<
https://theconversation.com/the-hidden-sources-of-forever-chemicals-leaking-into-rivers-and-what-to-do-about-them-267465>
"As one of the birthplaces of the industrial revolution, the River Mersey in
northern England is no stranger to pollution flowing into its waters.
“It’s gone through periods of extremely bad river water quality where the river
was just raw sewage”, explains Patrick Byrne, a water scientist at Liverpool
John Moores University. “During the heyday of manufacturing and the industrial
revolution, you would’ve had a lot of toxic metals as well from different
manufacturing processes.”
Despite a perception that the water quality is better than it used to be,
Byrne’s research found that the river now has a new kind of pollution problem:
the amount of forever chemicals entering the Mersey catchment area is among one
of the highest in the world.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of human-made chemicals
used in waterproofing, food packaging and many industrial processes. They’re
known as forever chemicals because they persist and are hard to destroy. PFAS
have been found in almost every environment on the planet. They accumulate in
wildlife and humans and some have been linked to cancer.
In this episode of
The Conversation Weekly podcast, we talk to Byrne about
why rivers are the “canary in the coalmine” for wider contamination of a
landscape, and how so much PFAS continues to end up in them."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
