My OperaPCBs-preocuppation of blue whale
Thursday, November 12, 2009 2:59:52 PM
In the dawn of the industrial revolution, because of lacking awareness of ecology, human beings have released large amounts of synthetic chemicals into the environment. PCBs ( poly-chlorinated biphenyls) used widely in industrial application is one of the contaminants which makes blue whale become imminent extinction because it contributes to destroy the food supply for blue whales as well as kill baby blue whales. PCBs maybe suppress the immune system, promote cancer and to interfere with other important biological systems in animals. As we know, blue whales feed almost exclusively on krill-a type of plankton crustacean. That is a type of small shellfish in the ocean that live and received large amounts of contaminants. So, PCBs can cause death a lot of krill. In addition to, most of the contaminants such as PCBs and pesticides that blue whales accumulate, are ingested in their food. Moreover, PCBs is associated with fat and since milk is necessarily high in fat, the neonate receives large amounts of the contaminants when weaning. Especially, contaminant accumulation by calves occurs very quickly because the mother’s milk is very high in fat which is essential for the infant increase its fat stores and grow rapidly. Therefore, when a mother is weaning a calf, she is unloading a large amount of her contaminant burden onto the neonate. It is not good and has huge impacts on the health and development of baby blue whales. A necessary and urgent demand now is solve the problem: what can people do to save blue whales? And it is also significant to raise awareness of people about protecting marine ecosystem.
