Chapter 5 4 surface water and underground sea

Among all our natural resources, water has become extremely precious, and most of the earth's surface is covered by the boundless ocean, yet we feel lack of water in this vast ocean.It seems very contradictory. Don't you know that most of the rich sources on the earth are not suitable for agriculture, industry and human consumption due to the large amount of sea salt. So many people in the world are experiencing or will face the threat of serious shortage of fresh water.Human beings have forgotten their origins and ignored the basic needs of survival, so that water and other resources have become victims of human indifference.

The problem of water pollution caused by pesticides can be understood as part of the overall environmental pollution of human beings.Pollutants enter our water systems from many sources: radioactive waste from reactors, laboratories, and hospitals; fallout from nuclear explosions; household waste from cities and towns; and chemical waste from factories.Now, a new kind of litter has joined the ranks of pollutants: chemical sprays used on croplands, orchards, forests and fields.In this astonishing smorgasbord of pollutants, there are many chemicals that reproduce and surpass the harmful effects of radiation because of some sinister, little-understood internal interactions and toxic transformations between them. and superposition.

The problem of water purification has also been complicated since chemists started making substances that never existed in nature: the dangers to water users are increasing.Mass production of these synthetic chemical drugs as we know them began in the 1940s.This production is now increasing to the extent that large quantities of chemical pollutants are discharged into domestic rivers every day.When they are thoroughly mixed with household waste and other waste into the same water body, these chemicals are sometimes not detected at all by the analytical methods usually used in sewage purification plants.Most chemicals are very stable and cannot be broken down by normal handling.What's more, they are often not recognizable.In rivers, what is truly miraculous is the combination of various pollutants with each other to produce new substances that sanitation engineers can only disappointingly attribute to "joking".Testifying before a parliamentary committee, Professor Rufer Ellason of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology argued that it is currently impossible to predict the mixing effects of these chemicals or to identify the resulting new organics."We haven't begun to understand what those things are. What effect they have on people, we don't know," Professor Elarson said.

The use of various chemicals to control insects, rodents or weeds is now increasingly contributing to the production of these organic pollutants.Some of these are intentionally used in bodies of water to kill vegetation, insect larvae or trash fish.Some organic pollutants come from the forests, where two or three hundred acres in a state can be protected from pests by spraying them either directly in the rivers or dripping through the dense tree canopy onto the forest floor. , where they join the slow-moving seepage water and begin their long journey to the sea.Most of these pollutants are likely to be the water-soluble residues of millions of pounds of pesticides originally used to control insects and rodents, but which have left the ground and become part of the movement of the world's water bodies with the help of rainwater.

We see dramatic traces of these chemicals everywhere in our rivers and even in public water.For example, in the laboratory, a sample of drinking water taken from an orchard in Panslamaya was tested on fish. Because the water contained a lot of pesticides, all experiments were completed in just four hours. The fish are all dead.Streams that irrigate cotton fields are deadly to fish even after passing through a purification plant, and in fifteen tributaries of the Tennessee River in Alabama, water from the fields has been exposed to chlorinated hydrocarbon poisons. All the fish in the river died.Two of the tributaries are sources of water for the city.After a week of using pesticides, goldfish placed in iron cages in the lower reaches of the river were dying of suspension every day, which is enough proof that the water is still poisonous.

This pollution is invisible and undetectable in the vast majority of cases, only becoming known when hundreds of thousands of fish die; however in many more cases the pollution is not detected at all .The chemists who protect the purity of the water have not yet regularly tested for these organic pollutants and have no way to remove them.Discovered or not, pesticides do exist objectively.Pesticides, of course, along with other drugs widely used on the ground, have entered many rivers in China, almost all major river systems in China. Anyone who doubts that pesticides have caused widespread pollution of our water bodies should read a small report published in 1960 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.The service has conducted research to find out whether fish, like warm-blooded animals, store pesticides in their tissues.The first samples were retrieved from western forest areas where DDT had been extensively sprayed for spruce tree maggot control.As expected, all fish contained DDT.A really interesting discovery was made later when the investigators made a comparative survey of a remote creek about thirty miles from the nearest spraying area.This river bend is upstream from where the first samples were taken, and is separated by a high waterfall.The site is understood to have not been sprayed, however the fish still contained DDT.Did these chemicals reach distant river bends through buried water?Or did it drift through the air like dust and land on the surface of this bend in the river?In another comparative survey, DDT was still found in fish tissue in a spawning area whose water came from a deep well.Also, no medicine was sprinkled there.The only possible route of contamination appears to be related to groundwater.

