Paracetamol from Plastic Bottles-this could be the start of something big

Remember how your mum always made you swallow water to wash down your headache pills? What if those pills had been made from the remains of a long discarded plastic bottle that some other child had been forced to undergo? According to the resourceful Nicola Davis of the Guardian, it’s about to happen.[1] And the implications are enormous.

A team lead by Professor Stephen Wallace of the University of Edinburgh has actually gone and turned old plastic bottles into medicine. Combining the very best in organic chemistry and genetic engineering, they have modified a strain of E. coli to make good old paracetamol, that standby of every household drugs stash the world over. [2] The details of how they do it may be read in the links supplied. But our interest today is somewhat different.

At last someone has found a use for all those mountains of ghastly plastic waste which so disfigure this once beautiful planet. It can be made into something which millions, no billions, of people can deploy every day: and to some beneficent purpose. And if paracetamol, why not other things? Meanwhile. fans of economics will note the creation of a demand., Soon people may be fighting each other in the streets to get the best plastic bottles to sell to wholesalers. Nations will go to war to gain access to those vast disgusting rafts of waste which currently drift around the oceans. There’s one sure way to modify the behaviour of the ignorant mass of humankind- Turn virtue into economics and let them make some money from it. The Professor and his team may have done just that.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jun/23/scientists-use-e-coli-bacteria-to-turn-plastic-waste-into-paracetamol-painkiller

[2]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-025-01845-5

#genetic engineering #organic chemistry #plastic #pollution #medicine

Climate Change denial: latest round in a long war of deception

First deny there’s a problem. Then do all you can to delay a solution. Buy up politicians, scientists, bloggers, and bots. The tactics of the fossil fuel industry and outriding nations as they seek above all to protect their comfy lifestyles and exorbitant profits. It’s not just made abundantly clear in this report by Damien Carrington in the Guardian: it nails down every last nail to be had into the coffin lid. [1]

But we’ve seen it all before gentle readers. We recall walking down an alley in London in 1971 with a close relative who assured us there was no definite, provable link between smoking and cancer, OK!? (he died of the latter) Why was he able to state this? Because for decades the tobacco industry had managed a huge campaign of deception, obfuscation and general misinformation designed to give him and his peers every excuse they needed to continue their tragic addiction. Using exactly the same techniques now employed by climate change deniers, funnily enough.. The only difference was that they didn’t have the Interweb to turbocharge their propaganda and illusioning. This rather depressing link to the WHO explains the ghastly details to anyone who may want to know more about the fundamentals of human nature [2]

And what are these fundamentals, by the way? We don’t know them all But we can hazard a guess at some, provisional though we may well be

1 Some people will do anything to make some quick cash, Anything at all.

2 Many people will do anything to avoid facing the consequences of the vile little habits which they have acquired in the course of a lifetime of self indulgence and self deception.

3 Just because you are educated and slightly more far seeing than others around you does not give you tactical superiority in the current wars between the intelligent and our enemies They are incredibly cunning and well funded

4 This ain’t over yet. Keep a close eye on rising sea levels, if you want to live

We will be ready with further insights. inspirations and bons motifs in future blogs. Keep reading. And thanks for all the recent sigh ups and likes. Keep ’em coming.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/19/climate-misinformation-turning-crisis-into-catastrophe-ipie-report

[2]https://www.who.int/news/item/16-11-2023-new-who-campaign-highlights-tobacco-industry-tactics-to-influence-public-health-policies

#climate change #global warming #ecology #fossil fuels #tobacco #cancer

Renewable energy from seaweed Now there’s a thought

If we are going to get through the current climate crisis, and come out alive at the other end, we ‘ll need to consider every new idea, however outre it may sound at first sight, Which is why we want to showcase, via the Conversation,[1] the work of Mike Allen , Professor of Genomics at the University of Exeter and founder of SeaGen,[2] a company which has the courage and vision to think differently. ]For Mike thinks that by using robotics, he can harness the enormous biomass of seaweed in the sargasso sea, and other places

Now we’ve always been pro- seaweed here. Veteran readers may recall our promotion of the new Sussex kelp forest, both on this site and in articles in local newspapers and websites [3] and we certainly talked about how the stuff, especially kelp, could be a source of all kinds of useful things like food and fertiliser. But as his article and website makes clear, Mike is taking this to a whole new level. By using autonomous robotic systems, the harvesting and processing of the weeds can be done on an ergonomic and industrial scale.

