TOPIC 4 How Much Is Too Much?

Figure 3.17 This lake in the Canadian Rockies is a renewable source of fresh water.

Water is an essential ingredient for living organisms, and Canada is

fortunate to have vast supplies of it. Some countries, such as Kuwait or
Bahrain, have no renewable fresh-water supplies. How much of a shock
is it then, to find that most authorities would recommend against
drinking the water directly from the lake shown in Figure 3.17? To be
safe, you need to filter or boil the water at least five minutes to remove
the parasite, Giardia, which can cause the intestinal illness, commonly
known as beaver fever. Would you agree that the water in such a lake is
polluted? Could you tell just by looking?
In some cases it might be obvious that pollution is present; in others it is
not so obvious. So, when can we be sure that a body of water is polluted?
To answer this question, you first need to know the difference
between pollution and a pollutant. In general, a pollutant is any
material, or form of energy, that will cause harm to a living organism.
The harm may be the result of physical, chemical, or even biological
mechanisms that threaten the health or survival of that organism.
Pollution is any alteration of the environment producing a condition
that is harmful to living things. For example, you have read about the
effects of the pesticide DDT. That is a case of pollution. The harm
may not be immediate, but it does occur; the only question is when.
At what point does the concentration of a pollutant become a prob-
lem? Does it happen when the pollutant causes the immediate death of
an organism? When the pollutant is only somewhat harmful? Perhaps
when the pollutant is present at a level that you can detect? The next
investigation will give you an appreciation for how difficult a question
this can be to answer.

How Much Is Too Much? • MHR 213

 S K I L L C H E C K

Initiating and Planning

Performing and Recording

3-G
Analyzing and Interpreting

Communication and Teamwork

Where Does Pollution Begin?

Chemicals are all around you. The water you drink, the foods you eat, the air you
breathe — are all chemicals. Of the thousands of chemicals in use, some are human-
made and some are natural. Some are harmless, and some are hazardous. Others are of
unknown toxicity, either because they have not been tested or they are difficult to detect.
The amount, or dose, of a chemical determines how much harm will be caused, so it is
important to be able to detect the presence of chemicals. Unfortunately, the only way to
determine the level of a hazardous chemical is to observe its effect on a living organism.
To complicate matters, different organisms respond differently to the same dose of a
chemical. To find out how dangerous a chemical can be, you must find out what its
effects are—it must be tested on a living thing.

Question
How much of a chemical needs to be present in order to be detectable?

Safety Precautions Part 1 Put 5 mL of salt into the

• Do not use laboratory glassware.
It may look clean, but is it? Preparing Serial standard glass and fill the
Obtain plastic drinking glasses
and carry out this activity only in
Dilutions glass to the mark with warm
tap water. Stir until the salt
a classroom, or in a cafeteria.
dissolves.
• It is not usually recommended to Procedure
taste anything during experiments
however, this investigation Make a mark near the top of
includes a safe tasting situation. one of the glasses using the
marking pen. This glass will
Apparatus become your standard glass.
8 clean plastic drinking glasses The mark on the glass will
of the same size and shape help you fill the glass with
3 clean plastic drinking glasses
of any size or shape the same amount of water
marking pen each time.
spoon
ruler

Materials
5 mL of salt
tap water Pour the salt solution from
5 mL of sugar your standard glass into the
glass labelled number 1.
Using a ruler, measure from
the top of the solution to the
bottom of the glass. Use the
marker to place a mark on
Use the marker to label the the glass that is one-tenth of
remaining glasses from 1 to 7 the way down from the top
of the solution.

214 MHR • Environmental Chemistry

 Repeat steps 6 and 7 with Ask the test subject to taste
glasses numbered 3 to 7 to the water in each of the
produce weaker and weaker three glasses and try to iden-
dilutions of salt solution. tify which has the salt solu-
tion in it. Record the accu-
Part 2 racy of this guess.
The Taste Test Repeat steps 2 and 3 with
each of the remaining num-
Carefully pour off the top Procedure bered glasses, working back-
one-tenth of the salt solu- Use the three clean, ward from glass number 6 to
tion from glass number 1 unmarked glasses. The per- glass number 1.
(that is, down to the mark) son tasting (the test subject)
and put it into your stan- should have no knowledge Part 3
dard glass. Place glass num- of which glass contains the
ber 1 aside for later testing. salt solution. This is called
How Sweet It Is!
a “blind” test.
Procedure
Away from the view of the
Rinse all of the equipment
test subject, pour a little of
you have used. Repeat Parts
the salt solution from glass
1 and 2 of the procedure,
number 7 into one of the
substituting sugar for salt.
unmarked glasses. Fill the
other two with tap water.

