Green-blooded.

For yonks I've been telling people to avoid consuming Chinese goods, particularly food products, but it's only been in the last year that people have started taking me seriously due to the deluge of mainstream news articles over health and safety hazards that have accompanied various Chinese exports. Now I'm telling you that it's seriously not a good idea to live/work/play anywhere close to the petrochemicals industry, i.e. if you're in The Pore then stay as far east as possible. And it looks like CSI's Grissom agrees with me:

(Grissom to Dr. Robbins) "You know atmospheric sulfur levels are on the rise? [In] a hundred years we will all be look[ing] like spinach."

Yes. There is actually a rare medical condition called sulfhaemoglobinaemia, where sulphur is incorporated into the oxygen-carrying compound haemoglobin in red blood cells, which can turn blood a dark green colour. And it's happened before.

The shipping industry has been a key user of sour (i.e. containing high levels of hydrogen sulfide) crude oil - the main source of bunker fuel - and much of the sulphur oxide created during the combustion of a ship's fuel is emitted all over the world along shipping routes. But now various politicians desperate for popular platforms are provoking regulatory changes that will force ships to use bunker fuels with much lower sulphur content.

So where's all that sulphur naturally lurking in crude oil gonna go? It's just a matter of time before all ships will have to use "cleaner" bunker fuel which has had most of its sulphur content removed in refineries. Which probably means that the level of sulphur oxides emitted by refineries will rise rather significantly. You see, nobody wants to use fuels with high sulphur levels because it damages engines and machines. The "invisible hand" has, over the past century, directed the use of high sulphur crude oil towards a use that minimises its cost to society. And now we're about to undo all its work.

The only way to reduce atmospheric sulphur levels is to reduce aggregate global consumption. That means, inter alia, no more bananas for you. Failing that, would you rather have unhealthy levels of sulphur in your body or randomly dispersed the world over? It seems that the latter would be the lesser of two evils.

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I thought I'd post a stunning pic of hammerhead sharks in the sea around the Galapagos Islands because that's where I intend to celebrate my release from indenture in 2011: