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THE NATURE OF WORLD WAR III--PART 1
The social movement created by U.S. toxics activists began in the late 1970s with a concern for place. People were fighting to clean up and protect specific places: their home, their neighborhood, a valley, a mountainside, a city block, a community. Specific places were the focus and toxic materials were the concern.
Over the past 20 years, toxics activists have come to understand that the problems they face are deeper than just toxic dumping, as bad as that is. Now people see that toxic wastes are just one aspect of a larger problem: toxic products, a toxic economy. Furthermore, toxic chemicals in the economy are just one aspect of an even deeper problem: the economy is not working for people or communities and most of the people affected by economic decisions are no longer participating in those decisions. In communities, people are realizing that the deepest question of all is, Who gets to decide?
The economy is not working for most people. Plant closings, downsizing, wage freezes and give-backs, union busting, replacement of full-time, permanent jobs by part-time and temporary jobs without benefits --these are the the result of decisions that have taken away the economy security of at least 100 million people in the U.S.
Real wages for non-supervisory workers --75% to 80% of all workers --have been declining since 1972.[1] Measured in constant (inflation-adjusted) dollars, a full-time worker in 1972 took home $315.44 per week; today that same worker takes home $255.90 per week,[2] a 19% decline. People are adjusting to this wage decline by having other members of the household go to work, working longer hours, taking second and third jobs. Even these heroic efforts have not turned things around for most families in the 1990s: in the period 1989 to 1995, median family income dropped in 5 out of 6 years.[3] The total drop in median family income since 1989 has been 6%. The reality is unmistakable: the economy is not working for most people the way it used to.
Meanwhile, inequality is increasing sharply. The rich are getting much richer and the poor are getting poorer and more numerous. If you break society into 10 groups, each representing 10%, the incomes of the richest 10% rose 21% between 1979 and 1987, while the incomes of the poorest 10% dropped by 12%.[4] Between 1983 and 1992, an astonishing 99% of the increase in the nation's wealth was awarded to the wealthiest 20% of the people.[5]
In 1949, the richest 1% of the population owned 21% of all assets; today that richest 1% owns more than 40% of all assets.[6]
Is all this happening because the economy is in a slump? Is business doing badly? Hardly. During the period 1980-1995 corporate revenues rose 129.5%, corporate profits rose 127%, and executive pay rose 182%.[7]
Meanwhile the share of the federal tax burden borne by corporations and the super-rich has been declining, and the share paid by the middle class has been increasing. In 1950, taxes on corporate income provided 26.4% of federal tax income. In 1995, that figure had fallen to 11.6%.[8]
During the same period, the tax burden on individuals has risen. In 1972, the social security tax, a wage tax, was 4.8%; today it is 7.65%, a 59% increase.[9] Furthermore, in 1972, the median sales tax across all the states was 3%; today it is 7%.[10] Meanwhile the income tax on the rich and super-rich has dropped dramatically. In 1950 the top income tax was 91%; in 1995, it was 39.6%.[11]
Because of phenomenal growth in profits in recent decades, many corporations are now larger than countries. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are now corporations and only 49 are countries. General Motors --the 22nd largest economy in the world --is larger than Denmark, larger than Thailand, larger than Hong Kong, larger than Turkey. Ford Motor is larger than South Africa, larger than Saudi Arabia, larger than Norway. Exxon is larger than Finland, larger than Poland, larger than Ukraine. Wal-Mart Stores is larger than Israel, larger than Greece.[12]
As a result of corporate size and wealth, corporate executives are calling the shots economically and politically in the U.S. It presently costs anywhere from $1 million to $25 million to run a successful election campaign for the federal House or Senate.[See REHW #409, #419, #421.] Such sums of money are only acquired by appeals to the super-rich and the super-rich, of course, are tied to corporations. Only 5% of households own 77% of all corporate stocks.[13] The wealth of corporate executives and corporate shareholders, and their direct financial support of political candidates, translate into raw political power. One result of this power is that Congress, in recent years, has drastically reduced taxes for the wealthy, and for corporations, but has increased taxes on the middle class and the working poor. Furthermore, Congress has embroiled the United States in so-called "free trade" agreements (NAFTA and GATT) that have diminished the power of our national government (indeed, all national governments) to control corporate behavior. In sum, corporations are increasingly out of control. As Ronnie Dugger (founder of the Alliance for Democracy[14]) has written,
"We are ruled by Big Business and Big Government as its paid hireling, and we know it. Corporate money is wrecking popular government in the United States. The big corporations and the centimillionaires and billionaires have taken daily control of our work, our pay, our housing, our health, our pension funds, our bank and savings deposits, our public lands, our airwaves, our elections and our very government. It's as if American democracy has been bombed. Will we be able to recover ourselves and overcome the bombers? Or will they continue to divide us and will we continue to divide ourselves, according to our wounds and our alarms, until they have taken the country away from us for good?"[15]
These realities have not been lost on toxics activists, who have come to understand that the dumping of toxic materials into their communities is part of the toxic economy which is, in turn, part of the same problem as their community's economic decline, and that all these problems are related to the nature of corporations. Corporations cannot care about particular places. They cannot even care about human health. Nor can they care about democracy --corporations are among the most authoritarian and undemocratic organizations ever created. Corporate managers can only care about short-term financial gain. It is not a matter of corporations being run by bad people; they are not. They are run by ordinary people --most of them good-hearted --who are trapped within the logic of the corporate form. Corporations must make decisions that will return a profit to investors. That is all they are set up to do under the law. If they did otherwise, they would be sued for breach of fiduciary trust by their shareholders. Until the American people re-assert their control over corporations and give them a different purpose in life, corporations will continue to destroy communities and places, economically and ecologically.
