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Featured stories in this issue...
Living Above the Line
Our legal and economic systems are based on the assumption that
economic growth always provides more benefits than harms. But now that
we have exceeded many of Earth's ecological limits, that basic
assumption no longer holds true. The implications are profound.
Potentially Dangerous Sludge Used in Lead-poisoning Test
In the late 1990s, government-funded studies in poor, black
neighborhoods in Baltimore and East St. Louis, Ill., traded food
coupons and free lawns in exchange for permission to spread sewage
sludge on their yards.
Is Industrial Pollution Making America Fat?
Dr, Bruce Blumberg believes the obesity epidemic actually is due,
in part, to industrial pollution -- specifically to low levels of
toxic compounds he calls "obesogens."
Message in a Bottle
Trash twice the size of the continental United States is collecting
in the North Pacific, but here's the kicker: most of it is made to
last forever.
Global Hot Spots of Hunger Set To Explode
Food shortages and rising prices of food and fuel around the world
are triggering political instability that could infect 40 countries.
UN Chief: Food Crisis Is Now Emergency
"The rapidly escalating crisis of food availability around the
world has reached emergency proportions," says U.N. Secretary-General
Ban Ki-Moon. At least $500 to $750 million is needed on an emergency
basis to help 100 million people avert the danger of starvation.
Health Food Is Going To the Dogs -- Literally
The American Pet Products Manufacturers Association expects
Americans to spend about $43.4 billion on their pets in 2008, up from
$41.2 billion in 2007. About $16.9 billion of that is expected to be
spent on food.
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From: Rachel's Democracy & Health News, Apr. 17, 2008
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LIVING ABOVE THE LINE
By Peter Montague
I know it's not fashionable to talk about limits. Nobody likes
limits. But anyone who's paying attention knows that the Earth has
definite limits. It's a tiny place, really. (If the Earth were a
peach, then the part of it we inhabit -- the biosphere -- would be the
fuzz on the peach.)
About six months ago, the United Nations Environment Programme's
fourth Global Environmental Outlook Report (GEO-4) concluded that we
humans presently require 22 acres per person to support our global
average lifestyle -- but, the report said, Earth has only 15 acres per
person available.
In other words, we have already exceeded the Earth's "carrying
capacity" -- it's capacity to "carry" (or support) 6 billion humans.
And the human enterprise is poised for a massive spurt of economic and
population growth -- expected to raise our numbers to 9 billion by
roughly mid-century and to double the size of the human economy every
23 years.
This is why the surface of the Earth is getting warmer, chemical
contamination is rife, fresh water is in short supply, and there are
food riots occurring or threatening to occur in about 40 countries.
Given the way we live now, there's not enough space on earth to
provide land for the food and minerals we require, plus places to
absorb our wastes.
The situation is serious. In 2005, when the Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment was published, the directors of that authoritative study
said, "At the heart of this assessment is a stark warning. Human
activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of Earth that
the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations
can no longer be taken for granted."
Unfortunately the U.S. legal and economic systems are premised on the
idea that everything can grow without limit -- and everyone else's
legal and economic systems seem to rest on similar assumptions.
Attorney and scientist Joseph H. Guth** shows this in two simple
graphs.
Here's the first one:
In this graph, Joe Guth shows the two basic assumptions that underpin
our present legal and economic systems (and the regulatory system they
have spawned). First, the system is premised on the assumption that
economic growth is always good -- which is to say, the benefits will
always be larger than the costs. (Joe Guth wrote about this in more
detail in Rachel's #846.) Yes, the system acknowledges that people are
being harmed and that the earth is being stressed by "development" --
but overall the system assumes that benefits always outweigh costs.
This is why it is almost impossible to beat polluters in court -- the
legal system assumes that the polluter is creating more good than harm
and it is up to you, the plaintiff, to prove otherwise. If you
can prove to a near certainty that the costs of an activity outweigh
the benefits, you've got a fighting chance that the judge will make
the polluter pay a fine or perhaps even cut back the pollution a bit.
