As if there wasn’t already enough to worry about, now doctors are predicting that climate change will harm people’s respiratory health. The American Thoracic Society is so concerned it filed a report with two goals. The Society not only wants to raise awareness with doctors so they can take preventive measures with their patients but also is enticing researchers to take on the question for further study. They found that climate change has a direct impact on air quality. A hotter climate, wildfires, more pollen in the air and rates of airborne diseases are worsening respiratory health worldwide.
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Californians living in the state’s agricultural regions are at risk of drinking water contaminated with harmful levels of nitrates, according to a new UC Davis report. Linked with thyroid illnesses and some cancers, nitrate contamination largely comes from chemical fertilizer and animal manure. We discuss the extent and cost of the problem, as well as potential solutions.
Hundreds of thousands of people living in California farming communities may very well have been drinking nitrate-contaminated water.
Growers are worried this study will just put even more restrictions on what they believe is already highly-regulated farming but local water rights activists say nitrates are a serious concern linked to birth defects and thyroid conditions.
Nitrate contamination of groundwater in some of the state’s most intensely farmed regions has grown worse in recent decades and will continue to spread, threatening the drinking water supplies of more than 250,000 people, according to a new study.
The research, conducted by UC Davis scientists, underscores the complexity of dealing with nitrate pollution, which is largely the result of nitrogen leaching into aquifers from fertilizers and manure applied to cropland. High nitrate levels have been linked to cancer and reproductive disorders and can be lethal to infants.
Agricultural fertilizer and dairy manure are the main contributors to growing nitrate groundwater contamination affecting one in 10 people in the south San Joaquin Valley, according to a report released Tuesday.
Polluted drinking water in some of California’s most productive agricultural areas is putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk for disease and cancer, according to a study released Tuesday by UC Davis.
Water contamination from factory farm waste and agricultural pesticides is a growing problem and usually lacks a media spotlight. This week, however, two separate studies illustrating how big of a problem we face received decent attention.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report paints a bleak picture of the billions of dollars spent around the globe cleaning up after Big Ag’s mess.
One in ten people is exposed to unsafe drinking water. According to a UC Davis study that looks at high levels of nitrate in ground water, in the Tulare Lake and Salinas basins. It affects 250,000 residents from Fresno to Bakersfield and theSalinas Valley.
“This problem is really not just a problem in the southern central valley its no even a problem just in California this is a global issues,” said Dr. Thomas Harter, of UC Davis.
A report Tuesday from scientists at the University of California, Davis, about nitrate contamination of ground water in the Tulare basin in the southern San Joaquin Valley and in the Salinas area have prompted some state lawmakers to call for action to fix the problems.
Much of the groundwater used for drinking in California’s two leading agricultural regions contains unsafe levels of nitrate from farm fertilizer, according to a new report from the UC Davis Center for Watershed Science. In fact, the amount of contaminated water in the Tulare Lake Basin and the Salinas Valley is so vast it would fill Lake Shasta nearly eight times.