Report: Pesticides hurting Bay, need closer look
A group of advocates and experts is warning that pesticide pollution from farm fields and households is contributing to the Chesapeake Bay's decline, and may well be linked to declines in frogs across the region and intersex fish seen in the Potomac River.
In a report released today, the group calls on federal, state and local government to accelerate research into what threats pesticide contamination may pose to the bay, and to step up efforts to reduce such toxic pollution.
"The thing that alarms us the most are the endocrine disruptors and the findings that have come out about intersex fish and frogs with reproductive problems,'' said Robert SanGeorge, director of the Pesticides and the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Project. Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that mimic the natural hormones in humans or animals and can disrupt their growth and reproduction.
The project is a partnership between the Maryland Pesticides Network and the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. The group's warning and recommendations are the product of two years' study, in consultation with scientists, public health experts, government officials, watermen, environmentalists, farmers and pest management industries.
The report comes as federal and state governments attempt to jump-start the 26-year-old effort to restore the bay. The multi-state bay campaign has focused mainly on reducing nutrient pollution from sewage, farm and lawn fertilizer, power plants and vehicles. But the report argues that not enough attention is being paid to the potential harm being done by pesticides, primarily herbicides that wash off farm fields but also the many household products with a plethora of chemical ingredients that are washed down sewers.
"There's no smoking gun," SanGeorge says, acknowledging the lack of conclusive research showing toxic chemicals in the bay and its tributaries are harming fish and wildlife and bay grasses. But he points to studies suggesting problems and "enormous data gaps" that need to be filled.
Researchers suspect pesticides in the Potomac, for instance, may be causing the development of "intersex" fish, with both male and female reproductive organs. They have yet to find clear evidence of such a link however. Likewise, researchers have raised concerns about the impact on frogs and fish of low levels of the weed-killer atrazine found in water samples across the bay region. That connection also is still being studied and debated.
"We know there are some gaps in the data and our understanding of the effects," said Greg Allen, a scientist in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Chesapeake Bay office. One area deserving further study, he suggested, is the impact on spawning fish and frogs in springtime, when herbicides freshly applied to farm fields at planting time tend to show up in greater concentrations in nearby streams.
While officials have gone to great lengths to figure the amounts of nutrient pollution entering the bay from all sources, there are no similar catalogs of pesticide use in the region. The report urges required reporting of some uses, but largely calls for voluntary measures and incentives to encourage less use of pesticides and potentially toxic chemicals.
Jeff Lape, director of EPA's bay program office, acknowledged the report and said in an email that government agencies would continue to work "to promote sensible alternatives and other options that will reduce the input of pesticides to the bay."
To read the report, go here.
Comments
Concerning the wildlife effects, such as the recent apparent increase in the number of intersex fish, from environmental exposure to hormonally active agents (HAAs), we may not have to look any further than human activity as a primary source of HAAs. Natural estrogens and oral contraceptives exist in our waterways at concentrations that might promote the effects outlined in this report. Other materials which we flush down our drains every day, such as cosmetics, are know HAAs. Pesticides, particularly the organochlorines, are well known as HAAs. The use of these materials has been in great decline over the past 30 years in our country. It seems that pesticides are noted by the media beyond the level of their actual contribution to harmful environmental and wildlife effects. The human population in the Chesapeake watershed has doubled in the last 50 years. It is very convenient to always look for insidious caues to these problems rather than ourselves as a primary cause.
Posted by: MIke Cantwell | July 30, 2009 2:17 PM
The problem really isn't the farms but the spread of humanity along the bay. Everytime there is a sewage treatment plant going up the population along the bay jumps 10 fold. These homes built along the water and water view kill the trees and grass land and cause massive run off that does not occur even on the most anti enviroment farmer. He needs the plants. Anne Arundel County is the worst, letting the developers just run wild and build anywhere alng the bay.
Posted by: kathy | July 30, 2009 5:43 PM
This effort to clean up the Bay has been going on for 26 years? And nothings been done yet?
Posted by: david wayne osedach | July 30, 2009 6:09 PM