But notice that the burden of proof rests on you to prove that
the harms outweigh the benefits. If there is any real doubt or
uncertainty, the polluter wins automatically (the polluter gets the
benefit of the doubt).
Secondly, both the legal system and the economic system assume that
costs can grow forever without limit. That's what Graph 1 shows.
Neither the economic system nor the legal system recognize that the
Earth is finite and that we've already run out of space to support
ourselves in the style to which we have become accustomed.
In the law, there are no built-in limits -- nor even any built-in way
to recognize limits or even to recognize the need for limits --
and anyone who wants to impose limits bears the burden of proving that
limits are necessary and reasonable. Without compelling proof, growth
proceeds unchecked. Growth gets the benefit of the doubt.
Now let's look at Graph 2.
Here we see a horizontal line that represents the ecological limits of
the Earth. According to the GEO 4 report and the Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment, we are already living above this line -- and so about 2
billion people have run out of necessities (water and food), not to
mention housing, education, health care, and the other basics of a
decent life.
You could say that the horizontal line represents the "precautionary
principle." In many cases, we don't know exactly where the limits of
the biosphere lie. But when we exceed them, we usually learn about it
the hard way -- ocean fisheries stop producing fish, for example, or
the temperature of the planet begins to rise and storms grow more
frequent and more destructive, or industrial poisons begin to be
measured in human babies' first poop (which is called meconium).
These are all unmistakable signs that we have exceeded earth's
carrying capacity (sometimes called "assimilative capacity") and that
our cumulative costs have risen above the horizontal line in Joe
Guth's second graph.
Some Growth is Good
Economic growth is needed in poor countries, so they can begin to live
a better life. They need roads, power plants and ports. They need to
achieve a middle-class lifestyle so they can afford real social
security programs instead of relying on large numbers of children as
their only old age insurance. (This is the answer to "the population
problem" -- middle class people naturally want small families, so we
need to raise everyone's standard of living so they need and want
fewer children.)
But growth in the global South will require us to cut back in the
overdeveloped global North. The wealthy countries need to operate
their economies substantially below that horizontal line in Joe Guth's
second graph, to make space for needed growth in the global South.
To do that, our legal system needs to develop some new assumptions:
traditional economic growth can no longer be assumed to provide net
benefits. Arguably, growth in the global North is already creating
more harm than good and the law needs to reflect that. The burden
should now be placed on those who aim to enlarge the human
"ecological footprint" -- they should have to show that the benefits
will outweigh the costs. And the burden should be on them to offer
persuasive evidence; if there's substantial doubt or uncertainty, then
the law should assume that expanding the human ecological footprint is
a net detriment, to be prevented. (This is what it means to "reverse
the burden of proof.")
When the cumulative costs of many, many small projects add up to a
threatened planet, it is time to take into consideration the
"cumulative impacts" of traditional growth and development. And since
this is hard to do, the precautionary principle becomes our standard
decision rule: when essential data are missing or the science is
uncertain, give the benefit of the doubt to nature and to human
health.
When you're living above the line -- as abundant evidence suggests we
are now doing -- then our task is to re-examine everything we are
doing and choose the least harmful ways. Eat lower on the food chain,
travel less, build fewer McMansions, revive mass transit, revitalize
our cities, shift to less destructive ways of farming, and so on.
This need not feel painful or restrictive -- if we take it as an
exciting opportunity to find our right livelihoods, to discover and
create sustainable ways of being on the planet. As we know from the
important not-for-profit sector of our economy, endless growth is not
essential for creating plenty of good jobs.
One thing is certain: the earth is our only home and we'd had better
take care of it or we're goners. Continuing to live above the line is
a recipe not only for increasing pain and misery, but eventually for
extinction.
=========================================================
Additional reading:
James Gustave Speth, The Bridge at the Edge of the World (Yale
University Press, 2008).
