table of contents world information transfer’s · republic, germany, japan and lithuania for...

Summer-Fall 2016, vol. XXVIII No. 2-3

Education brings choices.Choices bring power.

World Ecology Report is printed on recycled paper.

TABLE of CONTENTS

SESSION I

OPENING REMARKSDr. Christine K. Durbak H.E. Amb. Volodymyr Yelchenko

CHORNOBYL COMMEMORATIONH.E. Amb. Motohide YoshikawaH.E. Amb. Raimonda MurmokaiteMinister-Counsellor Jiri EllingerAmbassador Heiko Thoms

KEYNOTE ADDRESSJUSTICE FOR YOUNG PEOPLEDr. James Hansen

LEUKEMIA AND THYROIDDr. Lydia Zablotska

ENERGY & PUBLIC HEALTHDr. William Rom

ENERGY IN 21st CENTURYDr. Todd Allen

CLOSING REMARKSAmbassador Yuriy A. Sergeyev

SESSION II

OPENING REMARKSDr. Christine K. DurbakMr. Yaroslav Golitsyn

LITTLE THINGS MATTERDr. Bruce Lanphear

TOXINS & BRAIN DEVELOPMENTDr. Martha Herbert

VACCINATION POLICIES & H.R.Ms. Mary Holland

CLOSING REMARKSDr. Bernard D. Goldstien

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United Nations Headquarters, April 26, 2016

Special Conference

Issue

WORLD INFORMATION TRANSFER’S 25th International Conference on Health and Environment: Global Partners for Global Solutions

Session 1: Chornobyl and Nuclear Energy Session II: Toxic Contamination of Children

See WIT’s 25th Conferenceyoutube.com/user/WITConferences

[Left to Right] H.E Ambassador Volodymyr Yelchenko, H.E. Amb. Motohide Yoshikawa, H.E. Amb. Raimonda Murmokaite, Minister-Counsellor Jiri Ellinger, Ambassador Heiko Thoms, Dr. Lydia Zablotska, Ambassador Yuriy A. Sergeyev, Dr. Christine K. Durbak, Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Willaim Rom and Dr. Todd Allen

[Left to Right] Dr. Bernard Goldstien, Mr. Yuroslav Golitsyn, Dr. Christine K. Durbak, Dr. Leonardo Trasande, Dr. Mary Holland, Dr. Martha Herbert

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This has also included debunking false claims when research has pointed them out. Our knowledge of the consequences of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster 30 years ago today will undoubtedly grow. We will adjust our thinking when new scientific evidence emerges. Our goal will continue to be educating the public on science based health and environmental information. For this thirtieth anniversary of the meltdown of Chornobyl reactor number 4 on April 26, 1986 exactly thirty years ago today we’ve decided to take stock of what we have learned.

We’ve synthesized our learning into seven statements.

1. Thyroid disease including thyroid cancer is the primary physical illness that has emerged after 30 years of scientific research on the human population exposed to radioactive fallout from the Chornobyl nuclear disaster.

2. PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder – is the mental illness that has emerged after 30 years of research on the human population exposed to radioactive fallout from the Chornobyl nuclear disaster. PTSD produces stress related physical illness in some people. Illnesses caused by alcohol and drug abuse have been associated with some PTSD cases after Chornobyl.

3. Findings from scientific research on the effects of radioactive contamination slowly silenced most of the unsubstantiated claims about Chornobyl fallout.

4. Solutions still need to be found for Safe Storage of waste from nuclear power plants and for Securing the by products of such power plants, specifically plutonium.

5. Human error is inevitable as evidenced by environmental accidents since Chornobyl, but willful ignorance is inexcusable as inaction on climate change shows. I could digress on the sources of selective ignorance – self interest; greed; corruption. I recommend reading about how lead got into gasoline and carcinogens into cigarettes.

6. An educated public is necessary to counter willful ignorance and push for science based public health and environmental policy.

“An educated public is necessary to counter wilful ignorance and push for science based public

health and environmental policy.”

Dr. Christine K. Durbak Conference Chair and Founder, World Information Transfer, Inc.

Opening Statement

Your Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, Faculty members, Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen and Students,

I would like to begin by once again thanking the Government of Ukraine, H.E. Yelchenko; the U.N. Permanent Mission of Belarus, H.E. Dapkiunas; Mission of the Czech Republic, Mr. Ellinger; Mission of Lithuania, H.E. Murmokaite; Mission of Germany, Amb. Thoms; and the Mission of Japan, H.E. Yoshikawa for their cosponsorship of our 25th Conference on Health & Environment.

Following Chornobyl, WIT began on the premise that without a healthy environment, populations can not attain and retain health and that information can bring the power to make more informed decisions for the benefit of both the health of the people and the planet. We have organized the Health and Environment: Global Partners for Global Solutions conference at the United Nations Headquarters for the past quarter of a century, a few years after the nuclear accident at Chornobyl, with the continual co-sponsorship of the Government of Ukraine and others. Our 25 conferences have provided an educational platform for current scientific research on specific health and environmental issues related to the UN Agenda. The internet has enabled us to expand access to our conference research findings and to achieve our key goal of communicating science based actionable information. Since we don’t test our conference audience, we are never certain how much was learned or what learnings were applied. We have only anecdotal evidence of success.

That evidence includes many comments over the years from the UN Secretariat and Mission representatives on our persistent effort to include human health consequences in discussions about the environment. Today, the pairing of health and environment is a given. Our conference has been dubbed the Chornobyl Conference at the UN, and we’ve been credited with helping to keep scientific issues related to the Chornobyl nuclear accident on the agenda.

SESSION I: CHORNOBYL AND NUCLEAR ENERGY

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7. Finally, we needed a tragedy like Chornobyl to gain the knowledge and understanding of the need for using the Precautionary Principle for further development of our world. Like Chornobyl, climate change also needs to be examined and re-examined as it will affect everyone and everything that inhabits this world. I want to leave you with one key takeaway best expressed by astrophysicist Carl Sagan. Through his elegantly written books and his popular TV series, Cosmos, Sagan popularized the importance of Science as a way of thinking.

“[Science] is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: the obvious is sometimes false; the unexpected is sometimes true.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos (1985), pp. 277.

Thank you for your attention!

H.E. Amb. Volodymyr YelchenkoPermanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations

Opening Statement

Excellencies, Dear Colleagues and Distinguished Guests,

We are pleased once again to join this essential open dialogue on different aspects of the Chornobyl legacy, which has already became a long lasting tradition for the UN Headquarters. First of all let me thank Dr. Christine Durbak of World Informational Transfer for being so supportive in this partnership. I would also like to welcome all our distinguished speakers for today. I am particularly grateful to my colleagues Ambassadors from Belarus, Czech Republic, Germany, Japan and Lithuania for co-sponsoring this event.

Dear Colleagues,

Today Ukraine marks 30 years since the Chornobyl disaster, the world’s worst nuclear accident. In 1986 one of major humanitarian challenges has stricken Ukraine, and its neighboring European countries - exposing an unidentified problem of thousands of internally displaced people. This disaster entered the history of mankind as a sad and tragic page. Humanity did not know such technological catastrophe before in terms of its scope and complexity

of long-standing humanitarian, environmental, health, social and economic consequences. After three decades, the affected areas are still suffering from the impact of the accident. However, we can take heart that communities in the affected regions now have a chance and, increasingly, the means, to lead a normal life.

In this regard, Ukraine welcomes all appeals and initiatives expressed just moments ago by the UN Secretary-General and summarized by the President of the UN General Assembly and UN Member States at the special session of the General Assembly. It was underlined that the international community remembers the hundreds of emergency workers who responded to the accident and more than 330,000 people uprooted from their homes in its aftermath. It was emphasized that international community stand in solidarity with the millions who have been traumatized by lingering fears about their health and livelihoods. To remember those, who saved the world by sacrificing their own life, Ukraine declared 2016 as a year of remembrance of liquidators and victims of the Chornobyl disaster.

Dear colleagues,

To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the disaster, the Government of Ukraine is conducting a number of high-level events on the site of the Nuclear Power Plant, as well as the internationally supported conferences in Kyiv, including the meeting of the Assembly of donor countries to pledge for the construction of the concrete Shelter over the nuclear plant. The funding of 2.4 billion dollars has come from more than 40 countries and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and more is expected from the G7 group and the European Commission. With most of the work now completed, the structure is being fitted with high-tech equipment that will be able to decontaminate hazardous material.This ambitious goal would not have been achievable without international cooperation.

Throughout the years, the United Nations, the EBRD, the European Union, as well as individual donor countries have demonstrated their unwavering commitment to help Ukraine restore affected areas.

Thank you.

“Chornobyl...entered the history of mankind as a sad and tragic page.”


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H.E. Amb Motohide YoshikawaPermanent Representative of Japan to the United Nations

Chornobyl Commemoration

Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates,Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to

the organizers of today’s event, in particular my friend for many years, Ambassador Volodymyr Yelchenko, of Ukraine, as well as World Information Transfer. My gratitude also goes to all the co-sponsors.

Thirty years have passed since the Chornobyl accident.

To achieve true reconstruction, we believe it is particularly important to provide support for the health and mental care of the affected people. Based on this belief, Japan has implemented projects that provide medical equipment to the affected areas, for example, to more than thirty medical institutions in Belarus.

Securing the safety of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power

Plant and its related facilities is also indispensable to ensure the safety of the surrounding areas. In this regard, Japan has contributed 84 million euros to the “Chornobyl Shelter Fund (CSF)”. This Fund contributes to make the current shelter over the reactor stable and environmentally safe. Japan has also provided 34 million euros to the “Nuclear Safety Account (NSA)”. This Account finances the interim storage of spent fuels. I would like to announce that Japan has decided to additional 3.5 million euros to this account.

Ladies and Gentlemen, This year also marks the fifth year since the Fukushima

Daiichi nuclear accident caused by a huge tsunami that followed a massive earthquake.

Thanks to the efforts of people of Japan and also

strong support from the international community, the decommissioning of the plant and the contaminated water management has been progressing.

The radioactive density of the seawater outside the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station remains low enough, compared to the density limit specified in the regulation.

We finished removal of spent nuclear fuels from one of the Units in December 2014 and now we are in preparation for the removal of spent nuclear fuels and fuel debris from the other Units. After the Fukushima Daiichi accident, we established Joint Committees with Ukraine and Belarus. We have learned a lot from the experiences and knowledge collected from the Chornobyl incident on various issues, such as decontamination measures, monitoring surveys and food safety. As Japan moves forward with further reconstruction, I would like to draw your attention to an important challenge that we are faced with, which is the restrictions imposed against Japanese food products. Since the accident, many countries expressed concerns regarding contamination from radioactive materials and restricted and suspended imports of Japanese food products. Even now, some restrictions remain.

Japan is thoroughly inspecting radioactive materials in its food supply based on the most stringent standards in the world. As Chornobyl officials know, regulations based on unfounded rumors impede true reconstruction and development. We hope that the remaining restrictions will be lifted based on accurate scientific and objective data. Ladies and Gentlemen, let me conclude by expressing Japan’s determination to move forward towards the future, by learning from the experience of Chornobyl and cooperating with other countries.

“As Chornobyl officials know, regulations based on unfounded rumors impede true reconstruction

and development”

“We are living at the expense of the future by exhausting the world’s resources”


Summer-Fall 2016

H.E. Amb. Raimonda MurmokaitePermanent Representative of Lithuania to the United Nations


Excellencies, Distinguished Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen Today we commemorate the 30th anniversary of the

nuclear disaster at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) – one of the worst disasters in the history of nuclear energy. This commemoration is a most appropriate moment to reflect over the devastating effects of such accidents, to remember all those who had been affected by the disaster and pay our tribute to all those who had to manage the effects of the incident, including the first responders who walked into sure death, without adequate gear and support, to protect others.

More than seven million people and some 63,000 square miles (163,000 square kilometers) of land in Europe have been affected by the nuclear contamination from Chornobyl NPP. More than seven thousand Lithuanians were involved in the emergency response actions. Some in the region impacted by the Chornobyl nuclear accident, especially closer to the eye of the disaster, still live with its consequences. Power plant area remains a ghost, too risky for humans to return. Thirty years after the accident we witness the long-term nature of the impact of the disaster which created humanitarian, environmental, social, economic and health consequences.

Lithuania highly appreciates the efforts of the international community aimed at mitigating the consequences of the disaster in Chornobyl. Efforts of the international community in assisting the design and construction of a new, safe confinement (sarcophagus) for the Chornobyl’s reactor are especially important. Lithuania has also made its contribution to the Confinement Fund. This process of mitigation of the consequences of Chornobyl disaster reminds us of the key issues of our common safety and common concern.

As Chornobyl disaster has clearly demonstrated, nuclear accidents and radiological emergencies have no boundaries. Looking into the future, we must make sure such accidents don’t repeat.

We must focus first of all on prevention, while at the same time improving our ability to promptly and effectively respond to nuclear accidents. Unsafe nuclear facilities can bring huge and long-term damage to societies. Lithuania insists that after the devastating accidents in Chornobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011), environmental and nuclear safety, including transboundary impact assessment, in developing NPP projects should not be considered a mere formality but a pressing and immediate urgency.

