Can pollution be controlled?

What of the future?

For all these reasons, one can assume that the vast bulk of the pollution generated by our industrial activities will find its way into our environment, which means that total pollution emissions to the environment will, to all intents and purposes, reflect closely the level of industrial activity.

This conclusion is implicit in most of the serious forecasts of pollution trends in Europe. The Economic Commission for Europe points out, for instance, that in spite of all measures taken to control the release of waste products of all sorts into the European environment, it is continuing to increase at a rate of about 5 percent per annum, while the quantities of inorganic waste released into the environment worldwide will continue to double every 10 – 12 years. [95]

In another, little publicised, OECD report it is admitted that the OECD area is rapidly reaching the point where it must choose between industrial expansion and clean air. The report predicted that emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels would go on increasing, unless there was a reduction in fuel consumption and by implication of economic activity. [96]

Already, in one year, it appears the waste the European community has released into the environment includes 90 million tonnes of household refuse, 115 million tonnes of industrial waste, 950 million tonnes of agricultural waste, 200 million tonnes of sewage sludge and 150 million tonnes of waste from extractive industries.

The physical problem of disposing of such massive quantities of waste products is in itself a major one and the danger to public health is already, the Commission admits, serious. Yet by the end of the 20th century, if economic activity continues at the present rate, the quantities will have quadrupled – with wastes accumulating on the land, in rivers and waterways and in the atmosphere and often too, in biological organisms including human ones with inevitable detrimental effects on health.

Pollution by radioactive materials must also increase in the same way. Already, as Dr Spearing points out,

“merely the ‘low level’ releases to the environment, currently occurring, contain long-lived radio-isotopes which are being discharged at a rate exceeding the rate at which their radio-activity is decaying. In consequence, there is a gradual and insidious build-up of environmental radioactivity and there is a very real risk of irreversible contamination of our planet to a degree that will impose a severe burden of human suffering on future generations, quite possibly to the end of the story of human life on earth.” [97]

As Sir Brian Flowers warns

“By the year 2000, a world nuclear power programme would have generated such large quantities of fission products (and actinides) that even if they were dispersed uniformly in the vast bulk of the oceans, the resulting concentration would be within one or two orders of magnitude of the maximum permissible concentration for drinking water. This would not be satisfactory because of the many food chains that would concentrate the radioisotopes and return them to man.” [98]

With regard to marine pollution in general, one of the world’s foremost oceanographers, Dr Edward Goldberg, writes

“Our concern is the haunting possibility that levels of a toxic material can rise so high that exposure of organisms to such materials in the open ocean, as well as in the coastal ocean, may result in widespread mortality or disease . . . If these substances mix with the deep ocean, they will he transferred within a decade to zones below the mixed layer, where they may remain for thousands of years . . .” [99]

He concludes that we may leave future generations “the legacy of a poisonous ocean”.

Another consequence of the increased contamination of our planet must be the continued incidence of cancer. Already more than 25 percent (51 million) of the 200 million people living in the US will get cancer; 34 million will die of it. As Epstein points out

“most of the people dying today are over forty or fifty years old and were thereby brought up in that period that preceded the general contamination of our environment by most of the known carcinogens in general use today. We can thereby expect that when today’s children reach the age of forty or fifty, the cancer rate will be very much higher.” [100]

Frank Rauschel, when he was director of the National Cancer Institute, agreed with this thesis.

“Given today’s environment we are living with a time-bomb that’s going to explode in twenty or thirty years from now in the form of even more persons being stricken with cancer.” [101]

Indeed at the rate at which the cancer rate is increasing today, it is only a matter of a few decades before this dreaded disease becomes generalised among the populations of industrial countries – a truly nightmarish prospect. It is now generalised among fish populations in highly polluted US East coast rivers.

However, perhaps one of the most dramatic consequences of present pollution trends must be changing climatic patterns. Professor Flohn at the Second International Conference on the Environmental Future, went so far as to state that “a global climatic catastrophe is unavoidable, if we continue to use energy at the current rate”, a conclusion that was also that of other eminent climatologists present.

Indeed it is difficult to see how such a conclusion can be avoided if one accepts with Flohn, that we are already “on the fringe when man-made changes” to the chemical composition of the atmosphere “are at the same level as natural ones” – and are, what is more, still increasing. [102]

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What hope is there?

In the introduction of the Fifth Report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, Mr Crossland, who was then Minister of the Environment, congratulates its authors for showing that there was no substance to the predictions by environmentalists that our industrial activities were causing irreversible damage to our environment.

In the same report, its principal author, Sir Brian Flowers, concludes that pollution could never by itself limit economic growth. These statements, which reflect official opinion in this and other countries as well, could not be further from the truth. Indeed if global environmental pollution were to increase at the current rate for more than a few decades, economic activities, like all other human activities, would be dramatically curtailed by the mere fact that our planet would have ceased to provide a suitable habitat for complex forms of life such as human and the other higher mammals.

