Pollutants May Lay Behind Cancer Outbreaks In Flounder, Catfish, Seals, Multiple Species Worldwide

[hatrack]

hirty years ago, a Canadian marine biologist noticed something mysterious was happening to beluga whales in the St. Lawrence Estuary. Decades of over-hunting had decimated the population, but several years after the government put a stop to the practice, the belugas still hadn’t recovered.

Two decades and hundreds of carcasses later, he had an answer. “They were dying of cancer,” said Daniel Martineau, now a professor of pathology at the University of Montreal. The white whales were victims of intestinal cancers caused by industrial pollutants released into the St. Lawrence River by nearby aluminum smelters.

Now research points to environmental pollutants as the cause of deadly cancers in several wildlife populations around the world. Normally rare in most wildlife, cancers in California sea lions, North Sea flounder and Great Lakes catfish seem to have been triggered or accelerated by environmental contaminants.

Other animal populations, including Tasmanian Devils, sea turtles, woodchucks, manatees, eels and sperm whales, also have been stricken with cancers, although they appear to stem from natural causes, including viruses, spontaneous tumors, or genetic factors. In some cases, the survival of a species and the stability and biodiversity of an ecosystem is jeopardized. The cancers also highlight the dangers that industrial activities pose – not just to animals, but to people in the same areas, exposed to the same compounds.

EDIT

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/wildlife-cancer

[JuniperLea]

1. I often wonder if this is why marine mammals beach themselves...

And wonder how thoroughly they are examined when they do.

Thanks for posting this.

[Trillo]

2. Who gives a damn about that?

There's no profit in treating non-human animal cancers.

Maybe somebody needs to figure out how to put those wild animals to work, civilize them, so they also can afford privatized health insurance. I've read the U.S. Navy has worked with training seals dolphins. Think of the potential "profit"! Then those civilized animals can work for their entire lives, build up a little nest egg of centralized banker's fiat money, which the globalist profiteers can then retake upon cancer treatment, bleeding them dry so to say before they die.

/sarcasm I wish it was