African Lion disappearing in Kenya

The most alarming fact of this wildlife population study is that the population decrease is happening just as fast inside the National Parks as outside the National Parks. The wildlife population declined 41% between 1977 t0 1997, and since then the rate of decline has not slowed.  The study was commissioned by the Kenya Wildlife Service, which manages the Kenya National Parks.  The Kenya Wildlife service said the drastic decline could leave Kenya without the African Lion by 2020, the lion being Kenya’s “symbol of national strength”.     

Unfortunately the study has attracted little attention. Kenya is still dealing with the results of the 2007 presidential election.  The conservation community has also been relatively quiet about the study since it’s really not new news since Kenya has always mismanaged it’s wildlife programs.  There also have been other rarely read studies in the African Continent reporting their wildlife population is also on the decline in protected areas. Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa are the exceptions but if the trend continues the wildlife population in Africa will resemble the wildlife population in Europe; mostly invisible. 

Aside from the mismanagement and political problems what else is causing the wildlife population to decrease?  Overpopulation: the African Continent is expected to grow rapidly, it’s population could increase by more than a billion people by 2050.  What to do about overpopulation is such a complex and controversial subject with many religious, race and geopolitical components I would rather not write about it now but just acknowledge it’s specific effect on the wildlife population in Africa.  Part of the proof that overpopulation is one of the causes of wildlife population decline can be drawn from studying wildlife populations in southern Africa, especially Nambia.  It has a low population density and a stable wildlife population. 

One possible solution that has had some minor success in Kenya is community involvement. There has been wildlife population increases at the Shompole conservation area and tourist lodge which is managed by the Masai community.  For this project the Kenyan government relinquished part of control of the area so the community could be directly involved and therefore would be directly rewarded for it’s efforts.  This situation would be analogous to a US community project where the neighborhood works together to keep their business district clean and safe so it will reap the rewards of increased revenue and property values. 

Unfortunately this type of successful community involvement in Kenya relative to safeguarding the wildlife population is rare.  Placed in between a massive population explosion, poorly managed national parks, political unrest and poaching, ultimately the African Lion might only be seen in a zoo.

Beluga Whales dying of cancer

In the St. Lawrence Estuary in Quebec hundreds of Beluga Whales have died of intestinal cancer over the last 30 years.  Aluminum smelters dumped their poison into the Estuary until 2004, then Canada finally shut them down.  5 years latter Cancer is still killing the Whales, “Cancer is the consequence of a lifetime of accumulating mutations,” said Daniel Martineau, a professor of pathology at the University of Montreal., who added that the deadly disease “is exactly what you would expect to find in animals that are eating from these sediments.” 

The poison in the sediments where the whales feed is called POPs.  POPs are a combination of various chemical waste products including PCBs that are a by-product of the manufacturing process of aluminum.  The whales eat mussels that have absorbed the POPs in the sediment and the poison works it way into the Beluga’s intestinal tract after years of eating the mussels.  “Often the POPs interact directly with an animal’s DNA by disrupting its structure and leading to mistakes in replication. These mistakes accumulate over the animal’s lifetime, leading to tumors and, possibly, death. In other cases, the chemicals attach to DNA and turn genes on or off. Pollutants can also contribute to cancers by distracting an animal’s immune system, allowing certain types of viruses to cause tumors.”  Carol Meteyer, a wildlife pathologist with the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis.

Here is the really sad part.  “Mothers dump their contaminant loads to their first born pups,” said Gina Ylitalo, a research chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle, Washington, who led the study. So that is why it could take another 20 years or so for the cancer to die out.  Unfortunately the cancer just doesn’t disappear after you shut off the poison faucet. 

It is fairly rare for wild animals to be killed by cancer but the case of the Beluga whales in Quebec is not the only incident. Scientists have seen it in California sea lions along the central coast, North Sea flounders and in Ohio’s Black River catfish.  Elevated levels of POPs were found in these mammals and fish; in the case of the sea lions it was 85% higher than in sea lions who did not have cancer.

