Now plants can synthesize certain vitamins and there's no doubt that citrus is high in Vitamin C, for example. But many minerals must be drawn out of the soil where something is grown. So are all <X> high in selenium? What about historically selenium-impoverished areas? What about cropland that's been depleted after decades of use? Still the same selenium in there?
I've decided that without constant analysis and assay of each and every plant, you can't really tell the composition of what we're finding in our groceries. It's the winegrower's concept of terroir, that is, the soil, the environment, the climate, all contributing to the makeup of the final product.
This line of reasoning was enough to send me to a regime of supplementation. Unfortunately it is also impossible for my HCPs to track or validate any intake, baseline, or improvements to attribute to the supplements, so I terminated them just as abruptly. But it was a good thought. I think anyone who needs a particular nutrient should supplement with it, rather than try and derive it from diet alone, in light of this.
And also we cannot get too uptight about toxins in food, because that's just a neverending bugaboo that could simply kill us from anxiety more than anything else!
Well said.
I'm anxious, rightly or wrongly, about arsenic.
Per best available science about, when presented with otherwise equal choices, I'll avoid grains from fields previously used for cotton. So California over Texas, Missouri. (Obviously, my preferences will change as (my understanding of) the best available science matures.)
To your point, I do think my mental health would improve were I blissfully ignorant.
Nevertheless, I continue to be concerned about whether I'm exposed to too higher levels of mercury. Trouble is I love eating those small cans of tuna and by my estimate I eat too many of them.
Are my levels of methyl mercury too high? All I can say is that I don't know. That I'm still compos mentis enough to write this could perhaps be a rough indicator. :-)
"“The widespread distribution of cadmium contamination comes from both natural and anthropogenic sources,”"
"“Geochemically, certain parent rock materials [substrate below the ground], such as black shales, contain high levels of cadmium, leading to elevated concentrations in the soil due to weathering.”"
"However, the study does not assign blame to either natural or human causes."
To put that into perspective, I recall seeing one estimate that put the typical levels of arsenic in a cubic meter of soil that if concentrated would kill the average human.
Now, a cubic meter of soil is a very large amount, so the effective concentration is what actually counts. How relevant to human health is this 'typical' amount/quantity? Well, I don't know as it's not my field. I'd suggest however it cannot have a big effect on human health as we've lived and evolved for hundreds of millennia with that level of arsenic in soils—that's long before anthropogenic sources would have had time to kick in.
That said, we know that in some locations natural arsenic levels are high enough to cause significant health problems, in fact sometimes concentrations are so high as to be life-threatening. Such high levels are especially dangerous when leached out of rocks and soils and they end up in water supplies (contaminated bore water being the main culprit, it's a well-known problem).
I was surprised not to see this reflected in the map
Strangely California white basmati has relatively low levels.
https://apps1.cdfa.ca.gov/FertilizerResearch/docs/Cotton_Pro...
What counts is how much winds up in humans' bodies. And halfway: how much winds up in crops grown in such areas.
There is no 1:1 relation between [concentration in the soil] and [concentration in crops grown in that soil]. Some plants are known to be strong accumulators of certain elements/compounds. And some plants could be low in X even if soil they're from is high in X.
So the only way to be sure is have crop samples chemically analyzed.
It could prove to be as easy as novel fertilizers and soil amendments.
Much like how Zeke Hausfather is researching how to leverage agriculture to accelerate carbon capture.
"What's the deal with enhanced rock weathering to store CO2?" [2025-02-07]
https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-the-deal-with-enhanced-rock
https://thebreakthrough.org/people/zeke-hausfather
Surely there's (economical) ways to neutralize toxins in place. Storing them in compounds which are no longer bio-available.
IIRC the term of art is bio-remediation.
When you look at the ice cores, the "emissions" were higher just before the last glacial maximum.
The only reason why the metals weren't there 5000 years ago was that the soils had gotten recently stripped. The whole concept was invented by insane people.
andy99•9mo ago
redczar•9mo ago
Edd314159•9mo ago
It only talks about the levels in the soil. It says nothing about what impact this has on the food we eat from that soil (in fact it explicitly states that the level in food was not measured).
It also doesn't quite agree with your use of the word "we". The article does not conclude whether the elevated levels of metals were down to natural processes or humans (e.g. it suggests that weathering could be at least a contributing factor).
I get what you're saying, if someone says something is "toxic", it means something somewhere is at a level which is dangerous in some context. But the original comment on what the article itself is saying is not wrong. There is no information on real-world implications.
redczar•9mo ago
hilbert42•9mo ago
That point is key from the perspective that natural levels of dangerous metals act as a reference for comparison.
That said, science tells us that some elements are both toxic and carcinogenic and that humans have contributed to their increased levels in the environment is not in any doubt.
The dangers heavy metals from anthropogenic sources pose to human health depends on many factors, location, concentration, dispersabity, etc.
The point the article makes about "chromium (in its highly toxic hexavalent form, often released by leather tanning and pigment industries)…" is particularly poignant for me. I recall seeing a documentary on WWI military archeology—a new factory was being built in Belgium over a WWI battlefield. When builders discovered soldiers' graves during construction work had to stop until all archeological evidence had been collected and documented.
The grave of one soldier was particularly revealing, except for his skeleton, his boots and a small purse containg a few coins nothing much else remained. What's particularly interesting and relevant to this discussion is that his leather boots were in almost perfect condition, so too was his tiny leather purse.
That these articles were still so intact after nearly 100 years buried under earth was directly because of the high levels chromium used in the tanning of the leather. The chromium was so toxic that after all that time microorganisms were still unable to attack the leather without being killed. (I found this distressing to watch because of the almost pristine condition of those leather items, especially so the purse with its tiny cache of small coins, they vividly brought home the tragedy that had befallen this poor unfortunate soldier.)
Moreover, it also brought home the fact that one didn't have to know an iota of chemistry to know hexavalent chromium is highly toxic. It was so damn obvious.
That said, it's clear from the nature and location of the chromium that it's been largely contained at its source, if it had been dispersed widely then the concentration would have fallen by a significant amount, by now the residual level would such that microorganisms would have been able to attack the leather.
We have to use forensic evidence such as this on a wide scale to ascertain the actual danger these heavy metals pose to human health.
ekianjo•9mo ago
redczar•9mo ago
quesera•9mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication
I believe this demonstrates GPs point.
redczar•9mo ago
Obviously the phrase “toxic water” means water polluted by toxins. Go be a pedant to someone else.
quesera•9mo ago
redczar•9mo ago
bluGill•9mo ago
Thus we don't even know if there is anything toxic here. At least not with the information so far. If someone can show these have toxic effect I worry but so far I'm not sure
redczar•9mo ago
bluGill•9mo ago
ziddoap•9mo ago
If it wasn't bad, it wouldn't be stated as "toxic levels".
Robotbeat•9mo ago
ecocentrik•9mo ago
If every article contained every bit of prior knowledge required to understand the article, the average article length would be 3000 pages and all articles would be prefaced with a guide to language.
xhkkffbf•9mo ago
barbazoo•9mo ago
AlexandrB•9mo ago
ekianjo•9mo ago
zdragnar•9mo ago
Alas, some people will occasionally use them indoors with poor ventilation, which is a Bad Idea.
barbazoo•9mo ago