The Chinese government has labelled arsenic contamination, which it first diagnosed in China in the 1970s, as one of the country’s “most important endemic diseases,” due to the chronic side effects which include cancers, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. China has been undertaking time-consuming testing of wells but the process could take decades to complete, prompting the researchers of the new study to produce a computer model able to predict which areas would be most likely at risk.

The model found 14.7 million people at risk of water contaminated with levels higher than the World Health Organisation’s recommended limit of 10 micrograms per litre, with almost 6 million at risk of concentration levels of five times that number.

“In areas of high population density, the risk of high arsenic contamination is much more [than the average levels throughout China], especially in the Huai River [ in Central China],” said Dr Guifan Sun, China Medical University dean and member of the team behind the work. “These areas should be tested as soon as possible and I think after our paper is published, it will make the Chinese government pay attention.”

“This is a global issue,” said Michael Berg, another member of the team and a senior researcher at Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology. “Potentially, 140 million people are at risk of consuming arsenic contaminated water daily world-wide.”

The researchers created the model using publically-availabe information such as wetness, soil and other indicators of where contamination is likely to be high, combining it with population data, arsenic concentration levels from their own field tests at thousands of villages, and the Chinese government’s own testing of wells between 2001 and 2005.

Luis Rodríguez-Lado of University Santiago de Compostela in Spain and the lead author of the work, said: “The foundation of our model was based on arsenic measures in 2,600 villages in six provinces in China. Our study has been going on for five years, linking it with the previous studies by the Dr Sun and his team with the Chinese in 2005.

“With the use of data collection and statistical analysis, we were able to create a map of areas where the probabilities of arsenic concentration was higher than the average 10 mg per litre in the whole of China.”

Dr Sun said that without the new model, results could have taken more than 20 years to appear. “This was the reason for the urgency. We will give advice to the government on how to test these predicted areas.”

The wards’ low-income group people are especially exposed to arsenic related diseases as they drink and use water from those tubewells to meet daily necessities.

CCC and other authorities have so far taken no initiative to protect the endangered population, alleged local residents.

CCC and Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) are rather pointing fingers at each other, saying it is the other’s duty to detect and seal the contaminated tubewells.

Users of those tubewells do not even know that they are being exposed to high levels of arsenic.

The findings were revealed by a recent survey jointly conducted by the Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology (Cuet), and the Institute of Engineers of Bangladesh, Chittagong.

The seven affected wards are East Sholoshahar, South Kattali, West Bakalia, East Bakalia, South Bakalia, North Agrabad, and North Halishahar.

According to World Health Organisation (WHO), 0.05 ppm (part per million) arsenic in water is safe for human body.

But tubewells in North Halishahar and East Sholoshahar are pumping water that contains 0.5 ppm arsenic, 10 times higher than the safe level.

Dr Swapan Kumar Palit of the civil engineering department at Cuet said the seven wards have been identified as more risky. His department has done a detailed survey in East Sholoshahar recently.

Of the 233 tubewells in ward 6 of East Sholoshahar, 99 pump water with high levels of arsenic, said Dr Swapan, who is the key researcher in the survey.

Areas affected by the highest level of arsenic in the ward are Baraypara, Ghasia Para, Chairman Ghata, and Omar Ali Matabbar Road, Swapan said adding that generally low-income group people and slum dwellers live in these areas with no water supply from the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA).

Dr Swapan said the survey was launched in 2008.

He said CCC and PHED should seal the contaminated tubewells, so no one could be affected.

Both the authorities, however, are trying to shift the responsibility on the other.

“We have no role in sealing tubewells in the city area,” a PHED official said, asking not to be named.

CCC officials, on the other hand, said the civil surgeon and PHED are the authority in this regard.

Civil Surgeon Dr Mohammad Abu Taiyab told The Daily Star, “The city corporation has more of a responsibility to seal the tubewells.”

He however added, “If they report to us, we will also take action.”

The panel of experts says any tsunami unleashed by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake in the Nankai trough, which runs east of Japan’s main island of Honshu to the southern island of Kyushu, could top 34 m at its highest.

