Polluted Great Lakes Pose Human Peril, Study Warns

Researchers warned Wednesday that unchecked pollution by toxic chemicals and destruction of the Great Lakes ecosystem is affecting fish, birds, mammals and reptiles in the food chain and may threaten the health of the region’s 35 million American and Canadian residents.

They said that cleanup efforts could cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

“Evidence is growing that the well-being of the region’s human inhabitants cannot be divorced from the fate of the Great Lakes’ wildlife,” they said in a report. They suggested that women not eat fish from the lakes until they are past child-bearing age.

Researchers cited an ongoing study of women who consumed the equivalent of two to three lake trout, coho or chinook salmon from Lake Michigan per month.

“Data show that the length of (the) gestational period, birth weight, (head size) and cognitive, motor and behavioral development of the infant were adversely affected by the mothers’ lifetime consumption of fish,” the report said.

“Millions of people in (the region) are exposed to hazardous chemicals,” said H. Jeffrey Leonard, vice president of the Conservation Foundation, a sponsor of the research.

“You drink them in contaminated water. You eat them concentrated in the flesh of the fish. You breathe them in the air. We know that these continuous exposures have a serious adverse effect on the wildlife of the region,” said Leonard. “We fear increasingly that humans, especially pregnant women, and children, may be affected as well.”

And the Great Lakes themselves, reservoirs for 20% of the earth’s fresh water, “are imperiled,” the researchers said in a joint report by the Washington-based Conservation Foundation and the Canadian Institute for Research on Public Policy. The lakes and their tributaries are a source of drinking water for one of every 10 Americans and a third of the Canadian population.

“The Great Lakes environment is sick and it is no longer getting better,” said John D. Runnalls, an associate director of the Institute for Research on Public Policy. “Despite all the considerable progress made in the last 20 years, toxic substances are still present in our water at unacceptable levels.”

“On the surface, the Great Lakes appear to be much cleaner than they were 20 years ago when Lake Erie was choking with industrial waste and municipal sewage,” said Leonard. “The message of our report is that in subtle, and in perhaps much more dangerous ways, the Great Lakes environment is in crisis. The Great Lakes ecosystem remains a giant depository for toxic contaminants. Toxic chemicals that deform birds and fish and that are working their way up the food chain.”

“The clinical effects of residues on human health are not yet understood,” the report said. “It is known, however, that such chemicals are associated with a number of reproductive, neurological, immunological and carcinogenic effects and with abnormal sexual development. Stepped-up efforts to test for parallel effects in human beings are a clear priority.”

The threat to humans, the lakes and to the region is so serious and the damage so much greater than previously believed, that “urgent action is needed” now at all levels of government, concluded the 255-page report released simultaneously in Toronto and Chicago.

Sites on the shores of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan were selected for the release of the report and the clear skies, the nippy autumn wind and boats bobbing on the water belied the report’s message of warning.

“What is happening here is undoubtedly happening elsewhere,” said Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly at the Chicago release of the report. Reilly launched the “GREAT LAKES Great Legacy?” study when he was president of the Conservation Foundation. “When we look at the Great Lakes” he said, “we see our future.”

Two years in the writing, the report is the first attempt to compile recent research by a variety of scientific, environmental and government groups and to relate disparate studies. The picture that emerges is unsettling for a region that is economically and environmentally dependent on the Great Lakes.

The region is dotted with 42 areas so defiled by human wastes and toxic industrial garbage that it will take decades and “vast sums of money” to restore them, the report said. There are beaches permanently closed because they are not safe for swimmers, small lakes in the Great Lakes basin dying from acid rain and bald eagles that nest on the lakes but cannot reproduce there.

“The long-term environmental health of the . . . region cannot be secured until the cumulative adverse environmental effects of all human activities are reduced to levels that the total ecosystem--not just the water but the land, the air and the wildlife as well--can tolerate,” the study said.

The report calls for governments at all levels on both sides of the border to intensify their efforts to save the region and estimates that the costs will run into the tens of billions of dollars if not the hundreds of billions.

Reilly was not optimistic that the U.S. government would rush in with new money for the region. Instead, he suggested that local and state governments might have to shoulder the burden of cleanup.

“We are willing to take a leadership role in protecting our environment,” said Wisconsin Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, speaking for the Great Lakes Governors Conference, “but the magnitude of the problem we face demands federal attention at greater funding levels than current trends allow.”

But in Canada, Health Minister Perrin Beatty, in an announcement prepared for the report’s release, said the federal government will spend $103.7 million in the next five years to study the human health effects of contaminants from the Great Lakes Basin and to clean up badly polluted areas.

AREAS OF CONCERN IN THE GREAT LAKES BASIN Lake Superior-1 Peninsula Harbour, 2 Jackfish Bay, 3 Nipogon Bay, 4 Thunder Bay, 5 St. Louis River/Bay, 6 torch Lake, 7 Deer Lake/Carp Creek/Carp River Lake Michigan-8 Manistique, 9 Menominee River, 10 Fox River/ Southern Green bay, 11 Sheboygan, 12 Milwaukee Estuary, 13 Waukegan Harbor, 14 Grand Calumet/Indiana Harbor, 15 Kalamazoo River, 16 Muskegon Lake, 17 White Lake Lake Huron-18 Saginaw River/Bay, 19 Collingwood Harbour, 20 Penetang Bay to Sturgeon Bay, 21 Spanish River Lake Erie-22 Clinton River, 23 Rouge River, 24 River Raisin, 25 Maumee River, 26 Black River, 27 Cuyahoga River, 28 Ashtabula River, 29 Wheatley Harbour Lake Ontario-30 Buffalo River, 31 Eighteen Mile Creek, 32 Rochester Embayment, 33 Oswego River, 34 Bay of Quinte, 35 Port Hope, 36 Toronto Waterfront, 37 Hamilton Harbour Connecting Channels-38 St. Marys River, 39 St. Clair River, 40 Detroit River, 41 Niagara River, 42 ST. Lawrence River. Source: International Joint Commission