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Upfront–

THE last thing you might expect to encounter exploring the ocean floor is a chemical weapon. But it seems hundreds of thousands of tonnes of them have been dumped into the sea, and no one knows exactly where the weapons are. Now, scientists are calling for weapons sites to be mapped for safety’s sake.

Between 1946 and 1972, the US and other countries pitched 300,000 tonnes of chemical weapons over the sides of ships or scuttled them along with useless vessels, according to public reports by the Medea Committee, a group of scientists given access

to intelligence data so they can advise the US government on environmental issues.

But the military have lost track of most of the weapons because of haphazard record keeping combined with imprecise navigation. Even the exact

chemicals were not always noted, though there are records of shells, rockets and barrels containing sulphur mustard and nerve agents such as sarin.

The Chemical Weapons Convention does not cover the destruction of the sea-dumped weapons, which are considered abandoned. “There’s no piece of legislation or treaty that deals with this stuff,” says Peter Brewer, an ocean chemist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, California. “It’s in limbo.”

If the chemicals leak from their containers, they will break down slowly in the cold seawater. But it is unclear what will happen if the chemicals bind to sediment or sink into anoxic zones, says Brewer (Environmental Science and Technology, vol 42, p 1394).

A team led by Roy Wilkens at the University of Hawaii in Manoa is planning to look for munitions dumped off the island of Oahu. Records only note that the weapons were dumped about “five miles south of Pearl Harbour”. Finding them will involve a search of 60 square kilometres, says Wilkens.

WHEN the cost of sequencing a human genome gets down to the price of a family car, then the era of personalised genomics will truly be upon us. This was the prediction from James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, in an interview with New Scientist (20 October 2007, p 58) last year.

Well, it’s getting close. Last week, Applied Biosystems of Foster City, California, announced that it had sequenced the genome of a Nigerian man at a cost of

less than $60,000, excluding labour. “We are committed to pushing the limits of this technology,” says Shaf Yousaf of Applied Biosystems. “These prices will come down further in the next year or two.”

Several companies are already offering partial personal-genome scans, based on single-letter changes in parts of the genome , for about $1000. Cheap full-genome sequencing would help us to understand why people differ from others, and could help determine whether someone was at risk of a particular disease.

A BUCKET WITH YOUR SALAD?The rate of food poisoning from salad greens in the US is hugely outstripping increases in their consumption.

Three large outbreaks in 2006 that between them made 300 Americans sick were traced to bulk-prepared greens. “For most outbreaks, investigators are unable to pinpoint where contamination occurred,” says Michael Lynch of the US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia.

Whatever the cause, increased

consumption is not it. Between 1986 and 1995, Americans ate 17 per cent more leafy greens than in the previous decade, yet poisonings rose 60 per cent. In the decade between 1996 and 2005, poisonings rose 39 per cent, against a consumption hike of just 9 per cent.

Lynch, who presented his team’s results on Monday in Atlanta at an international conference on emerging infectious diseases, says more research is needed to explain the discrepancy.

US SIDESTEPS AIR HEALTH ADVICE

“The US and other countries pitched 300,000 tonnes of chemical weapons overboard”

For many researchers, the Bush administration will be best remembered for the way it has manipulated scientific advice for political ends. The latest evidence of this tactic is a controversial proposal to change the way US air-quality standards are set, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) in Washington DC.

When the Environmental Protection Agency said last week that it would beef up air-quality controls by cutting ground-level ozone limits from 80 parts per billion to 75 ppb, it seemed like good news. Ozone can trigger respiratory problems and heart attacks. The new rules should save lives and, by cutting pressure on hospitals, might create financial benefits that outweigh the cost of implementing the changes.

However, around a year ago the EPA’s own scientific advisers told the

agency that there was “overwhelming” evidence that an even tighter limit of 70 ppb would save thousands more lives. The decision to ignore that advice has angered public-health groups.

Now worse may be to come. The administration wants to reform the process for setting air-quality standards and may allow political appointees to help draft the advisory reports, a job that is currently in the hands of researchers. The UCS fears this will allow the White House to suppress this kind of independent scientific advice in future.

“The interference in science has been a consistent theme of this administration for many years now,” says Tim Donaghy of the UCS. “The administration has changed the rules along the way so that, when the next administration gets into office, the role science plays in setting regulations will be greatly diminished.”

WAL

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BIB

IKO

V/AL

AMY

–Smoke and mirrors

Sea monsters $60,000 a genome

6 | NewScientist | 22 March 2008 www.newscientist.com