Industry's Plan for Us

October 28, 2007

Peter Montague <peter

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Rachel's

Democracy & Health News #930

" Environment,

health, jobs and justice--Who gets to decide? "

Thursday, October 25,

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Featured stories in this issue...

Industry's Plan for Us

The fossil fuel corporations have a plan for us, and it does not

include any substantial investment in renewable solar energy. Their

plan is focused on " geo-engineering " -- which means re-engineering the

oceans, the atmosphere and the earth itself to make it possible to

continue burning fossil fuels. U.S. EPA is on board with the plan.

Dioxins Can Alter Normal Sex Ratios for Births

Using birth data and an inventory of pollution sources, the study

concluded that early exposure to dioxins -- even at 25 km (15.5 miles)

away from the source -- increased the risk of cancer later in life in

a group of 20,000 people surveyed during the 1990s. The large-scale

burning of municipal and medical waste is the primary source of

dioxins in Canada.... but they are also created by electrical power

generation....

Criminal Element

" The idea that a society could have systematically poisoned its

youngest children with the same neurotoxins in two different ways over

the same century is almost impossible to believe. "

The Lethal Consequences of Breathing Fire

When the Victorians first conceived of incinerators in the late

19th century they called them 'destructor units', as this perfectly

describes what they do. In principle little has changed. Despite the

best efforts of the industry to rebrand and clean up incineration, the

fact remains that 'garbage in' means 'garbage out'.

Environmental Nasty Surprises as a Window on Precautionary Thinking

How often will environmental nasty surprises emerge? How long will

it take us to recognize and address them? How much damage will they

do? How much, ultimately, is at stake? A precautionary framework for

environmental decision making would respond to the urgency of such

questions by attempting to shape technologies in ways calculated to

make future nasty surprises less frequent and less severe.

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Rachel's Democracy & Health News #930, Oct. 25, 2007

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INDUSTRY'S PLAN FOR US

By Peter Montague

It now seems clear that the coal and oil industries are not going to

allow the United States to curb global warming by making major

investments in renewable sources of energy. These fossil fuel

corporations simply have too much at stake to allow it.

Simple physics tells us that the way to minimize the human

contribution to global warming is to leave the remaining fossil fuels

in the ground -- stop mining them as soon as humanly possible. This

obvious solution would require us to turn the nation's industrial

prowess to developing solar power in its many forms as quickly as we

can -- we would need a " 'Manhattan Project' for Energy, " as the

strategy journal of the top U.S. military planners said recently.

Look at the relative size of our current government investments in

solar vs. fossil fuels. In 2007 the federal Department of Energy spent

$168 million on solar research. On the other hand each year since

1991 the U.S. government has spent 1000 times that amount -- $169

billion -- subsidizing the flow of oil from the Middle East,

according to the Joint Chiefs of staff, our top military planners.

And that figure doesn't include what consumers paid for the oil

itself. If our solar investment remains one-tenth of one percent of

our investment in oil, there will be no solar power to speak of in our

future.

A rapid shift to renewables based on solar would not be easy and I

don't want to minimize the effort required. It's stupendously large.

But we've undertaken heroic industrial projects before -- and with

notable success. We mobilized quickly and massively to defeat the

combined industrial might of Germany, Japan, and Italy in less than

five years after Pearl Harbor. The original Manhattan Project turned

a physicist's theory into a working A-bomb in less than 6 years; just

building the gaseous diffusion plant near Oak Ridge, Tennessee was a

scientific, engineering and industrial feat of astonishing magnitude

and complexity. The Marshall Plan successfully rebuilt Europe after

WW II. Our Man-on-the-Moon program succeeded just 11 years after the

Russians tweaked out national ego by launching Sputnik into orbit in

1957.

Yes, a shift to solar-powered renewables would be difficult, but it's

doable. Unfortunately, any plan to shift from fossil fuels to solar

has three fatal flaws, from the viewpoint of Big Oil and Big Coal:

1. The fossil fuel corporations have an enormous investment in fossil

infrastructure and they own vast quantities of fossil fuels that they

plan to exploit with little real effort over the next 50 years. They

have been making excellent profits for a century and, as fossil fuels

get scarcer, prices will only rise. In 2006, ExxonMobil reaped profits

larger than any other corporation in history ($39.5 billion). If the

U.S. does not invest seriously in renewable alternatives, we'll have

no choice but to pay whatever price the fossil corporations demand.

Just a few days ago oil hit $90 a barrel; eight years ago it was

selling for $10 a barrel. No wonder ExxonMobil now has a book value

larger than the national budget of France. Naturally, they intend to

maintain their market share, even if it means doing everything in

their power to thwart progress.

2. The fossil fuel business is 100 years old and fully understood. No

surprises lie ahead. But renewables? Who knows which renewables will

win out in the marketplace of ideas? If Uncle Sam were to invest as

much money in solar power as it has so far invested in the Iraq war

(roughly $800 billion), who knows what new technologies would emerge?

(Incidentally, if we maintain our current solar research budget at

$168 million per year, it will take us 4761 years before we have spent

as much on solar research as we have, so far, spent in Iraq.) New

technical innovations could be very unsettling for complacent

industries like coal and oil. For them, innovation spells trouble.

Innovation could render them irrelevant in a decade or two and they

could disappear just like the makers of whale-oil lamps and buggy

whips 100 years ago.

3. Coal and oil are highly centralized. It's their nature. Whoever

owns the fossil fuels, the big central power plants, and the

distribution systems can call the shots. But solar? The sun shines

everywhere and it's free. Suppose some woman at MIT develops a solar

panel that you paint onto your roof (from a can you buy at Home

Depot), attach some wires, and start generating your own electricity?

Central control disappears. This would be like tossing a hand grenade

into the current corporate/political structure. Of course even right-

wing politicians love lefty-sounding slogans like " power to the

people, " but they don't mean real power like electricity or hot water

or home-made hydrogen for transportation fuel. (Check out the Nova TV

program, " Saved by the Sun, " which briefly mentions paint-on solar

panels.)

No, a serious plan to focus the nation's industrial prowess onto a

solar-powered rebirth will not be allowed by the fossil corporations.

Instead we'll be offered a rolling circus of technical fixes aimed at

keeping coal and oil streaming out of the ground. The circus is

already well under way.

A Sulfur Parasol to Blot Out the Sun

Just this week the New York Times published a proposal to attach a

fire hose to some lighter-than-air balloons for the purpose of

injecting at least a million tons of sulfur particles into the upper

atmosphere, to create a giant parasol to cool the planet. Such a

scheme might further deplete the Earth's ozone shield, which remains

frayed from DuPont's earlier botched experiment with CFCs. And it

could create large-scale acid rain. But contemplating these clownish

Rube Goldberg solutions may at least relieve the stress of facing what

really needs to be done.

