James Fischer wrote:

>A list member asked me off-list about milligrams versus parts
>per billion and parts per million, so I guess I should lay this
>out, since contamination claims are clearly going to become more
>and more common.
>
Interesting, but any discussion about ppm or ppb has to get back to what
happens to it in the wild. The food chain tends to concentrate so you
can start with ppb go to ppm and soon come to amounts that are of concern.

Anther problem is how the small amounts are treated by the body. Are
they in and out or are they tied up and concentrated with each
ingestion. There are many such compounds that in the moment are harmless
but in the aggregate might not. So even ppb, over time, may be a problem.

>I should list a few standard conversions for those who think that if God
>intended us to use the metric system, there would have been 10 Disciples.
>In my view, if God had wanted us to use the metric system, he would have
>given us ten fingers.   :)
>
Eight fingers (and two thumbs) so we should be in octal (base 8 which is
a valid and used counting system- mostly used by assembly language
programmers - eight bits per byte- as a way to shift from binary to
decimal).

Bees, of course, are binary ( base 2).

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine