Spread of Norovirus through Pesticide Spraying

As Dr.Mercola mentioned in his article “Pesticide Spraying may Spread Norovirus” norovirus is the leading cause of food-borne outbreaks in the US, with fresh produce, especially leafy vegetables and fruits) among the most common culprits.

Reality is that contaminated water is a potential introduction source of norovirus to fresh produce. This has centered on water used to irrigate crops. Several researches were done to determine if irrigating water could be a source of norovirus spread and the results showed that it could. Environment Health Perspectives reported that in seven of the eight pesticides tested, norovirus persisted even two hours later.

“Farmers mix pesticides with water from sources including wells, irrigation ditches, rivers and lakes. All these water sources have been known to harbor norovirus. Until recently, no one had tested whether norovirus in contaminated water remains infectious after pesticides are added.”

Researches showed the virus is able to stay in contaminated water and be active when it’s sprayed onto crops.

So pesticides “may not only be a chemical hazard, but also a microbiological hazard for public health. The inclusion of antiviral substances in reconstituted pesticides may be appropriate to reduce the virologic health risk posted by the application of pesticides.”

Researches came with recommendations to add antiviral substances to water, a much simpler and healthier.

Buy organic as much as possible, since this eliminates the use of chemical pesticides.

Norovirus

Norovirus is a genus of genetically diverse single-stranded RNA, non-enveloped viruses in Caliciviridae family. The viruses are transmitted by fecally contaminated food or water, by person-to-person contact, and via aerosolization of the virus and subsequent contamination of surfaces.

Norovirus can survive for long periods outside a human host depending on the surface and temperature conditions: can stay for weeks on hard surfaces and up to 12 days on contaminated fabrics, and it can survive for months, maybe even years in contaminated still water. The virus survives 7 days after contamination on several surfaces used for food preparation.

Noroviruses have a big impact on people’s health. Noroviruses are responsible for more than half of all food-borne disease outbreaks each year. They are the most common cause of diarrhea in adults and the second most common cause in children.

Noroviruses are a group of viruses that cause inflammation of the stomach and large intestine lining; they are the leading cause of gastroenteritis in the U.S. . They are originally called the Norwalk virus.

Noroviruses are sometimes called food poisoning, because they can be transmitted through food that’s been contaminated with the virus. They aren’t always the result of food contamination. Noroviruses are also called the stomach flu, although they aren’t the influenza virus.

People become infected with noroviruses when they eat food and drink liquids that have been contaminated, raw or undercooked oysters and raw fruits and vegetables have been implicated in some outbreaks. You can also get infected if you touch an object or surface that has been infected with the virus and then touch an object or surface that has been infected with the virus and then touch your nose, mouth, or eyes.

Noroviruses can survive temperature extremes in water and on surfaces.

Once someone is infected from contaminated food, the virus can quickly pass from person to person through shared food or utensils, by shaking hands or through other close contact. People who have weekend immune system are particularly susceptible to catching noroviruses.

If you come down with a norovirus infection, you will probably go from being completely healthy to feeling absolutely miserable within a day or two after being exposed to the virus. 

Typical symptoms include nausea, vomiting, watery diarrhea and stomach cramps. Other norovirus symptoms include: low-grade fever, chills, headache, muscle aches, fatigue.

Most of these symptoms aren’t serious, but diarrhea and vomiting can deplete your body of the fluid it needs and you can become dehydrated. Children and the elderly are most susceptible to dehydration, as well as malnutrition from not getting enough nutrients.

You have to take stool test to confirm that you have the illness. 

A small percentage of people who are infected with noroviruses never have any symptoms, which suggests they might have some natural protection from the virus.

Noroviruses, like other viruses, don’t respond to antibiotics, which are designed to kill bacteria. No antiviral drug can treat noroviruses, but in healthy people the illness go away on its own within a couple of days. Most people don’t have any long-term problems from the virus.

To prevent dehydration, drink plenty of liquids, especially water and juices. Drink an oral rehydration solution to replace lost fluids and electrolytes. Avoid sugary drinks, which can make diarrhea worse, as well as alcohol and caffeinated beverages, which can dehydrate you further.

Symptoms of dehydration include dizziness when standing, dry mouth and decrease in urination. Severe dehydration is sometimes treated with intravenous (IV) fluids. 

Good hygiene is the key to prevent an infection with norovirus, especially when you are in close surroundings with people. So wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 15 seconds, or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer, especially after going to the bathroom and before you prepare or eat food. Carefully dispose contaminated items. Wash raw fruits and vegetables thoroughly. Cook oysters and other shellfish before eating them. Clean and disinfect surfaces with the mixture of detergent and chlorine bleach after someone is sick. If you have norovirus, don’t prepare food for at least two to three days after you feel better. Try not to eat food that has been prepared by someone else who is sick.