In reality of course such a situation is unlikely to occur. Over the next decades our polluting activities are likely to diminish rather than increase. This, however, is not going to be because of any intelligent decisions taken either by our industrialists, or our politicians, but simply because world conditions are becoming ever less propitious to the industrial process. It is, in fact, global economic catastrophe that is likely to provide the only effective method of pollution control.

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Notes

1.	Lord Zuckennan, “The Environment”. This Month, London, 1972.
2.	Nicholas Wade, Science 13 Feb.1976.
3.	“The PCB Problem”, New Canadian Report Pollution. Environmental Bulletin, October 1976.
4.	John Nisbett, “Balancing the Costs of Cancer”. Technology Review, January1976.
5.	Lawrence McGinty, New Scientist, 14 July 1977.
6.	Ross Hume Hall, Food For Nought. Doubleday, New York, 1974.
7.	Anthony Tucker, The Guardian, 7 October 1977.
8.	Science News, Vol.102, September 1970.
9.	New Scientist 15 January 1976.
10.	Environmental Policy No. 82, 26 November 1978.
11.	Peter Schmidt. Alsdorf, 1969.
12.	Robert Walgate, Nature Vol. 280, 5 July 1979.
13.	Nature Vol. 280, 5 July 1979.
14.	New Scientist 22 July 1976.
15.	“Blind Man’s Bluff”, Ecologist Quarterly, Spring 1978.
16.	Samual Epstein, “Testimony on the Delaney Amendment and on Mechanisms for reducing Constraints in the Regulatory Process, in general and as applied to Food Additives in particular”. US Senate Hearings before the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, 20th September 1972.
17.	Anita Johnson, Environment, April 1979.
18.	Neville Grant, “Mercury in Man”. Environment, May 1971.
19.	Anthony Tucker, The Guardian, 7 October 1977.
20.	Derek Bryce-Srnith, text of unpublished lecture.
21.	Nature Vol. 276, 16 November 1978.
22.	Professor Gordon Athersley, “Proof of Evidence”, Windscale Inquiry, September 1977.
23.	Chemical and Engineering News, 19 January 1976.
24.	Jack Schubert, “The Programme to Abolish Harmful Chemicals”. Ambio, 1972.
25.	Neville Grant, op.cit.
26.	Anthony Tucker, The Toxic Metals. Pan/Ballantyne, London, 1972.
27.	E. Sturgess, The Times. Quoted in The Ecologist Vol. 3 No. 9, September 1973.
28.	Colin Norman and Chris Sherwell, “Treading Softly on the Ozone Layer”. Nature Vol. 263, 23 September 1976.
29.	Angela Singer, The Guardian, 22 April, 1978.
30.	Michael Waldichuk, “The Assessment of sub-lethal effects of pollution in the Sea. Review of the problems”. Paper prepared for the Royal Society Meeting on 24-25 May, 1978.
31.	H. Rosenthal and D. R. Alderdice, “Sub-lethal effects of environmental stressors, natural and pollutional, on marine fish eggs and larvae”. Journal of Fisheries Research Board of Canada Vol. 33 1976, pp.2047-2065. Quoted by Waldichuck, op.cit.
32.	F. M. Donaldson and H. M. Dye, “Corticosteroid concentrations in sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) exposed to low concentrations of copper”. Journal of Fisheries Research Board of CanadaVol. 32 1975, pp.533-539. Quoted by Waldichuck, op.cit
33.	J. M. Anderson, “Assessment of the effects of pollutants on physiology and behaviour”. Proceedings of the Royal Society BI77, pp.307-320, 1971. Quoted by Waldichuck, op.cit.
34.	H. Kleerekoper, “Effects of sub-lethal concentrations of pollutants on the behaviour of fish”. Journal of Fisheries Research Board of CanadaVol. 32 1976, pp.2036-2039. Quoted by Waldichuk, op.cit.
35.	P. E. Lindal and E. Schwanborn, 1971, “Rotary-flow technique as a means of detecting sub-lethal poisoning in fish populations”. Oikos Vol. 22, pp.354-357. Quoted by Waldichuk, op.cit.
36.	H. Rosenthal, op.cit.
37.	Anthony Tucker, 1972, op.cit.
38.	S. G. Rainsford, quoted by Anthony Tucker, 1972, op.cit.
39.	Anthony Tucker, 1972, op.cit.
40.	I. M. Dale, M. S. Baxter et alia, “Mercury in Seabirds”. Marine Pollution Bulletin Vol. 4 No. 5, May 1977.
41.	Carroll Wilson et alia, A Study of Critical Environmental Problems (SCEP) Man’s impact on the Global Environment. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1971.
42.	Irving Selikoff, Nature, December 1978.
