From Organic Family Magazine No. 2 RECIPES FOR A HEALTHY FUTURE OR FOR EXTINCTION - THE CHOICE IS OURS Judy Hoy, with technical assistance from Pamela Hallock Muller*, Ph.D.

A series of events occurred both within our own region and on the other side of the planet that combined like ingredients in a recipe to alter the appearance and diversity of animal life in the valley in which I live. These events provide a lesson in the interconnectedness of all life on Earth and likely provide a recipe for extinction. Several species can no longer be found in our county and populations of several others are in serious trouble.

In 1991, Mt. Pinatubo, a volcano in the Philippines, blasted enormous amounts of ash and sulfur gases into the atmosphere. Although Mt. Pinatubo is a long way from my home in Ravalli County in Western Montana, the fact that we live on a very small planet quickly came home to roost with very sharp talons.

High in the Earth's upper atmosphere is a region known as the stratosphere. Everyone knows that all animals require oxygen from the atmosphere to live and breathe. What many people don't realize is that a special form of oxygen known as ozone, high in the stratosphere, is also essential for complex forms of life, including humans, to exist on Earth.

A typical oxygen molecule is made up of two oxygen atoms. But when bombarded with cosmic radiation, some molecules break apart into individual atoms. Since an oxygen atom isn't stable alone, it binds to another oxygen molecule to form an ozone molecule, which consists of three oxygen atoms. Fortunately for us, ozone molecules are very effective in absorbing the most damaging ultraviolet-B (UVB) portion of the radiation that comes from the sun. For every 1% increase in the stratospheric ozone, 2% of the UVB is blocked from reaching the Earth's surface.

If too much UVB radiation reaches the Earth's surface, it can cause all kinds of havoc, particularly unfavorable chemical reactions. The most familiar type of UVB damage occurs when our skin sunburns. When damage occurs in the photosynthetic portion of plants, we also say the plant "sunburns." When such reactions take place in the genetic material of plant and animal cells, the result can be mutations. But many people don't realize that UVB exposure can also severely damage a plant or animal's immune system, leaving them much less able to detoxify chemical pollutants and resist infectious or opportunistic microbes. Without protective ozone in the stratosphere, complex life on Earth would perish, leaving the planet to the microbes that first inhabited the Earth more than three billion years ago.

In the 1970s, several chemists discovered that man-made chemicals known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) could be damaging the Earth's protective ozone layer. Soon thereafter, scientists with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) discovered the formation of an ozone hole in the stratosphere over the South Pole. Fortunately, most scientists and intelligent political leaders quickly recognized the critical threat to human existence and an international treaty known as the Montreal Protocol was signed phasing out the widespread use of CFCs.

However, because ozone-damaging chemicals are still in use, and because it takes several decades for them to travel to the stratosphere from where they are released near the Earth's surface, the protective ozone layer has continued to thin. Although ozone destruction is most dramatic in the polar regions, the formation of ozone holes represents widespread thinning. You can compare ozone thinning to wearing out your jeans - a hole forms where the cloth has worn away completely, but the cloth around the hole is thin and ragged. Each spring since the 1970s, the ozone in the Southern Hemisphere has thinned to nothing (called an "ozone hole") over the South Pole, with thin, ragged areas extending far to the north over Australia and South America and the southern oceans in between.

While most people have heard of the ozone hole over the South Pole, few Americans realize that the ozone layer over the northern hemisphere has also thinned, though not quite as rapidly. Since the mid-1990s, an ozone hole has formed over the North Pole each spring, with thin, ragged areas extending to the south over North America, Europe and Asia.

Just over 20 years ago, a large volcano in Mexico called El Chichon erupted, and scientists soon discovered that the sulfur gases spewed from very large volcanoes can work together with the man-made CFCs to destroy ozone globally, not just in the polar regions. Following the even larger Mt. Pinatubo eruption in 1991, the ozone layer thinned by an additional 4% worldwide, increasing the UVB reaching the Earth's surface by an average of 8%.

