Where are the frogs.....?
I'm not an alarmist, nor a believer in quack science but sometimes you have to listen to the evidence and be very concerned. While global warming gets all the media attention, there are probably more pressing issues. Tonight I attended a live webcast lecture by noted biologist Tyrone Hayes which we at the Sibley Nature Center sponsored with The University of Texas. Dr. Hayes is a noted amphibian researcher, who was hired as a consultant to the Swiss chemical company Syngenta to verify that it's fertilizer component atrazine was not a problem to the environment. What he found was quite the opposite.
It turns out that frogs, like the canaries in the old coal mine, are good predictors for health issues in humans. And what he noted is that frogs species all over the world are dying off and mutating at an alarming rate. As he noted, there are many causes, but his involvement with the chemical company showed that pesticide runoff from agricultural lands was one of the leading causes. And atrazine is one of the worst offenders as it does not easily naturally decompose.
As he noted. Atrazine has been totally banned in Europe, even in Switzerland home of atrazine. Angola, with it's decades long history of civil war induced death and violence, has banned atrazine as too dangerous to use! One part per billion in water has been shown to be life threatening to frogs...in the USA we use 80 million pounds a year. Dangerous levels of atrazine are now commonly found in natural rain water in heavily agricultural areas of the US midwest.
Poor frogs......poor humans, atrazine travels up the food chain to what we eat, and it is now commonly found in most water sources. The hormonal actions from atrazine which causes mutation and abnormal sex changes in frogs are the same ones that cause breast cancer in women and prostate cancer in men.
Dr Hayes has been noted in National Geographic and you can read more here about the story of his findings. Or read his website, to learn more.
It turns out that frogs, like the canaries in the old coal mine, are good predictors for health issues in humans. And what he noted is that frogs species all over the world are dying off and mutating at an alarming rate. As he noted, there are many causes, but his involvement with the chemical company showed that pesticide runoff from agricultural lands was one of the leading causes. And atrazine is one of the worst offenders as it does not easily naturally decompose.
As he noted. Atrazine has been totally banned in Europe, even in Switzerland home of atrazine. Angola, with it's decades long history of civil war induced death and violence, has banned atrazine as too dangerous to use! One part per billion in water has been shown to be life threatening to frogs...in the USA we use 80 million pounds a year. Dangerous levels of atrazine are now commonly found in natural rain water in heavily agricultural areas of the US midwest.
Poor frogs......poor humans, atrazine travels up the food chain to what we eat, and it is now commonly found in most water sources. The hormonal actions from atrazine which causes mutation and abnormal sex changes in frogs are the same ones that cause breast cancer in women and prostate cancer in men.
Dr Hayes has been noted in National Geographic and you can read more here about the story of his findings. Or read his website, to learn more.
