Organic Pollutants Poison the Roof of the World 114
ananyo writes "Toxic chemicals are accumulating in the ecosystems of the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau, researchers warn in the first comprehensive study to assess levels of organic pollutants in that part of the world. Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are carbon-based compounds that are resistant to break-down. Some originate from the burning of fuel or the processing of electronic waste, and others are widely used as pesticides or herbicides or in the manufacture of solvents, plastics and pharmaceuticals. Some POPs, such as the pesticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and the herbicide Agent Orange, can cause diseases such as cancers, neurological disorders, reproductive dysfunction and birth defects. The researchers found large amounts of POPs (including DDT) in various components of the ecosystems such as soil, grass, trees and fish in the Himalayas and in the Tibetan plateau, especially at the highest elevations."
I'm waiting for the independent study... (Score:2)
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Most so-called "facts" used by progressives in support of their policies are, in fact, irrelevant factoids. As such, progressives are no more informed or rational than Christian conservatives.
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So the flipside of this is that Conservatives have no problem poisoning the environment. Does that sum up your position?
Re:How do we organic out of (Score:4, Informative)
burning of fuel or the processing of electronic waste? Everything is "organic". Nothing is man made besides god.
"Organic" is a term in chemistry. It refers to chemical compounds which contains the element carbon. For example, sulfuric acid is an inorganic compound, while methane is an organic compound.
Of course, you could have spent a whole 5-10 seconds Googling that instead of wallowing in your own ignorance and generally making an ass of yourself. I will never understand why people choose to be helpless when they have the means to easily and quickly inform themselves. The concept of "intellectual laziness" doesn't begin to answer this mystery. Perhaps some kind of deep-seated need for attention compels you to seek unnecessary hand-holding, but that is only a guess.
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My own personal take on this particular kind of idiocy is that when something is free (as in Beer) people have no respect for it's value because it cost them nothing to obtain. Knowledge on the Internet can be obtained for virtually no expenditure of time or resources at all, beyond that which you've already put in to gain access to the Internet, ergo people stop caring about knowledge and stop bothering to access it, even when they really should and nothing is stopping them.
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Knowledge? Sure. Get some definitions, numbers, all kinds facts.
Understanding? Not so much. That needs thinking (and the capacity for so doing). Lots and lots of thinking, and that means some effort expended, i.e., work. And there's the rub.
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Outside of the Chemistry lab, the use of the term "organic" is very different. How the term is used in Chemistry is not the same as how you present it to the masses. If the author does not understand basic communications they should have hired someone to help them before releasing misleading information to the public.
Re:How do we organic out of (Score:4, Informative)
When you're talking about chemical compounds, the term "organic" has a very specific meaning, regardless of whether you're currently inside a lab or who you're talking to. This is the meaning used in the article summary.
If you were talking about a head of cabbage, then "organic" would have a very different, specific meaning, once again regardless of lab setting or listener.
This is how words work.
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Anybody with a high school education should know the scientific meaning of the term "organic", in addition to the grocery meaning.
The articles are in Nature, Environmental Science, and Slashdot. Readers in all these forums should know the technical meaning of the term. If you don
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If you work in the field, sure you would. I have been out of college for a few decades, and that was the last time I was in the Chem lab. I'm sure a good amount of /. readers are working in the field, but many of us are not.
That aside, it was good to refresh the use of the term from chemistry.
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And yet, despite not knowing one of the most elementary concepts in chemistry, you state supposed "facts" and consequences about sustainability, pollution, and health risks:
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Kind of amazing considering that I never used the term "organic" in that post isn't it. It's also pretty amazing that many studies on pollutants use a non-chemical definition of "Organic". Also pretty crazy that nothing I said above is wrong. I have read hundreds of documents on the process of powdering coal and the impact on the people living near them. Not a single one defined pollutants as "organic", but by "pollutant" or by the chemical compound names.
Maybe you are claiming that I'm wrong in the po
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My point is that you don't know elementary concepts in chemistry, yet presume to speak with certainty about pollution, the environment, etc.
