pops culture

8/14/2019 POPs Culture

1/12

Reprinted from WORLD WATCH, March/April 2000

POPs Culture

by Anne Platt McGinn

2000 Worldwatch Institute

O R L D W A T C HN S T I T U T EW

IW 1776 Massachusetts Ave., NW

Washington, DC 20036

www.worldwatch.orgphone: (202) 452-1999 fax: (202) 296-7365

e-mail: [email protected]


2/12

3

B

etween 1962 and 1970, U.S. soldiers andtheir South Vietnamese allies sprayednearly 12 million gallons of herbicide over

vast tracts of Southeast Asian forest and

more than half of South Vietnams arable land. Theprogram was designed to eliminate any cover thatmight conceal North Vietnamese Army units or VietCong guerrillas. The crews on the planes that did thespraying devised a slogan for themselvesa variationon a famous Smokey the Bear public service mes-sage back in the United States. They said, only youcan prevent forests.

The herbicide came in orange-striped drums, so it was called agent orange. It was a mixture of twochemicals: 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D, both of them common-ly used herbicides at the time. As with complex syn-

thetic chemicals in general, these herbicides containedtrace amounts of various unwanted substances thatarose as byproducts of production. Among the byprod-ucts were some of the chemicals called dioxins. A 1985report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencycalled dioxins the most potent carcinogen ever testedin laboratory animals. More recent laboratory workhas linked dioxins with birth defects, spontaneousabortion, and injury to the immune system. Whenthose two herbicides were sold in the United States,they typically contained dioxin concentrations of about0.05 parts per million. But agent orange had dioxinconcentrations up to 1,000 times as high.

At the time, the spraying of agent orange seemeda relatively minor part of the conflict. The dioxins,however, will linger in Vietnams soil long after the

war has vanished from living memory. Yet no one is

really sure how much damage has been done.Medical doctors in Vietnam do not, by and large,have the resources to carry out longterm publichealth studies, but some doctors report that insprayed areas, certain birth defects have becomemore common: anencephaly (absence of all or part ofthe brain), spina bifida (a malformation of the verte-bral column), and hydrocephaly (overproduction ofcerebrospinal fluid, causing a swelling of the skull).Immune deficiency diseases and learning disabilitiesmay also be higher in sprayed areas. And if the humandamage is uncertain, the broader ecological impact is

a complete mystery.In part because it is so vague, the agent orangelegacy illustrates some of the worst aspects of dealing

with dangerous synthetic chemicals like dioxins. Forpurposes of environmental analysis, dioxins aregrouped in a loose class of potent toxins known asPOPs, short for persistent organic pollutants. Thefull definition of a POP, however, is somewhat morecomplex than the acronym implies. In addition tobeing persistent (that is, not liable to break downrapidly), organic (having a carbon-based molecularstructure), and polluting (in the sense of being signif-icantly toxic), POPs have two other properties. They

POPSCulture

b y A n n e P l a t t M c G i n n

If theres one form of industrial innovation that we can defi-

nitely do without, its the kind that is continually producing

new Persistent Organic Pollutantstoxins so potent and

durable that current emissions may still be causing cancerand birth defects 1,000 years from now.

26 WORLDWATCH March/April 2000


3/12

WORLDWATCH March/April 2000 27

are fat soluble and therefore liable to accumulate inliving tissue; and they occur in the environment informs that allow them to travel great distances.

If you put all five of these properties together,you can begin to see the potential for agent orangescenarios in many places. We know that POPs are

very dangerous, but we can never be sure exactly whowill be injured by them. In the 1970s, for example, agroup of children developed leukemia (a usually fatalblood disorder involving uncontrolled production of

white blood cells) in Woburn, a small town inMassachusetts. The leukemia had apparently beencaused by solvents in the tap water. But why did thedisease emerge only in certain children and not inmany others who also presumably ingested the sol-

vents? It often takes sophisticated statistical analysisto find any connection at all between contaminationand injurythats one of the reasons its so difficultto assess the public health risks from POPs. But ofcourse statistics cant capture the experienceof conta-

mination: such a threat can seem like an evil lottery.The apparent randomness of the threat is exacer-

bated by the fact that injury is often delayed or indi-rect. Extremely toxic chemicals can bide their time,then poison their victims in ways that are very hard tosee. Benzene, for example, is a common solvent. Itsan ingredient in some paints, degreasing products,gasoline, and various other shop and industrial com-pounds. If youre heavily exposed to it, you stand aheightened chance of developing cancerand so mayany children that you have after your exposure. Thatstrue even if youre a man, since fetal exposure isnt the

only way benzene may poison children: it can reachright into your chromosomes and injure the genes

your child will inherit. Benzene may do its damagewithout ever touching the child directly at all.

