>Pesticides: On the farm. In the fields.: After seven years of
>investigating the clues, researcher Martin Ouellet is ready to indict a
>culprit in the mass deformities and early death of frogs: pesticides used
on
>the farm.
>Donna Jacobs reports.
>It's a double biological murder mystery. What agents, possibly operating
>internationally, are horribly deforming so many species of frogs? And,
>what fate did all the other missing frogs meet?
>Martin Ouellet, a 30-year-old veterinarian who left his small animal
>practice near Montreal, has devoted the past seven years to hunting down
>the answer. He has the world's largest collection of deformed frogs in
>his lab at McGill University's Redpath Museum. For every misshapen frog he
>collects, he examines and releases hundreds. ``I don't want to take
>many,'' he says, ``because they're already under so much pressure.''
>He and a team of Canadian Wildlife Service biologists, have now examined
>nearly 30,000 frogs. He submits his photos into evidence. A frog with one
eye
>staring out from its back. A frog with legs growing from its belly. A frog
>with three extra legs. A frog dragging itself along with stumps for hind
legs
>or with hind legs fused. A frog missing an eye, or fingers or toes, or
having
>extra
>digits, one with 23 extra toes. His autopsy reports are equally chilling.
>Many frogs that looked normal outside were being poisoned to death inside
by
>clogged and yellowed livers.
>Frogs that look like males are female inside. Lab results show altered
>DNA. Even last year, Dr. Ouellet was circumspect in naming his primary
>suspects.
>He said he needed more proof before he could shift suspicion to
>accusation. Now, he is no longer hedging. The culprit, he says, is
>pesticides.
>Although his data proves guilt by association, the only way to convict
>pesticides, he says, is to reveal the mechanisms that disfigure frogs and
>to reproduce these deformities in frog- pond experiments.
>He finds the grotesque frogs along a 250-kilometre stretch on both sides
>of the St. Lawrence River, from Montreal eastward to Montmagny, Que. Only a
>man who has spent many summer months bending over frog ponds in farmers'
>fields could speak so plainly.
>He has catalogued 25 types of deformities among 16 amphibians -- spring
>peepers, grey tree frogs, mink frogs, wood frogs, green frogs, pickerel
>frogs, northern leopard frogs, bullfrogs, American toads, eastern newts,
>mudpuppies, redback salamanders, blue- and yellow-spotted salamanders,
>northern two-line salamanders and northern dusky salamanders.
>``We have to know why the frogs are deformed and why they are dying,''
>says Dr. Ouellet. ``We're also living in the St. Lawrence Valley and we put
>the food coming from there on our tables.''
>Sometimes he finds the evidence left behind in plain view at the scene --
>empty pesticide containers lying right there in the water. Dr. Ouellet
>watched as one farmer, unaware that the scientist was photographing frogs
>nearby, cavalierly burned plastic containers at the edge of an irrigation
>pond. ``All these ponds are used to irrigate fields, and sometimes they
>are chemical soup,'' he says. ``We're eating the food so there is a big
human
>connection.''
>His most dramatic findings: On agricultural land that has not been
>sprayed for many decades, an average of one frog in every hundred is
deformed
>--
>ranging (depending on the site) from a zero-to-12 per cent deformity
>rates.
>On working farms that use insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and
>chemical fertilizers, an average of 12 frogs in every hundred are
deformed --
>yielding zero-to-100 percent deformity rates.
>In July, Dr. Ouellet surveyed a farm property near St-Charles, 25
>kilometres southeast of Quebec City. There, every single frog he picked
>up was deformed -- missing toes and parts of legs. The deformities occurred
>in three different species -- leopard, mink and green frogs. Overall, this
>summer the news was bad: ``There were fewer frogs but way more
>deformities.''
>Jean Rodrigue, a CWS biologist based in Ste-Foy, Que., has been Dr.
>Ouellet's frequent field-research partner. When Dr. Ouellet presented
>their earlier findings, scientists challenged the data based on a small
sample
>size of a few thousand frogs. ``After seven years, we are finding exactly
>the same pattern but the sample size is huge and very hard to
>criticize.''
>On the spreadsheets of his enormous database, probably the largest field
>study in the world, each frog has its own line.