"They" have done this for a few centuries and taught it in high school (and again in college) for at least a century. We aren't talkin
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One does not have to be an expert in chemistry to understand pollution. That is an absolute fallacy. Your statement is rubbish (intentionally punned) and I'm pretty sure you know that it's rubbish.
Having knowledge and having it in the forefront are two distinctly different things. Would I be able to recall linear algebra if I needed to? Sure, with some work. It's not something I have used for 2 decades, but I could refresh myself. Perhaps you completely fail to understand how the brain works? I doubt i
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No, but one ought to have at least a high-school level understanding of science; you apparently don't. Don't try to defend the indefensible.
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Because I misinterpreted the context of a word I have no education? Sorry, very untrue. As stated previously, college was long ago and yes I was required 2 semesters of Chemistry in College. Does that imply I remember or use chemists context for everything? Not at all.
No, I won't provide transcripts but rather point out that you are a) wrong b) arguing from ignorance.
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I think technically it can also refer to silicon when it involved in compounds that function analogously to carbon-based organic chemistry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organosilicon [wikipedia.org]
There are a few others as well, like phosphorous and sulfur.
Yup, very misleading title! (Score:1)
I read the title and said "hmm", then I read what they claimed caused the "organic" pollution and said "What the F&*K!?". If the pollutants are caused by burning fuel, then it's not "organic" pollution. By their definition, absolutely everything should be considered organic. All computers must be 100% organic since they are made of Silicone, Copper, Gold, etc... Nuclear weapons are "organic" too, and the heat they give off is just energy which must be "organic" also.
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Fuel is likely to be of organic origin. Dead dinosaurs and all that.
Not to mention that a chemist's definition of organic is a compound that contains carbon.
From Dictionary.com:
Organic
1. noting or pertaining to a class of chemical compounds that formerly comprised only those existing in or derived from plants or animals, but that now includes all other compounds of carbon.
So your perception of 'organic' is relatively archaic.
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I get the point, it's just that the normal every day use of the term Organic is very different. I work in Math and Computers all day, it's been at least 20 years since the Chemistry lab. When I don't remember or know a term, I have no issues going to refresh my memory or learn. "Organic" is something seen every day with a very different meaning.
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"All computers must be 100% organic since they are made of Silicone, Copper, Gold, etc..."
I suspect I need more sleep (or therapy) because as I read your list of ingredients I flashed on 'conductive, malleable, programmable breast implants.'
Damn it! (Score:4, Funny)
Organic Pollutants Poison the Roof of the World
Damn it! I always bought my pollutants in the Organic aisle at the supermarket. I might as well stick with the regular pollutants and save a few bucks.
patent infringement (Score:1)
How long until Monsanto or other evil company sues the sherpas for patent infrigement?
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To bad I'm out of Mod Points.
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Tsk-tsk, should have used them sparingly and wisely, young Jarik. =p
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If you drink them, you can be immortal.
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For each year that these chemicals take, they give you five in return.
You're a republican, aren't you.
Article fail (Score:1)
TFA says "large amounts of...".
How many parts per trillion is "large"?
Re:Article fail (Score:5, Informative)
High mountains may serve as “cold traps” for persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and ice cores can provide long-term records of atmospheric deposition of pollutants. In this study, DDT, hexachlorocyclohexanes (HCHs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in an ice core from East Rongbuk Glacier were analyzed and the deposition fluxes of these pollutants were investigated. Concentrations of total DDTs reached maxima of approximately 2 ng l1 in mid-1970s, which is corresponding to the peak of malaria cases in India (in 1976). The decrease of DDT concentration after 1990s was in-line with the ban of DDT in India (in 1989). High level of -HCH was observed in early 1970s and it showed a decrease to undetectable level at the end of 1990s, which is in agreement with the period when India banned the usage of HCH (in 1997). Concentrations of total PAHs sharply increased after 1990 and the peak (approximately 100 ng l1) was found at the end of 1990s, when India entered the rapid industrialization (urbanization). PAHs in the ice core are dominantly pyrogenic in source, and are mainly from incomplete combustion of coal and biomass burning. Good correlations among concentrations of PAHs, nssSO42 and microparticles in snow pit samples showed that the origin of the PAHs and nssSO42 is often the same and they may be absorbed by particles and transported to high mountain regions by atmospheric circulation.
