…is the name of the book I found at the library.  Authors:  Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich (1970, revised 1972)

As promised, this is the text concerning nuclear disaster–specifically, they were concerned with nuclear war (as were we all) but I think with all of the nuclear reactors out there, their theory could be applied:

[…] The entire climate of the Earth would soon be altered.  In many areas, where the supply of combustible materials was sufficient, huge fire-storms would be generated, some of them covering hundreds of square miles in heavily forested or metropolitan areas.  We know something about such storms from experience during the Second World War.  On the night of July 27, 1943, Lancaster and Halifax heavy bombers of the Royal Air Force dropped 2.417 tons of incendiary and high-explosive bombs on the city of Hamburg.  Thousands of individual fires coalesced into a fire storm about 6 square miles in area.  Flames reached 15,000 feet into the atmosphere, and smoke and gases rose to 40,000 feet.  Winds, created by huge updrafts and blowing in toward the center of the fire, reached a velocity of more than 150 miles per hour.  The temperature in the fire exceeded 1,450 degrees F, high enough to melt aluminum and lead.  Air in underground shelters was heated to the point where, when they were opened and oxygen was admitted, flammable materials and even corpses burst into flames.  These shelters had to be permitted to cool 120 days to two weeks before rescuers could enter.  [the authors make note of the book The Night Hamburg Died by Martin Caiden].

[…]

In many areas the removal of all vegetation would no be the only effect;  the soil might be partly or completely sterilized as well.  There would be no plant communities nearby to effect rapid repopulation and rains would wash away the topsoil.  Picture defoliated California hills during the winter rains, and then imagine the vast loads of silt and radioactive debris being washed from northern continents into offshore waters, the site of most of the ocean’s productivity.  Consider the fate of aquatic life, which is especially sensitive to the turbidity of the waer, and think of the many offshore oil wells that would be destroyed by blast in the vicinity of large cities and left to pour their loads of crude oil into the ocean with no way of shutting them off. [BP oil spill, anyone?]

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So…if there were a disaster such as Japan’s here, it would affect the entire area in much the same way.  Not as catastrophic as the above, but nevertheless, it would affect the area in much the same say, just on a smaller scale.  And what kind of domino effect would there be?  Because we all know that what happened in Japan didn’t stay in Japan–it migrated here, causing fish to become radioactive.  I found a more in-depth article here with the same researcher–puts a different light on it with him saying, in so many words, “it’s not that bad.”  Pfft.  What kills me is that they only measured fifteen fish, and ALL of them had it.  Yeah, nothing to see here, folks…move along….

Incidentally, the researcher mentions that funding for the project came from Noah.  I think that was the writer’s error, and he was actually saying NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.

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Onto the next topic:  Synthetic Insecticides (same book)

Chlorinated Hydrocarbons

This group includes DDT, benzen hexachloride (BHC), dieldrin, endrin, aldrin, chlordane, lindane, isodrin, toxaphene, and similar compounds designed to kill insects.  DDT is the most thoroughly studied of the chlorinated hydrocarbons, and much of the following discussion is based on it.  Its behavior is more or less typical of the group, although other chlorinated hydrocarbons are more soluble in water, more toxic, less persistent, etc.   In insects and other animals these compounds act primarily on the central nervous system in ways that are not well understood, but the effects range from hypersexcitability to death following convulsions and paralysis.  Chronic effects on vertebrates include fatty infiltration of the heart, and fatty degeneration of the liver which is often fatal.  Fishes and other aquatic animals seem to be especially sensitive to chlorinated hydrocarbons.  Oxygen uptake is somehow blocked at the gills, causing death from suffocation.  That chlorinated hydrocarbons apparently can influence the production of enzymes may account for their wide range effects.

1.  Chlorinated hydrocarbons have a wide range of biological activity; they are broad-spectrum poisons, affecting many different organisms in many different ways.  They are toxic to essentially all animals including many vertebrates. 

