If California continues to dry out, inhabitants may face more occurrences of valley fever reports NewScientist (19/26 December 2015):
The Coccidioides fungus lives in the desert soil of the Southwest US and Mexico, but on dry, windy days it can get kicked up into the air. Inhaling a single spore can cause pneumonia – or worse. A drone designed at the University of California, Merced, aims to be a nose in the sky, searching for the airborne fungus to warn people when levels are high.
The fungus infects an estimated 150,000 people a year, causing a flu-like condition called valley fever. If properly diagnosed, valley fever can be treated with antifungal drugs, but little is known about how the spores spread through the environment, or how to stop this happening. The goal of the Merced project is to find out. The team wants to test for spores in flight, mapping their flow and potentially warning communities to stay indoors or wear masks on the most dangerous days.
Their initial approach is to use drones that can sample the air in real time. The vision of warnings of high risk of catching pneumonia, depending on weather conditions, may be only the first as climate change moves our ecological niche in ways that make our adaptations less advantageous due to the release of more dangerous substances – both natural and unnatural.
In the same issue I was surprised to read that golden eagles will, when starving, kill adult reindeer by striking the large veins in their necks and waiting for them to bleed out. Now I’m seeing other large creatures going after another large herd creature … humans ….
