tagged w/ mutations
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The fishermen have never seen anything like this," Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. "And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I've never seen anything like this either."
Dr Cowan, with Louisiana State University's Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences started hearing about fish with sores and lesions from fishermen in November 2010.
Cowan's findings replicate those of others living along vast areas of the Gulf Coast that have been impacted by BP's oil and dispersants.
Gulf of Mexico fishermen, scientists and seafood processors have told Al Jazeera they are finding disturbing numbers of mutated shrimp, crab and fish that they believe are deformed by chemicals released during BP's 2010 oil disaster.
Along with collapsing fisheries, signs of malignant impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp - and interviewees' fingers point towards BP's oil pollution disaster as being the cause.
Eyeless shrimp
Tracy Kuhns and her husband Mike Roberts, commercial fishers from Barataria, Louisiana, are finding eyeless shrimp.
"At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these," Kuhns told Al Jazeera while showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp.
According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP's oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: "Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets."
Eyeless shrimp, from a catch of 400 pounds of eyeless shrimp, said to be caught September 22, 2011, in Barataria Bay, Louisiana [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]
"Some shrimpers are catching these out in the open Gulf [of Mexico]," she added, "They are also catching them in Alabama and Mississippi. We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don't have their usual spikes … they look like they've been burned off by chemicals."
On April 20, 2010, BP's Deepwater Horizon oilrig exploded, and began the release of at least 4.9 million barrels of oil. BP then used at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic Corexit dispersants to sink the oil.
Keath Ladner, a third generation seafood processor in Hancock County, Mississippi, is also disturbed by what he is seeing.
"I've seen the brown shrimp catch drop by two-thirds, and so far the white shrimp have been wiped out," Ladner told Al Jazeera. "The shrimp are immune compromised. We are finding shrimp with tumors on their heads, and are seeing this everyday."
While on a shrimp boat in Mobile Bay with Sidney Schwartz, the fourth-generation fisherman said that he had seen shrimp with defects on their gills, and "their shells missing around their gills and head".
"We've fished here all our lives and have never seen anything like this," he added.
Ladner has also seen crates of blue crabs, all of which were lacking at least one of their claws.
Darla Rooks, a lifelong fisherperson from Port Sulfur, Louisiana, told Al Jazeera she is finding crabs "with holes in their shells, shells with all the points burned off so all the spikes on their shells and claws are gone, misshapen shells, and crabs that are dying from within … they are still alive, but you open them up and they smell like they've been dead for a week".
Rooks is also finding eyeless shrimp, shrimp with abnormal growths, female shrimp with their babies still attached to them, and shrimp with oiled gills.
"We also seeing eyeless fish, and fish lacking even eye-sockets, and fish with lesions, fish without covers over their gills, and others with large pink masses hanging off their eyes and gills."
Rooks, who grew up fishing with her parents, said she had never seen such things in these waters, and her seafood catch last year was "ten per cent what it normally is".
"I've never seen this," he said, a statement Al Jazeera heard from every scientist, fisherman, and seafood processor we spoke with about the seafood deformities.
Given that the Gulf of Mexico provides more than 40 per cent of all the seafood caught in the continental US, this phenomenon does not bode well for the region, or the country.
BP's chemicals?
"The dispersants used in BP's draconian experiment contain solvents, such as petroleum distillates and 2-butoxyethanol. Solvents dissolve oil, grease, and rubber," Dr Riki Ott, a toxicologist, marine biologist and Exxon Valdez survivor told Al Jazeera. "It should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known".
The dispersants are known to be mutagenic, a disturbing fact that could be evidenced in the seafood deformities. Shrimp, for example, have a life-cycle short enough that two to three generations have existed since BP's disaster began, giving the chemicals time to enter the genome.
Pathways of exposure to the dispersants are inhalation, ingestion, skin, and eye contact. Health impacts can include headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitisation, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, cardiac arrhythmia and cardiovascular damage. They are also teratogenic - able to disturb the growth and development of an embryo or fetus - and carcinogenic.
Cowan believes chemicals named polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), released from BP's submerged oil, are likely to blame for what he is finding, due to the fact that the fish with lesions he is finding are from "a wide spatial distribution that is spatially coordinated with oil from the Deepwater Horizon, both surface oil and subsurface oil. A lot of the oil that impacted Louisiana was also in subsurface plumes, and we think there is a lot of it remaining on the seafloor".
Marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia published results of her submarine dives around the source area of BP's oil disaster in the Nature Geoscience journal.
Her evidence showed massive swathes of oil covering the seafloor, including photos of oil-covered bottom dwelling sea creatures.
