The Earth Story

Life in a sinkhole The karst landscapes of China have been an essential part of their figurative art and painting since time immemorial, capturing the imagination and providing a sense of wonder at nature. The sinkholes here form when underground rivers carve out underground channels by chemical erosion whose roofs later collapse when they weaken. These windows allow sunlight to pour within, and extensive and unique ecosystems to develop underground. Loz Image credit: Song Wen/Barcroft Media http://on.wsj.com/1SdIVxD

Meet this organization - Ducks Unlimited - who are working with landowners and ranchers in the southern US Great Plains to conserve water and landscapes along the Platte River, supporting the Ogallala aquifer in the process.

A tour around the wasteland that the Salton Sea has become in California. Original video caption: I swear to god, that when I shot, edited and titled this film there was no sign of a global Pandemic hitting the planet and America was not yet burning. Even though the title may sound like click bait, especially these days, I think this is pretty much how a post-apocalyptic America would look like. More than one year ago I went to LA to shoot a documentary for ARTE and upon completion of the project I went on a trip to the Salton Sea area in California were I shot this film.

Rain Gardens This nondescript set of plants sitting aside the street is actually something quite important, and something you might be able to do at your own home. This is a rain garden, a type of feature that can be designed to limit and clean stormwater runoff. If you have a water-logged area of your home or an area that is naturally low, setting up a rain garden may be an option for you.

Iceberg B-15 In March 2000 a slab of ice larger than Jamaica broke away from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica - Iceberg B-15. The iceberg was 270km long and 40km wide and took over a decade to melt away, slowly breaking up into smaller and smaller pieces. By late 2011, the iceberg was literally in thousands of pieces, and sections of it were still floating around in 2013. B-15 began to fragment almost as soon as it broke off, and the majority of the fragments began drifting north. Iceberg B-15a (the largest fragment of the iceberg) and iceberg C-16 (an iceberg that was knocked off by B-15) did not drift north, which created a barrier that restricted the northward flow of pack ice. These two large icebergs remained in the area for several years which resulted in very high sea ice concentrations throughout the summer months around Ross Island, higher levels of sea ice to the south east of the icebergs (less open water), and a 40% decrease in primary productivity due to the decrease in open water. The iceberg did create a few problems for the ecosystems in the region, for example organisms that depend on primary production had to travel much further to find food. The penguins in the region had a particularly difficult period because of these icebergs. They had to travel further away from their nests just to get to open water and then travel further in the open water to find food, ultimately meaning they were away from their nests for longer periods of time. This voyage meant that their nests were exposed to predators (mainly Skuas) that feed on the eggs and chicks for much longer. Breeding success was observed to be significantly lower in the years that the icebergs were there, and many penguins shifted their nesting locations further north, closer to the open water. Some penguin breeding grounds were found to be completely abandoned! The calving event produced the largest recorded iceberg and was a rare event, but not unusual. It is estimated that icebergs of this size generally break off every 150-200 years. At the current rate of change the future may see many more icebergs like this, with many Antarctic ice shelves set for rapid disintegration. B-15 is an interesting example of how breakup of ice on the Antarctic continent can lead to temporary increases in ice on the seas around the continent.  -MJA Image credit: Landcare Research (satellite image, retrieved from http://bit.ly/1LQbAEs) and Josh Landis, NSF (Iceberg photo, retrieved from: http://bit.ly/1AF7kWQ). Further reading: http://stanford.io/1FeSFxO

