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A new class of toxic chemicals has been discovered in breast milk, in human blood, in food, in remote rural air, in wild fish, and in the sewage sludge being applied as fertilizer on food crops across the U.S. A Canadian health official recently summed up the discovery saying, "This stuff is everywhere."
The newly-discovered contaminants are brominated flame retardants. Bromine is a highly-reactive chemical element, a halogen in the same class as chlorine and iodine. Worldwide, eight chemical corporations manufacture about 300 million pounds of brominated fire retardants each year, of which about 80 million pounds are members of the class known as polybromo diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs.[2] Although all brominated fire retardants seem capable of creating environment and health problems, here we will focus on PBDEs, which leach into the environment from the plastics in appliances, TVs and computers, foam in upholstery, and the fabrics of carpets and draperies. Many hard styrene plastics and many foam padding materials are 5% to 30% PBDE by weight.
Like their cousin PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), many PBDEs persist for years in the environment, accumulate in the food chain and concentrate in fatty tissues. A recent survey of the PBDE literature revealed that some PBDEs can cause cancer, interfere with hormones, and disrupt normal growth and development in laboratory animals.[3] Recent studies have shown that these brominated compounds can interfere with the thyroid hormone, which is critical for the proper development of the brain and central nervous system in animals and humans. Baby mice exposed to PBDEs show permanent behavioral and memory problems, which worsen with age.
Because PBDEs are found at very high levels in computers, carpets and the foam padding inside furniture, the thick dust covering "ground zero" in lower Manhattan doubtless contains substantial quantities of PBDEs, so anyone breathing the air there without proper safety equipment is inhaling these toxicants. The dust at the site of the World Trade Center atrocities resulted from "thousands of plastic computers, acres of flammable carpet, [and] tons of office furniture...." pulverized when the twin towers and other nearby buildings collapsed September 11. To make matters worse, a portion of this high-tech dust is being continuously incinerated by a stubborn fire smoldering beneath the rubble.
In several "risk assessments" of air pollution hazards at "ground zero" U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has concluded that the air in lower Manhattan is safe for workers and residents, but EPA's risk assessment did not consider PBDEs (nor did it consider many other chemicals probably present in that air). Notably, in spite of EPA's assurances of safety, more than 4000 people have developed chronic chest pain, a persistent cough now known as "world trade center cough" and asthma-like (or emphysema-like) breathing problems from exposure to the air in lower Manhattan.
EPA has also employed risk assessment to declare the use of contaminated sewage sludge "safe" as fertilizer on food crops, but here again EPA did not consider the effects of PBDEs (or many other chemicals) on the crops, on people eating the crops, or on the natural environment in which the crops are grown. An estimated 8 billion pounds of contaminated sewage sludge are routinely spread onto farmland in the U.S. each year. In July of this year researchers reported finding high concentrations of PBDEs in 11 samples of sewage sludge from Virginia, New York and California.
This of course is one of the unavoidable failings of a risk-assessment approach to managing toxic chemicals -- you can only (partially) assess the risks of chemicals that you know a great deal about. U.S. chemical manufacturers introduce about 1000 new chemicals into commercial use each year with no safety testing required and little or none done. Typically, safety testing only begins after industrial chemicals have been discovered causing harm 10 to 20 years after introduction. Risk assessments are always "behind the curve" and therefore always give false assurances of safety.
An alternative to the risk assessment approach is to take precautionary action as soon as evidence of harm begins to emerge.
A recent survey by a group of Scandinavian researchers reports that PBDE levels have been increasing exponentially in the environment in Sweden for 30 years and show no sign of leveling off. Recent studies indicate that the U.S. is far more contaminated than Sweden. For example, sewage sludge in the U.S. contains 10 to 100 times as much PBDE as does European sludge. Other major sources of PBDEs are thought to be municipal incinerators and landfills. PBDEs can also volatilize (ooze into the air) out of electrical components, especially from warm devices such as computers and TV sets.
