They used to fluff up hats with Mercury nitrate, until the hat makers went mad! They used to put arsenic into wallpaper before they found a safer green dye and they used to build homes in New Zealand with asbestos cladding for better home insulation – warmer in winter, cooler in summer.
They used to put lead in petrol, and in paint, too. Aluminium pots and pans were common in Kiwi kitchens – in fact, I was going to buy a bread maker until I found the ingratiate cooking tray was aluminium – and they used to mix mercury (it’s poisonous) into teeth fillings because that was the only thing they had at the time.
It’s said that native American Indians used to smoke for thousands of years and never suffered from lung cancer, perhaps this means it is just manufactured cigarettes that does the harm.
Plastic packaging is everywhere but now we are told microplastics are turning up in sea salt and many other items including human bodies.
Some are even saying with all the plastics going into our oceans, credit card size pieces of plastics are being found entering bodies from sea salt. Can this be true?
Scientists are talking about radio frequency toxicity and the possibility of health issues arising from having cell phones “glued” to our ears but who really knows?
People say it’s all about a changing, world. The big question is, can we call this progress and how much harm has missed you and I? If this is the trend history continues to record, what are we doing about it?
E. Richards, Botany
