Mermaid research took a depressing turn. Here's a little snippet...One of the problems besieging the waters is that seven billion tonnes of stuff are dumped in the oceans each year - most of that is plastic.
There's a thing called polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) - it's a synthetic chemical used to make plastics and styrofoam.
Which leads me to PCB contamination. It does all kinds of stuff: it's been linked to altered physiology, fall in reproduction, mass die-offs of shellfish. The concentration of PCB in Beluga whales (those little white whales) is so high that their corpses have to be treated as toxic waste.
Hmm. We're putting so much poison in the waters that it's turning living things to toxic waste?Talk about moments when alarm bells sound...
2 comments:
If you want to get even more worried about this and other related stuff, I can recommend "The Omnivore's Dilemma". Gives a whole new meaning to environmental panic...
Thanks for the recommendation - it looks really good. The problem is, there's no unlearning this stuff once you've read it! I'll end up living off a colony of basil plants on the kitchen window...
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