History by proxy

In a study from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we learn something simultaneously fascinating and alarming; humanity's fingerprint on the globe is so clear that it can even track our wars, famines, and plagues -- back twenty-five centuries or more.

The whole thing was done using proxy records, which involve using indirect sources of evidence about the past to infer what conditions were like.  A commonly-employed one is using the constituents of air bubbles in amber and ice to make inferences about the global average air temperature at the time -- a technique that shows good agreement with the measurements of the same variable using other methods.

Here, in a team effort from the Desert Research Institute, the University of Oxford, the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, the University of Copenhagen, the University of Rochester, and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, researchers studied ice cores from thirteen different locations in the polar northern hemisphere, and found that the levels of one contaminant in the ice -- lead -- was enough to parallel all of the major plagues and wars that occurred in Europe and northern Asia back to 800 B.C.E.

What they found is that lead concentrations in the ice rose when things were quiet and prosperous, probably due to an expansion of smelting operations for items like lead seams for stained-glass windows and impurities in silver ore processing.  If the signature of wars was clear, the signature from plagues was blatantly obvious; the years following the Plague of Justinian (541-542 C.E.) and the two spikes of the Black Death (1349-1352 and 1620-1666 C.E.) were two of the lowest points on the graph.

"Sustained increases in lead pollution during the Early and High Middle Ages (about 800 to 1300 C.E.), for example, indicate widespread economic growth, particularly in central Europe as new mining areas were discovered in places like the German Harz and Erzgebirge Mountains," said study lead author Joseph McConnell of the Desert Research Institute.  "Lead pollution in the ice core records declined during the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period (about 1300 and 1680 C.E.) when plague devastated those regions, however, indicating that economic activity stalled."

Silver smelting plant in Katowice, Poland, ca. 1910 [Image is in the Public Domain]

The authors write:

Lead pollution in Arctic ice reflects midlatitude emissions from ancient lead–silver mining and smelting.  The few reported measurements have been extrapolated to infer the performance of ancient economies, including comparisons of economic productivity and growth during the Roman Republican and Imperial periods.  These studies were based on sparse sampling and inaccurate dating, limiting understanding of trends and specific linkages.  Here we show, using a precisely dated record of estimated lead emissions between 1100 B.C.E. and 800 C.E. derived from subannually resolved measurements in Greenland ice and detailed atmospheric transport modeling, that annual European lead emissions closely varied with historical events, including imperial expansion, wars, and major plagues.  Emissions rose coeval with Phoenician expansion, accelerated during expanded Carthaginian and Roman mining primarily in the Iberian Peninsula, and reached a maximum under the Roman Empire.  Emissions fluctuated synchronously with wars and political instability particularly during the Roman Republic, and plunged coincident with two major plagues in the second and third centuries, remaining low for >500 years.  Bullion in silver coinage declined in parallel, reflecting the importance of lead–silver mining in ancient economies.  Our results indicate sustained economic growth during the first two centuries of the Roman Empire, terminated by the second-century Antonine plague.

Of course, there's nowhere in the ice cores that has as high a level of lead contamination as recently-deposited ice does.  "We found an overall 250 to 300-fold increase in Arctic lead pollution from the start of the Middle Ages in 500 C.E. to 1970s," said Nathan Chellman, a doctoral student at the Desert Research Institute, and co-author on the study.  "Since the passage of pollution abatement policies, including the 1970 Clean Air Act in the United States, lead pollution in Arctic ice has declined more than 80 percent.  Still, lead levels are about 60 times higher today than they were at the beginning of the Middle Ages."

As an aside, the Trump administration v. 2.0 has already promised to drastically roll back regulations requiring industry to conform to reasonable pollution standards, including allowable levels of air pollution.  So look for the contaminants in ice -- and in your lungs -- to spiral upward once again.

But hey, if the price of eggs goes down, then fuck the environment, amirite?  

Of course I'm right.  Nothing to worry about.  MAGA FTW!

Ahem.  Back to reality.

As I've pointed out (repeatedly), what we are doing does have a measurable, quantifiable effect on the environment, and studies like McConnell et al. should be a significant wake-up call.  And as I've also pointed out, it probably won't.  It's all too easy for people to say, "Meh, what do I care about a little lead in Arctic ice?  So it bothers a few seals and polar bears.  Too bad for them."  And continue with our throw-away, gas-guzzling, conspicuous-consumption lifestyles.

It's cold comfort knowing that when the aliens come here in a thousand years to find out why the Earth is barren, they'll be able to figure it out by looking at the traces we left behind in the ice, soils, rocks, and air.

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History by proxy

In a new study from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we learn something simultaneously fascinating and a little alarming; humanity's fingerprint on the globe is so clear that it can even track our wars, famines, and plagues -- back twenty-five centuries or more.

The whole thing was done using proxy records, which involve using indirect sources of evidence about the past to infer what conditions were like.  A commonly-used one is using the constituents of air bubbles in amber and ice to make inferences about the global average air temperature at the time -- a technique that shows good agreement with the measurements of the same variable using other methods.

Here, in a team effort from the Desert Research Institute, the University of Oxford, the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, the University of Copenhagen, the University of Rochester, and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, researchers studied ice cores from thirteen different locations in the polar northern hemisphere, and found that the levels of one contaminant in the ice -- lead -- was enough to parallel all of the major plagues and wars that occurred in Europe and northern Asia back to 800 B.C. E.

What they found is that lead concentrations in the ice rose when things were quiet and prosperous, probably due to an expansion of smelting operations for items like lead seams for stained-glass windows and impurities in silver ore processing.  The signature of wars was clear, but the signature from plagues was blatantly obvious; the years following the Plague of Justinian (541-542 C.E.) and the two spikes of the Black Death (1349-1352 and 1620-1666 C.E.) were two of the lowest points on the graph.

"Sustained increases in lead pollution during the Early and High Middle Ages (about 800 to 1300 CE), for example, indicate widespread economic growth, particularly in central Europe as new mining areas were discovered in places like the German Harz and Erzgebirge Mountains," said study lead author Joseph McConnell of the Desert Research Institute.  "Lead pollution in the ice core records declined during the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period (about 1300 and 1680 C.E.) when plague devastated those regions, however, indicating that economic activity stalled."

Silver smelting plant in Katowice, Poland, ca. 1910 [Image is in the Public Domain]

The authors write:

Lead pollution in Arctic ice reflects midlatitude emissions from ancient lead–silver mining and smelting.  The few reported measurements have been extrapolated to infer the performance of ancient economies, including comparisons of economic productivity and growth during the Roman Republican and Imperial periods.  These studies were based on sparse sampling and inaccurate dating, limiting understanding of trends and specific linkages.  Here we show, using a precisely dated record of estimated lead emissions between 1100 BCE and 800 CE derived from subannually resolved measurements in Greenland ice and detailed atmospheric transport modeling, that annual European lead emissions closely varied with historical events, including imperial expansion, wars, and major plagues.  Emissions rose coeval with Phoenician expansion, accelerated during expanded Carthaginian and Roman mining primarily in the Iberian Peninsula, and reached a maximum under the Roman Empire.  Emissions fluctuated synchronously with wars and political instability particularly during the Roman Republic, and plunged coincident with two major plagues in the second and third centuries, remaining low for >500 years.  Bullion in silver coinage declined in parallel, reflecting the importance of lead–silver mining in ancient economies.  Our results indicate sustained economic growth during the first two centuries of the Roman Empire, terminated by the second-century Antonine plague.

Of course, there's nowhere in the ice cores that has as high a level of lead contamination as recently-deposited ice does.  "We found an overall 250 to 300-fold increase in Arctic lead pollution from the start of the Middle Ages in 500 CE to 1970s," said Nathan Chellman, a doctoral student at the Desert Research Institute, and co-author on the study.  "Since the passage of pollution abatement policies, including the 1970 Clean Air Act in the United States, lead pollution in Arctic ice has declined more than 80 percent.  Still, lead levels are about 60 times higher today than they were at the beginning of the Middle Ages."

As an aside, the Trump administration has steadily rolled back regulations requiring industry to conform to reasonable pollution standards, including allowable levels of air pollution.  So look for the contaminants in ice -- and in your lungs -- to spiral upward once again.

But hey, it means the economy's good, so nothing to worry about, right?

Of course right.

So as I've pointed out (repeatedly), what we are doing does have a measurable, quantifiable effect on the environment, and studies like McConnell et al. should be a significant wake-up call.  And as I've also pointed out, it probably won't.  It's all too easy for people to say, "Meh, what do I care about a little lead in Arctic ice?  So it bothers a few seals and polar bears.  Too bad for them."  And continue with our throw-away, gas-guzzling, conspicuous-consumption lifestyles.

It's cold comfort knowing that when the aliens come here in a thousand years to find out why the Earth is barren, they'll be able to figure it out by looking at the traces we left behind in the ice, soils, rocks, and air.

**************************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is pure fun for anyone who (like me) appreciates both plants and an occasional nice cocktail -- The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart.  Most of the things we drink (both alcohol-containing and not) come from plants, and Stewart takes a look at some of the plants that have provided us with bar staples -- from the obvious, like grapes (wine), barley (beer), and agave (tequila), to the obscure, like gentian (angostura bitters) and hyssop (Bénédictine).

It's not a scientific tome, more a bit of light reading for anyone who wants to know more about what they're imbibing.  So learn a little about what's behind the bar -- and along the way, a little history and botany as well.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

All I need is the air that I breathe

The smog in Beijing, China is legendary.  People wear filter masks to go to the grocery store; if you work outside, you have to wear breathing protection on the worst days or you're likely to end up with bronchitis or worse.  The culprit is not only automobile exhaust, but the thousands of unfiltered coal-burning stoves that many use to heat their houses.

All the way back in 1993, studies demonstrated the toll on human health.  Xiping Xu (of the Harvard School of Public Health) et al. published "Air Pollution and Daily Mortality in Residential Areas of Beijing" in The Archives of Environmental Health, and had the following to say:

The relationship between air pollution and daily mortality in 1989 was examined in two residential areas in Beijing, China.  Very high concentrations of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and total suspended particulates (TSPs) were observed in these areas...  A highly significant association was found between ln(SO2) and daily mortality.  The risk of total mortality was estimated to increase by 11% (95% confidence interval [95% CI] = 5%–16%) with each doubling in SO2 concentration...  When mortality was analyzed separately by cause, the association with a doubling in SO2 was significant for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (29%), pulmonary heart disease (19%), and cardiovascular disease (11%), and marginally significant for the other nonmalignant causes (8%), but not statistically significant for cancer (2%).

In the intervening 24 years, the problem has only gotten worse.  In 2015, Robert A. Rohde and Richard A. Miller of the University of California-Berkeley published a study called "Air Pollution in China: Mapping of Concentration and Sources" showing evidence that the excess mortality in China due to air pollution amounts to 1.6 million deaths a year -- 4,400 a day.

Air pollution, say Rohde and Miller, is a major contributor to 17% of all the deaths in China.

Beijing is hardly the only place this is a problem.  Mexico City's population, topography, and lax pollution standards have given it some of the worst air in the world.  A study by Brent Duke of Stanford University found that a third of the city's population suffers from some kind of respiratory ailment directly attributable to pollution exposure.  On the worst days, simply breathing the air is the health equivalent of smoking forty cigarettes a day.

The reason all of this comes up is that there is a new insane science-denying idea floating around in the Trump administration; that air pollution has no ill effect on health.  And one of the prime movers of this claim is Steve Milloy -- a member of Trump's transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency.

"My particular interest is air pollution," Milloy said.  "[Scientists studying the health effects of air quality] validate and rubber-stamp the EPA’s conclusion that air pollution kills people.  EPA scientists are paying for the science it wants."

In fact, Milloy calls into question not only the health effects of breathing polluted air, but the health effects of smoking.  In a piece called "How Stupid is Air Pollution 'Science'?" he wrote for Breitbart in January, Milloy writes:

In breathing fresh air, the typical adult inhales about 1 microgram of PM2.5 [microscopic particulates] every 6 minutes. 

But a smoker will inhale somewhere between 10,000 to 40,000 micrograms of PM2.5 from one cigarette… that is, in that same 6-minute period. So in the same brief time period, a smoker will inhale 10,000 to 40,000 times more PM2.5. 

Somehow though, despite the much greater inhalation of the supposedly deadly PM2.5, only 2,000 more smokers die annually from PM2.5-related heart-lung causes that non-smokers — according to air pollution “science” anyway.

Which should win some kind of award for pretzel logic.

Of course, to win that award he'd be competing against himself, because he's also responsible for something he has titled, with no apparent sense of irony, a "Fact Sheet" on air pollution that runs counter to every legitimate study on the topic.  This "Fact Sheet" is so full of straw men, cherry-picked data, and outright lies (such as the statement that no study has ever demonstrated that long-term exposure to fine particulates causes increased risk of mortality) that you'd think that even a quick Google search for peer-reviewed studies on the subject would be sufficient to dismiss it.

But no.  In fact, if you do a Google search for "PM2.5 science" what actually heads the list is Milloy's "Fact Sheet."

So you can't simply dismiss this as the crackpot ideas of a few cranks.  These people have clout, an audience, and (worst of all) the ear of the president.  They are deeply in the pockets of corporate interests, and are one by one assuming leadership positions in the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior.

What we are heading toward is the dismantling of all of the hard-won pollution standards that have, in the last few decades, improved the air in places that used to be nearly unlivable -- like Los Angeles and Pittsburgh.

It's not that we've solved the air pollution problem here in the United States.  Los Angeles, Denver, Houston, and Chicago, to name four, still have serious issues with smog, largely due not only to population size but to topography and prevailing weather conditions.  But at least over the past four decades, since the passage of the Clean Air Act, we've been heading in the right direction.

If Milloy and his cronies have their way, we'll be doing a complete about-face.

My own solution to this would be to send Milloy to Beijing during a bad smog event and lock him outdoors for a few days.  Failing that, the only answer is that we need to keep close watch on this administration's likely move toward ripping up the standards for air and water pollution, based on the claim that they're "bad for business."  Call your representatives, and let them know that they can't get away with this.

The air you breathe and the water you drink depends on it.