Seaweed on beaches in France produce deadly fumes
Because of farm fertilizer runoff, the seaweed in coastal waters in Brittany is growing like a monster. Scientists warn that as the seaweed rots, it forms white crust that traps hydrogen sulphide gas. When the crust breaks, it can poison people.
Alain Menesguen, director of research at the French Institute for Sea Research and Exploitation, said: “This is a very toxic gas, which smells like rotten eggs. It attacks the respiratory system and can kill a man or an animal in minutes.” Some scientists believe that a build-up of hydrogen sulphide in the atmosphere wiped out the dinosaurs 300 million years ago.Fumes from rotting seaweed on France's northern beaches could kill
the latest
latest episodes
Breaking: Frnc srrndrs.
Sorry, I had to.
Except that the dinosaurs didn't die out until 65 million years ago. Research FAIL.
Toxic killer seaweed? It's B horror that writes itself!
yep, no dinosaurs 300 million years ago. definite fail...
I love the escalation--
"Too much seaweed! Icky!"
"And it smells farty!"
"And it could kill a man!"
"Or it could lead to mass extinction!"
I suspect the next step would be to postulate the end of baryonic matter, but.
I'll cut 'em some slack on the extinction if they're talking about the Permian-Triassic knockout and rounding by fifty million years or so. But I bet it wasn't caused by seaweed...
They probably did mean the Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction, which killed well over 90 percent of all higher life on earth. That event seems to have been caused by hydrogen sulfide produced by certain microorganisms multiplying prodigiously in the oceans due to ocean acidification (I think), which in turn seems to have been caused by high CO2 levels in the atmosphere...
Incidentally, we're set to reach about the same level of atmospheric carbon by the end of the century, on our current trajectory.
Future sounding like fun yet?
@#7- And that level of atmospheric carbon was still less than half of that during the Devonian period, when forests spread across the land and fish learned to walk.
@ #7: The Devonian also saw multiple extinction events. Coincidence?
Frankly, I'm not a scientist, so there's nothing truly authoritative I can say here. Here's Wikipedia on Ocean Anoxic Events (which is what probably happened at the Permian-Triassic boundary, and several times during the Devonian): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event. Sounds fairly plausible to me.
And yes, I'm one of those bizarre people whose reaction to scientists making a statement like "We don't know absolutely for sure yet, but if Condition A persists, it *may* lead to a mass extinction" is not "Well, you gotta prove to me with absolute certainty that it will before I'll consider doing anything about it" but rather, "Wow, shit, let's make sure that Condition A does *not* persist, then!"
I guess that makes me a hysterical alarmist in some people's views. But to me, some risks are simply not worth taking.
Ponyo's mother loved her Devonian sea.
not quite the hand of Darwin, but it will do.
The toxicity of hydrogen sulfide is comparable to that of hydrogen cyanide. So no joke, it ain't something to brush off as just a stinky rotten-egg gas.
You can't smell H2S. The rotten egg smell is SO2.
How about suing the farms producing the runoff for negligence? Or are they given farming permits by the government for legal immunity from such torts?
#12: sorry, wrong. H2S is very foul-smelling, which is lucky, as it warns us long before the concentration gets toxic.
#14, felsby:
But higher concentrations will paralyse the olfactory nerve, making the smell disappear... scary, huh?
The horse was killed in few minutes!
I remember hearing how it was submitted that organic food has no health benefit. I kind of think gases strong enough to kill a horse could have deleterious effects on somebody's health.
#16: you are confusing "eating organic food" with "organic farming practices", like many other armchair-critics of that study.
Eating non-organic food does not lead to your body randomly producing H2S.
Jerril
I am absolutely not confused. As you say, eating non-organic food does not lead to random H2S formation in your body, but it may engender it downwind. Part of the problem is people distancing themselves from the environmental consequences of dietary choices. I think it's funny/savagely tragic that the organic farming practice metanalysis was trumpeted as saying "research says there's no benefit", instead of the equally likely phrasing "there's no obvious nutrient content difference, though certainly some differences were known, but we can not say the differences were beneficial. We didn't try to examine toxicity or environmental costs". I think the framework of the study was legit and likely carried out well, far as I know, it's just the interpretation that I object too. No argument with the study itself. People have obviously lived to ripe old ages on conventional agriculture, so it's clearly not inherently toxic to everyone. Meanwhile, conventional farming practices have had measurable contributions to pollution, which are again measurably deleterious to health. Organic farming can pollute as well, but does not tend to lead to eutrophication.
Why don't they harvest it and eat it instead of letting it rot into waste and poison? Sea lettuce is tasty!
I thought the French were all about sea food? Maybe they're just fans of sea meat.
I like the idea of holding someone responsible for the toxic run-off. I'd peg the chemical company before the farmer, though. I mean, it's going to rain, shit is going to flow downhill. You could do some mitigation efforts, but ultimately, the fertilizer and pesticides will find their way down the watershed. The chemical companies should be able to come up with products that don't have such deleterious effects on the environment and human health.
Passing stringent environmental legislation is critical in protecting people, water, air, soil. The other beneift is that it would spur much new interest/investment/innovation in green companies. It would be great for the economy.
Sednaboo> I guess you are a vegan or a vegetarian, right ? Yes, many of us like what you call "sea meat". Tasty animals that were used to live in sea water (ironically, if French, we say "fruits de mer"). "sea meat" is a kind of neologism for me. When I read "sea food" on a menu in UK or US, I expect animals, not sea weed. We have no tradition of eating "sea plants" (or maybe very locally, like pickled glasswort), like most western countries.
This partially answer you question: theses algae are not harvested because you have no market for it. But I guess the true reasons are because they are already heavily polluted (notably by the nitrates) and costly to collect. We are talking about pollution here, not vegetable farming.
To moderators: thank you to refuse to moderate the "french surrender" insult. It is indeed very witty and greatly contribute to the debate.
To moderators: thank you to refuse to moderate the "french surrender" insult. It is indeed very witty and greatly contribute to the debate.
Thank you for coming to BB and leaving an anonymous comment about my 'refusing' to moderate something which you didn't flag for me to look at.
Apologies, I almost never comment, so don't bother signing up. I have just noticed the small "eyes" on the right of the comments.
However, I am pretty sure that any other "bad joke" on a given group of people defined only by their origin, nationality or religion would never be accepted.
It is as clever as constantly repeating how all American are fat, bigoted and uncultured.
You know, anonymously expecting to be taken seriously after telling someone else how to do their job is a pretty bad joke.
Anonymous@22: Some of the first tax records in Iceland are for sea vegetables. In ireland, a place not known for eating fish, laverbrot is a traditional breakfast food. And if you go to the other side of Eurasia, you get all the sushi and ramen and other dishes that are the way most people in the world eat seaweed. It's not some hippie cure all.
Plus if you're concerned about pollution, (and since you brought up veganism) you'd get less of that from eating plants than animals, and the latter would have bioaccumulated many of the harmful chemicals you are concerned about.
There's very little of this toxic seaweed in the Mediterranean.... because it's too hot. So if we wait another 15 years or so the problem in Brittany will be solved by global warming ... and the poor Brits will inherit it!