Death of a sea Human indifference and unplanned use of natural resources have successfully destroyed the Aral sea within the short span of 50 years. The Aral sea, the fourth largest freshwater lake of the world, is located in the midst of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in Asia and it is on the verge of drying up completely. The water of the Aral sea was replenished by two of the biggest Central Asian rivers - the Syr Darya from the north and the Amu Darya from the south. In the early 1960s, the Soviet Union began using the waters of the lake to boost cotton production. Numerous dams and irrigation channels on Amu Darya clogged off the water supply to the lake. As a result, 60,000 sq. kms. area of lake water (i.e. about 80% by volume) was lost by way of irrigation and evaporation. As the sea started to shrink, the pleasant climate of the area began to change. The rain stopped and the grass dried up. The summers became hotter than ever before, and winters became too cold to endure. The local produce like melons, clover, and barley could not be grown any longer. Herds of antelope that used to roam the area dwindled away. The seawater became polluted with increasing concentrations of fertilisers and pesticides which were present in the surface runoff. This rise in pollution level killed all the aquatic animals, causing fisheries and the communities that depended on them to collapse. When the sea receded, layers of polluted, salty sand were exposed. These sediments were carried by the wind and created health hazards among the local population. By 1997 the lake had shrunk to 10 percent of its original size and split into a large southern Uzbek part and a smaller Kazakh portion in the north. The Kazakh government has started conservation measures to restore the small Aral in Kazakhstan. They built the Kokaral dam in 2005 to stop the existing lake water from running away into the desert while the Syr Darya continues to replenish it with fresh water. After the dam was built port Aralsk saw the sea water returning within 25 km of the port area whereas before 2005, the sea had receded 100 km away from the port. While this dam did save the small northern part of the Aral Sea, aside from occasional floods, the eastern portion of the Aral Sea has now been dry for years. The Soviet Union sowed the seeds of the Aral Sea's destruction by building a cotton industry; now that it is so close to death the oil and gas deposits under the seabed have attracted the attention of Russian and Korean energy companies.They are now actively extracting in the Uzbek part of the sea and the dry sea bed enables easier access to the oil and gas deposits. The Uzbek government is planting saxaul trees on the seabed to reduce the spread of the toxic salts but conservation efforts towards restoration of large part of Aral sea are nil. Lakes are being created for fish-farming and to help improve living conditions of the people of the region, but all of these efforts are too little, too late to save the Aral sea. The decreasing water level through all these years as is evident from the photos shows the extent of the destruction of this beautiful lake. --RB. Further details: http://bit.ly/1tjm4B2http://cnn.it/1E8PoCxhttp://bbc.in/1Ar8MKC More on Kokaral dam: http://dailym.ai/1FTbsTY Information on Ground water pollution via sediments: http://bit.ly/1Fl63kW Image credits: NASA/USGS/GSFChttps://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/30165

Influence of the environment: The Marine, Freshwater and Terrestrial Environments.

The physical properties of salt water, freshwater and air have important implications for anatomy, physiology and behaviour of the animals inhabiting them. Let us take a look at the main features of marine, freshwater and terrestrial environments and their effects on animal life.

Post Three: The terrestrial environment

The terrestrial environment is our home, home to humans, so it can be hard to accept that it is the harshest of the three main environments. To begin with, compared to water there is little buoyancy, so all terrestrial animals require some form of skeleton strong enough to enable support and movement on land. Extremes in temperature are much more common, requiring biochemical, physiological or behavioural adaptations to cope with them.

All land animals also face the problem of significant water loss by evaporation. To control this, their body coverings must offer a more permeable barrier between internal and external environments than is common in marine and freshwater animals. It is also critical for terrestrial animals to locate their respiratory surfaces inside the body, or to protect them from desiccation if they remain external. Surfaces permeable to oxygen and carbon dioxide are also permeable to water, so evaporative water loss would be great if respiration occurred on the outside of the body. If respiratory surfaces are internal, with only a small external opening, evaporative water loss can be reduced. The few terrestrial animals such as snails and earthworms that use the body surface for respiration protect it with mucous secretions to reduce water loss. Behavioural adaptations such as burrowing may also be important in reducing evaporation across the external body surface.

Land animals can also conserve water when excreting nitrogenous wastes. It would be extremely wasteful to excrete ammonia because of the large volume of water required to keep it dilute and non-toxic, so energy is expended to convert ammonia to urea (in mammals) or uric acid (reptiles and birds; birds excrete their faeces and ‘urea’ at the same time to conserve energy, in the form of uric acid). Despite the energy cost, these compounds are less toxic so less water is needed to remove them.

Lastly, fertilisation must be internal in terrestrial animals, because the gametes could not survive and fuse without water. This in turn may require elaborate courtship behaviour as I am sure many of you who have watched Nat Geo Animal Planet or Sir David Attenborough would have certainly seen some of this behaviour! Young may be born alive, or eggs laid in an enclosed protective coat or located in a moist spot. The eggs cannot obtain water-soluble nutrients from their surrounding environment, so all nutrients necessary for development must be available within the egg. Larvae are rare in terrestrial animals, but insects are a significant exception.

So, we can see that terrestrial animals must support their bodies in the absence of significant buoyancy and that water loss is also a significant problem that has to be overcome. There is no disputing the fact that the marine environment is indeed the easiest environment to live in, but that there is no escaping the fact that life, no matter where it lives, needs water in one way or another.

