This story was co-published with Public Health Watch.

When David Butts’ water filter is off and he turns on a tap in his modest house in this rural community, black water streams out.

Butts said his water has gotten progressively worse in the past decade.

The 56-year-old retired home contractor is angry that he must spend around $50 a month on filters to clean his drinking water. And he worries that before he began using filters five years ago, the dirty water was threatening the health of his ailing, elderly mother, who lives with him.

Butts is not the only one upset over tap water. Dozens of other residents in this no-frills borough about an hour’s drive northwest of Pittsburgh have experienced repeated bouts of discolored water for years, costing them money and raising fears for their health. Residents say the tainted water stains bathroom fixtures and clothing, and residual sludge blocks pipes and destroys washing machines and water filters. Some are especially worried that the water could harm their children.

A growing number of people in Industry, population 1,800, say they’ve had enough. Last fall they asked the local water authority — the Industry Borough Municipal Authority — to investigate and rectify the problem. The authority’s annual water reports from 2019 to 2021 said the water was clean and met federal standards. But under public pressure, the authority asked a private company to collect and test water samples from nine homes, including Butts’. The results shocked and confused Industry residents: The tests found a little-known, problematic metal in the water — manganese. 

In low doses, manganese is essential for good health, ensuring proper metabolism, bone growth, and healing of wounds. But in high concentrations it becomes toxic and can cause neurological harm, including tremors and hearing loss, and even lead to symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease, reports the Office of Dietary Supplements, part of the National Institutes of Health. Symptoms may not appear for months or years. Manganese in drinking water may be particularly harmful to infants and children, various studies suggest: It is linked to lower IQ and behavioral problems like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

High levels of manganese can be a serious problem, says Linda Birnbaum, former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program. “It’s not good for people’s brains, especially infants and children. It’s very concerning.”

The tests in Industry found that one home had manganese levels 4.8 times higher than what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says protects people’s neurological health. That house and two others failed the EPA’s standard for appearance and taste. Butts’ unfiltered water and tests at six other sites were within safety and aesthetic limits — which Butts and others found hard to believe.

“Don’t tell me this water is clean,” he said. “How many people are getting sick when [the water authority] could have been doing something?”

Under Pennsylvania rules, drinking water providers must limit manganese to 50 micrograms per liter (µg/L) or below. However, they don’t have to test for the metal, so it can go undetected. The EPA and many other states and communities don’t set legal limits or enforce rules on the metal in drinking water. The EPA is considering whether manganese needs tighter guidelines or legal limits. But its efforts have met stiff resistance from industries that use manganese in their products or produce manganese as waste, including the steel, chemical, energy, and agricultural industries. 

A search of federal records, some obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, shows that corporate groups have repeatedly lobbied the EPA to delay or derail regulation. Some of the groups and companies also have hired scientific consulting firms, such as ToxStrategies and Exponent, to produce reports on manganese health risks that suggest stricter controls are not needed and children are not more vulnerable to excess manganese than adults. 

The firms’ conclusions conflict with other, publicly funded studies, and some government and academic researchers question the accuracy of the industry-funded findings.

David Michaels, a former head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), said industry efforts to fight manganese controls appear to be “classic product defense.” 

Industry has used the tactics in regulatory battles over products ranging from pesticides to opioids, said Michaels, author of the books “Doubt Is Their Product” and “The Triumph of Doubt.” The goal of this “mercenary science”, as he calls it, is to preserve profits and avoid future litigation or cleanup costs. 

“Industries downplay the risks of their products, spreading disinformation here and hiding evidence of harm there,” Michaels said.

Industry groups and consultants dispute this view, saying they play a valuable role in shaping policy that protects the environment and people’s health.

In a written statement to Public Health Watch, Joseph Green, a lawyer who represents the Manganese Interest Group, wrote that the group, composed of trade associations and companies, supports the “scientifically sound” regulation of manganese. It participates in public rulemaking and encourages EPA policies that protect public health and the environment, Green wrote. Regulators must consider all the available scientific information and the views of a wide range of stakeholders, including industries, he added.

At a minimum, dozens of drinking water systems across the nation have provided residents with water that has high levels of manganese; it may go undetected in many others. 

An EPA survey published in 2021 tested 5,034 U.S. public water systems and detected manganese above the EPA’s “health advisory” level in 106, or 2.1 percent, of them. In some areas, such as the Village of Kiryas Joel, New York, and the town of Randolph, Massachusetts, levels were over six times higher than the EPA’s recommended safety limit. Some state water experts say the number of people affected is likely much higher because the survey focused on larger drinking water facilities, which can have less manganese contamination than smaller ones.

