Thus, what might initially appear to be a purely scientific issue actually has much more far-reaching repercussions. “Sustaining the human elementome will be more and more complicated and risky; it will need to be done in terms of environmental justice, and of course, with a more rational use of the Earth’s limited resources,” sums up Jaume Terradas, founder of CREAF, honorary professor at the UAB and one of the article’s three authors.
Precisely because metals ‘n’ all are not biological things, merely extracted from rocks, therefore we need global and socialist planning of them all. That is – really – what they’re saying.
Josep Peñuelas, CREAF and CSIC researcher and the other co-author of the study. “In that scenario, it is possible that we will have used up all our reserves of some of those elements (gold and antimony) by 2050, and of others (molybdenum and zinc) within a hundred years.”
They’re also grossly ill-informed of course.
“the human elementome”? Oh god, kill me now!
Carbon, calcium, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, silicon, sulfur, magnesium and potassium are the building blocks of almost all life on our planet (tree trunks, leaves, hairs, teeth, etc).
Interesting. Are their actually any silicon compounds required in our bodies?. I believe there’s some sea life use one for skeletal material. And seems strange to leave iron out of that list, since we’d be somewhat anaemic without it.
By Ricardo Murphalban.
@BiS: The webelements site says silicon is 260 ppm in humans (about 20 grams in the average human).
“Silicon is probably essential in higher plants and perhaps to mammals. Diatoms, some protozoa, some sponges, and some plants use silicon dioxide (SiO2) as a structural material. Silicon is known to be required by chicks and rats for growth and skeletal development.”
Steve nails it
Sadly the willingness to crack down hard on Left wing academia (Where almost all this batshit nonsense arises) is weak to non-existent. Meeting up with an old Cambridge contemporary from the 90s he made the quite valid point that ‘who is there’ spearheading any kind of fightback against this rubbish? If we’re relying on the likes of Sunak, Gove and Hunt to do anything about it we’re likely to be waiting a while.
Ignorant drivel.
Chlorine? Our body fluids are saline.
Sodium? saline, again.
Fluorine? Teeth…..
Iodine? Thyroids.
Selenium? Copper (seafood)….and many more.
see “Trace Elements in Man and Animals” ISBN 3-89485-999-7
We actually use most of the periodic table that isn’t radioactive ( and some that are..), life in general near everything from it.
Thing is, most of it is used only in trace amounts, usually as an inhibitor/blocker, sometimes for a very specific trick as catalyst, tightly tied to a protein to make it stay put.
Next to impossible to quantify, amounts for most of them in our bodies must be expressed in nanomoles or even smaller. We know of the elements because we figured out the specific enzymes, not because of detectable bulk amounts.
For instance, most (human) cells use lead somewhere. It’s estimated that a single cell needs something like 10-15 lead atoms to keep things going.
For an estimated adult body of 37^12 cells that amounts to a total of (taking 15) 55^13 lead atoms = just under 4 milligrams of lead.
We generally contain more lead, but that’s not used, but stashed safely away in our fatty tissue, before bing bound to a protein and evacutated through the kidneys.
And Lead is one of the more abundant trace elements. Along with arsenic, antimoni, chromium, mercury, and germanium. They can actually be isolated from human ashes using standard (al)chemical techniques.
Which is why graveyards/ash fields have typical (often “rare”) plant life: metal poisoning of the soil.
That taboo about not eating anything from a graveyard has a solid reason…
But the whole thing about the “elementome” and life possibly running out is crackers.
Because we literally pick up most of our trace elements from the dust in the air. To the point where we have mechanisms to actually stop us doing so/toss stuff out if needed, because the dust in the air itself already contains too much of it for daily use.
Unless all erosion stops, and the wind stops blowing, there’s no way in all seven hells we are ever going to run out.
“honorary professor at the UAB”
That’s Birmingham uni … but not that one.
“Thus, what might initially appear to be a purely scientific issue actually has much more far-reaching repercussions. “Sustaining the human elementome will be more and more complicated and risky; it will need to be done in terms of environmental justice, and of course, with a more rational use of the Earth’s limited resources,” sums up Jaume Terradas, founder of CREAF, honorary professor at the UAB and one of the article’s three authors.”
Does this actually have any discernable meaning?