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Lovely old Asbestos :rolleyes:...Qld Government chief health officer informed me that he would happily live in and around Asbestos dust without consequence :no:...the political hierarchy also told me the fibres didn't float in the air for anymore than a few metres and of course that it is safe enough to drink/eat...NO chance of it being found in honey one would assume...MM:)Quote:
Originally Posted by ian
This highlights the importance of collating info on natural background levels for comparative analysis...MMQuote:
Originally Posted by ian
If they are and you eat them, yes. Pharmacology can be thought of as dividing the world into three basic classes of stuff: Food, Drugs and Poisons. Anything that's not a Food or Drug is a Poison.Quote:
Originally Posted by ian
It most likely to come from the mining. There will be some small contribution from lead outcrops but it will be swamped by lead in dust and other natural sources.Quote:
Originally Posted by ian
About the most sensitive environmental reservoir we have is Polar ice and snow and the method used is isotopic fingerprinting . Our lab did a lead isotope in ice cores going back thousands of years and there were no BH lead deposit lead isotopes in the ice until the mining started in the 1890s. Within months of starting the mining lead isotopes had reached Antarctica. Later when BH lead was used in petrol the isotopic finger print print became even clearer.
Yep.Quote:
Originally Posted by MAPLEMAN
About a decade ago our lab put up a proposal to a mining company and the govt to set up and run an isotope survey around a proposed new mine site before mining started so potential spills could be detected and then blame apportioned. Isotopic surveys are very expensive and I think we asked for about $400k for a 2 year research program - well that was never going to happen was it and not just because of the cost.
I also participated in a Govt sponsored "experts" panel about best practice regarding a certain type of mining. The panel consistent of scientists, engineers, an economist, lawyers and govt advisers with the latter 2 making up about half the panel. The paperwork was horrendous and I have never heard so much gobbledygook from lawyers and govt advisers in my life so it took me a couple of meetings to work out the whole thing was just an covering exercise so I resigned. After the report was written, even though I had resigned they still asked me to bill them for the numbers of hours I had spent working on the materials but I declined to take any money for this sort of nonsense. Could say a lot more about this and other stuff but I signed certain confidentiality agreements. By that stage in my working life I was so jaded with they way this whole business was going I didn't have the energy to make a stink about it - still don't, just need some peace and quiet life.
Interesting fact that Rhododendron and Azalea nectar contain grayanotoxins which can also find their way into honey
Potential to make one very sick if consumed
A number of other flowering plants also contain alkaloids that pose a threat also...MM:)
just shows what a sheltered life you led in academia. When you said that lawyers and government advisers made up half the panel, that told me precisely what the panel's task was.Quote:
Originally Posted by BobL
Before I retired, the process had got so bad that lawyers were being commissioned as the prime contractor for writing government funding bids.
picking 1882 as the date was deliberate as it represents the year before the discovery of the deposit. Mining commenced in 1885. Working from memory, the surface outcrop of the Broken Hill ore body was extraordinarily rich -- something like >40% lead. For some context, according to Wikipedia, average metal grades for the Broken Hill ore body through 1946 (lead and zinc combined) were 21.5%.Quote:
Originally Posted by BobL
so my expectation is that while dust from mining might be detectable in Antarctic ice after the 1890s, in 1882, before mining commenced, the local dust would have been very high in lead.
Turns out this is what the mining companies and Govt like you think so they can blame "natural contamination", but it turns out this effect is quite small.Quote:
Originally Posted by ian
The lead isotopes in dust sampled around an exposed undisturbed lead ore body turns out to be mainly dominated by what's in the wider area local soils and rocks which is usually quite isotopically different to the lead in the ore so can be clear distinguished and apportioned. If the deposit is anywhere near a dry region, dust from hundreds or even thousands of km away can contribute in a major way to local dust.
The other factor is that exposed and weathered lead ore bodies (gossans) are quite tough and resistant to abrasion compared to many other surface rocks, and as ore outcrops represent only a small fraction of the area of exposed soil/rocks they don't contribute much to local dust even if wet they contribute is highly concentrated. It's only when the ore body is disturbed by mining and especially by smelting that large amounts of lead are dumped into the atmosphere that mined ore lead isotope signatures are picked up.
