[HN Gopher] Sparrows may be 'canary in the coal mine' for lead p...
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Sparrows may be 'canary in the coal mine' for lead poisoning in
children: study
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 101 points
Date : 2024-07-18 13:44 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.abc.net.au)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.abc.net.au)
| vcxbx wrote:
| It's fascinating how nature can provide such critical warnings
| about our environment. If sparrows are showing high levels of
| lead, it makes you wonder how much is seeping into the broader
| ecosystem. Could this be an early indicator of a larger, more
| pervasive issue affecting both wildlife and human health? It's
| definitely worth paying attention to and investigating further.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| Lead poisoning in Australian mining towns is a surprisingly
| contentious issue. Town mayors usually try to cover up and deny
| any evidence of lead poisoning, because without the mines, there
| is no town.
|
| The broken hill that the town of Broken Hill is named after no
| longer exists. The mullock heap pictured in the article is all
| that remains: the entire hill was dug away when the original mine
| was active. As you can see on OpenStreetMap[0], the slag heap
| sits right in the middle of the town, with lead-laden dust
| blowing down into the streets and backyards every time the wind
| picks up.
|
| The other town mentioned in the article is Mount Isa[1]. Mount
| Isa has both a mine and a smelter, both located immediately to
| the west of the town. The prevailing winds are westerlies, so
| again the toxic dust falls on the town.
|
| [0] https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/-31.9653/141.4597
|
| [1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/-20.7339/139.4831
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Town mayors usually try to cover up and deny any evidence of
| lead poisoning
|
| After moving to the West from a developing country was
| surprised to discover that things our politicians do for a big
| bribe western politicians sometimes do for free.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| The money just flows through different channels, but that's a
| funny observation.
| gwervc wrote:
| Exactly, corruption is more sophisticated, but it exists
| and is huge nonetheless. The big difference is that the
| starting GDP is higher, which allows for a little more to
| reach normal citizens after corruption is taken into
| account.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| An old friend of mine who was originally from Iran told
| me something a family member of his said to him, which
| was basically: "In the west you may not have bribery, but
| the ability to influence decisions is mostly out of your
| reach. At least here little people can have some small
| control over their environment through small bribes." I
| had never heard bribery pitched that way before, and it's
| obviously... a garbage... way to run a society. But.
|
| In Roman times, decision making, power, etc was in large
| part done through systems of explicit patronage. We now
| -- in public at least -- consider patronage to be a
| corrupt and awful thing, but then having a powerful
| patron was a sign of virtue and goodness. Having a
| wealthy famous patron literally made you a better person,
| "not-guilty" in various crimes, etc.
|
| I am not convinced that that ethic has ever really gone
| away. Just maybe more hidden.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| That's because the seat of power in the west is not with
| governments at all, but with business. The gov't ends up
| being there to keep them happy and avoid conflicts between
| them.
|
| They've mostly stripped themselves of the ability to do
| anything they could be bribed over.
| FredPret wrote:
| I don't know man. The US government spends in a couple of
| months what the biggest companies are worth in total.
|
| According to this [0] Uncle Sam is obligated to spend 6.3T
| this year. That's 500B per month. Compare to the market cap
| of mammoth companies [1]. ExxonMobil, UnitedHealth, and
| Mastercard are all in the top 20 US companies and worth
| around one month of government spending.
|
| How can a whale be beholden to a flea?
|
| [0]: https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function
| [1]: https://companiesmarketcap.com/
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| How much of that is defense? How much is security &
| policing?
|
| A bulk of that spending is to keep the market going, and
| to protect business interests.
| tehjoker wrote:
| The government is designed for rich people from its
| foundation, it's a cozy revolving door for the elites and
| functions to repress popular movements. Officials
| identify with business and owners and can pick up do-
| nothing or interesting jobs after their government
| services.
|
| US elections are some of the most expensive in the world
| and politicians rely on donations to win their campaigns.
| The connections between business and government are a
| spider web. Business also isn't a set of individual
| companies, they in fact cooperate on public policy
| through think tanks such as the chamber of commerce and
| the business round table.
