sarah darwins
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Just a side note to part of the above discussion, regarding PCBs. Last night I saw a rather sad piece on The One Show that featured a story about a dead killer whale, whose premature death and failure to produce a calve during the years she had been studied have been tentatively attributed to very high levels of PCBs found in her blubber.
The story was covered by the Guardian earlier this year:
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...er-whale-died-extreme-levels-toxic-pollutants
One of the scientists interviewed on the show last night urged us to treat this as a 'shot across our bows'. I have no idea how much we really know about the effects of persistent toxins on mammalian health, but it seems like something we need to learn more about. It's weird — or maybe not weird — how there seems to be a divergence in how we talk about these things with regard to other species and with regard to ourselves. We are, after all, just another mammal (I don't mean this as a comment on anything above — my position on all this is "I have no sweet clue" ).
The story was covered by the Guardian earlier this year:
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...er-whale-died-extreme-levels-toxic-pollutants
One of the scientists interviewed on the show last night urged us to treat this as a 'shot across our bows'. I have no idea how much we really know about the effects of persistent toxins on mammalian health, but it seems like something we need to learn more about. It's weird — or maybe not weird — how there seems to be a divergence in how we talk about these things with regard to other species and with regard to ourselves. We are, after all, just another mammal (I don't mean this as a comment on anything above — my position on all this is "I have no sweet clue" ).