titaniumkid
spending too much on rocks
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Member since June 2023
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Post by titaniumkid on Jul 15, 2024 19:33:16 GMT -5
docharber thanks for sharing your thoughts. You make some good and interesting points, and I like learning about perspectives from different people in different parts of the world. I could write an essay in response but I'm going to hold back ![:)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/smiley.png) I do strongly disagree with what you said about chemicals being used to preserve pollinators. They kill pollinators. Anything with "cide" at the end (herbicide, insecticide, fungicide, acaricide... whatever it may be) was deliberately designed to be biologically active and cause toxicity, and it's very difficult to poison one thing without poisoning another. If you want a good example of this, look up imidacloprid. This very popular neonicotinoid insecticide was marketed as environmentally friendly and pest specific. It hugely contributed to wiping out pollinators, particularly bees, and is now heavily regulated in parts of the world. Organophosphates can still be toxic to humans, even in small amounts. Especially when we are talking about chronic, repeat exposures (such as eating trace amounts on food over time). You don't need a lot of a chemical to cause adverse effects in this exposure scenario. A good example is chlorpyrifos, which is a suspected endocrine disrupter and a developmental/reproductive toxin. Anyone interested but not wanting to trawl through the scientific literature can visit the PAN pesticide database (https://www.pesticideinfo.org/chemical/PRI2051) The thing that concerns me about pesticide use, aside from how little we know before we spray it around, is ecological effects. The world around us has inherent value, not just what we can get out of it, and it deserves protecting. If you want to use a Christian framework for this, I would say we have a responsibility to be good stewards of what has been given to us. From a more human-centric or utilitarian position (if you want to disregard the natural world having its own inherent value), it's very hard to predict, long-term, how we're making things worse for ourselves as we poison the world around us. Pesticides aren't guaranteeing food for a starving world. People in some parts of the world are still starving. Modern farming guarantees that my "right" to buy an unblemished, perfect looking apple in the off-season because I feel like eating an apple whenever I want is met. We are "fearfully and wonderfully made" but the human heart is "deceitful above all things and desperately sick", as evidenced by things brought up in this thread, such as the fact they knew plasticisers were reproductive toxicants in the 80s but here we are surrounded by them today (so a few people get rich), organic farming should be about better farming practices to improve human health AND promote long term, sustainable farming but "organic" is a marketing strategy to scare people and organic products are not necessarily organic (so again a few people get rich), people in the world are starving even though there is a surplus of food because there is greed, entitlement, selfishness, and corruption (and a few people get richer), and pesticides (and other chemicals) continue to be developed and marketed before we fully understand their impacts (so a few companies and stakeholders get rich). We know better, we can do better, but we aren't. Seems like I wrote an essay anyway. If you see me back here, tell me to go and do the things I'm supposed to be doing ![:P](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/tongue.png)
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Post by vegasjames on Jul 16, 2024 3:26:21 GMT -5
WOW-great chat session. Yeah, lots of lapidary materials are misleadingly named. Maybe bumblebee should be called dead bee calcite? I think green beryl is colored by iron rather than chromium or vanadium, as is aquamarine, which can be fairly on the green side, that being the distinction between it and emerald. The color of a chromium colored green stone is much more vibrant, even in pale colored stones. Its hard to know what to be scared of in the environment. A friend of mine, a biochemical toxicologist, was working with plasticizers back in the 80's and even then the potential risk to reproductive health was known. Guys, guess what? Your average sperm counts are down almost half from what they were, say, 100 years ago. plasticizers are likely the biggest culprit. About organophosphates- in small amounts they are fairly harmless to humans with little long term toxicity. Just because the body's burden of a substance is higher than expected doesn't necessarily mean it's doing any harm. I maintain that "organic" produce doesn't actually confer health benefits, but is often fresher and of better quality overall. But in a hungry world where so many face the threat of famine, we must risk use of agricultural chemicals to keep our food supply sufficient, and hopefully preserve our pollinators. The added cost is, I think, more due to preying on a gullible public by greedy growers and distributors. Most organophosphates are rather fragile compounds