(please note that Slashdot does not support the superscript I just copied and pasted)
Also, my google fu turned up one of the original research articles [itpcas.ac.cn] that appears to be hosted for non commercial purposes only.
Re:Article fail (Score:4, Interesting)
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Ice cores from a glacier in the Himalayas?
This is a totally fraudulent piece of research because those all melted years ago. At least Al Gore's buddies were mumbling something about that at their UN conferences.
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I don't know how many are there now, so how can I say?
POOP (Score:3)
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Don't panic. Just know where your global-sized organic compound absorbent towel is.
Humans (Score:3)
When I read "Organic Pollutants", I initially thought the article was referring to humanity.
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There are a lot of human bodies on Everest...
The Free Market Will Fix All This (Score:1)
U.S. off the hook for this one (Score:1)
looking at origins of these pollutants in the article, neither from China nor USA. w00t, we can keep pumping out the stank
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And you are from a part of the world with poor reading comprehension (I'd guess Kentucky); the article gives an example of a POP as Agent Orange, but does not say that compound was found.
most protocols of the geneva convention haven't been ratified in the USA so it is not bound by them; signing is irrelevant, the Constitution is the supreme law of this land.
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Just because you happen to disagree with a particular practice during wartime does not make it a violation of Geneva Conventions. The Geneva Conventions specifically are rules by signatories that state these are the rules they will follow when conducting war but it only applies to signatories; if someone does not sign and does not follow the rules, or does sign and then violates the rules, then it's generally accepted that one does not place blame on a responding party who is forced to violate the rules in
if you combine this effect with global warming.. (Score:2)
If we can't spread the wealth around, what good are we anyway?
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I dunno. At the level of carcinogens in the study, washing all of that into the Ganges may actually make that cesspool cleaner.
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It's the thing on top of the attic of the world. The attic is the place in your parents' house where you live, if your other brother is already living in the basement. The basement is underneath the attic, but there is some stuff in between.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roof_of_the_World [wikipedia.org]
learn to be smarter.
Plant uptake and Monsanto (Score:3)
DDT gets a bad rap (Score:4, Informative)
DDT is villianized far out of proportion these days. Although admittedly they are both POPs, setting it rhetorically alongside Agent Orange as though they are the same is absurd.
DDT's carcinogenic properties are not really all that serious. We expose ourselves to more carcinogenic substances all the time, such as gasoline fumes. These minor effects were played up by DDT's opponents back in the day to scare people into accepting a DDT ban. Similarly, the acute toxicity is minor. To my knowledge, there's only one case where someone died from consuming DDT, and in that case the DDT may have contained other harmful chemicals.
On the other side of the coin, DDT saved millions of lives by eliminating malarial mosquitoes and other harmful insects. It easily saved more lives than it took.
Agent Orange on the other hand has caused awful damage in the areas where it was used extensively. If DDT was even close to as dangerous as it was made out to be by its opponents, then the present day impacts would be like a worldwide version of the Agent Orange boondoggle...times 1000.
Re:DDT gets a bad rap (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't about human lives per se, it was about the heavy toll on the environment. DDT was the nuclear option of pesticides, it killed everything good and bad. Now for people who want to use it again they need to realize that even back then insects like mosquitoes were already developing genetic resistance to it because it was overused. Plus there are alternatives to DDT now that are superior and more selective.
We've also become much more aware of the effects of chronic low-level exposure to toxins. It may not kill you outright but over decades could be causing genetic damage, neurological damage, etc. Most people want to live long and healthy lives I assume.
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Yes, but time does so in a significantly smaller amount. It's not the "what", it's the "how much".
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Insightful reply. Might as well shoot yourself in the head then because you're going to die anyway, right?
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Actually this is an urban myth. The bald eagle was not impacted by DDT, in either its decline or recovery.
http://junkscience.com/2012/01/02/bald-eagles-still-not-saved-by-ddt-ban/ [junkscience.com]
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You, keep regurgitating the same old crap and eventually it won't be crap. But you are on the side that gets to claim the victory for defeating yet another good thing from modernization happening, so that must be a big plus for you in the "feels good, warm and fuzzies" column.
