Everyone in New Jersey lives within 10 miles of a toxic dump. It seems like a good place to start applying the Precautionary Principle.
by Peter Montague
Excerpted from Rachel’s Environment & Health News #763, Electronic Edition, April 2003
To my way of thinking, Turnpike Exit 9 is a little slice of heaven. New Jersey is the Garden State, where activists grow like flowers. It’s a state where you see tee shirts proclaiming, “Union and proud of it!” — and because of those unions, wages in New Jersey exceed the national average. As a result, many people have some breathing room to worry about their neighbourhoods and their children’s health, and even to get nosy about their government. (Yes, folks, unions are essential to the success of every democracy. Unions are also the foundation stone of public health: inequality is our biggest killer disease by far, and labour unions are our best defence against inequality. When unions grow weak, the corporados roll you on the ground and have their way with you. Take a look around. But I digress.)
New Jersey is a state with a growing Environmental Justice Alliance, a state-wide Environmental Federation with 80 organizational members, and a Work Environment Council with 60 organizational members where labour, community, and environmental activists develop strategies together.
But of course there’s a reason for all this energy, activism and commitment. Everyone in New Jersey lives within 10 miles of a toxic dump. There are at least 12,648 active contaminated sites in the state, and more are being created as we speak.
Yes, there’s real trouble here. The streams and the tap water in much of New Jersey are contaminated with toxic metals, pesticides, antibiotics, flame retardants, deodorants, artificial colours, caffeine, benzene, pain killers, perfumes and fragrances, fuel additives like MTBE, anti-depressants, blood-pressure medicines, birth control pills, insulin, sunscreen, gasoline, and hormones that were injected into cows but soon leaked into the nearest stream. A low-level toxic brew.
One thing hasn’t changed — New Jersey (like the 49 other states) is still bogged down in a “risk assessment” mentality.
How does a “risk assessment mentality” manifest itself? Let me count the ways.
For instance: When university scientists released their shocking report listing 600 industrial chemicals in the state’s waters, a reporter wanted to know what it all meant. The chief research scientist answered the question this way: “The question is, ‘Is this something the body deals with at low levels, metabolizes, and there’s no problem? Or is this something that accumulates in the body? To be honest, we are just starting to deal with that question.” In other words, what it all means is “scientific uncertainty” but trust us, we can “deal with that question” eventually. Until then, sit tight.
The take-home message was clear: scientists will have to determine the combined effects of all these chemicals on humans and wildlife before we can conclude there’s a problem worth solving. We need scientific proof of harm before we can justify action to protect ourselves. That is the essence of a risk-assessment approach, and it is rampant.
Let’s examine the university’s risk-based approach for a moment. Scientists now know that very low levels of some individual chemicals are biologically active in humans — especially humans in the womb. Some chemicals interfere with hormones at levels measured in parts per trillion, others in the low parts per billion. Furthermore, a handful of studies have now shown that harmless levels of several individual chemicals can combine together to produce harm.
But testing to measure the effects of mixtures of chemicals is extremely expensive and time-consuming. We’ll never be able to determine the precise effects on the offspring of a pregnant woman who drinks (and breathes) a toxic brew of mercury, PCBs, manganese, dry cleaning fluid, benzene, birth control pills and who knows what else. Lastly, if we’re drinking (or breathing) these chemicals every day, it doesn’t matter if they build up in our bodies or not; even if we excrete all of them every day, we get a fresh new load every day, so our bodies are continuously awash in exotic industrial toxicants. Can this be good for babies? Is this what we want for our babies? Do we really need scientists to answer these questions for us? Ask any Mom.
No, the risk-based approach would study a problem like New Jersey’s contaminated waters (and air) for 100 years and still never reach scientific consensus on the nature of the danger.
Corporations, of course, love this risk-based approach because it allows them to do their business in our water without ever taking any responsibility for the dangers they create.
A much smarter approach says, “All this crap in our environment is probably not good for babies, or for fish, and we could set specific goals for cleaning our waters and then take real steps to reach our goals. We could continue to study the harms of individual chemicals and spread that knowledge far and wide so people know exactly how and why their tax dollars are being spent. We do need the best possible scientific information. But delaying action until we have scientific consensus on the hazards posed by combinations of 600 industrial poisons is a recipe for endless trouble.”
Some would call this “precautionary action.” Others would call it common sense.
Here’s another example of risk assessment at work.
At a meeting the other day, I ran into Jane Nogaki, one of New Jersey’s most wonderful activists. Jane says to me, “New York has passed a law banning the use of arsenic in new playground equipment. Don’t you think N.J. could use a law like that?” I start to answer when a gentleman standing nearby chimes in. I believe his work is partially funded by the US Department of Agriculture, a lumbering agency in every sense of that word. Immediately he steers the conversation into familiar risk-assessment territory:
Gentleman: “I’ve been looking at this, and the only place you’d expect to find arsenic is in the soil immediately around the posts holding up the play set. It won’t harm anyone there,” he says in classic risk-assessor fashion.
Jane, smiling: “Actually, they’re finding arsenic all over the play sets, where the children can get it on their hands. Arsenic causes cancer and it’s a danger to the children.”
Gentleman: “From what I read, it’s only freshly-treated lumber that has arsenic on its surface. As play sets age, the arsenic is no longer measurable, so there’s little or no hazard,” he says, in best risk-assessor style.
“Actually,” says Jane, smiling, “I’ve been reading just the opposite. It’s the older play sets that have the most arsenic on the wood.” The gentleman goes silent. Jane has nailed him.
I speak for the first time. “This is a risk assessment conversation,” I say. “Maybe a precautionary approach would help. A precautionary approach would ask, What are our alternatives? What are the different ways of providing play sets for children?”
Jane smiles broadly. “Yes, there are non-arsenic wood preservatives, there are different kinds of wood that don’t need preservatives, there are plastics, and there are metal play sets,” she says.
Gentleman: “The exotic woods cost at least 20% more than arsenictreated yellow pine and they don’t have the necessary strength.” A lumber guy to the end.
I say, “The play set at my early school could easily be in use today, 50 years later. It was made of sturdy metal.”
At that moment the meeting is called to order. I reflect that the gentleman has been using a risk-based approach to defend the status quo, doing his best to prevent people like Jane and me from asking the most basic precautionary questions:
(a) What are our goals for our children and the quality of our environment?
(b) What are our options for getting there?
(c) How can we prevent problems before they start?
(d) Shouldn’t corporations have to test their products before they are allowed to market them?
Those questions are fundamentally different from, “How much arsenic-treated wood is safe for children at play? How much PCB-mercury- Viagara-contaminated fish can a pregnant woman eat without damaging her unborn baby’s brain?”
The true answers to the precautionary questions can be known through a process of democratic debate. On the other hand, the true answers to the risk questions are forever unknowable, subject to endless scientific uncertainty. So long as we allow uncertainty to paralyse us while we search for the Holy Grail of scientific consensus, the corporados will rule the day and our children will get sick: cancer, asthma, reduced IQs, attention deficits.
Risk-assessment thinking created New Jersey as it is today: dangerously contaminated by unaccountable corporate decisions, aided by governments and scientific risk assessors. The best hope of turning things around is starting to think and speak in a precautionary way. We can do this. It is starting to happen. So long as we retain the right of free speech, this surging sea change is something that the corporations and the governments they own simply cannot stop.
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Environmental Research Foundation, P.O. Box 160, New Brunswick, N.J. 08903. Fax 732-791-4603; Email: erf@rachel.org See also San Francisco Goes Precautionary, MillWatch, p. 26