Maryland State of Mind; The Pfiesteria Files

Funding for this Maryland state of mind special is provided by the 13 institutions of the university system of Maryland and by Maryland to see Grant College. In 1997. That was something dead in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay and something was dissolving the flesh fish and affecting the brains of water and working its rivers. Scientists race to find answers to understand an organism that looks like something from science fiction. And then realized that the creature was affecting their brains as well. Was this organism an animal or a plant. Was hysteria hysteria justified or something created by the media and were chicken farmers unfairly bearing the brunt of the public's fears. These questions and more will be answered in the history of violence. A Maryland state of mind special.

Were. The only commercial fishermen on as well. We will start back in March.

We grab our native. Whatever. It is. Bet on my life that there are. Going. To. The. Sacred ashtrays big enough vendors that don't just. Benefit the made it benefits everybody. Run away rather than. Half. Way up the coast from Florida just north of the Outer Banks of North Carolina the Chesapeake Bay is a long arm of the ocean that punches deep into the heart of Virginia and Maryland. Here. Ocean water and river water meet and mix creating

a rich food where what were once the most boundary of old bay waters in the world. Every autumn and winter for more than a hundred years Waterman has been hauling oysters off the bottom of the bay. But now in smaller and smaller harvests. And every summer in every river so many people have been catching so many blue crabs. Until finally there were not so many left to catch. And every year the springtime runs for rockfish then the spawning and feeding for dozens of other species. A gold rush for all kinds of fish. And over fishing for recreational anglers

came in growing numbers and for the men and women who were these water in dwindling numbers still hoping to make a living off the bay. Well we will start back and end tomorrow. The weather was pretty bad this year so we didn't get it but I think. Along this one lonely river in the middle of the bay there are still a handful of watermen who wait every year with pound nets and fight nets for these first fish runs of spring. In their nets. They still find fish as they always have rock fish and Mothershed catfish and perch. But in the spring of 1997 they found something else.

A mystery that would change our understanding. Of the Chesapeake. We started catching a lot of fish lesions in the hole. We started out saying eight or 10 fish a day and then it went to 10 percent were cadged into Tornay right on up to 50 and 60 or catch kept getting worse and worse. But that's when we started noticing that was on her perch catfish Majed. Rockfish almost everything that we've got. But it left looked like you didn't know what to think. It's something to do that to a fish death let you do what I'm afraid of. Cool. One of the first journalists to report on the story of the poker Moak river was Brad Bell of Channel 7. Cool. Yeah. It had gotten to me through the waterman in the Chesapeake grapevine that there were fish with

lesions. A television reporter with the ABC affiliate in the nation's capital Ben decided to investigate the odd reports of sick fish in the middle of the bay. So we started out for the Pocono Bay Bridge. I didn't even know what shell town was and never heard a shell town and I'd been most everywhere in Maryland. Cross over the Chesapeake Bay. Head down past the chop tank and the chicken Macaco. The Coke and the wine come and go. Drive all the way down to the southern end of the Eastern Shore of Maryland and you come to one more river with an ancient Indian name. Up. Like water river. Born in a cypress swan. The Pocono curves down across the coastal plain carrying the runoff of half a dozen small towns.

And hundreds of small farms. And the last town on the last river in Maryland. Is shelled town. Why were there so many wounded fish in this river. The few watermen who still work there next year. Began asking Maryland state agencies for answers. We notified four of our mental health first. And asked me to save them a sample of the fish. Which I did. They called me back next day and told me they weren't nothing to worry about. It was just stress. The fish were stressed day. And that left them a cesspool due to other kinds of bacteria and stuff in the water. Well I didn't buy that.