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005)
United Nations Environment Programme's fourth Global Environmental
Outlook Report (GEO-4)
** Joseph H. Guth, J.D., Ph.D, is Legal Director of the Science and
Environmental Health Network (SEHN). He is a member of the New York
State Bar, has a law degree from New York University, a Ph.D. in
biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin (Madison), and an
undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of
California, Berkeley.
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From: Greenwire, Apr. 14, 2008
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POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS SLUDGE USED IN LEAD-POISONING TEST
Scientists conducting research supported by federal grants spread
sewage sludge made from human and industrial wastes on yards in poor,
black neighborhoods to test whether the fertilizer could protect
children in the area from lead poisoning in the soil. Families in the
areas were assured the sludge was safe and were never told about its
potentially harmful ingredients.
In the late 1990s, government-funded studies in poor, black
neighborhoods in Baltimore and East St. Louis, Ill., traded food
coupons and free lawns in exchange for permission to spread sewage
sludge on their yards. Researchers said the sludge helped put children
less at risk of brain damage from lead, a highly toxic element once
used in gasoline and paint that children could ingest as it flaked off
walls in their houses.
The researchers said phosphate and iron in the sludge could bind to
lead and other hazardous metals, allowing the combination to pass
safely through a child's body if eaten.
Rufus Chaney, an Agriculture Department research agronomist who co-
wrote the study that took place in Baltimore, said the researchers
told the families about lead hazards and told the people that the
sludge, Orgro fertilizer, was store-bought and safe. He said the
researchers did not, however, inform the families about some studies
that indicate safety disputes and health complaints over sludge.
No one can say exactly what is in sludge because of its dynamic
nature, containing primarily human excrement but also anything else
flushed down a toilet or poured into a drain: industrial chemicals,
drugs, personal care products, flame retardants and other byproducts
of modern civilization.
Soil chemist Murray McBride, director of the Cornell Waste Management
Institute, said he agrees with the researchers about sludge's ability
to bind with lead in soil, but he does not assume that it is
necessarily safe.
"If you're not telling them what kinds of chemicals could be in there,
how could they even make an informed decision? If you're telling them
it's absolutely safe, then it's not ethical," McBride said. "In many
relatively wealthy people's neighborhoods, I would think that people
would research this a little and see a problem and raise a red flag."
Although government documents outlining the research grants do not
list any names of individuals participating in the study for privacy
concerns, it also does not indicate any medical follow-up.
"The study did not test children or other family members living in the
homes," said Joann Rodgers, a spokeswoman for Johns Hopkins, which is
affiliated with the Kennedy Krieger Institute that conducted the
research in Baltimore (Heilprin/Vineys, AP/San Francisco Chronicle
online, April 14 and Kevin S. Vineys, AP/San Francisco Chronicle
online, April 13). -- KJH
Copyright 1996-2008 E&E Publishing, LLC
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From: Portland (Or.) Tribune, Apr. 15, 2008
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IS INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION MAKING AMERICA FAT?
Studies link pervasive 'obesogens' to weight gain in frogs, mice
By Chris Lydgate
Despite the nagging of diet experts, fitness instructors, public
health officials, doctors, nurses and moms, the tide of obesity that
has practically engulfed Western civilization over the past two
decades shows no sign of reaching its ebb.
In the United States, the percentage of adults who are obese --
defined by the National Institutes of Health as a body-mass index
exceeding 30 -- has doubled since 1990, climbing from 12 percent to a
whopping 24 percent in 2005, closely tracking Oregon figures,
according to the Oregon Health Division.
For the most part, the blame for the obesity epidemic has fallen on
diet and exercise, with particular emphasis on familiar evils such as
the proliferation of junk food, the advent of the remote control,
trans fat, ever-longer commutes and even the disappearance of physical
education in schools.
But now some researchers have identified a new suspect: pollution.
Attributing obesity to diet and exercise is "practically scientific
dogma at this point," says Bruce Blumberg, associate professor of
developmental and cell biology at UC Irvine. But, he continues, "diet
and exercise are simply not adequate to explain the explosion of
obesity in Western countries."
