Environmental Health Featured Science Activities

U.S. Geological Survey ( USGS ) scientists have completed the most comprehensive evaluation to date (2014) of decadal–scale changes in pesticide concentrations in groundwater of the United States. Such assessments are essential for tracking long–term responses to changes in pesticide use and land–management practices.

A U.S. Geological Survey USGS Health-Based Screening Level ( HBSL ) Web site includes human-health benchmarks for 351 contaminants (79 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA ) Maximum Contaminant Levels ( MCLs ), 117 EPA Human Health Benchmarks for Pesticides ( HHBPs ), and 155 USGS HBSLs ). The Web site also provides detailed toxicity information used to calculate HBSLs . A comprehensive...

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists studying a midwestern stream conclude that pharmaceuticals and other contaminants in treated wastewater effluent discharged to the stream are transported into adjacent shallow groundwater. Other mobile chemicals found in wastewater are expected to have similar fates.

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists are focusing on new efforts to help protect human and environmental health during disasters. Two papers published recently summarize important characteristics of materials released into the environment by natural and anthropogenic disasters, such as volcanic ash, building collapse dusts and debris, flood sediments, flood waters, wildfire ash and debris...

Maps and data tables that describe nutrient loading to major estuaries throughout the conterminous United States are now available online. These maps show the major sources of nutrients and their contributing areas for 115 estuaries along the Atlantic coast, Gulf of Mexico, and Pacific Northwest coast and from 160 watersheds draining into the Great Lakes. Information on the sources and areas...

Conserving nature can improve human lives. From forest watersheds that perform natural filtration of drinking water to coral reefs that break tsunami waves before they flatten seaside villages, intact ecosystems provide innumerable services to human society. Might biodiversity be healthy for the ecosystem and also protect people against infectious diseases? While most disease ecologists would say...

Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) diagnosed West Nile Virus (WNV) in numerous eared grebes and bald eagles that died in a 2013 mortality event in the Great Salt Lake (GSL). Diagnoses were based on findings during pathological analysis to determine cause of death, including molecular detection of WNV genetic material in tissues, and isolation of WNV from multiple tissues from each...

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists and collaborators discovered that long-wave ultraviolet (UV) light directed at the wings of bats with white-nose syndrome (WNS) produced points of distinctive orange-yellow fluorescence. The orange-yellow glow corresponds directly with microscopic skin lesions that define the current "gold standard" for diagnosing WNS . White-nose syndrome, a fungal disease...

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have discovered evidence of the same influenza virus (H1N1) in sea otters living off the coast of Washington State that caused the 2009 "swine flu" pandemic in humans. During a sea otter health monitoring projectconducted in 2011, researchers discovered antibodies for the pandemic 2009...

Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), University of Hawaii, the State of Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources, and The Nature Conservancy are investigating unusual mortality of collector urchins ( Tripneustes gratilla ) that has been ongoing since February 2014. As grazers, urchins play a critical role in preventing overgrowth of algae on tropical coral reefs. Awareness of the linkage...

Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) contributed to a publication that reports the complete gene sequence of a novel picornavirus isolated from minnows and baitfish in several areas of the United States. The scientists used the molecular sequence and characterization of this virus to determine the evolutionary (phylogenetic) placement in the "family tree" of known fish viruses. The...

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and National Park Service (NPS) scientists collaborated in the first study to measure mercury in fish from remote places in 21 National Parks spanning 10 Western States, including Alaska. Mercury levels in fish generally were low, but were elevated in some local areas, including two parks in Utah and Alaska where samples taken from sport fish exceeded the U.S...