It makes you think hard about the possibility of life elsewhere in the Universe, and the fact that many animals tend to survive if not thrive in environments where there is ample water available. Food for thought indeed.

Thanks for reading.

~ JM

Photo Credit: Photo and caption by Rebecca Langford, National Geographic. Sourced fromhttp://on.natgeo.com/1JZNR3W on 21/04/2015

More Info:

Gordon, M.S and Olsen, E.C. (1995). Invasions of the land: the transition of organisms from aquatic to terrestrial life. Columbia University Press, New York. Pechenik, J.A. (2005). Biology of the invertebrates. McGraw-Hill, Boston. 5th edn, Chapter 1. The Living Environment: http://bit.ly/1yK6pnv The Terrestrial Environment: http://bit.ly/1GcWUQz

Silver nanoparticles (Ag NP) – what are they, and what do they do?

Silver nanoparticles – they're in almost everything; your food, clothes, laundry detergent, cosmetics... But what are they? What do they do? Their presence is becoming more prominent and people are beginning to question it. Silver nanoparticles have been beneficial for humans thus far, and have had numerous studies showing that they have no significant negative effects on humans. The problem with silver nanoparticles is the detrimental effects they have on the environment.

So, what are silver nanoparticles? Well, a nanoparticle is anything that is 1-100 nanometres in size (a nanometre is one millionth of a millimetre). And a silver nanoparticle is, obviously, exactly as it is named. Its unique in that it is antimicrobial and non-toxic to humans and animals, so it became very popular in pretty much everything that humans don't want to have germs.

These particles end up in the water system from various routes such as the dumping of waste during production, garbage disposal, wet clothes drying outside, etc. The precise issues this may cause have not yet been narrowed down because a lot of the studies researching this issue are long-term and have not yet been finished. Some short-term studies have found that the silver nanoparticles may bioaccumulate (when a substance accumulates in the flesh/fat of an individual) in fish, becoming toxic over time. It may also inhibit the growth of algae.

One of the long-term studies not yet completed is the overall effect that these silver nanoparticles have on a food chain. Even if, hypothetically, they affect nothing but bacteria or microfauna (microscopic animals), killing the bacteria could result in either an explosion of their food species, or a reduction in their predator, which would result in trophic cascade (a collapse of the entire food chain).

~Rosie

Image: http://bit.ly/1GUJdo8

Sources: http://bit.ly/19T7fT7

http://bit.ly/1C2ghVK

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure

Spoil heaps may be considered uneconomic waste by many companies, but to geologists they are a treasure trove of sparkling minerals and criss crossing veins. My sixth form geology teacher would regularly raid a white gold spoil heap in Wales, giving specimens to her students as good luck charms for their exams. We still don’t know if her activities were entirely legal, but they did help spark a love of minerals within her students that lasts to this day.

However, these rocks aren’t just pretty to look at; they can also provide an insight into the type, age and order of mineralisation that occurred. So much information can be gathered from such sites that universities will take students to spoil heaps as a field based exercise in mineral exploration.

Of course they are also the perfect place to add to any rock hounds collection, after all one man’s trash is another man’s treasure!

- Watson

Image Credit: Wikipedia

World Biomes

Biogeography is the scientific study of the way plants and animals are distributed across the globe. Because climate and soil determine which plants thrive in a particular region, similar types of vegetation, as well as the animals associated with them, occur in places with climates that are similar. These places, occupying large areas and identified by their vegetation types, are known as biomes. For example, the belt of mainly evergreen coniferous forests that runs across Canada and northern Eurasia constitutes a biome known as boreal forest in North America and taiga in Russia. The character of this forest is essentially the same throughout the biome, but the plant and animals species found there vary. There are twelve biomes in the world. Although general vegetation types can identify biomes, the vegetation in any biome is in fact quite varied because of a number of local differences in land use and environment. Tropical biomes occur between the tropics of Cancer (north) and Capricorn (south). Temperate biomes can be found in temperate regions, and polar biomes are located near the poles. Other biomes are more difficult to define precisely, because not all plant communities have clear boundaries. The range of plants in each biome makes it possible to draw the boundaries in different ways.