Here is an article that includes one of my former students in the author list.
https://research.jcu.edu.au/tropwate...eltingtown.pdf
Quote:
Xstrata Pty Ltd and Queensland Government agencies havedisputed the industrial source of environmental Pb and haveargued persistently that the elevated PbB of local children and Pbin the Mount Isa urban area are sourced predominantly from natural surface exposures of orebodies. This line of argument hasbeen maintained despite the fact that mining operations at MountIsa have already been connected strongly to environmentalcontamination (Parry, 2000; Queensland EPA, 2008, Taylor andHudson-Edwards, 2008; Munksgaard et al., 2010; Taylor et al.,2010, 2011; Mackay et al., 2011, Mackay and Taylor, 2013).
Here's a study of how dietary intake influences colorectal cancer risks:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...m_medium=email
The crux of the paper is that you can reduce your chances of developing CR cancer by about half, more if you're male and less if you're female, if you choose to consume a diet that is low in foods that provoke inflammatory responses relative to a high inflammation index diet.
This describes the inflammatory diet index and gives you an idea of what to avoid. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4958288/
Combine the low inflammation diet with not smoking and moderate alcohol consumption and you'll do yourself good.
Hi,Quote:
Originally Posted by rob streeper
We all know what Bs stands for, Ms is more of the same and Phd is just piled higher and deeper.
Regards:wink:
Look at the snippet on public opinions of scientists.
Oddball scientists, the rise of Chinese research, and other highlights from NSF’s new tome of essential science statistics | Science | AAAS
Unfortunately the full report isn't available because our government, in its most recent paroxysm of childishness, has shut down.
Australians tend to go the extra kilometre at putting anyone down that does better than them, whether its scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, sports people or politicians. It's even worse for home grown successful people or inventions who often have to go overseas to get the recognition they deserve.
The following lists some famous and less well known australian inventions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeli...ian_inventions
How many of these were/are ever made here in Australia and how many have ended up being made overseas.
How many of us have ever heard of one of our most prolific inventor, David Unaipon - he's even on our $50 note.
Bob,
Interesting. The US is the same but different. We don't have a formalized or widely shared named concept of anti-intellectualism but the current here is very strong. The closest we come to that theme is embodied in the epithets such as 'book-smart' or 'nerd'. Nerd isn't thought to be insulting so much these days because of the admiration of Silicon Valley types because of their vast money piles.
It's called "tall poppy syndrome" here in Oz.
Most Australians will claim "It's not success that Australians put down but over self promotion by successful people". This attitude helped make Oz a less class bound society than the UK where most of it's migrants came from pre WWII. You might notice this appearing on these forums from time to time. I have no trouble with that at all.
Cutting down the tall poopies was evident in the past especially in sporting situations, and military circumstances with lower ranks taking less put downs, and questioning orders, from big noting officers who acted superior for no good reason other than they were officers. The English officers in WW1 found this very difficult to handle.
I suspect the "over self promotion" aspect is less so these days especially now that Tattler type news outlets and social media in general feeds the trolls and the tendency is to "dig" or "make" up something to put the tall poppies down whether they are acting superior or not.
Yes, I've read about it. I didn't want to mention the term to avoid provoking the trolls. My experiences in the on-line and off-line woodworking communities give me the feeling that the USA is in worse shape than Australia is in that regard.
funny that.Quote:
Originally Posted by BobL
From memory it was in the 1920s that the dust problem in Broken Hill was recognised to be so bad that a vegetation / re-vegetation effort commenced aimed at reducing environmental dust. A pretty significant initiative when you realise how scarce water was in the city.
I'm pretty sure that as late as the 1970s, lead exposure in BH was still regularly monitored -- unfortunately, the techniques of the day didn't permit an isotopic analysis.
Absolutely correct...MMQuote:
Originally Posted by BobL
Isotopic techniques were developed by nuclear scientists in the 1960's that could just do this work. A Caltech scientist (Claire patterson) who was also the first scientist to use lead and U isotopes to accurately date the age of formation of the earth used these methods and developed many of his own to determine that lead in petrol was slowly poisoning us and was instrumental in push authorities in the US to remove the lead from petrol. The problem was not the isotope measurements themselves but determining the extent of contamination of samples. Lead from petrol had by then contaminated labs and lab equipment and also reagents. It took about a decade for Patterson to build a clean lab, develop the clean lab procedures and to purify the reagents so he could establish the true natural back ground using ice cores and other environmental reservoirs.Quote:
Originally Posted by ian
The rest of the world took another decade or so to catch up on these methods with scientists from all over the world undertaking sabbaticals at Caltech to learn the methods. One of my PhD supervisors started doing this sort of work from the late 70's and spent a year at Caltech in 1983. He had started a petrol archive whereby whenever he filled up his tank he also collected 50mL of petrol direct from the servo pump into specially cleaned test tubes - the archive ran from 1978 until my PhD supervisor died in in 2009. Whenever he was away I often collected petrol samples for him and sometimes did the analyses. I also developed a simpler method for extracting the lead from the petrol using small disposable plastic syringes which had to be cleaned in purified acids. We refurbished an old photo dark room into our first tiny clean lab in 1978. It was only about about 5 sqm in area so it was very cramped. I designed and built our first true clean lab in 1985. This one was ~18 sqm and we called it the Femtolab because for the first time we achieved water with 720 femtogram/g lead concentration (0.00000072 ug/g). I used the lab for meteorite residue research but others used it for lead research. In 2000 we built a 400 sqm ultra clean lab and it's still running today although no one is doing any lead work in it.
