"Fresh" Water — Or Filthy Water?
Enough about air pollution for the moment. What about supplies of fresh water? By fresh water, we mean the opposite of salt water. Today, "fresh" water is anything but fresh in the true sense of the word.
Take the Netherlands, for example. Holland is suffering from the pangs of European prosperity. For centuries the Dutch have successfully battled against both the North Sea and internal fresh water flooding.
Now a new problem has arisen. The Rhine River flows out through Holland. The Dutch desperately need diversions from the Rhine's giant volume to flush salt out of reclaimed sea land areas. But the Rhine has become so polluted (from wastes picked up in France and West Germany) that its value for this cleansing purpose is seriously questioned.
"Holland's twin problem," says a Dutch official, "is invasion by the salt sea and pollution from the dirty Rhine — Europe's filthiest and most contaminated river."
In West Germany, polluted rivers and lakes are a growing menace. Only the Ruhr River has been successfully cleaned up. Even beautiful Lake Constance along the German-Swiss border is reported to be accumulating waste materials at a dangerous rate.
The problem is much the same elsewhere. Traveling through Italy with our Dusseldorf office manager was eye-opening. As we stood on the bank of the much-polluted Arno River in Florence, he sardonically warned, "Don't fall in! You'll die of diphtheria before you hit bottom."
Similar conditions exist on the other side of the globe. The beautiful natural harbor in Sydney, Australia, is now contaminated.
"Name your disease," reports the Australian International News Review. "With very little effort you can catch it merely by going swimming anywhere inside the harbor itself or almost anywhere along the coast for 20 miles above and below the city." Reports of typhoid and paratyphoid organisms made headlines in Sydney newspapers as early as a year ago.
"Colon of Mid-America"
Almost every creek, river, lake and bay in the entire United States is now contaminated. Nothing reveals this ugly fact more than the state of the once-beautiful Mississippi River — now referred to by some as the colon of mid-America."
Last fall a group of conservationists inspected the Mississippi by boat in the vicinity of St. Louis. The men were shocked to see more than 100 pipes pouring untreated sewage directly into the Mississippi.
Water samples taken from the river below St. Louis were found to be so toxic that even when diluted ten times with clear water, fish placed in the mixture died in less than one minute! When the samples were diluted 100 times, the test fish still perished within 24 hours. Fortunately, the people living south of St. Louis have more rugged constitutions than do fish.
A 2,464 Mile Sewer
If you think the Mississippi River situation is serious, however, just listen to what is being proposed for the Missouri River, the Mississippi's "northern half."
In January, a group of water experts prepared a bold report urging that the second longest river in the U.S. be used for one purpose only — removing city wastes.
Imagine — the Missouri to become a 2,464 mile sewer!
But on second thought, why not? — considering the sad shape the river is in. What the frank report admitted is that the overburdened Missouri can no longer be expected to perform a dual role, that of removing sewage and providing a source of clean water at the same time.
"Typical River" Highlights National Crisis
Down South, the state of the vital, once-crystalline Chattahoochee River of Georgia and Alabama offers a graphic study of America's water crisis.
The murky Chattahoochee enters Atlanta loaded with upstream pollution. There much of its coffee-with-cream colored water detours into Atlanta's filtration plant to supply the domestic and industrial needs of the city's half-million people.
Doses of alum, chlorine, ammonia, carbon and lime are added to make the water as clear and potable as possible.
After doing its work for Atlanta, an overloaded purification plant returns the water, some of it untreated, into the stream bed — considerably darker in color. For miles downstream, even industry cannot use it.
The Public Health Service labels Atlanta's water and sewage problem "critical." It adds, however, that it is typical of conditions prevalent throughout the entire country. If you want more vivid examples read U.S. Congressman Jim Wright's new book, The Coming Water Famine. But don't read it before dinner unless you have a cast-iron stomach.
Is it any wonder that one writer described the typical drinking water supply of many U.S. cities as "a brown, diluted soup of dead bacteria preserved in chlorine"?
Sterile Rivers
It is difficult for the average citizen to grasp the enormity of the contamination crisis facing our rivers and lakes. But our scientists know. And they are alarmed at what they see.
A recent National Academy of Sciences special report contained a shocking prediction. By 1980, even with efficient waste treatment, the discharge of sewage and other organic wastes will be absolutely enormous. The waste pileup will by then be capable of consuming all the oxygen of all the flow in dry weather of the 22 river basins in the United States. (The oxygen is removed by bacteria feeding on the waste products)
Imagine! STERILE RIVERS, completely robbed of life!
Chemical poisons, the report said, are being introduced in new forms so fast that the toxicologists simply cannot keep up with them. This, coupled with the relentless growth of population and industry, will soon make the situation entirely unmanageable.
America's Dead Sea
Who would believe North America's five fabulous Great Lakes — containing one fifth of the world's supply of fresh water — could become seriously polluted?
They are. The situation is critical.
Lake Erie is literally dying. Not only is its shoreline polluted but over one fourth of the lake is without oxygen.
This vast reservoir of death in the middle of the lake is a virtual underwater desert. All useful water life has been smothered by the immense blooms of green and blue-green algae feeding on the nitrogen, phosphorus and other waste products flushed into the lake by polluted rivers and streams.
Two other Great Lakes are showing ominous signs. Lake Michigan, a cul-de-sac body of water with little drain-off, is steadily accumulating dangerous amounts of waste.
