Equilibrium/Sustainability — Presented by The American Petroleum Institute — When escaping the Endangered Species list means going extinct

Today is Wednesday. Welcome to Equilibrium, a newsletter that tracks the growing global battle over the future of sustainability. Subscribe here: digital-staging.thehill.com/newsletter-signup. 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed removing 23 animal and plant species from its endangered list on Wednesday — not because these species are suddenly thriving, but because they are all extinct in the wild. 

But this may only be the beginning. 

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland warned that climate change will continue to worsen the conditions that led to their extinction, saying “now is the time to lift up proactive, collaborative, and innovative efforts to save America’s wildlife,” as Zack Budryk reported for The Hill. 

Among the species on the list are 22 animals and one plant: the ivory-billed woodpecker, Bachman’s warbler, the San Marcos gambusia fish, the Scioto madam fish, eight species of freshwater mussels and 11 Hawaiian and Pacific Island species. 

As we contemplate the poor health of the biosphere, we’ll look at two stories about human health. First, a study breaks down what masks keep you safest from the chronic impacts of wildfire smoke and other tiny, sneeze-proof pollutants. Then we’ll explore one solution that a team of researchers says might help solve global nutritional security: cultivating microgreens on your windowsill. 

For Equilibrium, we are Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin. Please send tips or comments to Saul at selbein@digital-staging.thehill.com or Sharon at sudasin@digital-staging.thehill.com. Follow us on Twitter: @saul_elbein and @sharonudasin. 

Let’s get to it.

Cotton masks offer little protection against wildfire smoke 

Not all masks are created equal — particularly when it comes to filtering the dangerous microscopic particles associated with wildfire smoke, a new study has found. 

Top line: A cotton mask only blocked “20-40 percent of smoke, if you are wearing it correctly for most of the day,” study co-author Jack Kodros, a research scientist at Colorado State University, told Equilibrium. 

An N-95 respirator mask, by contrast, brings protection to about 90 percent, according to the study, which was recently published in GeoHealth, the journal of the American Geophysical Union. 

When an N-95 respirator is not available, the scientists found that doubling up a surgical and cloth mask — also the Center for Disease Control’s recommendation during the coronavirus pandemic — also brings coverage up to about 90 percent.

But there’s a bigger point. Though these conclusions aren’t exactly news. Public health authorities like the California Air Resources Board have cautioned all fire season that cloth masks offer little protection against smoke inhalation, but we didn’t have hard numbers on the discrepancy. 

Equilibrium spoke with Kodros for a tale of two respiratory illnesses, and two kinds of masks.

What led them to this question? “A number of friends, because of mask mandates, were starting to ask, ‘should I hold onto my mask for fire season?’ And I realized: there’s not a lot of quantitative guidelines about what masks would be useful for air pollution.”

Kodros’s team assessed how effective each mask — cotton, surgical and N-95 — was by attaching it to a pipe that simulated breathing. Then they calculated how many smoke particles each mask type let through — which was a function partly of whether they were properly worn. 

“If you have the best mask in the world and it doesn’t fit onto your face, you have no protection,” Kodros said. But a properly fitted N-95 mask, they found, would decrease hospital admissions for wildfire smoke inhalation if 40 to 80 percent of the population wore it.

And? Judged against the benchmark “normal” fire season — if such a phrase means much anymore — of Washington state in 2012, they calculated that the wide adoption of N95 masks could have cut wildfire-caused hospital admissions by 20 to 40 percent, mostly among those with acute asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

A MESSAGE FROM API

The Environmental Partnership recently released its annual report highlighting its new flare management program that reported a 50 percent reduction in flare volumes from 2019 to 2020. Read more.

 

TWO DISEASES, TWO MASKING STRATEGIES

Why were cloth and surgical masks so ineffective? The size of the weave or the fit makes a difference depending on the kind of particles. 

Coronavirus is typically caused not by free viral particles, but by particles trapped in floating droplets of saliva or mucus which are about twice the size range of the dangerous particles in wildfire smoke, Kodros said.

Unlike larger dust, ash or sand particles, these tiny particles bypass the sneeze reflex and the guard hairs in the nose and throat and penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream, where they can cause chronic health impacts, Kodros said.

The purpose of the masks is different too. Coronavirus masks are as much about keeping public spaces free of dangerous emissions (in this case, infected droplets)  as protecting the wearer.

But wearing a mask doesn’t do anything to cut emissions of smoke or other dangerous air pollution, Kodros said. Masking up “doesn’t address the underlying issue of what’s causing the pollution.”

Last words: “We can’t reduce air pollution without doing something different,” Kodros said. 

To read the full interview with Kodros, please click here. 

 

Microgreens could help solve global nutritional security struggles

These tiny yet mighty “microgreens” can thrive even in areas that are considered food deserts — making them particularly relevant during a pandemic that has disrupted food supply chains, according to the study, published in the journal of the International Society for Horticultural Science. 

“The current COVID-19 pandemic revealed the vulnerability of our food system and the need to address malnutrition issues and nutrition-security inequality,” lead author Francesco Di Gioia, an assistant professor at Penn State University, said in a press statement.

Wait… what exactly are microgreens? It’s a loose category. Microgreens feature a rich variety of colors, shapes, textures and flavors, and sprout from many vegetables, as well as herbs and other wild edible species, a news release accompanying the study said.

