Coal burning releases mercury, which settles in the ocean, where bacteria at 1,000 ft depth convert it to a fat-soluble form which fog picks up and deposits in coastal regions, where abnormally high traces are now found in mountain lions.https://www.sfchronicle.com/environment/article/Fog-brings-poison-mercury-to-Santa-Cruz-Mountains-14862445.php …
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Ashes of sprawl drop into the ocean.
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It's well-known by most folks that when fires burn in urban areas, toxic ash is the result, which can make its way into surface waters. What's probably less appreciated is that even when undeveloped wildlands burn, metals that have been sequestered from the atmosphere >>>
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by plants, soil bacteria/fungi, etc. can be released, become mobile in the environment, and then transformed into bioavailable forms (like methylmercury) that enter the food web. For example, that second paper found that the 2009 Jesuita fire mobilized lead >>
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My lay interpretation is that the environment bioaccumulates these insults over time, and that the burning puts it back into play. A low-probability implication is that stuff that burns can be inhaled, and in many cases this is more unpleasant than ingestion.
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The prospect of heavy metals sequestered in plants that burn and then the target metals washing into say, Hetch Hetchy, is not a fun one.
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As for the second paper: "Pyrogenic remobilization" is lead back in system. My inst doesn't have this journo yet. My read of abstract is: Lead from gas waybackwhen->env->trees->trees burn->lead released into ash. Ash->? ?==water table?
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