The EPA suggests that people consume water with no more than 300 µg/L of manganese each day over their lifetimes to avoid potential neurological harm. Infants younger than six months should be limited to that daily amount in water for no more than 10 days. But these levels are not a legal limit, so most public water utilities are not required to monitor manganese or remove it. By contrast, other international authorities such as the World Health Organization advise much tighter controls on manganese.

The EPA’s guidance is also based partly on a decades-old estimate of the average level of manganese adults reported eating every day, said Seth Frisbie, an expert in drinking water contaminants and professor emeritus of environmental chemistry at Norwich University in Vermont. The estimate doesn’t adequately account for infants, who weigh much less than adults, absorb the metal more readily and excrete it more slowly, leaving them at risk by the guidance, he said.

What’s more, infant formula can contain high levels of manganese — manufacturers are legally required to add it — potentially increasing babies’ cumulative exposure, Frisbie said. 

Manganese can occur in drinking water through both natural processes and industrial pollution. Rainwater and sometimes river water seep into soil and over manganese-containing rocks, picking up and sending the metal into groundwater used for drinking.  Some states, such as Minnesota and New Hampshire, have higher levels of manganese in their soils and groundwater. It’s also discharged by industries such as steel manufacturers, coal-fired power plants and hydraulic fracturing operations used to extract oil and gas.

Some epidemiological and animal studies funded by governments or universities suggest that consuming manganese at levels that exist in hundreds of U.S. water supplies may harm cognition, including reduced memory, learning ability, and other intellectual functions. One analysis, led by University of Montreal researchers and based on data from two studies involving 630 children in Canada, found that manganese levels in drinking water of around 133 µg/L and 266 µg/L — considered safe by the EPA— were associated with a 1 percent and a 2 percent drop in one type of IQ, respectively. 

That may seem minuscule. But Youssef Oulhote, an epidemiologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who ran a separate analysis of the Canadian schoolchildren data, said that while a person may barely notice losing a few IQ points, the effect across an entire population can be significant, leading to more people with intellectual disabilities and fewer who are cognitively gifted. 

A study of 643,401 children in Denmark, released in 2020, found that children exposed to concentrations of manganese of around 100 µg/L at any one time during the first five years of life were much more likely to have a type of ADHD that limits attention span and increases distractibility and forgetfulness than those exposed to below 5 µg/L. 

No single study has proven that manganese causes neurological problems in infants and children. Some studies that show links between manganese and neurological problems have limitations. For example, the studies in Canada involved a small number of children, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions. Taken together, however, these studies offer “compelling evidence” that manganese in drinking water may harm children’s neurology and behavior, Oulhote said. 

Industry representatives disagree. The Manganese Interest Group suggests that infants and children are not more exposed or vulnerable to high levels of manganese than adults, and when the metal is consumed in drinking water at levels of 100 µg/L or lower, it doesn’t significantly build up in infants’ and children’s brain tissue. The group’s argument is based on models published in an academic journal and financed by Virginia-based Afton Chemical Corp., which produces manganese-based additives for fuel. The modeling was largely performed by ToxStrategies, which has offices across the country and has done work that minimizes the risks of products for industrial clients. For example, it has performed several studies paid for by an industry think tank that questioned some of the dangers of hexavalent chromium, a carcinogenic compound used by the steel industry and others and a byproduct of electricity production. 

The Manganese Interest Group also funded a review performed by California research firm Exponent that found there is insufficient evidence to prove that manganese consumed or inhaled by infants and young children causes neurodevelopmental problems. Green, the lawyer for the interest group, said while it funded the study, it had no control over content.

 The Manganese Industry Group suggests that people are largely exposed to manganese in food, so drinking water is unlikely to add much to their manganese consumption. However, New Jersey state toxicologists wrote in 2021 that despite the intake through food, “drinking water serves as a substantial exposure source in some areas of the world, including New Jersey.”

The borough of Industry lives up to its name. Nearby, giant cooling towers mark the Beaver Valley Power Station, a nuclear plant, on the south side of the Ohio River. To the northeast sits a coal-fired power plant that closed in 2019. The area also has several hydraulic fracking sites and a Shell plastics plant.

Many residents look fondly on the area’s industrial backbone, which sustains the local economy. Butts remembers visiting his father at the coal plant, where he spent his working life driving a coal-ferrying barge.

But some residents are beginning to wonder if industries, especially fracking, are behind the borough’s contaminated water.

On a cool evening in late March, around 20 residents gathered at a monthly meeting of the water authority’s board. The atmosphere was tense, and at one point police showed up and hovered outside. During the public session, Andrew Zachodni, the board’s then vice-chairman, confirmed that manganese was the likely cause of residents’ dark water and said the authority was looking into why there’s so much of it. The authority’s latest water report, for 2022, found manganese present at levels that range above EPA recommendations. 

