Complication of Epidemiology - Environmental factors

I'll start with the story of DDT and its effects on the top of the food chain in the avian  world.
DDT was never sprayed on the eagle, nor was it sprayed on the fish that the eagles eat,
nevertheless, the eggs had trace amounts of DDT in them and it affected the thickness of the shell causing the eggs not to mature.
The source?  Farmer spraying fields of plants, draining off into the streams, insects with DDT being consumed way down the food chain by small water dwelling animals, which were consumed by still larger fish until the size was large enough for an eagle to catch.
Think about it, that is a long way to travel.
We know, from other countries experience, that Arsenic can cause cancer, but at fairly high levels, but what about low levels?
We know from the non-smoking Uranium miners in Colorado and Utah that radon in very high levels can cause lung cancer.  Reports and studies on low levels when i studied them were mixed as were the studies on radon in water (even more so because some studies showed an inverse relation between cancer and high levels of radon in the water).
Then there was the study that the US EPA did on tree milling areas where there would be a very fine dust produced.  The study found that those workers who also worked producing methanol were not only NOT effected, but that the methanol vapors mitigated other factors such as smoking.
There is thee issue of asbestos, in the medium small particle range, causing a very bad disease, which is a direct cause and effect, or manganese which caused a mercury like brain problem when consumed in high quantities and of course a long history of problems with mercury itself.
Then we go to small levels of the next generation of pesticides after DDT, Aldrin (active component is dieldren) and chlordane.  Dieldren has been described in literature as something that would assist cancer production if there is something else which would cause cancer.  Chlordane is a concern for the endocrine system.
Now we get into the difficult stuff, pesticides have been found to effect immune systems at low levels and affect autoimmune diseases a generation down.
The issue with environmental factors is that they are complicated, small amounts of dieldren might not affect a person, but maybe their children or maybe a high dose of radon or a small dose of arsenic might be a trigger.
Eating process foods might be a factor.  Other pesticides in foods might be a factor.  Using chlorine bleach might be a factor.
Occupational exposure to ozone from a copier might be a factor or excess car exhaust from long commutes may play in to the equation.
One thing the US EPA did right is they talk about life time exposures to substances, but it can also be combination of things that could be factors.
This is why straight epidemiology does not work well in these situations, but it is the only tools we have.
This is complicated and direct connections are often hard to find.

NRDC reports on beaches

There are many things that one can say on these yearly reports and i find much of my attitude toward them as "they still do not really understand at all".
Why?
While they do provide open discussion about the quality of swimming water in America and do raise awareness of what we have done to our planet (not that it would matter much if we were suddenly gone, the planet would heal itself), but they have missed balance.
Balance?  What does that have to do with anything?
If you believe the ideas and myths presented of the "American Indian" and how they lived in harmony with nature (not totally in reality, but better than we), there is to be harmony and balance between man and nature.
The NRDC and the US EPA are "clean water" agencies and that means they would be very happy if all the water in the world was without any materials of any kind other than water.
That, to me, would mean sterile water with no life
Why?
The reality is that water carries with it normal things from the land to water that provides life for the tiniest organisms which allow other organisms to feed and the cycle goes upward.
Man partakes of this food chain at thew higher levels and so must put back a proportional amount to balance the equation.
Of course we have not done this.
We have put things in there to kill things we do not like (pesticides and other poisons).  We have put things from the manufacture of items to kill our selves (lead and mercury).  We even have  put all of our waste, with out any sorting of good from bad, in the same waters.
So the organisms the US EPA is worried about and uses to monitor water quality are organisms that are common to humans, enterococcus and fecal coliform, but they have many, many natural sources as well and are part of the cycle of life.
They also are linked to human illness.
So when a town like Stamford, closes its beaches after a heavy rain, it is not because of man-made pollution, it is because the normal cycle of washing the earth has brought these organisms into the water for a time.  It will eventually increase  aquatics life and bathers are inconvenienced for a day.
This of course is not what the US EPA nor the NRDC wants, they want no beach closures ever and i think it is rather selfish of us to think this way.

The US EPA, my tirade

I think most people reading this blog realize I have a bit of a disdain for the US EPA.
Recently, in the news, the issue of PCB's in caulk at New York Public schools were brought to a climax with an agreement to "study" the real health issue.
They set a standard in 1977 (?) and now are kind of backing down because of the huge cost for remediation.
This is mostly the case for Us EPA policy.
Another example is that there were many pesticides banned for commercial use in 1977, particularly in agriculture, but pest control companies were allowed to use them for residential homes termite remediation!  Where it may well be part of the issue in some of the wells in the North Stamford area.

