OT: Reptile - True???

[Guest guest]

> Have a look at this. Is this news that lurking around the net is

true? Is

> this possible? Explain if somebody knows. Thanks

 

No.

 

There are many real concerns about the quality of drinking water -

various bacterial (like E. coli) and viral infections (such as

infectious hepatitis) in fecal material in drinking water sources,

various parsistes such as liver flukes, algae problems like

pfiesteria, and poisons from agricultural and industrial runoff.

 

Stories like the snake story often are used to distract people from

real life problems. They're also used to discredit real life horror

stories. People read outrageous stories like the snake story and

think that couldn't be true. Then, when they see a real horror

story - like pfiesteria - they tend not to believe it because they've

been conditioned by stories like the snake story to believe that

anything they read about water being unsafe is not true.

 

Pfiesteria piscicida is an algae - specifically a dinoflagellate.

 

Something was killing the fish in North Carolina (one of the 50 US

states) coastal waterways. The fish were floating to the surface

with bloody sores. Then fishermen began to get sick - rashes, skin

sores, severe memory problems, etc. Researchers from NC State

University investigated. Then they began to get sick.

 

All of this is detailed in the book And the Waters Turned to Blood by

Rodney Barker. It's an exciting read. The book tells why NC got hit

particularly by pfiesteria piscicida. It's also a story of bravery

and determination by researchers who pushed on in spite of many

obstacles. These obstacles included identifying what was killing the

fish and making fishermen sick. Pfiesteria piscicida has 24 life

stages. This made identifying it very difficult. Water samples

revealed what appeared to be one organism, but samples taken from

dead fish revealed what was thought at first to be a different

organism. In time researchers realized that the reason pfiesteria

remained " hidden " for so long was because it has 24 states of being.

 

Other obstacles included greed and corruption in NC government. The

NC agencies which were supposed to be protecting the public instead

were protecting those responsibile for the conditions which favor an

explosion of pfiesteria. In the end, chief researcher JoAnn

Burkholder, professor at NC State University, kept her job because

she was popular with the alumni association.

 

Like so many algaes, pfiesteria piscicida thrives on pollutants - in

particular nitrogen runoff from farming. Hog farming is very big

business on the NC coast. The state was lax about its standards for

large scale hog farming. It was allowing (still allows to a lesser

extent) hog farmers to place the waste from the hogs in large

lagoons. NC's coastal soil - like that of so many coastal areas - is

unsuited to using lagoons for waste management. They frequently

ruptured, sending tons of raw sewage into waterways. The pfiesteria

loved this. The pfiesteria population exploded. The pfiesteria also

thrived on the runoff of chemical fertilizers and the pollution

contributed by factories.

 

Pfiesteria piscicida has turned up in and caused problems in the

coastal waterways of neighboring states like Virginia and Maryland.

The Chesapeake Bay states also have been hard hit by pfiesteria. But

why was NC hit the hardest?

 

The answer to this is found by looking at a map of the east coast of

the US. North Carolina is that state which has a string of long

islands off the coast. These islands are called The Outer Banks.

NC's coastal estuaries (where fresh water from inland meets the salt

water of the ocean) are very, very swallow. In other states where

the estuaries are deeper and there are no long islands off the coast

blocking the flow of water, a lot of pollutants and pfiesteria are

getting washed out to sea. They're still a problem in other states,

but not as bad as in NC with its swallow estuaries and those long

barrier islands. As a result, both pollution and pfiesteria were

able to really build up in NC coastal waterways.

 

The human factors - primarily greed and special, unfair treatment for

some - which fed the explosion of pfiesteria in NC's coastal

waterways is in itself a subject worthy of much study. Hog farmers

(and others guilty of pollution) fought any attempts to lessen the

pollution, always claiming that to do so would " hurt the economy "

and " cost jobs " . But let's look at these claims in more detail.

 

Not doing anything about the problem hurt the economy and cost jobs

even more so than starting to clean it up did. What about NC's

fishing industry? It was extremely hard hit. When fish are floating

with bloody sores, these are not fish that can be sold for food.

Pfiesteria literally was wiping out fishing in NC's coastal waterway

by killing so many fish. This includes recreational fishing as well

as commercial fishing.

 

And what about the medical costs and the diability costs of the

fishermen and others who were infected with pfiesteria? Some of

these people were disabled and unable to work at any job as a result.

 

The pollution and pfiesteria also affected another industry and

source of money which always has been very, very big in NC, and this

industry is tourism. NC always made a lot of money from tourism -

from the coastal area though the Piedmont (rolling hills section) to

the mountains. Tourism was big business in NC. But not so much

after pfiesteria. People from other states began to cancel their

plans to vacation in NC. (It wasn't just the pfiesteria. When those

hog lagoons ruptured, fecal material was fouling NC's waterways,

making them unsafe for swimming and boating because of the threat of

bacterial and viral infection. Officials didn't always notify the

public that a spill had occured and post signs forbidding swimming

and boating. As a result, a lot of people were swimming and boating

in contaminated water.

 

The refusal to do nothing for so long also impacted heavily on the

state's reputation and on other agricultural industries. In the

past, NC used to be very, very careful about maintaining certain

standards, particularly when it came to poultry. As a result, NC

farmers tended to land a lot of national and international contracts

for agricultural products produced in NC because the state did have a

good reputation for insisting on high standards. This changed

thanked to the special treatment given the hog farmers (one of which

was one of NC's senators in Washington, DC).

 

For those interested in learning more about pfiesteria and how greed

and special, unfair treatment can block what's best for the public,

check out the book And the Waters Turned to Blood by Rodney Barker.

Also check out the following links:

 

http://www.diseaseworld.com/pfiest.htm

 

http://www.pfiesteria.org

 

Pfiesteria rhymes with " hysteria " if you're wondering how to

pronounce it.

 

Victoria