Diane Donatella, an Industry native, asked if fracking could be the cause. About nine years ago she started having stomach problems when she drank the water and noticed the water staining her toilets. “The timing coincides with the fracking,” she said.

Donatella said she didn’t complain to the authority until now because she didn’t realize others were having similar problems. “I thought it was just me,” she said.

Zachodni said the authority might look into Donatella’s theory. If she’s right, Industry wouldn’t be the first Pennsylvania community to allege manganese contamination of drinking water caused by fracking. Several residents of Connoquenessing Township in Butler County, to the northeast, sued Rex Energy, alleging the Pennsylvania company polluted their well water with manganese and other contaminants through fracking. According to news reports, the case was settled in 2018, with Rex, now owned by PennEnergy Resources, not admitting wrongdoing. 

John Stolz, an environmental microbiologist at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh who studied the Butler County issue, said that escaped fluids and gases from oil and gas extraction can stimulate subsurface bacteria, which in turn releases manganese from rocks into the water. 

Also at the meeting, Bryan Catlin, a father of two boys, said that on his street a handful of children, including his own, have autism or learning disabilities. He wondered if the cause was manganese in the water. But board members said they didn’t want to have that discussion and abruptly ended the public session. Several residents said afterward they were angered by the dismissal of Catlin’s concerns. The water authority later declined to comment to Public Health Watch, citing advice from its lawyer.

Jessica McCafferty, a mother of two who lives near Butts, says she worries that manganese-tainted water may have played a role in causing ADHD in her 11-year-old son. They used to drink the tap water but stopped a couple of years ago when it developed a metallic taste and her infant son’s bath water was brown with black specks. Now she bathes him every other day and drinks only bottled water. 

“I worry,” she said. “The baby starts sucking on the wet washcloth and I think, ‘No’!”

As evidence of risks grows, the EPA has taken steps that could lead to tighter controls of manganese in drinking water: It has added the metal three times to its Contaminant Candidate List. Industry has fought back.

Since 1998, the EPA has published five such lists, often including dozens of unregulated chemicals and microbes that could be found in drinking water. The agency must select at least five of the candidates to evaluate more closely and later decide whether any need regulation. 

The EPA invites any interested party to submit comments. 

In two consecutive rounds of the list — preliminary ones were released in 2015 and 2021 — industries that use or produce manganese objected to its inclusion via the Manganese Interest Group, which includes the American Iron and Steel Institute in Washington, D.C., and the Afton Chemical Corp.

Between 2015 and 2020, the interest group twice wrote to the EPA asking that it remove manganese from the candidate list. In 2015, the group argued that the best available science does not support the metal’s inclusion, citing research funded by Afton Chemical, documents show. In 2017, the group reiterated its position, as did the American Iron and Steel Institute, in separate comments sought by President Donald Trump’s administration on its plans to roll back EPA regulations. The institute also met with EPA representatives the same year to discuss “environmental issues that are key to the steel industry,” according to correspondence between the EPA and Thomas Gibson, then president and CEO of the institute. Manganese was among the institute’s key issues. The correspondence was obtained by environmental groups and posted online by Toxic Docs, a repository of records on toxic substances based at Columbia University and City University of New York. 

The EPA disagreed with industry’s position, but in the end kicked a decision on manganese down the road. In March 2020, the agency announced a preliminary decision not to consider manganese for regulation at the time, preferring to wait for nationwide data on its presence in drinking water. In response, a group representing drinking-water utility officials, advocates and others told the EPA it should “make appropriate management of manganese a priority.” 

In separate comments, New Hampshire’s environmental services commissioner said the EPA should reassess its health guidance on manganese and better inform the public about the dangers to infants.

Instead, the EPA confirmed its manganese decision in early 2021. 

But the issue didn’t go away. A few months later, the EPA released a draft of the next Contaminant Candidate List, which included manganese. Industry lobbying persisted. In September 2021, the Manganese Interest Group requested in public comments that the EPA strike the metal from the draft list. The group cited as evidence the two modeling papers funded by Afton Chemical and prepared by ToxStrategies, among others. One paper predicts manganese in drinking water won’t significantly build up in infants’ and children’s brain tissue when consumed at levels of 100 µg/l or below, commonly found in tap water. 

Some scientists challenge the quality and findings of the ToxStrategies papers. Frisbie, the environmental chemist, and Erika Mitchell, his wife and research partner at a nonprofit toxicology lab, said in an interview that the papers contain mistakes and inaccuracies. In an assessment published in 2021, researchers at the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) wrote that that one of the ToxStrategies papers uses an extremely low rate for how much manganese infants absorb from reconstituted formula. That rate is not supported by available scientific studies, wrote the researchers, who added their views weren’t necessarily those of the MDH.