POPs are potent ecological poisons as well. And just as in the human body, their ecological effectsoften exhibit a kind of weird indirection. In theUnited States in the 1960s, for example, biologistsbegan to find strong field evidence that the pesticideDDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) and similarchemicals were dangerous. But the evidence didntcome from the organisms that had absorbed the pes-

ticides directly. It came from birds of preyeaglesand falconswho were suffering widespread repro-ductive failure. Too few eggs and egg shells so thinthey cracked soon after laying: these were the resultsof a type of indirect poisoning known as bioaccumu-lation. The fat solubility of the pesticides allowedthem to concentrate in the tissues of their hosts asthey moved up the food chain, from insects torodents to raptors. Even today, the North AmericanGreat Lakes basin is showing the effects of certainPOPs, like DDT, which have not been used in theregion for decades. Eagle populations are stilldepressed; tumors continue to appear in fish, birds,

and mammals.But there is one way in which the agent orange

scenario deviates from the norm. Most POPs owetheir presence in the environment not to the horribleexigencies of war, but to ordinary industrial process-esplastic and pesticide manufacturing, leaky trans-formers, waste incineration, and so forth. POPs arean inevitable byproduct of business as usual. Bydesign and by accident, we are continually introduc-ing new chemicals into the environment without anyclear notion of what they will eventually door

whether we may one day find ourselves in a desperatescramble to remove them. And among the tens ofthousands of chemicals that have been in circulationfor decades, relatively few have been studied for theirhealth and environmental effects. Consequently, noone knows exactly how manyPOPs there are, but its like-ly that many thousands ofchemicals could qualify

for the term. And beyond their

number is the questionof their effect: whilePOPs are toxic bydefinition, theirlongterm health

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MILAN KECMAN


4/12

and environmental impacts are still largely unknown.Even more complex than evaluating individual POPsis the looming need to understand what kinds of syn-ergistic interactions could be triggered by overlap-ping exposureto multiple POPs or to POPs com-bined with other chemicals. Multiple contaminationis the rule, rather than the exception, but virtuallynothing is known about it. What we do know is thatmost of the worlds living things are now steeping ina diffuse bath of POPs. And that almost certainlyincludes you. No matter where you live, youre likelyto be contaminated by trace amounts of POPs.Theyre in your food and water; they may be in theair you breathe; theyre probably on your skin fromtime to timeif, for instance, you handlepaints, solvents, or fuels.

Currently, 140 nations are negotiating atreaty to phase out 12 specific POPs (seetable, page 32). This so-called dirtydozen includes nine pesticides, onegroup of industrial compoundsknown as polychlorinatedbiphenyls (PCBs), and twotypes of industrialbyproducts, the diox-ins and their

RELEASEA Monsanto Chemical Works factory in Alabama,

circa 1947, made a quantity of PCBs and shipped

them in fluid form to a GE factory in Massachusetts,

which loaded the fluid into electric transformers as

insulation. Transformers were shipped out and

installed on thousands of utility poles and buildings.3



5/12

chemical cousins, the furans. The treatyis called the International LegallyBinding Instrument for Imple-menting International Action onCertain Persistent Organic Pollu-tants and as its name suggests, itis a laudable but rather timideffort. Its supporters hope that it will eventually serve as a mecha-nism to phase out dozens of other

POPs. But at least in its presentform, it doesnt address the funda-

mental problem. If we want toreduce the risks from the vast andgrowing number of synthetic chemi-cals that are being released into the

environment, we will have to rethink some of ourbasic notions of industrial development.

Every Twenty Seven Seconds

There are now over 20 million synthetic chemi-cals, and that number is increasing by more than 1million a year. As a rough global average, a newchemical is synthesized every 27 seconds of the day.

