The latest debris from the 2011 Japanese tsunami to come ashore on the state’s southern coast is likely the most surprising so far.
A small, 18-foot blue fiberglass skiff bearing the name Saisho-Maru was found March 22 just north of Sid Snyder Beach near Long Beach.
While finding tsunami debris on our beaches isn’t new, what was found inside the stern’s built-in compartment caught the attention of state Fish and Wildlife biologists.
“There was five fish total we found in the boat’s compartment, and this is the first time we’ve seen vertebrates come ashore in tsunami debris,” said Bruce Kauffman, a state Fish and Wildlife biologist in Montesano.
The fish are commonly referred to as a “knifejaw or striped beak fish” that are native to waters off Japan, Korea and China.
“Finding these fish alive was totally unexpected and it is pretty unusual to find live fish,” Kauffman said.
Fisheries biologists say the compartment where the fish were found looked like an aquarium with enough sealife growth that the fish were able to feed off that and survive for so long.
“The fish were found in a compartment in the very back of the boat that appeared to have been enclosed at one point, but didn’t have a lid anymore,” said Leanna Reuss, the tsunami debris coordinator for AmeriCorp in Long Beach.
“It looked like most of the boat was floating underwater, and the fish used it (the compartment) as a shelter to stay alive,” Reuss said. “Otherwise I don’t think they could have survived the long drift across the ocean.”
Reuss says the boat was taken off the beach, and is now in the shop at Cape Disappointment State Park.
Only one of the fish is still alive. That fish is being kept in a holding tank at the Seaside Aquarium in Oregon. Once it’s healthy, the aquarium plans to put it on display.
Other tsunami debris found recently on coastal beaches include a large dock, boats and even a motorcycle.
(Photos courtesy of Washington State Fish and Wildlife)
“Our tribal leadership’s main responsibility is simply to protect our people,” said Marc Gauthier, a representative of the Upper Columbia United Tribes, before leaving the meeting. “It comes down to that basic human desire to protect your family.”
The Washington State Department of Ecology has known since the 1990s that its water-pollution limits have meant some Washingtonians regularly consume dangerous amounts of toxic chemicals in fish from local waterways.
At least twice, Ecology has been told by its overseers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to fix the problem and better protect people’s health. Ecology was close to finally doing that last year — until Boeing and other business interests launched an intense lobbying campaign aimed not just at Ecology but also at the Washington Legislature and then-Gov. Christine Gregoire. That is the picture that emerges from recent interviews as well as government documents obtained by InvestigateWest under the Washington Public Records Law.
The problem lies in Ecology’s estimate of how much fish people eat. The lower the amount, the more water pollution Ecology can legally allow. So by assuming that people eat the equivalent of just one fish meal per month, Ecology is able to set less stringent pollution limits.
Meanwhile, citing the health benefits of fish, the state Department of Health advises people to eat fish twice a week, eight times as often as the official estimate of actual consumption. The state knows that some members of Indian tribes, immigrants and other fishermen consume locally caught seafood even more often than that and are therefore at greater risk of cancer, neurological damage and other maladies.
The Boeing Co. looms large in this story. In June 2012, Boeing said if Ecology went ahead with plans to make fish safer to eat, it would “cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars and severely hamper its ability to increase production in Renton and make future expansion elsewhere in the state cost prohibitive,” according to a Gregoire aide’s reconstruction of a conversation with a Boeing executive that month.
In July 2012, Ecology announced it would not go forward with a new rule to adjust the fish-eating estimate as planned. Instead the agency launched a “stakeholder process” that would delay any new rules for at least two years. Last week that process plodded on in Spokane, where state and local government officials and others spent more than three hours discussing the many contaminants that for years have prompted official state warnings against eating Washington fish too regularly.
“All we’ve seen is delay,” said Bart Mihailovich of the Spokane Riverkeeper environmental group, one of several that have refused to participate in the new series of meetings. “Why are we going back and doing what was already done?”
At the meeting in Spokane Thursday, a representative of Indian tribes called Ecology’s conduct “a betrayal” and explained that the tribes are boycotting the current process because it is unnecessary.
“Our tribal leadership’s main responsibility is simply to protect our people,” said Marc Gauthier, a representative of the Upper Columbia United Tribes, before leaving the meeting. “It comes down to that basic human desire to protect your family.”
Ecology had at least one other false start in fixing the rules, back in the mid-1990s, an effort that petered out even before a rule change was proposed, said Melissa Gildersleeve, the Ecology manager overseeing the current stakeholder process. That followed a 1994 study by the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission that documented how the national estimate of one fish meal per month was greatly and regularly exceeded by some members of Indian tribes.
