Quotations on Pollution

The earth dries up and withers,
the world languishes and withers;
the heavens languish together with the earth.
The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants;
for they have transgressed laws, violated the statutes
broken the everlasting covenant.
Therefore a curse devours the earth,
and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt.

-the prophet Isaiah (c.760-690 B.C.)
Isaiah 24:4-6 in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible  

For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.

-Rachel Carson (1907-1964), Silent Spring, 1962  

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

-Helen Keller (1880-1968)  

Ecological devastation is the excrement, so to speak, of man's power worship.

-Ernest Becker (1924-1974), Escape from Evil, 1975 *  

The quality of American life is an insult to the possibilities of human growth . . . the pollution of American space, with gadgetry and cars and TV and box architecture, brutalizes the senses, making gray neurotics of most of us, and perverse spiritual athletes and strident self-transcenders of the best of us.

-Susan Sontag, "What's Happening in America"
in Partisan Review, 1966  

Chemical contamination starts in the womb. Even before a baby takes a breath, her body contains chemicals passed on by her mother.  Tests of umbilical cords show that a newborn's body contains nearly 300 compounds -- among them mercury from fish, flame retardants from household dust, pesticides from backyards, hydrocarbons from fossil fuels.

-Marla Cone, “Products derived from natural, nontoxic ingredients -
once seen as fringe -- are now mainstream,”
Los Angeles Times, 14 Sept 2008

Who would have predicted a century ago that the richest civilizations in history would be made up of polluted tracts of suburban development dominated by the private automobile, shopping malls, and a throwaway economy? Surely, this is not the ultimate fulfillment of our destiny.

-Alan Durning, How Much Is Enough?, 1992  

Suburbs...have become the heirs to their cities' problems. They have pollution, high taxes, crime. People thought they would escape all those things in the suburbs. But like the people in Boccaccio's Decameron, they ran away from the plague and took it with them.

-Charles Haar, New York Times, 16 Mar 80

Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet? Must my flock feed on what you have trampled and drink what you have muddied with your feet?

-Ezekiel 33:18-19 NIV Bible

The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and aesthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania's public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.

-the Pennsylvania State Constitution, Article 1, section 27

They have poisoned the Thames and killed the fish in the river. A little further development of the same wisdom and science will complete the poisoning of the air, and kill the dwellers on the banks...I almost think it is the destiny of science to exterminate the human race.

-Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), Gryll Grange, 1860 *

You know that the air and water are being polluted, as is everything we touch and live with, and we go on corrupting the nature that we need. We don’t realize we have a commitment to God to take care of nature. To cut down a tree, to waste water when there is so much lack of it, to let buses poison our atmosphere with those noxious fumes from their exhausts, to burn rubbish haphazardly – all that concerns our alliance with God.

-Oscar Romero (1917-1980), The Violence of Love, March 11, 1979  

Man was the outlaw, the rebel, the distorted shape that scarred the earth, the voice that silenced the music of Eden, the hand that raised up obscenities and blasphemies. Man was the pariah-dog, the moral leper in this translucent mirror of Heaven. He was the muddier of crystal waters, the despoiler of forests, the murderer of the innocent, the challenger against God. He was the assassin of the saints and the prophets, for they spoke of what he WOULD NOT HEAR, in the darkness of his spirit!

-Taylor Caldwell (1900-1985)  

A dense blanket of pollution, dubbed the "Asian Brown Cloud," is hovering over South Asia, with scientists warning it could kill millions of people in the region, and pose a global threat. In the biggest-ever study of the phenomenon, 200 scientists warned that the cloud, estimated to be two miles (three kilometers) thick, is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths a year from respiratory disease. By slashing the sunlight that reaches the ground by 10 to 15 percent, the choking smog has also altered the region's climate, cooling the ground while heating the atmosphere, scientists said on Monday. The potent haze lying over the entire Indian subcontinent -- from Sri Lanka to Afghanistan -- has led to some erratic weather, sparking flooding in Bangladesh, Nepal and northeastern India, but drought in Pakistan and northwestern India.

Marianne Bray, “‘Asian Brown Cloud’ poses global threat,” 
CNN.com 12 Aug 02  

The American people today are involved in a warfare more deadly than the war in Vietnam, but few of them seem aware of it and even fewer of them are doing anything about it. This is a war that is being waged against the American environment, against our lands, air, and water, which are the basis of that environment.

-Norman Cousins (1915-1990)
Testimony before the U.S. Senate Public Works Subcommittee,
June, 1966 *  

Like a muddied spring or a polluted well
is a righteous man who gives way to the wicked.

-Proverbs 25:26 NIV Bible

How would you describe the difference between modern war and modern industry—between say, bombing and strip mining, or between chemical warfare and chemical manufacturing? The difference seems to be only that in war the victimization of humans is directly intentional and in industry it is "accepted" as a "trade-off." Were the catastrophes of Love Canal, Bhopal, Chernobyl, and the Exxon Valdez episodes of war or of peace? They were in fact, peacetime acts of aggression, intentional to the extent that the risks were known and ignored.

-Wendell Berry, "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine"
from What Are People For?, 1989  

The Public Relations Committee realizes that public fear of chemicals is a disease which will never be completely eradicated. It may lie dormant or appear from time to time as a minor rash, but it can flare up at any time as a major and debilitating fever for our industry as a result of a few, or even one instance, such as the Mississippi fish kill, or the publication by some highly readable alarmist, or as an issue seized upon by some politician in need of building a crusading image.

-Cleveland Lane,
member of the Chemical Industry's Public Relations Committee
while working for Goodrich-Gulf Chemicals Inc., 1964  

The "developed" nations had given to the "free market" the status of a god, and were sacrificing to it their farmers, farmlands, and communities, their forests, wetlands, and prairies, their ecosystems and watersheds. They had accepted universal pollution and global warming as normal costs of doing business.

-Wendell Berry, “Thoughts in the Presence of Fear,”
OrionOnline.org, 24 Sep 2001

Every one of you sitting here today is carrying at least 500 measurable chemicals in your body that were never in anybody’s body before the 1920s… We have dusted the globe with man-made chemicals that can undermine the development of the brain and behavior, and the endocrine, immune and reproductive systems, vital systems that assure perpetuity… Everyone is exposed. You are not exposed to one chemical at a time, but a complex mixture of chemicals that changes day by day, hour by hour, depending on where you are and the environment you are in… In the United States alone it is estimated that over 72,000 different chemicals are used regularly. Two thousand five hundred new chemicals are introduced annually—and of these, only 15 are partially tested for their safety. Not one of the chemicals in use today has been adequately tested for these intergenerational effects that are initiated in the womb.

