Bee Colony Collapse Mystery

  • Brownish-orange bumps on the backs of these bees are Varroa jacobson mites, a possible cause of the disappearing bees. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

Scientists are scrambling to find out why honey bee populations are
collapsing. Lester Graham reports, there are a lot of theories. Some
of them are getting more attention than others:

Transcript

Scientists are scrambling to find out why honey bee populations are
collapsing. Lester Graham reports, there are a lot of theories. Some
of them are getting more attention than others:


Recently, beekeepers have seen entire colonies of worker bees leave and
never come back to the hive. It’s called Colony Collapse Disorder.
Some news reports have suggested wireless phones or cell phone towers
might be throwing off bees’ navigation.


Barry O’Connor is Curator of Insects at the University of Michigan’s
Museum of Zoology. He says so far, that’s just a theory:


“This phenomenon has been seen in a lot of places where there aren’t
cell phone towers. And so it’s not the whole story if it’s even a part
of the story.”


Other theories for the collapse include stress from moving bees around
to pollinate crops, a newer class of nicotine-based pesticides, a
genetically modified corn with a built-in insecticide, or a combination
of environmental problems.


Growers say food production could drop a lot without honeybees to
pollinate crops.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Good Fish, Bad Fish

  • Some grocery stores are training their staff on the benefits and risks of eating some kinds of fish. Nels Carson (pictured) answers customers' concerns about fish contamination. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Fish advisories are confusing. Their guidelines change depending on your gender and age,
and on the type of fish you’re eating. Reporter Kyle Norris boils down
some of the information in advisories and comes up with a few things to think about
when you eat fish:

Transcript

Fish advisories are confusing. Their guidelines change depending on your gender and age,
and on the type of fish you’re eating. Reporter Kyle Norris boils down
some of the information in advisories and comes up with a few things to think about
when you eat fish:


So I did a little informal survey the other day where I asked my friends what they knew about
eating fish. Some of my friends said, “Hey, isn’t eating fish good for you?” Well, turns out they’re right. Fish are
great sources of protein. They’re low in “bad” fats and high in “good” fats, or omega-3
fatty acids, which help your heart stay healthy.


And some of my other friends knew that fish were bad for you. Turns out they’re also right. Fish
take in pollutants through their food and water. Toxins such as mercury, PCBs, and
dioxins. If humans eat enough contaminated fish, those contaminants can build up in our
bodies and cause serious health problems. Contaminants are especially threatening for
small children and women of childbearing age because they can affect children’s
developing nervous systems.


Governments put out advisories so we know which fish are safe to eat. But advisories aren’t
the easiest thing to understand. And anyway, what do you do if you’re in a restaurant, or
cruising through the grocery store and you just want some fish?


“Uh we’re standing in front of the seafood counter at Whole Foods and we’re looking at
our fresh case…”


That’s Nels Carlson. He heads up the seafood department at my local Whole Foods
Market. He says people ask him about fish safety everyday:


“It can be kind of a daunting topic, I think, because there is such a variety. It’s not just a
gross generalization. So it really, it takes a lot of dialogue between customers and team
members and having a very knowledgeable team member base here really helps that.”


They’ll ask him about mercury in the fish, a highly toxic metal that occurs naturally but is a lot more prevalent
mostly because of coal burning power plants. Mercury shows up in higher concentrations
in certain kinds of fish. It’s nice to have a knowledgeable guy like Nels to talk with. Good fish vendors, such as
Whole Foods, go through special training on fish safety. But what if there’s no seafood
expert hanging out next to the fish sticks in the freezer section, if you know what I mean?


Anita Sandretto teaches in the Environmental Health Sciences department at the
University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, and she said that my friends are right.
Okay, well, she didn’t really say that, but she said there are good things about fish and there are bad things about fish:


“If you want to have the benefit of the fat and the omega-3 fatty acids, eat fish with more
fat, but the fat will also be where you will see the contaminants such as PCBs, dioxin.
The flesh will also be where you might have the mercury contamination.”


See, that’s the thing about eating fish: it gets complicated and there are no hard and fast
rules. Sandretto says eating fish is all about treading a line between the advantages and
the risks. So, if there is a risk, you want to reduce it as much as possible:


“…Because if you have any risk in a particular type of food, if you only consume once in
while, you have a less risk of anything bad happening.”


So think in terms of moderation and variety. Sandretto says it’s cool if you want to eat fish once or
twice a week, and to try and vary the kinds of fish that you eat. She says moderation and
variety are actually great rules of thumb to apply to your entire diet. So you could eat a
turkey sandwich on white one day, tuna on whole wheat the next, and a veggie burger the day
after that.


If you eat fish caught from local waters, check with your regional or state health
departments for their fish advisories. Just because a waterway looks clean or is in a
picturesque setting does not mean that its fish are harmless. Contaminants enter the
water in all kinds of ways.