Analyze
1. Glass number 2 contained a salt (or sugar) solution that is approxi-
mately one-tenth as salty (or sugary) as glass number 1. In other
words the solution in glass 1 is about ten times more concentrated
Add warm tap water to the than the solution in glass 2. Approximately how many times more
standard glass to fill it back concentrated is the solution in glass 1 than in glass 7?
to the original mark and stir.
2. At what dilution (in which glass) could your test subject taste the
Pour the diluted salt solution salt? The sugar? Compare your results with the results from other
from your standard glass into groups. Did other groups obtain similar results?
glass number 2. Again, mea-
sure and mark a spot one-
tenth of the way down from Conclude and Apply
the top of the solution to the 3. Explain why there might be a difference in the results you
bottom of the glass. Carefully obtained using salt and sugar. Was there a difference in results
pour off one-tenth of the salt between people? What do you think would cause this discrepancy?
solution from glass 2 and put
it back into your standard 4. The purpose of a “blind” study is to ensure that your results are
glass. Place the glass aside for less likely to be influenced by bias. What do you think a “double
later testing. blind” study is? Why would such a study be used?

How Much Is Too Much? • MHR 215

 How Much Is That?
In the previous investigation you used 5 mL of salt or sugar in a glass
of water. After one dilution, you obtained a salt or sugar concentration
that was one-tenth of the original, or 10 percent. Your serial dilutions
produced concentrations of hundredths (1 percent), thousandths
(0.1 percent), ten thousandths (0.01 percent), and so on.
For many of the products that you use or buy, the standard way of
indicating how much of a substance is present is to refer to the percent-
age (%) of weight or volume it represents.
Yogurt is a good example. When the label states 1 percent milk fat, it
means that 1000 g of yogurt contains 10 g of milk fat. Or, to put this in
a simpler ratio, 1 g of milk fat is mixed into 100 g of the other sub-
stances that make up yogurt. In fact, the term “percent” actually means
parts per hundred. In your studies you will already have encountered
the unit parts per million (ppm), and even units of parts per billion
(ppb). The iodized table salt that you probably used in your investiga-
tion contains about 76 g of potassium iodide (KI) for every
1 000 000 g of sodium chloride (NaCl) for a concentration of 76 ppm
potassium iodide. Did you notice that you were able to taste the iodine
in the diluted salt solutions in the last activity before you were able to
taste the salt?
It is hard to imagine such small amounts of a substance as being
detectable, never mind harmful, but in fact you will see even smaller
amounts being considered. The element cadmium is considered toxic
when it reaches concentrations of 17 parts per trillion (ppt)! To picture one
part per trillion, imagine one quarter in a stack of quarters 2000 km high.

Example:
If the nutritional information label on a container of
yogurt specifies that each 125 g serving contains 7 mg of
cholesterol, what is the concentration of cholesterol in a
serving of yogurt in parts per million (ppm)?

Solution:
First, state your information as a ratio.
7 mg cholesterol
  0.056 mg/g
125 g yogurt

Second, express that ratio in the form of mg/kg

0.056 mg/g  1000 g/kg  56 mg/kg
Since mg/kg is equivalent to ppm, there are 56 ppm of
cholesterol in each serving of this yogurt.
Figure 3.18 Read the nutrition information
on the label to find out the percent milk fat
of the yogurt you eat.

216 MHR • Environmental Chemistry

The Danger Is in the Dose
Toxicity is the ability of a chemical to cause harm to an organism. The The word “pollution”
harm can either occur directly or be caused by the substances that form comes from the Latin
in the organism as it uses that chemical. A chemical has acute toxicity pollutus, which means
when serious symptoms occur after only one exposure to the chemical. “made unclean, foul, or
Methyl isocyanate is one such chemical. Chronic toxicity is diagnosed dirty.” Look up the term
“pollution” in a the-
when symptoms appear only after a chemical accumulates to a specific
saurus and list as many
level after many exposures over time. Lead is an example of this type of synonyms for pollution
substance. For both acute and chronic toxicity, exposure to a chemical is as you can find.
critical. Regardless of how the damage occurs, or even why it
occurs, it is the amount of the chemical causing
that damage that matters. Unfortunately,
it is not always easy to establish the www.mcgrawhill.ca/links/sciencefocus9
level at which a substance is toxic. How critical is the state of our water supplies? What
Due to differences in body mass, solutions can we come up with for the problem of polluted
water sources? Go to the web site above, and click on Web
metabolism, and even lifestyles, dif-
Links to find out where to go next. Write the answers to
ferent organisms will vary in their
these questions in your notebook.
response to a particular toxin.

