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 All living organisms produce waste. In
sufficient quantities, waste produced by living organisms becomes
toxic to that species if the waste cannot be removed or
altered from the habitat. This basic
fact of life provided a natural barrier to human longevity for
thousands of years. Renowned scientist Leonard Hayflick in his book
How and Why We Age indicates that from the Bronze Age to
Ancient Roman times, human life expectancy was only about 18
years. It is only in recent history, after humans were able to
separate waste and habitat, that our life expectancy increased
dramatically.
Humans differ strongly from
other living organisms in the quantity of waste we produce due to
our use of tools. If
you separate out the waste produced by our bodies, almost all other
waste produced can be considered discarded tools. Computers,
cars, diapers, packaging, clothing, books, buildings and almost
anything else that humans produce can be considered a tool. Even
hazardous chemicals can be used to make tools, or are actually tools
themselves in the case of pesticides, herbicides and
solvents. In fact, the discovery and use of tools is largely responsible for our dominance in the world today.
If you travel back to our origins
in Africa, where it is now believed that humans first appeared, early humans were at a disadvantage to many other living
organisms. We were slower, weaker and, in many cases,
smaller than other competing animals. Survival depended on our brain
power, and very early in our evolution tools became the practical
extension of that brain power. The first known tools date back more
than one million years ago, and are nothing more than crude stone
implements designed for cutting. These tools were probably
used to cut up larger prey for transport to safer ground, thereby
avoiding encounters with predators. Shortly after
humans enter the archeological record, however, an amazing thing
happened:
the discovery of our greatest tool, fire. The
discovery of fire cannot be overemphasized. Fire caused former
predators to fear us and allowed colonization of areas that were
once uninhabitable. It is no surprise that shortly after the
discovery of fire, human colonies enter the archeological record at
multiple locations.
The discovery of fire is also
interesting for another reason. Incomplete combustion of many
compounds (including wood) produces polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons,
or PAHs for short. PAHs are suspected human carcinogens
(scientifically suspected to cause cancer in humans) that, along
with a host of other compounds, are included on the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency's (USEPA) list of priority pollutants.
Therefore, very early in our history, humans produced tools that
generated chemical compounds that would be considered hazardous to
human health and the environment today.
Along with humanity's rapid ascent
to world dominance came the rapid evolution of tools and the production of
hazardous chemical. The development of bronze and, ultimately, steel gave
us stronger, longer lasting
tools, but it also produced concentrated solutions containing many
hazardous elements (e.g., nickel, lead, chromium, arsenic, cadmium and mercury, and hazardous compounds like lead
sulfide and
arsenic sulfate). Leather tanning produced durable clothes, but also
generated hazardous liquids. The difference between then and
now was that the world population was small in comparison to that today, resulting in the production of limited quantities of
hazardous wastes in comparison to the size of the environment.
In addition, due to the limited lifespan of humans, the effect of hazardous
chemicals on our health until recently was probably largely unseen.
Humanity gradually eliminated
most infectious diseases through improved sewage control practices,
vaccine development and the discovery of antibiotics. The net
result was a dramatic increase in the average human lifespan.
By 1900 the average human lifespan was 50 years; and by 1940 it was
65 years. Today the average human lifespan is approaching 80
years of age. As the average human lifespan began to
increase, however, the world population also began to mushroom. A longer
lifespan allowed families to have more offspring and, since the
mortality rate was much lower, more offspring survived.
Concurrent with the gradual
realization by some members of the scientific community that the
population growth was accelerating, other members of the scientific
community began to notice the impact of humanity on the environment.
The popular book Silent Spring, written by marine
biologist Rachel Carson in 1961, publicized the growing concern over
the use of organic chemicals in the environment by
pinpointing the use of herbicides and pesticides as two of the main
culprits in the environmental destruction. The environmental
movement gathered steam quickly with the help of the adolescent baby
boom generation, and by 1970 the USEPA was established to
help deal with environmental concerns.
This brief discussion of
environmental history illustrates several key ideas that should be
emphasized because they are integral to understanding most environmental issues and are contrary to much
of the hysterical thinking that has been pervasive in conjunction
with environmental issues. These key ideas can be summarized
as follows:
Hazardous chemicals are not
a new invention by industrial society. At least since
the development of fire, humanity has coexisted with some of the
same hazardous chemicals that are now included on the list of
national priority pollutants (as defined by the USEPA). In fact,
if you scan the USEPA's list of priority pollutants, dozens of hazardous
chemicals included on this list have coexisted with mankind for
centuries. It is also interesting to note that PAHs (some of
the more toxic priority pollutants as defined by the USEPA) have
probably been part of our environment since the discovery of fire
almost one million years ago.
Hazardous chemicals are
used to make common everyday tools, are produced as a byproduct or
waste in the tool-making process, or are tools themselves.
Hazardous chemicals in general are not ultra-secret formulas
produced behind government doors or illegally as some great scheme
to poison the world. Probably better than 95 percent of all environmental contamination is caused by boring, everyday chemicals
that are used to produce common goods, are byproducts during the
production of common goods, or are common everyday goods themselves.
Even if we went back to the Stone Age we could not survive without
coexisting with some hazardous chemicals.
Legally acceptable (based
on past laws) and widely followed historical disposal practices
resulted in the majority of present day environmental contamination.
This key idea was not explicitly stated previously, but was
certainly insinuated. Until the 1970s, there were virtually no
laws governing the proper disposal of most wastes in the
environment. Common disposal practices included unlined waste
pits, deep well injection, open burial and simply discarding small
quantities of waste products on the ground. There was simply
no knowledge available to warn society that the seemingly small
quantities of chemicals that were discarded over the years would
end up contaminating large portions of the environment. Even
if some individuals suspected that damage was occurring, analytical
methods for detecting chemicals in the parts per billion range, which is required to assess most chemical contamination in the
environment, were not available until recently.
"Population Growth is the primary source
of environmental damage." - Jacques Cousteau.
Far from the headlines proclaiming toxic waste in our backyards is
the true silent destroyer of ourselves and the environment:
population growth and our incessant desire to expand in the name of
progress. In fact, environmental issues did not come to the
forefront until the world population began to have a noticeable
impact on the environment. All of the hazardous waste sites combined
do not even form a blip on the screen compared to the destruction of
ecosystems that occurs as population centers expand. The entire
world is now being brainwashed to believe that we cannot be happy
without cars, houses, TVs and millions of disposable items that
often find a home alongside the road after they have been used up.
By most estimates there are approximately 8 billion people in the
world today. With low infant mortality rates and life
expectancy approaching 80 years of age, we cannot continue to
proliferate and expand our territory as we have in the past without
total destruction of the
environment.
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