Equilibrium/Sustainability — James Webb Telescope lifts off on Christmas

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

After decades of design, debates and delays, the world’s most advanced telescope is now ready to make its launch debut on Christmas morning — beginning an unprecedented, million-mile journey, National Geographic reported.

The James Webb Space Telescope is set to take off at 7:20 a.m. ET on Saturday from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. The mission’s success, however, will require “an intricate series of carefully choreographed maneuvers” during its first few weeks in space — meaning that even a single misstep could thwart the entire missions, according to NatGeo.

But the telescope’s 21-foot-wide eye is sensitive enough to observe a bumblebee in lunar orbit and capable of transforming the human perspective of the cosmos — even offering a view back in space and time, NatGeo reported. 

“This is a high-risk and a very high-payoff program,” NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy told reporters, as cited by NatGeo. “There are a lot of hard, long weeks ahead, where the telescope has to deploy perfectly.”

Today we’ll head back to Earth and look at where Americans can expect a winter wonderland this Christmas and where they should brace themselves for unseasonable heat. Then we’ll explore new findings linking the consumption of microplastics to inflammatory bowel disease.

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.

Wintry Christmas for the Northwest

While residents of the Northwest are waiting for wintry weather this Christmas, millions of Americans will encounter temperatures that are 20 to 30 degrees above average for the end of December, the Weather Channel reported.

First words: “Seattle, Portland, Medford — measurable snow is coming your way that is going to last at least through Sunday,” meteorologist Domenica Davis said on the Weather Channel. 

How much snow? Four or more inches in Portland, while extended forecasts from the National Weather Service showing that temperatures will drop to the teens and 20s this weekend, with a 90-percent chance of snow by Sunday, The Oregonian reported.

The expected snow is part of a cold and moist system moving south from the Gulf of Alaska, which already brought in rain on Wednesday, according to The Oregonian.

And the mountains will get even more. Parts of the Sierra Nevada may be buried in up to 10 feet of snow, CNN reported, citing the National Weather Service. And the rest of the region will still likely see between 5 to 8 feet, making travel conditions hazardous.

Utahns are also wishing for winter this weekend, with a few inches likely in the valleys and a foot or 2 in the mountains, according to The Salt Lake City Tribune. The mountains of northwest Montana could have more than 10 inches of snow, a local NBC affiliate reported.

A holiday rarity: Although snow piles are the norm for the mountains, the odds of such “holiday weather” hitting the cities of Seattle and Portland on Christmas is just 1 to 3 percent, according to CNN.

But the winter wonderland could be disrupted by labor shortages. With snow comes a need for plows — particularly amid peak Christmas travels — but city officials in Portland expressed some concerns about ongoing driver shortages.

While Oregon has about 1,100 snowplow drivers when fully staffed, an Oregon Department of Transportation spokesman told The Oregonian that there are currently about 100 vacancies statewide — warning that there could be some delays plowing state thoroughfares.

BUT SOME OF THE US WILL SIZZLE

Temperatures will be particularly warm across the Plains and Southern U.S., with Dallas reaching 86 degrees Fahrenheit on Saturday and other parts of Texas and Mississippi also climbing to unusual heights, according to the Weather Channel.

Record-high heat: “These are spots where we could break some records as far as highs go on Christmas Day,” Weather Channel meteorologist Ari Sarsalari said. 

In addition to Texas and Mississippi, parts of Kansas may also break heat records, according to The Wichita Eagle. Normal highs for this time of year in Wichita are in the low 40s, while the record high was 83 degrees in 1955, the Eagle reported. 

Similar forecasts were in store for Arkansas, where a local CBS affiliate suggested that “Santa will need to switch out his red suit for a t-shirt and some flip flops.” 

A strange combination: “The general theme is going to be way above average temperatures in the south and pretty well below average temperatures up in the Northwest,” Sarasalari said on the Weather Channel.  

Will all the snow help alleviate Western drought? That remains to be seen. 

A recent slew of “atmospheric rivers” — flows of moisture thousands of feet in the sky — brought in several inches of precipitation across the Northwest, but these areas still have not recovered from ongoing aridity, according to CNN.

Some 97 percent of the West remains in a drought, CNN reported. Such conditions cover 46 percent of the U.S. and Puerto Rico, and now affect 99.9 million people, according to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s National Drought Mitigation Center.

Takeaway: We have yet to see how much precipitation will roll in over the next week and how its overall impact on a parched environment. That said, National Integrated Drought Information System officials said that they are looking toward the incoming storm system as “a hopeful sign.” 

Bowel disease may be linked to microplastics: study 

Individuals affected by inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) have more microplastics in their feces than healthy controls, a new study has found.

Recent estimates indicate that people consume tens of thousands of microplastics — those that are less than 5 mm in length — from a variety of sources, ranging from bottled water to food to air, according to the study, published in Environmental Science & Technology. 

