permaculture

[Marimike6@cs.com]

In a message dated 10/4/2002 1:20:11 PM Eastern Standard Time, heidehermary@pacificcoast.net writes:

I'm not so sure I'd want to drink rainwater collected from rooves in
>urban areas. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a bit of airborne
>pollution around urban centers that would fall as rain?
>

Sure is. In fact you can find airborne Sox, Nox and mercury in a lot of other places, like most of the Northern Hemisphere. As likely as not, the raindrop that just fell on your petunias condensed around a particle that was belched from a smokestack operated by your local power company or one four states over, or one in China. The majority of our electricity, as well as China's, comes from coal plants.

There has been enough of this stuff to modify global weather patterns in this century. One thing that sounds good on the face of it is: more nuclei, more rain drops. The down side when you look into it is the weather patterns have been changing, while farmers generally prefer reliable weather. The newer rains come at inappropriate times and quantities.

Here in NC we've had a summer-long drought followed by fall rains that have pretty much destroyed our peanuts. While it's normal to get this pattern from time to time, statistically we seem to be getting more of it, in line with the global pattern of increasing weather instability.

But yes, there is a lot more local particulate matter around urban areas. The New Yorker ran a cartoon a few years back where a little kid is eating his lunch next to a window and his mother says "Close the window, Junior-- your soup's getting dirty."
Any urban gardener washing the dirt off his leaves every few days knows this is not all that funny. If you don't wash your leaves off in town, the dirt actually slows the rate of respiration-- your plants get something like asthma. It looks like graphite, only a little grittier.

Mike Elvin
Fuquay-Varina, NC