Pollution may cause rapid evolutionary change in fish
Jamel Johnson
SOC 202-01
2/18/2011
Atlantic tomcod has some of the highest pollution levels exposure in the Hudson River. This comes from accidental sewage spills, and urban runoff; also including the thousands of pounds Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) that the General Electric facilities dump in the river. Beside the pollution the Atlantic tomcod show a high reduction in sensitivity, and the reduced response trait can go to their offspring. So that mean sorts of evolutionary change could be occurring in the fish population. So they tested it out. The way the fish are supposed to react is when they come in contact with the pollution they are supposed to produce a detoxification enzyme that metabolizes the pollution. But the study showed fish from the Hudson River and to variant AHR2 alleles in their DNA, and while other cod not from the Hudson river only had one variant AHR2 allele. To me that is just outrageous. We are changing even the animals we eat. This cannot be healthy. My concern is do the people who fish out of that river know? And this is just on a small scale. What about the whole U.S.A, how many different fish are we changing with our polluted waters? Or even on a global scale, we have different law to try to protect our wild life. What about the people in other countries where they don’t have laws, and most of the people live off the land and waters. What kind of mutated animals are they eating that they don’t know about? This is all very scary and serious problems. What can this mean for our food supply?
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/02/pollution-may-cause-rapid-evolutionary-change-in-fish-population.ars
http://pollution
Jamel Johnson
SOC 202-01
2/18/2011
Atlantic tomcod has some of the highest pollution levels exposure in the Hudson River. This comes from accidental sewage spills, and urban runoff; also including the thousands of pounds Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) that the General Electric facilities dump in the river. Beside the pollution the Atlantic tomcod show a high reduction in sensitivity, and the reduced response trait can go to their offspring. So that mean sorts of evolutionary change could be occurring in the fish population. So they tested it out. The way the fish are supposed to react is when they come in contact with the pollution they are supposed to produce a detoxification enzyme that metabolizes the pollution. But the study showed fish from the Hudson River and to variant AHR2 alleles in their DNA, and while other cod not from the Hudson river only had one variant AHR2 allele. To me that is just outrageous. We are changing even the animals we eat. This cannot be healthy. My concern is do the people who fish out of that river know? And this is just on a small scale. What about the whole U.S.A, how many different fish are we changing with our polluted waters? Or even on a global scale, we have different law to try to protect our wild life. What about the people in other countries where they don’t have laws, and most of the people live off the land and waters. What kind of mutated animals are they eating that they don’t know about? This is all very scary and serious problems. What can this mean for our food supply?
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/02/pollution-may-cause-rapid-evolutionary-change-in-fish-population.ars
http://pollution
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