Instead, Blumberg believes the obesity epidemic actually is due, in
part, to industrial pollution -- specifically to low levels of toxic
compounds he calls "obesogens."
Just as exposure to carcinogens can trigger cancer, Blumberg and other
researchers say exposure to obesogens can trigger a dramatic increase
in the amount of fat produced in a person's body, leading to excess
weight and obesity.
The precise mechanism by which these obesogens operate remains dimly
understood. They belong to a class of compounds known as "endocrine
disrupters" because they block or pervert the operation of the
hormones that govern crucial biological processes such as growth,
reproduction, sexual development and behavior.
Five years ago, Blumberg was studying the biological effects of
various marine pollutants -- in particular, tributyl tin, or TBT, a
pesticide notorious for its toxic properties, such as bizarre
mutations in the shells of mollusks and the sex organs of sea snails.
Blumberg and his co-workers exposed female frogs to extremely low
levels of TBT; as expected, TBT did indeed cause sexual mutation among
frogs. But what was really striking, he says, was that the hapless
amphibians got fat -- really fat.
"To be honest, I will have to say we stumbled on this," he says.
Tiny doses had a big effect
Although most of the research on endocrine disrupters has focused on
their potential effects on sexual development, fat production also is
regulated by the hormone system and is, theoretically at least, just
as susceptible to disruption.
Blumberg injected mice with TBT and observed similar results: fat
rodents. Even more significant, the compound triggered obesity in
ridiculously min-uscule quantities. In fact, Blumberg and his
colleagues demonstrated effects from TBT at 27 parts per billion --
the rough equivalent of 4 tablespoons in an Olympic-sized swimming
pool.
Blumberg concluded that the fattening effects of TBT and a group of
similar compounds known as organotins are so profound that even trace
amounts could trigger an increase in weight. "The introduction of
organotins is likely to be a contributing factor to the obesity
epidemic," Blumberg says.
Toxicology experts concur that some compounds are so potent that they
can indeed trigger changes at minute concentrations, at least in the
test tube.
"It sounds absurd, but it's not inconsistent with what we see in the
lab," says Fred Berman, director of the Toxicology Information Center
at the Center for Research on Occupational and Environmental
Toxicology at Oregon Health & Science University.
Organotins are everywhere
The disruptive effects of organotins stem from their propensity to
stimulate a particular hormone receptor that plays a key role in
maintaining the body's metabolism, in effect telling the body which
kind of cells are in short supply and need to be grown.
Organotins somehow encourage that receptor to manufacture fat cells --
which in turn promotes that ominous abdominal bulge feared by
statisticians and movie stars alike.
Organotins first came into widespread use in the 1960s in the
shipbuilding industry, where they were mixed with paint to deter
barnacles and mollusks from accumulating on the hulls of ships.
They also have been used as soil fungicides for crops such as nuts,
potatoes, rice and celery; as "slimicide" to clean up the goop that
accumulates in underground water wells; and in the manufacture of
polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, a hard plastic found in drainpipes, vinyl
flooring, window frames and hundreds of other places.
These widespread uses suggest several possible routes of human
exposure, Blumberg says. Organotins may contaminate crops, seep into
wells or leach into drinking water from PVC pipes.
Link to obesity stays unclear
It is worth pointing out, however, that little research has been
conducted into actual levels of organotins in the average household.
Moreover, many basic questions about the link between organotins and
fat remain unexplored -- for example, whether people who might
encounter high levels of organotins as a result of their occupation,
such as farmworkers or shipyard workers, suffer higher rates of
obesity.
The pernicious effects of organotins on the marine environment are
well-established, and they now are banned as anti-barnacle agents.
Nonetheless, they continue to be used in agriculture and in the
manufacture of plastics. "At my house, we minimize the use of plastic
to store food," Blumberg says. "We use glass or stainless steel
instead, and in general we try to eat fresh, local, organic food with
as little packaging as possible."
