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Modern Day Equivalents of a Talmudic Question

Question: In Bava Kama 50b we learn that a pit's foul air can kill an animal. This observation raises three immediate questions. First, what is meant by a pit? Second, what types of foul air are being produced? Third, how can these gases kill an animal?
Submitted by Dr. Isaac Betech Nissan (T.O.V.) Mexico City, MEXICO

Answer:
For those familiar with farm life, you know that wherever you have animals, you have farm waste-lots of odorous, sloppy manure. Picture for a moment, a farmer in ancient Israel, especially the hilly regions of the country. Add to this picture a hot summer day with no breeze. Now place that manure pile into your picture. The mix of still, hot air in a valley with pockets of decaying animal waste is probably the pit being described by our sages. The odor generated by these manure piles, sulfur and ammonia compounds, are byproducts of fecal production. While methane is also created, it is a colorless, odorless gas (which is why your local gas company adds another gas to your fuel supply so you can detect leaks) and does not add to the smell. However, it does add to the lethality of the mix if inhaled in sufficient quantities. Sulfur, while a micronutrient (it is important in certain amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, some of which are central to our body's ability to detoxifying harmful substances), will combine with the fluid linings in your lungs to produce sulfuric acid, a potent chemical that will destroy the tissues in your body. Ammonia, too, is toxic. If you can't get to fresh air, i.e., you get stuck in the pit, death can occur. If you think this is just a hypothetical situation the rabbis were considering, I read recently in the newspaper of a situation where a number of cattle were entrapped in a manure pit and died by inhaling the fumes produced by their own waste. In another case, researchers recorded elevated levels of sulfur and ammonia at a North Carolina hog farm. Silos, too, can be "tall pits" because they may accumulate dangerously high levels of hazardous gases created during the fermentation of the stored forage.

We can, however, redefine "pit" as any location in which something can become localized. With that in mind, let's consider two situations: temperature inversions and occupational exposures. Under normal conditions, air temperature gets cooler the higher up in altitude you go. Under some situations, a stable layer of warmer air will trap cooler air below it. This can happen in one of several ways: when a cold front slides under a warm front or heavier, cooler mountain air slides down into a valley and replaces the lighter, warmer air. These inversions tend to be unstable and last for only a short time. More stable inversions occur in valleys where air movement is blocked. When nighttime cooling of the air occurs and the winds are calm or cool, humid sea air flows into a valley and becomes trapped, these inversions can last for awhile. If the valley has significant amounts of polluted air, that air becomes localized in the lower, cooler layer. If the inversion lasts into the daylight hours, then the sunlight can react with the various toxic chemicals in the trapped air to create "photochemical smog," the noxious brew in cities such as Los Angeles and Denver that is a major health issue for many individuals. In severe cases, such as those documented in both the United States and Europe, significant numbers of human deaths have been documented. These "pits" have been documented in such diverse locations as Chile, Germany, Greece, Mexico, New Zealand, among others. That situation, as you can see, now resembles our Talmudic pit-we are trapped in a layer of foul air.

Pits can be more than holes in the ground or sites surrounded by hills. Pits can be places where peoples, by the nature of their job or living conditions, are forced to be in situations in which their health may be endangered. The boundaries are those of the a building, a farm field, or neighborhood. Significant work has been done by scientists around the world on what is called "occupational exposure" to harmful substances. Factory workers are exposed to toxic metals such as lead, chromium, zinc, cadmium, and mercury. They, like the animals in the pit, often succumb to life-threatening or life-altering diseases. Evidence is accumulating about the role environmental contaminants may play in Lou Gehrig's disease, Parkinson's disease, dementia, mental illness, learning disorders, cancer, chromosomal aberrations, reproductive deficits, early puberty, and neuromuscular problems. Placing children in these potentially hazardous employment situations intensifies the effects due to their still developing bodies being more sensitive to environmental contaminants. Many workers have, however, some protection from their unions or company-sponsored health care-albeit at a huge cost to the company and the nation. Yet, there are many workers who have no protection. There is now significant documentation of the health risk migrant workers face due to the seasonal exposure to pesticides, including cognitive function and eye-hand coordination. The inner city can be considered a "pit" because of the higher concentrations of contamination in the air, water, and soil in these older, poorer sections of a city. Chemicals that affect both the nervous and hormonal system, such as lead, chromium, mercury, or PCBs, are prevalent in these locations. Due to their poverty, the individuals in such neighborhoods cannot escape to a cleaner environment

In this short description of environmental "pits" it is clear that, while the Rabbis may not have intended their description to have such wide implications, in today's world, a pit can be more than a hole in the ground.

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