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The waiter arrived to take our orders for dessert and/or a beverage of some sort. Another person came and removed the used plates and glasses.

When the brief flurry of activity had subsided, Mary continued by saying: "Just to give you a relatively simple example of the complexity of these kinds of interaction, consider the issue of acid rain. Despite the fact that during the last thirty years regulatory steps have been taken to help bring about a fairly dramatic reduction in the amount of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides being emitted into the atmosphere, nonetheless, acid rain, rather unexpectedly, continues to persist as a problem.

"One would expect, the level of acid rain to go down when some of its primary, formative ingredients - in other words, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides - are removed from the environment. Because this has not always been the case, especially in certain environments, such as forests, a few scientists have taken a closer look at the issue.

"They have discovered that the problem of acid rain is a lot more complicated than originally was believed to be the case. Among other things, these researchers have found that the buffering role of certain chemicals, known as bases, have not been properly appreciated in connection with helping to counteract and neutralize the effects of acid rain.

"More specifically, David, as I'm sure you know, bases have a pH of more than 7, whereas acids have a pH of less than 7. In the atmosphere there are tiny amounts of minerals, like magnesium carbonate and calcium carbonate, found in atmospheric dust particles, and these minerals can serve as bases when the particulates, of which they are a part, are dissolved in water.

"If these base particulates either act directly with acidic gases such as nitrogen oxides or sulfur dioxide, or if the particulates become dissolved in atmospheric water droplets containing any of the acidic gases, then the basic and acidic materials tend to cancel each other out, resulting in a neutralization of the acid properties of the gases or water droplets.

"In addition to natural sources for airborn dust particles with basic characteristics, there are also a number of human-assisted sources of particulate production. Construction sites, mining operations, farms, cement production plants, automobile traffic on unpaved dirt or gravel roads, as well as metal processing, can all release considerable amounts of mineral-containing particulates into the air that have the potential for forming basic solutions when dissolved in water.

"When the regulations for decreases in the emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide came into effect, there were also other kinds of regulations seeking to reduce the levels of different particulates generated by various kinds of commercial activity. When particulate emissions began to decrease, along with them went their neutralizing capabilities with respect to acid rain emissions.

"This is not the end of the story, however. The relationship between bases and acids extends beyond what goes on in the atmosphere. Their dynamics carry over into, and have ramifications for, chemical processes going on in the soil.

"Base cations, or ions, are positively-charged. In the soil there are small particles of decayed organic matter and various kinds of clay which are negatively charged, and, as a result, these anions, or negatively-charged ions, are available for reacting with positively-charged ions, like basic particulates, that, previously, had been airborn but, now, have become deposited in the soil.

"In addition, many of the elements - such as sodium, calcium, potassium, and magnesium - contained in these former dust particles of the air serve as a potential source of nutrients for plant life. Thus, when dust particles containing these kinds of element descend on the soil in which plants are rooted, they act as a source of minerals for proper plant functioning and development.

"When acid rain falls and leeches downward through the soil, positively-charged hydrogen ions contained in the acidic water are capable of binding more tightly with negatively-charged ions of clay and organic matter in the soil than are positively-charged ions such as magnesium, sodium, calcium and potassium. Consequently, the cations, or positively-charged ions, in acid rain tend to replace base cations that, up to then, had been bound to the negatively-charged ions in the soil.

"These chemical replacement-reactions have a number of consequences. First of all, once the base cations have been shunted aside, they become vulnerable to being washed out of the soil and ending up in streams, rivers and lakes, and, in the process, not only depleting the soils of minerals necessary for healthy plant life, but making the soil acidic which has its own deleterious effects on plant life.

"Secondly, when acid rain soaks into the ground, sometimes it brings about the formation of aluminum ions by reacting with naturally occurring, or synthetically generated, aluminum that is in the soil. Aluminum ions are positively-charged and also tend to replace base cations, just as the positively-charged hydrogen ions of acid rain tend to replace base cations.

"Aluminum ions have toxic properties. Therefore, not only does acid rain force out useful mineral nutrients from the soil, as well as acidifies the soil, acid rain also provides a way for a toxic substance to accumulate in the soil by helping to convert aluminum molecules to an ionic form capable of entering into chemical reactions with the negatively-charged ions in the soil.

