NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/talk/environm/5257

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From: [e-mail] (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe)
Subject: "Deadly Deceit," SILENT SUMMER--Chernobyl fallout in '86 dosed us all
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Summary: in '86 birds were 1 more warning sign telling what nuclear tech does
Keywords: radioactive contaminants concentrate as they move up the food chain
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Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 14:06:00 GMT
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          radioactive contaminants become increasingly concentrated
                       as they move up the food chain


       Carson's imaginary spring drew uncomfortably nearer reality in 1986,
    when a massive and unprecedented decline in landbird productivity was
    witnessed and documented by ornithologist Dr.David F. DeSante at the
    Point Reyes Bird Observatory (PRBO) in Northern California. . . .
       "Nobody could think of anything to explain this," DeSante said.  "So
    I said, as a joke, `Well it must have been Chernobyl,' and everyone
    just burst out laughing.  Because when the fallout cloud passed over,
    and when it rained, the radio report said that there was no reason to
    worry--and no reason to even wash the vegetables and fruit--the amount
    of radiation is insignificant--don't get alarmed--everything is fine.
    So we didn't think about it anymore.". . .
       At this point in their investigation, according to DeSante, one of
    his colleaugues remarked, "that is when the Chernobyl cloud was passing
    over," and urged that they reexamine this hypothesis.  This time nobody
    laughed when Chernobyl was mentioned. . . .
       DeSante's explanation as to how Chernobyl fallout could have spurred
    infant and juvenile bird mortality is based on the fact that
    radioactive contaminants become increasingly concentrated as they move
    up the food chain.  A startling and disquieting example of this
    "transfer factor" in action, is that fish that feed on algae and ocean
    sediments have been found to concentrate radionuclides to levels far
    surpassing the amounts found in the water in which they live.  DeSante
    suspected that iodine-131, the primary constituent found in North
    American fallout, was the culprit behind the reproductive failure. . . .
       Ornithologists are generally in agreement that birds can be regarded
    as early warning systems for man because they extremely sensitive to
    the environment--like the canary in the coal mine.  The miner never
    knew when poisonous gases were accumulating to dangerous levels.  When
    the canary died, the miner hastened to get out.  Did birds send a
    similar message to humanity in the summer of 1986, this time about the
    dangers of low-level radiation, particulary to especially sensitive
    members of the human race such as infants and ailing adults?



   ALL of us MUST confront this addictive death process while there is still
   time.  Dr. Rosalie Bertell articulates this situation very well: "The
   classical marks of a social addiction are all present in the nuclear
   military scenario:  secrecy, extreme behaviour, rationalization, lies and
   self-destructive actions."  the most destructive part of addictive
   behavior--whether in a single person's life or in the life of the entire
   species--is the practice of denial.  Healing can only gain momentum when
   denial is no longer employed to avoid confronting the disease.
                                                                   --ratitor


   The following is taken from the revised and updated softcover 1991 edition
     of "Deadly Deceit, Low-Level Radiation, High-Level Coverup" by Dr. Jay
     Gould and Benjamin A. Goldman with Kate Millpointer, published by Four
     Walls Eight Windows, New York, and reprinted here with the permission
          of Dr. Gould.  This chapter was written by Kate Millpointer.
 _____________________________________________________________________________


