Word: bacteria
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...coli 0157 is a particularly nasty strain of the E. coli that lives and thrives in our digestive tract. Animals such as cows tolerate 0157 far better than people, and often shed the bacteria in their feces. The bacteria can then infect crops such as lettuce, spinach, onions, or even apples when contaminated manure is used as fertilizer, or when contaminated water is used to irrigate fields. Most recently, E. coli 0157 found in bagged salads packaged by Dole sickened over two dozen people...
...skies. Smokestack mercury exists in either particle form--which falls relatively quickly back to earth--or aerosol form, which can travel anywhere around the globe. Either way, when it lands, trouble begins. On the ground or especially in the low-oxygen environment of the oceans, mercury is consumed by bacteria that add a bit of carbon to convert it to methylmercury, a metabolically stickier form that stays in the body a long time. That is bad news for the food chain, since every time a bigger animal eats a smaller animal, it consumes a heavy dose of its prey...
...study of Northeastern songbirds. A group headed by Evers had been worried for some time that mercury's reach was greater than it seemed, particularly in the Northeast, which is downwind from the power plants of the Midwest and Canada. Mercury from those plants' smokestacks could find plenty of bacteria in water, leaves and sod to make the toxic conversion to methylmercury. Netting 178 species of songbirds and testing their blood and feathers, Evers found that all of them were indeed contaminated, some in concentrations exceeding 0.1 parts per million. That doesn't sound like much...
...When antibiotics were introduced in the 1940s, infections caused by staph were easily fought. By the 1950s, however, the bacteria had developed defense mechanisms to antibiotics and today they are increasingly resistant. Until recently, these resistant bacteria were found exclusively in the hospital environment, but they have spread to the community - particularly in Georgia, Texas and California. I see children in my office every week with tender, warm boils of pus on their buttocks, legs, arms and even foreheads. Ten years ago these infections were rare and quickly treated with a shot of antibiotics in the office and a short...
...When these patients develop recurrent boils, they undergo weeks of bleach baths and intranasal antibiotic creams to hopefully eradicate the resistant bacteria that have colonized their skin and nasal passages. Occasionally, oral antibiotics are ineffective and patients must be admitted to a hospital to receive intravenous therapy and sometimes surgical treatment of their abscesses. Unlike strep, staph is alive and getting stronger all the time, with few new effective antibiotics on the horizon...