Canadian scientists have been measuring ozone levels since 1957. The closest station to western Montana is in Edmonton, Alberta, 500 miles straight north. By January 1993 and continuing through July of 1994, they documented an extensive thinning of the ozone layer over an oval-shaped area of the Northern Hemisphere from 30 to 60 north latitude (N). Ravalli County runs north and south on the extreme western edge of Montana, from 45 to 47 N, directly in the center of the oval.

An unusual weather pattern compounded the ozone thinning in late March of 1993, when the station in Edmonton recorded a record low spring time ozone value of 22% below normal for over two weeks. This low ozone value equated to an unprecedented increase in UVB to 44% higher than normal. As a Canadian scientist appropriately stated, "We were fried like a weenie in a microwave oven."

Canadian scientists also reported that just a few minutes of exposure to UVB levels of that magnitude severely weakens the immune system. Damage to the immune system from just one short exposure can last for at least two weeks. Since UVB levels remained consistently 10% to 20% high for well over a year, immune systems of all animal life exposed to the sun in the high UVB area would have been affected for that entire time period. The result was greatly increased susceptibility to diseases, including cancers, and to toxic effects of low-level chemical exposures.

I was told, in 1993 and 1994, that people were sunburning through their shirts and that drug stores in Western Montana could not keep sunburn lotion on the shelves. Doctors who specialize in skin cancers say that now, 11 years after this unprecedented and extended UVB dose, there is an epidemic of melanoma. Most distressing has been the significant increase in young people dying of the most deadly form of skin cancer.

Ironically, high UVB can be advantageous to oomycota, fungi, lichens, blue-green algae and a whole suite of microbes and other "primitive" microorganisms. Microbes represent the earliest colonizers of our planet; they were here before the Earth's atmosphere had free oxygen, let alone an ozone layer. UVB radiation causes mutations, and, while most are fatal, some can be advantageous. In microbes, with their more simple organization and high rates of reproduction, mutations are more likely to be advantageous and the "new and improved" microbes can rapidly increase in number. In more complex organisms, mutations are nearly always fatal.

I observed that blue-green algae and lichens (symbiotic associations between blue-green algae and fungi) grew at astounding rates. Those organisms were apparently basking in the high UVB and loving it. The rates of infection by potato blight and fungi such as wheat rust had farmers scrambling to protect their crops. Conventional farmers were advised to use more and stronger pesticides. Fungicide use increased from thousands to millions of pounds.

Potato blight was originally thought to be a type of fungus, but has since been found to be an oomycota, whose physiology is more closely related to us than previously thought. There have been assumptions concerning man-made chemicals which I believe will prove to be the most costly errors in human history. Assuming that chemicals which stop the growth and reproduction of oomycota would not have seriously adverse affects on all other living organisms, including vertebrates, has been one of the most costly in terms of lives.

Another of our most costly errors was brought to our attention by Rachel Carson in 1962 in her famous book Silent Spring. She warned us that some organochlorine pesticides, especially the much used 2,4-D had been shown in studies to cause chromosomal damage similar to that found with radiation poisoning. She also warned about the danger of exposing animal life to fungicides and the serious effects of pesticides on the earth's ecosystems and balance of natural functions. The cost in lives and dollars for not heeding her warnings will likely prove to be unsustainable in the near future.

Use of our next documented ingredient, a fungicide Chlorothalonil (aka, Bravo and other aliases), on potato fields in states upwind of Western Montana, accelerated rapidly, from a pre-1994 use of thousands of pounds to several million pounds in 1996 and 1997. This fungicide is classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a "general-use pesticide" of moderate toxicity. Nearly all toxicity studies performed on chlorothalonil were based on ingestion, and the major effects in studies with rats was hyperplasia (enlargement) in the fore-stomach and kidneys. Surficial exposure causes eye irritation and dermatitis. The only inhalation study that I could find concluded that Chlorothalonil was highly toxic to rats. Glutathione, an important defense mechanism against toxic chemicals within the liver, binds with chlorothalonil and its metabolites, and the bound toxin is transported to the kidneys where it is excreted.