The cancer found in the Belugas can be looked at as another example of the canary in the coal mines.  Scientists say that the cancer patterns found in the Estuary could reveal cancer patterns found in human populations.  When both people and mammals are living in an area where there is an abundance of cancer causing POPs cancer will most likely show up first in the mammals.  This should set off an alarm for us to quickly move in and hopefully save some lives. Unfortunately not enough people are paying attention to helpless mammals.  Usually people have to start dying in order for someone to pay attention. 

I, obviously, am not saying it’s somehow OK for the mammals to be our canaries in the Estuary. But if in general, “society” was aware that aggressive monitoring of the planet’s animal’s health could possibly help safeguard their own maybe more attention would be paid to their well being.  Sad scenario for sure but at this point we will continue to try for the best but take what we can get. 

More problems for Polar Bears

Not only do they have to worry about their home dissolving right from under their paws but now they have to be careful what they eat. We really stuck it to them.  They have been around for about 200,000 years with virtually no worries and suddenly they have more than their share. Polar bears are the world's largest land predators. They top the food chain in the Arctic and the large males can weigh up to 1500 pounds so they really had no one to fear until global warming and life threatening man made chemicals showed up in their prey.

Due to warmer temperatures caused by global warming the Arctic ice is melting sooner in the spring so the bears are eating different foods. The bears now eat more harbor and harp seals and fewer bearded seals than before.  This shift in diet resulted in higher levels of PCBs and flame retardants in their tissues.  These chemicals have been linked to negative impacts on their reproductive and immune systems.  Also the bears are becoming thinner, have shorter life spans and give birth to less babies due to the shorter hunting season created by a shorter season of winter ice.

I am sure about now you are asking how in the world did flame retardants end up in the tissue of one of the most magnificent creatures on earth.  Flame retardants do just what you think, they make it harder for something to burn. The problems occurs when products sprayed with flame retardants are not properly dealt with after their “useful life“.  Hard to believe but some of the products end up in wastewater treatment plants instead of being reused or properly disposed of.  Wastewater treatment plants dump their “treated” sewage in the ocean and the flame retardants, now on the loose, swim towards the nearest piece of plastic. Flame retardants and other similar dangerous chemicals don’t mix well with water so they are attracted to pieces of plastic. In fact the concentration of these chemicals is a thousand times greater on the plastic in the ocean then in the surrounding water.  Then its up the food chain from the small fish eating these tiny chemical coated pieces of plastics to the polar bear.  It’s amazing what disgusting and disheartening information you can find when you really look for it.

But when can do something right now to slow and stop this process. Reuse everything you possibly can and please, whenever humanly possible, don’t buy plastic products, especially plastic water bottles. 

Do we know why?

Previously I have written about the processes used by specific companies to simultaneously preform a task, i.e. kill weeds, create profits and cause environmental harm.  I have never suggested these specific companies or industries maliciously cause environmental harm only that it is a secondary by-product of their company’s practices. In most cases they are surely aware of causing environmental harm but do not change their practices.

I recently read a letter to the editor in the August 15th-21st 2009 issue of The Economist magazine. This letter profoundly states the case not for examining the tools used which can cause an inhumane outcome but to attempt to understand why people are so easily manipulated into engaging in processes which eventually result in their or someone else’s harm. 

Here is the most relevant portion of the letter written by Dennis Sandole, Institute of Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University in response to an article about genocide in Rwanda. 

“The deepest conundrum is what makes groups of people, defined by religion, class, race or any other attribute, so vulnerable to political manipulation that they can be easily persuaded to commit diabolical acts against other groups.  Until we solve that core problem, would-be manipulators will always find one medium or another, from the printed word to the latest form of e-communication, to demonize and proscribe the hated “other”.

Now to apply this complex, challenging and important question to the subject of environmental harm.  “Groups of People” from the quote would apply to both the manipulators and the manipulated. People not involved in the production or sale of products harmful to the environment are the manipulated. And so people involved in the sale and production of products harmful to the environments would be the manipulators.  

Why is the possible?  According to Dennis Sandole it is not due the extraordinary communication tools available to the manipulators. It is an “attribute” commonly found in the character of each group of people which allows them to either manipulate or be manipulated. 

