Planet Organic

Renee Elliott, Founder, Planet Organic, 42 Westbourne Grove, London W2 5SH. 

The fact is, a growing number of people believe organic and natural foods are healthier for us and our planet. Organic farming does not use any chemicals that could cause contamination of rain and groundwater. In addition, the richness of the material used to fertilize organic fields topsoil does not allow it to erode into nearby rivers and streams. 

Burning of any hydrocarbon (fossil fuel) or, for that matter, any organic material converts its carbon content to carbon dioxide and its hydrogen to water. Because power plants and other industries emit large amounts of carbon dioxide, they contribute to the so-called greenhouse warming effect on our planet, which causes significant en-... 

An extensive source of natural pollutants is the plants and trees of the earth. Even though these green plants play a large part in the conversion of carbon dioxide to oxygen through photosynthesis, they are still the major source of hydrocarbons on the planet. The familiar blue haze over forested areas is nearly all from the atmospheric reactions of the volatile organics... 

We cover each of these types of examples in separate chapters of this book, but there is a clear connection as well. In all of these examples, the main factor that maintains thermodynamic disequilibrium is the living biosphere. Without the biosphere, some abiotic photochemical reactions would proceed, as would reactions associated with volcanism. But without the continuous production of oxygen in photosynthesis, various oxidation processes (e.g., with reduced organic matter at the Earth s surface, reduced sulfur or iron compounds in rocks and sediments) would consume free O2 and move the atmosphere towards thermodynamic equilibrium. The present-day chemical functioning of the planet is thus intimately tied to the biosphere. 

It is also often taken for granted that many of the Earth s subsystems are exposed to free oxygen (O2), leading to a range of one-way reactions of reduced materials (such as organic carbon or metal sulfides) to an oxidized form. As pointed out many times in earlier chapters, the oxidation-reduction status of the planet is the consequence of the dynamic interactions of biogeochemical cycles. As is the case with the acid-base balances, there is considerable sensitivity to perturbations of "redox" conditions, sometimes dramatically as in the case of bodies of water that suddenly become anaerobic because of eutrophication. Another extreme... 

Carbon accounts for only 0.08% of our planet s mass. Nevertheless, life on Earth is based on carbon. Living organisms take in carbon, process it through biochemical reactions, and expel it as waste. 

Photocatalysis is a fundamental feature of life processes on our planet [1] (it provides photosynthesis in plants and bacteria) and of the chemistry of its atmosphere [2]. Work is under way to develop photocatalytic technologies for abatement of environmental problems [3,4]. Photocatalysis is anticipated to become in the coming years important also for selective organic synthesis [4]. In a more distant future thermal catalytic processes induced by heating with solcir radiation, together with photocatalytic processes may become important for environmentally friendly technologies of solar energy utilization [5-9]. 

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