Trace amounts of any element, whether in soil, water, or air, are basically useless, because they can't be mined economically. Even rare and valuable elements l

Trace amounts of any element, whether in soil, water, or air, are basically useless, because they can't be mined economically. Even rare and valuable elements like platinum are only mined where they've been concentrated by geological processes over millions or billions of years. Sometimes you'll see bold claims about the abundance of certain elements backed by the fact that they exist in ppm or even ppb [1] concentrations in Earth's crust, conveniently ignoring the infeasibility of processing teratonnes of material (and completely destroying huge parts of Earth's surface area). [1] ppm/ppb = parts per million/billion