Around the poles, the polar ice biome supports no plant life. The climate is exceedingly harsh and there is neither soil nor liquid water at the surface. Bordering the polar ice is the tundra biome, where the ground is exposed and the temperature rises above freezing for a short time in summer. Along its edges, tundra gives way to boreal forest or taiga. Tundra and boreal forest are mainly confined to the Northern Hemisphere, because there is little land at the correct latitude in the Southern Hemisphere. Closer to the equator, deciduous trees become more common among the conifers of the boreal forest. The biome changes and temperate deciduous forest becomes more widespread. This biome is restricted to the continental regions with moist climates, while temperate rain forest is found only in the wettest regions.

As climates grow hotter and drier, the biome changes again. Temperate grassland, the prairies, steppes, pampas and veld, replace the temperature deciduous forest. In a few parts of the world there is a biome typical of Mediterranean climates, dominated by dry woodlands and chaparral shrub lands. A belt of subtropical deserts lies across both hemispheres. Deserts vary according to their locations, with some found along western coasts and some in the interiors of continents. Where climates are a little moister, subtropical deserts merge into savanna grassland. On either side of the equator there are tropical dry forests and rain forests. Mountain grasslands and shrub land biomes are not confined to particular latitudes.

The importance of biomes cannot be overestimated. Biomes have changed and moved many times during the history of life on Earth. More recently, human activities have drastically altered these communities. Thus, conservation and preservation of biomes should be a major concern to all.

~JM

Photo Credit: http://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/biomes

More info:

World http://www.worldbiomes.com/ World Biomes Map – Colouring in: Awesome activity for kids. http://www.classroomsecrets.co.uk/world-biomes-map/ Blue Planet Biomes: http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/world_biomes.htm Terrestrial Biomes: http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/terrestrial-biomes-13236757

Chain smoking chicks?

Last week we showed a common and fairly disgusting scene – piles of the discarded cigarette butts that cover the ground worldwide (http://tmblr.co/Zyv2Js1dIaajE). This litter not only is unappealing, it actually has real environmental impacts.

This bird is handing a discarded cigarette butt to its chick on a beach in Florida, and this isn’t a one-time thing; birds worldwide have found a use for discarded cigarette butts in their nests. Lining their nests with discarded cigarette butts actually serves as a barrier to types of parasitic mites that could otherwise threaten the nests. The nicotine and other chemicals in the cigarette provide a type of chemical insect repellant – a study by St. Andrews University found some nests in the Mexico City area contained as many as 50 discarded cigarette butts.

Of course, this could also be a case where there are short-term benefits but long-term issues that the birds don’t realize. The birds notice that they see a benefit from the cigarettes – fewer mites, but if there are other issues due to exposing birds to nicotine and other chemicals throughout their lifetime, the birds might not be able to understand the risks. Thus, they hand off the cigarette waste to their youth wanting them to know its use, but with no way to understand the consequences.

Also, I’m hoping that “Karen Catbird” is the photographers’ real name and not a pseudonym for the news report. 

-JBB

Image credit: https://www.wfla.com/news/pinellas-county/bird-caught-giving-chick-cigarette-on-st-pete-beach/2098672777?fbclid=IwAR1YIO83ZOdaB0EpMF7HpshFLKE0a6oLpY6DKP7mulAS4W52iyGJ8G_cpGc

Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-20607413 http://bit.ly/1yHkUlq

Growing Deltas

As we’ve previously covered (http://on.fb.me/1DuQOaU), the Mississippi River delta plain is disappearing. The land loss along the Louisiana coast has been attributed to several factors, but particularly to lack of sediment that could build new marshes. Two deltas in Atchafalaya Bay, however, are growing. Comparing these satellite photos from 1984 and 2014 clearly shows an increase in land area at both. They are located at the mouths of Atchafalaya River, a distributary of the Mississippi, and the Wax Lake Outlet. About 40% of Atchafalaya’s water is redirected into Wax Lake as part of an effort to reduce severity of floods.

Prior to the Mississippi River being heavily dammed, most of the water was heavily laden with sediments. Now, sand and silt are often deposited behind levees instead of flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. The water is also forced through narrow channels too quickly to deposit the remaining sediment once it reaches the mouth of the river. Instead, it goes into the deeper waters of the Gulf, well past any place that could support delta-building.

Atchafalaya River still carries sediments, both naturally occurring and dredged, into the bay at just the right speed to allow them to settle and build up in the shallow coastal waters. Vegetation then colonizes the sandbars thereby stabilizing them and keeping them in place.

