Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
Light, buoyant and cheap, polystyrene foam is commonly used for docks, buoys, pontoons at marinas and other water activities throughout Canada. But the plastic, oil-based product is causing a wave of pollution in oceans and waters across the country, says B.C. NDP MP Rachel Blaney. The federal government needs to ban the use of expanded polystyrene (ESP) and extruded polystyrene (XP), commonly known as Styrofoam, in floating structures in both freshwater and saltwater, said Blaney, the MP for North Island-Powell River.
So-called “forever chemicals,” which are compounds that do not break down easily in the environment, are entering the air from the water through sea spray, a new Swedish study says. Detailing their findings in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, researchers said lab results showed that when bubbles containing perfluoralkyl acids (PFAS) burst at the surface of saltwater, the compounds were aerosolized and entered the air in tiny particles. In order to find out if sea spray could be a vehicle for the compounds to be transported long distances, researchers did field observations at two coastal locations in Norway, collecting more than 100 air samples between 2018 and 2020.
The Arctic Ocean was once a pool of fresh water capped with an ice shelf half as thick as the Grand Canyon is deep. If that's hard to envision, don't despair. Scientists were surprised at the discovery, published Wednesday (Feb. 3) in the journal Nature, as well. The trick to envisioning this odd arrangement is to think about the relationship between ice sheets and the ocean. When ice sheets melt, they dump water into the ocean, raising the sea level. But when ice sheets grow, as they have during Earth's glacial periods, sea level drops.
