Most Recent Posts

Americans love bananas. Each year, we eat more bananas than any other fruit. But banana growers use a lot of pesticides — and those chemicals could be hurting wildlife. As a new study shows, the pesticides are ending up in the bodies of crocodiles living near banana farms in Costa Rica, where many of the bananas we eat are grown.

Of course, there's a reason why banana plantations rely heavily on pesticides. For one, banana trees are particularly susceptible to infestations, says Chris Wille, the chief of sustainable agriculture at the nonprofit Rainforest Alliance. He works with banana growers to help them reduce the amount of pesticides they use.

Second, most plantations are in the tropics, "where there are a lot more kinds of pests and in abundance," he says.

And insects aren't the only problem there. There are worms and fungi, too.

"When you see pictures of airplanes spraying banana farms, they're spraying for airborne fungal disease called Black Sigatoka, which can devastate a plantation in a matter of a week or so," says Wille.

Many of Costa Rica's banana plantations are in the remote northeastern region, at the headwaters of the Rio Suerte River. The area is full of streams and canals, flowing past the banana farms and into protected rain forests that are part of the Tortuguero Conservation Area.

Paul Grant, a wildlife biologist at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, went there to investigate whether pesticides are hurting local wildlife.

"In the past, I have witnessed and a lot of the locals have pointed out that there have been massive fish kills as a result of pesticide exposure in high levels," says Grant.

He wanted to know if these pesticides are also ending up in animals that eat the fish. In particular, he was interested in a small crocodile called a spectacled caiman, because a bony ridge between its eyes makes it look like it's wearing eye glasses. These caimans live in the Tortugero Conservation Area, which is just downstream from the banana farms. The animal is considered a threatened species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Grant wanted to test caimans because they are long-lived animals and are top predators in the ecosystem. "A lot of the pesticides will wind up at the top of the food chain," he says.

He collected blood samples from 14 adult caimans. Some of the animals lived closer to plantations and others further downstream, in more remote, pristine areas.

He and his colleagues analyzed the blood samples for 70 different pesticides. The results concerned him.

The samples contained nine pesticides, of which only two are currently in use. The remaining seven are "historic organic pollutants," says Grant.

These are pesticides like DDT, dieldrin, and endosulfan — chemicals that have been banned, some of them for nearly a decade. But they persist in the environment, and build up in the bodies of animals.

These chemicals are also found in significant levels in all sorts of aquatic mammals, including American crocodiles in the U.S., and whales and seals in different parts of the world.

The overall levels of pesticides in the Costa Rican caimans in comparison were modest, says Peter Ross, an environmental scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, and also an author on this study.

Still, he says there was some indication that the chemicals may be harming the caiman.

"What was revealing to me was the fact that the caiman that were near the banana plantations had not only higher concentrations of pesticides, but also they were in a poorer state of health relative to the caiman in more pristine, remote areas," says Ross.

Ross and his colleagues have published their findings in the latest issue of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.

There's an important lesson here, says Chris Wille of the Rainforest Alliance.

"You know, we're now reckoning with the problem left by past use of highly toxic, highly persistent pesticides," he says. "So, what plantations must avoid now is leaving similar toxic legacies for the next generation to deal with."

Especially as the demand for bananas has been growing worldwide, and farms move towards more intensive methods of cultivation.

On how the deaths affected her

I know that I've already forgotten things about us growing up, and [my brother's] not there to remind me or to verify things or to help me get things correct. It's difficult, but it's part of the reason why I wanted to write the book, too.

... I know it sounds trite when I say it, but [the deaths] made me realize that I don't have a lot of time and that I'm not promised tomorrow. I hear that all the time at home, I guess because everyone in my community has lost a young person that they love, you know? So everyone always says that all the time: You're not promised tomorrow; you don't have tomorrow. So it does, it sounds trite, but it's true. It made me feel that I wasn't promised some long life where I would die when I was 60 or 70 or 80 or 90. That's not a given for me, and so it actually brought me to writing.

... When I write about what was happening at the time, in the book, I can certainly see how I was suffering from that mindset too, especially during those years. I was reckless and I did a lot of drugs and I drank a lot and I did stupid things because a part of me despaired at that idea and did think, "What's the point?"

On how she ended up attending private school

My mother worked for a white family that lived in one of the mansions on the beach. The husband in the family was a lawyer; he worked for a firm in New Orleans. So when the lawyer was home my mother would have conversations with him about her kids, of course. And so at the time, in fifth grade, I was dealing with a lot of bullying in the public schools I went to — I went to two public schools that year and I was being bullied. My mother told her employer this and then he asked if she would be interested in sending me to the school that his children went to, which was a private Episcopalian school. She said yes and then he offered to pay for it, to fund it basically, as a scholarship. ... So from sixth grade on I was a student at that private Episcopalian school.

Author Interviews

New Memoir Recounts Black Lives 'Reaped' Too Young

Miami-based Carnival Corp., the world's largest cruise operator, reported a third-quarter profit nearly a third lower than a year ago following a series of embarrassing and deadly mishaps involving its ships.

Carnival turned a $934 million profit for the period June through August, down 30 percent from the same quarter in 2012.

The company owns several cruise lines, including Carnival, Holland America, Princess and Costa, whose Costa Concordia liner wrecked on the Tuscan coast last year, killing 32 people. Carnival also has had its share of problems, including fires and power outages at sea that became public relations disasters for the parent company.

Carnival Chairman Micky Arison acknowledged Tuesday that it could take as long as three years for the company's brand and reputation to rebound from the Costa Concordia wreck and other problems.

"There are a lot of great brands that have had setbacks and they've recovered ... but the economic situation in southern Europe isn't helping," Arison said at a news conference Tuesday in London, according to Reuters.

"Costa is already beginning to recover, studies of acceptance suggest it [the brand] has recovered nicely," Arison said, according to the news agency. He added that it would take "two to three years" to get the brand back to where it was.

Arison's comments come a week after the completion of a massive operation to right the capsized Costa Corcordia, which has been lying on its side since the accident on Jan. 12, 2012. The liner's captain is on trial in Italy on charges of manslaughter and abandoning his stricken vessel.

Testifying on Monday, Capt. Francesco Schettino blamed the ship's helmsman for steering the wrong way as he tried unsuccessfully to avoid hitting a reef off the coast of the island of Giglio.

On Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, Schettino got "some support during his trial from an unexpected corner: representatives of the tragedy's many victims."

"' Schettino is the only defendant, but he's not the only one responsible,' said Daniele Bocciolini, a lawyer for several survivors in a civil suit attached to the criminal trial, according to the news agency. 'He's not responsible for the lifeboats that couldn't be launched nor for the emergency generators' that failed."

The question of the day isn't what President Obama will speak about when he addresses the opening session of the U.N. General Assembly shortly after 10 a.m. ET.

Among the subjects he'll address are some rather obvious topics: the crisis in Syria; the Middle East peace process; the terrorist attack on a mall in Kenya; and the West's relations with Iran.