>That means the PhD candidate will spend an intense winter in data
>analysis to find the common instruments in the deaths and deformities.
>The Canadian contribution is significant amid the increasingly crowded
>field of scientists who, worldwide, are working flat out to solve the
>riddle. However, the usual scientific curiosity has taken on a sense of
>urgency for at least three reasons.
>First, some frogs are already on the threatened-species list in several
>countries, including Canada.
>Dr. Ouellet's academic supervisor is David Green, a professor of biology
>at McGill and former national co-ordinator of the Canadian Declining
>Amphibian Populations Task Force. Among Canada's 45 frog and toad species
and
>21
>salamander species, according to Dr. Green, 17 are in decline. Several of
>those are designated as vulnerable or threatened species, mostly among
>western species, because of human activities: encroachment, farming and
>logging practices. (For years, Canadian farmers have received attractive
>subsidies from the public purse to drain their lands for cultivation.)
>Mass deformities have not caused all of the global population declines.
>Individual populations cannot thrive, however, when every other frog is
>abnormal. Severe deformities sentence young frogs to an early Darwinian
>death, which explains why Dr. Ouellet never finds a grossly misshapen
>adult frog.
>Second, amphibians are an important ``sentinel'' for the health of water,
>soil and air. Frogs are particularly susceptible during their dramatic,
>hormone-driven change from water-breathing tadpoles to air-breathing
>frogs.
>Some frogs, such as mink frogs, green frogs and bullfrogs, spend two or
>three years in breeding ponds as tadpoles, perhaps the single reason they
>show particularly high levels of deformities.
>Third, hormone-disrupting chemicals which play havoc with master glands
>and organs, such as the thyroid and liver, have raised alarm among
>scientists.
>One particularly suspect class of pesticides are retinoids, compounds
>derived from Vitamin A, known to produce birth defects in humans and
>other vertebrates. Hormone disruption often affects the thyroid, which
directs
>a huge number of body functions, from metabolism to sexual development, and
>the liver, which is crucial for filtering out environmental contaminants
>and toxins in the blood. Researchers are looking at human health -- at
>increases in prostate and breast cancer, at declining human fertility, at
>abnormal sexual organs in children -- and sensing a pattern.
>Research done in Canada, California, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and
>Finland
>shows that children of parents who work or live in farm settings have
>more
>deformities. These include: fused fingers and toes, missing fingers and
>toes, deformed arms and legs and abnormal hearts, kidneys and sexual
>organs. Mothers who work in agricultural industries are more likely to
>miscarry or have stillborn children.
>``There are big problems going on out there,'' says Dr. Ouellet. ``The
>frogs are probably trying to tell us something, so it's probably
>important to listen.''
>Already, in some rural areas in Canada, the once-deafening sound of frogs
>peeping and bullfrogs croaking is down to a few voices.
>People talk to Dr. Ouellet about it. ``People all over the place say, `I
>remember going to that pond when I was a kid and there were tons of
>frogs' or `I remember when it was so loud it was impossible to sleep. Now
it's
>hard even to hear one frog singing.'''
>While deformities naturally capture headlines and the public's attention,
>they may be the least severe situation. ``If there's too much toxicity
>and the eggs die,'' says Dr. Ouellet, ``you will have no frogs at all.''
>Scientists and nature lovers are already dreading the season that some of
>them believe is quite close: the long Silent Summer.
>Some researchers blame the steep decline in frog populations on UVB rays
>blazing through a thin ozone layer and destroying genetic material in
>eggs and tadpoles. For others, the culprit is an affliction: a frog virus,
>bacterium, fungus or parasite.
>Only Dr. Ouellet openly points to pesticides: ``We have very
>incriminating results.''
>The more circumspect Mr. Rodrigue is amused by his colleague's
>outspokenness. ``I guess it is incriminating. But of what?''
>These two men have spent months of their lives catching frogs; some days
>start at 4 a.m. and end at 8 p.m. They work in rain, swatting bugs and
>mosquitoes. Dr. Ouellet holds the record for examining 1,058 frogs in one
>day.