So we contacted department out of resources and they started looking at the fish they've got. Tell me something but I think it's going nuts. That kind of thing. I know that work out because I mean it's. Two different looking dinosaurs. They went ahead and analyzed and first took more samples. They said they're going to get back within a couple of weeks which they never did actually really it never did NOT NOT. Down at the last far age of Maryland 150 miles from Washington reporter Brad Bell found worried Waterman still looking for an answer. We come upon the matics family compound. You walk out on their dock introduce ourselves and I say Have you seen these fish and the reaction was have we seen the fish we've got them all over the place and they were they were almost angry in the nets. There were fish with lesions big nasty ugly sores. The fish that we were

seeing were catfish perch Kroeker. It was a variety of fish. Some of them had gotten to the point where their tails were actually eaten off. We've seen or it or not net damage not scrape wounds. I've been covering the environment in the Chesapeake Bay for years and years for two different television stations full time environment reporter I'd never seen anything like it. What could be causing these toxins in the water from factories upstream or sewage plants pesticides spraying they weren't sure. I mean there were all sorts of theories. The watermen read their trade journals. They know what hysteria is. They know what has been going on in North Carolina. One theory a toxic microbe found in North Carolina Rivers a week after my first visit to shell town. We went out to the fish trap. The television reporter decided to test the Styria theory where we found fish with lesions. I filled the water bottle bottle of ivy water next morning bright and early

5:00 a.m. We headed out to North Carolina with our water samples. It is now called Wisteria piskies Cedar. And it was first investigated and later named by workers in this laboratory. A single celled organism. It is one of the most primitive lifeforms on earth. It is called the dinoflagellates. It has two flagella. To tell us. It is called Priscus Cedar because under certain conditions it seems to kill fish. In 1988 in an aquarium like this in a veterinary laboratory at North Carolina State University. Fish. Began die. Was there something in the water. That could kill. You.

It was kind of a nondescript not a flageolet little tiny organism thousand of them could fit on the head of a piano. It was hard to identify because of you looking at something under a microscope you're magnifying at seven or eight hundred times its normal size and it looks like just a little basketball swimming around. So they called in the Burkholder. That occurred to you wouldn't want to sample if you could have identified the organism. Joanne Burkholder was an aquatic botanist a specialist in freshwater plants who was new to brackish water biology. But I didn't have appropriate credentials to study this organism I'd never been tried in a toxic dinoflagellates lab I had one publication on freshwater dinoflagellates. I'll record that I'm looking at the cell phone using a scanning electron microscope. They blew up their tiny organism by six thousand times its normal size.

Each species of nano flageolet had its own fingerprint that identifies the outer membrane structure and you have to go through a process of stripping off. Membranes or swelling them so that the sutures or plate tabulations really show up. So right here was there a tell tale structure a fingerprint that would give up its name. Anti-New to scan around the top of this after peening membranes in counting players an unexpected finding. They were looking at an undiscovered organism. A dinosaur flagellate never before described in the scientific literature. Took Mother Nature to million years making history. In that period of time she set up the balance just the way she wanted. The right amount of

wetlands where she put those wetlands. Trees fish rain everything in balance. After I retired from Marine Corps I followed a childhood dream went into commercial fishing. And I'd fish up and down the river. But then the fish started showing signs of the sores. The crabs started having holes in the shelves. And I got to a point where I didn't. I decided it wasn't safe to eat from myself and my family so I quit eating it and I had some. Subconscious problems with that and decided that I just had to get out of the market and couldn't sell these fish that I would make myself. The 1990s brought the largest fish kills ever recorded in North Carolina Rivers. When they get hit the fish that have been hit you get sick they break off from the bigger schools they come into the shallows and form their own schools

in one year an estimated 10 million dead fish in one event in another year. More than one billion dead fish. Fish were dying so fast in so many places they were just bubbling to the surface. It didn't matter where that fish was or where he was swimming. He's gonna die. There was so many dead fish all over the river that people didn't want to go outside. The stench was terrible. They were using a bulldozer to bury him on the beach. And many of the dying fish showed small red lesions. We didn't know what it was and the state couldn't tell us. They were saying we don't know what's wrong. We're dropping our oxygen meters in water. The oxygen levels are fine but these fish are dying in large numbers. They're coming up with sores and we don't know what's wrong. In the coastal plain river is. Sick and dying fish. And in Burkholder research laboratory. Every time the