An earlier forecast in 2003 put the potential maximum height of such a tsunami at less than 20 m (66 feet).

Last March’s magnitude-9.0 earthquake spawned a 14-m (45-foot) wave that devastated most of Japan’s northeastern coast and triggered meltdowns at a nuclear power plant.

The revised tsunami projections, contained in a report released Saturday and posted on a government website, are based on new research following last March’s magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami, which devastated a long stretch of Japan’s northeastern coast and killed about 19,000 people.

Last year’s catastrophe and the ensuing crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, prompted sweeping reviews of Japan’s disaster preparedness and criticism over apparent failures to take into account potential risks.

The tsunami knocked out power at the 40-year-old coastal nuclear plant, leading to the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. Tens of thousands of residents have had to leave the area, and it’s unclear whether some will ever be able to move back.

The Fukushima plant was designed to withstand a 6-m (20-ft) tsunami, less than half the height of the surge that hit it on March 11, 2011.

The latest forecast shows a tsunami of up to 21 m (69 ft) could strike near the Hamaoka nuclear plant. Its operator, Chubu Electric Power Co., is building an 18-m (59-ft) high sea wall to counter tsunamis. The wall is due to be completed next year.

The plant was shut down in 2011 due to estimates it has a 90% chance of being hit by a magnitude 8.0 or higher quake within 30 years.

In other unsettling news, another government report shows that a strong earthquake hitting the Tokyo Bay region could shake the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area—home to more than 33 million people—at the maximum seismic intensity of 7 on the Japanese scale.

The report, issued Friday by the Ministry of Education, came in the form of mapping that shows that much of the Tokyo region would likely experience severe shaking from a magnitude-7.3 earthquake inside Tokyo Bay.

The study prompted calls for Tokyo residents to be better prepared for such disasters. Although they live with the constant threat of a major earthquake that experts have long said is overdue for the region, not all living in the region keep recommended water and other supplies on hand.

A report in the newspaper Asahi Shimbun listed troubles that might be expected from a major quake, such as electricity outages that could persist for more than a week and water supply disruptions that could last for nearly a month, based on government estimates.

The revised tsunami forecast for a possible Nankai earthquake says Tokyo could expect waves up to 2.3 m (7.6 ft) high. But at the coastal town of Kuroshio, on the island of Shikoku, the tsunami could top 34 m (112 ft), it shows.

The computer modeling for the revised forecasts assumes a high tide for the highest estimates.

In the northern delta, the underground water level was found falling dramatically in Mai Dich area of Cau Giay District in Hanoi.

In the dry season, 7/7 water samples showed ammonia concentrations much higher than the permitted levels.

In Tan Lap commune of Dan Phuong district, the ammonia concentration found was 23.30mg/l, or 233 times higher than the permitted level. Meanwhile, 17/32 samples were found as having manganese concentration and 4/32 samples having arsenic concentration higher than the permitted levels.

Scientists say arsenic contaminated water can cause skin diseases such as pigmentation changes, skin darkening, thickening, or skin cancer.

More recently, when naming the provinces and cities most seriously contaminated with arsenic, Dr. Le Van Cat from the Vietnam Chemistry Institute said the worst situation was seen in Hanoi.

Cat said the arsenic concentration was tens of times higher than the permitted level in many areas.

The water pollution was found in most of the small household-owned water wells, while there were about 5 million such self-dug water wells in the city.

Meanwhile, a report from Unicef said the most serious pollution was found in the southern part of Hanoi, especially in Hai Ba Trung and Thanh Tri districts.

In Quoc Oai district, the arsenic concentration found was three times higher than the permitted level. In Dan Phuong district, the ammonia concentration was 233 times higher than the permitted level.

Scientists attribute the high concentration of arsenic in underground water to the overuse of pesticide, coal burning and other activities.

In July 2014, the local residents in My Dinh II residential quarter of Nam Tu Liem district shouted for help as they had to use unsafe water provided by HUDS Company which was found as having arsenic concentration two times higher than the permitted level for a long time.

