One of several 'buddies' at college had a collection of Frank Zappa records that got quite a bit of play, with the most memorable number involving the above title and its rejoinder: "Don't You Eat That Yellow Snow."
Now, I didn't much care for Zappa, and found excuses to be elsewhere, but that line stuck with me to the extent that it seems more than just clever and pleasingly twangy. It speaks the truth.
Pollution, whether of the yellow snow variety, or that described in a recent Discover magazine article titled: "Are Toxins In Seafood Causing ALS, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's?" is so pervasive in our increasingly crowded world that when remedial steps are proposed, the solution is to minimize the effect rather than to remove the pollutant.
The Discover article describes startling research which seems to link algae blooms (scummy water) to a compound that accumulates in some kinds of seafood--notably pink shrimp, largemouth bass and blue crab--to the above three diseases. It seems there is more to the association than a clear causal link, and that genetic predisposition and healthy living may account for the rest of the story. But, our family does have a pond that is commonly overcome with algae during the warmer months due to fertilizer runoff from farm fields. And our friends do like to come over and fish. And we do have bass in our pond. And my step-grandfather had Parkinson's and was an avid fisherman who likely ate quite a few bass from our pond. Hmmm.
But getting back to my original point, the article goes on to say that if the association could be proven, doctors could then test for the compound that's to blame. That's a good stop-gap strategy, but why not see this story pointing in a different direction? Why not address the cause of the darned problem: scummy water? I suppose that's because the scope of the mess is too large and involves human population numbers, for one thing.
And yet there's probably a minority of people who think that an even larger population is a good thing--crowd 'em in, the more the better! A common argument along these lines is that more people mean a greater chance for geniuses. Only trouble is, crowded slums and other economic backwaters have a hard time producing geniuses, no matter how many people are packed in.
Think of it this way, Where does one find fish without the implicated compound derived from scum? In wilder settings. I bet the chances of contracting any of the three scourges mentioned above is zero when eating from a wild, rushing stream teaming with native fish, far from the nearest urban development.
No comments:
Post a Comment