OHSU's Berman reckons that Blumberg's research raises "a real concern"
about the role of organotins and other possible pollutants in the
obesity epidemic. "We need to be looking at this," he says. "But we
don't know for sure. We need to do more studies to see if there is a
real effect in the real world."
Blumberg is careful to note that obesity is a complex phenomenon
stemming from many factors, and that obesogens probably are only part
of the story.
In addition, he points out that people who are exposed to obesogens
are not doomed to a lifetime of corpulence -- they simply have to work
harder than others to shed weight.
chrislydgate@portlandtribune.com
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From: Good Times Magazine, Mar. 19, 2008
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MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
By Amanda Martinez
One sunny day 10 years ago, Captain Charles Moore was sailing home
from a yacht race in Hawaii when he steered his boat off-course in
search of a little adventure in the North Pacific. Heading north in
his 50-foot catamaran, Alguita, Moore wanted to graze the lower
Eastern corner of a rarely sailed region, the North Pacific
subtropical gyre, before making his way home to Long Beach,
California.
The most remarkable characteristic of the gyre, a 10-million-square-
foot, clockwise-churning vortex of four converging ocean currents, was
supposed to be its unique weather pattern. It's a high-pressure area,
meaning that warm air hovers over it. The air is still. There's no
wind. Picture an immense oceanic desert. Frustrated sailors long ago
christened the area "the doldrums" and avoided it, as do predatory
fish who find no prey within its calm, nutrient-lean depths. "It
almost looks like an oil slick, or like a mirror. It's really
beautiful, the phenomena of a very smooth ocean," says researcher Dr.
Marcus Eriksen.
But as Moore ventured into the gyre, his fascination with weather
patterns gave way to a different reaction -- alarm. In this most
remote part of the ocean, his expectation of the pristine was met by
blight.
A vast array of trash -- bottle caps, plastic bottles, fishing floats,
wrappers, plastic bags and fragments, many tiny plastic fragments --
stretched before Moore as far as the eye could see. His alarm turned
to shock. It took him a week to sail through the gyre, the debris
surrounding his boat the entire time.
Dr. Marcus Eriksen considers his first encounter with the gyre to have
occurred on the beach in 2001 while teaching bird biology to high
school students. This particular beach belonged to Midway Atoll, the
last island of the Hawaiian Archipelago. "I noticed the hundreds of
carcasses of Laysan albatrosses," says Eriksen. "Every single one had
a handful of plastic inside its rib cage." He quickly made the
connection between the plastic pieces and their stark resemblance in
ocean waters to the fish, squid and krill that serve as staples of the
foraging albatross' diet. "I knew there was this floating plastic that
these birds were consuming," he says. "That got me interested in the
issue."
Four years later, Eriksen became director of research and education
for the Algalita Marine Research Foundation (AMRF), the nonprofit that
Moore founded after discovering the gyre. Together, Moore, whose
resume reads like a coming-of-age at sea story -- deck hand, stock
tender, able seaman and now captain -- and Eriksen, a Marine who
served in the first Gulf War, have made several trips back to the gyre
to research the content and extent of its massive pollution and
monitor its growth. When not at sea, the two men are working
tirelessly to educate the public as to its existence and causes.
So Rubber Duckie, You're the One
By now, you may have heard reports of the enormous "trash patch"
forming in the North Pacific gyre, as major news outlets have a two-
minute, sound-bite love affair with the gyre's pervasive description.
"It's twice the size of Texas," they say. "It's an incredible,
floating, plastic island in the middle of the ocean."
"Twice the size of Texas is inaccurate. I wouldn't use that anymore,"
says Eriksen, who returned on Feb. 28 from AMRF's latest 4,000-mile
research mission, during which he spent a solid four weeks in the
gyre, running experiments. "If you want to give folks an idea of the
extent of pollution in this gyre, I'd say twice the size of the
continental United States is the best way to put it."
