France’s Zone Rouge – A Forbidden No Man’s Land Poisoned by War (2015)

Re:France’s Zone Rouge – A Forbidden No Man’s Land Poisoned ... by mdturnerphys on Friday April 27, 2018 @12:04AM (#16938382)

"German researchers found extremely dangerous levels of up to 17% arsenic in the soil"

That seems too high to be true. The page doesn't give the source, but I wonder if something like bioavailability got misinterpreted as composition.

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Re:France’s Zone Rouge – A Forbidden No Man’s Land Poisoned ... by valinor4 on Friday April 27, 2018 @02:47AM (#16938869)

Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge) states that "as arsenic can constitute up to 17% of some soil samples" and references "Bausinger, Bonnaire, and Preuß, 2007".

I found this study (https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-01267232/document) but I am afraid I don't know how to read the results.

I assume that 17% is the absolute maximum proportion of arsenic ever found in a single small sample.

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Re:France’s Zone Rouge – A Forbidden No Man’s Land Poisoned ... by tom_mellior on Friday April 27, 2018 @05:11AM (#16939415)

I don't really know how to read this either, but the number 17 as such does not appear anywhere in that paper. This quote may be relevant: "Concentrations of As vary between 72,820 and 1,937 mg/kg" (page 13).

These commas appear to be thousands separators, so that's a maximum of 73 grams per kilogram or 7% per mass of a soil sample. I'm not a doctor, but I would advise against eating significant amounts of these soil samples.

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Re:France’s Zone Rouge – A Forbidden No Man’s Land Poisoned ... by jacquesm on Friday April 27, 2018 @08:44AM (#16940347)

I'm not a doctor either, but I would advise against eating soil altogether.

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Re:France’s Zone Rouge – A Forbidden No Man’s Land Poisoned ... by coldacid on Friday April 27, 2018 @12:27PM (#16942026)

Eh, it's good for building up the immune system.

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