Weed killer ‘castrates’ male frogs, study says
By Azadeh Ansari, CNN

(CNN) — Atrazine, a weed killer widely used in the Midwestern United States and other agricultural areas of the world, can chemically “castrate” male frogs and turn some into females, according to a new study.

New research suggests the herbicide may be a cause of amphibian declines around the globe, said biologists at the University of California-Berkeley, who conducted the study. The findings are being published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers found that long-term exposure to low levels of atrazine — 2.5 parts per billion of water — emasculated three-quarters of laboratory frogs and turned one in 10 into females. Scientists believe the pesticide interferes with endocrine hormones, such as estrogen and testosterone.

“The effects of atrazine in the long term have been shown to demasculinize or chemically castrate [frogs], combined with complete feminization of some animals,” said lead researcher Tyrone B. Hayes, a biologist and herpetologist at the University of Berkeley.

“We need to reconfigure how we evaluate chemicals in the environment and the impact on environmental health and public health,” he said.

Hayes found that 10 percent of the exposed genetic male frogs developed into functional females who copulated with unexposed males and produced viable eggs. The other 90 percent of the exposed male frogs expressed decreased libido, reduced sperm count and decreased fertility, among other findings.

Syngenta, a Swiss company that is the largest manufacturer of atrazine, has challenged the validity of Hayes’ study.

“We haven’t seen these kinds of responses that Dr. Hayes reports,” said Keith Solomon, an environmental toxicologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, who has served as a consultant to Syngenta. “Some of these studies are poorly conducted and are entirely inconsistent.”

The new study’s implications for atrazine’s effect on humans is unclear. But some scientists are concerned the herbicide may pose risks to reproductive health.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year launched a comprehensive evaluation of the herbicide to investigate any possible links between atrazine and cancer and to determine whether new restrictions are necessary. The EPA’s current safety standard for atrazine in drinking water is three ppb.

The European Union banned atrazine in 2004 because it was consistently showing up in levels higher than 0.1 ppb — its threshold for harmful chemicals — in drinking water.

Farmers in the United States continue to use atrazine on crops.

The herbicide has been a long-standing favorite among corn, sorghum and sugarcane farmers because it is affordable and can eliminate the need for tilling the soil. Tens of millions of pounds of atrazine are used each year in the United States. Syngenta estimates that 60 million pounds were used during 2008, most of it on corn.

A 2006 study by the U.S. Geological Survey found atrazine in approximately 75 percent of stream water and about 40 percent of all groundwater samples from agricultural areas tested between 1992 and 2001.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy organization, released a report in August 2009 that documented spikes of atrazine in the water supplies of Midwestern and Southern agricultural areas where the pesticide is primarily applied.

Home or municipal carbon filters can remove atrazine from water but some water filtration systems in small towns are not equipped to filter out atrazine. Water systems in a handful of states have sued atrazine’s manufacturers in an effort to force them to pay for removing the pesticide from drinking water.

Tim Pastoor, principal scientist for Syngenta, told CNN that the EPA’s current levels for atrazine are safe and that “there is political pressure to get atrazine re-examined.”

“Residues of atrazine and all our crop protection products in water do not pose a health risk for consumers,” Syngenta says on its Web site.

The company also says “ongoing laboratory and field research by university scientists shows that atrazine has no effect on the survival, growth or limb deformities of frogs.”

But Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist with the NRDC’s health and environment program, believes the research by Hayes and the other University of California, Berkeley, biologists is valid.

Sass also is skeptical of Syngenta’s claims.

“Their tactic is to flood the scientific literature with negative data to negate the other studies,” she said. “It’s only their studies that show that atrazine is not an endocrine disrupter.”

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

Toxic towns: People of Mossville ‘are like an experiment’
By David S. Martin, CNN Medical Senior Producer

Westlake, Louisiana (CNN) — Gather current and former Mossville, Louisiana, residents in a room and you’re likely to hear a litany of health problems and a list of friends and relatives who died young.

“I got cancer. My dad had cancer. In fact, he died of cancer. It’s a lot of people in this area who died of cancer,” says Herman Singleton Jr., 51, who also lost two uncles and an aunt to cancer.

Singleton and many others in this predominantly African-American community in southwest Louisiana suspect the 14 chemical plants nearby have played a role in the cancer and other diseases they say have ravaged the area.

