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Humans Make Ozone
MondoMor writes "Spotted this article at the Scripps Research Institute. Apparently humans have the ability to manufacture ozone, and do so as an immune response. Suppose we took a bunch of lawyers to the south pole, right under the ozone hole..."
I thought you said humans produce ozone?
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Oh,I have long known this, although I was thinking of the *other* way of producing ozone. Walk across a thick carpet or rub against an upholstered chair and accumulate some static. Then head to the nearest metal doorknob and put your finger near the knob..you'll probably see an arc jump from an extremity like a finger to the doorknob ("point discharge"). Electric discharges in oxygen can form ozone (O3), and you can actually smell it in some machine rooms, and after a burts of lightning. Of course, the static discharge is not exactly pleasant, but we all have to make sacrifices in the cause of science :-) Unless of course you're one of those people who liked touching battery leads or an electrode hooked up to a lemon to your tongue..
Suppose we took a bunch of lawyers to the south pole, right under the ozone hole...
Sure, and cut them all down with machine guns and bury them in a mass unmarked grave. I've had that dream too. But how does that help the ozone layer? And why the South Pole?
Ozone is ozone, but we only like it when it's it the upper atmosphere where it can block UV radiation. Down here it is a poison.
This Sig Kills Fascists
Methane too
How much Ozone does a person make while driving around in their SUV?
Dude, if you thought that ozone is bad news, singlet oxygen is highly toxic to just about everything biological.
As the article states, ozone is produced by neutrophils as a part of an immune response. Not too surprising; redox chemistry is critically important and we've evolved ways of protecting ourselves from harmful oxidation. For example the enzyme catalase converts hydrogen peroxide into water and hydrogen, while superoxide dismutase is a free radical scavenger. I wouldn't be too surprised if there's a specialized anti-ozone protein as well. Anyway, neutrophils engulf bacteria (and other things) and the engulfed matter ends up in an intracellular compartment called a phagosome. The neutrophil pumps in various nasty compounds--I imagine ozone may be one of them--to kill whatever it engulfed. I'd imagine that neutrophils have higher than normal expression levels for catalase and other protective enzymes to protect itself...from itself.
If I'm not mistaken, oxidants cause mutations in the DNA of your cells -- and if that mutation happens to occur in some vital bit of the DNA, you get cancer. Cancer cells are, fundamently, normal cells that have gone awry and reproduce extremely quickly. That's why chemotherapy is used to treat cancer -- chemotherapy targets fast-reproducing cells (also why it makes your hair fall out -- hair cells are another fast reproducing cell type). In any case, if your body produces oxidants to fight germs, couldn't those same oxidants be causing, as a side affect, mutations in your DNA? Maybe the dramatic rise in cancer rates over the past x*10^2 years isn't due entirely to our longer life spans -- maybe it's also, in part, due to the fact that we live much closer together and regularly infect and are infected by our family members/cow-workers/fellow K-mart shoppers. The common cold a cause of cancer? Maybe not so far fetched. And maybe it's the body's oxidant-loaded response to things like cigarettes that causes cancer -- not the cigarette chemicals themselves (though I am very poorly acquainted with cigarette research). Also, what impact would those anti-oxidant drinks/pills/suppositories that are all the fad these days have on your body's ability to fight off diseases?
This isn't listed on the main page. We all must be using some sort of headline grabber.
-1 (Troll) is antihammer
this reminds me of the terraforming discussion we had a few days ago. Accelerated technology on ozone production is not only good for our planet, but for others in the future. Wasn't there a release in Nature or some such magazine that stated that the hole in the ozone wall was repairing itself, though? Kinda harsh if we get up these billion dollar ozone making plants and they're obsoleted by good old mother earth...
this is not a sig.
Well, this is quite interesting. We could create biomass in the atmosphere, and let it generate Ozone up there, using biological technology. I bet it would work!
I thought that science had determined that the ozone "hole" was a natural cycle and that man didnt have anything to do with it. Considering the fact that CFC's are heavier than air and it breaks down in the presence of sunlight, you would think people would have known this sooner..
Put a bunch of laweyrs there, and they will get a court order of every body else out of planet earth
The lunatic is in my head
..whackos.
My laser printer from over a decade ago had warnings about producing ozone. IE, don't keep it terribly enclosed and sniff the fumes.
So, ozone hole my ass. All we need are a bunch of laser printers, eh?
And they would need to be very sick lawyers anyway.
You mean like personal injury attorneys?
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
"Suppose we took a bunch of lawyers to the south pole, right under the ozone hole..."
Ahh, another one of those guys... Buddy, I hate to tell ya, but the ozone is NOT depleting. The reason for global warming is the sun is just getting hotter, like all stars do. Even if the Ozone is depleting, it's constantly replenishing itself through volcanic eruptions, cars, and even TVs and computer screens (no wonder I'm addicted).
How man bbls (english barrels - standard measurement of crude oil in chemical engineering) does goatsee produce. I suspect a lot. This might be an educated guess, but the pictures speak for themselves.. now don't they.
Arg. Yeah that's right.