scientists found dead fish. They also found these newly discovered dinoflagellates. Was this POD organism a plant or an animal. Inside its body. They saw chlorophyll the engine for photosynthesis. We were seeing a chloroplast within the body of hysteria. And in that sense we thought it was a plant. But it also looked like an animal because it swam through the water attacking both plants and animals. Evolution had equipped this organism with unusual attack strategies for use. On each predator to take. One curled around its middle help it whipped through the water. At one end a tube that snakes out. Don't call it helps mysterious Knag food.

Once it hooks up. This predator sucks out the inside of plants. And steals their chloroplasts. It would actually take their chloroplast stored in a food vacuo within its body and then use that chloroplast to make its own energy from the sunlight. A new level of excitement arose as we started to figure out hey this is link between. Plants and animals. Truly the Twilight Zone the name for that is Claudel chloroplast Mathurin of the plant. And then you might be able to say that it's Aligarh like but it's really not analogous with an animal. But it wasn't the only animal lurking in there water samples die off. We saw this very distinctive Ami Boyd looking cell that was associated with typical Donald flageolet basketball looking cells. Were they both fish killers.

Misworded actually following this amoeba trail. Hundreds of hours under the microscope evaluation one day and then all of a sudden right there in front of you and got lucky and the one of the transformation started taking place transformation of this basketball looking shape dinoflagellates into an amoeba. Like. At about two and a half minutes for it to happen. I looked under the microscope further did a very thorough examination of the samples and found hysteria flagellated stage of with amoeba extension of the body coming out. And saw how whole transformation progressions in all samples cysts buried in the mud could change into free swimming zone spores. And so spores could change into a larger star like amoebas. And then change again into longer fatter logos in the process.

According to Burkholder 24 life stages in on. But in which form would Styria be capable of finding and killing fish. When Burkholder added Mysteria to fishtanks she soon began announcing more controversial findings. Pfiesteria can she said pursue fear. The diner flageolet detects nearby fish through chemical signals. From fish skin or urine nor feces. Once they sense the fish pfiesteria swarm after they release an unidentified neurotoxins. A toxin that appears to stun fish and sometimes opens

lesions. The toxin moves invisibly through the water. Then arrow slices and floats invisibly in the air. Working closely with dense Mysteria cultures several researchers began to experience strange symptoms. My eyes were burning. I realized that I wasn't breathing very well had severe stomach cramping doubled over severe asthmatic like symptoms severe headaches. And. Flu like Symptoms sore stomach cramping that goes on for several days and the worst the fact that I encountered was a short term memory loss and cognitive impairment. Alarmed Burkholder removed all her toxic Mysteria tanks to isolated Trigger's on the edge of campus. Despite a new lab a new safety precautions. Other symptoms began

showing up in her closest collaborator Howard Glasgow. Episodic rages and what I would get mad and really rail somebody for just having dropped a pencil on the floor he would be extremely sarcastic and flippant. His graphs were almost like jibberish was to the point where I remember nothing. You would forget entire conversation. I didn't know what to think. I wondered after a while whether he just wasn't interested in this job anymore. Glasgow's office was next door to the new Mysteria hot room where a mistake was made during construction. They put the return vents for the hot room that we were active going stereo back into my office. So I was sitting there for six months with the fumes being vented right back over top of my head.

An accidental experiment was in progress. The question what are the human effects of ongoing exposure to these toxins. I can look at something and I had no ability to read. It was as if I was looking at hieroglyphics just couldn't couldn't recognize it and I couldn't even pick up a newspaper in bed we did. We. Found the airflow problem. But by that time Howard was unable to literally find his way home for three weeks. He would get lost in an accidental experiment with unusual findings. Personality changes. Mental changes. Memory loss. We never know what. The next new toxins going to be.