We have no financial or any other connection to this man or his company. But we are massive fans of the hopeful start-up. Because we believe that progress, real progress grows form that complicated network of new companies , university departments, government agencies and anonymous little industrial estates where the real dreams of the future are born. We’ve done stories like this before, and will do more in the future. If you really need a declaration of interest it is this: they may help us to survive.

[1]https://theconversation.com/how-seaweed-is-a-powerful-yet-surprising-climate-solution-251195?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%

[2]https://www.seagen.io/

[3]https://www.sussexgreenliving.org.uk/sussex-kelp-forest-leads-the-way-by-keir-hartley-first-published-in-west-sussex-county-times/

#seagen #seaweed #sustainability #robotics #ocean #climate change

Do glaciers have political opinions? and some other mystery questions do get you thinking

Instead of all those discourses on things like microbiology or economic history, we thought we’d offer you something a little different today, gentle readers. We’ve decided to come up with one of those puzzle exercises, you know, brain teasers they call them. So here are 11 questions designed to get you thinking, to stretch the old grey matter as t’were. And the good news is: Most of the answers will be available somewhere on the Interweb, or via the websites we have so helpfully posted below.

1 How do you explain the change in the ratio of C₁₃ to C₁₂ in the atmosphere since 1850? Why did this ratio seem have fallen especially quickly after 1950?

2 Since 1750 about 2400 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide have been added to the atmosphere. If this call came from volcanoes, why is the isotopic signature of atmospheric CO₂so different from that from volcanic sources?

3 Do glaciers retreat because they share the political opinions of the Green Party, or is all this melting caused by something else?

4 Why have global surface temperatures increased by 1.2% since the late nineteenth century, but stratospheric temperatures actually fallen?

5 Why is the ocean warming faster than the land? Why would the land warm fastest first if all this were caused by the Sun?

6 Why does spring arrive earlier and earlier in the Northern hemisphere?

7 Do fish conspire with extremists,or have their migrating patterns changed for other reasons?

8 What is causing all these temperature rises anyway?

9 Why is the atmosphere of Venus so hot? And why is the atmosphere of Mars so cold?

10 Do you think rises in sea levels will drive increases in human migration?

11 If scientists are right about cures for cancer, physics, astronomy computers and many other things, why are they suddenly wrong about climate science?

[1]https://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/climate-change-evidence-causes/

[2]https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/evidence/

[3]https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/what-evidence-exists-earth-warming-and-humans-are-main-cause

#climate change #global warming #climate science #carbon dioxide #ecology #pollution

Capturing Carbon from the sea-a new idea to contain global warming

One thing we know for certain: the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere isn’t going down any time soon. Last time we looked, it was about 420ppm, which is 50% higher than it was before the industrial revolution. [1] People are not cutting back fast enough. Natural “sinks” like oceans and forests are being destroyed. And despite all the valiant efforts to replace these natural systems with technologies that capture CO₂ from the burning atmosphere, they are not happening fast enough. We are going to crash through the 1.5^O safe limit. Is there any hope of a short cut which might give us a lifeline?

According to Professor Tom Bell of Exeter University there is indeed. Seawater holds 150 times as much carbon dioxide as air does. And so he and his teams have devised a Cunning Plan to start pulling all the extra deadly gas form the water, and putting it to safe storage. We’ve two versions of the story today. One from Jonah Fisher of the BBC[2] if you’ve only got time for a quick espresso. For the double latte and piece of cake crowd, there’s a really clear set of pages from Exeter University itself.[3] We found the graphics to be rather good on this one.. so give it a go.