Scientists at Louisiana State University estimate that the two deltas together added about 34 square kilometers (13 square miles) of land between 1989 and 1995. Hurricanes then helped strip away 2 square kilometers (1.2 square mile) between 1999 and 2004; years which also had no major floods to replenish what was lost.

The growing deltas don’t come close to replacing the land that disappears in an average year, and the 50-year forecast is grim. Scientists say the Louisiana coast could lose another 5,000 square kilometers (3107 square miles). Wax Lake Outlet and the Atchafalaya River may serve as models for how to rebuild the deltas.

Photo Credit: NASA References: http://1.usa.gov/1ArUBqw

The Most Common Type of Litter

A 2009 study found that discarded cigarette butts add up to 770 million kilograms (1.7 billion pounds) of litter globally every year. Additionally, ever since the first annual International Coastal Cleanup in 1986, they have been the most common type of trash picked up on beaches each year. Other than being unsightly, what harm do they do? Cigarette butts are toxic. They contain nicotine and trace amounts of the chemical additives used to make them. Laboratory studies have shown that these compounds are damaging to some small freshwater organisms and marine bacteria. Larger animals sometimes mistake cigarette butts for food and consume them, but it’s not known how many they have to eat before they are harmed by the chemicals; although it’s certainly not good for animals to have the plastic filters in their digestive systems (http://on.fb.me/1CdMpFn).

The plastic in cigarette filters is cellulose acetate, which is not biodegradable. It is photodegradable, meaning, under ideal conditions, ultraviolet rays from the sun can break the filter into smaller pieces, but it never entirely goes away. Instead, the smaller pieces and their toxins disappear into our soil and water as pollutants. Of course, any butts buried under sand, rocks, plant material, or anything else will be protected from the UV rays, and will remain largely intact, although the chemicals can still leech out.

Discarded butts have also caused wildfires. Numbers are hard to come by, but smoking materials in general were estimated to be responsible for 12 percent of brush, grass, and forest fires in the U.S. in 2010.

Some cities are trying to address the problem by introducing recycling programs, putting more ash trays in public places, and increasing fines for littering. The recycling programs and extra ash trays have been moderately successful, but the simplest solution is, if you’re a smoker, don’t treat the world like it’s your ash tray.

Photo Credit: William Ross http://www.flickr.com/photos/thedarkthing/5144654131

References: http://bit.ly/1EWT4cX http://bit.ly/1CfGT7H http://bit.ly/1ybwrcs

The Salton Sea

In 1905, workers were constructing a canal to carry water from the Colorado River on the eastern border of California to the fertile agricultural areas in the Imperial Valley when something when wrong. The waters of the Colorado broke free and almost the entire volume of the river poured into the low ground at the bottom of the Valley. The Salton Trough sits over 70 meters below sea level, only a tiny bit above the elevation of Badwater Basin in Death Valley, so water easily poured into the basin when the canal walls broke.

This wasn’t the first time in geologic history that the river had filled the Imperial Valley. The valley floor is filled by Colorado River sediments; for the last several million years the river has bounced back and forth between flooding the Imperial Valley and entering the Gulf of Mexico, with its direction determined by which flow path was easiest. As sediment built up in the delta, the river would naturally shift its course to flood the imperial valley, and as sediment blocked that spot it would shift again back to the Gulf of California and its delta.

The river flowed into the basin for more than 2 years before engineers could finally send its huge flow back to the Gulf of Mexico. The flood gave birth to an inland lake known as the Salton Sea.

For decades, the Salton Sea actually stayed mostly fresh. Tourists from the nearby cities of Los Angeles and San Diego would visit the shores to swim in the waters and migrating birds found a delightful water source on their route. But over time, the chemistry of the water changed.

The Salton Sea was flooded by the Colorado, but the water in the local area was able to sustain it. Flood irrigation from nearby farmlands and input from local streams kept the Salton Sea water level close to constant, but those waters also carried salts and fertilizers into the Sea, increasing the salt content and eventually leading to algal blooms that would kill huge numbers of fish.

The Salton Sea’s tourism industry died decades ago as the waters changed, but the situation is more worrisome today. California spent years in drought, and beyond that water for farming in this valley has become gradually more precious due to increased demand and climate change.

The decline in water supplied to the Salton Sea risks turning the waters into a desert or a disaster like Owens Lake to the North (see here:http://on.fb.me/1ytht1g) or Lake Urmia in Iran (http://on.fb.me/1BvJUjE). If the waters of even part of the lake dry up, it will expose bare, salt-covered sediment that will easily be picked up by the wind. These sediments could easily turn into a major source of air pollution throughout the southwestern United States if they’re allowed into the air. That level of air pollution would likely turn into a multi-billion dollar environmental disaster.