In the whole problem of water pollution, nothing is more disturbing than the threat of widespread contamination of groundwater.It is impossible anywhere to add pesticides to water without compromising its purity.It is very difficult for the Creator to seal and insulate subterranean waters; and she has never done so in the distribution of the earth's water supply.The rainwater that falls on the ground continuously seeps down through the pores and cracks in the soil and rocks, getting deeper and deeper.Until at last a zone is reached where all the pores of the rock are filled with water, this zone is a dark subterranean sea starting at the foot of the mountain and sinking at the bottom of the valley.The ground water is always in motion, sometimes very slowly, no more than fifty feet a year; sometimes more rapidly, almost a tenth of a mile a day.It roams through invisible waterlines, until at last somewhere it emerges in the ground as a spring, or it may be drawn into a well.But most of the time it falls into a stream or river.With the exception of rainwater and surface runoff that falls directly into rivers, all water that now flows on the Earth's surface was at one time groundwater.So from a very real and startling point of view, the pollution of groundwater is the pollution of the world's water bodies.

Toxic chemicals pumped out of a manufacturing plant in Colorado must have flowed through dark subterranean seas to farmland miles away, where they poisoned well water, sickened people and livestock, and destroyed crops—many of the same kind The first typical event of .Briefly, it goes like this: in 1943 a chemical corps munitions plant at Fallen Mountain near Denver began producing military supplies, and the equipment of this munitions plant was leased eight years later to a private oil company to produce insecticides .Even before the process could be changed in the future, bizarre reports began to come in.Farmers a few miles from the factory began reporting undiagnosed diseases in their livestock: they complained that so many crops had been destroyed, leaves were turning yellow, plants couldn't get through, and many crops were completely dead.There are also some reports related to human diseases.

The water that irrigated these farms was drawn from very shallow wells, and when assayed (in 1959 in a study involving a number of state and federal administrations), it was found to contain chemical compounds.Chlorides, chlorates, phosphates, fluorides, and arsenic were discharged into the ponds during the operation of the Rocky Mountain military plant.Apparently, the groundwater between the military factory and the farm was polluted, and it took seven to eight years for the groundwater to travel about two miles underground with the poison to reach the nearest farm.This infiltration continued to expand, and the well further contaminated the as yet unidentified area.Investigators have nothing to do to remove the contamination or stop them moving forward.

All of this was bad enough, but what was most surprising and most meaningful of the whole affair was the discovery of weed-killing 2.4-D in ponds and some wells at military factories.Of course, its discovery is enough to explain why the crops will die after being irrigated with this kind of water.But the strange thing is that this arsenal has never produced this 2.4-D in any process. After a long and serious study, the chemists concluded that 2.4-D was synthesized spontaneously in an open pond.Without the help of human chemists, it was synthesized from other substances expelled from the arsenal under the action of air, water, and sunlight.The pond has been turned into a chemical laboratory producing a new drug that fatally damages the life of the plants it touches.