Very few of these substances ever go into commercialproductionsomething like 99.5 percent remainacademic curiosities, or rapidly forgotten attempts toproduce a new pesticide, or solvent, or whatever. Butevery year another 1,000 or so new compounds enterthe chemical economy, either as ingredients in fin-ished products, or as intermediateschemicalsused to make other chemicals. The total number of

DISPERSALOver the decades, transformers deteriorated or

were destroyedsome by lightning, others by

demolition. The PCBs leaked into the ground and

were dispersed by runoff into streams or slow seep-

age into aquifers. Some lodged in soil that baked

in the sun, turned to dust, and blew away, eventu-

ally settling throughout the global environment.


6/12

synthetics in commerce is probably now somewherebetween 50,000 and 100,000. But the total numberof synthetics in the environment is probably fargreater than that, because of the byproducts (likedioxins) unintentionally generated during produc-tion, and because of the breakdown products thatresult from the decay of commercial substances.

Chemical innovation on this scale creates an enor-mous biological risk, despite the fact that many syn-thetic chemicals are probably harmless, and manynaturally-occurring chemicals are extremely danger-ous. To understand the risk, its useful to have a gen-eral sense for what usually happens with natural tox-ins. Most really potent natural toxins break down farmore readily than POPs. Powerful natural toxins alsotend to be geographically isolatedthey arent usual-ly dispersed throughout the environment. And whileits true that there are some natural forms of mass

poisoning, such events are generally episodic ratherthan continualthink of red tide algal bloomsalong ocean shorelines, for example. Finally, apartfrom such mass poisonings, any really powerful poi-son produced by a living thing is likely to be troph-ically isolatedthat is, it will tend to affect onlyorganisms that play certain ecological roles. To bepoisoned by a toxic frog, for example, you almosthave to be a frog predator. Dont mess with the frogand youll be fine. The toxic frog paradigm does not,however, apply to our current chemical economy,

which is causing broadscale, chronic exposure topowerful toxins at virtually every ecological level.

Not all manufactured chemicals are organic (thatis, carbon-containing); inorganic chemicals play keyindustrial roles as well. Sulfuric acid (H2SO4), forexample, is a key feedstock for much chemicalproduction, especially fertilizer. But most

ACCUMULATIONPCB-containing dust that settled in lakes or rivers

became a nutrient for algae. Water fleas ate the

algae. Small shrimp ate the fleaseach shrimp

eating many fleas and bioaccumulating the PCBs

that lodged in its fat. Small fish called smelt ate the

shrimp, and trout ate many of the smelteachstage increasing the concentration of the toxin.


7/12

commercially important inorganics, like sulfuric acid,arent synthetic in the sense of being completely arti-ficialthey occur in nature. And synthetic or not,only around 100,000 inorganic chemicals are known.Contrast that with the many millions of organic com-pounds now knownmost of them wholly artificialand you can begin to get an idea of the stupifying

variety in molecular structure that carbon permits.Large-scale industrial production of organic chem-

icals was well underway by the middle of the 19thcentury. Refineries in both Europe and the UnitedStates were using coal to produce keroseneor coaloil, as it was then called. In 1859, westernPennsylvania became the site of the worlds first oil

well. As other oil fields opened in theUnited States, Europe, and east Asia,

those coal refineries became oilrefineries, and industry acquired a

vast and extremely versatile supply of lubricants andfuels. Synthesis of completely novel compoundsbegan in European laboratories at about the sametime. DDT, for example, dates from 1874, when it

was synthesized by a German chemistry student,although its pesticidal properties were not appreciateduntil the 1930s. The first plastics were synthesizedfrom cellulose (the primary constituent of wood) inthe 1890s. By the end of the century, organic chem-istry had revolutionized a major industrythe pro-duction of dyes.

The key to that development was the realizationthat synthetics could be produced in abundancedirectly from oil, instead of from living plant prod-ucts. With a cheap source of raw material at hand,synthetics offered an answer to war-time shortages ofoften much more expensive natural products. Vinyl,

and CONSUMPTIONA woman cooks a trout, which has bioaccumulated

the PCBs from hundreds of shrimp and thousands of

fleas. The PCBs are then added to other POPs she

has consumed in cows milk, beef, and other foods.