THIN PLASTIC SOUP
Plastic and plankton duke it out in a 6:1 ratio in this one-mile trawl
sample from the North Pacific Gyre. The "floating plastic island"
metaphor, which may very well have been the gyre's one-way ticket to
urban legend, is also out. The details of the truth that stand in its
wake, however, are much more pernicious. "It's not a plastic patch.
There is no island out there," explains Eriksen. But if it's still the
salient metaphor you're after, Eriksen is armed with one. "I'd say
endless from Hawaii to L.A. is a thin plastic soup. The rope and the
netting and the monofilament line, all the fishing gear that's out
there, there's a lot of that, we'll call that the noodles.
The vegetables are all the big stuff, like the fishing floats and the
plastic bottles. We found a suitcase floating around...big chunks of
Styrofoam, tons of bottles, milk crates, fishing crates. I found a
laundry basket that had something like 20 fish in it. And when I
picked it up, they wouldn't get out of it."
Oceanographers estimate that the amount of trash currently percolating
in the gyre weighs in at 3.5 million tons and extends 300 feet beneath
the ocean surface. So the question begs to be asked: where is it all
coming from? About 20 percent of the debris results from spillage and
dumping at sea. High seas and turbulent storms coax entire cargo
containers into choppy waters (remember the 80,000 Nike shoes lost
from the Hansa Carrier in 1990 and the 29,000 "rubber duckies" that,
in a moment of grave irony, were washed overboard from their cargo
ship in 1992?), passenger vessels dispose of waste in what appears to
be a conveniently unaccountable location, and both commercial and
recreational fishing vessels lose their equipment or simply toss it
overboard to evade costly disposal fees at port. As for the other 80
percent, that's coming from land -- litter that's left in piles on the
beach, overflowing garbage cans, sloppy trash transport and
industries' lax disposal methods. Let's say, for instance, a plastic
bottle is discarded on the street here in Santa Cruz. Aided by wind,
it finds its way into one of the gaping storm drains that line the
streets, the ones subsequently posted with the warning "no dumping,
drains straight to Bay." If you ever harbored any doubts as to whether
these signs make good on their promise, the answer is yes. "It's
simply gravity flows," explains Bill Kocher, director of the City of
Santa Cruz Water Department. "There are underground pipes, so when
something goes into an inlet like that, it flows into sort of a
concrete basin and there's a pipe that exits that basin. And then
it'll just flow from there by gravity, usually to a waterway like a
creek before it hits the Bay.
Once in the Bay, our bottle begins about a two-week journey out to
sea, where approximately 500 miles off of our shore, it catches a
current from the gyre and joins the congregating purgatory of trash
gathering at the gyre's core like bubbles amassing in the center of a
hot tub. In the ten years since it began monitoring the gyre's trash
burden, AMRF estimates that it's increased five-fold. "That's a
conservative estimate," says Eriksen.
"We'll know more when we analyze all of the samples from our latest
voyage."
Heading for the Breakdown
Oddly enough, the main concern over what is now considered to be the
world's largest landfill aren't the facts that it exists at all or is
growing at such an alarming rate. It's that the majority of it is
plastic. A report issued by the United Nations Environment Program
(UNEP) states that plastics comprise 60 to 80 percent of the ocean's
total trash, as well as 90 percent of all floating marine debris.
Why the focus on plastic? Because it's synthetic, so unlike other
debris, it doesn't biodegrade. Instead, it photodegrades; UV light
from the sun breaks it down into smaller and smaller pieces until you
have countless plastic particles, and eventually a fine plastic dust.
Revisiting Eriksen's "soup metaphor," these plastic shards, particles
and dust are what he calls the "broth."
