Swarming locusts may be drawn to overgrazed fields because the insects prefer to feed on low-nitrogen plants in areas where the soil is depleted, US and Chinese researchers said Thursday.
In bad years, locust swarms can inhabit as much as 20 percent of the Earth’s surface, particularly in Asia and Africa, and negatively impact the livelihoods of one in 10 people, according to the article in the journal Science.
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We meet Mariette Lieferink in a McDonalds near Gauteng, on the edge of Johannesburg, buying a dozen sickly sweet drinks. She’s no one’s idea of a leading environmental activist. She wears a tight-fitting, scarlet, embroidered Chinese dress, high heels, and make-up. She is nearly 60, a mother of four, grandmother of two and she used to be a preacher. Now she is head of the Federation for a Sustainable Environment, and works flat out to clean up the massively polluted mining areas of Johannesburg.
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A new report on environmental pollution in China has shown that around ten per cent of the country’s farmland is heavily contaminated with lead, zinc, and other heavy metals.
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BANGALORE: The next time you go to buy vegetables in the market, check if they are coming from villages around Varthur Tank, Bellandur Tank, Byramangala Tank and Nagawara Tank areas, for a recent study conducted by city-based Indian Institute of Horticulture Research (IIHR) has revealed that vegetables grown in these areas contain heavy toxic metal pollutants.
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An American scientist working with a team of Indonesians scientists has discovered a new giant black warrior wasp species. The wasp will be added to the list of items named after the country’s national symbol, the mythical bird Garuda.
The insect-eating predator was discovered by Lynn S. Kimsey, a professor of entomology and the director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, while working with 12 scientists from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) during an expedition to the Mekongga Mountains of Sulawesi.
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The national product quality watchdog has found heavy metal elements in some toy products, which experts say can accumulate in children’s bodies and cause chronic poisoning if they are absorbed.
A recent spot-check by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine showed that lead and chrome were found in toy products, China Central Television (CCTV) reported Sunday.
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China’s environmental protection ministry is cracking down on pollution caused by lead and other heavy metals following a spate of poisoning cases and reports that much of the country is contaminated with toxic materials.
The new rules were announced late Wednesday, after dozens of children living near a battery plant in southern China’s Guangdong province were reported sickened by lead poisoning.
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The New Taipei City Department of Agriculture has launched an investigation into allegations that arsenic-tainted fish are being distributed for sale to wet markets in the Taipei area.
The media report that made the allegations added that officials and consumers were both unaware that the fish had been caught from an area where fish are contaminated and should not be consumed.
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As you put on your makeup, you may be spreading trace amounts of lead across your cheeks, cadmium on your eyelashes and arsenic on your lips.
In lab testing of 49 cosmetic products, Environmental Defence found varying levels of toxic heavy metals in all of them. One contained levels far exceeding Health Canada recommended limits, according to the report “Heavy Metal Hazard,” released Monday. None of the products listed the metals on the labels.
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Looking for a good way to consume a higher daily dose of lead, arsenic, and cadmium? Try smoking Chinese cigarettes.
According to a Reuters report, a recent tobacco study conducted by researchers from the Buffalo-based Roswell Park Cancer Institute found that cigarettes produced in China contain three times the amount of heavy metals found in Canadian-manufactured brands.
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Popularity: 9% [?]
Abandoned mines in Romania leach water contaminated by heavy metals into rivers. A Hungarian chemical plant produces more than 100,000 tonnes of toxic substances a year. Soil in eastern Slovakia is contaminated with cancer-producing PCBs.
The flood of toxic sludge in Hungary is but one of the ecological horrors that lurk in Eastern Europe 20 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, serving as a reminder that the region is dotted with disasters waiting to happen.
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A United Nations team has finished collecting dozens of soil and water samples in a region of northern Nigeria where acute lead poisoning due to backyard gold digging has sickened hundreds of children this year, leading to excess deaths.
The five-member team from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) will spend the next two days working in its mobile laboratory to analyze the samples and present preliminary findings to local and federal government officials by Monday.
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Locusts have always been a problem but never to the degree that they are today. As temperatures have increased, Locusts have moved with the climate and are now causing havoc as far north in Europe as France.
When faced with a shortage of crops to eat, Locusts have been known to eat the carcasses of other Locusts and failing that, they have been known to eat the clothes of people’s backs.
The Locusts in Revelation Chapter 9 for 2,000 years have defied explanation until now. Read More / Watch Video »
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Ground water in Punjab, India, has been contaminated to such an extent that it is now causing DNA to mutate in people who drink it, warns a research commissioned by the Punjab Water Pollution Control Board.
The study was conducted over a period of two years by a team of senior doctors from the post-graduate Institute of Medical Education in Chandigarh.
It found that poisonous pesticides and heavy metals have entered the food chain, and this is now making congenital deformities, cancer and kidney damage exceedingly common. Read More / Watch Video »
Popularity: 13% [?]
BEIJING (AFP) – Every 30 seconds a baby is born with physical defects in China, partly due to the country’s deteriorating environment, state media said, citing a senior family planning official.
The figure, reported by the China Daily in its weekend edition, adds up to almost 1.1 million in a year, or about seven percent of all births in the world’s most populous nation.
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From loner to swarming locust – scientists watched the transformation unfold. It is one of nature’s most radical transformations – the moment a crowd of harmless desert locusts begins to swarm into a devastating plague.
Now scientists from the UK and Australia say they have discovered the trigger – the brain chemical serotonin.
The molecule is best known in humans as a target of anti-depressant drugs.
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Popularity: 8% [?]
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