treatment

A Vaccine For Bees | Earth Wise

February 27, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The US has seen annual reductions in honey bee colonies since 2006. According to the USDA, there are many factors that have contributed to the decline. These include parasites, pests, insecticides, disease, and a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder in which worker bees abandon a hive and leave behind the queen.

One of major threats to bee colonies is American foulbrood disease, which is a bacterial condition that attacks bee larvae. It is highly contagious and has no cure. Until now, the only treatment method required burning the colony of infected bees along with the hives and equipment and treating nearby bee colonies with antibiotics.

Recently, the USDA has approved a conditional license for the world’s first vaccine for honey bees. The vaccine contains inactive bacteria of the type that causes American foulbrood disease.

The vaccine is incorporated into the royal jelly fed by worker bees to the queen bee. The queen ingests the feed and keeps some of vaccine in her ovaries. This gives bee larvae immunity to the disease as they hatch and thereby reduces death from the illness.

According to the California State Beekeepers Association, the new vaccine could be a major breakthrough for protecting bees. Preventing the infection in hives could avoid costly, destructive measures and allow the beekeepers to focus on other important elements of keeping bees healthy.

Bees as pollinators play a critical role in many ecosystems. For humankind, pollinators such as bees, birds, and bats are responsible for about a third of the world’s crop production.

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US approves world’s first vaccine for declining honey bees

Photo, posted June 6, 2022, courtesy of Bernd Thaller via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Capturing Methane To Feed Fish | Earth Wise

December 30, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Methane in the atmosphere is an extremely potent greenhouse gas. Its warming potential is about 85 times that of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. It also worsens air quality by increasing atmospheric ozone. Many human activities add methane to the atmosphere, notably emissions from landfills and oil and gas facilities.

Capturing methane from these sources for subsequent use is currently uneconomical but new research from Stanford University analyzes the market for using the methane to feed bacteria to produce fishmeal.

Methane-consuming bacteria called methanotrophs can be grown in chilled, water-filled bioreactors containing pressurized methane, oxygen, and nutrients. The bacteria produce a protein-rich biomass that can be used as fishmeal in aquaculture. This could offset demand for fishmeal made from small fish or plant-based feeds that require land, water, and fertilizer.

Some companies already do this using natural gas provided by utility pipelines, but it would be far better for the environment to use methane emitted at large landfills, wastewater treatment plants, and oil and gas facilities.

Consumption of seafood has more than quadrupled since 1960, depleting wild fish stocks. Farmed fish now provide half of all the animal-sourced seafood we eat.

The Stanford research analyzed the cost of methanotrophic fishmeal production under various scenarios and found it to be very competitive with and in some cases considerably cheaper than current market prices for fishmeal.

According to the study, this process could profitably supply total global demand for fishmeal with methane captured in the U.S. alone.

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Stanford researchers reveal how to turn a global warming liability into a profitable food security solution

Photo, posted April 30, 2017, courtesy of Artur Rydzewski via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Pesticide From Beer | Earth Wise

July 23, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Researchers from the Neiker Basque Institute for Agricultural Research and Development in Spain have demonstrated that a combination of rapeseed cake and beer bagasse can be used to reduce populations of soil parasites and increase crop yields.

Beer bagasse is spent brewers’ grain – the stuff that is left over after the beer is made. Beer brewing generates substantial amounts of by-products, including large amounts of spent grain. It already has some practical uses, including as a feedstock for biofuel, as a food additive, and it even has some medical uses. But the new research has shown that the bagasse can be the basis for a biodisinfestation treatment to be used in agriculture. The aim is to disinfect soils, protect soil microorganisms, and increase crop yields.

The actual material studied was a mixture of beer bagasse, rapeseed cake, and a generous amount of fresh cow manure. The high nitrogen content of the mixture promotes the activity of beneficial microorganisms in the soil, which helps to break down organic matter and kill off nematodes and other parasites that damage crops.

Nematodes are common parasites that can penetrate plant roots to lay their eggs, which damages the root and prevents the plants from absorbing nutrients effectively. Application of the bagasse-based mixture over 12 months increased crop yields by 15% and boosted healthy soil microbes.

