Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
The European Union should consider immediately scaling up genomic sequencing of COVID-19 infections and monitoring of waste water, including from airports, to detect any new variants given the virus surge in China, the bloc's health chief said. In a letter to health ministers of the EU's 27 members, Stella Kyriakides said the bloc should be "very vigilant" as China lifted travel restrictions on Jan. 8 as reliable epidemiological and testing data for China were quite scarce.
A process to convert PPE waste into harmless byproducts is a potential gamechanger to the problem of PPE waste filling landfills and polluting oceans and rivers. Shredded masks, gowns, gloves and plastic safety glasses go into a machine; hot, pressurised water and compressed air are applied; water and acetic acid are the end-products. The PPE-to-liquid process is carried out at a temperature of 300°C and takes about an hour in a small prototype machine in a laboratory in the faculty. Gaseous by-products from the process are oxygen and low concentrations of carbon dioxide which can be safely discharged. “This is a clean, chemical-free solution which will be a game changer internationally,” says Dr Saied Baroutian, an associate professor in the faculty’s Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering.