A new word enters our vocabulary: Geo-engineering

Instead of allowing the U.S. to make the transition to solar power,

the fossil corporations have evidently decided it's better to

re-engineer the oceans and the atmosphere -- and perhaps even the

planetary orbit of the Earth itself -- to make it possible to continue

burning fossil fuels for another 50 years.

Grand schemes for re-engineering the planet now have their own special

name -- geo-engineering. The word means, " global-scale interventions

to alter the oceans and the atmosphere so fossil corporations can

continue business as usual. "

The fire-hose-and-balloon project is only one of many " geo-

engineering " schemes in the works.

Fertilizing the Oceans with Iron

There are serious plans afoot to dump huge quantities of soluble iron

into the oceans as fertilizer, intending to stimulate the growth of

plankton, which will then eat carbon dioxide from the air. As the

plankton die, their carcasses will sink to the bottom of the ocean,

carrying all that carbon dioxide with them, where it will remain

for... for... well, actually, nobody knows for how long. How long

might it be before that dormant carbon dioxide comes back to bite us?

Nobody knows. Would such a plan disrupt life in the oceans? Nobody

knows. But private firms are pressing ahead with large-scale ocean-

fertilization experiments as we speak. (They are hoping to get rich

selling " carbon credits " to polluters so the fossil corporations can

continue contaminating the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. We might

well ask the ethical question, who gave these cowboys permission to

run geo-engineering experiments in the world's oceans?)

This is all very reminiscent of earlier plans to bury nuclear waste

in the floor of the Pacific Ocean, on the theory that the seabed has

lain dormant for many millions of years. But that plan never caught on

because few people could develop sufficient confidence that the future

would unfold exactly like the past. There was that nagging doubt...

what if we've missed something important and we turn out to be wrong?

What if our understanding is flawed? There was too much at stake, and

the plan was shelved. (With carbon dioxide, of course, there's far

more at stake.)

Mirrors in Orbit

Now there's a new plan to rocket mirrors into orbit around the

earth. Another parasol to block sunlight. The mirrors would consist of

a mesh of aluminum threads a millionth of an inch in diameter, " like a

window screen made of exceedingly fine metal wire, " says Lowell Wood

at Lawrence Livermore Lab, who dreamed up the idea. The only drawback

to this plan mentioned so far is its enormous dollar cost: to reduce

incoming sunlight by 1% would require -- get this -- 600,000 square

miles of mirror, which is larger than the combined areas of Arkansas,

Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia,

Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Maine, South Carolina, West Virginia,

Maryland, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey,

Delaware and Rhode Island.

Of course the U.S. has a long history of large-scale interventions

above the clouds. In 1962 we conducted an experiment called Starfish

Prime " in which we exploded a small nuclear weapon (equivalent to 1.4

million tons of TNT) 400 miles up in the atmosphere, just to see what

would happen. What happened came as a complete surprise to the

geniuses who set off the blast. The explosion left so much residual

radiation trapped in space that the world's first communication

satellite -- Telstar, which was launched after Starfish -- failed

because it encountered crippling levels of radiation. Ultimately,

one-third of all the low-orbit satellites in space at the time were

disabled by the residual radiation from Starfish Prime. Another

unanticipated cost of Starfish was the temporary shutdown of

communications and electrical supply in Hawaii, 1300 kilometers from

the blast. Who knew?

Project RBR

Despite lessons supposedly learned from Starfish, just last year the

Pentagon proposed a project called RBR ( " Radiation Belt

Remediation " ). The RBR project would generate " very low frequency

radio waves to flush particles from the [Van Allen] radiation belts

and dump them into the upper atmosphere over one or several days. "

(There are two Van Allen radiation belts; the one closest to earth

lies 400 to 4000 miles in the sky.) The stated purpose of the RBR

project is to " protect hundreds of low earth-orbiting satellites from

having their onboard electronics ruined by charged particles in

unusually intense Van Allen radiation belts 'pumped up' by high-

altitude nuclear explosions or powerful solar storms. " It seems the

Pentagon is making plans for conducting nuclear warfare above the

clouds. But I digress.

Luckily a small group of scientists from Britain, New Zealand and

Finland (organized as the " British Antarctic Survey " ) caught wind of

the RBR plan and actually gave it some thought. They concluded that

RBR would " significantly alter the upper atmosphere, seriously

disrupting high frequency (HF) radio wave transmissions and GPS

navigation around the world. " The world's commercial (and military)

transport systems are now almost completely dependent upon GPS

navigation, so disrupting the global GPS system would create economic

chaos, not to mention loss of life. Who knew?

A Plan to Change the Earth's Orbit

As pressure builds on the fossil corporations to quit contaminating

the atmosphere with CO2, plans for geo-engineering the planet grow

ever-more grandiose and desperate. There is now talk of moving the

Earth 1.5 million miles out of its orbit around the sun, to compensate

for doubling carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Ken Caldeira of

Stanford University has calculated that moving the Earth in this

fashion would require the energy of five thousand million million

hydrogen bombs (that's 5,000,000,000,000,000 hydrogen bombs). No doubt

the Pentagon is studying it with considerable interest.

The Biggest Geo-engineering Project: Carbon Sequestration

Now, the biggest earth-based geo-engineering project of all is in the

late stages of development by the coal and oil industries, and is

about to be " regulated " by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

(EPA). This is the plan that convinces me that the fossil

corporations have no intention of allowing the U.S. to make a rapid

transition to solar power. This Big Fossil plan is called CCS,

short for " carbon capture and sequestration " and it, too, closely

resembles dozens of previous unsuccessful attempts to figure out what

to do with radioactive waste.

Carbon sequestration is a fancy name for what used to be called the

" kitty litter solution " to radioactive waste: bury it in the ground

and hope it stays there. Carbon sequestration is a plan to capture

gaseous carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants (and perhaps from

other industrial operations as well), turn it into a liquid, and pump

it into the deep earth or perhaps into the ocean, where it will

remain for an unknown period of time. Professional optimists employed

by the fossil industries claim the unknown period of time is

" forever. " But how can they be sure?

Saving the Coal Industry

The future of the coal industry, in particular, is at stake. Without

carbon sequestration, the coal industry will not survive. Just this

month the state of Kansas refused to license the construction of a new

coal-fired power plant simply because of its carbon dioxide

emissions. This is the first time a coal plant has been turned down

merely because of its contribution to global warming. The hand writing

is on the wall: Big Coal is doomed unless they can find some way to

demonstrate that " clean coal " is more than an advertising slogan. This

is what carbon sequestration geo-engineers are being paid to do.

Saving the Oil Industry (and the Automobile Industry)

But there's more at stake than just the coal industry. The oil

industry, too, is depending on " carbon sequestration " to convince the

public that continuing to burn fossil fuels is safe. Even the car

companies have recognized that their future depends upon convincing us

all that carbon sequestration will work -- and work forever.

