be susceptible to the pathogens and to becoming ill because they expose themselves to the sand more than adults.

“Parents of young children don’t need to overreact to our findings,” Shibata asserts. “They can reduce their child’s infectious risk by basic hygiene practices such as hand washing before eating or drinking and taking a shower.”

The report has been published in the American Chemical Society’s journal “Environmental Science and Technology,” and was written by Shibata and by Helena M. Solo-Gabriele, who is and the principal investigator of the study and a professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at the UM College of Engineering.

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Bumblebee and honeybee populations have been declining quickly over the past couple of decades. This event has been dubbed the Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD. Beekeepers and researchers have been baffled, unable to determine what causes this sudden declination.

But just last week, researchers at the University of Stirling, UK and the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) conducted two separate studies that point to the culprit: commonly used pesticides, which have been proven to damage the bees’ central nervous systems and homing abilities (learning and memory skills for remember the paths to the plants) and affects the birth of queens for colony growth.

The decline is believed to have been caused specifically by neonitinoid insecticides (which is a class of chemicals), which have been used since the early 90s. The bees pick up the pesticide along with the pollen and transfer it to other plants and bring it home to their hives, making other bees susceptible to the poison.

“Some bumblebee species have declined hugely,” Dave Goulson of the University of Stirling in Stirling, U.K. says in the  AAAS news release. “For example in North America, several bumblebee species which used to be common have more or less disappeared from the entire continent. In the U.K., three species have gone extinct.”

The study at Stirling University worked with bumblebees, a couple colonies of which were exposed to low levels (low enough to not be fatal) of the chemical imidacloprid – which is found in many brands such as Gaucho, Conguard, and Xytect – while a couple more were not. The researchers weighed all of the hives separately to determine how much each would grow by the end of the experiment.

They placed the bumblebees in an enclosed space outdoors for six weeks so they could go about their business in natural conditions. It turned out the exposed colonies gained less weight. The hives were 8-12% smaller. The population decreased as wells the amount of honey/nectar. Also, these hives contained 85% fewer queens (2 queens compared to 14 produced by unexposed colonies) in comparison to the unexposed hives.

The researchers in Avignon, France worked with honeybees. They gave one colony nonlethal doses of thiamethoxam, another chemical found in pesticides. Next, they tagged honeybees with radio-frequency identification microchips to track them. Following the experiment, the researchers found out that the colonies with the infected bees were 2 to 3 times more likely to die than nonexposed colonies. The pesticides were believed to have greatly damaged the bees’ homing systems, reducing the amount of nectar brought the colonies.

The INRA researchers conducted a second study in which they produced a mathematical model of the dynamics of honeybee populations. When the failure of the homing abilities was incorporated, the model predicted honeybee colonies would be impossible to recover at a certain point.

In addition to the honeybees and bumblebees, all other kinds of bees pollinate major vegetable and fruit crops as well as flowers. Because of their waning populations, farms would face dilemmas for the lack of pollination, which would instigate a decrease in the development of crops.

“There are obviously big question marks as to whether the safety testing that was done on these was really adequate,” Goulson adds.

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Since it is such a common element in nature, until recently, nitrogen was ignored as being a pollutant. Nitrogen is a natural part of the ecosystem and helps to increase the rate of plant growth. Because of this benefit, nitrogen has been used frequently, during the last decades, as an agriculture fertilizer. However, there are negative effects brought on by nitrogen that many people aren’t aware of.

Agricultural fertilizers and burning fuels are sources of nitrogen pollution. These occurances involve the predominance of nitrogen in the atmosphere which lead to the greenhouse effect, pollution of waters and soil, and to breathing and heart problems for living creatures. Calculating the impact on health, by respiratory problems, asthma and cancer; the nitrogen pollution reduces life expectancy of any European by six months.

Accordingly to a recent study on European Nitrogen Assessment, in Europe each person pays between £130 and £650 per year for the cost of nitrogen pollution, while on average, the total amount rises to €70bn-€320bn: costs of pollution on air, soil, water, increased greenhouse gases and damage to wildlife.

BBC News announced that 80 percent of the nitrogen in crops feeds livestock, not people. Meat consume is heavily increasing the nitrogen pollution, especially in Europe. Dr. Mark Sutton, from UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, one of the leaders of the study, according to the Telegraph: “Amazingly, livestock consume around 85 per cent of the 14 million tones of nitrogen in crops harvested or imported into the EU; only 15 per cent is used to feed humans directly.

European nitrogen use is therefore not primarily an issue of food security, but one of luxury consumption”. The advice is not to become all vegetarians, but at least to try a “demitarian” regime, to try a reduction of meat consumption. Other advice, to lesson the negative impacts seen by nitrogen, are being shared by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The Department said, in order to improve soil-management practices, using conservation-tillage, crop rotation, and cover crops as wheat, rye and other grasses will be neccessary. Among agricultural strategies through methods as “precision farming” (fertilizers calculated with precision for each surface), manure recycling, genetically modified crops (which absorb nitrogen from air), governments should adhere to a new set of policies, at least in Europe, said professor Bob Watson, Chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Even though European Union statistics shows that the emission of nitrogen decreased from 13.84 million tones in 1997 to 10.94 in 2007, improvements are still required. “There have been and still are many attempts to control nitrogen but we believe the big challenge is to link existing policy areas and make them work together.” stated Sutton.

However solutions reside also in the hands of individuals by cutting down meat consumption, and choosing a responsible industrial and agricultural business.

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Yes, you have read it right!  It´s not about the color – Green fashion is based on three premises: reuse, reduce and recycle. It consists in reusing objects that you already have or using them for recycling it. It also consists in reducing the use of pesticides or chemical products that are used to make clothes.

For making a pair of pants or a t-shirt they usually use some chemical products that go straight through the material that sometimes has caused intoxication after using that clothe. This doesn’t just happen in the countries with lack of regulation; there have been several cases in the United States as well. Designer Anne Salvatore, is an example of fashion green designers. Since she was pregnant, she moved from her fast paced city environment to a ‘green style’.

She even recalled her brand as ‘Beau Soleil’. Nowadays, she just designs with ecological materials, such as; bamboo, organic cotton, and she recycle vintage clothes and accessories for making new ones.

However, this is not an issue for designs to be chosen for the most popular runways. ‘Conscious Collection’ by H&M is another example of clothes that have joined a long time ago to this ecological action. This chain decided to offer their clients natural clothes to show them how you can be in fashion and taking care of the environment at the same time.

The main color that they chose for their ‘green collection’ was white to stand out the purity of the weaves that they used for their designs. What´s people opinion?

It seems that the British like ecological fashion. Apparently a linen t-shirt or a bamboo grain skirt seems for the rest of people like a physicist experiment. One of the reasons could be; on the one hand its prices, and on the second hand the lack of creativity in the designs.

The controversy is served, on the one hand some experts opinion is that: “they don´t believe that this kind of ecological business will be enough to make a brand fashionable. Trends, the seduction, the savoir-faire, the shapes and the beautiful materials are important in the world of fashion.” On the other hand, others think that “it´s not a matter of price.

For them to make ecological products is not associated with the placement. From the ecological point of view every brands should bear in mind the ecological proposals for the packing, process of making, and the way of delivering. In a close future, every brand will be ecological”.

Amid this confrontation we have to say that brands will have to think about a solution that combines characteristics, fashion and ecology. Let´s see what happens.   Rob Wilson / Shutterstock.com

Rob Wilson / Shutterstock.com

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