Subject: Frogs and canarys......
Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 095925 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@llion.org>
To: emfguru@hotmail.com
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Hi everybody: (This one is especially for Mary Wolfe).....
I think the following is a very interesting story. Note, the
"universal" impact now being reported on frogs worldwide!!!
Something appears to be disrupting the frog's natural defenses
(immune system) against a fungus that is killing them and causing
deformities -- now seen to be occurring all over the world. This
fungus is not something new in their environment. In the past, their
defenses have been able to cope with it. But something has changed
that???
NIEHS (the same NIEHS that is now so prominent in EMF research, they
headed the recent wrap-up of the EMF RAPID project) says that they
suspect "something in the water." I suggest that it is not really
plausible that whatever 'water pollution' they are considering to be the
cause would be so "universal" as to explain the worldwide occurrences
that are being reported.
The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) says the cause is likely to
be the "ultraviolet" radiation that has increased in recent decades
due to the thinning of the world's ozone layer.
That is certainly a more plausible explanation, in my view. But there
is also another 'worldwide pollution radiation' (which this group knows
well) that is perhaps even more likely to be the cause -- EMF. That
possibility, too, should be studied right along with the ultraviolet....
(Again, Becker anticipated such a possibility in his book, The Body
Electric which I cite in my "Blue World" essay.....)
Over approximately the past three decades the world has increasingly
been subjected to a "bath" (now continuous) of more and more electronic RF
and MW (EMR) radiation (from space-based and ground-based wireless
transmitters) that could equal or (I suggest) ***exceed*** the changes
that have occurred in the earth's environmental exposure to ultraviolet
radiation???
It just may be that the frogs will turn out to be the 'canarys' we've been
looking for to "prove" the EMF case......
At least some serious research should (soon) be devoted to the exploration
of the possibility that EMF (particularly in the RF and MW bands) is
biologically active in the case of frogs -- as we already strongly
suspect in the case of humans????? A good assignment for Liburdy, Luben
and Blackman!!!! Get the contract out NIEHS!!!!......
Cheerio.....(I think you will find the following is interesting reading.)
Roy Beavers (EMFguru)
rbeavers@llion.org..............http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html
................................It is better to light a single candle ...
than to curse the darkness...............................................
_________________________________________________________________
05:59 PM ET 07/06/98
Fungus kills off frogs, researchers find
WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - A fungus normally found in soil is
killing off frogs and toads all over the world, several teams of
researchers reported Monday.
One team said the fungus was found in all dead frogs and
toads collected for their study in Australia and Panama, while
U.S. researchers found that the fungus had killed frogs in the
United States.
They do not know why the chytridiomycete fungus, which has
never affected animals such as frogs before, is killing the
creatures.
``We're taking it very seriously,'' Philip Rosen of the
University of Arizona in Tucson told Science News magazine.
Rosen, a herpetologist, said the fungus had been seen in
U.S. zoos before, but did not make frogs sick. But a leopard
frog he found in Arizona seemed to have died of the infection.
Donald Nichols, a pathologist at the National Zoo in
Washington, confirmed the diagnosis. He has also found the
fungus in the skin of cricket frogs from Illinois, while other
experts have found the fungus on toads.
A second report, in Monday's Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, confirms the fungus is killing off frogs
all around the world.
Lee Berger of James Cook University in Townsville,
Queensland, Australia and colleagues said they found the fungus
in sick and dead frogs found in rain forests in Australia and
Panama.
``We have also found this new disease associated with
morbidity (illness) and mortality in wild and captive anurans
(toads and frogs) from additional locations in Australia and
Central America,'' they wrote.
They said frogs living along rivers and streams in the
mountain rain forests of Australia had started to rapidly
disappear. It looks like some sort of epidemic has struck, with
mass die-offs noted, they wrote.
``These were the last sightings of many of the affected
species at these locations,'' they wrote.
The species included rain forest frogs known as Mixophyes
fasciolatus and the giant cane toads, known scientifically as
Bufo marinus, introduced to Australia from Hawaii in 1935.
The fungi, they said, are usually found in the soil, where
they help break down rotting matter. They may be killing the
frogs by stopping air and water from passing through their
permeable skin, or the fungus could be releasing some sort of
poison.
The fungi only does serious harm to adult frogs. Tadpoles
were only infected on the insides of their mouths, which have
thicker skin.
Scientists are worried by the disappearance of frogs around
the world. People have also been finding strangely deformed
frogs. Frogs are considered a ``sentinel'' species, which reacts
swiftly to environmental changes because they live both on land
and in the water and have a thin, permeable skin.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said in
November that ultraviolet radiation, entering the environment in
increased doses because of ozone layer depletion, may be causing
the deformities.
But the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
(NIESH) said the deformities, which can include missing or extra
limbs, are traceable to something in the waters they inhabit.
^REUTERS@
Archive provided courtesy of WaveGuide, http://www.wave-guide.org
Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html