Month: September 2017

Here’s a statistic for you to consider: the U.N. estimates that over 30 percent of the food that is produced every year never gets eaten. Now one enterprising Nigerian entrepreneur has built an app to help get some of that food to those who need it. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …

Globally, around one-third of all food produced for human consumption is wasted or lost before it can reach consumers. The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization says even if just one-fourth of that food could be saved, it would be enough to feed 870 million hungry people.For VOA, Faiza Elmasry reports, while Faith Lapidus narrates. …

Harvey’s filthy floodwaters pose significant dangers to human safety and the environment even after water levels drop far enough that Southeast Texas residents no longer fear for their lives, according to experts.   Houston already was notorious for sewer overflows following rainstorms. Now the system, with 40 wastewater treatment plants across the far-flung metropolis, faces an unprecedented challenge.   State officials said several dozen sewer overflows had been reported in areas affected by the hurricane, including Corpus Christi. Private septic systems in rural areas could fail as well.   Also stirred into the noxious brew are spilled fuel, runoff from waste sites, lawn pesticides and pollutants from the region’s many petroleum refineries and chemical plants.   The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported Sunday that of the 2,300 water systems contacted by federal and state regulators, 1,514 were fully operational. More than 160 systems issued notices advising people to boil water before drinking it, and 50 were shut down. Water safe in Houston The public works department in Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, said its water was safe. The system has not experienced the kind of pressure drop that makes it easier for contaminants to slip into the system and is usually the reason for a boil-water order, spokesman Gary Norman said.   In a statement Thursday, federal and state environmental officials said their primary concerns were the availability of healthy drinking water and “ensuring wastewater systems are being monitored, tested for safety and managed appropriately.”   About 85 percent of …

Officials in San Diego County have declared a public health emergency because of the spread of the liver disease hepatitis A.   Infections have killed 15 people and hospitalized nearly 400 more, with the homeless population hit hardest since the outbreak started last November.   The Union-Tribune reports that Friday’s emergency declaration helps the county request state assistance and gives legal protection for new sanitation measures. Hand washing, street cleaning   Those measures include about 40 portable hand-washing stations for areas with concentrations of homeless. The virus lives in human feces and spreads if people who have used the bathroom don’t properly clean their hands. Crews also plan to use bleach-spiked water for high-pressure washing to remove “all feces, blood, bodily fluids or contaminated surfaces,” according to a sanitation plan included in a letter delivered to San Diego city government Thursday.   In the coming weeks, other cities in the region will see hand-washing and street-sanitizing efforts, said Dr. Wilma Wooten, the region’s public health officer. Preventative strategy not enough   To date, vaccination and education have been San Diego County’s main preventative strategy. Though thousands of doses of vaccine were distributed, infection rates have not slowed much, and death reports have accelerated in recent weeks.   The sanitation measures were inspired by a campaign in Los Angeles, home to tens of thousands of homeless.   “We know that L.A. has had no local cases of hepatitis A related to the strain that we’re seeing here in San Diego,” Wooten …

The Autism Society estimates about 1 percent of the world’s population is on the autism spectrum. The disorder can affect a person’s ability to interact with others and respond to emotions and social cues. But a new app for Google Glass might be helping. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …

Floodwaters have inundated at least five highly contaminated toxic waste sites near Houston, raising concerns that the pollution there might spread. The Associated Press visited the sites this past week, some of them still only accessible by boat. Long a center of the American petrochemical industry, the Houston metro area has more than a dozen such Superfund sites, designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as being among the most intensely contaminated places in the country. No immediate response EPA spokeswoman Amy Graham could not immediately provide details on when agency experts would inspect the Houston-area sites. She said Friday that staff had checked on two other Superfund sites in Corpus Christi and found no significant damage. “We will begin to assess other sites after flood waters recede in those areas,” Graham said. Near the Highlands Acid Pit, across the swollen San Jacinto River from Houston, Dwight Chandler sipped beer and swept out the thick muck caked inside his devastated home. He worried whether Harvey’s floodwaters had also washed in pollution from the Superfund site just a couple blocks away. In the 1950s, the pit was filled with toxic sludge and sulfuric acid from oil and gas operations. Though 22,000 cubic yards of hazardous waste and soil were excavated in the 1980s, the site is still considered a potential threat to groundwater, and EPA maintains monitoring wells there. When he was growing up in Highlands, Chandler, now 62, said he and his friends used to swim in the by-then abandoned pit. …

