Cell and the cancerquences

MidDay
by Sudeshna Chowdhury

A recent report published by the World Health Organization says that cell phone radiation could possibly be carcinogenic. Doctors advise people to take precautions before it is too late

It seems caution is the watchword for billions of cell phone users across the world after a report published by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), indicated that radiation from cell phones posed an increased risk for brain cancer.

The IARC, which is the World Health Organization's (WHO) cancer research agency, has classified 'radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), based on an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer, associated with wireless phone use'.

While many cell phone users are concerned, others are least bothered with the study findings. Many, though, have already pressed the panic button and are consciously cutting down on their talk time. For example, Rahul Jain, stock investor from Malad (W), after reading the latest report by WHO, has decided to use his mobile only when it is important.

"The nature of my job is such that I have to constantly be on the phone. But mobile-related health hazards are always on my mind.

At the same time, there is no direct correlation between cell phone usage and cancer, so many of us do not take these warnings seriously. Once concrete evidence comes up, I believe, we will be further limit mobile usage and take necessary precautions."

Necessity
A lot of people believe that cell phones have now become an integral part of their life and it is next to impossible to do without them. "We're youngsters and how could we possibly live without mobiles?" asked Devyani Sabnal (20), student of SIES college, Sion.

Referring to WHO's report, Sabnal said, "Every problem has a solution. If researchers are saying that cell phone usage can be carcinogenic, then there is a need to find a solution too but abandoning cell phones or limiting its usage is not the answer."

Arjun Pathwar (19), student of Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) at Vile Parle too echoes a similar sentiment. "I am not bothered at all with this study. My friends too are aware of the study but we just don't care.

Mobiles are one of the most effective forms of communication and if it is established that usage of cell phones can cause cancer, then we shall see what to do later. We can't be bothered now," elaborated Pathwar.

But doctors believe that, not paying heed to these warnings might prove dangerous for people in the long run. Hence it's better to be safe than sorry. "By the time the results come out, which can clearly indicate that cell phones can have serious health hazards, many might have already lost their life.

In fact we see a lot of kids who come to us to seek treatment for brain tumour, etcetera, and we prescribe minimum usage of cell phones for such patients," said Dr Arvind Kulkarni, Director, Radiation and Oncology, Lady Ratan Tata Medical Centre, Cooperage.

Dangerous
Dr Ashok Waghmare, a neuro physician recollects a case where one of his patients complained of severe headache and dizziness. "I suggested a few painkillers but he got no relief. After inquiring about his lifestyle, I got to know that he was a medical representative and had to use the phone constantly. So I suggested that he put the phone on loudspeaker while talking.

Within a week he was cured," said Waghmare. When asked why cell phones could be dangerous for the brain, Waghmare points out that, "The brain has electromagnetic transmitters and it attracts such radiation. Hence brain function can be impaired."

Waghmare further adds that using loudspeakers dissipates radiation from the phone to the surroundings and, "there is no direct connection with your ear. As a result, the radiation does not affect your brain too much. However, the best option is using landline phones." Longer the distance, lesser the effects of radiation, say doctors.

Children
Most people in the age group of 25-40 have problems related to excess cell phone usage, says Waghmare. Doctors are concerned with cell phone usage among kids too.

In fact, many parents are equally concerned with the revelations of the WHO study. To prevent her son from using the cell phone, Mansiha Shroff makes her son, Manan (15), go through newspaper articles, which highlight risks related to excess cell phone usage. Said Shroff, "He is old enough to read such articles and understand the health hazards posed by radiation from cell phones. Also, he has a prepaid card, which limits his usage beyond a point."

Shroff says that her five-year-old daughter, Riddhima too wants a mobile phone, "but we explain to her in simple terms that the mobile is bad for her health." From safety issues to lack of sleep to other health issues, cell phones can affect kids in a lot of ways. "Cell phones do concern parents.

Some believe that it can impair their child's hearing ability. Others express concern that too much usage of mobiles can lead to anxiety, irritation and lack of sleep," said Arundhati Chauhan, President, Parent Teacher Association (PTA) United Forum.

