Oceanographers study the impact of toxic ash from the L.A. wildfires
Los Angeles — A research ship from the San Diego-based Scripps Institute of Oceanography goes out every three months along the Southern California coastline.
Recently, the ship was traveling the coast collecting plankton samples, small organisms that many larger fish live on. But this trip was anything but ordinary.
"This is something I've never experienced before, and I don't know anybody else that has," Scripps Institute scientist Dr. Rasmus Swalethorp told CBS News.
What the researchers experienced, by total coincidence, was pulling up to Los Angeles in January as the deadly and devastating Palisades and Eaton fires were burning thousands of homes, incinerating plastic, paint, asbestos and car batteries. The fires released a cloud of toxic ash that settled over the ocean for about 100 miles.
Crew members put on masks to protect against the smoke as black ash settled on the ship, while the plankton they collected was also swimming in ash.
"All the organisms that are going to live down on the seabed, they're certainly going to be exposed to this, potentially transporting whatever is in that ash further up the food chain," Swalethorp said.
Scientists with the Scripps Institute have been collecting California ocean samples for 75 years. The new ash-laden samples will be added to this vast archive.
"We know what the fish are like under normal circumstances, but the scientific opportunity here is to look at the condition of the fish when they're exposed to all the ash," said Andrew Thompson, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Commercial and recreational fishing in California brings in about $1 billion a year and supports 193,000 full and part-time jobs, according to numbers from the NOAA. While it could take years to know how, or if, these toxins impact fish, both fishermen and restaurants say knowing the answer is important.
"The damage that these fires has caused is like woven so deeply into the fabric of our food systems that it's something that you know, it should be just an absolute red flag for anyone involved…a red flag for change," said Michael Cimarusti, a chef at the L.A. seafood restaurant Providence. "Like, what can be done to ensure that these kinds of fires, like, don't happen again."
Swalethorp says monitoring how ocean life responds will continue for years.
"We are also going to be looking for chromium, for mercury," Swalethorp said. "…Things we don't want in the ocean."
But because of a grim kind of luck, scientists at least have a head start in knowing exactly what toxins they are looking for.
Dolly Parton's husband, Carl Dean, died at age 82. Here's a look back at their love story
Federal employees received a new email about weekly tasks. Here's how agencies responded.
"Anora" wins 5 Oscars at 97th Academy Awards
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Tagomics awarded £860k grant for colorectal cancer diagnostic
Tagomics has been awarded £860,000 ($1.1m) from Innovate UK to develop a test for diagnosing early-stage colorectal cancer (CRC). The Cambridge, UK-based company said the money from the UK government innovation agency's Biomedical Catalyst programme would help fund a £1.2m project that is applying its Interlace multiomics workflow platform towards the detection of genetic and epigenetic mutations associated with CRC. This includes the development of new models for analysing patients' multiomic profiles to identify new disease biomarkers. Once the project concludes, a pilot study of the diagnostic test will be undertaken with the UK National Health Service (NHS). Led by Dr Arash Assadsangabi, consultant physician and gastroenterologist at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, in collaboration with the Northern Care Alliance Research Collection biobank, the study will profile 250 patients suspected of having CRC to validate identified biomarkers and demonstrate multiomic profiling's efficacy in the early detection of the disease. Tagomics' chief scientific officer and co-founder, Dr Robert Neely said: 'We believe that the unique, information-rich dataset that Interlace provides us will be pivotal in detecting CRC at the earliest possible stages of development, enabling treatment of the cancer when it is most vulnerable to modern therapeutics, with the aim of dramatically improving patient outcomes.' Upon completion of the project, Tagomics will look to further expand the capabilities and applications of its Interlace platform with the support of Agilent Technologies, building on an established partnership that was key to the early development of the platform, Dr Neely added. The American Cancer Society estimates that there will be 107,320 new cases of colon cancer and 46,950 new cases of rectal cancer in 2025. According to GlobalData analysis, with early detection of CRC critical in reducing the disease's mortality rate, in vitro diagnostic (IVD) tests have a critical role to play in bridging the disease's screening gap, with company's such as Guardant Health at work on developing patient-first tests to create solutions that make patient care more accessible. Guardant's SHIELD test, which was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a primary screening option for CRC in 2024, is intended to detect alterations in the blood associated with CRC. "Tagomics awarded £860k grant for colorectal cancer diagnostic" was originally created and published by Medical Device Network, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data


CBS News
2 hours ago
- CBS News
At 2025 Tribeca Festival, VR, augmented reality and AI showcase immersive storytelling
The 2025 Tribeca Festival continues this week with movie screenings, Q&As, industry panel discussions and public performances across New York City. But one program in this year's festival takes place in virtual worlds. For more than a decade, Tribeca has been expanding its focus beyond cinema and television to include new avenues of storytelling through the use of virtual reality, augmented reality, and other nascent technologies, producing some vivid immersive displays. Even if the storytelling aspect of the programs were limited, the artistic expressions could be powerful. This was especially true with past exhibits that enveloped the viewer in massive spaces, in which computer-generated imagery or time-lapse photography placed the viewer in new worlds, from exploding galaxies to swirling blood vessels. A view of "Boreal Dreams," a simulation of climate's impact on consciousness, one of many exhibits in the 2025 Tribeca Festival's Immersive program. David Morgan/CBS News Hosted under the umbrella title "In Search of Us," this year's installation in Lower Manhattan ties 11 projects together under the rubric of impacts on humanity — exploring topics from artificial intelligence to climate change, war, school shootings and transphobia. The exhibits with the most profound effects are those with the strongest and most emotional stories embedded inside