At Low temperatures any contaminant is accidentally cryopreserved and can infect humans, animals, cells or food after its thawing, also after centuries. When using Liquid Nitrogen for cryopreservation and food production this risk of contamination can be avoided by sterilizing liquid nitrogen before use
The melting of permafrost not only causes sea levels to rise, but also releases carbon and unknown VIRUSES and bacteria into the atmosphere. Dangerous MICROORGANISMS (included ANTHRAX, CORONAVIRUS, EBOLAVIRUS, HEPATITIS etc) persists cryopreserved for centuries at low temperatures, and reactivates at melting of ice or gas in which are contained (EG LIQUID NITROGEN).
Permafrost is any ground that remains completely frozen (32°F - 0°C) for at least two years straight. These permanently frozen grounds are most common in regions with high mountains and in Earth’s higher latitudes, near the North and South Poles. Permafrost covers large regions of the Earth: almost a quarter of the land area in the Northern Hemisphere has permafrost underneath. The upper layer of the permafrost’s soil, called the active layer, absorbs heat during warm seasons to thaw temporarily allowing plants to grow and animals to find food. The melting of permafrost is obviously implicated in sea levels rise, but furthermore it releases carbon and unknown bacteria into the atmosphere (1).
Global warming is proceeding 2.5 times faster in Russia than in the rest of the world. Russian scientists have discovered that the dissolution of permafrost is releasing into the air spores and bacteria that have been frozen for thousands of years, such as the Bacillus Anthracis bacterium. In Siberia, this bacterium infected villagers and caused the death by anthrax of a 12-year-old boy. Anthrax is an acute infection and can be lethal even if, normally, it does not spread rapidly. Bacillus Anthracis bacterium, usually frozen in permafrost, would have “awakened” by the melting of the layer due to the high temperatures that have reached the area even the 35 Celsius degrees. From there, some spores would then be carried away by the wind. Not all bacteria can come back to life after being frozen in permafrost. Anthrax bacteria, among other spore-forming bacteria like tetanus and botulinum from Clostridium, can survive forming spores, extremely resistant for more than a century. Humans can become infected by inhaling spores, eating contaminated food or handling infected animals.
Even fungi and viruses can survive in permafrost for a long time (2).
In fact, in 2004 scientists found the body of a woman buried in the permafrost of Alaska, affected by the old Spanish flu disease, which killed 50 million people worldwide between 1918 and 1920. In 2014, Legendre and colleagues revived two viruses trapped in Siberian permafrost for 30,000 years. Known as Pithovirus sibericum and Mollivirus sibericum, they are both "giant viruses", so called because unlike most viruses they are so large that they can be seen with a normal microscope. Once they were reanimated, the viruses quickly became contagious. Fortunately for us, these particular viruses only infect single-celled amoeba. However, the study suggests that other viruses, virulent to humans, could be reanimated in the same way (3).
NTERILIZER provides an effective and easy to implement method to sterilize liquid nitrogen (-196° C) with UV radiation.
TAGS: bacteria, permafrost, sterilization, nterilizer
BIBLIOGRAFY.
1. Pericolo “permafrost”: il ghiaccio perenne si scioglie e fa resuscitare batteri sconosciuti. BIOSOST. Aprile 2019.
- Siberia: il batterio dell’antrace «si risveglia». Morto un bambino. Corriere della sera. Agosto 2016.
- In-depth study of Mollivirus sibericumgiant virus. Legendre M et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Sep 2015; DOI:10.1073/pnas.1510795112