"When base cations, relative to acid rain cations, predominate in the soil, the former serve as a buffering system against the effects of the latter by helping to neutralize acidity. This neutralizing action protects the flora of forest eco-systems, as well as the fauna that depend on a healthy flora for biological success.

"When the amount of acid rain begins to overwhelm the buffering capacity of base cations, a useful form of cation exchange is replaced by a problematic form of cation exchange. At some point during this transition from the former kind of cation exchange to the latter modality, both the flora and the fauna of the forest eco-system begin to be affected adversely.

"For a long time, the standard model of cation exchange maintained that base cations in the soil were continuously replenished by means of a sort of chemical weathering process. In other words, various useful minerals, contained within the rocks in the soil, were released into an eco-system, slowly over time, through the dissolution of the rocks as a result of the effects of various naturally occurring chemical reactions involving these rocks.

"Relatively recently, however, researchers have discovered that in certain eco-systems, airborn base cations seem to serve as a more important source of some nutrient minerals than does the chemical weathering process going on in the soil. Consequently, in these kinds of eco-system, pollution regulations designed to reduce the levels of particulate emissions actually render the system more vulnerable to the effects of acid rain because a source of buffering - namely, the base cations which will arise when the minerals in the particulates go into solution - is being withdrawn from the environment due to the regulations.

"One of the morals of this story does not involve the suggestion to permit higher levels of particulate emissions to be released into the environment in order to better counteract the effects of acid rain since various kinds of particulate create their own form of health and environmental problems. Rather, scientists recommend that the levels of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides currently being pumped into the atmosphere should be reduced even further than required by present regulatory guidelines.

"If the chemical emissions that help lead to the formation of acid rain were reduced even more, then even though particulate emissions were also being reduced, nonetheless, airborn base cations still would be available in sufficient quantities to neutralize the effects of acid rain in those eco-systems which, for whatever reason, relied more on airborn dust particles to supply necessary minerals than chemical weathering in the soil. The issue becomes a matter of ensuring that the base cation exchange process in a given eco-system never becomes so fragile that its buffering capacity is overwhelmed by the cation exchange system being introduced into the eco-system by acid rain.

"Another moral of this research concerning the complex dynamics of base cations, acid rain, soil anions, and the viability of an eco-system - and the point I originally wanted to make - is the following one. Even in relatively simple cases

like acid rain, the environmental interaction of synthetic and naturally occurring chemicals can have unpredictable ramifications and properties.

"When one throws over a hundred thousand synthetic chemicals into this ecological stew, only the most asinine of people can say they know, without the benefit of extensive testing, that none, or few, of these synthetic chemicals could enter into deleterious synergistic relationships with one another and, consequently, potentially become capable of having a negative impact on various species of flora and fauna. Unfortunately, all too many individuals in the chemical industry seem to believe synthetic chemicals should enjoy the same sort of constitutional protection as human beings do and, consequently, these people appear to want to maintain that all chemicals are innocent until proven guilty.

"I would prefer the Napoleonic code of law be applied to chemicals. I believe the burden of proof should be placed on the chemicals that are suspected of wrong-doing and the task of their advocates is to prove the innocence of these substances, rather than having the burden of proof placed on the rest of society to prove the culpability of synthetic chemicals.

"Furthermore, in conjunction with the Napoleonic emphasis concerning the one on whom the burden of proof rests, I would want the more rigorous standards of criminal procedures to be applied to any investigation into the potential toxicity of chemicals, rather than the far less demanding standards of civil procedures. In other words, chemical companies should be able to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that chemicals - whether individually or in synergistic conjunction with other chemicals being released into the environment - have no deleterious consequences for the environment or human beings, rather than merely having to demonstrate, as presently is often the case, that there is a slightly greater preponderance of evidence in favor of the 'innocence' of such chemicals, as opposed to the evidence of 'guilt' concerning these chemicals."

Our waiter arrived with the after-meal orders which Mary and I had made. There was a lull in the conversation while we busied ourselves with adding our personal touches to the recently arrived food and beverages.

In between the bites and the sips, Mary continued on with giving an account of her research. "To further complicate matters," she added, "various chemical companies - both through legal lobbying efforts, as well as through other kinds of more questionable, hidden activities - have been able to bring about a narrowing of the definition of what constitutes innocence and guilt in such matters. At the present time, in many jurisdictions, commercial enterprises are required only to conduct experimental trials on three unrelated species, for three generations, to determine if a substance exhibits any carcinogenic properties or causes birth defects.