The lake has been gradually contracting for the past several years, exposing dry and salty ground particularly at the southern tip where the polluted "New River" enters the lake after flowing through agricultural areas in Mexico and the US. The State of California was originally supposed to develop a remediation plan for this area as early as 2003, but no one wants to spend money or give up their access to water supplies, so more than a decade passed with no agreement between the various agencies and landowners who would have to participate in controlling pollution in this area. Finally, just last month several stakeholders struck an agreement to begin diverting some water and developing wetlands on areas that are being exposed as the lake shrinks - a first step towards managing the drying of this basin.

-JBB

Image credits: EPA/NBC News/NASA http://nbcnews.to/1L5sobA

Read more: http://desert.sn/1uqqnvY http://desert.sn/1L5snEm http://www.fws.gov/refuge/sonny_bono_salton_sea/ http://saltonsea.ca.gov/ http://saltonseamuseum.org/salton_sea_history.html https://bit.ly/2YeFcay

Lake Urmia

This doesn’t look much like a lake, but today it is again. Iran’s Lake Urmia used to be one of the largest saltwater lakes in the world. A couple decades ago, this lake was the largest saltwater lake in the Middle East and the 6th largest in the world. By 2013, the lake had lost a whopping 88% of its volume in the last 2 decades almost entirely due to diversions of the water for use by Iranian society.  Restricted, salt-water lakes like this rely on the input water to keep them flooded. The lake exists in the first place because the water flowing in balances the water lost by evaporation; if either of those changes, the lake volume must change in response.

When evaporation takes over, the lake not only shrinks, but it leaves salt behind. As the rocks nearby erode, it produces salt that is delivered to the lake and builds up in the sediments at the bottom. If the water stops being delivered, the salt concentrates to the point that life can no longer live in the water and the sediments can even be exposed.

Salt-encrusted grains are often small and easily broken up. When they’re exposed to desert winds, these tiny, salt-crusted grains are easily lifted and carried by the wind, forming particulate air pollution. Thus, when a restricted lake dries up, it does dramatic damage to the local population.

When the lake reached its low point in 2013, Iran began a major program to divert extra water into the lake. With the assistance of some heavy rains, the lake has gone from only being 12% of its former coverage to ~60% of its former coverage this year. There’s a good chance the salty spot in this picture now has a few centimeters of water covering it again.

-JBB

Image credits: http://bit.ly/1EAT2Ex http://www.chess.com/blog/sallefara/national-park-of-lake-urmia http://cnn.it/1yFaebh https://en.radiofarda.com/a/iran-s-lake-urmia-revives-amid-heavy-rains-in-recent-months/29878602.html

Original paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0380133014002688

Balloons Killing Animals

Releasing helium-filled latex balloons at sporting events, weddings, funerals, and numerous other occasions is a fairly common occurrence. But what happens to the balloons after they float away?

Latex balloons can rise to an altitude of about 8 kilometers before “brittle fracturing” occurs, where the balloon fractures into long strands which can strongly resemble the tentacles of jellyfish or squid to a marine animal. Approximately 10% don’t fracture at all and come back down intact posing an even larger hazard.

Latex is both non-toxic and biodegradable; even so, it may take up to 4 years for latex to biodegrade. In that time, pieces may be consumed by wildlife, particularly marine life, and cause a blockage in the digestive system which leads to starvation. Any ribbons or strings attached to the balloon can also be a hazard because animals may become entangled in them. There was even an incident in 2011 in which a UK farmer’s cow died from ingesting a balloon released as part of a Red Nose Day charity event at a Primary School 80 kilometers away http://bit.ly/1zkpCZi. Livestock deaths from balloons are not uncommon.

One alternative is to fill the balloons with air instead of helium. The balloons won’t float away and are easier to keep in place. This has the added advantage of not using up finite helium, an element that is becoming increasingly scarce here on Earth as we recently explained http://on.fb.me/1AeKL6U.

Photo Credit: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service https://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwshq/8080505619 Read More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/7447381.stm http://balloonsblow.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Debris-Selectivity-by-Marine-Turtles.pdf http://www.mcsuk.org/downloads/pollution/dont%20let%20go.pdf