|
| Furthermore, since business controls the commodities and
| processes that sustain life, business holds a veto over
| economic policy with "capital strikes". Government could
| seize these properties, but our left wing is very weak.
|
| Think about it another way, why do you assume that
| elected officials have any obligation to the public when
| there is essentially no recourse except through elections
| and elections generally require oodles of money to win?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Right. It is worth noting that the total allowable cost
| of the recent UK election was 54k per seat per party,
| meaning that a political party could only spend 34M GBP
| contesting every Parliamentary seat.
|
| It would only take the top three House fundraisers to
| outstrip this number:
| https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-
| overview/fundraising-t...
| somenameforme wrote:
| Because government is not a singular entity, but made up
| of lots of individual people. And the overall electoral
| process of using a silver tongue to convince millions of
| people that you agree with all of them on everything,
| especially on things they disagree with each other on,
| and/or that the world will end if the other guy gets
| elected, ensures you select away from any sort of pesky
| things like values or ethics.
|
| The wildest thing, to me, is just how cheap it is to buy
| a politician. Senator Menendez [1] made it a bit too
| overt and ended up getting convicted so there's no
| speculation involved there. International/country level
| corruption of a senior Senator, who was also the head of
| the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, including getting
| him to directly interfere in criminal cases? Less than a
| million bucks. I guess it's more of a buyer's market,
| which is pretty 'funny' in and of itself.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Menendez#Allegati
| ons_of_co...
| recombined wrote:
| Always a pleasure to see we're in a good company. I've had the
| misfortune of being raised in this place:
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/aXkHEfX42aNp2yxV9
|
| Combine a large lead smelting plant with one of the world's
| largest producers of (unenriched) uranium, and a dozen other
| metals like copper and zinc. Add zero effective environmental
| regulation on top, and you get us.
|
| According to government data, lead concentrations in the top
| soil are measured in hundreds to several thousands of
| milligrams per kilogram, depending on location. The norm is low
| dozens, if I am not mistaken.
|
| No blood level studies have been done since the end of the
| 1980s. Thanks to this link, I at least have a reference point
| from a relatively transparent and accountable society. All I
| can say, back when I was in middle to high school, it felt like
| every other kid was diagnosed with anemia (yours truly
| included), and skin conditions like atopic dermatitis or
| recurring abscesses covering half the body were very common.
|
| Personally I have never felt like having a sharp mind, but it's
| difficult to say how much impact lead may have had on this.
|
| This is how it typically looks on the ground, if you're
| interested:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/HyT1B5p
|
| Don't know why I'm writing all this, I guess to let it be known
| that there are far worse places out there than a couple of
| small Australian towns (with what to me looks like very clean
| air).
| jeffbee wrote:
| "Giant toxic slag heap in the middle of town" is probably
| pretty common. Was definitely a thing in El Paso, Texas, where
| I lived in the 1980s.
|
| https://www.nrdc.org/stories/flint-east-chicago-there-was-sm...
| teruakohatu wrote:
| You weren't kidding, that one mine has polluted a significant
| percentage of the entire earths surface [1]:
|
| > "The idea that Amundsen and Scott were traveling over snow
| that clearly was contaminated by lead from smelting and mining
| in Australia, and that lead pollution at that time was nearly
| as high as any time ever since, is surprising to say the
| least."
|
| > The similar timing and magnitude of changes in lead
| deposition across Antarctica, as well as the characteristic
| isotopic signature of Broken Hill lead found throughout the
| continent, suggest that this single emission source in southern
| Australia was responsible for the introduction of lead
| pollution into Antarctica at the end of the 19th century and
| remains a significant source today, the authors report.
