The levels found "greatly exceed concentrations at which severe toxic effects are known to occur," the scientists found.
All agreed, however, that we are in for an uncomfortable period in which severe economic storms are all too plausible.
It relies in part on news accounts, in which severe accidents may be overly represented while nonfatal cases are underreported.
The worst feature of the area's climate is the irregularity of the rainfall, as a result of which severe droughts plague the region.
While several factors have contributed to soaring food prices, what really stands out is the extent to which severe weather events have disrupted agricultural production.
Until recently, he described himself in Who's Who as a "financial executive," and, indeed, he looks like a bookkeeper — tall, thin, with an austere face, in which severe eyes peer unblinkingly from behind thick glasses.
One would be forgiven for forgetting that as Osborne spoke 194 nations are gathered at UN negotiations attempting to sketch out a global deal to tackle climate change, without which "severe, widespread and irreversible" impacts will strike people and property.
"These challenges require urgent action in the areas of the financial sector, state-owned enterprises and microeconomic reforms in order to prevent a situation in which severe imbalances would steeply increase towards unsustainable levels," it said.
It can be debated how many of these methods violate the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which defines torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted".
The condition is less persistent than vestibular neuronitis, in which severe vertigo persists for days, probably as a result of viral infection of the inner ear or vestibular nerve.
A potential treatment to which severe autism will respond, but to which "pervasive developmental delay" or Asperger's will not, will never be known if clinical trials do not separate different forms of "autism".
