
How the Benzene Tree Polluted the World - anarbadalov
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/benzene-tree-organic-compounds/530655/?single_page=true
======
rwmj
The pictures of the Budweiser & Spam cans at nearly 4000 and 5000 meters depth
respectively are astonishing:
[http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/explorations/ex1605/lo...](http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/explorations/ex1605/logs/apr22/welcome.html)

~~~
trhway
looking at the image, i mentally interposed the can upon detailed photo of
Saturn rings. We'll be there one day...

~~~
pavement
Thing is, none of this becomes definitively cool for at least another 100
million years after we go extinct, when the universe resumes an era of
prehistory prior to the next intelligent life form to emerging from some
primordial soup.

Worse still, if that inter-historic era never occurs due to the persistent
presence of intelligent machines.

At that point, all bets are off, as to whether even remnants of our pollution
might remain, in the face of pervasive systems engineered to keep ecosystems
free of the detritus of human civilization, and automatically recuse
themselves from pristine areas that require no further stewardship.

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refurb
Not trying to downplay the issue because their are serious implications of PCB
exposure, but the article just says "PCBs were detected" in marine life. The
real question is how much?

As a former chemist, we have a ridiculous ability to detect chemicals. It's
not unusual to have lower detection limits in the parts per trillion or lower.
For reference 1 ppt is 1 mg of chemical in 1000 metric tons of water (or a
cube of water 10 m on each edge). We can detect it, but the likelihood is that
it doesn't have an impact.

Looking at the paper quoted in the article, PCB concentration was ~100 ppb of
dry weight, which would be less looking at wet weight (the nature state of the
organisms).

~~~
Retric
I just want to say it really depends on the chemical and location in the food
chain. Something that's stable and bioaccumulates can have meaningful impact
on top preditors even with extremely low initial concentrations.

Especially if it is unusually potent. To use a famous example the LD 50 on VX
is ~7 µg/kg. Now, picture something like that that also bioaccumulates.

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philipkglass
_Industry develops and retracts chemical classes in waves without seeming to
absorb the larger lesson._

I've studied environmental and industrial chemistry and I'm not sure exactly
what larger lesson the author thinks was available for the taking but left
unabsorbed by industry. The highly halogenated structures that dominate
persistent organic pollutants (it's the multiple fluorine/chlorine/bromine
atoms that cause persistence, not the benzene ring) were largely developed in
an effort to improve human welfare. PCBs were not flammable, so safer for use
in hot transformers than earlier plain-hydrocarbon dielectric fluids.
Polybrominated diphenyl ethers show up in furniture and clothing because they
are effective flame retardants. They became ubiquitous in direct service to
human safety. DDT seemed, initially, like a miraculous savior of human health
and crops from harm by insects.

After many real-world cautionary examples, the availability of better bench
screening assays, and the development of quantitative structure-activity
relationship models, today we can have a pretty good idea of whether a
compound will be an endocrine-disrupting persistent organic pollutant _before_
it becomes a high volume industrial product. None of these lessons or tools
were available in the first half of the 20th century when these chemicals
entered the mainstream of industry. Animal tests were around, of course, but
the insidious thing about a lot of POPs is that they _don 't_ have obvious,
acute health consequences. The LD50 may be quite high. If you're just trying
to figure out "will this kill exposed workers/consumers," the assays won't
reveal that (e.g.) long term thyroid function suffers in exposed mammals, or
see endocrine effects that interfere with sexual organ development in young
animals. You don't know what you don't know.

All that said, I certainly _can and do_ criticize the modern chemical industry
for foot-dragging, delaying tactics deployed against regulating chemicals that
have demonstrated obvious ill effects in animals, or that are so structurally
similar to other POPs that they really shouldn't maintain grandfathered
approvals. It took until _last year_ for the EPA to regulate perfluorooctanoic
acid in drinking water, whose formula alone should ring chemists' alarm bells
with regard to bioaccumulation and persistence:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid)

~~~
StillBored
People go all ape s __t over the potential for radioactive waste
contamination, but I think its only a matter of time before we cover the
planet in something that really messes with higher life forms in a massively
negative way. This may have already happened, and we don 't even know it.

