WHILE most doctors wear a white lab coat to work, Dr. Jamie Bacon prefers rubber waders, a big white hat and sunglasses. Her tools of the trade include a soup ladle, nets, plastic bottles and jars.

On-lookers are sometimes puzzled by the exact nature of naturalist Dr. Bacon's work. One person contacted the Mid-Ocean News to say Dr. Bacon was rescuing toads from people's yards and "repatriating" them in the wild.

Dr. Bacon said she wasn't repatriating them at all. Since 1997 she has been rounding them up, studying them, then putting them back where she found them. Her work is part of the Amphibian Research Project which studies deformities and abnormalities of Bermuda amphibians. Tongue-in-cheek, Dr. Bacon calls her work the "toad rodeo" but she is deadly serious about what she does.

She admits that toads aren't the most loved creature in Bermuda's environment, but she is passionate about saving them. Not only are the toads she studies an important member of Bermuda's ecosystem, they are also an early warning system of environmental crisis. Many of the toads Dr. Bacon studies, have deformities, an extra arm or an extra leg.

DR. Bacon spends her days wading through the murky waters of Bermuda's ponds analysing, cataloguing and reporting data on tadpoles, toadlets and toads. She hopes this data will shed light on the extraordinarily high mortality and deformity rates among toads in Bermuda and give an indication of how these factors reflect on the human population.

Dr. Bacon is the primary scientist working on The Amphibian Research Project that aims to produce results for government to use in environmental policy decisions.

"In close collaboration with Dr. Douglas Fort, President of Fort Environmental Laboratories in Oklahoma, we have found Bermuda to be just about the worst site ever surveyed for toxicology results in amphibians," said Dr. Bacon.

"Part of our research includes how this could be affecting the human population in Bermuda. We have a epdemiology review out to physicians on the island. When that is completed it will be sent out to the lab in Oklahoma to see if there are signs of toxicity in the human population."

The project centres around more than 20 sites throughout the island and includes volunteers from Saltus Cavendish, Bermuda High School for Girls, The Bermuda Zoological Society and the Mid Ocean Club.

"There are a few methods of collecting data on the toads," said Dr. Bacon. "One is that we have sites around the island where tadpoles are being raised in mesh enclosures placed in ponds. We put 100 in each enclosure and monitor mortality, deformity and growth rates.

"The other main method is our 'toad rodeo'. In the toad rodeo we go to a site and collect as many toads as we can in order to get an idea of sex ratio, age, health status and any abnormalities.

"These sites include nature reserves, golf courses, rectory grounds and even people's back yards. We'll catch up to 100 on a good day, but on some sites we're lucky if we get 15."

The data gathered in the toad rodeo has provided some answers for Dr. Bacon and her collegues.

"Certain things have become clear," said Dr. Bacon. "For example we have found that toads in Bermuda today are quite short lived in the scheme of things. Our parents grew up with toads far larger and older. In our study we have seen few toads above the age of two or three."

Dr. Bacon has been pursuing answers on the questions of amphibian life for several years. "I got involved in 1997 when I helped Donald Lindsay do surveys of whistling frogs," she said. "By 1999 I had started doing the adult toad deformity surveys.

"In 2000 my work permit came up for review and a Bermudian applied for the job. So I decided to move on and become a full-time research associate for the Bermuda Zoological Society."

Despite years of research and two papers accepted into the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Dr. Bacon says that it will be some time before they will be able to publish definitive results.

"There are certain things that must be done to determine causality and we are working hard to establish those things," said Dr. Bacon. "It is going to take about two more years before we have some of the answers we want.

"We aim to report to government in March 2005 with clear results that will help them take action in improving the situation. The goal is to be able to tell government organisations like the Bermuda National Trust and the Bermuda Audubon Society what is happening, whether there are any health implications and what we can do about it."

Whether the toxicity found in amphibians is also affecting humans is still unclear, according to Dr. Bacon.

"It depends where the heavy metals, hydro-carbons and other toxins found in the amphibians come from," she said. "If we find that ponds and groundwater are the only effected areas, then humans should be fine, because all government well water is purified. However if the toxins are coming from more than just those areas we might have more to worry about."

According to Dr. Bacon, research is planned for other areas and to explore the origins of the toxins found in the ponds.

"We just recieved funding to have road water run-off tested," said Dr. Bacon. "We will be checking for certain metals and other things in it that could cause deformities. The aim is to see if the exhaust is covering the roads enough to collect in water run-off.

"If it is the exhaust that is bringing some of the toxins to the ponds it would indicate that the problem is more widespread than ponds and ground water. "In addition Donald Linsay will be looking at other factors in terms of microbiology that may be affecting the toads."

THE island's contamination problem has several possible sources according to Dr. Bacon. "We have a history of just dumping things like oil that just get more toxic with age, we have a fellow that goes around spraying herbicide all day, we have the incinerator and we have too many two-stroke bikes. There are so many factors that determining the cause of contamination is very difficult."

According to Dr. Bacon, even after making such a determination, finding the exact causes of deformities may prove difficult.

"The problem is synergistic, deformities come from certain combinations of contaminants not necessarily the amount of contaminants," said Dr. Bacon.

"If you have a small number of hydro-carbons present and a small amount of heavy metals present you can still have a very large problem. Some toxins that are completely harmless alone create problems if other toxins are present. That creates a real problem in Bermuda because in most cases we have several toxins in one area."

According to Dr. Bacon the project has also discovered that the problem is not isolated to only a few spots . "Every pond has had at least one test cage with a mortality rate of 60 percent or higher," she said.

"One of the goals of our project was to find how widespread the problem was. We found out rather quickly that the problem is everywhere on this island ranging from Somerset to St. George's and on the rise. These ponds are turning into chemical soups.

"You are not supposed to have more than five percent abnormalities at any given site including injuries. In 17 of the 24 sites we had numbers more than five times that. In the worst of the sites we saw abnormalities of up to 81 percent. We had trouble finding just one clean reference site on the island. Eventually, we decided to use a enclosure of plastic sheeting that accumulates rain water. While this seems to be safe numerically, I have found some deformities, which would indicate that there is some other way that the water is getting contaminated."

It has nothing to do with the kind of toads we have here in Bermuda, according to Dr. Bacon. "We know that if we take a sample of the water from here and send it away to laboratories they will find deformities in all four species they test it with," said Dr. Bacon.

"Between the research component and the educational component, Dr. Fort and I collaborate all the time. We have to match what he is doing in the lab with what I am doing in the field and so we are always sending things to Oklahoma to be tested."

The project has gained more support from the community lately, according to Dr. Bacon. "A great deal of people were disgusted by toads and couldn't care less that they were dying," she said.

"Now people are finally starting to concede that the project is not necessarily about saving the toads but rather it is about following a toxic situation that could affect a heck of a lot more than just amphibious life."

And she stressed the importance of the people who support the project. "Dr. Fort and his lab work hard to make this possible, but there are many other people who I couldn't do this without," she said.

"I am indebted to the kids at Saltus Cavendish and Bermuda High School for Girls who have raised thousands of dollars and offered hours of their time. Gorham's Hardware Store and John Barritt & Son Limited both have made donations and I thank them for that. The Mid-Ocean Club has also been of great help. There are so many people who help and I want them to know I appreciate it."