Re: Will mankind evolve due to pollution? not anytime soon!

Posted by lanecove on July 27, 2003 at 05:10:02:

In Reply to: Will mankind evolve due to pollution? posted by physicskid on May 25, 2003 at 02:57:41:

physicskid,

With some exceptions, the story on pollution etc is a lot rosier than the perception, as reflected in the popular press. Some examples:
- air and water quality in developed economies has improved dramatically in the last few decades
- a similar trend is beginning in many developing economies
- far more is now known of the effects of an enormous number of chemicals on humans and other living things
- the process of regulating the use of 'older' chemicals is getting under way. Pretty stringent regulations on the use of chemicals newly developed for industry, agriculture, etc have been in place for some time; now those same requirements are being made retroactive for chemicals in use before the regulations were introduced.

Even if there were a significant selection effect associated with pollution, we wouldn't see it any time soon - evolution operates over timescales that are very long compared with the human lifespan (how much human evolution has there been since the first recognisable agricultural settlements? None, to the first order). Unless of course the effect were as severe as myxomatosis on the Australian rabbits!

The exceptions to the rosy picture? Apart from some truly shocking local examples (e.g. housing developments on toxic landfill sites), they include:
- fine particulate emissions from diesel engines
- chemicals (or their metabolites) resembling sex hormones
- indoor air quality, esp in well-insulated houses in winter

Personally, I'm much more worried about the insane use of antibiotics in animal feed - not to control infection, but to speed weight gain - antibiotic resistance will develop quickly enough anyway, why accelerate it so unnecessarily?

I guess next would be the use of studies done by the manufacturers of chemicals etc to characterise their environmental impact (rather than an independent lab) - too much potential conflict of interest for my liking.

Regards
lanecove

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