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was ubiquitous, showing up everywhere from Asian jungles to the Antarctic, and
that once taken up into the animal food chain its concentration was
progressively magnified through successively higher trophic levels, such as
algae fish predator fish fish-eating bird predator bird.
The examples cited to illustrate the first turned out invariably to be
artifacts of the measuring techniques used, or results of misidentification.
One of the principal instruments used in pesticide analysis, introduced in the
early sixties, was the gas chromatograph, in which the sample being tested is
vaporized into a stream of carrier gas that is passed through a column of
porous material. The various constituents, having different molecular weights,
separate out into distinct bands which can be identified by their emergence
after a characteristic propagation time to be registered, usually as a "peak"
of signal voltage, at a detector. (The process is analogous to the way in
which water from a plumbing leak spreads out across a ceiling tile and dries
to leave a ring pattern of successively colored haloes hence the name.)
Although highly sensitive, it is a fact with this technique that totally
different substances with similar mobilities can have similar "signatures,"
making skilled interpretation an imperative. The much-publicized finding of
"DDT" in the Antarctic, for example, turned out to be due to contamination by
molecules from the connecting tubing of the apparatus. Soil samples sealed in
glass jars since 1911 gave results that were interpreted as five kinds of
pesticides that didn't exist until thirty years later. A similar story applies
to a gibbon from Burma, preserved since 1935.
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The examples given to "prove" the hypothesis of magnification along the food
chain were based on selected data. Figures were taken for DDT concentrations
found in hawk brains, where they are highest, fish muscle, where it is lowest,
and duck fat, which is intermediate. Comparison of figures for muscle tissue
from crustaceans, fish, duck, hawk shows no magnification.
210
The Scientists' Findings and the Administrator's Ruling
The hearings went on for seven months, during which 125 witnesses were heard
and 9,362 pages of testimony recorded. The EPA's hearing examiner, Judge
Edmund Sweeney, was even-handed in his dealings, which seemed to infuriate
environmentalists and drew criticism from the
New York Times and
Science
, neither of which sent reporters to cover the proceedings. The scientific
advisors had also followed the testimony and were unanimous in their
eighty-page recommendation that the claims were unsubstantiated and there was
no reason for DDT to be banned. Sweeney issued his conclusions on
April 25, 1972. They included the following:
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" DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man. . .
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" DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man. . . .
" The uses of DDT under the registrations involved here do not have a
deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or
other wildlife. . . .
" The adverse effect on beneficial animals from the use of DDT under the
registration involved here is not unreasonable on balance with its benefit. .
. . There is a present need for the continued use of DDT for the essential
uses defined in this case.
This was in line with the professional scientific and medical scientific pleas
that had been made worldwide. During the EPA hearings the World Health
Organization issued a statement that included:
Improvement in health occasioned by antimalarial campaigns has broken the
vicious cycle of poverty and disease in many areas by preventing incapacity
and death
. . . . [N]o economic alternative to DDT is available and the . . .
consequences of the withdrawal of DDT would be very grave. . . . [T]he safety
record of DDT for man is truly remarkable.
Six weeks after Sweeney's findings, on June 2, 1972, the EPA Administrator,
William
Ruckleshaus, reversed the decision, rejected the scientific evidence, and
ordered a ban on the sale and production of DDT. Ruckleshaus had not attended
any of the sessions during the seven-month hearing and admitted that he had
not read the transcript. The decision, he stated, was taken for political
reasons.
Environmentalist groups have campaigned vigorously ever since for a full ban
on all use, by all nations.
Today, more than 2 billion people 40 percent of the world's population live in
malarious countries. Around 300 million are infected, and something like 100
million cases are estimated to occur each year along with millions of deaths,
most of them children. Africa is one of the worst sufferers, with nearly 85
percent of the world's cases. More than 30 percent of childhood deaths there
are caused by malaria.
Perhaps the most charitable interpretation of the 1972 decision would be that
it was intended as a demonstration by a fledgling federal agency, in its first
major test, that it was genuinely a disinterested arm of the national
executive and not a lackey to financial or private corporate interests. One
can only say here that if public perceptions are to take precedence over fact
in the formulation of policy, it's a sad day for science. Critics have seen
the ruling as part of a deliberate policy of population control, in a period
when global overpopulation has been widely promoted as one of the greatest
problems that the world faces.
In the foregoing, I have leaned heavily on the book
Ecological Sanity
, by George Claus and
Karen Bolander, which devotes almost six hundred pages to the subject of which
I have managed to address only a few selected details briefly. The authors are
meticulous in their treatment. They obviously read and studied the materials
which in many cases expert witnesses who testified at the EPA hearing appeared
not to have understood. In a number of instances they redid calculations and
replotted graphs, showing data to indicate the reverse of what the authors of
the papers maintained. In other words, as a source reference for anyone
wanting seriously to grasp the issues at stake and how they were handled, I
would recommend it as invaluable. It is, however, out of print. After reading
a review, I managed to track a copy down in a used bookstore in New Jersey.
Silent Spring can be found in mass-market editions at any bookstore, and is
reprinted regularly.
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"Vitamin R": Radiation
Good for Your Health
212
It is very difficult, and perhaps entirely impossible, to combat the effects
of brainwashing by argument.
 Paul Feyerabend
Radiation Phobia
It seems that the public is at last coming around to accepting that a nuclear
power-generation plant cannot explode like a bomb. The majority that I talk to
appear to concede, also, that the Chernobyl accident that occurred in the
Soviet Union in 1986 was a result of practices and policy very different from
the West's, and that there are other methods of bomb-making that are easier,
quicker, cheaper, and safer than fooling around with used power-plant fuel. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]