What Deformed Frogs Say About Our Drinking Water

On Sunday, April 5th of this year, Thirteen/WNET’s Nature Series premiered Frogs: The Thin Green Line. Emmy award winning filmmaker, Allison Argo, blended poetic cinematography with masterful soundscapes in a disarmingly straightforward masterpiece delineating the relationship between sewage water and the growing number of frogs being born with defects.

“It’s uncomfortable to realize that we are part of the problem,” Argo explained to me in a phone interview on the topic, but “It’s also exciting and stimulating to realize that we are part of the solution.” Argo’s ability to maintain an optimistic perspective on this bleak situation is grounded, in part, by the day-to-day lifestyle adjustments she makes. She switched to public transportation for her travels between her Cape Cod studio and Boston, she has been swapping old light bulbs for more energy efficient ones, and she is building a frog pond in her yard this summer.

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Are Fireworks Environmentally Friendly?

The Fourth of July is a holiday of mixed feelings and varying acts of celebration. Some people hide in the bathroom with their pained, frightened dogs while sounds of war surround their city, while others spend hundreds of dollars on fireworks and relish the opportunity to make things go BOOM. The one thing about the Fourth that’s agreed upon is the wonderful day off from work that accompanies this holiday. But what about the fireworks? All the smoke and chemicals can’t be good for the environment, right?

Right.

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