If the EPA were to accept ToxStrategies’ findings, it could weaken the agency’s health advice on safe levels of manganese, potentially leaving people more vulnerable to harm, Frisbie and Mitchell say. 

ToxStrategies did not respond to emails and phone calls requesting comment. Afton Chemical also did not respond to requests for comment.

Birnbaum, former director of the health sciences institute, said that, in general, many scientists working for consulting firms are good researchers but they interpret their data in a way that makes their employers or sponsors happy. “They may not even be conscious that they are doing it,” she said. 

Responding to the 2021 EPA draft, the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators called for the EPA to do more to assess and control manganese. The group’s executive director, Alan Roberson, said in an interview that an informal survey of members last year found a majority wanted the EPA to regulate manganese. 

When considering regulations or taking other actions, the EPA consults a 46-member, handpicked Science Advisory Board for guidance. The water contaminant list is among the proposals that come before the board, which is composed of scientists from academia, government and industry.

Here too, industry pressed its case.

At a June 2022 meeting of a board committee, Green, lawyer for the manganese group, called on board members to recommend that the EPA cut manganese from its contaminant list. Green said his group was “perplexed” that the committee had not referenced the models prepared by ToxStrategies and funded by Afton Chemical in a draft of its recommendations on the candidate list. 

A consulting-firm scientist on the board also supported the ToxStrategies model. 

Barbara Beck, a lead toxicologist at Boston-based Gradient, was appointed to the board in 2019 by the Trump administration and has authored papers defending clients’ and their products, including ones containing lead and so-called “forever chemicals”, which are potentially toxic.

Beck had produced articles with Gradient colleagues in academic journals in 2009 and 2017 that questioned the health impacts of inhaling manganese. 

In July 2022, records show, Beck advised that the EPA board committee delete from its draft details of a review of epidemiological studies that suggest manganese in drinking water is linked to neurological problems in children. She proposed adding other models instead, including those developed by ToxStrategies that Green wanted included.

Beck acknowledged some of the concerns about manganese, writing there is merit to the EPA considering whether science supports adding the metal to the contaminant list. But she said the review of epidemiological studies didn’t make a strong enough case for inclusion. 

In contrast, Gloria Post, a state toxicologist for New Jersey, criticized the draft guidance for omitting many studies that indicate neurobehavioral harm to infants from manganese in drinking water. 

The epidemiological studies that Beck objected to made it into the board’s final guidance for the contaminant list. So did the ToxStrategies study, making it more likely that industry findings on manganese are considered in the EPA’s discussions.

The EPA decided to include manganese in its final version of the list published in November 2022 and will decide by 2026 which contaminants might need tighter controls.

Public Health Watch reached out to Beck and Gradient for comment, but they did not respond to emails or phone calls. 

In a parallel process, the EPA planned to assess how harmful manganese is to inhale and ingest, which could lead to a revision of recommended safety levels. The process, called IRIS — for Integrated Risk Information System — is a key EPA program to impartially assess the human health risks of chemicals in the environment. 

Emails obtained through a records request by Public Health Watch show that the EPA began working on the assessment and issued its work plan for review across the agency in August 2018. But eight months later the EPA announced it had suspended the manganese assessment. Emails obtained by Public Health Watch suggest the manganese assessment was held up by the EPA Office of Air and Radiation. The office was headed at the time by William Wehrum, who resigned in 2019 over alleged ethics breaches, including doing alleged favors for an energy company.

An EPA spokesperson said in a statement that manganese is not a priority chemical for evaluation, but if it becomes a priority and there are enough resources, the EPA may resume the assessment.

Birnbaum, the former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said in an interview that it’s time for the EPA to act to protect vulnerable populations. “In my mind manganese should be regulated,” she said. 

Meanwhile, some states have tightened manganese limits or recommendations on their own. Minnesota advises that bottle-fed infants consume no more than 100 µg/L daily of manganese in drinking water. New Jersey and California require water providers to notify customers if the manganese level exceeds 50 µg/L. 

Without the federal government endorsing new standards, however, state health officials can find it difficult to convince lawmakers and communities to set new limits, said Jonathan Petali, a toxicologist for the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services.

Residents like those in Industry, Pennsylvania, must bring on the fight themselves. And their efforts are starting to pay off. 

A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said it is working with the Industry water authority to ensure required standards are met through regular testing of tap water for manganese, cleaning of the wells and installing a new treatment system.

Butts says he will keep pushing until he sees results. He’s a former Marine and sees it as his mission to restore clean water to his community. He and other residents want the authority to determine the causes of the black-water problem and assess whether Industry’s children are at risk of neurological harm.

“Is our water safe?” Butts asked. “We don’t know.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Black water: How industry is fighting stricter controls for a little-known drinking water contaminant on Aug 29, 2023.