Children and teenagers should be discouraged from using cell phones as, "Children and teenagers are more sensitive to genetic mutations than grown ups. Also, do not keep phones close to your head while sleeping. Switch the phone off at night," said Kulkarni.

RISK FACTOR
Dr Anusheel Munshi

Nearly 5 billion people worldwide have mobile phones. In India itself, nearly 800 million people use cell phones. The WHO had set up an expert panel to evaluate the effect of cell phones on the human body.

On May 31, 2011 the expert panel said that cell phones might possibly cause side effects. In finding cell phones to be "possibly carcinogenic," the IARC panel stated that heavy cell phone use might or might not cause a specific form of brain cancer called glioma.

The finding means that research is urgently needed to find out whether cell phones actually cause cancer. It is to be noted that the present panel report does not report any new finding of a study.

Rather it is the expert opinion of eminent leaders in scientific thought, based on the current literature. As of date, no study has categorically implicated cell phones as a causal factor for brain tumour, although there have been suggestions to that effect.

Lifetime exposure to the magnetic fields created by the phones is rapidly increasing. Cell phones are held tightly against the head. Also, children are at particular risk, not only because their skulls are thinner but also because their lifetime exposure to cell phones is likely will be greater than the exposure of current adults.

The effects of cell phones take long to manifest. In some cases this duration may be 10 years or more. Finally, cell phone technology is rapidly advancing and it is claimed that the electromagnetic exposure is progressively less with newer phones.

Electromagnetic radiation is governed by an interesting law known as the inverse square law. What this essentially means is that if we increase distance from the source by a factor of 2, the exposure gets reduced by 1/4th.

It is for this reason, that distance from the device is a critical saving factor from side effects of the cell phone, if indeed they are proven to have such effects. Till we get further evidence on the issue, it may be appropriate to observe the following precautions.

Cell phones may be used whenever they are really needed. For most routine work and casual talks, use the regular landline connection. Discourage children from excessive use of cell phones.  Whenever possible, use a wired ear piece connected to the cell phone. Avoid cell phone use when the signal is weak. Consider alternating between left and right ear while talking on cell phone. Use texting (SMS) instead of calling if possible.

Better safe than sorry
Dr Arvind Kulkarni

Radiation from mobile phones and other electronic devices such as microwave ovens, has been a concern for the medical community for many years.

The atmosphere is full of invisible electromagnetic emitted from radio, television, computer, etcetera. These electronic gadgets have become an integral part of our life and we cannot really do without them. But people can exert caution as far as their usage is concerned.

Although medical journals have often published reports, which state that a, "definite link between these radiation and cancer has not been proven yet," I believe that, there is no point in waiting for such results to emerge.

One must realise that a tumour doesn't develop instantly; it takes many years to develop. The writer is the Director, Radiation Oncology Department at the Lady Ratan Tata Medical Centre, Cooperage, Colaba, Mumbai

MALE INFERTILITY
Men risk wrecking their fertility if they don't curb their cell phone use. Researchers have found that cell phone use may also lead to low sperm quality and a decrease in fertility.

"Our findings were a little bit puzzling," said Rany Shamloul, postdoctoral fellow in pharmacology and toxicology at the Queen's University, Canada, who led the study. "We were expecting to find different results, but the results we did find suggest that there could be some intriguing mechanisms at work," said Shamloul.

The team discovered that men using cell phones reported higher levels of circulating testosterone but they also had lower levels of luteinizing hormone (LH), an important reproductive hormone that is secreted by the pituitary gland in the brain.

Researchers hypothesize that electromagnetic waves (EMW) emitted by mobiles may have a dual action on male hormone levels and fertility.

EMW may increase the number of cells in the testes ; but by lowering the levels of LH, EMW may block the conversion of basic circulating type of testosterone to the more active form of testosterone associated with sperm production and fertility.

Guidelines
The government assured that India would adhere to best global and scientific benchmarks while drafting the final guidelines in the telecom sector. The government's reaction comes in the backdrop of a latest WHO report which says cellphone use can possibly cause brain cancer.

"While telecom is a huge success story in India, we have to ensure that any possible health related effects of radiation emitted by mobile phones and towers are reflected in the guidelines.

The final guidelines would take into account the best global benchmarks and scientific evidence on the subject," said Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology Sachin Pilot.

