POLLUTION FROM THE INDUSTRIAL ENVIRONMENT

Image courtesy of Wolfgang Schlegl

Toxins in the environment have reached unacceptably high levels. [3]Industry is one of the leading causes of pollution worldwide, and is responsible for the release of most of these toxins into the environment.  These unwanted byproducts of our lifestyle will remain in our environment as waste and pollution from hundreds of years up to thousands of years beyond the useful life of the product itself.  Many of these byproducts are carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic.

The coal power industry is one of the world's biggest polluters, and is responsible for adding more carbon dioxide to the environment than any other human activity.[4]  The plastic industry is another major polluter.  Many plastics are organochlorines, and every time they are made they create dioxin. Every time they are discarded and incinerated, they create dioxin.  Dioxin is a big body of chemicals.  According to the Environmental Protection Agency, dioxin is so hazardous that it has to be limited to parts per billion—not parts per million as with many other toxins—to qualify as an "acceptable" level of exposure for humans. In order for dioxin to meet this "acceptable" level of exposure, industries would essentially have to cease further pollution immediately.  Although government agencies continue to allow and set “acceptable” levels of exposure, there is no real safe amount of exposure to poisons such as dioxin. The ultimate solution would be banning such substances, but as long as people continue to buy things like plastic, the industry will continue to create them.

Image courtesy of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

An all too common example of a wasteland of concrete and industrial pollution as far as the eye can see.

Throughout history, war has taken its toll on the environment long after the wars have ended.  We have sprayed Agent Orange to defoliate jungles in Vietnam, burned oil wells in Iraq, and salted fields around Carthage in the first century to impair food production.  We have blown up more than a thousand atomic bombs for test purposes, and at least 215 of these were above ground.[5] We have built weapons incinerators to destroy our stockpiles of chemical weapons to make room for more weapons (despite the stockpiles), and any chemist will tell you that turning a liquid toxin into a gas is a pretty bad idea in terms of containment. We live in a world where many countries’ economies are geared towards making war, because governments make money when they make war.  The use of these toxins is not about national security; it is about industry making money at the expense of the health of its people.  As a collective global population, we need to take a much stronger, more active role in role in telling our elected officials that we will not tolerate this level of toxic pollution in our environment.

If we begin designing products from natural, biodegradable material, waste becomes food at the end of a products useful life, and can be safely returned to the soil, effectively eliminating the need to continue pumping our overly full landfills with hazardous materials.  If we don’t stop dumping persistent toxic pollutants into our environment we will leave this inter-generational tyranny as our legacy for our children,  our children’s children, and beyond.