English rivers polluted by neonicotinoids, first tests reveal
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
https://shadowproof.com/2014/02/20/trophic-cascade-how-wolve...
It like we can't understand complex systems very well. Almost everything we do seem to have to have major unintended consequences. We see this over and over again, we have to abandon the "as cheap and fast as possible" thinking !
But have you seen those glow in the dark aquarium fish? Or the tomatoes that use flounder DNA to make them hardier in the freezer? How rigorously is it possible to test ramifications from those things?
However! I read an interesting study that claimed Bt transgenics are better for food production & the environment because they kill crop pests but the carnivorous field fauna (spiders, horseflies, etc.) flourish with humankind's helping hand.
Whereas I typically purchase non-GMO foods, this revelation caused me to question, and to become ambivalent. No doubt pests would tolerate Bt with time, but in humans Bt is a non-toxic pesticide, and the germlines of the crop pests would probably never recover from the trait's proliferation. At the same time, the carnivorous "worker arthropods" which eat the crop pests would also experience a huge acceleration in their development.
Directed breeding in animals is an issue which has a tighter grip on my heart--some of the stuff that's been done to dogs and cats to "get them to look a certain way" is really messed up. Maybe some look at the fields the same way.
I do not know. It is not my choice. I am glad for that.
Still, we need to try and make progress.
[ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/business/gmo-promise-fall... ]
The entire western food system resembles some kind of BNW-esque intelligence test, where you have to wade through this web of lies, and if you can't figure it out, you're basically eating small amounts of poison that dull your thinking, sap your energy, and shorten your lifespan.
Good luck figuring it out!
The problem is we keep getting better at doing crazier things, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15929012
I'd reckon the geniuses in the labs do understand complex systems very well, only problem is that these chemists, engineers, etc who do bring concerns their concerns to the table tend to get shut down in favor of getting a product to market so that the company can continue to reap profits no matter what the environmental impact.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20151111-how-the-river-tham...
Can't we use the same idea for insects?
https://www.ted.com/talks/nathan_myhrvold_could_this_laser_z...
I wonder if anti-midgie lotions have these things in them?
Over these borders, after 10km of night ( or even day) drive your car will be splatted with insects. No idea why, but the vegetation is incredibly varied/wild compared with West Europe.
But the mosquitoes north of Cape Canaveral were on to me the moment I got out to take a short hike.
Did similar driving Eastern Kansas/Western Missouri below Kansas City, and no bug splatters. Doesn't matter time of day, traffic, countryside, just nothing.
If you want to see serious bug splatters, try Okeechobee during love-bug season. I drove through that once about eight years ago, and the marks are still visible on the car.
>As reviewed here, four studies reported low rates of adverse health effects from acute neonic exposure. Even the most severe outcomes, including two fatalities, may have been mediated by other factors (age, underlying health conditions, undetected coexposures). The acute poisoning studies did, however, elucidate clinical findings important for the diagnosis and treatment of acute neonic exposures, including a better understanding of neonic toxicokinetics in humans.
Having suffered from (finally clinically diagnosed and clinically treated with chelators DMPS and DMSA - with great results) low-dose long-term heavy metal poisoning I had to find out, both myself (studying as much as I could) and from the doctors, that there basically exists next to zero clinically relevant research for a) low-dose exposure, b) long-term, c) (and this one is by far the worst) a mix of chemicals rather than examining just one or two at a time in isolation. The last one is very relevant - mixing stuff often dramatically changes the effect. I once found an LD (lethal dose) heavy metal poisoning study on rats where mixing lead and mercury was about a thousand times more lethal (i.e. 1/1000th the dose of both) compared to poisoning the rats with only one of them.
The reason isn't a conspiracy of course, it's just impractical to impossible to study anything but acute poisonings and only of one or very few chemicals at a time.
Also, each time somebody recites officially allowed values I cringe - for example, the medical science opinion about the desirable lead exposure is zero. However, of course this isn't practical - and this is what all those official limits are: Administrative practical values, considering what can be done, where the research stands (always erring on the opposite side of caution - you have to prove the bad effect before the limits are lowered) and at what cost.
So no, science does not have the answer about any of this. The internal medicine + environmental medicine research doctor that was my main doc is pretty pessimistic about the stuff we (humans) do, and this guy lives with the research, always citing this or that new study when we meet.
