Darkoshi

Texas Wine Grape Growers Sue Bayer-Monsanto Over Dicamba Drift Damage / Some growers report losses of up to 95 percent (June 2021)
"The volatile nature of the pesticide dicamba has meant that it can wind up miles away from where it was sprayed...."

A New Approach to Protecting Bees From Toxic Pesticides (June 2021)
"Researchers at Cornell University have discovered a way to help bees safely digest what’s been killing them
...
Once ingested, the enzymes pass through to the bee’s midgut, where the microparticle’s casing sequesters the organophosphate pesticides, breaking them down and detoxifying them before they can be absorbed and harm the bee."

But are organophosphates a big danger to bees? Based on some of the below articles, it was neonicotinoids that were thought to be a culprit of bee population decline, along with many other factors.


That article however makes me think about how currently companies like Monsanto sell farmers pesticide along with patented seeds for crops that are resistant to the pesticide, and make money from both. Now there may be one company selling pesticide and patented seeds, and another company selling special patented food to feed your pollinator bees to make them resistant to the pesticides. Money, money, money. Maybe they'll also start selling genetically modified patented bees which are pesticide resistant.

From doing a search on that, more interesting articles:

Scientists to Breed Genetically Modified Bees: Here's Why (Nov 2015)
"Canadian scientists are set to breed honeybees to make them resistant to disease and harsh winter conditions..."

Engineered bacteria protect honey bee health (Feb 2020)
"Bacteria naturally found in honey bees were engineered to help bees fight infections that that have been destroying colonies."
Mites on bees; those poor bees.

Are GMOs and pesticides threatening bees? (no date listed)
Long article; I didn't read it all. But the tone of this article and website makes me wonder if it is funded by companies like Monsanto. Yet the website claims not to be.

Invasion of the ‘frankenbees’: the danger of building a better bee (Oct 2018)
(long article; I didn't read it all)

I mentioned a house before, which had a natural gas leak. The smell was so offensive and sickening to me that I could not stand to remain in the house for more than a few minutes. Yet 3 other people, including the 2 that lived there, smelled nothing at all, and the 4th person(my mom) only smelled it slightly. The house had a gas stove which had been used recently to cook a meal, so it was suggested that I was simply smelling the pilot light, or perhaps some of the gas left over from the cooking.

Now, I've been in the house again several times, and though the stove hadn't been used in a long time, I could still smell gas. It wasn't nearly as strong as before, but still quite offensive. The smell hit me opening the outer door of the house already, before even opening the main door. The smell was strongest in the lower kitchen cabinets under the stove and under the sink - enough to make me gag. But again, no one else who visited the house smelled anything unusual, even in those same cabinets.

I strongly suggested the owner get the pipes and stove checked for a gas leak. But procrastination ensued.

Finally I procured a combustible gas detector, as by now I was now very curious whether it was really gas that I was smelling, and how much of it there was, that I could smell it so strongly, yet no one else could.

In the cabinet under the stove, the detector showed levels of up to 6000ppm of natural gas, or 11% of the LEL (lower explosive limit). Inside the rest of the house, where the odor was still fairly strong to me, it showed levels of about 50ppm.

The owner finally did get it checked out. The gas company rep confirmed a "small" leak (not with his nose; with his own meter), and shut off the gas. There was a shut-off valve right in the cabinet which I hadn't even noticed due to being so repulsed by the smell.

The house was aired out. Now, with the main gas smell gone, I noticed that the house smelled rather musty - something I hadn't been able to tell before, due to the stronger smell of gas. But I still kept noticing some whiffs of gas too. So I checked the cabinets again, and found another leak, this time by the pipes under the oven. There, the detector showed levels of only up to 300ppm, but it was still strong enough to make me gag.

If the gas rep considered levels of 6000ppm a small leak, I suppose that levels of 300ppm (~0.5% LEL) would be considered inconsequential. And the 50ppm or so (~0.1%), which I could also easily detect, would be considered even more inconsequential.

Anyway, I found a pamphlet which says:
"Both propane and natural gas are colorless and odorless. For safety reasons, an odorant (Mercapatan) is added so that any leak can be detected by smell. The common detection threshold for smelling the gases is around 20% of the lower explosion limit (LEL)."

So apparently most people can smell it at 20%, but I can smell it at 0.1%. I'm really curious if this is genetic, and how many other people there are who are similarly sensitive to the smell of mercapatan.

Also, propane smells different to me than natural gas does. I wonder if they are they truly odorless to everyone, and is it only the additives that I smell? But it may be that the smell I associate with propane is the smell of the smoke when it is burned, more than the gas itself.

I also wonder now, how many smells which are so strongly offensive to me, other people don't even smell at all. (As opposed to them smelling it but not being bothered by it, as I had generally assumed.) I've been thinking about this a lot lately in light of the above, and might do another post on it.

Oh, another note. According to several sources:
http://archive.orr.noaa.gov/book_shelf/1476_OdorThreshold.pdf
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/chemists-and-bad-smells-and-sulfur-a-productive-pairing/
http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/media/8553/chap4-leakdetection-natgas.pdf

"The human sense of smell is very discerning and can detect mercaptans at a concentration of only 1 part per billion (ppb)."

Based on the above if my measurements and calculations are accurate, that would mean that I can detect it at about 5 parts per trillion. ???

Just logged on to 23andme.com for the first time in months, to see if there are any updates. Got distracted into answering a bunch of the "quick questions". One of them is:

"Does the sound of other people chewing fill you with rage?"

My 23andme DNA test results indicate that 99.8% of my ancestry is European, which is no surprise to me. However, it also indicates that 10.2% is Ashkenazi. That is interesting. I had always wondered whether part of my mom's family (from Germany) might have been Jewish. Then again, it could be from the other side of the family.

There was nothing particularly startling or worrisome in regards to my Disease Risk and Carrier Status.

The closest match found by the "Relative Finder" feature is someone who may be my 3rd or 4th cousin. Based on their profile, I think we are related somehow via my maternal grandfather's family.

Interesting article on human chimerism (having 2 or more sets of genes).. and how it may be more common than once thought.
http://www.katewerk.com/chimera.html