by Dr.Harald Wiesendanger– Klartext
What the mainstream media is hiding
Rain has ceased to be drinking Water – worldwide. A disturbing study by Swedish and Swiss scientists confirms this.
“Blessed rain, … bathe my soul and wash my heart clean … Rushing, wafting veil of Water that washes everything clean! No solar miracle can compare to the miracle of blessed rain,” enthused the Czech writer Karel Čapek (1890-1938) almost a century ago. (1)
Those who still rave about it are not current with the latest research. As researchers from Stockholm University and ETH Zurich explain in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, there is now no place on Earth where rainwater still falls below the US limits for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), notorious “forever chemicals” – not even in remote areas like Antarctica. “Based on recent guidelines from health authorities, rainwater everywhere should be classified as undrinkable,” explains study leader Ian Cousins, a professor in the Department of Environmental Science at Stockholm University.
PFAS are a group of chemicals that increase the risk of infertility and, cancer, and developmental delays in children. And new dangerous effects are constantly being discovered (1) – from immunotoxic to hormonal. PFAS do not occur naturally and never degrade in the environment. They are used in household items such as food packaging, electronics, cosmetics, and cookware because of their excellent non-stick or stain-resistant properties. Once released, PFAS enter the atmosphere through evaporation and ocean spray and accumulate in rain. Cousins speaks of a virtually irreversible cycle between the ocean, air, and precipitation. There are regional hotspots: While PFAS are detectable everywhere – even in snow samples from Mount Everest – higher levels occur near industrial sites and urban areas, for example, around PFAS production facilities. However, even samples from pristine areas show PFAS contamination, indicating long-distance global transport.
Toxic Cocktail from Above
Heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and cadmium also enter the air through industry, traffic, and combustion and are washed out via precipitation.
Many pesticides—agricultural chemicals such as herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides—can also evaporate from application areas or be carried by the wind, thus entering the atmosphere. A comprehensive study commissioned by the US government that compared rain samples in the agricultural areas of Mississippi and Iowa found 37 different pesticide active ingredients. The widely used glyphosate was present in 77% of the samples.
Added to this are microplastics – tiny plastic particles smaller than 5 millimeters, mostly in the nanoscale. Snow and rain samples sometimes contain thousands of particles per liter: In the Arctic, up to 14,400 microplastic particles were counted per liter of snow, and in Central Europe, even up to 154,000 per liter. “It’s raining plastic,” scientists aptly titled a 2019 report.
And let’s not forget the “classic” air pollutants nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulfur dioxide (SO2). In rain, they lead to the formation of acids – nitric and sulfuric acid – as well as the introduction of nitrate and ammonium.
Once the epitome of purity, rainwater has since ceased to be considered safe.
In a single day, 1.4 billion liters of rainfall are on our planet. Since the dawn of humankind, they have trusted that they could safely consume Water from the sky. In many regions, it remains a key component of the drinking water supply today: for example, on islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific, where rainwater is collected because there are no rivers or lakes; in highland and mountainous regions such as the Andes and the Himalayas, where rainfall feeds the headwaters of major rivers that supply downstream cities with millions of inhabitants; in monsoon and rainforest regions of Southeast Asia, Central Africa, and the Amazon, where high rainfall fills rivers, lakes, and aquifers; and in the arid areas such as the Sahel zone and parts of Australia, where rain falls rarely but is used intensively, for example, in dams, cisterns, and storage ponds.
The Bible describes contaminated Water as a sign of punishment. Several passages reflect the idea that natural resources can perish when the balance with God or creation is disturbed. “They have transgressed the ordinances […]; therefore the curse has devoured the earth” (Isaiah 24:4-6). “Therefore, thus says the Lord: I will give them poisonous water to drink” (Jeremiah 9:14-15). Revelation (8:10-11) prophesies a cosmic judgment: “…and many people died because of the bitterness of the water,” meaning undrinkable or even fatal.
Reversing the Trend
Thankfully, the apocalypse is not inevitable. Some developments give hope that rainwater will soon be cleaner again – at least in certain regions or for individual groups of pollutants:
· The EU is working – at a snail’s pace, but at least – on a general ban on over 10,000 PFAS compounds, which could take effect in the next few years.
· Too high, but better than none: Tightened drinking water limits mean that pollutants such as PFAS, pesticides, and micropollutants must be more intensively monitored and filtered out. This increases the pressure on industry and agriculture to produce cleaner products.
Bans on individual pesticides – e.g., neonicotinoids and atrazine within the EU – have already resulted in some of them no longer being detectable in rain.
Industrial plants and power plants are using increasingly improved filters, e.g., for mercury, nitrogen oxides, and ammonia.
Techniques are increasingly being developed in agriculture to reduce ammonia emissions – e.g., through manure cooling or covered storage.
The decline in sulfur and nitrogen compounds has significantly reduced acid rain in recent decades. A similar effect has been achieved with lead since leaded fuels disappeared from the market.
Such progress proves that rainwater doesn’t necessarily become dirtier. With political will and societal pressure, it can also become cleaner again.
But: Many new pollutants – PFAS, microplastics, and “modern” pesticides – remain in the global water cycle without consistent action. For decades, if not centuries.
