The Politics of Pollution

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday May 03, 2002 22:13 by Robert Allen - an talamh glas atgblue at yahoo dot com

Pollution has become a major problem in modern Ireland yet we seem to believe it is the trade off we make for our prosperity.

GETTING ON WITH IT:
The Politics of Pollution

by Robert Allen

"By putting business before every other manifestation of life, our mechanical and financial leaders have neglected the chief business of life: namely, growth, reproduction, development, expression. Paying infinite attention to the invention and perfection of incubators, they have forgotten the egg, and its reason for existence."
Lewis Mumford[1]

Many years ago in conversation with the environmental director of one of our industry federations I heard the spoilt whinges of an apprentice capitalist. "Do we want to be organic farmers or waitresses or do we want to get on with it?" came the retort to a remark I had made about environmental standards and enforcement.[2]

I wasn't looking for a philosophical or political debate, I was simply wondering why we have environmental standards that ignore the reality of pollution - of our waterways, air and soil, that ignore the consequences of chemicals in our food, that ignore the social cost of our arrogance, ignorance and stupidity.

This begs a very obvious question and one which is being frequently asked by those who have taken the time to study contemporary society and its physical, biological and psychological impact on humankind.

What kind of life do we really want? In answering that we must also ask ourselves what kind of place we want to life in, what kind of culture we wish to participate in? Do we want to live in a place where people have to fight external forces to live, dependent on a misery cheque from a recalcitrant State; where people struggle in abject poverty; where relationships disintegrate in acrimonious turmoil; where environmental illnesses are so pervasive they are taken for granted; where some people wallow in material splendour while others totter above the abyss; where those who control the means of production enjoy what they genuinely believe is a high standard of living to the detriment of the rest of us; where those same people tell us that the benefits of material society outweigh the risks?

But whose society is this? Is it a society created by the individual needs of everyone or a society created by the ruling hierarchies to allow them to control and dominate each individual, or is it a society that has become a mirror image of itself or a society that has allowed itself to be perpetuated by its consumerist culture? The answer depends on your vantage point, your politics and your honesty. What you must ask yourself is this: What are the final consequences of a society out of control? You don't know. That's not surprising because none of us know what the final social costs will be.

What we do know and what we must address is the simple question. Is this really the kind of world you would want to live in?

You wouldn't? That's good so I suppose we better get on with it.

The problem I have is this: What is it? Before you tell me I'd like to venture a few suggestions.

IT is encouraging capital investment in the form of toxic industry so that a minority of people can enjoy a higher standard and quality of living. It is encouraging this industry to set its own agenda to the detriment of the well being of every person living in this country. It is ignoring the environmental damage chemicals have done and are doing to this country. It is dismissing those who believe that this industry is not only a law onto itself but is belligerent in the face of criticism, ignorant of scientific studies which show conclusively that there is a problem with anthropogenic chemical compounds, arrogant to the point that you get the impression that only what they say is true, that everyone else is talking nonsense.

As Lester Brown points out in his State of World annual survey, every living system on Earth is in decline.[3] We live in a world poisoned by toxins. That is not to say, as Christopher Stone is at pains to point out, that "the elimination of the world's exotic species of animals or the annihilation of great forests" will mean the death of the planet.[4] Those who have studied Gaian literature know we live on an extremely resilient ecosphere. But that is not the real point here. The planet will survive anything we do to it. Mother Earth will heal herself despite the damage we have done to her.

We know that many plant and animal species are dying out faster than scientists can identify them. We know because our media tells us about the damage to the planet. What our media does not tell us is the damage our consumerism and lifestyles are doing to ourselves. Despite the green revolution that began with the introduction of chemicals into our agricultural systems the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations International Children?s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) estimate that one billion people (one in five of the planet's human population) are suffering from disease, poor health or malnutrition and that 100 million people, 27,000 a day, will die of treatable diseases.[5] Perhaps we don't know this.

Do we also know that our fresh water is being poisoned by pollution, that topsoil is being lost at a rapid rate while our forests are, in the words of Stone, "being stripped, stressed and burned" to the extent that "ecosystems that have been in existence for at least 50 million years are being eliminated within a period of a half a century or so"? Do we know that our oceans with their unique and delicate lifeforms are being destroyed by nuclear and toxic wastes so much that with bioaccumulation some species are loaded with toxins and much of the consequent diseases? Do we know that because the waste of the industrialised northern hemisphere is swept poleward by winds, currents and animal migration that the indigenous human population, the Inuit, have higher levels of organochlorines[6] in their blood than any population on Earth which have not been exposed to industrial accidents, like Chernobyl, Bhopal, Seveso, Times Beach or Love Canal.[7]

[dioxin molecule] Why do we not know this? Although there is a paper mountain of contemporary studies out there about pollution and health, the precise effect of pollution on human health is a contentious issue despite the evidence that tells us that virtually every species on the planet is in grave danger. Since July 1991, when an unprecedented gathering of scientists at Wingspread, Wisconsin in the USA discussed how the organohalogen compounds we know as pesticides, industrial chemicals and synthetic products affect sexual development in wildlife and humans, more and more scientists are realising that these compounds are responsible for the destruction of species all over the planet. More significantly is the reason; the failure and break down of endocrine and immune systems. As the human endocrine system is virtually identical to other vertebrates such as fish, birds and mammals, scientists are certain that we are next, unless, as the Wingspread scientists put it, something is done to abate and control the chemical compounds industry is pumping into the environment.[8]

But we don't need science to tell us that toxic pollution is harming the planet's ecosystem, gradually poisoning us and altering the climate. We only need to talk to the communities which live amidst our chemical industry or listen to the lamentable stories young mothers tell their friends of their children's respiratory problems or hear farmers moan about the crazy weather and the sick soil. So why do our government, our institutions, our academia and foreign industry refuse to take seriously what a few enlightened visionaries believe is the slow destruction of humankind? Is it apathy and ignorance or is it greed and selfishness? We're spreading a manmade disease and all our media and politicians do is ignore the evidence all around us. While honest scientists call for an absolute end to the manufacture of the chemicals that are poisoning the planet others insist that the toxic load does not accumulate to concentrations which will pose a threat to the health of the ecosystem. And this is an argument about health, not about the believed technological perfection of incinerators or cars or chemical processes and the benign use of chemicals in all their forms in every industry from agriculture to manufacturing and certainly not about the omnicompetence of science.

There is a tool While many scientists are unequivocal in their belief that chemical and nuclear pollution is responsible for many of the modern illnesses in the western world, the absence of establishment-reviewed epidemiological studies, means that the debate remains unfocused, the case "unproven". Industry, as one environmental lawyer put it, "has the advantage of knowing that the difficulty in ascribing any one pollutant to any one illness is enormous".[9]

Evidence of pollution - the problem which confronts the local GP ? allows the chemical industry in particular to argue that their processes are not to blame for illnesses among industrialised and the wider communities. Chemicals are regarded as relatively harmless if clinical damage cannot be detected. According to those prepared to accept that there is a real problem, animal models, clinicopathological studies and epidemiological investigations are even regarded as not sensitive enough to detect the effects of low level exposures to chemicals. Animal models are used to study the effects of high doses of chemicals but as Ashford and Miller note "rats, mice and other animals are unable to tell researchers if they have headaches, feel depressed or anxious or are nauseated". They conclude, "thus, the subtle effects of low-level chemical exposure may be missed completely". Epidemiological studies point to associations between events, but as multiple chemical sensitivity is the consequence of multiple triggers resulting in multiple health effects, according to Ashford and Miller, "epidemiology may be an insensitive tool". And clinicopathological studies, because they rely on the presence of a clinical sign, laboratory measurement or tissue pathology, are, note Ashford and Miller, "not likely to be sensitive to the early effects of low-level exposures, that is prior to end-organ damage".[10]

Inflammation of the airways is one of the first indicators of toxic pollution and multiple chemical sensitivity is the consequence of this exposure. However those who have been working for the past 50 years to establish this as a scientific and pragmatic fact were, until recently, marginalized by the medical profession and the scientific community because their conclusions were based on techniques which included anecdotal evidence. Gradually the lazy thinking which dismissed the work of Theron Randolph and those who adopted his concept of clinical ecology is being questioned, but not in Europe where clinical ecologists are still being marginalized as cranks, freaks, gurus and pseudo scientists, using a compliant media to present the usual corporate capitalist tactics. However in 1991 the Canadian and US governments formulated specific recommendations which, predicted some observers, might take the issue of chemical sensitivity into mainstream medicine and public health.

This is slowly beginning to happen as those in the mainstream medical profession struggle to deal with patients who have illnesses not easily explained by the rigid practices of modern medicine. Few doctors disagree that environmental pollution is the cause of respiratory illnesses. What they are unsure about is the cause, which, as we have seen from Ashford and Miller's comments, has more to do with the tools of the trade. Asthma is triggered by the pollutants common in our urban air, significantly oxides of nitrogen and sulphur, ozone and fine particles. That fine particles may be invisible killers is only beginning to gain greater credence than before, despite our knowledge of the London smog which killed 4000 people in one week in 1952.[11] The question, Dr Peter Montague of Environment and Health Weekly asks, "is how much pollution causes how much damage and is there a threshold, an amount below which no effects are seen?" [12] This has been the debate throughout the past four decades because many authorities believe there is a safe threshold. But this is now being questioned by scientists studying the effects of small particulates. Humans evolved to filter out large particulates by the hairs in the nose, mucous membranes in the throat and airways and other mechanisms . Small particulates, which are produced by modern combustion machines, pass through these natural protections straight into the lung. Because they originate in modern combustion processes most fine particles are coated with toxic metals and chemicals. In the deep lung air comes into contact with the blood stream. Therefore, according to Montague, "fine particles provide a uniquely efficient carrier, giving dangerous toxins direct entry into the blood stream". In 1990 the Journal of the American Medical Association observed that death rates from asthma have been increasing in the US., Canada, England, France, Denmark and Germany.[13]

In addition to asthma deaths the prevalence of asthma has been increasing steadily and in major cities asthma is the leading cause of hospitalisation among children aged 5 to 15. Asthma is a disease of the immune system. In an asthmatic the immune system overreacts to the presence of an external agent. The bronchial tubes (which connect the throat to the lungs) become inflamed, produce excessive mucous, and may constrict by muscular spasm. As a result the asthmatic feels like he or she is drowning for lack of air, which, for many, is actually what is happening. What is now beginning to concern some doctors is the possibility that the asthma increase is the result of damaged immune systems. In April 1994 Science, the magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, agreed, claiming that immunologists were encountering a "far more subtle" problem than AIDS; damage to the immune system from environmental pollutants. "Everywhere these days doctors are seeing increasingly severe cases of immune-related diseases," wrote Richard Stone.[14]

There is also Far less subtle is the clinical damage from exposure to chemicals that scientists, workers and industrial communities have no doubt about. Cancer! The argument that occupational and environmental exposure to chemicals is causing a range of cancers not easily explained by age, diet or addiction has been uncompromised by those practitioners who study these phenomena. Scientists agree that one in three in industrialised societies will get cancer during our lifetime and one in four of us will die from it. But the greatest risk is among those living near industrial plants, mines, chemical works and nuclear installations; and workers exposed to chemical and radioactive carcinogens. According to Samuel Epstein, Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois, "some 75 per cent of all cancers develop in those over the age of 55.

But there are notable exceptions, particularly some leukaemias, brain cancers and cancers of the tests, which strike mainly the young and have been increasing at alarming rates".[15] Epstein's work has led him to the conclusion that the rates for certain cancers are ten times higher among some industrial workers than within the general population. Based on exposure data, the US National Institutes of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has estimated that approximately 11 million workers are exposed to occupational carcinogens.[16] Two studies of workers exposed to tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin (TCDD) - one of the most poisonous organochlorines, produced as a by-product of chemical manufacture and the combustion of chlorinated compounds - have also shown high increases of various cancers.[17] Marilyn Fingerhut's study of 5172 American chemical industry workers revealed a cancer rate 46% above normal.[18]

A similar study of German workers revealed a rate 39% above normal but the German study also revealed that the cancer rates were 82% for workers employed for 20 years or more.[19] Although these studies have shown that high exposure to dioxin is a direct cause of cancer (and this has since been confirmed by studies of the population exposed to dioxin from the Seveso accident in Italy in 1976)[20], Linda Birnbaum, director of environmental toxicology at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and one of the scientists leading the agency's three-year reassessment of dioxin said she was also concerned about the chemical compound's impact on the human immune system, "that much lower exposure to dioxin may result in adverse health effects that are very subtle and difficult to detect". [21]

