Silent Spring
So I finally started reading Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, last weekend. It's basically the original environmentalist book. It was written in 1962, and it's all about the government pesticide spraying programs, and the rise in pesticide use, radiation, and the creation of non-natural chemicals. It may touch on other things later, I'm only halfway through, but I think the focus remains mostly on pesticides, just examining them from different perspectives in each chapter (affect on birds, affect on the soil, affect on groundwater, etc.).
I consider myself pretty well-educated as laymen environmentalists go, and certainly this data is now out-dated, but it's really eye-opening to have some of this info laid out in front of me with dates and stats and such, and to realize that, basically, we were pretty ok until the 20th century, and then we really, irrevocably screwed over the human race (and all species, really).1 We began to mess with the environment too much in the 1800s, with the industrial revolution and large-scale coal mining and such, but until warfare (and medicine, too, I guess) escalated to the level of developing radioactive, nuclear, chemical, and plastic materials that were then adopted large-scale for every-day applications, we weren't that bad off.
Parts of Silent Spring cite various studies on how long certain chemicals remain in your system and how they can be passed on to a fetus. It also touches upon the idea that one pesticide spraying in one corner of the country can (and likely will) affect people all across the country or further, due to runoff, groundwater, rain, migratory animals, trade of goods, etc. In addition to this, it talks about scale (ie: raising one crop in a large area; blanket pesticide spraying rather than spot-treatment) and how that completely alters biodiversity, killing off necessary predators or food supplies, *creating* pest problems where there never were any previously, and thus ruining the way an ecosystem is meant to keep itself in check. Reading all of this combined, along with when individual events occurred (such as when DDT was created, when large scale spraying started, etc.), it dawned on me that my parents' generation were most likely all born with at least trace amounts of man-made, non-natural, toxic chemicals in their systems. More importantly (to me at least) they were the *first* generation where this would be the case. Think about that - until a little over 50 or so years ago, we were born as all-natural, clean biological slates. And we likely never will be again, due to the fact that the nature of a carnivorous food chain necessarily amplifies toxins further up the chain.2
This kind of reading brings up all kinds of rambling and cyclical streams of thought for me. Like the irony in buying gear made of man-made, unnatural, toxic (in some part of the process or another) materials for going out and enjoying nature. Nalgenes, primaloft, polarfleece, coolmax, ripstop nylon, vibram soles, gore-tex, lycra... none of these exactly grow on trees. How many unnatural, toxic materials are in your home right now? Could we ever change that? It's all so day-to-day, but it wasn't until the last century. To what extent do we need to revert for our long-term survival? How do we come to grips psychologically with being born into a world that our race has trashed, not being ok with that, and feeling helpless to fix it? (or am I the only one who is kept up at night by that kind of thing?)
1I intend to follow this up with The World Without Us and some Gaia hypothesis readings in an attempt to further develop my opinion on whether or not our damage to the environment is irrevocable, but given half-lives of radioactive elements, and given what I know of our current methods for dealing with Superfund sites (my understanding being that most hazardous waste cleanup consists of containment and burial, with exceptions of relatively few cases where aeration, introduction of targeted bacteria, application of a neutralizing chemical, etc. can have an affect), I view it as pretty irrevocable. I should also read up more on current research on hazardous waste cleanup, since I haven't really researched that much since high school and hopefully there's been some progress in a decade.
2This is most definitely true when you look at it like this: one leaf has nPPM (parts per million) of chemical x on it; 1 bug eats 200 leaves; 1 fish eats 200 bugs; by the time a person eats that fish, the PPM is much, much higher. This is an over-simplification of it, as there are also various chemical reactions that take place within the body (sometimes neutralizing a toxin, but often converting it to something more toxic), not all people eat fish, larger creatures may have a higher tolerance for a given chemical (or some creatures of the same type or size may be immune to what will kill another), etc. But that's the basic gist of how toxins are amplified in the food chain.
The part that I get fuzzy on though, is whether or not there's a breaking point. Do we flush the chemicals after a certain concentration, or after a certain amount of time? Will we adapt to convert the chemicals to something less toxic in our systems? Does the exponential increase in population actually dilute the average amount of toxins in any given person if we cease to pump new toxins into our environment? I mean, if the amount of toxins on the planet is fixed (which is a totally hypothetical situation), surely eventually they'll be diluted in every creature as creature populations grow. But, unless they decompose over time, the fixed total quantity of toxins on the planet can never drop, right?