Nguyen Van Manh, deputy director of HUDS, then said in the rainy season, the arsenic concentration often went up because the surface water was absorbed into the earth.

The residents only stopped complaining when they later could began using the clean water provided by Viwaco.

Scientists describe the underground water pollution in Hanoi as “alarmingly serious”.

The terrain is lower in the southern and southeastern parts of the city. these are the areas where surface water brings dirt, which is absorbed into the earth and taints the underground water.

When a chunk of space rock bested the atmosphere and tumbled earthward, it terrified Peruvian locals with its violent entrance of flame and smoke. At 13,000 feet, the alien mass could go no farther, and it struck the southern town of Carancas, burrowing deep into Andean soil. The impact crater, big enough to hold a school bus, burped gas and stone fragments at nearby houses before quickly filling with water.

Soon after the meteor hit, locals began showing up at the community health clinic, complaining of mysterious illnesses. Local doctors, unable to determine the causes, blamed the meteorite, and overnight, the sleepy town near the border with Bolivia became the subject of global media attention. Scientists swarmed the area to find an explanation. They interviewed residents, collected samples and studied the findings, hoping to discover microbes, electromagnetic forces or, at the very least, some foreign metals.

Instead, they found dangerously high levels of arsenic unrelated to the meteor — much of it concentrated at the town’s elementary school. For the people of Carancas, the discovery of arsenic was a devastating blow but one that may have saved their lives.

“People are dying from arsenic poisoning,” said Faruque Parvez, an environmental health scientist at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health who studies arsenic in Latin America. “These are the consequences for a community and an entire generation.”

An estimated 14 million people in Latin America are exposed to drinking water with unsafe levels of arsenic, making it the most widespread toxic chemical exposure in the region. Numerous studies tie the poison to a long and terrible list of serious illnesses like cancers, Type 2 diabetes, premature birth, infant mortality, heart disease, lung disease and cognitive and motor impairment for children. While an arrival from outer space alerted people to the dangers of arsenic, complications much closer to home mean they’re still not getting the help they need. The region’s poverty, corrupt officials and distrust of outsiders ensure the problem’s longevity.

News reports at the time suggested that the Carancas meteor aerosolized some arsenic-laden groundwater and that people breathing in the toxin suffered as a result. A one-time high-level exposure to arsenic could cause illness. But it’s more likely the meteor gave people the opportunity to come forward with problems they have been experiencing for years — problems caused by a lifetime of arsenic exposure, said Steven Bosiljevac, a civil engineer who has worked in Carancas.

Arsenic is so toxic that the World Health Organization says levels above 10 parts per billion in drinking water is dangerous. Ten parts per billion is tiny — the equivalent of 10 seconds in about 32 years. Yet anything more than that is enough to seriously affect health.

“If you consume even small dose of arsenic every day, your chances to get several types of cancer and other illnesses are increased,” said Dina Lopez, a hydrogeochemist at Ohio University. “It’s especially bad in the regions that are isolated, like in the countryside.”

Peru is hard hit by the arsenic issue, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) paper published last year. Out of 151 water samples taken throughout the country, more than 75 percent exceeded the recommended limit of arsenic. What’s even more frightening is that over half those samples had more than five times the limit.

“There were some serious hot spots of arsenic in groundwater,” said Heather Williams, an assistant professor at Pomona College in California who studies water politics. “A lot of it was the most toxic form.”

The meteorite put Carancas on the map. Without this oddity, a 1 in 182 trillion chance, children at the school would have spent their most formative years pouring toxins into their little bodies, Bosiljevac said.

It’s not just children who are affected, though young people are at an elevated risk because they’re still developing. Arsenic is hazardous because it mimics phosphorus, which is one of the six building blocks of life. Your body relies on phosphorus to store the energy you need to do simple things, like move an arm. When arsenic gets in your system, taking up the space once reserved for phosphorus, it can mess with your energy production and spur a host of nasty health consequences.

The negative health effects on humans are well documented, said Christine Marie George, an environmental epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Leave a problem like this unchecked, she added, and entire communities could fall victim to the mental and physical disabilities caused by arsenic.

