Whaaattt?

The smog was visible. You knew it was killing you. These toxic gases are invisible. Everything looks fine and dandy. I remember the days when you couldn’t see what number a bus was until it was at the bus stop, so dense was the smog.

 

Armaments are pretty toxic too - directly killing thousands, decimating wildlife and any natural spaces, polluting the atmosphere,causing famine and damaging/wiping out infrastructure all at the same time.
Presumably the powers that be find it easier to blame wood burners and dental fillings. Surprise, surprise

 

I just think that believing you can keep increasing population and have no impact on the planet is stupidity, OK so there are ways of decreasing the impact but that will always be out weighed by the increase IMO.

I'm not going to ruin what's left of my life because whatever I do will not solve anything.

If that is selfish then so be it, but nobody has ever bothered in the past, they have always lived for today.
Maybe that's where its all going wrong, everyone is being depressed, no wonder they keep going on about mental health.

 

As I've said before things are more worrying now because we have so much more information about what is happening locally, nationally and globally. Some people will go about their business as usual whilst others will incline towards paranoia.

The obvious, sensible, middle path is to do what we can as individuals and households to make sure we are not knowingly doing unnecessary harm so, for example, we reduce energy consumption if possible, reduce waste and recycle as much as possible for our own budgets and for the greater good. We reduce the use of unnecessary minerals and chemicals for our own health as well as the greater environmental impact on flora, fauna, soil and water quality and thus the qulaity of our own food and the wild food chain.

Governments can and should organise and legislate for the big projects but we, as individuals, families and communities can do a lot on our initiative.

 

A monthly newsletter from one of our gardening gurus included this little bit of information with Remembrance Day oin mind. A nice bit to read on a frosty morning.

"When Canadian John McCrae penned the poem In Flanders Fields in 1917 he was exposed to an abundance of Flanders poppies in bloom quite literally “among the crosses, row on row”.

If you were to visit Flanders in Belgium today, or next spring during poppy time, you see precious few poppies in bloom, other than those cultivated by Belgians.

So, what happened to the fields of poppies that Lieutenant-Colonel McCrae saw that April?

Answer: the seeds lie dormant under the soil.

If poppies do not bloom naturally now, why did they bloom during the first world war?

The seeds were generations old, lay dormant under the soil at that time and with the churning of the land through artillery fire and traffic, the disturbance brought them to the surface where they germinated and bloomed, many, it is thought, after generations of dormancy.

The Flanders poppy is a fussy plant. It grows in open soil and requires lots of sun. The plants die with frost, but the seeds persist in the soil until ideal growing conditions come round once more.

We pray that the reason for the next generation of natural Flanders poppy regeneration is for a cause supporting peace."

 

It depends on how the fields are cultivated @CanadianLori. There was always a good show of them in a group of fields between the local town and our house in Belgium. They belonged to the local university and were cultivated without chemicals and they studied the flora and fauna, especially insects in amongst the old varieties of wheat and barley.

 

Yes, when we took ownership of this house the garden had not been tended in any way for a long time. It was a field, really. The first year that we rotovated it and pulled out loads of perennial weeds and couch grass it looked terrible. The next year it was a mass of Flanders field poppies. We get the odd one now if we do a bit of deep digging.

 

Some seeds only germinate when exposed to light, others only grow in disturbed soil.
Poppies like both, so surface scattering of poppy seed is better than burying them.

 

I’ve got a mouthful of amalgam fillings which I hope will see me out! Recent breakages have been replaced with ‘white’ fillings, just coming in when I was a student over 50 years ago. The good thing about the amalgamation fillings is that they are safe and effective for the recipient, and can last for years, although not particularly pretty. The various white fillings are all types of ‘plastic’ and the long term effects of leaching into the mouth are not yet well known - although the glass ionomer ones which stick well, do leach fluoride into the attached tooth, and can prevent further decay.
The regulations around the handling of the mercury ingredient have tightened considerably over the years, from mixing the amalgam in a pestle and mortar, to all the ingredients sealed together in a capsule so no exposure to the mercury. Plus scavenging equipment in the waste disposal and the spittoon. Best advice is not to be tempted to have old but functional amalgam fillings drilled out unless necessary, the fad for taking out perfectly good silver fillings to replace them with white ones did more harm than good.
Did not know about the crematorium problem! Maybe the amalgam filled teeth do need to be removed beforehand, possible job for retired dentists, but I wouldn’t fancy that at all!

 

They take out pace makers before cremation, I believe. And maybe hip and knee replacements?

 

Yes pace makers are removed as they don't want the batteries exploding. Hip and knee replacements are not removed as, if done properly, they should stick like "a very sticky thing" to a blanket. In the case of my mother the undertaker took the hip joints out afterwards and my brother and I have one each.

 

Funnily enough @regates, I was at the dentist last week as I suddenly developed a dent / dip in one of my fillings. It felt like a step down had occurred. When the dentist saw it he said, my goodness, you’ve snapped / cracked off the whole filling in half and one half of it has slipped down between your teeth! Mine is an amalgam one, so, unfortunately, they don’t really last forever. Soz!

 

I was growing up in the drill and fill era of dentistry so ended up with a mouthful of zinc amalgam fillings, most of which lasted into my 40s when I had to go private to get any dental treatment at all; at this point they were all taken out and replaced with modern materials and a number of crowns and caps.
I remember the original dentist with his frequent calls to his nurse of "Evie I'm going to need x lots of amalgam" followed by the rumble of the mixer.
He had hairy arms, played squash with other dentists, drove a sports car, yachted, skied and took family holidays in the Caribbean in the winter, just like all the other local NHS dentists in the area. No one else in town flew anywhere for a holiday.
In later years I did wonder what all the amalgam had done for Evie's health.
One colleague did tell me that her father had to retire as a dentist due to mercury poisoning.

 

I am not sure whether you mean you have them installed or not?

 

Either way, quite a souvenir! I made do with a pair of spectacles.