Aggregates Manager

Bill Langer is a consulting research geologist who spent 41 years with the U.S. Geological Survey before starting his own business. He can be reached at Bill_Langer@hotmail.com CARVED IN STONE 32 AGGREGATES MANAGER / July 2018 J ust over 10 years ago (November 2007), I wrote a column called "Food for Thought." The theme of the article was geophagia, the consumption of soil, which is a common behavior of many birds and animals. The article mentioned that researchers studying wild chimpanzees noticed some of the animals suffering from severe diarrhea were eating soils rich in clays that bind the toxins. This column is an expansion of that topic and describes how the clay helps cure diarrhea. Unfortunately, this column is based on personal experience. Our dog, Keiki (pronounced Kay Kee), suffered through severe diarrhea brought on by a serious case of pancreatitis, a disease where the pancreas becomes inflamed and releases digestive enzymes that are activated before they enter into the small intestine. Those enzymes caused Keiki to vomit, have diarrhea, and most critically, they attacked her pancreas. One of the medications that our vet gave Keiki was bio-sponge — one tiny capsule twice a day. It turns out that bio-sponge is not some complex laboratory-created drug, but is a naturally occurring clay called smectite. There is a myriad of uses for smectite, including iron foundry, oil well drilling, decolorizing oils, wine clarification, iron ore and feed pelletizing, cat litter, oil and grease absorbents, and a carrier for insecti- cides, to mention just a few. So how can a tiny amount of clay that is used primarily in industri- al applications help cure an ailing puppy? I am not a veterinarian, but I learned that the bacteria, bacterial toxins, viruses, and many decay products associated with pancreatitis or diarrhea are adsorbed by the smectite, thus preventing them from being fixed to the membrane receptors on the cells of the intestines. The secret lies in the properties of smectite. It is made up of many layers. Each individual layer consists of three even thin- ner layers that are attached to one another at the atomic level. Picture, for example, a piece of plywood made up of three thin plies of wood glued together. The top and bottom ply are the same, and the middle is different. Then picture a stack of many layers of plywood. That is what smectite looks like. To put things into perspective, the smectite layers are very thin — about 2 nanometers thick, including the interlayer be- tween two adjacent "pieces of plywood." For comparison, a human hair is approximately 100 nanometers in diameter. Now imagine peeling apart all those layers of smectite and laying them on the table top. They would cover a huge surface area. If you pulled apart all the layers in 1 cubic inch of smectite, they would cover about 3,500 square feet. Whew! The top and bottom of each layer of smectite has a negative ionic charge. The nasty bacteria and so forth associated with pancreatitis and diarrhea have a positive charge. Because negative charges attract positive charges, the surfaces of the nega- tively charged smectite layers adsorb the toxic substances by hydrogen bonding; sort of like sandwiching the bad molecules between the layers of the stack of plywood. The smectite is capable of expanding as the toxins are adsorbed between the clay layers creating lots of room to capture the nasty things that were making Keiki ill. There are a few other ways that smectite helped cure what was ailing Keiki. Thankfully, the skill of our vet, smectite, and the other medicines did their job. AM A naturally occurring clay called smectite has numerous uses, including helping to cure a sick puppy. Bio-sponge: A Dog's Best Friend Bio-sponge contains a naturally occurring clay called smectite. It's a veterinarian's modern-day alternative to animals eating dirt to cure stomach ailments.

• Cover