Re:DDT gets a bad rap (Score:4, Informative)
I think you're forgetting the primary concern with DDT was birth defects, not cancer. Primarily in animal populations. ...and the fact that insects were becoming resistant to it anyway, in some cases.
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One study found a 33% increase in urogenital birth defects. Significant, but not exactly large, treatable, and probably preventable by taking special precautions with women. Malaria in babies, on the other hand, is extremely serious and likely far more frequent without prevention.
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Mod parent up. DDT is safe for humans and the environment.
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Oh yeah. Using a relative small amount spread around the environment is EXACTLY the same thing as ingesting large amounts daily.
Le's use that reasoning to set the safe level of clean water ingestion. A few years back, somebody drank huge amounts of water (many gallons in a day) and died. Therefore, it is not safe to drink any amount of water nor any other liquid having water as an ingredient.
Does it now sound a bit retarded to not distinguish between none, a little and too much.
Flush twice (Score:1)
Because the world is humanities's toilet now.
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The Real Problem (Score:5, Funny)
Ugly Bags of Mostly Water are the real problem.
Bacteria in a petri dish will eventually die from living in their own "filth."
Ugly Bags of Mostly Water are no different, and will continue to reproduce as long as there is a food source, until waste management becomes impossible and they die off from being poisoned by their own excrement.
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this
Everything is connected (Score:5, Insightful)
Even though they ignore our ways of life for their simple one, they end up not being able to trust the air and the water they are surrounded with as it delivers them poisons.
This world is too fractured to come up with viable options for actually cleaning up and reversing the damages we've done.
Yet we must, because eventually, we will cause damages which will be hard to revert from.
We need to normalize our social and political landscape across the entire globe and we need to figure out a true viable global economy which factors in, the proper way of doing business which enforces keeping our environment clean and pollutant free.
We have the technology, but we don't have the maturity. This planet is being exploited to the bones by a few very greedy bastards and the flock of sheeps who won't do nothing about it.
Better grow up folks, because this is the only planet we have.
Profit at the cost of our environment is wrong.
Unless you don't care about the legacy you leave your children and their future progeny.
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do you have any proof for your assertion? those people have to deal with poisons already, the world has had arsenic, lead, mercury, etc. since the dawn of time, and no doubt their lifestyle with less than ideal sanitation introduces more. anyway, average lifespan has almost doubled there in 20th century to 67 years, modern times can't be all bad for them
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Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch the size of Texas?
Rings a bell?
All the major cities in the US have pollution index, and this air pollution is a direct link to COPD. I have COPD, never smoked in my life. Don't even hang around smokers, but I'm a city boy, or used to, now, because of that, I tend to stay in the country, better air, in my area anyway.
It's common sense, this planet can only do so much to sustain itself when we keep making it worse.
For example, we keep chopping down mo
First Study (Score:4, Informative)
I am sure this is a valuable piece of work, as it is claimed as the first of it's type and will be very useful as a benchmark. Analytic chemistry has progressed tremendously over the 40 years I was a practicing chemist, to the point where concentrations of particularly dangerous materials are possible to measure at femtograms per liter. At those concentrations you are detecting a very small number of molecules in a sample,
But since it's the first it really doesn't say much in terms of the progression of the state of affairs in these ecologies. It will be very interesting to see what the results are in a decade or two; whether the measures we are taking now to reduce the presence of these various very bad actors in the environment are being effected by environmental controls or not.
People greatly underestimate the versatility of Nature as a chemist. Some of the worst chemicals found in these studies are formed not only by man, but by Nature as well. For example DDT like chemicals have been found to exist in every evolutionary epoch.
http://books.google.com/books/about/Naturally_Occurring_Organohalogen_Compou.html?id=u45Z-kh61ngC [google.com]
http://books.google.com/books?id=S2fvZsZwgQ4C&pg=PA185&dq=naturally+produced+ddt&hl=en&sa=X&ei=p0FoUe69C6nD4APzwoGYBA&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=naturally%20produced%20ddt&f=false [google.com]
Paywall (Score:3)
Lets link to a vague report based on a paywalled paper. There is no way to look at the actual numbers to verify the article's assertions.