The stories of the devastation of Colorado farms and their crops are of universal importance.Could something like this be happening anywhere except in Colorado where chemical pollution leads to public water?In lakes and streams here and there, under the catalyst of air and sunlight, what other dangerous substances could be produced by chemicals marked "harmless"? Truth be told, the most astonishing aspect of chemical contamination of water is the fact that in a river, lake, or reservoir, or in a glass of water on your dining table, chemists are not responsible for thinking of Synthetic chemicals.The possibility of interactions between freely mixed chemicals caused a great uproar among U.S. Public Health Service officials, who were concerned that a relatively widespread chemical that could form The presence of toxic substances expresses fear.This situation can exist between two or more chemicals, or between a chemical and a growing amount of radioactive waste.Under the impact of ionizing rays, it is easy to change the properties of chemicals and rearrange atoms in a pathway that is not only predictable but also controllable. Of course, not only the groundwater is polluted, but also the water flowing on the surface, such as streams, rivers, and water used to irrigate farmland.The National Wildlife Refuge at Lake Teal and South Klamath Lakes in California, it seems, provides a disturbing example of this.These sanctuaries are part of the North Klamath Lakes Biological Refuge system that just straddles the Oregon border.Possibly due to the shared use of water, everything in the sanctuaries is interconnected and influenced by the fact that these sanctuaries are surrounded, like some small birds, by vast farmlands that were originally a paradise for waterfowl The swamps and water surfaces were later transformed into farmland after drains and small rivers were drained. The farmlands surrounding the biosphere are now irrigated by water from North Klamath Lake.Collected from the fields they irrigate, the water is pumped into Tire Lake and from there to South Klamath Lake.All water in wildlife refuges established in these two bodies of water therefore represents water drained from agricultural land.It is important to keep this in mind to understand what is happening. In the summer of 1960, staff of these sanctuaries picked up hundreds of dead or dying birds at Tire Lake and South Klamath Lake.Most of these are fish-eating species: herons, pelicans and gulls.After analysis, they were found to contain pesticide residues of the same kind as the poisons DDD and DDE.Fish in the lake were also found to contain pesticides, as was plankton.The manager of the reserve believes that the pesticide residues in the river water of the reserve are increasing day by day because the water flows back and forth to irrigate the heavily sprayed farmland to bring these pesticide residues into the reserve. Severely poisoned water precludes attempts to restore water quality that should have borne fruit, the sights and sounds of every hunter going to hunt ducks, every pair of flocks of waterfowl flying like floating ribbons across the night sky Everyone who loves it should be able to feel this kind of result.These special biological reserves occupy a key position in the conservation of western waterfowl.They are at the focus of a funnel-shaped thin neck where all migratory routes, such as the known Pacific Flyway, converge.When migration season comes, these biological sanctuaries receive millions of ducks and geese that fly from the bird sanctuaries of the Bering Coast east of the Hudson Bay; in autumn three quarters of all waterfowl fly east, into the countries of the Pacific Rim.In summer, the biological sanctuary provides habitat for waterfowl, especially two endangered species of bird species, the red-headed duck and the red duck.If the lakes and ponds in these protected areas are seriously polluted, the destruction of remote waterfowl will be unstoppable. Water should also be considered for joining the chain of life it supports, starting from the tiny, dust-like green cells of plankton, through tiny daphnia and into the bodies of plankton-eating fish, which feed on the plankton. It is eaten by other fish, birds, minks, and raccoons. This is an endless material cycle process from life to life.We know that minerals essential to life in water pass from one link of the food chain to another in the same way.Can we imagine that the poisons we introduce into the water will not take part in such natural cycles? The answer can be found in the amazing history of Clear Lake, California.Clearwater Lake is located in the mountains ninety miles north of Francescu Sanitarium and has always been famous for its fishing.The name Qingshui Lake does not do justice to the fact that it is quite cloudy due to the black ooze that covers the entire shallow bottom of the lake.Unfortunately for fishermen and coastal dwellers, the waters of the lake provide an ideal breeding ground for a tiny gnat.Although closely related to mosquitoes, the gnats, unlike adults, are not blood-sucking and presumably do not eat at all.But people who live in gnat-infested areas are troubled by the huge number of bugs.Efforts to control gnats have been made before.But most failed until the late 1940s, when chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticides became the new weapon.The chemical chosen for the new attack was DDD, a close relative of DDT, which was apparently less threatening to the life of the fish. The new controls introduced in 1949 were carefully planned, and few expected to have any ill effects.The lake was surveyed, its volume determined, and the insecticide used was highly olefinic in the water at a ratio of one to seventy million (1/70 x 106).The control of gnats was initially successful, but in 1954 the treatment had to be repeated, this time at a concentration ratio of 1 to 50 million (1/50X106), and the eradication of gnats was considered successful at the time. The first signs of other life being affected came in the ensuing winter months: Western grebes on the lake began to die, and more than a hundred were quickly reported dead.The western grebe at Clearwater Lake is a nesting bird and a winter visitor, attracted by the lake's abundant fish.The grebe, which has established its floating dwellings in the shallow lakes of western United States and Canada, is a bird of beautiful appearance and elegant habits.It is called "Grebe in the sky" by you because when it ripples slightly in the water and crosses the lake, its body floats low to the surface, while its white neck and black head are raised high.The newly hatched chicks, with their fawn-coloured down, are in the water within a few hours and are still riding on the backs of their parents, nestled comfortably among their parents' wing feathers. A third raid in 1957, with the gnats restored to their original numbers, resulted in the death of even more grebes.As tested in 1954, assays on dead birds failed to reveal evidence of infectious disease.But when it occurred to someone to analyze the adipose tissue of the grebe, it