permaculture

[Marimike6@cs.com]

John (Schinnerer, MA)---

This sounds like a good idea, dispersing toxic metals so that the concentrations disappear. It has been said before that "the solution to pollution is dilution".

The only problem is that we've been doing this for so long that the completely diluted metals are becoming a pressing problem. Up in Massachusetts I assume you have recommended limits on the amount of fish you consume. I know we do here in North Carolina. This is because of our national reliance on coal-fired electrical generation plants. Along with the sox and the nox (sulphur and nitrogen oxides) you get a lot of mercury going up the stack in a large coal plant. The particles become rain nuclei. The rain drops that fall on your garden put the mercury there for a while, but the runoff from that portion of the country that is built up and paved runs into the river, from whence it goes to the sea.

It bioaccumulates in the fatty tissues of fish and becomes concentrated as one goes up the food chain. We are at the top of the food chain, and so should not eat too many fish, which would otherwise be a very healthy food.

The only long-term solution is to sequester it by some process where it can be recovered and sold to mercury-using industrial plants for re-use. The economics of this are generally unfavorable, but if someone is found who is willing to pay the price (in an ideal world, the US Govt) the means are not that difficult.

The sensible place to collect it would be in stack scrubbers on the coal plants. But if you read the papers, getting Big Coal to obey the laws now on the books is slow going-- as is writing new, better laws.

Going the other route, if you have a big pile of contaminated soil you want to grow vegetables on, there are grasses and other plants that will accumulate the mercury, cadmium, lead or whatever. It could then be burned in a small scrubber at your local landfill to recover the tiny amounts of toxics for recycling.

That is the theory, and will some day come to pass. The reality today is that these processes have to be researched in universities willing to fund the project. Papers must be published. State governments (forgetting the federal level for the moment) have to become interested, and legislation proposed that will enable pilot projects to get off the ground. Right now is not a good time because all the states, except North Dakota and a couple of others, are currently broke. But one day soon it will be a good approach to explore, as the states are in fact very concerned over lead, mercury and other toxics pervading their environment.

In the words of the great sage, "with enough money, all things are possible!"

Mike Elvin
Fuquay-Varina, NC

--- Begin Message ---

• From: John Schinnerer <eco_living@yahoo.com>
• To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
• Subject: Re: [permaculture] Heavy metal issues
• Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 23:23:11 -0700 (PDT)

Aloha,

> I can't recal lif it was John Todd or Gunter Pauli,who spoke of it,
> but apparently there's progress being made in actually extracting
> (some) heavy metals from the plants for reuse/resale.....

I wonder how much energy and what level of technology that takes, and
how safe it is for the people involved and the place it's done in.

The problem to begin with is that we've extracted heavy metals from
their 'safe storage places' via mining and/or smelting (nickel,
cadmium, lead, boron, etc.) or concentrated them via
agriculture/irrigation practices (selenium, etc.). So now we've got
toxic concentrations of them to deal with.

The first two of the four "Natural Step" system conditions address our
processes of concentrating heavy metals - by essentially saying that
these sorts of actions are in direct conflict with 'sustainability'.

In other words, the stuff doesn't go away - they're elements, not
compounds, they don't 'break down'. Best hope, as mentioned, is that
*if* we quit concentrating the stuff, the stuff we've already
concentrated to toxic levels can/will eventually be dispersed to
appropriate trace levels again via whatever ways that can happen.


=====
John Schinnerer, MA
-------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Cultural & Ecological Designing
Food - Water - Shelter - Community - Technology
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net

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