Coverage of me and other train wrecks: my mama, subway nut jobs, sex and the environment.

3.26.2008

Safe Chemicals

Okay okay okay. I need your help. Let's increase awareness. Ready?

Chemicals created throughout the 20th century were introduced into all the products and much of the food (and consequently the air, dirt and water) without much knowledge about their potentially harmful effects.

And now, decades later, we realize some of these chemicals (DDT, PVC, et al, et al) never should have been used. Some caused birth defects. Some take eons to degrade. Some mix with others and produce super chemicals, and by "super" I mean really toxic. Our bodies carry a chemical load that human bodies didn't carry a century ago. Man-made chemicals. (Remember the stories about rocket fuel toxins in breast milk?)

The NY Times's Science section published an article about "Green" chemicals. Companies are rushing to make environmentally sound chemicals.

Right.

From a marketing standpoint, they need to do this in order to keep selling their poisons, er, products. The companies making the green chems will pitch them to consumers and governments as benign, and many in our generation will fall for the ads, and then our grandchildren will conduct research that proves these green things are venoms. The business cycle does only cares about the human body to the extent that those bodies shop. Short of causing sudden death, anything goes when it comes to new products.

A note: I'm interchanging "products" with "chemicals" here because, well, these new green chemicals will end up in our products--in plastics, on food, in our IKEA furniture.

So please please please, be a voice against this naive, baby-boomish idea that we can make good, wholesome chemicals. Promote the idea that the best way to live, is to live with what we've got, with what already exists in nature, in the QUANTITIES in which it exists (plants make CO2, but too much of it kills people and glaciers, so...). So talk about this issue. Mention it with kindness around the water cooler so that your co-workers remain informed and aware, and most importantly, help your co workers focus on the truly benign way to live: sustainably, with as few chemicals in your life as possible.

Here is the NY Times article.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home