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TRADE SECRETS - Rachel's #553, Let's Stop Wasting Our Time
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Source: Rachel's Environment & Health News
Rachel's Environment & Health News
#553 - Let's Stop Wasting Our Time, July 03, 1997
Let's Stop Wasting Our Time
The mainstream environmental movement spends its time urging
government to regulate corporations that are making people sick while
poisoning the planet's air, water, and soil. Regulation is what mainstream
environmentalists aim to do. They gather data, write reports to show how
bad things have gotten, and then they ask government regulators to modify
the behavior of the responsible corporations. In Washington, D.C., and in all
50 state capitals, hundreds or thousands of environmentalists toil tirelessly
year after year after year, proposing new laws, urging new regulations, and
opposing the latest efforts by officials (corporate and governmental) to
weaken existing laws and regulations. They write letters, meet with agency
personnel, publish pamphlets and hold conferences, prepare testimony for
subcommittees, serve for years on citizen advisory boards, create "media
events," mail out newsletters and magazines, organize phone trees to create
awareness and raise funds. They pore over immense volumes of technical
information, becoming experts in arcane sub-specialties of science and law.
They work hard, much harder than most other people. When they find that
their efforts have been ineffective, they redouble their efforts, evidently
hoping that more of the same will work better next time. Environmental
Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Audubon,
National Wildlife Federation, The Wilderness Society, The Environmental
Working Group, and many others that make up the mainstream
environmental community are well-intentioned, earnest, and diligent. They
are also, it must be admitted, largely ineffective.
An eye-opening new book describes the nearly-complete failure of all our
attempts to regulate the behavior of the chemical corporations. TOXIC DECEPTION, by Dan Fagin and Marianne Lavelle,[1] is subtitled "How
the Chemical Industry Manipulates Science, Bends the Law, and
Endangers Your Health." In his day job, Dan Fagin writes for NEWSDAY
(the Long Island newspaper) and Marianne Lavelle writes for the
NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL. Both are award-winning investigative
reporters, and this book shows why: it is thorough and
thoroughly-documented, even-handed, careful in its conclusions, and
absolutely astonishing in how grim a picture it paints of our corporatized
democracy. Even those of us who study chemicals-and-health full-time
have never put all the pieces together the way these two have.
The book is organized as a case study of only four dangerous chemicals:
atrazine, alachlor, perchloroethylene and formaldehyde.
** Atrazine is a weed killer used on 96% of the U.S. corn crop each year.
Introduced in 1958, some 68 to 73 million pounds were used in 1995, making
it the best-selling pesticide in the nation. Atrazine interferes with the
hormone systems of mammals. In female rats, it causes tumors of the
mammary glands, uterus, and ovaries. Two studies have suggested that it
causes ovarian cancer in humans. EPA categorizes it as a "possible human
carcinogen." Atrazine is found in much of the drinking water in the
midwest, and it is measurable in corn, milk, beef and other foods.
** In 1969, Monsanto introduced Alachlor, a weed killer that complements
atrazine. Atrazine is best against weeds and alachlor is best against
grasses. Often both are applied at the same time. Alachlor causes lung
tumors in mice; brain tumors in rats; stomach tumors in rats; and tumors of
the thyroid gland in rats. It also causes liver degeneration, kidney disease,
eye lesions, and cataracts in rats fed high doses. Canada banned alachlor in
1985. EPA's Science Advisory Board labeled alachlor a "probably human
carcinogen" in 1986. In 1987, EPA restricted the use of alachlor by
requiring that farmers who apply it must first take a short course of
instruction. Much of the well water in the midwest now contains alachlor
and its use continues unabated.
** Perchloroethylene ("perc") is the common chlorinated solvent used in
"dry cleaning" (which is only "dry" in the sense that it doesn't use water). In
the early 1970s, scientists learned that perc causes liver cancer in mice.
Workers in dry cleaning shops get cancer of the esophagus seven times as
often as the average American, and they get bladder cancer twice as often.
A few communities on Cape Cod in Massachusetts have perc in their
drinking water; a study in 1994 revealed that those communities also have
leukemia rates five to eight times the national average. Perc is ranked as a
"probable human carcinogen" and we all take it into our homes whenever
we pick up the dry cleaning.
** Formaldehyde is a naturally-occurring substance present in the human
body in very small quantities. Mixed with urea, formaldehyde makes a glue
that handily holds plywood and particle board together. Mixed with a soap,
urea-formaldehyde makes a stiff foam that has excellent insulating
properties. After the oil shortage of 1973, Americans began to conserve
fuel oil by tightening and insulating their homes, and it was then that people
discovered that formaldehyde can be toxic. In tens of thousands of
individuals, urea-formaldehyde has caused flu-like symptoms, rashes, and
neurological illnesses. In some people, it triggers multiple chemical
sensitivity (MCS), a life-long, debilitating sensitivity to many other
chemicals, including fragrances and perfumes. In recent years, scientists
have confirmed that formaldehyde causes rare nasal tumors in mice and in
industrial workers exposed to high levels of formaldehyde gas. It is also
linked to brain tumors in people exposed to it on the job (embalmers and
anatomists). It is ranked as a "probable human carcinogen" in humans, and
we are all widely exposed to it through cabinets, furniture, walls and
flooring.