Its going to be a case of "hey look a new Plasticizer/dye/whatever, is awesome
lets use it in all the new $ConsumerProducts", followed by the realization
later after we have basically lets it contaminate every cubic inch of
water/soil/air that it damages some fundamental aspect of our biology and is
the cause of massive cancer rates/birth defects/IQ loss/whatever.

So, the question is, do you think our knowledge of mammal biochemistry is
sufficient to have models that can predict every form of possible damage?

Put another way, is endocrine disruption the only pathway to serious long term
biological damage?

Do we even know enough to answer those questions accurately?

~~~
mirimir
> Do we even know enough to answer those questions accurately?

No, we don't.

And that's why using persistent organics is dangerous.

------
js2
There's a lake not far from me in Raleigh, NC that I often run past. The lake
is used for recreation. It's also an EPA Superfund site because a company long
since out of business, Ward Transformers, saw fit to dispose of its polutants
right into a ditch behind the plant. The chemicals ran off into the lake and
streams for miles. All the nearby waterways warn not to eat the fish caught
therein.

At one point, a contractor hired by the company to dispose of the chemicals
was caught spraying them along rural roadsides.

[http://sph.unc.edu/superfund-pages/srpresources/ward-
transfo...](http://sph.unc.edu/superfund-pages/srpresources/ward-transformer-
superfund-site-resources/)

[https://sph.unc.edu/files/2015/08/SRP_Soil-Still-
Toxic-25-ye...](https://sph.unc.edu/files/2015/08/SRP_Soil-Still-
Toxic-25-years-later.pdf)

------
basicplus2
"How PCBs reached the Mariana is still under investigation"

Well in Western Australia PCB's by the truckload in 44 Gallon Drums were
dumped into the ocean and left to rust away off South Fremantle for many many
decades, so this does not surprise me if this was happening all over the
world.

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AlphaWeaver
It's a bit odd that they used the PCB acronym to describe these chemicals. It
leads to sentences like:

>Soon PCBs were added to paints, caulks, plastics, even floor finishes and
dish detergents.

~~~
majormajor
It's an old abbreviation in the chemical world.

For HN audience, the most recognizable older source that uses it a lot might
be Neal Stephenson's _Zodiac_ from 1988 :), but the chemicals are much older
than that.

~~~
PoachedSausage
It is well known in the high voltage world, many old (it was banned around
1985) transformers and capacitors were filled with it.

~~~
jandrese
Yep, and the disposal method for those old transformers was far too often
"throw it in the woods down the street".

Every so often the local news will do a story when someone finds another pile
of rusty and leaking transformers sitting on a lot behind a daycare or
something.

------
erentz
If stories like this interest you, I recommend the book Toms River by Dan
Fagin about a major chemical factory in Toms River, NJ.

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jackgavigan
Anyone who finds this story interesting should read _Zodiac_ by Neal
Stephenson.

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twic
It seems almost inconceivable that a long-form humanistic article like this
would omit the fact that Kekulé discovered the ring structure of benzene _in a
dream about the ouroboros_ :

[https://nevalalee.wordpress.com/2011/05/29/friedrich-
august-...](https://nevalalee.wordpress.com/2011/05/29/friedrich-august-
kekule-on-an-unusual-dream/)

Surely that's a guaranteed crowd-pleaser!

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eecc
Is it worth the hassle to disable ad-blockers?

~~~
gojomo
I didn't see the ad-blocker-blocker loading this URL in Brave. Also, often
blocking both ads & JS for a site blocks the ad-blocker-blocker.

~~~
andai
Can confirm, just disabling JS gets around almost all anti-adblock, as well as
speeding up pageload by 10-20x and removing obnoxious stuff from the page.

~~~
roywiggins
The really bad blocker blockers use noscript <meta refresh> headers, which
most JavaScript blockers don't do anything to. Weirdly, I've only ever seen
those on local newspaper websites. They just force redirect to a nastygram if
you aren't running JavaScript.