and break down quickly. I do wonder about compounds used for termite treatment and other long-term applications and the risks these chemicals might pose. Thanks to our Supremely Stupid Court, the agencies which have been established to try to keep us safe are hamstrung (again), with their every decision now being subject to adjudication. I wish our governmental entities had more regulatory authority and more resources to enforce it, but they don't. In some states there may be strict regulation of marketing terms like "organic" and the ever-popular and meaningless word "natural", but in Florida, where i live, probably not. Nobody lets truth stand in the way of profit. I'll shut up now. What am I saying- of course I won't!But first, I'd like to emphasize, like the Psalmist says, that we are "fearfully and wonderfully made". We have wonderful systems in our bodies to deal with environmental hazards, which if not overwhelmed, are very effective in containing or eliminaing them. Your liver can perform over 500 distinct chemical operations. Your DNA can repair itself to an extent from radiation and oxidative damage. OK, about ozone. It's a potent and rapid microbicide that breaks down quickly. However, the most common, practical, and effective means of preserving produce- particularly apples- is to store them in a low oxygen environment (nitrogen). Ozone can be a very strong respiratory irritant and may cause oxidative damage to lung tissue. It can trigger asthma. I always advised my COPD and asthma patients to avoid ozone type air cleaners. A HEPA filter is much safer, usually cheaper, and just as effective. And, DON'T let anyone sell you a UV sanitizing system (like whole house air cleaners and spa water cleaners that work both by direct UV effect and/or generating ozone. The former will keep one side of your HVAC coil cleaner but that's all. The needed exposure time to sanitize anything with UV is exponentially longer with increasing wavelength. The silly blue light (near-UV) systems out there now are totally useless from a practical standpoint. The air flow is way too fast in an HVAC system to achieve adequate UV exposure, and any produced ozone concentration way too small. Water can be sanitized with UV but only with fairly long exposure of still water. In a spa, look for an electrostatic discharge system that produces way more ozone than the common UV ozone generators and are much more effective in sanitizing a spa. Those silver ion systems are also helpful and keep your parties from being crashed by werewolves. I'm done now. Mark H. Regarding organophosphates, which accumulate in the body, might want to read these:
"Most organophosphates exhibit lipophilic properties and possess a high volume of distribution. They distribute rapidly into adipose tissue, the kidneys, and the liver. Their extensive distribution provides protection from metabolism. The level of lipophilicity and the patient's adipose tissue can affect the outcome after poisoning."
And
"The mobilization of unmetabolized organophosphates from fat stores can trigger a cholinergic crisis. This phenomenon is associated with highly lipophilic compounds and typically does not manifest in individuals with low lipophilicity and smaller volumes of distribution"
"Organophosphates are also the primary constituents of nerve gas. Within the human body, organophosphates act as inhibitors of the enzyme acetylcholinesterase, leading to excess neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh). This surplus of ACh in the body leads to the manifestation of symptoms associated with the cholinergic toxidrome. Exposure to organophosphates, whether acute or chronic, can lead to varying degrees of toxicity in humans, animals, plants, and insects."
Something about being a primary component of nerve gas is unnerving.
"Organic" is a bit misleading as it implies no toxic chemicals used on the plants. Although, to certified as an organic farm, the farm must be free of toxic man-made herbicides and pesticides for 10 years. Problem is that many of these chemicals are highly stable, and can survive in the soil from 15-100 years before degrading. Another issue is that they cannot stop winds from carrying the herbicides and pesticides over to the organic farms, nor the bees or wind cross pollinating crops from GMO fields. Furthermore, many organic farms are irrigated with surface water that has traveled long distances, including past non-organic farms where the water can be contaminated with various things including herbicides and pesticides. Another good reason to use ozone even on organic crops.
As for organophosphates, their decomposition varies greatly depending on various factors, but have been found years later in soils:
As for our detoxification systems, the key words were "if not overwhelmed". People are generally assaulting their system all the time with things like hexane in auto smog, dyes and preservatives in foods, formaldehyde in the home, from aspartame (Equal, Nutrasweet), some milk products, etc. From alcohol and tobacco, coffee, pharmaceutical and illegal drugs, hormones and antibiotics in the food, toxins in the water such a dioxins and PCBs, phthalates from some plastics, BPA from canned good and thermal paper receipts, bug sprays, and the list goes on and on.