>Pressed to speculate about causes, Mr. Rodrigue says only that he has a
>feeling that the problem lies with insecticides. Whenever he sees a
>strawberry field or a potato field, he is pretty sure the nearby pond
>will hold a high percentage of deformed frogs. (In potato fields whose
ponds
>produced deformed frogs, the scientists have documented use of the
>herbicides metribuzin and diquat and the insecticides phorate,
>azinphosmethyl, cypermethrin, oxamyl and chlorothalonil, and the
>fungicide mancozeb.)
>Strawberries are known to carry the highest load of pesticide residues:
>``Wash your strawberries very well,'' he says.
>But he won't draw conclusions about whether and which pesticides because
>of inconsistencies, the pristine ponds with five per cent of the frogs
>deformed and the working farm ponds with no deformities. He's waiting for
>their data to presents the answers.
>Dr. Ouellet says he also expects to see deformed frogs in ponds next to
>corn fields. (Some farm ponds with deformed frogs are next to corn fields
>sprayed with the herbicide atrazine and the insecticide carbofuran; both
>have hormone-disrupting effects on wildlife.)
>Both men criticize the practice of farmers who remove vegetation around
>their farm ponds and who mow their fields right to the water's edge. This
>gives pesticides a direct, unfiltered runoff path into the ponds. Some
>farmers actually spray the water, itself. In both cases, this violates
>the ``buffer zone'' clause -- specific pesticide distances from water --
>detailed for some farm chemicals.
>In Mont-St-Hilaire, however, the researchers have a huge experimental
>``control site.'' The two small mountains, formed by ancient volcanoes
>and now owned by McGill University, has been declared a biosphere by the
>United Nations. It's located 45 kilometres east of Montreal, on the St.
>Lawrence
>River's south shore and it's a remnant of the environment before
>pesticides. In a world where pesticides ride on air currents for
>thousands of kilometres, of course, there is no truly pristine place left
on
>earth.
>However, having never had a direct application of farm chemicals,
>Mont-St-Hilaire bolsters Dr. Ouellet's damning conclusion about
>pesticides.
>Among the 7,000 frogs and salamanders he and student assistants Linda
>Paetow and Roxane Petel examined there, only 10 had deformities -- all
>mild limb malformations.
>Fifty or 60 years ago, another generation of researchers had catalogued
>the 16 native frog species and other amphibians and reptiles that lived
>there.
>Pristine or not, Mont-St-Hilaire now has fewer frog species -- two frog
>and three salamander species are missing altogether. The old specimens,
>stored at the Redpath Museum and at the Museum of Nature in Ottawa, provide
a
>comparison of frogs from the dawn-of-pesticides era with those from
>today.
>Amphibian deformity is not a new phenomenon. Mysterious mass deformities
>have been documented for some 300 years. And the growing file on deformed
>frogs now, particularly in Quebec, Vermont, Minnesota and California,
>reflects the increase in the number of scientists looking for them. Dr.
>Ouellet's work in agricultural areas, with students Jonatan Blais and
>Patrick Labonte, contrasts with the typical wildlife biologists who work
>in ``nice wetlands and don't go into a corn field, which is not fun to
>sample.
>It's disgusting. There's a little water, a cornfield, pesticides. It
>smells.''
>If, when the answers are in, the culprit is whole families of pesticides,
>the Canadian and U.S. governments may indeed ban their use. Then, says
>Dr. Ouellet, pesticide companies will just develop new products which, in a
>decade or two, will also be proven harmful. ``Whatever the mechanism,
>pesticides are always toxic in the end,'' he says flatly. ``That's why
>they work. Some will disrupt hormones, some will cause direct mortality,
>others will cause limb deformities.''
>He looks to DDT as a perfect example of a chemical with proven toxic
>effects on wildlife and humans. Banned in 1972, its metabolite, DDE,
>remains in the soil and wildlife even now. Nevertheless, he says,
>pesticides companies ``sell it like crazy'' in Africa, South America and
>Asia because it's a cheap compound and it's not banned there.
