Last week, the opening convocation for Black History Month was given by Tyrone Hayes of UC Berkeley. I was impressed: he's exceptionally personable, and despite the poor organization of his visit (UMM's fault, entirely) and having to drive for hours through a small blizzard to get here from the airport, he was gracious and fun to talk with. He gave a phenomenally well-organized, lucid talk which managed to describe all the basics of his research in terms a lay audience, most of whom were not science majors of any kind, could comprehend. And as I learned, most of his work is done by undergraduates—he has an enviable research program fueled by entry level students working towards a bachelor's degree. I am humbled.
I have to say that if you get an opportunity to hear Hayes speak, jump at it. It's a model of good educational rhetoric. And hey, if you're on a seminar committee somewhere, look into inviting him out…it will be worth your while.
The subject of his talk was atrazine. Atrazine is a heavily used pesticide in the United States—we hose our cornfields with the stuff around here, using it to control weeds and boost the productivity of our acreage by 1.2%. That may not sound like much, but over the entire midwest, that adds up to really big money, money that flows into the coffers of its manufacturer, Syngenta. Syngenta is a Swiss company, and interestingly, atrazine is banned in Europe. In the US, we're allowed to have up to 3 parts per billion in our drinking water, and Syngenta initially commissioned Hayes to research possible deleterious effects of atrazine.
Atrazine was thought to be harmless: it's a compound that interferes with the photosynthetic machinery of many plants (corn has a protective enzyme that neutralizes it), and since we don't do photosynthesis, it was thought to lack the potential to harm us. Unfortunately, what Hayes found is that it has a secondary effect, activating an enzyme called aromatase, which converts testosterone to estrogen.
And it has effects on frogs at concentrations as low as 0.1 parts per billion.
As you might guess from the fact that atrazine stimulates the conversion of testosterone to estrogen, it feminizes male frogs. He showed lots of examples and a great deal of quantitative data illustrating frogs with shriveled testes, frogs with both testes and ovaries, and in a picture that elicited a few sympathetic moans of pain from the audience, testes that were rupturing with maturing egg cells popping out of them.
![i-26bd6cfecd89ee81f4777bfba92b43ab-fem_frog_gonad.jpg](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/wp-content/blogs.dir/470/files/2012/04/i-26bd6cfecd89ee81f4777bfba92b43ab-fem_frog_gonad.jpg)
Gonads from a treated male R. pipiens (0.1 ppb atrazine) with vitellogenic testicular oocytes. (A) Bouin's-fixed section; bar = 250 µm.
The posterior portion of the gonad is filled with oocytes that are pro-
truding through the testicular lobules and can be seen on the surface
tions were taken. (B) Transverse cross-sections showing that the ante-
rior testis has poorly developed testicular lobules; the black arrowhead
shows a tangentially sectioned oocyte. (C) and (D) Large vitellogenic
oocytes in the posterior portion of the gonads. Bar = 250 µm for panels
(B-D).
The endocrinology of frogs is not that different from us in this regard. We also have aromatase and testosterone and estrogen. He showed data that correlated infertility rates in humans with levels of atrazine in their urine, and measurements of atrazine in farm workers that vastly exceeded the recommended limits by tens of thousands of times. And ladies, you aren't off the hook: elevated estrogen levels can promote the growth rate of breast cancers. He also mentioned a statistic that I suspect the Minnesota Tourism Board would like to bury: rates of birth defects in Minnesota spike to twice the level of other seasons for children conceived in the spring, when farmers spray their fields with this stuff.
Speaking of burying the data, remember that this work was commissioned by Syngenta. Syngenta is now doing their best to destroy Hayes' reputation. They've engaged in character assassination, have pressured interest groups to deny him speaking engagements, and have commissioned new studies to cast doubt on Hayes' work. He didn't speak too much about that, but did show an example of the results from another Syngenta study that showed no effect of atrazine on frogs: the work was so sloppily done that approximately 97% of the frogs died. That's one way to flatten the data and make an uncomfortable phenomenon disappear.
He was supposed to be the keynote speaker at a meeting of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency last year, but was disinvited at the last minute by the MPCA Commissioner, Sheryl Corrigan, a Republican appointee (surprised?). Steven Milloy, the master of Junk Science, has vilified Hayes. This is yet another example of the politicization of science: we have solid data, an easy to understand mechanism, and a legitimate health concern, and wealthy agribusiness lobbyists are blocking any serious consideration of the issue. Hayes has been flying back and forth between Berkeley and St Paul, working to wake people up to common sense, but so far the bills to stop atrazine use have been killed. It's depressing when atrazine advocates say stupid things like this:
"Do you really believe that the U.S. EPA, under two administrations, one Democrat and one Republican, would disregard a real threat to human health and the environment?" said White. "Do you believe that?"