Maybe I should add that there indeed are lots and lots of studies. However, they are incredibly specific, they won't be the basis for tougher legislation/lower official limits, because even if you take a hundred (good) studies of that kind you did not prove that the specific effect observed in the lab is relevant "in the world setting", and/or on humans, and/or what the combined net effect of "everything" might be. Which is, at least today, pretty much impossible.
Wow. I'm extremely curious about how you found out, what your symptoms were, and what resources you used to educate yourself. Do you think that people with your condition are misdiagnosed on a large scale?
Exclusion and desperation. I got nothing from various doctors despite problems that I thought should be treatable. It had very, very slowly gotten worse over two to three decades. It is very, very subtle, and until a threshold was reached I described myself as "100% healthy" - completely ignoring a myriad of increasing little problems. Because each and every one of them has alternative explanations, usually: aging, office/computer work, stress, wrong food, "everybody has problems", etc. Soooo much went away under chelation treatment that I didn't even have on the radar, things that I had attributed to the mentioned untreatable problems, mostly aging or stress or food. But it wasn't!
I thought that my problems seemed very treatable/diagnosable, but nobody even tried. "You take Nexium (a PPI) for the rest of your life" said a professor of gastroenterology, which to me was pure torture, I never felt as bad in my life as when I used that stuff. Then I found that I had a massive Candida problem, which had started when I took the PPI. A doctor confirmed it (the professor had ignored everything I had told him and thought it's all in my head), I was even given systemic anti-fungals (fluconazole), with huge positive effect, but then my hands where yellow... I then learned that Candida never is a root cause, always a symptom. Apparently I didn't have any of the usual medical textbook problems that lead to such a problem. The only thing left was something I found in the forums of the "crazy people": They claimed Candida often is a problem of people with a heavy metal problem. With nothing left to try and to lose I went down that route: Take measurements, find a specialist (I had to go very far), start chelation and see if it helps. Well, the measurements should middlish amounts of mercury, "You are in a gray zone but I can justify chelation therapy" said the doctor. The real proof came with the unexpectedly large success over the years.
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If I was a doctor I would not treat this condition. It is next to impossible to detect - basically, there is no known method to conclusively test if heavy metals are a problem or not. You can get indications, but only acute poisonings with large doses can be shown through a simple test. So how did we know in my case? I was "lucky" enough to have had a few special conditions that lead to an acute surge, so I actually had significant levels (of mercury) in blood, hair and urine. Most people with chronic poisoning won't have that though. The rest of the proof that that indeed was the problem was all the things that started to improve after starting chelation - many of them completely unexpectedly. For example, during chelation, after each round, the tissue around my right-side thyroid was "working" (very active, some pain). The result, shown a year afterwards: A 5 mm nodule in the twice-normal-size thyroid had completely(!) disappeared, and the thyroid was almost normal size. I had had endocrinologists show that nodule and the double-sized right thyroid unchanged over almost three decades. The endocrinologist examined me with ultrasound TWICE because he did not believe his results. There is a lot more, that was just one of the highlights because people like undeniable biomedical imaging proofs, so much better than me saying "I can sleep much better".
So anyway, as I was saying, if I was a doctor I would not treat this condition. The problem is that you need crazy people like me. This requires a long-term commitment for an uncertain outcome. You also need resources - money, TIME (you cannot go on living a regular employee life, the chelators only help get things started, your body has to do most of it, and it requires lots of time and you need to rest or it (the body) won't do anything). Most people would never have that patience, as a doctor you will make your life much harder if you offer those treatments. Not to mention that there is the potential to be right - and make things a lot worse: If somebody indeed has a heavy metal problem chelation may make it worse (it mobilizes more than it can bind, since no chemical bond is eternal and perfect), and if their body already is on edge...
Also, the whole subject is itself poisoned. On the one hand you have few options to show anything conclusively, no good tests, on the other hand the whole topic of heavy metal poisoning, or just poisoning, is extremely popular in "alternative health" circles. So even if you are a doctor, you really, really don't want to be seen working in this area by your colleagues. It's much more acceptable (by both your medical colleagues as well as insurers!) to offer homeopathy, as an MD, than offering chelation. At least that's my observation.
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> Do you think that people with your condition are misdiagnosed on a large scale?