One last thought: imagine a little fish with a little bit of contamination in its body.
Now imagine a medium-sized fish, who swims along and eats that fish and 99 of its closest small
fish friends. That medium guy now has 100 times more contamination than the small fish.
And now let’s say a big fish swims up and gulps down ten medium fish. That big fish has a
concentration that’s 1000 times higher than what that origianal small fish had.


So the moral of that story is, eat smaller fish when possible, also called pan fish. And
at the end of the day, keep in mind that the majority of research, including a recent study
from Harvard’s School of Public Health, say that the benefits of eating fish in moderation
outweigh the risks.


For The Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

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Report: Toxic Waste Sites Near Minorities

A new report says toxic waste facilities are more likely to be built near the homes of racial minorities. Rebecca Williams reports the study follows up on a landmark report from twenty years ago:

Transcript

A new report says toxic waste facilities are more likely to be built near the homes of racial minorities. Rebecca Williams reports the study follows up on a landmark report from twenty years ago:


Both studies examined how close people live to toxic waste sites. The new report finds minorities who live in poorer neighborhoods are the most likely to live near toxic sites. The report says little has changed in 20 years and problems have been made worse by weak environmental laws.


Paul Mohai is a professor at the University of Michigan and a co-author of the study. He says racial minorities in poorer neighborhoods are often unfairly treated.


“They’re quite a bit more at risk than white Americans because they do tend to live in communities that not only have more pollution burdens but they also lack resources frankly that more affluent white communities have.”


Mohai says minorities living in poor neighborhoods tend to have less access to elected officials. He says that can make it harder to fight against the siting of a new waste facility.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Road Salt Damage

  • Overuse of salt can cause damage to concrete, steel and the environment. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Each year about 118,000 people are hurt and 1,300 people are killed on
the roads during snowy and icy conditions. So, snowplows hit the
roads, scraping snow and ice off the surface… and spreading
incredible amounts of salt on highways, streets and roads to help keep
them clear. Lester Graham reports there’s some concern about the long-
term effects of all that salt:

Transcript

Each year about 118,000 people are hurt and 1,300 people are killed on
the roads during snowy and icy conditions. So, snowplows hit the
roads, scraping snow and ice off the surface… and spreading
incredible amounts of salt on highways, streets and roads to help keep
them clear. Lester Graham reports there’s some concern about the long-
term effects of all that salt:


This dump truck is getting ready for a load of salt for a coming
winter storm. Salt helps make icy roads safer. It helps prevent
people from slipping and falling on sidewalks. And… it’s pretty
cheap. But there are problems with salt. Salt pollutes and salt
corrodes.


Mark Cornwell has spent a good deal of his career trying to convince
highway crews that there are better ways to keep things safe and reduce
how much salt is dumped on roads and sidewalks:


“Salt basically damages just about everything it comes in contact
with. Salt moves through concrete and attacks structural steel,
bridges, roads, parking structures; it eats the mortar out of bricks
and foundations. It damages limestone, you know, just on and on and
on.”


So, even though salt is cheap, the damage it does costs a lot. It’s a
hidden cost that’s seldom calculated. Imagine the cost of having to
replace a bridge five years early because the structure is weakened by
salt. And then there are your direct costs: trying to keep salt
washed off your vehicle, and still seeing rust attack your car.


Cornwell says there are some cities and road commissioners working to
reduce the amount of salt spread on the roads. But in most places, the
political pressure to get the salt trucks out early, and laying it on
thick to keep drivers happy, outweighs any concerns about trying to
reduce the salt:


“I’m sure the public expects full attention to snow and ice. And they
have absolutely no understanding, however, of what it costs to provide
that.”


Nobody thought a lot about the damage salt was causing until the last
couple of decades. In a few places, the people responsible for keeping
the roads and walkways safe have been trying to reduce the amount of
salt they use and still keep public safety tops on the list of
concerns:


“So, this is our shops. The brine-maker is right here.”


Marvin Petway is showing me some of the tools in his arsenal to reduce
how much salt is used and still keep things safe. He works at the
University of Michigan, where there’s a goal to cut the amount of salt
used in winter in half. What they’ve learned is using innovative ways
of putting down salt can actually help melt snow and ice faster. One
way is to mix it with water to get the chemicals in salt working
a little more quickly:


“Why use 5 pounds of rock salt when you can use 2 gallons of liquid
salt? We’re able to get better coverage, quicker, better cost, and
we’re putting the material that is effective in reducing ice build-up
directly to the area where we don’t want ice located.”


The crews trying to reduce salt use computer assisted spreaders to
measure out only the salt needed, they mix in less corrosive chemicals
that make salt brine more effective, and even just wetting the salt in
dump trucks with chemicals all help to melt snow and ice faster and in
the end use a lot less salt.


Nothing is going to replace salt altogether, but those efforts can add
up to a lot less salt. That means less destruction of infrastructure.


