N.B.’s whooping cough outbreak: Blame the anti-vaxxers or blame the vaccine?

Dr. Neil Rau, CTV News Infectious Diseases Expert
CTV : November 1, 2015

The current whooping cough outbreak in New Brunswick continues to grow, with an increasing number of children and adolescents implicated.

According to Dr. Yves Leger, Medical Officer in the Eastern Region of New Brunswick, which is at the centre of this outbreak, most people who have whooping cough symptoms have been vaccinated.

Another outbreak in Northern Alberta and Saskatchewan earlier this year similarly involved fully immunized populations. By contrast, an Ontario outbreak in 2012 involved unimmunized Mennonite communities, leading to the death of three infants.

Given the mixed history of outbreaks, some have concluded that so-called “anti-vaxxers” are to blame for the recent New Brunswick outbreaks of whooping cough, also known as pertussis.

Although I am a strong proponent of vaccination, the anti-vaxxer explanation is incorrect. Here’s why:

Some facts about pertussis and its vaccine

1. Pertussis continues to circulate among adults and adolescents, even in communities with high immunization levels. For infants under three months of age, pertussis remains a potential killer. But for adults and adolescents, the disease mimics a common cold, or at worst, causes a bad cough illness. In fact, the early phase of pertussis features a runny nose, and is indistinguishable to most doctors from other viral infections, including the common cold. Pertussis in older children and adults is often so mild that patients don’t seek medical attention. And when they do, the special tests needed to pick out the disease are seldom performed, and the patients are sometimes misdiagnosed as having something else, such as asthma. In short, most cases of whooping cough in older children and adults stay under the radar because they are inconsequential.

2. Protection from the pertussis vaccine falls over time. This is why five doses are required in childhood, along with “booster” doses in adolescence and adulthood to maintain protection. In contrast, most who receive the measles vaccine have life-long protection, explaining why measles does not circulate much amongst vaccinated populations.

3. The whole cell pertussis vaccine was replaced by the acellular pertussis vaccine in 1997, as the latter had fewer side effects. By 2012, it was becoming evident that the change in vaccine came with a trade-off: the acellular vaccine — which contains only part of the pertussis bacterium — has become less effective. A credible explanation is that the evolution of circulating pertussis strains are missing a protein called pertactin. Pertactin is an important component of the vaccine; if a strain is deficient in this protein, those who have received the vaccine are less able to mount an immune response to such strains. Multiple other outbreaks of pertussis in fully immunized children and adolescents have followed in the U.S. and Western Europe over the past three years. I suspect that the current New Brunswick outbreak falls into the same category, and may feature pertactin-deficient strains.

4. Despite the shortcomings of the acellular vaccine, we remain miles ahead of the prevaccination era of the 1940s, when four times more cases of pertussis were reported. The current vaccine is still effective – just not 100 per cent effective. Better vaccines are the subject of research.

(read the full article at CTV)

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Measles Outbreak Traced to Fully Vaccinated Patient

Betsy Trumpener
CBC News: October 25, 2015

A relentless landslide that’s contaminated a source of drinking water near a community in northeastern B.C. has residents blaming oil and gas exploration’s effects underground for causing the slide that’s contaminating the creek with silt and heavy metals.

Farmers and ranchers near Hudson’s Hope say they’ve lost their sole water source and blame landslides on changes to underground aquifers and land stability because of nearby fracking and the effect of two nearby hydro dams, but officials say there is no proof of this.

“I have no water,” said Rhee Simpson, who has lived and farmed along Brenot Creek for 62 years.

“You can’t play in it. You can’t fish in it. You can’t drink it. Your stock can’t drink it. Someone has to do something to get our water back.”

Brenot Creek has long carried clean water to families, crops and cattle near Hudson’s Hope in northeastern B.C. The creek is a tributary of Lynx Creek, whose water eventually flows into the nearby Peace River.

Last year, a landslide started oozing grey mud, filling the creek with silt and sand. Tests by the Ministry of the Environment showed dangerously high concentrations of heavy metals, including lead, barium, cadmium, and arsenic.

In September 2014, the District of Hudson’s Hope and Northern Health issued an advisory to stop using the creek’s water for drinking, stock watering or farm irrigation.

“Clean water is essential for life and all of us need to feel confident that the ground and surface water we all depend on is of good quality. We will continue to press for answers to how exotic metals came to be present in the groundwater,” Mayor Gwen Johansson wrote on the District of Hudson’s Hope website in January.

Since then, debris has continued to slide, filling the creek with heavy metal silts and sand.

