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In This Issue     Special Feature: “Better Living Through Chemistry”:  Losing Access to Fish from the Sea   A Bit of History EDCs: Clambering Up the Food Pyramids An Unintended Legacy Setting Off Around the World From the Skin of Whales: Lessons in Poisons Chromium: A Nasty Surprise Traveling Toxins: The Human Connection No International Control on Whaling An Emerging Threat Reasons for Optimism!   About Roger Payne   Upcoming SNS Events & Media Links   In Other House News…   How to Subscribe May I Share This Newsletter? About SNS About the Publisher SNS Website Links Where’s Mark?

     By Roger Payne

           

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Publisher’s Note: At a time when all the news seems bad, who needs one more slice of what today’s biologists call, in referring to their jobs, “documenting the decline?” No one.

 

And yet, this is all “just desserts” for a species that has managed to make its own planet toxic in just a hundred years or so, the smallest possible bit of time along our species history. Can the Earth afford the human species? If the judgment had to be made today, the answer would be an obvious “No.” Add to that all of the doubters, anti-science types, and “Party First, Country Second” folks so hard at work confusing the issues, and – well, case closed.

 

But humans have another attribute: although we are hard to arouse to a unified cause, once aroused, we are extremely potent.

 

Roger Payne is likely the world expert on perhaps the (OTHER) most important problem facing us today: we have polluted the oceans, beyond anyone’s wildest fears. In this exacting piece, Roger shares the knowledge he has personally accumulated in traveling the world’s seas, sampling whales (the ultimate bio-accumulators) for important and dangerous substances.

 

I don’t see this problem as being much different than all of our other human-caused problems – at least those relating to sustainability. How can one separate air pollution from marine pollution, or land pollution? As Roger notes, the water is “downhill” from all of them.