EWG staffers put our heads together to come up with this list of bad news environmental stories of the last decade that people might have missed. But there were plenty of big stories that hardly anyone could have missed, such as climate change. What's on your list of the biggest environmental stories of the last 10 years?

1. Secret Gas Drilling Chemical Almost Kills Colorado Nurse
Doctors ran into a medical mystery -- and a stone wall from industry -- when they tried to find what was in a gas drilling chemical that nearly killed a Colorado nurse. Aren't you glad that Congress exempted these "fracking" chemicals from regulation under the Safe Water Drinking Act?

2. Intersex Fish Turn Up All Over
Are you a boy or are you a girl? That's the question that scientists are asking as they study the organs of supposedly male fish from coast to coast and find eggs in many of them. The chief suspects: endocrine-disrupting pollutants that even in tiny amounts can mimic hormones and affect sexual development.

3. Prescription Drugs in Your Drinking Water
Take a swallow and call me in the morning. Antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones - they've all turned up in tests of drinking water around the country. Could there be health risks from decades of drinking water laced with combinations of potent drugs?

4. And Rocket Fuel, Too
Perchlorate -- the stuff is used in rocket fuel and explosives and turns up not just in water but also in milk, lettuce, other foods - and in our bodies. It's been linked to thyroid problems in pregnant women, newborns and infants. The EPA is reconsidering its earlier decision not to regulate it in water. Stand by.

5. Ethanol -- Not Just Bad Energy Policy
There are a lot of reasons to question the drive for biofuels, especially corn-based ethanol, but there has been much less attention paid to what it means for air pollution and health. For people who like to breathe clean air, the balance doesn't look promising.

6. Non-stick, No-Stain and No-Good
They were the miracle products that were supposed to make life easier - keeping spills from staining our couches and making it easy to clean our pots without scrubbing -- until it all went sour. Chemicals in the original Teflon and now off-the-market Scotchgard were linked to cancer and developmental problems. They have a way of polluting everything and they refuse to go away.

7. Monsanto Owns Corn (and also soybeans)
80% of the corn and 95% percent of the soybeans grown in America contain genes inserted by Monsanto scientists, and the company writes tough - and secret - licensing agreements to maintain control and lock out competitors. Now the Justice Department and some states are thinking these practices might violate anti-trust laws. Turnips, anyone?

8. Occupational Hazard: Microwave Popcorn
This fun food turned to be no fun for people who make it. A strange lung malady that sickened workers in plants that make microwave popcorn was traced to a widely used butter flavoring. And one popcorn-crazy consumer was felled, too. It took a while, but OSHA finally took a look, and the stuff is being phased out.

9. Dead (Zone) on Arrival
In the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay and elsewhere, vast expanses of ocean have been turned into biological deserts as fertilizer runoff from farms washes downstream and nourish runaway algae growth, which deplete most of the oxygen when the tiny organisms die and decompose. The Gulf dead zone has more than doubled in size since the 1980s - accelerated by the boom in crops grown to make biofuels. In 2009, it was smaller than predicted, but more intense, in 2009.

10. The (Not So) Great Pacific Trash Gyre
It's hard to spot from the water or even from space, but an estimated 3.5 million tons of mostly plastic trash from all over the world floats just below the surface of the Pacific, swirling slowly around in an area of circular currents twice the size of Texas. It's devastating to birds and sea creatures that think the plastic bits are food. It's time to stop adding to the mess - and then see if there's any way to clean it up.

What stories top your list of the decade's biggest environmental news??

By Olga Naidenko, EWG Senior Scientist

How much does a can of tuna cost to an average shopper in a U.S. supermarket? Something like 33 cents a can, if you look hard enough and search for a good sale. Not a bad deal - if you only count the sticker price.

Now let's think a little bigger.
Take, say, the U.S. as a country. What would the cost for that same tuna can be on a national level? It turns out that the numbers there are far from economical. Most tuna in the U.S. comes from the still plentiful, yet rapidly depleting tuna fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean.

Pacific fishing areas are used by fishing fleets from many countries: Japan, China, Taiwan, Koran, Phillipines, Spain, and, of course, the United States. To have a right to fish in these regions, distant fishing fleets and their governments pay access fees to the island nations in whose territorial waters tuna stocks are moving.

We (you) pay $18M annually to put fishing boats on the water
Every year the U.S. government pays a stunning $18 million simply for the right to put a mere 40 (40!!) American tuna fishing boats into the Western and Central Pacific Ocean, under the so-called U.S. Treaty signed with 16 Pacific island nations.

While the number of fishing boats may change from year to year (though the access fee does not), even at the highest number (40 tuna vessels on the ocean), that still adds up to $450,000 perboat. Now that's an example of government subsidies at an amazing scale.

Of course these millions don't appear out of thin air. Rather it's your money - taxpayer dollars that are generously disbursed by the government to support the tuna fleet.

The actual amount of the U.S. fishing subsidies is likely to be much higher, according to the ground-breaking research published by EWG earlier this year.

It costs a lot more than $$
The problem is by no means limited to economic cost, either. Fishing subsidies contribute to keeping too many fishing boats on the water, which - surprise! - results in overfishing and severe depletion of the fishing stocks. Soon, those "33 cents a tuna can"-times will be gone. Instead, tuna products are on their way to disappearing from the supermarket shelves as tuna are literally fished to the bottom.