The last step is the baby, whose first food is her

mothers milk.

31

3


8/12


3

for instance, was developed in the 1920s as a rubbersubstitute; during World War II, it helped ease thedemand for this essential plant producttires stillhad to be made of rubber, but vinyl worked well as a

wire insulator.In the years following the war, synthetics flooded

one manufacturing process after another, since theywere often much cheaper than such traditional mate-rials as rubber, wood, metal, glass, and plant fiber. Insome cases the synthetic displaced a traditional mate-rial outright, but arguably just as important has beenthe interest in combining old and newthe metalthat has a specialty coating to make it more durable,the flooring laminate composed of resin and woodfiber, and so forth. In ways large and small, synthet-ics have transformed our built environmentsandnot simply by replacing things that were made beforeout of some other material, but by allowing for the

creation of products that probably wouldnt other-

wise have existed, at least on a mass scale. Plastic, forinstance, is as fundamental in electronics manufactur-ing as microchips. Today, synthetic organic chemicalsflow through just about every pipe in the chemicaleconomy (see table, page 35).

Not surprisingly, the volume of synthetic organic

chemical production has moved continually upwardsever since large-scale manufacturing began in the1930s. Global production escalated from near zero in1930 to an estimated 300 million tons by the late1980s. In the United States alone, production hassoared from about 150,000 tons in 1935 to nearly 150million tons by 1995almost a thousandfold increase.Cinema fans may recall the one word of advice givento the confused young man played by Dustin Hoffmanin the 1968 film, The Graduate: Plastics. Thetrend was as clear then as it is now: U.S. production ofplastics has increased 6-fold since 1960.

The chemical structure of synthetic organics

Production and Use of the Dirty Dozen POPs

Material Date of Introduction Cumulative World Production(tons)

Aldrin (insecticide) 1949 240,000

Chlordane (insecticide) 1945 70,000

DDT (insecticide) 1942 2.83 million

Dieldrin (insecticide) 1948 240,000

Endrin (insecticide and rodenticide) 1951 (3,119 tons in 1977)

Heptachlor (insecticide) 1948 (900 tons used in 1974 in the U.S.)

Hexachlorobenzene (fungicide and 1945 12 millionbyproduct of pesticide production

Mirex (insecticide and flame retardant) 1959 no data

Toxaphene (insecticide) 1948 1.33 million

PCBs (liquid insulators in transformers, 1929 12 millionhydraulic fluids; ingredients in some paints,adhesives, and resins. No longer generallyproduced in industrialized countries.)

Dioxins (byproducts of organochlorine production 1920sand incineration, and of wood pulp bleaching)

Furans (same as with dioxins) 1920s

SOURCE: Anne Platt McGinn, Phasing Out Persistent Organic Pollutants, in Lester R. Brown et al., State of the World 2000(New

York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000), page 223, note 13.

(10.5 tons International ToxicEquivalency of dioxins andfurans combined in 1995)


9/12


3

varies enormously, of course, but when it comes toassessing the potential of any particular chemical tocause trouble, either in the human body or in theenvironment, one question is of overriding impor-tance: does it contain chlorine? Chlorine is highlyreactivethat is, it combines very readily with certainother elements and it tends to bind to them verytightly. (The big exception to this rule involves alooser association called an ionic bond. For example,sodium chloride, or table salt, is the product of anionic bond between a chlorine and a sodium atom.Such a bond is weak enough to allow the two atomsto separate from each other in solution.) Carbon isone of the elements that chlorine will bond to,although in nature such combinations, known asorganochlorines, are rarely abundant. (There are afew exceptions, such as salt marsh emissions ofmethyl chloride.) But chemists have found that byadding chlorine to carbon-based compounds, aneven greater molecular variety becomes possible.

Chlorines ability to snap firmly into placeand toanchor all sorts of chemical structureshas made it,in the words of W. Joseph Stearns, Director ofChlorine Issues for the Dow Chemical Company,the single most important ingredient in modern[industrial] chemistry.