2.  They have great stability.  It is not clear, for instance, ho long DDT persists in ecosystems.  Fifty percent of the DDT sprayed in a single treatment may still be found in a field 10 years later.  This does not mean, however, that the other 50 percent has been degraded to biologically inactive molecules;  it may only have gone somewhere else. […]

3.  Chlorinated hydrocarbons are very mobile.  For example, the chemical properties of DDT cause it to adhere to dust particles and thus get blown around the world.  Four different chlorinated hydrocarbons have been detected in dust filtered from the air over Barbados; frog populations in unsprayed areas high in the Sierra Nevada of California are polluted with DDT.  Furthermore, DDT codistills with water; when water evaporates and enters the atmosphere, DDT goes with it.  Chlorinated hydrocarbons thus travel in the air and surface waters.

(I found this reference, but was sorely disappointed at the statement that chlorinated hydrocarbons have only been used for the last ten years. Good Grief, a research paper that doesn’t have historical data.)

4. Finally, chlorinated hydrocarbons become concentrated in the fats of organisms.  If you think of the world as being partitioned into nonliving and living parts, then these pesticides may be thought of as moving continually from the physical environment into living systems.  To attempt to monitor DDT levels merely by testing water (as has been frequently done) is ridiculous.  Water is saturated with DDT –that is, can dissolve no more–when it has dissolved 1.2 parts per billion.  Besides, the chemical does not remain for long in water, it is quickly removed by any organisms that live in water. 

It is these four properties –extreme range of biological activity, stability, mobility, and affinity for living systems –that cause biologist’s fears that DDT and its relatives are degrading the life-support system of our planet.  If any one of these properties were lacking, the situation would be much less serious, but in combination they pose a deadly threat.

Organophosphates

This group includes parathion, malathion, Asodrin, diazinon, TEPP, phosdrin, and several others.  These poisons are descendatns of the nerve gas Tabun (disopropyl-flurophosphate), developed in Nazi Germany during WWII.  All of them are cholinesterase inhibitors; they inactivate the enzyme responsible for breaking down a nerve “transmitter substance,” acetylcholine.  The result is, in a acute cases of poisoning, a hyperactivity of the nervous system; the animal dies twitching and out of control. 

Unlike chlorinated hydrocarbons, organosphospates are unstable and non-persistent; thus, they tend not to produce chronic effects in ecosystems or to accumulate in food chains.

Organophosphates inhibit other enzymes as well as cholinesterase.  Indeed, some of those that show relatively high insect toxicity and low mammalian toxicity do so because they poison an esterase that is more critical to the functioning of insect rater than of mammalian nervous systems.  Malathion, which is violently poisonous to insects, is relatively nontoxic to mammals because the mammalian systems contain an enzyme, carboxy-estrase, that destroys malathion.  But toxic effects on mammals can occur when malathion is used in combination with other organophosphates, which apparently inhibit the carboxy-esterase enzyme. 

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I was trying to find something written about the effects of the pesticides on enzymes–much is talked about them in health circles–the general consensus is that with the advent of the chemical age, enzymes have been diminished.   They advocate raw foods, non-microwaved foods, and organic foods to increase enzyme activity.  Enzymes are even more reduced in toxic people like myself, so taking a supplement of enzymes is needed.

I’ve looked at photos of our parents and grandparents when they were our age, and they don’t look as old as the Boomer generation does at that same age.  Our skin doesn’t look as healthy, either–it doesn’t have that glow.    I have to think it’s from unhealthy food coupled with the toxins in the atmosphere.    FW has had many “Ozone days” this summer due to the stupid, unrelenting heat.  I didn’t think it affected me that much until I went out for a jog last week on an Ozone day.  I felt pretty good jogging, but when I was going up the stairs to my apartment, I started to wheeze.  Well now that was not good.  So now, when I could be jogging outdoors, I have to do aerobics inside.  Not that I mind aerobics, because it’s fun, but I’d rather be outside jogging.

Anyway, I’m concerned about the long term exposure of the chlorinated hydrocarbons–we’ve all been exposed.  How much?  How long a period?  How has our DNA been affected?  And just because at the writing of this book the organosphosphates were not of big concern, it was written decades ago–what new information has been uncovered?  And is it information that was researched without $$ from chemical companies or those with an agenda?