The lessons of Chornobyl and other nuclear accidents oblige us to develop nuclear technologies in conformity with the spirit and letter of international nuclear safety and security requirements. To us, nuclear safety in the neighborhood and transboundary impact assessment is a question of national security and indeed our future- no wonder, since a new nuclear power plant is rising a mere 50 km away from the capital city Vilnius- Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant in Ostrovets. Should anything happen, the consequences would be hard to imagine. We therefore insist that the construction of this plant should strictly comply with the international nuclear security and safety requirements, undergo adequate stress tests, and should not pose a threat to the people of the whole region. Lithuania is urging appropriate attention of international organizations, first of all the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency, to the development of this NPP project.

Strong commitment to the requirements set by the International Nuclear Energy Agency - Espoo Convention and other international organisations, is of utmost importance for any country that develops or plans to develop nuclear energy, including our immediate neighbors. Countries which are only starting to develop nuclear energy programmes should be particularly transparent and cooperative. They should assume responsibility for the safety of their own people as well as for the impact on people of neighboring countries. Lithuania calls on all the countries that develop nuclear energy to implement the highest international nuclear safety and environmental standards throughout the full nuclear facility cycle and in the most comprehensive manner. We have seen the immense damage that nuclear accidents can cause, for generations to come.

“More than seven thousand Lithuanians were involved in the emergency response actions”

“More than seven million people and some 63,000 square miles of land in Europe has been affected by the

nuclear contamination from Chornobyl”


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Minister-Counsellor Jiri EllingerCharge d’ Affaires, Permanent Mission of Czech Republic to the United Nations


Madam Chair, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

On behalf of the Czech Republic, I would like to thank the Permanent Mission of Ukraine for hosting today’s event devoted to the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Chornobyl accident. In our view such gatherings can not only contribute to overcome the tragic nuclear legacy of Chornobyl disaster, but also provide an opportunity to reinvigorate ongoing efforts to improve nuclear safety and radiation protection worldwide.

Experience from operating nuclear facilities has shown that we should never slacken in our efforts to maintain and further upgrade nuclear safety standards. The Chornobyl accident has clearly demonstrated the need for international cooperation and effective information, knowledge and experience sharing as well as transparent communication among all stakeholders.

We consider it more than ever important to renew our assurance to the public that our nuclear facilities are operated in a safe and reliable manner, and are able to cope with possible accident scenarios. Public acceptance of a nuclear option will always be essential also in the case of new nuclear reactors we are going to build in the years to come. It goes without saying that the lessons learned from the Chornobyl, Fukushima and other accidents shall be properly considered also in this regard.

Nuclear power represents an important part of our national energy mix. While operating nuclear power plants, we are very well aware of our obligations and responsibilities in this respect.

We stand ready to actively contribute to all efforts to strengthen the international framework in the areas of nuclear safety, radiation protection, emergency preparedness and response.

That is why we have also supported the idea of setting up a multilateral funding mechanism to assist Ukraine in transforming the existing Chornobyl sarcophagus into a safe and environmentally stable system that would meet the requested criteria. The Czech Republic also pledged to contribute to the Chornobyl Shelter Fund, and a substantial voluntary contribution has been transferred for this purpose to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Madam Chair, in the aftermath of the Chornobyl disaster, a solid international nuclear safety and radiation protection framework was built.

Above all, the international community adopted binding safety-related conventions that address the need for an early notification of and cooperation in the case of nuclear and radiation accidents, and commit contracting parties to maintaining and promoting the highest standards in the fields of nuclear safety and radiation protection. We urge all Member States to adhere to these standards, as we all strongly desire to never see the aforementioned accidents repeated in the future. In this connection, I would like to mention that we are very well aware of the fact that the existing generation of reactors cannot be a “final solution”, as we will have to respond to the increasing demand for sustainable energy, while striving for ever higher safety standards. Let me thus highlight that innovative reactors and nuclear fuel cycles have a crucial role to play in our future development. Therefore, my country actively participates in relevant international activities to support the development of innovative technologies, especially in the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In conclusion, let me once again stress the continued urgency of paying adequate attention to nuclear safety and radiation protection, including at political level.

Thank you for your attention.

“The Chornobyl accident has demonstrated the need for international cooperation and effective information, knowledge and experience sharing”

“… innovative reactors and nuclear fuel cycles have a crucial role to play in our future development”


Summer-Fall 2016

Ambassador Heiko ThomsDeputy Permanent Representative of Germany to the United Nations


Excellencies, distinguished colleagues,Ladies and Gentlemen All over the world, Chornobyl is a synonym for the

enormous risks of nuclear energy. This is also true for my country. In Germany we will never forget the nuclear disaster and its manifold consequences. April 26, 1986, was a day of uncertainty and fear. I myself still remember that very clearly, as if it had happened only yesterday. I was in school that day.

The dreadful shock of the accident 30 years ago also provoked an unprecedented wave of compassion and solidarity in Germany. Hundreds of initiatives and partnerships, involving authorities, private businesses, and ordinary people were formed in order to provide help to affected communities in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

The 30th anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster reminds us of the fact that this tragedy is not over. Many people in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are still dealing with the disastrous consequences. Germany has provided substantial political, financial and technical support over many years to alleviate and overcome the consequences – and we will continue to do our share. Under the German G7 Presidency in 2015, an additional 615 million Euros were pledged by the international community to ensure that the construction of the New Safe Confinement over block 4 of the Chornobyl power plant could continue. The G7, together with many other countries and institutions, has by now made a total of more than two billion Euros available to ensure the long-term safety of the site.

The Federal Minister for the Environment and Nuclear Safety of Germany travelled to Ukraine last month to pay tribute to the victims and to visit the site of the destroyed reactor. The accident of Chornobyl and the events of Fukushima 25 years later opened our eyes to the risks associated with the use of nuclear energy. After Fukushima,

a broad consensus was reached in Germany to phase out nuclear power. At the end of 2022, all remaining nuclear power plants in Germany will be shut down and the use of nuclear energy in Germany will come to an end. The highest level of safety must be guaranteed for the remainder of the operating period.

This is a priority for our government. After Fukushima, stress tests were carried out on all our nuclear power plants. The lessons learned from these tests were compiled in a national action plan, which is being implemented, updated and published annually. The events in Fukushima have taught us that emergency planning is indispensable, regardless of the likelihood of a nuclear accident. We have therefore reviewed and updated the scientific foundations for emergency preparedness and response in Germany and the corresponding rules and regulations.

The environmental impact of our nuclear power plants will remain long after they have been shut down. Radioactive waste may emit radiation for millions of years. For that reason, it must be safely disposed of. This will continue to be a challenging task for Germany today and in the future.

Excellencies, distinguished colleagues,Ladies and Gentlemen, Radioactivity does not stop at natural borders. There are

several nuclear power plants in our neighboring countries that are close to the German border. This is why we need a joint approach to emergency response in Europe. This will also enhance our level of protection. Following a German initiative, the heads of the European radiological protection and nuclear safety authorities agreed on a common European strategy for the management of severe nuclear accidents for the first time.

There are many lessons we can and must draw from Chornobyl, Fukushima and other locations in the world which have become sad symbols for the tragic consequences of nuclear disasters. In Germany we have decided to focus our economy on renewable energies, phase out nuclear power and do without fossil energy sources in the medium term.

We are calling this transformation the Energiewende or Energy Transformation. We believe that it will not only ben-efit our economy but also greatly contribute to achieving our part in realizing the Sustainable Development Goals and in implementing the Paris Climate Agreement which we signed only a few days ago.

I thank you.

“Chornobyl is a synonym for the enormous risks of nuclear energy”


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Dr. James HansenDirector, Program on Climate Studies Columbia University Former Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

“Justice for Young People”

Thank you very much Madam Chair, I’m going to talk about how we can get justice for young people. We have an urgency to recognize global emergency. The reason that it’s hard for people to recognize this emergency is that the weather looks fine. The difficulty is that the climate system has great inertia. The ocean is 4 km deep, the ice sheets are 2-3 km thick. They don’t respond quickly as we apply forces to them. That means that we have only felt about half of the global temperature change due to the gases that are already in the atmosphere. The rest is going to occur in coming years, and that’s why it’s an intergenerational issue.

The reality is that our climate system turns out to be dominated by amplifying feedbacks. For example, as the planet gets warmer, ice and snow melts, exposing a darker surface that absorbs more sunlight, making the planet still warmer. That’s an example of an amplifying feedback. The really big issue is the stability of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, because we are very close to the point of no return in which we hand young people a situation in which the warming ocean is melting the ice shelves (the tongues of ice that come out into the ocean). As these ice shelves melt, it allows the ice sheets to expel icebergs into the ocean much more rapidly, causing large sea level rise.

When we get sea level rise of several meters, it means our coastal cities will become dysfunctional, and the economic consequences of that are incalculable. We really can’t let that happen, but we are very close to the point where it becomes unavoidable. That means we’re going to have to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that we’re pouring into the atmosphere, specifically we must phase out fossil fuel emissions. That’s possible! The solution is technically possible, and is actually economy sensible, but we’re not

taking the actions that could achieve that. So, there are several potential injustices associated with climate change. One of them is that it’s today’s adults who are receiving the benefits of using fossil fuel energy. We saw the example that we now have air conditioning & washing machines. There are a lot of benefits of this energy. Those are benefits that the present generation is getting, and we’re leaving the problems to the next generation. So there’s this intergenerational injustice. But there’s also a north to south injustice, because the fossil fuel and CO2 emissions have mostly been caused by Europe, United States, Japan, places in the north, but the climate changes have really been felt at low latitudes.

The countries that did almost nothing to cause climate change are going to face the greatest impacts. And then, of course, there is the injustice of one species taking over the planet. There’s the danger that if we continue on with business as usual of fossil fuel emissions, it will cause a shifting of climate zones, which is already beginning but is relatively small so far. However, in combination with the stresses we put on all the other species, there’s the potential to cause the extinction of a significant fraction of the species on the planet. Let’s talk about these climate impacts.

In the case of species extermination it’s a combination of different stresses along with climate change.So I usually give an example of this insect - the monarch butterfly. It’s a good example because it’s a combination of a stress caused by Round-Up, a herbicide that kills milk weeds which are the only thing that monarch caterpillars can eat. These monarch butterflies are remarkable.-They travel over a year all the way from Mexico to Canada, and find their ways back to the trees where their great-grandparents (started the migration). Unfortunately, because of a combination of these effects we now have only a few percent as many of these butterflies as we did a few decades ago. It’s a good example of the stresses we put on different species.

It is a combination of the multiple stresses that we put on species along with the shifting climate zone which has the potential to cause extermination of a significant fraction of the species on the planet. A good example is the rainforests of the ocean. The coral reefs have associated with them over a million species. The stresses that we are putting on coral reefs are in part the increasing acidification of the ocean as we put more CO2 in the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide

“In the case of species extermination it’s a combination of different stresses along with climate change.”

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

“The countries that did almost nothing to cause climate change will face the greatest impacts.”


Summer-Fall 2016

dissolves into the ocean and makes the ocean more acid. A more acidic ocean can dissolve the carbonate skeletons of such marine life. That’s one irreversible climate impact. The second one that’s also irreversible on any time scale that humans would care about is ice sheet disintegration and rising sea levels because it takes thousands of years for ice sheets to build up from snowfall. So, if we allow ice sheets to disintegrate, sea level will be higher for as far into the future as we’d care to imagine.

I already mentioned how this happens - as the ocean gets warmer it melts the ice shelves. So, we see for example in Greenland, the area that has melted during the summer fluctuates from year to year with the weather but in general there’s an increase in the area on Greenland that has summer melt. That melt water will burrow a hole in the ice sheet, go to the base of the ice sheet, and speed up the discharge of the giant icebergs to the oceans.

We can measure the melting of the ice on Greenland and Antarctica because we have a satellite which measures the gravitational field so precisely that we can see the changes in the mass of the Greenland ice sheet and the Antarctic ice sheet. Greenland is losing about 300 km^3 of ice per year.

A very important feedback which was described in a recently published paper is the effect of this melting freshwater that is discharged from Greenland and Antarctica.

the ocean surface water lighter, so it does not sink as easily. The normal process of sinking deep water brings warmer water to the ocean surface, where it releases heat to the atmosphere and into space, which is a way that ocean loses heat into space. If we shut off that circulation, then the heat stays in the ocean and it’s available to melt the ice shelves. That’s what’s beginning to happen; we are beginning to get a feedback with the ice shelves are melting faster.

As a result, the waters around Antarctica and Southeast of Greenland are actually getting cooler at the surface and warmer at depth. In our models it takes several decades into the future before we get very substantial cooling and higher melt rates. In the real world we are already beginning to see cooling southeast of Greenland and in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. The models might be less sensitive to this and we think we know why. It’s because the models tend to have too much small scale mixing which reduces the effect. The rate of sea level rise has been increasing; it’s now more than 3 mm per year.