We know this is really, really important to the fossil corporations

because some of the biggest names in global industry are underwriting

" geo-engineering " solutions for the carbon dioxide problem at some of

the most prestigious U.S. universities. The Center for Energy &

Environmental Studies at Princeton University is conducting geo-

engineering studies (1.4 Mbyte PDF) funded by BP (the felonious

oil corporation formerly known as British Petroleum) and by Ford

Motor, the troubled SUV manufacturer. Geo-engineering work at

Stanford University is being supported by ExxonMobil, by General

Electric, by Schlumberger (the oil-drilling services giant), and by

Toyota.

To convince the U.S. environmental community that geo-engineering

carbon dioxide is the only way to go, the Stanford geo-engineering

group has linked up with NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council).

Together, they are publishing clever propaganda masquerading as

science. For example, in a recent letter to California legislators

they say, " We only wish to address the science of CCS [carbon capture

and sequestration] here. " So we are expecting a scientific argument.

Instead, the letter tries to persuade legislators to support carbon

sequestration using arguments that have nothing to do with science.

The letter is peppered with distinctly unscientific language like

" perfectly safe " to describe the fossil corporations' favorite geo-

engineering solution. " Perfectly safe " is not a scientific concept. It

is a political concept.

To be fair, deep in their letter NRDC and friends add a few caveats to

their " perfectly safe " claim. For example, they say, " Leakage is

conceivable but it is unlikely in well-selected sites, is generally

avoidable, predictable, can be detected and remedied promptly, and in

any case is extremely unlikely to be of a magnitude to endanger human

health and the environment if performed under adequate regulatory

oversight and according to best practices. " [Emphasis in the

original.]

So carbon sequestration will be " perfectly safe " if it occurs

at " well-selected sites " and if performed under adequate

regulatory oversight and according to best practices. " [Emphasis

in the original.]

Let's examine these caveats. Are these scientific concepts? Do they

even refer to anything in the real world?

Human History: Selecting Sites for Dangerous Projects

What experience do humans have siting dangerous facilities at only

" well-selected sites " ? I am thinking of the atomic reactor in Japan

sited near an earthquake faults and recently shut down by serious

earthquake damage. I am thinking of the U.S. radioactive waste site

proposed for Yucca Mountain in Nevada where government and private

engineers felt the need to falsify data to make the site appear

acceptable. How do NRDC and Stanford propose to avoid a repeat of

these fiascos when it comes time to site dozens or hundreds (perhaps

thousands) of sites for pumping carbon dioxide into the ground?

Human history: Best practices with Dangerous Technologies

And that about " best practices " ? Does this phrase take into account

actual human experience with power plant operators photographed

asleep in the control room of nuclear reactors? Or young men deep in

missile silos relieving their boredom by getting drunk or taking

drugs while standing ready to launch intercontinental ballistic

missiles armed with hydrogen warheads?

Will Every Nation Abide by the NRDC/Stanford Prescription?

After the U.S. begins injecting billions of tons of liquid carbon

dioxide into the earth, won't China, India and other countries do the

same? If they do, can they be counted on to choose only " well-selected

sites " and to follow only " best practices " for the next hundred years?

Who will oversee carbon sequestration in Nigeria or Uzbekistan?

How do NRDC and Stanford imagine that standards for site selection and

" best practices " will be enforced around the globe? Have NRDC and

Stanford published solutions to these problems? Or are they just

putting empty words on paper hoping to fool clueless legislators into

adopting untestable technical solutions that the fossil corporations

are paying them to promote?

But the most dubious part of the NRDC plan to geo-engineer carbon

sequestration is their claim that is will be " perfectly safe " if

performed with " adequate regulatory oversight. " Can NRDC and their

friends at Stanford point to any instances of large-scale industrial

enterprises that currently have " adequate regulatory oversight? "

Everyone knows that regulators quickly get captured by the industries

they are supposed to regulate. There is a substantial body of social

science literature on this point. Regulators are poorly paid, but if

they look the other way at regulatory violations, they may find a

lucrative job awaiting them when they retire from government. Less

sinister but more pervasive is the simple fact that regulated

corporations spend a lot of time befriending regulators, dropping by

to say hello, asking about the kids, gaining their trust and

ultimately their allegiance. Are NRDC and Stanford prepared to deny

this indisputable history of regulatory collapse? Have they examined

the dismal record of the Food and Drug Administration, the Consumer

Product Safety Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the

Securities and Exchange Commission? Are they prepared to design and

describe regulatory institutions that do not suffer from these same

fundamental human flaws? Or are they just blowing smoke?

So let's examine these caveats just a bit more.

1. What actual experience to do humans have designing anything to be

kept out of the environment forever? Answer: None. Absolutely

none. In this context, then, what can " perfectly safe " possibly mean?

2. What human regulatory institutions can NRDC and friends point to

that have proven adequate? Let's see. The regulatory system for

preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons? Today, 40 years after

the inception of the non-proliferation treaty, Israel, India, North

Korea, Pakistan -- all have The Bomb despite heroic efforts to prevent

its spread. The only reason Iraq and Syria don't have a nuclear weapon

is because Israel bombed their nascent nuclear power plants to

smithereens.

What about the regulatory system for controlling the discard of

radioactive waste? Radioactive waste is loose at thousands of

locations around the planet. In hundreds (perhaps thousands) of

instances we do not even know where the stuff has been dumped. This

technology was developed by the smartest people in the world with

unlimited budgets -- yet at places like the gold-plated Los Alamos

Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico (now renamed the Los Alamos

National Laboratory), plutonium, americium-241, strontium 90 and other

supremely dangerous radioactive elements were buried in shallow pits,

or simply dumped into mountain canyons without any records kept of

their whereabouts. The kitty litter solution. And this was a federal

scientific laboratory under strict military surveillance and control

at the time. Can we expect the fossil corporations under the watchful

eye of EPA (wink, wink) to do better?

How about the regulatory system for curtailing the widespread

destruction of wildlife and human health from hormone-disrupting,

cancer-causing chlorinated chemicals? The arctic, which has no

industrial enterprises to speak of, is among the most heavily

contaminated places on earth because the chemical regulatory system

failed to consider how chemicals migrate once they are released into

the environment.

So where can we find real-world examples of this " adequate regulatory

oversight " that NRDC and Stanford say will be necessary to make carbon

sequestration " perfectly safe " ?

Maintaining vigilance for hundreds or thousands of years?

Elsewhere in their letter, NRDC and the engineers from Stanford say

they believe carbon sequestration can be maintained for millions of

years, but they say, if something goes wrong, rapid response will be

possible.

Is this really true?

Again, let's return to the debates over radioactive waste from the

late 1970s. Back then scientists were a bit more candid: they admitted

they knew of no way to pass information reliably to future generations

describing the location of radioactive waste dumps. Given human

history and the evanescence of human institutions, they could not

imagine a way to reliably warn future generations about dangers buried

in the earth. At one point they considered writing a huge warning

across the face of the moon using symbols because they had no idea

which human languages would survive thousands of years into the

future. Have NRDC and Stanford published their solution for this

problem?