Don Anderson has been tracking toxic blooms in the world's oceans for 30 years. Siri is a new problem a new toxin that we don't understand. It is potentially much more dangerous than we think. Toxins from dinoflagellates and algae usually attack people through the food chain when they hear clams for example like to feed on Alexandrea a toxic dinoflagellates that can multiply into huge red tide. When clams fill up on these Dino flatulence and people fill up on clams the result can be paralysis. Other toxic blooms can be even more dangerous. Some of them as I said can cause brain damage some of them can kill you they will cause respiratory arrest. Others will will cause all sorts of neurological problems. Before we have more toxicology more toxic

outbreaks more areas affected it's just the problem is much much bigger than it ever was. And then you say why what. What is it that's making that expansion happen. These mysterious toxic blooms are popping up along New England. And the Pacific Coast and the Gulf Coast. They come in red tides and brown tides and invisible tides. Causing sick fish. And sometimes sick people. Was Mysteria another kind of coastal bloom. Or was it simply an odd contaminant dangerous only to lab workers. There was indeed an exposure problem. So I was pulled away from work for a few months. After a three month recovery. Glasgow came back to work amidst growing controversy about listeria.

Back to work and had a vested interest in pfiesteria research obviously at that point and was determined at that point to to approach it with a new vigor. The cause of the controversy hypothesis. The fish killer from their laboratory could be one of the causes for fish crows. Joanne Burkholder had been asking for water samples from any fish kills along North Carolina good. Fish lesions in these kills looked a lot like the fish lesions they were finding in their lab. In May of 1991 from a major fish kill along the Pamlico River came the evidence Burkholder in Glasgow were looking for. I was extremely excited. I remember staring under the microscope. And but here it is my little girl called Pamela. We have actually caught a fish out of the.

Wisteria was killing fish in the coastal plain rivers of North Carolina. In May 1997. Television reporter Brad Bell showed up with samples from Maryland. Went to NC State. And met up with Howard Glasgow and you took the samples put it under the microscope. Dr. Burkholder walks into the room. She said yep there it is. And I said What is it. She said that's pfiesteria. We had actually only evaluated that under the light microscope. So it was presumptive at that point. But through seven years of experience of having looked at these cells for. Countless hours you know it was a pretty good bet. You know from that experience that we were right. I was done. It was so easy. For them. But lab testing had just begun. Fish Tank tests and scanning electron microscopy would take another four

weeks to verify if Asturia in the poker Moak river. Brad Bell decided not to wait in the middle of a ratings period and my bosses are watching these things very closely. And that was. They knew that that night we had very good ratings and they led the newscast with that story. Washington D.C.. So. Mysterious there was a huge. Competitive news story. Grad's story was a breakthrough story through his enterprise. It forced the Department of Natural Resources to begin to confront the issue. What do you think. I mean are you skeptical when you go to these calls or do you in your mind open on and we just trying to get. I have a theory about environmental problems. Basically it's this. It's real simple. You won't find them if you don't look for it. And for the first part of 97 Marilyn wasn't looking at least not very hard for the first Theoria connection with Fishkill.

We began to hear from Waterman that something is making a sick in the water down here. It was clear evidence to me that we had stirred up Stalock organism of some kind or it was like say progressively you do stop make you sick sort of off the record comments were made to suggest that we shouldn't listen too closely to the water down there either that they were not necessarily believable that they were malingerers or worse the state DNR officials thought the watermen were angry not about fish but about early arrests for deer poaching and that gave rise to a lot of friction. The temperatures were running kind of high and I think some of our folks felt at the time that well maybe this is they're sort of making this more of an issue than it is to give us a hard time trying to get on a news report. We couldn't tell the people that it was for my health even though we didn't have to

