Category Archives: Chemicals in the Environment

10/7/10

Volunteers Help Baby Sea Turtles Survive the BP Oil Spill

The life of a sea turtle hatchling isn’t easy. After they hatch out of leathery eggs in a nest, buried deep in the sand, they move immediately toward the light above the ocean, scramble into the surf, and swim for a couple of days straight without stopping. Finally they rest in floating seaweed called sargassum. Sea turtle babies float along in the sargassum, a mini-ecosystem that provides food and protection, for a few years until they grow from about the size of a cookie to the size of a dinner plate.

This year, however, wasn’t a normal year for the sea turtle hatchlings. Because of the 4.9 millions of barrels of oil spewed into the Gulf as a result of the BP oil spill, the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, those seaweed life rafts were covered in oil or were incinerated during the many controlled burns. Under these conditions, most of these sea turtle hatchlings wouldn’t have survived. Wildlife officials decided to intervene and transport the latest generation of sea turtle babies to a cleaner part of the ocean.

On October 1, the New York Times ran an article, The BP-Spill Baby-Turtle Brigade by Jon Mooallem that tells the inspiring, though bittersweet, story of the extraordinary efforts of the volunteers who helped save the hatchlings. For years, volunteers with the Alabama organization, Share the Beach, have taken time out of their lives each year to help protect threatened and endangered sea turtles along the Alabama coast. During the nesting season, they clear the beach of debris so turtles can lay their eggs; they patrol the beaches and protect the nests after the female turtle lays her eggs; and they give the hatchlings a head start by helping them reach the ocean.

Because of their experience , the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked these volunteers to help dig up the nests during the last days of the eggs’ incubation. They then packed the eggs in Styrofoam containers, and the eggs were transported by FedEx trucks to a climate-controlled warehouse at the Kennedy Space Center on the east coast of Florida.  After hatching, the baby turtles were released into the oil-free Atlantic.

But it wasn’t easy for the volunteers to let their babies go. As quoted in the NY Times article, a Share the Beach team leader named Bill Hanks said, “It’s kind of like it’s our turtles. You get attached to them, almost like a mama-daddy thing.”

Sending the eggs was especially difficult because a mature female sea turtle will usually return to the beach where she hatched to lay her own eggs.  Because sea turtles’ nesting and hatching was disrupted and they entered the ocean from another beach, the question is, will these turtles eventually return to Gulf Coast beaches or to Florida beaches?

Kemp's ridley sea turtle hatchlings from the Gulf Coast released into the Atlantic Ocean from the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, Florida. Photo by Kim Shiflett, NASA.

But the volunteers, though devastated, knew they had to do it for the sake of the turtles. (Incidentally not all scientists are in favor of this type of hands-on intervention with sea turtles, but most seemed to agree it was acceptable in such an extraordinary crisis.)

In late August the operation wound down as the sargassum seemed to recover. Although the surface of the Gulf appears to be oil-free, it remains to be seen what has happened to all that oil and chemical dispersant. Those sea turtles that depend on food deeper down in the ocean may suffer. For example, the main diet of leatherback turtles is jellyfish. Have jellyfish absorbed oil and disperant chemicals, and thus will now be ingested by the critically endangered leatherbacks? It seems likely.

While things look bleak for leatherbacks and other marine animals in the Gulf, at least some of the sea turtle babies are off to a good start thanks to efforts of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service and the Share the Beach volunteers.

You can adopt a sea turtle nest from Share the Beach—a wonderful gift for a sea turtle lover!

More information:

The BP-Spill Baby-Turtle Brigade by Jon Mooallem, NY Times, October 1, 2010

Updates on Sea Turtles and the Oil Spill, Sea Turtle Conservancy

09/30/10

Deformed Frogs Found in New Mexico Pond

According to the KOAT-TV blog (Albuquerque, NM), residents of Los Lunas, New Mexico, are concerned about  dead and deformed frogs found in a pond in a park just a few feet from their homes.

A  frog with two extra legs

As quoted in the report, a resident, who wants to remain anonymous, said the discovery has been a huge concern around the neighborhood for weeks. “We saw several today, probably five or six, maybe ten that were just dead around the pond.”

