One Helluva Cell

Fish have been dying in great numbers across the United States--for years. Try an estimated 11.7 million in one year in 22 states. Try 14.3 million in Texas in less than a year. A million in one month in North Carolina. It's not just fish either. Dolphins, sea turtles, whales, sea lions, seals and birds die too. And people become ill.

The cause, of course, is us. Our pollution is too much for the rivers, bays, coastal waters and other water bodies. The pollution may not be yours and mine directly, but it is ours indirectly because we demand the consumer products, services and conveniences that support our lifestyles. Agricultural runoff is a big cause. So are herbicides, pesticides, weed killers and herbicides, oil products, metals, sewage plant overflow, and all kinds of chemicals. You try swimming in this stuff.

Often the agricultural runoff contains nutrients that feed algae so well that they "bloom" into huge numbers know as red tides and brown tides. Such blooms aren't good because as they die off and decompose they require a great amount of oxygen, which when depleted deprives other organisms of the oxygen they need. Thus there are fish kills. But there is more to these blooms then simply depleted oxygen and dead fish. Some of these blooms are made up of organisms that can be toxic, so it's more than just oxygen depletion that kills fish.

A few dead fish would be one thing, but millions of dead fish are another. Dead fish don't do the commercial or sport fishing industries any good. Poor fishing can mean poor tourism. Millions of dead fish also don't do the environment any good. Too many dead fish at one time cannot decompose and be consumed in a normal ecosystem's performance. This leads to unhealthy water, which translates into illness in people.

In 1991, a scientist named JoAnn Burkholder slowly stumbled onto the toxic nature of a water-dwelling organism called Pfiesteria piscicida, (pronounced fee-STEER-ee-uh pis-kuh-SEED-uh). She did more than stumbled,--she almost died. So did one of her research assistants who was studying the phenomenon in a poorly ventilated laboratory. Everyone thought he was working in a safely ventilated area in 1993 when in fact the toxic air from an isolation lab was being pumped into the supposedly safe area. That's right. Pfiesteria's toxic nature can be airborne. Despite her research assistant's extreme experience, which included unexplained personality change, and Burkholder's own experiences with disorientation, depression, mental lapse, physical weakness and other symptoms, scientific community peer reviewers failed to recognize her research as legitimate.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic