Pharmaceutical Waste Seeping into Environment
http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/pharmaceutical-waste-seeping-into-environment-0241/
One disturbing thing that the article doesn't touch on is that over time, the presence of such chemicals in lakes, rivers, and streams selects for creatures that aren't just able to live with them, but actually come to require them in the water in which they live, either as part of their own metabolic processes, or because the creatures they feed on or otherwise depend on for survival require those chemicals. An analogy is anthropogenic -- man-caused -- fire: few places on Earth aren't regularly exposed to man-caused fire, due either to the use of fire to clear land for crops or to encourage the growth of plant-life preferred as food by game or stock animals, or due to accidentally or deliberately (arson) caused fire that recurs virtually every year. Once anthropogenic fire is introduced into a region, the wildlife comes to depend on it in various ways, and if such fire ceases to occur, lightning-caused fire, which is far rarer and less frequent, can't do the job for them that anthropogenic fire did. We and our hominid ancestors have been playing with fire for two million years or so, and life on Earth has evolved not just to be able to live with man-caused fire, but actually need it. Similarly, over time, the life of the regions of the world where chemicals such as the ones described in this article will evolve such that it comes to need those chemicals, and when, inevitably, our species ceases to be, those creatures will become extinct right along with us. We have been inadvertantly as well as deliberately terraforming -- or, more accurately, anthroforming -- our world ever since we first captured and harnessed fire, and Earthly life is not now what it would have been without us. That life needs us just to survive, weird as that may sound -- which rather thoroughly scotches the Green notion that the total elimination of humans would be the best thing that could ever happen to the Earth.
One disturbing thing that the article doesn't touch on is that over time, the presence of such chemicals in lakes, rivers, and streams selects for creatures that aren't just able to live with them, but actually come to require them in the water in which they live, either as part of their own metabolic processes, or because the creatures they feed on or otherwise depend on for survival require those chemicals. An analogy is anthropogenic -- man-caused -- fire: few places on Earth aren't regularly exposed to man-caused fire, due either to the use of fire to clear land for crops or to encourage the growth of plant-life preferred as food by game or stock animals, or due to accidentally or deliberately (arson) caused fire that recurs virtually every year. Once anthropogenic fire is introduced into a region, the wildlife comes to depend on it in various ways, and if such fire ceases to occur, lightning-caused fire, which is far rarer and less frequent, can't do the job for them that anthropogenic fire did. We and our hominid ancestors have been playing with fire for two million years or so, and life on Earth has evolved not just to be able to live with man-caused fire, but actually need it. Similarly, over time, the life of the regions of the world where chemicals such as the ones described in this article will evolve such that it comes to need those chemicals, and when, inevitably, our species ceases to be, those creatures will become extinct right along with us. We have been inadvertantly as well as deliberately terraforming -- or, more accurately, anthroforming -- our world ever since we first captured and harnessed fire, and Earthly life is not now what it would have been without us. That life needs us just to survive, weird as that may sound -- which rather thoroughly scotches the Green notion that the total elimination of humans would be the best thing that could ever happen to the Earth.