                                  Chapter 3
                                SILENT SUMMER



         Twenty-eight years ago, ecology pioneer Rachel Carlson warned
    in her prescient book "Silent Spring" that unless humanity were to stop
    polluting the biosphere with chemical and radioactive poisons, some
    future spring would yield "only silence . . . over the fields and woods
    and marsh."
       Carson's imaginary spring drew uncomfortably nearer reality in 1986,
    when a massive and unprecedented decline in landbird productivity was
    witnessed and documented by ornithologist Dr.David F. DeSante at the
    Point Reyes Bird Observatory (PRBO) in Northern California.
       "Usually," DeSante said, "there's a lot going on when you walk down
    the net lanes in July.  There are flocks of `punks' [juvenile birds]
    and family groups of bushtits.  Juvenile sparrows are collecting in
    little groups, and warblers are flying through the trees.  The young
    birds are squeaking and chirping and some of the adults are
    singing."[21]
       But when he walked the net lanes on July 22, 1986, there was a
    striking change.  Instead of the exhilarating songs of multitudes of
    adult birds involved with their breeding and nurturing activities, and
    the squeaks and chirps of the fledgling young, he met an ominous
    silence.
       "There just were no young birds," he said, "and the adults had
    stopped singing.  I guess they had just given up."
       For more than a decade DeSante, who earned his doctorate in
    biological sciences at Stanford and has a master's degree in
    engineering, headed a standardized mist-netting and banding project at
    PRBO, the landbird biomonitoring program.  The young birds get caught
    in the fine filaments of the mist nets, and then are counted and banded
    for tracking purposes.  Unlike most researchers, who usually
    concentrate on just one species, DeSante monitored the reproductive
    success of 51 species of landbirds, which makes him a big-picture
    ornithologist.[22]
       Generally, most banding programs are conducted during the fall and
    winter, when birds are migrating.  However, DeSante conducted his
    research during the spring and summer breeding season, when thousands
    of birds nest at PRBO's Palomarin Field Station, located just inside
    the southern end of the Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County.
    As such, his work was unique in North America.
       The breeding season had started out auspiciously enough in 1986, and
    by May it seemed clear that the season was going to be better than
    usual.  Based on the rather high amounts of rainfall California had
    received that winter, DeSante and his researchers expected landbird
    productivity to be ten percent above normal.  In fact, during the first
    30 days of the monitoring period--May 10 through June 8--the capture
    rate was almost twelve percent above normal.
       Then in mid-June, during the fourth of ten ten-day monitoring
    periods, the researchers observed that the number of birds netted was
    only 56 percent of the previous ten-year average.  Although this was a
    lower reproductive rate than normal, it is not unusual to see a
    decrease during that part of the breeding period, according to DeSante.
    So the researchers dismissed this early indication that something was
    amiss, expecting to see a rapid improvement.
       The improvement never came.  Instead, the numbers got worse--almost
    on a daily basis.  By the eighth monitoring period, which occurred in
    late July, productivity dropped to 24 percent of normal.  And this
    during a time when peak numbers of birds are usually captured.  From
    1976 through 1985, the average daily capture for July had been more
    than 30 birds, and 60 and even 90 bird days were common, according to
    DeSante.  But in July 1986, no more than 24 birds were netted in any
    single day, and there were days when only three birds were captured.
       Dismayed by these results, DeSante and his colleagues began an
    arduous seven-week computer analysis of the captures of newly banded
    birds for the years 1976-1986, hoping that the data they generated
    would provide a clue to the mysterious decreases of young birds.  They
    ruled out pesticides, herbicides or other chemicals, since no
    applications were know to have occurred in the past eleven years within
    at least two kilometers of the area.[23]  And starvation was evidently
    not a factor, because the food supply was plentiful relative to recent
    years.
       "Nobody could think of anything to explain this," DeSante said.  "So
    I said, as a joke, `Well it must have been Chernobyl,' and everyone
    just burst out laughing.  Because when the fallout cloud passed over,
    and when it rained, the radio report said that there was no reason to
    worry--and no reason to even wash the vegetables and fruit--the amount
    of radiation is insignificant--don't get alarmed--everything is fine.
    So we didn't think about it anymore."
       Acting on the hunch that he was not the only researcher witnessing
    the plummeting bird populations, DeSante called Dr. Donald L. Dahlsten,
    at the University of California.  Dahlsten has conducted nesting-site,
    reproductive and life-span studies on mountain and chestnut-backed
    chikadees at two study sites:  Blodgett Forest (since 1972), located in
    the western Sierra Nevada;  and Modoc County (since 1964) in
    northeastern California, about 350 miles from Sacramento.
       Formerly an executive director of "Environment", Dahlsten is
    professor of entomology and until recently chaired the Division of
    Biological Control at the University of California in Berkeley.  He
    specializes in how birds control forest insects, with particular
    emphasis on the disruption of this natural balance caused by over-use
    of pesticides.  Instead of mist-netting juvenile and adult birds,
    Dahlsten and his coworkers study and band the nestling or baby birds
    while they are still in the nesting boxes.
       When asked by DeSante about how his chickadees were doing, Dahlsten
    said that Bodgett Forest had been a disaster that year and he did not
    now why.
       "We noticed something was wrong as soon as we saw the first nests,"
    Dahlsten said.  "It was one of those black and white things.  We were
    aware that there was a helluva mortality and we could not figure it
    out.  It was the first time I had seen such a failure."[24]
       When Dahlsten tallied the 1986 reproductive failures, and compared
    the results with previous years, he discovered that complete nest
    failures were at a 15-year high at Blodgett Forest, as were nestling
    and egg mortality.[25]  Once again, pesticides and starvation were
    ruled out as possible explanatory factors in the unprecedented