-Theo Colburn, Speech at the State of the Word Forum, 
San Francisco, 3 Oct 96

Without requiring lab tests to determine their safety, the U.S. government has approved thousands of chemicals for use in such products as sofa cushions, soaps, paints and baby bottles. On average, two more chemicals are approved every day.  The result: Consumers are unwittingly part of a vast, uncontrolled lab experiment.  "We're treating [people] worse than lab rats," said Karen Florini, a lawyer with the nonprofit group Environmental Defense. "At least with lab rats, somebody bothers to collect the data."

-Tom Avril, “U.S. chemical regulation leaves much unknown” 
Philadelphia Inquirer, 4 Nov 03

More than eight million pounds of persistent toxic metals (like lead and mercury) were released into our waterways (in 1997), an increase of more than 50 percent from the previous year and the largest amount since at least 1992. Nearly 900,000 pounds of reproductive toxins like toluene were released into U.S. waterways, an increase of 60 percent from the previous year and the largest amount released since at least 1992. More than 2.5 million pounds of carcinogens (like vinyl chloride and benzene) were released into U.S. waterways. The parent corporations with the greatest amounts of toxic pollution to waterways were Armco Inc., PCS Nitrogen Fertilizer LP, BASF Corporation, E. I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co., and Vicksburg Chemical Co.

-Cat Lazaroff, "Polluters Sully US Waters Despite Federal Regulations"
Environment News Service, 17 Feb 00  

Finally, since human beings are uniquely capable of producing materials not found in nature, environmental degradation may be due to the resultant intrusion into an ecosystem of a substance wholly foreign to it.  Perhaps the simplest example is a synthetic plastic, which unlike natural materials, is not degraded by biological decay.  It therefore persists as rubbish or is burned—in both cases causing pollution.  In the same way, a substance such as DDT or lead, which plays no role in the chemistry of life and interferes with the actions of substances that do, is bound to cause ecological damage if sufficiently concentrated.  In general, any productive activity which introduces substances foreign to the natural environment runs a considerable risk of polluting it.

-Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle, 1971

If you visit American city,
You will find it very pretty.
Just two things of which you must beware:
Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air.

Pollution, pollution,
They got smog and sewage and mud.
Turn on your tap and get hot and cold running crud.

See the halibuts and the sturgeons
Being wiped out by detergents.
Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly,
But they don't last long if they try.

Pollution, pollution,
You can use the latest toothpaste,
And then rinse your mouth with industrial waste.

-Tom Lehrer, musician and satirist from song "Pollution"  

Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.

-Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962  

By the time the Raccoon River winds through the western hills here, passing corn fields and livestock pens before reaching Des Moines miles to the east, it is so polluted the city has to put it through a special nutrient filter to meet government standards for drinking water. The culprits are not industrial plants or mines belching toxins into the river. They are Iowa farms, which send fertilizer and animal wastes into the groundwater and into the river. "Farmers are the problem," said L. D. McMullen, the general manager of the Des Moines Water Works. "And they are entirely unregulated." The issue goes beyond Iowa. Across the country, metropolitan water agencies are battling increasing pollution from the countryside. The river pollution is spreading and helping to cause dead zones in the open seas. A recent study by the Pew Oceans Commission, an independent group examining government policies, called huge livestock feedlots and farm fertilizer runoff among the fastest-growing sources of pollution in oceans thousands of miles away.

-Elizabeth Becker, "Big Farms Making a Mess of U.S. Waters, Cities Say,"
The New York Times, 10 Feb 02  

Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles -- the raw materials for the plastic industry -- are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain. "What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It's that simple," said Dr Eriksen.

-Kathy Marks & Daniel Howden, “The World’s Dump,”
The Independent UK, 6 Feb 08

Along with the possibility of extinction of mankind by nuclear war, the central problem of our age has therefore become the contamination of man's total environment with such substances of incredible potential for harm—substances that accumulate in the tissues of plants and animals and even penetrate the germ cells to shatter or alter the very material of heredity upon which the shape of the future depends.

-Rachel Carson (1907-1964), Silent Spring, 1962  

An unfolding technology has increased our economic strength and added to the convenience of our lives. But that same technology—we know now—carries danger with it. From the great smoke stacks of industry and from the exhausts of motors and machines, 130 million tons of soot, carbon and grime settle over the people and shroud the Nation's cities each year. From towns, factories, and stockyards, wastes pollute our rivers and streams, endangering the waters we drink and use. The debris of civilization litters the landscapes and spoils the beaches. Conservation's concerns now is not only for man's enjoyment—but for man's survival.

-Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) 36th President of the United States,
Special Message to Congress, "To Renew a Nation"
8 Mar 68  

Dust and soot in the air contribute to between 20 and 200 early deaths each day in America's biggest cities, according to the largest coast-to-coast scientific study of the problem. Ill health from particulates, tiny specks smaller than the width of a human hair, is spread across 20 of the largest cities in the United States--including Los Angeles, Santa Ana-Anaheim, San Bernardino and three other California areas--which are inhabited by about 50 million people, the new research indicates. Elderly people are the most frequently harmed. … The Environmental Protection Agency has been attempting to tighten limits on emissions of particles. Critics in the business community are challenging those new rules in the Supreme Court, arguing that the regulations are too costly and that the scientific evidence behind them is too sketchy. The new study, conducted by a team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland and published in the current edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, is likely to bolster the EPA's case. The researchers found strong evidence that dust and soot particles, not other factors suggested by industry, appear to be causing the harmful effects. And they found that the ill effects occur even in cities that meet existing national air pollution standards--suggesting that stronger controls would protect public health.

-Gary Polakovic, "Study Links Deaths to Airborne Particles,"
Los Angeles Times 14 Dec 00

If we are really serious about protecting the environment, the discharge pipes and stacks of industry would all plug directly into their intake side, and costs would not be externalized to a voiceless environment.

