The Daily Score

I always thought that the problem with pesticides and PCBs and other chemicals was that they are long lived in the human body (and ecosystems). The fact that evidence of them can disappear after just 5 days implies that maybe they aren't so bad for you after all???

First, many organophosphate pollutants are properly called POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants). The problem is that they are organic (having a C atom). This means they easily cling to molecules in the body by virtue of their C. Thus they can disrupt metabolic function among other things.

Next, the assumption was that because POPs adhere to certain silicate materials, they must persist in the body as well.

The takeaway - if this paper holds up and other studies confirm it - is that POPs can be flushed from the body by our diet. This is big. This should also trigger a reaction from Big Ag, as their practices - again - will come under scrutiny (rightly so*).

*Agriculture affecting Mississippi River more than climate change

Analysis of North America’s largest river indicates that changes in agricultural practices are affecting its water discharge and bicarbonate flux more than climate change. That’s according to a team from Yale University and Louisiana State University in the US, who used data rescued from a warehouse with records going back to 1902.

"Mid-western farming has significantly changed the hydrology and chemistry of the Mississippi River, injecting the equivalent of five Connecticut Rivers annually into the river during the past 50 years," said Peter Raymond of Yale. "It’s like the discovery of a new large river being piped out of the corn belt."


The agricultural practices most likely to be causing the changes are liming, changes in crop type, rotation and tile drainage, say the scientists.

Both water-discharge and bicarbonate levels in the Mississippi have increased over the last 50 years – water discharge by around 50 km3 every year and bicarbonate flux by 4.6 Tg, an increase of around 40%.

"A majority of riverine bicarbonate (HCO3–) originates from the atmosphere,” Raymond told environmentalresearchweb. "It starts off as atmospheric carbon dioxide, is taken up by plants and plants respire it into soil water – where the carbon dioxide interacts with rock minerals and is converted to bicarbonate. So this process removes atmospheric carbon dioxide: it is modelled to remove ˜0.4 gigatonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide a year, while we pump more than 6 gigatonnes."

While bicarbonate flux tends to increase as river discharge rises, the team found that in the Mississippi River, from 1902 to 2005, the amount of bicarbonate flux for average river discharge also showed a large increased, changing by 2.9 Tg.

Similarly, while precipitation increased by around 9% over the course of the study due to climate change, the amount of water discharge for an average precipitation year also increased. The team linked these rises in water discharge and bicarbonate flux to agricultural practices.

We really need to come up with a word for the comment thread equivalent of 'writing in crayon'. Epuerileism or something.