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NEWS NOTES EDITED BY CHRISTY HARRISON
COKED-UP CROPS
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINA SUN
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ARMERS IN INDIA have discovered a refreshing alternative to traditional pesticides: Coca-Cola. Since last October hundreds of farmers in central and southern India have reportedly been spraying their crops with Coke, apparently an effective pest killer that’s also easy on the pocketbook. Popular pesticides in India run from $55 to $220 per liter, while locally produced Coke costs around $.50 per liter. No one knows exactly how it works, but some scientists speculate that the sugar in the cola attracts red ants that feed on pests. Pepsi reportedly works just as well. Insect busting is one more item in the growing repertoire of purported uses for Coke: over the years, the soft drink has been said to work well as a cleaner, a spermicide, and when mixed with MSG, an aphrodisiac (imagine the marketing potential: Coke takes care of all your sexual needs!). But Coca-Cola spokespeople deny claims that their product acts as a less toxic pesticide. According to the “Myths and Rumors” section of the company’s Web site, “Soft drinks do not act in a similar way to pesticides when applied to the ground or crops. There is no scientific basis for this and the use of soft drinks for this purpose would be totally ineffective.” They add, “Our products are world class and safe. The treated water used to make our beverages meets the highest international standards.” The company’s haste to tout the safety of its water may have something to do with recent reports that Coke and Pepsi produced in India contain staggering amounts of pesticide residue. A 2003 report by the Centre for Science and the Environment, an Indian nonprofit, showed that Coke and Pepsi, as well as ten other soft drinks, had average pesticide concentrations between 15 and 87 times the legal limit. But this contamination may be part of a larger problem in India: in 2002, the Indian Council of Medical Research found that more than half of all food items produced in India were contaminated with pesticides. www.plentymag.com March 2005
DUDE LOOKS LIKE A LADYFISH
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ale fish across the country are undergoing coerced sex changes, thanks to the high levels of estrogen in our waterways. University of Colorado researchers found that startling numbers of male fish in three Colorado waterways have developed female sex organs and are laying eggs. In Boulder Creek, female white sucker fish outnumbered males ten to one, but half of those “females” were clearly born male. And a study of the Potomac River last spring showed that almost 80 percent of male smallmouth bass had sexual abnormalities. Scientists think that waterborne estrogen creates transsexual fish by tricking the male’s endocrine system into producing female cells. When Colorado researchers replicated the Boulder Creek estrogen levels in a lab, male fish became feminized within a month, says David Norris, the study’s chief researcher. Estrogen excreted by humans and livestock is found naturally in all waterways, but man-made “estrogen mimickers”—chemical compounds lurking in products including detergent, paint, rubber, cosmetics, and plastic—could be upping the estrogen in our water to dangerous levels, scientists say.
Synthetic estrogens from birth-control pills, as well as phytoestrogens from plant products like soy and paper pulp, further compound the problem. And in a recent study of water in 30 states, government researchers found natural estrogen and estrogen mimickers in four-fifths of the streams they tested. The good news is that we have the technology to remove the hormones from our waterways: filtration by reverse osmosis— the most common way of purifying water, involving passing a solution through a semipermeable membrane to separate the water from all the other muck—does the trick. Cities often use this system to filter their water before it gets to consumers, but Norris argues that companies with high outputs of estrogen mimickers should be responsible for their own osmosis prior to dumping. The bad news is more alarming: sexual abnormalities aren’t limited to fish. In 2002 a study showed that a popular weed killer was turning frogs into hermaphrodites, animals with the reproductive organs of both sexes. Are there even more “tran-imals” out there? “No doubt about it,” says Norris. “It’s just a matter of looking.” P L E N T Y | 13