Prof. Tyrone B Hayes

The third annual Rachel Carson Memorial Lecture was held in London on 3rd December 2005.  Professor Tyrone Hayes of the University of California presented the lecture highlighting the dramatic impacts of atrazine, one of the most widely used weedkillers in the world, on frogs and other amphibians.  He warned "The impact on these species indicates that the environment is in much more dire straits than Rachel Carson described with respect to bird declines in 1962.  Over 32% of the world's amphibians have become extinct since 1980, and over 43% are experiencing population declines.  These trends are significantly worse than current trends for mammals and birds.  Our canary is dying"

The lecture was published as an article in Pesticides News 70: From silent spring to silent night: endocrine disruption, amphibian declines and environmental justice.