Bloomington Herald-Times
November 20, 2009
Toxic waste
IU researcher studies atmospheric contamination of Great Lakes system
By Dawn Hewitt
November 20, 2009
Despite decades of efforts to clean up the Great Lakes, pollutants are entering them every day from what might seem like an unexpected source: the air.
A researcher and his assistants at Indiana University are monitoring that air and its contaminants -- and have been for more than a decade.
Ron Hites, a professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, and the project he leads with research scientist Ilora Basu, recently received a $5 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to continue work that both influences environmental policy and documents the effects of changes to it.
The Integrated Atmospheric Deposition Network is a joint project with Canada to monitor water pollution caused by air pollution in the Great Lakes. The Hites lab is responsible for U.S. data collection and analysis.
Air quality is monitored at three rural sites on the shoreline of lakes Superior, Michigan and Erie, with data collection every 12 days. Canada has monitoring sites on lakes Huron and Ontario. This study has been going on since 1990, and Hites has been overseeing it since 1994. Such long-term data can show clear effects of, for example, new restrictions on use of pesticides.
The network monitors polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), organochlorine pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and trace metals such as lead and cadmium -- substances which are harmful in the environment not only because of their toxicity, but because of their persistence. Some of these substances bioaccumulate: as tiny amounts are ingested by animals or people, they can build up to dangerous levels.
Two more data collection sites are downwind of big cities: Chicago and Cleveland. Those sites show that cities send high concentrations of contaminants into the lakes through the air.
"Thirty years ago, most water contamination came from rivers. One big sources of PCBs in Lake Michigan was Johnson Outdoor Motor Co.," Hites said in a telephone interview. "They were using PCBs in outboard motor manufacturing, and discharging it directly into the lake.
"Direct, point sources (of pollution) are easy to find, and easy to turn off. Most point sources were eliminated in early to mid-1980s. Occasionally there are new ones. But now, most contamination is from atmospheric deposition" -- that is, caused by air pollution.
Hites' lab measures both wet deposition -- air pollution that rain picks up and drops -- and dry -- particles that fall out of the air.
He said the $5 million grant will help pay the four technical staff members, one grad student and one post doctoral researcher at IU, plus the five site operators who staff the monitoring stations.
IADN researchers don't sample water in the Great Lakes, and long-term data on Great Lakes water quality doesn't exist.
But longitudinal data on Great Lakes fish does exist -- fish that have been swimming in the waters, consuming pollutants for years.
And Hites said there's a clear relationship between the contaminants researchers find in the air and in the fish.
"Think about Lake Superior. There's nothing up there except Duluth, and everyone leaves in winter," Hites joked. "So how does Lake Superior get polluted? Big cities like Chicago put stuff into atmosphere, it drifts all over the place and comes down in Lake Superior," he said. "It ends up in fish from atmospheric delivery of pollutants that originated in cities."
Most people think of PCBs as being in the ground, not in the air. Even in Bloomington, where PCB contamination from old industrial uses remains a problem, the ambient level of PCBs in the air is not worth worrying about, Hites said.
Although PCBs were banned in 1976, more enter the Great Lakes every day, Hites said, often "from dump sites in Chicago and sludge drying fields."
The federal ban of PCBs prevented manufacture and use in new products, but the substance remain legal in closed applications such as capacitors and transformers, designed to be sealed and never opened. When such devices are taken out of use, they can end up in junk yards, where they can be damaged and inadvertently opened. The liquid contents can seep out and volatilize -- turn into a gas -- be picked up by the wind, then dropped into the lakes.
"In in the '80s, the concentration (of PCBs) in the environment and in fish in the Great Lakes did decrease dramatically, by a factor of two or three," Hites said. That's when point sources of the contaminant were found and shut off.
"Since then, PCB concentrations haven't changed much on average. The reason, we think, is that there continue to be sources: some transformers and capacitors (that contain PCBs) are still in use. Imagine in Chicago, a building is torn down. Ballasts in old fluorescent lights used to contain PCBs. When they bust, the PCBs go into atmosphere. Or if there's a fire (in an old building)."
On the other hand, consider lindane, a persistent chlorinated pesticide. Canada banned its use as a seed treatment in 2004, and the U.S. in 2009, although it's still legal for head lice treatment.
"Its concentrations (in the Great Lakes) have gone down dramatically. The graph shows rapid, exponential decrease. The ban was effective," Hites said.
Hites said the EPA and the Great Lakes National Program Office are most interested in his results, and because it is an international project, reports are exchanged with Canada, and distributed to all eight Great Lake states.
Environmental scientists generally agree, Hites said, that the bans on persistent toxic compounds such as DDT and PCBs have been generally effective.
"Some people say we shouldn't have banned them," Hites said.
"But it's harder to determine indirect effects of compounds, like on calcium metabolism," Hites said, referring to DDT's link to weakened eggshells in fish-eating raptors.
"The main problem isn't the toxicity (of the compounds), but their persistence. Chemists love them. They're easy to make and have an infinite shelf life. That's the problem. When they get out in the environment, the unintended consequences show up. If DDT degraded after two years, it wouldn't be so much of a problem. If you can think of all the possible consequences (of a persistent toxic compound in the environment), it wouldn't be a problem. But you can't," Hites said.
Bored by numbers? Try IU prof's 'Mathletics'
New book explores the math behind sporting events
By Mike Leonard
November 20, 2009, last update: 11/19 @ 11:46 pm
The best and worst case for incorporating math and statistics into the evaluation of sports occurred last Sunday during the Indianapolis Colts game against the New England Patriots.