A local resident took pictures of the deformed frogs after her kids caught several from the pond. In the photos, some of the frogs have no back legs at all, while others have too many legs.

Michael Jaramillo, director of Parks and Recreation for Los Lunas, investigated these reports and found two dead and deformed frogs almost instantly. He suspects that weed killer or chemicals used to treat the algae may be hurting the amphibians. The city of Los Lunas has closed the park and has stretched a yellow caution tape around the entire pond, and experts will soon test the water.

Mason Ryan, an amphibian expert at the University of New Mexico, said in a related article that  frogs can be good indicators of what’s wrong in the environment. He doesn’t know what’s specifically happening at the New Mexico park, but the frogs could help tell the story.

“It could indicate that something is out of whack — a potential parasite population has increased too much, a potential predator or disease or chemical contaminant.”

State environmental officials plan to contact the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and to test the water for contaminants.

More information:

Dead, Deformed Frogs Found in Pond, KOAT, Albuquerque

State Official Investigate Deformed Frogs

09/20/10

Creating a Nature-Friendly Garden or Backyard – Guest post, Marlene A. Condon

We’re so pleased that Marlene A. Condon offered to share her expertise about creating wildlife-friendly gardens and backyards. Marlene is a nature writer and photographer with a passion for creating wildlife habitat around homes.  A field editor for Birds & Blooms since the magazine’s debut in 1995, she has been published in numerous newspapers and magazines and is the author of The Nature-Friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Wildlife, Plants, and People (Stackpole Books).

With fall upon us, the majority of gardeners are thinking about cleaning up the garden and putting it “to bed.”  But this year, leave the garden alone.  Numerous kinds of wildlife are getting ready for winter.  Your hands-off attitude in autumn will benefit them and they will repay you next year when you begin a new gardening season.

Japanese Maple with its leaves raked around it to provide hibernation cover for numerous kinds of wildlife, including tree frogs.

The falling leaves that pile up along your garden fence create a haven where Gray Treefrogs and Spring Peepers can hibernate.  Next spring, as temperatures rise and these two kinds of treefrogs awaken, they will climb up into your trees and shrubs to feed upon insects and spiders.  Peepers, which usually stay within two to three feet from the ground, might also be found on your herbaceous (non-woody) plants.  But no matter where they feed, these amphibians help to limit the populations of invertebrates to numbers that your plants can sustain without incurring serious harm.

Some species of spiders and insects are taking refuge within your dying and drying garden plants to try to survive the winter in an inactive adult state.  Other species will soon perish, leaving behind eggs, larvae, or pupae on or within plants to carry on the line—if they survive the searching eyes of numerous predators still active in cold weather.

Praying Mantid egg mass on Purple Ruffled Basil. Dried plant stalks contain the eggs of numerous critters essential to the functioning of the garden.

Watch your garden throughout the winter and you will see birds, such as Downy Woodpeckers and Carolina Chickadees, clinging to and poking your brown plants.  They are looking for the tiny insects and spiders, in whatever form, that provide our avian creatures with the fat and protein they require to survive the harshest time of the year.

American Goldfinches feeding in winter on Purple Ruffled Basil seeds.

If there are plants and food aplenty during the winter for them, birds that are permanent residents of the area may want to build nests next spring in your yard.  As winter comes to an end, you simply need to cut up the old plant stalks a bit and let them lie where they fall.  Many kinds of birds, such as Carolina Wrens, need such old stems, along with those dried leaves that sheltered the treefrogs, to construct their nests.

Carolina Wren chicks leaving nest made of plant debris.

The dried plant material that the birds don’t take will be recycled into the soil for the benefit of your growing plants.  As snails and slugs become active, they will be delighted to find their favorite food (decaying plant and animal matter) waiting for them to feed upon.  When these unusual organisms are provided with such a fine smorgasbord, they don’t bother your growing plants.  Instead, they help to fertilize them—which is exactly what their function in your garden is supposed to be.