Lake Ontario, the last lake in the chain, is also the final deposition for the pollution of the four other lakes. Visitors to famed Niagara Falls are often offended by the stench of sewage and paper-mill waste flowing over the falls.
Just to reverse the deterioration in the Great Lakes would now take at least ten years of hard effort at a minimum cost of 20 billion dollars!
Destruction Rate Unparalleled
"No country in the history of the world," says Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, "has destroyed its natural resources at a rate comparable to the destruction now going on in the United States.
"In the last 100 years this country has destroyed more of its resources than the entire world has in the past 1,000 years. We destroyed the forests, the rivers — there is not one watershed in the United States that is now unpolluted — and we are rapidly destroying the lakes."
Senator Nelson predicts that unless corrective measures are taken, our useable water reserves "will be used up in ten years!" (Newark, New Jersey, Star-Ledger, August 23, 1966)
Silent Killers
The most insidious of all contaminants today are the hydrocarbon pesticides — of which DDT is the most famous. Drained off sprayed farmlands into creeks, rivers and the oceans, these high-powered poisons are entering the world food-chain. They pose a grave threat to all forms of life!
There is apparently no area on earth untouched by DDT and its related family of pesticides.
The Antarctic continent is the most remote area of the earth, the most isolated from man and his actions. Yet, trace amounts of DDT which has never been used there have been detected in the tissues of four Antarctic animal species.
Tissue analyses of Adelie penguins, crab-eater seals, Weddell seals and fish species of the eelpout family have all revealed traces of DDT. The heaviest concentration was found in the eel-pouts, captured in bottom traps at depths of more than 1500 feet in McMurdo Sound.
At the opposite end of the earth, the same amazing result has been found.
During the summer of 1965, a husband-and-wife team of amateur ornithologists explored the remote, nearly inaccessible interior of Alaska.
All around their campsite area in the Brooks Range were numerous nests and eggs — all contaminated. Varying amounts of chlorinated hydrocarbons were discovered in every specimen they checked. The highest amount was found in a rough-legged hawk and in a larvae which lived under a rock in a cold mountain stream.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service believes the source of the contamination to be "pesticide fallout" — probably the result of aerial spray which never reached the ground at its intended target.
DDT in the Pacific
One year ago, a three-man research team made a startling discovery. The researchers collected more than 400 samples of fish, shellfish and other invertebrates in the Pacific Ocean off America's West Coast. Do you know how many were free of pesticide residue?
FOUR!
That's right, four! A measly four out of over 400 samples — only one percent — collected in a broad area from Seattle to the Galapagos Islands and from San Francisco to Hawaii. It seems that animals without a trace of DDT or some other pesticide have become freaks.
The researchers were also startled to find that the DDT concentration in the reproductive organs of certain species was 10 times that found in other body tissues. Is it any wonder the fertility rate of man and wildlife is dropping?
In addition, the researchers said the widespread occurrence of DDT residues in marine bays and estuaries was particularly significant. Such bodies of water are the "nurseries" of many species of commercial fish.
"The distribution of pesticides in areas for which they were never intended is no longer a nightmare but a reality," the research team concluded. (New York Times, February 9, 1966)
Poisons Magnified
Pesticides washing off sprayed lands enter rivers and streams in very dilute quantities. But marine organisms ingesting the chemical often concentrate the poison many times. Studies have shown that oysters can accumulate DDT residues 70,000 times the amount of DDT in the surrounding water. And many people eat oysters.
Small fish also concentrate pesticides and pass them on to larger fish which eat them. When the larger fish are eaten by fish-eating birds such as the osprey or bald eagle, the birds get extremely concentrated doses of poison.
The osprey and eagle stand at the top of this marine food chain. And both of these birds are now in biological trouble and are threatened with extinction. The osprey, which used to breed by the hundreds on the East Coast, is now down to a few dozen.
In 1963, of 56 specimens of bald eagle found dead or incapacitated in 20 states and two Canadian provinces, all but one contained DDT. Of five infertile eagle eggs tested, all contained DDT.
"We know that pesticides are responsible for the bald eagle's plight," noted ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson testified before Congress in 1964.
Human Contamination
Not only is our air, water and land contaminated, but we ourselves are polluted. There are 20 tons of DDT residue in the U.S. "walking" around stored within the bodies of nearly 200 million Americans.
This amounts to one tenth of a gram per person. A small but definite amount. And it is growing. Recent studies and examinations also show that DDT can even be transferred from a mother to her unborn child through the placenta.
Once DDT finds its way into the fat of any creature, its persistence permits it to stay unchanged for a long period of time. And as the creature — each one of us — eats more food contaminated with DDT, the amount of DDT in our fat increases. This stored DDT accumulates until it is much more concentrated than that being daily ingested.
Contaminated animals are known to have died during drought conditions when their stored fatty tissue was called upon for energy. What happens to a human in a time of stress or a period of weight loss when fat is burned, releasing stored, concentrated DDT into the individual's system?
Newer dangers are continually being reported. Some scientists are warning that many of the pesticides stored in the body's fatty tissues can act as inhibitors of the oxygen supply to the cells. Experiments with animals have shown that interference with the oxidative enzyme system of a fetus will cause structural changes in the tissue and organs, and a marked increase in congenital deformities.
The pesticide peril is increasing every day. "The more you spray today, the more you will have to spray tomorrow," is a known axiom.