Forgotten, But Not Gone

Picture yourself in a casket below ground. Fumes of formaldehyde drift around you like unpleasant perfume, but you are not troubled. You have smelled your last. A light spring rain is falling, and drops of water make their way through the soil, settling on the finely crafted contours of your casket. Within a few short weeks, moisture begins to seep inside. Stains of mould spread across the satin lining. You begin to bloat. Unfazed by your appearance, groundwater penetrates you, mingling your tissues with the juices of rotting leaves and your dearly departed neighbours. In time, the world devours you in the dark.

What do you imagine you are made of? Will you be a wholesome meal? If you live in Canada, your body is likely to yield more than just nutrients and minerals. According to recent studies, inhabitants of industrialized countries are contaminated with traces of a wide range of carcinogens and other toxic substances. Fat-soluble substances like degreasing agents and dry-cleaning chemicals accumulate in our livers, our brains, our blood, our breasts, and the oily marrow of our bones. Industrial solvents and gasoline additives circulate with our fluids, diluted but recognizable.

Known as body burdens, these chemical traces can produce unexpectedly strong biological effects. The notion that the chemical ingredients of everyday objects might be hindering our immune systems, interfering with the replication of our dna, and disrupting the hormonal messages that regulate everything from mood to sexual function is discomfiting, to say the least. Like the eventual decay of our bodies underground, the accumulation of body burdens represents an alarming integration with the substance of the earth and a somewhat morbid field of interest. Yet this is the very terrain Stephen Harper’s Conservative minority government wandered into last December when it promised to evaluate and regulate toxic substances currently in widespread use. In anticipation of an election, the Conservatives are depending on initiatives like the Chemicals Management Plan to salvage their environmental image, but it remains to be seen whether the policy signifies a real shift from the invisibility and inertia that has characterized this issue in the past. Encumbered by feelings of apprehension and powerlessness, many people have preferred not to know about the effects of formaldehyde and polyvinyl chloride, artificial musks and aluminum. Where recognition of these effects threatens powerful business interests, the links between such substances and diseases like cancer have been not only ignored, but actively obscured. Certainly, Harper’s plan indicates growing political interest in chemical pollution, but will that be enough to catalyze changes in the chemical composition of our world?

Since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring introduced the public to the impact of synthetic pesticides on ecosystems and human health forty-five years ago, many of the substances she identified have been banned, some at the international level. Under the first Canadian Environmental Protection Act, passed in 1988, our government has been collecting data from industry on newly developed chemicals and testing them for human safety before allowing them onto the market in large quantities. Environment Canada and provincial agencies monitor industrial releases of toxic substances into air, water, and soil, and publish information about the health effects of a wide range of synthetic substances.

While these may seem like appropriate measures, they haven’t properly addressed the potential danger posed by synthetic chemicals. For example, government agencies still have to prove conclusively that an existing chemical is hazardous before it is taken off the market, a process that can take between ten and fifteen years. Canadian industries currently produce around 18 million kilograms of known carcinogens every year, and given that only a fraction of the chemicals used commercially have even been tested for carcinogenicity, the actual amount is no doubt higher. As regulators plow slowly through their backlog of “priority substances,” cancer incidences are continuing to increase. At present, over 40 percent of Canadians will experience a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. One in four will die from the disease.

Despite the long lag times between chemical exposure and the onset of disease, the evidence linking synthetic toxic substances to cancer is compelling. Studies reveal significantly higher rates of cancer in areas where toxic wastes are treated and stored, as well as in regions with high industrial activity. Occupations that involve exposure to hazardous substances produce greater numbers of cancer victims; farmers, for example, endure more treatments for multiple myeloma and prostate cancer than people whose work does not involve chemical pesticides. The World Health Organization estimates that environmental stresses like chemical pollution and ionizing radiation cause 1.3 million deaths worldwide from cancer each year.

Given this evidence, it is absurd that the elimination of carcinogens has never before been a major election issue. Rather, cancer has been approached as a target for medical intervention. Well-publicized charity drives like Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the Relay for Life, and Let’s Make Cancer History have typically raised large sums of money to “search for the cure.” But they devote only a fraction of their proceeds to preventive efforts, which are aimed mostly at encouraging people to alter their diets or stop smoking.

The low priority given to healthy environments can be explained in part by the financial allure of cancer diagnosis and treatment. The 2005 annual report of AstraZeneca, a leading producer of cancer drugs, states that “the world market value for cancer therapies is $26 billion and growing strongly.” A reduction in cancer incidence would represent a threat to the performance of investments, a decline in large and profitable markets.

Back in 1985, when Zeneca Pharmaceuticals sponsored the first US National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it operated as a subsidiary of Imperial Chemical Industries, one of the largest chemical companies in the world. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the event has never offered information on the links between chemical pollutants and breast cancer. AstraZeneca’s website denies environmental causation of cancer, claiming that everyday exposures to toxic substances “have not been conclusively linked to an increased risk.”

Economic interests have shaped not only the dissemination of information on cancer, but the production of new knowledge. To the extent that scientific studies depend on commercial sponsorship, research on links between profitable chemicals and cancer remains chronically underfunded. Asked in a recent survey to comment on the projected challenges in breast cancer research over the next thirty years, the majority of experts expressed hope that breast cancer will become a disease women live with, rather than die from. This goal seems tragically unambitious. The assumption that cancer is inescapable obscures the very real possibility of its prevention.