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Welcome to Dispatches from The Chemical Edge

Petrochemical Supply Chain – CHE Manager

Welcome to Dispatches from the Chemical Edge

Since the late 1960s I have watched the growth of two amazing and compelling bodies of environmental knowledge. The first is concerned primarily with the species- and civilization-threatening causes, and the ever-accelerating timetables of climate change. The second is concerned with the adverse impacts of far, far too many modern day chemicals – consumer as well as industrial – and the pandemic plagues of acute and chronic diseases and disabling syndromes and disorders that are eroding our health and our viability as well. When the rate of autism spectrum disorder shifts in 50 years from 1 in 10,000 to one in 80, something terrible is going on. The same can be said of cancer rates – some up more than 180 percent, all more than 50 percent – since the 1970s. And cancer is now the leading cause of deaths in children. Even the obesity pandemic is a red flag.

The term “petrochemical” expresses the intimate relationship between the industry that causes climate change and the one that produces the toxics that are threatening us so seriously. Shell Oil is twinned by Shell Chemical, ExxonMobil by Exxon Chemical, and so on down the line. Climate and health catastrophes are two sides of the same coin.

Yet though everyone I know, work with, or even encounter casually seems to have grasped the fundamentals of climate change, and the vast majority agree with the need to green our energy production through a global shift to sustainable technologies, far fewer people have a similar grasp on the threats posed to us by ubiquitous chemical impacts.

Certainly, most people grasp the idea that “pollution” is bad. But few people realize that almost none of us escapes the effect of toxic chemicals. For most people, pollution is still something that exists “somewhere else” – for example, inside and close to industrial facilities the refine or work with chemicals, in fence-line communities, such as those in Sarnia, Ontario, or in Baton Rouge, Louisiana – and is, therefore, someone else’s problem. Few people realize the extent to which these installations send direct, industrial pollution – in accidental spills, but mostly in legal emissions – far downstream, in water, soil and air, reaching every region of the earth.

As well, few people really understand the severity and the impacts of what researchers call TRAP – traffic-related automobile pollution – even though this has a devastating effect on the neurological, respiratory and cardiovascular health of tens of millions of us, especially those who live close to major thoroughfares, and those who live in cities where smog is generated.

And perhaps even fewer people really understand the reach and severity of the widest contaminants of them all: the consumer chemicals that leach off everyday objects made from refined petrochemicals – the same chemicals that make workers and people in fence-line communities sick also have a very detrimental effect on people who purchase and use the end products of that long petrochemical supply chain. I am constantly reminded by people I meet how few understand that toxic chemicals are in everything today – in building supplies and cosmetics, in furnishings and baby clothes, in plastics and in cleaning supplies – and that means they’re right inside our homes, our schools, our workplaces, our stores, in the air we breathe, in the dust bunnies under the bed, in the fumes from our printers, in our medical supplies, in our baby toys.

Our children are, without any doubt, the most vulnerable among us to these everyday chemicals – a reality that has haunted me for years, and which I have sought to address here, in offering a section on children, and in my intention to blog about issues that affect them on a regular basis.

Enormously troubling is that most health professionals seem to be as ignorant as the average person of the constellation of issues behind today’s chemical regime. I meet many people in the health field – from senior government officials to nurses and doctors on the front lines – and I am repeatedly and dismayingly stunned by the ignorance of toxics that I encounter among them.

Last year, for example, at an environmental event, I was seated next to a distinguished paediatrician, copiously awarded for his life-saving campaigns to replace micro-nutrients in the diets of many African children. After congratulating him on his work, I asked what he thought about the problem of endocrine disruption in babies and children. Turned out he no idea what an endocrine disrupting chemical was. As disturbing as this was, it was in line with so many other such encounters. Last year too, I worked for some months with a number of health ministry staff on a task force and learned that not one of them – including the person from the Ministry of the Environment – had a clue about the issues so many fine scientists, physicians, epidemiologists, occupational health and safety specialists and paediatric researchers have studied and published.

It’s a fact that the silos of knowledge are high and too often impermeable. It’s holding us all back. Helping to dissolve the knowledge barriers has been a huge motivator for me, in writing about toxics-related issues.

