PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Toxic algal blooms behind Klamath River dams create health risks far downstream

Toxic algal blooms behind Klamath River dams create health risks far downstream
2015-06-16
(Press-News.org) CORVALLIS, Ore. - A new study has found that toxic algal blooms in reservoirs on the Klamath River can travel more than 180 miles downriver in a few days, survive passage through hydroelectric turbines and create unsafe water conditions on lower parts of the river in northern California.

Water-borne algal blooms can accumulate to concentrations that can pose health risks to people, pets and wildlife, and improved monitoring and public health outreach is needed to address this issue, researchers said.

The frequency, duration and magnitude of harmful algal blooms appear to be increasing.

The findings were made by researchers from Oregon State University, based on data from an extensive survey of the Klamath River in 2012, and just published in Harmful Algae, a professional journal.

The toxins may be a special concern if they are bioaccumulated in some animal species, such as freshwater mussels in which the level of the toxin can be more than 100 times higher than ambient concentrations.

"It's clear that these harmful algal blooms can travel long distances on the river, delivering toxins to areas that are presently underappreciated, such as coastal margins," said Timothy Otten, an OSU postdoctoral scholar in the OSU College of Science and College of Agricultural Sciences.

"And the blooms are dynamic, since they can move up and down in the water column and are physically distributed throughout the reservoir," he said. "This means you can't just measure water in one place and at one time and adequately estimate the public health risk."

Microcystis is a seasonal blue-green cyanobacterium found around the world, preferring warm waters in lakes and reservoirs. Some strains are toxic, others are not. Its magnitude and persistence may increase with global climate change, researchers say, and it can cause a range of health issues, including liver damage, rashes, gastrointestinal illness, and other concerns. The toxin is not destroyed by boiling, making it unique from many other biological drinking water contaminants.

Improved awareness of the ability of blooms to travel significant distances downstream, and communication based on that, would help better inform the public, the OSU scientists said. But individual knowledge and awareness would also help.

"On a lake or river, if you see a green band along the shore or green scum on the surface, the water may not be safe to recreate in," Otten said. "Because this problem is so diffuse, it's often not possible to put up posters or signs everywhere that there's a problem in real-time, so people need to learn what to watch for. Just as with poison ivy or oak, the general public needs to learn to recognize what these hazards look like, and know to avoid them in order to safeguard their own health."

In this and other recent research, the OSU scientists have also developed genetic tools that can help identify problems with Microcystis, more quickly and at lower cost than some older methods. But those tools have not yet been widely adopted by the monitoring community.

"Right now, some lakes are not sampled at all for algal blooms, so we don't really know if there's a problem or not," said Theo Dreher, the Pernot Professor and former chair of the Department of Microbiology in the OSU College of Science and College of Agricultural Sciences. "There's no doubt we could use improved monitoring in highly used lakes and reservoirs, or in rivers downstream of them when toxic blooms are found."

In this study, researchers found that intensive blooms of Microcystis in Iron Gate Reservoir on the Klamath River were the primary source of toxic algae observed downstream. They used genetic tracking technology to establish what many may have suspected when observing Microcystis in the lower reaches of the Klamath River. This transport of algae has been very little studied, even though it's likely common.

The possible removal of dams on the Klamath River after 2020 may ultimately help mitigate this problem, the researchers said. Their study found no evidence of endemic Microcystis populations in the flowing regions of the Klamath River, both upstream and downstream of the Copco and Iron Gate reservoirs.

The problem with these bacteria is national and global in scope, especially in summer.

There are more than 123,000 lakes greater than 10 acres in size across the United States, and based on an EPA National Lakes Assessment, at least one-third may contain toxin-producing cyanobacteria. Dams, rising temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, extreme weather and increased runoff of nutrients from urban and agricultural lands are all compounding the problem.

Many large, eutrophic lakes such as Lake Erie are plagued each year by algal blooms so massive that they are visible from outer space. Dogs have died from drinking contaminated water, and sea otter deaths in Monterey Bay have been attributed to eating shellfish contaminated with toxin produced by Microsystis.