As David Korten has written,
"It is no exaggeration to say that local communities everywhere are on the front lines of what might well be characterized as World War III. It is not the nuclear confrontation between east and west, between the Soviet Union and the United States, that we once feared. It is a very different kind of conflict. There is no clash of competing military forces and the struggle is not defined by national borders. But it does involve an often violent struggle for control of physical resources and territory that is destroying lives and communities at every hand. It is a struggle between the forces and institutions of economic globalization and communities such as yours that are trying to reclaim control of their economic lives. It is a contest between the competing goals of economic growth to maximize profits for absentee owners versus creating healthy communities that are good places for people to live. It is a competition for the control of markets and resources between global corporations and financial markets, on the one hand, and locally owned businesses serving local markets, on the other."[16]
Toxics activists now find themselves wanting to think more broadly than they ever have before. To gain control of toxics in a particular place, they now know they must think in terms of asserting their influence over the economy of that place. What are the components of the local economy? How do we analyze a place to find out what its resources are --especially its unused or presently-wasted resources? How do we prevent big, outside corporations from wrecking locally-owned businesses? How do we measure well-being so we'll know whether things are getting better or getting worse? How DO decisions get made in this place? How DO we control corporate behavior?
All of this is forcing toxics activists to look for allies who are prepared to help them think about community economic development and, ultimately, about controlling the behavior of corporations. Specific allies come to mind: the organization known as Sustainable America for local and regional-scale economic development,[17] and the Alliance for Democracy[14] for controlling corporations.
What also comes to mind is that there are some principles that have been worked out by toxics activists during the past 20 years, which can provide guidance for ALL activists. These are principles that can be used in local toxics fights, or can be used in local economic reconstruction. They can even provide some guidance as we try to devise ways to control corporate behavior. More next week.
--Peter Montague
GIRLS ARE REACHING PUBERTY EARLY
Many girls in the U.S. are entering puberty much earlier than normal, according to a recent study reported in the journal PEDIATRICS.[1] And there is some evidence that exposure to environmental chemicals many be contributing to the phenomenon.
Current medical texts say that only 1% of girls show signs of puberty, such as breast development and pubic hair, before the age of 8.[2] But the PEDIATRICS study found that a substantial proportion of American girls have one or both of these characteristics at age 7 and that 1% of all girls now have one or both of them at age 3.
Data for the study were collected by 225 physicians in suburban practices who recorded the physical growth of 17,077 of their young female patients, of whom 90.4% were white and 9.6% were African-American.[1] The authors of the study say their sample of girls was not selected randomly and therefore may not accurately represent the entire U.S. population of female children. However, they know of no systematic bias in their sample and they believe the girls they studied are typical.
The early onset of puberty was observed in both white and African-American girls, but with significant differences between them. African-Americans showed the first signs of sexual maturity about a year earlier than whites. Previous studies had observed these racial differences, but no one has provided an explanation for them.[3] (There is some evidence that these racial differences have developed only recently. A 1944 study reportedly found no such differences.[4])
The new PEDIATRICS study found that, at age 7, 27.2% of African-American girls, and 6.7% of white girls had either breast or pubic hair development; by age 8, 48.3% of African-American girls and 14.7% of white girls had one or both of these characteristics. The study also found that 1% of whites and 3% of African-Americans had such characteristics at age 3.
The study found that the average age for onset of puberty was just under 9 for African-Americans and was 10 to 10 1/2 for whites. Current medical texts say puberty begins between the ages of 11 and 12, on average.
