Potential meat contamination question. See inside for details?
Asked by
chyna (
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March 18th, 2014
In my hometown there was a well known chemical plant that closed down and the buildings were torn down. In the 50’s and afterward, it wasn’t known what the chemicals could do to people so this plant dumped chemicals into the ground and into the river. After a recent soil analysis of the land from a reputable company, it was determined the land was so contaminated that no building could be put on this land for 100 years.
Recently, I have been noticing the deer are feeding on this land. Will this taint the deer meat and will it be bad for human consumption?
Wouldn’t the deer realize there is chemicals in the grass?
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4 Answers
No, the deer wouldn’t reject the grass unless it tastes bad for some reason. The toxic effects are insidious and already established in the ground water and soil.
100 years? Whoa…sounds like a really toxic site to me.
Anyone eating these deer certainly could suffer residual effects if their primary food source comes from a toxic site.
Keep an eye out for 5 legged fawns with 2 heads. 0-O
My guess is the deer have no receptors to tell them the chemicals are there. It’s only when the mutations start showing up that they’ll begin to show the damage. These chemicals are fairly recent changes to the environment.
chyna:
Many dangerous chemicals these days are dangerous at ppb or ppm (parts per billion or parts per million). At these minute levels of concentration there’s virtually no living thing on earth that could normally sense their presence.
Personally, I wouldn’t worry about the deer meat. If they were penned or otherwise confined to the area, that would be of concern, but as it is they’re just a natural part of the 100 year reclamation of the land.
Consider that 100 years isn’t a blink of an eye to the Earth (half that time has already passed since the contamination), and remember that the Earth creates it’s own natural hazards to life and life adapts to that.
It amazes me how much more aware humans have become just in my life time. DDT and the like had so decimated the large bird population by the 70’s that I remember spotting a blue heron in our creek and thinking it akin to a prehistoric animal (I was all into science and history). We’d gawk and point at a large hawk or eagle, and crows were unknown in this area. I now live about 15 miles from my birthplace, and I literally almost never leave the house without seeing a red-tailed hawk. Eagles and egrets and crows abound.
The Earth is, thank goodness, resilient. Mankind is it’s own worst enemy.
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