5 ms·

I can see land is actively used for farming, which means it's probably not contamined anymore. I never saw any of the "forbidden" signs anywhere on the other h

• ItsMe000001 8y ago
  > I can see land is actively used for farming, which means it's probably not contamined anymore. Given my own experience as someone who had a (lab test proven) chronic heavy metal poisoning and what my (university researcher) doctor told me, but also what I know from the history of lead until and even after it got banned from gasoline, your assumption that people (officials) care is probably unwarranted. What cannot be seen, and what does not have any immediately recognizable and attributable effects, but on the other hand causes large costs, is usually dismissed by most people, and pointing it out is "irrational" and "fear mongering". There are people who want to go back to Chernobyl, only recently (on HN?) there was an article about young people illegally going there, claiming there is no problem. That's individuals - the incentive is even higher for officials not impacted by any negative effects, but who are impacted when they "hinder the economy with useless regulations". > a local don't stumble upon this anymore. A local won't notice. Not even if they themselves slowly get poisoned by small trace amounts. From experience, you cannot tell the effects of low-dose chronic heavy metal poisoning from thousands of other little problems (unless you take chelators for long periods to see if they change anything; but they themselves don't do all that much since they only work in extracellular space, but much or most of the poison is stored inside cells in chronic poisoning). Eye sight suffers? RSI symptoms? Dry eyes? Occasional muscle cramps here and there? Bowel problems? Skin issues (e.g. psoriasis, etc.)? Easily stressed? Occasionally slightly aggressive for no apparent reason? It is subtle, and every single symptom can be attributed to "age", "stress", "that's normal" ("everybody has problems"). As I said, you don't get recognizably sick in any traditional sense. In addition, even if a doctor knows about the problem and would be willing to diagnose it, it actually is impossible on an individual basis since you cannot reliably measure body burden unless you cut pieces off of organs and send them to a lab. Alternatively, one can try chelation for very long periods (6-12 months at least) and see if that helps with anything. All very impractical. So, since it's impossible to reliably recognize (on an individual basis - it would require population statistics, large samples), nothing happens. See the lead discussions that came up after Flint, when it was in the news that there were a lot more places than Flint with lead problems. It's all out of the news again by now - guess what is going to happen with all those places.... I'd say nothing at all. For perspective, in the German state of Bavaria there still is an active alert for radioactive wild boar caused by Chernobyl fallout, which I would think was a lot less than what happened in the trenches of WWI (scale, yes I know, one is about radioactivity, the other one about "only" heavy metals and chemical poisons): http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/a-quarter-century-after-chernobyl-radioactive-boar-on-the-rise-in-germany-a-709345.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/a-quarter-cent...