Discussion Questions
1.) What happened
when Colborn started to chase the specter of cancer? (page 19)
2.) How did
Colborn respond to Bengtsson’s speech?
What did she think the speech contained?
Did she take any action? If she
did, what action did she take?
3.) What showed
up in the tissue analyses done on the wildlife?
Where did they show up again?
4.) What was
Colborn’s latest discovery? When did her
discovery come?
5.) Where was the
hand-me-down poison found in? What did
they all have in common?
6.) What did the
hand-me-down poison disrupt?
7.) Who was John
Harshbarger? What did he contribute to
the studies?
8.) What happened
when the researcher fed contaminants extracted from the sediments to the fish
or applied then to the skin?
9.) A team from
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had ruled out viruses, but what did they
also rule out?
10.)
Who
researched on an international collaborative effort that was shedding light on
how PAHs did their damage inside the body?
2. Colborn intuitibely sensed that Bengtsson's speech contained an important clue about how many chemicals were acting on wildlife in the Great Lakes and elsewhere. But because of her immediate focus on the cancer connection, she put it out of her mind.Months would pass before she came to recognize the full importance.
ReplyDeleteJohn Harshbarger is the leading expert on cancer in the wildlife from the Smithsonian Institution. He had responded that historical data showed that large outbreaks of cancer in fish had been reported only since the chemical revolution of the past half century, which had poured countless tons of man-made chemical in the enviroment. In all the outbreakd except one, he added, viruses had been excluded as a cause.
ReplyDeleteThe hand-me-down poison is found in the fat of the wildlife.The hand-me-down poison had one thing in common: they all acted on the endocrine system, which regulates the body's vital internal processes and guides critical phases of prenatal develpment.
ReplyDeleteThe hand-me-down poison distruped hormones.
ReplyDeleteA team from the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service had ruled out not only viruses but also mental and synetic chlorine-containing chemical such as DDT in theit studies of cancer in brown bullheads, a type of catfish, in the Black and Cuyahoga Rivers, which flows into Lake Erie.
ReplyDelete1. After long months of research and hard work, Colborn started to chase the specter of cancer, but encountered a dead end because she was not able to find enough data to support her beliefs. (pg 19)
ReplyDelete2. Colborn thought the Bengtsson's speech had clues that would help uncover how many chemicals were acting on wildlife in the Great Lakes as well as other regions. (pg 18)
3. In the tissue analysis done to wildlife species, it was found that they had chemicals such as the pesticides DDT, dieldrin, chlordane, and lindane, and PCBs. These chemicals were also found in human blood and body fat. (pg 24)
4. Colborn was able to discover that although PCBs were found in low portions in the Great Lakes, they had to be measured in a way other than the standard water testing procedure. She also found that these chemicals accumulate in the tissue and affect the species highest in the food chain, that consume other species with much of the chemicals accumulated, producing deadly results. Colborn came across her latest discovery as she reexplored the literature on the eerie wasting syndrome seen in young birds. (pg 25-26)
5. The hand-me-down poisons were found in the fat of the wildlife. They had in common that they (chemicals) all acted on the endocrine system, which regulates the body's vital internal processes and guides critical phases of prenatal development, as well as dealing with the production of hormones. (pg 28)