{"id":61702,"date":"2022-01-30T17:43:52","date_gmt":"2022-01-30T22:43:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61702"},"modified":"2022-01-30T17:49:49","modified_gmt":"2022-01-30T22:49:49","slug":"61702","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61702","title":{"rendered":"Chemical pollution exceeds safe planetary limit: researcher Q+A on consequences for life on Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"magazine\">\n<div class=\"wrapper\"><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<div class=\"grid-twelve large-grid-eleven\">\n<div class=\"top\">\n<aside class=\"grid-two content-social-distribution\">\n<h3 class=\"print\"><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/chemical-pollution-exceeds-safe-planetary-limit-researcher-q-a-on-consequences-for-life-on-earth-175256\">Chemical pollution exceeds safe planetary limit: researcher Q+A on consequences for life on Earth<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"grid-ten large-grid-nine grid-last content-body content entry-content instapaper_body inline-promos\">\n<p><em>The production and release of plastics, pesticides, industrial compounds, antibiotics and other pollutants is now happening so fast and on such a large scale that it has exceeded the planetary boundary for chemical pollution, the safe limit for humanity, a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/10.1021\/acs.est.1c04158\">new study claims<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>We asked Patricia Villarrubia-G\u00f3mez, a PhD candidate at Stockholm University and one of the authors of the study, to explain what this means.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>What are planetary boundaries?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In 2009, an international team of researchers identified\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1063&amp;context=iss_pub\">nine planetary boundaries<\/a> that maintain the remarkably stable state Earth has remained within for 10,000 years \u2013 since the dawn of civilisation.<\/p>\n<p>These boundaries include greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, the ozone layer, an intact biosphere and freshwater. The researchers quantified the boundaries that influence Earth\u2019s stability and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.1259855\">concluded in 2015<\/a>\u00a0that human activity has breached four of them. Greenhouse gas emissions are pushing the global climate into a new, hotter state, species extinctions threaten the biosphere\u2019s integrity, the conversion of forests to farmland has degraded the quality of land and industrial and agricultural processes have radically altered natural cycles of phosphorus and nitrogen.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers lacked the data to quantify the boundary for chemical pollution, otherwise known as novel entities (essentially, any substances made by humans plus natural elements like heavy metals which human activity mobilises or transports at high volumes), until now. Our research suggests we have crossed this boundary and beyond the known safe operating space for humanity.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"align-center zoomable\">\n<div class=\"placeholder-container\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\" lazyloaded\" src=\"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/441577\/original\/file-20220119-17-dg6a45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip\" sizes=\"(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/441577\/original\/file-20220119-17-dg6a45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=567&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/441577\/original\/file-20220119-17-dg6a45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=567&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/441577\/original\/file-20220119-17-dg6a45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=567&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/441577\/original\/file-20220119-17-dg6a45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=712&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/441577\/original\/file-20220119-17-dg6a45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=712&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/441577\/original\/file-20220119-17-dg6a45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=712&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w\" alt=\"A diagram depicting how much humanity has transgressed planetary boundaries.\" data-src=\"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/441577\/original\/file-20220119-17-dg6a45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/441577\/original\/file-20220119-17-dg6a45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=567&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/441577\/original\/file-20220119-17-dg6a45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=567&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/441577\/original\/file-20220119-17-dg6a45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=567&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/441577\/original\/file-20220119-17-dg6a45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=712&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/441577\/original\/file-20220119-17-dg6a45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=712&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/441577\/original\/file-20220119-17-dg6a45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=712&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"enlarge_hint\"><\/div><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">In uncharted territory: humanity is transgressing boundaries which maintain a stable planetary state.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"attribution\"><a class=\"source\" href=\"https:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/10.1021\/acs.est.1c04158\">Stockholm Resilience Centre<\/a>,\u00a0<span class=\"license\">Author provided<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>How did you discover this?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chemical pollution exceeds safe planetary limit: researcher Q+A on consequences for life on Earth The production and release of plastics, pesticides, industrial compounds, antibiotics and other pollutants is now happening so fast and on such a large scale that it has exceeded the planetary boundary for chemical pollution, the safe limit for humanity, a\u00a0new study [&hellip;]<\/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":[16795,32588,4931,8487],"class_list":["post-61702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-chemical-pollution","tag-patricia-villarrubia-gomez","tag-planetary-boundaries","tag-the-conversation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61702","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=61702"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61704,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61702\/revisions\/61704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}