Researchers Humans have been polluting rivers for 7,000 years
By Karen Graham Dec 4, 2016.
Human-caused environmental pollution is usually associated with the start of the modern industrial era, but researchers looking for evidence of when humans first began using metal tools may have found the world's first polluted river.
For centuries, humans have used rivers, streams and the sea as a garbage dump, not realizing the consequences of their actions. Actually, it was just something people did to get rid of their waste.
But an international team of anthropologists, looking for clues on how man first transitioned from using stone tools to metal ones discovered a 7,000-year-old dried up riverbed in the Wadi Faynan region of southern Jordan that had high levels of copper pollution in the sediment, according to a press release.
Professor Russell Adams, with the Department of Anthropology at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, along with his colleagues, found evidence of the early anthropogenic or human-caused pollution, as well as the smelting of copper.
More:
http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/science/researchers-humans-have-been-polluting-rivers-for-7-000-years/article/481018#ixzz4SbrzwJhQ
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Elements like lead and mercury and cadmium, dangerous pollutants released in metal refining and burning coal, have a "half life" of FOREVER, and never go away. Organic (carbon-based) wastes, for example PCBs, coal tar wastes, DDT... have a similar resilience.
