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<p class=MsoPlainText>Hi GRENers,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Hope everyone has found a cool place to hang out in this
heat wave. I thought this article was worth forwarding. Makes me less happy
about my upcoming camping and beach trips to Lake Huron, though…<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Susan K<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>July 8, 2010<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>The Ottawa Citizen<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Misgivings about manure<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>By Tom Spears,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>When I started writing stories about Great Lakes ecology
in the late 1980s, an activist said something that sounded profound. Thinking
back to the earlier, algae-choked days on Lake Erie, she said: "Today
there's less sewage, but more poison."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>By poison, she meant synthetic chemicals with long, unpronounceable
names, known by their initials (DDT, PCBs) or short forms (dioxin).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Some were pesticides, and some were just accidental
byproducts of industry, the stuff people used to dump anywhere without
understanding the harm.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Today the picture is changing again. Those synthetic
chemicals do last a long time, but we've stopped manufacturing and dumping most
of them.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>No one makes mirex or PCBs today. Eventually the chemical
residues will break down.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>What we do produce in enormous quantities is manure.
Federal figures show that Ontario and Quebec together produce manure equivalent
to the sewage from 100 million people. It is sprayed, mixed with water, on
fields near the Great Lakes, especially lakes Huron and Erie, and the smaller
St. Clair.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>I've been uncomfortable with this for some time. Then a
few weeks ago, the environmental commissioner for Ontario came to Ottawa. Gord
Miller dropped in to the Citizen for a chat and mentioned that he had just given
a speech to a conference on fresh water in Bracebridge, the heart of the
Muskoka region.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Miller argued in his speech that the biggest threat to
Ontario's water isn't toxic waste. It's manure.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Manure is called "nutrients" in official
circles, but in reality it's foul-smelling brown stuff, especially the manure
from factory farms that is kept in huge vats, fermenting a bit, and sprayed on
fields in spring and fall. (And sometimes winter. They shouldn't do this
because it runs off frozen land in spring into lakes and rivers, but people
sometimes do it anyway.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>For years we've been told E. coli and other pathogenic
material in fresh water comes from both farm animals and from humans, the
implication that both groups are equally part of the problem. But a recent
study of Lake Huron looked at the DNA of E. coli. It shows that only about one
to three per cent of the lake's E. coli come from humans -- and about 60 per
cent comes from livestock manure. The rest is either unknown or from wildlife.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>So human sewage isn't the problem. The problem is the
spraying of more animal manure than the land can soak up.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>If you wonder why we haven't heard more about this,
Miller had an answer for that too.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>The Great Lakes have wave action that keeps such
pollution close to shore, where people swim.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>But until very recently, Miller says, surveys of lake
water quality were done by boats that are too big to approach shore. They've
been sampling farther out, in deep water that's cleaner -- and missing the true
picture.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Luckily the commish is on top of this. He says sampling
procedures have improved. We do hope his next survey of Ontario's environmental
health tells everyone what's been happening.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>And yet Canadian and U.S. pollution regulations still
focus on the enemies of the 1970s, the remnants of days when the chemical
factories dumped waste material in a shallow hole out back, near the local
river or lake. That's yesterday's problem. It's time to focus on the real,
Walkerton-style pollution. There's less poison today, but more animal sewage.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>This problem appears to threaten more than our waterways.
At Newcastle University in England, scientists have been measuring how natural
bacteria change over time. In farm soil, they've found something odd:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>soil bacteria are showing genetic signs of resistance to
a variety of antibiotics. Professor David Graham, who led the research, said
the findings suggest an emerging threat to public and environmental health.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Graham's point is that drug resistance in infectious
disease bugs is a known threat. It most often takes the form of
"superbugs" that infect people, often in hospitals. A common one is
MRSA, a staphylococcus bug that resists the drug methicillin.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>We know that hot spots of drug-resistance in soil
bacteria are often near hog farms. Pigs get antibiotics in their food
regularly, sick or not, and the drugs are flushed out with the manure. In high
volume, this is enough to change those soil bacteria.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>But then again, soil bacteria don't affect us directly,
right? They help crops grow, and it doesn't matter, does it, whether they can
resist antibiotics?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Turns out these bugs may affect us after all. Back at
Newcastle, Graham points out that harmless soil bacteria could pass on a
resistant gene to a disease-causing pathogen, such as MRSA, with obvious
consequences. (Bacteria are weird; they borrow genes from each other, and from
their hosts.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Manure, anyone?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Tom Spears is a member of the Citizen's editorial board.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>E-mail <a href="mailto:tspears@thecitizen.canwest.com">tspears@thecitizen.canwest.com</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Read more: <a
href="http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Misgivings+about+manure/3248981/story.html#ixzz0t56xjeUh">http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Misgivings+about+manure/3248981/story.html#ixzz0t56xjeUh</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><img border=0 width=107 height=78 id="Picture_x0020_1"
src="cid:image001.png@01CB1E9E.9AAE6EA0"> Read 2080:The Return of Pareto by
Susan Koswan <o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i>Environmentalists, corporate fundamentalists, aliens and
dandelions... <o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i>In Kitchener/Waterloo bookstores and libraries or from
dandelion@gto.net<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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