Pollutants Don’t Go Away: Why the new conservationists are wrong

Pollutants Don’t Go Away: Why the new conservationists are wrong. One of the themes of the “new conservationist” movement headed by Peter Kareiva and Emma Marris is that nature is self-healing and the effects of contaminants from man-made disasters and poisoning (e.g., nuclear tests) vanish through time. However, research by Alan Jamieson and others published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution found that industrial pollutants have reached the “deepest corners” of the ocean that are not directly contacted by humans. These are chemicals “that haven’t been produced for decades” but do not naturally decay. The researchers said they were surprised by “how badly contaminated” the deep ocean animals were. It is not known exactly how the pollutants reached the ocean but the researchers suspect that it was from leaks from landfills and contamination from the atmosphere. You can read Ellie Kincaid’s Wall Street Journal article about this at https://www.wsj.com/articles/industrial-pollutants-found-in-the-deepest-corners-of-the-ocean-1487001600  The full article is available at the journal’s website: http://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-016-0051
​