Environmental Protection? Why Bother?

Hi all.  I was invited to maintain a blog on Patch and I’m rising to the challenge, although the phrase “in over my head” comes to mind. 

Since I spend much of my professional and private “thinking” time on environmental and health-related issues, I suspect most of my musings will be along these lines (although gardening subjects may sneak in from time to time).

 Having worked in the environmental field for the nearly 25 years (first with EPA then as a consultant), I’ve seen environmental protection wax and wane through different political and economic times.  I’ve been amused for the past few years as “being green” has become a rallying cry, as if this was being discovered for the first time.  While the resurgence of interest is heartening, environmental protection backslides when interest is lacking.  And that affects us all.

Over the years, environmental protection has become quite the big umbrella.  Whether curbing global warming, regulating polluters, saving the whales (or eagles or polar bears), reducing pesticide use in food, or just changing light bulbs, environmental protection affects our lives in many ways: socially, politically, economically, and health-wise. 

For me, the use of chemicals in or on our food or in our household products particularly disturbs me.  If you consider this more a of a health issue than an environmental issue, consider the effects of air and water discharges when the chemical is manufactured or disposed or the effects on native flora and fauna when the chemical is applied to or runs off of crops.

Unfortunately, we have undertaken a very risky experiment since the 1940s, when we began “better living through chemistry.”  Particularly after WWII, chemicals were introduced into everyday products to make our homes cleaner, our hair shinier, our yards bug-less, and our food technicolor and eternal (Cheetos, anyone?).  It was through this miracle of science that we were freed from the mundane application of elbow grease and could enjoy apples in February.  It all sounds great….until the chemicals that keep your apple worm-free result in the population decline of bald eagles and other sensitive raptors. 

Reports seem to come out daily that a chemical in a product we regularly use causes some undesirable health effect.  BPA in your water bottle, 2,4-D in your Weed and Feed, Quaternium-15 (a formaldehyde-releasing preservative) in your baby shampoo; myclobutanil (a developmental toxin) on your strawberries: all capable of causing undesirable health effects.  Our exposure to chemicals is so prevalent and widespread that it is nearly impossible to avoid.  And studies on the effect of these chemicals in the combined exposures we experience are essentially non-existent. 

 At the root of this is our country’s flawed chemical management policy.  Rather than a chemical company having to prove that their product is safe for use, the burden of proof that it isn’t safe is left to the government.  Fox? Henhouse? 

While I’m not completely comfortable in trusting the government to protect me, I sure don’t trust the chemical industry to protect me. It’s just not in their job description.  So what can we do? 

We need to sort through the rhetoric and avoid chemical-tinkered products whenever possible, and push politically.  Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) is pushing to reform the country’s primary chemical management law, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), with his introduced Safe Chemicals Act of 2010, and if you agree, I suggest you let your legislators know.  In a really potent piece of policy, the American Academy of Pediatrics recently issued a call for a stronger chemical management policy.  I was so impressed with their words that I’m going to reproduce them here for you all:

"The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that chemical management policy in the United States be revised to protect children and pregnant women and to better protect other populations. The Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) was passed in 1976. It is widely recognized to have been ineffective in protecting children, pregnant women, and the general population from hazardous chemicals in the marketplace.  It does not take into account the special vulnerabilities of children in attempting to protect the population from chemical hazards. Its processes are so cumbersome that in its more than 30 years of existence, the TSCA has been used to regulate only 5 chemicals or chemical classes of the tens of thousands of chemicals that are in commerce. Under the TSCA, chemical companies have no responsibility to perform premarket testing or postmarket follow-up of the products that they produce; in fact, the TSCA contains disincentives for the companies to produce such data. Voluntary programs have been inadequate in resolving problems. Therefore, chemical-management policy needs to be rewritten in the United States. Manufacturers must be responsible for developing information about chemicals before marketing. The US Environmental Protection Agency must have the authority to demand additional safety data about a chemical and to limit or stop the marketing of a chemical when there is a high degree of suspicion that the chemical might be harmful to children, pregnant women, or other populations." Pediatrics 2011;127:983–990.

You go, docs! 

 So, there is some hope that, with the pendulum swinging in a “pro-environment” direction, some real change may occur.  While it might not be soon enough to protect me or my peers from succumbing to an industrial disease, perhaps our kids will fare better.

Speaking of change, most of you probably know that the environmental movement and EPA were borne out of the conviction that DDT and its metabolites were responsible for the decline of bald eagles and other birds as a result of egg-shell thinning (still controversial), which led to the ban of DDT in the early 1970s.  In all of my 50+ years, I had never seen a bald eagle, even once; they (like mink - another victim of environmental pollution) were the stuff of legend.  But Jamie Schwartz (former town council member) sent me this picture he recently took of a pair of bald eagles in Brickyard Pond.  And there have been additional sitings of bald eagle in other parts of Rhode Island.  So while we still might be fighting the battle with chemical companies and inadequate chemical control, it’s nice to see that at least one past pro-environmental action has resulted in a real success.  For that, I am thankful.