All Posts Tagged With: "Indiana"

Excerpt:

More than half of the United States’ top mercury-emitting power plants increased releases of the toxic metal in 2008, according to a report issued today by an environmental group.

The Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) study shows mercury emissions rising in 2008 at 27 of the nation’s top 50 polluting plants.

Overall, electric utilities’ mercury emissions dropped 4.7 percent from 2007 to 2008 — the last year for which data is available — while gross power generation declined by about 2 percent, the report says. Emissions of the toxic pollutant from the top 50 plants combined fell slightly over that period by about 0.26 percent.

Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that can accumulate in lakes and rivers, contaminating aquatic life. Exposure to mercury can interfere with brain function and can lead to birth defects and other developmental problems.

Power plants are the single largest U.S. source of mercury air pollution, the report says, producing more than 40 percent of all human-caused mercury emissions nationwide.

Rates of infection of Amblyomma americanum (L.) by Ehrlichia chaffeensis were
compared in 100 ticks collected from sites in each of four states: Indiana,
North Carolina, Kentucky, and Mississippi. The overall infection rates were
similar among sites, ranging from 1 to 4%. Because pathogenic differences may
exist between E. chaffeensis strains, nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR)
amplification of the variable-length PCR target (VLPT), and sequencing of the
amplicons were performed to differentiate between strains. The most common
infecting strains at all sites exhibited a repeat profile of 1,2,3,4
(corresponding to the Arkansas/Jax/Osceola and Liberty strains). To determine
whether the minimum infection rates (MIRs) or the most common infecting strain
were changing over time in southern Indiana sites, 2765 ticks from six counties
in 2000 and 837 ticks from seven counties in 2004 also were examined in pools of
five ticks per pool. The MIRs for 2000 and 2004 were 3.5 and 4.2% respectively,
suggesting that the overall MIRs remained low. At two sites, in Pike and
Harrison counties, however, infection rates more than doubled from 2000 to 2004
(7 to 16% and 0.3 to 2.7% respectively). Across all sites, the most common
infecting strains (Arkansas/Jax/Osceola and Liberty) did not significantly
change (68% in 2000; 79% in 2004). Continued