We should shift subsidies to save tuna
As Renee Sharp, EWG's California Office Director and a lead author of EWG's fishing subsidies studies study, described in a recent Enviroblog post, "the U.S. and the world are going to have to shift subsidies to forms that enhance fishery conservation rather than depletion."

This commonsense conclusion appears to elude the government bureaucrats in charge of negotiating fishing agreements with Pacific island nations. In fact, as reported last week by Christopher Pala in Environmental Science and Technology, the U.S. is actually planning to increase its tuna fishing, thus accelerating depletion of the entire fishery.

According to the news story:

The U.S. is coming under harsh criticism from Pacific island nations and conservationists for ramping up its catch of bigeye tuna at a time when scientists are calling for an immediate 30% reduction. By invoking a treaty it signed with 16 Pacific island nations, the U.S. has declared itself immune from a reduction in catch that fisheries scientists say is long overdue. In contrast, other nations are preparing for 10% per year cutbacks starting in January 2010.

Do you think U.S. taxpayers should pay buckets of money to help speed the demise of the world's last great stocks of tuna? We really don't think so. In fact, we wrote a full report on the issue earlier this year.

We applaud Environmental Science and Technology for calling attention to this important issue. Fisheries conservation is an essential, urgent need, so that our children will be able to actually try what tuna tastes like rather than only knowing Charlie the Tuna as a cartoon character. Not to mention there are 1 or 2 other things to spend taxpayer money on these days.

[Thanks to Flickr & Secret Seasons for the pic]

Special to Enviroblog by Renee Sharp, Director, EWG California Office

This week, EWG published a peer-reviewed paper on fishing subsidies that was almost four years in the making. Sound boring? Think again.

First, there is the plain fact that the world's oceans are in serious peril. If the overload of press recent press stories weren't enough to convince you, then these stark numbers should: in 2007 the National Marine Fishery Service determined that a 24 percent of the nation's 530 monitored stocks were overfished and 17 percent were experiencing overfishing. The international Food and Agriculture Organization has come up with similar estimates for the depletion of global fish stocks.

Second, the numbers are so dang big: the U.S. government doled out more than $6.4 billion from 1996 to 2004, or an average of $713 million per year.

No one is suggesting that all of these subsidies are harmful or contributing to overfishing. But it is likely that many of them do encourage fishing operations to harvest more fish than can be naturally replaced.

Bottom line: it is clear that the U.S. and the world are going to have to shift subsidies to forms that enhance fishery conservation rather than depletion.

Third, EWG was honored to collaborate with the renown fisheries economist Ussif Rashid Sumaila on the study and to have the academic work supported by the fabulous folks at the Lenfest Ocean Program.

To read EWG's summary and analysis of the study, or to download the academic paper, click here.

The oceans are connected to human health on multiple levels, from very basic, foundational need for recreation and cultural links with ocean livelihood, to the health of populations that live on the coast and look out to ocean for food, trade, and basic survival. For those who live away from the coast, the ocean connection often comes when they look for seafood in a grocery store or hear news stories on TV about devastation brought by coastal floods and changing weather patterns.

As described by many scientists who specialize in oceanography, marine biology, and environmental health, numerous connections between the oceans, human activities, and human health result in both positive and negative exposures and health effects. The influence of human-generated pollution that pours into the ocean from sources often hundreds or thousands of miles away, can be persistent and stark. A load of fertilizer applied to farm land half way across the continent frequently ends up polluting marine ecosystems, impacting both coastal recreational opportunities and productivity of fisheries. Pathogens discharged into riverways with manure from large-scale factory farms and animal feeding operations pose hazards to fishers and anyone boating or swimming near estuaries.

Some risks of marine pollution -- shellfish poisonings, harmful algal blooms (often called red tides), and water-borne pathogens such as cholera or viral diseases -- are relatively well understood. In contrast, the link between anthropogenic pollution discharged from land and toxins in the ocean water are infrequently discussed. Similarly, the marine dimensions of global climate change, for example ocean warming and subtle but profound changes in ocean chemistry can escape public notice. Yet, these changes would have life-or-death consequences for the majority of the inhabitants of Planet Ocean - from coral reefs to schools of fish and marine mammals. Changing marine conditions would also likely alter coastal environments by changing weather patterns - now that's one effect that will be readily noticed by over a billion of people living in proximity to the coast.

We now know that the health of the oceans is in dire condition and with it come threats to human health as well. As stated by Dr. Jane Lubchenco, a renowned marine biologist nominated as the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "The evidence is now overwhelming that even the immense oceans are depleted and disrupted. Turns out that oceans are more vulnerable - and more valuable - than we thought." (see NY Times interview with Jane Lubchenco here). Ocean ecosystems are in "for a tough ride" - yet the news are not all doom and gloom. Restricting land pollution run-off and eliminating destructive activities such as over-fishing, ocean dumping, and unmitigated extraction practices will go a long way towards protecting the health of the oceans and the people who depend on them.

The most important step is for marine scientists, public health experts, and ocean lovers of all stripes and colors to come together in a concerted effort to protect the oceans from ourselves. We all love the oceans, but we should not love them to death. Many efforts are underway as communities are organizing towards ocean conservation. One such event is happening in Washington, DC during March 7-10, the Blue Vision Summit. Preserving the health of the oceans will take a lot of work - but it can be done!

photo by lakerae