Why should we assume that humans a hundred years from now -- let alone

500 or 5000 years from now -- will be able to monitor for carbon

dioxide leaks, locate them, and take rapid action to control them? The

prudent assumption would be that humans will NOT have those

capabilities. It seems to me it would be unethical to design our

technologies based on untested and untestable (and wildly optimistic)

assumptions about future humans and their social organizations. Who

gave us the right to make decisions now based on assumptions, which,

if they are wrong, could destroy the planet as a place suitable for

human habitation -- which is precisely what the carbon sequestration

researchers are intending to do.

With the future of the human species at stake, isn't a little humility

in order? Will these geniuses find themselves staring into the mirror

one day toward the end of their shameful careers muttering, " Who

knew? "

But ordinary people who aren't subsidized by energy or automobile

corporations are asking the same sorts of common-sense questions they

asked 20 years ago when the same sorts of brainy university types were

telling us it was " perfectly safe " to bury radioactive waste in the

ground:

** What if these scientists and engineers turn out to be wrong?

** What if there's something important they haven't thought of?

** Are these people infallible or are they human? They can't be both.

** Isn't it unethical to claim that something will be " perfectly safe "

when as a scientist you know you can't be perfectly sure?

** When the fossil corporations impose their plan on us and begin

large-scale carbon sequestration, won't that become a powerful

incentive to reduce federal funding for conservation, renewables, and

solar power? Then won't we have all our eggs in one basket? And didn't

our grandmothers tell us that was a bad idea?

** After the fossil corporations impose carbon sequestration on us,

won't we be saddled with even more killer fly ash choking the air, and

even more toxic bottom ash threatening groundwater supplies? Won't we

have even more destruction from mountain-top-removal coal mining, plus

the enormous waste of water and land in the mid-western and western

coal states? " Clean " coal will still be one of the dirtiest and most

destructive forms of energy. And oil will still keep dragging us into

endless bloody resource wars because we will still need to funnel more

and more of the world's remaining petroleum into our astonishingly

wasteful and inefficient enterprises. Is this really the direction we

want to be going? Is this a plan we can explain to our children with

pride? Is this a plan that will give our children hope?

** Would carbon sequestration truly be reversible if we discovered far

in the future that it was a mistake? If not, who can claim that it is

ethical to proceed?

** If radioactive waste and carbon dioxide are so dangerous and so

hard to manage, how does it make sense to steer the nation and the

world onto a course that will guarantee continued production of these

lethal substances far into the future?

** With the survival of humans at stake, isn't this a classic and

urgent case for applying the precautionary principle?

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Vancouver (B.C., Canada) Sun, Oct. 20, 2007

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DIOXINS CAN ALTER NORMAL SEX RATIOS FOR BIRTHS

By Jonathan Spicer, Reuters

TORONTO -- More girls than boys are born in some Canadian communities

because airborne pollutants called dioxins can alter normal sex

ratios, even if the source of the pollution is many kilometres away,

researchers say.

Dioxin exposure has been shown elsewhere to lead to both higher cancer

rates and the birth of more females.

Researchers at the IntraAmericas Centre for Environment and Health say

their findings, released this month, confirm the phenomenon in Canada.

The study also reveals the health risks of living within 25 km of

sources of pollution -- a greater distance than previously thought,

they said. [The study appeared in two separate publications, available

here and here.]

Normally, 51 per cent of births are boys and 49 per cent are girls.

But the ratio was reversed -- with as few as 46 males born for every

54 females -- in Canadian cities and towns where parents were exposed

to pollutants from sources such as oil refineries, paper mills and

metal smelters, according to the study.

" If you find an inverted sex ratio, and want to know what causes it,

look for sources of dioxin, " said James Argo, a medical geographer who

headed the study, which was published in a journal of the American

Chemical Society.

" In every one of those cities where those industries are found ...

there was a higher probability of female births to male births, " Argo

said in an interview.

Using birth data and an inventory of pollution sources, the study also

concluded that early exposure to dioxins -- even at 25 km away from

the source -- increased the risk of cancer later in life in a group of

20,000 people surveyed during the 1990s.

Previous studies that linked dioxins with cancer and a gender

imbalance focused on smaller distances, usually about 5 km, Argo said.

Dioxins are toxic chemicals found in very small amounts in the air,

water, soil and some foods.

The large-scale burning of municipal and medical waste is the primary

source of dioxins in Canada, but they are also created by fuel and

wood burning, electrical power generation and in the production of

iron and steel.

Since more females were born in the 90 communities studied, more

breast, uterine, cervical and ovarian cancers were observed among them

than other forms of cancer, Argo said.

Copyright The Vancouver Sun 2007

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The New York Times Magazine (pg. 32), Oct. 21, 2007

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CRIMINAL ELEMENT

By Jascha Hoffman.

[Jascha Hoffman is on the staff of The New York Review of Books.]

Has the Clean Air Act done more to fight crime than any other policy

in American history? That is the claim of a new environmental theory

of criminal behavior.

In the early 1990s, a surge in the number of teenagers threatened a

crime wave of unprecedented proportions. But to the surprise of some

experts, crime fell steadily instead. Many explanations have been

offered in hindsight, including economic growth, the expansion of

police forces, the rise of prison populations and the end of the crack

epidemic. But no one knows exactly why crime declined so steeply.

The answer, according to Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, an economist at Amherst

College, lies in the cleanup of a toxic chemical that affected nearly

everyone in the United States for most of the last century. After

moving out of an old townhouse in Boston when her first child was born

in 2000, Reyes started looking into the effects of lead poisoning. She

learned that even low levels of lead can cause brain damage that makes

children less intelligent and, in some cases, more impulsive and

aggressive. She also discovered that the main source of lead in the

air and water had not been paint but rather leaded gasoline -- until

it was phased out in the 1970s and '80s by the Clean Air Act, which

took blood levels of lead for all Americans down to a fraction of what

they had been. " Putting the two together, " she says, " it seemed that

this big change in people's exposure to lead might have led to some

big changes in behavior. "

Reyes found that the rise and fall of lead-exposure rates seemed to

match the arc of violent crime, but with a 20-year lag -- just long

enough for children exposed to the highest levels of lead in 1973 to

reach their most violence-prone years in the early '90s, when crime

rates hit their peak.

Such a correlation does not prove that lead had any effect on crime

levels. But in an article published this month in the B.E. Journal of

Economic Analysis and Policy, Reyes uses small variations in the lead

content of gasoline from state to state to strengthen her argument. If

other possible sources of crime like beer consumption and unemployment

had remained constant, she estimates, the switch to unleaded gas alone

would have caused the rate of violent crime to fall by more than half

over the 1990s.