Money and health do not mix, except at the US EPA.

The real Rain Story

I said something about rain the other day, so I figured I would check myself. I always check these gut intuitions with facts. We have collected data since 1984 at the Government center on lots of things, including rain:

Year	Total Rain	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
1984	10.65					1.85	2.8	4.5		1.5
1985	44.627		1.9	0.77	1.182	6.77	4.23	5.38	5.292	5.451	1.5	9.702	2.45
1986	35.51	3.84	0.51	2.94	1.75	2.02	2.75	3.22	4.08	0.55	2.4	5.1	6.35
1987	40.886	2.65			9.232	1.652	2.591	2.772	5.67	6.021	3.942	3.722	2.634
1988	33.636				1.841	4.762	0.533	5.561	3.48	3.902	4.223	9.334
1989	40.976			1.3	4.302	12.492	4.83	3.55	5.451	3.831	3.02	2.2
1990	30.162				2.61	4.39	2.72	1.751	6.391	1.85	8.77	1.68
1991	41.816	3.874	2.122	4.094	2.713	4.593	1.595	3.278	7.584	3.892	0.842	3.415	3.814
1992	41.116	1.444	2.084	4.272	2.256	3.378	4.003	3.154	5.883	2.625	1.287	5.434	5.296
1993	32.283	2.522	3.782	3.973	3.124	1.848	1.521	1.501	2.144	4.646	2.453	1.359	3.41
1994	43.841	6.9	3.862	6.871	2.554	3.398	2.605	3.615	4.046	2.064	1.072	3.484	3.37
1995	30.403	3.032	3.551	0.747	2.852	1.372	1.103	1.375	0.72	2.763	6.593	3.875	2.42
1996	63.726	5.581	2.36	5.61	7.661	2.128	5.192	7.934	0.842	6.015	8.8	4.192	7.411
1997	65.142	4.082	1.806	8.351	3.21	8.044	7.191	10.193	8.833	1.4	1.685	3.604	6.743
1998	45.627	5.808	6.291	5.691	3.903	4.81	6.911	1.645	3.741	2.833	3.633		0.361
1999	75.828	6.661	4.985	4.224	1.551	3.901	1.113	1.948	4.46	26.947	9.15	7.686	3.202
2000	118.637	9.283	4.631	17.209	8.204	9.657	12.134	15.245	10.136	12.713	1.498	10.791	7.136
2001	86.684	6.435	5.512	15.12	6.209	7.631	11.802	3.701	11.321	11.281	1.741	2.281	3.65
2002	122.411	4.272	1.441	9.79	8.631	14.394	20.86	2.94	12.491	15.14	13.29	9.292	9.87
2003	144.478	1.604	5.301	5.883	7.731	17.473	23.21	6.584	15.05	17.11	17.132	11.85	15.55
2004	168.19	4.743	7.91	11.201	18.863	12.461	11.163	25.174	14.62	33.741	4.421	14.702	9.191
2005	183.491	2.92	2.8	3.76	9.3	3.64	5.93	5.821	5.2	7.37	93.11	22.99	20.65
2006	334.945	25.66	8.64	3.44	39.57	31.07	35.71	26.5	51.55	20.62	37.565	37.73	16.89
2007	311.41	25.84	3.58	27.95	66.02	8.72	22.5	25.04	18.96	9.88	61.16	16.58	25.18
2008	140.253	11.08	21.96	17.31	9.441	14.65	12.39	7.521	11.33	14.12	5.201	5.73	9.52
2009	3.02	1.77	0.55	1.37
Average	88.067	6.667	4.551	7.358	9.363	7.484	8.295	7.196	9.136	8.731	12.270	8.554	7.862

We are low!

Long Island Sound and rain

Any one notice that we have not yet had much rain this spring. We had loads of snow, but really very little rain. The snow is gone and the temperature is going up and down. Without a good rain to wash the decaying organic matter (read mostly leaves here) into the Sound, there will not be a spring algae bloom. the bloom is a bringer of life as many of the plankton eating fish come to feast, spawn and move on, The fish eggs, babies and grown-ups make food for other fish.
The question is, Are we going to have our cycle or not?
I bring this up because there are many things that may affect fish populations and weather is definitely one of them.
Catching winter flounder has been now restricted. This is rather ironic because the gentleman who I call the Patron Saint of Long Island Sound (1, 2, 3 and 4)tried to get winter flounder on the endangered species list a few years back and now it is. They told him was not ever going to happen, they were not endangered. Someone was wrong and it was not him.
I wait with "baited" breath (pun intended).