The authors say it is conceivable that their sample might have been biased by young girls entering puberty whose parents became concerned and sent them for medical examination. If so, they said, an equivalent parental concern should produce, in their sample, an excess of 12 year olds who show no development, but no such excess appeared in the data.
The study found that age of first menstruation has not changed. Average age of first menstruation in whites is 12.8 years and in African-Americans is 8 months earlier. This is a pattern that has held steady for 30 or 40 years, the authors say.
The principal author of the study, Dr. Marcia E. Herman-Giddens told the NEW YORK TIMES, "The reason I did this study is that in my clinical practice, I was seeing a lot of young girls coming in with pubic hair and breast development, and it seemed like there were too many, too young. But I don't think any of us expected to see such a large proportion of girls developing this early," she said.[5] Dr. Herman-Giddens is an adjunct professor of maternal and child health at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) School of Public Health.
The PEDIATRICS study suggests that environmental chemicals that mimic estrogens might be involved. The authors point to a small study of 10 girls who entered puberty early as a result of exposure to hair-care products that had estrogenic properties.[6] They suggest that other well-known estrogenic chemicals, such as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) should be studied to see if they are implicated in early-onset puberty.
As it happens, a very recent preliminary report indicates that PCBs and DDE (a breakdown product of the pesticide DDT) may indeed be associated with early sexual development in girls. Both DDE[7] and PCBs[8] are known to mimic, or interfere with, sex hormones.
According to the British journal NEW SCIENTIST, Dr. Walter Rogan described preliminary data at a conference on environmental estrogens in July in Arlington, Va.[9] Rogan is acting clinical director at the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in Research Triangle, North Carolina.
According to NEW SCIENTIST, between 1979 and 1982 Rogan and his colleagues measured PCBs and DDE in blood and breast milk of hundreds of pregnant women in North Carolina. They also measured the chemicals in fetal blood collected from umbilical cords after birth. They then monitored the physical growth and maturity of 600 of the children of these women. According to NEW SCIENTIST, girls with the highest pre-natal exposures to the chemicals entered puberty 11 months earlier than girls with lower exposures. For boys, exposures to the chemicals before birth made no apparent difference in sexual development.
Rogan minimizes the importance of his data, but others say his findings are significant because few studies have ever looked at chemical effects on the offspring of exposed women, and the women Rogan studied were exposed to PCBs and DDE from normal diet and environmental sources, not from industrial accidents of other abnormally high exposures.
Is there other evidence that estrogen-mimicking chemicals could speed up the sexual maturation of mammals? At least three laboratory studies seem relevant here:
** Female rats were fed a diet that contained a phytoestrogen (a naturally-occurring plant that mimics estrogen). The ovulation of their offspring was prematurely terminated --a sign that their sexual development had been speeded up by their mother's diet.[10]
** Exposing immature female mice to high levels of methoxychlor stimulated them to early sexual maturity.[11] Methoxychlor is currently used in this country as a substitute for DDT which was banned in the 1970s, partly because of its estrogenic properties. The estrogenic properties of methoxychlor have become well-established in recent years, but its use continues.
** Rats treated once with certain PCBs on the second or third day of life exhibited a permanent alteration in sexual development. Specifically, young female rats treated once with Monsanto's Arochlor 1221 (a PCB) achieved sexual maturity in 28 days whereas untreated controls reached sexual maturity in 42 days.[12]
The authors of the PEDIATRICS study wrote, "This study strongly suggests that earlier puberty is a real phenomenon, and this has important clinical, educational, and social implications."
As the authors of the pediatrics study hint, the clinical implications may be serious. The arrival of puberty is driven by naturally-occurring estrogenic hormones coursing through the blood stream. There is now considerable evidence that breast cancer is promoted by the presence of these same naturally-occurring estrogens. Women who go through puberty early have a longer-than-normal exposure to these estrogens and therefore may be in greater danger of getting breast cancer.[13,14]
Breast cancer now kills 46,000 American women each year and the number is steadily rising; the reasons for the rise are poorly understood but there is widespread agreement that estrogen plays a role in the disease.[15] In recent years, researchers have hypothesized that environmental chemicals that mimic estrogens may also promote breast cancer.[16]
The social implications of early-onset puberty are obvious: young children with mature bodies must cope with feelings, urges and differences from their peers that most children are not well-equipped to handle. For many children, early pubescence may be a significant burden to bear.