Take a sophisticated chemical sector, like that ofthe United States, and consider the importance ofchlorine in it. Chlorine is used to make thousands ofchemicalssolvents, pesticides, pharmaceuticals,bleaches, and so on. Around 11,000 organochlorinesare in production. The biggest readily identifiable

category of these is plastic. Of the more than 10 mil-lion tons of chlorine that the U.S. industry consumeseach year, about one-third goes to produce 14 differ-ent types of plastic. The most common of those ispolyvinyl chloride (PVC), which is light, strong, andeasy to mold. PVC is used to make plastic wrap, shoesoles, automobile components, siding, pipes, andmedical products, among other things. In less than adecade, from 1988 to 1996 (the most recent year for

which figures were available), global production ofPVC expanded by more than 70 percent, from 12.8million tons to 22 million tons. In the use of prod-

ucts like PVC, you can see how thoroughly weveenveloped ourselves in organochlorines.Although many organochlorines are not known

to be dangerous, a substantial number of them docreate major risks. In large measure, those risks arethe result of three common characteristics.Organochlorines are very stablethats obviouslypart of their manufacturing appeal, but it also meansthat they dont go away. They tend to be fat soluble,

which means that they can bioaccumulate. And manyof them have substantial chronic toxicitythat is,

while exposure over the short term may not be dan-gerous, long-term exposure frequently is. (The rea-

sons for toxicity vary. Some organochlorines canmimic naturally-occurring chemicals such as hor-mones, thereby upsetting the bodys chemicalprocesses; some weaken the immune system; someaffect organ development, some promote cancer, andso on.) Stability, fat solubility, and chronic toxicity:does that begin to sound like a POP? Chlorine cer-tainly isnt requiredto make a POP. Among the non-chlorinated POPs are various organometals (used, forexample, in marine paints) and organobromines(used as pesticides and as liquid insulators in electri-cal equipment). But most known POPsincludingall of the dirty dozenare organochlorines.

Organochlorine pesticides are the class of productsthat has produced what are probably the most notori-ous POPs (see the table on page 32 for some exam-ples). Its hardly surprising that pesticides are a majoringredient in our stew of dangerous chemicalsafterall, pesticides are designed to be toxic and they areproduced in enormous quantities. Since 1945, global

production of pesticides has increased an estimated26-fold, from 0.1 million tons to 2.7 million tons,although growth has slowed in the last 15 years, ashealth and environmental concerns have inspired anincreasing number of bans, primarily in industrializedcountries. These restrictions have reduced the totalquantity of pesticides used in the industrialized coun-tries, but the toxicityof particular pesticides has con-tinued to grow. Current pesticide formulations are 10to 100 times as toxic as they were in 1975.

Today, pesticide manufacturers usually want theirproducts to have a high acute toxicity and low chron-

ic toxicity. Theyre looking for compounds that willkill quickly but that dont haunt the field indefinite-ly, so organochlorines, with their substantial chronictoxicities, no longer have the universal appeal theyonce did. Newer pesticides are less likely to containchlorine. Thats obviously good, but not goodenough, for two reasons: non-organochlorine pesti-cides also sometimes turn out to be POPs, and near-ly all the old products are still with us anyway. Theypersist in the environment and most are still used indeveloping countries.

A more obscure array of POPs involves a family of

organochlorines that have been used as liquid insula-tors in electrical equipment, as hydraulic fluids, andas trace additives to plastics, paints, even carbonlesscopy paper. These are the polychlorinated biphenyls,or PCBs. For decades, the extreme stability, low flam-mability, and low conductivity of POPs made themthe standard liquid insulation in transformersandsince transformers are a near-ubiquitous part of everyelectrical grid, PCB contamination is now a standardform of landscape poisoning. In industrialized coun-tries, PCBs were manufactured mostly between the1920s and the late 1970s; they are still manufacturedin Russia and are still in use in many developing


10/12

3

countries. Scientists estimate that up to 70 percent ofall PCBs ever manufactured are still in use or in theenvironment, often in landfills where they are gradu-ally seeping into water tables. The United NationsEnvironment Programme (UNEP) recently pub-lished guidelines for helping officials in developingcountries identify PCBs. But given their multiple usesand more than 90 trade names, simply finding themis going to be a mind-boggling tasklet alone clean-ing them up.