proof it was. I wonder about. Whether it's true. I wonder if they could really be said. We've got to treat it with more dispatch more concern or urgency and try to get a little more light shed on what was really going on because they were clearly troubled by it. Clearly. Were Waterman and water skiers and swimmers getting sick. From the. River. For an answer the state of Maryland turned to medical experts at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins and the ones I was reading the newspapers just like everybody else about the Syrians his skills learned about history. And I paid close attention. I grew up on the Eastern Shore. I worked on scolloped boats. I worked on clam boats a specialist in infectious diseases. David all got quickly joined Glenn Morris the epidemiologist who would be leading a

medical team down to the eastern shore of. The state and needed an answer. The charge was was fairly straightforward fairly simple so yes or no sort of thing is there or is there not a human health effect associated with Mr. Morris assembled a team that included internists and specialists in pulmonary disease respiratory therapy and dermatology. He also added a neuro psychologist all the way down. I actually spent about half an hour talking with the team members on the boss the script telling them that you know this might well simply be hysteria hysteria. It wasn't euphoric at seven. Officials promised the mother of all medical exams tests of the heart scan and more.

Today we are going to practice good solid clinical medicine. There are several of us taking good histories getting good physical exams to try to get an idea of what their current health status is. They said OK what what is your history what your medical history. They gave us blood tests they gave us. Really they looked for skin cancers they looked for everything. So there were a variety of ailments there were a number of complaints about gastrointestinal problems and skin problems and respiratory problems and they were all the kinds of things you might see in the course of the day and the general internal medicine clinic. But Person after person said you know I'm just forgetting stuff and taking the big take I'm working on something right in the middle I don't know when I'm doing stop and then I'm wondering what I'm doing. I mean I've never been like that before. I just realized that I didn't know where I was. I had the strange sensation that I hadn't a clue where I was. So I stood there in the open doorway of the restroom. Trying to. Get my bearings and. Then I remember OK this is the pizza I'm in Pocono. Marilyn Nefert little thanks. In other words just not forget everything. There's just certain

little elements there that you know you want or forgot if something went wrong with you. It is quite reasonable to hypothesize along one River in Maryland the same memory problems that showed up in Burkholder lab in North Carolina. I'm going to read her stuff 10 years ago but something about yourself and you tell me I've done it up out up and down. I didn't know it. I mean that's just how it's I could not read a full sentence because by the time I got to the end of it I didn't know what the beginning of it said. It just slowed me down so much I may just feel like you're in slow motion. You try to go faster. Your brain you know you can go faster but your brain just sing sing sing songs or something to rush your body to go ahead. Anecdotes are not evidence isolated from the physicians neuro psychologist Lynn Grant gave a battery of tests probing for mental problems. We examined aspects of all areas of brain functional and focused

on a little bit more memory concentration. Can you tell me. In science every now and then you stumble over something where you suddenly realize there's something new here. But what exactly had the Maryland Medical team found. Lynn Groton quickly scored the test from the Pokemon. Then compared their scores with a database of test scores from around the country. The database is basically a database of hundreds or thousands of individuals who have NO NO NO LOGIC exposure or neurologic difficulty who answer the exact same questions. The data were disturbing. We found individuals who had been exposed to the waterways with hysteria

for hysteria like liberalism's. I'm going to have more difficulties on new learning. The in response. Your exposure to the Pocono correlated with low cognitive scores. Dr. Grafton didn't completely believe her own results. When I saw the filings that were frightening. Public health is tough. You're placed in a situation where you've got to make decisions where you don't know everything. It's difficult to come to judgments quickly with small samples but it certainly can be done. You don't have to have a thousand people sick to know that exposure to pfiesteria toxins produces a memory problem. There is reason to act the public must be informed. Of this connection with human health. At the same time there is no reason to panic. Maryland became the first state to close a river because of health problems linked to

this degree. It's a river nobody ever heard of in a place nobody ever heard of. By the time I got there 40 other reporters were there. When the medical team began to assemble its findings. That was a big deal. The Schrag a news article off of the governor says this may harm humans therefore I'm closing the river. That's Face Time for a newspaper say wow look at this. And a feast time for television. Anybody with a TV camera in Washington can get out there and one day you can you know hop in a van in the morning you're out there by midday you've got your scenic watermaker the pretty picture story. Newspapers now fed television and television fed newspapers. I like having TV on the same. You're always trying to sell the story to your editors and have TV's and if it's common across the evening news Gee where's your editors are more likely to think it's a major story.