--Peter Montague
LIVING DOWNSTREAM
In 1964, two senior scientists at the National Cancer Institute, Wilhelm Hueper and W.C. Conway, wrote, "Cancers of all types and all causes display even under already existing conditions, all the characteristics of an epidemic in slow motion." The unfolding epidemic was being fueled, they said in 1964, by "increasing contamination of the human environment with chemical and physical carcinogens and with chemicals supporting and potentiating their action."[1,pg.43]
Their words were met with silence.
The World Health Organization (WHO) maintains and analyzes cancer mortality (death) data from 70 countries. WHO research shows that industrialized countries have far more cancers than countries with little industry (after adjusting for age and population size). One-half of all the world's cancers occur among people living in industrialized countries, even though such people are only one-fifth of the world's population.[1,pg.59] From these data, WHO has concluded that at least 80 percent of all cancer is attributable to environmental influences.[1,pg.60]
In the U.S., the cancer epidemic described by Hueper and Conway in 1964 has been progressing steadily. In 1950, 25 percent of adults in the U.S. could expect to get cancer during their lifetimes; today about 40 percent of us (38.3 percent of women, 48.2 percent of men) can expect to get cancer. Omitting lung cancer from the statistics, the incidence (occurrence) of cancer increased 35% in the U.S. between 1950 and 1991. If we include lung cancers, then cancer incidence increased 49.3% between 1950 and 1991.[1,pg.40]
Viewing the same phenomenon from another vantage point: white women born in the U.S. in the 1940s have experienced 30 percent more non-smoking-related cancers than did women of their grandmothers' generation (women born between 1888 and 1897). Among men, the differences are even sharper. White men born in the 1940s have more than twice as much non-tobacco-related cancer as their grandfathers did at the same age.[1,pg.45] (Historic data are missing for non-whites.)
In the U.S. today, in the age group 35 to 64, cancer is the number one killer. Because of this fact alone, one might expect that the nation would welcome a book by a qualified scientist examining all the lines of evidence linking cancer to chemical contamination of the environment AND OFFERING SOLUTIONS.
But one would be disappointed in that expectation. Sandra Steingraber's new book, LIVING DOWNSTREAM --AN ECOLOGIST LOOKS AT CANCER AND THE ENVIRONMENT, has been greeted with nearly total silence. Appearing under the imprint of an important house, Addison-Wesley, the book is a major publishing event --hard back, 270 pages, including 77 pages of references in small type at the back. At age 38, the author is an accomplished researcher, writer and teacher with a Ph.D. in biology from University of Michigan who has obviously spent years preparing the manuscript, visiting special libraries, interviewing cancer researchers, and applying her scientific training to the diverse evidence linking cancer to environmental contamination.
Furthermore, the book is beautifully written. Steingraber (who has previously published a volume of poetry, POST-DIAGNOSIS) has the rare gift of combining poignant, lyrical prose with scientific exactitude and clarity. She is among the rarest of scientists --those who see the extraordinary among the ordinary and who can write so well that her readers are transported effortlessly through the complexities of an arcane topic like cancer cell biology. Indeed, Steingraber displays an encyclopedic knowledge of cancer biology, yet she conveys it in terms than anyone can grasp and appreciate. Simultaneously, she is careful to note the limitations of scientific knowledge. She never oversteps the bounds of what is really known, what is suspected but unproven, and what is merely informed speculation.
By any measure, LIVING DOWNSTREAM is an extraordinary work --extraordinarily easy (even pleasurable) to read, extraordinarily thoughtful and evenhanded (even gentle, generous and forgiving) in its treatment of a politically charged topic, and extraordinarily informative, thought-provoking, and useful.
Yet the book has been ignored. It appeared in May of this year, but a search this week of several hundred of the nation's newspapers (via the online Dow Jones News Service) reveals that Steingraber's book has been reviewed in only four places --in the Portland OREGONIAN, the CHICAGO TRIBUNE, USA TODAY, and deep within a "new science books" column in the WASHINGTON POST. In essence, the existence of this book has been blacked out by most of the nation's press. Like Wilhelm Hueper before her, Sandra Steingraber has (so far) been met with a stony silence.
The book is simultaneously a detective story --Steingraber investigating Tazewell County, Illinois, where she grew up, looking for clues to the rare bladder cancer that she herself contracted at age 20 --and a thorough scientific treatise (thankfully, one that is easy to read) on the relationship of cancer-causing chemicals to human and animal health.