Hello, and welcome to Week 8 of Record High. I’m climate solutions reporter Gabriela Aoun Angueira, and today we’re going to be introducing Grist’s new guide to keeping communities safe in extreme heat.

Scorching temperatures have affected nearly every part of the United States this summer. Just last week, heat indices in the Midwest skyrocketed, with Chicago reaching 120 degrees. Aid groups in the city raced to distribute frozen water bottles to the unhoused and box fans to elderly residents who lacked air conditioning. Meanwhile, farther south, San Juan, Puerto Rico, surpassed a heat record established in 1976.

If the past few months have made anything clear, it is that extreme heat is not just about the numbers on a thermometer. It impacts all aspects of our lives. To help readers navigate the new realities of life in this hotter world, Grist today published a comprehensive guide to keeping kids healthy, homes cool, workplaces safe, neighbors looked after, and our bodies protected in extreme heat. 

We gathered advice from a dozen experts, from engineers to child psychologists, and distilled it into easy-to-implement tips. Along the way, a theme emerged: In so many ways, preparation eases the stress of managing a hotter world.

Firefighter and paramedic Kaipo Kelley told us that those who learn the signs of heat illness ahead of time can act more quickly to help themselves or someone else who is unwell, perhaps preventing heat exhaustion from turning into potentially fatal heat stroke.

For children whose lives are disrupted by heat waves, child psychologist Jennifer Louie said that creating a family plan of where to go and indoor activities to do when outside temperatures are dangerous can help assuage kids’ anxiousness. 

At work, collaboratively deciding with managers and staff how to adjust routines on hot days, like by moving shifts to cooler hours or instituting more frequent breaks, sets a tone for prioritizing safety over productivity, said a representative from the Occupational Safety and Health Agency, or OSHA.

Home energy audits, whether completed by a professional or done yourself, can help identify the most efficient ways to seal and insulate homes before the heat hits and you have to crank the air conditioning, said Brett Little of the Green Home Institute.

And getting together with neighbors to identify who might be especially vulnerable in a heat wave — like the elderly, those with medical conditions, or folks without AC — and planning who will check on them ensures no one gets left behind, said Scott James, who formed his own neighbor network in his hometown of Bainbridge, Washington.

The tips we’ve compiled also include suggestions for supplies and resources to have on hand, like books for talking to kids about climate change and power banks for helping neighbors charge phones in a power outage. There are DIY ideas for keeping homes cold by building “swamp coolers” and for rapidly lowering the body temperature of someone who might have heatstroke.

In addition to the guide we published on the Grist site, look for easily shareable versions of all these tips, in English and Spanish, rolling out on our Instagram this week.

We need your help

In two weeks, Record High will look at the impact that extreme heat is having on travel and recreation — and we want to hear from you. Have you had outdoor sports canceled due to scorching temperatures? Travel plans scrapped or scuttled? Health impacts from exposure to high heat? Click here to share your experiences with us.

By the numbers

Although summers are expected to get even hotter in the coming years, few people in the United States are taking steps to prepare for extreme heat, according to FEMA’s 2022 National Household Survey on Disaster Preparedness. Just 17 percent of households say they have assembled supplies to deal with extreme heat, for example, and only 4 percent have made a plan with neighbors.

Data Visualization by Clayton Aldern

What we’re reading

Portland food trucks feel like ovens: There are more than 1,000 food trucks in Portland, Oregon, but as my colleague Joseph Winters writes, cooking in them in the summer heat is becoming unbearable. Some truck owners are turning off their grills, like a vegan chef who swapped out plant-based burgers and fries for a “cold menu” of chik’n salad and chips.
Read more

Inflation is down, but not heatflation: The global price of olive oil is double what it was last year, our food and agriculture fellow Max Graham reports. That’s in part due to a yearlong drought and a hot spring in Spain that devastated the olive groves of the world’s largest olive oil producer. Fears are mounting that the country could run out of the culinary staple completely.
Read more

Detained in deadly heat: An investigation by the Intercept found that the U.S. Border Patrol has been detaining migrants in Arizona in outdoor pens in temperatures as high as 114 degrees. Now, the outlet is reporting that the practice has been in place far longer than previously known, and that officials have said it violates a court order related to detentions.
Read more

How much heat can our bodies really handle?: As the world heats up, scientists and doctors are studying what happens to the body under heat stress, and how much global heating human bodies will be able to withstand. A New Yorker writer subjected himself to a 104-degree heat chamber at 40 percent humidity to better understand it himself.
Read more

In a sweltering Dubai, residents hit the beach at night: In the United Arab Emirates, prime beach time is now midnight. The New York Times visited a beach where lifeguards work late shifts, spotlights illuminate the waters, and children play on floaties during the only hours it’s bearable to be outside.
Read more

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Your guide to surviving a hotter world on Aug 29, 2023.