Sewage in the Environment! Bad or Good?

As I appear to get sharper and more on top of things, there are more things to talk about in the environment. The Greenwich sewage spill. Greenwich has a lot of problems with their infrastructure regarding the the sewer lines. They don't have some one like Stamford does in the person of Jennette Brown who is obsessed (in a very positive way) with treating sewage. Their problems (along with the towns upstream) have kept Byram Beach on a very precarious "open" status. But do I think this is necessarily bad, No! Truth is for many years, there was no swimming in the winter because the treatment plant just let the sewage flow out untreated into the Sound. Now I know everyone is going "yuck" right now, but it actually provided for the nutrient base for an incredible fishing hatchery in the sound and while this was going on, there was no hypoxia! The balancing act of nature absorbed all those nutrients and produced, surprise, fish! Now I will admit, according to the theory that I proposed a few posts ago, it also created the ground work for the problems we now have. anaerobic bacteria working full tine to produce the toxic H2S. So in light of my previous post concerning the late rain, there might be an added benefit from this sewer break and fisher people might have a positive surprise this coming spring. Of course I do not recommend releasing untreated sewage into the sound due to the disease issues, but there are ways to deal with the diseases before the stuff whits the fan, so to speak.

A 'eureka' moment

I of course, have an interest in Long Island Sound. When I first came here I was told by my best friend of the fishing will he was growing up and as he was raising his son. There was a little when I first came in 1977, but it quickly dwindled, so only truely dedicated fishermen went out fishing to catch things. Art Glowka was one and he noticed a significant change and pondered it. Meantime, the USEPA was out doing their thing and not looking at what affects they might be having. Municipalities like New York went with it cause they could get federal money to up grade sewage treatment plants and that might help their beaches.

So what was the eureka moment?

We were talking about the measured fact that nitrogens have remained constant for the past 60 years.
That the measured hypoxia has been growing since 1977.
Chlorophyll levels (the measure of algae) have been decreaseing for a significant time.
The fish started decreasing and changing in 1977.
Changing means differnet kinds of fish, decreasing means of the kinds that were most prevelant in the past.
The size of the plankton has been shown to be different, smaller than before and that means different fish will eat them.

Art and i started talking about the water column and hydrogen sulfide in the muck at the bottom.

I thought about it long after he left and I don't have a full picture, but it has to do with the fact that the deutritis was no longer being added as a cover to the old anerobic (without oxygen) muck, protecting it from the hydrogen sulfide being produced.

We have ample evidence that this exists and when conditions are wrong, it gets stirred up and is the best explaination of why the lobsters died off.

Did we create this toxic mess? Yes, from years of treatment plant discharge!
Is limiting nitrogen going to do anything to change things? No, not a bit!
Do I have a solution? A temporary one and that is to let the clean deutritis that we currectly pay to get rid of in some land fill go back into the Sound, but I do not think that is the only aswer and people smarter than I will figure something out!
So this is my usual boring environmental post!
We also talked about the carbon or deutritis that both rotting leaves and sewage tretment plants would add to the waters of the sound

The Patron Saint of Long Island Sound – Final installment – the quagmire

The one Issue that everyone agrees on is that the Long Island Sound is not what it used to be – the estuary which provided the beginnings for large fish populations is no more. Some of the reasons may be over fishing and I would submit that it is not just the issue of over fishing, but not replacing what we take with the seeds to recreate what we have taken. This is my radical view and that of many others who study the Sound with a view that is not based in politics.

The issues

1) The USEPA wants to bring the nutrient load into the Sound back to what it was when the Indians were here

a. I would say the Indians did not eat anywhere near the amount of fish we do and we are now the prime consumers of the fish.

2) The USEPA believes that all sewage treatment plants should have a zero nutrient contribution to the Sound and

3) The USEPA says that nitrogen is the main cause of Hypoxia in the Sound and presents its effects as a poison.

a. Nitrogen is an essential nutrient along with carbon and phosphorous and must be present to allow the re-creation of the fish that we consume.

b. Several well-known and highly respected scientists have studied the nitrogen levels in the sound and say they have not changed in the past 70 years.

c. Nutrients were suppose to equal more algae which equals to more chlorophyll, but chlorophyll measurements have been dropping the past number of years and hypoxia is still continuing???