    mortality spikes.
       Dr. C. J. Ralph made similar observations at the Lamphere-
    Christiansen Nature Preserve, North of Eureka, California.  Dr. Ralph
    witnessed a 60 percent decrease in newly-hatched White-crowned
    Sparrows, compared to the previous four years.  An ornithologist and
    research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service, and adjunct professor
    at Humboldt State University, Dr. Ralph had independently studied the
    breeding biology of white-crowned and song sparrows since 1982.
       "We don't know if there was unusual mortality, or lack of breeding
    success, but we didn't have as many juveniles to band in 1986," he
    remarked late in the summer of 1988.[26]  "Our data are nothing in
    isolation.  However, when added together with DeSante's work, it is
    interesting, because it points to a geographical component."
    Nevertheless, Ralph suggested that what had taken place could be
    "coincidence."
       Researchers at the Harvey Monroe Hall Research Natural Area in the
    subalpine Sierra Nevada witnessed significant decreases among Oregon
    juncos.  Nine previous years of data showed that numerous groups of
    juncos, with 30 to 150 birds per flock, moved up the west slope of the
    Sierra into the subalpine in the middle to late summer.  In 1986, just
    a few straggling flocks of juvenile juncos were observed, with the
    largest group comprising only four individuals.  And there appeared to
    be a nearly complete absence of juvenile warbling vireos and black-
    headed grosbeaks.
       These corroborative findings convinced DeSante that the
    unprecedented reproductive failure was not limited to Palomarin, but
    had extended over much of northern California.  DeSante's data also
    indicated that the reproductive failures occurred around May 10 or 15,
    because the first decreases in young were observed three to four weeks
    later.  (Birds captured in the mist-nets are "dispersing young" that
    have been out of the nest for three or four weeks.)  The reproductive
    decreases of nearly every species of landbird at Palomarin had not
    started at the beginning of the breeding season, but after about thirty
    days into it.  Beginning on June 9, capture rates of young birds
    plunged--from 56 percent of normal, to 42 percent, to 39 percent, and
    finally in late July to only 24 percent of normal.  Something very
    unusual had happened in the early part of May--but what?
       Curiously enough, Dahlsten's Modoc County site, located in the far
    northeastern corner of California, showed reproductive numbers on the
    *high* side of normal.  Researchers in the southern section of the
    state, reported the same.  The explanation seemed to be associated with
    the heavy rain that had fallen on most of Northern California on May,
    6, but had missed northeastern and southern California.
       At this point in their investigation, according to DeSante, one of
    his colleaugues remarked, "that is when the Chernobyl cloud was passing
    over," and urged that they reexamine this hypothesis.  This time nobody
    laughed when Chernobyl was mentioned.
       When DeSante and his colleagues categorized the bird species
    according to migratory behavior, habitat preference, and nest location,
    they found that the decreases were independent of those factors.
    However, when they classified the species according to foraging
    behavior, they discovered an astonishing fact--the only species not
    affected were woodpeckers and swallows.
       At first they could not understand why the two groups of species
    were exempted from the decreases, but knowledge of avian diets provided
    a clue.  They knew woodpeckers feed their young on grubs and beetles,
    which in turn feed on dying, dead and decomposing wood.  Swallows feed
    their young on flying insects, which, in the vicinity of Palomarin,
    primarily emerge from flowing water in small creeks that contain
    decomposing materials.
       So whatever had affected the majority of birds at Palomarin appeared
    to involve the primary production food chain, such as caterpillars and
    other larvae which eat new plant growth, and are in turn fed upon by
    many species of birds.  Such foods are an important source of forage
    for warbling vireos and black-headed grosbeaks.  During the entire
    one-hundred days of mist-netting and banding, the researchers did not
    net one young warbling vireo or grosbeak.  DeSante believes no young
    were produced by those species in the vicinity of Palomarin in 1986.
       By mid-September 1986, DeSante had completed a painstaking study of
    the combined data from Palomarin and from other areas on the West
    Coast.  He found that while the rate of *adult* birds banded per one-
    hundred net hours in the summer of 1986 was eight percent below the
    previous ten-year mean, the rate of *young* birds banded was 62 percent
    below the mean.  Conversely, better-than-average breeding success
    occurred for mountain chickadees east of the Sierra Nevada, for the
    subalpine community on the east slope of the Sierra Nevada, and for
    those in Southern California.  Due to weather patterns, those areas
    received no Chernobyl fallout.
       DeSante also found that the reproductive failures coincided,
    geographically, with the passage of the May 6, 1986 Chernobyl cloud
    over coastal Washington, Oregon and northern California.  Neither past
    heavy spring rains, droughts, or other unusual weather conditions such
    as the 1982-83 El Nino winter of excessive rainfall produced such
    severe effects on landbird productivity as seen in the summer of 1986.
    Those past events resulted in only nineteen to thirty-two percent
    reductions in landbird productivity.
       Woodpeckers and bark-gleaners--birds that feed on insects in dead
    and decaying wood, which absorbs no rainwater and thus no radiation--
    showed no decline at all.  However, birds that feed on insects that
    feed on new plant growth, showed declines of 63 to 65 percent, and
    seed-eaters declined by about 50 percent.  Circumstantial evidence was
    strong for DeSante's food chain hypothesis.
       DeSante's explanation as to how Chernobyl fallout could have spurred
    infant and juvenile bird mortality is based on the fact that
    radioactive contaminants become increasingly concentrated as they move
    up the food chain.  A startling and disquieting example of this
    "transfer factor" in action, is that fish that feed on algae and ocean
    sediments have been found to concentrate radionuclides to levels far
    surpassing the amounts found in the water in which they live.  DeSante
    suspected that iodine-131, the primary constituent found in North
    American fallout, was the culprit behind the reproductive failure.
       The deleterious effects of iodine-131 are relatively well-documented