Rapid global heating due to humans’ use of fossil fuels has contributed to an array of damaging environmental effects on the planet, including extreme weather, unprecedented ocean temperatures and a rapid decline in sea ice.

Sea ice is the habitat of several animal species, including polar bears, Arctic fox, caribou and emperor penguins, who live and breed entirely on frozen Antarctic sea ice.

According to a new study, thousands of emperor penguin chicks from four colonies in Antarctica are thought to have died due to record-low sea ice levels that caused a “catastrophic breeding failure.”

“Abrupt reductions in sea ice extent can have profound effects on ecosystems and the species that depend on the sea ice for breeding, moulting or foraging… Almost all emperor penguin colonies depend upon stable land-fast sea ice, which they use for breeding and moulting, while also using the marginal ice zone as a foraging habitat,” the study said.

The study, “Record low 2022 Antarctic sea ice led to catastrophic breeding failure of emperor penguins,” was published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

In the study, the researchers from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said there was a high probability that none of the emperor penguin chicks from four out of five of the known colonies in the eastern and central parts of the Bellingshausen Sea had survived, a press release from BAS said.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by British Antarctic Survey (@britishantarcticsurvey)

The scientists looked at satellite images showing sea ice loss at emperor penguin breeding sites long before the chicks would have had time to develop their waterproof feathers.

“They still have their downy plumage. If the ice breaks out before they can safely enter the water, the plumage becomes waterlogged and, basically, the chicks die of exposure,” said Dr. Barbara Wienecke, a senior research scientist at the Australian Antarctic Division who has paid many visits to emperor penguin colonies, as The Guardian reported. “It’s horrendous and I find it extraordinarily distressing to think of this happening.”

For the penguins in their large colonies to breed, the sea ice must be stable and firmly attached to shore from April to January, according to the press release. The penguins lay their eggs during the Antarctic winter of May to June, with eggs hatching after 65 days. Chicks fledge during the summer, from December to January.

Antarctic sea ice extent at the start of December of 2022 equaled the previous record low from 2021. The eastern and central Bellingshausen Sea area experienced the most extreme loss at 100 percent for November of 2022.

“We have never seen emperor penguins fail to breed, at this scale, in a single season. The loss of sea ice in this region during the Antarctic summer made it very unlikely that displaced chicks would survive,” said lead author of the study Dr. Peter Fretwell of BAS in the press release. “We know that emperor penguins are highly vulnerable in a warming climate – and current scientific evidence suggests that extreme sea ice loss events like this will become more frequent and widespread.”

Antarctica has experienced its lowest four years of sea ice extent in its 45-year satellite record since 2016. The two lowest years were 2021 to 2022 and 2022 to 2023. Thirty percent of the identified 62 Antarctic emperor penguin colonies were affected by sea ice loss from 2018 to 2022.

In the past, emperor penguins have responded to the loss of their sea ice habitat by changing to more stable locations the following year. However, according to scientists, that doesn’t work when the whole region is affected; there is simply nowhere for them to go.

Emperor penguins have never had to contend with threats such as large-scale hunting, overfishing or even habitat loss caused by humans. The only major threat considered to affect their long-term population is climate change.

Recent predictions of population trends for emperor penguins based on sea ice loss forecasts have shown that if current rates of warming continue, by the end of the century more than 90 percent of their colonies will become quasi-extinct.

“It’s only by changing our behaviour and the amounts of fossil fuels we use will we reverse the trajectory for these emperor penguins, and many other species,” Fretwell said, as reported by The Guardian.

Satellite images from the European Commission’s satellite mission Copernicus Sentinel-2 were used to discover the five penguin colonies studied in the past 14 years, the press release said. All of the colonies had returned to the same place each year for breeding, and there had only been one prior instance of breeding failure, in 2010 at Bryan Peninsula.

“This paper dramatically reveals the connection between sea ice loss and ecosystem annihilation. Climate change is melting sea ice at an alarming rate. It is likely to be absent from the Arctic in the 2030s – and in the Antarctic, the four lowest sea ice extents recorded have been since 2016,” said Dr. Jeremy Wilkinson, a BAS sea ice physicist, in the press release. “It is another warning sign for humanity that we cannot continue down this path, politicians must act to minimise the impact of climate change. There is no time left.”

The post Thousands of Emperor Penguin Chicks Die Due to Antarctic Ice Loss appeared first on EcoWatch.

This story is part of Record High, a Grist series examining extreme heat and its impact on how — and where — we live.

When Chris Hudson saw a heat advisory in the forecast for the Portland, Oregon, area earlier this month, he sprang into action. Things were about to get sweaty in his vegan food truck, and turning on its 75-pound deep fryer and 500-degree-Fahrenheit grill seemed like a bad idea.

