100th Anniversary of Water Chlorination
Submitted by Dr. Patrick Moore on Tue, 10/07/2008 - 4:15pm.
News of the Day
(Re-posted from Huffington Post)
I became an environmental activist in the early 1970s just as I was completing my doctorate in ecology at the University of British Columbia. It was the height of the Cold War and the height of the Viet Nam War and we were compelled to take a very public stand against activities we thought to be catastrophic both for people and for the planet.
I joined a small committee that was meeting in the basement of the Unitarian Church. We organized a protest voyage against U.S. hydrogen bomb testing in Alaska and had tens of thousands marching in the streets. When that H-bomb was set off at Amchitka Island in November 1971, it was the last hydrogen bomb the U.S. ever detonated.
It was the birth of Greenpeace, the organization I co-founded, spending 15 years in its top committee, helping to lead environmental campaigns around the world.
But it's ironic in the extreme that, as we mark the 100th anniversary of drinking water chlorination, my old organization and other activist groups aligned with it continue to oppose this most important public health achievement.
Activist organizations like Greenpeace have access to a full century of observations on the results of water chlorination in the US, all the way back to September 26, 1908 when Jersey City, NJ became the first US city to chlorinate its public water supply.
It's true, there were those back then who vehemently opposed the use of this "poison" in public water supplies. According to one official at the time, continued chlorination to eradicate typhoid was akin to being "between the devil and the deep blue sea, for at present we don't know whether typhoid fever or the (chlorinated) drinking water is the worst."
Thankfully from the perspective of human health, chlorination of water supplies spread rapidly. Today, chlorination is the overwhelming choice for treating public water systems.
The results are clear. This widespread adoption of chlorine disinfection across the U.S. has had very important results. Waterborne diseases like typhoid, Hepatitis A and cholera that once killed thousands of Americans each year have been virtually eliminated. Typhoid fever cases fell by more than 99 percent between 1900 and 1960. Related childhood mortality fell dramatically. And average life expectancy rose from 47 years in 1900 to nearly 78 years in 2006.
Yet, many of my old environmental colleagues continue to vilify chlorination of water by raising unwarranted fears about health risks of chlorine and disinfection byproducts. In fact, it was a Greenpeace decision in 1986 to support a world-wide ban on all chlorine use that turned out to be a breaking point between my old organization and me.
My strongly held view is that chlorine is essential for our health. It is that simple. At the time I explained to my fellow Greenpeace International directors that water chlorination was the biggest advance in the history of public health, and in addition that the majority of our pharmaceuticals are based on chlorine chemistry. As the only board member with an education in science, my words fell on deaf ears.
In short, my former colleagues ignored science and supported the ban, giving me no choice but to leave the group as I could not support such a policy. Despite science concluding no known health risks - and ample benefits - from water chlorination, Greenpeace and other environmental groups have continued to oppose its use for more than 20 years.
I believe the opposition to the use of chemicals such as chlorine is part of a broader hostility to the use of chemicals in general. I often cite Rachel Carson's 1962 book, Silent Spring, as having had a significant impact on many pioneers of the green movement. The book raised some legitimate concerns, many rooted in science, about the risks and negative environmental impact associated with the indiscriminate use of chemicals.
But the day-to-day water chlorination that occurs across America is not in the category of indiscriminate use. For Greenpeace and groups like it, the healthy skepticism learned from Carson has hardened over the years, and given way to a mindset that treats virtually all use of chemicals with suspicion.
After a century of use and the resulting eradication of waterborne diseases across the US and the world, those activists who continue, absurdly, to oppose water chlorination only illustrate the need for an alternative environmental policy based on science and logic - not misinformation and campaigns of fear.
After all, campaigns based on groundless fears distract the public from real environmental threats such as air pollution and tropical deforestation for example.
As we mark one of the key milestones in improving the public health of Americans right across the country, let's always remember we all have a responsibility to be environmental stewards. But stewardship requires that science drive our public policy, just as it did a hundred years ago in Jersey City.
Responsible for Obesity
Submitted by Nick D on Tue, 10/07/2008 - 11:16pm.
