Chemical pollution is “a threat to the thriving of humans and nature of a similar order as climate change” but decades behind global heating in terms of public awareness and action, a report has warned.
The industrial economy has created more than 100 million “novel entities”, or chemicals not found in nature, with somewhere between 40,000 and 350,000 in commercial use and production, the report says. But the environmental and human health effects of this widespread contamination of the biosphere are not widely appreciated, in spite of a growing body of evidence linking chemical toxicity with effects ranging from ADHD to infertility to cancer.
“I suppose that’s the biggest surprise for some people,” Harry Macpherson, senior climate associate at Deep Science Ventures (DSV), which carried out the research, told the Guardian.
OK, everything past the invention of fire murders us in our beds which is why we all live so long now. But is this a prescient warning or a nutter?
“Unfortunately, it is a recommendation to eat more organic food, but it is more expensive in general. So at least washing fruit and vegetables before eating them, but organic if you can afford it.”
Ah, yes, a nutter. 99.9% of the pesticides in your food are produced by hte plant itself to kill the things that would eat it.
“…somewhere between 40,000 and 350,000 in commercial use and production”
That’s a hell of a range. Far too wide to be trustworthy.
I hope nobody’s told him about the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide.
So at least washing fruit and vegetables before eating them
I notice that vegetables from our garden at home come out of the ground with a bit of soil on them so look very very different from the ones in the supermarket. I can’t imagine our ancestors evolved washing fruit and vegetables to the extent we do.
The ‘Daily Mail’ had an advert masquerading as a news item today for a range of cooked meals that needed no refrigeration yet supposedly weren’t full of unnecessary chemicals. Are there people who would really believe this?
Over washing veg is a menace.
I have noticed over the years that pristine specimens we buy today go off a lot quicker than they used to.
As to toxins : I developed an intolerance to nightshade ( pots, toms, aubergines ) thanks to being poisoned by a green spud.
The vitamin C may be near the surface, but so are the poisons.
I suppose being a ‘senior climate associate’ gives him some unique insight into ‘novel entities’ in the environment. More likely it tells us where his funding comes from – our taxes via Mad Ed?
@JuliaM – August 6, 2025 at 7:37 am
Perhaps it’s been irradiated?
A major issue in drug development is your liver chewing that newly developed drug into bits before it’s had a chance to do anything.
Our bodies are very good at disposing of (or not absorbing in the first place) exogenous chemicals, novel or man-made.
*natural or man-made
This nincompoop would no doubt be amazed to discover that his body is entirely made of “chemicals”.
We’re doomed!
“99.9% of the pesticides in your food are produced by the plant itself”
Bruce Ames wrote about this decades ago e.g.:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.87.19.7777
Is this from 1968?
The West conquered pollution in the ’60s and ’70s.
When greenies and lefties witter to me about pollution I quietly mention the Aral Sea and the various nuclear cities in Siberia, gently pointing out that communist countries have been way more polluting of their environment than the capitalist West.
It doesn’t go down well.
I once used, im print, the line commies good for the environment “is an idea cured by a quick trip to where the Aral Sea isn’t” which the editor said made his tea come out his nose when he first read it.
Great minds, alike etc eetc
Fruitbat test?
The tendency to stick Chem or ultra in front of a word to make it sound scary?
See contrails, processed foods etc etc ad nauseum
“The tendency to stick Chem or ultra in front of a word to make it sound scary?”
Also “neo” as in neoliberal, neoconservative. Mind you the American neoconservatives were pretty scary in their let’s-have-a-jolly-war attitude (tense chosen because I hope they’re all dead or retired).
It has been reported that ten rivers contribute 90% of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans – six of them flow through China (four wholly, one part-China part Russia, one part China part Vietnam), two the Indian sub-continent, two in Africa.
So I am fairly sure the Grauniad is going to say this is all our fault.
Well indirectly some of it probably is, thanks to councils like Haringey shipping off the “recycling” to the Subcontinent for disposal, where no doubt most of it promptly went into one of those rivers.
“The tendency to stick Chem or ultra in front of a word to make it sound scary?”
On the border between Belgy and Clogland around Hasselt is a huge plant called, rather cleverly I thought, Chemalot.
( Bird and Fortune in one of their spoof interviews had a character who was the CEO of Tox-u-Like chemical works )
OK, everything past the invention of fire murders us in our beds
Whoa! Burning wood in the home for cooking & heating is one of the largest causes of respiratory diseases in the developing world. Don’t do you much good in the developed world either. I’ve lived in places where you burn wood because there wasn’t an alternative. But I’d never do it by choice. Even in those oh so middle class log burning stoves. If you can smell it, it’s killing you. You only have to look how filthy the rooms get.
Same with candles. Always gets me, those women who have fits of the vapours being within 20 feet of a lit cigarette having perfumed candles everywhere. That “pretty” light is white hot unburnt carbon particles soon to be clogging up your lungs
John77 @ 3.33, 50% of the plastic junk in the oceans is from fishing. 90% of the rest is from the ten rivers.
And as Norman says, a lot of it is our fault – the virtue signallers swallowed what they were fed by the eco nutters and sent their plastic for recycling*. A lot of it got sent abroad to places like China, (like the Russkies, they don’t give two hoots for the planet), who decided to chuck it in the river when it was found to be too expensive to recycle.
* And not just us. Check out the saga of the one hundred and three container loads of ‘recycling’ that the Canucks sent to the Philippines. Nappies, all sorts of toxic shit…….
In the good old days, we’d just dump all that plastic junk in the backyard incinerator. Hell of a lot less muck to recycle.
But of course the weekly burnoff is illegal these days.
I’ve always thought that landfill is an excellent thing to do with plastics. Because it’s then concentrated. New technology is always being developed; I’ve always thought the first useful thing that AI would be able to do better than humans is sort plastic waste: one of those jobs that requires constant concentration on dull subject matter, is massively parallelisable, and doesn’t produce enormously valuable output.
So at the point where recycling plastic is cheaper than making new, we know where it is and can dig it up again.