Use of Water

After breathing, the most important thing we need to do is to drink water.
Water has many crucial duties in our body. The most important are:
-We need water to detoxify our cells from accumulated waste. Without this function, our cells will slow down and stop producing energy. Water is the garbage collector, going through cells to exchange waste for minerals.
-We need water, as electrolyte, to receive and deliver chemical messages in our body.
-We need water to thin our blood and lymphatic fluid and lubricate our eyes.
-We need water to flush out waste from our Digestive system and help the Kidneys to filter and detoxify our blood.
-Without water we would not have saliva, blood, lymphatic fluid, mucosal membrane and our joints would dry out.
-Without water we could not sweat and clean our detoxifying organs.
Without adequate quality and quantity of water, we will slow down, get sick and age early.
You may know that filtering drinking water is a smart thing to do, but do you know that the more you filter your water you will take out not only the “bad things” but all the active ingredients as well. Filtered water, without re-added minerals is “dead” or empty water! Empty water cannot communicate with your body and ends up over diluting your extracellular fluid, causing fluid retention and metabolic slowdown.
There is much confusing and false information about drinking water. Here are some that are not only confusing, but nor right:
Drink as much you can, as soon as you get up, is false.
You should drink not more than a glass of water upon arising otherwise you will dilute your digestive acid and wash most of it down to your small intestine, causing inflammation and reduce the effectiveness of alkaline pancreatic enzymes to break down carbohydrates. Furthermore, by emptying the stomach of gastric juices you will incapacitate the stomach to break down protein, the most desired food for Breakfast. Doing so, you will set yourself up for the development of digestive disorders and will end up with less energy.
Do not drink when you eat, is half true.
One should not drink a large amount of any liquid when you eat, but should sip on up to 150 ml of room temperature water, tea, etc. to help lubricate dry food and increase the quantity of gastric juices. If you eat other than soup or some liquid based food, than you will be better off sipping on some water or other liquid.
Sip at least 2 L of water, every day, is not true.
It depends on the size of your body, your metabolic speed, kidney function, activities and microenvironment as to how much you should drink per day. The best practice is to drink gulp a glass of water every 2 hours to systematically help your kidneys to filter your blood. Only when you are doing moderate to heavy exercise, should you sip water – to help your muscles, introduce sweat and lubricate your body.
Swimming in the ocean and or having regular baths is a blessing for a body, giving it the chance to self-regulate it’s fluids. Having regular foot-spas when you can’t swim or bathe is the next best thing to do, especially when you indulge yourself with few tablesp

oons of Magnesium-oil or chloride crystals.
Most people’s bodies are acidic, so drinking alkaline water and bathing with magnesium could help balance your pH (acid/alkaline). Cancer can develop faster in an acid environment.

NASA Radar Watches Over California's Aging Levees

This 2004 levee break, caused by a burrowing beaver, did $90 million worth of damage. NASA's UAVSAR is monitoring levees for early signs of stress that could lead to failure. Image credit: Calif. DWR

One morning in 2008, research scientist Cathleen Jones of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., was flying over the San Andreas fault near San Francisco, testing a new radar instrument built at JPL. As the plane banked to make a turn, she looked down to see the Sacramento River delta, a patchwork of low-lying lands crisscrossed by levees.

Jones was using an instrument that can measure tiny movements of the ground on the scale of less than half an inch (less than a centimeter). It's called the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR).

"It struck me that this new instrument might be perfect for monitoring movement of levees," said Jones. Checking the scientific literature, she found that nothing like that had been attempted before in the delta. She reported her idea to water managers at the California Department of Water Resources (DWR). She didn't know it, but she was at the beginning of a long-lived initiative to refine NASA technology for use in safeguarding the delta levees.

In the Sacramento River delta north of San Francisco Bay, islands, agricultural lands and communities below sea level are protected from surrounding water channels by more than 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) of dirt levees, many of which date back to the California Gold Rush. About two-thirds of all Californians and more than 4 million acres of irrigated farmland rely on the delta for water.

If a levee gives way, the results can be disastrous. A single 2004 levee failure created $90 million of damage and threatened the water supply to Southern California. However, the first warning that a levee is developing a structural problem can be a tiny soil deformation -- too small to be noticed by a visual inspection.

Remote sensing is a clear solution. The DWR managers had tried other remote sensing methods such as lidar, without complete satisfaction. They were immediately interested in the possibilities of UAVSAR. Joel Dudas, a senior water resources engineer with the DWR, said, "UAVSAR has the highest potential for giving us a very precise measurement at a scale that we didn't know was possible."

Supported by NASA's Applied Sciences Program, JPL and the DWR established a partnership in 2009 to begin a research project testing how UAVSAR technology could be applied for monitoring the delta levees. Since then, Jones and UAVSAR have flown a mission over the delta on NASA's C-20A scientific research aircraft every four to eight weeks. Each mission flies along nine overlapping flight lines that were designed to observe every levee in the 700-square-mile (1,800-square kilometer) delta from at least three directions in about three hours.