The mayor said this summer there was so much heavy metal silt it created a visible debris plume and sandbar in the Peace River.

Johansson continues to search for answers as to why this is happening and who will pay for any clean-up.

“There’s a lot of vulnerabilities in this area as far as water is concerned.” she told CBC News. “It’s a real concern.”

In the past, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the region has triggered earthquakes. Fracking, is the process of injecting water, sand and chemicals at high pressure deep underground to break rock and free gas.

(read the full article at CBC)

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Reuters : October 12, 2015

Laos has suffered a case of vaccine-derived polio, the World Health Organization said on Monday, in a new setback to a global plan to eradicate the crippling disease after the virus resurfaced in Ukraine and Mali.

The WHO said an 8-year-old boy died of the disease on Sept. 11, and genetic sequencing suggested the virus strain has been circulating in the area of Bolikhamxay province, which has low immunisation rates, for more than two years.

There is no cure for polio, which attacks the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis within hours of infection. But a global vaccination campaign has all but beaten the wild polio virus, with only Pakistan and Afghanistan reporting cases of wild polio virus infection this year.

Specialists have warned that vaccine-derived cases – such as this one in Laos and previous ones in Ukraine and Mali – could hamper progress towards global eradication.

The WHO stressed that “ending polio for good requires eliminating both wild and vaccine-derived polio”.
(full article at reuters)

Robert Hunziker
Counterpunch : September 23, 2015

Some nuclear advocates suggest that wildlife thrives in the highly-radioactive Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, animals like it, and not only that, a little radiation for anybody and everybody is harmless and maybe good, not bad. This may seem like a senseless argument to tackle were it not for the persistence of positive-plus commentary by nuke lovers. The public domain deserves better, more studied, more crucial answers.

Fortunately, as well as unfortunately, the world has two major real life archetypes of radiation’s impact on the ecosystem: Chernobyl and Fukushima. Chernobyl is a sealed-off 30klm restricted zone for the past 30 years because of high radiation levels. Whereas, PM Abe’s government in Japan has already started returning people to formerly restricted zones surrounding the ongoing Fukushima nuclear meltdown.

The short answer to the supposition that a “little dab of radiation is A-Okay” may be suggested in the title of a Washington Blog d/d March 12, 2014 in an interview of Dr. Timothy Mousseau, the world-renowned expert on radiation effects on living organisms. The hard answer is included further on in this article.

Dr. Mousseau is former Program Director at the National Science Foundation in Population Biology, Panelist for the National Academy of Sciences’ Panels on Analysis of Cancer Risks in Populations Near Nuclear Facilities and GAO Panel on Health and Environmental Effects from Tritium Leaks at Nuclear Power Plants, and a biology professor – and former Dean of the Graduate School, and Chair of the Graduate Program in Ecology – at the University of South Carolina.

The title of the Washington Blog interview is:

Chernobyl and Fukushima Studies Show that Radiation Reduces Animal and Plant Numbers, Fertility, Brain Size and Diversity… and Increases Deformities and Abnormalities.

Dr. Mousseau made many trips to Chernobyl and Fukushima, making 896 inventories at Chernobyl and 1,100 biotic inventories in Fukushima. His mission was to test the effects of radiation on plants and animals. The title of his interview (above) handily serves to answer the question of whether radiation is positive for animals and plants. Without itemizing reams and reams of study data, the short answer is: Absolutely not! It is not positive for animals and plants, period.

Moreover, low doses of radiation aka: “radiation hormesis” is not good for humans, as advocated by certain energy-related outlets. Data supporting their theory is extremely shaky and more to the point, flaky.

Furthermore, according to the Cambridge Philosophical Society’s journal Biological Reviews, including reported results by wide-ranging analyses of 46 peer-reviewed studies published over 40 years, low-level natural background radiation was found to have small, but highly statistically significant, negative effects on DNA and several measures of good health.

Dr. Mousseau with co-author Anders Møller of the University of Paris-Sud examined more that 5,000 papers involving background radiation in order to narrow their findings to 46 peer-reviewed studies. These studies examined plants and animals with a large preponderance of human subjects.

The scientists reported significant negative effects in a range of categories, including immunology, physiology, mutation and disease occurrence. The frequency of negative effects was beyond that of random chance.

“There is no threshold below which there are no effects of radiation,” Ibid.

“With the levels of contamination that we have seen as a result of nuclear power plants, especially in the past, and even as a result of Chernobyl and Fukushima and related accidents, there’s an attempt in the industry to downplay the doses that the populations are getting, because maybe it’s only one or two times beyond what is thought to be the natural background level…. But they’re assuming the natural background levels are fine. And the truth is, if we see effects at these low levels, then we have to be thinking differently about how we develop regulations for exposures, and especially intentional exposures to populations, like the emissions from nuclear power plants….” Ibid.