Steingraber examines the following lines of evidence indicating that certain chemicals (and radiation) can cause cancer in living things:
** cancer in workers exposed to chemicals;
** studies of non-worker human populations exposed to chemicals out of ignorance or by accident or by misguided public policy (for example studies of humans who contract cancers from exposure to chlorinated drinking water);
** cancer in immigrants who soon exhibit the cancer rates of their adopted countries, rather than the cancer rates of the place where they were born;
** maps showing more cancers in urban areas than in rural;
** maps showing more cancers in rural counties with heavy pesticide use vs. rural counties with low pesticide use;
** individual studies revealing cancer clusters near chemical factories and near particularly-polluted rivers, valleys, and dumps;
** rising rates of childhood cancer. The lifestyles of children have not changed much in 50 years; they do not smoke, drink alcohol, or hold stressful jobs, yet childhood cancers are steadily rising;
** cancer in fish and shellfish living in polluted bodies of water. In North America there are now liver tumor epizootics (the wildlife equivalent of epidemics) in 16 species of fish in at least 25 different fresh-and salt-water locations, each of which is chemically polluted. In contrast, liver cancer among members of the same species who inhabit nonpolluted waters is virtually nonexistent.
** many kinds of cancer that can be induced in laboratory animals by exposing them to certain chemicals;
** cellular studies indicating that certain chemicals can cause cell growth and division;
** studies showing that chemicals can damage the immune system and the endocrine system, promoting cancers.
Yet, despite the abundance of evidence, science can never prove beyond all doubt that the chemicalization of the human economy is responsible for a substantial fraction of the cancer epidemic we are experiencing. As Steingraber puts it, "Like the assembling of a prehistoric animal's skeleton, this careful piecing together of evidence can never furnish final or absolute answers. There will always be a few missing parts..."[1,pg.29] She then goes on to explain in detail why science can never provide proof positive when confronted by a problem as complex as environment and health.
However, the limitations of science do not render us helpless. In her introduction, Steingraber notes that, as she was writing the last pieces of the book in late 1996, the news broke that scientists had finally found the agent in cigarette smoke that causes lung cancer. Yet, she points out, she herself grew up protected from cigarette smoke by her parents and teachers, and by public policies that kept cigarette smoke out of restaurants, hospitals and many other public spaces --actions taken and public policies created by people "who had the courage to act on partial evidence." The courage to act on partial evidence. This is a key concept. It underlies the principle of precautionary action.
Yet many scientists and policy makers exhibit a hushed complicity tantamount to cowardice, afraid to speak out about what they themselves believe to be true: that cancer is caused by exposure to carcinogens and that enormous suffering could be avoided if we would reduce our exposures to cancer-causing chemicals in air, water, and food.
Steingraber says again and again cancer cells are created, not born. Current science tells us that, at most, 5 to 10 percent of cancer is caused by defective inherited genes. This means that 90 to 95 percent of cancer is created by encounters with carcinogens during a person's lifetime. Yet the modern trend is to focus on the genetic causes of cancer. This deflects attention away from the preventable causes of cancer. As Steingraber says, "Shining the spotlight on inheritance focuses us on the one piece of the puzzle we can do absolutely nothing about."[1,pg.260]
She personalizes this as follows: "I had bladder cancer as a young adult. If I tell people this fact, they usually shake their heads. If I go on to mention that cancer runs in my family, they usually start to nod. SHE IS FROM ONE OF THOSE CANCER FAMILIES, I can almost hear them thinking. Sometimes I just leave it at that. But, if I am up for blank stares, I add that I am adopted and go on to describe a study of cancer among adoptees that found correlations within their adoptive families but not within their biological ones.... At this point, most people become very quiet.
"These silences remind me how unfamiliar many of us are with the notion that families share environments as well as chromosomes or with the concept that our genes work in communion with substances streaming in from the larger, ecological world. What runs in families does not necessarily run in blood. And our genes are less an inherited set of teacups enclosed in a cellular china cabinet that they are plates used in a busy diner. Cracks, chips, and scrapes accumulate. Accidents happen."[1,pg.251]
Steingraber says we will have to adopt a new way of thinking about chemicals. "This requires a human rights approach," she says. "Such an approach recognizes that the current system of regulating the use, release, and disposal of known and suspected carcinogens --rather than preventing their generation in the first place --is intolerable." Such a practice shows "reckless disregard for human life."[1,pg.268]
And: "When carcinogens are deliberately or accidentally introduced into the environment, some number of vulnerable persons are consigned to death. The impossibility of tabulating an exact body count does not alter this fact."[1,pg.268]
We, being more blunt than Sandra Steingraber, draw from this that murder is murder even if the victim is anonymous. And scientists, risk assessors, and regulators who grease the wheels for such a system --even if only by their complicit silence --have blood on their hands. They are the enablers of a system that profoundly violates the human rights of the thousands (or millions) whom it victimizes.
--Peter Montague
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