As a result, the study is unlikely to change leading scientific consensus or affect the current negotiations on a comprehensive global agreement on climate change.

The new study, led by former NASA climate scientist James Hansen (now at Columbia University) is set to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry. Hansen and 16 colleagues argue in the paper that increasing melting of the ice sheets over Greenland and Antarctica will lead to a shutdown of the ocean’s currents. That would lead to warm waters trapped under Antarctica, which would increase the melting of ice there (if all the continent’s ice melted, it would raise sea level by around 200 feet).

Hansen’s prediction is more dire than the scenario deemed most likely by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which foresees no more than 3 feet of sea level rise by century’s end.

The 10 feet Hansen predicts would make many of the world’s coastal cities, from New York to Shanghai, unlivable. It would also flood South Florida, making everything below Interstate 75 unlivable (from Ft. Lauderdale on down). Three feet would put many of New York’s airport runways underwater, but would be much easier to mitigate with seawalls.

A number of prominent climate scientists are skeptical of Hansen’s conclusions.

Ian Joughin, a professor of Earth sciences at the University of Washington, says melting glaciers and ice sheets contribute only about 1 millimeter (0.04 inches) of sea level rise a year.

While Hansen and team predict a doubling in the rate of ice melt in Greenland in the coming years, Joughin says that seems unlikely given past trends and what we currently know about the processes.

“I don’t think you can extrapolate current melt rates to get to 10 feet,” says Joughin.

Hansen was not available to comment on the study or the reaction.

Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says the Hansen report is merely “one scenario, and not evidence for that scenario.”

Schmidt says the study “might add to the discussions” but is far enough from conventional thinking that it is unlikely to change mainstream climate views, international negotiations on reducing carbon, or the IPCC’s recommendations to world governments.

“There’s plenty of reason to worry about sea level rise, but I don’t see 10 feet happening by end of century,” says Joughin.

Government officials in Hong Kong and Taiwan detailed what’s known from mainland sources, and infectious disease news reporting sites such as FluTrackers, Avian Flu Diary, and ProMED Mail have been tracking official and media reports.

In a statement today, Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection (CHP), citing provincial health commission sources, said that, of 27 patients, 7 are in serious condition and the rest are stable. The main symptom is fever, but some patients have had shortness of breath.

Wuhan health officials said the pneumonia appears to be viral and that the patients are in isolation. No obvious human-to-human transmission has been observed, and no healthcare worker infections have been reported.

So far, the cause of the outbreak is still under investigation. News of the outbreak triggered rumors of possible severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Virologist Leo Poon, DPhil, a SARS expert from Hong Kong University, told Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), a public broadcasting service in Hong Kong, that it’s too early to say the outbreak is a SARS event. He added that the emergence of atypical pneumonia cases requires identifying the responsible pathogen and ruling out SARS or other types of coronaviruses.

That means weird things are starting to happen. Last summer, giant mysterious craters discovered by reindeer herders in a remote section of northern Siberia captured the world’s attention. Upon closer inspection, it was obvious these craters formed recently with some explosive force behind them. Since then, there have been further scientific excursions to the craters.

According to measurements made by Russian scientists, methane concentration at the bottom of one of the holes was thousands of times higher than in the regular atmosphere. A more thorough recent expedition identified “dozens” of new holes, all of which apparently formed in the last year or two.

The Siberian holes draw into question the near-term stability of Arctic permafrost, which traps enough carbon, if fully unleashed, to double atmospheric concentrations and potentially push global warming into a frightening new phase. Scientists are quite certain it will take at least a century for that to happen in a worst-case scenario, but it’s clear that the release has already begun.

A recent study estimated continued warming would produce an additional 35-205 billon tons of carbon emissions (about 2-10 percent of current global totals) from permafrost by 2100. The wide range reflects how little we still know about the response of permafrost to increased temperatures. Since the permafrost thaw is already in progress, it could be difficult to slow down: Even a sharp cutback in emissions from cities and cars may only be able to cut those numbers in half. With the atmosphere only able to hold another 400 billion tons or so before we’re committed to a rise in global temperatures of more than 2 degree Celsius, the point after which “dangerous” impacts become much more likely.