-Wes Jackson, "Farm Debt," Altars of Unhewn Stone, 1987

Between November of 1999 and December of 2000, EPA filed lawsuits against nine power companies for expanding their plants without obtaining New Source Review permits and the up-to-date pollution controls required by law. The companies named in our lawsuits emit an incredible 5 million tons of sulfur dioxide every year (a quarter of the emissions in the entire country) as well as 2 million tons of nitrogen oxide. As the scale of pollution from these coal-fired smokestacks is immense, so is the damage to public health. Data supplied to the Senate Environment Committee by EPA last year estimate the annual health bill from 7 million tons of SO2 and NO2: more than 10,800 premature deaths; at least 5,400 incidents of chronic bronchitis; more than 5,100 hospital emergency visits; and over 1.5 million lost work days. Add to that severe damage to our natural resources, as acid rain attacks soils and plants and deposits nitrogen in the Chesapeake Bay and other critical bodies of water. Fifteen months ago, it looked as though our lawsuits were going to shrink these dismal statistics… Yet today, we seem about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We are in the ninth month of a "90 day review" to reexamine the law, and fighting a White House that seems determined to weaken the rules we are trying to enforce. It is hard to know which is worse, the endless delay or the repeated leaks by energy industry lobbyists of draft rule changes that would undermine lawsuits already filed.

-Eric V. Schaeffer, Director of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's
Office of Regulatory Enforcement, Resignation Letter, 27 Feb 02  

Short-term exposure to low levels of particulate air pollution may increase the risk of stroke or mini-stroke, according to new research conducted in Texas that suggests current exposure standards are not sufficient to protect the public. Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the United States.

-Environment News Service,
“Breathing Dust and Soot Raises Risk of Stroke,” 2 Jun 08

The tiny particulate pollution from cars, power plants and factories does more than clog your lungs. It leads to development of heart disease, according to a BYU researcher… "It's very different from what we thought previously," said professor and epidemiologist Arden Pope of Brigham Young University, who led the study. While exposure clearly impacts the lungs, "long-term, chronic exposure to air pollution seems to manifest more in cardiovascular disease than it does in respiratory disease." The link between air pollution and increased deaths has been shown in research by Pope and others. His most recent study, however, shows the biological mechanism by which long-term exposure to tiny-particle pollution can actually lead to ischemic heart disease, which causes heart attacks, as well as irregular heart rhythms, heart failure and cardiac arrest.

-Lois M. Collins, “Pollution in the air can cause heart ills” 
Deseret Morning News, 16 Dec 03

The three largest electricity companies in the United States — American Electric Power, the Southern Company and the Tennessee Valley Authority — together accounted for 17 percent to 24 percent of total industry emissions of the four pollutants tracked in the study. Those are sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which contribute to acid rain and haze; mercury, which is toxic to humans; and carbon dioxide, which is widely linked to global warming.

-Neela Banerjee,
"Study Ranking Utility Polluters Aims to Sway Emissions Debate,"
The New York Times, 21 Mar 02  

The Environmental Protection Agency believes that about 630,000 of the roughly 4 million babies born annually in the United States — twice as many as previously thought — may be exposed to dangerous levels of mercury in the womb, according to an analysis released Thursday. The primary source of newborns' exposure to mercury is the fish and shellfish their mothers eat. Mercury in children can impair motor functions, learning capacity, vision and memory, and can cause a variety of other symptoms related to neurological damage. The EPA's analysis reflects a new understanding among scientists in the U.S. and Japan that umbilical cord blood has higher mercury concentrations than a mother's blood

-Elizabeth Shogren, “Estimate of Fetuses Exposed to High Mercury Doubles,” LATimes.com, 6 Feb 04

The Environmental Protection Agency has determined that more than half of all freshwater fish it sampled from America's lakes could be unsafe for women of childbearing age to eat twice a week, according to data disclosed by environmental groups. More than three-quarters of the fish sampled also had mercury levels that may be unhealthy for children younger than 3. The data, collected between 1999 and 2001 on 2,547 fish from 260 lakes, are part of the first-ever nationwide study the EPA has conducted on freshwater fish in an ongoing four-year project.

- Juliet Eilperin, “Most Fish From Lakes Is Too High In Mercury,” 
Washington Post, 4 Aug 04

The threat to health from mercury emissions is far more widespread than previously supposed, the United Nations says. It is urging governments to introduce drastic reductions. A United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) report says 70% of mercury emissions of human origin come from coal-fired power stations. Yet the technology to eliminate most of them already exists. …The report says coal-fired power stations and waste incinerators produce about 1,500 tonnes of atmospheric mercury emissions a year, with a further 4-500 tonnes estimated to come from mining of gold and silver using basic, non-industrial methods. It says higher temperatures, increased storminess and more extreme weather will increase releases of mercury from soils and sediments. High levels of acidity in rivers and lakes also appear to trigger releases.

-Alex Kirby, “UN urges 'drastic' cuts in mercury,” BBC News, 4 Feb 03

We are told that we cannot afford clean air and water and health for our children. Yet in the first few months of 2001, you and I spent over $2 billion buying videos. Brides-to-be will spend over $35 billion on weddings this year, and Americans will spend a staggering $550 billion on gambling. Corporations will spend untold billions on advertising.

-Jackie Alan Giuliano, "Earth Day 2001 - A Celebration or a Wake?"
Environmental News Service, 20 Apr 01  

What can be done? Well, the governments of the world can undertake what amounts to a vast clean-up campaign and a vast campaign of organic renewal. The problem is the cost of an effective operation, which is enormous, and thus must be paid by someone via some form of taxes. There are only two someone's: either the firms that are considered to have been the perpetrators of the waste, or the rest of us. If it is the former, the pressure on the profit margins will be impressively high. If it is the latter, the tax burdens will mount significantly, a problem to which we are coming. Furthermore, there is not much point in cleanup and organic renewal if the practices remain as at present, since it would amount to cleaning an Augean stable. Hence, the logical inference is to require the total internalization of all costs. This however would add still further to the pressure on the profits of individual firms. I do not see any plausible solution for this social dilemma within the framework of a capitalist world-economy

-Immanuel Wallerstein, "Globalization or The Age of Transition?  
A Long-Term View of the Trajectory of the World-System," 1999

What is involved in the cost of inputs? It is not only the price at which they are bought from a different firm but also the cost of treating them. Now while the cost of purchase is normally borne entirely by the firm that will eventually get the profits, the costs of treating the materials is often partially borne by others. For example, if in treating the raw materials, there is toxic or cumbersome waste, part of the cost involved is getting rid of such waste, and if toxic, in a safe manner. Firms of course desire to minimize these costs of disposal. One way they can do thus, a way very widely practiced, is by placing the waste somewhere away from the factory site after minimal detoxification, for example, by dumping chemical toxins into a stream. This is called by economists "externalizing the costs." Of course, this is not the end of the costs of disposal. To stick to the example, if toxins are dumped into a stream, this may poison the stream, and eventually (perhaps decades later) there will be damage to people or to other matter (at costs that are real, if difficult to calculate). And there may be a social decision to clean up the toxins, in which case the body that undertakes the clean-up, often the state, is bearing the cost. Another mode of reducing costs is to utilize raw materials, but not to provide for (that is, pay for) their renewal, a problem especially true of organic matter. Such externalization of costs significantly reduces the costs of raw materials to given producers and hence increases the margin of profit.