INFORMATION:

This study was supported by Pacificorp, the OSU Agricultural Experiment Station and the Mabel E. Pernot Trust.


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Toxic algal blooms behind Klamath River dams create health risks far downstream

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Can personal devices interfere with hospital care?

2015-06-16
This news release is available in French. Montreal, June 16, 2015 -- Thousands of patients die each year in hospitals across North America due to medical errors that could be prevented were doctors and nurses provided with instant access to patient records via wireless technology. Cue the catch-22: the electromagnetic radiation caused by those very devices can interfere with electronic medical equipment and thus lead to serious clinical consequences for patients. Luckily, that could soon change thanks to new research from Concordia University that helps define a ...

Tracking the viral parasites cruising our waterways

Tracking the viral parasites cruising our waterways
2015-06-16
Humans aren't the only ones who like to cruise along the waterways, so do viruses. For the first time, a map of fecal viruses traveling our global waterways has been created using modeling methods to aid in assessing water quality worldwide. "Many countries are at risk of serious public health hazards due to lack of basic sanitation," said Joan Rose, Homer Nowlin Chair in water research at Michigan State University. "With this map, however, we can assess where viruses are being discharged from untreated sewage and address how disease is being spread. With that, we can ...

NASA sees Tropical Storm Bill making landfall in Texas

NASA sees Tropical Storm Bill making landfall in Texas
2015-06-16
Tropical Storm Bill was making landfall at 11 a.m. CDT on Matagorda Island, Texas on June 16 as NASA and NOAA satellites gathered data on the storm. At NASA a movie of Bill's landfall was created using data from NOAA's GOES-East satellite. The center of Bill is expected to move inland over south-central Texas during the afternoon and night of June 16. On June 15 at 19:15 UTC (3:15 p.m. EDT) the MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Storm Bill approaching Texas and Louisiana. Powerful thunderstorms circled the center in fragmented ...

For those over 50, finding a job can get old

2015-06-16
Results from a new study led the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Psychology and University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management show that, compared to younger job seekers, older adults receive fewer job offers, search for weeks longer and are ultimately less likely to find re-employment after losing a job. The study is published by the journal Psychological Bulletin. "There's very robust evidence that as an individual moves beyond age 50, they experience a large penalty toward how quickly they will find a job," says Professor Connie Wanberg, the Industrial ...

Clemson research: Vehicle direction, not driver biometrics, best way to detect drowsiness

2015-06-16
CLEMSON, S.C. - Drowsy drivers take a heavy toll on the nation's highways. So finding a reliable way to test for fatigue to mitigate its potential damage could have a significant impact on highway safety. U.S. statistics reveal drowsy drivers are five times more likely to be involved in an accident, or a near-crash incident, than alert drivers. Furthermore, drowsy or fatigued drivers are responsible for an estimated 56,000 crashes annually with more than 40,000 of them resulting in fatal and non-fatal injuries. Closer to home, there are more than 730 traffic accidents ...

World spends more than $200 billion to make countries healthier

2015-06-16
SEATTLE -- The world invested more than $200 billion to improve health in lower-income countries over the past 15 years. Global health financing increased significantly after 2000, when the United Nations established the Millennium Development Goals, which included a strong focus on health. This trend in funding has only recently started to change, according to new research by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. The article, "Sources and Focus of Health Development Assistance, 1990-2014," was published online June 16 ...

Renewable energy from evaporating water

Renewable energy from evaporating water
2015-06-16
New York - An immensely powerful yet invisible force pulls water from the earth to the top of the tallest redwood and delivers snow to the tops of the Himalayas. Yet despite the power of evaporating water, its potential to propel self-sufficient devices or produce electricity has remained largely untapped -- until now. In the June 16 online issue of Nature Communications, Columbia University scientists report the development of two novel devices that derive power directly from evaporation - a floating, piston-driven engine that generates electricity causing a light to ...

