2.14.14
Oil Spill
Researchers find crude oil interferes with fish hearts
Sun Herald
BY KAREN NELSON
Stanford University, researching the effect of the 2010 BP oil spill on
tuna, has found crude oil "interrupts the ability of fish heart cells to
beat effectively."
http://www.sunherald.com/2014/02/13/5337056/researchers-find-crude-oil-interferes.html
Stanford researchers, NOAA scientists discover impact of oil spill on fish
heart cells
Mississippi Press
February 13, 2014 at 6:02 PM
BILOXI, Mississippi -- While studying the impact of the 2010 Deepwater
Horizon oil spill on tuna, a research team led by Barbara Block, a
professor of marine sciences, discovered that crude oil interrupts a
cellular pathway that allows fish heart cells to beat effectively,
according to a news release from the Mississippi Department of Marine
Resources.
http://blog.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-news/2014/02/stanford_researchers_noaa_scie.html
BP Deepwater Horizon spill oil causes heart damage that can kill tuna, new
study finds
Mark Schleifstein
The Times-Picayune
February 13, 2014 at 3:05 PM
Crude oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon spill contains a chemical that
interferes with fish heart cells, slowing heart rates, reducing the ability
of the heart to contract and causing irregular heartbeats that can lead to
heart attacks or death, according to new research released Thursday by
researchers at Stanford University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration.
http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2014/02/bp_deepwater_horizon_spill_oil.html#incart_river
Toxins released by oil spills send fish hearts into cardiac arrest
LA Times
Scientists have cracked a cellular biology mystery underlying a harmful
effect oil spills have on fish: irregular heartbeats that can lead to
cardiac arrest.
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-tuna-hearts-oil-spill-toxins-20140213,0,5212912.story#axzz2tFJv5KiM
BP oil spill medical settlement moves forward after appeals dismissed
Jennifer Larino
The Times-Picayune
February 13, 2014 at 7:27 PM
It has been more than a year since the federal judge overseeing the
sprawling BP oil spill litigation approved a settlement allowing for
payments and treatment for hundreds of thousands of coastal residents and
cleanup workers who said they were made ill or were injured as a result of
exposure to oil and dispersants.
http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2014/02/bp_moves_forward_with_gulf_spi.html
State
Competitor of Miss. Silcon wants new review of Burnsville plant's emissions
permit
MBJ Blog
SELMA, Alabama – An Alabama competitor of Mississippi Silicon Metals LLC
has filed a petition to challenge the Mississippi Environmental Quality
Permit granted for the company's $200 million "greenfield" plant in
Tishomingo County's Burnsville.
http://msbusiness.com/businessblog/2014/02/12/competitor-miss-silcon-wants-new-review-burnsville-plants-emissions-permit/
Alabama company challenges permit for Mississippi Silicon
Daily Journal
An Alabama company has filed a petition with the Mississippi Department of
Environmental Quality over the agency's fast-tracking of a permit for
Mississippi Silicon, the company that announced last month it was building
a plant in Tishomingo County and adding 200 jobs.
http://djournal.com/news/alabama-company-challenges-permit-mississippi-silicon/
DMR posts notice four hours ahead of special meeting in Biloxi
Notice was posted four hours before CMR met
Sun Herald
BY PAUL HAMPTON
BILOXI -- The Commission on Marine Resources met in a special meeting
Thursday after notifying the public by putting a notice on the door of the
Bolton Building four hours before the noon session, officials said.
http://www.sunherald.com/2014/02/13/5338495/dmr-gives-four-hour-notice-of.html
Grants boost areas' development odds
Clarion Ledger
The Mississippi Development Authority recently awarded matching grants to
help nine nonprofit economic development organizations or local governments
prepare available greenfield sites for industrial development.
http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20140214/BIZ/302130060/Grants-boost-areas-development-odds
Regional
New Louisiana plan relies heavily on diversions to reduce nutrients causing
Gulf 'dead zone'
Mark Schleifstein
The Times-Picayune
February 14, 2014 at 3:43 AM
Louisiana plans to use existing and proposed sediment and freshwater
diversions as part of a new plan for removing a small share of the
fertilizers and other nutrients from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers
that are linked to springtime low-oxygen "dead zones" along the state's
coastline each year.