Interestingly I know someone who is a farmer and also a FIFO worker on a lead mine here in WA. He drives a water truck that helps keep dust levels down around the mine site and ore loading facility. Like all workers on the men site he has a blood lead check once a month and has always been well below the accepted level. The highest his lead blood level has been was still below the accepted level but was when he returned from extended leave during which he mainly worked on his farm. It appears that farm work put more lead into his blood than working on the lead mine does. During his time off he did spend quite a bit of time fertilising so this could have been the source. Some fertilisers which add trace metals do have slightly elevated lead levels so this is something to watch out for. Some fertilisers from third world countries can have quite high lead levels.
Very interesting paper on the history of leaded gasoline. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...bIYIy_kV-XkWrR
It demonstrates how hard it is for scientists to convince authorities about a critical issue even when overwhelming evidence is provided.Quote:
Originally Posted by rob streeper
Since that article was written in 1990, according to WikiP as of 2016 there are only 3 countries left in the world that sell leaded petrol, Yemen, Algeria and Iraq.
Thank you for posting Rob...informative read I must say.Quote:
Originally Posted by rob streeper
And after all these years,governments and corporations continue to ignore the advice of 'good' and 'credible' science in favour of their own economic agenda
Extraordinary just how deceitful these multinationals can be at times...and all because of this $...MM:)
Patterson should have apprenticed with my dad. Controlling for contaminated equipment was bread and butter for him.Quote:
Originally Posted by BobL
The lab that would have been doing the doing lead analysis in the 70s was run by the NSW Health department.
What sort of contamination?Quote:
Originally Posted by ian
usually everything that might harm or kill you -- the lab's primary role was forensic toxicology
I doubt they would have been able to help Patterson with low level lead measurements especially involving isotopes, Patterson started his lead work back in the early 50's and by the 1960's he was the world leader in this game.Quote:
Originally Posted by ian
Before Patterson developed his accurate trace lead measurements, even the best labs in the world had analytical blanks for lead measurements of the order of 1ug which is hopeless when trying to measure nano or picogram amounts. Some labs claimed less that this but Patterson was quickly able to show them they were wrong. You need to remember that during the era of leaded petrol the average unwashed human hand was covered by around 100 ug of lead on its surface. This was though of an a natural background and most labs had no idea where it came from. Washing and scrubbing with distilled water reduced that to about 10 ug with the remainder being sort of half embedded in the skin and impossible to wash out. We know this by repeated washing of graduate student hands with dilute nitric acid. Acid washed plastic gloves, plastic lab coats, snoods and overshoes became the fashion statements of day in those labs.
Patterson had to start from scratch with trace lead work. He tested every type of lab ware and material used to make labs and found PVC fume hoods and lab bench tops, and conventional lab glassware contained high levels of lead. HDPE lab ware contained less lead but its use was limited as it could not withstand heating so PTFE & FEP was used (later it was found that HDPE could withstand some washing and it was widely used) All lab ware had to be boiled for days in concentrated nitric and hydrochloric acids and stored for weeks in acidified tubs before it could be used. But before that was possible the cleaning water and commercial grade acids had to be purified because they were all contaminated. The containers to distill and hold the purified acids and lab ware had to be cleaned and the labs rebuilt to remove all PVC and metals like Zn that might contain any lead. The labs might look similar to conventional toxicology labs but when the surface was scratched they were quite different. When we built our large ultra-clean labs in 2000 the builder had consultants visit us with experience in toxicology labs and hospital theatre developments and they could not understand why we had a "no metal, no - PVC" requirements. In the end we hired our own consultant from the US who was an expert in ultra trace metal lab design and he was able to set us up to our specifications. Our benches were made of fibreglass and covered in HDPE sheet and PE film.
After a long effort Patterson got the analytical blanks down to the 50ng level and this enabled him to determine the amounts of lead prehistoric man had in his bones.