The government in August last year, had set up an inter- ministerial group to evaluate the evidence, re-visit radiation guidelines for mobile towers and adopt guidelines for radiation emission by cell phones.

The group had made it mandatory for cellphone manufacturers to declare the radiation level of each mobile handset on the packet itself.

Commonly prescribed interferon beta does not delay multiple sclerosis progression in study

CBS News

Interferon beta, the most widely prescribed medication used to treat multiple sclerosis (MS), has not shown any effect in delaying the disease's progression, according to a new study.

"Treatment with beta interferon was not associated with a delay in progression to disability," senior researcher Dr. Helen Tremlett, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia, told WebMD. "It may be that in subgroups of patients these drugs do slow disease progression, but we were not able to show this."

Researchers at the University of British Columbia collected information on 868 multiple sclerosis patients who had taken interferon beta and 1,788 patents who had not, from 1985 to 2008. Out of the group of patients who were not medicated with interferon beta, they were split into people who were able eligible for the drug but did not receive it (untreated) and people who fit the criteria for the drug, but it was not yet available when they needed it (historically untreated).

Researchers discovered that those who took the drug were no less likely to have long-term disability than those who didn't take the drug, when looking at a standard test to measure disability progression in MS.

"It dampens somewhat the enthusiasm for so-called first-line therapies," Ludwig Kappos of University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland and author of an editorial that accompanied the study, said to Businessweek.

The study was published on July 18 in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers used a metric known as a Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) to judge how far the disease had progressed in their participants. Those who scored a 6 - meaning they needed a cane to walk 330 feet or 100 meters - were considered to have a disease that progressed. Out of the subjects who took interferon beta, 10.8 percent scored a 6. Out of the subjects who were untreated, only 5.3 percent and 23.1 percent of the historically untreated group reached that same score.

Previous studies have reportedly shown that interferon beta does help stall disease progression, but researchers said that the methodology was flawed through small sample sizes, poor follow-up or included patients who were too ill to start taking medication in the control group, according to TIME.

Multiple sclerosis is a chronic autoimmune disease that attacks the central nervous system often leading to disability, according to the National MS Society. It uses the body's own defense system to attack myelin, the fatty substance that protects the nerve fibers in the central nervous system. This causes the fibers to form scar tissue - known as sclerosis - disrupting the messages traveling from the brain and spinal chord to other parts of the body.

The National MS Society adds that most people are diagnosed between 20 and 50, and while it is not considered a fatal disease, it can present many difficulties in the lives of those diagnosed. About 400,000 Americans have MS, and about 2.1 million people worldwide are affected. A person is diagnosed every hour.

There are four types of MS. Interferon beta drugs are used to treat the relapsing-remitting form of the disease, which is the initial diagnosis for 85 percent of MS patients, the National MS Society reports. People with relapsing-remitting MS often have attacks - called relapses, flare-ups or exacerbations - that show worsening neurological function.

This doesn't mean that MS patients should stop taking interferon beta. It has been shown to benefit MS patients in other ways, senior author Helen Tremlett told the New York Times.

"These drugs were licensed because they reduce relapse and have a better outcome with lesions," she said. "That has not changed."

Nearly all conventional food crops grown with fluoride-laced water, then sprayed with more fluoride

Natural News

The average American today is exposed to a whole lot more fluoride than he or she is probably aware. Conventional produce, it turns out, is one of the most prevalent sources of fluoride exposure besides fluoridated water, as conventional crops are not only irrigated with fluoride-laced water in many cases, but also sprayed with pesticide and herbicide chemicals that have been blended with fluoride, and later processed once again with fluoridated water.

This fact may come as a surprise to many who have bought into the idea that eating more fresh produce is automatically beneficial for health, regardless of how that produce was grown. Thinking that they are doing their bodies a favor, millions of Americans have incorporated conventional fruits and vegetables into their everyday diets, not realizing that the resulting cumulative effect of fluoride exposure from these foods could be harming their health.

Many food crops uptake fluoride chemicals from water, soil

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly 75 percent of the U.S. population is being forcibly medicated with fluoride chemicals via their water supplies. This means that a significant percentage of U.S. crops are also irrigated using this same fluoridated water, particularly in the "Bread Belt" states, many of which are almost entirely fluoridated.

