How much is too much of any particular pollutant? Are there some pollutants that are unsafe at any concentration? What factors need to be accounted for when setting limits on how much of a pollutant will be allowed?
This is the link to the article that you will be responding to.
Mercury In The Environment
http://www.usgs.gov/themes/factsheet/146-00/
Remember, you need to write a 300 word opinion/reaction to the article by Friday, July 22. You then have between Friday, July 22 and Friday, July 29 to respond to one of your classmate's posts. Please see the calendar page, the link for which is on the right.
Additionally, you should take a look at the links below to familiarize yourself with the issue a bit more. This will give you some context when you read the article. I don't expect you to spend too much time, but take a few minutes to explore the sites and get an idea for the scope of the issue.
A definition and diagram showing how biomagnification occurs.
http://wblrd.sk.ca/~sci10_dev/1_ecosystems/biomag.html
What is mercury and where does it come from?
http://www.uwec.edu/jolhm/EH/Leslie/what_mercury.htm
This link is for a calculator that will tell you if the amount of fish you eat contains too much mercury.
http://www.gotmercury.org/article.php?list=type&type=75
A map showing US mercury pollution.
http://whyfiles.org/201mercury/images/hg_deposition.gif
A fascinating article about shortages of important rare elements used in all of our favorite gadgets. Why you should recycle your old electronics.
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/06/19/why-your-favorite-gadgets-are-threatening-the-planets-future/
Mercury is a highly toxic element found naturally as well as a contaminant in the environment. As good as mercury can be in some cases, there are moments in which its amount can highly affect the health of people and wildlife. Thus, this depends on the exposure and the amount of mercury present in a given area of the environment. I think that everything that is good can become dangerous when it is used in excess. Mercury’s toxic effects therefore depend on its exposure and its chemical form. There are some forms of mercury that are way more harmful than others, such as the one present in gold mines which is present in high quantities, making it even worse.
ReplyDeleteOne way of exposing oneself to the dangers of mercury is by eating seafood because it contains large amounts of mercury so if people eat an excess, they might be exposed to danger. The same happens with wildlife; areas highly contaminated by mercury are a threat to wildlife, especially marine birds. When mercury enters the atmosphere, it can easily circulate there for years and this is a problem since it spreads to other places and can damage the environment. Some volcanoes include large amounts of mercury as well.
On the other hand, mercury is not always a problem. Methylmercury is the only form that accumulates in fish in excess and therefore it is really harmful. With not all the places being infected with the harmful mercury, more species can eat fish without problems, since fish is an important part of the diet of many species. Furthermore, there are places where mercury is stored in industrial or mining activities but surprisingly, these can erode, resulting in a decline in the concentration of mercury. And as always, it not only depends on nature it also depends on us to use the environment carefully and manage balanced quantities of such chemicals, such as mercury.
By reading this article I totally think that mercury is dangerous in many ways. It affects the environments and many factors around it. This hazardous chemical has to be stopped in some way. IT pollutes many lakes and rivers while at the same time contaminates many animals around it. When I was reading the article, I also thought that mercury could be the cause of an animal getting into extinction since it damages many fishes.
ReplyDeleteIt was really interesting for me to read about this article because to say the truth I didn’t know anything about the causes that mercury does in the environment. It also motivates me and other people to conserve its environment and always be caring for it. There are various toxic effects and the most toxic one is methyl mercury. Affects the immune systems, damages nervous system and many more things. The risk for people to get involve with mercury is by eating seafood since fish is really contaminated in the United States with this chemical. As a map showed the most affected part of the United States is the east coast, around New York and Maine. Mercury is very concentrated around these places and it is difficult for it to disappear. Instead of disappearing it will continue to move to other places where the world will seriously be affected by the damaged environment. Mercury as shown in some pictures also cause deformities in developing animals. As I said that some animals might get extinct because of mercury when I saw the photo of the loons in the article it made me sad. That is because the source of food for loons is fish and so they get contaminated when they eat their food. It is sad since loons and very pretty and are not found everywhere in the world and so they might get extinct some day.
This article reminded me greatly of the book, "Silent Spring", which I just read for class, and a documentary called "The Cove", that I watched a while ago that talks about a Japanese town's dependence on dolphins for food. Even though one deals with DDT pollution and the other one with dolphins, I feel both can be really tied in with the article and can help answer the entry question of what has to be considered when deciding how much of a pollutant should be allowed. In the end, I feel an ecosystem’s food chain happens to be the most important factor when deciding.
