Word: nitrogen
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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There's trouble in the air for ice skaters. Indoor rinks that are scraped smooth with fuel-powered ice-resurfacers--commonly known as Zamboni machines--may harbor high levels of nitrogen dioxide. The gas can cause chest tightening, difficulty breathing and exacerbate asthma. Look for rinks that are well ventilated--or those cleaned with electricity-powered Zambonis...
...keep up. And nowhere is the gap between what scientists have discovered and what judges must rule on greater than in the realm of artificial reproduction. An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 frozen embryos--fertilized eggs no larger than a grain of sand--are being preserved in liquid-nitrogen canisters across the country. As many as 20,000 of them could be in legal limbo. As of now, the courts have no clear rules for resolving questions of ownership and control. Lawyers can't even agree on whether a frozen embryo should be regarded as a human life form...
...environment is seriously threatened by the prodigal garbage of the world's richest economy. In the President's own boyhood town of Whittier, a part of metropolitan Los Angeles, the once sweet air is befouled with carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, lead compounds, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, fly ash, asbestos particulates and countless other noxious substances. The Apollo 10 astronauts could see Los Angeles as a cancerous smudge from 25,000 miles in outer space. Airline pilots say that whisky-brown miasmas, visible from 70 miles, shroud almost every U.S. city, including remote towns like Missoula in Montana's "big sky" country...
...similar process produced the even deadlier toxin of botulinum bacteria, but because oxygen kills these germs, they were grown in a fermenter infused with nitrogen. Botulism is a severe kind of food poisoning that causes paralysis and death. The Iraqis also used the castor-bean plant, widely grown in the country, to produce the poison ricin, which kills by altering the body's use of proteins and causing circulatory collapse and heart failure...
...area that is home to about 600 million chickens (outnumbering humans about 500 to 1), poultry is the leading suspect. Chicken manure is commonly used as fertilizer on farmlands around the affected waterways. Environmentalists say when it runs off into the water, it brings excessive levels of nitrogen. They have called for restrictions on the use of manure, including more use of sheds to prevent it from being washed into the water by rainfall...