Songbirds Dying From DDT In Michigan Yards
LOUIS, Mich. - Jim Hall was mowing the city's baseball diamond when he felt a bit bump underneath him. Just last week, he found another one. Hall, who has lived in this mid-Michigan town of 7,000 for memory enhancement aid 50 years. After residents complained for years about lifeless birds in their yards, 22 American robins, six European starlings and one bluebird had been collected for testing. The results, memory enhancement aid revealed final week: The neighborhood's songbirds are being poisoned by DDT, a pesticide that was banned in the United States greater than 40 years in the past. Lethal concentrations were found within the birds' brains, in addition to within the worms they eat. Matt Zwiernik, a Michigan State University assistant professor of environmental toxicology who led the testing. The birds' brains contained concentrations of DDE, a breakdown product of DDT, from 155 to 1,043 parts per million, with an average of 552. "Thirty in the brain is the threshold for acute death," Zwiernik stated.
Twelve of the 29 birds had brain lesions or liver abnormalities. The wrongdoer is a toxic mess left behind by Velsicol Chemical Corp., previously Michigan Chemical, which manufactured pesticides till 1963, a year after Rachel Carson's guide Silent Spring uncovered the hazards of DDT, particularly for birds. Populations of bald eagles and other birds crashed when DDT thinned their eggs, killing their embryos. The 9-block neighborhood has change into a real-life instance of Carson's "Fable for Tomorrow" in Silent Spring. Velsicol is notorious for one of the worst chemical disasters in U.S. In 1973 a flame retardant compound they manufactured - polybrominated biphenyls, or PBBs - was combined up with a cattle feed supplement, which led to widespread contamination in Michigan. Thousands of cattle and other livestock have been poisoned, about 500 farms have been quarantined and people throughout Michigan were exposed to a chemical linked to cancer, reproduction issues and endocrine disruption. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took management of the location in 1982 and the plant was demolished within the mid-nineties, leaving behind three Superfund sites within the 3.5-square mile city.
EPA officials didn't respond to repeated requests for comment on the poisoned birds and the Superfund cleanup. Of most concern is the 54-acre site that after contained Velsicol's principal plant, which backs as much as the neighborhood where residents have found lifeless birds on their lawns. Ed Lorenz, a professor at nearby Alma College and vice chair of the Pine River Superfund Citizen Task Force, which represents the neighborhood. Hall is the chair of the duty pressure. While there's a protracted-time period health examine for residents who had been exposed to PBBs, no one is monitoring their exposure to DDT or on the lookout for potential human health effects. Elsewhere, traces of the pesticide have been linked in some human studies to reproductive problems, together with decreased fertility and altered sperm counts. St. Louis City Manager Robert McConkie. The town's median family income is forty three p.c lower than the state's. About 22 p.c of its families reside below the poverty line. The birds apparently have been poisoned by consuming worms living in contaminated soil close to the outdated chemical plant.
No studies have been conducted to see whether or not the DDT has contaminated any vegetables or fruits grown in yards. Jane Keon, secretary of the task power, mentioned the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality ignored their complaints about dead birds for years. But Dan Rockafellow, the state agency's project supervisor for the location, stated it took time to gather enough hen samples to check. State officials didn't begin testing folks's yards till 2006, once they found a number of yards extremely contaminated with DDT and PBBs. EPA contractors now are cleansing up 59 yards. Next yr the company plans on including one other 37 yards exterior of the nine-block area. Many of the contamination is in the top six inches of the soil, probably from the chemicals drifting over from the plant, Rockafellow mentioned. However, some yards have DDT and PBBs deeper in the soil, which might be due to Velsicol's provide of free fill dirt to their neighbors decades in the past.