Dengue mosquitoes hitch rides on Amazon river boats

Dengue mosquitoes hitch rides on Amazon river boats
2015-06-16
The urban mosquito that carries the dengue fever virus is hitching rides on river boats connecting the Amazonian town of Iquitos, Peru, with rural areas. PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases published a study by disease ecologists at Emory University, showing how the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is normally associated with urban areas, is tapping human transportation networks to expand its range. "The majority of large barges we surveyed were heavily infested," says Sarah Anne Guagliardo, who led the study as a PhD student in the lab of Uriel Kitron, chair of Emory's Department ...

Next-generation sampling: Pairing genomics with large-scale herbarium sampling

2015-06-16
Plants are a ubiquitous and essential part of our lives. Estimates suggest there are hundreds of thousands of plant species known to science. How many species are there, really? How are they related? How many are threatened with extinction? Answering these questions in such an enormous clade of life is an important but daunting task for scientists. Modern molecular techniques and, in particular, next-generation sequencing provide a powerful tool set to begin uncovering these answers. DNA regions can quickly be obtained and compared across species to infer relationships ...

Designer electronics out of the printer

Designer electronics out of the printer
2015-06-16
This news release is available in German. They are thin, light-weight, flexible and can be produced cost- and energy-efficiently: printed microelectronic components made of synthetics. Flexible displays and touch screens, glowing films, RFID tags and solar cells represent a future market. In the context of an international cooperation project, physicists at the Technische Universität München (TUM) have now observed the creation of razor thin polymer electrodes during the printing process and successfully improved the electrical properties of the printed ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Offering self-collection kits in routine GP appointments could prevent 1,000 women a year from developing cervical cancer

European study offers clearer picture of childhood brain tumor survival

The Lancet: Three in five liver cancer cases due to preventable risk factors; obesity-linked cases on the rise, new analysis suggest

Tiny artificial cells can keep time, study finds

How aging quiets lupus and brings relief to some older patients

Research alert: Synergistic treatment approach supercharges cancer immunotherapy

White veteran high users of online portal generate and exchange more messages than certain patient minorities in the Veterans Health Administration

Web-based tool helps Michigan physicians navigate diabetes coverage and prior authorization

Most primary care patients with opioid use disorder who start treatment stay engaged

U.S.-born Latinos have higher rates of obesity compared to foreign-born Latino and white youth

Study finds veterans experiencing homelessness who gain housing are more likely to get colorectal and breast cancer screenings

Body fat percentage beats BMI in predicting 15-year mortality risk among U.S. adults ages 20 to 49

Umbrella review summarizes family physicians’ experiences with clinical integration

HEAL protocol addresses human trafficking in Brazilian primary care

Study finds uneven progress toward diabetes goals across patient groups in the enhanced primary care diabetes program

Veterans experiencing homelessness who secure housing more likely to get cancer health screenings

Family physicians improve rural maternity outcomes but those in high-need states need support

Tip sheet summaries Annals of Family Medicine July/August 2025

TFLN-based RGB multiplexer for energy-efficient laser beam scanning

On a Florida bombing range, endangered woodpeckers get a second chance

Study identifies gene clusters in rhizobia linked to robust legume growth

Remapping the evolutionary tree of butterflies

Employees who spot problems help the bottom line, so why do leaders give more power to bootlickers?

Could living near water mean you’ll live longer?

Alcohol withdrawal syndrome linked to worse surgical outcomes, higher costs

US POINTER trial: Structured lifestyle intervention delays cognitive decline

Detecting a potential behavioral biomarker for Parkinson’s disease in mice

Expectations about pain influence the experience in different ways

Landmark sleep study links objective sleep patterns with 172 diseases—regularity matters more than duration

Breaking research at ADLM 2025: AI poised to revolutionize Lyme disease testing, treatment

[Press-News.org] Toxic algal blooms behind Klamath River dams create health risks far downstream