-Immanuel Wallerstein, "Globalization or The Age of Transition?  
A Long-Term View of the Trajectory of the World-System," 1999

When it comes to acid rain or oil spills or depleted fisheries or tainted groundwater or fluorocarbon propellants or radiation leaks or sexually transmitted diseases, national frontiers are simple irrelevant. Toxins don't stop for customs inspections and microbes don't carry passports. North America became a water and free-trade zone long before NAFTA loosened up the market in goods.

-Benjamin R. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld, 1995  

Reducing air pollution in just four of the world's largest cities--New York; Mexico City; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Santiago, Chile--could prevent 64,000 premature deaths and 37 million lost workdays over the next two decades, according to research that examines the health effects of the use of fossil fuels. Worldwide, the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels leads to pollution that can result in elevated rates of infant mortality, asthma, cardiovascular problems and respiratory ailments and could cause millions of avoidable deaths worldwide over two decades, according to the new work, which reviewed more than 1,000 scientific studies… Also, "the benefits of lowering emissions are immediate" because many of the gases emitted when fuels are burned are also pollutants, said George Thurston, one of the review's authors and an associate professor of environmental medicine at the New York University School of Medicine. "Universal studies have shown when air pollution levels go up, you get an increase in the numbers of deaths and hospital admissions, missed days at work and school, and other adverse effects"

-Aparna Surendran,
"Fossil Fuel Cuts Would Reduce Early Deaths, Illness, Study Says,"
Los Angeles Times, 17 Aug 01  

America's cities, blanketed with smog and climate-altering carbon dioxide, have become cradles of ill health and are fostering an epidemic of asthma, according to a report yesterday from a leading group of Harvard University researchers and the American Public Health Association. Particularly hard hit are preschool-aged children, whose rate of asthma rose by 160 per cent between 1980 and 1994 (more than twice the national average), the report says. …The extra heat trapped underneath the CO{-2} causes plants to grow more, and produce more pollen and fungus, generating more spores. As well, the higher temperatures favour opportunistic plant species such as ragweed. Erratic weather in some parts of the United States has led to floods and damp homes, which in turn produce moulds and trigger asthma. As well, particulates -- or small bits -- from burned diesel fuel attach themselves to mould and pollen, which in turn is delivered deep into human lung sacs. The particulates sensitize the lungs to allergic reactions. A measure of the impact is that a quarter of the children living in Harlem are asthmatic, and they are concentrated along bus routes, the researchers said.

-Alanna Mitchell, “Global warming linked to high asthma rates,” 
The Globe and Mail 30 Apr 04

Now our biggest environmental problems come from our own actions, our own choices, rather than pollution produced by big business.

-former Minnesota Governor Jesse "The Body" Ventura, 
quoted in "Ventura: Pollution control starts with individuals,"
St. Paul Pioneer Press 24 Apr 01  

Worrying is less work than doing something to fix the worry. Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom with the dishes.

-P.J. O'Rourke, All the Trouble in the World, 1994

Among industries, electric power generation has a particularly large impact on the natural environment. Power plants are responsible for:

• 64 percent of all emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2), the leading component of acid rain and fine particulates;
• 40 percent of all man-made emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the leading greenhouse gas believed to contribute to global warming;
• 26 percent of all emission of nitrogen oxides (NOX), a key component of ozone (smog), acid rain, and fine particulates.

In addition, water pollution, nuclear waste, toxic waste, and impacts on birds and fish can be attributed to various types of power generation.

-U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Acid Rain Program,
E-Grid, 23 Dec 99  

Acid rain, which corrodes car paint and kills trees, has caused far more environmental damage than projected a decade ago, the researchers report in the journal BioScience. To bolster 1990 limits placed on acid rain's main component, sulfur dioxide, the team says, an additional 80 percent reduction is needed to bring sensitive streams back to non-acidic levels within 25 years. ''In 1990, the businesses, politicians, and public took a collective sigh of relief and said `that problem is over,' and it's not,'' said Gene E. Likens, one of the report's authors and director of the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y.

-Shannon McCaffrey, Associated Press
reported in Albany Times Union 26 Mar 01  

Another agricultural trend of growing concern is the increased nutrient content of coastal waters resulting from fertilizer runoff in agricultural regions. Augmented by urban sewage discharge in some situations, this results in huge algal blooms, which, as they die and decay, deplete the oxygen content in the water, leading to the death of the fish…Each summer, for example, nitrogen and phosphate washing from farmlands in the Mississippi Valley enter the Gulf of Mexico, creating a massive algal bloom covering some 16,000 square kilometers. As the blooms die off, this area – roughly the size of New Jersey – is so deprived of oxygen that no fish survive.

-Lester A. Brown, Michael Renner, Brian Halweil, Vital Signs 1999, 1999  

The Gulf of Mexico's largest-ever dead zone, an 8,000-square-mile blanket of water devoid of sufficient oxygen to support life, has formed along the floor of the Gulf coastline from the Mississippi River to an area west of Sabine Pass in Texas, a Louisiana scientist reported Thursday. Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium researcher Nancy Rabalais, who heads a team of scientists that has measured the low-oxygen area for 17 summers, blamed the growth on nutrients carried into the Gulf by spring flooding along the upper Mississippi River and on increased rainfall along the river's watershed this summer.

-Mark Schleifstein, "Gulf's dead zone has gone Godzilla, expert says,"
The Times-Picayune 27 July 01  

The dead zone this summer reached 8,500 square miles about as big as Massachusetts, to become the largest mass of oxygen-starved water ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico. Shrimp die. Fish flee. Crab carcasses lie covered in a bacterial mat as if spray painted white. In pockets where oxygen is totally depleted, the surface may appear clear, if a bit too glassy, while bottom waters faintly smell of rotten eggs. “Call it the Berlin Wall of the gulf,” said former Louisiana shrimper Donald Lirette, “because life can’t cross it from either side.”

-Rick Montgomery, Knight Ridder News Service, 
"Sea suffocates in 'dead zone'," St. Paul Pioneer Press, 29 Oct 02

A first-of-its-kind study of Iowa's 132 lakes shows they are among the most fertilizer-polluted waters on Earth. "We suspected Iowa has some of the most nutrient-rich water in the world, and this proves it," Iowa State University researcher John Downing said Monday. He plots the state's waters at the upper reaches of a worldwide chart. Downing's conclusion is based on three rounds of samples from each of Iowa's 132 lakes, all taken last summer. The samples show heavy concentrations of nitrates and phosphorus, two common ingredients in farm and yard runoff.