While not all crops uptake fluoride from water in the same amounts, many absorb significant amounts of fluoride through their root systems every time they are watered. Tea plants, for instance, are among the worst when it comes to absorbing fluoride from soil and water, and storing it in their leaves. Grapes are another crop that tends to accumulate fluoride in high levels as well.

According to data collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for its National Fluoride Database of Selected Beverages and Foods, fresh fruits and vegetables have relatively low levels of fluoride compared to what is found in fluoridated water, reconstituted juices, dried fruit, and other sources. But levels can vary, and particularly in the case of conventional produce, fluoridated pesticides and herbicides can add to overall fluoride exposure and intake levels.

Fluoridated pesticide, herbicide residues often lurk on conventional food

Because of its extreme toxicity, fluoride is often added to pesticides and herbicides in order to protect conventional crops from insect damage and disease. But just like with fluoridated irrigation water, fluoridated crop chemicals often absorb directly into plants, or at the very least, linger on the skins of the fruits and vegetables they produce, which adds to their fluoride toxicity.

Sulfuryl fluoride is one such pesticide that is commonly used to treat conventional cereal grains, dried fruit, tree nuts, cocoa beans, coffee beans, and other foods. Though the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is said to currently be in the process of phasing out the use of sulfuryl fluoride, the chemical is still being used on a wide variety of conventional food crops, unbeknownst to consumers.

There are, in fact, more than 150 different fluoridated pesticides currently approved for use on conventional crops, none of which are typically indicated on produce labels. Chances are that if you eat conventional fruit, vegetables, or nuts, you are more than likely eating varieties that have been sprayed or fumigated with fluoride chemicals, which are prohibited from use on organic crops.

As we reported on recently, conventional grapes are often sprayed with the fluoride-based chemical pesticide cryolite, which is often sold under the trade name Kryocide. This particular pesticide actually contains substances that facilitate the passing of fluoride across the blood-brain barrier and directly into brain tissue, which makes it exceptionally toxic.

This compounded exposure to fluoride from fluoridated irrigation water, fluoridated pesticides and herbicides, airborne fluoride chemicals, and fluoridated water used during processing or reconstitution after harvest renders many conventional fruits and vegetables fluoride saturated.

Admittedly, many organic crops are also exposed to fluoride via irrigated water just like conventional crops are. But at least organic crops are not sprayed with fluoridated pesticides after harvest, and many organic foods are processed after harvest using purified water, as indicated on their ingredient labels, which means they contain less overall fluoride than their conventional counterparts.

The Fluoride Action Network (FAN) has also created a helpful guide entitled 7 Ways to Avoid Fluoride in Beverages and Food that will help you discern how best to avoid fluoride when shopping for other types of food: http://www.fluoridealert.org/content/grocery_guide/

50 percent of France’s drugs ‘useless’ – top French doctors

RT

Half of France’s drugs are ‘useless’ and five percent are dangerous, a book by two top French doctors claimed. The duo believes the pharmaceutical industry is forcing ineffective drugs on the market, costing taxpayers up to ten billion euros a year.

The duo reviewed 4,000 French drugs and found that 50 percent were ‘useless,’ 20 percent were ‘badly tolerated’ and five percent had adverse effects.

Philippe Even, former head of the Necker Hospital in Paris, and Bernard Debré, doctor and member of parliament for the UMP party, recently co-authored a book titled ‘The Guide to 4,000 Useful, Useless or Dangerous Medicines.’

The book claimed that France could save up to ten billion euros a year by halting social security reimbursements for drugs that are hazardous or have no health value.

The pharmaceutical industry is “the most lucrative, most cynical and least ethical of all the industries,” Dr. Even said. He claims that in order to reduce budget shortfalls in France’s healthcare system, “one simply has to take the dangerous, useless and ineffective medicines off the market.”

The book was written in light of a Mediator Affaire report Dr. Even and Dr. Debré conducted in 2011 for former President Nicolas Sarkozy, where they investigated an incident where some 2,000 people were killed by a prescribed diabetic drug before the medicine was taken off the market.

