Mercury-laden fog swirls over coastal California, scientists find

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=136056&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Mercury-laden fog swirls over coastal California, scientists find[/font]
[font size=4]Ultimately makes its way into ecosystems along shore[/font]

August 26, 2015

[font size=3]What do the roof of a building in a West Coast redwood forest, a bluff in California chaparral, and a research vessel in Monterey Bay have in common?

They're often draped in tendrils of fog. That makes them prime sites for collecting fog water samples. And there's something else that can be found at those sites: mercury, according to atmospheric chemist Peter Weiss-Penzias of the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC).

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The average monomethyl mercury concentration in the fog water samples taken in 2011 was five-fold greater than the previously reported highest monomethyl mercury levels in rain water.

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[TheProgressive]

1. Humans are destroying Earth's ability to support human and other life...

[Nictuku]

2. Does anyone know if mercury is related to breast cancer?

I ask because in Marin County, there is a very high rate of breast cancer among women, and it is on the redwood coast. Often morning fog. I used to live there, I miss it so much (but not the breast cancer statistics). Everything I've read has not come to any consensus about the cause of it, and I'm curious to know if that could possibly be related to mercury.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. Mercury: Health Effects

http://www.epa.gov/mercury/effects.htm

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Health Effects[/font]

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[font size=3]Mercury and Cancer. No human data indicate that exposure to any form of mercury causes cancer, but the human data currently available are very limited. Mercuric chloride has caused increases in several types of tumors in rats and mice, and methylmercury has caused kidney tumors in male mice. Scientists only observed these health effects at extremely high doses, above levels that produced other effects. When EPA revised its Cancer Guidelines in 2005, the Agency concluded that neither inorganic mercury nor methylmercury from environmental exposures are likely to cause cancer in humans. More technical information is available in volume V of the 1997 Mercury Study Report to Congress (PDF) (349 pp., 1.2 MB, about PDF) (see especially pages 47, 80, 107, and 161 of the file).

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[hunter]

4. That's just great.

No wonder people in my family are frequently mad as hatters.



Leaded gasoline, and coastal fish my dad caught, back when raw sewage containing industrial wastes was dumped directly into the ocean with only minimal screening (since nobody wants to see used condoms and tampons washing up on the beaches) was probably another contributing factor.

Not to say there were no genetic factors either. Most of my ancestors ended up in the American West because they were no longer welcome in Europe, and didn't want to be recognized by anyone on the more populous East Coast. My mom clearly has some kind of Berserker heritage too. Her mom was full Berserker, removed from the home she owned as a danger to herself and others. She fought off the police and paramedics for many hours, and she was naked too.

I have other ancestors who decided it would be best to skip the U.S. Civil War, walking west, living by their wits along the way.

My wife's ancestors are a similar footloose sort, as Native U.S. Americans and immigrant Catholic Irish who ended up in Mexico and Canada when politics was most against them in the U.S.A..