Agriculture
Podcast and gallery: Karst + waste + drinking water = trouble
Two bonus features supplementing last week’s major package on estrogenic wells in Wisconsin’s karst region.
Our Reports
Endocrine disruptors
Hormonal wells found in state’s karst region; dairy farms possible source
In one of the most intensively farmed parts of America’s Dairyland, where 29 percent of the county’s private wells test unsafe due to bacteria or nitrates, residents have a new concern: estrogenic well water.
Environment
Overview: Endocrine disruptors in the environment
Scientists have learned that some chemicals may mimic or disrupt the hormones of people and wildlife, with potentially health-damaging results. They can be natural, like the estrogens produced by plants or cows, or synthetic, like birth control pills. They are known to be widespread in the nation’s waters, and to a lesser extent have turned up in groundwater. Sidebar to story on estrogenic wells in northeastern Wisconsin’s karst region.
Bill Hafs
Expert: Managing manure keeps emerging pollutants out of water
“A well-managed place is not going to get manure into the groundwater,” said Laurence Shore, a physiologist in Israel who studies the fate of hormones in the environment. With a video tour of an anaerobic digester at the two-dairy, 8,000-cow Holsum Dairies in Calumet County.
water pollution
Drugs found in Lake Michigan, miles from sewage outfalls
Prescription drugs are contaminating Lake Michigan two miles from Milwaukee’s sewage outfalls, suggesting that the lake is not diluting the compounds as most researchers expected, according to new research. Republished from Environmental Health News.
milwaukee water works
20 years after fatal outbreak, Milwaukee leads on water testing
For the public officials who safeguard Milwaukee’s water, Cryptosporidium changed everything.
DEHP
Study: Chemical blend lowers fish testosterone
Researchers exposed minnows to a blend of linuron, an herbicide used to control grasses and weeds, and DEHP, a plasticizer used to make medical products.
Angela Bauer
The hunt for endocrine disruptors
Minnesota researchers have found endocrine disruptors in nearly every lake they’ve tested.
Endocrine disruptors
Studies: Endocrine disruptors, cocaine common in Minnesota waters
Environmental experts said the discoveries in lakes, rivers and streams increase the pressure on Wisconsin to figure out what’s in its water. A key Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources official said that the state’s waters were likely also contaminated, but that the state had no money for such monitoring.
Endocrine disruptors
Endocrine disruptors: What can I do?
Advice from experts on how to limit your exposure and your impact on the environment.
Endocrine disruptors
Experts avoid sounding alarm on chemicals — but adjust their own habits
“It’s hard not to make people too worried about a lot of things,” said UW-Madison pediatric endocrinologist Ellen Connor, after running through a plethora of hypothesized health effects — genital abnormalities, tumors, lower sperm counts, diabetes, early puberty — and an equally long list of worrisome chemicals.
Dioxins
Tainted fish
The four groups of chemicals that trigger consumption advisories — PCBs, mercury, dioxins and PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfate) — have all been associated with endocrine disruption.
Endocrine disruptors
Environmental agencies respond to questions about endocrine disruptors
Emails from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Endocrine disruptors
Minnow reveals wastewater’s toxic effects
Males exposed to chemicals managed to mate if other males were not around. But if they had to compete with the control males, however, they “suffered nearly total reproductive failure”: They had no game.
Endocrine disruptors
Profiles: Chemicals in the water
More about nonylphenol and BPA, two chemicals commonly found in Minnesota’s waters.
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