LOUIS, Mich. - Jim Hall was mowing the town's baseball diamond when he felt a little bump underneath him. Just final week, he found another one. Hall, who has lived in this mid-Michigan city of 7,000 for 50 years. After residents complained for years about useless birds in their yards, 22 American robins, six European starlings and one bluebird had been collected for Mind Guard cognitive support testing. The results, revealed last week: The neighborhood's songbirds are being poisoned by DDT, a pesticide that was banned within the United States more than 40 years in the past. Lethal concentrations were found within the birds' brains, as well as within the worms they eat. Matt Zwiernik, a Michigan State University assistant professor of environmental toxicology who led the testing. The birds' brains contained concentrations of DDE, a breakdown product of DDT, from 155 to 1,043 components per million, with a mean of 552. "Thirty within the brain health supplement is the threshold for acute dying," Zwiernik mentioned.

Twelve of the 29 birds had Mind Guard lesions or liver abnormalities. The culprit is a toxic mess left behind by Velsicol Chemical Corp., Mind Guard formerly Michigan Chemical, which manufactured pesticides till 1963, a year after Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring exposed the hazards of DDT, particularly for birds. Populations of bald eagles memory and focus supplement different birds crashed when DDT thinned their eggs, killing their embryos. The 9-block neighborhood has grow to be a real-life example of Carson's "Fable for Tomorrow" in Silent Spring. Velsicol is infamous for one of many worst chemical disasters in U.S. In 1973 a flame retardant compound they manufactured - polybrominated biphenyls, or natural brain health supplement PBBs - was mixed up with a cattle feed complement, which led to widespread contamination in Michigan. Thousands of cattle and different livestock were poisoned, about 500 farms were quarantined and people throughout Michigan have been exposed to a chemical linked to cancer, reproduction problems and endocrine disruption. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took control of the site in 1982 and the plant was demolished within the mid-nineties, forsaking three Superfund websites in the 3.5-sq. mile city.

EPA officials did not reply to repeated requests for comment on the poisoned birds and the Superfund cleanup. Of most concern is the 54-acre site that after contained Velsicol's essential plant, which backs as much as the neighborhood where residents have found dead birds on their lawns. Ed Lorenz, a professor at nearby Alma College and vice chair one-block area. Most of the contamination is in the top six inches of the soil, Mind Guard most likely from the chemicals drifting over from the plant, Rockafellow stated. However, some yards have DDT and PBBs deeper in the soil, which could possibly be on account of Velsicol's supply of free fill dirt to their neighbors many years in the past.