The. Studio in the Chesapeake was now a national story based on only 13 people most of them water man on one river. The very first thing we realized was that we didn't have an appropriate control population. There might be occupations specific exposures. As I mentioned anti fouling paints or or diesel fumes that a control group from Baltimore for instance might not have. Or there are no norms available for Waterman people who spend 8 10 12 hours a day out on the water. So I thought well we'll just go out and get our own. So we came here to a certain city and started asking around. Perhaps most commercial fishermen scored badly on tests for memory and learning that's been involved study. Ocean city water men were an ideal control group. They did the same kind of work. But on the ocean rather than the bay. These women work as hard here as the wanted men on the Oakmark. So so

that sort of physical exertion could affect how you perform on a test. But fishermen in Ocean City claim that Mysteria cost them money. News stories drove down the prices for their fish. Everybody wants blood and guts story on the history issue. It really hurt us. It didn't have to. Come that waterman on the dockside and fish markets. He invited them in for examination. You've heard about the problems with this area down the Potomac River. The Waterman down there who are getting sick. Now I'm going to show you seven words at one time. And all of the ocean water Waterman sat down at a table. I don't expect you to get any more. That's all right. People memorize the same words and paragraphs. Read the same passages. We gave the ocean fishing Waterman. The exact same tasks and procedures that were given

to the people exposed to the Styria. These individuals the results were entirely normal belt. Rail. Step. Four. Inch. Wide. Doc. Confirmed for us that our normative databases were completely accurate and relevant to this particular population. In 1997 the medical team confirmed 37 people with a mysterious memory and learning loss. I want to lift her head for me and let me back down. Brain scans and chemical studies now indicate that an unknown toxin may slow down key areas of the brain. For that what would appear to be happening is that toxic material is getting into the body in some way. This toxic material that moves up to the brain. In the brain what it does. Is blocked.

This one particular receptor. In normal learning signals passed from one cell to another where a receptor absorbs the signal out of these connections. New memories are made new learning is laid down. That's. What our data suggests is that pfiesteria toxin when it actually gets into the brain can block the activity of this one receptor. When the toxin blocks this key receptor. Signals bounce off. You learn a new memory never happen. People not just fish people have been hurt. Then it became clear that we had ourselves a story that was not only obviously very important to people who live on the eastern shore and the people who were hurt but also people who care about the bay. And there was a political component here because we had a gubernatorial race coming up

the story just grows and grows. In the newsrooms of the Washington Post. And the Baltimore Sun an old fashioned newspaper war broke out over hysteria. So we were in a big horse race. I think it scared the heck out of people. And I think when you scare people you get their attention. That was intense pressure for stories. I mean a big league competition didn't do well we wanted to shine and we wanted to keep up with them and beat them from day to day. And I sometimes think sometimes we maybe didn't there were be comparisons of our coverage versus the post. They read our paper we read their paper. They are the most prominent competition on Maryla news. They they took the story very seriously. They they covered it very prominently. It was a front page story in The Baltimore Sun seemingly every day in on the Baltimore Sun would assign 21 reporters to the story.

And the Washington Post would assign 24 if they do be used to try to advance the story. You try to move on. So in the ideal the competition should serve the reader get that how many people running after the story trying to get to the bottom of what's what's actually going on. Some would say you know in less than ideal what you get is is an exaggerated account of of significance one result of the media war was exaggerated confusion and rising. We have calls from people in. Foreign countries scheduled to take sailing vacations on the day and they were calling us to cancel our trips and we're going to die. We literally. Have the coverage big headlines to help add to the hysteria. But in our defense. It was a major health human health issue and we had to cover. Another result was foaming seafood prices. In 1997. The final tally for the Maryland seafood industry. Forty