The study demonstrated that agricultural byproducts can be an effective treatment for root-knot nematodes and other soil parasites, increase crop yields, and help promote sustainable food systems to reduce waste from the agricultural industry. The researchers hope to identify other potential organic treatments for tackling soil parasite problems.

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Beer byproduct mixed with manure proves an excellent organic pesticide

Photo, posted July 1, 2011, courtesy of Quinn Dombrowski via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Cleaner Water Using Corn | Earth Wise

May 12, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Corn is the largest agricultural crop in the U.S., and it is also one of the most wasteful. About half of the harvest ends up as stover – corn stalks, leaves, husks, and cobs – once the kernels are used for food.

Corn stover has relatively few commercial or industrial uses. It can be used to produce biofuel, but that is not very energy efficient. It is sometimes used as a low-quality livestock feed as well. Mostly, it is just burned if it is used at all.

Researchers at the University of California Riverside have developed an energy-efficient way to make good use of stover by transforming it into activated carbon for use in water treatment.

Activated carbon – often called activated charcoal – is an organic material that is specially treated to contain millions of microscopic pores that make it highly absorbent. It has many industrial uses, the most common of which is for filtering pollutants out of drinking water. Most household water filters such as Brita filters as well as the ones built into refrigerators make use of activated carbon.

The Riverside researchers explored methods for producing activated carbon from charred corn stover and found that processing the material with hot compressed water – a process known as hydrothermal carbonization – produced highly absorbent activated carbon with superior properties compared to material produced by slow pyrolysis, where corn stover is charred at increasing temperatures over a long period of time.

According to the researchers, it is important to create approaches that convert waste into high-value materials, fuels, and chemicals in order to create new value streams and eliminate the environmental harm that comes from a so-called “take-make-dispose” economic model.

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Cleaner Water Through Corn

Photo, posted September 15, 2010, courtesy of the United Soybean Board / the Soybean Checkoff via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Antibiotics In The Environment

June 6, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Antibiotics make their way into the environment in many ways. Sources of antibiotic pollution include the waste from large-scale animal farms and the wastewater from hospitals, municipalities, and antibiotic manufacturing.

A new study has discovered concentrations of antibiotics in some of the world’s rivers exceed safe levels by up to 300 times. In the project, researchers looked for 14 commonly used antibiotics in rivers in 72 countries across six continents. They found antibiotics at 65% of all the sites they examined.

The antibiotic ciproflaxacin was the compound that most frequently exceeded safe levels, surpassing that threshold in 51 places. The antibiotic metronidazole exceeded safe levels by the biggest margin. Concentrations of this antibiotic at one site in Bangladesh was 300 times greater than the safe level. The most prevalent antibiotic was trimethoprim. It was detected at 307 of the 711 sites.

Some of the world’s most iconic rivers were sampled as a part of this study, including the Danube, Mekong, Seine, Thames, Tiber and Tigris.

The project, which was led by the University of York, found that high-risk sites were often located near wastewater treatment systems, waste or sewage dumps, and in some areas of political unrest.

Safe levels for antibiotics, which were recently established by the AMR Industry Alliance, range from 20,000 to 32,000 nanograms per liter depending on the compound.

According to the research team, solutions to the problem of antibiotic contamination should include infrastructure investment, tighter regulation, and the remediation of already contaminated sites.

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Antibiotics found in some of the world’s rivers exceed ‘safe’ levels, global study finds

Photo, posted October 7, 2013, courtesy of Nicola via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Llamas And The Flu

December 21, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Last year’s flu season was the worst in 40 years. More than 80,000 people died in the U.S. last year from the flu and its complications. Flu vaccines are the best preventative we have, but there are still high mortality rates around the world. Some individuals respond poorly to vaccination, and variations in viruses makes targeting with the optimal antigen very difficult. The World Health Organization estimates that between 290,000 and 650,000 people die from seasonal flu worldwide each year.

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Urban Streams Are Breeding Superbugs

August 14, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

City streams are subjected to a constant onslaught of synthetic chemicals found in pharmaceuticals and personal care products. Wastewater treatment facilities are not designed to filter out these compounds. Instead, they flow into surface waters where they impact aquatic organisms like microbes – which perform key ecosystem services like removing excess nutrients and breaking down leaf litter.