This is more than a foot per century, which is still moderate, but the rates of sea level rise are accelerating. There is a danger, as we know from Earth’s history; the last time the planet was two degrees warmer than pre-industrial, which means one degree warmer than now because we’ve already had one degree of warming, most of it in the last 40 years, but the last time it was one degree warmer than today, sea level was 6-9 meters higher. That’s 20-30 feet. We can’t let that happen, or young people have a disastrous situation. More than half of the large cities in the world are located on coastlines. Hundreds of millions of people live along the coastlines. Just in China there are 350 million people near sea level.

The entire nation of Bangladesh is near sea level. We cannot let that happen. Let me also mention climate extremes. As the planet gets warmer, we experience heat waves and things that go with that such as droughts, fires. But because the atmosphere is warmer, it holds more water vapor. Therefore at the times and places we do get rainfall, we get heavier rainfall events, and we get extreme floods and storms that are driven by latent heat.

That means thunderstorms, tornadoes, tropical storms - all of them get their energy from water vapor that has the ability to produce a stronger storm. We see that the temperature

Normally, we have an overturning ocean circulation, which is related to the sinking of water in the winter at the high latitudes.

The salty ocean water, which gets cold in the winter at the high latitudes, will sink into the deep ocean. Around Antarctica it sinks all the way to the bottom of the ocean-thus becoming Antarctic bottom water. As the ice melt on Antarctica increases and discharges as freshwater it makes

“That’s what’s beginning to happen; we are beginning to get a feedback with the ice shelves are melting faster.”


Summer-Fall 201610

fluctuates from year to year - weather is highly variable even averaged over a season; it’s highly variable from one year to another so you need to look at a probability distribution function of temperature anomalies about the average. That bell curve describing the distribution of anomalies is shifting towards higher temperatures. The amount of the shift depends on where you are in the world. In the US it’s not so large yet. In the summers the warming is enough so that if you’re as old as I am you notice that the frequency of unusually warm summers is somewhat higher than it was fifty years ago. For the winters, the shift is quite small, so far. If you look at some places in the Middle East and the Mediterranean, the summer shift is now 2.5 standard deviations, so every summer is warmer than it was 50 years ago. In the tropics all four seasons are warmer.

I just mentioned that there’s an empirical relationship in the parts of the world with low latitudes that are already hot, the increased heat actually makes it uncomfortable.

the way up to New York City because the ocean temperatures all the way up the Eastern United States were about three degrees warmer than normal. That is a result of the ocean circulation slowing down, as I showed on an earlier chart. The freshwater from Greenland has caused a slowdown of the Atlantic overturning circulation -which causes not only

cooling south of Greenland- but also causes warming along the east coast of North America. There was a lot of damage in different states along the east coast.

The bottom line is that the science is now crystal clear. We cannot burn all of the fossil fuels. We have only burned a small fraction of the fossil fuels in the ground, as the purple parts of the bar graph show, the oil, gas, and coal, the conventional fossil fuels. If we burned all of these fossil fuels, we’d melt all of the ice on the planet. Sea level would be 70 m higher, 250 feet higher. So we can’t do that, that’s crystal clear. The problem is that all of the nations would like to raise their standards of living the way we have done it in the North. The way we did it was by burning fossil fuels. Fossil fuels appear to the public to be the cheapest energy. They only appear to be [the cheapest] because the prices do not include the cost to society - the effects of air pollution, water pollution, and climate change.

So we need to add in that cost, if we want to solve this problem, we have to make the price of fossil fuels honest. We have to add a fee. I argue that we should collect a fee from the fossil fuel companies, at the domestic mine or the port of entry. I was giving a talk one day, and I thought my grandchildren were in bed, but Connor wasn’t, (who was then 8 years old); at the end of my talk my wife noticed that there were tears running down his face.

My wife ran to him and told him “don’t worry Connor, grownups are working on the climate problem, they will fix it.” I think Connor continued to think about it, as now he’s 11 years old, and he recently wrote down some thoughts. I was impressed because he figured out the two most important facts; one of them was unless we can figure out a time machine that actually works, young people are not going to be able to go back and fix this problem. And he also concluded that we know that using fossil fuels is not safe, it is very dangerous. So all energy sources have problems associated with them, and we need to compare them

In the Mediterranean and the Middle East the summers are becoming very uncomfortable, and there’s an empirical relationship between conflicts and temperature. The intergroup violence and conflicts between nations, there’s a 14% increase per standard deviation relationship. We’ve now had warming in those regions of more than two standard deviations. We also see an increase in fires.

There are other reasons associated with this, but increasing temperature is a major factor. There’s also an increase in floods. The 100 year floods now occur more than once per century in many places around the world. In just the last several days Houston, Texas had 24 inches of rain in one day, which has caused enormous damage. We also can connect this to Hurricane Sandy, which was a weak Hurricane - a Category 1 hurricane, but it remained hurricane strength all

“… the last time it was one degree warmer than today, sea level was 6-9 meters higher.”

“Millions of people live along the coastlines...the entire nation of Bangladesh is near sea level.


Summer-Fall 2016

objectively. Just an example, we already had a discussion about the fact that if we put our mind to it, there are ways we can develop technologies which are carbon free. We just unfortunately have not put the effort into the research and development over the last several decades that we should have been doing. To all the young people I see in the audience, I’m sorry for the terrible mess, but we’ve got a problem which we need to pay attention to. Thank you.

Dr. Zydia Zablotska University of California, San FranciscoColumbia University-UCSF-NCI Choronobyl Studies

“Leukemia and Thyroid”

Good morning and thank you for inviting me to this conference dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Chornobyl accident.

To begin with, why did we suspect that thyroid cancer and leukemia would be something that we need to pay attention to? The decision was based on the studies of the survivors of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Twenty years after the bombings in 1945, the only significant consequences were an increase in cataracts, leukemia, and thyroid cancer. However, after 30 years, there was also a significant increase in solid cancers. After 50 and 65 years following the bombings, there were also increases in non-cancer diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and non-malignant thyroid diseases.

Over the first twenty years after the Chornobyl accident, almost 5,000 cases of thyroid cancer were diagnosed in those who were under the age of 18 years at the time of the accident. Four thousand of these young patients, were younger than 15years at the time of the Chornobyl explosion. Before the Chornobyl accident, the annual incidence of thyroid cancer in Belarus was 0.04 per 100,000. Twenty years after the accident, it rose almost 200 times. Over time, questions have been raised: Is this increased incidence rate due to screening? Or is it due to radiation exposure after the Chornobyl accident? Many scientific groups screened Chornobyl children and adolescents for thyroid cancer in the years after the accident, contributing to the so-called “screening effect.” We observed a tremendous increase in thyroid cancer incidence rates in Belarus, which peaked around 2006 and went down, with women having much higher rates compared to men.

We decided to conduct collaborative studies in Ukraine and Belarus with funding from the U.S. National Institute of Health and scientists from Columbia University, the University of California, San Francisco, National Cancer Institute, and various research institutions in Ukraine and Belarus to answer this question. We enrolled 25,000 children who were under the age of 18 years at the time of the accident. These studies are very unique in the history of epidemiology because all study participants had individual thyroid activity measurements taken within two months after the accident. In 1997, we went into Ukraine and Belarus and looked for these individuals and invited them to come for screening to identify whether they have thyroid disease or not.

UNSCEAR Report, Vol. II, Annex D

Due to the prevailing wind patterns (in the Western and Northern directions in the first days after the accident and then in all directions), the long-range transport of various radionuclides caused serious contamination of the regions both close to the site of the accident and also throughout Europe. The chain of radioactive contamination was through the deposition of radioactive isotopes in the grass on the fields. Children who drank milk from cows which grazed on the contaminated grass, ingested radioisotopes, particularly radioiodines, and received substantial doses of radiation to the thyroid gland.

The majority of the 25,000 subjects from our studies in Ukraine and Belarus had moderate radiation doses. However, there was a sizeable group of patients who received extremely high doses. The average dose in Ukraine and Belarus was a little bit less than 1 gray, which is considered a very large radiation dose. We screened these patients for thyroid cancer and other thyroid disease several times (3 times in Belarus and 5 times in Ukraine). During the first screening of 12, 000 patients in Belarus, we identified 87 pathologically confirmed thyroid cancers. We calculated the risk depending on the thyroid radiation doses in 1986. It was evident that those with higher radiation doses had a significantly higher probability


Summer-Fall 201612

of developing thyroid cancer. Patients who received thyroid radiation doses of approximately 3 gray had 9 - 10 times higher risk of developing thyroid cancer compared to those who had very low doses.

A summary of the findings from these two cohort studies is that risks are very similar in both countries, and a little smaller compared to the radiation risks estimated for atomic bomb survivors. Thyroid cancer started to appear much quicker than it appeared in Japan – three-four years after the Chornobyl accident. Thirty years after the Chornobyl accident, most thyroid cancers are of papillary subtype, with the follicular subtype being extremely rare. Prognosis for these patients is very good and in our cohort of 25,000 patients, there were no deaths over the entire period of follow-up starting in 1997. To date, only 15 children have died from thyroid cancer in the three countries most contaminated by the Chornobyl fallout, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.

We also investigated the initial suggestion that women were at higher risk compared to men, but up to now, this question remains unresolved. There is however, some evidence that who were the youngest at the time of the accident had the highest risk. Also, people with previous thyroid diseases were at increased risk. In some territories of Ukraine and Belarus, there has been significant iodine deficiency before the Chornobyl accident. Many people had previously existing thyroid conditions such as diffuse goiter, which increased their risk of getting thyroid cancer due to radiation exposures after the Chornobyl accident. The last finding from our cohort studies is that after 22 years, there was no evidence of reduction of radiation risk of thyroid cancer.

We also enrolled approximately 5,000 women who were pregnant at the time of the Chornobyl accident to investigate the radiation effects on the fetus. We found that children exposed in utero had higher radiation risks compared to those who were exposed as children and adolescents, and

will also require a lifetime follow-up for thyroid diseases. A novel and unique finding from our studies was that radiation also increases the risk of non-cancer thyroid diseases such as for example thyroid follicular adenoma. The slide shows the results from our study of follicular adenoma in Belarus. Again, the higher the dose the higher the risk of follicular adenoma. The trend for follicular adenoma was very similar to thyroid cancer, which is very unfortunate because it means that these patients will require lifelong hormonal therapy and follow-up. We also looked at other non-malignant diseases of the thyroid gland, such as autoimmune thyroiditis, hypo- and hyperthyroidism.

Again, most of them increased with higher radiation doses with the exception of hyperthyroidism, for which the association was not clear. The main conclusion from our thyroid studies in Ukraine and Belarus is that the radiation risks of thyroid cancer and non-malignant thyroid diseases are similar in size to those of the atomic bomb survivors from Japan. Findings of the two cohorts are unaffected by the screening because we screened everyone in our study irrespective of radiation dose to eliminate the screening effect. We found out that the increased risk of thyroid cancer was indeed due to radiation. Finally, the most important conclusion is that continued follow-up will clarify the findings and we will need to follow-up this population for many years to come.

Another radiation-related health outcome which we wanted to study, was leukemia, because bone marrow is one of the most radiosensitive tissues in the body. Leukemia

“The majority of the 25,000 subjects from our studies in Ukraine and Belarus had moderate radiation doses...

there were no deaths over the entire period of follow-up starting in 1997”


Summer-Fall 2016

is known to appear two-five years after radiation exposure. The first studies of leukemia among those exposed to the Chornobyl fallout appeared five years after accident and examined radiation risks in children exposed in utero and in adults. Since these studies did not have individual radiation doses, the exact nature of radiation risks remained unclear. We initiated a case-control study of leukemia in Chornobyl cleanup workers. Two studies were conducted in Ukraine, which followed-up workers over a period of 20 years. In analyses of this population, we estimated a significant increase in all types of leukemia due to radiation exposures. In this slide, we show that cleanup workers who dad doses of 0.2 grey to the bone marrow had approximately two times

population have not gone down.

We recently reported that cleanup workers with chronic lymphocytic leukemia died sooner if they had higher

radiation doses. The purple line in the graph shows that cleanup workers with the highest doses had the shortest survival. Clean-up workers had the highest doses. You can see that after being diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, they died shortly within a couple of years. A typical progression of chronic lymphocytic leukemia in the U.S., for example, would be 20-30 years after diagnosis. So this is very aggressive leukemia. The conclusion from our studies of Chornobyl is that all clinical and population studies show that radiation had a significant impact on the long-term health risks of all three groups of the population that were exposed to radiation. We confirmed radiation risk for leukemia, thyroid cancer and reported a new findings of significantly increased radiation risks of non-malignant thyroid diseases.

The long-term mental health effects, however, appear to be the most significant public health consequence of the Chornobyl accident. Unfortunately, no large studies of mental health effects with radiation doses have been initiated.

We are unable to provide any scientific conclusion about the existence of association between radiation doses from the Chornobyl nuclear accident and mental health effects. I want to end my presentation with a quote from George Johnson who said “The most debilitating effect has been the paralyzing fatalism.”

