Decrepit Old Fool

From my photo album; Notes

Thursday night MrsDoF and I attended a guest lecture by Dr. Tyrone Hayes, a biologist from UC Berkeley, on the biological effects of the herbicide atrazine on amphibians and mammals. Using concentrations of 0.1ppb (which are, to say the least, environmentally relevant), he showed how atrazine caused high incidence of intersexed frogs, and prostate and mammary cancer in humans.  He also found neural damage in salamanders and mice.  The effects propagated in different ways through three generations even if exposure was discontinued.

His research was originally funded by Syngenta, the Swiss manufacturer of atrazine.  But when he started getting results like that, they told him to take a hike and threatened to sue him.  He now has funding from other sources to continue his research.  Atrazine is banned in Europe (or as the company prefers to say; “denied regulatory approval”) but we spray 80 million pounds of it on crops here in the US.  The highest concentrations of it in rainwater, groundwater, and tap water are in Iowa, Illinois and Indiana.  So this is a topic of no small interest ‘round these parts.

Syngenta says atrazine has “been used safely for over 47 years” but they decline to define “safe”.  The Epa (which is currently renewing its examination of the chemical) allows 30 times more atrazine in your drinking water than the levels studied by Dr. Hayes.

All very interesting. And you might ask a woman who has just miscarried or who has breast cancer – or a man with prostate cancer, what “safe” means.  The company’s press releases sound, with minor changes in wording, like they are from a tobacco company years ago. 

But something else occurred to me…

MrsDoF works with autistic children on a regular basis.  Because of a perceived increase in the rate of autism, many people are frantic in search for a cause, and hopefully a cure.  A strong focus has been turned on vaccinations, even though that’s been studied to death by independent scientists and the link just isn’t there.  The science came out on the side of the big pharma companies that make the vaccinations (and aren’t getting rich from them).  Never mind, Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey know better.  You never hear them wondering if the real reason might be some ubiquitous environmental chemical like atrazine or bisphenol acetate (BPA).  Something with proven endocrine disruptive and neurological effects.  If there is an increase in autism, it might be worth studying.

Everyone carries cell phones and some people get brain cancer.  Epidemiological studies aren’t showing a link, and cell phone radiation is in the wrong part of the electromagnetic spectrum to cause cancer (a couple orders of magnitude too far down the scale, in fact, to damage DNA molecules).  But never mind, the Maine legislation knows better and voted to require warning labels on cell phones.  In this case the science comes out on the side of the cell phone companies, which needless to say, are appealing the decision.  Again, nobody on the panic-side of the equation seems to be asking about ubiquitous environmental chemicals.

Jumping to conclusions has a certain satisfying feel to it.  But it’s wrong and ends up hurting people.  It is the environmental equivalent of arresting the first suspect.  For reasons I can’t even fathom, politicians seem content to do this and then trumpet the conviction, even if it is based on little more than a corporate press release that this chemical or that practice is “safe”.  It’s better to look for independent science on the subject, which is to say; “not from the company’s labs”.  Science takes time, and the results are frustratingly couched in terms of probabilities, but it’s our best bet for regulatory insight.  If it’s certainty you want, go jump off a thousand-foot cliff.

NOTES:

• The R. Omar and Evelyn Rilett Family Life Sciences lecture series is presented by the School of Biological Sciences at Illinois State University.

• Dr. Hayes’ website is Atrazine Lovers.  I do wish he could afford to hire a webmaster.
• EPA atrazine page
• EPA announces renewal of atrazine examination
• One of life’s little ironies: the company that makes Atrazine, and the company that makes the most common breast cancer chemotherapy drug, are divisions of the same parent company.
       
• Frogs are insectivores.  If we don’t have any more frogs (the spotted leopard frog is rare in Illinois now, used to be common) you have to wonder what bug’s life cycle is now unrestrained and what impact that will have on agriculture.  And for that matter, some “superweeds” are evolving resistance to atrazine, in some cases by gene-transfer from atrazine-resistant crops.  Which is to say; crops genetically engineered to allow higher levels of atrazine.
       
• By the way, atrazine plays hell with oceanic phytoplankton.