Sewage-Polluted Sea Spraying Contaminated Water Into Air, Scripps Study Shows
Teresa Lee
Journal Article: Bacterial and Chemical Evidence of Coastal Water Pollution from the Tijuana River in Sea Spray Aerosol
Coastal water pollution (CWP) is the result of sewage and runoff from storms entering coastal waterways, affecting local populations and could lead to a rise in global illnesses through direct contact with the water. Contaminants include plastics, drugs, insecticides, and pathogenic viruses.1-3 A pathway to the spread of disease is through sea spray aerosol (SSA) exposure, where seawater aerosols containing various chemical compounds and pathogens are ejected into the air from bursting bubbles via crashing waves and precipitation.4 A persistent site of concern regarding CWP is between Tijuana, Mexico and Imperial Beach, USA, where untreated sewage flows from the Tijuana River to south Imperial Beach coastal waters at the countries’ borders.
Pendergraft and colleagues identified chemical and bacterial species in coastal water and SSA samples from the Tijuana-Imperial Beach region using non-targeted tandem mass spectrometry, 16S amplicon sequencing, and a combination of modeling and statistical analyses to characterize CWP spread into the atmosphere. They used the Lagrangian particle dispersion model FLEXPART to calculate the dispersion of particles in the atmosphere to ensure that the identified species came from the local waters they sampled. The article goes into great detail of how they identified specific bacterial tracers unique in samples from Tijuana River water (TJRw) as opposed to Imperial Beach water (IBPw) or Scripps Institute of Oceanography water (SIOPw) (as a control), and found that a significant proportion of chemical species (45%) and bacterial communities (82%) found in Imperial Beach aerosol samples (IBa) are also found in TJRw samples. A common pattern observed was that the relative abundance of a given tracer bacteria was greater for TJRw than IBPw or Imperial Beach aerosols across the top 40 identified bacteria, meaning that bacteria from the Tijuana River is flowing into coastal waters before entering the atmosphere as SSA. They observed a weaker chemical tracer association but maintain that these chemical links can still provide information on the aerosol populations containing the tracer bacteria linking TJRw pollution to the Imperial Beach region.
Overall, this is more of a qualitative study compared to a majority of the articles discussed so far, given their objectives to identify and characterize bacterial and chemical species in evidence of CWP spread via SSA to call for coastal water and air monitoring. The article does a very thorough job of explaining their methods and accounting for factors like sampling conditions and particle dispersion in the atmosphere; I found it to be a difficult read at times, especially when they talk about the ST2 outputs with the comparisons they made based on their criterion. There is a definitive call to action regarding the health impacts given the types of bacterial tracers they identified with the study. The lack of adequate infrastructure is cited as the cause for the heavily polluted state of the Tijuana River and it is fair that the authors believe the problem will likely persist even after infrastructure improvements because the problem has been exacerbated for so long.
The NBC San Diego article listed City News Service as the author, which is a news agency that covers local government and public safety news in Southern California. Roughly 20% of the news article actually talks about or references the study and they do not directly link the journal article. The rest of the piece mostly quotes principal investigator Dr. Kimberly “Kim” Prather and talks about the need for further investigation on health impacts. What surprised me was the last line in the article that confirms funding for further studies in an omnibus spending bill by Rep. Scott Peters. While there usually is a political tinge to many news articles, especially those that relate research to public policy and considering the entity that wrote this article, this could be an attempt at underlining how important the research is that it warrants a mention about funding. The skeptic in me worries that this may incite questions about appropriating funds for those that may not view scientific findings such as these as a major concern, despite both the journal and the news articles saying otherwise.
The news article does a relatively fair job of reporting the main takeaways without intentional fear mongering and correctly identifies the analytical methods used in this qualitative study. I wished that the article included the figure that showed where specifically they sampled. The average reader may struggle to understand a majority of the figures presented in the journal but showing the sampling sites would allow anyone to geographically situate themselves and would reinforce why coastal and air monitoring is necessary. The news article is more of an informative report but could have benefited from reinforcing the journal’s call to action, especially since the entity that produced the piece focuses on public health news. Overall, I give this article a 6/10.
(1) Petras, D.; Minich, J. J.; Cancelada, L. B.; Torres, R. R.; Kunselman, E.; Wang, M.; White, M. E.; Allen, E. E.; Prather, K. A.; Aluwihare, L. I.; Dorrestein, P. C. Non-Targeted Tandem Mass Spectrometry Enables the Visualization of Organic Matter Chemotype Shifts in Coastal Seawater. Chemosphere 2021, 271, 129450. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2020.129450.
