Tech | January 25, 2013 | 31 comments

Common pesticides "can kill frogs within an hour"

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/24/pesticides-kill-frogs-within-hour

Image
JanforGore
By Damian Carrington/
Widely used pesticides can kill frogs within an hour, new research has revealed, suggesting the chemicals are playing a significant and previously unknown role in the catastrophic global decline of amphibians.

The scientists behind the study said it was both "astonishing" and "alarming" that common pesticides could be so toxic at the doses approved by regulatory authorities, adding to growing criticism of how pesticides are tested.

"You would not think products registered on the market would have such a toxic effect," said Carsten Brühl, at the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany. "It is the simplest effect you can think of: you spray the amphibian with the pesticide and it is dead. That should translate into a dramatic effect on populations."

Trenton Garner, an ecologist at the Zoological Society of London, said: "This is a valuable addition to the substantial body of literature detailing how existing standards for the use of agricultural pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers are inadequate for the protection of biodiversity."

Amphibians are the best example of the great extinction of species currently under way, as they are the most threatened and rapidly declining vertebrate group. More than a third of all amphibians are included in the IUCN "red list" of endangered species, with loss of habitat, climate change and disease posing the biggest threats.

Brühl had previously studied how easily frogs can absorb pesticides through their permeable skins, which they can breathe through when underwater. But pesticides are not required to be tested on amphibians, said Brühl: "We could only find one study for one pesticide that was using an exposure likely to occur on farmland."

More at the link

http://www.uni-koblenz-landau.de/landau/fb7/umweltwissenschaften/umweltwissensch...

Link to study.

________________________
50 years after Silent Spring and here we are. Still killing nature for profit and in the end ourselves because so many think government can do no wrong and should remain unaccountable for its actions. Seems we humans are proving we don't deserve this planet.
  1. groups:
    News and Politics,   Tech,   Green,   Culture,   10 more
  2. tags:
    Environment,  Earth,  Pollution,  Evolution,  12 more
  3.     
    |

31 comments // Common pesticides "can kill frogs within an hour"

  • JanforGore
    • +1
      JanforGore  

    • Species that have lived on this planet since before the dinosaurs will now be wiped out by humans within two centuries. Shame on us.

      This is an informative talk about the decline and all the reasons for it. We lose amphibians, we lose us.

    • 4 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +1
      JanforGore  

    • Species that have lived on this planet since before the dinosaurs will now be wiped out by humans within two centuries. Shame on us.

      This is an informative talk about the decline and all the reasons for it. We lose amphibians, we lose us.

    • 4 months ago
  • thedirtman
    • +1
      thedirtman  

    • JanforGore, I want to agree completely, but I also want to add one nuance.

      The older pesticides such as DDT were yet worse. More often, newer pesticides were designed to be unstable in the environment. They react with air to form more benign compounds often within 3 days to a week. DDT is stable in the environment and might kill a frog 50 years after its release.

    • 4 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +1
      JanforGore  
    • thedirtman:

      I agree with you. So then are you implying that this catastrophic decline could also be due to the latent effects of these older pesticides like DDT that are still lingering in our ecosystems as well as being compounded by the overuse of new ones?

    • 4 months ago
  • thedirtman
  • LivingPong
    • +2
      LivingPong  

    • I've seen plenty of farmers poisoned by common chemicals after not wearing a mask while spraying from their tractors, and frogs are going to cop a lot more spray than that. Even Roundup will leave you coughing up blood and severe headaches for the rest of the week if your spraying it from the boom and don't have at least a basic mask on, and that's a basic herbicide targeted at plants.

      There were a lot of frogs around here before the introduction of widespread pesticide use. There were also a lot of unusual insects like Ground Bees and predator insects that disappeared, the pest insects have increased in number.

    • 4 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +1
      JanforGore  
    • LivingPong:

      That is their plan. RoundUp was designed to cause weed and pest resistance to be able to bring the next incarnation out of the pipeline to make profit. This isn't about caring about the Earth to them. They are waging war against nature to conquer it and they have no idea of what can happen when she pushes back. It is so important that people understand the web of life and how what we are doing in our arrogance could very well be our undoing. Rachel Carson described it so eloquently and sparked an environmental movement that is sorely lacking today.