I would love to hear your answers to this question as I agreed whole heartly with Mr. Sandole. Many regulations are passed and many warning are given but to date most people seem to maintain their current behavior. In the meantime I can do some research to discover what psychologists and sociologists think of the destructive and self-destructive behavior portrayed by the manipulators and the manipulated. 

For now I will and I hope you will more thoroughly remove yourself from either group.  This should begin to undo the destructive actions of all of our behaviors and hopefully lead to a cleaner and thus less harmful environment.

Frog are great indicators of environmental health

Thanks to a wonderful suggestion from a member of the greenhomexpress facebook fan club, I checked out the site amphibianark.org.  Even if you have ranidaphobia, fear of frogs, you still can certainly appreciate the contribution they make to our ecosystem and as indicators of the planet's environmental health.  

First some fascinating and terrifying frog (amphibian) facts:  50% of the approximately 6000 species are threatened with extinction.  165 species are already extinct.  500 species will become extinct in the near future, too late to save them.  And the really sad news: it appears with current efforts and spending levels only about 50 species can be saved.  So, if we stay on course it should only take us about 100 years to wipe out about 90% of a species that has been around for about 400 million years.  Astonishing!

In the following paragraph I will briefly describe how frogs are vital components of our ecosystem.  Just to be clear, this is for informational purposes only since I personally believe that if something exists on our planet and we did not create it, i.e. build it, pour it out of a test tube, etc, then it belongs here regardless of what we understand about it.  Actually, I will quote  amphibianark.org since they do such a great job of explaining it. “Amphibians feed primarily on insects and other invertebrates. It was estimated that a single population of ~1,000 cricket frogs (Acris crepitans) could consume almost five million invertebrates in one year.  Clearly they serve as significant predators of small invertebrates, as abundant prey for larger predators, and as a vital link in the food web between the two. In areas of the world where amphibians have declined, there has been an increase in invertebrate pests that damage crops and that carry human diseases.”

How we, humans, benefit directly from amphibians:  They provide vital bio-medicines.  Some of the categories of medicines that amphibians have contributed to are analgesics, antibiotics, stimulants for heart attach victims, antidepressants, medicines for stroke, seizure, Alzheimer’s, cancer and HIV infections.

How we should benefit from amphibians: They have been compared to canaries in the coal mines. They have very thin skins and are susceptible to environmental contaminants.  Amphibians might be able to warn us if certain unsafe environmental conditions exist.  Some environmental and scientific organizations do this now, i.e. The Natural Defenses Resource Council, but it is clear that all of us need to pay more attention.  For example, Atrazine can chemically sterilize tadpoles at levels well below the EPA maximum allowable level for drinking water. And Atrazine has been found in more than 1 million American’s drinking water above the maximum amount set by the EPA. So the obvious conclusion is since Atrazine is sterilizing amphibians and it’s in our drinking water, Atrazine might be sterilizing us.  So we should pay very close attention to the amphibian population.

There are many time consuming and expensive processes we can become involved in to help rectify this horrible situation. But, as always, the simplest and quickest involves being extraordinarily environmentally careful when spending your hard earned money. Please make sure you are not allowing your health and the health of your loved ones to be controlled by a company that thinks its expendable.

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More on Atrazine, the very bad and the sinful

Back on August 5th I wrote about Atrazine, the herbicide that is used in 80 countries including the US but is banned in the EU.  In 2004 the EU banned it's use because studies showed that Atrazine could interfere with human reproductive processes.  Our EPA said the data was insufficient to determine if atrazine could cause reproductive problems in humans. 

The Very Bad

A new study was just released and it said "The common and highly-used herbicide atrazine can act within the brain to disrupt the cascade of hormone signals needed to initiate ovulation." "Collectively, the results of this study – along with a prior study by the same research group – demonstrate that exposure to atrazine in adults can disrupt the surge of hormones needed to trigger ovulation in rats. This mechanism is similar in rats and humans, suggesting that disruption in humans is at least possible." Environmental Health News, August 20th, 2009.  

The other news out of the study was that as soon as the rats were no longer exposed to Atrazine the disruption of the surge of hormones stopped. 