Invasion of toxic dwarfs
Not only in rain and drinking water but also in the air we breathe, in our food, and indeed everywhere in the human environment, artificially produced microparticles have been accumulating dramatically over the past few decades. Microplastics, ultrafine dust, and nanoparticles make us sick, chronically and incurably, if we ingest them over a long period of time and cannot get rid of them, but instead accumulate in every organ and every tissue. They kill us. They endanger the survival of our species. Why don’t we take them seriously enough?
Some experiences are so fundamental that they etch themselves deep into the collective memory. Each subsequent generation doesn’t have to acquire them anew through trial and error. As behavioral programs, they are literally inherited from birth: via the genome, via pre-wired neural networks in the brain.
Often, such primal experiences arise from recurring life-or-death situations. A threat suddenly appeared – and there was no time to go through the sophisticated cognitive processes of review, evaluation, and decision-making before reacting. In a split second, it had to be clear: Flee? Fight? Or do nothing?
From such primal experiences, for example, the rule of thumb arose: “The bigger, the more dangerous,” as well as its counterpart, “The smaller, the less dangerous.” When alone and unarmed, our most distant ancestors rightly fled from large mammoths and full-grown saber-toothed tigers – but not from their newborn offspring. If a boulder rolled toward them, they dodged it – but not a flying grain of sand. Even in modern times, the survival maxims of the Stone Age have had a behavioral impact. All over the world, regardless of race, gender, and culture, babies involuntarily react the same way when something significant suddenly appears in front of them or swells to gigantic proportions in an instant: Instead of showing curiosity and joyful anticipation, they become frightened, begin to cry, turn their heads away, seek protection, and try to move away. Only because the connection behind these reactions is so deeply rooted in the minds of our species was a blockbuster like “King Kong” possible: Our subconscious takes the threat of gigantism for granted, so much so that the nonsensical idea of a towering gorilla developing tender feelings for a delicate blonde human fascinates moviegoers around the globe. Would the Israelites have hidden behind the daredevil David with his slingshot if Goliath had only grown up to their knees?
Rules of thumb tend to be generally true; they allow for exceptions. Thus, they always lull us into a false sense of security, which can become extremely dangerous if they make us careless – as soon as they tempt us to overlook threats and fatally underestimate their extent. In our latitudes, the most dangerous animal is not the wolf but the tick.
Our worst enemies are those against which no sense warns us – we see, hear, taste, smell, or feel nothing when they attack us. Bacteria and viruses that no infected person has ever noticed have caused millions more deaths than all the wars ever fought combined.
However, the human organism has had hundreds of thousands of years to adapt to an environment full of microscopic pathogens. It developed a delicate defense system that renders most of them harmless. To combat the rest, a variety of effective medications have emerged.
We lack immunological and pharmaceutical protection to ward off far more monstrous threats: artificially created mini particles, some barely larger than a few atoms. They have been accumulating dramatically in the human environment for the past few decades. Microplastics, ultrafine dust, and nanoparticles make us sick, chronically and incurably, if we absorb and accumulate them over a long period of time. They kill us. They threaten the survival of our species. What can and must we do against these poisonous creatures? How do we tame them?
First and foremost, we should wake up. If extraterrestrials have been observing Earth for some time, they would probably come to the following conclusion: In the second half of the 20th century, a global experiment began on this strange planet, with all its inhabitants, from infants to the elderly, as involuntary guinea pigs. It apparently addresses three questions: How many pollutants from a wide variety of sources—including food, drinking Water, breathable air, clothing, cleaning products, medications and vaccines, and a thousand everyday objects—can be introduced into the human organism before even the most resilient person becomes chronically ill? How much profit can be made from this in the health sector? What level of marketing, lobbying, and corruption is necessary to allow governments to perpetrate this insidious mass poisoning—and to prevent the majority of the population from rebelling against it?
Nothing will change until we start. We must do so soon because time is running out.
(Harald Wiesendanger)
Notes
(1) In Das Jahr des Gärtners, Kapitel „Gesegneter Regen“ (1929). In The Year of the Gardener, chapter “Blessed Rain” (1929).
(2) https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/zero-pollution/cross-cutting-stories/pfas#:~:text=Of%20the%20relatively%20few%20well,2019; https://cen.acs.org/environment/persistent-pollutants/PFOA-rain-worldwide-exceeds-EPA/100/i27#:~:text=The%20EPA%20introduced%20the%20PFOA,PFAS%29%20later%20this
KLARTEXT about microplastics:
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Plastic is ubiquitous, virtually indestructible – and extremely dangerous if it enters our bodies. While industry downplays the issue, and health authorities and legislators hesitate, scientists have long been sounding the alarm: Tiny fibers and fragments of plastic that we unknowingly ingest through drinking Water and food, the air we breathe, and our skin can cause chronic illness.
Scary: Plastic poison in the brain
Five grams of microplastics enter our bodies every week. Within two hours of ingestion, the particles penetrate the brain. What damage do they do there? A new study raises the worst fears.
Will we end up as plastic idiots?
Microplastics are everywhere, including inside us. Even worse: The tiny plastic particles tend to accumulate in the brain. What damage do they do there? Recent studies raise the worst fears: This devilish stuff causes dementia. What can we do?
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