This also enabled Patterson to make an accurate measurement of lead in modern polar ice provided he used cubic metres of it but he could still not measure the lead in older ice until
he and his students pushed the analytical blanks down to ng and eventually 10's of pg levels. Even then they still had to use up many Litres of ice.
Isotopic measurements of lead added extra complexity in that in the 1960s the ionisation efficiency of lead was so poor at least 10 ug of lead was needed to see a lead signal in a mass spectrometer let alone measure its isotopic composition. It was not until the 1960's that special ionisation techniques were developed by nuclear scientists to get a signal from less than a ug. Since then special plasma mass spectrometers and ionisation enhancers are now used to measure the isotopic composition of as little as 1pg of sample
It took years of excruciating chicken and egg improvements and unheard of levels of cleaning to get to the sub pg level analytical blanks needed to measure lead in ancient polar ice.
In our lab we used the following protocol and all (apart from step 4) took place in a dedicated ultraclean 6 x 6 m lab that was 10 times cleaner than a conventional operating theatre.
1 water was conventionally and Reverse Osmosis filtered, then doubly deionised water, followed by multiple distillations in special quartz sub-boiling stills.
2 HCl was made using from electronic grade HCl gas bubbled into pure water
3 HNO3 was doubly distilled in a quartz sub-boiling still followed by double distillation using a teflon still.
4 FEP lab ware was soaked in ethanol, regular AR grade Conc HCl, Concentrated aqua regia, Conc HCl, then boiled in 5/10L quartz glass beakers containing dilute HCl and HNO3 for about a week
5 then boiled in teflon baths of pure water for a few days, and then soaked in HDPE baths in dilute HNO3 for a minimum of 6 months with the solution changed ever month.
6 we used a lot of HDPE lab ware and that was soaked for months alternately in water and dilute nitric acid.
At one stage we had something like $25k worth of lab ware just in the cleaning cycle. These days a 1m long segment of ice core can be stood upright inside a freezer cabinet with the bottom end poking through onto the top of a specially made Silicon Carbide hot plate and melted at a few mm per minute and the water drained off direct into the mass spectrometer and up to about 40 trace metals measured simultaneously in the melted water.
Over 20% of children (aged 5 years and younger),residing in the Broken Hill region have lead blood levels at 10 ug/dl or greater
Evidence based science affirms damage and toxicity to occur within the body when levels are demonstrated at 5ug/dl
And certain State health departments would conveniently argue that this is untrue.
Kids in Mt Isa have had elevated blood pb levels recorded at over 30ug/dl
As has been reported in this thread,bees have this marvellous ability to filter honey,however continue to accumulate lead in their bodies,not unlike humans.
Further studies are to be undertaken to ascertain whether or not elevated pb levels are detrimental to the well being of the bees concerned
I suspect that in time it will be found that there will be collateral damage for the poor bee!
Where do we go once this mighty planet is totally fouled with toxins and filth...Moon...Mars...Mercury???
When our alien friends ask 'what happened to you guys?'...we can say 'jobs and growth'!!!
The BIGGEST problem humanity faces now and well into the future is our insatiable need to pollute the air/water, upon which our very existence relies on!
We are creating legacies that will define the health and safety of future generations...and not for the better!
Time for 'head out of the freckle' and encourage a sustainable,healthy future for everyone on this earth...changes MUST be made soon...MM:(<strike></strike>
From the ABC landline story on Honey/Bees.
A Taste Of Landline - Series 3 Ep 13 : ABC iview
Couple of points that might be of interest.
Veroa mite free Queens are being bred on Rottnest island for the Australian and international market.
There have never been many vehicles on Rottnest so it should be relatively lead free.
Marri and Jarrah honey has been found to have 20% more abiotic properties than NZ Manuka honey.
It sells for up to $100/kg in china.
Really enjoyed watching that Bob...quite informative!
Interesting point that 2-3 times the amount of Manuka honey sold than produced across the Tasman
Highlights the importance of maintaining accountability and credibility within the industry so that folk aren't 'ripped off' so to speak
The notion of chain of custody is a good one...know exactly how,where and when it was produced along with a bill of health is a positive for consumers...a great advantage for exporters too.
Thank you for sharing...MM:2tsup:
Reminds me of estimates made of the number of "wood of the cross" relics are estimated to add up to about 100X the amount of wood in a real cross.Quote:
Originally Posted by MAPLEMAN
Chain of custody quality control is performed using trace element concentrations and selected isotopes.Quote:
Highlights the importance of maintaining accountability and credibility within the industry so that folk aren't 'ripped off' so to speak
The notion of chain of custody is a good one...know exactly how,where and when it was produced along with a bill of health is a positive for consumers...a great advantage for exporters too.