If lead poisoning is a factor in the development of criminal behavior,

then countries that didn't switch to unleaded fuel until the 1980s,

like Britain and Australia, should soon see a dip in crime as the last

lead-damaged children outgrow their most violent years. According to a

comparison of nine countries published this year by Rick Nevin in the

journal Environmental Research, crime rates around the world are just

starting to respond to the removal of lead from gasoline and paint.

" It really does sound like a bad science-fiction plot, " says Nevin, a

senior adviser to the National Center for Healthy Housing. " The idea

that a society could have systematically poisoned its youngest

children with the same neurotoxins in two different ways over the same

century is almost impossible to believe. "

The magnitude of these claims has been met with a fair amount of

skepticism. Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, wonders how lead could

have had such a strong effect on violent crime while, according to

Reyes, it showed almost no effect on property crimes like theft. He

also doubts that the hypothesis could explain the plunge in the U.S.

murder rate from the 1930s through the 1950s. " I certainly think it's

a reasonable exercise, " Miron says. " We just have to be appropriately

suspicious of how much you can actually show. "

The theory will be put to the test as children grow up in Indonesia,

Venezuela and sub-Saharan Africa, where leaded gasoline has just

recently been phased out. Meanwhile, the list of countries that still

use lead in gas -- Afghanistan, Serbia and Iraq, as well as much of

North Africa and Central Asia -- does not rule out a connection with

violence.

No matter how suggestive the economists' data, it takes a doctor to

show that some of the people most damaged by lead are out there

breaking the law. Herbert Needleman, the University of Pittsburgh

psychiatrist and pediatrician whose work helped persuade the

government to ban lead in the 1970s, recently studied a sample of

juvenile delinquents in Pittsburgh; the group had significantly more

lead in their bones than their peers. And lead may not be the only

source of damage. The National Children's Study will soon begin to

track more than 100,000 children to determine the effects of exposure

to common pesticides, among other chemicals.

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The Ecologist, Sept. 6, 2007

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THE LETHAL CONSEQUENCES OF BREATHING FIRE

By Pat Thomas

Roughly 2 1/2 million tonnes of municipal waste are incinerated in the

UK each year. More efficient filters make emissions look clearer, but

just because you don't see the pollution, doesn't mean it isn't there.

The same toxic chemical that were in out plastics, paper, textiles and

wood when they went into the fire are still there during and after

combustion. And their release into the air is still associated with a

range of human health problems including cancer, reproductive problems

and learning difficulties in children.

But the intense heat of incineration also helps create a whole range

of new compounds with a completely unknown potential for toxicity.

Indeed, the way that incineration changes the seen into the unseen and

the known into the unknown is one of its most dangerous consequences.

Gas

Modern incinerators have measures in place to control the emissions

they release into the atmosphere. These incinerators have to comply

with tough standards set by European and UK legislation, which are

designed to control acid emissions (using 'scrubbers'. Devices that

use a high-energy liquid spray to remove acid emissions from the air

stream), dust levels (using electrostatic precipitators, essentially

dust magnets in the incineration unit) and fine particles (using

textile filters).

Even so, a large incinerator produces the equivalent of 300 wheelie

bins of exhaust gases from its chimneys every second. These not only

pollute the local area, but are also carried on the prevailing winds

to neighbouring cities and towns. Human beings are exposed to them by

breathing contaminated air, by absorbing them through their skin and

by eating contaminated food, such as vegetables, eggs and milk.

Because of their acidic nature incinerator emissions such as nitrogen

oxides, sulphur dioxide and hydrogen chloride contribute to the

phenomenon of acid rain, which is destructive to forests and lakes and

the animals that inhabit them.

While a few hundred of the gases emitted by incinerators have been

identified (see table), the process of heating and releasing emissions

into the environment creates the possibility of thousands of new

chemical compounds. There are no formal air quality standards for many

of these and many have never been fully studied with regard to their

effects on human health.

There is no technology that can remove all the pollutants and there

are too many uncertainties and variables to say whether anything that

gets released into the air is categorically 'safe'. While the health

effects of mixtures of chemicals are largely unknown, the effects of

single emissions such as dioxins and heavy metals, and also furans,

PCBs, PAHs, numerous VOCs, acid gases and particulates, is better

understood.

These substances are persistent -- they remain in the environment

indefinitely -- and bioaccumulative, meaning that even small amounts

build up in the body tissues over time. Some cause cancer, some

trigger respiratory problems such as asthma and some are mutagenic -

capable of causing genetic damage.

All these substances are legally released into the air. Many are not

or cannot be measure or monitored at all and the Environment Agency

(EA) has admitted that current emissions standards are based on what

is technically achievable rather than what is safe for human health.

Microscopic particles

Newer incinerators appear to burn 'clean'. But while newer filters may

keep larger particles from being discharged into the atmosphere, they

do little to prevent the release of microscopic particles measuring

just 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5). these particles are released

into the atmosphere when oil and solvent-based mixtures are burnt in

incinerators, as well as by industrial processes such as smelting and

metal processing. In the last decade or so the amount of PM2.5 in our

atmosphere has risen astronomically.

The incineration process liberates a range of heavy metals such as

lead, mercury, arsenic, chromium and cadmium from otherwise stable

matrices such as plastics into the air. Because they are released as

microscopic particles, these metals have the potential to penetrate

deep into the lungs where they enter the bloodstream and are deposited

in organs and tissues throughout the body.

At the high temperature used in incineration, mercury is particularly

problematic since it can be turned into a gas that evades the most

commonly used filters. Incineration of municipal waste is a major

source of mercury in the environment. Even if filters such as

activated carbon are used to absorb mercury before it can be released,

the question of what happens to the mercury that is captured by the

filtration process and how often the filter is changed remains.

Ash

Around 30 per cent of what is incinerated ends up as bottom ash, which

is the ash and non-combustible material left over, and is disposed of

in landfill sites. A further five per cent of incinerated waste ends

up as fly ash.

Fly ash has a fine consistency and has to be sealed into containers

and disposed of as hazardous waste in special landfill sites that are

licensed to accept toxic rubbish. Bottom ash has a more gravel-like

consistency and is 'recycled' by processing it into a suitable

aggregate type material for use in the construction industry. In the

EU bottom ash is considered a toxic residue. However, after 'ageing'

(that is washing it, treating it to reduce its acidity and allowing it

to stand for a period of one to three months), it is considered

suitable for some construction purposes.

In addition to fly and bottom ash, the lime and carbon used to clean

the filters are also considered toxic waste. The cleaning and

scrubbing substances are highly contaminated with all the same

chemicals as fly ash and need to be disposed of carefully.

The ash and cleaning substances generated by incinerators contain

toxic chemicals. How these are eventually distributed into the

environment and how they affect human health is less well studied than

the effects of gases and microscopic particles.