Chlorothalonil is considered only moderately toxic to birds and mammals, but highly toxic to fish and other aquatic organisms. Toxic effects are not the only serious damage done to organisms. In a study of pesticides commonly found in food in a typical diet, Italian researchers found that combinations of pesticides caused oxidative damage resulting in misreplication of DNA. According to the researchers, "The damage increased dramatically at the lowest doses tested." Two of the pesticides, chlorothalonil and diophenylamine, caused misreplication of DNA when tested alone. Additionally, a study done on human cells and a study done on mouse cells, showed that chlorothalonil induced genetic (DNA) damage. Other studies show that it impairs protein synthesis, adversely affecting growth and disrupts production and synthesis of vital enzymes, resulting in increased cell death.

Chlorothalonil was not the only fungicide whose use dramatically increased on crops and lawns. However, it was the fungicide upon which I focused because the potato fields in Idaho are only 200 miles away. Chlorothalonil (0.03 ppb) and two similar chemicals (0.39 ppb), which were not specifically identified, were found in melt water from snow, which fell into glass pans in my front yard on March 17, 1998. I sent the melt water to Energy Labs in Billings, Montana, to be tested specifically for chlorothalonil. The lab concluded that the other chemicals detected were likely two metabolites of chlorothalonil or a metabolite and the main breakdown product, hexachlorobenzene. Hexachlorobenzene was banned by the EPA because it was shown to cause cancer. Chemical manufacturers attached two cyanide atoms to the hexachlorobenzene ring and gave it a new name, chlorothalonil. This new pesticide was allowed for use on crops by the EPA because in ingestion tests it was not shown to be extremely toxic.

Unfortunately, the most common "toxicity" tests required by the EPA are based on ingestion. Animals are much better able to neutralize and detoxify ingested chemicals rather than chemicals that are either inhaled or absorbed through the skin. This is because before humans began developing a wide range of toxic organic chemicals, animals were much more likely to eat a toxic plant than to breathe a toxic chemical. Nazi Germany used the enhanced toxicity of inhaled chemicals to "efficiently" kill millions of humans in gas chambers. Medical researchers today are using this knowledge to deliver more effective dosages of a variety of kinds of medications using inhalers, nasal sprays, and skin patches.

Many humans and other animals in Ravalli County began coughing severely in summer of 1994, around the same time the use of fungicides escalated dramatically on potatoes and other crops. However, our county officials considered the 0.42 ppb chemical combination in the snow melt to be too low to be of concern. This was despite being told that the test was done in March when no one was spraying locally and spraying had not occurred for several months on the closest source, the potato fields in Idaho. Concerned citizens, including myself, attempted in vain to get officials to understand that if those three chemicals were present in our air in winter, other chemicals not used here were likely coming here by atmospheric transport from other states or even other countries.

The three chemicals found in the test were proven to be airborne and likely present year-round. Exposure would likely be much higher in summer when the chemicals were being sprayed. Because we live in a valley surrounded by tall mountains, we have severe temperature inversions, which trap the chemicals on the floor of the valleys where most of the people, livestock, and wildlife live. The result is that every air breather (including humans) is forced to inhale chemicals with each breath, year-round. I believe that doctors and veterinarians should be made aware that such exposures to mixtures of airborne toxins are likely contributing to the many health problems that people and their domestic animals, as well as wildlife, are experiencing.

By 1996, the ingredients already in the recipe were producing serious effects. But to put the icing on the cake, in 1997, farmers in states upwind began testing a new growth-enhancing combination of amino acids called Auxigro by spraying it on the fields. It is not considered a pesticide so it has less regulation. One-third of the combined amino acids is glutamic acid, to which many people are highly allergic. Detrimental effects of chemicals on eyes, lungs, and hearts were brutally apparent immediately after Auxigro began being used.

In July of 1999, a team of amphibian researchers who took water samples in Ravalli County found a half part per billion of Alachlor in the Bitterroot River which begins in Ravalli County and runs the full length of Ravalli County before joining the Clark Fork River in Missoula County. Alachlor is used on peanuts, sorghum, corn, and other crops which are not grown in Ravalli County, except for a few patches of sweet corn and silage. The researchers apparently did not specifically inform officials in Montana that the highly estrogenic chemical Alachlor, which is not used here, was present in our river. I read the results of the study which was published in 2002, and informed the Governor of Montana, the State Health and Agricultural Departments and our county officials. No one was concerned that there was enough Alachlor in the snow in some weather fronts to cause a constant average measurement of 0.53 ppb in mountain snow melt running into the river in summer.

