HERNAN PAYRUMANI / WIKIPEDIASamples from a glacier on Illimani Mountain, in the Andes, allowed researchers to measure lead concentrations in the regionHERNAN PAYRUMANI / WIKIPEDIA
In South America, the use of fossil fuels has generated more intense lead pollution in the past 50 years than have two thousand years of mining. Researchers from the University of Bern, in Switzerland, reached this conclusion after using mass spectroscopy to measure the concentration of lead in a continuous sample of ice extracted from a glacier in the Bolivian Andes (Science Advances, March 2015). The metal was used as part of the silver production process from 450 to 1900 AD, and in tin production in the early 20th century. After 1960, the amount of lead in the atmosphere tripled in comparison to the emission levels resulting from activities of the metal industry in the region, probably due to the use of fossil fuels. “Our study reveals a significant drop in lead pollution levels after the ban on leaded gasoline in the region of the Bolivian Andes, although it has still not fallen to natural levels,” said Anja Eichler, one of the authors of the study, in a comment to the British newspaper The Guardian. In Brazil, leaded gasoline was first introduced in 1922 to improve the performance of auto engines; in the 1970s, the health risks of lead sparked the first debates on its removal from the fuel supply. Banned since 1992 as a gasoline additive in Brazil, lead can cause damage to the nervous system, and several studies have found correlations between high levels of lead pollution and increased criminality.
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