Tudorman, DDT is a hormone disruptor that may be responsible for our obesity epidemic by short circuiting the hormonal signals that tell us when we're full. For more information, see this great article in the Ecologist called "The Big Fat Fix." Here's an excerpt:
In the late 1990s Professor Angelo Tremblay and his team began to study, first in animals and then in people, the metabolic effects of organochlorines. Their interest was sparked by earlier Italian research which showed that overweight people who underwent gastric bypasses, to encourage weight loss, experienced dramatic increases in levels of the pesticide DDT and one of its breakdown products, DDE, in their blood as their bodyweight declined. The Laval studies of humans undergoing an average weight-loss programme also showed that concentrations of these chemicals rose as the pounds were shed.
Once in the body organochlorines and other industrial pollutants are generally stored in human fat cells. During weight loss the fat cells shrink and release these chemicals back into the bloodstream. The scientists at Laval found that as levels of these now freely circulating pollutants rose in dieters, levels of essential thyroid hormones – necessary for maintaining an efficient metabolism – fell dramatically.
A drop in basal metabolic rate (BMR) – the rate at which the body burns calories – is not uncommon in dieters. Studies into dieting show that as metabolism slows down during weight loss, levels of thyroid hormones also drop naturally. This slowdown is referred to as ‘adaptive thermogenesis’.
The worrying discovery of the Laval scientists was that higher levels of organochlorine compounds were associated with much lower levels of thyroid hormones than would be produced by weight loss alone. In dieters with these newly liberated toxins circulating throughout the body, BMR also slowed more dramatically, as did energy expenditure and levels of skeletal muscle oxidative enzymes (which determine how efficiently the muscles use energy – when levels are not optimum, energy gets stored as fat).
“If I were to put this in journalistic terms,” says Tremblay “I might say that the organochlorines like DDT essentially shut down the metabolic furnace that helps the body burn fat.”
Carry A Few Extra Pounds Or Die From Malaria
Submitted by tudorman on Wed, 10/08/2008 - 12:07am.
I understand DDT created significant problems in the environment. I don't wish to see that happen again. (I remember when I was a kid the mosquito truck driving around the neighborhood spraying what I assume was DDT. Perhaps that explains the spare tire that is following me around.
) However, I read an article a number of years ago that argued the mosquito killing benefits of DDT far outweighed its problems if used correctly. At that time, as I remember, US exports of DDT were not permitted. I don't know if that is still the case. At any rate, it seems that the stance against DDT has softened somewhat since then.
From the NPR article of 09/15/2006:
"In the early 1960s, several developing countries had nearly wiped out malaria. After they stopped using DDT, malaria came raging back and other control methods have had only modest success.
Which is why Arata Kochi, head of the WHO's antimalaria campaign, has made the move to bring back DDT. His major effort at a news conference Friday in Washington, D.C., was not so much to announce the change, but to deflect potential opposition from environmental groups.
"We are asking these environmental groups to join the fight to save the lives of babies in Africa," Kochi said. "This is our call to them."
A number of major environmental groups support the limited use of DDT, such as spraying only inside of houses and huts once or twice a year. That type of use is supported by the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense, which was originally founded by scientists concerned about DDT. The limited application is also part of President Bush's new malaria initiative. "
The potential for saving lives demands that DDT be part of the arsenal in the fight against malaria.
In the larger sense, I feel much of the thinking by today's environmental movement is too open-ended, and it often hurts the cause. Sure, a line should probably be drawn somewhere, but it's easy to say "I'm for clean water". But how clean? And at what cost? Because the money spent to clean that last fractional percent of pollution out of the water is going to be big bucks, and society might be better off with more suffering prevented if those resources are spent attacking another problem.
I think Dr. Moore would agree.
So It's DDT that's Caused My Increase In Weight!?
Submitted by No Vested Interest on Wed, 10/08/2008 - 1:10am.
I guess I can understand that.
But, now that DDT is no longer used, what's to explain the great increase iin obesity in recent yrs?
Is it DDT still iin the environment? Or is it just plain old overeating, poor dietary habits and lack of adequate exercise?
Question half serious, half joking.
Amen!
If only the Greens would see that the sensible use of DDT would save thousands of lives and relieve the suffering of many times more throughout parts of the underdeveloped world in the fight against malaria!
Contrary to the beliefs of some, the vast majority of conservatives are not hellbent on the destruction of the environment. I'm certainly not. But much of the debate has been hijacked by the radical fringe of the movement. (Much like national security and the neocons.) The passions and emotions of these issues make it nearly impossible to find common ground, each side too leary of the other to concede an inch.