When the ground sinks, arsenic levels in drinking water may rise
Water for our home in Bayside comes from our well as does the water of most homes on our street. As someone who drinks about a quart of well water a day, I was very interested in a recent article in Science magazine (https://science. sciencemag.org/ content/368/6493/845) that reviews the distribution of arsenic in well water around the world. Fortunately for those of us who live in this beautiful area on the northwest coast of California, the levels of arsenic in our water are below the levels for safe water set by the World Health Organization. What does arsenic do to you and are there places in California and the rest of our planet that are affected by unhealthy levels of this chemical?
To begin, what is arsenic? It is one of the basic chemical elements found in the periodic table that shows its relationship to other elements. Arsenic is dissolved from rocks by water in areas that have groundwater pools. If you have significant levels of arsenic in your water, it can cause cancer, heart disease, diarrhea and affect your skin.
The central valley of California is where people are being exposed to high levels of arsenic. This is due in part to the fact that a lot of groundwater is being pumped that allows arsenic to enter the water. Pumping a lot of water from the ground has resulted in the land actually sinking. Scientists have discovered that where the ground has sunk more than half an inch, the levels of arsenic in the water was substantially increased. In Madera County, north of Fresno and south of Merced, arsenic levels are twelve times the safe level proposed by the World Health Organization. Other areas with high levels of arsenic in groundwater are located in South America and Asia.
Animals and COVID-19
While I suspect that many of us are tired of yet more information about COVID-19, scientific studies of what the virus does to us, how it is transmitted, how to develop a vaccine and other animals that can be used as models for vaccine testing are critical for human’s future. If animals can transmit the virus to us, it is critical to discover which animals can do it and also to use them as organisms to test newly developed vaccines. A recent study by Chinese scientists also published in Science magazine (https://science.sciencemag. org/content/368/6494/1016) investigated the possibility that livestock, our companion animals such as dogs and ferrets and others, could be infected and also pass the virus on to us. Ferrets were used because they are often kept as pets, but these scientists also infected pigs, chickens, ducks and dogs and other pet animals. The virus does not develop well in dogs, pigs, chicken and ducks, but ferrets and other companion animals do become sick and can transmit the virus to other animals and possibly humans.
Birds and bees
We have a lot of wonderful hummingbirds in our garden, and as I write this, I see them feeding on the flowers outside my window. They are clearly dependent on nectar from flowers and must recognize when it is time to visit them. A lot of plants depend on insects such as bees to pollinate them and produce seeds and new plants. Scientists have been studying bees and have found that they not only pollinate flowers, but if the plant has not produced flowers, then the bees have a way of getting the flower to produce pollen for its food. Bees have evolved a means of getting tomato plants, for example, to produce flowers about a month earlier than they would normally do. They do this by biting the leaves of the tomato plant. When the scientists damaged the leaves themselves with razors, the plants did not respond as they do when bees bite a hole in the leaf. Perhaps the bees are transmitting a chemical that causes plants to flower. That has not been proven yet, but is under investigation. It is wonderful to remember that puzzles like this often lead to important scientific results. Let’s keep watching.
Rollin Richmond is an emeritus professor of biology and emeritus president at Humboldt State University. He has worked as an evolutionary geneticist at several universities during his career. (Full disclosure: He happens to be responsible for 50 percent of Times-Standard publisher John Richmond’s genetic makeup.) Questions or comments about this column can be sent to rollinr@ humboldt.edu.