4) The USEPA says all storm water should really be treated so that there are no additional contributions of nutrients to the Sound and that will also keep the beaches open all the time.

a. See my nitrogen argument and I would tell you I would rather have a beach closed for 24 hours after one of these heavy rains and provide nutrients to the Sound than have sterile water.

b. I still think there is a fundamental problem that is not being looked at because many of these changes occurred after sewage treatment plants were being upgraded in 1977.

c. I DO NOT advocate the release of raw sewage into the Sound, but sewage can now be treated very effectively using UV lights to kill all the pathogens in the waste we produce and there are levels of treatment to remove toxic components with out removing the nutrient value.

d. Some how we have now changed the character of the algae in the Sound and prominent scientists from the marine fisheries and UConn can attest to this.

5) The USEPA now says most of this change is unavoidable since it is due to global warming and so there is nothing that they can really do.

Then why have they wasted so much money each year since 1987 ($100,000,000 each year)

6) The USEAP says that all this is due to the East river flowing into the Sound. (They do
that a lot) They spent a lot of money($77,000,000) to develop a model which said this
and ignored a NOAA model and data that did not. (whoops!)

a. The flow of the Sound is fairly steady east to west at all tide levels.

This was clearly shown by buoy marker in 1910 (?) and again using GPS measurement in 2007.

Finally you get to meet The patron Saint of Long Island Sound:

He is often out on his boat, walking the shore and attending meetings to try to get some one to answer his many questions.

NOW I AM WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO ASK THE RIGHT QUESTION ON THIS ARTICLE.

The Patron Saint of Long Island Sound - Part 3 - Battle Lines

In the Advocate this Sunday the USEPA passed along its normal piece of propaganda they call the Sound Health magazine It talks of its involvement in the Sound since 1987 and some data goes as far back as 1987. They actually talk about climate change, but only because the Pres. has said it is okay to do so, 2 years ago they couldn't say anything and where steadfastly against mentioning it. I bring this up only to show that The Long Island Sound Study is really only a political vessel, not a scientific or an environmentally based group of people. They based the info on the all pervasive "Hypoxia" which really occurs mostly in the Western part of Long Island Sound and say that it is due to nitrogen. They want to blame the East River and the treatment plants in Westchester County (This is where Art Glowka and I differ slightly, because the treatment plants in Westchester are Combined Sewage and Storm water systems and can not handle anything over 2" of rain in a 24 hour period and must bypass a lot of sewage when those rains happen.) But I am as unconvinced as he is that the East River has anything to do with the Western Part of the Sound. The tidal flow of the Sounds waters in Westward with clear tidal front along the Throgs Neck Bridge showing Long Island Sound Pushing all the Water Westward even at low tide. One of the big issues is that for a very long time has been that the LISS simply ignored past evidence and the Living Marine resources (fish and such) as they pushed an issue of TMDLs (Total Maximum Daily Load) particularly emphasizing Sewage Treatment Plants and Nitrogen.
When you look at the finfish report, you will see interesting discrepancies between what the State DEP reports and what the USEPA is reporting.
I will say again if the size of algae is important to one group of fish and not to another, the group it is not important to will flourish and the other decline.
Of interest though is the discussion concerning Sea Robins, which might be compared to lobster in the junk that they eat. They have increased significantly.
Talking about Lobsters everyone was scratching when the die off happened, but no one remembered what happened, really and we saw a small repeat last year.
So what did happen - does Art Glowka and Whitemeist have some mistical powers that saw what no one else did?
No powers, just curiosity. Hurricane Floyd Hit in September or October - I forget now (and do not want to look it up) and really stirred up the bottom, more so than in awhile. Moreover there was a significant Low rainfall period for over a month before it hit. Art smell awful low tide water after the storm and brought me samples. There was significantly measurable H2S ( hydrogen sulfide, a very toxic agent that is produced in the muck of the Sound by bacteria living "anaerobically) in the water column, shortly thereafter the Lobster were being found dead in the Lobster Pots. Three weeks later the H2S had cleared, but the Lobster population was gone!
The rebound did not happen and you can ask if the Sea Robins had anything to do with it? Or the size of the algae to feed the lobster larva? Or was it disease?
Slowly it began to pick up, but last fall we had a wicked noreaster' which created about the same situation and again Lobster were found dead in the lobster pots. This was not the same intensity as Floyd, but still showed the same result, H2S in the water column, killing slow moving, bottom feeders.
So the battle lines were drawn, the USEPA will uninvite Art to any public meetings, because he asks these questions and asks them to make sure what they are doing before they do it. He challenges them on wasteful spending and making policy without really knowing what they are up against.

The Patron Saint of Long Island Sound – Part 2 – Algae!