"Looking down from the bow of our ship, you could see a very spaced-
out confetti of plastic particles," says Eriksen. "A lot of it is
microscopic, things are degrading into basically polymer-size
molecules, which you really can't see with the lot of it is
microscopic, things are degrading into basically polymer- size
molecules, which you really can't see with the naked eye." While in
the gyre, AMRF researchers use a manta trawl, a super fine mesh net
("it's smaller than the holes in your T-shirt," says Eriksen) to
collect samples of seawater in order to measure its concentration of
plastic. So far, AMRF's samples have yielded a ratio of six parts
plastic to one part plankton -- that's six times as much plastic as
plankton in the middle of the ocean.
Pictures Worth 1,000 Statistics
Nowhere have the consequences of the gyre's trash manifested more
horrifically than in the effects it has had on marine life. One
million seabirds, 100,000 marine animals and numerous fish die each
year, either mistaking debris for food or becoming entangled within it
and drowning. A report from the UNEP states that these harmful effects
have impacted 86 percent of all sea turtles, 44 percent of all seabird
species and 43 percent of all marine mammals.
Clinical statistics aside, pictures evoke a sincere moral indignation
-- a sea lion is choked by a plastic ring carving into the flesh
around its neck; monofilament fishing line cuts into the flippers of a
sea turtle, drawing blood; even a whale ensnared by nets and gear
drags them along behind it, the ropes digging into its back.
It's too large to drown, but it can't hunt and will eventually starve.
According to the National Oceanographic & Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA), 90 percent of Laysan albatross chick carcasses contain
plastic. The chicks don't make it off the beach; it's their parents
that fly thousands of miles out over the gyre, to bring back faux-
nourishment in the form of pieces of plastic and plastic bag that in
ghosting the water's surface look identical to krill and squid. The
chicks can't digest it and die within days.
Eriksen mentions the ongoing partnership AMRF has with NOAA in which
it helps them to tag ghost nets. "They're these mountains of derelict
fishing gear abandoned in the ocean," Eriksen explains. Fish and
animals get trapped within them, they can't hunt and/or they can't
breathe and so they die. If AMRF finds one, they attach a satellite
buoy to it so NOAA can track and remove it. "They're too big for us,"
he says. "This last time, we actually found a two-and-a-half ton net
floating around, just full of fish under it. So we put a buoy on it."
But while the effects of the gyre's plastic debris on marine life have
been severe and immediate, scientists are accruing evidence that its
repercussions for humans, at the genetic level, may be even worse in
the long run.
Et tu, Nalgene?
Simply put, plastic is made from petroleum-based synthetic polymers to
which chemicals are added to achieve certain characteristics, like
inflammability and malleability. These chemical additives certainly
aren't the kind of thing you'd want to ingest by any means. In fact,
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines them as
persistent organic pollutants (POP) or toxins that "persist in the
environment for long periods and biomagnify as they move up the food
chain," and classifies many of them as known carcinogens. They do,
however, come into awfully close contact with our food and beverages,
as well as items we use everyday, and as such, our ingestion of them
has become unavoidable.
Take phthalates for instance -- deemed as a "known human carcinogen"
by the World Health Organization, it's added to polyvinyl chloride
(PVC) to make products soft and supple. Ever notice how oily the
inside of a bag of potato chips gets? It turns out that oil would eat
away at the bag if not being prevented from doing so by a film of PVC.
The chemical, also found in shrink wrap, cosmetics and toys, was
banned by Gov. Schwarzenegger last August in toys manufactured for
children aged 3 and under, and on Feb. 21, AB 2505, a bill that would
phase out PVC packaging, was introduced to the California legislature.
Keep in mind that the use of PVC was phased in in 1926.
Then there's bisphenol A (BPA), which, as an additive to
polycarbonates, is commonly found in dental sealants, the resin
linings of food and drink cans and, most ubiquitously, plastic
bottles, from single-use water bottles to trusty Nalgene canteens to
baby bottles. The chemical, of which six billion pounds is produced
annually, is increasingly being identified in scientific studies as a
hormone disrupter that mimics estrogen and leaches into foods and
liquids. A Time magazine article published on Feb. 8 casts BPA as a
"parents' nightmare" while describing a study in which researchers
tested 19 baby bottles bought from the U.S. and Canada. Every single
bottle, when heated to 175 degrees F, leached BPA, and while
government health and environment agencies in both countries are still
declaring the additive to be safe in small amounts, health-oriented
stores like Whole Foods and Patagonia have ditched their entire stocks
of polycarbonate bottles.