-Perry Beeman, "Iowa's lakes among filthiest in the world"
The Des Moines Register, 6 Mar 01  

Little Boy Blue
Come blow your horn—
They’ve sprayed extra chemicals
On the corn
The soil is dying
The rivers could weep
And the people to stop it
Are fast asleep

-Barbara Jurgensen & Murray Goodwin, A Polluter’s Garden of Verses, 1975

...the fouling of the nest which has been typical of man's activity in the past on a local scale now seems to be extending to the whole world society.

-Kenneth E. Boulding (1910-1993),
The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth, 1966  

…for nearly 40 years, while producing the now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek [Alabama] and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents -- many emblazoned with warnings such as "CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy" -- show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew. In 1966, Monsanto managers discovered that fish submerged in that creek turned belly-up within 10 seconds, spurting blood and shedding skin as if dunked into boiling water. They told no one. In 1969, they found fish in another creek with 7,500 times the legal PCB levels. They decided "there is little object in going to expensive extremes in limiting discharges." In 1975, a company study found that PCBs caused tumors in rats. They ordered its conclusion changed from "slightly tumorigenic" to "does not appear to be carcinogenic."

-Michael Grunwald, "Monsanto Hid Decades Of Pollution,"
Washington Post, 1 Jan 02  

Corporate polluters, their phony think tanks and political toadies like to marginalize environmentalists as tree huggers, or radicals. But there is nothing radical about clean air or water.

-Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

During those years, St. Louis-based Monsanto flushed tens of thousands of pounds of PCB's and other toxic wastes into Snow Creek each year… More than 45 tons of PCB's, a highly efficient industrial insulator, were discharged in 1969 alone, according to company documents. Monsanto also deposited millions of pounds of PCB's in a hillside landfill just above the plant …In the first two weeks of testimony, the plaintiffs' lawyers have established through Monsanto memorandums that the company was aware of the level of its discharges and that it at least partly understood the risks as early as the mid-1960's, if not earlier. But it did not begin improving pollution controls until 1970, a year before it stopped making PCB's in Anniston… A witness for the plaintiffs testified on Thursday that PCB levels in the blood of many plaintiffs was elevated. The 16 plaintiffs in the first phase of the trial had average PCB levels of 46 parts per billion, 27 times the national norm, said Dr. Ian Nisbet, a Massachusetts toxicologist and a consultant for the plaintiffs. "This is by far the most contaminated community — as indicated by the levels in their blood — that I've ever encountered," Dr. Nisbet said.… "We would all rather live in a pristine world," said Jere White, a lawyer for Monsanto and Solutia, in his opening argument two weeks ago. "We are all going to be exposed to things on a daily basis. Our bodies can deal with it."

-Kevin Sack, "PCB Pollution Suits Have Day in Court in Alabama,"
New York Times, 27 Jan 02  

But, biologically speaking, [PCBs] are quite reactive. Just how reactive became apparent in 1968 when PCBs accidentally leaked into cooking oil in Japan. Children born to mothers who consumed the contaminated oil during their pregnancy showed behavioral disorders and were of below normal intelligence. An uncanny similar accident in Taiwan a decade later resulted in almost identical problems: children exposed prenatally showed profound developmental delays and mental deficits. Furthermore, so did children born several years after their mothers were exposed. In the wake of these findings, PCB production in the United States ceased in 1976. Although no consumer product now on the market is made with PCBs, much older electrical equipment, especially that in use by industry, still contains this oily fluid. So, of course, does all scrapped equipment rusting away in landfills and out back on old military bases. Indeed, the quantity of PCBs still in use plus the quantity still languishing in waste dumps exceeds the total amount that has already escaped into the general environment. Without a program to recall and contain them, semivolatile PCBs will continue to insinuate themselves into the food chain for decades.

-Sandra Steingraber, Having Faith, 2001  

PBDEs are added to plastics, electronics, textiles, and construction materials as components of a common fire retardant. Fetal exposure of mice to PBDEs causes permanent neural defects. The Swedish government has moved to ban some forms of PBDEs based on the findings of an earlier study conducted in Europe that showed a ninefold increase of PBDEs in human blood samples between 1977 and 1999. The first EHP study, by researchers at the Indiana School of Medicine and the Indiana University Department of Chemistry and School of Public Health and Environmental Affairs, found that women in Indiana have PBDE blood concentrations 20-70 times higher than levels reported in the European study. The Indiana study also measured concentrations of PBDEs in cord blood from the women's newborn infants and found equally high levels suggesting "that the human fetus may be exposed to relatively high levels of PBDEs," according to the study authors. The authors go on to suggest that exposure to PBDEs may present a health hazard because of the similarity of the chemicals' molecules to those of another class of chemicals, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The authors say that PBDEs' structural similarity to PCBs, which are known to have neurotoxic and carcinogenic action, raises the question of potential biological hazards associated with PBDEs.

-Erin Hollingshead, “Significant Amounts of Potentially Harmful Chemical 
Found in Blood of Mothers and Babies,”
Environmental Health Perspectives, 10 Mar 03    

A chemical widely found in food packaging and other plastics may cause severe genetic defects in embryos, at levels people are commonly exposed to, according to a scientific study published today. Laboratory experiments by geneticists at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio showed that bisphenol A disrupts the way that chromosomes align to produce the eggs of mice, leading to aneuploidy, which is the main cause of miscarriages and Down's syndrome in humans. Scientists say the study is the first to show that exposure to a small amount of an environmental contaminant that mimics the hormone estrogen disrupts the growth of embryos, killing them or leading to genetically abnormal offspring. …BPA ranks among one of industry's top chemicals, with 2 billion pounds used yearly.

-Marla Cone, “Study Links Plastics to Embryo Ills,” 
Los Angeles Times, 1 Apr 03

The air is full of a farewell—
deserted by the silver lake
lies the wild world, overturned.
Cities rise where the mountains fell,
the furnace where the phoenix burned

-Kathleen Raine, from On Leaving Ullswater, Collected Poems, 1956  

The Environmental Protection Agency concluded yesterday that long-term exposure to exhaust from diesel engines likely causes lung cancer in humans and triggers a variety of other lung and respiratory illnesses. The study, the culmination of decades of research, highlights the health problems posed by the complex mix of gases and fine particles emitted by heavy-duty diesel engines operating on the nation's highways, farms and construction sites. "Overall, the evidence for a potential cancer hazard to humans resulting from chronic inhalation exposure to [diesel emissions] is persuasive," the report states.