While showing slides at an American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington, Joye said: "This is Macondo oil on the bottom. These are dead organisms because of oil being deposited on their heads."
Dr Wilma Subra, a chemist and Macarthur Fellow, has conducted tests on seafood and sediment samples along the Gulf for chemicals present in BP's crude oil and toxic dispersants.
"Tests have shown significant levels of oil pollution in oysters and crabs along the Louisiana coastline," Subra told Al Jazeera. "We have also found high levels of hydrocarbons in the soil and vegetation."
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, PAHs "are a group of semi-volatile organic compounds that are present in crude oil that has spent time in the ocean and eventually reaches shore, and can be formed when oil is burned".
"The fish are being exposed to PAHs, and I was able to find several references that list the same symptoms in fish after the Exxon Valdez spill, as well as other lab experiments," explained Cowan. "There was also a paper published by some LSU scientists that PAH exposure has effects on the genome."
snip
"What we think is that it's attributable to chronic exposure to PAHs released in the process of weathering of oil on the seafloor," Cowan said. "There's no other thing we can use to explain this phenomenon. We've never seen anything like this before."
More at the linkThe fishermen have never seen anything like this," Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera.... more
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One year ago we saw a crime of nature unparalled committed by BP. As the Deepwater Horizon exploded sending 11 men to their deaths, a tragedy of immense proportion began to play out on our tv screens, and a twenty four hour feed of the Micondo well was made available for us to witness the killing of the Gulf and the species that live there.
This "accident" by BP in league with Transocean and Halliburton that was so much in our consciousness then has been relegated to unimportant by our media and our government. This crime, unpunished, the criminals, now left free to continue the very behavior that led to this environmental catastrophe as they also repair their image as the stories of illness and death are covered up and ignored is a crime against nature and a betrayal of our future.
And they think we have forgotten. They think we will let it go. They think they have escaped justice. I say, they are wrong.
And just like Jeffrey Smith, I too see the other more insidious spill that will affect generations to come for all time. The spill of an irresponsible science experiment already going horribly wrong. To unleash such a genetic storm upon the world with no idea how it can be reigned in if it goes wrong is not only irresponsible but criminal. But the companies involved and the biotech industry didn't and don't care about that. They knew there was much profit to be made from unleashing this on an unsuspecting global populace, and that even the ill effects could be used to profit from it.
This invasion into our ecosystems, our bodies and the generations to come can no longer go unchecked. It is grievously immoral to allow such a spill to continue especially being aware of the consequences now without knowing just how bad it will get in even ten to twenty years time. And just as with the Gulf disaster, it is government collusion with industry that has seen our futures sold to the highest bidder as our planet is used as a petrie dish!
People reading this, please understand the weight of what is being done to your world and act. We have the power, we have the tools, we have the voices. It's time for them to be heard. Our future depends on it.One year ago we saw a crime of nature unparalled committed by BP. As the Deepwater... more
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Pedigree dogs should be bred with more normal specimens to end mutations that have left bulldogs, spaniels and other species with painful abnormalities such as tiny skulls or overly jowly faces, according to a review.
In a wide-ranging report into dog breeding prompted by an undercover investigation into the Kennel Club, Patrick Bateson, a professor of zoology, found large commercial "puppy farms" were often unhygienic and tolerated disease and inbreeding, causing a range of "welfare costs" for dogs.
He recommended a new law requiring micro-chipping of all new puppies; stricter local authority inspections of puppy farms; an independent council to identify the removal of inherited inbreeding and disease; and a monitoring system based on vets' reports to catalogue unhealthy traits. He also recommended a new publicity and education campaign to inform buyers how to acquire and keep healthy dogs.
Professor Bateson, a Cambridge University academic, was asked to chair the independent inquiry by the Kennel Club and Dog's Trust, following a Panorama programme in 2008, Pedigree Dogs Exposed. The BBC show found serious health concerns caused by inbreeding, prompting the RSPCA and BBC to pull out of Crufts, the club's annual showcase. The Kennel Club introduced new standards for 209 breeds last year. In a 65-page report, Professor Bateson said interviews with vets, scientists, campaigners and breeders had revealed "widespread concern" about commercial puppy farms.
As well as exacerbating unnatural features by breeding dogs with close relatives, many failed to check for disease, keep kennels clean, care properly for puppies or socialise or exercise them properly before selling them aged six to eight weeks, he said. Some Irish puppy farms produced 5,000 young dogs a year.
