WWF: How You Pollute Nature Before Breakfast

http://www.frogsaustralia.net.au/documents/doc_1_fes_v1.pdf

Where do pollutants come from?

Outside of natural disasters, almost all
pollutants are the result of human activities,
whether created directly, or as by-products
of production processes.

How many chemicals do we use here in Australia?

For a start, there are over 40,000 industrial
chemicals listed by regulatory authorities, and
over 4,500 agricultural and 3,000 veterinary
products registered for use in Australia. Do we
know the effects that each of these chemicals
have? Frogs are not a standard test species, so
in most cases we don’t know what they do to
frogs. In addition, many chemical formulations
are based on other, older formulations. These
formulations have generally been originally
tested a long time ago and so may not meet
contemporary standards. The Australian
Pesticides & Veterinary Medicines Authority
(APVMA) assesses existing chemicals in
response to concerns about their health,
trade or environmental effects.

Due to the huge number of chemicals in use,
only a small proportion have been assessed
and so we often don’t know the effects that all
these chemicals have on frogs.

Unfortunately, information on agricultural
and veterinary chemical usage is not formally
collected across Australia. We do know that
herbicides, insecticides and fungicides have
been regularly used in Australian farming for
at least 40 years. We also know that all forms
of pesticide use have increased over the past
two decades and that we spend around a billion
dollars on them annually.

Who produces pollutants?

The list of who produces pollutants is
enormous because many things that we use in
day to day life either cause pollution while being
manufactured, or become a pollutant when
we finish with them.

Take, for example, most peoples’ morning routine.
You get out of bed. If it’s a wooden
bed, the wood has usually been treated with
preservatives and anti-fungal agents, perhaps
sealed with a varnish. Many of these treatment
processes discharge waste water, not to
mention the initial process to produce the
preservatives and varnishes, all of which are
likely to be toxic to frogs in variable amounts.
Chlorinated phenols are used as wood
preservatives and pesticides, and are often
the by-products of paper pulp milling. All these
chemicals are toxic in high doses.

If the sheets on the bed are cotton, they
have usually undergone a bleaching and dying
process. Chlorine based bleaches can be
dangerous to frogs. The cotton industry uses
thousands of tonnes of insecticides every year
to control pests. Pesticides, and their effects
on frogs, are discussed in much greater
detail later on in this booklet. Your sheets are
partially polyester? Many plastics industries
are again highly polluting. Bisphenol A, a highvolume
chemical used to make polycarbonate
plastic, epoxy resins, and other chemicals, has
been shown to be weakly estrogenic to fish.
Estrogen is an important hormone that regulates
many bodily functions in many animals,
including frogs.

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which are
widespread contaminants in industrialized
nations, were used to manufacture paints,
plastics, adhesives and electrical goods (such
as transformers and capacitors), non-carbon
copying paper and are used as hydraulic and
cooling fluids. PCBs have been shown to
cause reproductive failure in birds, cause liver,
stomach and thyroid gland injuries and affect
the immune system in other animals. PCBs are
so persistent and mobile in the environment that
almost everyone has been exposed to them.

You grab your towel (again it is likely to be
cotton) and walk across to the bathroom.
Think about the preserved and sealed wood
of the floor, and how logging industries can
also cause problems with erosion and sediment
into rivers. The rug on the floor and the paint
on the wall may be a source of acrylic acid.
This acid is used to produce acrylic esters
and resins, and used in detergent intermediates
and oil treatment chemicals. It is also emitted
in the production of acrylate, and from polishes,
paints, coatings, rug backings, adhesives,
plastics, textiles and paper finishes. According
to the National Pollutant Inventory database
(collated by the Department of Environment
and Heritage DEH), about 90% of acrylic acid in
the environment is expected to end up in water.
It has slight toxicity to aquatic organisms such
as fish and has high toxicity to birds.

In the bathroom, you step into the shower.
Your shampoo bottle is usually made from
plastic. Its label is usually bleached paper
(as is most toilet paper). Pulp and paper mills
discharge dioxins to air and billions of liters
of liquid effluent each year. In fish, this effluent
can cause delays in sexual maturity and reduced
egg production, depress sex steroids, cause
masculinisation of female fish, and suppress
immune functions.

Your shampoo may contain up to 50
ingredients. A number of them are foaming
agents, or ‘surfactants’. Surfactants have been
shown to be harmful to frogs and are discussed
more extensively later on in this booklet, on
page 10. Some anti-dandruff shampoos contain
selenium. Excess selenium is associated with
reproductive effects and mortality in wild birds,
although we don’t have a good understanding
of what it does to frogs. However, sodium
selenite has been shown to cause severe
developmental abnormalities in the African
clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) at concentrations
of 2 mg/L. One teaspoon of salt is 5,000 mg,
so 2mg is a very tiny amount.

Your shaving cream may contain
octylphenol, which is also a breakdown
product of a chemical widely used in the pulp and
paper industry and is found in many common
household cleaners. Octylphenol adversely
affects both the growth of snapping turtle hatchlings, and development in tadpoles.
Your antiperspirant contains aluminium, which
may have effects on the nervous system, and is
toxic to frogs at concentrations of 0.86 – 1.6 mg/L.

Your toothpaste can contain carrageenen as a
thickener, triclosan as an antibacterial, and
fluoride. The first can cause intestinal ulcerations,
the second has been shown to accumulate in wild
fish, and there is some evidence that fluoridecontaminated
water can cause frog eggs to hatch
prematurely. We don’t know what effects these
things have on Australian frogs.

All of these products are washed down the
drain. Many trillions of litres of contaminated
water flows through sewerage systems in
Australia every day. Although sewerage is
partially treated, treatment plants often do not
capture all the solids we rountinely flush down
toilets, such as wrappers, cigarette butts, dental
floss, nappies, and toilet paper, let alone treat
things like chemicals, cleaning products
and detergents.

At least 80% of water samples taken from rivers
and catchments in the USA in 1999 and 2000
contained chemicals such as disinfectants,
antibiotics, antioxidants, caffeine, fireretardants,
and fragrances. Surfactants
and platicizers (such as 4-nonylphenol and
bisphenol-A) were also found in over 50%
of samples. The potential toxicological effects
of most of these compounds are relatively
unknown. This means that many possible
contaminants are entering our waterways, and
we simply do not know what effects they may
have on our frogs. Research has shown that
caffeine is teratogenic (i.e. causes birth defects)
to the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis)
and causes malformations of embryos at
concentrations of 0.12 mg/L. One cup of coffee
contains 100mg caffeine. Interestingly, caffeine
spray is now being used as a slug and snail
killer; and may also be used to control pest
frogs in Hawaii, by causing then to go into
cardiac failure.

We haven’t even gotten to electricity, or your
morning coffee, or breakfast, or cars, or roads
yet! This is meant to illustrate how things that
are either directly polluting, or are the result
of an industry that pollutes, permeate our
daily lives.