Blog- TOXIC PLAYGROUNDS

You may not think the smallest things such as kids playing at playgrounds couldn’t be dangerous. Think again, in New Orleans Howard Mielke of Tulane University's Center for Bioenvironmental Research found arsenic, which is an element that has a metallic luster and vaporizes when heated. While searching for arsenic with a portable X-ray fluorescence they found 36 percent of the sites visited were contaminated and only 38 were examined. Researchers toke a bit of soil and mimic the pH of a child’s stomach. I am shocked that this hasn’t been discovered before, many children must have gotten sick because of arsenic on a children’s playground. After examining the soil Mielke says, “is that the median arsenic concentration was on the order of 57 parts per million. This compares with the median of 1.5 ppm in soils generally throughout the city of New Orleans.” when the school was informed with the dangers for the arsenic they replaced the tainted chips with untreated bark. Luckily this problem was found and treated before it got worse. This shows that it is worthwhile surveying play areas.

source- http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/49960/title/Toxic_playgrounds

Extra Credit- science connection

I Have resently started reading My Sisters Keeper which i believe connects to science.In the novel Anna was born to save her older sister Kate who is diagnosed leukemia. For Anna's parents to get the perfect matched child to Kate, scientists matcher the mothers eggs and the fathers sperm to create the specific combination of the genetic material to match Kate. For Kate to survive she had to take things form Anna, such as blood, white cells, stem cells, and her bone marrow. Anna has undergone many surgeries and transfusions so her older Kate can survive .this novel connects to science because Kate has to borrowing many body needs, in order to survive, in the book they use scientific terms. this is a very indulging story, I recommended it to anyone once you start reading you cant stop. I hope you enjoy it.

largest web-spinning spider discovered

A newly discoverd spider web is the largest in a class of web spinners. These species of golden orb - weaver are found South Africa. These are newly described spiders, and now are considerer larges web spinner. these species of spiders are now called Nephilla Komaci.It spins webs of up to 1 metre in diameter. I find this amusing considering these great spinners weren't even know as spiders. I am surprised that this was just recently found, but i believe that this is only because they are endangered. There maybe even better spinners that are yet to be discovered