"Many breeders exercise high standards of welfare, but negligent management on puppy farms is a major welfare issue as is inbreeding in pure-bred dogs," said Professor Bateson. "Fashions for extreme conformations are also a cause of welfare problems."Pedigree dogs should be bred with more normal specimens to end mutations that have... more
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Check out the link for some of the best entries to Worth1000.com, a popular online image-altering contest on the theme of genetic mutations.
Internet users were given 48 hours to create an imaginary creature to illustrate what happens “when nature messes up”.
Among the striking entries were dogs with six eyes, flamingos with two necks and a giraffe with young growing out of its knees.Check out the link for some of the best entries to Worth1000.com, a popular online... more
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Some strains of bird flu are coming ever closer to developing the traits they need to cause a human pandemic, a study released Monday said.
Researchers who analysed samples of recent avian flu viruses found that a few H7 strains of the virus that have caused minor, untransmissible infections in people in North America between 2002 and 2004 have increased their affinity for the sugars found on human tracheal cells.
Subsequent tests in ferrets suggested that these viral strains were not readily transmissible.
But one strain of the H7N2 virus, a low pathogenic avian flu strain isolated from a man in New York in 2003, replicated in the ferret's respiratory tract and was passed between infected and uninfected ferrets suggesting it could be transmissible in humans.
The investigators said the evidence suggests that the virus could be evolving toward the same strong sugar-binding properties of the three worldwide viral pandemics in 1918, 1957 and 1968.
"These findings suggest that the H7 class of viruses are partially adapted to recognize the receptors that are preferred by the human influenza virus," said Terrence Tumpey, a senior microbiologist with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
The authors said that if the viruses continue to evolve in this direction, the avian flu viruses could travel more easily between other animals and humans. They called for strict surveillance of avian flu viruses and continuing federal preparations for a possible future pandemic.
The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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At this point I don't consider it a question of "if" a pandemic will strike the world, but "when." Especially now with the current state of our environment. China being one example of what environmental factors (climate change) can do to exacerbate strains like Avian flu. It seems that historically a pandemic strikes us globally about every 100 or so years. The Spanish Flu that hit us in North America in 1918 wiped out millions... Are we due? After all the hype about Avian Flu in 2003 it has died down now and you don't hear anything about it. I think it is something we need to keep in our minds, especially considering how easy it would be to spread such a virus if it got into the wrong hands.Some strains of bird flu are coming ever closer to developing the traits they need to... more
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EPA Great Lakes 2008 Earth Day Challenge removed a huge amount of electronic waste and pharmaceuticals from eight states.
The goal of the EPA Great Lakes 2008 Earth Day Challenge was the collecting and recycling of one million pounds of electronics (e-Waste) plus the collection and proper disposal of one million pills.
These goals were exceeded many times over.
A few examples:
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In Milwaukee, WI: 32 tons of electronic waste and 3.5 tons of pharmaceuticals were turned in.
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At the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin near Green Bay: Approx. 4 tons of e-waste was collected plus thousands of pounds of other trash cleaned from reservation Tribal members turned in over 23 pounds of medicines including 100 bottles of pills, more than 25 computers and dozens of related components like hard drives, printers, keyboards and speakers; televisions, radios, DVD players, 12 cell phones and over 100 small batteries.
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In Traverse City, MI: Over 28,750 pounds (over 12.5 tons) of computers and other e-waste was collected.
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The electronic waste is recycled, and the pharmaceuticals are incinerated in state-of-the-art EPA -license facilities.
So why is this important?
The old and broken electronics - like computers, cell phones and TVs - contain heavy metals that can leach into the groundwater if dumped into landfills.
The unused pharmaceuticals can end up in your drinking water if they are flushed or poured down the drain.
That’s because most wastewater treatment facilities are not designed to remove chemicals from these pharmaceuticals including hormones, narcotics, seizure medication and many more - that end up back in your drinking water.
In an April 2008 press conference in Milwaukee, EPA and other officials explained why the Great Lakes Challenge and similar projects are important to protect the environment and your health.
Pharmaceutical chemicals are sent back out into the Great Lakes, rivers and other places were people recreate and are the intakes for drinking water.
Studies show that the chemicals are appearing in the nation’s drinking water in small amounts - the long term effects are not known - however they have been linked to mutations in fish and other wildlife.
Also - these medicines can be stolen, diverted or accidentally ingested by children - if they languish in your medicine cabinet.
Around the country many e-waste and pharmaceutical take back programs have been developed by governments and local businesses.
Please check with your local officials to find out details for your area.
Because every day should be Earth Day.