PBDEs are not very soluble in water, but they dissolve readily in fat. They are also persistent in the environment (meaning they break down only slowly). As they move through the food chain, they concentrate and biomagnify. These are the very characteristics that have caused other industrial poisons to be labeled bad actors and yanked from the market, including DDT and PCBs.
Given these characteristics, it was no surprise when Scandinavian scientists reported earlier this year that PBDEs have been increasing exponentially in breast milk in Sweden since 1972, the concentration doubling every 5 years. The researchers emphasized that current levels in breast milk, and in the Swedish diet, are far below the levels known to harm laboratory animals, but they concluded that "the time trend of PBDEs in human breast milk is alarming for the future."
No one knows for sure what the effects of PBDEs might be on developing embryos or suckling infants. (To inform yourself about the KNOWN consequences of contaminated breast milk, read Sandra Steingraber's electrifying new book, HAVING FAITH; AN ECOLOGIST'S JOURNEY TO MOTHERHOOD. It is worth emphasizing here that breast milk, even laced as it is with low levels of industrial poisons, is still the best food for infants because all the alternatives are worse.)
PBDEs are now everywhere. European researchers have found PBDEs in freshwater and ocean fish (salmon, herring, sprat), in air at remote rural locations, in sewage sludge, in deep ocean sediments, in eels, seals, shellfish, bottlenose dolphins, porpoises, pilot whales, and crabs, among other species. Based on limited studies, the Great Lakes appear to be among the most PBDE-contaminated bodies of water in the world, with Lake Michigan the worst.
Studies in Germany, Holland, Sweden, Japan and the U.S. have reported the presence of PBDEs in fish, meat, cow's milk, fats/- oils, and bakery products. Studies of human blood in the U.S. have revealed PBDEs in all samples.
In 1999 the Swedish Chemicals Inspectorate concluded that, "The lower-brominated technical PBDE compounds, containing mostly pentaBDE, are persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic in the aquatic environment. They show effects above all on the liver but also on thyroid hormone and affect the behaviour of mice. They occur widely in the environment, in human blood and in mother's milk." In Sweden, this combination of characteristics triggers precautionary action to remove such chemicals from the market. Denmark and the Netherlands have also taken steps to ban PBDEs.
In September the European Union decided to take precautionary action without waiting for conclusive scientific evidence of harm. The European Parliament voted September 6 to ban the use, manufacture, and import of some forms of PBDEs during the next few years, but the European Council of Ministers must approve the ban before it becomes law.
Naturally, all such bans will be subject to challenge in the secret tribunals of the World Trade Organization (WTO) if any of the world's eight manufacturers of PBDEs decides to fight for its self-declared "right" to turn a profit by discharging industrial poisons into the environment. The manufacturers have reportedly expressed "furious opposition" to the European ban. One of the main purposes in setting up the WTO was to allow corporations (acting through pliant governments) to use "risk assessment"to challenge and repeal the health and safety regulations of any and all nations. Prior to the WTO, corporations had no way to challenge the health and safety policies of all nations simultaneously, so the WTO offers remarkable new efficiencies in this regard. Risk assessment is ideally suited for such a purpose, especially when little is known about the chemicals being assessed. The less is known, the safer the chemicals can be made to appear -- just as with the air at ground zero.
The U.S. government has no regulations governing the manufacture, use, or disposal of PBDEs, and has announced no plans to initiate regulations. U.S. chemical policy is still in a primitive state, guided by the philosophy, "Don't ask, don't tell."
PBDEs are similar in chemical form, and in many of their actions, to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), which are among the most dangerous and persistent chemicals ever let loose by corporate imprudence. The U.S. banned PCBs in 1976, when much less was known about PCBs than is known about PBDEs today. But our political situation is far different today than it was in 1976. Corporations today are much more powerful and governments are substantially weaker. Corporations have succeeded in embedding risk assessment into all U.S. government decision-making processes, so precautionary action is nearly inconceivable within most agencies of government. The public is much better informed, but its democratic institutions (public schools, the press, the judiciary, Congress and the executive branch) have been hijacked by corporate money and now mainly serve powerful elites, regardless of the general welfare.
