{"id":61559,"date":"2022-01-19T08:20:04","date_gmt":"2022-01-19T13:20:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61559"},"modified":"2022-01-19T08:20:04","modified_gmt":"2022-01-19T13:20:04","slug":"chemical-pollution-has-passed-safe-limit-for-humanity-say-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61559","title":{"rendered":"Chemical pollution has passed safe limit for humanity, say scientists"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Chemical pollution has passed safe limit for humanity, say scientists<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Study calls for cap on production and release as pollution threatens global ecosystems upon which life depends<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Firefighters<\/picture><\/div>
Firefighters take part in an emergency drill against winter chemical hazards and accidents in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.<\/span>\u00a0Photograph: Xinhua\/Rex\/Shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The cocktail of chemical pollution that pervades the planet now threatens the stability of global ecosystems upon which humanity depends, scientists have said.<\/p>\n

Plastics are of particularly high concern, they said, along with 350,000 synthetic chemicals including pesticides, industrial compounds and antibiotics. Plastic pollution is now found from the\u00a0summit of Mount Everest<\/a>\u00a0to the\u00a0deepest oceans<\/a>, and some toxic chemicals, such as PCBs, are\u00a0long-lasting and widespread<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The study concludes that chemical pollution has crossed a \u201cplanetary boundary\u201d, the point at which human-made changes to the Earth push it outside the stable environment of the last 10,000 years.<\/p>\n

Chemical pollution threatens Earth\u2019s systems by damaging the biological and physical processes that underpin all life. For example, pesticides wipe out many non-target insects, which are fundamental to all ecosystems and, therefore, to the provision of clean air, water and food.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has been a fiftyfold increase in the production of chemicals since 1950 and this is projected to triple again by 2050,\u201d said Patricia Villarrubia-G\u00f3mez, a PhD candidate and research assistant at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) who was part of the study team. \u201cThe pace that societies are producing and releasing new chemicals into the environment is not consistent with staying within a safe operating space for humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Sarah Cornell, an associate professor and principal researcher at SRC, said: \u201cFor a long time, people have known that chemical pollution is a bad thing. But they haven\u2019t been thinking about it at the global level. This work brings chemical pollution, especially plastics, into the story of how people are changing the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chemical pollution has passed safe limit for humanity, say scientists Study calls for cap on production and release as pollution threatens global ecosystems upon which life depends Firefighters take part in an emergency drill against winter chemical hazards and accidents in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.\u00a0Photograph: Xinhua\/Rex\/Shutterstock The cocktail of chemical pollution that pervades the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[16795,16591,13575,6917],"class_list":["post-61559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-chemical-pollution","tag-damian-carrington","tag-planetary-boundary","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61560,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61559\/revisions\/61560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}