Atrazine, a similar chemical to Alachlor, has been reported to cause reproductive anomalies in frogs at concentrations as low as 0.1 part per billion, and is said to fall in rain and snow everywhere on the planet. When exposed to water containing Atrazine, immature male frogs develop female as well as male sex organs and have less testosterone than most female frogs. Both Alachlor and Atrazine have been shown to be serious hormone disrupters. Both of those much used herbicides have been strongly implicated in damage to immune systems in amphibians, and the subsequent decline in amphibian populations because of parasites and infections. In our area, recent declines in amphibian populations are being blamed on fungal infections. It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that organisms whose immune functions are seriously compromised chemically and/or by UVB exposure, would likely be susceptible to all kinds of infections.

In addition to hormone disrupting chemical combinations that are transported by weather fronts, there are PCBs, hormone-disrupting and otherwise toxic chemicals and heavy metals being carried on dust particles in the rain and snow. Heavy metals include mercury, arsenic, lead, silver, barium and aluminum. Some, like mercury bioaccumulate, and become highly toxic to the top animals in the food chain.

Even though local and state officials dismiss airborne transport of toxic chemicals as unlikely, such transport has been well documented scientifically. The U.S. Geological Survey and other researchers are currently studying the health consequences of microbe and heavy metal-laden dust transported across the Atlantic from North Africa. Prevailing air currents are an important part of the global water cycle. Like a whirling beater in the bowl of chemicals that the earth's atmosphere has become, the weather fronts swirl around and around. After being released into the environment, chemicals evaporate and condense then they are picked up around the world by weather fronts, leaving their chemical signatures in rain falling into fresh and salt-water bodies and in snow falling on our pristine mountain top wilderness areas, thus revealing the intricate linking of earth's ecosystems.

Long-range transport of Persistent Organo Pesticides (POPs) from warm regions to cold areas like the Arctic is explained by a hypothesis named Global Distillation. Multiple times, chemicals in the environment evaporate in the warmer regions, are carried to colder areas and condense. They eventually accumulate on mountain tops or in the far north, where evaporation rates are lower, and attach to dust and rock particles. They remain for years, or even decades in ice and glaciers. With global warming, the chemicals which have been trapped for many years are released to begin their journey over again. As chemicals melt out into lakes and rivers, they begin another journey, a journey through the food chain into tiny aquatic animals, eaten by fish and other predators, which are finally eaten by larger predators, including humans. With each step up in the food chain, they concentrate in fatty tissue at ever increasing levels. This is called bio-magnification. It is not surprising that researchers found high PCB concentrations in aboriginal peoples living in remote villages in the high Arctic, as these people eat fish and fat from fish-eating mammals.

Chlorothalonil's ability to travel long distances from where it is used was demonstrated in a U.S. Dept. of Agriculture study of the Bering Sea. Far from fields where the chlorothalonil was used, it was found in every fog sample and in most seawater samples collected, as were several other pesticides.

Closer to home, Glacier Park snow was found to have higher than anticipated levels of a variety of chemicals, as well as sulfates from fossil-fuel combustion, nitrates from fertilizers, and ammonium from cattle feedlots. Those pollutants were picked up by weather fronts in the Pacific Northwest and deposited in snow along the Continental Divide. In the Canadian mountains north of Glacier Park, POPs, including DDT byproducts, were found. These are thought to have been carried by the jet stream across the Pacific Ocean from as far away as Asia, where DDT is still used, although it is banned in the U.S.

In addition, tiny specks of dust carry many kinds of bacteria, viruses, and fungi, which not only survive the trip, they thrive on the chemicals attached to the outside of the dust particles and the minerals of which the dust is composed. When the specks of dust are breathed into an animals' lungs, the bacteria, viruses and fungi also go into this warm moist environment. There, they can multiply relatively unimpeded if the immune systems of the animal has been compromised by chemical toxins and/or UVB.

