Environmental Pollution and Human Disease

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Environmental Pollution and Human Disease
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In the study of history, nothing is more
fascinating than the emergence of those ideas
that periodically galvanize mankind into urgent
action. Such ideas leap onto the center stage of
public awareness, stay for a time, and then
effectively vanish. The most interesting moments
in this process, of course, are those when the
idea is on stage, when it engages the public in
passionate debate, when people struggle to fit
the idea into the existing order, and when
through their efforts, people inevitably change
both the existing order and the character of the
ideas -William D. Ruckelshaus 1985
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Toxic waste directly assails several fundamental
social beliefs that humans have dominion over
nature that personal control over ones destiny
is possible that technology and science are
forces of progress only that risks necessary for
the good life are acceptable that people get
what they deserve that experts know best that
the market place is self-regulating that ones
home is ones castle that people have the right
to do what they wish on their own property and
that government exists to help. Edelstein, 1988
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The most efficient way for our society to learn
how to cope with risk is to enable hundreds or
thousands of locally based risk-management
endeavors to take place. Local risk-taking
preferences could then be expressed, under broad
limits set by higher levels of government. This
will inevitably change public perceptions of
risk, for in such perceptions familiarity breeds,
not contempt, but the ability to discriminate
between trivial and important risks. Fear is,
after all what has tended to paralyze public
policy on these issues, and all our research
shows that familiar risks engender less fear than
unfamiliar ones. As our people begin to assess
and manage risks at the local level, they will be
preparing themselves to cope as citizens of a
democratic society moving into a future dominated
by barely imaginable technologies and fraught
with unfamiliar risks. -Ruckelshaus, 1985
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America is in the grips of a cancer epidemic and
synthetic chemical technology is a major part of
the cause. Americans have been besieged by a
chemical phobia that threatens the health of our
productive economy.
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It is undoubtedly true that there are trace
amount of cancer-causing substances even in the
best of our food and water. But to say that
pesticides cause death is to make a fetish out of
inanimate objects. We must distinguish between
agents and causes. Asbestos fibers and pesticides
are the agents of disease and disability, but it
is illusory to suppose that if we eliminate these
particular irritants that the diseases will go
away, for other similar irritants will take their
place. So long as efficiency, the maximum of
profit from production, without reference to the
means, remain the motivating forces of productive
enterprises the world over, so long as people are
trapped by economic need or state regulation into
production and consumption of certain things,
then one pollutant will replace another.
Regulatory agencies will calculate cost and
benefit ratios where human misery is costed out
at a dollar value. Carcinogens are the agents of
social causes, of social formations that
determine the nature of our productive and
consumptive lives, and in the end it is only
through changes in those social forces that we
can get to the root of problems of health.
R. Lewontin 1991
(Biology and Ideology)
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Etiology of liver cancer Incidence Africa vs.
USA Aflatoxins chemicals produced by mold on
stored grain Hepatitis B viral DNA found in
liver cancer tumors
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CONCLUSION The etiology of liver
cancer Hepatitis B initiates liver
cancer Aflatoxin promotes cancer
development weakened immune systems favor
progression to late stages
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Carcinogen testing Suspected carcinogen
molecular or cellular tests of chemical
interactions Known carcinogens animal
bioassays Epidemiology and occupational exposures