Free Republic

Gold nuggets are sprouting like weeds on streams in the Sierra foothills. High water from melting snow is scouring feeder creeks this month that haven't been flushed clean for years. The flushing power can dislodge gold caught for eons in deep pockets and under rocks and propel it downstream. Eventually the weight of the gold causes it to fall to the stream bottom, often jamming between rocks in V-wedge crevices. There it waits for you. At more than $1,500 an ounce, this isn't a kids' game. Gold panning can yield gold flakes amid a layer of black sand. But sniping...

Yes, it's asbestos Janet Raloff Federal mineralogists have now corroborated what toxicologists from another agency reported last year: Sierra-foothills communities around Sacramento, Calif., are built atop soils naturally laced with asbestos. The confirmatory findings appear in a December 2006 report by Gregory P. Meeker and his team at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Denver. Last spring, a San Francisco–based Environmental Protection Agency team demonstrated that everyday activities, such as bike riding, gardening, and baseball, could churn up high concentrations of asbestos-laden dust from soils in the foothills area (SN: 7/8/06, p. 26: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060708/bob9.asp). In response, a construction-materials trade group...