“We are living at the expense of the future by exhausting the world’s resources”

higher risk of any type of leukemia compared to those who had bone marrow dose close to zero.

In addition, there was no difference in radiation risks for various subtypes of leukemia. A number of previous studies, especially of atomic bomb survivors from Japan, suggested that chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which constitutes almost 50% of leukemia in adult men in the U.S., was not caused by radiation exposure.

Our study contradicts these previous findings and suggests that chronic lymphocytic leukemia is associated with radiation. We showed that approximately 20% of all leukemia among Chornobyl cleanup workers from Ukraine was due to radiation, with the rest being due to other exposures and age-related effects. The summary for leukemia is that there is a definite linear dose-response in Chornobyl cleanup workers. There is a similarity of risks for all subtypes of leukemia. We also examined other hazardous exposures in this population, i.e. lead and benzene. There was some indication that drivers (those exposed to petroleum) had higher risks of leukemia, irrespective of radiation dose. After twenty years of follow-up, increased risks of leukemia in this


Summer-Fall 201614

Dr. William RomProfessor, College of Global Public HealthNew York University

“Nuclear Energy, Climate Change and Public Health”

Madam Chair and Distinguished Guests,

This weekend (April 22, 2016) is the 46th anniversary of Earth Day. Earth Day was founded by Governor and Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1970. At the EPA Laboratory in Research Triangle Park, NC, there is a quote from him: “The ultimate test of man’s conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.” The environment was priority number one in 1970. Thousands of people had demonstrated for a clean environment. The EPA was established as were legislative accomplishments: The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act (1972), National Environmental Policy Act, the Occupational Safety Health Act. Many events culminated in 1970 thanks to Rachel Carson who wrote The Silent Spring. Remember DDT was an insecticide that was very potent, but entered the water supply, was taken up by fish and plants, and entered the food chain of birds like the bald eagle who were contaminated by DDT causing them to produce eggs that were too thin to hatch.

Since banning DDT, we have had a tremendous recovery of bald eagles in this country. Last summer, I was sitting on my Adirondack chair Burntside Lake at the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota; I looked up and a bald eagle came out of the sky with its talons extended. It landed in the water, missed a fish, spread its wings, and landed on a branch five feet above my head. I was stupefied. Bald eagles are coming back and perhaps this is an example of how to solve some of our environmental challenges.

In 1970, I was one of the hundreds of people who were active on Earth Day and organized a panel to protect the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota. By 1978, we had a wilderness bill for the Boundary Waters. We solved that problem. Then came acid rain and EPA regulated SO2 using a cap and trade mechanism. We are now observing the recovering of Adirondack lakes and streams. Then

we discovered that chloroflurocarbons in refrigerators and air conditioning systems destroyed the ozone in the stratosphere. We then discovered an ozone hole developing over Antarctica during the extremely cold winters, and we were all worried about UV radiation extending from the ozone hole. Over the past year, measurements have shown that the ozone hole is shrinking and by 2050, we’ll have largely healed it. Now we have carbon pollution: CO2 and methane.

Never before have we had such a challenge as global warming from the greenhouse effect of rising carbon pollution. These two pollutants are going to cause tremendous problems for public health and now challenge us on generating electricity and transport.

Dr. Durbak gave me a challenge to discuss the human health effects of nuclear energy. In 1980, Dr. Victor Archer and I wrote a book on the Health Implication of New Energy Technologies published by Ann Arbor Science. We had 54 chapters about new energy technologies and their health effects. I’m a physician and I’m very interested in environmental health effects. I illustrate the nuclear accident at Fukushima. Dozens of tanks down there are for the melted nuclear fuel masses to be stored (750,000 tons). You can see the workers are protected in suits and masks.

There are numerous challenges in the nuclear energy cycle. We have to mine uranium. I spent 6 years developing the Rocky Mountain Occupational Center of Health at the University of Utah. In the Four Corner states of Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico, most of the uranium mining is done. We’ve had an epidemic of lung cancer in uranium miners exposed to alpha particles in the dust, and underground mines that existed there in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Early detection of lung cancer is a problem. But uranium mining also produces tailings. We have EPA Superfund sites throughout the Navajo region that need to be cleaned up.

“Never before have we had such a challenge as global warming from rising carbon pollution.”


Summer-Fall 2016

We have uranium transport and processing. We have nuclear power plant construction, which is extremely expensive. In 1957, the Price-Anderson law limited the liability to $500 million from accidents. We have the problem of disposal of spent fuel rods, and these now have to be stored on site. The nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, has been stopped. We have to process plutonium or reprocess as a potential solution. Reprocessing plutonium has not been funded in the President’s 2017 budget. We have to worry about the risk of dirty bombs’ possession by terrorists. We also have the accidents. We have had accidents at Three Mile Island, Chornobyl, and, of course, Fukushima. Third generation nuclear power plants exist in China and fourth generation plants are still in planning stages but we also have the risk of ionizing radiation to workers and residents’ health.

Nearly all radiation exposures in the modern world are low-dose or at low dose-rates. The Radiation Health Effects Research Foundation extant for over half a century, has data on 47 years’ lifetime follow-up; there has been an increase in cancer deaths and non-cancer deaths at 5 mSv. A useful representative value is that for those exposed at age 30, the solid cancer risk is elevated by 47% per sievert at age 70. There is a linear relationship for solid cancers incidence. Meta analyses evaluating Chornobyl type workers, UK nuclear power plant workers, and American power plant workers that there is an increase in leukemia. We also have radiation-induced other diseases, e.g. heart disease. Again, a straight line linear relationship exists. There may be a role of radiation-caused inflammation in causing heart disease.

The U.S. energy cycle for producing atomic bombs and nuclear energy has had a compensation program called Energy Employees Compensation Program run by the Department of Labor. By January 2016, they had 100,000 claims, and a total of 12 billion dollars has already been paid for 22 different cancers. I’m going to segue from the problem of electricity generation to our next public health problem, which is climate change.

John Holdren, the U.S. science advisor, has shown in these slides that climate change is our number one scientific and public health challenge. As Dr. James Hansen said, as the Northern Hemisphere burns fossil fuels, the whole world is warming up. The first health problem from climate change is that it’s getting hot out there. There are heat waves. In 2003, there was a huge one in France for nine consecutive days in August. During that period, there were 15,000

excess deaths in France and 32,000 in Western Europe, with mortality being age-related. There were increased deaths from heat strokes, hyperthermia, dehydration, heart failure, chronic respiratory disease, and an increase in psychiatric disorders, particularly depression. These were mainly due to the lack of air conditioning in Europe. We also note that in cities, there is a heat island effect caused by the asphalt, which makes it even hotter. The problem with the heat island effect is that it doesn’t cool off at night and these heat-related deaths occur especially at night when the heat persists.

In addition to heat waves, we have mortality and morbidity from air pollution. We have wildfire smoke and increase in non-accidental mortality. We have seen increases from bushfires in Australia. We have seen our fire season in the U.S. increase by more than 2 and a half months. The smoke is a toxic particulate pollutant, Forest fires places demands on the budget of the U.S. Forest Service up to 50% for fighting these fires.

One of global warming’s greatest threats to public health may be the spread of mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever and Lyme disease. Dengue Fever is spread by two kinds of mosquitoes: the Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. Dengue causes severe muscle pains and headaches, but only about 5% of people contracted with the disease may have shock syndrome and a risk of death. The zone of the mosquito will increase from 2,080 to 2,100, showing that much of the U.S. will be a zone for the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that not only spread Dengue Fever, but also Zika, Chikungunya, some are involved in Malaria, and recently Yellow Fever, which has broken out in Angola. But probably one of the biggest concerns for public health are

the extreme weather events: storms, flooding, etc. Tropical cyclones get their energy from the warm surface layer of the ocean, which is getting warmer. Tropical Cyclone Haiyan had 6,000 people who were killed, 27,00 injured, and over a million homes that disappeared. These hurricanes have not exempted New York City. I’m a doctor at Bellevue, our largest public health hospital in the country – and during Hurricane Sandy, Bellevue was flooded. There are a total of 825 beds at the hospital. The surging waters went down the loading dock, into the basement where six feet of water accumulated. The elevators went down there and were shorted out. The pumps to bring diesel to the thirteenth floor were shorted out so that doctors had to carry diesel

“Reprocessing plutonium has not been funded in the President’s 2017 budget”

“There were increased deaths from heat strokes, hyperthermia, dehydration, heart failure, chronic respiratory disease, and an increase in psychiatric

disorders, particularly depression..”


Summer-Fall 201616

up the stairwell to keep the emergency power going. The pumps for water were shorted out so that water to the 22nd floor roof, to flush one thousand toilets, couldn’t get up there. Bellevue was evacuated, and the hospital had over 300 million dollars of damages. NYU Langone Medical Center had a billion dollars of FEMA-compensated damages, primarily because of all the CT Scanners and equipment loss. Not only that, but these hospitals were out of business for six months requiring doctors like myself to send our fellows and residents trainees to other hospitals, obtain accreditation, determining where to have our clinic patients go. Our faculty members met at the local pub to keep morale up.

Not only will the oceans have greater storms, but ocean levels will also rise due to thermal expansion and melting of the glaciers and polar ice shelves. Oceans will become more acidic from the CO2 converting to carbonic acid. Our glaciers are starting to melt. As a medical student, I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. I got married, had a daughter, and later she followed my footsteps to the summit of Kilimanjaro.

Twenty-nine years later, I observed from Uhuru Point that the glacier was gone. There are glaciers in the Himalayas, the Kun Lun, the Tian Shan, but the Tibetan Plateau is where seven Asian rivers begin. These rivers serve 40% of the world’s population. Those glaciers are melting. I went to the mountain where the source of the Yangtze River is located - we climbed Mount Geladaintong (21,750 feet) and found that the glaciers were receding there. I was also able to go the Northern tip of Greenland and join the Inuit on their spring hunt. This is the glacier from the ice cap of Greenland going down toward the ocean. It had receded five kilometers in five years.

And then finally I was able to go down and see some of the glaciers in the Antarctic region. This is the Larsen B Ice Shelf on the front page of the New York Times in 2002 breaking up. Dr. Hansen said the ocean is getting warmer, and these ice shelves are melting from underneath which is very hard to demonstrate in computer models. When these glaciers melt underneath, the ice shelves that are resting on the continental shelf will break in half into the ocean. Several of these ice sheets, the Bellingshausen and Amundsen shelves, are now melting so fast that they have the potential for significantly elevate sea level, up to four or five meters.

As Dr. James Hansen said, we must limit global warming so as to not exceed 2 degrees Celsius. In fact, to avoid dangerous consequences, it should increase to a maximum of 1.5 degrees celsius or less. We have to convince the world that to meet our target most of the coal, gas, and oil, owned by the fossil feul industry, must be left in the ground. We’ve also discovered that fracking leaks significant amounts of methane – a gas that is 22 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a span of twenty or more years. We now have a new challenge of methane leaks.

President Obama’s Climate Action Plan has three parts: cutting carbon pollution, preparing the U.S. for climate change, and leading international efforts to address climate change. This slide shows the >500 purple dots that are the coal-fired power plants and the blue ones are natural gas; this is all fossil fuel. You can see that the central part of the country and the Rocky Mountain area are studded with coal-fire power plants. To control that we are going to have to design a plan so that the EPA can have authority over the regulation of carbon dioxide.

The EPA Clean Power Plan has three building blocks: Clean combustion of coal, switching to natural gas, and renewable energy such as solar and wind. The Clean Power Plan could result in a 30% reduction of fossil fuel usage by 2030. It would reduce deaths, asthma attacks, heart attacks, hospital admissions, and the cost will only be 8 billion dollars, whereas the benefits can reach up to 34-54 billion dollars. Most of these benefits are health benefits from getting rid of coal-fired power plants. The ingenious Clean Power Plan relies on federalism: it depends on the states with every state having a target to meet and most of these will be focused on coal. It will change the mix of electricity generation to more gas and renewable energy. However, it will not get us to 80% renewables; it is a short-term fix.

“In addition to heat waves, we have mortality and morbidity from air pollution.”

“Oceans will become more acidic from the CO2 converting to carbonic acid.”


Summer-Fall 2016

Dr. Todd AllenSenior Fellow, THIRD WAYFormer Deputy Director, Science and Technology, Idaho National Laboratory

“A 21st Vision of Nuclear Energy”

Thank you very much.

I titled my talk “Twenty-first Century Vision of Nuclear Energy”- but want to make clear this is not necessarily my vision, as much as it is my observations of the people who study and research nuclear technologies or try to improve them- so that will be the basis of my presentation.

I want to start with a little bit of the context for energy. It’s important to recognize the importance of why we care about energy – and that is simply, because the use of energy has made our lives significantly better. A famous example, contained in a YouTube video by Hans Rosling, talks about the value of the washing machine and how modern technology has changed people’s lives away from back breaking labor that prevents you from enjoying a high quality life, and I think this is an excellent example. I’ve argued many times publicly that, after getting married, getting a washing machine in my house is probably the second happiest thing that has ever happened to me. But it’s obviously not just washing machines, it’s Water Purification, Sanitation, Irrigation, and Heating and Air Conditioning, and things that make our lives more livable. And there are people in the West who, I think would never go back, and I think there are people in developing countries who want the types of things that I’ve listed here that make our lives much better.