I have no opinion about other people. A lot of things are very special in my own case. I certainly think the problem could be much larger than people think. On the NIH website I found a document that stated that mercury is far more toxic than lead. I took a course from Tufts University [0] about water treatment. Of the four weeks they spent one entire week, 25% of the whole course, only talking about lead. There were two professors, one for the engineering side, one for the medical side, and the medical professor cited study after study and showed graphs that the state of medical science is that the only safe level is zero (technically not feasible - thus not possible to have as an official limit). So there is a lot of attention on lead, has been for decades. I don't see nearly as much on mercury, supposedly much worse, despite there being quite a bit of mercury around us. For example, are you sure eating all that tuna and other sea fish, especially the predatory ones, is such a good idea? In my experience, the one I gained the last few years, involuntarily, the signs are extremely(!) subtle. You don't get "sick" or a fever. You may have a little bit of trouble with your eyes. Or you get problems with your carpal tunnel (RSI). The easy explanation will be, in both cases, that you spend too much time in front of computers. Or you have a bit more trouble finding good sleep. Your digestion acts up - but just a bit, if you went to a gastroenterologist they'd send you home "we found nothing wrong". The list goes on and on.
Are people misdiagnosed?
Maybe, I'd say probably - but there is no proven alternative. None. We just don't know.
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There is a general mismatch problem with medical knowledge based on observation and statistics: It is one thing to know that x percent of a certain population have a problem. It is a completely different problem going the other way: If you have an individual, in front of you, does (s)he have the problem or not? The probability you have is of no use to you, you have to make a decision, yea/nay?
A prudent doctor, knowing that the odds are low, will always say "no" in such a case, and statistically speaking that's the winning strategy from a public health point of view. You know you lose a few, but that's the minimum, if you tried finding out who actually has the problem (that you cannot reliably diagnose on an individual level) your overall statistics would get worse. That means knowledge of a problem on the scale of the population is almost useless when it comes to making individual treatment decisions. You need something on that (individual) level. In the case of long-term exposure (or any exposure) to low-dose poisons we don't have much that we can use, not on the individual level.
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[0] https://www.edx.org/course/biology-water-health-fundamentals...
Your question is interesting but might be better restated as: "What is the effect on humans if there is a drastic decline in flying insects?"
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/19/europe/insect-decline-germany/...
That's entirely expected, the EU as a whole is more liberal, more green, and more socialist than the Tories.
The creation of free movement of people, goods, services and capital across 28 States and creating a common currency used by many of them is arguably not “benign”.
For avoidance of doubt I’m in no way expressing an opinion on the merits of these - simply that it is not benign in the sense of having done nothing.
I think that you're using the word in a pretty unusual way there, perhaps inspired by medical usage. 'benign' comes from the latin meaning 'good', and has the same root as 'benefactor', 'beneficial', 'benefit' or 'bonus'. In its nonmedical sense it almost always refers to something being good, not having negligible effect.
Sorry to mock you, but environmental concerns affect us all. Earth is one giant connected system; everything eventually influences everything else. It's just a matter of the latency of the connections. Pollution is something we need to tackle globally, because many types of pollutants don't break down naturally or necessarily become less dangerous. On the contrary, many continue to accumulate and are concentrated by natural processes into places where water drains--this is why we find these things in rivers and lakes first, and in the highest concentrations. They are everywhere, tho.
Point is, its about who enforcing it not what. If even that does not fix your observations, I would like to request some proof/citations.
That's not really different in the EU.
> In response to the study, the European Commission recommended a restriction of their use across the European Union. On 29 April 2013, 15 of the 27 EU member states voted to restrict the use of three neonicotinoids for two years starting 1 December 2013.
> The UK, which voted against the bill, disagreed: "Having a healthy bee population is a top priority for us, but we did not support the proposal for a ban because our scientific evidence doesn’t support it."
> The decision was up for review in 2016. In March 2017, The Guardian printed an article which claimed that they had obtained information that indicated that the European commission wants a complete ban and cite "high acute risks to bees". A ban could be in place this year (2017) if the proposals are approved by a majority of EU member states
The EU hasn't been a panacea thus far, particularly with the environment. The strongest influence they've had is with personal rights & freedoms but there have consistently been lapses when it comes to the environment. They refuse to pound down on coal in Eastern Europe/Northern Greece & overlooking Diesel-gate are just more recent ones.
The only thing that can help the environment is if green politicians get a sufficient vote in the country involved
Diesel-gate is a different issue and highlights the weakness of recognising other countries’ testing standards without setting sufficiently stringent regulations to ensure that testing was valid. The problem was that member states weren’t required to do their own testing but to trust that whoever did it had done it correctly while incentivising the testing state to be lenient lest they lose the payments to perform tests.
The country has no green tradition, it was dragged into modern practices kicking and screaming by German and Scandinavian-inspired EU regulations. Their rivers and beaches only started looking clean in the early ‘00s.