Much depends on where the ash ends up. Incinerators produce about a

million tonnes of contaminated ash each year and this ash is difficult

to dispose of. 'Creative' attempts at disposal have included spreading

ash on allotments and footpaths, as was the case in the late 1990s

when decades of this 'recycling' of mixed fly ash and bottom ash from

the Byker incinerator in Newcastle resulted in the worst dioxin

contamination ever seen in a local area. Ash samples were found to

contain 1,950 nanograms of carcinogenic dioxins, massively above the

five nanograms they would have expected to find in a polluted area.

These days bottom ash cannot be mixed with much more toxic fly ash.

However, this has occurred in the past, as was the case with waste

from London's Edmonton incinerators, and used to build roads and car

parks. Selling off toxic ash means incinerator operators can avoid

expensive disposal costs and generate income. While the ash may be

mixed with concrete, erosion takes its toll and some toxins are

eventually returned to the environment.

The health fallout

Epidemiological and environmental studios show that certain types of

diseases and health problems can and do occur with greater frequency

in those who live close to incinerators. Operators often dismiss these

health problems as coincidence. Since many incinerators are sited in

impoverished areas where the residents are already at a higher risk of

every type of illness, it could equally be argued that the strategic

citing of incinerators in generally neglected areas is designed to

hide human health effects.

Dioxins are arguably the best studied of all incinerator emissions,

while operators argue that levels emitted from incinerators are small,

this needs to be weighed against several important factors, not least

of which is the unacceptably high background levels of dioxin already

in the environment. Since many dioxins are known hormone disrupters,

and since hormone levels are tightly controlled in the body, even

small amounts -- as little as one part per trillion in the blood --

may translate into substantial hormone disruption, a risk factor for

cancer, growth disruption and immune system dysfunction.

Dioxins also readily enter the food chain when they are deposited on

grass and crops. It is estimated that, in one day, a cow grazing near

an incinerator could put as much dioxin into its body as a human being

would get if he or she breathed the air next to the cow for 14 years.

Likewise, one litre of contaminated milk would deliver as much dioxin

to a human being as he or she would get from breathing the air next to

the cow for eight months.

Even small daily emissions of dioxins can, over time, build up in the

environment and in the bodies of exposed populations, and while

European regulators are more laissez faire, the US EPA says there are

no safe levels of dioxins.

But dioxins are only one part of the complicated health equation

related to incineration. According to Dr Dick van Steenis, a retired

GP and anti-incineration campaigner whose research into the toxic

effect of incineration fallouts has helped stop four incinerators from

being built in the UK, the total cost of this virtually unregulated

industrial air pollution is nearly 34 billion pounds per annum. That

figure takes into account known emissions and van Steenis notes, there

will be cumulative impacts in the body and synergistic effects, for

example cadmium and lead in the body will multiply the effects of

mercury by 50 times which will facilitate the development of ADHD and

autism..

Once in the lungs, PM2.5s are capable of causing serious health

problems ranging from asthma, allergies, type 2 diabetes, immune

system problems and multiple sclerosis. US data links PM2.5s to

greatly increased rates of heart disease.

Incinerators emission are also linked with other diseases such as:

Cancer

Researchers have found significant clusters of cancer, which is

thought to be due to exposure to dioxins. In residents living close to

an incinerator in France, for instance, there was 44 per cent increase

in soft tissue sarcoma and 27 per cent increase in non- Hodgkin's

lymphoma. In Italy and the UK, studies show an increased incidence of

cancer of the larynx.

UK data on people living near municipal waste incinerators and

hospital waste incinerators show double the risk of dying from

childhood cancer. And one of the largest ever studies in the UK,

involving 14 million people living within 7.5 kilometres of

incinerators, found a 37 per cent increased risk of death from liver

cancer.

Hormone disruption

In residents living near an incinerators in Scotland the incidence of

twins/multiple pregnancies is double the national average and in

residents living near an incinerator in Belgium it is nearly three

times as great.

It's not only reproductive hormones that are affected. Lower levels of

thyroid hormone have been detected in children living near a German

incinerator.

Birth defects

A report released by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) in 2005

examined the rate of birth defects in children living near

incinerators over an eight-year period. Compared to the national

average for England, 11/1000 children living downwind of incinerators,

cement works, oil refineries, power stations and steelworks were

significantly likely to be born with birth defects. In rural mid-

Devon -- where the local incinerator was the most significant source

of pollution, the birth defect rates are 62/1000, compared to Bexley

in London where, at the time of the survey, traffic, rather than the

local incinerator, was the major source of pollution and the rate was

23/1000. The defects are the likely result of maternal exposure to

particulates measuring 2.5 microns or less in diameter.

The reports notes, in particular, that Bexley's birth defects rates

are likely to increase following the decision to allow the White Rose

incinerators to burn unlimited amounts of radioactive waste. Such as

that generated by hospitals.

The appearance of birth defects would suggest that the toxins released

from incinerators can cause DNA damage. This is worrying enough. But

newer evidence in the field of 'epigenetics' suggests that certain

defects can be programmed into the body without making obvious damage

to the DNA and that these defects are heritable -- passed on down the

generations.

Commonly defined as the study of heritable changes in gene function

that occur without a change in the DNA sequence, epigenetics is

reshaping the way scientists look at traditional genetics and their

real world influence on health and disease.

The ONS data is consistent with a previous study linking industrial

PM2.5 emissions with birth defects which was carried out at McMaster

University, Canada in 2004. The McMaster study, although based on

animal data, found that compared to mice breathing clean, filtered

air, those exposed to ambient air near highways and steel mills

containing PM2.5 developed mutations that were passed down through the

generations, even though they showed no detectable signs of DNA

damage.

What goes into the environment?

The table below does not represent the entire scope of possible health

effects. Nor does it represent the full range of identified chemicals

emitted by incinerators, which number up to 250 individual substances.

The effects of mixtures of chemicals, for instance, are largely

unknown. There may be more generalised problems that never get studied

or reported such as hospital admission or GP visits for vague

complaints such as 'respiratory distress'. In addition, these effects

are human effects and do not take into account damage to the ecosystem

due to acid emissions.

Substance: Health Effects

Antimony: A number of effects, including respiratory

Arsenic: Class 1 carcinogen

Cadmium: Class 1 carcinogen

Carbon Monoxide: Reduced oxygen in the blood

Chromium III

Chromium VI: Type VI is a Class 1 carcinogen

Cobalt: Class 2b carcinogen

Dioxins: Class 1 carcinogen (as TCDD). Affects development and

reproduction. Highly toxic, persistent, bioaccumulative. Can

contaminate food

Hydrogen Chloride: Acid, irritant to tissue including respiratory

tract

Hydrogen Fluoride: Irritant, affects bone formation

Lead: Class 2b carcinogen

Manganese: Neurological effects

Mercury: Neurological effects. Damages kidneys

Nickel: Class 1 carcinogen (as compounds of nickel)

Nitrogen Oxides: Respiratory effects (and is a precursor of ozone,

which also contributes to respiratory problems)

PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon) Some are carcinogens

Particulates/PM10s: Respiratory effects; no known safe threshold

PCBs: Properties similar to dioxins

Sulphur Oxides: Respiratory effects

Thallium: May affects several organs and nervous system

Vanadium: Respiratory effects

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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, Jan. 1, 2003

[Printer-friendly version]

ENVIRONMENTAL NASTY SURPRISES AS A WINDOW ON PRECAUTIONARY THINKING

By Jeff Howard

All environmental problems are nasty surprises. Each runs counter to

Western society's expectation of endless progress through mastery of

nature.[1] But the term seems especially appropriate for problems

that:

** catch most scientists, technologists, regulatory officials, the

mass media, and the general public off-guard;

** are already quite extensive by the time they are recognized;

** stem from deeply entrenched technological processes or practices;

** present a potentially large-scale, long-term threat to human or

ecological health.

