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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/25/how-birds-of-prey-are-exposing-a-toxic-time-bomb>
"Rui Lourenço first started collecting eagle-owl feathers because they were
beautiful. Below the birds’ cliff-side nests in rural Portugal, he would find
their shed feathers and bring them back to his ecology lab at the University of
Évora. “It was just the typical curiosity of a naturalist,” he says.
“Especially the flight feathers, they’re large, they’re soft, they have really
interesting patterns.”
One day, a colleague asked if she could check them for toxic chemicals. As top
predators, raptors’ concentration of chemicals is particularly high due to a
phenomenon called biomagnification in which concentrations increase as you go
up the food chain. This means that monitoring them can help reveal what
substances are polluting the natural world. Lourenço now regularly sends
feathers for analysis. “They work as an alert system not only for predators,
but for the environment and humans,” he says.
And we need to be alerted. This year, a team of scientists warned that we had
probably breached the planetary boundary for how much chemical pollution the
Earth can handle and still remain a suitable home for human beings. Since the
release of new chemicals now far outstrips our ability to test and regulate
them, they argue, the situation is out of control.
Then, last month a paper showed that just one class of chemicals – per- and
polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), also known as “forever chemicals” because
they do not break down in the environment – is now ubiquitous in Earth’s
rainwater at concentrations above the safe drinking limit. “At the UN
environment programme, they talk now consistently about the triple crisis:
climate, biodiversity and pollution,” says Linn Persson from the Swedish
Society for Nature Conservation, who co-authored the planetary boundary
warning."
Via Frederick Wilson II.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