The issue with plankton, algae and all the little microscopic critters that live in the Sound is that they are the fundamental building blocks of life in the ocean or an estuary (like Long Island Sound is). They are not bad creatures, but good. The smaller the size, the more base form of organism is supported. The larger plankton is food for fish and lobster larva. The small ones are good for Jellyfish, slipper snails and that kind of creature (hmmm…Jellyfish, didn’t we have an early coming of them…oh I wander from my topic). Clams and oyster eat just about everything.

So what is the problem? When they die, that is when they use up oxygen, but if they are eaten before they die, there is no problem. Most springs, when things thaw on land and we get a good flush of rain, there is an algae bloom and this begins the cycle of the food chain in the Sound.

So I talked about the size of the algae being important, what conditions change the size of the algae?

When talking about this you need to know what feed algae – nitrogen is one element, phosphorous is another and carbon is a third. That seems fairly simplistic, but that’s what algae are – simple. In the Great Lakes there was a huge problem with the amount of phosphates from detergents being dumped into the Lakes from various sources and the choking algae blooms (along with lots of other serious crud) cause a real problem. In the oceans, phosphorous is not the problem. Studies over decades of the Interstate Sanitation Commission on nitrogen shows that level has been very consistent over decades, but maybe the form has changed.

Form, forms of Nitrogen? I never mentioned that did I? Well Nitrogen has many forms, it can exist as ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, organically bound or inorganically bound and well the first 3 are what feed algae and they convert it to an organic nitrogen, which fish larva can feed on.

Still doesn’t tell you about the size, does it?

And so then we get to talk about carbon.

The sources of carbon are decomposing plant material and waste materials from animals. But wait, we pickup our leaves and grass and such so they don’t go into a compost in the back yard and clean up all the dead trees and we have very good sewage treatment plants to clean up our waste. The only thing left is water comes out of the storm water and that is the next target of the USEPA.

I am not saying that there is a lot of stuff that goes into our water ways that shouldn’t be there, but bear with me as I get to the next installment.

The Patron Saint of Long Island Sound - Part 1

Back in March when I first started blogging, my very first blog was a short discombobulated piece of poorly written thoughts that doesn't make sense even now. The information alluded to in that small paragraph came from many factors, but mostly from on tireless retiree who had made things about Long Island Sound his passion. At that time he volunteered for the Long Island Sound Task Force (not the EPA, but a private not for profit environmental group now called Save the Sound) and was helping them conduct different measurements of Long Island Sound. At that time I was still getting my ears wet at the Health Department Lab and was only doing a little thinking beyond the flasks before me. I had one great flaw and that was I was insanely curious and would try to conduct as many tests as possible on a single sample that I possibly could. The Local environmental groups loved me and I would do minimal cost work for them on samples they would bring in (Save our shores, Save the Sound, and another group in Fairfield) as well as some of the towns that did not have labs (Darien, Westport and Fairfield). We would try to be on the forefront of the tests that were being used, but would always hold on to some of the old ones to maintain a continuous thread. It was in this mix in 1985, I met Art Glowka. He seemed old then, but full of energy and he would question everything, what the data meant, how the data was compared to other data and always the conclusions drawn from that data. He was and is a fisherman and became to realize had established himself as a intense environmentalist. He worked with Bobby Kennedy on the Hudson River Foundation that got GE to stop dumping PCB s into the Hudson river and was on the committee that decided where United Way dollars were spent. Not someone to trifle with, but his manner was to challenge with questions and I kinda liked that. He got me involved with Save the Sound, where I helped them build a chlorophyll lab to determine what was in the samples they got. He then presented a strange picture to me...the fish populations were declining and no one was even aware of it.
Now for me, Long Island Sound was a place where I heard many stories from an older friend of bonanzas of fish many years earlier and even when I first moved here in 1977, I would fish and catch descent size fish for eating and then it seemed to get harder and I lost interest in fishing here and would take my friend down to Virginia Beach to spend time and fish and there was no lack. So I could actually relate to the issue. As he explained things to me they actually made sense and then he became Shellfish Commissioner for Stamford and basically had on board other persons who were interested in the Environment and Fishing and Clamming. William Thorne would collect samples form off docks and down the Noroton River; Fred Stunkle would give me his detailed fish records so I setup a website - Westerlongislandsound.com (which no longer exists today) to explain in detail the fish decline by showing well kept records of some of the catch and release fishermen, some of the records of the Audubon society showing a decline in bird life, records of empty bluefish stomachs, some of the charter fishing boat records and an extremely interesting study done by a man named G. Capriulo, who worked with the DEP on a grant from the National Science Foundation who basically said size matters and we have changed the size of the plankton in the Long Island Sound...