 

The Sinful

Now armed with that final piece of information, why isn't  Syngenta, the company that manufactures Atrazine, removing Atrazine from the marketplace and siting this study saying that there isn't any long term permanent health problems? Essentially they could take the money and run.  

Lets say we can climb into the heads of the Board of Directors of Syngenta and imagine what they are thinking. My guess, being the cynical environmental watchdog,  is that they are thinking along the following lines.

They might be thinking they can roll the dice and think the dice are fixed.  They can still manufacture Atrazine, make lots of profits and wait until another study proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that their product does interfere with the human reproductive system.  (I am not saying in general terms that I think capitalism is bad, I am saying making money and putting people's lives at risk is bad.) And if people complain about the long term effects they can site this current study.  If you believe this might be their reasoning I would suggest to you that the only conclusion is that they are indeed sinful.

The simple truth: Syngenta is manufacturing a chemical that is used to kill organic matter.  It is a weed killer.  Logically if it kills organic matter there is that possibility that it could kill us.  

We don't need it,  plenty of farmers grow food without herbicides and we don't want it, let them roll the dice with their own lives.

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Only Buy Surfboards Made in the US

If you buy a surfboard please either buy a used one or one made entirely in the US. 

Why?

The reasons and my story:  I went shopping for a surfboard the other day.  It has been at least a decade or so since I bought a surfboard, so I was very uneducated about what has occurred in the last couple of years.  Just like all the other purchases we make this one originally seemed simple. Unfortunately, it turned very complicated very quickly. 

First heres some important background information on surfboard manufacturing.  Previous to December 5th 2005, virtually all surfboard foam was made by Clark Foam using polyurethane. TDI was the reactive agent used by Clark foam in making polyurethane. TDI is a Carcinogen. The EPA shut down the company after 45 years in business.  The circumstances surrounding the closing of the plant are very controversial and an important topic to be addressed in another blog.  So after December 5th 2005, if you bought a new surfboard, it was either made using another type of foam other than PU with TDI as a reactive agent or was not manufactured in the US.  

When I was talking to the salesperson at a local surf shop he pointed out that some of the surfboards were in fact made in China.  

The insane irony of this should now jump off the computer screen and smack you in the face.  Why would the US allow the importation of surfboards made using TDI? But not let a manufacturer use TDI in the production of surfboards here in the US.  Does this mean it's "OK" for workers outside the US to be exposed to cancer causing chemicals?  No it is not "OK".  So the US should ban the import of those surfboards.  Very simple.  But they don't.  

The surfboards made in China were, of course, much less expensive than the surfboards made in the US.  But, as I have pointed out before in other blogs relative to other products, the price difference did not include the environmental costs.  In this case not only are there environmental costs due to the carcinogen TDI but also due to the large carbon footprint caused by international transportation of this product.  As I said, this purchase originally seemed simple but turned very complicated.

I ended up buying a used surfboard made in the US after 2005.

Poisoning Dolphins

“The fact that this chemical, (triclosan, a germ-killing chemical), is found in the environment and is being detected in a top level predator, (one-third of the bottlenose dolphins tested off South Carolina and almost one-quarter of those tested off Florida,)  certainly warrants concern,” said Patricia Fair, a research physiologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and lead author of the dolphin study, which was published online in the journal Environmental Pollution in May.

Triclosan is a germ-killing chemical found in hundreds of products, including liquid hand soaps, toothpaste and deodorants. The amount of Triclosan found in the dolphins has disrupted the hormones and growth and development of other animals that had similar amounts in their blood.

And to those who say we need this chemical otherwise we won't rid ourselves of infectious bacteria. 

"In the first known comprehensive analysis of whether antibacterial soaps work better than plain soaps, Allison Aiello of the U-M School of Public Health and her team found that washing hands with an antibacterial soap was no more effective in preventing infectious illness than plain soap. Moreover, antibacterial soaps at formulations sold to the public do not remove any more bacteria from the hands during washing than plain soaps." August 15th, 2007.  U-M stand for University of Michigan.  Notice the date, 2 years ago. 

The obvious conclusion: We don't need antibacterial soaps or any other products that contain Triclosan.  We are poisoning one of the most intelligent and precious animals on earth with something we don't need now nor have we ever needed.  