While who eats how much contaminated fish is a slippery and much-debated corner of science, few of the parties involved in the current dispute in Washington contend that the current fish-consumption rate accurately reflects the true amount eaten, especially by some groups such as members of Indian tribes, subsistence fishermen and immigrants. The figure came from a 1973-74 federal study that asked consumers to fill our “food diaries” for three days, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
GWYNETH ROBERTS/Lincoln Journal Star 1491s member Bobby Wilson (center) dances for the camera as Native Youth Leadership Symposium Participants (rear) watch during production of a public service announcement video Tuesday, April 2, 2013, at Morrill Hall.
The guerrilla Native filmmakers and comedy troupe came to Lincoln on Tuesday to help participants of the Sovereign Native Youth Leadership program shoot a video. The Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs hosted the 1491s’ visit and sponsors the youth program — high school students from Nebraska’s four tribes learning to be leaders.
Last week, to prepare for the 1491s’ visit, the students brainstormed ideas. But on Tuesday, the five members of the 1491s struggle to get students to share them.
Goldtooth, one of the group’s founders, tells students the filmmakers are there to help them find their voice.
“You dictate the direction,” he says.
Ryan Red Corn, an Osage member of the 1491s, shares the story of a young woman they met at a Native boarding school who told them about briefly escaping the school to retrieve berries from a nearby tree. The 1491s made a video about it.
The 1491s have lampooned everything from the movie “The Last of the Mohicans” to powwow emcees, and they’ve gotten hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube.
Despite their popularity, at least two Native students haven’t seen their work.
As the morning wears on, the students begin opening up, a little at a time.
Two brothers from Winnebago speak about their dad, who once struggled with alcoholism but quit after his children were born. They talk about losing their uncle to cirrhosis, a liver disease prevalent in alcoholics.
“Top that,” student Skyler Walker says, daring the others to beat his story and eliciting laughter.
So how does a mixed bag of comedians and filmmakers get shy Native students to open up? Red Corn says it’s important to make them laugh and see themselves as important.
The 1491s spend much of Tuesday making each other laugh, poking fun at Red Corn for being half white and Goldtooth for enjoying food too much.
Eventually, they begin teasing the students, including Skyler and his brother Max, who are half Ho-Chunk and half white. The boys call themselves “half chunks.”
“Half chunk 1 and half chunk 2,” the 1491s call them.
Then they turn on each other: “Osage sounds like a drunk person speaking Dakota,” Goldtooth says to Red Corn.
But then, just a little, the tone of their conversation shifts.
As he talks about his love of gourd dancing in the Omaha tribal tradition, student Marco Ramos cuts short a conversation between Red Corn and comedian Bobby Wilson.
“Quit holding hands and pay attention,” he says, as the room erupts in applause and laughter.
Later at lunch, Scott Shafer of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs describes how difficult it has been getting the students to open up to the presenters they have heard since the program began its second year this past fall. So often, students have struggled to connect to policymakers and professionals, he says.
That wasn’t the case Tuesday as the students and the 1491s developed ideas for their video on alcoholism.
One student describes adults who tell her not to drink but who then drink themselves.
Somewhere in the room, an idea flickers.
Filmmaker Sterlin Harjo, who has directed several movies and documentaries, offers an idea that involves the students making the video’s viewers believe they were talking about using drugs and alcohol.
“It helps me forget my worries,” Cheyenne Gottula, an Oglala who attends Lincoln High School, says before the camera. “My mom’s the one who got me into it.”
Then, the reveal.
“I like playing volleyball.”
Reach Kevin Abourezk at 402-473-7225 or kabourezk@journalstar.com.
70 sacred Hopi masks that are set to be auctioned in France are estimated to be worth $1 million. The New York Times reports, the auction is set for April 12th at Néret-Minet auction house. Néret-Minet states that the items were legally obtained over 30 years ago and that this auction should be considered a homage to the Hopi Indians and they should be happy so many people want to understand and analyze their civilization.
“The Hopi Tribe is just disgusted with the continued offensive marketing of Hopi culture.” The Hopi Tribe has attempted to contact the auction house with no luck and has sought legal council on possible ways to bring the masks back to their rightful owners, The Hopi Tribe.
Source: FDA Consumer Health Information www.fda.gov
Is your medicine cabinet filled with expired drugs or medications you no longer use? How should you dispose of them?
Most drugs can be thrown in the household trash, but consumers should take certain precautions before tossing them out, according to the Food and Drug Administra- tion (FDA). A few drugs should be flushed down the toi- let. And a growing number of community-based “take- back” programs offer another safe disposal alternative.
Guidelines for Drug Disposal
FDA worked with the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to develop the first consumer guidance for proper disposal of prescription drugs. Issued by ONDCP in February 2007 and updated in October 2009, the federal guidelines are summarized here:
Follow any specific disposal instructions on the drug label or patient information that accompanies the medication. Do not flush prescription drugs down the toilet unless this information specifically instructs you to do so.
