His investigation of mass mortality and mutation of hatchery fish has “thoroughly terrified” one of Australia’s leading aquatic veterinarians about the agrochemical pollution of the supposedly pristine Noosa River on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
Dr Matt Landos, consultant to most of the country’s fresh water fish hatcheries and most aquatic sectors, accuses Queensland and federal government agencies of dereliction of duty of care.
He was a member of a taskforce set up by the Queensland government to investigate the damage at the Sunland hatchery a few kilometres up river from Noosa and says the government refuses to release the report although he put in a “right to know” application.
And the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, the federal regulator responsible for agrichemicals, did not respond to his “heads up” about the hatchery, in whose water bodies the same chemicals were found as sprayed on a neighbouring macadamia farm.
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But Landos extrapolates dangers to people from what’s happening to the fish. He presented to a public meeting in Noosa, attended by about a hundred people, a review of Australian and overseas scientific studies that show pesticides interfering with human hormones and increasing the incidence of a number of diseases.
He cited declining sperm counts in men, larger breasts on women but one in nine of them now getting breast cancer, menstruation now starting at 11, compared with 17 in 1950, boys getting smaller testicles, shorter penises, lower fertility, later puberty.
“So, are we being experimented on by our regulator, is this regulatory system supporting safety and productivity, or is this really a real-life experiment and we’re in it, we’re the rat?”
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“What’s worth bearing in mind is that 96% of the money that operates the regulator comes from chemical levies, so it’s a self-regulated industry,” Landos explained.
“The chemical companies pay for the regulation of their own chemicals through the regulatory process. It’s a bit of a fox running the chicken coop kind of set-up.”
To email or phone the responsible ministers:
Qld fisheries minister, Tim Mulherin, 07 3239 3000, dpi@ministerial.qld.gov.au
Federal minister for fisheries, Joe Ludwig, 07 3001 8110, joe.ludwig@maff.gov.au
Hear an interview with Landos at http://www.noosacommunityradio.org/mutating-fish-a-wake-up-call-for-huma....
Below is a recording of the session, divided into six parts. The technical quality is not much chop but it’s understandable. It will take you just over an hour to hear it all.
Part 1: http://www.4shared.com/audio/KNwp3iQh/Take_1.html (plays 10’18”)
Landos’ academic and professional qualifications. He has spent about two years working on Noosa River, spending 150,000 dollars of his own money on this issue. “The fish hatchery gave us an insight into issues that are likely to be taking place in the river.” In the past 15 years professional fishermen have noticed a dramatic decline.
Part 2: http://www.4shared.com/audio/CcF_-kwP/Take_2.html
(plays 12’16”)
Professional river fishermen proactively monitor fish stocks. The fish caught are becoming bigger, which means no new juveniles are coming into the system – “so we’ve cut off reproduction of these animals”. A range of agrichemicals and compounds have been measured in the river, but government suggested the levels found were harmless. Guidelines are 10 years out of date, while in the past 10 years there’s been an explosion of science around toxicology and agrichemicals. There’s no guideline level at all for the majority of chemicals and none of the guidelines are enforceable, anyway. Industrial and household pollutants which are known to be problems have also been found. The national regulator ignores cumulative effects of various pollutants acting together. Farmers often use several chemicals together in the one spray tank. Every single stream and river in Queensland that drains agricultural land is contaminated with pesticides all the time. Zero action is taken by the Queensland government.
Male oysters turned into females in the Maroochy and Noosa rivers, clearly because of sewage in the Maroochy, but there’s no sewage in the Noosa, so farm chemicals, fertilisers and detergents acting like hormones are suspected.
Part 3: http://www.4shared.com/audio/t9TVTocL/Take_3.html (plays 11’10”)
Indigenous people used to thrive on the oysters in both rivers, which were plentiful, renewable and reliable. All the oysters are gone from both rivers. There’s now degraded sea grass and sludge, detrimental to breeding marine animal life. “Marine parks are absolutely farcical measures to address the problems that are happening in our waterways with pollution.” Most pollutants are principally derived from agricultural land.
In the Queensland government’s rating of waterways quality, Noosa slipped from A to B and there’s not a single A left on the list. Seagrass and algae are incredibly sensitive to herbicides; seagrass is disappearing wholesale from estuaries throughout Queensland, including Noosa. “In a waterway you don’t grow any fish without seagrass.”
Landos presented international studies attributing increases in several human diseases and obesity to chemical pollution of waterways. “We’ve got problems with our reproduction, with our hormones.”