And yes, the liver can do some amazing things if it has what it needs and is also not overwhelmed. One of the things it needs though are methyl donors for among other things detoxification of hormones that include powerful man-made xenoestrogens that can be up to 100,000 times stronger than the body's own estrogens, and again can survive in the soil up to 100 years. Problem is, there are many people who lack proper methylation. Especially the elderly, and people with low stomach acid such as when taking antacids and acid blockers that is very common, or ingesting things like baking soda, calcium carbonate, magnesium oxide, or high pH waters. So, the whole issue is way more complicated.
By the way, the DNA repair you mention is also a methylation dependent process, and thus lack of methyl groups, which is common, can interfere with this DNA repair.
How many people have access to gaseous nitrogen and a container to hold it and produce? Ozone is readily available, destroys herbicides and pesticides, destroys bacteria and fungi that can spoil produce, and inhibits ripening by destroying ethylene gas.
Yes, ozone can be a respiratory irritant, but we also inhale it daily as ozone is formed daily to ground level. And if you ever walk in to a copier place like Kinko's, that strong smell is high levels of ozone. Anything can be dangerous to deadly in excess though such as organophosphates, water, oxygen, aspirin, etc. That is why we use many of these things, including ozone, responsibly.
Many home air purifying ozone units have a voltage regulator that allows you to adjust the ozone output to the size of the room, and the fans in the units help disperse the ozone more uniformly. I also highly recommend that when people use these type of units that they put the units as high as possible. Since the ozone weighs more than air, it will slowly sink breaking down by reacting with chemicals in the air such as formaldehyde, carbon dioxide, itself, etc. reducing ozone levels even further before reaching breathing levels. The water purification units that I recommend using for produce purification have little risk due to their very low concentrations of ozone output. The biggest risk is from medical grade units, pool/spa ozonators and commercial ozone deodorizing units that have much higher ozone concentrations being put out, which at these concentrations can cause lung damage and trigger asthma attacks in asthmatics.
HEPA filters cannot do what home ozone air purifiers do since they cannot oxidize many harmful gases in the air such as formaldehyde, xylene, tolulene, etc, nor destroy airborne pathogens.
You comment about the UV lights in duct systems is interesting since hospitals use these UV systems in their air ducts, especially for the operating room, to reduce transmission of airborne pathogens.
As for the types of ozone units, I have never seen an electrostatic ozone unit. The three types of ozone units are ultraviolet, which I am not a fan of, hot corona and cold corona that includes gas plasma units. UV units cannot have their concentrations controlled easily, and the tubes degrade with time. Hot corona forms O3, as where cold corona can form higher allotropes up to O25 (Long chain ozone, polyatomic oxygen molecule). Both hot and cold cold corona are easy to control concentrations, and their output is more steady over time.
Therefore, cold corona is the best overall, but these units tend to be very hard to find, with the exception of gas plasma units, and tend to be very expensive.
When I first got in to ozone therapy over 30 years ago the cold corona units were up to $15,000 for medical units, which is one of the reasons I started building my own. Harder to build that hot corona units, but only cost me around $100 to build. And I needed exceptionally high outputs for some experiments, but cold corona systems with that kind of output did not exist in the day. So again, I had to build my own.
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Post by vegasjames on Jul 16, 2024 3:49:07 GMT -5
Lots of things are misnamed. Fish for instance. Tilapia is not a species of fish. It's a lot of similar species grouped together. They are actually the African Cichlids that are popular with many aquarium folks. My favorite is Orange Roughy. It used to be considered a trash fish but as fishing regulations tightened up it started getting used for consumption. They decided at that point to change the name. No one wanted to eat slime heads! Tropical hardwoods are just as bad. Loads of mahogany and ebony that are being sold that are neither and there are some names that are a bunch of different species grouped together just like Tilapia. Correct, tilapia refers to the genus, not the species. The species refers to the more specific types of cichlids that fall under the genus Tilapia.
Although, the cichlids of the Tilapia genus were more specifically categorized to separate them from other cichlids once referred to as "tilapia". The mouth brooding cichlids were moved to the genus Sarotherodon and Oreochromis, as where the cichlids that deposit eggs on the bottom of water areas remained in the genus Tilapia initially.
