A Flood of Man-Made Chemicals

THIS century could well be called the age of chemistry. Man-made chemical compounds have changed our lives. Our homes, offices, and factories are filled with aerosols, artificial sweeteners, cosmetics, dyes, inks, paints, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, plastics, refrigerants, synthetic fabrics—the list could fill volumes.

To satisfy the world’s demand for these products, the annual global production of chemicals, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), amounts to about $1.5 trillion. WHO reports that some 100,000 chemicals are now on the market and that from 1,000 to 2,000 new ones are added each year.

However, this flood of chemicals invites questions regarding how they affect the environment as well as our own health. Clearly, we are sailing into uncharted waters. “We are all part of an experimental generation, and the full effects will not be known for decades to come,” said one doctor.

More Chemicals, More Risks?

The people most often affected by chemical pollutants, observes WHO, are “poor, illiterate people with little or no access to appropriate training or basic information on the risks posed by chemicals to which they are exposed directly or indirectly every day.” This is especially true of pesticides. But we are all affected by chemicals.

Some 20 percent of California’s water wells, says the book A Green History of the World, have pollution levels, including pesticides, above official safety limits. “In Florida,” the book adds, “1,000 wells have been closed because of contamination; in Hungary 773 towns and villages have water that is unfit for consumption, in Britain ten per cent of aquifers are polluted above World Health Organisation safety limits and in parts of both Britain and the United States tap water cannot be given to new born babies because of high nitrate levels.”

Mercury is another useful but potentially toxic chemical. It finds its way into the environment through sources ranging from industrial smokestacks to billions of fluorescent lights. Similarly, lead can be found in many products, from fuel to paint. But like mercury, it can be toxic, especially to children. Exposure to leaded emissions may shave up to “four points from the I.Q.” of the average child, says one report from Cairo, Egypt.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, each year some 100 tons of mercury, 3,800 tons of lead, 3,600 tons of phosphates, and 60,000 tons of detergents enter the Mediterranean Sea as a result of human activities. Understandably, the sea is in crisis. But it is not alone. In fact, the United Nations declared 1998 the International Year of the Ocean. Worldwide, all oceans are in trouble, particularly because of pollution.

While chemical technology has given us many helpful products, we use and dispose of many of them at considerable cost to the environment. Have we, as one newspaper columnist recently said, made ourselves “hostages to progress”?

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Chemicals and Chemical Reactions

The term “chemical” applies to all the basic substances that make up the world around us, including the more than one hundred fundamental elements, such as iron, lead, mercury, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen. Chemical compounds, or combinations of different elements, include such things as water, acids, salts, and alcohol. Many of these compounds occur naturally.

A “chemical reaction” has been defined as “a process in which one substance is chemically converted to another.” Fire is a chemical reaction; it converts one combustible substance—paper, gasoline, hydrogen, and so forth—into a totally different substance or substances. Many chemical reactions occur unceasingly, both around us and inside us.

Chemicals—Friend and Foe?

WE MAKE many decisions in life by weighing advantages against disadvantages. For example, many people buy a car because of the convenience it offers. But against that convenience they have to weigh the cost of owning the car—insurance, registration, depreciation—and of keeping the car roadworthy. They also have to consider the risk of injury or death due to accidents. The situation is much the same with synthetic chemicals—their advantages have to be weighed against their disadvantages. Take as an example the chemical called MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether), a fuel additive that enhances combustion and cuts vehicle emissions.

Thanks in part to MTBE, the air in many cities in the United States is the cleanest it has been in years. But cleaner air “has come at a price,” reports New Scientist. This is because MTBE is a potential carcinogen, and it has leaked from tens of thousands of underground gasoline storage tanks, often contaminating groundwater. As a result, one town now has to bring in 82 percent of its water from outside, at a cost of $3.5 million a year! New Scientist says that this disaster “could become one of the US’s most serious groundwater pollution crises for years.”

Some chemicals have been banned and taken off the market altogether because of the damage they cause to the environment and to health. ‘But why,’ you may ask, ‘does this happen? Are not all new chemicals thoroughly tested for toxicity prior to release?’

Problems With Tests for Toxicity

Actually, testing chemicals for toxicity is a blend of science and guesswork. “Risk assessors do not know how to draw a sharp line between ‘safe’ and ‘unsafe’ exposures to any chemical,” says Joseph V. Rodricks in his book Calculated Risks. That is true even of drugs, many of which are produced synthetically. “Even the most careful testing,” says The World Book Encyclopedia, “cannot always reveal the possibility that a drug might produce an unexpected harmful effect.”

