Would it be considered unlucky that 25 people would die in a coal mine?”
An elegant but disturbing paper was just published that documents that biologically relevant concentrations of endocrine disrupting pollutants are affecting the quality and quantity of song produced by male songbirds, which in turn, influences female mate choice. According to the research team, not only do these pollutants influence behavior, but they also affect the development of specific brain regions that support song behavior. More worrying, these pollutants are water-borne, so not only are animals, such as insects, fish and birds, being exposed to them, but people are, too. So wild birds are acting as sentinals, like canaries in a coal mine, warning us of environmental dangers that threaten society itself. Endocrine disruptors are both natural and synthetic chemicals that act as hormone mimics. They include a wide variety of chemical pollutants, especially pesticides such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and its various breakdown products, known as metabolites. Endocrine
Beijing, Dec 28 (IANS) Five coal mine executives were detained after 12 people died in an explosion in a mine in north China’s Shanxi province, authorities said Monday. The accident occurred at 11.30 p.m. Sunday when 16 miners were working in a shaft in the Donggou Colliery Co. Ltd. in Jiexiu city, said a spokesman with the Shanxi Provincial Work Safety Administration, Xinhua reported. The mine was expanding its annual production capacity from the authorised 30 tonnes. The workers violated a safety rule that prohibited the demolition of a wall between the shaft and a disused area of the mine where the gas was accumulated in high density, the spokesman said. The four survivors were under observation in hospital.