    in sheep, cattle, swine, and humans, but no comparable studies have
    been conducted on birds.  Yet it seemed reasonable to DeSante that
    similar health problems might occur in birds, particularly small
    insectivorous ones.  "Smaller birds ingest more food matter per body
    weight because they have a faster metabolism and so will take up a
    larger dose of radiation than larger birds," DeSante explained.[27]
       "No others animals would be as sensitive to radiation as baby birds
    during their first ten days of development.  Laboratory radiation
    studies have been done on chickens.  They are very different because
    they hatch full-feathered and are able to run around right away.  They
    have a long development time in the egg and they are larger and heavier
    in body weight.  The studies that have been done on small birds such as
    bluebirds and tree swallows subjected them to much higher doses of
    radiation than Chernobyl produced.  So people haven't worked with low-
    levels of radiation on small birds.  That is what needs to be done
    now."[28]
       DeSante wondered if a correlation could be found between the amount
    of radiation potentially received by the birds in various areas of the
    United States and their reproductive success.  He decided to examine
    the amounts of radiation measured in pasteurized milk by the
    Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) across the United States, and
    changes in landbird numbers between 1986 and 1987, as recorded by the
    Breeding Bird Survey, which is conducted under the auspices of the U.S.
    Fish and Wildlife Service.
       But birds don't drink milk, so why did DeSante use the EPA milk
    data?  He explained it this way.  When radioactive rain falls, it is
    adsorbed by the vegetation and concentrates on the new growth.  Then it
    is grazed upon by first order, or primary consumers, such as cows--or
    caterpillars, and other larvae and grazing insects such as
    grasshoppers.  Arboreal insectivores, small insect-eating birds that
    forage in trees, consume these caterpillars and other larvae, and also
    feed them to their young.  So the amount of radiation picked up in milk
    is a good measure of the amount of radiation that was picked up by the
    primary consumers, such as grazing insects, and eaten by the birds.
       DeSante further theorized that if there had been significant
    decreases in the reproductive success of small arboreal insectivores in
    1986, the decreases should show up in the population levels of these
    birds in 1987, as recorded in the Breeding Bird Survey data.  Indeed,
    he found a strong correlation between regional concentrations of
    iodine-131 in milk, and decreases--between 1986 and 1987--in numbers of
    small, arboreal, insectivorous birds.  For no other birds was there a
    similar, significant correlation.
       He suggested that by virtue of their larger body weight and lesser
    consumption of grazing insects, birds in other foraging categories were
    spared the effects of low-level radiation.  He concluded that Chernobyl
    fallout may have adversely affected the reproductive success of small,
    arboreal, insectivorous birds all across the United States, and that
    the severity of the effect was related to the amount of radiation that
    they received.
       DeSante also wanted to know if survival from 1986 through 1987
    differed from the previous six years for adult birds of different ages.
    DeSante and his researchers had seven years of survival data for three
    species of coastal scrub birds at Palomarin:  wrentits, Nuttall's
    white-crowned sparrows, and song sparrows.[29]  They found that in
    1986-87, the survival rate of old birds of these three species was the
    *lowest* in seven years.  In sharp contrast, the 1986-87 survival rate
    of one-year-old and middle-aged adult birds of these three species was
    the *highest* in seven years.  Presumably, this was because of
    favorable weather conditions during the winter of 1986-87.  At first
    these anomalous findings perplexed DeSante, because older adult birds
    generally survive at least as well as young adult birds.
       "Older birds are generally a little bit dominant over younger birds,
    more experienced, better able to find shelter, and they usually have
    the best territories," DeSante explained.  "If the problem were food
    supply, again the older birds generally do better, are more dominant
    and thus better able to get food."[30]
       As a result of his careful studies of the landbird biomonitoring
    program at Palomarin, he had discovered that there was a reproductive
    failure that affected young or embryonic birds.  By the time the
    fledglings were out of the nest, there were sixty-two percent fewer
    than there should have been.  The survival data demonstrated that the
    very old were affected as well.
       Finally, DeSante wondered if the survival of one-year-old birds in
    1987 would provide an indication of the magnitude of the reproductive
    failure in 1986.  Again, he compared the number of young birds of the
    same three species (the wrentit, Nuttall's white-crowned sparrow, and
    song sparrow) for the seven years 1981-87.
       "By the time the 1987 breeding season rolled around, the decrease in
    young birds [those hatched in 1986] was even greater than the decrease
    we had detected in the summer of 1986," DeSante said, "suggesting that
    still more of those birds died later that summer, or at an accelerated
    rate that winter.  And if they did die at an extra rate that winter,
    isn't that awfully strange.  Because those birds that were one- or two-
    or three-years old survived at a much greater rate.  Again, the only
    birds that survived at a much lower rate in 1986-87 were the young and
    old."[31]
       DeSante suggested that these puzzling results may all agree with the
    hypothesis that radiation from Chernobyl was the culprit.  He said, "I
    believe that if low-level radiation is working through the immune
    system, it would preferentially affect the very young, whose immune
    systems are just developing, and old, whose immune systems are breaking
    down.  And that might be the reason for what we saw in 1986."[32]
       Ornithologists are generally in agreement that birds can be regarded
    as early warning systems for man because they extremely sensitive to
    the environment--like the canary in the coal mine.  The miner never
    knew when poisonous gases were accumulating to dangerous levels.  When
    the canary died, the miner hastened to get out.  Did birds send a
    similar message to humanity in the summer of 1986, this time about the
    dangers of low-level radiation, particulary to especially sensitive
    members of the human race such as infants and ailing adults?