Let me amplify this by referring to the consensus statement released by Dr Theo Colborn and her colleagues following the Wingspread conference in 1991. The 21 scientists had gathered to discuss sex hormones - the androgens that make males look and act like males and the oestrogens that make females look and act like females - in wildlife and humans. As a result of their conference Dr Colborn and her colleagues agreed that "many compounds introduced into the environment by human activity are capable of disrupting the endocrine systems of animals, including fish, wildlife and humans" and they noted that "the consequence of such disruption can be profound because of the crucial role hormones play in controlling development". [The endocrine system consists of specialised cells, tissues and organs that create and secrete, usually into the blood, organic chemicals known as hormones - the body's chemical messengers - which in turn regulate the bodily functions necessary for life. It is the endocrine system that starts the female menstrual cycle and in a developing foetus it is the endocrine system that regulates cell division and organ differentiation.] When these manmade chemicals enter the bodies of humans, animals and wildlife, largely through the food chain, they mimic hormones.

What Dr Colborn and her colleagues have discovered is that the body mistakes these environmental hormones for natural hormones but unlike natural hormones which carry a specific biological message and are then dispatched from the blood steam these environmental hormones remain in the body for long periods, causing continual biological destruction. Dr Colborn and her colleagues also noted that most chemical endocrine disrupters mimic oestrogen, which, many scientists now believe, is the cause of the 50% drop in the male sperm count since 1940, the two-fold increase in breast cancer among women since 1960, the three-fold increase in testicular cancer and two-fold increase in prostate cancer since the 1940s, the phenomenal rise in endometriosis (a disease virtually unknown outside the 20th century) which now affects five million American women and the increasing number of children born with abnormalities.[22] Other scientists, whether they are afraid of losing their jobs or something worse, argue that they can't be sure. These are the scientists we hear in our media.

In our industrial world our politicians and media not only support this toxic industry but actively prevent open and honest discussion about its impact on our lives. Polluting industry, whether it is transnational or local, is not Ireland's future. Our future lies in a clear understanding of our basic needs, the kinds of communities we will have to build if we are to create social, economic, cultural and political structures that will serve every person born on this island over the coming decades.

A realistic future would involve people not industry and state-led-policies. It would mean empowering individuals and communities to give them control of all of their lives. True empowerment comes with freedom, not oppression. It certainly will not happen in a society that is dominated by the toxic waste we produce or by our wasteful ways.

- Robert Allen
References:

[dioxin molecule] 1. Mumford, L, The Future of Technics and Civilisation, Freedom Press, London, 1986

2. IBEC environment director, interview with author, 1993

3. Brown, L, State of the World annuals, Norton, New York, Earthscan, London

4. Stone, C. The Gnat is Older than Man: Global Environment and the Human Agenda, Princeton UP, Princeton, 1994

5. WHO/UNICEF annual reports, Geneva

6. An organohalogen is a molecular bonding of carbon atoms with any of the following halogen atoms, astatine, bromine, chlorine, fluorine or iodine. An organochlorine is the bonding of chlorine with carbon.

7. See Dewailly, E, Inuit exposure to organochlorines through the aquatic food chain in arctic Quebec EHP 101: 618-621 (1993); Dewailly, E et al, Exposure to remote maritime populations to coplanar PCBs, EHP 102: Suppl 1, 205-209 (1994) and Wania, F and Mackay, D, Tracking the distribution of persistent organic pollutants, Enviro Sci & Tech, 30(9): 390A-396A, 1996

