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Daily Mail
30 minutes ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
Urgent warning over parasite-riddled fish eaten by millions that cause heart attacks
Nearly every single freshwater fish in Southern California may be riddled with parasites that could cause serious health issues in humans. Researchers from the University of California-San Diego revealed that a staggering 93 percent of the 84 freshwater game fish they examined carried two species of trematodes - parasitic worms that infect people who eat raw or undercooked fish. These freshwater species included bluegills, largemouth bass, green sunfish, bluegill-green sunfish hybrids, redear sunfish, black crappies, and the common carp. The two species of flatworms discovered (Haplorchis pumilio and Centrocestus formosanus) typically cause stomach problems, weight loss, and fatigue in people. However, the research team warned that particularly severe infections can lead to heart attacks of strokes. The researchers added that Americans don't often think about freshwater fish having parasites, but the outbreak has already been found in Texas, Florida, and Utah as well. Ryan Hechinger, an ecologist at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography said: 'These parasites are here in the US, and they're infecting fish that people are eating.' The fish are typically found in warm, shallow waters with vegetation nearby. However, this has also become a thriving habitat for the invasive snail Melanoides tuberculata, which carries the trematodes spreading to local fish. Freshwater game fish include multiple species that live in lakes, rivers, or reservoirs. They're popular targets for recreational fishing, often because anglers consider them fun to catch or good to eat. Fully cooking any fish caught in these locations will eliminate the parasites, according to guidelines from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). For those who eat raw fish, in items like sushi, they need to freeze their catch for at least a week to kill the trematodes. The parasites were mostly in the fins and gills, though H. pumilio was often found in the muscle tissue near fin bases, which could end up in fish fillets. Overall, researchers found 78 of the 84 fish they examined are carrying the parasitic worms. Other popular freshwater game fish that could be at risk from the snail's parasites include catfish, trout, salmon, and perch. The study authors fear that millions of people could be at risk of contamination, based on the amount of interest in eating raw fish on social media and platforms like YouTube. During their study, published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, Hechinger's team also looked at 125 popular YouTube videos which featured people eating raw freshwater fish. Nearly two-thirds (65%) did not mention the proper cooking or freezing methods for these fish, which the team believes is promoting bad habits and will likely lead to the spread of dangerous parasites among seafood lovers. According to the study authors, many videos also spread false information, like claiming that marinating fish in citrus juice or choosing 'healthy-looking' fish eliminates the risk of parasites, which isn't true. While there hasn't been widespread outbreak of trematode infections reported in California or elsewhere, Hechinger said that doesn't mean many people aren't getting sick. 'Nobody is looking for cases and doctors aren't required to report them,' he explained. Hechinger added that his team believes fish-borne trematode infections should be added to the list of diseases doctors have to report to public health officials. The FDA explains that improper cooking of fish means it hasn't reached an internal temperature of at least 145°F. For those freezing their fish to eat it raw, it needs to reach a temperature of -4°F for seven days or be flash-frozen at -31°F for at least 15 hours. When fish is improperly cooked or frozen, the trematodes can survive and then infect the human body when eaten. Once swallowed, these parasites enter your stomach and not even the stomach's acids can kill the larvae, which are protected by a cyst-like covering. In the small intestine, digestive enzymes break down this covering and release the young worms into the gastrointestinal tract. Over the next few days to weeks, the juvenile worms grow into adults, which are about one to two millimeters long. As the worms multiply and attach themselves to the small intestine, they irritate the intestinal lining, leading to symptoms like stomach pain, diarrhea, nausea, and indigestion. After eating infected fish, most symptoms of H. pumilio or C. formosanus typically start within one to two weeks. If left untreated, the more severe symptoms of a chronic infection could start to show one to three months after eating the fish. Once doctors diagnose someone with an infection, the standard treatment is an anti-parasitic medication called Praziquantel. The infections typically clear up within days after taking the drug.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Tijuana River pollution impacts air quality in San Diego: study
SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — Local researchers with the University of California San Diego and Scripps Institution of Oceanography examine how pollutants in wastewater travel and move along the San Diego coastline. Researchers took samples of water and air from the U.S.–Mexico border to the Scripps Pier in La Jolla and found a mixture of illicit drugs, chemicals from tires and personal care products in the air. Their study discovered pollution from the Tijuana River is affecting the air quality. 'This is a new route of inhalation exposure, people who are exposed to it are breathing it in and that's hard to control. We can control people not going into the beach, but now how do we control in the air,' said Jonathan Slade, UCSD Assistant Professor of Chemistry. Imperial Beach is seeing the most impact from airborne chemicals as is Border Field State Park, Slade said. In La Jolla, the research shows chemicals were also found in the air, but not as high as in the South Bay. The samples were collected in 2020, but researchers say little has changed in how sewage released from the river is processed. 'The Tijuana River is a very dynamic environment with implications for public health,' lead author Adam Cooper said. 'Ours is one of the most comprehensive studies to date investigating water-to-air transfer of these pollutants.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Waikiki Aquarium welcomes rare Australian sea critter
HONOLULU (KHON2) — Juvenile weedy seadragons will be included in the Waikiki Aquarium's Amazing Adaptations Exhibit, making their debut on May 23. The unique sea creatures are rarely seen and were received through a special collaboration with Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California San Diego. From Vegas to Hawaiʻi, your Memorial Day weekend food menus guaranteed to satisfy Prior to their debut, the seadragons completed a 21-day observational quarantine. The species is native to Australian waters and are related to seahorses and pipefish. Similar to seahorses, male weedy seadragons brood eggs and incubate them on the underside of their seadragons are known for their elaborate mating dance, where they spin snout-to-snout and move up and down in order to transfer eggs from the female to the male's tail, where they are then fertilized. The juvenile seadragons that can be found at the Waikiki Aquarium are smaller and less colorful than adult seadragons, but they already possess signature seadragon traits like their leaf-like appendages and elongated bodies. For more information on the Waikiki Aquarium and how to see the juvenile weedy seadragons, visit the aquarium's website. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
CBS News
13-05-2025
- Science
- CBS News
Trump administration's proposed NOAA cuts threaten decades-long CO2 data collection, scientist says
More carbon dioxide — released from cars, factories and power plants — was present in the atmosphere last year than ever before in recorded history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's latest report. The federal agency has been monitoring CO2 levels since the 1960s. It's part of the work started by Professor Ralph Keeling's father, Professor Charles David Keeling, who first documented the building up of CO2 in the atmosphere, driving climate change. Now, the Trump administration's proposed funding and personnel cuts threaten to put an end to decades of critical scientific research, according to leaked budget documents and climate scientists. Standing at what he called the center of the operation that his father started at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, Professor Ralph Keeling continues his father's work, analyzing air samples collected from around the planet inside volleyball-like flasks. Ralph Keeling analyzing air samples collected as part of NOAA's global CO2 monitoring program. CBS News "He never encouraged me to go into the field. But he inspired me by what he did," said Keeling as he worked in his La Jolla, California, lab. His father — the climate scientist whose readings of carbon dioxide confirmed to the world to the possibility of the greenhouse effect — co-authored a federal science report in November 1965 and warned about high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, blaming the industrial burning of coal, oil and gas. "The headline, sadly, is the same every year, is that we keep breaking records. And it's concerning," Ralph Keeling said. What also concerns him are cuts proposed by the Trump administration that he said would slash climate research at NOAA, such as the ongoing collection of CO2 samples. "It would be a big blow if that work stopped," Ralph Keeling said. "Not just for me personally, but for the community and for the world at large." CBS News has reached out to the White House for comment. NOAA's carbon sampling program collects air from all over the world. Over the years, CBS News crews have stood on a volcano in Hawaii to see samples gathered, as well as see them shipped from Norway back for analysis at a NOAA laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. The reason samples collected near the North Pole are sent to Colorado is because scientists want to confirm that they're measuring on the same scale, according to Ove Hermansen, a researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research. The result is what's known as the Keeling Curve, named after Ralph's dad, who died in 2005. It's a simple graph plotting the unchecked rise of carbon dioxide. The image below shows how closely the Keeling Curve matches the rise in global average temperatures. A sample of the Keeling Curve which plots the unchecked rise of carbon dioxide. NOAA Global Monitor Laboratory/CBS News "It's beautiful data, but it's also sad, underlying that sense of, wow, scientific wonder and beauty is also a sadness that this is actually what's happening," Ralph Keeling said. The Trump administration's plans would eliminate funding for NOAA's global CO2 program and end decades of unbroken data collection, Keeling said, degrading the nation's ability to project how climate change could impact us in the future. "So, turning off a program like this would be like turning off the headlights on a dark street at night. You can't see where you're going," he added.