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20140808070623/http://www.nasa.g...
| zug_zug wrote:
| It's really scary how a tiny amount of a mineral can permanently
| damage the human mind. I have to admit there's a part of me that
| almost wants to be skeptical, that mg of a rock could overcome
| the wonderous self-aware human mind. Every so often I have to
| remind that skeptical piece of me that it's an idiot and that
| every human alive is wildly fragile to any number of elements and
| chemicals.
|
| ------
|
| Onto the article, if I ran a production software system, I'd be
| collecting data on the health of all my servers.
|
| If I ran a country, I'd collect health data on all my towns
| (perhaps blood tests of 1% of the population each year).
|
| Of course in malfunctioning environments, measurement is scary to
| leaders because it can give evidence that they aren't doing their
| job.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Public Health agencies (at least in the US) collecting data
| about residents is a thing. People just get a little touchy
| about government programs collecting all this data ...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| What? Public health agencies are "goverment programs."
|
| Also: corporations lobby against funding / legislation /
| regulation for public health data collection - and then tell
| conservative voters it's about "their privacy."
|
| Meanwhile, corporate America is selling literally every scrap
| of data it can to each other, LexisNexis, Palantir...
|
| It's not just other corporations buying up that commercially
| available data; it's intelligence agencies and law
| enforcement, too.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Yes -- I wasn't implying that public health organzations !=
| government.
|
| And I know that (at least they're supposed to) government
| collected data has strict policies on handling + processing
| it, where as commercially available data is more "loosy-
| goosey". (Which, government has learned they can also use
| with little more than a polite word)
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Well as they say, an entire human body is just
|
| > Water (35 L), Carbon (20 kg), Ammonia (4 L), Lime (1.5 kg),
| Phosphorous (800 g), Salt (250 g), Saltpeter (100 g), Sulfur
| (80 g), Fluorine (7.5 g), Iron (5 g), Silicon (3 g) and trace
| amounts of fifteen other elements.
|
| (The amounts are off somewhat but you get the idea)
| sva_ wrote:
| You got the recipe instructions or just ingredients?
| bloopernova wrote:
| 1: Place 10e9 x ingredients on surface of habitable zone
| planet around young star.
|
| 2: Agitate water via tidal action, allow small amounts to
| dry and flood multiple times.
|
| 3: Add sunlight and electrical storms.
|
| 4: Wait 4 billion years.
| lostlogin wrote:
| You heathens do things so slowly. It takes a week and
| someone needs to find the apple snake. /s
| bloopernova wrote:
| For a given value of "week" ;)
| endemic wrote:
| You jest, but sometimes I wonder which is more likely.
| wcoenen wrote:
| This list is a mix of chemical substances (e.g. water),
| categories of substances (e.g. salt) and elements (e.g.
| carbon), so it doesn't really make sense. It would make more
| sense to stick to elements, e.g. list hydrogen and oxygen
| instead of water.
|
| Also, ammonia is very toxic and only exists in trace amounts
| in the body.
|
| Apparently it's a quote from the manga series Fullmetal
| alchemist.
| bell-cot wrote:
| This. But _compared to the fluorine_ , ammonia is not
| particularly toxic.
| Nouser76 wrote:
| This leaves out the fact that attempting to make a human out
| of these just results in an abomination (and the ability to
| do alchemy without a transmutation circle).
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well yes and a processor is just a bunch of sand. It's the
| state and arrangement that matters.
| card_zero wrote:
| Bags of mostly water, poking at rectangles of sand ...
| decorated with a bunch of information.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Ugly giant bags of mostly water!
| Horffupolde wrote:
| Wait until your realize botulinum toxin has an LD50 of just 3
| ng/kg.
| throwup238 wrote:
| And that the spores are _everywhere_.
| umvi wrote:
| > It's really scary how a tiny amount of a mineral can
| permanently damage the human mind.
|
| It's scary how certain things in tiny amounts can have huge
| effects on humans:
|
| - ricin (1mg or less can be lethal)
|
| - insulin (.05 mL can easily put you in a coma if you don't eat
| enough sugar to cancel it out)
|
| - countless other toxins, poisons, chemical compounds
|
| - viruses or bacteria since they can multiply might be smallest
| things of all that can hurt humans
|
| Also related: how much energy is stored in tiny amounts of
| matter. When fission bombs go off, only a tiny amount of matter
| is converted to pure energy.
| brightball wrote:
| I know this always ventures into conspiracy territory, but this
| connection with aluminum's affect on the brain is one of the
| most contentious issues around the topic of autism.