“We are hoping to make it through the next few days by offering a cold menu,” he told his business’s followers on Instagram. Instead of grilling his famous meat-free burgers, he would serve a new “chik’n salad sando” and a “BBQ chik’n wrap.” In lieu of fries, chips. Plus, for dessert, several flavors of dairy-free milkshakes and soft-serve ice cream with chocolate dip.

The new menu was meant to tamp down temperatures inside Gnarlys, the popular food truck Hudson opened in 2021. But when the mercury climbs into the upper 90s and beyond — as it did earlier this month, breaking August records for the Portland area — there’s only so much he can do. “We were still at, like, 102 in the cart,” he told Grist, even with a portable AC unit and a fan running around the clock, and with all the windows open.

A food truck is basically “a metal box,” he added. “The sun is beating down on this metal box.”

Hudson is just one of many food truck owners across the U.S. who are struggling to contend with longer and hotter summers. This year alone has seen thousands of daily temperature records fall, and a brutal series of enduring heat waves has made this summer the hottest on record for more than a dozen cities in the South. Among major cities nationwide, heat waves are now happening three times more often than they used to in the 1960s. 

The trend is particularly pronounced in Portland, a historically temperate city with more than 1,000 food trucks and carts, one of the highest numbers per capita in the country. All those mobile food businesses are dealing with a spike in the frequency, duration, and intensity of heat waves even more dramatic than what other U.S. cities are facing. Portland used to get about a week’s worth of 90-degree days every year; now it gets 27. Residents spend more than three times as many hours enduring a heat index above 90 degrees, sharply increasing the risk of heat-related illness.

“I didn’t think I would have to worry about heat in Portland,” said Hudson, who moved to the city from Chico, California in 2019. He had ruled out his second-choice city — Austin, Texas — because of its high temperatures. But now in Portland, he said, “we’re dealing with 100-something days every year … I’m worried to the point where I don’t really want to continue to be in a food truck next summer.”

Portland’s most recent heat wave reached its peak in the afternoon of  Monday, August 14. Around 4 p.m. that day, the thermometer at the Portland International Airport read 108 degrees Fahrenheit, the second-hottest temperature ever recorded in the city.

But that was just the beginning for the city’s food trucks. Hours before then, as early as 9 in the morning, the temperature inside Rad Magic Subs had already hit 108 degrees. Justin Miller, who opened the submarine sandwich food truck two and a half years ago, didn’t stick around to see how hot things would eventually get — he announced a temporary closure on Instagram. But he knew from experience that the mercury would only climb higher inside the truck, potentially all the way up to 115 or 120 degrees, as the day went on. The owner of another food truck that did open for business that day reported a peak temperature of 122 degrees.

This is typical. Most food trucks are retrofitted from cargo vehicles like moving vans, and are inherently prone to high heat. They have metal exteriors, limited air flow, and lots of heat-generating kitchen equipment crammed into a relatively small space — sometimes as small as 70 square feet. The exact setup varies from truck to truck, depending on the kind of food being sold, but might include a massive flattop griddle next to a deep fryer, or perhaps an industrial-sized oven — in addition to a big fridge, which lets off heat in order to keep food cold. Other features of a typical food truck include a large ventilation system above the cooking equipment, a generator to keep the fridge and freezer running, tanks for wastewater and freshwater, and separate sinks for washing hands and doing dishes. 

Unless clouds roll in to block the sun, “you really can’t get it much cooler in the cart,” said Miller. Small fans and AC units are often ineffective, since the air they blow tends to get sucked up into trucks’ exhaust fans. Even on a 61-degree evening, researchers have shown that temperatures near a food truck’s cooking area can reach as high as 105 degrees. In some jurisdictions like Los Angeles, although not in Portland, health-code regulations make it harder to cool off by preventing food trucks from opening their back doors, in order to keep insects away from the food.

Miller joined many Portland-area food truck owners in deciding to close down during the heat wave, rather than suffer through. But that’s not a decision to be taken lightly, in a sector marked by financial precarity. Many food truck owners will go to great lengths to stay open, even under sweltering, 100-degree-plus conditions.

“We have such a small profit margin that every single day matters,” said Kiaha Kurek, who owns a Hawaiian food truck in Portland called Hapa Howies, which serves a variety of hot lunch plates. Like many of the food truck owners Grist spoke with, she said she doesn’t let her two employees work once outdoor temperatures start to feel “unbearable.” But she’s willing to put herself through those uncomfortable conditions. 

If it’s been a slow couple of weeks, Kurek will brave the heat by herself, wrapping a wet towel around her neck as she prepares a limited menu of cold poke bowls. “You have to think strategically,” she said. “Make sure you have lots of water on you, wear tank tops, wear shorts.”