>For Dr. Ouellet, the solution is in natural biological controls and
>restoring the natural cycle where healthy populations of birds, frogs and
>dragonflies, and microscopic predators, suppress crop-chewing insect
>populations. He believes this counter-revolution begins not with the
>farmer, but with the consumer, that is, everyone who eats. A
>pesticide-free apple with a yellow spot, a crooked carrot, a lopsided,
>imperfectly red tomato are natural. People would be more willing to buy
them,
>indeed, one day may go looking for them, when they know the true cost of
>picture-perfect produce.
>In 1998 alone, Minnesota committed $1 million to frog deformity
>research -- after school children found deformed frogs on a 1995 field
trip.
>The sum discourages this Canadian team which is working with a 1998 grant
of
>$25,000 from the Canadian Wildlife Service and occasional grants or free
>services offered by a coalition of McGill, the University of Montreal and
>the Quebec ministry of the environment. The scientists don't have enough
>money to pay for lab tests. One frog autopsy, one chromosomal analysis
>and one pond water analysis would cost, says Dr. Ouellet, more than $1,000.
>The huge discrepancy in funding strikes the veterinarian as doubly
>ironic.
>``We're in worse shape than the U.S.,'' he says. Canada's climate
>dictates cultivation along its warm southern border, farming that is more
>concentrated and pesticide-consuming. And, he says, as governments cut
>research funds to pay for health care, they may be paying for human
>diseases from the environmental contamination the researchers are trying
>to document.
>Dr. Ouellet and his colleagues are the only Canadian scientists doing a
>large-scale investigation of this mystery. Wherever they've looked,
>they've found deformed frogs. And Dr. Ouellet's ``take home message'' is
that
>if
>he were looking anywhere else in Canada for deformed frogs, he would find
>them there, too.
>ILLUSTRATION: Black & White Photo: Dr. Martin Ouellet / Photo shows a
>typical frog deformity. Dr. Martin Ouellet has documented 25 types in his
>study of 30,000 amphibians.; Black & White Photo: John Mitchell, The
>Ottawa Citizen / Dr. Martin Ouellet searches a marsh at
night.
>He
>and Canadian Wildlife Service biologists have spent many summers doing
>fieldwork.; Black & White Photo: Dr. Martin Ouellet / Photo shows a
>typical frog deformity. Dr. Martin Ouellet has documented 25 types in his
>study
>of 30,000 amphibians.; Black & White Photo: Dr. Martin Ouellet / Photo
shows
>a typical frog deformity. Dr. Martin Ouellet has documented 25 types in his
>study of 30,000 amphibians.; Black & White Photo: Dr. Martin Ouellet /
>Photo shows a typical frog deformity. Dr. Martin Ouellet has documented
>25 types in his study of 30,000 amphibians.; Black & White Photo: Dr.
Martin
>Ouellet / Photo shows a typical frog deformity. Dr. Martin Ouellet has
>documented 25 types in his study of 30,000 amphibians.; Black & White
>Photo: Dr. Martin Ouellet / Photo shows a typical frog deformity. Dr.
>Martin Ouellet has documented 25 types in his study of 30,000
>amphibians.;
>Black & White Photo: Dr. Martin Ouellet / Photo shows a typical frog
>deformity. Dr. Martin Ouellet has documented 25 types in his study of
>30,000 amphibians.
>The Ottawa Citizen
>%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
>ITEM
>PUBLICATION The Ottawa Citizen
>DATE Sun 27 Sep 1998
>EDITION FINAL
>SECTION/CATEGORY News
>PAGE NUMBER A6
>BYLINE Donna Jacobs
>COLUMN TITLE Special Report: Science and the Environment
>STORY LENGTH 1922
>HEADLINE: What have we done to the frogs?: An epidemic of deformed
>frogs in his back yard frightens Raymond Greffe. But what
>really worries him is why provincial and federal
>governments aren't more interested. Donna Jacobs
>investigates an environmental harbinger.
>NOTRE-DAME-DU-MONT-CARMEL, Quebec - When Raymond Greffe stepped
>out of his house in rural Quebec to mow his lawn in July, he
>expected to see what he always sees: Hundreds of tiny new leopard
>frogs hopping like mad to get out of his way.
>Instead, they were ``crawling like toads or just falling over in
>the grass.''
>He picked one up. Part of its hind leg was missing. He picked up
>another and another -- 30 in all and 24 of them had a stump
>instead of a hind leg, or no hind leg at all.
