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Dead Zone

Every year about this time, a “dead zone” the size of New Jersey spreads its lethal tentacles across the northern Gulf of Mexico. This vast, oxygen-depleted swath of ocean traces its roots upstream, to a place where plant life is abundant: the famland of the Mississippi Basin.

Scientists have known for years that agricultural runoff from our nation’s crops was killing aquatic life downstream. But now a study by Environmental Working Group (EWG) has narrowed the source of the “dead zone” to a relatively small area of farmland that is heavily subsidized by American taxpayers.

More than 7.8 million pounds of fertilizer per day leaves the farms along the Mississippi and its tributaries, the report found. Farmers in this area receive substantial federal subsidies, which encourage the use of excessive amounts of agricultural chemicals. These chemicals contribute to more than 70 percent of the pollution creating the Gulf of Mexico’s annual “dead zone,” reports EWG.

The zone is created when nutrient-rich fertilizer pours into the Gulf, spawning algae blooms. The blooms then die and decompose, sucking all of the oxygen out of the water. Without oxygen, fish and shrimp and other aquatic life can’t survive – hence the name “dead zone.”

How to shrink the zone? Shrink agricultural subsidies, suggests EWG.

Whether that would solve the problem remains to be seen. But this zone, while certainly one of the largest in the world, is hardly the only one. Dead zones have tripled worldwide over the past 30 years. Solutions for balancing agricultural needs with aquatic health will ultimately need to be addressed in more global fashion.

For a copy of the EWG report, click here.

For more information on this topic, download the pdf or click here.

To read more about this and other environmental health issues, go to: www.environmentalhealthnews.org, www.ourstolenfuture.org, or www.healthandenvironment.org