-Eric Pianin, "EPA Links Lung Cancer, Diesel Exhaust,”
The Washington Post, 4 Sep 02

Air pollution is not merely a nuisance and a threat to health.  It is a reminder that our most celebrated technological achievements—the automobile, the jet plane, the power plant, industry in general, and indeed the modern city itself—are, in the environment, failures.

-Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle, 1971

Anyone who studies our poisonous drugs, our denatured food, our deathtrap automobiles and houses, our lung-rotting cities, must concede that we accept a good deal of murder as inevitable simply because it is done to make or save money.

-Joy Davidman, Smoke on the Mountain, 1953  

These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes - nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the "good" and the "bad," to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soil - all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called "insecticides," but "biocides."

-Rachel Carson (1907-1964), Silent Spring, 1962  

Children frequently exposed to household insecticides used on plants, lawns and in head lice shampoos appear to run double the risk of developing childhood leukaemia, research suggests.  A study by French doctors, published today in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, supports concerns raised in recent years about the use of toxic insecticides around the home and garden — including plant sprays, medication shampoos and mosquito repellents — and a possible correlation with increased rates of acute leukaemia in children.

-Sam Lister, “Household insecticides could double child leukaemia risk,” 
The London Times, 17 Jan 06

Exposure to the pesticide methyl bromide and six other pesticides have been linked with an increased risk of prostate cancer among pesticide applicators in North Carolina and Iowa, U.S. government scientists reported Thursday. Methyl bromide is a fumigant gas used to protect crops from pests in the soil and to fumigate grain bins and other agricultural storage areas. Prostate cancer risks were two to four times higher among pesticide applicators than among men who were not exposed to methyl bromide.

-Environment News Service, 
“Methyl Bromide Exposure Raises Prostate Cancer Risk,’ 2 May 03

The United Nations says the amount of pesticide waste which seriously endangers people and the environment around the world is five times greater than a previous estimate two years ago. In a new report the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says almost 500,000 tonnes of old and unused toxic pesticides have been abandoned on sites. Most of that is in the developing world.

-BBC News, "Global waste pesticide warning" 9 May 01  

Last year approximately 400,000,000 gallons of chemical termiticides were pumped onto American soil. That's enough chemical to fill 80,000 semi-tanker trucks. …Even though the termite insecticide chlorpyrifos (Dursban) has been banned from store shelves, builders and pest control companies can use stocks to treat new homes until 2006. "Current termite control practices are hazardous for new homeowners, who are not even required to be notified of toxic chemical use (soil poisons)," said Jay Feldman, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based group Beyond Pesticides/National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides. A 2000 square foot home requires that 380 gallons of pesticide be pumped into the ground. In a 100 home subdivision, that's about 38 thousand gallons put where children and pets play, and the family gardens. Under pressure from EPA, Dow Chemical pulled Dursban from retail shelves at the end of 2001, but continues selling it for termite pretreatments in new home construction.

-E-Wire Press, "Hidden Pesticide Hazards Lurk in Newly Built Homes,"
17 Apr 02  

What, then, is the effect of pesticides? Pesticides have created a legacy of pain, and misery, and death for farm workers and consumers alike. The crop which poses the greatest danger, and the focus of our struggle, is the table grape crop. These pesticides soak the fields. Drift with the wind, pollute the water, and are eaten by unwitting consumers. These poisons are designed to kill, and pose a very real threat to consumers and farm workers alike. The fields are sprayed with pesticides: like Captan, Parathion, Phosdrin, and Methyl Bromide. These poisons cause cancer, DNA mutation, and horrible birth defects. The Central Valley of California is one of the wealthiest agricultural regions in the world. In its midst are clusters of children dying from cancer. The children live in communities surrounded by the grape fields that employ their parents. The children come into contact with the poisons when they play outside, when they drink the water, and when they hug their parents returning from the fields. And the children are dying.

-Cesar E. Chavez (1927-1993), Speech 12 Jan 90  

We're conducting a vast toxicological experiment and we are using our children as experimental animals.

-Philip Landrigan, MD quoted in Trade Secrets: A Moyers Report  

…laws governing pollution tend to move pollutants from one medium to another.  So, for example, we scrub SO₂ from power plants only to dispose toxic sludge on land.  We “clean” water only to disperse toxic-laced solids on farmland or landfills.  Pollution control becomes a kind of giant shell game by which we move pollutants between air, water, groundwater, and land.

-David W. Orr, The Last Refuge, 2004

Unborn U.S. babies are soaking in a stew of chemicals, including mercury, gasoline byproducts and pesticides, according to a report to be released Thursday… The report by the Environmental Working Group is based on tests of 10 samples of umbilical cord blood taken by the American Red Cross. They found an average of 287 contaminants in the blood, including mercury, fire retardants, pesticides and the Teflon chemical PFOA. "These 10 newborn babies ... were born polluted," said New York Rep. Louise Slaughter, who planned to publicize the findings at a news conference Thursday. "If ever we had proof that our nation's pollution laws aren't working, it's reading the list of industrial chemicals in the bodies of babies who have not yet lived outside the womb," Slaughter, a Democrat, said.

-Maggie Fox, “Unborn Babies Soaked in Chemicals, Survey Finds,” 
Reuters 14 Jul 05

In Finland—which has a high-quality registry—children born to women employed during their first trimester of pregnancy in agricultural occupations involving pesticides had twice the risk of cleft lips and palates. In Spain, oral clefts were three times more likely among babies born to women similarly employed. In addition, these children had greatly increased risks for multiple anomalies and defects of the nervous system. Also in Spain, the rates of surgical repair for undescended testicles is higher in areas of high pesticide use. These findings were mirrored in Denmark, where the sons of women who worked as professional gardeners in greenhouses, orchards, or nurseries were found to have a significantly increased risk of undescended testicles. Norwegian researchers documented strong associations between spina bifida as well as hydrocephaly and maternal work in orchards or greenhouses. Here in the United States, a study of nearly 700 women in California showed an increased risk of fetal death among babies whose mothers lived near crops when certain pesticides were sprayed. The largest risks were found among pregnant women exposed during the critical first trimester and among those who lived in the same square mile where pesticides were used.