Take advantage of community drug take-back programs that allow the public to bring unused drugs to a central location for proper disposal. Call your city or county government’s household trash and recycling service (see blue pages in phone book) to see if a take-back program is available in your community. The Drug Enforcement Administration, working with state and local law enforcement agencies, is sponsoring National Prescription Drug Take Back Days (www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov) throughout the United States.
If no instructions are given on the drug label and no take-back program is available in your area, throw the drugs in the household trash, but first:
° Take them out of their original containers and mix them with an undesirable substance, such as used coffee grounds or kitty litter. The medication will be less appealing to children and pets, and unrecognizable to peo- ple who may intentionally go through your trash.
° Put them in a sealable bag, empty can, or other container to prevent the medication from leaking or breaking out of a garbage bag.
FDA’s Deputy Director of the Office of Compliance Ilisa Bernstein, Pharm.D., J.D., offers some additional tips:
Before throwing out a medicine container, scratch out all identifying information on the prescription label to make it unreadable. This will help protect your identity and the privacy of your personal health information.
Do not give medications to friends. Doctors prescribe drugs based on a person’s specific symptoms and medical history. A drug that works for you could be dangerous for someone else.
When in doubt about proper disposal, talk to your pharmacist.
Bernstein says the same disposal methods for prescription drugs could apply to over-the-counter drugs as well.
Why the Precautions?
Disposal instructions on the label are part of FDA’s “risk mitigation” strategy, says Capt. Jim Hunter, R.Ph., M.P.H., senior program manager on FDA’s Controlled Substance Staff. When a drug contains instructions to flush it down the toilet, he says, it’s because FDA, working with the manufacturer, has determined this method to be the most appropriate route of disposal that presents the least risk to safety.
Drugs such as powerful narcotic pain relievers and other controlled sub- stances carry instructions for flushing to reduce the danger of unintentional use or overdose and illegal abuse.
For example, the fentanyl patch, an adhesive patch that delivers a potent pain medicine through the skin, comes with instructions to flush used or left- over patches. Too much fentanyl can cause severe breathing problems and lead to death in babies, children, pets, and even adults, especially those who have not been prescribed the drug. “Even after a patch is used, a lot of the drug remains in the patch,” says Hunter, “so you wouldn’t want to throw something in the trash that contains a powerful and potentially dangerous narcotic that could harm others.”
Environmental Concerns
Despite the safety reasons for flushing drugs, some people are questioning the practice because of concerns about trace levels of drug residues found in surface water, such as rivers and lakes, and in some community drinking water supplies. However, the main way drug residues enter water systems is by people taking medications and then naturally passing them through their bodies, says Raanan Bloom, Ph.D., an environmental assessment expert in FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “Most drugs are not completely absorbed or metabolized by the body, and enter the environment after passing through waste water treatment plants.”
A company that wants FDA to approve its drug must submit an application package to the agency. FDA requires, as part of the application package, an assessment of how the drug’s use would affect the environment. Some drug applications are excluded from the assessment requirement, says Bloom, based on previous agency actions.
“For those drugs for which environmental assessments have been required, there has been no indication of environmental effects due to
flushing,” says Bloom. In addition, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, scientists to date have found no evidence of adverse human health effects from pharmaceutical residues in the environment.
Nonetheless, FDA does not want to add drug residues into water systems unnecessarily, says Hunter. The agency reviewed its drug labels to identify products with disposal directions recommending flushing or disposal down the sink. This continuously revised listing can be found at FDA’s Web page on Disposal of Unused Medicines (www.fda.gov/Drugs/ResourcesForYou/ Consumers/BuyingUsingMedicineSafely/ EnsuringSafeUseofMedicine/Safe DisposalofMedicines/ucm186187.htm).
Another environmental concern lies with inhalers used by people who have asthma or other breathing problems, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Traditionally, many inhalers have contained chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s), a propellant that damages the protective ozone layer. The CFC inhalers are being phased out and replaced with more environ- mentally friendly inhalers.
Depending on the type of product and where you live, inhalers and aerosol products may be thrown into household trash or recyclables, or may be considered hazardous waste and require special handling. Read the handling instructions on the label, as some inhalers should not be punctured or thrown into a fire or incinerator. To ensure safe disposal, contact your local trash and recycling facility.
When physicians prescribe medication they do so after a thorough evaluation of their patient. It is up to the patient to educate themselves on safety warnings and potential dangers associated with taking the drug.
