Water is affecting the food chain

• How?• Through Biomagnification• Animals and plants cannot get rid of toxins so

they build up in their system. • As we consume an animal or plant we take on

that poison.

How Biomagnification works

x xx xx x x x x x x xx xx x x x

4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x

12x 12x 12x

36x 36x 36x

4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x

12x 12x 12x 12x 12x 12x

x xx xx x x x x x x xx xx x x x x x

x xx x x x x x x xx xx x

108x

• View this National Geographic Video to help explain this to you

• Link

Is Biomagnification affecting Humans?• You can google these videos

to view:• film health matters –

Pollution in food• You can view film - fish

farms• You can view film tainted

tunaFebruary 18, 2007

Findings in Humans• In Detroit there is a human health study • They wanted to see if there was any impact on infant

development whose mother’s grew up in the Great Lakes Area• Doctors studied the attention span on infants• Babies with high PCB levels did not have a high attention span

compared to babies who had little PCBs in their system• Found a “reduce potential” in babies who had higher toxins in

their system then others• Open link “Uncertain

link between Great Lakes pollution, health risk: report”– Provide a brief summary of the article

So if animal species are changing….what about humans?

• Jacobson Study• Gave children a test of memory and mental speed.• Children exposed to PCBs not only had poorer memories,

they were slower to get answers and often were incorrect when compared with children who did not have as high a PCB in their system

• What we still don't know is the longer term picture. Is this going to interfere with schooling, jobs etc.

• This shows that women who ate fish from the Great Lakes do affect their offspring

• Water pollution also affects human health. In one example, the massive English-Wabigoon River system in the Dryden and Kenora area of northern Ontario was poisoned with mercury in the 1970s.

• The source of the mercury was a mill owned by a large paper company. The fish in the area consumed the mercury. The people of the Whitedog (Wabasseemoong)

• First Nation and the nearby Grassy Narrows First Nation became ill by eating the fish. Many were permanently disabled. Ball Lake Lodge, a major employer, had to be closed. The commercial fishery ceased operations. The Whitedog and Grassy Narrows people were uprooted and their way of life ruined.

Are there other problems we have not yet discussed?

• Yes• Other things get into the water that are not

taken out.• Old medicine• Apparently a real danger to the environment

are birth control pills• What the pills are doing is actually affecting

the fish

How?

• The estrogen from the pill and from women excreting estrogen who are on the pill is making it into our lakes and rivers.

• Male fish started to respond to the high levels of estrogen and started to produce egg proteins

• Some male fish actually did produce eggs• Female development was also delayed

because of the of the exposure to estrogen

• Good news is that this problem does not appear to be affecting humans, however studies are still investigating this.

• Places that still dump municipal sewage untreated in Canada are Halifax, St. John’s and Victoria.

• What does Kingston do??– Take some time to research this and find out

Pain Killing Medicine

• On Monday March 24th, 2008, Environment Canada's National Water Research Institute in Burlington reported that they found trace amounts of pain killer medicine in 15 communities around the GTA.

• They did not specify what 15 cities• Water Pollution: Great Lakes Clean Up

(3:00min)

• Read the following article “Mercury may biomagnify more effectively in colder latitudes” and answer these questions.– Why do many top predators in the Arctic have high

mercury concentrations?– Explain the important global trends on how mercury

is transferred through diverse aquatic food webs.– What does the study referenced in the article,

indicate about that fragile arctic ecosystems?