Part 4: http://www.4shared.com/audio/cmTsH-kI/Take_4.html (plays 7’)
The widely used insecticide Endosulfin moves huge distances, “you can’t control where it goes”. In its precautionary approach, Europe banned it. An Australian review two years ago found “it’s fine” while meanwhile 60 more countries withdrew it. In December 09 Australia looked at it again, still found it safe. In October 2010 Endosulfin’s removal was announced with a two-year phase-out period amid “great concern” by the regulator “that this chemical is not safe”.
“The Labor Party in the last election made a number of promises about reforming the regulator. They’ve had chemicals under review for 15 years, chemicals that are removed in Europe, many of them. They said we want to make them more efficient - a good idea. They said we want to make it so they can use up-to-date research – brilliant. They want to make it easier for them to start a review when they get worried – super idea. They want to put the responsibility for safety back onto the chemical company who wants to get their product registered. To say every three years, when we learn a bit more, we’re going to review the product – in Australia there’s no compulsory review. We’ve got products that are 30 years old, never ever reviewed, ever. They’ve also said if something’s banned overseas, we really ought to look at it, it really is a good clear signal that there are rational people in Europe, they’re not all lunatics, they’ve decided to ban it for a reason and we ought to think about it here.”
Landos urged people to 1. call for release of the taskforce report, 2. commit to helping local farmers improve their practices, 3. write to the state and federal ministers to demand some ground-up reform of the regulator.
Part 5: http://www.4shared.com/audio/KMm9xMLF/Take_5.html
(plays 10’25”)
The idea of safety is currently lost in our regulatory system, Landos said. Companies here are not required to look at endocrine (hormone) disruption, in Europe they are. “The things that I’ve seen, the things that I’ve learnt through this investigation in the past two years I found thoroughly terrifying. And I wanted to give you as a community the opportunity to pick up the ball on that.”
An email list of interested people is being compiled. Landos referred to a big recent federal commitment to reduce impacts on the Barrier Reef, but none of the money has been apportioned to look after the river carrying the pollution out to sea.
“There’s a core problem with funding, the regulator would claim that it’s poorly funded.”
It’s difficult for farmers to switch from things they know to new practices. Organic farms have challenges depending on who their neighbours are in terms of the water they use and controlling drift. Cases have been found of residues of six pesticides on the same crop.
An angry farmer at the meeting claimed farmers don’t really want to spray and doubted the reports Landos was citing. An employee of the Queensland government accused Landos of overstating the severity of the risks to the Noosa River and claimed good uptake by farmers of best practices.
Part 6: http://www.4shared.com/audio/45KZCmZa/Take_6.html (plays 13’24”)
Landos said the Director of Biosecurity Queensland refused his invitation to come and address the meeting about the non-release of the taskforce report, and about updating the public and the community on where Queensland was at in its chemical regulation upgrade which was supposed to commence two years ago – where is it at?
The government employee said the work hasn’t been done yet to determine where the chemicals measured in the river are originating.
Though the Burdekin River had once been a fantastic barramundi fishery, Landos said, not one barramundi is caught there now. The formerly rich Barramundi fisheries throughout Queensland are gone, with once highly productive rivers severely degraded. The state government had duly ignored hundreds of review documents Landos sent them, he said. [After this article was published, Matt Landos asked me to make the following correction: "Barramundi can still be caught in Burdekin, however, numbers are dramatically lower, and insufficient to support a commercial fishery any longer. Indeed the wild harvest commercial barra industry, now is largely confined to the Cape rivers. Where there is a notable absence of anthropogenic influence. The barra fishery used gill nets, which don’t destroy habitat, or alter water quality. Provided fishermen stick to the quotas they are a v sustainable fishing method.]
A Macadamia Society representative accused Matt of half-truths. He believed the taskforce report would vindicate the farmer involved in the hatchery dispute. A man representing internationally active Water Watch said no government, no council really wants to clean up. The community needs to band together to make things happen. A woman said 20% of bream now caught are visibly deformed.
Landos said there is low take-up by farmers of non-spray buffer zones of land. The temptation is to plant all the way to the edge. In Victoria a group of farmers and commercial fishermen are cooperating to reduce seagrass loss.
The government employee said, contrary to Landos’ claim that nothing was being done, there is 50,000 dollars of incentive funding for buffer planting for sediment control in the Kin Kin and middle Mary areas. There’s been a project for the last two and a half years for Kin Kin looking at best practice for sediment waterways. In terms of riparian wetland buffers, about 50% of farmers do what the government considers best practice. Landos should check his facts first.