More alarmingly, the researchers also detected large amounts of POPs in various components of the ecosystems such as soil, grass, trees and fish in the Himalayas ...
Terms like "large amounts" are meaningless as it is a relative subjective term. My "large amount" may be different than their "large amount". Show me the numbers. It looks to me like they want people to buy their report.
DDT kills insects... (Score:1)
...and is harmless to humans and other life forms.
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Except that said thinning of shells was a load of crap and never proven to have actually been caused by DDT and the waning bird populations caused by the supposedly thinning eggshells weren't actually declining but were, in fact, increasing.
The closest actual causation link might have been declining populations of animals that fed mostly on mosquitos but that wasn't happening either because there were not and are not any such animal populations.
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problems will be solved by taxing the h*ll out of the common citizen.
Once all the h*ll is gone it'll be the rapture and we won't have to worry anymore...
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How would you try solving the problem then?
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You don't understand carbon trading do you? have you looked into at all, of just repeat what you hear on the Tee Vee?
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Re:DDT? (Score:5, Informative)
I worked for many years in vector borne disease surveillance. Most of what you have said is wrong or misleading.
DDT based mosquito "eradication" programs never eradicated any mosquito populations, because a single surviving gravid Anopheles mosquito can lay over two hundred eggs at a time. But malaria has a weakness that mosquito borne encephalitis does not have: most strains of Plasmodium have no significant enzootic reservoirs -- that is to say most strains that infect humans, infect humans exclusively. This means if you can eradicate human-to-human transmission, you eradicate the underlying infectious agent.
In the late 40s DDT *was* instrumental in eradicating endemic malaria in the US, but that was through over four million "domestic" treatments -- applications. These are treatments of the *interiors* of homes. In domestic applications, the DDT does not enter the food chain and does not bio-accumulate.
DDT is not magic pixie dust. It's not the only pesticide that works, and it is neither necessary nor sufficient for malaria eradication. It is, however, valuable. It is cheap, effective, and relatively long-lasting, which is a huge boon in domestic applications because it reduces the number of re-treatments you have to do. That same property of longevity makes it a very poor choice for agricultural use.
I attended a number of meetings where the prospect of using DDT for malaria eradication in the third world was discussed. The key problem is that many places where it is needed are desperately poor, and theft is rife. I knew plenty of researchers who had their field equipment stolen; some of them took to putting their computers and backups in a backpack and slept with it to keep from losing their data. There is a high risk of DDT being stolen and diverted to agricultural use, where its drawbacks come into play: under certain conditions it can persist in the soil for years, and it has a high potential to bio-accumulate, so even small concentrations can have effects on predatory animals. Furthermore runoff into water sources in sub-lethal concentrations has a high potential to create DDT resistance in target species including Anopheles, the vector of malaria. That could undermine attempts to eradicate a number of mosquito borne diseases other than malaria. This could have significant effects on attempts to control many mosquito borne diseases, malaria included.
Well, this is kind of a strawman argument. I've worked with people in the pesticide industry, in public health, and with environmental groups, and as far as I can see the images you mention here are entirely a figment of your own imagination. Everybody who studied this problem understand there are risks and benefits to using DDT, mainly they differ on how they weigh the risks.
In any case, if we knew that domestic DDT applications could eradicate malaria in an area back in 1950, why wasn't it eradicated worldwide? Because there's never been the political will to do that. There has never been a worldwide ban on DDT (which is why they're seeing way up in Tibet), so why hasn't it been eradicated in more places? Because there was never the political will to do it. If the will existed, we could do it, with or without DDT, just with somewhat less initial cash outlay for DDT.
Let me reiterate: DDT is not magic pixie dust. It *does* have potential to reduce the initial *cost* of eradicating malaria (except in SE Asia, where zoonotic forms of Plasmodium exist). But wherever malaria could be eradicated *with* DDT, it could also be eradicated with something else, say with synthetic pyrethrins. Pyrethrins have a very short half-life outdoors, reducing problems of pesticide resistance and bio-accumulation. The main drawback is that they also have a somewhat shorter half-life indoors, requiring more repeat treatments in the eradication phase. That'd still be a bargain in terms of human life.