And that's just two on a list of pollutants that are increasingly
present in our environment. How do they relate to ocean plastics? The
answer is twofold. As plastic breaks down into micro-particles, it not
only retains these chemicals, it absorbs more of them, like a sponge.
In a study published in the Nov. 15 issue of Environmental Science and
Technology, British researchers at the University of Plymouth reported
that when marine worms were exposed to microplastics that contained a
high concentration of a specific toxin, the tissues of the worms
showed an 80 percent increase in accumulation of the toxin. The study
concludes that microplastics have the unique potential to transport
pollutants throughout the ocean ecosystem and global environment.
Asking ourselves how many of these ubiquitous pollutants we can
actually name, it's worth taking a moment to contemplate our role at
the top of the food chain, as well as just how informed we feel as to
the contents of our water supply and what ends up on our plates.
Considering the community's vigorous unease with the recent Light
Brown Apple Moth aerial spraying, why is there not more outrage?
A Fool's Head in the Sand
The urge to feel overwhelmed at this point is dually noted. An initial
swipe at optimism floats the question; "OK, so how do we clean it?"
The short-term answer is a bit of a let down. "There is no way to
clean it right now," says Eriksen. Note, this isn't a vote for
hopelessness, it's merely an indication of the immense scope of the
problem, as well as of the complications involved in addressing it.
For instance, no single country has jurisdiction over the gyre. "Once
you get beyond our coastal waters, it's an international zone that no
one owns," explains Eriksen, making it a true global issue. As you can
then imagine, nations aren't exactly clamoring to claim responsibility
for a clean-up strategy that even the scientists and politicians who
have been vaguely willing to consider it, lowball as beginning in the
billions.
As a result, a common response has been a kind of c'est la vie apathy.
After all, it's been our practice to tacitly designate some areas of
this planet for aesthetic preservation, while others seem destined to
hide our actions' most deleterious consequences. Maybe the North
Pacific subtropical gyre just drew a short straw, so to speak.
Unfortunately, there are four other high-pressure oceanic systems in
the South Pacific, North and South Atlantic and Indian Ocean,
respectively. Together, estimates the AMRF, these waters comprise 40
percent of the planet's oceans and roughly 25 percent of the Earth's
surface. As to the likelihood that trash exists in these waters as
well, Eriksen seems certain.
"Oh, it's global," he says. "Everywhere I go, I see trash. I've gone
scuba-diving in Vietnam, walking the beaches in Peru, walking across
train tracks in Tanzania. Plastics are on every beach I've gone to."
So the out-of-sight, out-of-mind strategy is not going to fly. Another
common reaction has been denial. Search the gyre online and you'll
find many exasperated posts, demanding "well, where are the satellite
pictures?" followed by bold declarations of continued skepticism until
such photo-documentation of a true "trash island" is produced. While
such a head-in-the-sand strategy might conjure momentary psychological
relief, it's ultimately thwarted by such explanations as the fact that
the trash is constantly mobile in the gyre's currents, it is often not
in large enough clumps to register as a "detectable object" on
satellite radar, if you'll recall, it's believed to extend 300 feet
below the ocean's surface and considering the scope of the challenge
presented by plastic particles that appear no larger than "confetti
pieces" when viewed from the deck of a ship, let alone microplastics,
our pictures of proof might be better sought through the lens of
viewed from the deck of a ship, let alone microplastics, our pictures
of proof might be better sought through the lens of an electron
microscope.
Thank You for Plasticizing
"The best thing to do now," says Eriksen, "is to adopt the mantra of
physicians: 'Do no more harm.' The way you do that is to stop allowing
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