Attack of the Killer Seaweed: Nature Strikes Back

Killer seaweed is supplanting normal seaweed in the oceans. Now it's returning to the shores that spawned it, spreading death on land.

by Heidi Stevenson

28 July 2011

It sounds like something out of a bad science fiction flick. But it's real. Animals are dying on beaches in France. One man nearly died. Beaches are being cleared because of deadly seaweed.

Beaches in northern France are being choked by a green tide of algae that produce the poisonous gas, hydrogen sulphide. The cause is the runoff of effluent from factory farms. Nature is striking back!

Now, dead zones are not only being created in the ocean by factory farming wastes. They're creating dead zones on shore.

Both vegetable and animal modern agriculture produces high levels of nitrates. One species of seaweed absorbs these nitrates, which stimulate them to grow to enormous size, resulting in "green tides" that wash up onshore. As the seaweed decays, it releases hydrogen sulphide, a noxious gas as poisonous as cyanide—and it stinks like rotten eggs.

The Rotten Egg Stench Won't Save You

With a rotten egg stench, you'd think that it would be easy to avoid hydrogen sulphide. However, that odor only exists at a concentration up to 30 ppm (parts per million. At that level, the worst symptom is irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat.

As the concentration rises up to 50 ppm, the odor changes, becoming sickeningly sweet. Symptoms grow more serious at this point. Headache, coughing, nausea, dizziness, and breathing difficulty are likely to be experienced.

Exposure over a period of time at these levels can lead to serious, and potentially deadly, symptoms. Bronchitis, pneumonia, severe headaches, pulmonary edema, and loss of motor coordination (indicative of neurological damage) are likely to occur.

When the concentration of hydrogen sulphide exceeds 100 ppm, there is no odor because the olfactory nerves become paralyzed. This effect occurs rapidly, so can make it seem that the gas has dissipated.

At this point, the victim can succomb very rapidly to shock, convulsions, coma, and death. Death results from cellular asphyxiation. Just a few breaths of air at 200 ppm concentration takes in enough hydrogen sulphide to cause respiratory failure.

Deaths Ignored

Awareness of the problem is not new. For ten years, French officials have ignored the demands of local councils to address the problem of stinky and unusable beaches. Even when a man hired to clear the gunk from the beach two years ago collapsed in a coma, nothing was done. Dr. Pierre Philippe, of Brittany's Lannion Hospital, cared for him. He says that he's treated several people poisoned by hydrogen sulphide on the beaches.

In 2009, a horse passed out and died. An autopsy proved that the cause of death was a pulmonary edema from hydrogen sulphide.

Now, foraging wild boars are being found dead in large numbers. Two adult and three young boars were found lying dead in the mud of an estuary yesterday. A total of 28 boars have been found dead since 7 July.

The first two boar deaths were covered up. They were passed off as having died from swallowing too much mud! Was that the world's first "death by excessive mud ingestion" claim?

To further evade the true cause, French tourist industry officials attempt to misdirect blame for toxic seaweed onto global warming.

Agribusiness

The problem has been developing for more than ten years. More and more seaweed masses have been washing up onshore, rotting, stinking, and making the beaches unusable. In the last two years, they've become deadly.

For years, people in local communities have been complaining that their beaches were being ruined. The cause has been well understood all along to be nitrates from agribusiness operations. Both petroleum-based fertilizers used in mass quantities and wastes from factory-farmed pigs, chickens, and dairy cattle run off into rivers. These rivers carry the nitrate-rich effluent to the sea.

In the sea, the nitrates are taken in by algae, making them grow to monstrous sizes. Massive green tides composed of this distorted seaweed are washed onto shore, and the seaweed rots. As it decomposes, it both forms gas pockets in the mud and forms a crust that traps the hydrogen gas. When an animal or human stumbles onto it, the crust is easily broken and the mud pockets easily pierced. The gas escapes and the result is rapid death.

Of course, stopping the cause would cut into Agribusiness profits. So France has chosen to let it continue.

Will the next step after the deaths of a few beaches and a few animals be mass deaths of humans? If so, then we'll be repeating a possible scenario of the end of dinosaurs. One of the leading theories of dinosaur extinction is a build-up of hydrogen sulphide in the atmosphere poisoning the creatures.

Gaia is striking back at her tormenters. Killer seaweed is supplanting normal seaweed in the oceans. Now it's returning to the shores that spawned it, spreading death on land. Will we stop the insane industrialization of farming, or continue to bow at the altar of Agribusiness profits?

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