Arsenic and Clean Plates

All of us of a certain age and level of subsistence
can recall how our mothers urged us to clean our plates.
"There are people going hungry!", they would say.
"Eat your vegetables! Eat your phosphorous!"

Phosphorous is one of the building blocks of life.
I don't think my mother knew that, and neither did I,
but she urged me to clean my plate, nonetheless.

As it turns out, phosphorous is optional.
Scientists have discovered that there is a form of life--
not on some distant planet, but right here in California--
that does not use phosphorous. It uses arsenic.

It is a microbe, scraped from the bottom of Mono Lake,
that uses arsenic instead of phosphorous. Speculation is
that perhaps the microbe can be used to pull arsenic
out of those places where it can kill the rest of us.

One might have expected that California harbored
alien life, but the pleasure of that discovery may be short-lived.
It is quite likely that other arsenic-rich sites will have
evolved arsenic-based life, too. Life is a persistent achievement.

Personally, I suspect that where there is tea, there is arsenic;
not just the low levels we know about, but arsenic-rich
forms of poisonous life. It is not my place to do so,
but were I asked, I would suggest that tea bags in Alaska
be collected with latex gloves, and analyzed. Maybe in
Congress, too; wherever you find baggers of tea.

It probably all began in Boston Harbor, centuries ago,
when tax protesters threw tea into the sea. "Enough
arsenic, already!" they chanted, in mindless unison,
not knowing that there are microbes whose mothers
urge them to clean their plates, and eat their arsenic.

Life takes diverse forms, but mothers are the same everywhere.

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