A professor at the University of Rochester named Jesse Ausubel put out a plot of how we use energy over time, and how many grams of carbon we put out for every Gigajoule of energy that we produce. There’s nothing in this correlation that talks about why, it’s just what we do. It shows that from about 1850 up to about 2000, we slowly use less carbon in the energy that we produce. I think this is true and natural, and I think we see in the debate about climate change, a continuing push to make this happen. If you look at the technology, we tend to use higher energy density fuels which produce more energy per unit mass. If you extend that forward, you would project yourselves towards a use of nuclear energy as a component of a modern energy system. Right now we are in a very interesting national and international discussion about how to get to our clean

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has shown that there is enough onshore wind in the Great Plains and sunlight in the Southwest to generate enough power to meet 80% of the needs of the country without storage. It does require high voltage direct current transmission lines to both coasts.

NOAA has recently published an article: Harnessing the Wind and the Solar Renewable Energy to meet our electricity needs by 2030. This would reduce CO2 by 80% from 1990 levels. The important thing to realize is that wind turbines and photovoltic energy are here and are affordable. The straight lines are high voltage DC transmission lines, of which there would be a total of thirty-two bringing power from the Great Plains to the east and the southeast and the solar power to California. It would reduce the consumption of water, and it would reduce the amount of health problems dramatically.

Lastly, the Paris Climate Agreement signed by 190 countries committed pledges to tackle climate change. There is a global ambition for doing this but the important thing is the urgency of doing something now.

We have to do a scale of moving up to 50% renewable energy. For example, in New York State we have about 1000 wind turbines, but we’re going to need about 2600 more by 2030 if we’re going to fill in the gap of our coal-fire power plants, and three out of our four nuclear plants will close because of age. We’re going to need to produce about 40 million solar voltaic panels spread over 360 solar farms just in New York state!With enough urgency and scale, this problem and challenge is solvable with current technology!

“fracking leaks significant amounts of methane – a gas that is 22 times more potent than carbon dioxide.”


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energy goals. Clearly, people want to use as much solar and wind, traditional renewable energy, as possible. There’s a question about whether or not it will be enough, and I believe, amongst other people, that we’ll end up with a component of nuclear energy in this modern future. The question is what to do with the technology to make it as valuable as possible. A couple of other things I’ll note. One is just a projection from BP Worldwide, they believe that we’ll be increasing the use of nuclear energy by 50% by 2035, and I’ll note a book that came out recently called Half-Earth.

It’s not about nuclear energy, it’s about how to protect biodiversity on the planet, and this author’s argument is that to protect biodiversity, it is best to leave nature alone, and therefore use high energy density sources like nuclear.

So what does nuclear energy look like? This is a U.S. example, and I’ll admit in my presentation I tend to be U.S. centric because that’s my knowledge base, but this just shows the goals of the U.S. Clean Power Plant. If we meet those goals relative to decreasing tons of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere, we’ll drop by a little over four hundred million tons by 2030. Around 2030 is when the current generation of light water reactors are expected to start retiring.

If we retire them and don’t replace them with clean energy sources, in another twenty years, we’ll essentially lose all of the gains from the clean power plan. And so clearly we need to replace this with non-carbon emitting energy. Right now, nuclear power in the U.S. provides about 60% of our non-carbon emitting energy, so it seems to me there is a component of nuclear in the future. So what does that mean relative to how you improve

nuclear technologies? Well, certainly you expect a nuclear technologist to improve the technology, that’s no different than any other technology. People don’t drive the same cars they drove in Henry Ford’s day. Now we drive much safer cars and there’s no difference in nuclear technology. We also need to think about how you make nuclear energy affordable. Before, we always built very large giga-watt scale plants. It’s now clear that there should be multiple types of nuclear power plants, each meeting different functions.

When rolled out in the early days, it was very secretive and, in many cases behind military programs, I think we have engendered a mistrust that we should try to fix for future generations of nuclear technology. My view is that any energy technology, nuclear included, has some benefit and has some risk and in the end we end up using some proportion of any of them that’s a balance of the value we get from them in in proportion to the hassle.

I can spend the rest of my time talking about nuclear technology. First, following the Fukushima accident, and for those of you that are not aware, the real reason the plants failed and were destroyed is because they were unable to bring electricity up the plant to keep the cooling system working.

The plant shut down properly after the earthquake, but the flood from the tsunami took out their entire electrical and generating system, and the backup batteries died very soon. There were six plants in the Fukushima area, they could not restore energy to four of the plants, however they were able to do so for two of them. Thus two plants cooled safely while four were destroyed.

One of the things we’ve done in the United States is the FLEX Program, which has been to stage power equipment away from all of the sites in a way that you can bring it in if necessary from a remote location if we had a similar type accident. In the research world there are people from universities, national laboratories, and private companies working to develop better fuel for these plants that would not fail in

the same way under a similar accident. For those of you that watched the video of the Fukushima accident, you saw large explosions. Those explosions were actually not nuclear explosions, they were hydrogen explosions similar to the Hindenburg. What happens is, if you let the cladding, the material that the fuel is held in a nuclear reactor, heat up in exposure to water, it corrodes and produces hydrogen as a result. People are working very hard to develop different

“Explosions in Fukushima were not nuclear explosions, they were hydrogen explosions, like Hindenburg”

“We care about energy…because the use of energy has made our lives significantly better.”


Summer-Fall 2016

types of fuels that would not have a similar response. These are examples of how technologists are trying to improve on older, first generation nuclear technologies.

Now I’ll tell you about some of the advanced concepts that people are thinking about. The way we traditionally made and sent power to people, was through a large central station power plant that produced electricity and then sent it over the transmission and distributions lines to people. However, in the last ten years, large fractions of variable solar and wind on the grid. People are not only users and buyers of electricity; in many cases they sell electricity back to the grid. You end up having a complicated set of control systems and backup systems to make all of this work. It’s a complex system partly because we wanted to take as much advantage of the solar and wind that we can; that’s a good thing.

However, in that complexity, it demands different functions from your energy system, whether they’re production systems, whether they’re transmission and distribution systems. And I’m finding that a lot of the researchers in nuclear space are looking at different types, I’ll call them products, but different types of products and systems that could work in this very rich and complex environment. And that’s actually what the modern grid is demanding of energy producers broadly.An example from a colleague of mine from Idaho indicates how we might use nuclear differently. She’s a chemist and actually builds catalysts, and she rightly notes that we produce natural gas, we use it for heat and electricity, but in a lot cases we burn, we flare, we just strand the gas; that’s a carbon dioxide emission. She wants to build catalysts that capture carbon dioxide at the site, and turn it into a valuable

product, for example as a transportation fuel, a chemical, or some other product we make out of carbon. Her argument is that if you had a smaller nuclear system, the system would give you the energy you need without producing more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This will allow you to capture all that gas in a way that also does not produce more carbon dioxide in the process, so there’s a double benefit.

The think tank that I’m working at currently did a study in which they looked at private industry and whether people were spending their own money to develop nuclear technologies, or rather if it were a government driven process. They found that in the U.S there are about fifty companies spending about 1.3 billion dollars of their own money to design and try to bring to commercialization different types of nuclear products.

They range from very small to very big, they look different from light water reactors, I’ll give you a quick description of three of them. It’s different types of reactors, different uses of them and hopefully in a way that allows us to use the benefits of nuclear technology while simultaneously continuing to reduce the risks and perceived problems with nuclear technologies.

The first example is something called a NuScale Small Modular Reactor, a water-cooled reactor, but the design attempts to put a lot of the components inside of a vessel and means there are less pipes attached to it, which means there are less places to start a leak. And as I mentioned early on, one of your safety goals in a light water reactor, is to make sure it’s cooled with water at all times. These plants were initially thought of as smaller versions, at least ten times smaller, than a traditional light water reactor.

While that’s the goal of the designers, as part of the design, by putting all of the components in a vessel, which sits in a water pool, which sits inside another concrete vessel and is build underground.

The goal of NuScale is to actually build a commercial plant in the early 2020s. If they get approval from a regulator, one of their big goals is to move what’s called the emergency planning zone. Right now, if you operate a big light water reactor, you have to be able to convince the regulator that you can evacuate an area a ten-mile radius around the reactor. With this type of plant, their goal is that the evacuation zone surrounds the boundaries of the plant, which significantly decreases the affected area. That’s one of their safety goals associated with their plan. Terrapower, a company financially backed by Bill Gates, is trying to design what’s called a traveling wave reactor. This one is different from water-cooled reactors and it has some elements similar to the one that I just explained

“Nuclear power in the U.S. provides about 60% of our non-carbon emitting energy.”


Summer-Fall 201620

to you, in the sense that it’s a single vessel, less piping so you don’t have penetrations and you can’t lose your coolant. It’s actually cooled with liquid sodium, which transfers heat very well, which makes it very very difficult to damage the fuel in the way that happened at Fukushima.

As a matter of fact, there’s a classic 1979 U.S. test with a sodium-cooled reactor where they just turned off all the pumps and the reactor just coasts down safely. And so this reactor is bigger than a NuScale one, it’s smaller than a typical light water reactor, but they’re aiming to try to build something that not only has to improved safety designs, but has better proliferation resistance including the fuel cycle.The final example is a company called TransAtomic, who’s goal is to design a salt-cooled reactor, salt that becomes liquid. And one of the goals of this particular design is to take nuclear waste and actually destroy it. It’s also a low-pressure system so it’s very hard to have a leak that would cause you to lose coolant, and the system would automatically shut itself down if you lose power. I’ll finish there.

I’ll just observe that I think that a lot of these are thoughts, they’re concepts and people are starting to work on them, but the combination of the variety in thinking, the variety of products, and the fact that private companies are deciding to spend their own money gives you the sense nuclear components are on the way to protect the climate. People are putting some thought into different types of products that would be better for the next generation. Thank you.

“a lot of the researchers in nuclear space are looking at different types of systems that could

work in this very rich and complex environment.”

Ambassador Yuriy A. SergeyevFormer Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations

Closing Remarks

Thank you and good morning to everyone. I would like to thank Dr. Christine Durbak, for her long standing initiative to keep the memory of reasons and consequences of the Chornobyl disaster alive in the United Nations.

Thirty years ago in Ukraine on 26th of April 1986, the nuclear facility in Chornobyl - the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster - which took the lives of reactive staff and emergency responders, displaced hundreds of thousands of individuals and effected the long term health and well-being of individuals exposed to the radioactive chemicals.

The Chornobyl disaster was born by the Soviet system itself. It was both madness and crime to build nuclear reactors in densely populated lands of Ukraine, especially when there existed infertile deserts that were once expenses of the USSR. It was both madness and crime to build nuclear reactors in Ukraine, which for many decades generated and even over generated electricity for itself and neighbors at its hydropower and thermal power plants.

This is why Ukraine had no present need for additional energy sources which it collected in Siberia and Central Asia. It was a crime and a total display of Soviet inhumanity when unprotected people were made to face the accident.

It was a crime when a few days after the accident, the community leaders led by Gorbachev and their henchman deliberately did not cancel the traditional ‘May day parade’ in Kyiv and drove school children to participate in it, under the influence of radiation. It was a crime of the Soviet government and the communist party to conceal the fact of the strategy, its scope and possible consequences. Chornobyl retuned to the Soviet Union as a boomerang - environmental protection movements raised and awakened national consciousness. Gorbachev finally faced his own lies and the Soviet government and the communist party lost credibility.

In the years of 1989 and 1991, Gorbachev went around the Soviet republics praying that the USSR does not disintegrate and requested support of a new union treaty. However, they lost trust of the millions that could not be regained.

“The Chornobyl disaster was born by the Soviet system...in densily populated lands of Ukraine”

BY WALL STREET JOURNAL

REACTOR 4, CHORNOBYL


Summer-Fall 2016

Neither President Bush Sr., who in August 1991 urged Ukraine not to destroy USSR, nor Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, overcame Gorbachev’s lie on Chornobyl. Many years after Gorbachev finally recognized the Chornobyl explosion was perhaps the real cause of the downfall of the Soviet Union.

My family and I, who stayed during the very first hours and during the catastrophe and after in Kyiv confirmed that the USSR seems to exist primarily because of its inhumanity and aggressive lying. We knew that sooner or later this would have happened.

Chornobyl was the catalyst, unfortunately taking many lives and destroying many fates, ultimatly brought down the utilitarian regime of inhumanity and injustice. Exactly as the USSR began Chornobyl.

Thank you.

“It was a crime when a few days after the accident, the community leaders led by Gorbachev ... did not cancel the

traditional ‘May day parade’ in Kyiv”

FACTS ON THE CHORNOBYL DISASTER

THE REGION HAS BECOME ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST UNIQUE WILDLIFE SANCTUARIES WITH THRIVING POPULATIONS OF WOLVES, DEER, BEAVERS, EAGLES, AND OTHER ANIMALS.