Some of the minerals you take into Strawberry crops are severely damaged by cycla-
Mineral Maximum men mites. Attempts to control cyclamen mites
your body could be harmful rather pollutant permitted level
than helpful. Intake of “heavy metal” (in ppb) with the insecticide parathion failed drastically. In
ions such as mercury and lead may arsenic 5.0 one study, a cyclamen mite population increased
cause death of nerve cells, which as much as 35 times after the application of
barium 1000.0
results in permanent neurological parathion. Upon investigation, it was found that
cadmium 0.017 another mite species, one that normally preyed
damage. The Government of
Canada has established guidelines chromium 8.9 on cyclamen mites, was even more sensitive to
(trivalent)
for acceptable amounts of such parathion. With the predator species wiped out by
metals in our fresh-water supplies. chromium 1.0 the parathion, the surviving cyclamen mites were
(hexavalent)
This table shows some of able to reproduce and grow without being eaten
lead 7.0 by their normal predator.
those limits.
mercury 0.1
selenium 1.0
silver 0.1

How Much Is Too Much? • MHR 217

Lethal Dose 50 Table 3.4
LD50s for Various Chemicals
A common measurement of
the toxicity of a substance is by Toxin name Source Approximate LD50s
its Lethal Dose 50. LD50 (in ppm)

botulinum toxin A Clostridium botulinum 0.00000003

refers to the dose of a chemi- bacterium
cal that will kill 50 percent of
tetanus toxin A Clostridium tetani 0.000005
the population to which it is bacterium
applied. The LD50 for a dioxin contaminant in some 0.03
chemical takes into account herbicides and in PCBs
that some individuals within nicotine cigarette smoke 0.86
the target population may be strychnine pesticide 5.0
more resistant to the toxic
solanine potatoes 6.0
effects of the chemical. Table
chlordane insecticide 40.0
3.4 summarizes just a few of
the LD50s that have been dieldren insecticide 80.0

established for the human

population. Each LD50 in the table is expressed in parts per million
within the human body. An LD50 does not refer to parts per million in
the environment or in materials ingested by humans.
The most lethal poison known arises from the bacterium, Clostridium
botulinum. This bacterium is common in foods and can be destroyed by
high temperature and acidity. Other bacteria species produce toxins that
are almost as lethal. In fact, you may have noticed in
reading Table 3.4 that the toxins produced by bac-
teria are much more lethal than dioxin, the most www.mcgrawhill.ca/links/sciencefocus9
deadly of the human-made toxins. To find out more about how toxic substances affect us.
The LD50 of a chemical is only a useful Go to the web site above, and click on Web Links to find
guide to how we should handle that substance. out where to go next. Choose three substances, and
For example, a chemical with LD50 of 15 ppt is describe their effects in your notebook.
one for which proper safety precautions should
be followed.

Preserved foods that have not been exposed to sufficiently high temperatures in the preser-
vation process are often the source of the fatal illness “botulism.” The name comes from
botulus, the Latin word for sausage. The origin of this weird “link” originates with an out-
break of the illness in nineteenth-century Germany. Contaminated sausages were identified
as the culprit, so the disease became known as botulism. When the bacterial culprit was
eventually isolated and identified, it was named Clostridium botulinum. Which other English
words have their origin in the Latin word botulus?

218 MHR • Environmental Chemistry

An Acceptable Risk?
Government agencies and legislative bodies are often pressured to relax
the strict testing required before a new drug or substance is approved
for everyday use. Many people view the waiting period as inconvenient
and unnecessary. However, there are good reasons why these waiting
periods are in place. What do you think they are?
Since not all individuals or species react the same to a particular
chemical, establishing risk is often difficult. First, a dose that kills one
individual may cause only mild discomfort in another. Second, the toxic-
ity of a chemical often depends on how the chemical enters the body.
Inhaling or ingesting a chemical is much more likely to cause harm than Figure 3.19 In light of the
spilling the same chemical on your skin. Third, you can’t completely fact that thalidomide is one
rely on published toxicity values to determine the effects on humans, of the most effective drugs
doctors have for the
because few actual measurements have been made. Most of the informa- treatment of many
tion regarding humans is the result of studying accidental-exposure diseases, such as lupus
cases. Why would that be? Would you volunteer to be a test subject for a and rheumatoid arthritis,
toxicity experiment? Another reason to question the reliability of toxici- should it be struck from the
list of approved drugs?
ty values is that they are merely guesses based on the
assumption that humans will react to a chemical in
the same way that a laboratory rat or mouse will. So
despite the best efforts of scientists, sometimes a
substance will be approved for use with tragic effect.

