Pollution

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Pollution Disease

• Light pollution
• Noise
• Contaminants

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Light Pollution and Biodiversity

• Birds
• Use the moon and stars for navigation during
  their bi-annual migrations.
• collisions with night-lit towers
• Reptiles
• Sea turtle hatchlings orient themselves toward
  the sea based on subtle light along horizon
• Artificial Light and Feeding, Hunting, and
  Hormones
• Light is a major trigger of physiology

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• While on the beach, hatchlings find the ocean by
  crawling towards the lower, brighter seaward
  horizon and away from the dark, elevated
  silhouettes of vegetation and dunes.

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Exam II

• This Friday 3/24
• 50 multiple choice and T/F
• 5 take homes due the following Monday
• Part II of the text (except PVA which we cover in
  next section)
• Lecture material since last exam except
  Overconsumption/Overpopulation

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Noise pollution
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Noise and whales

• Whales are acoustic animals navigate, find
  mates, find food, communicate
• Avoid sounds with a source level of about 120 dB
• Air guns used for oil exploration geophysical
  research (216 - 230 dB)
• Underwater construction and explosives
• Military sonars
• Large ships

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Noise and whales

• Effects
• Masking social communications used to find mates
  or identify predators
• Temporary and permanent hearing loss or
  impairment
• Displacement from preferred habitat
• Disruption of feeding, breeding, nursing and
  communication
• Strandings
• Death and serious injury from hemorrhaging and
  tissue trauma
• Public and scientific concern about underwater
  noise pollution has grown over the last decade
  after a series of mass mortalities of cetaceans
  associated with the use of mid-frequency active
  sonar in coastal areas

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Contaminants Disease

• CHLORINATED HYDROCARBONS
• DDT PCBs
• AIR POLLUTION AND ACID RAIN
• ENDOCRINE DISRUPTING CHEMICALS
• INTERACTIONS

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PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls)

• PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls)
• Compounds manufactured post-1930's as
  non-flammable insulators and heat-dissipators in
  capacitors and transformers, hydraulic fluids,
  paint additives and plasticizers.
• Cause liver damage, affect calcium metabolism,
  and cause pathological changes in the
  reproductive system.
• Production stopped in 1977 but due to stability
  and bioaccumulation, still detected at high
  levels in animal tissues.

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DDT (dichloro diphenyl trichloro ethane)

• DDT is not metabolized and does not break down in
  the body.
• It is much more soluble in fat than in water
  (lipophilic)
• Accumulates in body fat and is not excreted.
• Carnivores eat many times their body weight of
  prey during their lifetime -- the carnivore
  accumulates most of the DDT that was present in
  all of the prey organisms.

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Blocks calcium transfer
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Average levels of DDT in human body fat for
individuals living in the United States,
1942-1978 (PPM, m g/g fat).
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Turtles of the Akwesasne (St. Regis) Reservation

• St. Lawrence River in northern New York State
• Snapping turtle eggs in 2000 had total PCB
  concentrations ranging from 1,900 to 61,000 parts
  per million
• federal standards for PCB levels for edible
  poultry are 3 parts per million and for edible
  fish are 2 parts per million.
• soil on a dry-weight basis of 50 parts per
  million is considered a hazardous waste site.
• The situation tragic for the local people whose
  creation story holds that the world took shape on
  a giant, benevolent turtles back and who
  traditionally depended on turtles for food and
  cultural uses.

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Beluga

• Corpses of 129 beluga whales stranded on the St
  Lawrence River shore over 17 years analyzed
• Loaded with PCBs and DDT
• Depress immune system (pneumonia, ulcers, cysts,
  lesions, tumors, and bacterial infections) and
  low birth rates
• 20 of animals have cancer

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A global problem -- highest PCB levels in humans
and marine mammals in Arctic

• E.g., western Aleutian sea otter tissue has x2
  concentration of PCBs than otters living along
  the central California coast.
• Inuit have highest human concentrations
• PCBs in Arctic not coming from local sources
• Concentrated at high latitudes by the phenomenon
  of global distillation.
• PCBs evaporate rapidly from the soils of warm
  latitudes, but condense and come back to the
  surface in rain and snow at high latitudes
• Same applies to DDT

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Overseas

• DDT is still used in Mexico, Central and South
  America, and Asia, mainly inside houses for
  mosquito control.
• It is still being manufactured in Mexico, China
  and India.

