Negative effect | artificial-rainfall

How harmful is cloud seeding?

There are many drawbacks associated with cloud seeding.

1. Uncertainty of targeting

- Once you release these "seed", it is then up to nature to do the rest. There is a risk seeds will get carried by the wind and go off target. Then these seeds may produce rain in the place you don't need it, And the place you wanted it to rain remained dry.

2. Not enough time for test to effects of 'seeds'

- Most cloud seeding operations will use a chemical called silver iodide as the main ingredient for these 'seeds'. There are still many questions about how safe it is for long term exposure or consumption of this chemical for plants, animals, and humans. Health problems and environmental impact ranges from toxicities of excess silver iodide. Silver iodide causes respiratory and skin disorders too. It also causes renal and pulmonary lesions and also Argyria. Argyria is a situation where the discoloration of skin takes place.

However, the toxicity of silver and silver compounds (from silver iodide) was shown to be of low order in some studies. These findings likely result from the minute amounts of silver generated by cloud seeding, which are 100 times less than industry emissions into the atmosphere in many parts of the world, or individual exposure from tooth fillings.

3. Legal responsibility for disasters caused by artificial rain

- Can you be held legally responsible if you seeded a storm and the storm becomes enhanced? Then this 'seeding enhanced storm' caused flooding rain damage or maybe even a flash flooding death. Health problems and environmental impact ranges from storms like tornadoes, or suppression of the rain. Rain suppression would cause a very unfortunate impact on agriculture. This would result in several repercussions like lack of vegetation and crop harvest tends to get poorer. No matter how useful it turns out to be to produce rainfall, it also poses a grave risk of flooding due to the uncontrolled rainfall that may occur at adverse conditions.

4. Economical problem

- The entire technique that is involved in cloud-seeding cost a huge amount of money and can be said to be expensive.

5. Ecological side-effects

- With the artificial production of rain, the lives of several animals will definitely be at stake. It’s not only the fauna but also the flora which has an equal risk too. Thus, all the living organisms are supposedly threatened too even though it is done for a common benefit.

Cloud seeding has various positive effects and negative effects as well. There is no technology that is not tied with negative aspects. It all depends on how we use them to bring out some real improvement or environmental change. Cloud seeding is one of them, where the agricultural practices in certain areas can go up one notch higher just by the optimism and productivity that this artificial rain bestows.