Even this was upended in 2013, where now generally only 4 types of cichlid remain in the genus Tilapia.
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docharber
has rocks in the head
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Member since October 2008
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Post by docharber on Jul 16, 2024 16:32:15 GMT -5
OK, first I didn't mean to imply that chemicals protect pollinators, but that we must sometimes risk their use while hopefully not harming pollinators through that use. In rereading my comments, I can see why a reader might think I actually meant (agricultural) chemicals migth protect pollinators. I certainly didn't. And yes, I'm aware of imidoclopramide's now-realized toxicities. I have not failed to notice that our local population of bees is greatly diminished. and I haven't seen any luna moths in years. Our frog population used to create a real din after summer rains, and they're much quieter in recent years. I don't use chemicals on my lawn at all as we have a creek in the back yard and I don't want to contaminate the watershed. WHen needed, I use soapy water to treat infested plans and it works very well. I do maintain that most organophosphates in use today are quickly degraded in the environment before they can enter our bodies. I used to do industrial medicine for the Air Force and ran pseudocholinesterase levels, etc., regularly in individuals who worked in insect control. I never saw any overt or chronic human toxicity. In fact it is exceedingly difficult to demonstrate that the trace levels of pesticides in our tissues are (or are not) causing harm. We live in a world full of deadly naturally-occurring things. I Organophosphates and other agricultural chemicals can be designed to linger longer, of course, as has been done with naturally occurring and rapidly degraded pyrethrins by halogenating them to create permethrins. And, nerve agents are specifically designed to degrade quickly after exerting their lethal effects. Of course, you won't find a bottle of Sarin on the shelf at the local COOP. I just wanted to point out that without alternatives, we have to risk the use of agricultural chemicals to feed our 8 billion fellow humans. We can certainly act to test and regulate these substances more effectively, raise alternative crops and decrease meat production, griow GMO crops more widely, etc. But there has to be the political and economic will to do so. Personally, I have no concerns about GMO crops. We've been messing with the genomes of plants for decades and we're getting good at it. So far, no Little Shop of Horrors scenarios. Sadly, there's a lot of unvetted and misleading information on the web and elsewhere that raises undue concerns, just as there is misleading information about the safety of agricultural practices and environmental toxin risks.
Now, about ozone again. Air filtration systems are mainly intended to remove particulate matter. HEPA filters do this very well without exposing people to high ozone levels. Most allergists will tell you just what I have told you, that ozone air cleaning systems should be used with caution by those with respiratory disease like asthma and COPD where ozone can heighten the pulmonary inflammatory response that is so important in these disorders. We really don't know what risks may be posed by long-term exposure to higher than naturally occurring ozone levels. Acute worsening of asthma is definitely a recognized risk. While eliminating some toxins with ozone might sound appealing, you are trading the risk of these exposures for one that might be worse. Activated charcoal is a better, and benign, answer for chemical vapor threats.
Well, this has been fun.
M. Harber
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Post by vegasjames on Jul 16, 2024 20:18:34 GMT -5
OK, first I didn't mean to imply that chemicals protect pollinators, but that we must sometimes risk their use while hopefully not harming pollinators through that use. In rereading my comments, I can see why a reader might think I actually meant (agricultural) chemicals migth protect pollinators. I certainly didn't. And yes, I'm aware of imidoclopramide's now-realized toxicities. I have not failed to notice that our local population of bees is greatly diminished. and I haven't seen any luna moths in years. Our frog population used to create a real din after summer rains, and they're much quieter in recent years. I don't use chemicals on my lawn at all as we have a creek in the back yard and I don't want to contaminate the watershed. WHen needed, I use soapy water to treat infested plans and it works very well. I do maintain that most organophosphates in use today are quickly degraded in the environment before they can enter our bodies. I used to do industrial medicine for the Air Force and ran pseudocholinesterase levels, etc., regularly in individuals who worked in insect control. I never saw any overt or chronic human toxicity. In fact it is exceedingly difficult to demonstrate that the trace levels of pesticides in our tissues are (or are not) causing harm. We live in a world full of deadly naturally-occurring things. I Organophosphates and other agricultural chemicals can be designed to linger longer, of course, as has been done with naturally occurring and rapidly degraded pyrethrins by halogenating them to create permethrins. And, nerve