Links Analysing wastewater reveals population health - The Science Show - ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-fqo Sydney’s Toxic Green Olympics https://www.uow.edu.au/~sharonb/Olympic.html Antidepressants in Stream Waters! Are They in the Fish Too? https://toxics.usgs.gov/highlights/antidepressants_fish.html   This year’s new global solar capacity on pace to potentially pass 2016 record due to lower costs — Financial Post http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-fo5 **** This is the World Organic News for the week ending 5th of June 2017. Jon Moore reporting! This week we begin with a post linking to the ABC’s Science Show from 3rd of June 2017. The segment is entitled: Analysing wastewater reveals population health. Not surprisingly, given the unfettered nature of chemical production from 1945 until the momentum of Silent Spring led to the establishment of environmental protection legislation across the nations outside of the Iron Curtain in the 1970s, many of these chemicals persist. Not just in the environment, that is waterways, soils and so on but also in newborns. Yes we are, in fact, part of the environment so that’s not as surprising as we might at first think. To quote from the segment summary: Quote: Some chemicals, produced for the manufacture of goods and services don’t readily break down in the environment. Some can persist for years, decades or longer. The pesticide DDT was banned in 1972 in the US, but can still be detected in the environment and in people. End Quote. These chemicals are very persistent. Back in day, when the land was being prepared for 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, the site selected had issues. Yet Sydney 2000 was considered a very green games. A quote from “Sydney’s Toxic Green Games” suggests it started well behind scratch: Quote: The area has been home to a number of unpleasant industries since early in the century. Part of the site once housed the State Abattoirs (1907 to 1988) and the State Brickworks (1911 to 1988) which included a quarry for clay and shale to make bricks. The Navy's armaments depot is currently on the site but is likely to be relocated. In the mid-1980s when it became evident that the brickworks and the abattoirs were nearing the end of their operating lives, the area was designated for redevelopment. It is surrounded by chemical industries, a fuel terminal, a large petroleum products storage area, an oil refinery and a prison. Unoccupied parts of the site have also been subject to years of waste dumping. End Quote. The point I’m trying to make is we are all walking around to some lesser or greater extent on contaminated lands. There are clearly areas of concentration yet the segment from the Science Show points out DDT in newborns! Even if we manage to avoid a three degree rise in global temperatures, and in my darker moments, that seems unlikely, we still have this lingering contamination throughout the biosphere. And it’s not just industrial chemicals, antidepressants have been found in fish downstream from sewage works. I quote: Quote: The antidepressants were found in fish collected over 8 kilometers (approximately 5 miles) downstream of the location of the wastewater discharge. The scientists detected several commonly used antidepressants in water, streambed sediment, and the brain tissue of white suckers, a native fish species. Fish collected upstream from the wastewater discharge did not have antidepressants present in their brain tissues. End Quote So we are in varying degrees wading through a cocktail of carcinogenic and mind altering and who knows what other types of chemicals. Does these things bioaccumulate? In other words do they become more concentrated as we move up the food chain. Does a little antidepressant in fish ground up and fed to pigs which are then eaten by humans become a significant dose in our species. Given the horrors of factory farming, a little prozac might ease the suffering of pigs but do we want to be bathed in th