The smoke from massive wildfires hangs like fog over large parts of the U.S. West, an irritating haze causing health concerns, forcing sports teams to change schedules and disrupting life from Seattle to tiny Seeley Lake, Montana.   Air quality has been rated unhealthy across the region because of blazes that show no signs of abating. Officials said Friday that one of the worst U.S. wildfire seasons in terms of land burned is likely to keep scorching Western states and blanketing them with smoke until later this fall. Headaches, raspy voices   People who live in small towns to the populous San Francisco Bay Area have had enough.   “Last night, I went to sleep with the windows open and woke up with a stomachache and a headache,” said Tresa Snow, who owns a hair salon in Brookings, Oregon, near a large wildfire. “I knew before I could even smell it that the fire was back. And you can hear my voice, kind of raspy. We’re all kind of like that.”   She said business has been down in the town near the California border.    “Businesses are closing because they don’t have their help,” Snow said. “People have been evacuating.”   As the long Labor Day weekend approached, several high school football teams changed their season-opening games to avoid the smoke, and other athletic events have been postponed.  ​Fleeing homes in Burbank   In Southern California, an erratic wildfire just north of Los Angeles forced the closure of Interstate …

Floodwaters are beginning to recede around Houston, and although the rain in Houston has stopped, VOA’s Carol Pearson reports, assessing its impact on the health of Houston’s residents is only just beginning. …

U.S. maritime archaeologists say they have discovered two shipwrecks in northern Lake Huron believed to be steamers that sunk more than a century ago. Researchers announced Friday that they have confirmed the discoveries of the wooden freighter Ohio, which sank in 1894 and the steel-hulled steamer Choctaw, which went down in 1915. Officials say the 202-foot-long Ohio was loaded with grain when a passing schooner collided with it, sinking both vessels. Five crew members from the schooner, which has never been found, died in the accident. The 266-foot Choctaw was carrying coal when it was struck by a Canadian Steamship Company freighter in dense fog. All crew members from both vessels were rescued from that accident. Researchers with the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary say they found evidence of the vessels in May while using high-resolution sonar to map the bottom of Lake Huron. The scientists say they sent remotely operated vehicles into the water in recent weeks to get video evidence of the vessels and to confirm their identities. Officials say the vessels are well-preserved in the Great Lakes’ cold freshwater and say in the future they would like to open the sites to public diving. Researchers say they believe there are about 200 shipwrecks in a 4,300-square-mile sanctuary of Lake Huron, with about half of the shipwrecks discovered. …

When U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson returns to Earth on Saturday from the International Space Station, she will have spent more time in space than any other American. Whitson will have logged 665 days in space over three separate missions, the equivalent of about one year and 10 months outside the Earth’s atmosphere. The world record belongs to Russian Astronaut Gennady Padalka, who spent 879 days in space. Whitson is scheduled to return to Earth Saturday night in Kazakhstan in a Russian Soyuz capsule. She will then travel to Germany before heading home to Houston, which is still crippled from Hurricane Harvey. Whitson said in an email to the Associated Press that her home was not damaged in the storm. However, she said the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston was temporarily closed except for essential personnel, such as those staffing Mission Control for the space station mission. “Any trepidations I might have about returning in the aftermath of a hurricane are entirely eclipsed by the all those folks keeping our mission going,” she said. Whitson, a biochemist, began her third and latest mission on the International Space Station last November. During the mission, she performed a spacewalk and also become the first woman to command the space station twice. She and the other crew members aboard the International Space Station also pursued hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science. At 57, Whitson is the oldest woman to have been in space. The astronaut has said she …

Although 75 percent of our planet is covered with water, many countries around the world suffer from a low supply of fresh water. There is plenty of water in the ocean, but removing the salt is very expensive, and only coastal nations with an ample supply of power, such as the Arab Gulf States, can afford to rely on desalination. Now, as sources of fresh water dwindle, emerging new technologies could make the technology much more cost effective. VOA’s George Putic reports. …