CHERNOBYL’S LAST REACTOR WAS SHUT DOWN IN 2000.

MORE THAN 5 MILLION PEOPLE LIVE IN AREAS THAT ARE CONSIDERED TO BE “CONTAMINATED” WITH RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL FROM THE ACCIDENT.

INFORMATION ON THE IMPACT ON HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT RISKS WAS OVER ESTIMATED.

THE RADIATION LEAK CAUSED THE NEARBY FOREST TO TURN A BRIGHT GINGER COLOR, THUS THE FOREST WAS NAMED THE “RED FOREST”.

TWENTY-EIGHT OF THE WORKERS AT CHORNOBYL DIED IN THE FOUR MONTHS FOLLOWING THE ACCIDENT, ACCORDING TO THE U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION (NRC).

IN 2011, UKRAINE OPENED UP THE AREA TO TOURISTS WHO WANT TO SEE FIRSTHAND THE AFTER-EFFECTS OF THE DISASTER.

ONLY A HANDFUL OF RADIATION EFFECTS, SUCH AS STUNTED TREES GROWING IN THE ZONE OF HIGHEST RADIATION AND ANIMALS WITH HIGH LEVELS OF CESIUM-137 IN THEIR BODIES, ARE KNOWN TO OCCUR.

SOME EXPERTS HAVE CLAIMED THAT THE UNSUBSTANTIATED FEAR OF RADIATION POISONING LED TO GREATER SUFFERING THAN THE ACTUAL DISASTER.

Source: Open University

“Czechoslovakia of the early sixties with slogans like “With the Soviet Union for All Times” carried in the May Day parades were like political kabuki theater. Our suspicions that this kind of posturing was just for show were vindicated when the Warsaw Pact tanks rolled into Prague in 1968.”

-Milan Schonberger, formerly of Czech Republic


Summer-Fall 201622

SESSION II: TOXIC CONTAMINATION OF CHILDREN

Dr. Christine K. Durbak Conference Chair and Founder, World Information Transfer, Inc.

Opening Statement

Your Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, Faculty Members, Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen and Students, I would like to begin by once again thanking the Government of Ukraine, H.E. Yelchenko; the U.N. Permanent Mission of Belarus, H.E. Ambassador Dapkiunas; Mission of the Czech Republic, Mr. Ellinger; Mission of Lithuania, H.E. Murmokaite; Mission of Germany, Ambassador Thoms; and the Mission of Japan, H.E. Yoshikawa for their cosponsorship of our 25th Conference on Health & Environment.

I would like to start by stating that the best science is a good start to begin any change in a society. A true scientist seeks to find the truth through a scientific method which begins with a hypothesis that attempts to prove or disprove the hypothesis. We need exhaustive research and transparent communication for science to influence our thinking. We all know that the past will not solve our current or future problems without rigorous research and that we need education to break the cycle of fear that prevents change from being activated. We also know that scientific findings often reveal truths we do not want to accept from taking place.

Education can provide the accurate knowledge that we need and strong, healthy adults to make the right choices and to promote sustainable development for the society. Education empowers people to know their choices, achieve their goals, cope with life’s vicissitudes and lead healthy lives. Educated people can influence leaders to enable their citizens to attain a better life and a healthier society.

The problem at hand is that both governments and citizens need to learn how to move away from some traditional and cultural patterns of conduct.

Fear, that prevents changing generations of customary behavior, is the fear of anger from others who have not learned or refuse to accept scientific findings as it interferes with our customary thinking. To change, takes courage, a lot of courage to stand against the prevailing opinions because resistance to change is part of our DNA and most people do not have the courage to think or act differently than the prescribed behavior of traditional patterns. We need to reflect on some of these cultures and traditions and consider the future of the child that will inherit this world. Children need courageous parents to have the courage to break the mold of traditions. Paranoia is composed of denial, projection and reaction formation.

An official response to the Chornobyl explosion (Ukrainian spelling) was denial. Reaction formation is the response to a perceived loss of control, by creating systems or groups of likeminded people with shared perceptions of reality – we observe that in groups like ISIS. The lack of transparency by governments, companies and some civil society members, foster fear and prevent the establishment of a health security network beneficial to all humanity. Greater reliance on science would assist all nations in a world increasingly marked by rapid technological changes.

Information communication technologies have been the tool for communicating vital scientific information and at the same time also for an antiscience, anti-intellectual reaction. Utilizing science for decisions regarding health occurs when leaders are not afraid of objective, documented findings of the scientists. Fear of the consequences of scientific information increases the health risks to all populations, risks which can create very harmful consequences, some of which we’ll hear today. This afternoon we will hear from the scientists that have worked diligently to discover the facts that will help make a healthier world.

“The lack of transparency ... fosters fear and prevents the establishment of a health security

network beneficial to all of humanity.”


Summer-Fall 2016

Mr. Yaroslav GolitsynFirst Secretary, Economic Affairs Permanent Mission of Ukraine to theUnited Nations

Opening Statement

Thank you Dr. Durbak, distinguished delegates, excellences and colleagues.

I will speak on behalf of my Ambassador of Ukraine, Volodymyr Yelchenko. We are pleased once again to join this essential open dialogue on the Chornobyl legacy. First, let me thank Dr. Durbak of World Information Transfer for covering important issues such as health and environment, for many years at the United Nations. Today Ukraine remembers the 30th anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster, the world worst nuclear accident.

The Chornobyl problem is a global one and its strict financial regulation remains a challenging concern. The government of Ukraine has conducted a number of high level events and have finished the onside of the nuclear power plant in Chornobyl. The funding of 2.4 billion dollars has come from more than 40 countries and they are paying back for the construction and development as a management institution for this money flows. The Chornobyl disaster became the most serious political security impact to many aspects including the nuclear energy industry. However, international regulations and standards for radioactive protection, national strategies as well as radioactive waste management principles have been substanially revised.

In June this year, world leaders gathered in New York, to adopt the world’s new commitment to end AIDS and HIV epidemic by 2030. We will, as a constituent part of the international community, accelerate our effort to develop concrete strategies for action to eliminate this disease throughout the world within the next 15 years. Ukraine is contributing to this effort greatly. I invite all of us to engage and have a professional conversation.

Thank you.

“The lack of transparency ... fosters fear and prevents the establishment of a health security

network beneficial to all of humanity.”

“LITTLE THINGS MATTER” Dr. Bruce Lanphear

Subtle shifts in the intellectual abilities of individual children from widespread exposures to toxins can have a big impact on the number of children in a population who are intellectually challenged or gifted.

The impact of toxins on the developing brain is usually subtle for an individual child, but the damage can be substantial at the population level. Numerous challenges must be addressed to definitively test the impact of toxins on brain development in children:

We must quantify exposure using a biologic marker or pollutant; account for an ever-expanding set of potential confounders; identify critical windows of vulnerability; and repeatedly examine the association of biologic markers of toxins with intellectual abilities, behaviors, and brain function in distinct cohorts.

Despite these challenges, numerous toxins have been implicated in the development of intellectual deficits and mental disorders in children. Yet, too little has been done to protect children from these ubiquitous but insidious toxins. The objective of this review is to provide an overview on the population impact of toxins on the developing brain and describe implications for public health.

...Continued on Page 34


Summer-Fall 201624

Dr. Martha Herbert Pediatric Neurologist,Harvard University

“Environmental Toxins and Brain Development”

Thank you,

I am going to be talking to you about environmental disturbances of brain development, including the kinds of substances that can potentially interfere or alter brain development, as well as the remarkable discoveries in brain anatomy that has allowed a broader understanding of the many brian components and functions. I will explain some of what we already know, and some of what we will find out based on these discoveries.

Until about 11 years ago, governments and academic institutions were the only experimental bodies to conduct studies on the body burden of chemicals in newborn cord blood. Nowadays, nonprofits are also engaged in the testing of these chemicals – a procedure that involves looking for 454 substances and 287 substances or chemicals detected in umbilical cord blood. Carcinogens, neurotoxins, and teratogens, as well as nearly 200 substances that have been banned from the market for years, were found in just 10 babies. It was not until the start of nonprofit participation in experimental studies that we started taking into account the influence of accumulation of chemical exposures, particularly during vulnerable periods of somatic and river system development, in which even low levels of substances can have grave consequences. Brain development is both structural and functional. This is a very important concept, particularly as many studies carried out have only been looking at the impact of the environment on the structural development of the brain.

Some of the processes of brain development include Neuronal Migration (Mvelination) – a process that was beautifully illustrated by Pasco Rachise, a remarkable neural scientist and artist from Yale. His drawing shows a neuron early in fetal development climbing up a radio glial cell from the inner side of the ventricles out to the cortex. On the upper right side, his diagram shows the brain in the early

stage of development and the journey taken by the glial cell makes, as well as cells that have to be wrapped in the myelin (white material of the brain). Brain connectivity, particularly how the areas of the brain are connected, has become a huge area of research that had previously not existed.

THE ARCHITECTURAL BRAIN: THE DANCE HALL

Talking about the migration of the cells, where they end up, alterations in the brain mapping, and how they are influenced by environmental toxicants exposures has been a very important contributor to understanding the delegate vulnerability of a prenatal brain. I will call it here a dancehall - the building - but its brain anatomy destiny or structure and function influence each other.

THE FUNCTIONAL BRAINS: THE DANCE

I will refer to the functional brain as the dance. The brain functions at many levels, however for rhetorical purposes, I will talk about each of these functions as different, separate brains. I will talk about the Metabolic and Molecular Brain, the Bioenergetic Brain, the Immune Surveillance Brain, the Electromagnetic Oscillatory Brain, and the last two, which are particularly emerging in the research agenda, are the Fluid – Diffusion – Housekeeping Brain, and the Biophysical Brain. We know enough about these two areas to see important areas of environmental vulnerability. The two points I want to make about them is that, first they will modulate early brain development if it is perturbed early on, and the perturbations do not stop once you emerge from the womb. Both the perturbations and the vulnerabilities are lifelong. What we can argue is that there is toxic interference and two electromagnetic stressful interferences at every level. We see a kind of hierarchal scalar depiction of three levels: molecular network being at a smaller scale, cellular networks being at a higher level of organization and organ and tissue networks. Toxic interference can have impacts on mechanisms that act on any of these levels.

THE METABOLIC-MOLECULAR BRAIN

The metabolic-molecular brain, shows a number of biochemical processes that are going on in our brains at every micro-moment of every day, many of which can be upregulated, downregulated, blocked or diverted by influences from the environment. Changes in this type of activity occur at the biochemical level, the immunochemistry level, and the bioenergetics level. What are some of the environmental vulnerability of the Metabolic –Molecular Level? In the figure shown, we see a synapse and the transmission of chemical substances from the presynaptic neuron on the left to the postsynaptic

“It was not until the start of nonprofit participation in experimental studies that we started taking into account the influence of chemical accumulation…”


Summer-Fall 2016

neuron on the right. Environmental influences can impact which molecules are synthesized, how much is made, and as I just said, how chemical and signaling processes are upregulated or inhibited. This can cause cascading effects on the systems that can eventually lead to a variety of functional manifestations including mode, behavior, learning development.

INJURY AT THE CELLULAR LEVEL

At the cellular level, we have injuries that are mediated at the chemical level such as free radicals (OH.) that are created in our bodies and cells when oxidated demands exceed our supply of antioxidants to quench the pro-oxidants. The pro-oxidants can cause protein damage through the misfolding of proteins; they can cause membrane damage, the rigidification of the lipid cell membranes, which the channels between receptors in these cells not work properly, thus causing chemical inhibition, causing disturbances in chemical transmission, which then leads to DNA damage at the local level, or in germ cells, the lipid peroxidation in the bottom is the damage on the membranes, mitochondrial damage (damage to your energy production mechanism), cell swelling (permeability, things getting in and out of the cell that really should not be because membranes are supposed to be exquisite boundaries). Cells should have intact membranes so that acids cannot damage the cell, however environmental influences will compromise these boundaries and barrier functions.

The Bioenergetic Brain is very Environmentally Vulnerable. The rendition of a mitochondrion and the lipid membrane with hydrophilic parts, the part which is next to the water on the outside. Now energy is generated by the mitochondria, and the brain is the biggest energy consumer. The brain weighs 2% of the body weight and uses 20% of the body’s energy because it takes an enormous amount of energy to make nerve cells fire. The vulnerability includes high nutrient needs, membranes that can be easily damaged and the vulnerability is that they can be injured by tens of thousands of substances and by electromagnetic radiation. High nutrient needs can lead to a demand for nutrients that exceed supply. Therefore, the step in the biochemical process that requires that nutrients becomes a limiting step and slows energy production down.

We also see the cell membrane with a lot of channels and other activities of which one is a series of reactions that takes place on a mitochondrial membrane. When that membrane

is damaged, which is quite a common occurrence, these processes can be compromised.