Results of Major Landmark Study on Low Dose Radiation (July 2015)

A consortium of researchers coordinated by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France, examined causes of death in a study of more than 300,000 nuclear-industry workers in France, the United States and the United Kingdom, all of whom wore dosimeter badges, Researchers Pin Down Risks of Low-Dose Radiation, Nature, July 8, 2015.

The workers received on average just 1.1 millisieverts (mSv) per year above background radiation, which itself is about 2–3 mSv per year from sources such as cosmic rays and radon. The study confirmed that the risk of leukemia does rise proportionately with higher doses, but also showed that this linear relationship is present at extremely low levels of radiation.

The study effectively “scuppers the popular idea that there might be a threshold dose below which radiation is harmless,” Ibid.

Even so, the significant issue regarding radiation exposure for humans is that it is a “silent destroyer” that takes years and only manifests once damage has occurred, for example, 200 American sailors of the USS Reagan have filed a lawsuit against TEPCO, et al because of radiation-related illnesses, like leukemia, only four years after radiation exposure from Fukushima.

Japan Moving People Back to Fukushima Restricted Zones

Japan’s Abe government has started moving people back into former restricted zones surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station even though it is an on-going major nuclear meltdown that is totally out of control.

Accordingly, Greenpeace Japan conducted a radiation survey and sampling program in Iitate, a village in Fukushima Prefecture. Even after decontamination, radiation dose rates measured ten times (10xs) the maximum allowed to the general public.

(read the full article at Counterpunch)

Fukushima reactor could have suffered total meltdown – report

RT : September 26, 2015

Fukushima’s reactor No.2 could have suffered a complete meltdown according to Japanese researchers. They have been monitoring the Daiichi nuclear power plant since April, but say they have found few signs of nuclear fuel at the reactor’s core.

The scientists from Nagoya University had been using a device that uses elementary particles, which are called muons. These are used to give a better picture of the inside of the reactor as the levels of radioactivity at the core mean it is impossible for any human to go anywhere near it.

However, the results have not been promising. The study shows very few signs of any nuclear fuel in reactor No. 2. This is in sharp contrast to reactor No.5, where the fuel is clearly visible at the core, the Japanese broadcaster NHK reports.

The team believes that 70 to 100 percent of the fuel has melted, though they did add that further research was needed to see whether any fuel had managed to penetrate the reactor

A report in May by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which is the plant’s operator, said that a failure in reactor No.2’s pressure relief systems was one of the causes of the disaster. The team used a robot, which ventured into the building and measured radiation levels at various places, while also studying how much leakage had occurred from the control systems.

TEPCO has used 16 robots to explore the crippled plant to date, from military models to radiation-resistant multi-segmented snake-like devices that can fit through a small pipe.

However, even the toughest models are having trouble weathering the deadly radiation levels: as one robot sent into reactor No.1 broke down three hours into its planned 10-hour foray.

Despite TEPCO’s best efforts, the company has been accused of a number of mishaps and a lack of proper contingency measures to deal with the cleanup operation, after the power plant suffered a meltdown, following an earthquake and subsequent tsunami in 2011.

Recent flooding caused by Tropical Typhoon Etau swept 82 bags, believed to contain contaminated materials that had been collected from the crippled site, out to sea.

“On September 9th and 11th, due to typhoon no.18 (Etau), heavy rain caused Fukushima Daiichi K drainage rainwater to overflow to the sea,” TEPCO said in a statement, adding that the samples taken “show safe, low levels” of radiation.

“From the sampling result of the 9th, TEPCO concluded that slightly tainted rainwater had overflowed to the sea; however, the new sampling measurement results show no impact to the ocean,” it continued.

A recent study by the University of Southern California said the Fukushima disaster could have been prevented. One of the main faults cited was the decision to install critical backup generators in low-lying areas, as this was the first place the 2011 tsunami would strike, following the massive earthquake.

(read the full article atrt)

RINF: September 2, 2015

A new report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “downplays” the continuing environmental and health effects of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown while supporting the Japanese government’s agenda to normalize the ongoing disaster, Greenpeace Japan charged on Tuesday.

The Vienna-based IAEA released its final report Monday on the 2011 triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. While the agency pointed to numerous failings, including unclear responsibilities among regulators, weaknesses in plant design and in disaster-preparedness, and a “widespread assumption” of safety, it was more circumspect with regard to health concerns.