Yes. Yes, I do.
Hayes T, Haston K, Tsui M Hoang A, Haeffele C, Vonk A (2003) Atrazine-Induced Hermaphroditism at 0.1 ppb in American Leopard Frogs. Environmental Health Perspectives 111(4):568-575.
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Very good article about him in Best American Science Writing 2004. He's a very driven guy.
a-HA! So you ADMIT that there are machines in those cells!
In PLANTS. Therefore, soybeans are designed.
And someday, the great Farmer in the Sky will come to harvest the fruits of His sowing, and He shall find the fields crawling with metazoan vermin, parasites on His work, and yay-us, He shall be displeased.
Atrazine has been a train wreck waiting to happen for a long time. In the late 90s, I did a long-winded analysis of a CBO cost-benefit study of environmental regulation, using atrazine as a test case. They had implied that atrazine regulation was a ridiculous waste of money, saying that controlling it cost $4 billion per cancer case prevented. But the total spent on controlling it was really something like $10 million, and EPA hadn't even regulated it for cancer risk in the first place. (They hadn't regulated it for endocrine disruption, which they didn't know much about at the time, either.) The economists who did the cost-benefit analysis hadn't known how to quantify non-cancer risk, so they ignored it.
The usual trolls of the time said that atrazine wasn't worth regulating even if there were non-cancer effects. Of course internet sceptics and libertarians are all-knowing.
I remember the howls when Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" came out.
We STILL haven't got this idiocy fixed, even over here (England) never mind your corrupt Republican politician-problems.
Nasty.
Hayes is a good guy--I've admired him for years for ending all of his talks at meetings with a picture of his wife & kids to point out "what's really important."
Here's a link to a press release describing his most recent work, on effects of mixtures of pesticides...sobering indeed:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/02/060202180830.htm
I first met Tyrone when I was a grad student, when I was pursuing my dissertation work with the androgen receptor in birds. Needless to say, due to the overlap in our interests, we had a lot to talk about.
Tyrome left a big impression on me and my colleagues because he is so articulate and driven, yet surprisingly down-to-earth, and also because of his ability to provide undergrads with a fabulous opportunity to get their hands wrapped around real (publishable) research. His undergrads also gave beautifully designed and presented talks at professional meetings. We definitely need more people like Tyrone in science.
Discover magazine had an excellent article about him in 2003 (I believe between March-May). Very interesting and worth the read.
Groups like Mindfully, where this article appeared, lose their credibility when warning of the "completely negative and overbearing influence of the US" throughout the world. (On Mindfully's Web site, in the "about" section.)
Is America overbearing? Yes, frequently. Negative? Sometimes. But "completely negative"? Only a fanatic would believe that.
And speaking of "fanatic", take a look at Mindfully's whacked-out version of Sept. 11, which implies "an intentional demolition job", and I don't mean by Al Qaida.
C'mon, P.Z.! Can't you find a better source than this concoction of loonballs who belong with the intelligent design creationists?
Bradley, would you feel better if PZ had used another source like The Chronicle of Higher Education? You know, the place that Mindfully got the article from?
This is the cheating-spouse defense - "I can't believe you'd think Im cheating! Where's the trust?" Laughable if it weren't so sad.
Yes. Why did PZ have to give that nutball site free publicity?
Hey, you don't have to believe the Web or the Chronicle...here's the Sygenta/EcoRisk story in Hayes's own words:
Hayes, TB. 2004. There is no denying this: defusing the confusion about atrazine. BioScience 54:1138-1149.
http://www.iceh.org/pdfs/SBLF/HayesBioscience.pdf
I went at it with Alex Avery at Tech Central Station when the atrazine story broke. Alex was woefully unprepared for someone to actually argue from the paper - all he had was smears, obfuscation and mendacicization; the same thing happened to Chapela, BTW. That's when I knew Alex was hired as a shill to smear Hayes' work and that Hayes was on to something.
Best,
D
I second that emotion: Hayes is an engaging, clear speaker, and lays out his research well. Great fun. We saw him at a California Academy of Sciences members' night, before we dropped the membership. (That's another story entirely.) I can see why he's attracted a corps of dedicated undergrads.
If I'm recalling correctly, UC hasn't done itself proud wrt him, either.