1. Many prescription drugs including pain and anti-anxiety medications can be addictive.
2. Just because a controlled drug is legal to prescribe, doesn’t make it safer than illegal drugs.
3. A teenager’s brain continues to develop until age 24, which increases their risk of addiction 8 fold.
4. Taking a prescription drug that doesn’t belong to you is a FELONY.
5. Sharing, selling or giving someone a controlled prescription drug is a FELONY. You are seen as a drug dealer/trafficker, with a possible sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
6. Driving a vehicle under the influence of controlled prescription drugs is legally the same as a DUI (Driving Under the Influence “of alcohol”)
7. Never adjust the dosage of a medication that was prescribed to you. Depending on the controlled substance, it can lead to withdrawal symptoms including: difficulty breathing, confusion, exhaustion, decreased heart rate, anxiety, insomnia, muscle tremors, physical dependence, and even life-threatening consequences.
8. Mixing controlled substances can be dangerous – make sure your physician is aware of all medications and herbal supplements you are taking. Your doctor may not have access to the names of medications prescribed by other physicians. Mixing controlled substances can lead to overdose and death.
9. Do not mix alcohol with controlled substances. It can cause: drowsiness, dizziness; increased risk for overdose; slowed or difficulty breathing; impaired motor control; unusual behavior; and memory problems.
11. Keep track of when you take all medications – this will minimize the chances of taking double doses, or missing a dose.
12. Don’t discuss what medications you are taking with anyone but your medical or mental health team, and keep the medications in a secure place at all times. Prescription drug abuse of controlled substances has become an epidemic in the United States. Often these medications are stolen from medicine cabinets and nightstands. Addicts have been known to break into homes where they suspect they can find meds, as well as assault someone who is in possession of the prescription medication they desire.
Ladybugs are said to bring luck, but there’s nothing lucky about a new type of synthetic drug called amped, also known as exuberance powder. Marketed as a “ladybug attractant,” people use the substance to get high much like “bath salts” or other amphetamine-like drugs.
While high, some of the side effects include:
Increased blood pressure
Increased heart rate
Paranoia
Extreme violent behavior
Hallucinations
Delusions
Law enforcement and lawmakers are playing catch-up with these synthetic products, as many of the chemicals used to make these substances are not yet outlawed.
The consumption of these substances is increasing fast. In 2011, the American Association of Poison Control Centers said there were 6,138 calls regarding exposure to bath salts, compared to 2010 when there were only 304.
The Keystone XL pipeline is in James Hansen’s sights as the famed climate scientist retires from NASA, where he has worked for more than 40 years, in order to spread the message about climate change full-time.
The veteran scientist, who has been arrested at least four times at rallies against the Keystone XL oil pipeline project, will step down this week, NASA said in a statement on April 1. For the past 46 years Hansen has worked at the agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, from which perch he has spread the word about the changing climate and its effect on future generations. He has headed the institute since 1981.
“His departure … will deprive federally sponsored climate research of its best-known public figure,” The New York Times reported, but added, “At 72, he said, he feels a moral obligation to step up his activism in his remaining years.”
He has already done plenty during his years at NASA, including testifying before Congress and predicting many of the changes that are taking place today. In fact, as The Washington Post reports, he was among the first to warn Congress, back in 1988, that greenhouse gases threatened to cook the Earth, in testimony that “was one of the first and clearest public statements on global warming.”
“It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here,” he told Congress then, according to The Washington Post. He also predicted ice melt, cautioned that the risks of sea-level rise were being underestimated by science, and said that the international community is not adequately addressing climate change. Most recently he has been extremely outspoken against further development in the Alberta oil sands of Canada, particularly the Keystone XL pipeline that is under review by the U.S. government and opposed by many tribes.
To do this he “plans to take a more active role in lawsuits challenging the federal and state governments” for not issuing stricter emissions standards and for the governments’ support of extracting sludgy bituminous crude from the Alberta oil sands in Canada, The New York Times said.
“If we burn even a substantial fraction of the fossil fuels, we guarantee there’s going to be unstoppable changes,” Hansen told The New York Times, warning of a tipping point for Earth. “We’re going to leave a situation for young people and future generations that they may have no way to deal with.”
As of April 1, Inuktitut became an official language of Nunavut, putting it on par with English and French in the territory.
“This level of statutory protection for an aboriginal language is unprecedented in Canada,” said the Government of Nunavut’s Department of Culture and Heritage in an April 2 news release.
The passage of the Official Languages Act has been five years in the making. This act takes the place of the Northwest Territories Official Languages Act, which recognized only English and French as official languages. The older act did give “a lesser set of rights to seven aboriginal languages, including Inuktitut,” according to Uqausivut, a comprehensive language plan. But, as the plan points out, “This does not reflect the realities of Nunavut, where a majority of people speak neither English nor French as their first language, but a single Aboriginal language.”
To help support public agencies in becoming compliant with the new act, the Department of Culture and Heritage will provide $5 million for Inuit language initiatives.
“I am proud that Inuit in Nunavut now have a clear statement of their inherent right to the use of the Inuit language in full equality with English and French,” said James Arreak, Minister of Languages, in the press release.
