A Quantitative Comparison of Oil Sources on Shorelines of Prince William Sound, Alaska, 17 Years After the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill.

Environmental damage caused by accidental discharges of pollutants depends in part on the degree of prior contamination, in that increased pollution of an already heavily contaminated region will usually be considered less detrimental than equivalent pollution of a pristine region. Quantitative comparisons of specific pollution events with the extent and severity of prior contamination are rare, owing to difficulties in identifying and assessing contaminants remaining from prior pollution events, and in some cases contaminants from natural sources. The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill (EVOS) presents an unusual opportunity to quantitatively evaluate residual contaminants from petroleum sources on shorelines of Prince William Sound (PWS), Alaska.

Long-lived marine species may be resilient to environmental variability through a temporal portfolio effect.

Maintenance of genetic variation may provide resilience of populations to natural environmental variability. We used Pacific ocean perch (POP; ) to test for the maintenance of adaptive variation across overlapping generations. POP are a long-lived species characterized by widespread larval dispersal in their first year and a longevity of over 100 years.

Semipermeable membrane devices link site-specific contaminants to effects: Part 1 - Induction of CYP1A in rainbow trout from contaminants in Prince William Sound, Alaska.

Extracts from semi-permeable membrane devices (SPMDs) deployed on beaches in Prince William Sound (PWS), Alaska, were used to evaluate if complex contaminant mixtures from different sources can be distinguished by the resulting cytochrome P450 1A (CYP1A) activity in exposed test animals. Deployment sites included canneries, salmon hatcheries, and beaches where lingering oil remains from discharges during the 1964 earthquake or the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Other sites were selected at random to evaluate region-wide contaminant inputs or were located in salmon streams to evaluate contaminants carried and released by migrating salmon carcasses following reproduction.

Slightly weathered Exxon Valdez oil persists in Gulf of Alaska beach sediments after 16 years.

Oil stranded by the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill has persisted in subsurface sediments of exposed shores for 16 years. With annualized loss rates declining from approximately 68% yr(-1) prior to 1992 to approximately 4% yr(-1) after 2001, weathering processes are retarded in both sediments and residual emulsified oil ("oil mousse"), and retention of toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons is prolonged. The n-alkanes, typically very readily oxidized by microbes, instead remain abundant in many stranded emulsified oil samplesfrom the Gulf of Alaska.

Left ventricular apical rupture caused by takotsubo cardiomyopathy--comprehensive pathological heart investigation.

An 81-year-old woman with emotionally-induced takotsubo cardiomyopathy developed a fatal left ventricular (LV) apical rupture. During the hospitalization persistent ST-segment elevation with no electrocardiographic time evolution was observed on the ECG, characteristic for takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Histopathologically, transmural myocardial necrosis with hemorrhage was found at the rupture site, but there were foci of coagulation and contraction band necrosis with mononuclear lymphocyte infiltrations in other heart regions, and the intensity and distribution of these pathological changes corresponded to the distribution of the LV contraction abnormalities seen on ventriculography.

[Alveolar capillary dysplasia as a cause of failure in treatment of a neonate with pulmonary persistent hypertension of the newborn - case report].

A patient with severe persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn (PPHN) due to alveolar capillary dysplasia, congenital (ACD), is presented. In the treatment, apart from standard methods, high frequency oscillatory ventilation (HFOV), inhaled nitric oxide and activated C protein have been applied. In spite of treatment the patient died and post-mortem diagnosis was based on lung histopathology examination.

Vertical distribution and probability of encountering intertidal Exxon Valdez oil on shorelines of three embayments within Prince William Sound, Alaska.

We examined 32 shorelines selected at random in 2003 from shorelines in Herring Bay, Lower Pass, and Bay of Isles in Prince William Sound, Alaska, to examine the vertical distribution of oil remaining from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and to estimate the probability that sea otters and ducks would encounter oil while foraging there. On each shoreline, sampling was stratified by 1-m tide height intervals and randomly located 0.25 m2 sampling quadrats were examined for evidence of surface and subsurface oil.

[Injuries to the skin and subcutaneous tissues of the chest wall and abdomen resulting from seat belt trauma in road accident victims].

A modification of the autopsy has been discussed. The modification concerns the dissection of the chest and abdomen integuments prior to opening the peritoneal cavity. This makes it easier to determine where and how the injuries to subcutaneous tissues and muscles resulting from the action of seat belts occurring in road accident victims are located.

Estimate of oil persisting on the beaches of Prince William Sound 12 years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

We estimated the amount of oil remaining in Prince William Sound, Alaska, 12 yr after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill to assess its importance as a long-term reservoir of toxic hydrocarbons. We found oil on 78 of 91 beaches randomly selected according to their oiling history. Surface oiling was recorded for randomly placed quadrats, which were then excavated and examined for subsurface oil.

[Significance of chromatographic methods coupled with mass spectrometry for identification of drugs for medico-legal purposes exemplified by chlorphenoxamine].

This work presented the death of the 17-year old women M.F. The direct cause of death was violent strangulation.