Their report stated that the French medical system was in dire need of reform, spurring Dr. Even and Dr. Debré to write their book.

The two made a list of drugs that pose health risks, including cardiovascular, anti-inflammatory and anti-smoking drugs, and contraceptive pills.

Statins, drugs taken to lower cholesterol, were just one of the many drugs found to be “completely useless,” Dr. Even said in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur. “[Statins] are taken by three to five million French people, which costs France two million euros per year.”

France a top drug consumer

According to 2011 study, France is the world’s fifth-largest market for pharmaceuticals, with the average French person having 47 pills and prescriptions in their medical cabinet. The combined cost of those medicines is around 532 euros per person, with the state covering 77 percent of the price, France24 reported.

“We have to do a big clean-up of our pharmacies,” Dr. Even told Le Parisien. “France has a huge public debt and the state can make considerable savings.”

“Meanwhile in the UK, where people take far fewer medicines than us, people are no less healthy as a result,” he said. The two believe that, while there is no room for ‘useless’ drugs on the market, people should certainly continue to use effective drugs. “Antibiotics are the best [medical] discovery of all time,” Even told Le Parisien. “Antiretroviral drugs have given us a very real lead on AIDS and a large number of anti-cancer medicines have had an immense impact on our treatment of the disease.”

Book blasted by medical establishment

The Professional Federation of Medical Industrialists (LEEM) criticized the book as un-academic and unclear. The group argued that the doctors’ assertions could have a destabilizing effect, needlessly alarming ill patients into ceasing treatments for their diseases.

“We must not forget that the state exercises strict controls on drugs. France has specialist [government] agencies responsible for the health of patients and of controlling what information is given to them [about drugs],” LEEM President Christian Lajoux told AFP.

Alzheimer's could be the most catastrophic impact of junk food

The Guardian
by George Monbiot

When you raise the subject of over-eating and obesity, you often see people at their worst. The comment threads discussing these issues reveal a legion of bullies who appear to delight in other people's problems.

When alcoholism and drug addiction are discussed, the tone tends to be sympathetic. When obesity is discussed, the conversation is dominated by mockery and blame, though the evidence suggests that it may be driven by similar forms of addiction.

I suspect that much of this mockery is a coded form of snobbery: the strong association between poor diets and poverty allows people to use this issue as a cipher for something else they want to say, which is less socially acceptable.

But this problem belongs to all of us. Even if you can detach yourself from the suffering caused by diseases arising from bad diets, you will carry the cost, as a growing proportion of the health budget will be used to address them. The cost – measured in both human suffering and money – could be far greater than we imagined. A large body of evidence now suggests that Alzheimer's is primarily a metabolic disease. Some scientists have gone so far as to rename it: they call it type 3 diabetes.

New Scientist carried this story on its cover on 1 September; since then I've been sitting in the library, trying to discover whether it stands up. I've now read dozens of papers on the subject, testing my cognitive powers to the limit as I've tried to get to grips with brain chemistry. Though the story is by no means complete, the evidence so far is compelling.

About 35 million people suffer from Alzheimer's disease worldwide; current projections, based on the rate at which the population ages, suggest that this will rise to 100 million by 2050. But if, as many scientists now believe, it is caused largely by the brain's impaired response to insulin, the numbers could rise much further. In the United States, the percentage of the population with type 2 diabetes, which is strongly linked to obesity, has almost trebled in 30 years. If Alzheimer's, or "type 3 diabetes", goes the same way, the potential for human suffering is incalculable.

Insulin is the hormone that prompts the liver, muscles and fat to absorb sugar from the blood. Type 2 diabetes is caused by excessive blood glucose, resulting either from a deficiency of insulin produced by the pancreas, or resistance to its signals by the organs that would usually take up the glucose.

The association between Alzheimer's and type 2 diabetes is long-established: type 2 sufferers are two to three times more likely to be struck by this form of dementia than the general population. There are also associations between Alzheimer's and obesity and Alzheimer's and metabolic syndrome (a complex of diet-related pathologies).

