Taken from Lynne’s weekly column ‘Green Scene’ for the Western Mail
14th August 2021
Bloomin’ Nightmare
Blue green algae (cyanobacteria) are a group of bacteria that is found naturally in water bodies like lakes, canals, rivers and ponds. However, they can pose a real health risk during warm summer months when their concentrations increase in the water to form blooms and scum on the surface. These blooms can contain dangerous toxins, which can be harmful, and potentially fatal, to pets, livestock, birds – and humans. Not surprisingly, they are known as Harmful Algal Blooms.
The harmful algae tends to appear as green or greenish-brown scum on the surface of water and dogs can typically swallow it by drinking water from an affected lake, river or pond or even while licking their fur after going for a swim. The smallest quantities can prove fatal, depending on the type of toxin ingested. Common, early warning symptoms include skin rashes, eye irritation, vomiting, diarrhoea, drooling, disorientation, trouble breathing, seizures, and blood in faeces. These can appear within a few minutes or sometimes hours and if left untreated can develop into liver damage, which in turn can be fatal. And it can happen alarmingly quickly.
Reports of these algal blooms in Wales have so far this year included Pembrokeshire and several different locations within the Brecon Beacons, as well as in numerous other areas of the UK.
With the weather set to warm up again, a paddle in a cool lake or river may be your dog’s idea of fun but please, keep them on a lead during walks near water bodies confirmed to have algal blooms – and obviously out of the water. The majority of blooms are toxic and it is impossible to tell the difference visually, so it is better to be safe than sorry.
Responsible national environment agencies or local authorities will put up signs near infected water bodies, but please don’t rely on that. You can also play a crucial role in providing warnings about outbreaks of blue-green algae by reporting sightings via the ‘Bloomin’ Algae’ app with a photograph. The UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology will quickly check if it is blue-green algae or something harmless, with correct and incorrect reports being plotted on an interactive map in the app.
Visit www.ceh.ac.uk/our-science/projects/bloomin-algae
You can also contact your local authority environmental health department if you suspect a bloom and public warning signs are absent.
Natural Resources Wales are urging people, “Don’t ignore it, report it!” To report an environmental incident, please call their incident hotline on 0300 065 3000 (24 hours).
Find out more at www.naturalresources.wales/guidance-and-advice/business-sectors/farming/blue-green-algae/
The blue green algae will also affect humans, so as the interest in paddle boarding and wild swimming has increased beyond belief, please be mindful for your own health too.
For Name’s Sake
One of the (ever-increasing) things that annoy me these days, is how ‘techy’ words have been stolen from nature. These words have been taken, they’re in use already – can’t these ‘clever’ people find some new words?
Blackberry is a classic – nature’s way of apologising for the bramble. But if you type blackberry into Google, you won’t get any reference to the fruit until page 3. The mobile phone takes up the first pages.
Tweeting and Twitter should be left for the birds to do – I have no interest in it at all. Although I do use Facebook – initially called Facemash and used by students to judge the attractiveness of fellow Harvard students. At least they (sort of) made up an original name.
The first known computer ‘bug’ was actually caused by a bug, or a moth to be precise, when it got stuck inside the gubbings of an early computer in 1947. The name stuck.
Inside every computer, smartphone, and server is a floating ‘forest’ of ‘branching’ directories, all sprouting from a deeply buried ‘root’ folder.
The first computer ‘worm’ was created or invented by John Brunner in his 1975 science fiction novel, The Shockwave Rider. He called it a ‘tapeworm’, since it worked in a way similar to the fleshy parasite. Real-life computer ‘worms’ followed soon after.
In the computer world, a ‘daisy chain’ is an interconnection of computer devices, peripherals, or network nodes in series, one after another.
Of course the references to water are numerous; we surf the web (another one from nature there, too), follow social media streams and WAVE is apparently an audio format, rather than something you might find yourself under if you’re not too good at surfing …
Even the word ‘blog’, which more recently has been taken from Weblog, was actually entered in the 1898 volume of The English Dialect Dictionary as a figurative use of block and is said to be ‘anything resembling a block or log of wood.’
Originally, ‘to marshall’ was to tend horses but now, in computer programming, marshalling is the process of gathering data.
One of the first search engines was named after Lycosa kochii, or the wolf spider. Called Lycos, the system was designed to imitate the spider’s habit of catching its prey by relentless pursuit.
Computers can ‘hibernate’ and then there is ‘cloud’ computing. But not for me there’s not – the clouds are still something I like to see on a hot day.
Of course with all this new vocabulary there is room for some comical misunderstandings too. In work last week, when I was getting a bit tetchy late in the afternoon, my brother teased me, “You need an nap, you’re over-tired!”
“Can you really get an app for being over-tired?” asked one of the other boys.
And when I told a client that I had to postpone an appointment as I was having windows installed, she told me very seriously that Windows 10 would install itself. That may be, but the glazed variety won’t.
Che Guevara said, “Study hard so that you can master technology, which will allows you to master nature.” I, on the other hand, recommend spending time in nature, which will allow you to cope with technology.
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