>All week he watched the frogs struggle. He didn't mow his grass
>for a month to give the frogs shade and cover from predators.
>``I've been looking at nature since I was 12,'' says the aviation
>electronics technician, ``and I never saw a robin eating frogs
>before. They were beating frogs against wood. The grackles were
>just walking in the grass and picking up frogs all over the place.
>the same thing for the crows.''
>He phoned the department of the environment and wildlife of
>Quebec. While he waited for someone to come to his house, in the
>little village of Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel, 45 kilometres south
>of Montreal, he did some investigating. Was this misshapen
>population the result of one batch of genetically damaged eggs?
>But examination of frogs along a half-kilometre stretch up the
>road showed no difference. The 80-per-cent deformity average held.
>``In the beginning I was looking for frogs that were deformed,''
>he says. ``After that, I looked for frogs that weren't deformed.''
>Don't, he says, ask if he was surprised. He already knew about the
>masses of deformed frogs in the U.S. But, most of all, as an
>environmentalist who lost many fights in the 1970s and 1980s, he
>was resigned. ``I predicted years ago that the frogs would be the
>first tobe attacked,'' he says, because they live in water as
>eggs and tadpoles and, particularly, because tadpoles breathe
>through their skin.
>But he just didn't expect to find the calamity literally at his
>doorstop. ``It's the quantity that scared me to hell. I thought
>I'd see it gradually come about. One year a couple, and the next
>year a few more. But it was all the babies around.''
>Danielle Guay, Mr. Greffe's friend, also spent many hours picking
>up frogs, documenting their missing and shortened legs. She lives
>in a neighbouring town, where she drives a school bus. She takes
>me on a walk down the lane that runs between Mr. Greffe's property
>and a very weedy pond that receives agricultural runoff from the
>field nearby.
>She has made a net to catch the frogs and captures eight frogs and
>two toads. One frog is missing part of a foot and two have only a
>stump at their hip. Gently, expertly, she extends their legs,
>notes their deformities and, murmuring to them, puts them back in
>the grass. ``If the frogs are sick, the fish are also sick,'' she
>says, and more comfortable in French, she adds ``Grenouilles
>malades, hommes malades (frogs sick, humans sick).''
>In Mr. Greffe's own back yard, beside his cattail swamp, two young
>frogs are disfigured, three older frogs are normal.
>A few days later, Dr. Martin Ouellet, a veterinarian and
>specialist in frog deformities, visited Mr. Greffe. The
>environment department had contacted him because he has spent the
>past seven years looking for the cause of frog deformities.
>``If it had been my goal to collect 1,000 frogs that day,'' he
>recalls, ``I would have been able.'' The lawn earned his
>description of ``hot spot.''
>`Every time you're catching two frogs, one is deformed,'' he
>says. ``It's huge.'' He anesthetized and killed several frogs for
>this winter's work: autopsies and analysis of genetic
>abnormalities on the frogs he has collected all over southern
>Quebec.
>They will form part of his database of nearly 30,000 amphibians,
>mostly frogs, but also some toads and salamanders. Among the 16
>species he has studied, he has found 25 types of deformities --
>frogs with three legs, with 23 extra toes, with an eye placed on a
>shoulder or a back, with missing fingers and toes, legs or parts
>of legs.
>The deformed frogs virtually all die, either from predators or
>disease. ``They're handicapped. They have a hard time moving and
>when they fall, they have abrasions from gravel. The bacteria
>enter and they usually die from septicemia.'' This blood poisoning
>is a painful death, a total-body infection that causes them to
>swell up. ``Of course, they're probably not comfortable,'' says
>Dr. Ouellet, who wants to avoid anthropomorphizing. ``But they
>fall. They have nerves and muscles. If you do that to a frog,'' --
>he pinches his skin -- ``they feel it. They have the same nerves
>that we have.''
>Martin Leveille, a biologist with the environment ministry,
>accompanied Dr. Ouellet to see the frogs around Mr. Greffe's
>property. He described the sight as ``bizarre'' with hundreds of
>tiny frogs with uneven legs, making erratic jumps.