As I mentioned before the easiest way to stop this type of insanity is with your pocketbook.  If we don't buy this poison then it will be impossible for someone to sell it.  It will be too late if we wait for the EPA or other similar organizations to react, they wait until the damage is done.  We can decide now.

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More unfortunate news about pesticides

Would rather write about something else since I posted a similar story this morning but the following news story just came out today.

“Rural residents who drink water from private wells are much more likely to have Parkinson’s disease, a finding that bolsters theories that farm pesticides may be partially to blame, according to a new California study.”  Environmental Health News, August 5th, 2009

We really don’t have a choice, it either organically grown foods and environmentally safe products or we suffer the consequences.  

What is a life worth?

On August 3rd I wrote about industrial chemicals that are introduced into our environment even though that have no known natural analogues.  This means they are unlike any natural occurring chemicals, and their effect on us and the environment is unknown.  Testing of these materials takes place, but it is rarely long term or comprehensive enough. So, we are at risk. 

Here is a specific example of one that was let out of the lab too soon and is  now used in 80 countries including the US but was banned by the EU in 2004.  

Atrazine is a herbicide that may cause a variety of cancers and harm human and animal reproductive and hormone systems.  The word “may” in the previous sentence is a relatively small word with only three letters, but it is a very large word for Syngenta.  It translates into billions of dollars for Syngenta, the manufacturer of Atrazine.  Since no governmental or private scientific organization has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Atrazine is carcinogenic or harmful to reproductive systems Syngenta feels they have the right to produce it.  

 What about our rights?  The EU felt the risk was too great 5 years ago so it banned Atrazine.  This was not some arbitrary decision. Studies were done, results were examined, and finally a decision was made. This was a well thought out decision in favor of possibly saving lives. 

Syngenta’s corporate goal is to increase crop productivity, a good thing.  While possibly causing human and environmental harm while doing this, a bad thing.  Simple solution:  Stop doing the bad thing.  Last year Syngenta’s sales were 11.6 Billion.  So they make a little less and possibly save some lives; sounds like a more reasonable course of action then what they are doing now. 

The irony in all of this is quite scary. Syngenta works to increase crop productivity to better feed an ever increasing world population. Also possibly decreasing world population by introducing a herbicide that could disrupt our reproductive systems. 

In the meantime I’ll stick to organically produced products.

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Our bodies can't figure out what we are doing

"This is the dilemma. Our sentry system through evolution has been designed to spot dangers in a certain range, like a snarling animal. We have no perceptual system for subtle molecular level impacts on nature or temperature change on a global scale. We literally don't know the consequences of what we do." Daniel Goleman, author of the book Ecological Intelligence, from Scientific American April 2009.

We think we are smarter than or are not paying enough attention to evolution.  Why do we allow industry to use approximately 100,000 industrial chemicals that have no known natural analogues?  Do we really need these chemicals?  The processes that use these industrial chemicals do not benefit us, they only benefit those that make money from them otherwise they wouldn't exist. In the meantime our bodies are trying to figure out what they are.  

Our brains are constantly working to protect us from scaring ourselves to death. My goal is certainly not to work against that survival technique but I do think we should be aware.  We really do need to take a very active role in what is allowed in our environment.  100, 000 "new" chemicals floating around in our environment is just too many. I personally think that one "new chemical" is one too many. Many chemicals that were once used in our environment have been banned because there was conclusive proof that they caused cancer.  I say, lets not wait for conclusive proof. 

The easiest and quickest way we can eliminate the new and unknown is to use our wallets.  We can start with the simplest purchases, items we buy on a daily basis. Food!!  Only buy organically grown food.  We don't need food grown using "new" chemicals.  Bodies like ours have been digesting food grown without unknown substances for hundreds of thousands of years, we don't need them.

Next, things you buy on a weekly basis, products you use to clean up the mess you made cooking and eating the food.  Look at the labels on these cleaners.  Do you recognize the ingredients?  If not, don't buy them. We also have been cleaning up after ourselves for a long time without these super cleaners, we don't need them either. 

Next week start with some other products you buy, clothes, etc. Take it one simple step at a time and you will be amazed how "green" you can get.

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