Chemical Pollution – The 70s to Now
My small, historical reference book, The Sun is Going Down for All of Us, has lots of interesting passages about the state of chemical pollutants in 1971. Here are a few quotes I thought were worth following up on:
Dangerous amounts of DDT have been found in lettuce, salmon, turkey and mackerel.
The United States has been unbelievably tardy in recognizing the danger of mercury.
Mercury is widely used to treat seed grain in order to prevent fungus infection . . . and the fodder is fed to farm animals. Such wheat fed to pigs gravely crippled three New Mexico farm children last winter.
City dwellers already have in their bodies 100 times the amount of lead that would be present under normal conditions.
In Moscow, where gasoline is lead-free, the concentration of lead in the soil is 19 parts per million. In Los Angeles, the concentration is 3000 parts per million.
DDT, mercury, and lead were a few of the highly toxic chemicals people were concerned about in the 1970s. Let’s see how well we’ve addressed those problems.
In case you weren’t around in the middle of the last century, DDT was a synthetic (man-made) insecticide developed in the 1940s. After WWII, it was used to great acclaim for combating insect-borne diseases like malaria and typhus. In fact, DDT was so effective at fighting those diseases that the chemist who discovered its insecticidal properties, Paul Hermann Müller, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948. The chemical was also widely embraced by farmers to deal with crop-destroying insects and by communities combatting mosquitoes, with DDT “fog” sprayed from trucks throughout the US. But during this same time, people were noticing that the wonder-insecticide was also killing beneficial insects and small animals and making people sick. Numerous people and organizations around the world started to raise alarms. In 1962, Rachel Carson’s seminal work on the dangers of DDT, Silent Spring, was serialized in the New Yorker, then published as what is arguably the most famous environmental book ever written. Carson’s detailed, scientific work and the book’s widespread availability, combined with the new environmental movement, turned the tide against DDT. Youth and pop-culture pushed for environmental regulations (including a DDT rebuke in Joni Mitchell’s 1970 song Big Yellow Taxi). But it wasn’t until 1972 that the Environmental Protection Agency finally banned its use in the US.
So, what’s the current status of DDT? Thanks to environmentalists, it was banned in the 70s and still cannot be used in the US or Canada. Interestingly, over the years there have been calls to bring it back. In the 1990s, some governments and corporations began to call for loosening of laws governing pesticides, citing increased deaths from malaria across the global south. That campaign did meet with some success, and DDT is still used in some countries in Africa, Asia, and South America to help control malaria.
What about mercury? In 1970, at about the same time as The Sun is Going Down was being written, the New York Times published a story entitled Mercury Hazard Found Nationwide. The article paints the story of mercury with a broad brush, describing findings of mercury in water, fish, and birds, then explaining sources of mercury and its effects on humans – primarily neurological disorders and fetal defects and mortality. It also describes the challenge of addressing the issue at the Federal level, since mercury contamination and impacts fall under various departments, including the Dept. of the Interior; the Dept. of Agriculture; the FDA; the Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare; and the Bureau of Water Hygiene. The problems couldn’t be addressed at the state level, since polluted rivers flow from state to state and contaminated birds and fish migrate across state lines. To get to the bottom of the mercury issue, Congress held hearings on mercury pollution, followed by aggressive moves to curb mercury contamination. To force corporations into compliance, the Government invoked a seldom-used 1899 law making it an offense to discharge anything into a waterway without permission from the Army Corps of Engineers. This action and later Clean Air Act legislation went a long way to reduce mercury contamination in our water and food.
What wasn’t addressed at that time was mercury pollution in the air. It wasn’t until 2011 that the EPA developed national standards limiting mercury and other toxic air pollution from existing coal- and oil-fired power plants.
The good news is that these legislative efforts and similar laws passed in other countries have been very effective. Researchers studying atmospheric mercury levels at Mt. Everest determined that they dropped 70% between 2000 and 2020. Unfortunately, atmospheric mercury levels may start rising again, due to the current US administration’s offer of two-year exemptions to Clean Air Act pollution standards to over a third of all domestic coal plants, chemical manufacturers, coke ovens, commercial sterilizers, and highly toxic facilities.
How are we doing on lead? Environmental problems from lead have been documented since 2000 BC, and the symptoms of lead poisoning were accurately described by Hippocrates in 400 BC. Since then, mankind has remained well-aware of the hazards of lead, but continued to use it in thousands of ways, including as a poison for assassinations! The US Government finally decided to try to do something about exposure to lead in 1970, with the passage of the Clean Air Act, mandating that the EPA identify and set standards for lead and other pollutants. In 1973 the EPA initiated a mandated phasedown of lead levels in motor vehicle gasoline, and by 1980 the amount of lead in US gasoline had dropped by 50% and average human blood-lead levels showed a corresponding 50% drop. Subsequent legislation and legal rulings between 1973 and today mandated and enforced lead level reductions in other products and emissions into the air and water. Simultaneously, standards for clean-up of lead pipes, lead paint, and lead-contaminated sites were established and are now guided by OSHA requirements.
The elimination lead from US gasoline and many other products has improved public health and safety. But due to its unique properties – high density, high ductility, sound absorption, radiation shielding, resistance to corrosion, and relative abundance – it is still used in some products like batteries, steel manufacturing, and radiation shields. It’s also still in gasoline and other common products in developing countries.
Lead is highly toxic to virtually all living organisms. There is no level of exposure that is considered safe for humans. Recent actions by the US Government have rolled back previous guidance on lead cleanup, tripling the amount of lead that must be in the soil to trigger a potential cleanup. This action leaves families (like this one in Omaha) with no recourse to get rid of contaminated soil in their yards due to lead-laced smoke from nearby factories.
My takeaways from all of this:
Manufacturers have no incentive to investigate and limit the toxicity of their products.
Government mandates are needed to protect the health of humans, animals, and plants from unsafe use and disposal of chemicals.
The Government can be pressured into action by informed citizens.
Government mandates can have a tremendous impact on the quality of our air, land, and water, and our overall health.
Constant vigilance is required to maintain our environmental protections.
Remember -
We’re all in this together.
References: sciencehistory.org, nobelprize.org, youtube.com, nrdc.org, newrepublic.com, worldatlas.com, newyorktimes.com, environmentalamerica.org, acs.org, theguardian.com, biologicaldiversity.org, niehs.nih.gov, xometry.com