{"id":43108,"date":"2015-10-20T05:51:00","date_gmt":"2015-10-20T04:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hispanicprwire.com\/new-scientific-study-finds-coral-reefs-under-attack-from-chemical-in-sunscreen-as-global-bleaching-event-hits\/"},"modified":"2015-10-20T05:54:04","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T09:54:04","slug":"en-medio-de-un-fenomeno-mundial-de-blanqueamiento-de-coral-un-nuevo-estudio-revela-que-los-arrecifes-de-coral-estan-en-grave-peligro-debido-a-una-sustancia-quimica-en-los-protectores-solares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hispanicprwire.com\/en\/en-medio-de-un-fenomeno-mundial-de-blanqueamiento-de-coral-un-nuevo-estudio-revela-que-los-arrecifes-de-coral-estan-en-grave-peligro-debido-a-una-sustancia-quimica-en-los-protectores-solares\/","title":{"rendered":"New Scientific Study Finds Coral Reefs Under Attack From Chemical In Sunscreen As Global Bleaching Event Hits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<style type=\"text\/css\"><![CDATA[\n\/* Style Definitions *\/\nspan.prnews_span\n{\nfont-size:8pt;\nfont-family:\"Arial\";\ncolor:black;\n}\na.prnews_a\n{\ncolor:blue;\n}\nli.prnews_li\n{\nfont-size:8pt;\nfont-family:\"Arial\";\ncolor:black;\n}\np.prnews_p\n{\nfont-size:0.62em;\nfont-family:\"Arial\";\ncolor:black;\nmargin:0in;\n}\n]]><\/style>\n<div class=\"xn-content\">\n<p><span class=\"xn-location\">SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic<\/span>, <span class=\"xn-chron\">Oct. 20, 2015<\/span> \/PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE\/ &#8212; A new study published today in a toxicology journal has found that a chemical widely used in personal care products such as sunscreen, poses an ecological threat to corals and coral reefs and threatens their existence.<\/p>\n<p>Oxybenzone is found in over 3,500 sunscreen products worldwide, and pollutes coral reefs from swimmers wearing sunscreens and through wastewater discharges from municipal sewage outfalls and from coastal septic systems. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The study comes less than two weeks after NOAA declared the third ever global coral bleaching event and warned that locally produced threats\u00a0to coral, such as pollution, stress the health of corals and decrease the likelihood that they will resist bleaching, or recover from it.<\/p>\n<p>It demonstrates that exposure of coral planulae (baby coral) to oxybenzone, produces gross morphological deformities, damages their DNA, and, most alarmingly, acts as an endocrine disruptor. The latter causes the coral to encase itself in its own skeleton leading to death.<\/p>\n<p>These effects were observed as low as 62 parts per trillion, the equivalent to a drop of water in six and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools.<\/p>\n<p>Measurements of oxybenzone in seawater within coral reefs in <span class=\"xn-location\">Hawaii<\/span> and the <span class=\"xn-location\">U.S. Virgin Islands<\/span>, for example, found concentrations ranging from 800 parts per trillion to 1.4 parts per million. \u00a0This is over 12 times higher than the concentrations necessary to impact on coral. <\/p>\n<p>A team of marine scientists from <span class=\"xn-location\">Virginia<\/span>, <span class=\"xn-location\">Florida<\/span>, <span class=\"xn-location\">Israel<\/span>, the National Aquarium (US) and the US National Oceanic &amp; Atmospheric Administration, undertook the study.\u00a0 Lead author Dr. <span class=\"xn-person\">Craig Downs<\/span> of Haereticus Environmental Laboratory Virginia, said, &#8220;The use of oxybenzone-containing products needs to be seriously deliberated in islands and areas where coral reef conservation is a critical issue.\u00a0 We have lost at least 80% of the coral reefs in the <span class=\"xn-location\">Caribbean<\/span>. Any small effort to reduce oxybenzone pollution could mean that a coral reef survives a long, hot summer, or that a degraded area recovers. Everyone wants to build coral nurseries for reef restoration, but this will achieve little if the factors that originally killed off the reef remain or intensify in the environment.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Between 6,000 and 14,000 tons of sunscreen lotion are emitted into coral reef areas each year, much of which contains between one and 10% oxybenzone. <\/p>\n<p>Further information about the study can be found at haereticus-lab.org and marinesafe.org.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"xn-content\">\n<p><span class=\"xn-location\">SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic<\/span>, <span class=\"xn-chron\">Oct. 20, 2015<\/span> \/PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE\/ &#8212; A new study published today in a toxicology journal has found that a chemical widely used in personal care products such as sunscreen, poses an ecological threat to corals and coral reefs and threatens their existence.<\/p>\n<p>Oxybenzone is found in over 3,500 sunscreen products worldwide, and pollutes coral reefs from swimmers wearing sunscreens and through wastewater discharges from municipal sewage outfalls and from&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hispanicprwire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hispanicprwire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hispanicprwire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hispanicprwire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hispanicprwire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hispanicprwire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hispanicprwire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hispanicprwire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hispanicprwire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}