http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2014/02/louisiana_plan_relies_heavily.html#incart_river
National
Leaks in Natural Gas System Seen Exceeding EPA Estimate
Bloomberg
By Mark Drajem - Feb 14, 2014
A study funded by a foundation tied to the pioneer of hydraulic fracturing
found methane leaks from drilling and transporting natural gas are greater
than U.S. estimates, undercutting the fuel's climate benefits.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-14/leaks-in-natural-gas-system-seen-exceeding-epa-estimate.html
Obama to announce $1B climate resilience fund
The Hill
By Laura Barron-Lopez
During his visit to California on Friday, President Obama will announce a
new $1 billion resilience fund for communities battling climate change.
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/198394-obama-to-announce-1b-climate-change-resilience-fund
North Carolina Coal-Ash Spill Prompts Federal Probe
Grand Jury Subpoenas Documents From Duke Energy
Wall Street Journal
By VALERIE BAUERLEIN
Feb. 13, 2014 9:18 p.m. ET
RALEIGH, N.C.—A federal grand jury has subpoenaed documents from Duke
EnergyCorp. DUK +0.79% and state environmental regulators as part of a
criminal investigation into the spill of coal ash into the Dan River this
month.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304703804579381333302185604?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5
BP must face shareholder suit over 2006 Alaska oil spill
Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Thursday revived a
shareholder lawsuit against BP PLC over statements the company made in the
wake of a 2006 oil spill in Alaska.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-bp-spill-ruling-20140213,0,1268302.story
Press Releases
Stanford University Researchers, NOAA Scientists Discover Mechanism of
Crude Oil Heart Toxicity
While studying the impact of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill on tuna,
a research team led by Barbara Block, a professor of marine sciences,
discovered that crude oil interrupts a cellular pathway that allows fish
heart cells to beat effectively. The components of the pathway are present
in the hearts of many animals, including humans.[
http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2014/images/tuna_news.jpg]
A study of the impact of crude oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill on
tuna discovered that it interrupts the ability of fish heart cells to beat
effectively. Scientists from Stanford University and the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have discovered that crude oil
interferes with fish heart cells. The toxic consequence is a slowed heart
rate, reduced cardiac contractility and irregular heartbeats that can lead
to cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac death. The research, published in the
Feb. 14 issue of Science, is part of the ongoing Natural Resource Damage
Assessment of the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
While crude oil is known to be cardiotoxic to developing fish, the
physiological mechanisms underlying its harmful effects were unclear.
Stanford and NOAA scientists studying the impact of crude oil from the
Deepwater Horizon spill on tuna discovered that it interrupts the ability
of fish heart cells to beat effectively. Crude oil is a complex mixture of
chemicals, some of which are known to be toxic to marine animals. Past
research has focused in particular on "polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons" (PAHs), which can also be found in coal tar, creosote, air
pollution and stormwater runoff from land. In the aftermath of an oil
spill, PAHs can persist for many years in marine habitats and cause a
variety of adverse environmental effects.
The researchers report that oil interferes with cardiac cell excitability,
contraction and relaxation - vital processes for normal beat-to-beat
contraction and pacing of the heart.Their tests revealed that very low
concentrations of crude oil disrupt the specialized ion channel pores -
where molecules flow in and out of the heart cells - that control heart
rate and contraction in the cardiac muscle cell.
This cyclical signaling pathway in cells throughout the heart is what
propels blood out of the pump on every beat. The protein components of the
signaling pathway are highly conserved in the hearts of most animals,
including humans. The researchers found that oil blocks the potassium
channels distributed in heart cell membranes, increasing the time to
restart the heart on every beat. This prolongs the normal cardiac action
potential, and ultimately slows the heartbeat. The potassium ion channel
impacted in the tuna is responsible for restarting the heart muscle cell
contraction cycle after every beat, and is highly conserved throughout
vertebrates, raising the possibility that animals as diverse as tuna,
turtles and dolphins might be affected similarly by crude oil exposure. Oil
also resulted in arrhythmias in some ventricular cells.
"The ability of a heart cell to beat," explained Barbara Block, a professor
of marine sciences at Stanford, "depends on its capacity to move essential
ions like potassium and calcium into and out of the cells quickly. This
dynamic process, which is common to all vertebrates, is called
'excitation-contraction coupling.' We have discovered that crude oil
interferes with this vital signaling process essential for our heart cells
to function properly."