-Sandra Steingraber, Having Faith, 2001  

Diseases caused by environmental degradation kill one in five children before age five in the poorest areas of the world, international health experts said Friday. Worldwide, almost one-fourth of disease was linked to environmental factors of poor water and sanitation, indoor and outdoor air pollution, and vector-borne diseases, according to a report by the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

-Reuters News Service article reported by CNN Earth News, 1 May 98  

Children whose developing lungs are particularly vulnerable suffer the most from air pollution. For children, breathing the air in cities with the worst pollution, such as Beijing, Calcutta, Mexico City, Shanghai, and Tehran, is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.

-Lester A. Brown, Michael Renner, Brian Halweil, Vital Signs 1999  

Lead may be harmful even at very low blood concentrations, scientists from three institutions have found. The results of a five year study released today show that children with blood lead concentrations below the federal definition of an elevated lead level suffer intellectual impairment from the exposure… "In this sample of children we find that most of the damage to intellectual functioning occurs at blood lead concentrations that are below 10 micrograms per deciliter," said Richard Canfield of the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University and primary author on the study.

"Minuscule Blood Lead Levels Impair Intelligence,” 
Environment News Service, 16 Apr 02

Children eat, drink, and breathe more for their body weights than adults do, so they get bigger proportional doses of whatever is out there.

-Herbert Needleman, University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist who pioneered
studies linking lowered intelligence with early childhood exposures to 
lead, quoted in Trade Secrets: A Moyers Report

Hundreds of thousands of children throughout the country are attending schools that were built on or near toxic waste sites, putting them at increased risk of developing asthma, cancer, learning disorders and other diseases linked to environmental pollutants, according to a new study. The report, prepared by an environmental coalition called Child Proofing Our Communities Campaign and released yesterday, found that most states and public school systems lack environmental standards for selecting school construction sites. Instead, school projects are regulated only by local land-use laws, which the report called haphazard when it comes to evaluating environmental hazards. Consequently, the report said, many cash-strapped systems have opted to build on relatively cheap land on or near toxic waste sites… No state except California has a law requiring school officials to investigate potentially contaminated property and no federal or state agency keeps records of public or private schools that operate on or near toxic waste or industrial sites… However, the study notes there has been a sharp increase in the number of children afflicted with asthma, cancer, diminished IQs and learning disabilities during the past two decades and that experts say that children exposed to harmful toxins at home, at play or at school are particularly at risk to those health and developmental problems.

-Eric Pianin & Michael A. Fletcher,
"Many Schools Built Near Toxic Sites, Study Finds,"
The Washington Post Online, 21 Jan 02  

Children exposed to lead at levels now considered safe scored substantially lower on intelligence tests, according to a Cincinnati researcher who suggests one in 30 children in the United States suffers from its effects. Children with a lead concentration of less than 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood scored an average of 11.1 points lower than the mean on the Stanford-Binet IQ test, the researchers found. The mean is the intermediate value between the lowest and highest scores. "There is no safe level of blood lead," said Dr. Bruce Lanphear of Children's Hospital Medical Center and lead author of the lead study presented Monday at the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting.

-Jeanne A. Naujeck, "Even a little lead harms kids, Tristate doctor finds"
Cincinnati Enquirer, 1 May 01  

The broadest study yet of toxic chemicals that Americans absorb in their bodies showed a continuing decline in the clearest threats, like lead, pesticides and tobacco residues, but turned up numerous other findings that federal scientists and other experts called troublesome yesterday. The study tested blood and urine collected in 1999 and 2000 from more than 2,000 volunteers chosen as a representative slice of the American population. It determined that almost 8 percent of the roughly 50 million American women ages 16 to 49 had blood levels of mercury exceeding 5.8 parts per billion, the precautionary standard set by the Environmental Protection Agency… Among other findings, the new study disclosed that children had higher levels of residues from secondhand smoke, some pesticides and plastics than adults, and that Mexican-Americans have three times the levels of a DDT residue of other Americans.

-Andrew C. Revkin, “Study Finds Lower Level of Old Toxins but 
New Trends Are Worrying,” New York Times, 1 Feb 03

Female babies exposed to the pesticide DDT while they were in the womb had more trouble getting pregnant as adults than those who weren't exposed, according to a new study that concludes the pesticide's harmful results can take decades to appear. The study, published in the latest issue of the British medical journal Lancet, highlights DDT's long and troublesome reach. "This is the first research that shows it is possible that these exposures can cause problems 30 years down the line. It's the long-term, two-generational aspect that makes this study unique," said lead researcher Barbara Cohn, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Berkeley's Public Health Institute.

-David Kohn, "DDT Exposure said to hinder conception,"
Maryland’s SunSpot.net, 30 Jun 03

Pollution control authorities in the southern Indian state of Tamilnadu have ordered Hindustan Lever Limited, a subsidiary of Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever, to export to the United States 286 tons of waste contaminated with mercury from its controversial thermometer factory in Kodaikanal, now closed… The controversial Hindustan Lever factory was exported to India in 1983 after it was shut down in Watertown, New York… In March 2001, workers, community members and nongovernmental organizations forced the factory to suspend operations after discovering that the company had dumped wastes contaminated with mercury at several public locations including a local scrapyard and on the sensitive watershed forests adjoining the factory. The factory imports all its mercury, primarily from the United States, and exports all of the thermometers it produces to U.S. based Faichney Medical Company.

-Nityanand Jayaraman, 
“Hindustan Lever Will Export Mercury Waste to USA” 
Environment News Service, 31 Mar 03 

One third of all of our cancers are from tobacco. It's one of the big killers in America and more than half of our kids still have environmental tobacco smoke exposure when environmental tobacco smoke is known to be associated with sudden infant death syndrome, with ear infections, respiratory infections and the rest. If we had to pick something to really go after, that would be one that I would really argue is an extraordinarily high priority and something people can actually do something about.

-Dr. Richard Jackson, director of National Center for Environmental Health
 quoted in “Toxic Chemical Study Sounds Warning for Children,” 
Environment News Service, 4 Feb 03

A laboratory test of 22 types of lettuce purchased at Northern California supermarkets found that four were contaminated with perchlorate, a toxic rocket-fuel ingredient that has polluted the Colorado River, the source of the water used to grow most of the nation's winter vegetables… The four lettuce samples all contained substantial quantities of perchlorate. One, a packaged variety of organic mixed baby greens, had a level of perchlorate contamination at least 20 times as high as the amount California considers safe for drinking water. The other three were packaged butter lettuce and radicchio, romaine lettuce and radicchio and a head of iceberg lettuce. All were at least five times as high as the state considers safe for water. State and federal environmental officials believe that perchlorate, a salt widely used by the U.S. government to help power missiles and the space shuttle, may cause health problems, even in trace amounts. Because it is known to affect the production of thyroid hormones, which are critical to early brain development, researchers believe perchlorate exposure may be especially dangerous for pregnant women and young children.