ReplyDeleteAn ecosystem’s food chain happens to be the most important factor when deciding, since it is through the food chain that energy and therefore pollutants are transferred.
This idea was evident in “The Cove” since it mentions how dangerous the dependence on dolphin had become to the town. Apparently, the increased consumption of dolphin had caused people to be intoxicated with Mercury, resulting in many births of mentally retarded and deformed children. Since dolphins are on top of the food chain, all the fish they eat causes them to have more Mercury than the rest of fish/ animals in the sea (at least the ones below them in the food chain). They consume more Mercury and therefore have more of it. This pattern is no different to what happens with other pollutants like DDT which are not necessarily natural.
In “Silent Spring”, Carson presented a situation where a town sprayed DDT, and even though it was directed at animals like earthworms, even the robins were affected. Since the robins would eat more than one earthworm, the DDT levels in the robins became greater than that of the earthworms, resulting in their deaths.
Indeed, with this energy transfer thing, I feel that no pollutant levels are okay. A pollutant might start in a tiny percentage, but then as it moves up the food chain, it might becomes one that is exponentially bigger. In the end, it might just be that this pollutant is almost impossible to remove from the ecosystem and therefore maybe even ourselves.
(Sorry if I went a little off topic or if this does not even make sense, but I thought it’d be interesting to share. :P)
Determining how much is too much of any particular pollutant depends entirely on the pollutant because some pollutants in a very small amount can be extremely harmful and deadly and some can be less affecting. A great example of a highly dangerous pollutant is mercury. As the opening paragraph of this article specifically emphasizes on mercury and its harms, it shows how a pollutant such as mercury in small or large doses can clearly affect the environment and its surroundings including animals and human beings.
ReplyDeleteSome evident toxic effects that are caused by mercury are “It affects the immune system, alters genetic and enzyme systems, and damages the nervous system, including coordination and the senses of touch, taste, and sight.” such as mentioned in the article. Moreover a apparent effect of the toxic exposure of mercury is that since animals such as fish are being contaminated when humans eat it they tend to also be affected by the mercury. This is a very serious issue that could even get worse if we don’t fix the problem or create something to eliminate the overexposure of mercury. Every seafood could probably be a risk for humans to eat it because if the body of water were the seafood is being extracted from is contaminated by mercury it can either kill the animals of affect those who eat it.
On the other hand, even though mercury has indeed proven to be a threat for wildlife and the environment, what actually is affecting the fish and most of the seafood exposed to a toxic environment is the Methylmercury. The factors that need to be taken into consideration to set limits and fix the harms caused by mercury is that those places that are rich with life should specially been taking care of in order to avoid any more contamination for animals and humans.
This article made me realize that even though we actually don't feel right away the negative effect that a pollutant such as mercury can cause, in the long run it will cause a negative effect on everyone because by affecting seafood it will cause a domino effect that will later affect the consumer of the product. This issue can be directed to the predator or even to humans. I agree with what isa had to say because she emphasized on how this issue ca later affect the entire food chain and only spreading the toxicity until reaching an extremely dangerous state.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with Gabriela in that it was very interesting to learn about all the causes that mercury has, most of which are bad if it is used in excess or exposed in some specific way. I did not know anything about this chemical, only that it made up the barometer to measure pressure. Asides from that, I had no idea. But now I have a better knowledge of what mercury can cause to the environment.
ReplyDeleteGlori talked about the danger of mercury when eating seafood. This is so true since mercury is concentrated a lot on seafood and people that love seafood are in danger. It reminds me that at sometimes of the year there is certain seafood that are not recommendable to eat because they are infected. Many people also get really sick by eating seafood because they are infected with many chemicals. I never thought that mercury would be found on seafood. It was really interesting to read about it since I thought this element was part of many other things, but not seafood. Unfortunately on the east coast of the United States mercury has invaded seafood, and so people have to be aware of this problem!
ReplyDeleteI really liked Glori's mentioning of other places where Mercury can be present. She mentioned gold mines and volcanoes, which I liked since I doubt that fish are the only place where Mercury can be present and have a damaging effect on people. To my understanding, Mercury pollution can even result if energy- saving light bulbs break. I really liked how she addressed other Mercury sources.