Researchers first proposed that Alzheimer's was another form of diabetes in 2005. The authors of the original paper investigated the brains of 54 corpses, 28 of which belonged to people who had died of the disease. They found that the levels of both insulin and insulin-like growth factors in the brains of Alzheimer's patients were much lower than those in the brains of people who had died of other causes. Levels were lowest in the parts of the brain most affected by the disease.

Their work led them to conclude that insulin and insulin-like growth factor are produced not only in the pancreas but also in the brain. Insulin in the brain has a host of functions: as well as glucose metabolism, it helps to regulate the transmission of signals from one nerve cell to another, and affects their growth, plasticity and survival.

Experiments conducted since then seem to support the link between diet and dementia, and researchers have begun to propose potential mechanisms. In common with all brain chemistry, these tend to be fantastically complex, involving, among other impacts, inflammation, stress caused by oxidation, the accumulation of one kind of brain protein and the transformation of another. I would need the next six pages of this paper even to begin to explain them, and would doubtless get it wrong (if you're interested, please follow the links on my website).

Plenty of research still needs to be done. But, if the current indications are correct, Alzheimer's disease could be another catastrophic impact of the junk food industry, and the worst discovered so far. Our governments, as they are in the face of all our major crises, seem to be incapable of responding.

In this country, as in many others, the government's answer to the multiple disasters caused by the consumption of too much sugar and fat is to call on both companies and consumers to regulate themselves. Before he was replaced by someone even worse, the former health secretary, Andrew Lansley, handed much of the responsibility for improving the nation's diet to food and drink companies – a strategy that would work only if they volunteered to abandon much of their business.

A scarcely regulated food industry can engineer its products – loading them with fat, salt, sugar and high-fructose corn syrup – to bypass the neurological signals that would otherwise prompt people to stop eating. It can bombard both adults and children with advertising. It can (as we discovered yesterday) use the freedom granted to academy schools to sell the chocolate, sweets and fizzy drinks now banned from sale in maintained schools. It can kill off the only effective system (the traffic-light label) for informing people how much fat, sugar and salt their food contains. Then it can turn to the government and blame consumers for eating the products it sells. This is class war, a war against the poor fought by the executive class in government and industry.

We cannot yet state unequivocally that poor diet is a leading cause of Alzheimer's disease, though we can say that the evidence is strong and growing. But if ever there was a case for the precautionary principle, here it is. It's not as if we lose anything by eating less rubbish. Averting a possible epidemic of this devastating disease means taking on the bullies – both those who mock people for their pathology and those who spread the pathology by peddling a lethal diet.

Vancouver researcher finds flu shot is linked to H1N1 illness

The Vancouver Sun

A strange vaccine-related phenomenon spotted in Canada at the start of the 2009 flu pandemic may well have been real, a new study suggests.

Researchers, led by Vancouver's Dr. Danuta Skowronski, an influenza expert at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, noticed in the early weeks of the pandemic that people who got a flu shot for the 2008-09 winter seemed to be more likely to get infected with the pandemic virus than people who hadn't received a flu shot.

Five studies done in several provinces showed the same unsettling results. But initially research outside Canada did not, and the effect was dismissed as a "Canadian problem," a problem with the flu vaccine used in Canada.

But a new study suggests the findings were real.

Skowronski and a group of researchers have recreated the event in ferrets. Their findings were presented Sun-day at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a major international infectious diseases conference taking place in San Francisco.

Skowronski, who outlined the work at a webcast press conference, worked with 32 ferrets, giving half the 2008 seasonal flu shot and the rest a placebo injection. The work was blinded, meaning the researchers didn't know which ferrets received which shot. Later, all the ferrets were infected with the pandemic H1N1 virus.

The ferrets in the vaccine group became significantly sicker than the other animals, though all recovered.

"The findings are consistent with the increased risk that we saw in the human studies," Skowronski said.

The reason is unclear and Skowronski urged other research groups to take up the question. She said it's important to get to the root before the next pandemic. But in the meantime, Skow-ronski insisted the findings should not deter people from getting flu shots.

Related: More H1N1 Vaccine Recalled

Pest Infestation-Reducing Bats Dying from Pesticide Exposure

GreenMedInfo

We may need to teach ourselves about the 'bats and the bees' if we want to keep feeding ourselves. Research is now confirming what has been observed by many farmers: Bats are necessary for keeping many types of crop-eating insect populations from swarming, and their populations are becoming dramatically reduced due to the widespread use of pesticides on our crops.

