Managing troubled data: coastal data partnerships smooth data integration

Understanding the ecology, condition, and changes of coastal areas requires data from many sources. Broad-scale and long-term ecological questions, such as global climate change, biodiversity, and cumulative impacts of human activities, must be addressed with databases that integrate data from several different research and monitoring programs. Various barriers, including widely differing data formats, codes, directories, systems, and metadata used by individual programs, make such integration troublesome. Coastal data partnerships, by helping overcome technical, social, and organizational barriers, can lead to a better understanding of environmental issues, and may enable better management decisions. Characteristics of successful data partnerships include a common need for shared data, strong collaborative leadership, committed partners willing to invest in the partnership, and clear agreements on data standards and data policy. Emerging data and metadata standards that become widely accepted are crucial. New information technology is making it easier to exchange and integrate data. Data partnerships allow us to create broader databases than would be possible for any one organization to create by itself.     

Safety rules: procedural freedom or action constraint?

The paper presents a partial classification of safety rules as constraints imposed from outside on the freedom of choice of individuals or companies. The classification is linked to the Reason model of skill-, rule-, and knowledge-based behaviour. The imposition of constraints is related to a number of criteria concerning the context and use of the rules to arrive at proposals for when and where to apply what type of rule. To illustrate the principles discussed an example is given of the rule from the Dutch Working Environment legislation concerning the requirement to use “current state of the art in prevention” in companies. The paper proposes providing procedural rule support to companies on how to meet the rule, in the form of a data bank of practicable solutions to health and safety problems.     

Occupational health and safety professionals and management: identity, marriage, servitude or supervision?

The role and training of occupational health and safety professionals is a continuing subject of debate in the light of recent European legislation. This paper discusses the possible roles of professionals in the context of the complexities of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) management. It presents the roles using the metaphor of parent-adult-child relationships (Harris, 1970) and discusses the ways in which different relationships can lead to different problems of functioning. It concludes with presenting the possible role of training in tackling these problems.     

The network imaginary: coherence and creativity within a multiscalar collaborative effort to reform US fire management

In response to the ongoing crisis in fire management, the US Fire Learning Network (FLN) engages partners in collaborative, landscape-scale ecological fire restoration. The paper contends that the FLN employs technologies, planning guidelines and media to articulate an FLN imaginary that co-ordinates independent efforts to engage in ecological fire restoration work without need of either hierarchal authority or collective social capital. This imaginary may allow the FLN to draw on the creativity and adaptive innovation of collaboration to reform fire management institutions and fire-adapted ecosystems.     

House crickets can accumulate polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) directly from polyurethane foam common in consumer products

Polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants are added at percent levels to many polymers and textiles abundant in human spaces and vehicles, wherein they have been long assumed to be tightly sequestered. However, the mg kg⁻¹ burdens recently detected in indoor dust testify to substantial releases. The bulk of released PBDEs remain in the terrestrial environment, yet comparatively little research focuses on this compartment. There, insects/arthropods, such as crickets, are the most abundant invertebrate organisms and facilitate the trophic transfer of contaminants by breaking down complex organic matter (including discarded polymers) and serving as food for other organisms. Our experiments revealed that house crickets (Acheta domesticus) provided uncontaminated food and free access to PUF containing Penta-BDE (8.7% dry wt) for 28 d accumulated substantial PBDE body burdens. Crickets allowed to depurate gut contents exhibited whole body burdens of up to 13.4 mg kg⁻¹ lipid ΣPenta-BDE, 1000-fold higher than typically reported in humans. Non-depurated crickets and molted exoskeletons incurred even higher ΣPenta-BDE, up to 80.6 and 63.3 mg kg⁻¹ lipid, respectively. Congener patterns of whole crickets and molts resembled those of PUF and the commercial Penta-BDE formulation, DE-71, indicative of minimal discrimination or biotransformation. Accumulation factor (AF) calculations were hampered by uncertainties in determining actual PUF ingestion. However, estimated AFs were low, in the range of 10⁻⁴-10⁻³, suggesting that polymer-PBDE interactions limited uptake. Nonetheless, results indicate that substantial PBDE burdens may be incurred by insects in contact with current-use and derelict treated polymers within human spaces and solid waste disposal sites (e.g. landfills, automotive dumps, etc.). Once ingested, even burdens not absorbed across the gut wall may be dispersed within proximate terrestrial food webs via the insect’s movements and/or predation.     

Comparative embryotoxicity of a pentabrominated diphenyl ether mixture to common terns (Sterna hirundo) and American kestrels (Falco sparverius)

Concentrations of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in Forster’s tern (Sterna forsteri) eggs from San Francisco Bay have been reported to range up to 63 μg g⁻¹ lipid weight. This value exceeds the lowest-observed-adverse-effect level (1.8 μg g⁻¹ egg wet weight; ∼32 μg⁻¹ lipid weight) reported in an embryotoxicity study with American kestrels (Falco sparverius). As a surrogate for Forster’s terns, common tern (Sterna hirundo) eggs were treated by air cell injection with corn oil vehicle (control) or a commercial penta-BDE formulation (DE-71) at nominal concentrations of 0.2, 2, and 20 μg g⁻¹ egg. As a positive control, kestrel eggs received vehicle or 20 μg DE-71 g⁻¹ egg. In terns, there were no effects of DE-71 on embryonic survival, and pipping or hatching success; however, treated eggs hatched later (0.44 d) than controls. Organ weights, organ-to-body weight ratios, and bone lengths did not differ, and histopathological observations were unremarkable. Several measures of hepatic oxidative stress in hatchling terns were not affected by DE-71, although there was some evidence of oxidative DNA damage (8-hydroxy-deoxyguanosine; 8-OH-dG). Although DE-71 did not impair pipping and hatching of kestrels, it did result in a delay in hatch, shorter humerus length, and reduced total thyroid weight. Concentrations of oxidized glutathione, reduced glutathione, thiobarbituric acid reactive substances, and 8-OH-dG in liver were greater in DE-71-treated kestrels compared to controls. Our findings suggest common tern embryos, and perhaps other tern species, are less sensitive to PBDEs than kestrel embryos.     

Designing Environmental Databases for Statistical Analyses

The Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) collects data that are used to statistically assess the environmental condition of large geographic regions. These data are then posted on the EMAP web site so that anyone can use them. Databases used for the statistical analyses, "analytical" databases, differ in design from the "general-use" databases used by a secondary audience. Their scope is usually restricted in time, in geographic extent, and in type and content of data, often being limited to a single scientific discipline. Their structure may be more horizontal than vertical, so that statistical programs can import the data easily. Their design is strongly influenced by the nature of the scientific analysis because the goal is to create a good computing environment for that analysis. We illustrate these aspects of design with an analytical database for estuaries in the U.S. mid-Atlantic region.