Thank you for sharing...MM:2tsup:
If the product becomes valuable enough the crooks may try to dope the good honey with small amounts of race elements and isotopes but it is really hard to pull off.
My godfather in the south West of WA was growing potatoes on land that was uncontaminated by pesticides that had been used in the past by tobacco growers in surrounding farms. When the ex-tobacco farms were used to grow potatoes, some paddocks produced spuds with too high an average pesticide content and could not be sold. My Godfather was approached several times by neighbouring farmer to purchase godfather's spuds so they could mix them in with their contaminated spuds and make a sale :oo:. Its interesting that my godfather thought "organic farming" was a crock even though he used many organic practices dating as far back as the 1940's when he and his brothers first cleared their farm.
BTW many of these ex-tobbaco paddocks are now used for grapes. I often wonder what the pesticide content of the wine is like.
Good last point there, BobL. I never knew until recently, that both DDT and Dieldrin residues were cumulative, as with Mercury.
The tobacco chemicals issue makes for sobering reading.
5.8 Agricultural chemicals, flavourings and other additives
In the 70's I worked on a tobacco farm in Mareeba NQ. Man, they loved the chemicals there!Quote:
Originally Posted by onetrack
And I remember so well, Nunzio, the farmer I worked for, had no fear of them. He'd pour that 20l container of suckering fluid, or whatever other poison, into his sprayer reservoir behind the tractor, then reach down and give it all a big swoosh with his arm, and just shake it off. Wonder what happened to him?
I suspect that the tobacco industry is missing a golden marketing opportunity:
"Only smoke healthier organically grown tobacco - guaranteed to have 30-40% less chance of giving you less varieties of cancer"
Speaking of tobacco, I've read that there are some former tobacco lands that are unusable because of the application of arsenic containing pesticides up through the mid 20th century before the advent of the chlorinated organics. I think that this is mentioned in Silent Spring.
Bendigo Bob - my workshop neighbour is a truckie, hauling trailers around for Coles and Woolies.Quote:
He'd pour that 20l container of suckering fluid, or whatever other poison, into his sprayer reservoir behind the tractor, then reach down and give it all a big swoosh with his arm, and just shake it off. Wonder what happened to him?
He's in his early 60's. He's always taking cruises and going on long jaunts, and I asked him why, chiacking him about, "having too much money".
He said, "My old man had a hardware store when I was young. One brother cut up the asbestos sheeting without any masks, another brother mixed up all the spray chemicals with his hands, saying, 'this stuff is safe as houses! - you could drink it!'. Another brother mixed all the lead-based paints! All three brothers died of various cancers in their 50's! - and the old man died young from cancer, too! I'm getting in as many holidays as I can while I still can, 'cos I reckon I'm going to go the same way!"
He's absolutely crapping himself about dying early. But the thing is, all the toxins he talks about, were well-known in the 1960's, anyway, so I think his family have been victims of their own carelessness.
Seems orchards are bad for arsenic contamination. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1551991/
Another informative read...MM:2tsup:Quote:
Originally Posted by rob streeper
More on arsenic: The history of arsenical pesticides and health risks related to the use of Agent Blue
Seems that depending on where you're talking about arsenic is more or less prevalent.
Also, an interesting but very disturbing observation. I searched PubMed and found this: Pesticide content in drinking water samples collected from orchard areas in central Poland.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17655187
When I clicked on the Full Text link I got 'page not found'. Strona nie istnieje
When I searched the archive for the volume of the journal in which above article was printed I found this: Annals of Agricultural and Environmental Medicine - Issue 1/2007 vol. 14
Attachment 429257
The paper I'm looking for isn't there and only three paper titles are listed. Note the gaps in the progression of the page numbers of the articles, starting with 45-49, then jumping to 57-61 and jumping again to 169-72. Seems there's a LOT missing. Is somebody editing the scientific record? I'll ask.
Single pass desalinator and water purifier filter made by turning waste oil into a graphene filter membrane.
https://www.sciencealert.com/graphen...kable-seawater
A young bloke I taught at uni, where he was an outstanding student, was on the invention team.
Now watch how the patent will be bought up and the stuff will be made overseas.
Very exciting stuff Bob...and home grown so to speak.A great example of science working for the betterment of human kind.Well done to the research team involved...MM:2tsup:Quote:
Originally Posted by BobL