On today’s show, a Mount Allison biology professor is one of the lead researchers in a study that has documented the lasting legacy of large scale pesticide spraying in New Brunswick in the 50’s and 60’s.
Josh Kurek and a team of researchers including some Mount Allison students have sampled sediments and Brook Trout from seven different lakes in the province, and looked for evidence of DDT. In the five lakes within the former spray zone, “we’re seeing measures that are some of the highest in North America,” says Kurek. “And that’s 60, 70 years after we stopped using DDT.”
Kurek says that on average, the levels of DDT found in the flesh of Brook Trout are 10 times above ecological guidelines.
CHMA stops in to the Environmental Change and Aquatic Biomonitoring (ECAB) lab at Mount Allison to find out more.