But there are more reasons for reducing salt than the damage to
roadways and parking decks. Salt also damages the environment:


Mark Cornwell first noticed the effects of salt because he was a
horticulturalist. He’d work all spring, summer and fall planting
shrubs, make the grass green, tending beds of flowers. Then the winter
would come:


“Unfortunately what we were doing in six months of winter was
undoing everything we did in the other six months of the year.
If you’re going to get ahead, you’ve got to solve the problem
and in my mind, that was misuse of salt.”


Use too much salt and it kills plants. And it turns out the cost of
using all that cheap salt could be even greater than anyone guessed.
For decades, it’s been assumed that rain washed away most of the salt, but
studies in Ontario find that a lot of the salt doesn’t get washed
away.


Instead, a good deal of it is percolating down into shallow aquifers.
Researchers predict that in the future we’ll start find salt is getting
into the groundwater that supplies many of the wells where we get our
drinking water.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Viral Disease Killing Great Lakes Fish

  • Commercial fishers and biologists are concerned about the impact a viral disease will have on the Great Lakes fishery. There have been some large fish kills. Live fish commerce has been restricted to help prevent the spread of the disease.

A disease is spreading, causing large fish kills in the Great Lakes.
Biologists and fishery officials are working to prevent further spread of
the disease, but there’s a conflict between government agencies. Lester
Graham reports there’s also a cost to businesses that deal in live fish:

Transcript

A disease is spreading, causing large fish kills in the Great Lakes. Biologists and
fishery
officials are working to prevent further spread of the disease, but there’s a conflict
between government agencies. Lester Graham reports there’s also a cost to businesses
that deal in live fish:


The disease that’s killing fish is called Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia — or VHS. Jim
Diana is a fish biologist at the University of Michigan who’s been looking into what
it
does to fish…


“So, it’s a virus that the fish pick up and the virus causes really kind of a
general systemic
deterioration. Most notable, sometimes they’ll develop sores or lesions on the
outside of
the body, but they often will die without really external evidence at all.”


Basically, the fish die from internal bleeding. For several years there have been
die-offs
in the St. Lawrence River, which connects the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. But
researchers weren’t able to confirm the cause was VHS. Then this past summer in Lake
Saint Clair — the lake near Detroit that lies between Lake Huron and Lake Erie —
Jim
Diana says fish die-offs were confirmed to be caused by VHS.


“And since then, they’ve found it in quite a few other species, something like 20
other
species, so it’s quite widespread.”


It’s not clear how the virus got here. But… it originated in Europe. Researchers
guess
that infected fish hitchhiked in the ballast tanks of a ship… or a live fish shipment
escaped into the St. Lawrence River and it’s spread from there by ship.


Biologists say the spread of VHS is not good. It’s not expected to wipe out fish in
the
Great Lakes. But it is causing some real concern.


“We’re not talking about a couple of fish here, we’re talking about large fish
kills. And
VHS is present in those and implicated in the deaths of those fish.”


Marc Gaden is with the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. Gaden says because stocking
fish is a big industry… there’s a lot of fish shipped between the U.S. and Canada and
between one state and another.


“So, in the Great Lakes basin there is a movement of fish, fish eggs and other fishery
related things like water that’s used in the fish stocking trucks, things like that.
There’s
aquaculture that occurs, fish farms in the Great Lakes basin. The Departments of
Natural Resources harvest fish eggs to use in their stocking programs and the fish
themselves are stocked. So, there’s movement of fish and fish eggs throughout the
Great
Lakes basin just as a normal part of fisheries management and commerce that occurs.”


So the chance that the virus can be spread by all those fish moving around is
significant.
The federal government thought it was such a risk that it banned all fish shipments.
The
states quickly appealed that. They said it was overkill. They persuaded the feds
that they
were doing enough testing that the chances that VHS would be spread were slim.


So, the feds backed off a bit. But restrictions are still causing some problems. For
example… live fish that are not going to be put back into the lakes… live fish that
are
headed for dinner plates at restaurants still have to be tested. And VHS poses no
risk to
human health.


Ted Batterson is the director of the North Central Regional Aquaculture Center at
Michigan State University. He says he knows one fish farmer whose business is
supplying rainbow trout to restaurants.


“Well, now to be able to do that, he has to have the certification that these are
VHS-free.
It takes him currently, with the laboratory he’s been sending these to, up to 90
days to
get the certification that these are disease free. Well, that is not timely because
these
people who want fish at the other end need them in essence like yesterday, not 90 days
down the road.”


Another business hit by the restrictions on moving live fish is the bait industry.
If the
bait industry has to test –for example—one out of every 50 fish… and the test costs
about
50-dollars… no one will be able to afford to sell bait fish.


The states and the feds are still trying to figure out how to prevent the spread of
VHS…
without hurting the businesses that rely on live fish shipments any more than
necessary.
But… some businesses are already feeling the squeeze.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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