Like all radars, UAVSAR shoots pulses of microwaves at the ground and records the signals that bounce back. By comparing the data from consecutive flights, Jones can measure the rate of upward or downward soil movement in the intervening time. The instrument is specifically designed to ignore larger-scale movements (such as airplane motion) and record tiny variations that other instruments cannot identify. The team has also developed a model to support the data processing. The model incorporates land use, soil type and other factors that affect subsidence rates, allowing researchers to put the data in a context that can help water resource managers find better ways to manage the delta.

From the first year of operation, the research flights have proved that UAVSAR can locate areas of concern. That year, it detected a damaged levee that had been rammed by a ship. More recently, it spotted an area behind a levee where land was subsiding a few inches a year -- fast, but not observable by eye. The DWR added soil and continues to monitor the area.

Dudas is sold on the potential of UAVSAR monitoring to save time and money. He foresees an even more critical use if the program becomes a regular part of DWR operations -- a use that he hasn't had a chance to test because of the ongoing drought. "During high water we drive the levees, watching for leaks, but if there's a lot of vegetation or it's dark, we may not be able to see them. If we could fly this instrument during a flood, it would allow us to direct our emergency vehicles where they need to go.

If this work saves even one levee failure, that's more than worth all the time and energy we've put into it."

Harmone Disrupting Chemicals - in Colorado River

The Colorado River flows through the town of Rifle in Garfield County, Colorado. Photo (taken 1972) by David Hiser, courtesy of U.S. National Archives, Flickr/Creative Commons.

This week, more evidence came in that hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) poses potentially serious risks to drinking water quality and human health.

A team of researchers from the University of Missouri found evidence of hormone-disrupting activity in water located near fracking sites – including samples taken from the Colorado River near a dense drilling region of western Colorado.

The Colorado River is a source of drinking water for more than 30 million people.

The peer-reviewed study was published this week in the journal Endocrinology.

Fracking is the controversial process of blasting water mixed with sand and chemicals deep underground at high pressure so as to fracture rock and release the oil and gas it holds. It has made previously inaccessible fossil fuel reserves economical to tap, and drilling operations have spread rapidly across the country.

The University of Missouri team found that 11 chemicals commonly used in the fracking process are “endocrine disrupters” – compounds that can affect the human #hormonal system and have been linked to cancer, birth defects, and infertility.

“More than 700 chemicals are used in the fracking process, and many of them disturb hormone function,” said Dr. Susan Nagel, associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and women’s health at the University of Missouri School of Medicine and a co-author of the study, in a news release.

“With fracking on the rise, populations may face greater health risks from increased endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure.”

The research team collected samples from ground water and surface water from sites in Garfield County, Colorado, where fracking fluids had accidentally spilled, as well as from the nearby Colorado River, into which local streams and groundwater drain. They also took samples from other areas of Garfield County where little drilling has taken place, as well as from a county in Missouri where there had been no drilling at all.

They found that the samples from the spill site had moderate-to-high levels of #endocrine-disrupting activity, and the Colorado River samples had moderate levels.  The other two samples, taken from areas with little or no drilling activity, showed low levels of endocrine-disrupting activity.

The new findings add urgency to calls for moratoriums on fracking until the risks have been fully assessed and regulations and monitoring put in place to safeguard water supplies and public health.

Due to the so-called “Halliburton loophole,” the oil and gas industry is exempt from important requirements under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, and states have been slow to fill the regulatory gap.

Colorado, in particular, should exercise the utmost caution.

According to a report by Ceres, a Boston-based non-profit organization that educates investors about corporate environmental risks, 92 percent of Colorado’s shale gas and oil wells are located in “extremely high” water stress regions, defined as areas in which cities, industries and farms are already using 80 percent or more of available water.

Adding contamination risks to the high volume of water fracking wells require – typically 4-6 million gallons per well – argues strongly for a precautionary approach to future development and a pause in existing production until the full range of environmental health risks can be assessed.

But Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper has sais the state will sue any city that bans fracking within its borders.  Indeed, in July 2012, the statesued the front-range town of Longmont, which had issued such a ban.

A statement about the new findings of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in waters near fracking sites issued by Concerned Health Professionals of New York, and posted, concludes with this warning:

“These results, which are based on validated cell cultures, demonstrate that public health concerns about fracking are well-founded and extend to our hormone systems. The stakes could not be higher. Exposure to #EDCs has been variously linked to breast cancer, infertility, birth defects, and learning disabilities. Scientists have identified no safe threshold of exposure for EDCs, especially for pregnant women, infants, and children.”

And environmental health expert Sandra Steingraber writes in a letter posted at the same site:

“[I]t seems to me, the ethical response on the part of the environmental health community is to reissue a call that many have made already:  hit the pause button via a national moratorium on high volume, horizontal drilling and fracking and commence a comprehensive Health Impact Assessment with full public participation.”