But the overwhelming majority of POPs are notintentionally producedtheyre by-products, likedioxins and furans, two classes of POPs that resultprimarily from organochlorine production, thebleaching of wood pulp, and the incineration ofmunicipal waste. A 1995 UNEP emissions inventoryof 15 countries traced some 7,000 kilograms of diox-in and furan releases to incinerator emissionsthats69 percent of the total releases of those substances inthese countries. (Seven thousand kilograms may not

sound like all that muchbut bear in mind that theseare extremely toxic substances usually produced intrace quantities.) There are 210 known dioxins andfurans. And among the byproducts of organochlorineproduction and use, its almost certain that manymore thousands of POPs remain to be discovered.

Do we really need it?

Over the past three decades or so, attempts toregulate the chemical industry in the industrialized

world have grown to a phenomenal degree. In the

United States, for example, the effort now involvesfour federal agencies on a regular basis, and at leastseven major pieces of federal legislation, whichaddress pesticides, pollution, and attempt to promotecleaner industries. Any new synthetic produced inEurope or the United States is now subject to somedegree of toxicity testing before it can be injectedinto commerce.

But despite this gargantuan bureaucratic effort,the current regulatory approach is no match for thethreat. In the first place, most of the toxicity testingis done by the companies themselvesa practice that

invites obvious conflicts of interest. Nor do currentefforts offer a realistic possibility of dealing with thetesting backlog. Tens of thousands of chemicalsentered commerce in the decades before testing wasrequiredand we still have no clear notion of therisks most of them pose. Fewer than 20 percent ofthe chemicals in commerce have been adequatelyevaluated for toxicity, according to a 1984 National

Academy of Sciences report. (Its perhaps a reflectionof the magnitude of the problem that this 16-year-old report should still be widely cited.)

And then there is our uncertainty over what weought to be testing for. The toxicology of synthetic

organics is in a near constant state of flux, and the dif-ficulty of establishing a causal link between exposureand injury opens the science up to all sorts of tenden-tious reinterpretation. Anyone familiar with the smok-ing and health debates will recognize this problem.Take dioxins, for example. Chloracnethe severe skindeformity that is the hallmark of dioxin poisoning

was identified more than a century ago, in 1899. In1998, the UN World Health Organization (WHO)reduced its standard for tolerable daily intake of diox-in-like substances from 10 picograms per kilogram ofbody weight per day to 1-4 picograms. So a person

who weighs 68 kilograms (about 150 pounds)shouldnt be exposed to more than 4 trillionths ofa gram per day. For infants, the safe levels are evenmore minuscule. Yet just a couple of years ago, a con-sultant to the Chemical Manufacturers Associationannounced that dioxin has not been shown to poseany health threat to the general public.

Even where obfuscation is not an issue, advances

in toxicology tend to create a second testing backlog,since thousands of previously-screened chemicals mayneed to be re-evaluated. In 1996, for example, theUnited States launched a major pesticide re-evalua-tion program, in the light of new research on howthese chemicals can affect children, whose highmetabolism and rapid rate of physical developmentmake them more vulnerable to certain kinds of tox-ins. Thus far, screening has been completed on lessthan a quarter of U.S. pesticide registrations. (TheUnited States regulates pesticides by designating spe-cific uses permitted for each chemical; each such use

is known as a registration.)The shifting horizon of toxicology can call into

question even widely accepted synthetics. The plasti-cizers known as phthalates, for example, are believedto be among the most common industrial com-pounds in the environment. Yet recent laboratoryresearch in animals has linked phthalates to damage tothe liver, kidney, and testicles, as well as to miscar-riage, birth defects, and reduced fertility. Incinerationof phthalates produces dioxins. Phthalates occur ineverything from construction materials to childrensteething rings. And among the 1,000 new chemicals

that will enter the economy this year, who knows howmany more such discoveries will eventually be made?In its current form, the chemical sector is clearly

at odds with our collective obligation to maintainhuman and environmental health. What is needed isfundamental reforma change that goes far deeperthan conventional regulation. That reform couldstart with a very simple but revolutionary idea: its

wise to avoid unnecessary risk. This is the kernel ofone of the environmental movements core concepts:the precautionary principle. The principle states that

when any action is contemplated that could affect theenvironment, those who advocate the action should



11/12


3

show that the risks are either negligible, or that theyare decisively outweighed by the benefits.