The Cameron government promised to be “the greenest ever” and failed to deliver on all accounts, dropping the whole issue after less than a year in power; the current one doesn’t really have a green policy at all, unless you count “build on greenfields” as such.
Because of the hardcore first-past-post electoral system, green parties in England are happy when they manage to elect 1 MP and maybe throw enough races against Labour that “reds” have to listen a bit; but in the meantime they get a Tory government that is naturally pro-business and anti-environment. The only real influence they can have is by winning seats in the proportionally-assigned EU Parliament, where they gang up with the more numerous Eurogreens and deeply influence actual regulations.
Leaving the EU is a tragedy for UK greens, and it will kill any semblance of environmental policy in the country.
Almost nobody in the world is 'anti-environment'. That's a ludicrous claim. Many people think other things matter more than the environment, or don't care about the environment at all, sure, but if you think any people, let alone major political parties, are working against the environment deliberately for its own sake I think you're barmy.
Resulting in stupid stunts like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal which really is pollution for its own sake.
Typical examples of this culture war are nuclear power and GMO agriculture. The scientific consensus is settled: using GMOs in agriculture would be better for environment, but nevertheless it is the "environmentalists" who particularly oppose them.
Is it? I'm not aware of the GMO counterpart of the IPCC here and, unlike the question of global warming, there is a problem with Monsanto-funded studies muddying the waters.
I mean, in the same sense that socialists are often seen as anti-business. It's not so much that they dislike businesses per se (most of us in the social democratic tradition see markets and those who operate in them as an important source of wealth and innovation) but that, given a choice, they would direct government spending to more-or-less anything other than making business owners richer.
Maybe if you ask them rationally what their opinion is, it will come out pretty balanced, but that standard glosses over a lot of deeply rooted bias.
Your argument is like saying if I sit and watch my friend beat you up, not intervening because he promised me a few quid, then I'm blameless and not "anti" you in any way.
You're quibbling over semantics whilst we're trying to shine light on the destruction of irreplaceable natural resources, and pollution of our environment that will harm future generations.
If you can show Tories will preference the environment over business interests [of their donors, members] then please do so; this present argument is unhelpful.
I never understand what people mean by this criticism. I'm debating people based on the words they use and what they mean by using those words... and that's a bad thing? What else you would like me to debate them on instead? Their syntax and grammar?
And my local Conservative councillors seems to Tweet mainly about school funding and how important is is to preserve the green belt for the sake of the environment, so there you go.
Many people, such as myself, want positive action to protect the environment from damage to essential ecosystems, want preservation of green spaces, protection of native species, and such like.
Saying "the videos aren't making policies to actively harm the environment and do they're not anti-environment"is to entirely miss the substance of the argument which is that they're not doing enough to protect it and are seemingly ignoring environmental issues when profits can be made.
One often finds councillors at odds with the party as they focus much more on local issues. Conservative councillors in rural areas will be inclined to protect green belt, counter village in-fill developments, oppose fracking, etc, despite these being things the Tories as a party support (because: profits).
Tories are strong on rhetoric wrt green belt, just weak on protection.
> Environmentalism, as a movement, is an alternative world view and a substitute for Christianity.
They aren't against the environment itself. I'm sure they don't particularly care about it, but they don't hate the environment for the sake of it as far as I can see.
Not exactly, here have been very strong comments from some in the government that suggest that Britain is going to add environmental regulations to the 'bonfire of the regulations'.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-safety-...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-eu-regu...
> EU vote to extend the ban to all outdoor uses is expected soon.
> The proposed EU ban would still allow neonicotinoids to be used in greenhouses and as a flea treatment for pets. A new Greenpeace study suggests neonicotinoids are frequently found in waterways close to greenhouses where they have been used.
A drainage basin or 'catchment area' is any area of land where precipitation collects and drains off into a common outlet, such as into a river, bay, or other body of water. The drainage basin includes all the surface water from rain runoff, snowmelt, and nearby streams that run downslope towards the shared outlet, as well as the groundwater underneath the earth's surface.[1] Drainage basins connect into other drainage basins at lower elevations in a hierarchical pattern, with smaller sub-drainage basins, which in turn drain into another common outlet.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_table
(The first time I heard this was a big "aha" / "of course it works that way, how else would it work" moment for me. Ala XKCD 10000 [0]. Hopefully you're one of today's lucky winners!)
Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
>Do we really need regulations? Yes.
>Why do these things happen? Greed/profit motive.