WIRED
10-05-2025
- Science
- WIRED
Dismantling NOAA Threatens the World's Ability to Monitor Carbon Dioxide Levels
Eric Morgan Ralph Keeling May 10, 2025 7:00 AM The agency maintains the global backbone of measurements of CO 2 and other gases, but these are at risk of being curtailed if the foreshadowed cuts to NOAA are realized. Mauna Loa Observatory on Big Island, Hawaii. Photograph: Sebastian Noethlichs/Shutterstock This story originally appeared on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. There are trillions upon trillions of numbers in the world. We use numbers to describe almost every conceivable thing in the universe. But there is one number that surpasses all others for the enormous impact it will have on every living thing on Earth over the next few thousand years. We consider it so important that we've dedicated our lives to acquiring and understanding it. Today that number happens to be: 427.6. This is a measure (known in scientific terms as the mole fraction) of atmospheric carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, in parts per million. It's part of a continuous chain of observations stretching back across two generations, to 1958, when Dave Keeling recorded the first measurement of 313 parts per million. Dave Keeling maintained this record, known as the Keeling Curve, using a running hodgepodge of short-term grants until 2005, at which point geochemist Ralph Keeling, a professor at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, coauthor of this piece and Dave's son, assumed its stewardship. But now, after 67 years of battling to keep the program funded and provide the data to other scientists around the world, the program faces its most dire threat ever. Why? Endeavors of this nature—highly precise measurements of a trace gas over many decades—require three basic inputs: knowledge, people, and money. It's the third one that's at risk, thanks to the current administration's attacks on NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA provides support for our program both through an annual grant and through invaluable 'in-kind' support, such as staffers taking samples for us, maintaining buildings in remote areas where sampling occurs, and running the Mauna Loa Observatory. Monthly average carbon dioxide concentration at Mauna Loa (top panel) and annual financial support for the Scripps CO 2 program (bottom panel), adjusted for inflation to US dollars in 2007. Photographer: Adapted from Sundquist and Keeling, 2009 The Trump administration has made clear it wishes to gut NOAA's research enterprise, which is at the center of climate research globally. Already, we've seen large-scale firings and rejections of research proposals. Recent guidance from the Office of Management and Budget shows the administration intends to assiduously follow the blueprint of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 and shutter the Ocean and Atmospheric Research Line Office. This is not just a little haircut for a large federal agency—it's grabbing the scissors and stabbing the agency through the heart. If successful, this loss will be a nightmare scenario for climate science, not just in the United States, but the world. It will also likely spell the end of our ability to continuously update the Keeling Curve. Against this ominous backdrop, a small group of scientists is scrambling to preserve the ability to know how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. NOAA maintains a global backbone of measurements of carbon dioxide and other gases, not just at Mauna Loa, but at more than 50 stations around the world. In parallel, our program at Scripps maintains records at a dozen stations. Other countries also contribute, but their efforts are almost all focused regionally, leaving the big picture to just a few programs that are global in scope. Climate change, however, is a global problem, and global networks address the really important questions. Such networks provide critical information on how fast carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are building up in the air from fossil-fuel burning and other processes. They provide information on how much carbon dioxide is being removed from the atmosphere by the oceans and by land plants. They provide information critical to independently verify emissions, to negotiate international treaties, to make decisions now about how much carbon dioxide the world can emit. These observational networks are the factual basis upon which all efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change are based. NOAA and Scripps play another key role in the atmospheric measurement