Toxic Soup for the Soul

By Hans Tammemagi

One of life's great pleasures is paddling a canoe in the north country and catching a glimpse of a deer leaping gracefully into the forest or a loon diving under the silvery surface of a lake at sunset. The tranquillity and inner peace are a reminder, a gentle tug at our subconscious, that we have evolved from this primeval environment. There is a mystic connection between us and this rugged landscape.

Blessed with a vast country and a high standard of living, many Canadians believe that all is well. But it is not so -- the health of the globe is very much under siege.

First, human population has grown so large that through the simple crush of numbers we are trampling natural spaces, devouring resources, and eradicating many living species.

There is a second, more insidious, threat. Over the past half century there has been a chemical revolution that has had an enormous impact on the environment. When the Japanese captured the world's supply of rubber in World War II, petrochemical companies discovered that crude oil could be used as a very flexible replacement raw material. The chemical industry has grown explosively since that time, yielding a vast array of new synthetic organic compounds.

On the one hand these chemicals have greatly improved our standard of living: pesticides have increased crop yields, insecticides have improved health by decreasing mosquitoes and malaria, life span has been extended through new medicines and vaccines, an immense array of new and improved consumer products have emerged based on nylon, rayon, and plastics.

But there is a dark side as well. The release of synthetic as well as natural chemicals into the environment is poisoning the natural systems on which life depends.

The human body is a chemical factory. Enzymes are produced, food is broken down and converted to energy, and antibodies are formed to fight intruders. It has taken thousands and millions of years to develop this incredible complexity and the delicate balance between the different chemicals.

Suddenly, the chemical industry has thrown a giant monkey wrench into this fragile machinery. Humans are synthetically creating organic compounds -- the very stuff of living things -- and dispersing them throughout the environment. Instead of having millennia to adjust to these new chemicals -- many of them extremely toxic -- our bodies must learn to cope virtually overnight.

Organic compounds are built on the carbon atom usually in combination with a few other atoms. The diversity of living creatures from bacteria to elephants is due to the incredible ability of carbon to link together in an infinite combination of chains, rings, branches, and other configurations. And now chemists are assembling these carbon atoms like children playing with Lego.

The size of the chemical industry is mind-boggling. More than 55,000 chemicals are in use in North America today with about one thousand new compounds formed each year. There are PCBs, dioxins and furans, PAHs, phenols, and the list goes on and on. To further complicate matters, most of these chemicals form families. PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), for example, are actually a group of about 200 different compounds, which differ only slightly from each other chemically, yet have significantly different toxicity. In addition, there are numerous natural pollutants such as lead, arsenic, sulphur dioxide, and carbon monoxide that we are blithely dumping into the environment in prodigious quantities.

Pesticides have received the most notoriety. Since 1939, when it was discovered that DDT is a potent insecticide, the manufacture of pesticides has flourished. Some of these are the direct result of research into chemical warfare. Worldwide, about 2.3 million tonnes of pesticides are used annually. In Canada and the USA, about 700 biologically active compounds are used to make some 50,000 pesticide products. About 20% of all pesticides in North America are applied to lawns, gardens, parks, and golf courses. Designed to kill certain target organisms, it is not surprising that pesticides have nasty side effects.

Being organic chemicals, they can enter into the most vital processes of the body. For example, they can destroy enzymes whose function is to protect the body, they can block the oxidation process that provides energy, and can initiate the changes that lead to cancer. Many of these toxins are stored in body fat, to be released months or years later causing illnesses whose origins are almost impossible to trace.

The insidious nature of pesticides was demonstrated at Clear Lake, California, which was sprayed for gnats with DDD, a less-toxic relative of DDT, in maximum concentration of about 20 parts per billion. This resulted in the unexpected death of hundreds of birds who fed on fish in the lake. Analysis revealed the extraordinary concentration of 1600 parts per million DDD in the birds' fatty tissues -- an increase of 80,000 times what was used in the spraying!

Aerial spraying for the spruce budworm in New Brunswick killed an entire year's population of spawning salmon. Spraying for mosquitoes in coastal marshes killed huge numbers of fish and crab as well as birds that feed on them. Many similar horror stories abound, and were well documented in Rachel Carson's landmark book, Silent Spring, published in 1962.