>Why do people think it is acceptable to pollute? Greed/profit motive.
I was thinking, in the framework of capitalism, what would the incentive be, other than regulation, to not pollute? Why does it not work, is the incentive missing?
For example, there are companies like Clean Harbors that earn billions from recycling toxic waste, oil etc. Are they earning money because regulations need to be met, or is there a profit to be made?
If latter, how come no one is trying to make profit by capturing pesticides/insecticides?
Would deregularization make these billion dollar waste collection companies bankrupt?
So if you want create an incentive, have the health impact on society as a whole, impact the profits of the parties involved in creating the pollutants.
So you could for instance bind their taxes to some health measurements. Then you would have a market for capturing pesticides (if that's even possible).
Much simpler and probably more efficient is just to regulate.
Yes? If there aren't regulations, then waste will be disposed of by the cheapest method, which usually involves dumping it into the atmosphere and/or water. This is how it used to be until environmental campaigning in the 70s and 80s got the regulations introduced in the West, and far more recently in China.
The ironic thing is that we behave exactly like bacteria and animals and all other life, which have no choice but to expel their waste products directly into the environment. Properly adapted ecosystems have mechanisms for recycling all waste.
The difference with humans is threefold:
1.) We are too many, so the capacity of the environment into which we expunge our waste products can no longer handle the volume of waste we produce, forcing us to handle it with industrial processes.
2.) We produce waste types that the environment has no natural recycling mechanisms for, such as plastic, metal, and thousands of industrially produced chemicals, not to mention nuclear waste. We have only barely scratched the surface for recycling some materials, and the rest we literally just dump into giant holes or the oceans.
3.) We are busy destroying all the ecosystems that would naturally support us and recycle our waste, not only through loss of habitat, but mass dieoffs of insects, fish, etc.
Almost all natural ecosystems are death-limited, usually through some combination of predation, disease, or starvation. This was the case for humans up until about the 19th century. We've killed our predators and have to a great (but not total) extent achieved victories over disease and starvation. But if we're not to become death-limited again we must become contraception-limited.
Unfit oranges, apples etc. are waste to the fruit producers, but juices love it.
Cow shit is a complete waste but is used as a fertilizer. Although, a bunch of cow shit is also thrown into rivers.
Wasted food is ground into powder and given to animals.
I guess food might be an exception. I don't know if there exists something similar for oil, chemicals etc.
Much of the history of the petrochemicals industry is trying to find valuable things to do with less-valuable fractions and non-oil stuff that comes up from wells. Of course, if it's not valuable it tends to be flared off and contributes to global warming.
> Wasted food is ground into powder and given to animals
.. although since the CJD epidemic I think this is extremely limited. By regulations.
Yes. You need to read on industrial history if this is not obvious to you.
The nature of business and industry is such that they prefer local short term optimizations. In this context an environmental hazard is not considered a concern for various reasons, including, it incurs no immediate negative impact on the factory, the impact of one factory would be insignificant because everyone else is doing it and cutting chemical X would give competitors a financial edge, etc.
The only way to curb culture which creates negative externalities is to pipe those externalities back to it's source. Regulations and fines are a one way to make sure there is a feedback from negative externalities back to their source.
Think of it as an algorithmic problem - local optimization seldom leads to a global optimum. Hence, sometimes global tweaks can benefit an entire system.
The good news is that regulations work, and damage can heal.
See for example how CFC:s destroyed ozone layer before banning them.
I'm asking questions to learn something from the discussion. Currently, my opinion is that regulations are necessary, but perhaps they aren't, and I would like to hear why.
> Think of it as an algorithmic problem - local optimization seldom leads to a global optimum. Hence, sometimes global tweaks can benefit an entire system.
To me, this sounds as if the power of the government needs to be huge and centralized? Because obviously local agents cannot come up with globally optimal solution (if the problem is not structured in a way they can).
For example, the huge use of insecticides and pesticides enables the industry of cheap meat and dairy. Regularizing insecticides and pesticides will most definitely increase the costs for the producers and the price of the product will increase. On the other hand, there are enormous subsidies in farming and will these subsidies now increase to keep the prices low?
These regulations, at least that's how it looks to me, are directly impacting the tax payer, not the industry players.
EDIT: I'm out of discussion. Getting to many downvotes for no particular reason.
It will decrease costs but also decrease yield.
If only one farm does this, they lose money.
If it's imposed across an economy and imports of non-compliant produce are taxed, then the reduced yield drives up prices. This is effectively the EU approach.