As even casual football fans know, the revered and reviled New England coach, Bill Belichick, stunned the sports world by directing his team to try to complete a fourth-down-and-two conversion near the end of the game at the Colts' 29-yard line.
Orthodoxy would dictate a punt by the Patriots to force the Colts to drive 70-80 yards down the field for a winning score.
Belichick's Patriots did not make the first down. The Colts scored the winning touchdown with 13 seconds left in the contest. "And every announcer and practically every sports writer in the world called Belichick an idiot," Kelley School of Business professor Wayne Winston said this week.
"They're wrong," Winston said. "The numbers were in his favor."
The fact that the Patriots did not win the game does not refute his argument, the IU professor said. "I'm not, and no one who uses math, will argue that the numbers are infallible. They're a tool to use in making decisions." After all, sometimes a 20 percent probability will prevail.
Winston is the author of the recently published book "Mathletics: How Gamblers, Managers, and Sports Enthusiasts Use Mathematics in Baseball, Basketball, and Football." He'll be at Howard's Bookstore from 5-7 p.m. today to chat with the public and sign copies of the book.
There already is a significant body of work to bolster the math-based approach embraced by Winston and his longtime friend and fellow MIT graduate, Jeff Sagarin.
"I think most people first recognized how math can be used in sports through the book 'Moneyball,' which explained how the Oakland Athletics could compete with franchises like the New York Yankees spending far, far less money," Winston said.
People such as Winston delve deep into sports statistics to cough out values and probabilities far outside of traditional baseball and basketball box scores. Through the use of such statistics, they can help coaches decide what player lineups work well together and which ones don't, for example.
Winston and Sagarin worked as advisers to the NBA's Dallas Mavericks (owned by IU graduate Mark Cuban) for most of the past decade, when the Mavericks went from one of the worst to one of the best teams in professional basketball.
"Math gives you surprising answers," Winston said. "In my book, I give you the math, but I also give you the thinking behind the math. You can read around the math and if you're a sports fan, I think it's still going to be interesting.
"But in the publishing industry, they tell you if you have equations in your book, it's never going to sell," he added with a laugh. "If nothing else, I hope that some people will embrace 'Mathletics' as a fun way to teach math. If numbers bore you to death, perhaps they'll make more sense when they're applied to sports or gambling."
Flu cases continue decline, state officials say
By Dann Denny
November 19, 2009
Like a balloon with a slow leak, the H1N1 flu continues to lose steam across the state.
The percentage of people reporting to hospital emergency departments with flu-like illness fell to 6 percent last week, compared to 7.9 percent the week before and 10.6 percent the week before that.
That 6 percent figure is less than half that of the historic high -- 12.7 percent -- recorded the week of Oct. 26.
Of Hoosiers who visited doctors' offices last week, the percentage reporting flu-like symptoms was 10.2 percent, compared to 11.3 and 13.1 percent the previous two weeks.
"We are continuing to see encouraging trends in influenza-like illness activity in the state," said state epidemiologist Pam Pontones in a teleconference call today. "The indicators all point to a downward trend in activity."
Pontones said the reason a greater percentage of people with flu-like illness are going to doctors' offices rather than emergency rooms is that the H1N1 flu is affecting a disproportionately high number of people under 25, who typically seek medical care in a doctor's office rather than a hospital.
Last week the rate of influenza-like or pneumonia-related hospitalizations per 100 inpatient beds was 18 percent lower than the previous three-week average, with the largest decrease occurring in the 0- to 18-years (40 percent) and 19- to 24-years (44 percent) age groups.
The percentage of hospitals saying their number of influenza-like illness hospitalizations is elevated or slightly elevated this year fell to 53 percent, compared to 55 and 74 percent the previous two weeks.
"And no hospitals reported last week that they are having increased difficulty with managing those patient populations," Pontones said.
Another encouraging trend last week was the influenza-like illness-related absentee rates among health care personnel, which fell 31 percent from the previous three-week average.
Six deaths
There were 6 confirmed fatalities last week caused by the H1N1 flu, three more than two weeks ago but three fewer than the week before that.
"That is not surprising," Pontones said. "With past influenza pandemics, we've seen weekly fluctuations in the number of deaths, and that's what we're seeing with this pandemic."
Since June 1, there have been 28 H1N1 flu deaths in the state, and two deaths from the seasonal flu. All but one of the H1N1 deaths have been among those 64 and younger.
And with most of the H1N1 deaths there have been underlying medical conditions that predispose them to fatal complications," Pontones said. Pregnancy is considered one of those underlying conditions.
H1N1 vaccine
So far the state health department has received 890,300 doses of the H1N1 flu vaccine, which it has sent to county health departments based on each county's population. To date 438,856 Hoosiers have been vaccinated.
People 6 months to 24 years have received 58 percent of those vaccinations, while 36.7 percent have gone to health care workers and 20.6 percent have gone to pregnant women.
"We continue to get questions from parents and health care providers about the safety of the H1N1 injectable and nasal vaccine and continue to hear rumors that it's an experimental vaccine that has not been adequately tested."
Joan Duwve, medical director for Public Health and Preparedness, said the vaccine is manufactured the same way seasonal flu vaccine is made. The only difference between the two is the strain of flu the vaccine is designed to provide protection for.
Duwve also said that Tamiflu, which can lessen the duration and severity of the H1N1 flu, is not a panacea.
"Tamiflu is a great drug ... but it's not a perfect drug," she said. "It does not eliminate the possibility that there will be complications."