Within 10 to 15 years PBDEs will have surpassed PCBs as environmental hazards. Breast milk studies indicate that the danger to infants and children is rapidly rising. Who will lead this fight to allow us to take precautionary action against the corporate poisoners?
FAILURES AND SUCCESSES
In this series, we are exploring the evolution of the modern environmental movement, from about 1965 onward. The mainstream environmental organizations with the largest budgets are Environmental Defense, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club, and Wilderness Society. Since the late 1970s, a new environmental movement has appeared. This "environmental justice" (EJ) movement is composed of roughly five hundred locally-based groups. Descriptions of many of these groups can be found among the 2700 organizations now described on our web site, https://www.rachel.org. (Environmental groups of all kinds are encouraged to add themselves to our web site, thus helping to make the movement visible. If you know of groups that we are missing, please send E-mail to erf@rachel.org or call us toll-free at (888) 272-2435.)
The vast majority of U.S. citizens -- roughly 80% -- express strong support for environmental values,[1] yet most have never allied themselves with either the traditional or the environmental justice movements, so both movements are politically weaker than they could be. An obvious question is, Why?
Historically, many mainstream-professional environmentalists have viewed humans mainly as a source of trouble. This view has turned the nation's environmental agenda away from human concerns. Some within the Sierra Club have now rejected this view, but it remains widely held.
An excellent short history of the environmental movement has recently been published by MIT Press: William Shutkin's THE LAND THAT COULD BE. Shutkin observes, "...traditional environmentalism has focused on places where very few of us actually live and work, such as wilderness and national parks, while overlooking densely populated areas like cities and suburbs."
Shutkin goes on to say, "Left out of the [traditional environmental] movement have been the people themselves and the environmental issues that, quite literally, hit home -- local issues like lack of open space, brownfields [contaminated urban sites] , asthma brought on by air pollution, and other environmental problems endemic to many American communities.... Local communities and constituencies have been relegated to the back burner by both the public interest environmental establishment and the environmental law and policy system itself."
Importantly, mainstream-professional environmentalists have traditionally viewed community development and economic development as incompatible with environmental protection, thus turning their backs on the bread-and-butter concerns of a majority of Americans -- the working class, the poor, and people of color.
Shutkin: "Despite the importance of economic investment and employment opportunities to overall community health, including environmental protection and the availability of environmentally sustainable production methods, these issues have not risen to prominence among mainstream-professional environmentalists. Similarly, the movement has failed to address the persistent segregation of communities along racial lines, which has resulted in the continuing development of suburban and rural areas, with the associated environmental costs."
The mainstream-professional environmental movement has not only ignored the importance of economic development and the corrosive effects of persistent racism, it has also solidified and institutionalized a system of environmental protection designed (intentionally or not) to funnel pollutants into poor communities. As attorney Luke Cole has written,
"Environmental laws are not designed by or for poor people. The theory and ideology behind environmental laws ignores the systemic genesis of pollution. Environmental statutes actually legitimate the pollution of low-income neighborhoods."
Cole goes on, "Mainstream environmentalists see pollution as the FAILURE of government and industry -- if the environmentalists could only shape up the few bad apples, our environment would be protected. But grassroots activists come to view pollution as the SUCCESS of government and industry, success at industry's primary objective: maximizing profits by externalizing environmental costs. Pollution of our air, land, and water that is literally killing people is often not in violation of environmental laws...."
Because mainstream-professional environmentalism excluded other key concerns of the working class, the poor and minorities, a new approach to environmental protection began to emerge in the U.S. in the late 1970s.
This new approach -- environmental justice -- focuses on the environments in which people live, work, and play, and it assumes that environmental protection and justice require a political struggle against corporations. It also recognizes that environmental protection requires us to engage, defend, and rebuild our communities. Paragraph 12 of the 1991 Principles of Environmental Justice said, "Environmental justice affirms the need for urban and rural ecological policies to clean up and rebuild our cities and rural areas in balance with nature, honoring the cultural integrity of all our communities, and providing fair access for all to the full range of resources."