Snails feeding on plant debris and sickly plant that need to be recycled.

In other words, when you allow natural processes to occur as they are meant to happen, you don’t bring about the problems that most gardeners assume they are destined to encounter.  As numerous kinds of wildlife go about their everyday activities in your yard, they limit populations of other kinds of wildlife, thus eliminating overpopulations that are usually the sources of people’s gardening difficulties.

By creating a nature-friendly garden, you save money, time, and effort by not needing chemical pesticides.  By avoiding the use of pesticides, you don’t interfere with “Mother Nature’s” system of checks and balances that exists to keep the environment functioning properly.

You also don’t inadvertently harm wildlife that is not injurious to your plants.  Any insects or spiders poisoned by pesticides are easy prey for all of the other kinds of animals that feed upon them which means those critters can be poisoned as well.  And plants sprayed with herbicides pose an extreme danger to our helpful insect-eating amphibians, such as salamanders and toads, which have very absorbent skin.

Therefore, to avoid garden problems, help wildlife to survive in your yard.  You’ll get to enjoy the lovely songs and beauty of birds, the sights and sounds of numerous kinds of wildlife, and a more relaxed and thus more satisfying manner of gardening.

Please  visit Marlene’s website to learn more about her information- and photo-packed book.

All photographs copyright Marlene A. Condon

08/11/10

A Field of Nightmares Updated: Atrazine, Corn, and Frogs

As Susan and I are hosting family and friends, we are reposting a couple of posts this week from the past year. We’ve updated this post with new material below. This post originally ran in January 2010.

I’ve always had a sentimental attachment to cornfields—from the magical cornfield in Field of Dreams to the real cornfield across the road from a house I lived in during college years. My mother was born and raised in Iowa and I’m descended from Iowan farmers.

cornfield-medium

But chemicals, in particular Atrazine, used as herbicides on cornfields might be poisoning frogs (and people), and turning fields of dreams into fields of nightmares.  These herbicides run off cornfields into streams and rivers, and leak through the water-treatment process, contaminating groundwater and drinking-water supplies.

Last summer we blogged about the problems of Atrazine. Research by University of California, Berkeley professor  Dr. Tyrone Hayes, for example, has shown the effects this chemical—an endrocrine disruptor—has on frogs. It can cause birth defects and reproductive problems, including such bizarre deformities as male frogs with eggs in their testes. As reported in the Washington Post, new research at the University of Ottawa found that when exposed to Atrazine fewer tadpoles reached froglet stage. Atrazine appears to affect estrogen in humans as well and has been connected with ferility problems, cancer, and birth defects.

Warning in a Cornfield Warning in a Cornfield

The EPA, under the Obama administration, has launched a review of the chemical that will continue until fall 2010. It will look closely at Atrazine and other endrocrine disruptors, which might result in tighter restrictions on their use. While this sounds hopeful, Atrazine’s primary manufacturer, Syngenta, has strong ties and influence within the EPA. (Atrazine is banned in Europe, where perhaps industry and government aren’t as closely intertwined as they are in the U.S.).

For more information, please see this PDF,  a report by the Land Stewardship Project and the Pesticide Action Network North America titled The Syngenta Corporation: The Cost to the Land, People, and Democracy.

Update 8/10: Save the Frogs is sponsoring the International Day of Pesticide Action, in Washington, DC, on October 24, 2010, a march through the streets of DC from the steps of the Capitol to the Environmental Protection Agency demanding a federal ban on Atrazine, the 21st Century’s DDT. Please visit the Save the Frogs site for more information and to sign a petition to get Atrazine banned.  (Note: Susan designed the logo below)

03/25/10

Atrazine Turning Frog Princes into Frog Princesses?

Last summer, we wrote a post, Rachel Carson’s Legacy, about troubling chemicals called endrocrine disruptors, potentially harmful to both humans and frogs, that are in herbicides and pesticides, as well as in plastic, cosmetics, and many consumer products. We followed up with a post about Berkeley professor Dr. Tyrone Hayes‘ studies of one endocrine disruptor, Atrazine, a widely-used weed killer, and its effects on frogs. Some of these effects included “intersex” frogs—male frogs that developed with female characteristics.