(2) Kolpin, D. W.; Furlong, E. T.; Meyer, M. T.; Thurman, E. M.; Zaugg, S. D.; Barber, L. B.; Buxton, H. T. Pharmaceuticals, Hormones, and Other Organic Wastewater Contaminants in U.S. Streams, 1999−2000: A National Reconnaissance. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2002, 36 (6), 1202–1211. https://doi.org/10.1021/es011055j.
(3) Pathogenic Human Viruses in Coastal Waters. https://doi.org/10.1128/cmr.16.1.129-143.2003.
(4) Mechanism for the Water-to-Air Transfer and Concentration of Bacteria. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.170.3958.626.
I'm glad you mentioned how the article doesn't aim to fear monger in order to gain clicks, which helps maintain itself with a relatively unbiased and neutral perspective. Even with the perceived threat of how bacteria and other harmful pollutants can transfer from sea to air, the article does a nice job of summarizing the complexity and nuance of the situation, emphasizing the lack of clarity and need for further investigation. Though its true that the article could have done a better job in evoking the same call to action as the paper did, I think its nice that the article doesn't scare readers into avoiding rivers and beaches at all cost, but instead subtly adds a warning plus the emphasis of an on-going exploration.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that there should've been some diagrams to showcase the methods or the results. Yes its true that readers may not understand the information given, but either a picture of how the samples were taken (to show how they correlated aerosols in Tijuana River to Imperial Beach) or how similar the mass spec results were (to show how IB and TJR Have Significant Compositional Similarities) would definitely help support the narrative.That way, not only can the article add more detail on the reasoning and results that stem from their methodology, but also help inform readers on how analytical chemistry so far can help detect potentially potent sources of harmful SSA.
You make a good point regarding informing the public about the applications of analytical chemistry. Disseminating scientific findings in the news is met with a lot of hesitancy and distrust regarding the "science" and I think any measure to help bridge that gap in knowledge or familiarity helps (i.e. diagrams). I think there's a fine line between holding the general public to a higher standard in their ability to understand something and us being able to explain our research concisely and accurately without much confusion.
DeleteI found your blog post to be highly informative, and I enjoyed that you mentioned the lack of citation for the article. They did include where the article is published, but it does not give the name of the article and forces the reader to assume which article it is based on the author given. Not including a link highly discourages readers from going to the actual source. I am curious if you had any trouble finding the research paper from the article.
ReplyDeleteOn top of this, I really enjoyed the description of the article as a "difficult read." I also found myself rereading sections to understand what it was trying to say. I personally felt that the author relied too heavily on others words and did not interpret the meaning for a broader audience. Another part that bothered me about the quotes was that in a couple sections it was hard to know where the quote came from. In one section they quote "the author" which is ambiguous because it could either be the author of the scientific paper or the author of a mentioned news release from "the team." For these reason I definitely agree with your rating of 6/10.
I didn't have much trouble finding the journal article since I was familiar with Dr. Prather's work. But even if I wasn't, I think the news article does a decent enough job to include key words in their brief references to the article that someone might be able to find the paper on their own. I did double check to make sure that the paper was open access, so they really don't have an excuse to not link the article, especially if they refer to the article in the title.
DeleteI was fairly surprised to see that despite the masses of ads and click-bate videos that surround the article when you are reading it, this article isn't noticeably click-bate-y itself, which was refreshing. It also (as you mentioned) referenced the specific analytical techniques the researchers used which is impressive for a local news channel. I appreciate how this news article kept everything quick and concise (essential to getting people to actually read news) while including essential information about the most basic topics of the research paper. However, I did find it odd that for being such a short article they made their last paragraph about funding--it did feel like a somewhat unnecessary political grab. I also find it noteworthy that while the news article doesn't include a figure (which one showing the location would certainly be helpful) it did include a video that provides some useful detail. This video at the top of the page starts with a reporter on the beach describing the situation and then shows a polluted river, which I believe does help the audience get a better grasp of the situation. Because of this detail I would rate the article a bit higher than you at a 7/10.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point about the video! I agree, it does help the audience get a grasp of the situation; my mention of including the figure I had in the blog post was in the hopes of "demystifying" the methodology for the general public, especially with how polarizing science can be portrayed in media. Since they used samples from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography as a control, I figured having that one figure would help link everything together. Overall, I think I could've been more generous with my rating but I was a bit more parsimonious because I think we can hold higher standards for news sources when it comes to disseminating science while keeping in mind the background needed to understand the topic.