Other strategies to beat the heat include everything from running cool water over one’s hands to eating smaller meals and nibbling spicy foods to induce sweating. One crepe truck owner in Durham, North Carolina, told the News & Observer they close their eyes and pretend the intense heat is “from the sun’s rays as we lie on a pristine beach somewhere in Aruba.” Another said they sing Christmas carols, perhaps to conjure the cooling image of snow.

Leah Tucker, founder and executive director of the Oregon Mobile Food Association, a membership organization that represents the state’s food trucks and carts, said these kinds of coping mechanisms are typical: Most food trucks are owner-operated, and those owners often put their health and safety in the backseat so they can prioritize the well-being of their business. Tucker said she spends hot days encouraging food truck owner-operators to limit their hours or shut down temporarily. 

“Taking a day off and closing on a really hot day is not the worst thing that could happen,” she said. “A worse scenario would be working a full shift in an extremely hot environment — and then having to take more time off because you’ve had a heat stroke.”

Indeed, the consequences of heat exposure can be crippling. Every year, extreme heat kills more Americans than any other kind of weather-related disaster, and even among food truck veterans who say they’re “used to” the heat, researchers out of the University of California, Los Angeles Heat Lab have documented many cases of heat-related exhaustion, vomiting, heart attacks, nausea, and more. Workers of color may be particularly vulnerable to the heat, due to centuries of baseless assumptions that these demographics are less affected by high temperatures. Sofia Sabra, a researcher at the Heat Lab, said she’s interviewed food truck workers who thought they were able to take longer shifts with no breaks “because they were Mexican.” 

Despite the human health risks, many of the food truck owners Grist spoke with expressed a greater concern over equipment malfunctions during a heat wave — especially faulty refrigerators, which may not function well in temperatures above 90 degrees. Buddy Richter, who owns a Portland food truck called Buddy’s Steaks, said he stuffs ice into his fridge to keep the internal temperature from exceeding 40 degrees and spoiling his house-made vegan meats and cheeses. If the fridge breaks altogether, he said, that can lead to thousands of dollars in lost food and repair costs. 

As with Hudson’s chik’n sandos and Kurek’s poke bowls, Richter often prefers to offer a special “heat wave menu” rather than close down temporarily. Still, this strategy can cause further complications. When Richter offers a hot-weather special caprese sandwich instead of his normal plant-based cheesesteaks, some visitors grumble about the change. Some are reluctant to spend money on simpler menu items that they think they could prepare at home, for cheaper.

“Half the people show up and walk away,” he said. Sometimes, he barely manages to break even on these limited-run menus, since it costs extra to buy new ingredients and equipment. Miller, with Rad Magic Subs, experiences something similar — ”People say they can make [cold] sandwiches already” — while Kurek said she’ll get customers who say, “What do you mean, you don’t have your deep fryer on? It’s not that hot.”

“I look at them, and I’m like, are you crazy? It’s 104 degrees outside, how hot do you think it is in here?” she said. “There’s an absolute lack of understanding.” 

Gnarlys, which not only changed its menu during the heat wave but also shifted its operating hours, took to Instagram with a request for customers to “be patient and understanding” in the face of heat-related service changes. “Being frustrated and taking it out on us is not helpful for anyone. Contrary to popular belief, we do not control the weather.”

As climate change progresses, summers are only expected to get hotter. Already, the number of Americans exposed to dangerous heat waves every year has jumped by more than 125 million since 2000. And in the Pacific Northwest, by 2050, heat waves as extreme as the one that killed more than 250 people in the region in 2021 are expected to occur once every six years — rather than once a millennium.

These forecasts only increase the feeling of precarity that defines daily life for many food truck owners. Combined with the increasing risk of wildfires and the suffocating smoke they bring, Miller, with Rad Magic Subs, said the weather is “like an unfightable foe.”

“It’s our biggest challenge for sure,” he told Grist, even bigger than “the economy, supply issues, anything.” With each summer forcing more and more multi-day closures, he added, “the business model of a food truck seems to be less viable year after year.”

Many of the food truck owners Grist spoke with have the long-term goal of opening a traditional brick-and-mortar restaurant; the food truck is just a stepping stone along that path. But with so few options to mitigate the relentless and worsening heat, people like Hudson and Kurek have been eager to accelerate that transition. Kurek already has a September opening date for her restaurant — a joint venture with a Portland pop-up restaurant and a new brewery. (The Hapa Howies food truck will stay in operation.)

Hudson, the owner of Gnarlys, said he isn’t yet financially ready for that move. “But I’m ready when it comes to my mental state,” he said. He’s already planned out a new, expanded menu for when that day finally comes.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In Portland, Oregon, extreme heat is making food trucks feel like ovens on Aug 28, 2023.