Laboratories have certain built-in limitations. They cannot, for example, fully simulate a chemical’s behavior in the diverse and complex outside world. The world outside the laboratory abounds with hundreds, even thousands, of different synthetic chemicals, many of which can interact with one another as well as with living things. Some of these chemicals are innocuous on their own, but if they join together, outside or inside our bodies, they can produce new, toxic compounds. Certain chemicals become toxic, even carcinogenic, only after the body’s metabolism processes them.

How do risk assessors try to determine a chemical’s safety in the light of such challenges? The standard method has been to give laboratory animals a measured dose of the chemical and then try to apply the results to humans. Is this method always reliable?

Are Tests on Animals Reliable?

Besides raising ethical questions regarding cruelty to animals, testing toxins on animals raises other questions. For instance, different animals often react quite differently to chemicals. A small dose of highly toxic dioxin will kill a female guinea pig, but that dose has to be increased 5,000 times to kill a hamster! Even closely related species like rats and mice react differently to many chemicals.

So if the reaction of one animal species is no sure predictor of the reaction of another species, how certain can researchers be that a particular chemical will be safely tolerated by humans? The fact is, they cannot really be certain.

Chemists surely have a difficult task. They have to please the people who want their creations, appease those concerned about animal welfare, and satisfy their own consciences that their products are safe. For these reasons, some laboratories are now experimenting with testing chemicals on human cells in culture. Time will tell, however, if this makes reliable guarantees of safety possible.

When Laboratory Tests Fail

The pesticide DDT, still widely found in the environment, is one example of a chemical that was wrongly declared safe when first released. Scientists later learned that DDT tends to remain in organisms a long time, which is also the case with other potential toxins. What are the tragic consequences of this? Well, the food chain, made up of millions of tiny creatures, then fish, and finally birds, bears, otters, and so on, becomes a living funnel, concentrating toxins in the final consumers. In one case, a population of grebes, a species of water bird, was unable to hatch a single chick for over ten years!

These biological funnels are so efficient that some chemicals, though barely detectable in the water, become concentrated in astounding amounts in the final consumers. Beluga whales in North America’s St. Lawrence River are a good example. They have toxin levels so high that they must be treated as hazardous waste when they die!

Certain chemicals present in many animals have been found to masquerade as hormones. And it is only recently that scientists began to uncover the insidious toxic effect these chemicals can have.

Chemicals That Mimic Hormones

Hormones are important chemical messengers in the body. They travel through our bloodstream to other parts of our body, where they either stimulate or suppress a certain function, such as body growth or reproductive cycles. Interestingly, a recent press release by the World Health Organization (WHO) said that “a rapidly growing body of scientific evidence” indicates that certain synthetic chemicals, when taken into the body, interfere with hormones by either imitating them in a harmful way or blocking them.

The chemicals involved include PCBs,a dioxins, furans, and some pesticides, including DDT residues. Called endocrine disrupters, these chemicals have the potential to disrupt the normal workings of the body’s endocrine system, the source of hormones.

One hormone that these chemicals mimic is the female sex hormone estrogen. A study published in the medical journal Pediatrics suggests that an increased prevalence of early puberty among many girls could be linked to estrogen-containing hair products as well as environmental chemicals that mimic estrogen.

Exposing a male to certain chemicals at a critical time in his development can have adverse effects. “Experiments have shown,” says a report in Discover magazine, “that PCBs applied at just the right time during development can change male turtles and alligators into females or ‘intersex’ individuals.”

In addition, chemical toxins weaken immune systems, leaving animals more prone to viral infections. Indeed, viral infections seem to be spreading farther and faster than ever, especially among animals high on the food chain, such as dolphins and seabirds.

In humans, children are the ones who are affected the most by chemicals that mimic hormones. Children born to women who ingested PCB-contaminated rice oil in Japan some years ago “suffered from physical and mental developmental delays, behavioral problems including hypoactivity and hyperactivity, abnormally small penises, and IQ scores five points below average,” Discover magazine reports. Tests performed on children exposed to a high level of PCBs in the Netherlands and in North America revealed similar adverse effects upon their physical and mental development.

Also linked to these chemicals, reports WHO, may be the increase in “hormonally sensitive” cancers among men and women, such as breast, testicular, and prostate cancer. In addition, in a number of countries, the evidently ongoing decrease in the average sperm count in men, as well as the quality of the sperm, may be linked to the increase in the use of chemicals. In some lands, the average sperm count has almost halved in 50 years!

In the previous article, one doctor was quoted as saying that we are “an experimental generation.” It seems that she is right. True, many of our chemical creations have paid us back well, but others have not. We are wise, therefore, to avoid unnecessary exposure to chemicals that have the potential to hurt us. Surprisingly, many of these can be found in our homes. Our next article will discuss what we can do to protect ourselves from potentially dangerous chemicals.

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How Toxic Is Your Home?