All of which brings a wry smile to those of us with long memories. Notice, good reader, how the project is being funded by the UK Government. Back in the 1970’s it used to run hundreds of initiatives like this. Many of which later spun off into successful products which in turn founded the fortunes of many a successful export company. (An elderly member of our Editorial Board can bear personal testimony of this from the world of Forensic Science) Then along came the free marketeers, bleating their mantra “Private sector good; public sector bad” like so many sheep from Animal Farm. You can see the results of that “thinking” in the UK Trade Gap, which has been widening steadily ever since. Professor Bell thinks his project can be scaled to capture 14 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. It could be a major industrial and export success for Britain. Surely this one should be left to the pragmatists?

[1]https://www.ibtimes.com/atmospheric-co2-more-50-percent-higher-pre-industrial-era-3529972#:~:text=Concentrations%20of%20carbon%20dioxide%20in%20the%20atmosphere%20in,

[2]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr788kljlklo

[3]https://sites.exeter.ac.uk/seacure/

#global warming #carbon capture #atmosphere #oceans

Sustainable building materials? UK Hempcrete shows the way ahead

For those of us who spend our working lives worrying if the next generations will even survive, the global building and construction industry is a source of some angst. Yes, all those people have got to have places to live, and work, and to get cured of diseases caused by lack of antibiotics (LSS ad nauseam) The trouble with Construction is that it’s so eye-wateringly carbon expensive. Here’s one long fact for one short blog: if you add all their carbon costs together (resource extraction, transport, construction, demolition, recycling, plus cooking all those enormous English Breakfasts they all eat), it all adds up to a whopping 37% of global emissions. Any ideas?

One way ahead is to make the materials they use for things like floors, ceilings, walls and so on, a lot more planet- friendly. Which is why we want to showcase the work of a British firm called UK Hempcrete. [1]Hempcrete is an exciting new type of biocomposite made from the stalks of hemp plants, as well as more traditional materials such as lime and sands. [2] But the new mix carries two key advantages. Firstly , and unlike traditional building materials it actually acts as a sink for CO₂ over the course of its use. Secondly, it’s hygroscopic, allowing for much better moisture balance in buildings made from it. Every year we burn billions of tonnes of fuels trying to keep our buildings warm and damp- free. This new material gets around that problem almost entirely. But you can read a lot more about this company and its subsidiaries from their website and our other links; they’re much better at it than we are.

And, as you’re asking, do we have an interest in this company? Financially, no-we’d never even heard of them, or hempcrete, until our researchers flagged them up this morning. But we do have an interest in survival. And long ago we decided that it would not come from making people more virtuous, but by setting up ways to let people make money from progress. Which is why we plug, shamelessly, the work of all sorts of companies here, from net zero aviation folk to Biotechnology enthusiasts in the heart of the Cambridge Science Park. (LSS passim) Of course we keep the usual media/PR links to these outfits when we’ve finished. But that’s more on your behalf, gentle readers, not ours. Any attempt to get our construction industry onto a more sustainable, cleaner and rational footing will always earn the support of this blog. Good luck, UK Hempcrete-and keep it coming.

[1]https://www.ukhempcrete.com/

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hempcrete

[3]https://www.ukhempcrete.com/services/material-supply/

#global warming #carbon emissions #ukhempcrete #sustainability #consrtuction industry #building

Is Carbon Dioxide already killing us? An old blog revisited

About five years ago we published this blog called is Carbon Dioxide the new Passive Smoking?

We already know that rising levels of carbon dioxide from global warming are bad for the planet. They are ruining the climate, causing floods raising sea levels, and making fertile areas uninhabitable. But are they already starting to kill us individually?