For decades, Mossville residents have complained about their health problems to industry, and to state and federal agencies. Now with a new Environmental Protection Agency administrator outspoken about her commitment to environmental justice, expectations are growing.

“I’m pretty hopeful now,” say Debra Ramirez, 55, who grew up in Mossville and who lost a sister at 45 of sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease. “I do see her trying to do the right thing.”

Lisa Jackson, a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, and the first African-American administrator of the EPA, this year listed environmental justice as one of her seven priorities.

And the EPA held a meeting in Mossville last month formally kicking off a study designed to see if the community qualifies as a Superfund site, reserved for the most polluted places in the United States. Superfund site designation would bring federal funding for cleaning up Mossville.

Mossville Environmental Action Now (MEAN), the local environmental group, has asked government and industry to relocate residents who want to leave, offer a free health clinic and lower emissions from the plants. Superfund relocates residents only as a last resort.

“There are people that are getting sick; there are people who are dying because of what is happening in our community. These chemicals are killing us. They will destroy Mossville if nothing happens,” says Dorothy Felix of MEAN.

Thousands of pounds of carcinogens such as benzene and vinyl chloride are released from the facilities near Mossville each year, according to the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory.

Chemical boom
The industrial boom began in and around Mossville during World War II. Vinyl chloride makers, refineries, a coal-fired energy plant and chemical plants now operate in what was once rural country, rich in agriculture, fishing and hunting.

Robert Bullard, author of “Dumping in Dixie,” says it’s no surprise industry chose Mossvillle, an unincorporated community founded by African Americans in the 1790s.

“What happens is zoning becomes very political, and what happens is people with power, with lawyers and elected officials who can fight for them and make decisions for them, oftentimes will get things placed away from them and placed in locations where other people live” Bullard says.

Without the power, Bullard says, African-Americans have borne the brunt of living near industry, landfills and hazardous facilities.

“African Americans are more than 79 percent more likely to live in communities where there are dangerous facilities that pose health threats,” says Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University.

Bullard says Jackson has breathed new life into environmental justice since she took office last year. During the previous eight years, he says, “environmental justice was non-existent or invisible.”

Mossville fears
Over time, Mossville residents became worried emissions from the plants were affecting their health.

Those fears heightened in 1998 when the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry tested the blood of 28 Mossville residents and found dioxin levels three times the national average.

Dioxins are carcinogens. Volcanoes and forest fires create dioxins naturally. They are also released during vinyl chloride production, at waste incinerators and by wood processing facilities.

Residents were retested for dioxins in 2001, with similar results, but in 2006 the agency concluded that residents did not face a health risk, an assessment echoed by local industry.

“The emissions from the plants are within the standards set by the various agencies, and they are of a level that they have no ill effects on the local community,” says Larry DeRoussel, executive director of the Lake Area Industry Alliance.

DeRoussel speaks for local industry. CNN invited all 14 companies to speak on camera. None of them accepted; some said interviewing DeRoussel would suffice.

DeRoussel points to statistics showing the cancer rate in Calcasieu Parish, the local county, is not significantly higher than the state average.

But Wilma Subra, a chemist from New Iberia, Louisiana, who has worked with Mossville residents, says the statistics are misleading because the parish covers such a large area, more than 1,000 square miles, and more than 180,000 residents. Mossville is a tiny fraction of that, with about 375 homes adjacent to the chemical plants.

“The people of Mossville are like an experiment. They know that they have high levels of dioxin in their blood, and they’re allowed to continue to live there and be exposed,” says Subra, recipient of the MacArthur genius grant in 1999 for her environmental work with communities.

After the EPA announced its Superfund investigation, Felix says she’s hopeful for the first time in years Mossville will be saved.

“This is the first time I’ve had a little hope in EPA,” Felix says.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

So WordPress wants me to update to the latest and greatest version.

Our blog is set up so I just click the Please Update Now link and it is supposed to be updated automatically…..with no glitches.

But we all know….
Glitches sometimes happen….

Here goes….

Update:
Ok..that was really scary!
In past versions all I had to do was click on the Automatic Upgrade link and it did everything it was supposed to…all by itself!

This time however the blog was actually deactivated and I had to manually go through a series of steps to deactivate plug-ins, upgrade the blog, upgrade plug-ins, then reactive the blog.

Thank goodness it appears that everything came out fine!

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com