-Miguel Bustillo, “Lettuce Samples Found Tainted,” 
Los Angeles Times 28 Apr 03 

The nationwide price tag of perchlorate cleanup could be in the tens of millions, and possibly even billions, of dollars, according to water officials and other experts, who say it has the potential to dwarf California's problems with MTBE, a gasoline additive that tainted groundwater supplies. Perchlorate, which is highly soluble, has been detected in water supplies in California and at least 19 other states, usually near defense contractors or military bases. The Colorado River, which supplies drinking water to about 15 million people in the Southwestern United States, contains perchlorate that leached from the site of a former Nevada rocket fuel factory.

-Miguel Bustillo, “Lettuce Samples Found Tainted,” 
Los Angeles Times 28 Apr 03 

It's very likely that every one of the 3,200 outdoor firing ranges in the U.S. is so highly contaminated with lead that a massive cleanup effort would be required to make it safe for any other industrial or residential use.

-Jane Houlihan, research director of Environmental Working Group,
quoted in "Missing the Target - Green Bullets"
Environment News Service, 27 Jun 01  

A small neighborhood in Bossier City, Louisiana has some of the highest levels of chemical contamination, cancers and birth defects ever documented in the United States, according to National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists. The Lincoln Creosote plant is now a Superfund site on the National Priorities List of the most hazardous sites in the country. It was operated in a 20 acre field next to a residential area from 1935 to 1969 by several different owners and operators, producing telephone poles and railroad ties. The wood was pressure treated with creosote, copper-chromium arsenate and pentachlorophenol (PCP) and hung out to dry. Eventually, two large creosote ponds formed leaving arsenic and carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) as deep as 15 feet in the ground. Large residential neighborhoods border the Lincoln Creosote facility to the north, northeast, south and west… According to Dr. Patricia Williams, the high incidence of cancers and birth defects in Bossier City was probably caused by the contamination in the ground, air and water. Dr. Williams found that the incidence of leukemia from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s is as much as 40 times higher than normal populations, the rate varies depending on the type of leukemia. Breast cancer incidence is as much as five times higher than normal. Incidences of birth defects are 300 percent higher that those recorded during a comparable time period in Osaka, Japan which is near Hiroshima where an atomic bomb was dropped in 1945 to end World War II.

-Marie Marzi, "Creosote Contaminates Louisiana Community for Generations,"
Environment News Service 5 Sep 01  

According to the latest data available from the American Wood Preservatives Institute's 1995 statistical report, about 1.6 billion pounds of wood preservatives are used to treat wood each year, including 138 million pounds of CCA, 656 million pounds of penta, and 825 million pounds of creosote. The three wood preservatives targeted by the lawsuit are linked to a wide range of health problems including cancer, birth defects, kidney and liver damage, disruption of the endocrine system and death. Two of the components of CCA, arsenic and chromium (VI), are classified as known human carcinogens. Penta, classified as a probable carcinogen and a known endocrine disruptor, is contaminated with dioxins that the National Institutes of Health has classified as known human carcinogens. Creosote, a mix of toxic chemicals, is a cancer causing agent and is can cause nervous system damage.

-Cat Lazaroff, “U.S., Canada Groups Sue Over Toxic Wood Preservers,” 
Environment News Service, 11 Dec 02

Birds are being affected by lead on a massive scale. As of February 4, more than 176 trumpeter swans have been picked up dead or dying on the ponds they use in northern Washington state. It takes only three or four lead pellets to cause lead poisoning in a swan. Lead is a soft metal that is ground down easily in the gizzard of a bird. It then enters the blood stream quite rapidly. Lead shotgun shells used for hunting contain about 280 lead pellets. A hunter usually fires five or six shells for every bird that is hit. Only a few of the pellets actually hit the bird. The rest, often more than 1,000 pellets, fall to the ground or into the water. For years, duck hunters left about 6,000 tons of lead shot annually in United States ponds, lakes and rivers before the US Fish and Wildlife Service banned its use in waterfowl hunting. Lead shot is still used to hunt other kinds of game birds.

-Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D., "Missing the Target - Green Bullets"
Environment News Service, 27 Jun 01  

You shall not pollute the land in which you live; for blood pollutes the land, and no expiation can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it.

-Numbers 35:33 from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible  

Most Americans carry detectable amounts of plastics, pesticides and heavy metals in their blood and urine, a government survey has shown for the first time. The substances include many shown to cause brain damage, reproductive problems, cancer and other toxic effects in animals. However, the amounts found in the average person are far below the levels at which those problems occur. Nearly all of the 27 chemicals in the survey of 3,800 people conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1999 hadn't been previously measured in a national sample of the American population. Consequently, it's impossible to say if exposure is rising, falling or unchanged. Whether there are any health effects of trace amounts of the substances is similarly unknown in most cases.

-David Brown, "Study Tallies Americans' Exposure to Toxins"
The Washington Post, 22 Mar 01  

Of all the problems of conservation, none is more urgent that the polluted air which endangers the American people. We have been fortunate so far. But we have seen that when winds fail to blow, the concentrations of poisonous clouds over our cities can become perilous. Air pollution is a threat to health, especially of older persons. It contributes significantly to the rising rates of chronic respiratory ailments. It stains our cities and towns with ugliness, soiling and corroding whatever it touches. Its damage extends to our forests and farmlands as well. The economic toll for our neglect amounts to billions of dollars each year.

-Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) 36th President of the United States,
Special Message to Congress, "To Renew a Nation"
8 Mar 68  

I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted.

-Lawrence Summers, chief economist of the World Bank,
explaining why toxic wastes should be exported to Third World countries 

At 18 mpg, a car emits about 6 tons of carbon dioxide per year.

-Minnesota Pollution Control Agency

Children living near heavily traveled streets or highways are at greater risk of developing cancer, including childhood leukemia, a new study conducted in the rapidly expanding Denver metropolitan area shows. When researchers looked at the occurrance of cancer in children living in homes close to both high traffic corridors and high current capacity power lines, they found the cancer risks were greater than in children in high density traffic areas alone… The new study showed that homes adjacent to street corridors carrying 20,000 or more vehicles per day had roughly a six-fold increase in risk for children contracting cancer, including childhood leukemia.

-Environment News Service, 
"High Traffic Streets Linked to Childhood Cancers"
1 Mar 00