them. The VR exhibit "Fragile Home" allows viewers to explore a house in Ukraine, before and after the Russian invasion. David Morgan/CBS News; Tribeca Festival Within a simple, delineated space furnished with minimal furniture, "Fragile Home," by Ondřej Moravec and Victoria Lopukhina, uses mixed reality to recreate a home in Ukraine that comes under bombardment. Wearing goggles, the viewer walks through a comfortable, well-appointed living room, past a dinner table and a purring cat, and looks outside the window to a peaceful vista — all of which, in a flash, is replaced by the home's bombed-out remains, vandalized with Russian forces' "Z" graffiti. The sense of violation is made so powerful in so simple a setting — and the recognition that such destruction is multiplied millions of times over is heart-wrenching. But the objects that survived — those with personal meaning to just a handful of people – become representations of resilience to many. Left: A view of the cinematic game "Scent." Right: the AR "There Goes Nikki." Tribeca Festival; David Morgan/CBS News "Scent," by Alan Kwan, is a first-person cinematic game in which the player becomes a dog wandering a landscape, who observes people being attacked and killed by malevolent forces. In between avoiding bombs and gunfire, the dog helps guide the souls of those killed to become reincarnated. It's a meditative view of cruel violations impacting humanity and nature. Armed with a tablet, viewers of the augmented reality "There Goes Nikki" can wander a garden populated by virtual flowers, and a visualization of the late poet Nikki Giovanni reciting her poem, "Quilting the Black-eyed Pea (We're going to Mars)." By Idris Brewster, Michele Stephenson and Joe Brewster. Attendees subject themselves to AI's judgmental streak in "AI & Me: The Confessional and AI Ego." David Morgan/CBS News How dangerous is artificial intelligence? How dumb is it? How snarky? "AI & Me: The Confessional and AI Ego," directed by Daniela Nedovescu and Octavian Mot, provides viewers with an opportunity to become test subjects, as it were, to AI's judgmental streak. Upon sitting in a chair, the participant is captured on camera and analyzed by AI, which conjures up your name, personality traits, and goals. How close are they to reality? Prepare to get snarked. But if the AI program "likes" you? Your AI-altered image will turn up in its pantheon of favored carbon-based units (pictured above, right). A view of the VR exhibit "Uncharted," which combines a water-like background (actually composed of numeric symbols) and images of a dancer. Tribeca Festival Other exhibits are immersive representations of culture — some self-generated, some created by AI. "Uncharted" (VR, by Kidus Hailesilassie) combines footage of a dancer with spoken word and visualizations of symbols to become a rapturous demonstration of pan-African language and storytelling. The interactive "New Maqam City," by MIPSTERZ, allows you to become a DJ, manipulating drum beat patterns recognizable in Muslim communities around the world to create a transcendent vibe. "The Innocence of Unknowing" is a video essay and AI project studying media coverage of mass shootings, projected within a simulated classroom. (Created by Ryat Yezbick and Milo Talwani through the MIT Open Documentary Lab.) Strap in! Viewers of the haptic VR exhibit "In the Current of Being." David Morgan/CBS News One of the strongest impacts of any installation was made by "In the Current of Being," by Cameron Kostopoulos. Using haptic VR, the viewer is literally strapped into a chair; electrodes are attached to your fingertips, arms, and torso, along with VR goggles. Interesting, you think. Then, the presentation begins, recounting the true story of a survivor of electroshock conversion therapy. (As a teenager, Carolyn Mercer had been "treated" with electrical shocks in an attempt to "cure" her from becoming trans.) As images of female beauty are flashed before you, electrical impulses throb across your body. This is not virtual reality; the extreme discomfort is very real, forcing me out of the presentation less than halfway through. The upshot: aversion therapy works, because I will never allow VR electrodes to be attached to my body ever again. An AR component of "The Power Loom and The Founders Pillars" shows African imagery and textiles onto the pillars of the New York Stock Exchange. Tribeca Festival Beyond the confines of the exhibition space at 161 Water Street, the two-part "The Power Loom and The Founders Pillars" (by Lesiba Mabitsela, Meghna Singh and Simon Wood) includes a site-specific AR experience, visible on a mobile app six blocks away, at the New York Stock Exchange, creating a memorial to enslaved people once sold at the Wall Street Slave Market, established in the 18th century. While the Tribeca Festival proper concludes on June 15, "In Search of Us," presented in partnership with Onassis ONX and Agog: The Immersive Media Institute, runs through June 29. For more details and ticket info click here.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Toxic 'forever chemical' showing up in European food and wine
A team of researchers has found "alarmingly high" levels of trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), a so-called forever chemical, in dozens of organic and non-organic pastas, baked goods and breakfast cereals from Europe, as well as in wine. "In conventional grain products, the average levels were so high that a health risk to children can no longer be ruled out," said Helmut Burtscher-Schaden, an environmental chemist part of the Brussels-based Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Europe, which describes TFA as a "product of PFAS pesticides and industrial chemicals." Forever chemicals, also known as PFAS, are thousands of long-lasting substances used in household and everyday products since the middle of the 20th century but which have been found to be difficult to remove from the environment and from human bodies. The latest research points to 'widespread contamination from PFAS (per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances) pesticides," PAN Europe said, warning that TFA tends to build up in water and farmland. The amount of TFA in the food items was found to be three times that recorded in a similar study eight years ago, according to PAN Europe, which in April warned of "dramatic rise" of TFA in wine. In a report covering wines from Austria, Belgium, Croatia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg and Spain, PAN Europe found that while pre-1988 vintages do not contain any such contamination, there has been a "sharp increase" in pesticide and chemical residues in wine bottled since 2010. Such a "steep accumulation" should be "a red flag that calls for decisive action," according to Michael Müller, a professor of pharmaceutical and medicinal chemistry at the University of Freiburg. The European Chemicals Agency has warned that TFA "may cause harm to the unborn child" and "may impair fertility."