The doomsday prediction for the region is due to an impending rupture of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a fault line that extends roughly 700 miles off the coast of the Pacific Northwest from California, through Oregon and Washington, to Vancouver Island in Canada.

Rupture of the subduction zone — a sudden sliding shift or displacement of a tectonic plate beneath another due to accumulated stress — could cause the worst natural disaster in the history of the North American continent, affecting an area of about 140,000 square miles from Tacoma, Seattle, and Portland to Sacramento, a region home to about seven million people.

According to Kathryn Schulz, writing in the New Yorker, FEMA estimates that major earthquakes occur over the Cascadia Fault on the average about once every 240 years. The last major quake occurred in 1700, about 300 years ago, so, in theory, the next major earthquake is overdue.

Seismologists estimate that the impending earthquake could have a magnitude of up to 9.2 and last about four minutes, triggering a gigantic tsunami that reaches the coast about 15 minutes later.

Experts point to the irony of the fact that while most Americans are familiar with the name of California’s San Andreas Fault — the subject of anxious expectations of “the big one” for decades — fewer have heard of the Cascadia Fault, which lies to the north and, in fact, poses greater threat.

According to Schulz, the estimated upper limit of the San Andreas Fault with regard to the power of earthquake it can unleash is magnitude 8.2, compared with Cascadia which can unleash, in the event of a full-margin rupture, an earthquake of magnitude 9.2.

The power of the earthquake depends on whether a part of the subduction zone gives way or the entire zone slips in what is termed a full-margin rupture. In the event of a partial rupture, we could have a quake of magnitude 8.0-8.6, but in the event of full-margin rupture, we could have a quake of magnitude 8.7-9.2.

A full-margin rupture, according to seismologists, would trigger a devastating 700-mile-wide tsunami wall along the Pacific Northwest coast. According to Kenneth Murphy, who heads FEMA’s Region X, covering Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, by the time the tsunami recedes, “everything west of Interstate 5? along the Northwest coast “will be toast.”

FEMA projections, based on a planning scenario of the earthquake striking at 9:41 a.m., February 6, when beaches are not yet full, estimates that about 13,000 people could be killed and about 27,000 more injured. The disaster could displace up to one million people and leave two-and-half-million people in need of emergency supplies of food and water.

Physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, calculated about 1.6 million people in China die each year from heart, lung and stroke problems because of incredibly polluted air, especially small particles of haze. Earlier studies put the annual Chinese air pollution death toll at one to two million but this is the first to use newly released air monitoring figures.

The study, to be published in the journal PLOS One, blames emissions from the burning of coal, both for electricity and heating homes. It uses real air measurements and then computer model calculations that estimate heart, lung and stroke deaths for different types of pollutants.

Study lead author Robert Rohde said 38% of the Chinese population lived in an area with a long-term air quality average the US Environmental Protection Agency called “unhealthy.”

“It’s a very big number,” Rohde said. “It’s a little hard to wrap your mind around the numbers. Some of the worst in China is to the south-west of Beijing.”

To put Chinese air pollution in perspective, the most recent American Lung Association data shows that Madera, California, has the highest annual average for small particles in the United States. But 99.9% of the eastern half of China has a higher annual average for small particle haze than Madera, Rohde said.

“In other words nearly everyone in China experiences air that is worse for particulates than the worst air in the US,” Rohde said.

In a 2010 document the EPA estimated between 63,000 and 88,000 people died in the US from air pollution. Other estimates ranged from 35,000 to 200,000.

Unlike the US air pollution in China is worst in the winter because of burning of coal to heat homes and weather conditions that keeps dirty air closer to the ground, Rohde said. Beijing will host the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Outside scientists praised the research. Jason West at the University of North Carolina said he expected “it will be widely influential”.

Allen Robinson at Carnegie Mellon University said in an email that parts of the United States, such as Pittsburgh, used to have almost as bad air but have become much cleaner “through tough regulations combined with large collapse of heavy industry”.

As China started to clean up its air, limiting coal use, it would also reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief global warming gas, Rohde said.