GreenWatch

B. McPherson If you swim in warm, fresh water experts recommend nose plugs. Our home planet is warming. Not by much so far, only a degree or two. But already we are seeing an increase in distribution of diseases that are thought of as ‘tropical’. North America and other temperate developed areas have enjoyed freedom from many parasites and microbes that plague the warmer climates. This summer a microbe found in warm water, soil, hot springs has attacked people. In Pakistan, they are trying to track down the source of a brain eating amoeba. Sounds like something from a grade B movie. Not at all. In the US there are fatalities from this common microbe. Two children in Virginia died last August of the parasite after jumping into a warm lake. The meningitis the amoeba causes rarely gets far enough up the nasal passages to cause trouble, but the USDA has reported 32 infections over the past ten years. Once contracted the microbe causes death in 98% of victims. Caution is urg...

B. Mcpherson The cause of the dolphin deaths has been attributed to a measles like virus. No answers yet about the pelican deaths Thousands of deaths have occurred in the waters off Peru. Dolphins have been washing ashore in large numbers and thousands of sea birds, mostly pelicans have littered the shore. The jury is still out on the cause of death of the birds, but the culprit in the deaths of the dolphins has been named. Samples were sent out of country to confirm the suspicions that a virus caused the mammals deaths. “Specialists from the Marine Mammal Center (MMC), in the United States, have confirmed the death of thousands of dolphins in northern Peru was caused by the ‘morbillivirus’ .” Peru this Week   The numerous carcasses of the marine mammals have not been removed from the public and incinerated or otherwise safely disposed of, leading to criticism from an environmental NGO that the highly contagious virus might be able to “species jump” to humans. ...