One of the reasons we no longer run down our prey and gather berries and have short, disease-ridden lifetimes – for the most part – is the development of farming and supporting industry, and that has resulted in pollution which damages the well-being of ourselves and the other animals on this planet. But here’s an interesting detail, from NewScientist (6 May 2017):
Mark Miller at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and his team got volunteers to breathe air filled with harmless gold nanoparticles. Within 15 minutes the gold began to show up in the volunteers’ blood – and could still be found in blood and urine three months later.
The researchers then repeated the experiment on people who were due to undergo surgery. They found that nanoparticles accumulated in the fatty plaques inside arteries that can cause heart attacks and strokes (ACS Nano, doi.org/b6gm).
Perhaps nanoparticles found in pollutants contribute to the inflammation often thought to be vital to the growth of plaques in arteries. Still, this is not to condemn the industry, just the pollution. That can be cleaned up if we have the political will to make it happen.