ReplyDeleteAll pollutants will harm the environment yet some have a more harmful effect than others. Many pollutants such as mercury are especially dangerous since it harms the environment, wildlife and humans. Mercury for example is dangerous when concentrated and it is easy to be exposed to it either by environment or by the consumption of fish. Methyl mercury is extremely dangerous since it’s the most toxic form of mercury and the problem is that it concentrates on the muscle tissue of the fish so even if cooked and eaten there will still be exposure to Methyl mercury . Mercury causes many diseases both in humans and wild life, in humans some problems could be failure of the immune system, altered genetic and enzyme systems, and damaged nervous system, senses of touch, taste, and sight. Also wildlife is affected mostly the animals which main diet consists of eating fish or other aquatic animals, some of the problems wildlife may face are deformations, and low reproduction eventually causing wildlife population to lower and become endangered.
ReplyDeleteMercury enters the environment through many ways, human deploy large amounts of mercury into the environment through mining activities such as gold, coal, and metal processing also medical and other waste cause mercury to appear in environment. Yet the environment also naturally produces mercury such as in volcanoes, deposits of mercury, and volatilization from the ocean. In my opinion if we could lower the human input of mercury this would help solve the problem since it would create a more balanced environment.
Many places have started to take action were there are high levels of toxic mercury, yet some important places with high levels of mercury are San Francisco Bay, Carson River Nevada, Florida Everglades and Mississippi River yet there are many more places were mercury can be found such as lakes, rivers, oceans, and reservoirs. Some measures should be taken to lower the concentration and the consumption of contaminated fish this way people and wildlife would be protected from the dangerous of mercury.
I believe that measures should be taken to lower the amount of mercury in habitats were fishing occurs so this way humans won’t be contaminated by eating fight. As Alejandro said if we don’t take care of the problem now it could increase and cause an effect in which all seafood would be contaminated. So I believe this problem should be taken seriously and fought so that a better environment can exist.
ReplyDeleteBefore reading this article I knew mercury was not a safe mineral. Although I knew it was not good for our health or any wildlife’s health, I did not know it could cause so many problems. Mercury pollutes everything like lakes and rives, and if the lakes or rivers are polluted, the animals in the lakes or rivers get contaminated also. Then any animal that might want to get some food and goes to a lake or river to get fish might die of contamination of mercury.
ReplyDeleteMercury is a highly toxic element that is found both naturally and as an introduced contaminant in the environment. Mercury, as found in research, has shown that it can be a threat to health of people and wildlife in various environments that are not yet polluted. Eating contaminated fish and any wildlife exposes people and any fish eating wildlife in the environment to get toxic from a form of mercury, methyl mercury.
Mercury is a globally dispersed contaminant. But it is “normally a problem only where the rate of natural formation of methyl mercury from inorganic mercury is greater than the reverse reaction.”
“In highly polluted areas where mercury has accumulated through industrial or mining activities, natural processes may bury, dilute, or erode the mercury deposits, resulting in declines in concentration.” There will continue to be pollution if we do not get the mercury out of the whole system, because it is also included in the food chain when a river or lake gets contaminated and then everything ends up contaminated.
Mercury is an element that is highly dangerous and enemy of the environment. Mercury is a risk to the health of the wildlife and the people who leave in environment not yet contaminated. It depends on the exposure in which mercury is in existence. Everything is bad in excess. The worst form of mercury is methyl mercury, which damages the nervous system, affects the immune system. It can also be found in gold mine sites as elemental mercury. It pollutes many places and can cause extinction to some living things.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this article I learned many things that I was not aware of before. One of them is that methyl mercury is mostly found by eating contaminated fish (seafood). So it produces a risk to adults and wildlife that eat big amounts of fish that are contaminated. Young fish tend to contain less mercury than older ones. It not only provides risk for people, but also to wildlife. Mercury can cause deformities in animal development. As a result it can damage a lot the environment because when it enters the atmosphere it can circulate for many years spreading everywhere. Even in locations far away from the point sources mercury can result in toxic effects for the animals that eat at the top of the aquatic food chains. For mercury is very difficult to disappear. Instead of disappearing it does the opposite. Time to time the amount of mercury has increased and for that we have to be extra careful with what we are facing and what our environment is facing. Mercury might have come in tiny amount before, but now it is as large as I can imagine and we have taken action too late. It has become a large threat to wildlife, humans and in general the environment. We have to be careful on contaminations and the places where we know contain mercury.