43.	John D. Walker and Peter R. Caldwell, “Deadly mercury and bacterial interaction”. Environmental Science and Technology Vol. 10 No.12, November 1976.
44.	Jack Schubert, op.cit.
45.	Carroll Wilson, op.cit.
46.	O. Linden, “Acute effects of 081 and Oil Dispersant Mixtures on Larvae and Baltic Herring”. Ambio Vol. 7 No. 2, February 1976.
47.	Janice Crossland and Virginia Brodine, “Drinking Water”. Environment, April 1973.
48.	Samuel Epstein, “The Delaney Amendment”. The Ecologist Vol. 3 No.1, 1973.
49.	Jack Schubert, op.cit.
50.	Bryn Bridge, The Ecologist June 1972.
51.	Jean Marx, Science Vol. 201, 11 August 1978.
52.	Samuel Epstein, op.cit.
53.	Anthony Tucker, 1972 op.cit.
54.	V. T. Bowen, Proof of evidence at the Windscale Inquiry.
55.	Peter Bunyard, “Gearing up to the Plutonium Economy”. The Ecologist Vol. 6 No. 10, 1976.
56.	Environmental Directorate Report, OECD, 1975.
57.	Colin Normal and Chris Sherwell, op.cit.
58.	“When to ban nasty chemicals”. New Scientist, 8 April 1976.
59.	Charles Wurster, “The Effects of pesticides on the Environmental future”. In Nicholas Polunin ed., The Environmental Future. Macmillan, London, 1973.
60.	Abel Wolman, “Ecological Dilemma”, Science No. 193, 1976.
61.	René Dubos, Pollution. Publication of the National Association of Biology Teachers, 1973.
62.	Anthony Tucker, “The Poison Cloud over Civilisation’s future”. The Guardian 5 August 1976.
63.	Janice Crossland, “Drinking Water”. Environment Vol. 15 No. 3, April, 1973.
64.	M. Fielding and R. F. Packman, “Organic compounds in Drinking Water and Public Health”. The Ecologist Quarterly No. 3, Summer 1978.
65.	“Pollution”, Environment News Bulletin, May 1976.
66.	Nature Vol. 261 No. 409, June 1976.
67.	Archives of Toxicology Vol. 29 No. 287, 1975.
68.	Jon Tinker, “Treating Smog with Air Freshener”. New Scientist September 1976.
69.	Environmental Directorate, OECD, 1976.
70.	J. Sontheimer. The Ecologist Vol. 3 No. 9, September 1973.
71.	“Spilling the Beans”. The Economist, 7 February 1976.
72.	W. C. Chalmers, Evidence presented at the Windscale Inquiry, day 48, p.32, 1977
73.	Charles Wakstein, “British Nuclear Fuel’s safety record”. The Ecologist Vol. 7 No. 6, October 1977.
74.	Sir John Hill, quoted by Beryl Kemp in “Nuclear Alert”. Conservation News, January 1977.
75.	J. T. Edsall, Environmental Conservation Vol. 1 No.1, 1979
76.	Sir Richard Doll, Nature No. 265, February 17 1977.
77.	Samuel Epstein, op.cit.
78.	“Drug Safety and the Expert”. New Scientist, 2 September 1976.
79.	Samuel Epstein, op.cit.
80.	John E. Blodgett, “Pesticides, regulation of an evolving technology”. In Samuel Epstein and Richard Grundy, eds., Consumer health and Product Hazards/Cosmetics and Drugs, Pesticides, Food AdditivesVol. 2. The MIT Press, Cambridge Mass, 1974.
81.	“Rationalizing the Hunt for Cancer Causing chemicals”. New Scientist, April 1976.
82.	Not Man Apart, April 1976.
83.	D. Saffiotti quoted in Samuel Epstein and Richard Grundy eds., op.cit.
84.	Epstein and Grundy eds., ibid.
85.	D. Saffiotti quoted by Epstein and Grundy eds., ibid.
86.	Alvin Weinberg, quoted by Epstein and Grundy eds., ibid.
87.	Jack Schubert, op.cit.
88.	Barry Commoner, “Foreword” to Epstein and Grundy eds., op.cit.
89.	Stephen Boyden, “Evolution and Health”. The Ecologist Vol. 3 No. 8, August 1973.
90.	Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle. Jonathan Cape, London 1971.
91.	Samuel Epstein, op.cit.
92.	D. Saffiottti, quoted by Epstein, op.cit.
93.	Ross Hume Hall, op.cit.
94.	Frank Kreith, “Lack of Impact”. Environment Vol. 15 No. 1, January-February 1973.
95.	“Pollution”, Environment New Bulletin, 26 September 1977.
96.	The Ecologist Vol. 3 No. 1, 1973.
97.	Dr. J. K. Spearing, Proof of Evidence, Windscale Inquiry, 1977.
98.	Sir Brian Flowers, in 6th Report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, HMSO, London.
99.	Edward Goldberg, “The Health of Oceans”. Unesco Feature, 1975.
100.	Samuel Epstein, “The biological and Economic Basis of Cancer”. Technology Review Vol. 78 No. 8, July-August 1976.
101.	Frank Rauschel, US News and World Report, 1976.
102.	Professor Flohn, quoted by Edward Goldsmith in “The Reykjavik Conference”. The Ecologist Vol. 7 No. 6, 1977.

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