"We've known from NOAA research over the past two decades that crude oil is
toxic to the developing hearts of fish embryos and larvae, but haven't
understood precisely why," said coauthor Nat Scholz, leader of the
Ecotoxicology Program at NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center in
Seattle. "These new findings more clearly define petroleum-derived chemical
threats to fish and other species in coastal and ocean habitats, with
implications that extend beyond oil spills to other sources of pollution
such as land-based urban stormwater runoff."
"Today's report is an example of the ongoing work being done through the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA). The
NRDA Trustees have been apprised of the findings and believe the report
speaks for itself. This is a great example of the type of assessment that
is ongoing in the NRDA process. I commend Stanford University and our
federal partner, NOAA, for the excellent work," said Trudy Fisher,
Executive Director of the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality.
The new study also calls attention to a previously underappreciated risk to
wildlife and humans, particularly from exposure to cardioactive PAHs that
also exist at relatively enriched levels in air pollution. "When we see
these kinds of acute effects at the cardiac cell level," Block said, "it is
not surprising that chronic exposure to oil from spills such as the
Deepwater Horizoncan lead to long-term problems in fish hearts, as our NOAA
colleagues have observed in studies of larval fish development. "The
protein ion channels we observe in the tuna heart cells are similar to what
we would find in any vertebrate heart and provide evidence as to how
petroleum products may be negatively impacting cardiac function in a wide
variety of animals. This raises the possibility that exposure to
environmental PAHs in many animals - including humans - could lead to
cardiac arrhythmias and bradycardia, or slowing of the heart."
The Deepwater Horizon disaster released over 4 million barrels of crude oil
during the peak spawning time for the Atlantic bluefin tuna in the spring
of 2010. Electronic tagging and fisheries catch data indicate that Atlantic
bluefin spawn in the area where the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig
collapsed, raising the possibility that eggs and larvae, which float near
the surface waters, were exposed to oil.
The spill occurred in the major spawning ground of the western Atlantic
population of bluefin tuna in the Gulf of Mexico. The most recent stock
assessment, conducted in 2012, estimated the spawning population to be at
only 36 percent of the 1970 baseline population. Additionally, many other
pelagic fishes were also likely to have spawned in oiled habitats,
including yellowfin tuna, blue marlin and swordfish. NOAA scientists have
previously shown that exposure to crude oil-derived PAHs disrupts cardiac
function and impairs development in larval fishes. Numerous studies,
particularly in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, have
described a syndrome of embryonic heart failure, bradycardia, arrhythmias
and edema in exposed fish embryos. The potential for deleterious effects on
young fish in the northern Gulf of Mexico is still being investigated in
the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon spill. In the present study, the
NOAA team partnered with Stanford researchers to determine why oil
specifically impacts heart cells.
Taking advantage of captive populations of bluefin and yellowfin tunas at
the Tuna Research and Conservation Center (a collaborative facility
operated by Stanford and the Monterey Bay Aquarium), the research team was
able to directly observe the effects of crude oil samples collected from
the Gulf of Mexico on living fish heart cells. Block and her team bathed
isolated cardiac cells from the tuna in low dose crude oil concentrations
similar to what fish in early life stages may have encountered in the
surface waters where they were spawned after the April 2010 oil spill in
the Gulf of Mexico. They measured the heart cells' response using a
combination of sophisticated electro-physiological techniques - including
"patch clamping" and "confocal microscopy" - to record how ions flowed into
and out of the heart cells, and to identify the specific proteins in the
excitation-contraction pathway that were affected by crude oil chemical
components.
"We can examine the function of healthy heart cells in vitro and actually
measure in the microscope how they respond to the presence of crude oil in
real time," said Fabien Brette, a research associate in Block's lab and
lead author on the study.
"The normal sequence and synchronous contraction of the heart requires
rapid activation in a coordinated way of the heart cells," Block said.
"Like detectives, we dissected this process using laboratory physiological
techniques to ask where oil was impacting this vital mechanism."
The research was funded by NOAA, Stanford University and the Monterey Bay
Aquarium Foundation.
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