Some common microgreens come from arugula, basil, radishes, carrots, broccoli, cilantro, chrysanthemums, celery, kohlrabi, cabbage, peas, sunflowers and wheatgrass.

While a formal definition for microgreens does not yet exist, the authors said that they generally correspond to the development of “cotyledonary leaves” — or the appearance of a plant’s first true leaves. They are distinct from sprouts and baby leaf greens, according to the study.

What’s so great about microgreens? They offer a wealth of advantages to growers, including their ability to thrive in challenging environmental conditions. They also have a short growth cycle — with time from sowing to harvest ranging from six to 28 days — and can be grown in soil or soilless systems, with or without the use of fertilizers, the study said.

They’re also nutritious: Different species contain different vitamins (including A, C, E, and K), polyphenols, glucosinolates and omega-3 fatty acids, as well as fibers and minerals. Their relatively small footprint also means they can easily be grown at home and mixed, Di Gioia told Equilibrium.

“Once you do that you have the advantage of harvesting the greens directly in your kitchen at the time when you are eating them,” he said, adding that raw vegetables offer more biological activity than cooked ones.

 

‘SHORT-TERM SOLUTION’ TO INCREASING ACCESS TO NUTRITION

Improving nutrition security: Although global food availability has improved over the past half century, the researchers said that an increase in nutrients has not necessarily coincided with the increase in calories available. Billions of people still lack nutrition security,  and the situation has only deteriorated throughout the pandemic.

The pandemic has led to increased consumer awareness about food sources, but not everyone has been able to to purchase vegetables or access garden space, the study noted. Microgreens, therefore, might be able to offer “a simple short-term solution, even partially, to address nutrition insecurity,” the authors wrote. 

Microgreens in space: Scientists at both NASA and the European Space Agency are also investigating the possibility of cultivating microgreens on long-term space missions, and are exploring how to grow such plants in microgravity, according to the study. 

Prep kit for food emergencies: During future emergencies, Di Gioia proposed the idea of distributing microgreen kits that could be prepared and stored, and then made available as necessary.

“This kit could be provided to schools, to people in need,” Di Gioia told Equilibrium.

Organizations like the Federal Emergency Management Agency or international cooperation agencies might be suitable candidates for implementing distribution, he suggested.

Business opportunities: Microgreens could also offer a business opportunity to local farmers and entrepreneurs due to their higher price point and their unique nutritional profiles that vary based on geography, Di Gioia added.

“There is even space for producing varieties that are local, that you might not have here in the U.S., but could be produced in other places,” he said.

To read the full article, please click here.

 

A MESSAGE FROM API

 

The Environmental Partnership recently released its annual report highlighting its new flare management program that reported a 50 percent reduction in flare volumes from 2019 to 2020. Read more.

Weird Wednesday

Feeding cows seaweed to boost organic dairy profitability

• A multi-institutional research team — led by the University of Vermont — will explore the potential health, environmental and economic benefits of feeding seaweed to organic dairy cows, through a $2.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to a news release.
• Seaweed is a nutritious alternative to traditional corn- and soy-based feed and has the potential to decrease bovine methane emissions, according to the researchers. 
• The team is aiming to pinpoint “a more sustainable feed option, but one that could boost milk productivity and animal health without compromising natural resources,” Sabrina Greenwood, from the University of Vermont, said in a statement. 
• The scientists will also study how the unique nutrient profiles of certain seaweed species “might affect the flow of nutrients from manure to soils and then back to the forages that cows eat,” team member Alix Contosta, from the University of New Hampshire, added. 

Ancient city was destroyed by asteroid

• The ancient Jordan River city of Tall el-Hammam was once a key city of the Middle East: 10 times the size of Jerusalem and just northeast of the Dead Sea, it was a site where “much of … the early cultural complexity of humans developed,” said James Kennett, professor of science at UC Santa Barbara, in a statement to ScienceDaily.
• But a suspicious 1.5 meter layer of melted glass and “bubbled” bricks suggests a surprising secret to its collapse: an airburst, or the high-energy shockwave from a meteor burning up against the upper atmosphere.
• This event may have lived in cultural memory. “All the observations stated in Genesis are consistent with a cosmic airburst,” Kennett said.
• But he added that “there’s no scientific proof that this destroyed city is indeed the Sodom of the Old Testament,” whose unsustainable wickedness led to its destruction from the sky in the first book of the Bible.

Elephant’s like to compromise — until it means going hungry

• Elephants at a forest reserve in Myanmar overwhelmingly tended to cooperate to get food — until the cost of cooperation grew too high, according to a study in PLOS Biology.
• The elephants cooperated 80 percent of the time when presented with food items that could “only be accessed by pulling two ropes simultaneously — a task requiring two trunks,” according to a write up in ScienceDaily.
• But when a resource could only be accessed by one elephant — a circumstance uncommon in the wild, and therefore perhaps unfamiliar — elephants were much more likely to fight over, or try to monopolize, the resource.
• The study is “an exciting demonstration of how flexible and socially intelligent elephants are,” coauthor Li-Li Li, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in a statement. 
• But it’s also an unsettling warning of what can happen when environmental circumstances change beyond what a culture is adapted to: conflict and breakdown.

 

Please visit The Hill’s sustainability section online for the web version of this newsletter and more stories. We’ll see you on Thursday.

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