1. Water is affecting the food chain
How?
Through Biomagnification
Animals and plants cannot get rid of toxins so they build up in their system.
As we consume an animal or plant we take on that poison.

2. How Biomagnification works
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3. View this National Geographic Video to help explain this to you
Link

4. Is Biomagnification affecting Humans?
You can google these videos to view:
film health matters – Pollution in food
You can view film - fish farms
You can view film tainted tuna February 18, 2007

5. Findings in Humans In Detroit there is a human health study
They wanted to see if there was any impact on infant development whose mother’s grew up in the Great Lakes Area
Doctors studied the attention span on infants
Babies with high PCB levels did not have a high attention span compared to babies who had little PCBs in their system
Found a “reduce potential” in babies who had higher toxins in their system then others
Open link “Uncertain link between Great Lakes pollution, health risk: report”
Provide a brief summary of the article

6. So if animal species are changing….what about humans?
Jacobson Study
Gave children a test of memory and mental speed.
Children exposed to PCBs not only had poorer memories, they were slower to get answers and often were incorrect when compared with children who did not have as high a PCB in their system
What we still don't know is the longer term picture. Is this going to interfere with schooling, jobs etc.
This shows that women who ate fish from the Great Lakes do affect their offspring

7. Water pollution also affects human health
Water pollution also affects human health. In one example, the massive English-Wabigoon River system in the Dryden and Kenora area of northern Ontario was poisoned with mercury in the 1970s.
The source of the mercury was a mill owned by a large paper company. The fish in the area consumed the mercury. The people of the Whitedog (Wabasseemoong)
First Nation and the nearby Grassy Narrows First Nation became ill by eating the fish. Many were permanently disabled. Ball Lake Lodge, a major employer, had to be closed. The commercial fishery ceased operations. The Whitedog and Grassy Narrows people were uprooted and their way of life ruined.

8. Are there other problems we have not yet discussed?
Yes
Other things get into the water that are not taken out.
Old medicine
Apparently a real danger to the environment are birth control pills
What the pills are doing is actually affecting the fish

9. How?
The estrogen from the pill and from women excreting estrogen who are on the pill is making it into our lakes and rivers.
Male fish started to respond to the high levels of estrogen and started to produce egg proteins
Some male fish actually did produce eggs
Female development was also delayed because of the of the exposure to estrogen

10. Good news is that this problem does not appear to be affecting humans, however studies are still investigating this.
Places that still dump municipal sewage untreated in Canada are Halifax, St. John’s and Victoria.
What does Kingston do??
Take some time to research this and find out

11. Pain Killing Medicine
On Monday March 24th, 2008, Environment Canada's National Water Research Institute in Burlington reported that they found trace amounts of pain killer medicine in 15 communities around the GTA.
They did not specify what 15 cities
Water Pollution: Great Lakes Clean Up (3:00min)

12. Read the following article “Mercury may biomagnify more effectively in colder latitudes” and answer these questions.
Why do many top  predators in the Arctic have high mercury concentrations?
Explain the important global trends on how mercury is transferred through diverse aquatic food webs.
What does the study referenced in the article, indicate about that fragile arctic ecosystems?