EASTHAMPTON — In water bodies around the world, rising temperatures are resulting in an increased occurrence of toxic algae blooms that pose health hazards to plants, animals and people.

Easthampton’s Nashawannuck Pond is no exception, and for several years the Steering Committee has had the blooms on its radar. Now, a new tool purchased and shared by Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge will make it easier for local conservation efforts to monitor the presence of bacteria causing the blooms.

The new handheld device is called CyanoFluor, and it surveilles the presence of cyanobacteria, also referred to as “blue-green algae.”

Cyanobacteria are single-celled organisms that are present across all areas of the planet, from deserts to caves to glaciers to freshwater marine ecosystems. With an origin dating back at least 3 billion years, they are one of the oldest and most diversified organisms on the planet.

While they do perform many beneficial functions like producing the oxygen that makes the Earth habitable for other life forms, when cyanobacteria grow out of control they can quickly wreak havoc on an ecosystem.

“The reason we are so alarmed about [cyanobacteria], I think it’s fair to say, is that they are capable of producing toxins, and toxins that they produce are among the most potent toxins on the planet,” said Dr. Allison Ryan, a retired physician and neurologist from Florence who has been an active volunteer in the effort to control aquatic invasive plants in the Valley for 25 years.

Ryan said the toxins pose acute and chronic health threats to people and pets.

“A mouthful of water loaded with toxins can kill a dog within 10 minutes,” she said.

As for humans, exposure to the cyanobacteria blooms can lead to skin and eye irritation, gastrointestinal symptoms, and liver or neurological damage, depending on how much was ingested. One neurotoxin BMAA (or beta-N-methylamino-L-alanine) has been linked to neurodegenerative diseases like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

Plus, because the bacteria are so diversified, Ryan said the toxins are not easily degraded by common purification methods like boiling water or using chlorine.

Last year, in an effort to control cyanobacteria blooms at Nashawannuck Pond, the Nashawannuck Pond Steering Committee introduced an experimental method involving onion bags stuffed with barley straw, an idea that came from Ryan.

“It very slowly decomposes and, in the process of doing so, releases a series of chemicals. And the end result is to create a very low concentration of hydrogen peroxide in the water at two parts per million, which has been shown to be what you need to suppress the replication of cyanobacteria,” said Ryan, adding that the amount of hydrogen peroxide is small enough that it doesn’t have any effect on higher organisms.

After last year’s barley straw efforts, according to Ryan “the bottom line was Nashawannuck, for the first time in many years, did not have any visible or microscopically detectable cyanobacteria blooms.”

And while the barley straw method is proving to be impactful, the means by which to measure its impact have been cumbersome.

“To do that microscopic analysis, we needed to collect the water samples, put them on ice and drive them within two hours to Worcester where a colleague in our project had a lab that would do the testing,” said Ryan.

That’s where the new CyanoFluor device will come into play. With the help of the tool, which cost $7,342, cyanobacteria can be detected within a matter of just 15 seconds.

Aliki Fornier, ecology planner at the Connecticut River Conservancy, the organization currently stewarding the device, said that the process is simple: a small sample of water is placed into the spectrometer, which then measures the ratio between the pigments chlorophyll and phycocyanin. Higher proportions of phycocyanin indicate higher concentrations of cyanobacteria.

“What the tool does not do,” said Fornier, “is it doesn’t tell us what strain of cyanobacteria we’re dealing with… some are toxic and some are fine.”

Over the next year, Fornier and her team will go out once a month and test multiple ponds in Massachusetts. In addition to Nashawannuck Pond, others where tests will be done include Great Pond in Hatfield, Triangle Pond in Northampton and Pine Island Lake in Westhampton.

“We feel like there has been a lack of resources for testing for cyanobacteria,” said Fornier. “We’re trying to provide resources for the local communities to be able to test their water bodies for toxic cyanobacteria because it poses a huge health risk for residents.”

The long-term goal is to collect enough data about water bodies to qualify for permits allowing for experiments like using barley straw to mitigate harmful cyanobacteria blooms.

As the climate warms and blooms become increasingly common, Ryan said she believes “our most immediate and important local challenge is to decrease the over-nutrification of our waters.”

Maddie Fabian can be reached at mfabian@gazettenet.com or on Twitter @MaddieFabian.]]>