THE IMMUNE – SURVEILLANCE BRAIN

There is also the Immune–Surveillance Brain: We are coming to appreciate is the Bi-directional Communication where the immune system talks to the brain through cytokines and causes behavioral changes. The brain talks to the immune system releasing hormones that regulate and modulate immune responses. But you also see that toxicity impacts - both the way the brain functions and talks to the immune system and the way the immune system functions and talks to the brain.

AIR POLLUTION AND BRAIN INFLAMMATION

It has been known for some time that air pollution is a potent stimulator of Brain Inflammation. Dr. Calderon-Gardicuenas, TNS, 2009, compared brain tissues from children who died abruptly from things like bicycle accidents with no prior medical history or family history of brain disease, with children who had similar deaths in rural Montana where there is no air pollution, and found that even in children components of brain inflammation could be found that are only typically found in older adults with conditions such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. We also know that conditions like Autism disorder have higher incidence rates in areas in proximity to freeways and highways. Brain inflammation is not just a physiological process at the cellular level - when the inflammation goes on in the brain, it creates brain noise that interferes with information processing. A blood vessel with red blood cells (RBC) and a blue white blood cell (WBC) that can pass into the brain when the barrier is bridged. That can cause brain noise because chemical activity such as the neurotransmitters creates noise that does not come from the sensory system. When you have more signals and less noise, you have more bandwidth, but when you have less signals and more noise you have less bandwidth. This is a functional issue that is not related to the map but to the function.

THE ELECTRIC FUNCTIONAL BRAIN

The Electronic Functional Brain, has synapses that allow for inter-cellular coordination (such as the dendritic connections, gap junction, and calcium waves) and activities such as oscillations networks, coherence and coordination. When you have Environmental Degradation of Brain Electromagnetic Activity, you are less able to coordinate many things - the brain’s signaling becomes more “entropic”, more random, less synchronized and less coherent. The toxicants will conduct through the

“It has been known for some time that air pollution is a potent stimulator of Brain Inflammation”


Summer-Fall 201626

electrophysiology directly to mediate the metabolism, but radiation may do that straight to electrophysiology leading to alterations in the brain functions every day, not just in altered brain development.

THE FLUID – DIFFUSION –HOUSEKEEPING BRAIN:

The recent discovery of fluid – diffusing – housekeeping brain shows fluid draining distance in the brain, the lymphatic system, fluid pathways around the vessels that get bigger at night and drain misfolded protein. Just last year we learned that the brain has “glymphatic” and lymph fluids that were never identified anatomically.When clearance of misfolded proteins and other trash produced by brain activity does not occur, the pileup of trash can lead to degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s, The Biophysical Brain: Finally, the Extracellular Space and Matrix where physical properties such as fluids, pH, Proximity, Viscosity, Membranes, Permeability, Friability, Matrices and Tortuosity.

This is becoming a part of the neuroscience radar screen like never before, and I want to use the metaphor of wetlands, where wetlands cover biophysics of the material exchanges of the microscopic level to whole ecosystems. Pictures of the extracellular matrix in the brain shows that extracellular fluids, space, and matrix all take up 20% of the brain’s volume. They bathe every synapse, they modulate biophysics and they are newly on the radar of neuroscience with most of the papers having been published in the past 7 to 8 years. Again, the wetlands of the brain, like the wetlands in ecosystems, are places of biophysical exchange even prior to the more organized metabolic pathways.

Environmental contamination: should be looked at as a potential agent of degradation and de-calibration of the exquisite parameters of material –organism exchange.

The Degradation of the Brain’s Foundations therefore should be looked at as degrading the Brain’s Function because you have genetic and environmental biases, and then an interaction of the molecular pathophysiology, electromagnetic pathophysiology an underlying disturbances of biophysical parameters that can degrade the brain functioning and development too if it starts early enough. All of these degrade the behavior, thinking, relating, integrating and creativity of the brain.

I am working on a project with my colleagues called Documenting Hop, which looks to understand and bring awareness for the role of environmental contamination in causing an epidemic of chronic disease and brain dysfunctions amongst American children – frightening statistics state that one of every two American children are diagnosed with such diseases.

Many of the brain components beyond the architectural brain have actionable impact and improvement available from the knowledge we currently know. We need to take this knowledge and ability to impact brain health on all these levels to recover our children and regenerate our planet.

Thank you!

“We need to take this ability to impact brain health on all levels to recover our children and planet.”

Dr. Mary HollandResearch ScholarNew York University School of Law

“Vaccination policies and human rights”

I want to start by asking a couple simple questions by a show of hands. How many of you have ever, for any reason, been critical of the United Nations? Security Council, peacekeeper, budget issues come to mind. For any reason. OK. And how many of you have ever been critical of the United States of America, for any reason? Foreign policy, domestic policy, role at the UN. OK. So you are all here, at the United Nations, in the United States, but the vast majority of you have been critical of these institutions at one time or another for one reason or another.

To me, this is like asking, are you alive? Are you awake? Are you a thinking person? Do you care about the world? Almost all of us we have been critical at some point for some reason of the UN or the US, because these are complex institutions with varying actions and inactions of all kinds on many issues. But now if I ask you, have you ever been critical of your country’s vaccine policies; you may be reluctant to raise your hand. And for good reason, because in the supercharged public discourse about vaccines, were you to

“My focus is on the role of law in protecting human rights but for vaccines; rights of the collective vs. the

individual”


Summer-Fall 2016

have answered, “Yes, I have been critical of some aspect of vaccine policy at some time,” you would likely be branded “anti-vaccine,” that fundamentalist bogey-man term. And not by a militant or fringe publication or spokesperson. You might be branded “anti-vaccine” by the likes of the New York Times, the New England Journal of Medicine, the World Health Organization and by spokespeople from national centers for disease control and national pediatric associations. Your views on vaccines might be considered “outside the mainstream,” and equivalent to the views of those who deny climate change. You might be considered a flat-earther.

No matter if your critique were categorical, and that you truly oppose all vaccines for all people at all times, or if you simply believe, as Bobby and I and many others do, that mercury should never be a preservative in any vaccine anywhere in the world because there are better and safer alternatives. Many in the audience here today are branded “anti-vaccine,” although that is a gross distortion. We are called this primarily to marginalize and dismiss our views. But just as most of you are critical of some aspects of the UN and the US but think they are important institutions, most of us have views that are nuanced, pro-health and pro safe, affordable, necessary and effective, or sane, vaccines. My focus today is on the role of law in protecting human rights when it comes to vaccines. How can we balance the rights of the collective vs. the rights of the individual? Vaccines, by their very nature, are a population-based medical intervention. If enough people take this medical intervention, then the so-called “herd” will be protected from the circulation of a communicable disease, based on the theory of “herd immunity.”

Although individuals receive vaccines, the rationale for vaccines is for the good of the individual and the society. One of the core purposes of the United Nations, set forth in Article 1 of its Charter, is to achieve international cooperation “in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all.” So the UN and the international community have obligations to respect human rights related to vaccination. How must nations and the UN do this? That is an important question that deserves scrutiny, as it profoundly affects both individual and global public health. Since World War II, the international community has

“To me, this is like asking, are you alive? Are you awake? Are you a thinking person? Do you care

about the world? ”

recognized the grave dangers in involuntary scientific and medical experimentation on human subjects. In the aftermath of Nazi medical atrocities, the world affirmed the

Nuremberg Code which stated that the “voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.” The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights further enshrined this prohibition against involuntary experimentation in its 1966 text, stating “no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.” Such a prohibition is now so universally recognized that some courts and scholars have pronounced the right to informed consent in experiments as a matter of customary international law. In other words, it applies everywhere, whether or not a country has specific laws on its books, as customary norms now prohibit slavery, genocide, torture and piracy.

But what about informed consent in the area of medical treatment, including preventive medical treatment? What about informed consent to vaccination? This is a controversial issue today in many countries, including the United States. In 2005, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, addressed this issue, adopting the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights on the consensus of 193 countries. The participating countries hoped this Declaration, like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights before it, would become a set of guiding principles. On the issue of consent, the Declaration states that any preventive…medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information.

It further notes that the “sole interest of science or society” does not prevail. This pronouncement is an extension of the medical oath, attributed to Hippocrates 2500 years ago, that doctors must work for the good of their patients and never do harm. Abbreviated as the “first do no harm” principle, this credo embodies the precautionary principle in medicine, clearly placing the interests of individual patients above the interests of the collective or the “herd.”

This precautionary principle in medicine leads directly to the view that vaccination policies must be recommended, not coerced. The doctor-patient relationship depends first and foremost on trust, and coercion undermines it. When

“The doctor-patient relationship depends first and foremost on trust, and coercion undermines it”


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the doctor-patient relationship is based on coercion, trust is a casualty, and doctors then serve the state, and by extension the society, above their individual patients. This is a slippery slope, where civilized medicine has too often derailed in the past.

Dr. Leo Alexander, the chief U.S. medical consultant to the Nuremberg Trials, warned in 1949 that “From small beginnings the values of an entire society may be subverted.” He pointed out that long before the Nazis came to power in Germany, a cultural shift in the medical community “had already paved the way for the adoption of a utilitarian, Hegelian point of view,” with literature on the euthanasia and extermination of those with disabilities as early as 1931.

Following the medical precautionary principle, the default position for vaccination must be recommendations, not compulsion. Individuals, for themselves and their minor children, should have the right to accept or refuse these preventive medical interventions based on adequate information and without coercion, such as the threat of loss of economic or educational benefits. Informed consent must be the default position because compulsion, on its face, not only undermines trust, but limits the fundamental rights to life, liberty, bodily integrity, informed consent, privacy and to parental decision making.

Many developed countries’ vaccination policies embody this principle of childhood vaccination recommendations, including conference co-sponsors Ukraine, Germany and Japan. Other developed countries that achieve impressive public health without resort to compulsion, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, South Korea, and Spain, among others.

Nonetheless, the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, Article 27 permits limitations on fundamental rights, but these limits must be imposed by law and must be “for the protection of public health or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others ... any such law needs to be consistent with international human rights law.” International courts have developed a test to assess whether restrictions of fundamental rights are legitimate and lawful.

”This precautionary principle leads directly to the view that vaccination policies must be

recommended, not coerced.”

The test studies whether the measure is lawful, strictly necessary and proportionate to the risk. The State enacting such a restriction bears the burden of proof that the compulsory medical intervention is lawful, strictly necessary and proportionate. Generally, the “strict necessity” element must be the least restrictive alternative to achieve the public health objective, and non-coercive approaches must be considered first.

Thus, the State must show that a less restrictive alternative is not feasible before adopting a highly restrictive one. In addition to these criteria, if a State does mandate vaccination, then it has an affirmative obligation to provide an effective remedy for those who may be injured as a result. Like all prescription drugs, vaccines carry the risk of injury and death to some. The guarantee of an effective remedy is a basic pillar of the rule of law in a democratic society. And the remedy must actually be an effective one; it cannot be an illusory remedy, which in fact provides no relief.

Vaccination policies have changed drastically since the early twentieth century when they were primarily emergency medical interventions for the whole population in times of smallpox outbreaks to the policies of today, when they primarily target infants and young children for non-emergency prevention of many diseases of differing severity. Legislatures and courts have had to grapple with many issues flowing from these policies, including vaccine injury compensation, religious exemptions, philosophical exemptions, the right to education, the right to informed consent, and the right to parental decision making. I provide a few examples of court decisions related to vaccination and human rights from different countries.

In Japan, in 1992, the Tokyo High Court heard a case from 159 survivors of vaccine-induced injury or death. The Court concluded that the Ministry of Health had been negligent in failing to establish a screening program to exclude people with contraindications to vaccination. The court noted that the Ministry of Health had focused on measures to raise the vaccination rate at the expense of attention to vaccine adverse reactions. Furthermore, the court noted that the Ministry had not provided sufficient information about vaccine adverse events to doctors and the public. The court concluded that the injured victims were entitled to compensation as a matter of state redress.

“Let’s be alert, knowledgeable and integrate the interests of global health security with liberty.”


Summer-Fall 2016

In Ukraine, in 2004, its Constitutional Court interpreted its Constitutional guarantee of the right to education on the principle of equality. It found that its Constitution guaranteed every individual the right to education. Thus in Ukraine, no child, vaccinated or unvaccinated, may be refused the right to attend school. The Turkish Constitutional Court in 2015 upheld the principle that parental consent is necessary for the vaccination of infants and children. It found that despite its Ministry of Health’s assurances that childhood vaccinations are in the “best interests of the child,” that an infant’s interest in bodily integrity may only be violated for medical necessity and based on law, and that routine childhood vaccination required parental consent.On the other hand, a January 2015 judgment of the Czech Constitutional Court upheld a public health law prohibiting young children from attending preschool without vaccinations against nine diseases unless the children have “permanent medical contraindications.”

But the judgment was issued over a stinging dissent, arguing that the Court’s decision was more politically motivated than based in a rigorous constitutional legal analysis. The dissent found that the majority’s decision had “turned a blind eye” to the unconstitutionality of its public health law and that as a result, the Court’s decision ultimately would undermine rather than advance the legitimacy of vaccination mandates.