The principle reverses the usual burden of proof.In most environmental controversies today, that bur-den effectively rests with those who argue against anaction: they must usually persuade the public or pol-icy makers that the benefits are outweighed by therisks. But of course, we rarely understand the risksuntil after the factand maybe not even then. Thatsthe problem the principle is meant to address; its akind of insurance policy against our own ignorance.

In terms of our chemical use, a reasonable applica-tion of the precautionary principle would require us toassume that in certain chemical classesorganochlo-rines, for exampleany new compound is dangerous.The next step would be to ask: do we really need it?This kind of inquiry would tend to foster a differentkind of inventiveness, both within the chemical indus-try and within society as a whole. The emphasis wouldtend to shift from inventing new chemicals, to invent-

ing new uses for chemicals thought to be reasonablysafe, and to inventing new procedures that may not bedependent on chemicals at all. Fewer new chemicals

would come into commerce; a growing number ofestablished ones would come out.

There is already a strong precedent for this kindof chemical stand down in the impending ban ofchlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the now-notoriousclass of chemicals once almost universally used asrefrigerants and spray-can propellents. CFCs werefound to be weakening the stratospheric ozone layer,

which shields the Earths surface from harmful ultra-

violet radiation. Under the Montreal Protocol of1987, CFCs are being phased out in favor of othercompounds that are less harmful to the ozone layer.In many parts of the chemical economy, you can seethe potential for similar developments. Considerthree examples.

Pesticides: the phase-out may already have begun

Pesticides are the mainstay of monoculture farming.They are the mechanism that allows for vast expansesof pure corn, cotton, or soybeansa highly unnatur-

al condition that is very vulnerable to infestation. Butpesticides are also expensive and dangerous, andthese liabilities underlie the growing boom in organ-ic agriculture. In the industrialized countries, organ-ic production (which uses no synthetic pesticides) isthe strongest market within the agricultural sector. Inthe United States, the organic market has been grow-ing at a rate of 20 percent per year since 1989. Some35 percent of U.S. consumers look for the organiclabel at least part of the time. In Europe, one-third ofthe continents farmland is expected to be in organicproduction by the end of this decade. Organic andother forms of low-pesticide farming usually involve

more careful stewardship of the soil and more diverseplantings, which tend to have fewer pest problemsthan conventional monocultures. Even though the

yield of a particular crop may be lower than in con-ventional agriculture, an organic farm can do just aswell in terms of total productivity (that is, in terms ofall the crops coming off a unit of land) and in termsof financial returnand thats before you factor inthe environmental benefits.

A thornier set of pesticide problems involves pub-lic health. DDT may be eliminated by the new treaty

as an agricultural pesticide, but its still key to malar-

What Does the Chemical

Industry Produce?

Some Major Product Categories

Tars and primary petroleum derivatives

(used to make asphalt, fuels, lubricants, andmany of the products listed below)

Plastics (used inyou name it)

Resins (used, for example, in adhesives,protective coatings, and paints)

Intermediates (chemicals used to produceother chemicals)

Solvents (liquids used to keep other materialsin solution, as for example, in paints and

cleaning compounds)Surfactants (surface-active agents used in

products like detergents to promote an interac-tion between the product and the material towhich it is applied)

Elastomers (synthetic rubbers such asneoprene)

Rubber-processing chemicals

Plasticizers (used in plastics to conferflexibility)

Pesticides

Pharmaceuticals

Flavors and perfumes (manufacturerscommonly rely on synthetics to make theirproducts taste and smell the way they want)

Dyes and pigments (everything from thepaint on your car, to the color of your clothes,to the food you eat)


12/12

3

ia control in many parts of the tropics. Malaria kills2.7 million people every yeara death toll greaterthan that of AIDS. In much of sub-Saharan Africaand tropical Asia, control of the mosquitoes thatcarry the disease is a life-and-death issue, and that hasfrequently involved the broadscale spraying of DDT.But even here, more careful targetting of the mos-quitoes would permit enormous reductions in pesti-cide useand might even improve malaria control.Researchers in Africa, for example, have demonstrat-ed that bednets soaked in alternative, less-toxic insec-ticides can reduce malaria transmission by 30 to 60percent and childhood mortality by up to 30 percent.

