 |
THE FACTS ABOUT TODAY’S ENVIRONMENTAL MYTHS
By: Dr. Jay Lehr, |Scientist Director
The Heartland Institute
Thirty four years ago I began an effort to explain to the American Public and its Legislative Branches that our nation was unwittingly degrading the quality of its air, water and soil. The advent of the second industrial revolution following World War II lead us to send significant quantities of contaminants up our smokestacks, into our rivers, onto our soil and thence to our ground waters.
The year 1968 began a major legislative effort by scientists like myself to bring knowledge of our environment to bear on procedures and regulations that could staunch the unnecessary outpouring of industrial, municipal and domestic waste into the air we breathe, the water we drink and swim in, the water wells we pump from and the soil in which we grow our food.
Heeding our warnings, between 1972 and 1980, Congress passed a safety net of environmental laws which adequately protected every medium of our environment. They spawned an environmental improvement and protection program during the ensuing two decades that has become the most successful grass roots, self improvement program in our nations history. Today the Unites States enjoys the cleanest environment in its history, and by any measure, the best in the world.
The air in every major city in America has improved more than 100% as every contaminant such a sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide, lead, turbidity and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have declined dramatically and continue to do so.
Two thirds of our rivers and streams are now fishable and swimable and more miles of clean water are added to this category each year. The Cuyahoga river which caught fire in June of 1968, near Cleveland, now abounds with pleasure boats and fishing boats. Likewise, the Hudson River in New York State, a veritable sewer in the 1970s, is clean and beautiful again.
Our ground water, under attack from any number of chemical assaults in the 1960s and 70s are no longer the repository for waste. Today, solid waste landfills are light years beyond the garbage dumps of old with designs that no longer endanger our environment.
You do not often read or hear this great American success story in the news media because the environmental movement has been seized from the thoughtful scientists who launched it. It is now controlled by individuals and groups with hidden agendas that barely involve our air, water and soil. These people use the environmental concerns of the public to oppose capitalism, suppress individual rights, restrict population and enlarge government.
Their willing co-conspirators are the news media, which has long known that bad news sells best, and the major environmental advocacy groups who on packaging and selling fear to a willing public, apparently wired genetically to believe in the worst outcomes. I need mention only Y2K, Global Cooling in the 1980s (lest you forget), nuclear winter, Alar on apples and saccharin in soda pop, to name but a few.
The United Nations and less economically successful countries of the world wish to shackle the U.S. economic engine with unwarranted and unnecessary environmental controls. As an example unfounded fears of global warming drive plans to dramatically reduce energy output by increasing its cost.
Our own USEPA is all but totally controlled by bureaucrats intent on increasing their power and annual budgets with a never ending series of environmental scares using nothing but “junk science” to support them. The most prevalent techniques used to maintain a sense of crisis among a public deficient in scientific understanding are the use of infinitesimal statistics and the apparent health affects of mega-doses of chemicals on rodents.
Our technology is constantly able to measure ever smaller concentrations of contaminants in our air and water without explaining the virtual lack of impact such small concentrations have on human health. Forty years ago we were lucky to measure contaminants in parts per million (ppm). Now we regularly measure everything in parts per trillion (ppt, a millionth of a millionth) which is the equivalent of one second in 32,000 years. Such concentrations are insignificant to our health regardless of the chemical of concern. Soon we will readily be able to measure most chemicals a thousand times smaller, in parts per quadrillion, which is the ratio of a single human hair to all the human hairs on the heads of the entire world population (6 billion people, 160,000 hairs on a very health head, do the math).
Furthermore, when standards are set for a particular chemical, such as a maximum contaminant level (MCL), the public is not told that these are life time exposure limits. This means you must consume these concentrations of chemicals in your water or air every day of a 70 year life span to potentially increase your chance of contracting a form of cancer by one additional chance in 100,000.
The second problem is the way we determine the aforementioned maximum contaminant levels (MCLs). The standard procedure is to inject mega-doses of chemicals into a relatively small number of identical rodents (rats or mice) to see how they respond. We truly assume that rodents respond to chemicals in the very same manner that a human would. This is a shaky assumption when one considers that within similar rodent populations chemical impacts can vary by more than two orders of magnitude. For example it takes 5000 times more dioxin to kill a hamster than it does to kill a guinea pig.
Additionally, USEPA assumes that if a mega-dose causes an adverse health affect so too will an infinitesimally small dose. Although we know that we can adversely affect our health by overdosing on any number of important vitamins and minerals in our diet, USEPA assumes that there is no fully safe threshold for any chemical with an adverse effect at a mega-dose levels in rodents. The vast majority of scientists do not accept this faulty “no threshold” premise.
Before USEPA is finished they crunch the numbers obtained from their rodent experiment (emphasis on the singular “experiment” because the tests are too expensive and time consuming to ever replicate). The crunching is intended to create relevant numbers for humans considering the small size and somewhat different physiology of the rodents. But once some spurious equation is used to do this, (and they are spurious because we are really not that much like rats) USEPA reduces the acceptable chemical limit for human consumption one thousand fold to protect the young, the old and the infirm among us whose immune systems may not be as strong as the average person.
Recognizing that the inmates are obviously in charge of the asylum it may not be too difficult for me to convince you in the space allowed that every doom and gloom scenario you can think of regarding our environment is wrong, wrong, wrong.
A short list of environmental myths would include conventional wisdom on the impact of global warming, ozone holes, radon, asbestos, electric transmission towers, cell phones, arsenic, nitrates, nuclear power, pesticides, fertilizers, and wood preservatives to name but a few. That is not to say that everything and anything can not become dangerous at high enough concentrations, because they can, but not at the levels commonly set for us by the federal government or fear-mongered to us by environmental advocacy groups.
USEPA has admitted that on average $7.6 million dollars must be spent suppressing chemicals in our environment in order to extend the life of a single person by one year. That is using both their economic data and rodent studies. One might suspect that real cost is even higher. What is most sad about this is what could really be accomplished with this money with regard to “real”, rather than “imagined” health issues.
For instance, a recent Harvard University study determined that for every $19,000 spent in medical intervention a life is saved, for every $43,000 spent in highway safety a life is saved. Even more startling is the fact that in developing countries we can save an individual life with $500 spent on malaria control, $1000 spent on measles control, $2000 spent on improved sanitation, $4000 spent on improved medical treatment and $5000 spent of improved nutrition.
Presently the mass of misinformation continues to cloud the minds of our children, our families, friends, neighbors and co-workers. We have an uphill battle to win back the minds of the public so that we can once again use common sense in regulating our environment.
We should be celebrating the many victories we have achieved in cleaning and protecting our air, water and soil these past twenty years. The battle against overzealous environmentalism will never end, and we may not win, but we must persist in attempting to convince all those in our sphere of influence that the preachers of doom and gloom are wrong. They have never been right and never will be because their message is based on political agendas rather than sound science.
Just as Y2K and every other scare in your lifetime proved a fraud, so too will next years “Alar” scare likely be a contrived falsehood. But if we all come to our common senses and have the courage of our logical convictions and a simple grasp of the basic scientific facts presented in this brief article, we can one day prevail. There are so many constructive accomplishments that can be gained with the use of public energies and public monies to solve real societal problems. It is a shame to waste these resources on the fraudulent fears foisted upon us by those with a hidden agenda.
To read Dr. Jay Lehr’s biography, click HERE
To return to the Issues Alphabetical listing, click HERE
To join the ESB EMail list, click HERE
To leave a comment or suggestion, click HERE
To join as a Contributing Member, click HERE
To join as a Professional User, click HERE