The Fukushima disaster released vast amounts of radiation, leading to fears that cases of thyroid cancer in children would soar as they did following the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.

The 200-page report sought to assuage those worries, stating: “Because the reported thyroid doses attributable to the accident were generally low, an increase in childhood thyroid cancer attributable to the accident is unlikely.”

That assertion wasn’t bulletproof, however. The report added: “[U]ncertainties remained concerning the thyroid equivalent doses incurred by children immediately after the accident.”

In a press statement, Greenpeace Japan seized on the information gap.

“The IAEA concludes that no discernible health consequences are expected as a result of the Fukushima disaster, but admits important uncertainties in both radiation dose and long-term effects,” said Kendra Ulrich, senior global energy campaigner with Greenpeace Japan. “Nobody knows how much radiation citizens were exposed to in the immediate days following the disaster. If you don’t know the doses, then you can’t conclude there won’t be any consequences. To say otherwise is political rhetoric, not science.”

The IAEA report conveniently comes as pro-nuclear Prime Minister Shinzo Abe systematically seeks to lift evacuation orders and re-start the country’s nuclear program.

“The IAEA report actively supports the Abe government’s and the global nuclear industry’s agenda to make it appear that things can return to normal after a nuclear disaster,” Ulrich said. “But there is nothing normal about the lifestyle and exposure rates that the victims are being asked to return to.”

In July, Greenpeace Japan charged that the IAEA “has sought to downplay the radiological risks to the population since the early days in 2011. In fact, it produced two documents that can be said to have laid the foundation and justification for Abe’s current policy of de facto forced resettlement.”

[…]

(read the full article at RINF)

RELATED:
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Crews battle TransCanada pipeline fire southeast of Emerson

CBC News: September 6, 2015

TransCanada was forced to shut down one of its natural gas pipelines Saturday night after a massive fire about 50 km southeast of Emerson, Man.

It happened at about 9 p.m CT in Kittson County, Minn. A TransCanada spokesperson said the fire started in the yard of the St. Vincent Compressor Station.

Crews fought the fire for more than four hours before managing to extinguish the blaze at about 1:10 a.m. Sunday.

(read full article at CBC)

Wild Sight For Emerson Residents As Pipeline Explodes

CJOB: September 6, 2015

Evacuated residents are back in their homes after a natural gas pipeline explosion caused the sky to bloom orange Saturday night.

The explosion occured in Minnesota. Volunteer firefighters were called to the fire which started about one kilometer south of the border.

Residents of two homes on the Canadian side were evacuated after the explosion but were allowed to return by 11:00 p.m. The explosion could be seen from kilometers away. Flames have been described as reaching a height of 20 to 30 feet. Residents of the area also describe hearing a loud rumbling noise.

(read the full article at CJOB)

Fukushima nuclear waste detected along Southern California coast — Highest levels seen anywhere in North America since testing program began — 8.4 Bq/m3 of radioactive cesium measured near beach between Los Angeles and San Diego

ENENews : August 25, 2015

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Center For Marine And Environmental Radiation:

• Location: 32°57’0.00″N; 117°17’60.00″W [1.8  miles off the coast of Del Mar, California]
• Sample Date: Apr 04, 2015 11:36
• Depth: 3m
• Cs134: 1.5 ± 0.1Bq/m3
• Cs137: 6.9 ± 0.2Bq/m3

**********************************

The sample was taken just over a mile off the coast of Del Mar, CA – located about 15 miles north of San Diego and 100 miles south of Los Angeles. The only other location Woods Hole has reported detecting nuclear waste from Fukushima Daiichi along the shoreline of North America is in Ucluelet, Canada about 1,200 miles to the north of Del Mar.

7.2 becquerels per cubic meter of Cesium-134 and Cesium-137 was measured in a Ucluelet sample taken in February 2015. The Del Mar sample had 8.4 Bq/m3.

Results for other Fukushima Daiichi-derived radionuclides were not posted. According to media reports, “The plume also contains other radioactive material, including Strontium 90… radioactive isotopes of iodine, low levels of plutonium and tritium might be in the plume.”

According to Woods Hole scientist Ken Buesseler, “As the plume begins to arrive along the West Coast [it] will actually increase in concentration… no public agency in the US is monitoring the activities in the Pacific… Without careful, extensive, consistent monitoring, we’ll have no way of knowing how much radiation from Fukushima is reaching our shores, and how it could affect life in the ocean.”

Watch Buesseler’s recent presentation near Del Mar, CA here

source: ENENews