"Among other things, such testing does not address the fact that many synthetic chemicals have the capacity to mimic the activity of hormones. As a result, these synthetic chemicals have a significant potential for severely undermining and compromising an organism's endocrine or hormone-producing system.

"Biological systems involving embryological development, homeostatic feed-back processes, behavioral capabilities, neurological functioning, bodily rhythms, as well as immune activity, can all be affected adversely by an endocrine system that is being disrupted by synthetic chemicals that are mimicking the effects of naturally occurring hormones. These problems need not show up either in the form of easily detectable birth defects or in the form of some kind of cancer in order to be able to affect such things as: the capacity to concentrate, learn, and think; or, emotional stability; or, susceptibility to various kinds of non-cancerous diseases; or, stress thresholds; or, sociability; or long-term reproductive fertility and potency of a species; or, motivational patterns; or, the ability to realize a high-quality of life or one's full potential.

"Moreover, these kinds of problems may not manifest themselves within three generations. Certain critical levels of toxic exposure or accumulation, across more than three generations, may be necessary before the presence of these debilitating defects surface.

"Perhaps, like the case of acid rain and base cations, there are buffering systems which are active within the environment or a species that are capable, within certain limits, of counteracting or neutralizing the effects of various synthetic chemicals. Yet, when some critical level is reached, after many generations of exposure to, or accumulation of, hormone-mimicking synthetic chemicals, these systems become overwhelmed and are no longer able to offer a protective buffer.

"Many people in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries demand a strict causal proof, approaching one hundred percent certainty, that their substances are having a toxic impact on human beings or many other species of life. Aside from the fact that chemical companies and commercial enterprises are the ones that should be supplying the evidence exonerating their chemical 'clients' beyond all reasonable doubt, one of the problems with such a demand is one cannot find adequate control groups anywhere on Earth that are completely free of these substances so that we have an uncontaminated baseline against which to compare a contaminated system.

"Once these substances get in the eco-system, they get distributed by air, earth, wind, water and the food chain to every nook and cranny of the world. Radioactivity fallout from Chernobyl lands on North America; garbage from Denmark washes up on the beaches of Alabama; PCBs and CFCs produced in the Western hemisphere find their way into bodies of water that evaporate to form, along with thousands of other chemicals, a toxic rain that washes over Asia and Africa, and all the nations of the Earth are busy polluting the oceans and seas of the world which distributes these wastes to all corners of the globe through currents, tides, marine life and weather systems.

"When chemical companies were prevented from selling some of their pesticides in North America, these clever business people sold, and are continuing to sell, such pesticides overseas in massive quantities. Apparently, both the companies and the government have ignored or forgotten, rather conveniently, that those pesticides eventually will find their way back to North America via the toxic cycles that have become intrusively entangled with all of the naturally occurring cycles occurring in various eco-systems.

"Many industries are fond of pointing out that the complexity and intricacy of chemical reactions in various eco-systems is so extensive, one cannot do any more than establish correlations that are open to interpretation concerning their causal significance with respect to the issue of the degradation of either the environment or any given species. In taking this position they wish to put a positive spin on their activities, and, yet, in reality, they entirely fail to miss the logical conclusion of their own argument.

"If the chemical reactions are as complex and intricate as they claim - and they are, and, then, some - then, extra caution ought to be observed, not less, in making decisions about the release of chemicals into the environment. We need to understand, on many different levels, the full implications of a course of action before we commit ourselves, possibly quite irrevocably, to the consequences of that course of action.

"Of course, chemical companies, pharmaceutical firms, and a variety of other industries all argue they are the saviors of humanity. If not for their products, their argument goes, humanity would be threatened with all manner of unpleasant and inconvenient, if not lethal, ramifications.

"What these idiot savants seem to have forgotten is humanity managed to survive quite well for thousands of years without benefit of synthetic chemicals, pharmaceuticals and a plethora of pollution-entailing commercial products. Indeed, one might even be tempted to argue ancient human beings were, in many ways, far superior to modern human beings since the former were able to accomplish so much, with so little, and under very demanding, physical circumstances, whereas, in so many ways, we moderns have accomplished so little, with so much, and under relatively easy physical circumstances."

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