    • 4 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +1
      JanforGore  
    • LivingPong:

      That is their plan. RoundUp was designed to cause weed and pest resistance to be able to bring the next incarnation out of the pipeline to make profit. This isn't about caring about the Earth to them. They are waging war against nature to conquer it and they have no idea of what can happen when she pushes back. It is so important that people understand the web of life and how what we are doing in our arrogance could very well be our undoing. Rachel Carson described it so eloquently and sparked an environmental movement that is sorely lacking today.

    • 4 months ago
  • sue4e3
    • +3
      sue4e3  

    • Those that support the amphibian arc have been saying this for awhile now .There are good people out there fighting against this every day.

    • 4 months ago
  • JanforGore
  • sue4e3
    • 0
      sue4e3  
    • JanforGore:

      It is a good thing to get behind ..any one can make a donation to them .I go through the world wild life organization. I've heard you can go through the enviromental defense fund also. I absolutely adure frogs , toads and so many others . It 's beyond sad

    • 4 months ago
  • Wyley_Wombat
    • +4
      Wyley_Wombat  

    • If they keep experimenting with the formulation of 2-4-d and 2-4-5-d they will one day come up with a compound that is as permeable to human skin as the present formulations are to amphibian skin. When they achieve this we humans are toast.

    • 4 months ago
  • Vic_Romano
  • JanforGore
  • Wyley_Wombat
    • 0
      Wyley_Wombat  
    • Vic_Romano:

      Sorry I meant 2-4-5-T and 2-4-D which yes the military does have and calls Agent Orange. They also have a little gem called VX which is an organo-phosphate and a nerve agent. VX is similar to some commercial pesticides where as Agent Orange is an herbicide. Both are extremely nasty compounds.

    • 4 months ago
  • JanforGore
  • Vic_Romano
    • +2
      Vic_Romano  

    • It's like Einstein said about losing bees....

      We're going to end up knocking out an integral species--maybe plankton or bees or even frogs.

      Either way, it's awfully hard to remain optimistic knowing how badly we're killing our world.

    • 4 months ago
  • sedwin
  • JanforGore
    • +2
      JanforGore  
    • Vic_Romano:

      Biodiversity loss should be one of our primary concerns but gets little attention. Not until this Earth is covered completely in GMO contamination, toxic fracking fluid in our water, tarsands sludge and the silence is deafening because there is no other life will people understand what we have done.

    • 4 months ago
  • JanforGore
  • YourTaxes_MyPaycheck
    • -1
      YourTaxes_MyPaycheck  
    • sedwin:

      Aluminum causes Alzheimer's, Amyloid Proteins cause dementia also, and Nicotine same thing? Well, that's what happens when ya try to turn Bees into little flying humans.

      THEY NEED BEE HOSPITALS AND DOCTORS!!!!!!!!!!!!

    • 4 months ago
  • freecrack
    • -2
      freecrack  

    • some species of frog, and some pesticides, but also size of frog and dillusion of chemical matter.

      over all, reptiles dont groom as insects do, thus greatly negating the effects of pesticides, as i can tell you as a floridian who did pest control, no matter how much chemical we dump out into the world, we have no shortage of reptiles, frogs included.

      stop reading the guardian jan, you know better.

    • 4 months ago
  • JanforGore
  • freecrack
  • bailey78
    • +4
      bailey78  

    • I went organic a couple of years ago Chickens work better than any poison on the market. But even then they are a threat to frogs and toads.

    • 4 months ago
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
  • YourTaxes_MyPaycheck
    • -1
      YourTaxes_MyPaycheck  
    • JanforGore:

      The printing of Food Stamps is what keeps Americans from being True Evil. Food Stamps identifies us as a caring society. Frogs? Too bad. They should've been re-incarnated as people.

      Perhaps re-incarnated frogs were evil and death at our hands was their judgement. One reincarnation THEN DEAD FROG.

      The End

    • 4 months ago
  • sedwin
  • YourTaxes_MyPaycheck
    • -1
      YourTaxes_MyPaycheck  
    • sedwin:

      Interesting thought! making Food Stamps with Health Ink. Soaked in nutrition, anti-oxidants, Resveratrol for the heart: grapeseed extract pycnogenol and so on. Good work Sedwin!

      PURPLE SOYLENT GREEN BARS!!!!!!! YEE-HAA-H-H-H-H.

    • 4 months ago
more from Tech:
from the community

top videos