TOXIC DECEPTION documents how the manufacturers of these
chemicals -- and thousands of others like them --have managed to keep
their dangerous, cancer-causing products on the market despite hugely
expensive government regulatory efforts, civil litigation by citizens who feel
victimized, investigative news reports, congressional oversight of the
regulators, right-to-know laws, and hundreds of scientific studies confirming
harm to humans and the environment. The book documents how
corporations buy the complicity of politicians; offer jobs, junkets and
sometimes threats to regulators; pursue scorched-earth courtroom
strategies; shape, manipulate, and sometimes falsify science; and spend
millions of dollars on misleading advertising and public relations to deflect
public concerns. In sum, the book shows how corporations have turned the
regulatory system --and those who devote their lives to working within that
system --into their best allies.
After reading this book, one realizes that the purpose of the regulatory
system is not to protect human health and the environment. The purpose of
the regulatory system is to protect the property rights of the corporations,
using every branch of government to thwart any serious attempts by
citizens to assert that human rights should take precedence. "At the most
fundamental level," write Fagin and Lavelle, "the federal regulatory system
is driven by the economic imperatives of the chemical manufacturers--to
expand markets and profits--and not by its mandate to protect public
health."(pg. 13) Why are so many of us still defining our environmental
work entirely within the confines of this hopeless system?
After 27 years of unremitting, well-meaning attempts to regulate corporate
polluters, here is our situation:
** The government does not screen chemicals for safety before they go on
the market.
** Chemicals are presumed innocent until members of the public can prove
them guilty of causing harm. Naturally this guarantees that people will be
hurt before control can even be considered. After harm has been widely
documented, then government begins to gather data on a chemical, but "the
agency usually relies on research conducted by or for manufacturers when
it is time to make a decision about regulating a toxic chemical."(pg. 14)
** Industry manipulates scientific studies to reach the desired conclusions.
According to Fagin and Lavelle, when chemical corporations paid for 43
scientific studies of any of the four chemicals (atrazine, alachlor, perc or
formaldehyde), 32 studies (74%) returned results favorable to the chemicals
involved, 5 were ambivalent, and 6 (14%) were unfavorable.(pg. 51) When
independent nonindustry organizations -- government agencies, universities
or medical/charitable organizations (such as the March of Dimes) --paid for
118 studies of the same four chemicals, only 27 of the studies (23%) gave
results favorable to the chemicals involved, 20 were ambivalent, and 71
(60%) were unfavorable. (pg. 51)
** As of 1994, after 24 years of trying, EPA had issued regulations for only
9 chemicals.(pg. 12) EPA has officially registered only 150 pesticides,
though there are thousands of others in daily use awaiting review by the
agency.(pg. 11) The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has
done only slightly better, setting limits on 24 chemicals after 18 years of
effort.(pg. 81)
** Close to 2000 new chemicals are introduced into commercial channels
each year in the U.S., virtually none of then screened for safety by
government prior to introduction. When screening does occur, it occurs
AFTER trouble has become apparent. All together, about 70,000 different
chemicals are now in commercial use, with nearly 6 trillion pounds
produced annually in the U.S. for plastics, solvents, glues, dyes, fuels, and
other uses. All six trillion pounds eventually enter the environment.
More than 80% of these chemicals have never been screened to learn
whether they cause cancer, much less screened to discover if they harm
the nervous system, the immune system, the endocrine system, or the
reproductive system. In sum, in the vast majority of cases, nothing is known
about the health or environmental consequences of dumping these
chemicals into the environment. It's a huge corporate experiment on the
public.
The corporations use a single line of defense: we don't know FOR SURE
how dangerous these chemicals really are. But this simple strategy works
perfectly because Congress has placed the burden of proof on the public,
not on the corporations. We have to prove that we have been harmed.
Because we are all exposed to hundreds if not thousands of chemicals each
day, pinpointing the source of a rash, a headache, or a brain tumor is next to
impossible. Meanwhile the exposures continue. The dice in this game are
loaded. Why do we continue to play?
Instead, why doesn't the environmental movement come together to discuss
a new strategy --one that asserts the right of a sovereign people to control
subordinate entities like corporations? We could lawfully shift the burden of
proof onto the purveyors of poisons. We could legitimately deny them the
protections of the Bill of Rights. (Rule of thumb: if it doesn't breathe, it isn't
protected as a person under the Constitution). We could legally define what
corporations can and cannot do, JUST AS OUR GREAT
GRANDPARENTS DID IN THE EARLY DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC.
(See REHW #488 and #489.) Such a program would no doubt have
enormous popular appeal because so many people have been treated with
injustice and disrespect by one corporation or another in recent years. Why
keep wasting our time? Let's get together and focus our energy on
DEFINING (not regulating) corporations. It's the only way we'll ever
achieve environmental protection. And it would give people some control
over their lives once again.
--Peter Montague (National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO)
=====
[1] Dan Fagin, Marianne Lavelle, and the Center for Public Integrity,
TOXIC DECEPTION (Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Publishing Group, 1996).
Descriptor terms: chemical industry; regulation; environmental movement;
edf; nrdc; sierra club; wilderness society; epa; environmental defense fund;
natural resources defense council; formaldehyde; toxic deception;
perchloroethylene; perc; alachlor; atrazine; ewg; environmental working
group; pesticides; herbicides; cancer; carcinogens; mcs;
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