THE EARTH IS CONNECTED HENCE CONTAMINANTS SPREAD

I believe it was Dr. Gail Krantzberg of McMaster University who got this simple message through to me. CPAC had hired her early in their role as citizens holding Chemtura Canada environmentally accountable in Elmira. Dr. Krantzberg examined things such as whether or not Chemtura's pump and treat system was adequate to remediate the Elmira aquifers by 2028. She also commented on source removal of Uniroyal Chemical's sub-surface wastes and contaminated soils. She stated that eventually every drop of Uniroyal's wastes that wasn't evaporated and transported by air would eventually move off the site if not removed first. Hence the title above is an indictment of the Ontario Ministry of Environment's ridiculous legislative authority (from idiot politicians) stating that on-site pollution is O.K. as long as it doesn't move off-site. The point is that the earth is connected. Contaminants can travel literally as vapours through soil particles, they can dissolve into moving groundwater and from their into surface water and they can travel by wind and air either as dust or after having evaporated. Lastly they can travel by the food chain as we are about to see.

Last Wednesday's Waterloo Region Record carried this article titled "Widely used pesticides found in Ontario wild turkeys: study." Scientists at both the University of Guelph as well as at Environment Canada have examined the livers of 40 wild turkeys in Ontario and found that nine had detectable levels of neonicotonoid pesticides in them. Keep in mind that Non-detectable (ND) levels do not mean zero. It simply means that the concentrations were below the method detection limit (MDL) of the lab doing the analyses.

The two types of neonicotonoid pesticides found were clothianiden and thiamethoxam. These insecticides are water soluble and as mentioned above, once released into the natural environment can travel by several methods.There have been major studies linking them to honey bee mortality and other damage but there have been few studies regarding their effects upon wildlife. This study shows yet again how man made chemicals introduced for one purpose such as crop protection end up spreading including eventually into human beings who hunt and eat wild turkey. We are all part of this earth and we are slowly killing it with our pride, ego, avarice and short term thinking.