Forgotten, But Not Gone

Chemical pollution, like cancer, is largely regarded as an inevitable affliction. It’s a perception chemical companies don’t discourage. Take, for example, a recent print advertisement from the Dow Chemical Company, a large multinational chemicals and plastics manufacturer. The image features a well-dressed arm, which we are invited to imagine is our own, pouring water from a carafe into a wine glass. Outside the window beyond our table is a familiar street scene, the comforting buzz of civilization. Reading the ad’s text, we might be momentarily troubled to learn that “The world’s thirst for fresh water is growing faster than nature can provide.” Luckily, Dow’s Filmtec reverse osmosis membrane can derive safe drinking water from the ocean as well as “lakes and rivers that were previously unsuitable due to pollution.” We needn’t worry: “The world can have quality water for life. All we need is the right chemistry.”

What the ad doesn’t say is that Dow also produces a number of the chemicals that render our waterways “unsuitable.” For example, the company is a leading producer of perchloroethylene, a solvent commonly used in dry cleaning that has turned up in sea water, river water, groundwater, rainwater, and tap water as well as in shellfish, fruit, oil, meat, cow’s milk, and human breast milk. Studies have linked some kinds of “perc” exposure to elevated rates of leukemia, esophageal cancer, and bladder cancer, and it has been identified as a probable carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Is the production of this and other pollutants really necessary?

The tacit acceptance of hazardous pollution has roots that go back to the origins of industrial chemistry. With the synthesis of the first aniline dyes in the nineteenth century, both vivid colours and invisible toxic substances flooded from new chemical factories. These seemingly miraculous compounds brought purples, greens, blues, and reds out of the rarefied wardrobes of the elite and onto the streets of the world. Almost immediately, evidence surfaced that the dyes were less friendly to human health than they were to industrialists’ pocketbooks. Published reports of unusually frequent bladder cancer among dye workers had emerged by 1895, and in 1921 the International Labour Organization identified these chemicals as human carcinogens. And yet, aromatic amines like aniline are still imported for use in Canada, while others, like benzidine, were only phased out of use in the 1980s. Somewhere in this century or so of inaction, it must have been decided that the benefits of using these substances outweighed their harms, that their elimination would lead to a less colourful, if healthier, world.

Recent developments in ecological design suggest that toxic compounds can be eliminated without sacrificing the advantages afforded by harmful chemicals. Chemical dry cleaning can be replaced by methods involving water and non-toxic processes. Products like steering wheels, instrument panels, and spray paint can be made from plant-derived substances, and soybean oil can replace formaldehyde as the binding material in particleboard and plywood. By modelling the complex structure of a gecko’s feet, designers have produced strong adhesives that peel apart when pulled gently in the right direction, eliminating the need for harmful glue-removing solvents. Even colourful fabrics can be made in a way that poses no risk to textile workers and leaves factory outflows as clean as or even cleaner than the water upstream.

Interest in such innovations first emerged during the 1970s in response to the budding environmental movement. However, ecological design has begun to blossom in earnest in the last decade, mostly in response to progressive regulations in places like Scandinavia, Germany, and the Netherlands, where governments have been less squeamish about banning hazardous chemicals and redirecting market forces. By making industries responsible for the safe disposal or recycling of consumer products such as batteries, tires, and electronics, the European Union, South Korea, and others have stimulated efforts to make these goods less toxic. As 2006 drew to a close, the EU took an important step by passing a new chemicals policy known as reach (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of CHemicals), which places the onus on producers to prove the safety of substances they use in large quantities. Although it has been significantly weakened by industrial lobby groups, this new policy has the potential to gradually eliminate carcinogens and other toxic substances from the world’s largest chemicals market.

Environmental initiatives in Canada have tended to be less progressive than those in Europe, but political interest in the safety of chemical substances is growing. Many Canadian municipalities have recently prohibited the cosmetic use of pesticides, making lawns safer for children and dogs and decreasing the volume of poisons discharged into soils and water ways. British Columbia and Alberta are beginning to hold relevant industries responsible for the collection and safe disposal of hazardous household waste and other toxic products. Early in 2007, four members of parliament underwent body burden tests, the well-publicized results of which revealed astonishingly high levels of harmful chemicals.

After the Canadian Environmental Protection Act of 1999 was passed, updating the 1988 law, the government began to review more than 23,000 unregulated chemicals in widespread use. In September of 2006, the review concluded that around 4,300 of these are a concern to human health and the environment and will require further assessment and regulation or management. Stephen Harper’s response to this review is the Chemicals Management Plan, which he hopes will win the hearts of Canada’s environmentally concerned voters.

It is far from clear, however, whether the Plan is equipped to significantly reduce the burden of harmful chemicals in Canada. While it promises to prohibit the use of sixty confirmed toxic substances, many of these have already been banned in the European Union or the United States, and others are falling out of use. The Conservatives are offering manufacturers an opportunity to submit their own data in defence of an additional 200 substances of high concern before government scientists decide whether they should be banned, a process that will take years. Critics like Fe de Leon, a researcher at the Canadian Environmental Law Association, point out that these chemicals are among the most toxic covered by the act and argue that they ought to be phased out of use without further delay.

Whether in the European Union or Canada, the effectiveness of chemicals regulation will depend on the intensity and persistence of public scrutiny. Unlike discrete, tradable goods and services, elements like water are shared, not only with other people, but with other species and future generations. Within economic spheres like the chemicals and pharmaceuticals markets, such non-proprietary goods tend to simply disappear. To emerge into public view, these shared interests must become the subjects of conversation and debate, not only in houses of parliament, but in kitchens, cafés, classrooms, artworks, and the media.

Back underground, beneath leaky landfills and illegal dump sites, in urban runoff pipes and rural aquifers, the waters are gathering a host of invisible but potent ghosts. Here and there, the carcass of an abandoned water bottle or a broken cellphone consigns its chemical soul to the wet passages of the soil. In another kind of underworld, biological cells encounter these strange molecules beneath the porous surfaces of human skin. Forgotten once their use has ended, familiar materials pursue unpredictable and sometimes savage afterlives in the environment and in our bodies. Collective attention has the power to bring these substances into view, where we can speak about them, understand them, and render them benign.