Thalidomide Issue
The drug thalidomide is an example of just such a
tragic effect. Originally developed as a sleeping pill,
thalidomide was subjected to the usual toxicity tests
and declared harmless. Its use by pregnant women
in the 1950s and 1960s resulted in the birth of
thousands of babies with absent or extremely short-
ened limbs. After the first birth deformities were
noticed, further testing established that lab rats can
take doses of thalidomide as high as 4000 ppm with
no ill effect, but pregnant women who received a
much smaller dose (0.5 ppm) at just the wrong time
during pregnancy, produced a child with missing
limbs, as shown in Figure 3.19.

How Much Is Too Much? • MHR 219

 The Evaluation of Risk
There are often articles in the newspaper relating to toxic spills of
chemicals, or concerns about pesticide use. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
was a rallying cry for the environmental movement in the 1960s and
forced a re-evaluation of how much humans influence the environment.
With all of the publicity surrounding the human use and abuse of
toxic chemicals, we sometimes overlook the fact that most of these poi-
sons are natural, not human-made. The chemical defences that plants
and animals have evolved to discourage predators and eliminate com-
petitors are in general much more toxic and numerous than synthetic
toxins. For every molecule of human-made pesticide in our diet that is a
Figure 3.20 Saccharin is a result of agricultural use, there are as many as 10 000 molecules of natu-
sugar substitute that is 500
times sweeter than sugar. It
rally formed pesticides — some almost identical in structure and func-
was first discovered in 1879 tion to human-made ones. So how do you calculate the risk involved in
and used commercially by our use of pesticides? What is a safe level for any pesticide?
1907. Now it is a controlled We take risks every day in all kinds of activities. More importantly, we
substance, since it has been
found to produce cancerous
accept those risks as normal. The risk of spraining your ankle does not
effects in some lab animals. prevent you from walking down the sidewalk. Perhaps it is better to talk
While saccharin is still an about “acceptable risk” when evaluating the safety of an activity. For
accepted food additive, it example, a cup of coffee contains the alkaloid chemical caffeine, a ner-
is required that foods
containing saccharin be
vous system toxin that has an LD50 for mice of 130 ppm. Does that
labelled as possibly make it dangerous for humans? Consider this:
hazardous to your health. • Humans would have to drink 70 cups at one sitting to get a dose
Saccharin generates an equivalent to the LD50 for mice.
almost undetectable risk
of cancer in humans.
• It may not be accurate to use the established dose for mice to calculate
the dose for humans. If thalidomide can have different harmful dose
levels for humans than for rats, perhaps caffeine has different dose lev-
els for humans than for mice.
The risk is there, but obviously not much of one. For many people,
drinking coffee is an acceptable risk.
Benefits Versus Drawbacks
Every chemical has the potential to be harmful, depend-
ing on dose, our susceptibility, and how it reacts with oth-
er chemicals. We must decide if its use is more beneficial
than harmful. Is it better to treat crops with fungicides
known to have cancer-causing properties or to allow
moulds to grow, many of which are far more likely to
cause cancers? Is the risk from agricultural pesticide
residues less than the risk from the natural toxins a plant
produces when attacked by insects? The evaluation of the
risks and benefits of any chemical form the basis of how
chemical use is regulated. Of course, a proper analysis for
potential risks and benefits requires an understanding of
which chemicals are present. How can we do that? The
next Topic will introduce you to some of the methods.

220 MHR • Environmental Chemistry

TOPIC 4 Review
1. What is the difference between a pollutant and pollution?

2. What is the difference between acute and chronic toxicity?

3. The maximum permitted level of mercury in our water supplies is 0.10 ppb.
A scientist determines that a water source has 0.20 mg of mercury per
litre of water. Would this water supply be considered unsafe? Explain
your answer.

4. Thinking Critically The photograph below shows two children, playing

in a river across from a factory that produces a carbon “snowfall,” which
turns everything in the area black. Would you consider the water to be
polluted? What reason would you give for saying so? How could you
determine if it actually is polluted?

Some toxins can make the skin so sensitive to

sunlight that even moderate amounts of sun-
light can cause sunburn-like symptoms. Upon
recovery, the skin is often permanently dark-
ened. Many pesticides and plants are known to
cause this sensitivity to sunlight — the carrot
is one such plant.

5. Explain the term LD50 in your own words. Why is an LD50 a more
accurate way of reporting the effects of a chemical than just the toxic dose
that an individual has taken in?

6. Think back to the Inquiry Investigation at the beginning of this Topic.

Which glass containing salt water would you consider to be polluted?
Why? Check with your classmates. Did they agree with your choice?

How Much Is Too Much? • MHR 221