A RECENT study of over 3,000 people in the United States and Canada, according to Scientific American magazine, showed that “most citizens were very likely to have the greatest contact with potentially toxic pollutants . . . inside the places they usually consider to be essentially unpolluted, such as homes, offices and automobiles.” The chief sources of air pollution in homes were the fumes originating from ordinary products such as cleaning compounds, moth repellents, building materials, fuels, deodorizers, and disinfectants, as well as chemicals from dry-cleaned clothes and new synthetic upholstery.

“Space flu,” an illness experienced by astronauts until the cause was found, was due to such fumes, or “off-gassing.” You detect off-gassing when you sit in a new car or walk by shelves of cleaning products in a supermarket, even though they are in sealed containers. So when a house is shut tight to keep out, say, winter’s cold, off-gassing of various chemicals can contribute to a level of indoor pollution that is far in excess of pollution outside.

Children, especially toddlers, are the most vulnerable to indoor pollutants, says Canada’s Medical Post. They are closer to the floor than older people; they breathe more rapidly than adults do; they spend as much as 90 percent of their time indoors; and because their organs have not yet matured, their bodies are more susceptible to toxins. They absorb some 40 percent of ingested lead, whereas adults absorb about 10 percent.

Maintaining a Balanced Attitude

Because the present generation of humans has experienced a level of exposure to chemicals that is without precedent, there is still much to learn about the effects, so scientists remain cautious. Chemical exposure does not automatically raise the specter of cancer or death. Indeed, most people seem to cope fairly well, to the credit of the Creator of the wonderful human body. (Psalm 139:14) Still, reasonable precautions must be taken, especially if we have regular contact with potentially toxic chemicals.

The book Chemical Alert! says that “some chemicals are toxic in the sense that they interfere with the balance of [the body’s] processes and thereby produce vague symptoms that can best be described as just not feeling well.” Reducing our exposure to potentially harmful chemicals does not necessarily require major changes in life-style but only modest alterations in our daily routine. Please note the suggestions in the box on page 8. Some of them might be of help to you.

In addition to taking reasonable precautions with chemicals, we help ourselves when we avoid being unduly anxious, especially in regard to things over which we have no control. “A calm heart is the life of the fleshly organism,” says the Bible at Proverbs 14:30.

Still, many people do suffer and become ill, sometimes even terminally ill, because of chemical toxins.a Like the millions of people suffering from so many other causes nowadays, those afflicted with chemical-related sicknesses have every reason to look to the future, for soon the earth will be free of toxins that harm its inhabitants. Even toxic thoughts, along with those who harbor them, will be things of the past, as the concluding article in this series will show.

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For a Healthier, Safer Home

Reducing your exposure to potential toxins often calls for only modest alterations in your life-style. Here are some suggestions that you might find helpful. (For additional, more specific details, we suggest that you check with your local library.)

1. Try to store most chemicals that give off vapors where they will not contaminate the air in your home. These chemicals include formaldehyde and products containing volatile solvents, such as paint, varnish, adhesives, pesticides, and cleaning solutions. Volatile petroleum products give off toxic vapors. This group includes benzene, which in high concentrations for extended periods is known to cause cancer, birth defects, and other reproductive harm.

2. Have good ventilation in all rooms, including the bathroom. Showering volatilizes certain additives such as chlorine that may be in the water. This may lead to a buildup of chlorine and even chloroform.

3. Wipe your feet before you step indoors. This simple act, says Scientific American, can reduce the amount of lead in a typical carpet by a factor of six. It also cuts down on pesticides, some of which break down quickly outdoors in the sunlight but may last for years in carpets. Another option, which is a standard custom in some parts of the world, is to remove your shoes. A good vacuum cleaner, preferably one with a rotating brush, can also reduce pollution in carpets.

4. If you treat a room with a pesticide, keep toys out of that room for at least two weeks, even though the product label may say the room is safe hours after treatment. Scientists have recently found that certain plastics and foam found in toys literally soak up pesticide residues like a sponge. Children will absorb the toxins through the skin and mouth.

5. Minimize your use of pesticides. In his book Since Silent Spring, Frank Graham, Jr., writes that pesticides “have their place in home and garden, but sales campaigns have convinced the average suburban homeowner that he must keep at hand an arsenal of chemicals sufficient to stave off an African locust assault.”

6. Have flaking leaded paint removed from all surfaces, and repaint with unleaded paint. Do not allow children to play in dirt contaminated with leaded paint. If lead in plumbing is suspected, the cold-water tap should be flushed briefly until there is a noticeable change in water temperature, and water from the hot-water tap should not be used for drinking.—Environmental Poisons in Our Food.

Who Will Clean Up Our Earth?

