A Special Day

     Sunday, May 22, two weeks from today, has been proclaimed the United Nations' International Day for Biological Diversity.  According to a report published several years ago by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Earth is currently experiencing a biodiversity crisis that has already become the worst mass extinction event since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago.  Many factors have been cited as contributing to this ongoing disaster - poaching, overfishing, habitat destruction, and so on - but one key factor always towers over the rest in the public view.  That factor is pollution.
     The attention that pollution gets is mainly because of global warming, which is caused by the greenhouse effect, which is triggered by pollution of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.  These gases build up in the atmosphere over a long period of time.  There are, however, other kinds of pollution, some very fast-acting and lethal.  Specifically, a kind of fast-acting poison that humans routinely dump into animals' homes.  I refer to pesticides.
     All pesticides are created for the sole purpose of killing things.  They are poured onto farmland; then, when the crops are watered, the pesticide residues run off with the water into little channels, which run into streams, which run into rivers (or storm drains), which run downstream to the ocean…and, at every step along the way, these lethal toxins kill whatever they pass, both in the water and out of it.
     These pesticides have all kinds of unintended (though not really unexpected) effects on all kinds of wildlife, bringing many species to the brink of extinction, and wiping some out completely.  This has got to stop.

     Some of the most dangerous pesticides in existence are aldrin, dieldrin, and endrin, three related insecticides that cause serious nervous system failure in animals including humans, with young children the most vulnerable group.  Rachel Carson described the dangers of these and other chemicals in her 1962 book Silent Spring, often credited for singlehandedly starting the environmentalist movement.  Many pesticides were banned over the following decades, thanks to Carson's efforts.
     Silent Spring opens with "A Fable For Tomorrow," which describes a hypothetical town in the countryside, surrounded with stunning natural beauty.  Carson paints a portrait of serene animal and plant life, the people living every day with the enchanting sights and sounds of nature.
     Then along comes a certain "white granular powder"…and suddenly, the scene dissolves.  The livestock die, the birdsong disappears, the wildlife is devastated by this deadly pesticide.  The fable ends with these chilling words: "No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world.  The people had done it themselves."


     Easily the most infamous pesticide of all is DDT, which builds up in the fat tissues of fish.  When a bigger fish eats two smaller fish, the bigger fish picks up the DDT collections from both of them.  Thus a tiny amount of DDT drifting down to the ocean can become a significant concentration as it travels up the food chain.
     The top of the ocean food chain is the birds that eat the big fish.  Ocean-feeding birds would collect a relatively large amount of DDT.  This means birds such as the brown pelican (pictured), the peregrine falcon, and the bald eagle.
     Some people say that the only thing someone can do to you that is worse than killing you is to kill your children.  Well, DDT doesn't usually kill the birds that pick it up.  Rather, it makes their eggshells so weak that, before being ready to hatch, the eggs actually collapse under their own weight, destroying the unborn bird inside.  This tragic disorder decimated the brown pelican population, and wiped out peregrine falcons on the east coast…and, if you live in America, you probably know just how common it is to see our national bird, the bald eagle, flying around…


     Fortunately, all of the pesticides I have named so far are now banned in much of the world.  Unfortunately, there will always be other, newer pesticides, that can do further damage to wildlife.  There is currently a controversy revolving around the herbicide atrazine, which has been banned in the European Union - which includes the country (Switzerland) in which its manufacturer is based.  It is, however, still widely used in America…hence the controversy.
     Seriously harmful effects of atrazine have been recorded in frogs at an atrazine level equal to approximately one-thirtieth of the concentration that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allows in drinking water.  With that tiny amount of atrazine, male frogs have suffered "severe sexual deformities," and that is all I'm going to say about that.  The point is that, if you live in America, you could be drinking thirty times that concentration every day, and the government would do nothing about it…so, to make you feel even better, I'm going to add that employees at the atrazine manufacturer have shown an elevated level of certain cancers.  Just saying.


     So, the pesticides have to go.  The thing is, the chemical manufacturers have a lucrative business going, producing these toxins, and the farmers have a better profit margin, too, when they use pesticides. Both of those industries have an abundance of lobbyists.
     Some companies think that they can produce better pesticides, with fewer harmful effects.  Some people say that it doesn't matter, anyway: we shouldn't be worrying about these animals in the first place.
     First of all, there are plenty of organic farmers who are doing perfectly good business without using pesticides.  As far as the pesticide companies are concerned, I'm sure they could find work in a much healthier field of chemical production - medication, perhaps.  They simply cannot be allowed to continue disintegrating our world.
     As far as 'safe' pesticides are concerned, I contend that there is no such thing.  A chemical produced for the sole purpose of killing cannot possibly be a safe thing to have running into our water.  Finally, if you think we shouldn't protect animals because we're superior to them, consider this: the world's ecosystem is a delicate balance, and a tangled web.  When one species goes extinct, it has an effect on everything else that lives in the area.  This can turn into a chain reaction that would result in the loss of financially relevant resources.  Even if you cannot accept that, I have provided above several examples of pesticides directly harming humans.  Endrin kills children; atrazine may provoke cancer.  These are hardly the only cases - search the Internet if you want more examples.


     Now back to the International Day for Biological Diversity.  On May 22, try biking or carpooling instead of your usual drive.  Recycle.  Buy organic.  Tell some people about the dangers of commercial pesticides…and the great thing is, if you can do that on May 22, then you can do it on May 23, too…and May 24…believe it or not, every day is a good day to bike or carpool, recycle, buy organic, and spread the word.
     Once a species goes extinct, there's no getting it back.  As I said at the beginning of this, we are smack in the middle of the most devastating mass extinction in 65 million years.  We may not hear about all of them, but more species are going extinct every day.  Let's do what we can to end this crisis before it gets any further.


Sources:
http://www.cbd.int/idb/
http://www.livescience.com/652-humans-fuel-worst-extinction-dinosaurs.html
http://www.chesapeakebay.net/news_pesticides09.aspx?menuitem=43119
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001395.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Spring-Rachel-Carson/dp/0618249060/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1304852343&sr=8-1
http://www.flickr.com/photos/72825507@N00/2205729974/
http://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/DDT_and_Birds.html

http://www.endangeredspeciesinternational.org/atrazine.html