Day: December 23, 2020

In 1991, Frank Cox, a biotoxin coordinator for the Washington State Department of Health, went digging for razor clams. He packed up his haul and sent the shellfish to a state lab to check for paralytic shellfish poisoning, the only marine toxin known to appear on that part of the coast.

The lab ground up the shellfish and mixed the tissue with solvents. Then, they injected the slurry into mice, a common testing technique at the time. But the mice started to do something peculiar. Instead of gasping for breath or dying—standard symptoms of paralytic shellfish poisoning—the mice started scratching behind their ears. The symptom, though seemingly innocuous, revealed a disturbing new toxic threat: Domoic acid had arrived on the West Coast.

Domoic acid is a deadly, naturally occurring neurotoxin produced by Pseudo-nitzschia, a genus of planktonic diatom or single-celled algae. When that algae is eaten by other marine animals, like mussels, clams, and Dungeness crabs, the acid concentrates in their digestive tracts and internal organs. And when those tasty marine treats are ingested by humans, the domoic acid can make people sick, causing headaches, stomach cramps, nausea, and diarrhea. In more severe cases, patients might also experience seizures, coma, and even short-term memory loss, which is why the illness is also sometimes referred to as amnesic shellfish poisoning. After the world’s first occurrence of domoic acid poisoning in 1987, three people died.

So when state officials found out what was happening in those mice in the lab in Washington, they quickly closed the entire state’s coastline. Electronic signs on the highway warned visitors away from clamming, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife sent armed officers to patrol the beaches. “The public didn’t know what the heck was going on,” says Vera Trainer, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who studies harmful algal blooms in the Pacific Northwest. 

She says at the time, there was a huge amount of suspicion and anger from members of the coastal communities, which include many indigenous tribes that rely on the shellfish harvest for food and income. “People said, ‘Oh, the government’s just saying this because they don’t want us to have fun. They don’t want us to collect what’s due to us,’” says Trainer.

Since then, toxic algal blooms that create domoic acid have continued to force the closure of state beaches. A few times, once in 1998-1999 and again in 2002-2003, the beaches remained closed for the entire clamming season. Now, in a paper out this month in Frontiers in Climate, Trainer and her colleagues find that climate change could also be affecting the frequency and severity of these blooms; they write that a heat wave that lasted from 2013 to 2015 has made the blooms even more common. But the paper also describes a solution: a unique partnership in which scientists and coastal community members can contribute to monitoring and managing these now perennial toxic blooms.

“It’s maybe not the perfect, wonderful answer that everyone wants,” says Trainer. She acknowledges that scientists haven’t figured out a way to end the blooms—and that they may never go away. But she says other types of progress have been made. “We are just getting much better at learning to live with these,” she says. “Yes, we’re finding them in more places. They’re more intense. We need to control climate change. But in the meantime, we can work with people on the coast to develop these systems that are going to help us still gain access to safe shellfish.”

Pseudo-nitzschia are found in oceans all over the world, but the area around the West Coast— from Northern California up to Washington—is particularly suited to creating blooms. The topography of the ocean floor and the coastline create retentive zones, areas where the water eddies and swirls, bringing all kinds of phytoplankton and algae, including Pseudo-nitzschia, up to the surface where there are plenty of nutrients and sunlight to help them grow. Trainer describes these as “little mini ocean Crock-pots.”

Who would have thought that one of the more useful troubleshooting tools in Windows 10—good ol’ chkdsk—would itself become wrapped up in a paralyzing bug that could brick your PC. Not me, that’s for sure, given the “Check Disk” command is typically used to scan for and fix errors with your file system (and related metadata).

According to Windows 10 update KB4592438, released earlier this month, an error introduced by said update could cause some perilous issues with one’s PC. As Microsoft described:

“A small number of devices that have installed this update have reported that when running chkdsk /f, their file system might get damaged and the device might not boot. “

If I had to rank typical computer problems by severity, I would say “a troubleshooting tool that actually bricks your system instead of helping you out” would sit toward the top of my list. Microsoft claims that it’s already fixing this issue, so make sure you’ve installed anything and everything that’s available to you within Windows Update to ensure you aren’t bothered by this really frustrating bug. After that, wait, as the official fix will roll out automatically to your system.

What if chkdsk already borked your system?

Assuming you’re staring at a system that refuses to start up like it normally would, don’t panic. Or, rather, you’ve probably already been panicking, so it’s good that you’ve gotten most of the stress out of your body already. There is a fix for the issue, even if you can’t get into Windows 10 to address it with any lingering updates. As Microsoft describes:

1. The device should automatically start up into the Recovery Console after failing to start up a few times.
2. Select Advanced options.
3. Select Command Prompt from the list of actions.
4. Once Command Prompt opens, type: chkdsk /f
5. Allow chkdsk to complete the scan, this can take a little while. Once it has completed, type: exit
6. The device should now start up as expected. If it restarts into Recovery Console, select Exit and continue to Windows 10.

Once you’re back into Windows 10, hang tight. Microsoft is deploying its fix for chkdsk over the next day or so, so I’d hold off on running chkdsk until the end of the week, at minimum.

Also, a word about that: Generally speaking, you should avoid running the specific command that triggers this bug—chkdsk /f—without taking a few precautionary steps. This command locates and fixes errors it finds. Were I you, I’d simply run a normal chkdsk [drive letter] command first to scan your system. If, or when, any errors are encountered, use a tool like Macrium Reflect to make a full image or clone of your drive (just in case). Then, try running chkdsk /f. If you don’t encounter any issues after that, great. If you do, you’ll still have your data and/or be able to restore your system to a more usable state.

As always, remember that you don’t need to run a chkdsk /r on an SSD, as it’s completely unnecessary due to the way data is stored versus a mechanical hard drive. And if you’re suspicious that your PC’s drive has a mechanical issue, rather than a file system issue, chkdsk won’t help much. Instead, consider checking out its health by running a SMART report.