Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Keskiviikko 24.2.2021 klo 16.55 - Mikko Nikinmaa

People throw all kinds of thrash all around the place. As a school boy I did a little survey of  trash in roadsides and swimming strands in South Wales. Already at that time the cigarette ends  were very common. And they are a major source of microplastics. With the tide they are washed to the ocean, and start their long-lasting voyage in the sea.

Similarly, people throw all the wrappings, bags and everything else out of the car windows after they have eaten in the car. The car needs to be tidy, but the roadside doesn't since it is soon out of sight. Similarly, bikes, refridgerators etc are just dumped into rivers and lakes, as they sink to the bottom and are out of sight. All kinds of trash are flowing via short pipes to the ocen as long as they are not visible. When the trash is seen, the length of pipes is increased. Different poison barrels are just sunk from boats to the bottom of lakes and seas - out of sight, out of mind.

Environmental crimes, dumping of toxic material, plastic etc, are hardly ever investigated. It is  commonly considered that environmental contamination is not a crime. This attitude has now resulted in the massive plastic waste gyres in the ocans. What has earlier been out of sight has now become visible. Further, the toxins that have been dumped all around the place, start causing effects on organisms. So, it is not out of sight, out of mind any more, since harmful effects are visible.

What should be done is to start collecting all the trash, and make environmental crimes punishable. If both of those things were done the out of sight, out of mind attitude would soon disappear. That would be important for the sake of the environment. 

Kommentoi kirjoitusta. Avainsanat: trash, plastic pollution, environmental contamination

Because variability in redox signalling is important in temperature acclimation, toxicants causing oxidative stress may affect animal life in climate change situation in unknown ways.

Maanantai 14.9.2020 klo 16.53 - Mikko Nikinmaa

One of the most important disturbances caused by toxic chemicals on animals is oxidative stress. Chemicals with no structural similarity such as metals (Cu, Fe) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) can affect reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. Redox balance plays a role in rhythmic functions, such as circadian (daily) rhythms, affects temperature acclimation and responses to low oxygen. As a consequence, many normal functions such as feeding and reproductive rhythms, activity patterns etc. can be affected by environmental disturbances. Further, the effects on normal physiological functions may occur at concentrations of chemicals, which do not appear to exert clear toxicity, but because for example feeding times are affected, subject animals to increased predation pressure or other indirect effects.

A further complicating factor is the pronounced individual variability, which normally helps populations to survive through unfavourable conditions. This can be an important component of temperature acclimation. Since ROS signalling plays a role in temperature acclimation, environmental chemicals affecting ROS level can influence the capability of animals to acclimate to new temperatures, and also affect the important component of population acclimation, individual variability.

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With the present climate change, the light-dark rhythms at a given temperature will be affected, making temperature acclimation more demanding than earlier. The level of difficulty is further increased by environmental chemicals, which affect redox balance. The complex interactions between environmental toxicants, individual variation, temperature/hypoxia acclimation and rhythms are far too poorly understood. This makes it impossible for us to predict how the occurring environmental changes affect animal populations in nature. It is possible, if not even likely, that we see disturbances in conditions that have been considered safe based on traditional toxicology

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Kommentoi kirjoitusta. Avainsanat: oxidative stress, individual variation, environmental contamination