community. How does the world know that the value of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today is really 427.6 and not 427.7 parts per million? Such differences may seem small, but they are consequential in the realm of climate research, and they can be calculated only because a lot of work has gone into calibration. Hundreds of groups can measure carbon dioxide using various off-the-shelf analyzers, but these analyzers first need to be calibrated using compressed air that has a known amount of carbon dioxide in it. Scripps assumed the lead role for preparing tanks filled with known amounts of carbon dioxide and dispensing them to the community until 1995, at which point NOAA took over. The country and the world are now at risk of losing the only two programs that have played this central role. If the current administration has its way, the climate change research community could soon be fully adrift, unable to know with sufficient accuracy how quickly carbon dioxide levels are rising. Even in the best of times, long-term observations can be very fragile. It is difficult to convince funding agencies to put money into long-term observations because, by definition, they are continuations; they have been done before. Most funding entities, from science agencies to philanthropic organizations, want to be associated with exciting, groundbreaking work, and sustained observations are too routine to scratch that itch. (Dave Keeling records in his autobiography, Rewards and Penalties of Monitoring the Earth , that at one point a National Science Foundation program manager demanded that, to maintain funding, he generate two discoveries per year from his record of carbon dioxide levels.) Another vulnerability stems from the fact that the community of researchers making sustained measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide probably numbers less than 30. Graduate students interested in learning to conduct this arcane work are a rare commodity. Patience and attention to detail are required, and years may be needed to accumulate enough data to answer the key questions or make groundbreaking discoveries. Researchers have to be extremely diligent and exacting to ensure that measurements in 1958 are comparable to those today. Calibration is an endless chore. This scientific pursuit isn't for everyone. Perversely, while the Keeling Curve has attained iconic global importance, this actually can hinder, rather than help the funding situation. Environmental programs tend to be organized by geographic domain and discipline—the National Water Quality Program of the US Geological Survey, NSF's Arctic Observing Network, and the US Forest Service, for instance. Amid these focused efforts, the big picture can be lost. As the climate change field has evolved, we have found it increasingly difficult to find sponsors who accept responsibility for measuring vital signs of the Earth as a whole. The original Mauna Loa measurements were started during the International Geophysical Year in 1957/1958. This was a massive, remarkable effort, led by the United States and including 67 countries, with the goal (simply put) of measuring every physical attribute possible on the Earth in one year. It led to numerous, important scientific discoveries and the establishment of many measurement programs worldwide. It established the South Pole station, for instance, a home for vital climate research that is still going today. It was a time of enormous optimism, of international cooperation (even during the height of the Cold War), of vast dreams, of global cooperation. And the United States was proud to lead the way. This sense of endeavor continued into the 1970s, when then president Richard Nixon—a conservative Republican—established NOAA to better understand the world's oceans and atmosphere. By the 1980s, the NOAA grew in scope, alongside the Scripps effort, to become the beating heart of global climate science. Now, after just three short months of the Trump administration, we are contemplating the abdication of US leadership in oceanic and atmospheric science and the loss of the largest and most critical observing network for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and their calibration laboratories. Our colleagues at NOAA are living day to day, not sure if tomorrow will be their last on the job. We pray that common sense will prevail and that NOAA will be spared the worst. Whatever its fate, we will remain in the fight to preserve the world's ability to measure carbon dioxide levels with whatever support we can muster, a small bulwark against climate science's new dark age.