Before global warming, the average level of CO₂ in the atmosphere fluctuated around 280 ppm (parts per million). Now it hovers around 410 ppm; by the end of the century it could be around 670 ppm or even higher.

The human body can sustain low levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere-we’ve adapted to it. High levels are normally only a problem for people like building workers, astronauts and captains of nuclear submarines. Research shows that there is no question that the sorts of levels these people can meet will do you serious harm, but most of the work is concentrated around very high CO₂ concentrations at thousands of ppm, with very short exposure times , both for obvious reasons.

But as CO₂ levels rise, what happens to all of us as we breathe in steadily rising levels day in day out, without a break? Especially in places like offices, where it tends to become more concentrated.

Now a paper from Nature Sustainability by Tyler Jacobsen, Jasdeep Kler* and their co-workers looks at this question. Some of their findings are disquieting, to say the least. Firstly chronic CO₂ exposure does seem to have health risks. There’s a long list, but the main stand outs are on cognitive ability, kidney calcification and endothelial dysfunction. Secondly, this is a preliminary paper, as the authors admit. A very great deal of work remains to be done. And that will mean setting up research programmes, signing up scientists and re-budgeting whole departments.

There is a worrying historical parallel. When the first early papers on the effects of cigarette smoking were published, they were largely ignored. Which only gave the danger time to grow. And at least individual smokers were able to mitigate the risk by giving up. But for passive smokers the risk was everywhere. If you lived or worked or socialised with a smoker, you couldn’t help breathing the stuff in. It’s the same with carbon dioxide-there’s no getting away from it

We are aware of the dangers of crying wolf, and of course it’s perfectly possible that this may not be as serious as some of the other problems currently besetting the world. But isn’t it time we researched a little, just to make sure? (LSS 11 2 2020)

Since when very little has changed, Except perhaps that atmospheric levels of CO₂ have almost certainly risen a little. Again, we stress that we don’t know the answer, and are calling for research, not immediate action. But this this blog has a lot more readers now. We include the reference below. Do you know anyone who thinks this ought to be investigated further, by practising scientists or doctors?

Direct Health Risks of Increased Atmospheric CO2

Tyler A Jacobson, Jasdeep Kler, Michael T Herneke Rudolf K Brown, Keith C Meyer and William E Funk

Nature Sustainability Review Article Vol 2 August 2019 pp 691-701

#globalwarming #climatechange #co2levels #health risks #environmental health #passive smoking #health #medicine

Clean, Green Copper?

One of the downsides of making the change to a clean, renewable economy is the enormous cost of some of the technologies. And we are talking energy and pollution here, not money. It’s an uncomfortable truth which enemies of progress gleefully point out wherever and whenever they can. Take copper for example. It’s going to be central to any green ecosystem, showing up as vital component of anything and everything from electric cars to eco power plants. But, as the superlative Robin McKie of the Guardian points out, mining it demands enormous quantities of energy. As for the waste left behind- we almost dare not think.

Yet Robin is nothing if not hopeful . In this article he reviews a whole set of hopeful new technologies which are designed to find cleaner, more sustainable ways of pulling out this vital metal. Demands of brevity force us to extract only one(no pun intended) as it fits with the vaguely biological ambience of this blog

a company, RemePhy, has been started by Imperial PhD students Franklin Keck and Ion Ioannou……They have used GM technology to develop plant-bacterial systems that have an enhanced ability to extract metal from the soil. “Essentially, you will be able to grow these crops on land contaminated by waste left over from the mining of metals such as copper, and they will extract that metal,” (explainer-London’s Imperial College is nurturing many of these initiatives-ed)

The oldest trope on this blog is our admiration for when clever people tweak existing ideas and suddenly do something really useful in a new und unexpected way. Imagine the strategic benefits to a country that not only supplies itself with copper, but cleans itself up as it goes along. The benefits of Science and Reason, we suppose?