|
| People have been asking for studies for over a decade and it's
| been crickets.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > If I ran a country, I'd collect health data on all my towns
| (perhaps blood tests of 1% of the population each year).
|
| And maybe flag 0.1% of your population for _lots_ of medical
| testing, for their whole lives. Partly to catch unsuspected
| stuff, partly to have really solid baseline statistics.
|
| And if some of those those tests are widely know to be less-
| than-pleasant (bone marrow sampling, colonoscopy, etc.), and
| the busybodies & hypochondriacs find it easy to get on "the
| list" - that may increase citizen satisfaction with your heath
| care system. Both in those with more-is-better mindsets, and
| those too quick to imagine that the forbidden fruit is sweeter.
| thfuran wrote:
| >and the busybodies & hypochondriacs find it easy to get on
| "the list"
|
| If it's not a random sampling, is not nearly as useful.
| bell-cot wrote:
| True-ish. But:
|
| - You're free to keep track of how each person ended up on
| the list
|
| - Your supply of "random volunteers" for life-long medical
| testing may be limited
|
| - The costs/benefits of being a health busybody or
| hypochondriac, in the context of a wide variety of diseases
| and maladies, is itself worth study
|
| - At the "I run a country" level, ensuring long-term
| political support for good healthcare is as important as
| ensuring that your current healthcare system is good.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Actually considering how functional humans can be with a little
| lead, we are quite robust.
|
| I wonder why lead causes brain problems. I think it's because
| lead in the brain affects electrons and neurons. Maybe lead is
| magnetic?
| Terr_ wrote:
| No, Lead is not magnetic to any significant degree.
|
| What happens is that calcium is very important for your
| neurons to operate and signal each-other, and lead happens to
| be "close enough" that is competes/interferes with those
| mechanisms, gumming things up permanently.
|
| This causes the cells and their connections to wither and
| die, or to fail to form properly at all.
|
| https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2016/deadly-biology-
| lead-...
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Sparrow in the lead mine, if it were
| nanomonkey wrote:
| Anyone know a simple method of testing for lead in food? Say a
| wet chemistry method?
|
| I live in California, and I've noticed that everything has a CA
| Proposition 65 warning label. When I look into it it's generally
| lead that has bioaccumulated in the plant. What I can't find is
| how much or how widespread it is in the food.
| Cordiali wrote:
| There's test swabs for leaded paint, but I don't know if they'd
| be sensitive enough for food. At least where I live, they're
| pretty cheap, so it could be an interesting experiment.
|
| I remember seeing an article a while ago, where some local
| councils here specifically recommended building raised garden
| beds for veggie gardens. They apparently found, that in
| cities/towns older than about a hundred years, the risk of soil
| contamination can be pretty high, the main suspects being lead
| and arsenic. Raised garden beds is an easy way of eliminating
| that risk.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> I remember seeing an article a while ago, where some local
| councils here specifically recommended building raised garden
| beds for veggie gardens. They apparently found, that in
| cities /towns older than about a hundred years, the risk of
| soil contamination can be pretty high, the main suspects
| being lead and arsenic. Raised garden beds is an easy way of
| eliminating that risk._
|
| I'd recommend raised beds to anyone who lives in a suburb or
| city that's even a few decades old. The particulates and oils
| washing off the street and down roof shingles alone
| introduces plenty of contamination. Very rainy regions like
| the Pacific Northwest have to build rain gardens [1]
| everywhere to filter out baseline levels of suburban
| pollution, otherwise their water gets really bad.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_garden
| nanomonkey wrote:
| Yeah, City Slickers in Oakland stopped testing the soil and
| just told everyone that they should use raised beds. Problem
| is that there are so many fruit trees and self starting
| plants that I want to eat (I'm looking at you collards), but
| I'd like to know what I'm getting into.
|
| Also I've read that sunflowers are really good at pulling up
| heavy metals, and all of the bags that I purchase have
| warning labels on them. I'm curious if this is a real
| concern!
