Scanning the Department of Health’s computer print-out of contaminated wells provides an idea of the range of chemicals present in O’ahu groundwater. DBCP and EDB are frequently detected pesticides subject to state regulation.
Volatile organic chemicals are often discovered as well. These are derived from petroleum products and often used in industrial applications, such as degreasing solvents, but have also been used as so-called inert ingredients in pesticide formulations ingredients, that is, that may not kill the targeted pest, but which make the pesticide’s active ingredient easier to apply or to handle. Volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) found in O’ahu groundwater include carbon tetrachloride, tetrachloroethylene, TCP, TCE, and DCP.
Dieldrin, which recently turned up in O’ahu drinking water, is an unregulated chemical, which means that the state has established no maximum contaminant level for its presence in drinking water.
Danger in Dispute
Since the 1960s, a growing body of scientific evidence has led most experts and health professionals to the conclusion that human exposure to many organic chemicals, including those listed in the chart above, can result in dire health consequences. Cancer is only one outcome. Other consequences of chronic exposure to low levels may include reproductive problems, respiratory ailments, and birth defects.
Many of the chlorinated chemicals found in O’ahu groundwater are members of a general class of chemicals recently described as endocrine disruptors, since they are thought to affect cells by interfering with the body’s endocrine system, which controls reproduction, growth, development and behavior, especially gender-related behavior. Proponents of this theory hold that exposure to chlorinated compounds can lead to reduced sperm counts in males, increased cancers and reproductive problems, birth defects and deformities, and compromised immune systems, among other things.
In 1991, a multidisciplinary group of experts gathered at the Wingspread conference center in Racine, Wisconsin, “to assess what is known about the issue” of chemically induced hormonal changes. Those attending were from such fields as endocrinology, histopathology, immunology, medicine, wildlife management, rumor biology, and zoology. At the end of their meeting, they issued a two-page statement, now known as the Wing-spread Statement, that listed the points of consensus they had reached and outlined directions for future research. “We are certain of the following,” they said: “A large number of man-made chemicals that have been released into the environment, as well as a few natural ones, have the potential to disrupt the endocrine system of animals, including humans. Among these are persistent, bioaccumulative, organohalogen compounds that include some pesticides (flingicides, herbicides, and insecticides) and industrial chemicals, other synthetic products, and some metals.”
Chemical Reaction
In the last two years, however, an organized opposition to the theory of endocrine-disrupting chlorinated chemicals has been launched. The Chemical Manufacturers Association has sponsored much of the research that is used by these opponents, and their work is frequently (if not solely) published by conservative, business-oriented and -funded foundations, such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute, and the American Council on Science and Health.
The central thrust of these efforts appears to be to plant in the public’s mind (byway of a full-on media blitz) seeds of doubt about the present “regulatory climate,” as one author has described it – in other words, they seek to undermine the fundamental tenets used in the regulation of pesticides over the last 40 years.
Among the claims made by the friends of chlorinated compounds are these:
Dioxin may actually be good for you. This claim appears in Michelle Malkin and Michael Fumento, “Rachel’s Folly,” Competitive Enterprise Institute, March 1996, page 18. Malkin and Fumento, both journalists by training, quote a statement from Stephen Safe, of Texas A&M University. Safe, a toxicologist, is one of the most widely quoted opponents of the theory of endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
Nature’s own chemicals are just as bad. There are just as many, and as potent, endocrine-disrupting chemicals in nature as exist in pesticides and other chlorinated manufactured chemicals. One of the more recent publications on this theme, along with a catalog of naturally occurring phyto-estrogens (plant-derived), is found in Jonathan Tolman, “Nature’s Hormone Factory,” Competitive Enterprise Institute, March 1996. Tolman, who holds a bachelor’s degree in political science, is on the staff of the CEI.
Countering this, however, is the flier that most naturally occurring estrogens are readily metabolized and excreted from the body, whereas industrial chemicals “may be stored in the body and mimic hormones for long periods, years or decades, giving them long opportunities to affect a person’s endocrine system, nervous system, and immune system”. (The quote is from Rachel’s Environment & Health Weekly, June 29, 1995.)
DDT is benign. This is argued by Dennis T. Avery in his book, Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic (Hudson Institute, 1995). Avery, an economist and retired civil servant, earns $25,000 “net” from his work at the Hudson Institute, but lest readers feel pity – he supplements that “by doing long-term international forecasting for farm and agri-business groups.” Among Avery’s other claims: “there is no upward population spiral” and “there is lots less hunger than we’ve been told.”
Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski, andjohn Peterson Myers, Our Stolen Future (New York, 1996). Colborn and Myers are zoologists; Dumanoski is an environmental journalist. Colborn also was one of the organizers of the 1991 Wingspread conference.
Lawrence Wright, “Silent Sperm,” The New Yorker, January 15, 1996.
Dennis T. Avery, Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic (Hudson Institute, 1995). Avery provides what is probably the longest, and certainly the most ardent, defense of the chemical manufacturing industry yet written.
Volume 6, Number 11 May 1996
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