agents are specifically designed to degrade quickly after exerting their lethal effects. Of course, you won't find a bottle of Sarin on the shelf at the local COOP. I just wanted to point out that without alternatives, we have to risk the use of agricultural chemicals to feed our 8 billion fellow humans. We can certainly act to test and regulate these substances more effectively, raise alternative crops and decrease meat production, griow GMO crops more widely, etc. But there has to be the political and economic will to do so. Personally, I have no concerns about GMO crops. We've been messing with the genomes of plants for decades and we're getting good at it. So far, no Little Shop of Horrors scenarios. Sadly, there's a lot of unvetted and misleading information on the web and elsewhere that raises undue concerns, just as there is misleading information about the safety of agricultural practices and environmental toxin risks. Now, about ozone again. Air filtration systems are mainly intended to remove particulate matter. HEPA filters do this very well without exposing people to high ozone levels. Most allergists will tell you just what I have told you, that ozone air cleaning systems should be used with caution by those with respiratory disease like asthma and COPD where ozone can heighten the pulmonary inflammatory response that is so important in these disorders. We really don't know what risks may be posed by long-term exposure to higher than naturally occurring ozone levels. Acute worsening of asthma is definitely a recognized risk. While eliminating some toxins with ozone might sound appealing, you are trading the risk of these exposures for one that might be worse. Activated charcoal is a better, and benign, answer for chemical vapor threats. Well, this has been fun. M. Harber Words like " We really don't know what risks may be posed by long-term exposure " and "that might be worse" shows guessing. We can guess that the long term or repeated exposure of cumulative organophosphates may have risks we do not know about, especially since some are quite stable, so they may be worse than we are being led to believe.
As far as ozone again, as pointed out we inhale ozone on a daily basis. And as I pointed out most ozone air purifiers, which destroy toxins that HEPA filters do not, have voltage regulators to adjust the output of the ozone to fit the room as to not crate overly high ozone concentrations for the room size. And again, they are best put high for safety to allow time for ozone breakdown before reaching breathing level. You do not sit there with the ozone unit in your face, cranked up on high inhaling high concentrations of ozone. As with anything, people simply need to use things responsibly.
Furthermore, unlike HEPA filters, low concentrations of ozone have amazing healing benefits. Go to PubMed and you can find tons of medical studies on its benefits.
By the way, know what else can trigger off acute asthma attacks in asthmatics? Exercise, or even cold air. Does that mean everyone should avoid exercise and cod air because they may trigger asthma attacks and there may be long-term risks such as too much exercise can wear joints down leading to osteoarthritis? Hmmm... Long term exposure to exercise might be worse than we thought.
Oh. by the way. Know what else is associated with increased risk of asthma? Organophosphates!!!
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titaniumkid
spending too much on rocks
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Member since June 2023
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Post by titaniumkid on Jul 16, 2024 23:51:37 GMT -5
This has been fun. And distracting. And very off topic from bumblebee jasper ![:D](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/grin.png) So I'm trying to have self-control here and not do a huge reply. Thanks for sharing, everyone. In the unlikely event we ever meet in person, I'd like to continue talking about these things. Toxicology and environmental pollution are very interesting to me. I have inadvertently become the advocate of organic even though I don't eat much organic food because of expense, availability, and greenwashing. I do think moving agriculture towards more sustainable farming practices that require less chemicals will be better for food quality, human health, and the environment long-term, especially here in the west where we have a surplus of food, but that requires a huge mental shift for us folks regarding what we can eat, what it should look like, and when we can eat it. docharber I'm impressed your workplace ran OP specific tox testing. We worked with a range of toxic chemicals and heavily polluted environmental samples (mostly mud and water) where I previously worked (I won't name and shame), but their effort to cover themselves in case we got poisoned was to do lung function tests based on the fact we might have been exposed to cadmium in dust. It was a very unlikely route of exposure. It seemed extremely inadequate. I tend towards paranoia with chemicals because of what we researched, such as chronic exposures, low concentrations, contaminant mixtures, and full life cycle, multi-generational and sublethal effects... things traditional toxicity testing (LC50s etc) tends to miss. Anyway, time for self-control. Hope you're all well.
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