  [21] Kate Millpointer interview with David F. DeSante, July 5, 1988.

  [22] David F. DeSante and Geoffrey R. Geupel, "Landbird productivity in
       central coastal California:  the relationship to annual rainfall
       and a reproductive failure in 1986," "The Condor," 89:636-653.

  [23] The quantities of pesticides used, and number of acres sprayed for
       each agricultural product are prepared quarterly by the California
       Department of Food and Agriculture.

  [24] Kate Millpointer interview with Donald L. Dahlsten, July 14, 1988.

  [25] In Blodgett Forest during 1986, 14 of 33 nests failed (42 percent).
       A high rate of nest failure occurred in 1977, with 13 of 32 failed,
       but five of these were due to predators.  In 1986, two nests failed
       due to predation, leaving 12 which failed for unknown reasons, or
       36 percent.  98 out of 236 eggs died (41 percent).  57 deaths would
       be expected, based on a 15-year mean of 24 percent mortality.
       During no year other than 1986 did observed deaths deviate
       significantly from the expected number.  "Ibid."

  [26] Kate Millpointer interview with C. J. Ralph, September 6, 1988.

  [27] Kate Millpointer interview with David F. DeSante, August 8, 1988.

  [28] "Ibid."

  [29] With data from a study known as "The Coastal Scrub Avian Ecology
       Program," which determined the ages of individual birds by
       examining their skulls, DeSante was able to follow the lives of
       individual birds of three species in the coastal scrub habitat at
       Palomarin.  He determined a mean survivorship, that is, the mean
       number of birds that exist in one year and are still alive into
       the next year.  He classified the adult birds into three groups:
       one-year old birds;  middle-aged birds (two to three years);  and
       old birds (four years or older).

  [30] Kate Millpointer interview with David F. DeSante, February 15, 1989.

  [31] "Ibid."

  [32] "Ibid."


                        ______________________________



         Of obedience, faith, adhesiveness;
         As I stand aloof and look there is to me something profoundly
         affecting in large masses of men following the lead of
         those who do not believe in men.
                                       Walt Whitman -- Leaves of Grass