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Eerily Silent Summer Nights: Dead Crickets and Poisoned California Water http://apocadocs.com/s.pl?1309395922
I remembered recently reading an article about the top pesticide source that is disrupting aquatic life in the Sacramento San Joaquim Delta, which supplies water to 23 million Californians.
The culprits are Pyrethroids, a common synthetic pesticide that researchers first suspected entered the water cycle with agricultural runoff. But the largest quantities actually flow from urban Sacramento and cities in surrounding counties, either from an excessive use of shampoos to eliminate lice and fleas, or from people pouring leftover household pesticides down their drains.
Pyrethroids are linked to neurological and thyroid damage as well as hormonal disruption, and they're extremely harmful to beneficial insects, including bees....
... Borneo where, in the 1950s, the World Health Organization had sprayed roofs with DDT to eradicate malaria. This eliminated mosquitoes as well as the wasps that kept the thatch-eating caterpillars in check, which then thrived and ate the thatched roofs. So the government replaced the roofs with sheet metal, but the pounding rains kept people awake at night. The DDT-killed bugs were eaten by geckos, which were eaten by cats that also eventually died. Then the rats multiplied. Finally, the government had to commission Singapore's Royal Air Force to parachute cats into the country....
Lovins told this story to illustrate how everything is connected. Or as John Muir said, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."
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[Read more stories about:
pesticide runoff, toxic water, ecosystem interrelationships, endocrine disruptor]
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'Doc Jim says:
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I'm loathe to accept that everything's connected, if that means that I'm responsible for what I do.
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