“I PREDICT that by the year 2025 the word ‘pollution’ will have largely disappeared from our nation’s vocabulary as far as our industry is concerned.” That was the recent prediction made by a chemical corporation president. Do you believe that it will happen? If so, how will it be accomplished?

It is the desire for profits that often pushes unsafe products onto store shelves. For example, trade secrecy laws allow pesticide companies to keep certain profitable formulas secret by labeling their ingredients as “inert,” a term easily interpreted as “harmless.” Yet, “at least 394 inert ingredients have been used as active pesticides,” reports the magazine Chemical Week. Of these ingredients, 209 are hazardous pollutants, 21 are officially classified as carcinogens, and 127 are occupational hazards!

True, safety controls by governments have often been beneficial. But the prime concerns of governments, says one writer, are “economic growth and industrial profitability.” Thus, they are constantly faced with a trade-off—risks versus benefits. Essentially, the result is ‘regulated pollution.’

So where do we turn for answers? One of Jehovah’s Witnesses posed this question to a friendly householder. Expressing trust in human leaders and scientists, the person replied: “They will fix things up one day.”

“But who are they?” asked the Witness. “Are they not people like you and me? They may be more educated, but they have their limitations, their weaknesses. They make mistakes.” Add to this the enormity of the problems that confront them as well as the greed and corruption in human society.

Do you also believe that they will fix things up? The long history of human failure to do so does not inspire confidence. The magazine Outdoor Life said: “Scientists and their agencies are infinitely better at studying pollution problems than curing them.” What prospects are there that humans can solve this serious problem?

Can Humans Do It by Themselves?

Controlling chemical pollution is not simply a problem for local authorities. This is because chemicals used in one country affect people in neighboring countries, even people earth wide! And humans have been unsuccessful in cooperating to solve such world problems. The Bible indicates why when it states: “Man has dominated man to his injury.” (Ecclesiastes 8:9) Why are humans unsuccessful in governing themselves? Again, the Bible explains: “It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step.” (Jeremiah 10:23) What does that mean?

It means that humans were never meant to rule themselves independent of God’s direction. True, humans have done remarkable things—they have built marvelous residences, made ingenious gadgets, even traveled to the moon—yet they are incapable of governing themselves without divine guidance. That is what the Bible teaches, and history proves the Bible’s accuracy.

A Cleansed Earth—By What Means?

Our Creator, Jehovah God, has always been concerned about humankind and this earth, which he prepared for man. After he created humans, he directed that they care for the earth and life upon it. (Genesis 1:27, 28; 2:15) Later, after the first couple disobeyed his directions, he gave instructions to the nation of ancient Israel about caring for the land, including the requirement that it lie fallow for a full year every seven years. This allowed it to rejuvenate. (Exodus 23:11; Leviticus 25:4-6) But the people got greedy and disobeyed God. They and the land suffered.

Of course, chemical pollution such as we have today was not possible back then. Yet, the land became ruined because the Israelites failed to let it rest according to God’s purpose, and innocent people suffered. So God permitted the Babylonians to conquer Israel and take the nation into exile to Babylon for 70 years. This punishment also allowed the land to rest so that it could recuperate.—Leviticus 26:27, 28, 34, 35, 43; 2 Chronicles 36:20, 21.

This history teaches us that God holds humans accountable for what they do to the earth. (Romans 15:4) In fact, God promises that he will “bring to ruin those ruining the earth.” (Revelation 11:18) Significantly, the Bible paints a portrait of the kind of people who are contributing to this “ruining.” Their predominant traits, as listed in the Bible at 2 Timothy 3:1-5, include a preoccupation with money and self to the point of caring little for God and, by extension, for his creation, including fellow humans.

So these two Bible texts—2 Timothy 3:1-5 and Revelation 11:18—point to two solid conclusions. First, polluted minds lead to a polluted earth. And second, God will intervene to save this planet and God-fearing humans when both forms of pollution become full-blown. How will God intervene?

Through his prophet Daniel, God foretold: “In the days of those kings [evidently referring to governments today] the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that . . . will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it itself will stand to times indefinite.” (Daniel 2:44) That Kingdom is a real world government. Jesus Christ taught his followers to pray for that government when he said: “You must pray, then, this way: ‘Our Father in the heavens, . . . let your kingdom come. Let your will take place, as in heaven, also upon earth.”—Matthew 6:9, 10.

Under the loving oversight of God’s Kingdom, earth’s tenants will enjoy the exquisite privilege of making the whole planet a paradise. The air will be sweet, streams will run pure, and the soil will burst with uncontaminated life. (Psalm 72:16; Isaiah 35:1-10; Luke 23:43) Thereafter, the Bible promises: “The former things [today’s sicknesses, suffering, pollution, and the many other woes] will not be called to mind, neither will they come up into the heart.”—Isaiah 65:17.