The heat vaporises the mercury and the vapour exits the crematorium chimney, and then contaminates the rainfall, which eventually ends up in the sea.
Yes. A bit more from yesterday’s Guardian article is here. The bit below the red line agrees. There is more of the article online for the really curious/worried.
So really it's building up in the environment in all things not just fish, aways more behind the headlines. I only have old mercury fillings most I've had in the last few years have been the stuff they set with a uv light. But they don't seem to last like the old ones did.
Apparently living within half a mile of a crematorium is not good for your health, especially if you are downwind.
Industrial incinerators have particle traps and scrubbers to reduce mercury, other toxic materials and acid emissions.
I suppose the importance of the fish to human readers, as opposed to the rest of the food chain mentioned in the article, is that people eat fish but not otters and buzzards. Hence the mention of the fish as being toxic to us, but how many readers care whether they are toxic to other animals.
Like a lot of these things mercury is concentrated by the food chain ending up in the apex predators and carrion eaters so Polar bears, vultures, Orca etc all come off badly. Reduced lifespan and poor reproductive success for instance.
What about all the nasty chemical/gases that have to be vented into the air, 1 which was used in world war 1 which is still used today to kill bugs, some ship loads of grain are treated then when it done the cargo has to be vented for unloading so the gases then go into the air
Pleased to hear it as I live very close to one! Maybe teeth should be removed before cremation. It wouldn't take long.
They used to remove gold teeth before cremation. I work near a crematorium and I've just been googling - it has to pay a large fee every year because it doesn't meet the environmental standards for cleaning up the mercury. Eek.
Wood burning stoves are a far bigger problem for human health. Supposedly there are 2500 deaths per year in the uk, attributed to them and they cost the NHS approximately 54 million per annum. This article claims each wood burner in London costs the NHS £800 in health related treatment per year. Wood burners linked to 2,500 deaths a year in the UK, analysis finds They also emit more small particle pollution than road traffic, despite there being far fewer burners than motor vehicles. It doesn't help that 9 out of 10 don't need them as a heat source. I like a fire, they are pretty in a house and I get that people want them because they are cheap (once installed) but they aren't environmentally friendly like was once claimed. Our neighbours burn any old crap they can find from old pallets (pallets can be treated with horrible things) to furniture and I'm sure there are more toxic things given off by that than fillings.
I sometimes think science is too good at detecting these small amounts of toxins. Ignorance is bliss as they say. It's not like we have an epidemic with people dropping like flies. As for smoke emissions from wood burners, what would modern people do if we still had smog from coal fires.
Phosphine is probably the commonest gas used for grain fumigation these days, very toxic, also flammable. Released into the atmosphere it rapidly breaks down. It's easy to generate from Aluminium or Magnesium phosphide, just push tablets into the grain, they react with moisture and release phosphine which sinks through the grain heap.
Just quietly die, like the people did back then. The Great Smog of 1952 is estimated to have killed 12000 people. However, there are suggestions that today's air pollution is killing as many.