Researchers from the University of Tennessee tracked populations, eating habits and migration patterns of Brazilian bats (Tadarida brasiliensis), and compared them to the patterns of corn earworm moths (Helicoverpa zea) through multiple seasons.

They determined that the bats tracked and migrated with the moth infestations, and fed off of the moths where they gathered – among corn crops. The bats were found to migrate to moth infestations, dramatically reducing their populations. The evidence provided confirmation that bats are lethal predators of these and other pests that threaten our crops.

The researchers confirmed with their conclusion the importance of bats to preventing pest infestations on cropland and urban areas: "Our results support growing evidence for the role of generalist predators, and bats specifically, as agents for biological control and speak to the value of conserving indigenous generalist predators."

At least 70% of bats are insect-eaters. The type of insect eaten depends greatly upon the species. There are over 1,200 species of bats. They will typically eat the insects known to infest that particular geographical region, but many also migrate with the insects as determined in the Tennessee research. Some bat colonies have been observed eating tens of thousands of pounds of insects each night.

Bats are dying by the millions

The problem, however, is that bat populations are being reduced in many areas, and researchers are suspecting the involvement of pesticides. This is concerning numerous bat and environmental experts, who have connected insect infestations to bat population reductions.

According to the Bat Conservation International, a group committed to the conservation of bats, more than 5.7 million (and possibly up to 6.7 million) bats have died from a disease called the White-nose Syndrome. The disease appears to be connected to a fungus, but is also related to immunosuppression among the bats.

The link to pesticides

The syndrome is strikingly similar to the bee's colony collapse disorder, which many have attributed to a virus, but more recent research is connecting the disorder to pesticides. The research on CCD among bees has increasingly indicated that pesticides weaken the immune system, allowing the infection to take hold. Now this connection is also being made among bats.

Researchers from the State University of New York and the New York State Department of Health with the Department of Environmental Health Sciences released a study that illustrated that bats were accumulating toxic chemicals from pesticides and these were connected with their subsequent immunosuppression as well as hormone disruption.

They found that little brown bats found diseased with the White-nose syndrome also had significantly high levels of several pesticide- and herbicide-related chemicals in their fat tissues. These included polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs), organochlorine pesticides (OCPs which include DDT, chlordanes, HCB, and HCH). They found the highest levels of PCBs and PBDE concentrations in the bat fatty tissues were related to bats from regions with cropland spraying of pesticides.

The connection between declining bat populations and pesticides is also beginning to unfold among other research. Researchers from Germany's University of Koblenz-Landau tested bats and bat activity among apple orchards before and after the orchards had been sprayed with pesticides. They found that bats were increasingly retaining pesticide residues and this was decreasing their activities and populations among the orchards.

Their research concluded a connection between pesticides and bat population loss: "The results emphasize the importance of adequately evaluating the risks of pesticides to bats, which, compared to other mammals, are potentially more sensitive due to their ecological traits."

Bat populations are slow to rebound

Bats typically will have only one offspring, meaning that re-population of bats is a long and difficult process.

Bat experts have calculated that the loss of 5.7 million bats converts to nearly 4 billion pounds of additional insects. According to Bat Conservation International's Executive Director Nina Fascione, losses in bat populations indicate a critical issue to come, as "the environmental and economic costs will be enormous."

The loss of our bat populations will not only produce greater incidence of pest infestations. Many species of bats are important pollinators for many types of fruits. These species of bats prefer eating pollen to eating the insects that attack plants. The bats go from flower to flower eating pollen. Some of that pollen gets stuck in their fir, getting carried to other flowers. This effective pollination method is very similar to bees who transfer the sticky pollen from plant to plant as they harvest different flowers.

Most bat experts agree that bats are still somewhat mysterious due to their nocturnal activities. We are slowing realizing - and possibly too late - is that our widespread use of chemical pesticides is backfiring. Not only are we becoming poisoned by them: Those beneficial species that work alongside our food crops to assure their pollination and pest control are also becoming poisoned, and this may well threaten the future of our food supply.