[1]tps://www.theguardian.com/global/2025/mar/02/copper-scientists-london-energy-electrical

#copper #metals #mining #pollution #imperial college #renewables #clean energy

Lung cancer rising again Plus: is all that plastic in your brain doing you any good?

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

One of the great achievements that we progressives can still chalk up is the gradual elimination of smoking. Ok it’s still out there. But in western countries it’s in steep decline, and cases of lung cancer were falling accordingly. Or so it seemed. But since about 2020 it seems to be on the rise again. Among non smokers. Among women non-smokers in fact. Odd, isn’t it? The reasons are discussed by Dr Pinar Oysal Ongoner of the prestigious University of Westminster[2] *for the Conversation.[1] She is particularly interested in the rise in adenocarcinoma. The cause ? It looks as if air pollution is a strong candidate, with a strong pointer to our old friend PM_2.5 which is spewed out daily by millions of cars, lorries taxis and vans. Clean air zones, anyone?

As if one pollution story wasn’t bad enough, here’s another that may be worse. Ten years ago the idea of plastic micropollution getting into the brain was either ignored or scoffed at. Now we know better: Our Brains are full of plastic bits from Nature Briefings

Toxicologist Matthew Campen estimates that he can isolate about 10 grams of microplastics from a donated human brain; that’s about the weight of an unused crayon. Scientists are scrambling to understand how these tiny fragments, which have been found in every recess of our planet and our bodies, affect our health. They need clear data to communicate potential risks to policymakers, and with plastic production reaching new highs every year, they’re in a race against time. “It’s very scary to think the concentration of plastics in my brain will go up several percentage points before we have answers,” says Campen.Nature | 11 min read

A whole crayon’s worth of plastic in your brain? isn’t that, like, rather a lot? It took decades to discover the link between tobacco and lung cancer. And many more to overcome the vested interests and start saving lives. At that rate, how soon are we going to cope with this new plastic threat?

*_{The University of Westminster is not only famed for its academic excellence but also for the production of graduates of outstanding charm, good looks and modesty. Well, Postgraduates, actually}

[1]https://theconversation.com/why-is-there-an-increase-in-lung-cancer-among-women-who-have-never-smoked-249406?utm_medium=email&utm_campa

[2]https://www.westminster.ac.uk/

#cancer #pollution #traffic #pm2.5 #plastic #drinking straws

Mura Technology brings real hope on plastic pollution

The other day, someone on the Board suggested a reprise piece on Plastics Pollution. But when we looked back to the archives, we’d done so many of them! Choking up the system like the plastics themselves. Unlike the plastics however, the old articles don’t choke up the waterways, poison the seas, kill wild life and damage our health. Real plastic waste does all of this and more, as this article from Wikipedia makes clear.[1]

There is no realistic, practicable way to ask mankind, particularly the more-erm, intellectually challenged-members of our species to give up plastics. Yet they are slowly but steadily killing us. So what is to be done. Mura Technology[2]think that the answer is to recycle them. They think what? Yes, we didn’t believe it at first. But with the right combination of heat and pressure they think they can resolve any plastic waste back to the original oily products they were made from. To be used again. Humankind imitating nature. Circular manufacturing and all that. It won’t get rid of all the horrible plastic already in the sea; but it will stop anymore going in. and that’s a start.

Now, we owe this infographic to the amazing website Nature Briefings. It’s our go-to website for up to date clearly explained developments in Science, technology and of course their impacts on society. We think you should too. so once again we have put in their link[3[ in the hope you will sign up. Because the more people that do it, the quicker reason and learning will re assert themselves and we will move from this dark place [3] And get this-it’s free!

Good, isn’t it?

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_pollution

[2]https://muratechnology.com/

[3]Enjoying this newsletter? You can use this form to recommend it to a friend or colleague — thank you!

#plastic pollution# #recycle #environment #nature #ecosystem