Such problems are surprises because they seem to drop out of

the blue -- even if it is soon clear that warning signs were long

missed, ignored, or misinterpreted -- and reveal major errors in

scientific thinking and public policy. They are nasty because

they represent potentially enormous hazards and addressing them

entails substantial political challenges. This combination of

characteristics makes these problems a useful window into the ongoing

controversy over the Precautionary Principle and its place in the

environmental policy landscape.

ENDOCRINE DISRUPTION AND OTHER NASTY SURPRISES

Endocrine disruption is a classic example of nasty surprise, and

indeed it was in this context that the term " nasty surprise " may first

have been applied to environmental issues.[2, pp. 241-242]

Arguably the most significant development in the ecological and

environmental health sciences in the past two decades has been

recognition that synthetic industrial chemicals in the environment --

including DDT, chlorinated dioxins, numerous polychlorinated

biphenyls, various pesticides, and obscure components of plastics --

can interfere with the endocrine (hormonal) systems of animals,

including humans.[3] Efforts are under way to determine whether

exposure to these contaminants is linked to increases in the incidence

of breast cancer, testicular cancer, prostate cancer, undescended

testicles, abnormalities of the penis, reduced sperm count, and

learning and behavioral abnormalities as well as accelerated onset of

breast development.[4]

Endocrine disruption is a surprise. Despite what are now seen

as ominous warnings over decades, it came into scientific focus quite

rapidly in the late 1980s and early 1990s largely through a series of

accidental discoveries. Contrary to the doctrine that toxicological

risk diminishes with dose, endocrine-disrupting chemicals are

specifically (perhaps uniquely) active at extremely low doses and

their action often hinges not on dose but on exposure during key

moments in an organism's development. And contrary to the assumption

that cancer is the most sensitive health endpoint, this research is

demonstrating that for some chemicals it is reproductive and

developmental alteration.[2-5, 6, ch. 3]

Endocrine disruption is nasty. To many scientists, government

officials, and environmental advocates, it implies a potentially

enormous multigenerational threat to human and ecological health, a

threat exacerbated by the global ubiquity of some of the pollutants in

question and by their ability to remain biologically active for

generations to come.[2-7] Bewilderingly complex methodological

obstacles impede scientific investigation into the causes and

consequences of endocrine disruption and hence progress toward a

broadly accepted political response.[3,7] Since U.S.-style pollution

policy is based on the very toxicological assumptions that endocrine

disruption undermines, mounting evidence suggests the current

regulatory regime is an inadequate path to long-term

sustainability.[3, ch. 5, 5-7] And regulating a diverse and growing

list of endocrine disrupting chemicals could have significant economic

impacts.

Over the past half-century, the environmental policy landscape has

been littered with similar surprises, including:

** 1960s and 1970s -- Acid precipitation due to long-range atmospheric

transport of sulfur dioxide poses a widespread threat to aquatic

ecosystems and forests;

** 1960s and 1970s Large-scale industrial use of lead (especially in

gasoline) has vastly elevated tissue concentrations of the neurotoxin

in the general human population;

** 1980s -- The stratospheric ozone layer is being depleted by

chlorofluorocarbons and other common organochlorine compounds;

** 1980s -- Tin compounds widely applied to boat hulls can severely

damage the growth and reproduction of marine organisms;

** Recent decades -- Profound disturbances in a wide variety of

terrestrial and marine organisms, including periodic mass mortalities

of dolphins and seals and a decline in interregional bird migrations;

** Recent decades -- Plant and animal species across the globe are

dying off far more rapidly than the natural rate of extinction.

NASTY SURPRISES AND THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE

The Precautionary Principle (PP) is increasingly invoked in

international environmental protocols and agreements and in national

and local environmental disputes. It holds that when there is

significant evidence a new or existing technology poses a substantial

environmental hazard, lack of detailed scientific understanding should

not be used as a justification for postponing measures to contain the

threat.[8] Nasty environmental surprises appear to have played a

significant role in motivating development of the PP and in shaping

efforts to implement it.[8, 9] And they often have been prominent in

appeals for precautionary action, as when endocrine disruption and

ozone depletion have been cited in articulating a rationale for a

precautionary phase-out of major industrial uses of chlorine.[6]

In three ways, environmental nasty surprises illuminate the conflict

between precautionary and conventional modes of environmental decision

making. They:

1. Dramatically remind us that our understanding of complex natural

systems and the complex interaction of technologies with those systems

remains quite sketchy.

Unintended, unexpected, side effects are inevitable features of all

large technological systems. And when these systems interact with the

larger, even more complex natural systems (e.g., ecological,

atmospheric) in which they are embedded, they spin off additional

" emergent characteristics " at the regional and global levels. The

basic mechanisms of change in techno-ecological systems have been

poorly studied, constituting " virtually a black hole of knowledge and

understanding. " [10, p. 360, 11] Nasty surprises are emergent

characteristics that remind us contemporary technological systems

constitute " a great global experiment -- with humanity and all life on

Earth as the unwitting subjects. " [2, p. 240]

In the case of endocrine disruption, this " experiment " involves

essentially random encounters between industrial chemicals and the

hormonal systems of humans and other species. Only a few of the 87,000

synthetic chemicals in commerce and the unknown thousands of other

industrial chemicals produced as byproducts and degradation products

have so far been screened for endocrine-disrupting properties.

Moreover, hormonal systems of animals are staggeringly complex,

involving a large and poorly understood diversity of mechanisms and

hormone-receptor activities and diversity between species.[7] The

open-endedness of this " experiment " is further compounded by the

complexity of ecological systems that can be altered by chemical

disruption of' reproduction and development.[2]

Conventional design of chemicals, automobiles, and countless other

technologies have proceeded largely without regard to humanity's

underlying ignorance of natural and techno-ecological complexity; and

U.S.-style environmental regulation has relied on the assumption that

" sound science " has dispelled or ultimately will dispel such ignorance

sufficiently to allow society to achieve sustainability. Both

conventional design and conventional regulation are examples of what

Funtowicz and Ravetz call " ignorance-of-ignorance, a most dangerous

state for [humanity]. " [12, p. 1884] By contrast, PP proponents have

argued that a " precautionary science " -based approach must account for

the reality of substantial ignorance.[7, 8, ch. 61, 9, pp. 169-71, 13]

2. Highlight the inadequacy and politics of risk assessment.

Many nasty surprises stem from activities that predate the

institutionalization of formal environmental risk assessment as the

back-bone of the U.S. regulatory system in the early 1980s. But nasty

surprises nonetheless reflect poorly on present risk-based policies.