In practice the EJ movement has had considerable success keeping bad projects, such as garbage incinerators, out of poor communities and communities of color. And it has established the principle that everyone has the right to a clean environment.
As a result of EJ advocacy (and similar work by grass-roots groups overseas), the right to a clean environment is now becoming recognized as a basic human right.[5] In April of this year the United Nations Commission on Human Rights declared formally that, "Everyone has the right to live in a world free from toxic pollution and environmental degradation." In announcing this new human rights declaration, Claus Toepfer, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, said, "It is time to recognize that those who pollute or destroy the natural environment are not just committing a crime against nature, but are violating human rights as well."[5] This declaration transforms the main concern of the EJ movement -- equal protection against environmental harms -- into an international norm. By any standard, this is an important and lasting achievement of the EJ movement.
Furthermore, some EJ groups have made the difficult transition from environmental protection to community protection and economic development. Some EJ groups now own and manage housing units, computer-training labs, urban gardens, farmers' markets, and restaurants. Some EJ groups have taken control of the community planning process. Thus the EJ movement is beginning to take on projects that have very wide appeal, indeed -- far beyond the purview of traditional environmentalists. (We'll discuss this further in Part 3.)
William Shutkin makes the point that mainstream-professional environmentalism has failed -- even within its own terms -- because it evolved a style of advocacy that failed to mobilize the democratic participation of affected people everywhere. "With its direct mail machinery, centralized structure, and top-down decision making, mainstream-professional environmentalism has cultivated a largely passive constituency and in the process has stripped itself of the ability to activate and inspire robust political participation and civic engagement, the very forces that can hold decision makers accountable, prevent environmental harms, and institute local and regional environmental strategies...."
Essentially, mainstream-professional environmentalism failed to appreciate the importance of natural and social assets in creating and maintaining robust communities:
Shutkin again: "...[E] nvironmental assets like mass transportation, parks, and tree-lined walkways are paid for by public funds, and they require ongoing public investment for their maintenance and upgrade. Such assets constitute a significant part of the country's public spaces -- the physical infrastructure that allows people to come together, associate face to face, and engage in civic activities. Without them, our communities possess none of the physical resources that allow civic life to be expressed. In essence, environmental assets are the enabling mechanisms for civic culture."
But it's a two-way street: in our cities and towns, environmental amenities are the enabling mechanism for civic life, but active civic participation is essential for the maintenance of local environments. Once again, William Shutkin:
"Most Americans have lost touch not only with their neighbors, but [also with] the physical places where they live and work -- their environment. In the course of an ordinary day, week, or month, many of us have little direct involvement in the civic life of our communities, nor do we enjoy ready access to a safe, quality environment. The two are causally connected. As a public good, a healthy physical environment demands informed, active public participation in local decision making to ensure that the private sector, government, and even one's own neighbors do not undermine long-term environmental gains in their pursuit of short-term narrow ends."
Sociologist Manuel Pastor, Jr., draws out the implications of these ideas, as follows:
Whereas many environmental justice battles of the past have focused on stopping harmful and inequitable projects, community-based grass-roots groups can also "offer hope for a more positive and harmonious vision of the social good." Pastor sees at least two major benefits from this larger community-development approach:
(1) "... Claiming the right to clean air and water can be the beginning of a community movement to deploy natural assets in the service of community-based wealth creation [for example, in urban farms and gardens] ."
(2) Once a community asserts its right to a clean environment, it is a short step to asserting a right to other "social resources" such as schools, housing, open space, and employment.
Pastor concludes that -- without diminishing in any way the accomplishments of the environmental justice movement in opposing the placement of toxic hazards in communities of color and poor communities -- environmental justice activism can go further, becoming "an important part of the general community-building movement."
No doubt William Shutkin would agree with Pastor on this point. In THE LAND THAT COULD BE Shutkin has described one version of this larger community development approach, which he calls "civic environmentalism," our subject for Part 3.
--Peter Montague
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