million dollars in lost sales. It's a disturbing sight. Stores fish with lesions a King's Cross. Some say this is a sign Hobey could be in danger. What this shows is that it's not just localized on a river in fact it's moving and it's actually showing indications that the bay while the Chesapeake Bay Foundation says there is a link between the problems on both waterways nutrient rich runoff created by Delmarva poultry farms he is correlation at this point in time or the poultry conference. Eric Rhody the BBC News Center. On the lower Eastern Shore of Maryland in one of the poorest areas of the state. Thousands of contract farmers grow millions of chickens for half a dozen large corporations such as Perdue Farms and Tyson's food. This area here I'd say in the last 10 years. It's most likely increased by 50 percent as far as houses. And they're not building one house at a time

anymore. Two houses are built in three four six eight. And that's a lot of chickens a lot of manure. How much manure each chicken will live. Seven weeks and eat ten pounds of feed much you it shipped to the eastern shore from the Midwest sent by the poultry integrators. But each chicken will leave behind four and a half pounds of menu. And all of that will be loaded onto the farm lands in the lower Eastern Shore. At the beginning I thought it was a great asset. I said OK can you just menora be able to cut down on fertilizer. For the crops or whatever. We have so much manure that we can't get rid of. We just can't continually keep putting it into the show.

There's just too much manure in this lower east to shore the rivers in there according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation could end up like the river is in North Carolina. The great fish kills of the Noose River were blamed on zones of low oxygen. And glooms fistula. The result according to some scientists of too much nutrient load. Everything you're seeing here is just an imbalance of nutrients too much nitrogen too much phosphorus. From hog farms chicken farms turkey farms wastewater treatment plants golf courses municipalities. Everybody contributes but principally agriculture mostly hogs and wastewater treatment plants. In. North Carolina environmental organizations like the news river foundation launched aggressive lobbying and media campaigns. Calling

for new controls on industrial hog farm. In Maryland environmental organizations launched similar campaigns kicking off a political war over histeria aren't part of that got a vision. First you know that I have yet seen or read or heard any real conclusive hard evidence that links current farming practices to these specific problems that we've had in our rivers. We haven't heard anything about a golf course. I've got news for North Carolina to play. Go right down the street far away and belly up right. I can tell you I hope that we can come together as a community and solve this problem. We're back that day and a lot of sense. So we've got our heads together needing fast answers on this during the State turn to the University of Maryland.

Dunbar's asked a team of experts to meet together in Cambridge. The scientific community of course had a major challenge. If we have to provide the best advice we can at this time what would we say. He asked his team of specialists most of them from the Chesapeake to review the existing literature. Most of it from North Carolina. Was farm run off of animal waste and fertilizer actually feeding blooms of history. It's like fertilizing your lawn you get more grass but you also get more dandelions more crabgrass and and you notice those they're harmful. But everything was done. It doesn't seem to be a very simple thing. It isn't like you add nutrients and you get pfiesteria because we know that there are high nutrient Foth places and there isn't a theory outbreak fought for places when predators like this Styria get more food and.

Other predators get more hysteria to. Predators like this. Tin-Tin and ciliate that ate several green stain Mysteria for lunch. Or the species that ate several dozen wisteria for dinner. In this ecology of competing species predators like Mysteria often become brain. With so many predators eating fish are. Proving that toxic blooms come from farm runoff would take more time. And a more complete understanding of this entire ecology. Most data was circumstantial. It wasn't truth the way we usually accept scientific proof based on an experiment. This definitely caused that. The team produced the Cambridge consensus. A series of tentative findings

based not on what was proven about hysteria in the Chesapeake. But on what was probable. And yes that's an uncomfortable thing for scientists to do. We're trying to be conservative and yes it's very uncomfortable to have to then convey that message to seven hundred mostly farmers from the Eastern Shore mostly chicken growers. It's a little intimidating. This is advice that we were asked to give. Yes there is a basis scientific basis to suggest that if we reduce not eliminate it not overnight but we would reduce the likelihood of listeria outbreaks. The Listeria link only a tentative finding led the governor to call for new regulations on farm runoff. The industry with mandatory merchant regulations we got to keep our farmers attack the science disturb Yes you can be thrown away as far as.

