Songbirds Dying From DDT In Michigan Yards
LOUIS, Mich. - Jim Hall was mowing the city's baseball diamond when he felt a little bump underneath him. Just last week, he found another one. Hall, who has lived on this mid-Michigan city of 7,000 for 50 years. After residents complained for years about useless birds in their yards, 22 American robins, six European starlings and one bluebird were collected for testing. The outcomes, revealed final week: The neighborhood's songbirds are being poisoned by DDT, a pesticide that was banned in the United States more than 40 years ago. Lethal concentrations have been found within the birds' brains, as well as in 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 elements per million, with a mean of 552. "Thirty in the mind is the threshold for acute death," Zwiernik said.
Twelve of the 29 birds had mind 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 book Silent Spring exposed the hazards of DDT, especially for birds. Populations of bald eagles and other birds crashed when DDT thinned their eggs, killing their embryos. The nine-block neighborhood has become an actual-life example of Carson's "Fable for Tomorrow" in Silent Spring. Velsicol is infamous for one of many worst chemical disasters in U.S. In 1973 a flame retardant compound they manufactured - polybrominated biphenyls, or PBBs - was mixed up with a cattle feed complement, which led to widespread contamination in Michigan. Thousands of cattle and different livestock had been poisoned, about 500 farms had been quarantined and clashofcryptos.trade folks throughout Michigan have been exposed to a chemical linked to cancer, reproduction issues and endocrine disruption. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took management of the positioning in 1982 and the plant was demolished within the mid-1990s, leaving behind three Superfund websites in the 3.5-sq. mile town.
EPA officials did not reply to repeated requests for touch upon the poisoned birds and the Superfund cleanup. Of most concern is the 54-acre site that when contained Velsicol's major plant, which backs as much as the neighborhood where residents have found dead birds on their lawns. Ed Lorenz, a professor at close by Alma College and vice chair of the Pine River Superfund Citizen Task Force, www.neurosurges.net which represents the neighborhood. Hall is the chair of the duty pressure. While there is a protracted-time period well being examine for residents who had been exposed to PBBs, no one is monitoring their exposure to DDT or on the lookout for doable human well being results. 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 household revenue is 43 p.c lower than the state's. About 22 % of its households stay below the poverty line. The birds apparently have been poisoned by consuming worms living in contaminated soil close to the outdated chemical plant.
No research have been conducted to see whether or not the DDT has contaminated any vegetables or fruits grown in yards. Jane Keon, secretary of the duty drive, stated the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality ignored their complaints about useless birds for years. But Dan Rockafellow, the state company's undertaking supervisor for the location, said it took time to collect sufficient fowl samples to check. State officials did not start testing folks's yards until 2006, after they found a number of yards extremely contaminated with DDT and PBBs. EPA contractors now are cleaning up 59 yards. Next yr the company plans on adding another 37 yards outdoors of the nine-block area. Most 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 may very well be as a consequence of Velsicol's offer of free fill dirt to their neighbors a long time ago.