Recently a new study by Dr. Hayes has brought increased media attention to this issue.  As reported in the article, Weed Killer Creates Mr. Moms (Science News), Atrazine was added to water in the laboratory’s frog tanks in concentrations of 2.5 parts per billion—the same amount that might be found in rivers and streams, downstream of cornfields, golf courses, or domestic lawns, where it is used as a weed killer.

Dr. Hayes and associates found that one-third of the frogs raised in the water with Atrazine behaved like females, even sending out chemicals to attract other males. Out of the  forty frogs he studied, four had high levels of estrogen, and two actually developed female reproductive organs.

The EPA has determined that up to 3 parts per billion of Atrazine are safe in U.S. waterways. But according to Dr. Hayes’s studies, that’s too much. Even minute amounts potentially harm frogs—and humans as well. Endocrine disruptors have been associated with various cancers and reproductive birth defects in boys.

Recently, sixteen cities in six Midwestern states sued the Swiss corporation Syngenta, which manufactures the chemical, for the costs of expensive water filtration systems needed to keep drinking water safe.

Scientists at Syngenta continue to assert that Atrazine is completely safe (despite the fact that it’s been banned in Europe).   When I looked up the topic on google news, I found two Syngenta-sponsored sites with names such as “Atrazine Safe to Wildlife” and “Atrazine and Frogs.” Their website denies the “baseless activist” claims.

As Randall Amster writes in his post, Silent Spring Has Sprung, on Truthout, and reprinted on the Huffington Post, these denials from Syngenta are similar to the backlash Rachel Carson received from chemical companies when she exposed the dangers of DDT in her groundbreaking 1961 book Silent Spring. He writes:

In [Silent Spring], Carson famously argued that the pesticide DDT was responsible for negative impacts on the environment, animals and humans alike, despite disinformation spread by industry and government officials about its purported safety and utility in agribusiness. Silent Spring is often credited with starting the modern environmental movement, yet today we are facing equivalent challenges and similar campaigns to conceal the potential dangers of toxic chemicals in our midst.

Below is a video from the Huffington Post Investigative Fund about atrazine:

See also the New York Times article, “Berkeley Scientist Studies Raise Corporate Hackles.”

01/20/10

A Field of Nightmares? Atrazine, Corn, and Frogs

I’ve always had a sentimental attachment to cornfields—from the magical cornfield in Field of Dreams to the real cornfield across the road from a house I lived in during college years. My mother was born and raised in Iowa and I’m descended from farmers.

cornfield-medium

But chemicals, in particular Atrazine, used as herbicides on cornfields might be poisoning frogs (and people), and turning fields of dreams into fields of nightmares.  These herbicides run off cornfields into streams and rivers, and leak through the water-treatment process, contaminating groundwater and drinking-water supplies.

Last summer we blogged about the problems of Atrazine. Research by University of California, Berkeley professor  Dr. Tyrone Hayes, for example, has shown the effects this chemical—an endrocrine disruptor—has on frogs. It can cause birth defects and reproductive problems, including such bizarre deformities as male frogs with eggs in their testes. This past week, as reported in the Washington Post, new research at the University of Ottawa found that when exposed to Atrazine fewer tadpoles reached froglet stage. Atrazine appears to affect estrogen in humans as well and has been connected with ferility problems, cancer, and birth defects.

Warning in a Cornfield

Warning in a Cornfield

The EPA, under the Obama administration, has launched a review of the chemical that will continue until fall 2010. It will look closely at Atrazine and other endrocrine disruptors, which might result in tighter restrictions on their use. While this sounds hopeful, Atrazine’s primary manufacturer, Syngenta, has strong ties and influence within the EPA. (Atrazine is banned in Europe, where perhaps industry and government aren’t as closely intertwined as they are in the U.S.).

For more information, please see this PDF,  a report by the Land Stewardship Project and the Pesticide Action Network North America titled The Syngenta Corporation: The Cost to the Land, People, and Democracy.