Timber toxins could be poisoning town

Alarm bells first starting ringing when oysters died during floods in 2004.
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There are claims that a Tasmanian drinking water supply is being contaminated by toxins from tree plantations. The allegations, which are raised in tonight's edition of Australian Story on ABC1, stem from laboratory testing of samples taken from the George River in Tasmania's north-east.

The tests were paid for by St Helens GP Alison Bleaney, marine ecologist Marcus Scammell, and local oyster farmers in response to concerns about human health problems and oyster deaths. Dr Bleaney says there is an unusually high rate of cancer in the region. She started to look at the local river when oysters at St Helens died during a flood in 2004.

"I realise I see many things now ... that many GPs would never see one of these cases in their working lifetime," she said. "Clearly in a population of less than 3,000, to have these rare diseases, to have this chronic ill health, there must be something on the go to explain this." Dr Scammell says the tests show the river contained toxins from a type of plantation eucalyptus tree that has been introduced to the state, Eucalyptus nitens.

He says six separate laboratories in Australia and the United States have found the water in the George River is toxic. "When we took the leaves and extracted their contents and checked them for toxicity, they were indeed very toxic," he said. "Ironically the government and our investigations have come to the same conclusions, that the origin of the toxin is the trees. "They've concluded that it's naturally occurring and therefore not an issue. We haven't accepted that."

Dr Scammell says further studies are needed into health risks for communities near plantations around the world. "Public health has always said that we were wrong, even though they also ran tests and determined that there was a toxin in the water, but their argument was it is natural, so it is ok," he says. "My argument is that if we had a farm of funnel webs next door, they would be natural, but they wouldn't be ok."

More: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/22/2826160.htm?section=business

too much of a surprise that the chemicals deposited in the soil end up in runoff. I wonder if a setback of some distance would help - e.g. only natural vegetation within 100 m of a stream...