But what finally pushed me into creating this blog and website was the backdrop of suicidal mayhem in both climate and toxics fields created by the deeply anti-environmentalist Trump administration, against which a number of big deeply disturbing stories emerged this fall – stories about horrible active and legacy pollution in Ontario, the province where I now live; stories about the ongoing reality of environmental racism even as the chemical industry grows by leaps and bounds; and a story from the National Institutes of Health and the EPA about the appalling toll that toxics are taking on our children.

So: My goal has been to make a site that provides brief introductions to a number of the really big components of the chemical crisis; that provides non-specialist readers with great additional resources that include excellent and accessible science reporting and many original sources too, through numerous informative links, some reading lists and some of my own writing (wherever relevant) for people who want a person-friendly way to learn about current realities.

Also worthy of mention, I think, is that in my own work, I have long engaged with both U.S. and Canadian developments. On a personal level, I have lived and worked on both sides of the 49th parallel and I have family and friends in both countries. Substantively, however – and most importantly – I am acutely aware of how integrated the continental petrochemical economy is. Yet I’ve found that people in each country are largely ignorant of, and indifferent, to what’s happening in the other, and that makes it so much easier for the big companies to successfully drive their agendas through, over and over again. So here, I will be continuing with this dual focus.

As well as dealing with the whole tragic panoply of diseases and disorders that are familiar – cancers, respiratory, cardiovascular, neurological, reproductive and immunological disorders – in many places on this site, I have also chosen to provide a couple of specialized sections on the phenomenon of extreme chemical sensitivity. This condition involves toxic injury, affects nine times more people than Alzheimers, yet remains almost invisible, misunderstood and even stigmatized – a true exemplar of the broader strategies of deceit, denial, and government compliance, that make up the chemical industries’ playbook. Here you can learn all about this nightmare condition; and, if so moved, you can also learn about a process in Ontario, ongoing for many years, to bring about integrated care and support for the more than 300,000 people living with it just in my province.

Finally, let me say that we’ll be adding new content and replacing old as we go along. Some of the squares we are going to fill are already there in the nav bar, so you can have a look at what’s coming. But we’ll be picking the material to blog about day by day. So welcome to Dispatches today, and welcome back many times. I really hope you find ideas, facts and approaches that are helpful to you.

There are many ways to approach environmental issues. For me, the Precautionary Principle and the principles of environmental justice have always been critical in the way I try to understand and think about solutions for any given issue

Please click here and here to learn about these principles.

Navigation

DISPATCHES FROM THE CHEMICAL EDGE: WHAT’S ON THIS SITE

ALWAYS A WORK IN PROGRESS …

Home – The Blog. Every week, multiple, often stunning stories about adverse harms from chemicals come across the newsfeeds. There are often so many that it’s hard to choose which one to write about. But choose we will, and you’ll find new material more or less weekly in the blog on the home page. And yes, we’re going to be including good news too. We need it. To finish off the old and bring in the new year, two postings: the first on the oceans (help!) and the second on the process in Ontario to get care for chemically sensitive people suffering various forms of toxic injury. A third posting, about children, will take you to the page on Children.

About – In addition to my introduction to what’s on the site and why, you’ll find sections on perhaps the most important principles many people rely upon when approaching broad issues in toxics: the precautionary principle and the principles of environmental justice. And if you want to know even more about where we’re coming from, there’s a little section about Varda too.

The Chemical Industry Playbook – A frank and blunt introduction to the legacy of Big Chemical, and how this industry, petroleum’s twin, has functioned in the past, and continues into the present – with deceit, denial and government complicity. Lots of accessible links to documentation, lots of websites and reading material to help you see the picture too. Special sections are being devoted to specially widespread and damaging chemical products that are everywhere in everyone’s lives: pesticides and plastics, coming soon.

The Children’s Page – learn about the special vulnerabilities of children and about the impacts on them of industrial and consumer chemicals (it’s bad…). Focus for a few moments on the impacts of chemicals on our kids neurological and emotional health. Then read about the new blockbuster report from the U.S.’s National Institute of Environment and Health Science and EPA about vulnerabilities and impacts; and, in the resources section, find out who’s helping and what needs to be done with links to key websites, reading material and three of my own articles on children.