And bednets are relatively cheap: a net plus a yearssupply of insecticide costs about $11. In 1993, WHOdropped its blanket spraying recommendation forDDT, in favor of targeted spraying of the insecticideindoors only.

PVC: taking the POPs out of the products

The incineration of solid waste is a primary generatorof dioxins and furans. While better incineration pro-cedures can greatly reduce this kind of contamination,the single most effective way to lower dioxin output isto get as much chlorine as possible out of the wastestream. PVC is the source of an estimated 80 percentof the chlorine that flows into municipal waste incin-erators and nearly all the chlorine in medical wasteincinerators (these are among the most important sec-ond-rank dioxin emitters, after the municipal inciner-ators). A top priority for the new chemical economy

should therefore be the elimination of PVC, which is45 percent chlorine by weight, in favor of low-chlo-rine or chlorine-free materials. Initially, the substitutesare liable to be more expensive than PVC, but evenincipient demand could rapidly generate an economyof scale. The market prospects have already led theExxon Corporation, one of the worlds largest PVCproducers, to begin planning a shift from PVC tochlorine-free polyolefin plastics.

Bleaching and benzene: removing POPs fromindustrial processes

POPs often haunt industrial processes to a far greaterdegree than they contaminate the products them-selves. Thus, for example, paper is not ordinarily asource of organochlorine contamination while itsbeing used. But paper production certainly is, andpaper disposal can be as well, because the huge vol-ume of paper converging on an incinerator may allowtrace contaminants to concentrate. Both forms ofcontamination are caused by the use of chlorinebleaches to whiten woodpulp. Bleaching can produceup to 35 tons of organochlorines per day per mill. Yet

this type of pollution is now almost wholly unneces-saryand the paper youre looking at right nowproves it. (WORLDWATCH is printed on paper that isbleached without any chlorine or chlorine-basedcompounds, although unfortunately, that is not yettrue of our cover stock.) Thus far, only 6 percent ofglobal bleached pulp production is totally chlorinefree, but that includes more than a quarter ofScandinavian production, so the economic viability ofthe process is not in question. Some 54 percent ofglobal bleached pulp production is now elementallychlorine freemeaning that a chlorine bleach wasused, but at least it wasnt raw chlorine. (Our coverstock falls in this category.) Its true that convertinga mill to chlorine-free production is expensive, butthe picture is very different when you start fromscratch. Its actually cheaper to build a chlorine-freemill than a conventional one.

At least some of the more dangerous intermedi-ates within the industry are probably susceptible to

replacement as well. Benzene, for example, is a majorfeedstock chemical in the production of a wide rangeof materialsfor example, dyes, film developingagents, solvents, and nylon. For some applications,however, it may be possible to replace benzene withthe simple blood sugar, glucose. That may sound likea bizarre substitution, but its the ring structure ofboth molecules that allows for a degree of inter-changeability. Glucose is cheaper to make than ben-zene (6 versus 13 cents per pound) and for all practi-cal purposes, its harmless. As a feedstock, however,the processes for handling glucose are more expen-

sive than the better-established processes for ben-zene, but these costs dont take into account emis-sions control costs for benzene. In any case, the costs

would presumably decline if the use of glucose as afeedstock became more common. Such adjustmentsdeep within the industrial machinery may seem ratherobscure, but they could be major news: the possibil-ity of substituting an innocuous substance for anextremely dangerous one suggests that there may beall sorts of hidden opportunities for re-engineeringthe chemical sector.

If such re-engineering is to succeed, it will have toproceed from a much broader understanding of whatwere doing when we make and use synthetic chemi-cals. Whether we intend it this way or not, chemicalmanufacturing is as much an ecological process as itis an economic or industrial one. Any industry exec-utive knows that a chemical plant has to make somesort of economic sense. The POPs legacy is telling usthat it had better make environmental sense as well.

Anne Platt McGinn is a senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute.

pops culture

Documents