I consider myself pretty well-educated as laymen environmentalists go, and certainly this data is now out-dated, but it's really eye-opening to have some of this info laid out in front of me with dates and stats and such, and to realize that, basically, we were pretty ok until the 20th century, and then we really, irrevocably screwed over the human race (and all species, really).1 We began to mess with the environment too much in the 1800s, with the industrial revolution and large-scale coal mining and such, but until warfare (and medicine, too, I guess) escalated to the level of developing radioactive, nuclear, chemical, and plastic materials that were then adopted large-scale for every-day applications, we weren't that bad off.
Parts of Silent Spring cite various studies on how long certain chemicals remain in your system and how they can be passed on to a fetus. It also touches upon the idea that one pesticide spraying in one corner of the country can (and likely will) affect people all across the country or further, due to runoff, groundwater, rain, migratory animals, trade of goods, etc. In addition to this, it talks about scale (ie: raising one crop in a large area; blanket pesticide spraying rather than spot-treatment) and how that completely alters biodiversity, killing off necessary predators or food supplies, *creating* pest problems where there never were any previously, and thus ruining the way an ecosystem is meant to keep itself in check. Reading all of this combined, along with when individual events occurred (such as when DDT was created, when large scale spraying started, etc.), it dawned on me that my parents' generation were most likely all born with at least trace amounts of man-made, non-natural, toxic chemicals in their systems. More importantly (to me at least) they were the *first* generation where this would be the case. Think about that - until a little over 50 or so years ago, we were born as all-natural, clean biological slates. And we likely never will be again, due to the fact that the nature of a carnivorous food chain necessarily amplifies toxins further up the chain.2
This kind of reading brings up all kinds of rambling and cyclical streams of thought for me. Like the irony in buying gear made of man-made, unnatural, toxic (in some part of the process or another) materials for going out and enjoying nature. Nalgenes, primaloft, polarfleece, coolmax, ripstop nylon, vibram soles, gore-tex, lycra... none of these exactly grow on trees. How many unnatural, toxic materials are in your home right now? Could we ever change that? It's all so day-to-day, but it wasn't until the last century. To what extent do we need to revert for our long-term survival? How do we come to grips psychologically with being born into a world that our race has trashed, not being ok with that, and feeling helpless to fix it? (or am I the only one who is kept up at night by that kind of thing?)
1I intend to follow this up with The World Without Us and some Gaia hypothesis readings in an attempt to further develop my opinion on whether or not our damage to the environment is irrevocable, but given half-lives of radioactive elements, and given what I know of our current methods for dealing with Superfund sites (my understanding being that most hazardous waste cleanup consists of containment and burial, with exceptions of relatively few cases where aeration, introduction of targeted bacteria, application of a neutralizing chemical, etc. can have an affect), I view it as pretty irrevocable. I should also read up more on current research on hazardous waste cleanup, since I haven't really researched that much since high school and hopefully there's been some progress in a decade.
2This is most definitely true when you look at it like this: one leaf has nPPM (parts per million) of chemical x on it; 1 bug eats 200 leaves; 1 fish eats 200 bugs; by the time a person eats that fish, the PPM is much, much higher. This is an over-simplification of it, as there are also various chemical reactions that take place within the body (sometimes neutralizing a toxin, but often converting it to something more toxic), not all people eat fish, larger creatures may have a higher tolerance for a given chemical (or some creatures of the same type or size may be immune to what will kill another), etc. But that's the basic gist of how toxins are amplified in the food chain.
The part that I get fuzzy on though, is whether or not there's a breaking point. Do we flush the chemicals after a certain concentration, or after a certain amount of time? Will we adapt to convert the chemicals to something less toxic in our systems? Does the exponential increase in population actually dilute the average amount of toxins in any given person if we cease to pump new toxins into our environment? I mean, if the amount of toxins on the planet is fixed (which is a totally hypothetical situation), surely eventually they'll be diluted in every creature as creature populations grow. But, unless they decompose over time, the fixed total quantity of toxins on the planet can never drop, right?