Freaky Frogs and Girlie Man Fish
By Pat Racimora on July 12, 2009 at 12:01 PM in Current Affairs
It’s been a many years since W. C. Fields claimed he never drank water because “fish fuck in it.” Were he alive today, he would no doubt express far more creepy reasons for avoiding drinking H20 straight. It seems Mother Nature is really pissed off and has started getting more bizarre, more terrifying, while reaping her wrath for what we have done to our rivers, ponds, and oceans.
She sent in the frogs with multiple or missing appendages and other deformities. Presumed causes include pesticides (largely from chemical fertilizer), UV rays, and parasites. It seems clear to me, since freaky frogs are a relatively new phenomenon, that several human-influenced causes converged. Here is a good study that well illustrates conspiring forces.
The study showed increased levels of nitrogen and phosphorus cause sharp hikes in the abundance and reproduction of a snail species that hosts microscopic parasites known as trematodes, said Assistant Professor Pieter Johnson of CU-Boulder’s ecology and evolutionary biology department.
The nutrients stimulate algae growth, increasing snail populations and the number of infectious parasites released by snails into ponds and lakes. The parasites subsequently form cysts in the developing limbs of tadpoles causing missing limbs, extra limbs and other severe malformations, Johnson said.
“This is the first study to show that nutrient enrichment drives the abundance of these parasites, increasing levels of amphibian infection and subsequent malformations,” said Johnson. “The research has implications for both worldwide amphibian declines and for a wide array of diseases potentially linked to nutrient pollution, including cholera, malaria, West Nile virus and diseases affecting coral reefs.”
Recently, Mother Nature’s message is getting more intriguing, more hair-raising, more shocking. What would get red-blooded male’s attention quicker than the prospect of the contaminants flushed into our water supply causing them to turn into females?
This could be the beginning. Endocrine disruptors entering our water system through a variety of means, are apparently making their way up the food chain. According to the Federal Wildlife Services research:
We found female germ cells (oocytes) in the testes of 82% to 100% of the male smallmouth bass and in 23% of the males from the single largemouth bass collection near the Blue Plains Wastewater Plant in Washington, DC.
The baseline prevalence of testicular oocytes in male smallmouth is uncertain but may be in the range of 14% to 22%; baseline for male largemouth may be closer to 0%. We found vitellogenin [an egg yole precursor protein expressed in females of fish, amphibians, reptiles birds, and insects] in the blood of 33% to 90% of the male smallmouth and 85% of the male largemouth.
…Multiple environmental contaminants were found in the sampling devices, often with higher concentrations of wastewater chemicals (near the treatment plant outfalls). Pesticides currently used in agriculture were detected at all locations. Hormones were not detected in the passive water samplers. However, laboratory tests (yeast screening assays) suggested that estrogenic endocrine-disrupting chemicals were present at all locations. These tests do not identify single compounds, rather an overall response.
Based on the results of these samples, we cannot identify a single chemical or sources that may be causing the intersex and vitellogenin induction. Multiple chemical stressors that are not solely associated with agriculture or wastewater treatment plant effluent may be responsible.
So, where do these estrogen enhancers that are creating intersex fish come from? Seems there are a wide variety of sources, from materials used in agriculture and industry to women’s urine flushed down the toilet, with the strongest dose from women taking estrogen pills. (Stephen Colbert recently suggested that women now just “have to hold it.”)
Estrogen disruptors appear to have their strongest impact on the developing male fetus. Nicolas Kristof is taking the big leap (based on real data summarized by the National Wildlife Service) by suggesting that sexual organs of human boys are already trending towards “intersex.”
Now scientists are connecting the dots with evidence of increasing abnormalities among humans, particularly large increases in numbers of genital deformities among newborn boys. For example, up to 7 percent of boys are now born with undescended testicles, although this often self-corrects over time. And up to 1 percent of boys in the United States are now born with hypospadias, in which the urethra exits the penis improperly, such as at the base rather than the tip.
So, OK Mother Nature, you certainly have my attention!
by Ronald Scott
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