Chemicals in the Environment

In the last 50 years, since the end of World War 2, the manufacture and use of chemicals has dramatically increased. The resultant pollution of the atmosphere and contamination of soil and water, already widespread in industrialised countries, is on the increase in developing countries. Every ocean and every continent from the tropics to the polar regions is now contaminated.

Many synthetic substances in our environment are highly toxic. Some of these chemicals, known as persistent organic pollutants, remain in the environment for long periods and bioaccumulate (becoming more concentrated as they rise in the food chain). Methyl-mercury ingested by fish, for instance, is found in high concentrations in carnivorous aquatic mammals and is believed to affect humans who eat it. Over 30 years ago Rachel Carter was pointing out in "Silent Spring (1962), that "what we do to animals we do to ourselves .

Today there are at least 300-500 measurable chemicals in people's bodies, that had not been found in anyone's tissue before the 1920s. The known and suspected effects of many chemicals, including direct poisoning, cancers and reproductive damage, have been well documented. However, new scientific evidence indicates that many synthetic chemicals in our environment also pose another threat. Some of these chemicals mimic human hormones and so disrupt normal hormonal function in wildlife and humans. The true extent of this problem is unclear, as only a handful of the tens of thousands of chemicals in our environment and in active commercial use have been tested for their potential as hormone disruptors also called endocrine disruptors).

We do not know enough about the toxins now present in our environment: what they are, where they are, and how they affect living systems

THE RIGHT TO KNOW.

Communities have the right to know about the toxic chemicals entering the environment. This was the principle adopted at the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio in 1992. On this principle environmental groups like WWF and Friends of the Earth have based their "Right to Know campaigns which aim to force government and industry to give access to environmental information.

Computerised data bases of toxic chemicals, often called toxic chemical inventories, have been set up to keep track of and record chemical information on polluting factories and the use and emission of toxic substances In many countries this is not done at all and, where it is, it is not often done properly.

The UK currently collects information from some industrial polluters and publishes this material in a Chemical Release Inventory. However, without sophisticated analysis the information in the inventory is of little value for local communities in better understanding the impacts on their local environment arising from pollution. It is also incomplete as information is collected on only a section of pollutants and from only some polluters.

In 1965 Friends of the Earth exposed the nation's top polluters when it launched a computerised A-Z of the dirtiest factories in England and Wales. Anyone with access to a personal computer and connection to the Internet can now find out who is contaminating their local environment and use electronic maps to locate the polluter. The Internet site is " www.foe.co.uk ". This use of the Chemical Release Inventory allows users to explore electronic maps of England and Wales and locate polluting factories as well as finding out exactly which chemicals are being pumped out into the environment and in what quantities.

In the United States there has been far more progress in making environmental information available to the public. For instance the annual compilation of a Toxic Release Inventory has been a powerful motive force behind companies' performance in reducing polluting emissions. League tables of the most polluting companies are published along with maps of where they are and lists of the pollutants they have released. Anxious to get out of the polluting top ten and to reduce the risk of being attacked by local communities and so maintain their community licence to operate firms have taken steps to reduce pollution. Since the Community Rights to Know Act reported reductions in toxic emissions are about 43% for the whole country. This has kept millions of iSounds of chemicals out of our lives. It has helped people to stay healthy and live longer, to spur innovation to help businesses work smarter and cleaner and become more, rather than less, profitable.