Before Modern Man began polluting the pristine waters of Norway, some heavy metal contamination was 22% higher than today?
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“Together with other Norwegian and Swedish researchers, he has analyzed findings that show that cod in the younger Stone Age had an up to 22 times higher content of cadmium than today’s recommended maximum limit. It also had three to four times higher amounts of lead than is considered reasonable today.
The Harp seal, of which the Stone Age people also ate a lot, contained 15 times more cadmium than today’s maximum limit and three to four times the lead limit.
Selection of bones found at the settlement in Varanger.
“These substances are very harmful to our health. Cadmium, for example, is highly carcinogenic. We know that such heavy metals have no function in humans and that they can accumulate in the body when they are consumed. They can be broken down, but it takes a very long time. In other words, this seafood was very unhealthy – not to mention dangerous to eat a lot of, says Blankholm.
The researchers also found high values of mercury in cod and Harp seals, but the values were still slightly below today’s maximum limit.”
The reason heavy metals were so much higher than today’s “polluted” waterways?
Wait for it…climate change!
But if you are reading Granite Grok you would have known that. Our readers are 22% smarter than your average blogista.
Sometimes when reading these science blogs I get the uneasy feeling these scientists are merely unemployables living grant-to-grant as long as the answer to everything is “climate change.”
Just look at the warning to all of us polluters:
“Large amounts of toxic heavy metals such as cadmium and lead made cod and Greenland seals into harmful food in Northern Norway during the Younger Stone Age. Constantly rising sea temperatures and sea-level rise due to climate change can cause seafood to become equally unhealthy in the future.”
But this coming rise in the oceans has not dissuaded the super elites from buying ocean-front, second home property.
And it begs the question: Why weren’t the animals, or the other animals eating those animals loaded with heavy metals, dead or sick? Did “climate change” make them immune?
Quick, get me some grant money and I’ll let you know.