A new connection: While the health consequences of such consumption have long been unknown, researchers at Nanjing University in China have found that the development of IBD could be related to the ingestion of these fragments, a news release accompanying the study said.

“For the first time, this study reveals that there is a significant difference in the concentration of [microplastics] in feces from IBD patients and healthy people,” the authors stated.

What is IBD? This umbrella group of bowel ailments, which includes Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, is characterized by chronic inflammation of the digestive tract and can be caused or exacerbated by dietary choices and by environmental factors, according to the study. Meanwhile, the incidence of IBD continues to rise around the world.

How did the scientists link IBD to microplastics? The researchers obtained fecal samples from 50 healthy people — 30 male and 20 female — and 52 people — 31 male and 21 female — with IBD from different geographic regions of China.

Ultimately, they found that the samples from IBD patients contained about 1.5 times more microplastic pieces per gram than those from the healthy subjects. Individuals with more severe IBD symptoms also tended to have higher levels of fecal microplastics, according to the study. 

While the microplastics in IBD patient and health participant samples were similar in shape — described in the study as “sheets” and “fibers” — the IBD feces had more small particles, the scientists found.

Bottled water, takeout, dust: Through an accompanying questionnaire, the researchers confirmed that people in both groups who consumed bottled water, ate takeout food and were exposed to dust had higher levels of microplastics in their fecal samples.

They acknowledged, however, that it remains unclear as to whether this exposure triggers IBD or whether individuals with IBD accumulate more fecal microplastics due to their illness, stressing that “the underlying mechanism requires further study.”

UNCOVERING THE MYSTERIES OF MICROPLASTICS

Scientists are increasingly exploring the health impacts of microplastics — with this latest report coming on the heels of another study just a few weeks ago exploring the connection of baby bottle sterilization to microplastic exposure.

That study, which also included Nanjing University scientists and researchers from University of Massachusetts Amherst, found that the steam disinfection of silicone-rubber baby bottle nipples can expose both babies and the environment to microplastic and nanoplastic particles.

Potential hazard to infants: “Babies are the most sensitive group for any contaminants, not only microplastics,” Baoshan Xing, study co-author and professor of environmental and soil chemistry at UMass Amherst said in a statement.

The international research team employed a new microscopic technique to detect these particles, ultimately detecting that silicone rubber nipples undergo aging after repeated steam disinfections, according to the study, published in Nature Nanotechnology last month.

Last words: “We’ve identified this significant new source of microplastics to the environment,” Xing said. “Some plastics go into the sewer systems. They get into the water and landfills. They have such a long lifetime in the environment because they don’t decompose readily.”

Thursday Threats 

Louisiana’s longest oil leaker must pay the price; Mexican wheat fields discharging toxic nitrous oxide; and modern Iraq contends with environmental disaster. 

Louisiana firm to pay $43 million for longest oil spill on record

• Louisiana-based Taylor Energy will be paying more than $43 million in removal costs, civil penalties and damages for a Gulf of Mexico leak that has been discharging oil since 2004, the Department of Justice announced in a proposed consent decree, as reported by our colleague Caroline Vakil for The Hill. 
• The spill, which is the longest-running leak in U.S. history, resulted from a production platform collapse during Hurricane Ivan. As part of the settlement, the company will not “admit any liability to the United States or the State arising out of the MC-20 Incident.”

Mexico’s wheat fields releases dangerous greenhouse gasses

• While Mexico’s expansive wheat fields are critical to feeding the global population, research suggests that emissions of nitrous oxide from these fields are significantly underestimated — and could be double or even quadruple what the country has reported, according to The Washington Post. 
• Prior to planting wheat seeds, farmworkers funnel nitrogen fertilizer together with water down irrigation canals — a mix that leads to huge releases of nitrous oxide when no crop is in the ground to absorb it, the Post reported. Nitrous oxide has caused 6.5 percent of the world’s current warming and is 265 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in heating the atmosphere over a period of 100 years, according to the Post.

War, poverty and burning of polluting fossil fuels have left Iraq in ‘environmental ruin’

• Decades of war and poverty, coupled with continued fossil fuel extraction, have left modern Iraq in what Undark described as “environmental ruin.” So hazardous are the pollutant releases from oil refinery towers that one resident of northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region told Undark that “the smoke coats our skin and homes with black soot.” 
• Miscarriages have become commonplace, while Iraqi physicians say that “the many overlapping environmental insults could account for the country’s high rates of cancer, birth defects and other diseases,” according to Undark. The Iraqi Ministry of Health has in the past attributed cancer rates to depleted uranium deposits from the U.S. and British during the Gulf War, but both countries have disputed those claims, Undark reported. 

Equilibrium will be off on Friday, but we’d like to reiterate our appreciation for all of you who have subscribed to our newsletter in the past six months. We are so pleased to have you here, and we wish you a wonderful holiday season. 

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