Besides ingredients in the recipe for extinction from outside our area, there are some very insidious ingredients dumped into the mixture right here in Ravalli County. Throughout most of the 1990s, mint fields were scattered around the northern half of Ravalli County. I liked mint until I found out what was sprayed on mint fields and what that mixture did to animals. The primary chemicals, which I was told were used on mint here in Ravalli County were Terbicil, Bentazone, Copyralid (all herbicides), Propargite (insecticide for mites) and Acephate (insecticide).

My introduction to the estrogenic power of this mixture of ingredients happened by accident. I sent two healthy neutered three and one half month old, completely normal male Saunan goats to join the goat herd at the local refuge for their weed eating program. A large complex of mint fields, adjacent to the entire east side of the refuge, had all of the above, plus other chemicals regularly sprayed or applied through the sprinkler system. When I brought the five-month-old goats home six weeks later, they were both coughing severely, both very emaciated, and both had fairly large udders. I treated them for chemical exposure, which relieved their coughing and enabled them to gain to nearly normal weight. Although otherwise healthy again, they retained their mammary development and acted like female goats for several months. By the time they were a year old the mammary development had completely disappeared and their behavior had returned to normal.

Parents and pediatricians need to take notice of what estrogenic chemicals can do to small children. I later heard reports of little girls and even little boys in Ravalli County, who had significant breast development at five to eight years of age. Coincidentally, they lived near mint fields. Doctors gave the boys a shot of androgens and the breasts went away. Breast development in little girls was considered normal. The question remains whether those children suffered permanent damage.

Another major composite of ingredients has been consistently and increasingly sprayed into the mixture as the result of our state and county officials declaring a "War on Weeds." I call it the "War on Babies." Many people who live in Ravalli County add significant but unknown amounts of 2,4-D, Picloram, Glysophate, MCPP, Dicamba and other hormone disrupting, mitochondria damaging, brain-cell frying herbicides to the recipe for extinction. In addition, we must not fail to consider all of the so-called inert ingredients in the pesticides used here and up wind. Many are far more toxic, DNA damaging and/or hormone disrupting than the primary ingredient.

Every spring, each county and state road is sprayed on both sides, usually with a combination of 2,4-D and Picloram or Roundup (Glysophate). Several other herbicides are less commonly used. This exposes nearly every organism in the county to combinations of herbicides, plus the so-called "inert ingredients," in comparatively high doses for hours or even days. Bees, birds, sheep, and goats have been the most often reported casualties to be found dead after roadside spraying.

Additionally, several hatchling birds and fourteen young goats which had normal facial bone development have been observed to suddenly express an inability to digest food, lethargy, diarrhea and underbite (as a result of interrupted growth of skull and maxilla). On each occasion, the symptoms of illness and interruption of bone (and feather) growth occurred immediately after exposure to known application of 2,4-D and Picloram in the area where the young goats or hatchling birds lived. Again we should wonder what this combination of herbicides does to young children who live and play near sprayed roadsides or in areas where that combination is sprayed by air.

Almost everyone who lives in Western Montana, including myself, contributes to two of the ingredients being stirred into our recipe for extinction - exhaust from vehicles and smoke from stoves. Many recent studies of the components of smoke and vehicle exhaust have found that some do disrupt hormones, which means they likely affect the immune system. Everyone knows that smoke can cause lung damage and damage fetuses in the womb. Doctors have been telling us that for years.

I know only a few of the ingredients that are present in the constantly changing chemical soup that we breathe each day. There are tens of thousands of chemicals going into the air each day globally that are carried by the atmosphere to all parts of the earth. The total number of chemicals that cells of plants and animals have to deal with is unimaginable. When combined with fluctuating, elevated UVB and other radiation, what is amazing, is not that species are going extinct, but that so many species have so far been able to survive.

This article was originally published in Organic Family Magazine No. 2. ISSN 1550-8072
URL: http://www.organicfamilymagazine.com

Hoy, Judy. 2004. Recipes for a healthy future or for extinction- the choice is ours. Organic Family Magazine 2:5-9