poison – BioQuakes

Have you ever heard of using bottled water to shower? Sounds ridiculous right, but the people of Flint, Michigan need to do this to save their lives. The city of Flint switched their water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River in April 2014. The river was later discovered to be contaminated. Since the changeover, scientists have linked the high lead levels in children’s blood to the contaminated water. This is a serious problem.

Lead is a highly toxic substance that permanently affects humans’ brains by killing nerve cells. Not only does lead harm kids’ brain processes, it also may cause various future mental diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and Schizophrenia. Throughout U.S. history, people have been exposed to lead poisoning through basic everyday mediums, such as paint, water (from lead-contaminated water pipes), and dust. Children who eat paint chips or lick their fingers after coming in contact with products that have a lead component are poisoning themselves. The lead enters into the bloodstream and travels throughout the body, stealthily making itself at home, poisoning the body.

So how does lead poisoning work? Basically, lead disguises itself as zinc. Zinc is needed to anchor proteins that switch genes on and off. When zinc is replaced with lead, the switches cannot function properly, eventually leading to mental diseases.

Scientists have been researching the possibility that lead is transferable in DNA to offspring. This could be devastating to a population of a town like Flint, Michigan, where the mothers who have lead poisoning could pass this on to their babies. The worst part is that there is no cure for lead poisoning.

Because of the devastating effects of lead in bloodstream, governments have debated the topic of legalizing contaminated water as a bioweapon, using lead as the contaminant. Governments in the past have used poisoned water as an assassination method, proving the effectiveness of this strategy.

Preventing lead exposure and poisoning is critical for children’s health and for future generations.

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For more info on the biowarfare, click here.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arsenic_alchemical_symbol.svg

Picture this familiar scene: waking up in the middle of the night, too lazy to go to kitchen, and quenching your parched mouth with water from the bathroom sink. To people in America, this is a safe undertaking. But to people in Bangladesh, it could be deadly.

Arsenic is a naturally occurring element on Earth’s crust, which can enter drinking water from natural deposits. Its effects on the human body have been known to cause respiratory, circulatory and heart problems. Recently, however, researchers have had the chance to study itseffects on humans more closely in Bangladesh because of its unusually high percentage of arsenic in its water supply. And what researchers found was eye opening.

Researchers at the University of Chicago studied more than 11,000 Bangladesh men and women. After 6.6 years, they found that residents exposed to arsenic at 19 parts per billion or less showed signs of reduced lung function. While people who were exposed to 20 parts per billion or higher had the lung capacity similar to that of a long-term smoker.

The researchers recorded 407 deaths, 198 from circulatory diseases. 35-77 million people are exposed to arsenic in Bangladesh alone. The World Health Organization deemed the country’s arsenic contamination as “the largest mass poisoning of a population in history.”

Why should we be worried (other than the obvious ethical issues)? A group of Dartmouth researchers found that 2.3 million people in New England use wells as their main source of drinking water. This makes up approximately 40 percent of the population in Maine and New Hampshire. Although wells in the United States generally contain small amounts of arsenic, the researchers found that overtime, small doses of arsenic can lead to skin, bladder and lung cancer. So maybe next time it’s worth the trip to the kitchen.

BioQuakes

AP Biology class blog for discussing current research in Biology

Tag: poison

Lead Leads to Neurotoxitity

Largest Mass Poisoning of a Population in History

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