Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Canaries in Coal Mines



Erratic bat behavior at Great Smoky park may be linked to lethal syndrome. by Darryl Fears. The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/erratic-bat-behavior-at-great-smoky-park-may-be-linked-to-lethal-syndrome/2013/01/20/1be8fc8e-60d1-11e2-b05a-605528f6b712_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines

[Excerpted] Large groups of bats in the nation’s most popular national park appear to be stricken with white-nose syndrome, a deadly fungus that’s wiping out a variety of bat species up and down the East Coast, a possible extinction event, some biologists say...

...At last count, by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service a year ago, between 5 million and 7 million bats were estimated to have died from white-nose since it was first discovered in 2006 in a cave outside Albany, N.Y....

Majia here: Bats and bees are our canaries. We better start paying attention. 

Of course, it is hard to wake people up when mainstream accounts - such as The Washington Post article above - fail to mention that the disease in bats has been linked to pesticides. The collapse of the bee population has also been linked to pesticides.

Yale Environment 360: Behind Mass Die-Offs, Pesticides Lurk as Culprit Jan 7, 2010 by Sonia Shah http://e360.yale.edu/feature/behind_mass_die_offs_pesticides_lurk_as_culprit/2228/

In the past dozen years, three new diseases have decimated populations of amphibians, honeybees, and — most recently — bats. Increasingly, scientists suspect that low-level exposure to pesticides could be contributing to this rash of epidemics.

[excerpted] Ever since Olga Owen Huckins shared the spectacle of a yard full of dead, DDT-poisoned birds with her friend Rachel Carson in 1958, scientists have been tracking the dramatic toll on wildlife of a planet awash in pesticides. Today, drips and puffs of pesticides surround us everywhere, contaminating 90 percent of the nation’s major rivers and streams, more than 80 percent of sampled fish, and one-third of the nation’s aquifers. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, fish and birds that unsuspectingly expose themselves to this chemical soup die by the millions every year.

But as regulators grapple with the lethal dangers of pesticides, scientists are discovering that even seemingly benign, low-level exposures to pesticides can affect wild creatures in subtle, unexpected ways — and could even be contributing to a rash of new epidemics pushing species to the brink of extinction.... [end excerpt]


Majia here: Over time humans will also be impacted by the pesticides (and radionuclides) that are bio-accumulating in animals across the food chain.

This morning The Wall Street Journal reports that "More Children Get ADHD Diagnosis" by J. Dooren 1/22/2012 p. A2.

Majia here: Although I recognize that cultural expectations and pharmaceutical company marketing play a role, 

I also believe that we are damaging our children's endocrine systems and subtle epigenetic processes with ubiquitous chemicals, such as pthalates, which have been proven to disrupt endocrine functions at low levels of exposure during critical stages in development. (see my discussion here and here). 

I believe that actual rates of diseases such as ADHD and autism are indeed rising as our children are biologically vulnerable to our ecocide, as are the bees and the bats.

PREVIOUS POSTS ON BEES

May 26, 2012
A Last (Chemical) Gasp for Bees?By Shannan Stoll, YES! Magazine 27 May 12. http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/making-it-home/bee-decline-blamed-on-pesticides [Excerpted] "Colony collapse disorder threatens food ...
 
Feb 17, 2012
Seals and Radiation; Bees and Pesticide: SAME PLOT TO OBSCURE CAUSE. Enenews is running a news story covering the seal deaths in Alaska. Enenews: NOAA: No radiation levels that would “directly” cause seal deaths ...
 
May 06, 2012
Beeologics has developed a product called Remembee, an anti-viral agent which its boosters claim will help stem the tide of Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious plague which has led to the disappearance of the bees in ...
 
Jan 28, 2012
with news that the U.S. honeybee population has been so devastated that some beekeepers will qualify for disaster relief dollars, comes a report from Purdue University that one of the causes of honeybee deaths is - as long ...

Oct 11, 2010
A New York Times article described the ongoing bee collapse mystery as solved by the collaboration between a university scientist and the U.S. Military. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/science/07bees.html. Since I love ...
 
Aug 28, 2012
The second story was published in 2010 and concerned a Wikileaks release of an EPA report documenting the EPA knew the pesticide class at issue had risks for bees and other beings. What is frustrating here is that two ...
 
Apr 12, 2012
1/3 of Domestic Bee Population Fails to Survive Winter. http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/13-of-domesticated-us-bee-population.html. Seals and Radiation; Bees and Pesticide: SAME PLOT TO OBSCURE CAUSE ...
 

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