| speed_spread wrote:
| Rice is good at sucking up heavy metals from the ground.
| American rice fields often occupy old cotton fields where lead
| products were used as insecticide.
| pomian wrote:
| Those test swabs work quite well. They are designed to test
| ceramics, clay etc. You can find them in pottery supply stores.
| If trying on food,I would soak or boil that food to reduce
| water and thereby increase concentration if there is any. You
| could add lemon to the water, as acids (vinegar for example)
| help extract metals. The problem is you don't get an actual
| number, just over a certain limit. I think it might be 50 ppm.
| But it's been twenty years, so please check that number.
| Alternative is to send to a lab, ask for a 32 element icp.
| Should cost between 50-150$, especially if you state you don't
| need chain of custody proof. You will get 32 elements. Which is
| fun. (Can even look for gold, but that's extra $ testing.)
|
| Lead naturally occurs in the environment, depending where, in
| the world you are, from 2 to 20 even UpTo 50 ppm.
| Industrial/commercial sites are common to have up to 150ppm.
| Contaminated toxic sites way over that, over a thousand. We
| could go on. But the swabs work as a starting point.
| nanomonkey wrote:
| To answer my own question: potassium rhodizonate mixed with
| glacial vinegar creates a visual test for lead.
|
| I assume that I could grind up the food, test the slurry and
| then maybe do a more in depth test involving putting the food
| in a kiln and testing the ash for lead (assuming you use temps
| low enough to not vaporize the lead, below 1750C).
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Lead poisoning is quite common in suburban and urban areas, when
| houses / buildings are demolished. There's a huge plume of lead
| and asbestos dust that is generated, even if the contractor is
| making some effort to wet the site.
|
| If a building or home in your area is being demolished? Don't
| open your windows, and don't go outside without a well-fitting
| dust mask. _Never_ attend a building demolition event.
|
| Contractors and developers are _supposed_ to take measures and
| inform local government... _if_ they 're stupid enough to inspect
| for lead / asbestos before construction _and_ declare that they
| 're doing asbestos / lead abatement. Every piece of regulation
| and law I've found uses a very fascinating phrasing - you're
| required to do things _if conducting abatement_.
|
| Many states go further and exempt anything under a dozen or two
| units or commercial buildings. It's an absolute shitshow.
| cybersandwich wrote:
| >if they are stupid enough to inspect
|
| That's sadly true. There is no requirement to test; there is
| only a requirement to abate if you know its there.
|
| A friend of mine had a contractor say "those look like asbestos
| tiles, but you havne't tested them right ;) ;) ? If I dont know
| they are asbestos I can do this job for $X. Otherwise it will
| be $X + $5K so I can do abatement"
| smeagull wrote:
| People consider Sparrows pests?
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| It's strange, isn't it? I love them.
| yareally wrote:
| There are many kinds of sparrows, but the one people usually
| refer to as a pest is the Eurasian House Sparrow. Can be found
| on 6 continents, reproduces quickly, and are gregarious (most
| other sparrows don't live in groups).
|
| I find their antics to be interesting, but they're aggressive
| to other birds, especially for nesting sites (and they'll nest
| anywhere, unlike many of the birds they compete with).
| nineteen999 wrote:
| Tangentially, a bunch of movies have been filmed in and around
| Broken Hill[1], including Mad Max 2 and 4, Mission Impossible 2,
| Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, Wake in Fright, and my personal
| favourite cheesy Australian B-Movie, Razorback.
|
| The landscape typically lends itself to that kind of dry post-
| apocalyptic look, however shooting for Mad Max: Fury Road was
| relocated to Namibia[2] as heavy rains had caused the area to
| break out into bloom.
|
| [1] https://www.brokenhill.nsw.gov.au/Services/Filming-in-
| Broken...
|
| [2]
| https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/asset/99353-mad-m...
| mattpallissard wrote:
| Genuine question. Wouldn't it be more efficient to check the
| levels of lead in the people periodically? If a sparrow has high
| levels of lead then you still need to check the people.
|
| It seems like it would be fewer steps, fewer tests, and less
| messing around by making testing more available to the people.
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