turned out that the bird was enriched with DDD at a level of 1600 parts per million. The maximum concentration of DDD applied to water is 0.02 parts per million (0·O2X10-6). Why can chemical drugs reach such a high level in grebes?Of course, these birds feed on fish.When fish from Clearwater Lake were also tested, a picture unfolded: the poison was ingested by the smallest creatures, concentrated, and passed on to larger predators.Pesticides were found in the tissues of plankton at concentrations of 5 parts per million (maximum concentrations up to 25 times the water body itself); fish that feed on aquatic plants contained 40 to 300 parts per million of pesticides; Carnivorous fish accumulate the largest amounts.One brown mahi had a startling concentration: 2,500 parts per million.This is a reenactment of the folklore "Jack's Cabin" story, in this sequence the large carnivore eats the small carnivore which eats the herbivore which in turn eats the plankton which in turn eats the plankton Ingested poisons in the water. Even more bizarre phenomena were discovered later.Within a short time after the last application of the chemical, no trace of DDD could be found in the water.But the poison doesn't really leave the lake, it just gets into the tissues of the creatures in the lake.Twenty-third months after the chemical was stopped, the plankton still contained DDD at a high concentration of 5.3 parts per million.During the period of nearly two years, the phytoplankton continued to bloom and wither. Although the poison no longer existed in the water, it somehow remained in the phytoplankton from generation to generation.This poison is also present in the animals in the lake.A year after the chemical was stopped, all fish, birds, and frogs were still tested for DDD.It was found that the total amount of DDD contained in the meat has exceeded the original water concentration many times.Among the living carriers were fish, grebes, and California gulls that hatched nine months after the last application of DDD, and which had accumulated concentrations in excess of 2,000 parts per million.Meanwhile, nesting grebe populations had declined from more than a thousand pairs when the insecticide was first applied to about thirty pairs by 1960.And these thirty pairs seem to be in vain to build a nest, because since the last use of DDD, no small grebe has been found on the lake. It would thus appear that the whole poisonous chain is based on very minute plants, which are always the original concentrates.Where is the end of this food chain?People who do not know the course of these events may have prepared fishing gear, caught a string of fish from the water of Qingshui Lake, and brought it home to fry for dinner. What effect will a large dose or multiple doses of DDD have on people? Although the California Department of Public Health declared the test results to be non-hazardous, in 1959 the department ordered the use of DDD in the lake ceased.In view of the scientific evidence of the enormous biological potency of this chemical, this action is a minimum safety measure. The physiological effects of DDD may be unique among insecticides in that it destroys part of the adrenal gland, destroying the hormone-secreting cells on the outer cortex near the kidneys that are known to exist.This destructive effect, known since 1948, was first believed only by experimental results on dogs, since the effect was not yet revealed in experimental animals such as monkeys, mice, or rabbits. The fact that DDD produces symptoms in dogs very similar to that of Addison's disease in humans seems informative, as recent medical research has revealed that DDD has a strong effect on the human adrenal glands. inhibition.Its cell-destroying abilities are now being used in bed to treat a rare cancer of the adrenal gland surge. The situation at Clearwater Lake raises a real question facing the public as to whether it is effective or desirable to use substances with such drastic effects on physiological processes for the control of insects, especially if such control involves direct entry of the chemical into the water body Woolen cloth?The regulation that only allows the use of low concentrations of pesticides does not make much sense, and its explosive increase in the natural biological chain of the lake is enough to explain it.Now, often, an apparently small problem is solved, and another, more difficult problem arises.This situation is many, and more and more.Qingshui Lake is such a typical example.The problem of gnats is solved, which is beneficial to those who are troubled by gnats, but the danger to all people who use water for fishing from the lake is more serious, and it is still difficult to find out the reason. It is an astonishing fact that the reckless introduction of poisons into reservoirs is becoming a very common practice.The purpose is often to enhance the recreational use of water for people, even considering that at some expense the water must be treated to make it fit for drinking purposes.Athletes in a certain area wanted to "develop" a fishery in a reservoir. They persuaded the government authorities to dump large amounts of poison in the reservoir to kill off the unsavory fish, which were then hatched and replaced by fish that suited the athlete's taste.The process has a strange, Alice-in-Wonderland quality.The reservoir was originally established as a public water source. However, the nearby towns may not have had time to discuss this plan with the athletes, so they have to drink the water containing residual poison and pay taxes to treat the water to disinfect it. , which is by no means an easy task. Now that both ground and surface waters have been contaminated with pesticides and other chemicals, there is a danger that not only poisons but also carcinogens are finding their way into public waters.Professor W. C. Hueper of the National Cancer Institute has warned that "the risk of cancer from the use of contaminated drinking water will increase dramatically for the foreseeable future." And indeed at fifty A study in the Netherlands in the early 1990s has provided evidence for the notion that polluted water poses a risk of cancer.Cities that drink from rivers have higher cancer death rates than those that use water sources that are less susceptible to pollution, such as wells.Arsenic, an environmental substance well established as a carcinogen in humans, has been implicated in two historic incidents in which drinking contaminated water caused widespread cancer.In one case the arsenic came from slag dumps from mined mines, and in another from rocks that naturally contain high levels of arsenic.The heavy use of arsenic-containing pesticides can easily make this happen again.The soil in these areas has also become toxic.Rainwater carrying a portion of the arsenic enters streams, rivers and reservoirs, as well as the boundless ocean of groundwater. Here again we are reminded that nothing exists in isolation in nature.To gain a clearer understanding of how the pollution of our world is happening, we must now look at another of Earth's basic resources—soil.