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.

Subsequent to it’s April premiere, Frogs: The Thin Green Line has been generating national and international interest. Screenings of it have been hosted by the American consulate in the UK and by the San Francisco Science Museum. At the end of the summer it will have screened in Houston, as well.

Last Sunday, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist, Nicholas D. Kristof championed the issue in an op-ed column in an article titled, “It’s Time to Listen to Frogs.” The article raised concerns over the proliferating numbers of “deformed frogs and intersex fish” that are now being found all over the world. The phenomenon is attributed to Endocrine Disruptors, a class of chemicals used in certain form of agriculture and pharmaceutical manufacturing. The harm caused by chemicals that “enter the water supply through estrogens in human urine,” is not limited to the frog population alone. Kristof cites numerous scientific studies evidencing connections between amphibian abnormalities and the “increasing abnormalities among humans, particularly large increases in numbers of genital deformities among newborn boys.”

Argo’s documentary and Kristof’s op-ed article are only two of many sources to tap for this abundance of meticulously researched yet accessible information now available to the public on this growing yet under addressed health crisis.

Additional Resources:

Allison Argo’s Documentary can be watched, in its entirety, on the Nature website – Frogs: The Thin Green Line

The article that inspired Allison Argo to build a frog pond in her back yard can be found at:
http://www.loudounwildlife.org/HHFrogPond.htm

Another website Allison Argo enthusiastically recommends is Amphibian Ark

Nicholas Kristof’s Op-ed Piece can be found through the New York Times Website – It’s Time to Listen to Frogs by, Nicholas Krisof