Why did scientists not predict and avoid these devastating results? Incredibly sensitive scientific instruments that can measure to a few parts in a billion and better are required to measure these trace chemicals. This technology has only come available in the past few decades. There are many other complications, for example, chemicals can act synergistically with other pesticides and with the materials used to Acarry them. Thus, our understanding of synthetic chemicals is very sparse and despite the vast improvements in electronics and laboratory techniques many harmful chemicals are being overlooked

Only a few months ago, for example, the US and Canadian governments banned the manufacture of chlorpyrifos after it was found to cause brain and nervous system damage. But the horse had long ago left the barn; this chemical has been in use for 30 years in hundreds of products like household bug sprays, flea collars, and lawn chemicals.

In recent years some improvements have been made. Massive airborne sprayings are now rare, although pesticide usage is still an integral part of farming and maintaining suburban lawns. DDT was banned in the USA in 1972 although it continued to be manufactured elsewhere long after, and the use of long-lived pesticides has been replaced by more rapidly degradable varieties. (But this means that these chemicals need to be applied more often.) Overall, synthetic chemicals are better regulated and used in smaller amounts.

The bottom line, however, is that the use of chemicals is far too entrenched in our modern society -- they are desperately needed to help produce enough food for six billion mouths. And with 1000 new chemicals created each year, regulations, which take time to research and pass into law, will always lag behind what is needed.

A legacy of the chemical revolution is that synthetic chemicals show up everywhere. They are found in our lawns, as food additives, they float in the air we breath, and are in the water we drink, wash and swim in. You can't go indoors to escape, for the air inside can be even worse due to insulation, particle board, upholstery, carpet glues, cosmetics, coloring agents in paints and inks, and gas stoves. We are all in contact with these invisible synthetic chemicals from the moment of conception until we die.

Fish in Ontario's lakes and rivers contain such high levels of contaminants (mercury, PCBs, pesticides, and more) that restrictions have been placed on the amount that can be eaten. Our Niagara River is one of the most polluted, and the Ministry of Environment warns that certain sizes of white perch and carp should not be eaten at all, and many other fish should be consumed no more than four times per month.

These small amounts of chemicals are exacting a toll. Like the constant dripping of water torture, continuous low-level (chronic) exposure can lead to cumulative poisoning. Studies showed that cancer, which was a medical rarity in children in the early 1900s, had by the 1960s become the leading fatal disease of school children.

Sadly, Rachel Carson's clarion call of 1962 has been largely ignored. The Canadian Institute of Child Health recently reported that in the past 25 years childhood cancers have increased another 25%. There has also been a 400% increase in child asthma, and dramatic increases in sudden infant death syndrome, behavioural problems and other childhood diseases over this period.

We must learn that synthetic organic chemicals are not toys that can be tossed heedlessly into the environment. Instead, they are more like time bombs and must be treated with enormous respect. Government regulatory agencies must play a much stronger role and be far more cautious in approving the production of new chemicals.

Programs like Green Chemistry, a voluntary program in the USA supported by the Environmental Protection Agency, are a step in the right direction. Green Chemistry seeks to reduce the impact of chemicals on the environment by carefully assessing their impact prior to use, and by reducing toxicity through the use of alternate chemicals and processes. Environment Canada has initiated a voluntary program called ARET, Acceleration of Reduction/Elimination of Toxics that looks to eliminate 30 pollutants and reduce the use of many others.

Frustratingly, pests usually develop immunity to pesticides within a few years, often coming back in even larger numbers because their predators have been decimated. Clearly, spraying is only a stopgap measure. A healthier approach is to use integrated pest management, which requires a sophisticated understanding of pests and plants and uses natural means for pest control such as natural enemies, bacterial diseases, and sterilization. This is the way of the future.

We citizens and consumers play an important role. We need to insist that chemicals are not used indiscriminately, and perhaps having dandelions on our lawns is a small price to pay.

Dramatic steps are needed to slow down the Achemical revolution. Otherwise, when our grandchildren go canoeing they will see a deer with a large tumour limp into a forest of stunted trees. And the scrawny loon that dives into the acid lake may never emerge.