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Acid Rain
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Each year the U.S. discharges into the atmosphere

• 15 million tons sulfur dioxide
• 70 from power plants burning coal or oil.
• 30 from smelters and refineries.
• 20 million tons nitrogen oxides
• 40 from cars, trucks, planes
• 30 from power plants
• 30 from other industrial sources.
• Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides combine with
  water in the air to form sulfuric acid and nitric
  acid, causing acid rain

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Aquatic systems

• Acidification of lakes directly kills algae,
  invertebrates, amphibians, and ultimately fish.
• Lots of beautiful clear lakes that are dead.
• Over 200 lakes in the Adirondack Mountains are
  now unfit for fish.

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Soils

• Removal of soil nutrients.
• Leaches essential nutrients, including calcium
  and potassium, out of the soil thus reducing
  their availability to plants.
• Can kill microorganisms (e.g., fungi), preventing
  decomposition from returning nutrients to the
  soil
• Forest die-back

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Of soils, snails, songbirds
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• Snails rasp substrate to obtain calcium for shell
  building snails uncommon on acidified substrates
• Female tits eat snails as main source of calcium
  for egg shells
• Greatly reduced reproduction where snails
  uncommon
• Greatly increased reproduction where oyster
  shells provided
• Calcium leached from soils across large expanses
  of w. Europe limits songbird reproduction

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Hames, R. S., K. V. Rosenberg, J. D. Lowe, S. E.
Barker, and A. A. Dhondt, 2002. Adverse effects
of acid rain on the distribution of the Wood
Thrush Hylocichla mustelina in North America.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
9911235-11240
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Metals

• Dissolving toxic metals, typically aluminum and
  mercury, which are otherwise insoluble and
  harmless.

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Methyl mercury

• Once mercury is dissolved by acid, converted into
  methyl mercury, which is highly toxic to
  wildlife.
• A neuropoison, swells myelin sheath insulating
  nerves, thus preventing signals from being
  "correctly" sent along axons
• Behavioral disorders
• Major reason for decline in populations of loons
  in the eastern U.S.

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Endocrine-disrupting chemicals
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Endocrine-disrupting chemicals

• Mimic the effects of the body's own hormones and
  can impair the immune system as well as sexual
  development and fertility.
• Chemicals in this group include many pesticides
  (DBCP, DDT, DDE, kepone, heptachlor, chlordane,
  dieldrin, mirex, lindane and toxaphene), dioxins,
  PCBs, Bisphenol-A, and phthalates
• Many mimic the female hormone estrogen.

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Structures of estrogenic compounds. The
pesticides o,p'-DDT (I) and chlordecone (II
Kepone) the plasticizer bisphenol-A (III) and
the phytoesterogens zearalenone (IV), genistein
(V), and coumestrol (VI).
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Case Study Atrazine

• A common weed killer
• More than 60 million pounds applied last year in
  the United States alone.
• Used to control weeds on about two-thirds of all
  U.S. corn and sorghum acreage - improves corn
  yield by slightly more than four percent
• Collects in wetlands
• Atrazine ups production of the enzyme aromatase,
  which converts androgen hormones to estrogen
  hormones

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Hayes experiments

• At various concentrations of atrazine, used two
  separate populations of frogs raised in three
  separate tanks
• Atrazine affected sexual development of frogs at
  concentrations of 0.1 ppb and higher 30 x lower
  than the allowable limit of 3 ppb in drinking
  water
• At these low concentrations, up to 16 percent of
  the animals had more than the normal numbers of
  gonads

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More results

• Vocal organs of more than 80 percent of males
  exposed to 1 ppb or more of atrazine were smaller
  than average.
• Sexually mature males showed a 10-fold decrease
  in testosterone levels, bringing them below
  levels found in normal females.
• This suggests that atrazine acts by disrupting
  the synthesis of sex hormones, which could also
  explain the smaller larynges and abnormal gonads.

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Implications
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End - Pollution Disease