And the legislation. I think the survival of the poultry industry state. On these mandatory regulation encountered a long tradition of voluntary cooperation in soil conservation and nutrient management. And I know that the industry is the same thing on on Fox you've got to take prudent measured steps and adjust what you're doing as you learn more as opposed to say well we're not going to do anything until the jury's in. Well the jury is never in when the hell is a science. You know there's always gray music you shut up and sit down and talk to these people we are. You don't know farmers. These are the most honest people in the world. I had I only read Maryland became the first state to vote in mandatory controls on all its farmers because of listeria. When you see the concern about human health you change the stakes you can no longer rely on the vast majority of farmers doing what is right

and just sort of work on the other guys to come along. If you can prove that I'm doing something wrong then I will fix it. That's why most farmers are. You have to establish standards. You have to do something now. I think the public was calling for that. That's what happened. But so many mysteries remain. Over the next three years only five new cases of memory and learning loss all with low exposures and subtle symptoms but symptoms from other rivers than the pokemon from rivers with no fish kills. Could there be toxic blooms without sick fish. What we're trying to do is come up with ways to predict when waterways are risky for the general public and it's not going to be very often. It's going to be a rare event but how rare.

When scientists get old docs medical lab came up with a DNA probe for listeria. The test was used by Maryland's Department of Natural Resources to monitor bay waters throughout the state. North of the poker Moq DNR found hysteria in other rivers of the lower Eastern Shore. They also found it north of the chop town north of the Bay Bridge even north of Baltimore. These new maps of Maryland and Virginia show the listeria is part of the natural ecology of the entire Chesapeake Bay. And all these other organisms that bloom like this that cause toxin outbreaks. There are huge fluctuations year to year. Huge fluctuations will have a big red tide. Let's say one year. Next year nothing year after nothing and then it will come back.

If toxic species like fish during bloom again in the Chesapeake Bay. And they probably wish. They could strike hardest those they have struck before. I'm not afraid. All my life I've lived there all my life. I just hope that there's something to turn this thing around. This whole event has turned some people's lives upside down. But some people who I know were ill and who bravely came forward and talked about their illness and and have helped alert us all about a problem. I think that was a unique. Natural experiment. People kept back to. The tip toes. It's ok there's no problem. People are constantly being exposed. Ethically. We can never let that happen again. We now have the tools to identify Asturia very rapidly.

We know enough now that clearly we're going to keep people forever. We may have to come to deal with this as an ever present risk. In our lives that we live in the Chesapeake Bay. It may be that it's just like the risks that some of us absorb of eating raw shellfish. Or boating. Waters. Or anything else we do. You want to be on the water or around the water we may be exposed to hysteria. That is why the risks you take for the benefit. Of living around. Which. Has. Stirred up and it's been here since the world started you know so take something to trigger it. So whatever this is directed at. I think.

Manmade. Numbers are amazing. But. Since 1997 there have been no major new outbreaks of listeria in the Chesapeake Bay. But there have been new research findings. That challenged Dr. Burkholder explanations of hysterias life cycle and its effects on fish. And humans. Using new DNA probe. Some scientists now claim that fish Styria like most dinoflagellates has a simple. Rather than a complicated life cycle with no amoeba. Four. Others have presented evidence that Mysteria can kill fish but not with a toxin. Dr. Burkholder has maintained that her analysis is accurate and her experiments have been duplicated. She argues that science has said not growing their food Styria culture is properly. By the time pfiesteria blooms again in the Chesapeake. Scientists may have

more answers to some of these contentious questions. Is. This. The. Funding for this Maryland state of mind special is provided by the 13 institutions of a university system of Maryland. And by the Maryland Sea Grant College