section_path: Pollution
section_name: Pollution
paragraph_text: Pollution
  
  The major environmental threats to the gulf are agricultural runoff and oil drilling. There are 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells beneath the gulf. These have generally not been checked for potential environmental problems. In 1973 the United States Environmental Protection Agency prohibited the dumping of undiluted chemical waste by manufacturingsediment interests into the gulf, and the military confessed to similar behavior in waters off Horn Island. Microplastics within semi-enclosed seas like the gulf have been reported in high concentrations and the gulf's first such study estimated concentrations that rival the highest globally reported.
  
  There are frequent " red tide " algae blooms that kill fish and marine mammals and cause respiratory problems in humans and some domestic animals when the blooms reach close to shore. This has especially been plaguing the southwest and southern Florida coast, from the Florida Keys to north of Pasco County, Florida.
  
  The gulf contains a hypoxic dead zone that runs east–west along the Texas–Louisiana coastline. In July 2008, researchers reported that between 1985 and 2008, the area roughly doubled in size. It was 22,730 km (14,120 miles) in 2017, the largest ever recorded. Poor agricultural practices in the northern portion of the Gulf of Mexico have led to a tremendous increase of nitrogen and phosphorus in neighboring marine ecosystems, which has resulted in algae blooms and a lack of available oxygen. Occurrences of virilization and estrogen suppression were observed as a result. A 2007 study of the Atlantic croaker found a disproportioned sex ratio of 61% males to 39% females in hypoxic sites. This was compared with a 52% to 48% male-female ratio found in reference sites, showing impaired reproductive output for fish populations inhabiting hypoxic coastal zones.
  
  The major environmental threats to the gulf are agricultural runoff and oil drilling. There are 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells beneath the gulf. These have generally not been checked for potential environmental problems. In 1973 the United States Environmental Protection Agency prohibited the dumping of undiluted chemical waste by manufacturingsediment interests into the gulf, and the military confessed to similar behavior in waters off Horn Island. Microplastics within semi-enclosed seas like the gulf have been reported in high concentrations and the gulf's first such study estimated concentrations that rival the highest globally reported.
  
  There are frequent " red tide " algae blooms that kill fish and marine mammals and cause respiratory problems in humans and some domestic animals when the blooms reach close to shore. This has especially been plaguing the southwest and southern Florida coast, from the Florida Keys to north of Pasco County, Florida.
  
  The gulf contains a hypoxic dead zone that runs east–west along the Texas–Louisiana coastline. In July 2008, researchers reported that between 1985 and 2008, the area roughly doubled in size. It was 22,730 km (14,120 miles) in 2017, the largest ever recorded. Poor agricultural practices in the northern portion of the Gulf of Mexico have led to a tremendous increase of nitrogen and phosphorus in neighboring marine ecosystems, which has resulted in algae blooms and a lack of available oxygen. Occurrences of virilization and estrogen suppression were observed as a result. A 2007 study of the Atlantic croaker found a disproportioned sex ratio of 61% males to 39% females in hypoxic sites. This was compared with a 52% to 48% male-female ratio found in reference sites, showing impaired reproductive output for fish populations inhabiting hypoxic coastal zones.