>`These animals are still very vigorous and jump very well,'' he
>said. ``They don't seem to have much problem feeding.'' If a toxic
>substance caused the deformities and the frogs survive for two
>months after metamorphosis, their chances ``seem quite good.'' He
>says that it would be upsetting if the deformities were the result
>of human activity, but noted that causes can also be natural.
>``That's why we have to be prudent,'' he said. ``Next year there
>will be budgets and priorities and money for water tests.''
>The third person to visit the site, two weeks later, was Real
>Normandeau, provincial agricultural technician. He spoke with Mr.
>Greffe and Ms. Guay. He looked at the frogs with Dr. Ouellet.
>However, Mr. Normandeau did not take any water samples of the pond
>nearby where the frogs hatched, nor well-water samples from the
>nearby homes, nor a sample of water coming out of the large
>drainage pipe from the adjacent farm field. The pipe carries
>runoff from the farm fields, complete with fertilizers,
>herbicides, insecticides and fungicides that farmers have sprayed
>on their crops. He did not talk with the farmers nearby to see
>which pesticides they have used this season.
>``We are not sure if we can have the laboratory do samples and
>we're not sure if we have enough pesticide to produce good
>results,'' he said, noting that pesticides disintegrate. He added:
>``We're not sure pesticides are the cause of the deformities.''
>He preferred, he said, to make a research proposal for next spring
>and summer rather than ask the provincial government to analyze a
>variety of water samples from that site in July. ``What,'' he
>asked, ``should we tell the lab to look for?''
>Mr. Leveille said he did not know what farmers typically spray on
>their corn and soybean crops but said that Mr. Normandeau would
>know. Mr. Normandeau said he didn't. He said, though, he will find
>out. ``I will go back,'' he told the Citizen on Sept. 18., ``in
>two weeks.''
>In contrast, when Minnesota school children discovered deformed
>frogs during a school trip in 1995, it became an international
>story and set off a national and state emergency. Scientists
>tested pond and residential well water for pesticides, heavy
>metals, salt, pH levels -- any agents that could cause genetic
>abnormalities. They're still testing. In May, U.S. Secretary of
>the Interior Bruce Babbitt convened a cabinet-level briefing on
>plummeting frog populations in the U.S., which led to the creation
>of the Task Force on Amphibian Declines and Deformities to
>co-ordinate federal research. (Its Canadian counterpart is the
>Task Force on Declining Amphibian Populations in Canada.)
>This week, Mr. Babbitt announced a new coalition of government,
>environmental groups and children, and a new web site --
>www.frogweb.gov -- to find out what is killing and deforming frogs
>in the U.S. ``When we consider that these creatures are hardy
>enough to have been on Earth for 350 million years,'' he said,
>``it is shocking to think that there could be a world without
>frogs.''
>This difference in response to his own situation strikes Mr.
>Greffe: ``No one cares about the frogs.'' He includes farmers,
>neighbours and the provincial department in charge of this sort of
>environmental emergency. Anyway, he says, government departments
>work at cross purposes.
>Several years ago, the provincial government gave the neighbouring
>farmer permission to install a pump for his drainage system.
>Runoff now goes directly into the pond at the end of his corn
>field instead of draining into the ditch that runs the length of
>the huge field. The cattails in the ditch used to purify the water
>before it left the farm. ``Everybody knows that aquatic vegetation
>cleans out polluted water,'' says Mr. Greffe. Runoff is choking
>out the wildlife with weed growth.
>Both Mr. Greffe and Dr. Ouellet say that governments are reluctant
>to investigate farm chemicals and practices because it is big
>business, and because, in rural Quebec, the farm union is very
>powerful.
>There were fewer frogs already, says Mr. Greffe, without the
>possibility of pesticide poisoning. In 1992, just as Dr. Ouellet
>began documenting deformities, the provincial government invented
>a new permit to provide a legal frog hunt. ``You see how dumb
>things are: The year they put out a permit, there's less and less
>land and fewer marshes for the frog and now they have a permit
>that says you can take any quantity you want.''
>He says that, four years ago, bullfrogs had started to make a
>comeback in his area. ``We were there at night and there were
>bullfrogs singing. It's so beautiful.
>``One night, someone c
>
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with "unsubscribe sanet-mg".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".