Please either log in below,
or create an account.

Home › Dave's Place

An Overlooked Health Risk -- on Lake Superior

Mon, 02/15/2010 - 11:40 — Dave Dempsey

Lance Margrif: Double Sun

Lance Margrif: Double Sun ~Enlarge

The problem of toxic chemicals in Great Lakes fish is a diminishing concern, right?  Wrong.  At least not on Lake Superior. As author and Lake Superior buff Mel Visser says, levels of the domestically-banned chemical toxaphene in some lake trout there are 10 times higher than what would be classified as hazardous waste if it was in dirt.

Still, years ago, Ontario and the Lake Superior states more or less dropped toxaphene from Lake Superior fish consumption advisories, leaving anglers and their families at risk.

As Mel recently wrote in commenting on recent research, "The most remote and protected of the Great Lakes is producing the most POPs-toxic fish in North America." He says global sources of toxaphene moving through the atmosphere are the primary source." I am joining Mel in urging U.S. EPA to recognize this fact and reinstate the fish advisory.

By the way, Mel has a great blog on news and research regarding persistent organic pollutants here.

» About author Dave Dempsey

Comments

h2oyu's picture

Very interesting and

Submitted by h2oyu on Mon, 02/15/2010 - 16:48.

Very interesting and informative. My thanks to Mr.Visser for his presense on these issues.

       I thought it appropriate to add this Rachael Carson link as it will soon be 50 years since the introduction of "Silent Spring".  Ms. Carson died 2 years later of cancer.

http://www.rachelcarson.org/RachelCarson.ASPX

—

'Life is what happens while your busy doing something else.'[sic] J.Lennon

Pollution is a Global Problem

Submitted by Jason Tafilowski on Mon, 02/15/2010 - 18:29.

I recently read Mr. Visser's recent book "Cold, Clear, and Deadly" which I would highly recommend to anybody interested in this issue.  The book really hammers home the issue that pollution is not a regional problem, it is a global problem.

There is a really neat passage where he personifies toxaphene and takes the reader on a global journey across the world and shows how the chemical evaporates off of crops in a developing country and make a long global journey that eventually ends up in a cold northern climate in the bodies of mammals.  It's a complicated process that gets explained in a really coherent way.

Good on you Mr. Dempsey for bringing this issue to the EPA's attention.  For some reason people have their head in the sand with this issue.