An LAist investigation found toxic heavy metals in samples of fire retardant collected from the Palisades, Eaton and Franklin fires. Here's what that means.
  • wizzor@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    17·
    22 days ago

    Edit: The article actually covers this, I made a mistake, but will leave the comment as is as it’s not inaccurate.

    While a cause for some concern, the article is missing a critical piece of information: how much heavy metals are there? Heavy metals also occur naturally and some concentrations are harmful while others are not.

    Amount makes a poison.

    They did say the amounts were well below recommendations from the EPA, but I have no idea if the recommendation was made with this volume of drops in mind.

    • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      22 days ago

      If you scroll lower down, there’s a table with the amounts from the different samples from different fires.

      I think it’s telling that the amounts in the Palisades fire are by far the highest. That fire had a huge number of structures burned, so the samples of suppressant scraped off of leaves and things is going to be mixed with smoke and ash particles from those burning structures. It doesn’t make sense that the amount of heavy metals would vary wildly from one batch of suppressant to another, but it makes perfect sense that the amount in a field sample would vary depending on what’s burning in the area.

      • wizzor@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        3·
        22 days ago

        Hey, thanks, I don’t know how I missed that, I thought the article ended about halfway through.

        Updated the comment to reflect this.