In the United States, the legitimacy of school vaccination mandates came into sharp focus in 2015, when almost twenty states introduced legislation to limit or prohibit altogether exemptions from vaccination except very limited medical ones. Only in the state of California did blanket legislation pass, which prohibits all exemptions save limited medical ones, although similar laws already exist in two other states, Mississippi and West Virginia. We are likely to see in the near future whether California courts will uphold or reject this new law which directly contradicts the California Constitution’s guarantee of a right to a public school education to all children. We will see whether the courts are prepared to endorse a new kind of school segregation against 225,000 children whose vaccination status does not conform perfectly to California’s mandates.

With over 270 vaccines in the global research and development pipeline, the role of law and courts in

upholding or rejecting vaccination mandates and in compensating the victims of vaccine injury is critical. As we all understand, healthcare is big business the world over, and vaccines represent a growing medical market with increasingly high profit margins. If we don’t adhere to first principles of the rights to life, liberty and bodily integrity of the individual, and of the right to prior, free and informed consent in medicine, we may find ourselves with known and unknown harms.

To conclude, I paraphrase President Eisenhower’s farewell address to the United States in 1961 when he was addressing the risks posed by the “military-industrial complex.” I substitute the term “medical-industrial complex,” which I believe today poses many of the same risks he foretold:

The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this complex endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.

Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and medical machinery of health with our methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together….[I]n holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. So let us be alert, knowledgeable and properly integrate the interests of global health security with global liberty.

“Let’s be alert, knowledgeable and integrate the interests of global health security with liberty.”

“Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the meshing of the huge industrial and medical machinery”


Summer-Fall 201630

Dr. Bernard GoldstienFormer Dean, School of Public HealthUniversity of Pittsburgh

Closing Remarks

Thank you very much Dr. Durbak.

What she didn’t tell you is I started off by being asked to give a few concluding remarks on the 25th Anniversary of this event but now I have been asked to give a talk. As an old professor, I am going to tell you that yes I can do it, however, let me tell you I am going to be critical of some of the things you have heard.

So, let me just give a little bit of my background. Before becoming Dean of the School of Public Health, I worked for several years at the U.S. Public Health Service Division of Air Pollution in the 1960s, in which I assisted the Administrator of the EPA. More recently, I have had two experiences that fit more closely to what I am going to talk about today.

The first experience is serving as Chair for the National Academy Committee that looks at how EPA deals with sustainability.

“We are the only country in the world in which the private citizens who own a surface land have the

subsurface mineral rights.”

Looking at the history of the EPA, three phases can be identified: the first was ‘commanding control’, the Cuyahoga River was on fire and we could smell, see and feel the smoke - pollution was clearly visible and recognizable; the second phase was the realization of ‘invisible risks’, those that we cannot smell, see, nor feel, and thus we needed to somehow quantify these risks through risk assessments and risk management.

There was a 1983 National Academy book called The Red Book, which was basically a bible for risk assessment and risk management throughout the years. The third phase, the one we are currently in, is that of ‘sustainability’, dealing with the areas of environment, economics, and social health, and the challenge of balancing all three through trade-offs through management. At the National Academy Committee we put together a framework for analyzing sustainability, and as Chair I looked for any opposition and where it was. I found a much more intense opposition than I expected – one that largely focuses on the issues of property and

defense against sustainability. That goes well beyond what we might expect and well within the conservative part of the Republican Party.

If you look at this weekend’s edition of the World Report U.S. News, there was an editorial strongly supporting action against global climate change for Earth Day. There was also an opponent, written by the person who founded the Weather Channel, expressing that he thinks there isn’t really an issue that has to do with climate change, so much as it is the issue of the UN trying to take over sovereignty over the U.S.. And that is exactly how he phrased it. He said, over and over again that he believes strongly in the need to protect the environment and the future of children but he is not willing to give up sovereignty to the UN. How far-off is that? Well, to me it sounds far-off.

But as I am going to show you it’s not that far-off to everyone. Let me give you another example of this. President Obama, in January, vetoed a law that had been passed by Congress. It was a law that would roll back what EPA had done to extend the definition of water in the United States. Clean Water Act is able to be a federal law in our country because we don’t have any environment provision in the constitution.

The environment provision comes in because we are able to figure out ways to make federal laws go to local environmental issues. One of the ways is that the U.S. constitution gives the federal government the right to deal with navigable waters of the United States so if you have a pond in your backyard that eventually connects to a navigable river, then that’s how the government can say, “don’t put any pollution in your pond or else the FBI will go after you”. Well, EPA decided to extend what they meant by navigable waters into partial wetland. The Congress reacted and said “no, no, you can’t do that”.

When President Obama vetoed and said that nonetheless he wanted to protect the environment, the Senators who supported this Bill said that “we all want clean water, and this rule is not simply about clean water but it is about how much authority the federal government and our elected bureaucrats should have to regulate what is done on private land.” Now, I don’t want to get into the details of the Bill - whether it is accurate or inaccurate, but rather, the key point

“In the Republican Party’s 2012 statement, it states that they oppose UN Agenda 21 as it clearly

violates sovereignty.”


Summer-Fall 2016

is a majority of the U.S. Senators and the majority of the U.S. House of Representatives passed it, and President Obama has only given 9 vetoes since being in office. So here’s the proven fact, that there is a strong belief that private property is being meddled with by this environmental approach.

Well we have heard something about how U.S. being different from the EU. The reason that I am involved is that I have had a tough job trying to get some sympathy for a Emeritus professor when I was a visiting professor at the University of Columbia last year in the Political Science Department studying U.S.-EU differences on the approaches towards shale gas.

I am in Pittsburgh and it’s like being back in New Jersey in the 1980s when we first got involved in this. There is a whole bunch different of approaches taken by people and the government in environmental polices. Well, people in the U.S. are more confrontational, more legalistic towards regulatory approaches than in Europe. I was in Germany and one could say that U.S. is more successful - We are more successful in doing things beforehand rather than afterwards.

In the trade-off between the pursuit of life without state interference and the pursuit for a ‘best for all’, the US speaks more about the freedom to pursue life goals than achieving a state where nobody is in need. That freedom in its way is somehow very integral to us as I m going to argue that it fits into the constitutional issues that I am going to talk about.

We are the only country in the world in which private citizens who own surface land also have the rights to its subsurface minerals. In many others countries the government owns the rights to these subsurface minerals. For this reason the U.S. has moved forward with shale gas extraction far more rapidly than European countries even though many people go against shale gas. But the thing is even though subsurface rights are being granted, they have then been taken away again. We have our 5th Amendment, to ensure we are not deprived of our rights to possess our property, and to ensure that private property would not be taken away for public use without compensation.

In Europe, there isn’t really a great difference in the first attempt for the European Convention of Human Rights

which currently faces a big battle on whether property rights should be included amongst the top rights such as freedom of speech. And on the takings of property rights - defined by whether or not governments have the right to take property away from private land owners public good, such as for road construction - it is not clear that whether Europe is not different from us.

So, what about property rights? I am not sure whether you can read it, but if you look at the literature coming from right wing groups or conservative groups that are opposed to taking of property rights, they go back to a lot of quotes from the Founding Fathers. Agenda 21 is basically coming from the UN 1991 Sustainability Conference in Rio and basically has raised what we want to do about sustainability.

If you compare the Republican Party’s platform with that of the Democratic Party’s platform, you can see much more on property rights on that of the Republican’s. And the statements are getting more defensive. The most recent one is the most defensive, and it concerns the defense against taking of property rights for reasons of environmental regulation that destroy property value. Well, let me go back to this idea that private property is the best way for environmental stewardship. In the Republican Party’s 2012 statement, it states that they oppose UN Agenda 21 as it clearly violates sovereignty.

Let me finish by this quote. This is another quote that you could see frequently in many conservative websites, this one was actually taken up by a faculty member who wrote this paper in “Thomas Jefferson: The Founding Father of Sprawl?”. Because in that quote, it basically said that our government remains virtuous and as long as they are chiefly agricultural - and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any parts of the America. As soon as they get piled upon on by large cities, they will become corrupted like European cities.

This belief in cities being corrupted because of their inherent value of taking over agricultural lands is part of the ‘frontier mentality’, and continues to make up American identity. It is this ‘frontier mentality’ that prevents us from listening or accepting change from actors that ask us to cut down trees on our land, to install bicycle paths, or more generally, that promises the best for everyone, rather than giving society

“We need to be able to have the same degree of willingness to listen to science”

“...environmental influences will compromise these boundaries and barrier functions.”


Summer-Fall 201632

more freedom to act. We heard James Hanson earlier, talking very eloquently about the very important and potentially devastating effects of climate change, however we continue to hear critics of climate change come up with arguments that are a little bit off center. Republicans have admitted that global climate change is happening, in fact, President George Bush made a statement about it, however, he denied any anthropogenic causes to the process. The head of the Republican Science and Technology committee said over and over again that climate change is happening, but he said it is not due to human activities. They are looking for ways to deal with it as it is obviously bad. It’s very difficult to do so. But I tell you folks, difficult does not mean impossible.

Robert Kennedy, in his writings, said he vaccinated kids. I think that no matter how much you oppose to vaccine, should Ebola prevail and there is a vaccine to deal with it, you go for it. I have a personal issue in this. My wife has recovered fully, fortunately, from a cancer that would have been prevented had she taken the particular virus vaccine that has been available. Now if I walk around the room here, I suspect that we have a large amount of young women who should be taking this vaccine. Vaccine is a wonderful, preventive public health tool that can’t be thrown out in general. So you have this kind of issue that you really have to basically look at, you basically by taking a look at the presentation of professor Holland regarding rights and vaccination, and I guarantee you, you will hear the same eloquence from people who were talking about property rights, and what to do about the impending problems that we are going to have of global climate change. Well we need to be able to have the same degree of willingness to listen to science, and to listen to others who come at this front at different rights perspectives so as to make sure that we can be successful in dealing with the global climate change.

Thank you.

WORLD INFORMATION TRANSFER Internship Program

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As WIT’s representatives, interns attend and summarize relevant United Nations meetings where they also gather related information on health, environment and sustainable development.

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WIT Summer 2016 Interns with Dr. Christine K. Durbak and H.E. Mogens lykketoft, President of the UN General Assembly


Summer-Fall 2016

World Information Transfer, Inc., (WIT) is a not-for-profit, non governmental organization in General Consultative Status with the United Nations, promoting environmental health and literacy. In 1987, inspired by the Chornobyl (Ukrainian spelling) nuclear tragedy, in Ukraine, WIT was formed in recognition of the pressing need to provide accurate actionable information about our deteriorating global environment and its effect on human health. WIT exercises itsmandate through:

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LITTLE THINGS MATTER - DR. BRUCE LANPHEAR

It’s true not all chemicals are bad. But toxic metals like lead and mercury are found in all of us. So are persistent toxins like PCB’s and endocrine disruptors such as Bisphenol A and flame retardants. We’ve been studying the impact of toxins on children for the past 30 years and reach the inescapable conclusion...Little Things Matter.

Toxins can have a lifelong impact on children. We’ve also discovered that extremely low levels of toxins can impact brain development. Let’s take a look at the percent of children who are exposed to some of these toxins using a national study in the United States. To keep it simple we’ll use one hundred children to represent all children. Mercury is found in 89 percent of children, primarily from eating large fish contaminated by pollution. Lead is detected in the blood of all children regardless of race, income or where they live. Over 80 percent of children are exposed to organophosphate pesticides mostly from food. All children are exposed to PCB’s, a persistent pollutant that was banned in the 70s but will linger for generations. Bisphenol A or BPA is found in 96 percent of children. PBDEs, a type of flame retardant, are found in 100 percent of children. But these toxins don’t occur in isolation, children are exposed to many toxins and dozens of untested chemicals all the time.

The developing brain is particularly vulnerable to environmental toxins. The blood–brain barrier of the developing brain is not fully formed, and it is more permeable to toxins than is the mature brain.

Environmental toxins can impact the developing brain through various mechanisms. Some toxins, such as mercury, cause cell death and alter cell migration and cell proliferation. Lead disrupts neurotransmission, synaptogenesis, and synaptic trimming. Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (DDT), PCBs, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), phthalates, and bisphenol A appear to act—at least in part—by disrupting estrogenic or thyroid hormones. Another potential mechanism by which toxins may impact brain development is through epigenomic alterations—heritable alterations in gene expression that do not entail changes in the DNA sequence. Biologic markers, or biomarkers, of exposure, which can enhance our ability to quantify an individual’s internal dose of a contaminant, are revolutionizing the study of environmental toxins in the same way genetic tests are revolutionizing the study of heritability. The optimal strategy to prevent the development of brain-based disorders is to identify and restrict or ban the use of potential toxins before they are marketed or discharged into the environment. Unfortunately, industries are allowed to market a product until it is repeatedly shown to be toxic in both human and laboratory studies.

“The impact of toxins on the developing brain was first recognized in the aftermath of environmental disasters”

...Continued from Page 23

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