Trying to recall what they taught us in business school. Regulations of the kind I think you mean (i.e. ban pollution) are one way to combat externalities, but there are others, in theory.
Econ. researchers stipulate property rights as one way:
If I own the river, and the right to fish in the future, my incentives will shift toward not polluting today. If the river is public and I have no guarantee of future yields, then the game theoretically smart thing to do is pollute as much as I can get away with.
As always, the devil is in the implementation details.
Pre-emtping useless word thinking: I am aware that "property rights" can fall under regulation, depending on definitions. If that bothers you, feel free to s/regulation/bans in the paragraphs preceding this.
When you don't have a mechanism for regulation in government, such as democracy, you tend to get very bad government.
That's not to suggest that fines or elections are particularly effective but they serve similar purposes.
In principle, anyway. Democracy obviously isn't a perfect system.
The evidence seems to point very strongly toward the need for regulations. This is notable in examples such as China which has stepped into the developed world recently and has not yet caught up with the same level of regulations. Resulting in excessive and dangerous pollution throughout the country. While on the flip side we've seen the rapidity and efficiency with which solid regulations can result in cleaner air, safer waterways, species brought back from the brink of extinction, and so forth. Regulation works. Period. It may not be perfect, but it does work and is an economically viable solution.
Why do these things happen? Why do they think it's acceptable to pollute? Because they perceive a short-term gain in profits and without being forced to consider the negative externalities of their actions they simply won't (or can't while operating competitively with their competition).
Sometimes I wonder if future generations will be sickened by the idea that individuals thought it was ok to drive cars that simply released poisonous gasses and particulates into the air rather than trapping and storing them for safe disposal. After all, we know it has already led to society wide increases in violence due to retarded brain development.
A libertarian/hardcore capitalist approach might be to try to actually codify ownership rights over these things and give them to persons who could exert them against polluters.
I and I suspect many others would find that pretty disturbing. I think the idea of being forced to pay rent for breathing someones air is shocking, but if nobody stands to benefit from providing good quality air, there is no clear capitalist incentive to spend effort creating and ensuring it. Without that we need some other mechanism to force polluters to pay for the costs of their behaviour instead of forcing them onto everyone else.
One idea would be that if there were enough detailed, trustworthy information that consumers might hold companies accountable for their abuse of community resources, and vote with their wallets but empirically speaking this kind of safeguard seems to work very patchily when it works at all.
Once those two possibilities are eliminated I'm struggling to think of anything that doesn't end up looking like regulation.
Take a look at the third paragraph talking about free rider and negative externalities. This is a strong intuitive explanation of the need for larger bodies to step in and regulate.
- really this naive
- just bright high school kids
- simply trolling
- completely blinded by doctrine ("capitalism is the supreme good, so how is it possible that it is producing a bad outcome? Something must be wrong with the universe")
- actually a google AI trying to learn about the world from first principles
it mostly occurs because industries move faster than the science to study the effects of the by products and the desire by politicians to push economic growth and in some cases self enrichment. then the next generation down gets the results and ends up fixing it provided their method of government allows for it.
Pollution is usually a side-effect, not a goal. For example, people didn't mine and burn coal for nothing, they used it for heating and energy generation. Look at the Industrial Revolution for another vivid example.
Let's not forget that DDT, PCBs, and CFCs have contributed greatly in positive ways too. If they weren't used, the planet would be less polluted but we might have nowhere near the same quality of life as we do today --- just imagine how people lived several hundred years ago. It's hard to say, really.
Those "organic/biological" products in the supermarket look fine to me.
...but can the whole population survive on those exclusively, or even afford them?
Do we want to temporarily overshoot the carrying capacity by poisoning our environment at the risk of collapse if we lower that capacity in the process?
One ppt is 1 mg of material (smaller than a match head) dissolved in a cube of water that measures 100m on each side. Bigger than an Olympic sized swimming pool.
So the fact they said neonicotinoids were detected means nothing. The real question is how much was detected and dose that level have an impact on living organisms.
> we recommend here that ecological thresholds for neonicotinoid water concentrations need to be below 0.2 μg/L (shortterm acute) or 0.035 μg/L (long-term chronic) to avoid lasting effects on aquatic invertebrate communities
I assume the map refers to these values. μg/L is the same as parts-per-billion in case anyone was wondering.
(100^3)x(1000kg)=10^12 grams vs 1mg is a part per quadrillion.
So a 10m cube compared to a 1mm cube is part per trillion. That's the 10,000^3 ratio.