Chemical Sensitivities – Learn about this silent and devastating epidemic, which the chemical industry has paid untold millions and worked so hard to deny, with downloadable documents and links to a variety of informative web and print resources. You can also learn about the 30 year process for seeking care for the chemically sensitive in Ontario and learn about why safe housing and other social spaces are medical necessities for the chemically sensitive.

Greening Our Footprint – Why we have to green our chemistry, and an eclectic collection of new articles and reports, excellent websites, great books and articles on the adverse effects of common chemicals on health, on the political and disinformation activities of the chemical industry and struggles for environmental justice, and on what we can do to green the world.

Stories – On my research travels I have met some extraordinary people on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border: people working with chemicals, people in fence-line communities, people in whole parts of big cities afflicted with dozens of major pollution sources, and people who live lives in seemingly safe areas and spaces but became very sick with environmentally-related illnesses anyway. I have already begun to write up and post some of their stories – check out two about people in Canada’s “Chemical Valley”, Sarnia, Ontario; more are on their way from Detroit, Windsor and eventually many other places as well.

PLEASE COME BACK AND VISIT US SOON.

Fact Sheets on Common Chemicals

Safer Chemicals Healthy Families is perhaps the most important coalition of forces working in the United States for reform of out-dated toxic chemical laws, working with retailers to phase out hazardous chemicals from the marketplace and educating the public about ways to protect families from toxic chemicals.

It represents more than 11 million individuals and includes parents, health professionals, advocates for people with learning and developmental disabilities, reproductive health advocates, environmentalists and businesses from across the nation. It includes over 450 organizations and businesses united by common concern about toxic chemicals in our homes, places of work, and products we use every day. The Safer Chemicals Healthy Families coalition is staffed by a seasoned group of organizers that makes up its “Kitchen Table Campaigns” team.

The SCHF coalition offers two lists of toxic chemicals on their site. One is a list of the top 100 hazardous chemicals, and it also provides a quick take on jurisdictions that have identified these hazards. It’s available in pdf. They also post a shorter list, with more details about the chemicals listed, including their effects on us and the environment and in what products you are most likely to find them. Check out the fact sheets by clicking on the substance. Their information is drawn from the leading peer-reviewed science.

Once you read this list, you may think: But even if I read the fact sheets, when I see a new product, how will I know if those chemicals are in it? And there’s the rub. The chemical industry has fiercely resisted mandatory labeling on most consumer products, so mostly you won’t know. You can try to make educated guesses once you’ve read the fact sheets, you can refer to EWG’s safer products list, and you can try to shop cautiously. Here’s a good tip: If you buy products that chemically sensitive expert sources say are safe you’ll be best off. For example, check out My Chemical Free House and google your other queries.

But ultimately, as the SCHF coalition says, “you can’t shop your way around these chemicals.” And these chemicals spread into air, water and soil – so you can’t run, and you can’t hide, and your personal choices can take you only a limited way away from these dangerous poisons.

If we kill our bees, we kill ourselves. Credit: Beyond Pesticides Action

So the most important actions you can take are social measures geared to stop them at their source, which is to say to take economic and political action. SCHF runs ongoing campaigns to get major retailers to remove key classes of chemicals – and these are always important to join and spread.

But in my view, political action that demands labeling – so, rendering the poisons visible and obvious – combined with legislation to get these dangerous substances out of our lives, in local, state/provincial and national legislatures – these are ultimately the most important and effective steps to take. Check out Environmental Defence Canada’s campaign to pressure the Canadian government to ban toxic everyday chemicals. These measures not at all mutually exclusive. But in the end, without laws that effectively change the parameters, we won’t get to where we need to be.

Remember this: we humans did not co-evolve with these chemicals in our daily lives; and we will evolve much more successfully in the future without them.

Welcome to Dispatches from The Chemical Edge

Welcome to Dispatches from the Chemical Edge

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