This video on the projects connected to the Great Lakes 2008 Earth Day Challenge was made possible by a grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency in collaboration with the EPA's Region 5 office in Chicago the EPA Great Lakes national Program Office also in Chicago in cooperation with the non-profit Interfaith Earth Healing Initiative in Marquette, Michigan.
The EHI involves American Indian tribes and "a coalition of churches synagogues and other faith traditions joining together to heal protect and defend the environment" said EHI founder Rev Jon Magnuson of Marquette.
I’m Greg Peterson and you’re watching Earth Healing TVEPA Great Lakes 2008 Earth Day Challenge removed a huge amount of electronic waste and... more
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Youth and adults at the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin plan three events as part of the EPA Great Lakes 2008 Earth Day Challenge
(Keshena, Wisconsin) - As the students of all ages plan a major hands-on clean up of a tribal community and the recycling of electronics and proper disposal of unwanted medications to honor Earth Day 2008, adult members of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin in Keshena, WI have already turned in several thousand pounds of electronic waste as part of a national Earth Day Project.
The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin is collecting e-Waste all month including during the tribe's regular curbside bulk items Spring Cleaning collection on April 21-24 (Monday thru Thursday).
"We are getting lots of electronics right now," said Diana Wolf, the MITW Solid Waste/Recycling Coordinator.
The projects are part of the eight-state Great Lakes 2008 Earth Day Challenge sponsored by the USEPA. The events are being promoted by the interfaith Earth Healing Initiative that teams numerous faith communities and American Indian tribes with local challenge organizers to be volunteers and participants in the projects spread across the Great Lakes basin.
During the first week of April, the tribe’s drop-off sites collected several thousand pounds of electronics including 919 pounds of "low-grade circuit boards" removed from TV sets, stereos, high quality computers, cassette players and other electronics.
Wolf estimated that about two tons (4,000 pounds) of electronics will be turned in by the end of the month.
“We will do whatever it takes to do cradle to grave recycling,” Wolf said. "We are not making a profit off of it but it is the right thing to do."
On April 25 students at the Menominee Tribal School (k-8) will be cleaning the area around the school of litter and recyclables and other downtown areas of Neopit. The tribe's 234,000-acre reservation includes the communities of Keshena, Zoar and South Branch.
"The students will be picking up litter and recyclables - and anything that's on the roads or sidewalks or the yards," Wolf said, adding the students will be planting 50 saplings.
"We are inviting the parents to bring a potluck and there will likely be wild rice and other Native American dishes," Wolf said.
The lunch will include a drama performance and include Native Music involving the "Wind Eagle Drum" or the "high school drum" consisting of students who are learning the music of the Menominee tribe's history.
"Our school is very much a cultural-motivated school," Wolf said. "The school teaches about the Menominee culture and language. The students learn about our Menominee history and our language amongst the non-native teaching."
"My children speak fluent Menominee because they have been in the school for three years," Wolf said.
Menominee tribal college students are doing their part to protect the planet with e-Waste and pharmaceutical collections.
The College of Menominee Nation (State Hwy. 47/55) in Keshena, is accepting e-waste and unwanted medicines on April 22 from 9 a.m. to noon and accepting e-Waste from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the commons building.
The college’s Implementing Sustainable Development class is hosting the collection with help from the tribe's solid waste coordinator.
The e-Waste collection will accept electronics including old/broken computers, cell phones and batteries.
The pharmaceutical collection is accepting old and unwanted medications that must be in their original bottle or container.
http://www.earthhealinginitiative.org/keshena.html
http://www.earthhealinginitiative.org
http://www.menominee-nsn.gov
http://www.menominee.edu
http://www.menominee-nsn.gov/earthWeekFlyer.pdfYouth and adults at the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin plan three events as part... more
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Numerous faith communities, American Indians tribes and many others being recruited to volunteer or participate in large eight-state Earth Day 2008 events across the Great Lakes Basin.
Collections sites will accept old/broken computers, cell phones, TVs and other electronics to be recycled, and old/unwanted medicines to be properly disposed during the Great Lakes 2008 Earth Day Challenge
The EPA is awarding grants to some of the collection sites where residents can drop off e-waste and old/unwanted pharmaceuticals. The new Earth Healing Initiative will be organizing faith communities
For more details read the article or check out these links: Or call Greg at 906-401-0109.
Earth Healing official website::
http://www.EarthHealingInitiative.org
EPA Press Release on challenge:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/D48F2AD96EC624E38525740B003AEE57
EPA GLNPO Official challenge link:
http://www.epa.gov/glnpo/earthday2008/index.html
http://www.epa.gov/glnpo/earthday2008/events.htmlNumerous faith communities, American Indians tribes and many others being recruited to... more
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