|
"Polluting
Pays" versus "Polluter Pays" (Nityanad
Jayaram,
(1998), EQ News Features, Volume IV Issue II June) June 5th is World
Environment Day, and 1998 is the International Year of the Oceans. What
does one do on the World (Deteriorating) Environment Day of the International
Year of the (Poisoned) Oceans? Celebrate or Mourn? Renew the fight or
Give up? Every year on June 5, we have well meaning editorials and op-eds
about how humanity is at a crossroads in its relationship with the planet.
Multinational corporations and sundry other local polluters bring out
meaningless advertisements that exhort the audience to "Care for the
Earth." Every year, starting June 6, it's business as usual.
Let's get one thing clear. The earth needs no caring. It's our backsides
that we've to try and save. All the poisons we put out into the earth,
the seas and the atmosphere are coming and will continue to come back
to haunt us and future generations of life on earth. People will be
slow to understand the dangers posed by these poisons, and their understanding
will be further impeded by the efforts of those who profit by marketing
these poisons. International Conventions will then be put together at
taxpayers' cost to arrest the release of these poisons into the environment,
but precious little can be done to reclaim the toxins that are already
there. Meanwhile, the multinational poison peddlers will discover new
chemicals to replace the discredited old ones.
The health of the world’s people is tied to the health of its water
-- the oceans, seas, lakes and rivers. Many of the persistent toxic
pollutants that are now found in the world's oceans and waterways are
also found in the bodies of virtually all peoples and animals of the
world. These pollutants, especially those grouped under a category of
chemicals called Persistent Organic Pollutants or P0Ps, have contaminated
humans and wildlife either directly or indirectly from polluted water.
Persistent Organic Pollutants (P0Ps) are a class of mainly human-made
toxic chemical substances that cause severe and long-term effects on
wildlife, ecosystems and human health. They're persistent in the environment;
i.e. they do not break down or degrade easily. They travel long distances,
often across national borders, by escaping into the air and water, entering
the food chain and moving from warmer regions to the colder regions
of the world. Their persistence and trans boundary movement has resulted
in the contamination of ecosystems and food chains throughout the world,
even in areas that have never used or generated these chemicals.
P0Ps include some naturally occurring substances such as polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHS) but whose inputs to the biosphere have
dramatically increased, as a result of human activities such as oil
and gas extraction, the combustion of fuel (including vehicles) and
from the steel and non-ferrous metal industries.
However, the group of P0Ps that have attracted the greatest attention
are synthetic organohalogens (i.e. carbon-based chemicals also containing
the halogens, chlorine, bromine, fluorine or iodine). Of these, the
majority are organochlorines. It is estimated that a staggering 11,000
organochlorines are now in use around the world. They include pesticides
such as DDT, Chlordane, Heptachlor, Aldrin, Dieldrin, Endrin, Toxaphene,
and Mirex; solvents such as perchlorethylene; and chemicals with multiple
uses such as Poly Chlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs). Also included are organochlorine
by-products such as hexachloro cyclohexane, dioxins and furans.
Cause For Concern
To a lay person, a substance is a poison only if it causes immediate
death after exposure, or cancer in the long-term. But a growing body
of evidence points to much more insidious and devastating effects that
some P0Ps can have on human and environmental health. Many P0Ps damage
the immune system of life forms making them vulnerable to sickness,
ailments and eventual death.
P0Ps can have deadly consequences for people who live or work in close
proximity to these chemicals. Such vulnerable populations include agricultural
workers exposed to pesticides, subsistence farmers, people in pesticide
manufacturing industries, as well as those who depend on food from areas
-- including lakes and high-latitude seas --contaminated by P0Ps.
Some P0Ps are also known to mimic hormones, disrupt endocrine systems
and affect fertility in humans and wildlife. By attacking fertility,
P0Ps are capable of threatening entire populations of life forms.
P0Ps can be transported long distances by ocean currents. For example,
toxaphene used as a pesticide on cotton in the Caribbean and Central
America, is conveyed all the way, across the Atlantic by the Gulf Stream,
to appear in significant amounts in the northern seas. We also know
now that P0Ps are carried by the atmosphere towards polar environments
where, in the cold conditions, they condense and are deposited. This
mechanism is now believed to account for the surprisingly high concentrations
of P0Ps in arctic environments, and in the indigenous people who live
there. Inuit women of northern Quebec carry in their breast milk some
of the highest levels of organochlorines ever found in humans.
P0Ps'
Status: Theory versus Practice
Most of the P0Ps pesticides and PCBs are banned or severely restricted
for use in several industrialised countries. Many developing country
governments too claim to have discontinued several of these pesticides.
However, manufacturing and trade in these P0Ps continues in the South.
Illegal diversion of pesticides for uses other than what they are intended
for are common. Up until 1997, Greenpeace had documented the import
of banned pesticides such as Aldrin, DDT, Chlordane and Heptachlor into
several countries in Europe, the Americas and Asia, and Australia.
In India, analyses of human breast milk, infant formula and food items
have revealed the presence of very high levels of DDT and BHC. In Vietnam,
health effects due to the spraying of Agent Orange contaminated with
dioxin by the United States armed forces during the Vietnam War continue
to manifest themselves with surprising regularity.
In the Philippines, illegal use of Hoechst's organochlorine pesticide,
Endosulfan, resulted in widespread poisoning of rice farmers and pollution
of water bodies. The Philippines government’s attempts to tackle the
problem by banning the formulation of this problem pesticide were thwarted
by the powerful multinational.
Several countries in Asia, the Pacific and Africa reportedly have large
stockpiles of obsolete or date-expired pesticides and PCBs stored in
insecure conditions. In certain other nations, such stockpiles have
been "disposed" by even more polluting' methods such as incineration,
landfilling or discharge into waterways.
The
Goal: Elimination
Multinational chemical industries, whose profits are closely linked
to maximising production and usage of these dangerous chemicals, have
proven time and again that they will use any means available to them
to discourage initiatives by governments or communities to move towards
organic and natural agricultural practices. They will have us believe
that it is we who ought to provide conclusive evidence pointing to the
detrimental effects of their poisons.
In an era of free trade agreements, single countries or even regions
are finding it increasingly difficult to phase out sources of P0Ps when
such initiatives are seen as inhibiting trade agreements. Dirty industries
may respond not by cleaning up, but by relocating elsewhere and demanding
the right to import the product. A US corporation Velsicol long abandoned
marketing its dreaded pesticides -- Chlordane and Heptachlor -- in its
home country. But this company had continued to export these pesticides
to Asia until as recently as 1997.
Multinationals are global in nature. So are P0Ps and their contamination
problem. Only a global initiative to eliminate all production, usage
and trade of P0Ps can protect ecosystems and human health. And such
an initiative has to strike at the very existence of powerful corporate
entities that can get away with marketing such poisons.
There is no middle ground. Healthy life on earth and poisonous synthetic
chemicals cannot co-exist. Chemical companies that market such poisons
need to change their businesses because life and the effects of chemicals
on life won't change. The burden of proving that chemicals cause health
effects needs to be reversed. Let those that profit from marketing chemicals
prove that their "products" cause no damage to the environment. Remember,
the operative phrase is "Polluter Pays," not "Polluting Pays."
The ongoing negotiations under the United Nations Environment Program
to co-ordinate a global legally binding convention to address the P0Ps
problem can be successful only if citizens' groups and communities pitch
in by voicing their views against the toxification of our environment
and bodies.
|
