白雪丹枫 写道:XUYCA 写道:白雪丹枫 写道:上次和阿迪冰钓时,和当地的老外聊起污染的事,他们说没问题了。前年时政府曾经在湖边插牌警告不要食用那里的鱼。既然现在没有警示,应该就是通过检测没危险了。按GUIDE食用就好了。
那里的CRAPPIE有点泛滥成灾,不知道是不是大家都觉得不安全的原因。我曾经在夏天的中午去钓了一个小时,轻轻松松钓满。
可以查看一下那里的水的源头在哪里。
大前年污染是因为机场用除草剂,雨水把除草剂冲到湖里了,和水源头没什么关系。
Don’t eat Binbrook Reservoir fishFor years, Binbrook Conservation Area’s reservoir Lake Niapenco was thought to be relatively free of pollution.
It’s not.
The popular five-kilometre-long reservoir and Welland River tributary feeding it are contaminated with a toxic chemical restricted in Canada since 2004 to such unsafe levels that the province now warns children and child-bearing aged women not to eat any fish at all from the reservoir, and others to eat no more than two meals a month. Furthermore, only smaller fish should be consumed because the larger the fish, the higher the concentration of the pollutant.
Those fish consumption restrictions exist for only three other water courses in Ontario – one of them the creek that flows into Lake Niapenco, formally known as Binbrook Reservoir.
The synthetic chemical, called perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) or perfluorooctane sulfonate, is the key component in the suppression foam airport fire crews use to fight aviation fires. It also used to be the main ingredient in Scotchgard, 3M’s stain repeller used in everything from clothes to carpets until 3M began stopped using it in the formula in 2000.
“I’m totally devastated by this,” said Andy Fevez, 70, a member of the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority board of directors and a leading member of the Glanbrook Conservation Committee, a volunteer group dedicated to improving the park.
“We’re in there planting vegetation and keeping out the invasive plants at one end, and at the other end, this stuff is coming in unbeknownst to us. It just breaks my heart having worked on this conservation area for the past 25 years.”
Not a lot is known about the health effects of PFOS on humans. Unlike other chemicals that accumulate in fat tissues, PFOS builds up in the blood, liver and gall bladder. Animal studies have shown organ damage from high concentrations, but few long-term human studies have been done.
The big concern about PFOS is that it is “a biocumulative bioconcentrator,” said Don McLean, a well-known Hamilton environmental advocate. Smaller fish get eaten by bigger fish, and so on, concentrating the chemical the higher up the food chain one goes.
“The highest concentrations in North America generally are found in birds like eagles,” he said.
The discovery of the Lake Niapenco contamination was purely accidental and totally unexpected.
In 2009, Environment Canada scientists began an organic toxins accumulation study in Hamilton Harbour and the Humber River in Toronto, and they picked Lake Niapenco as the study’s reference or “control” site, believing the rural lake was not impacted by industrial or municipal sewage discharge. The last thing they expected to find was high concentrations of PFOS in reservoir turtle blood.
That set off a chain of events. The feds told the province, who went in and began their own fish testing. Sure enough, the lake’s large and smallmouth bass, pike, carp, crappie, bullheads and catfish were all contaminated. It meant Guide to Eating Ontario Sport Fish, which came out this month, had to be changed to reflect new restrictions on consumption. Ontario’s Ministry of Environment (MoE) notified the conservation authority in December.
The big question is: Where is it coming from?
In three weeks, the MoE kicks off a large-scale hunt for the source of the PFOS called a track-back, and to figure out what remedial action may need to be taken.
“We are sending a team to do all the tributaries of the upper Welland River,” to test the creek waters and sedimets for PFOS, said senior MoE spokesperson Jennifer Hall. “It’s a major study (in which) we follow the trail. If we find a path for it, we keep going until identify the source of the path.”
Depending on what the chemical sleuths find, the question may become: Where did it come from in the past?
A leading suspect is John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport, which sits on the headwaters of the Welland River. Fire crews used to train at the airport with the PFOS-laden fire suppression foam.
“We have it in our trucks, but we don’t train on site, we haven’t done so in about a decade,” said Richard Koroscil, president and CEO of the airport. Specialized airport firefighting training is now done at a facility at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.
Another suspect is the old Mount Hope dump at the corner of White Church Road and Highway 6 South. “It’s possible something in there is leaking out,” Fevez said.
The fishing season on the reservoir is currently closed, but set to open May 1. The reservoir is mandatory catch-and-release for bass and pike, but not for the other fish species. Conservation officials say they devising an extensive notification and information campaign for anglers.
“We will post signage around the lake and hand out fact sheets at our gate,” said Darcy Baker, NPCA director of land management. Because anglers with Asian backgrounds like to use the reservoir to catch carp, which they consider a delicacy, the conservation authority will also post the information in Mandarin and Cantonese.
The NPCA was supposed to discuss the problem at its March board meeting, which was cancelled due to an intense snowstorm. The next public board meeting is April 20.
pmorse@thespec.com905-526-3434