DeleteI agree with your assessment. I don't think the news article was bad, but I think improvements could have been made. I thought even just the abstract of the journal publication had many interesting statistics and numbers that could have been used in an understandable way to underline the importance of this study in the NBC article and put it into a broad context of how things like this can affect many people globally since so many live in coastal regions. They did mention the fact of 76% of bacteria breathed in was traced back to aerosolized raw sewage, but I still thought more could have been said. However, I recognize that perhaps only certain numbers were chosen to purposely limit the scope of the article and since it is a news source specifically for San Diego. Do you think this article could have been improved by recognizing how this could type of thing could be happening globally?
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, I also thought it was interesting that they mentioned the funding secured by Rep. Scott Peters. As a final statement to end the article, it felt kind of like I had finished watching a political ad rather finishing an article about a scientific study. Do you think this undermined the impact of the article or did it instead underline the importance of the issue?
I think that the article tries to hint at broader or global implications with the quote from lead author Matthew Pendergraft on the impact can have on coastal communities. I agree with your point that they might prefer that the focus remain on the San Diego region and I would then argue that they should then emphasize the call to action. I like your point about finishing the article as if it was a political ad and I definitely think it could undermine or detract away from the message. At best, I hope it underlines the message that more coastal and air monitoring is needed but the skeptic in me thinks that this takes away some of the clout it may have held.
DeleteTeresa, I think you did a great job analyzing the article and introducing the topic. Overall, the news article was confusing in what information they chose to emphasize and how they went about doing it. Again, like many comments have said, it doesn’t seem like the authors really understood the science behind the article and heavily quoted the corresponding author. I looked at other articles by City News Services and not many of them were scientifically related– most of the articles discussed issues relating to the economy, public policy, or crime. The last article that was published that was vaguely related to science was June 15 about COVID-19 restrictions and this article leaned more towards policy. It seems like writing about sea spray and scientific research is out of the usual comfort zone of City News Services. This makes me wonder if readers would come to this specific author and news source about scientifically related news articles and how this affects the way the news articles present their information.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up an excellent point! I knew that public health was one of City News Service's focus but I didn't realize how out there this piece might have been compared to some of their other works--I think one of their listed sample pieces for San Diego involved a recent shark attack. Given that this article was presented for NBC San Diego and the region that City News Service covers, I wonder if this was invertedly part of a PR push from UCSD.
DeleteI really enjoyed your blog post and totally agree with your rating of the article! You make a great point about the lack of visuals—like maps showing where the samples were taken as adding these would really help readers understand the geography of the pollution issues better. I also feel like the article relied a bit too much on expert quotes. While those are important, a better mix of data and expert analysis would have painted a clearer picture.
ReplyDeleteAnd honestly, I didn’t love the ending either. It would’ve been great if they had wrapped it up with something that really drives home the seriousness of the issue.
Overall, great insights and excellent work on the blog post.
Great analysis here! I think you covered both the strengths and shortcomings of the article well, as well as clearly explaining what was going on with the paper. I know that you mentioned feeling disappointed that the article spent very little of its wordcount on actually discussing the paper, and definitely agree with you, especially considering they did not even link the original paper. I do however really like that they interviewed and included quotes from the authors in lieu of just trying to present impersonal data. As has been mentioned in previous comments, this article might be a little out of the City News Service's comfort zone, but by bringing in quotes from the authors and sharing facts about them, they humanize the work behind the paper, allowing readers to feel interest in the research as the work of people, rather than just data on a page, which I really like. I do agree that the ending feels somewhat out of place and abrupt, and wonder how much of that might stem from City News Service trying to connect back to local politics, which it seems like it might more routinely cover.
ReplyDeleteGreat work! I think this is the first article I have seen here which comes from a local news station and reading the article almost sounds like how it would be read on live TV. Because of that I think there is a lot of features that are left out such as mentioning the actual methods used or even diving deep into the different types specicies found in the aerosols. I like how you stated the article is not trying to create fear or be click-baity because I competely agree with that assessment. Overall it was a good read but I think maybe including a figure that could give an overall insight would of been nice.
ReplyDelete