8. Theo Colborn and Coralie Clement (eds), Chemically-Induced Alterations in Sexual and Functional Development: The Wildlife/Human Connection, Princeton Scientific Publishing Co (1992); see also Colborn, vom Saal and Soto, Developmental Effects of Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals in Wildlife and Humans, Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol 101, no 5 (Oct 1993) pp 378-384; and Colborn and others, Great Lakes, Great Legacy?, Conservation Foundation, Washington DC, (1990), pp 139 Chemicals known to disrupt the endocrine system, Dr Colborn and her colleagues agreed, include: "2,4-D, 2,4,5-T, alachlor, amitrole, atrazine, metribuzin, nitrofen, trifluralin, benomyl, hexachlorobenzene, mancozeb, maneb, metiram-complex, tributyl tin, zinab, ziram, beta-HCH, carbaryl, chlordane, dicofol, diedrin, DDT and metabolites, endosulfan, heptachlor and heptachlor epoxide, lindane (gamma-HCH), methomyl, methoxychlor, mirex, oxychlordane, parathion, synthetic pyrethriods, toxaphene, transmobnachlor, aldicarb, DBCP, cadmium, dioxin (TCDD), lead, mercury, PBBs, PCBs, pentachlorophenol (PCP), penta- to nonylphenols, phthalates, styrenes."

9. Day, M, Polluters won't pay unless law is amended, Toxcat, no 1, pp3-4, April 1994

10. Ashford and Miller, Chemical Exposures: Low Levels and High Stakes, Van Nostrand Reinhold, London, 1991

11. Pollution in urban areas is characterised by smoke (tiny particles of carbon, hydrocarbons and tar), sulphur dioxide, ozone, PM10 (particulate matter below 10 micrometers) and nitrogen oxides. Although levels of smoke and sulphur dioxide (which are caused by domestic fires and solid fuel burning) have fallen in many cities in recent years levels of nitrogen oxides (which are caused by motor vehicles) are increasing.

12. Montague, P. Environment and Health Weekly #373, January 20, 1994, Environmental Research Foundation, P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403. Back issues available by email; to get instructions, send email to Rachel Clark with the single word HELP in the message; back issues also available via ftp from ftp.std.com/periodicals/rachel, from Gopher and from Rachel's Subscribe: send email email to with the single word SUBSCRIBE in the message.

13. Buist, A. S. and Vollmer, W. M. Reflections on the Rise in Asthma Morbidity and Mortality, Journal of the American Medical Association, October 3, 1990, 1719-1720.

14. Stone, R, Immunology: Pollutants a Growing Threat, Science, April 1994

15. Epstein, S.S, Moss, R.W, & Wiewel, F.D, 1991, People Against Cancer: New Directions in Cancer, Monograph, Otho.

16. Fingerhut, et al, Cancer mortality in workers exposed to 2,3,7,8-TCDD, N. Eng J Med 324 pp212-218 (1991) A more complete report of this research is available under the title Mortality among US workers employed in the production of chemicals contaminated with 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin from: NTIS, 5285 Port Royal Rd, Springfield, VA 22161. NTIS no: PB91-125971

17. Dioxin is a by-product of chlorine chemistry, in the production of organochlorines, chemical manufacture using chlorine and when organochlorines are heated during the manufacture of other chemicals and products or as waste. Industry has argued that some dioxins are formed during natural combustion but there is sufficient evidence on this (see below) and none which suggests that dioxin is produced during anything other than chlorine production, manufacture and disposal. (see Tong, H, Gross, M, Schecter, A, Monson, S & Dekin, A, 1990, Sources of dioxin in the environment: second stage study of PCDD/Fs in ancient human tissue and environmental samples, Chemosphere, Pergamon Press.)

18. Fingerhut, et al, 1991

19. Manz, et al, Cancer mortality among workers in a chemical plant contaminated with dioxin, Lancet 338, pp959-964 (1991)

20. Bertazzi, et al, Cancer incidence in a population accidentally exposed to 2,3,7,8 TCDD, Epidemiology 4(5) pp 398-406 (1993)

21. Birnbaum, L quoted in Science News, 24-27, 11 Jan, 1992

22. For an amusing fictional account of a world without fertile men see P.D. James' Children of Men, Faber and Faber, London 1992. For a more serious account see: Carlsen, E et al Evidence for decreasing quality of semen during the past 50 years, British Medical Journal Vol 305, pp 609-613, 1992; Giwercman, A. and Skakkebaek, N. The human testis - an organ at risk? International Journal of Andrology Vol 15, pp 373-375; Sharpe, R and Skakkebaek, N. Are oestrogens involved in falling sperm counts and disorders of the male reproductive tract? Lancet Vol 341, pp 1392-1395, 29 May, 1993; Sharpe, R. Declining sperm counts in men - is there an endocrine cause? Journal of Endocrinology Vol 136, pp 357-360, 1993