While limitations of risk assessment have long been discussed by

regulators and academics, risk assessment's inadequacy as a bulwark

against large-scale, long-term ecological dysfunction and subtle but

profound human health impacts has received little attention. Risk

assessment is a poor defense against nasty surprise because it

disregards much of the techno-environmental complexity from which

surprises emerge.[6,9] Consequently, " The very considerable amount of

scientific work which has gone into the modeling of environmental risk

systems over the past few decades cannot... be taken as reassurance

that even the main dimensions of environmental harm from human

activities have been comprehended. " [13, p. 113]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's response to endocrine

disruption illustrates the dilemma. The agency is pinning its hopes on

a program to identify hormonally active chemicals and characterize the

risk each poses. Although yielding valuable information, this program

is effectively swamped by the complex diversity of chemicals, species,

and endocrine mechanisms.[7]

Proponents of precaution argue that the inadequacies of the risk-

based regulatory paradigm stem from its tacit politics -- its naive

optimism about the ability of science to plumb the depths of

environmental complexity; its ability to conceal ignorance; its

reductionistic conception of hazard; its technocratic conception of

power; its disregard for the availability of less-hazardous

technologies; its willingness to sanction damage to the environment in

the interest of economic freedom. They call for regulation whose

politics is more transparent, more democratic, more environmentally

cautious, more scientifically humble. They call for broader

participation in environmental decision making and urge that

evaluation of a technology include consideration of its social

justification, the distribution of its social benefits, and the

availability of less hazardous alternatives.[6-9, 13-14]

3. Lead us to expect additional nasty surprises.

The enormous pace and scale of human-induced change in global systems

that are themselves enormously complex means that we are " more and

more likely to engender problems that we are less and less likely to

anticipate. " [15, p. 37] Viewing the rapid decline in global

biodiversity, biologist Myers concludes: " In the midst of much

scientific uncertainty about our world -- a world on which we are

imposing multitudes of simultaneous new insults -- we can be all but

certain that there are environmental processes at work, or waiting in

the wings, with the capacity to generate significant problems and to

take us by ostensible surprise. " [10, p. 358] Colborn and colleagues,

considering the emergence of ozone depletion and endocrine disruption,

concur. " If anything is certain, " they write, " it is that we will be

blindsided again " probably by " something never even considered. " [2, p.

242]. How often will nasty surprises emerge? How long will it take us

to recognize and address them? How much damage will they do? Is the

worst behind us, or ahead of us? How much, ultimately, is at stake? A

precautionary framework for environmental decision making would

respond to the urgency of such questions by attempting to shape

technologies in ways calculated to make future nasty surprises less

frequent and less severe.

The risk-based regulatory approach, with its disregard for the

systemic character of nasty surprise and its technocratic mode of

responding to new surprises, does not offer a viable approach to

dealing with nasty surprises. As the European Environment Agency

concludes in its recent report on precaution, the scientific hubris

built into western society's technological decision making has made

society vulnerable to technological blunders that undermine the

prospect of sustainability.[9]

REFERENCES

[1] D. Sarewitz, Frontiers of Illusion: Science, Technology, and the

Politics of Progress. Philadelphia, PA: Temple Univ., 1996.

[2] T. Colborn, D. Dumanoski. and J. Peterson Myers, Our Stolen

Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility: Intelligence, and Survival?

-- A Scientific Detective Story. New York, NY: Dutton, 1996.

[3] S. Krimsky, Hormonal Chaos: The Scientific and Social Origins of

the Environmental Endocrine Hypothesis. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins

Univ. Press, 2000.

[4] G.M. Solomon and T. Schettler, " Endocrine disruption and potential

human health implications, " Canadian Med. Assoc. J., vol. 163, no. 11,

pp. 1471-1476, 2000.

[5] P.L. deFur, " Public policy recommendations to address endocrine

disrupting chemicals, " Biotechnology International, vol. 2, pp.

230-234, 1999.

[6] J. Thornton, Pandora's Poison: Organochlorines and Health.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.

[7] J. Thornton, " Chemicals policy and the precautionary principle:

The case of endocrine disruption, " in Science and the Precautionary

Principle, J. Tickner, Ed. Washington, DC: Island, to be published.

[8] C. Raffensperger and J. Tickner, Eds. Protecting Public Health and

the Environment: Implementing the Precautionary Principle. Washington,

DC: Island, 1999.

[9] Late Lessons from Early Warnings: The Precautionary Principle

1896-2000. European Environment Agency: Copenhagen, 2001.

[10] N. Myers, " Environmental unknowns, " Science, vol. 269, pp.

358-360, July 21, 1995.

[11] N. Myers, 'Two key challenges for biodiversity: Discontinuities

and synergisms, " Biodiversity and Conservation, vol. 5, pp.

025-1034,1996.

[12] S.O. Funtowicz and J.R. Ravetz, " Uncertainty, complexity and

post-normal science, " Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, vol. 13,

no. 12, pp. 1881-1885, 1994.

[13] B. Wynne, " Uncertainty and environmental learning: Reconceiving

science and policy in the preventive paradigm, " Global Environmental

Change, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 111-127, 1992.

[14] M. O'Brien, Making Better Environmental Decisions: An Alternative

to Risk Assessment. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2000.

[15] C. Bright, " Anticipating environmental 'surprise', " in State of

the World 2000: A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress Toward a

Sustainable Society, L. Brown et al., Eds. New York, NY: Norton, 2000,

pp. 22-38.

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Kraig and Shirley Carroll ... in the woods of SE Kentucky

http://www.thehavens.com/

thehavens

606-376-3363

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October 31, 2007

Peter,

You probably know the REAL reasons that there are no plans to curb

global warming.

1. Reduction of the population: What better way to rid the World of

millions of third-world mouths to feed than through acts of nature?

2. Outright Corruption: The old fellows running things haven't figured

out how to line their pockets through solar technology. There is a

hundred year old money pipeline to selected families through oil, why

ruin it?

I have come to the conclusion, as one of those on the outside hungrily

looking in, that the human race will exterminate itself within 100

years solely through the greed of a few. May God have mercy on their

souls!

, surpriseshan2

wrote:

> INDUSTRY'S PLAN FOR US

> _http://www.precaution.org/lib/07/prn_the_industry_plan.071025.htm_

> (http://www.precaution.org/lib/07/prn_the_industry_plan.071025.htm)

> By Peter Montague

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