The Collapse of Science due to Environmental Issues -2

1. Negligence of Scientific Procedure

Although pollution and the exhaustion of resources are logical consequences, the people and the government as well as scholars were astonished by the result of their own achievements. However, they did not want to confront the facts but instead believed that their hopes would be realized and chose not to directly face their fears. The most marked phenomenon is pollutant materials, such as mercury, lead, tin, DDT (dichloro　-diphenyl　-trichloromethylmethane), polyvinylchloride, insecticides, food additives, dioxin and hormone-disrupting chemicals. Particularly in the 1950s, several large-scale pollutions terrified people. One was the smog pollution in London 1) and the other was the “Minamata disease” caused by mercury organic compounds 2).
In 1952, the citizens of London were attacked by severe smog. The number of victims who died in December of that year was about 4,000, and the total was estimated to be over 10,000. The air pollution at Yokkaichi in Japan was caused by the same smog. Meanwhile, the “Minamata disease” became widely known for the horrible damage caused by mercury to the cranial nerve of the people who habitually consumed fish from the Minamata bay 3,4).
Why could these disastrous pollutions not be prevented? The reason was simple. Even scientists and doctors did not know the poisonous effects of sulfur dioxide in London and Yokkaichi and of mercury in Minamata. The toxicities of sulfur dioxide and mercury are common knowledge now, but were not scientific and medical knowledge in the 1950s.
Anti-pollution movements, occurred and anti-pollution laws were established since then, and the prevention of pollution took on importance. It was easily considered to be a logical progress after the experiences of the many miserable accidents. Various chemicals became the subjects of investigation and writers and researchers such as A. Hamilton 5), R. Carson 6), S. Ariyoshi 7), and Theo Colborn 8) strongly warned of the effect of these on health and the environment.
The chemicals recognized by society as harmful were called by expressive words in the process. The four examples will be illustrated.
1) DDT
DDT is an insecticide which Paul Muller discovered by a new concept 9). Because it only attacks the nerves in arthropods, it is not generally poisonous to human beings but shows very strong toxicity towards insects. Muller won the Nobel Prize for discovering a new insecticide that was effective towards insects but simultaneously harmless to human beings. After the Second World War, a large amount of DDT was sprayed over American fields. Gypsy moths, malarial mosquitoes and other so-called harmful insects could be exterminated and the effect ranged over lakes and marshes as well as the fields. Afterwards, R. Carson was surprised by the absence of insects in lakes and marshes, but it was the logical consequence of America’s own achievement. Even though DDT kills insects, this does not necessarily mean that DDT is poisonous to human beings.
Carson wrote that “What happens in nature is not allowed to happen in the modern, chemical-drenched world, where spraying destroys not only the insects but also their principal enemy, the birds14)”. DDT was called the “white devil powder” and was banished rapidly and emotionally.
In reality, however, victims of DDT and related halogenated compounds have not been reported. In particular, DDT was certified as one of the most harmless insecticides through experiments on human bodies. Although Rachel Carson’s warning was valuable in terms of informing people of the importance of conserving the environment, in terms of the scientific evaluation of DDT, she was completely mistaken.
2) Complex pollution
Novelist Sawako Ariyoshi wrote a book entitled “Complex Pollution” in 1978 in which she warned the Japanese people and the government of the destructive effects of complex pollution by agricultural chemicals 10). She also wrote that using plural chemicals was much more dangerous than using a single chemical, and that the Japanese people would be severely attacked by chemical pollution in the future because the amount of agricultural chemicals sprayed over Japanese fields in the 1970s was about ten times larger than the amount used in European countries.
The expression she used to describe the future she envisioned, “the depth of fatal destruction”, makes the reader imagine an explosive increase of cancer and other queer diseases. In this sense, her expression was very extreme like Carson’s.
Approximately 30 years later, in the year 2000, the boys and girls who lived their most sensitive age in the high level of complex pollution reached their 40s, the so-called “cancer age”. Fortunately, cancer and other diseases did not increase at all 12). Is this what Ariyoshi meant by, “the Japanese will stand in the depth of fatal destruction”?
3) Dioxin
Dioxin was called “the most dangerous chemical ever synthesized by human beings” and its toxicity was reported to be 60,000 times larger than potassium cyanide 13). However, and fortunately, no victim has ever been reported even though dioxin can easily be synthesized in a small wood fire and a large amount was included in agricultural chemicals for rice paddies. When we come to think of it, mankind has been in contact with dioxin since the earliest times because we have used fire for warmth and to cook daily meals. If dioxin is the most dangerous chemical, then these habits should also be considered highly dangerous.
The fear of “dioxin” can be said to be another concocted story.
4) Hormone-disrupting chemicals
Theo Colborn wrote “Our Stolen Future” in 1996, where she pointed out that many chemicals would turn into hormone-disrupting chemicals by which living bodies would lose their procreative powers 14). These hormone-disrupting chemicals were afterwards named “environmental hormone” by the mass media. It was so sensational that many reports in TV were broadcasted and articles in newspapers were written, and even scientific symposiums were held.
At the initial stage of these proposals, many scientists were doubtful of the effect because the new theories were deduced from a few facts in a huge number of phenomena in animals and plants. As all chemicals are poisonous to a certain animal or plant at a given concentration level, anyone can produce “a new poison” if he prepares a lot of experimental animals and plants and gives them the chemicals to the extent that one of them becomes ill 15).
Even oxygen, sugar, coffee, and water could be classified into poisons by this procedure. The concept of pollution prevention inherently includes “scientific process” and “inference”. The state of things in the future can be precisely predicted by scientific processes only when the theory has been perfectly constructed. So, if an honest scientist is asked the toxicity of a newly synthesized chemical, he can only answer “impossible to judge” even when he has a lot of experimental data about it because direct experiments on human beings cannot be conducted.
On the other hand, it is very convenient for those scientists who have strong desires for fame, or a pessimist interested in nature who studies the environment or toxicity, or the mass media which wants to get a higher audience rating by creating sensational programs, and activists for the environment. These people may be good-natured but are not interested in the facts; instead, they are only eager to realize their goals or desires.
Almost all the descriptions in these books were not facts studied through rigorous scientific procedures but rather illusions based on preconceptions and fear or projections stumbled upon from a few favorable evidences in a huge number of phenomena. Although the descriptions were not facts, they were gradually metamorphosed into facts by the mass media, social movements and political activities which had some different purposes.
Up until recently, excessive regulation of those questionable chemicals was recognized to be effective towards the improvement of the environment that has partly been destroyed. Therefore, many people, in particular the mass media, thought that these regulations should be allowed even if the facts were not accurate.
However, such excessive regulation has in fact generated more victims. Three examples will be described here. The first is DDT. As mentioned earlier, Muller discovered that DDT was a strong poison to harmful insects and won the Nobel Prize in 1948. His discovery was applauded as “the most valuable invention in history”. This chemical was immediately used to exterminate harmful insects such as the gypsy moth and the malaria mosquito 16). The United Nations started a program to eliminate malaria from the world 17). After the program succeeded in advanced countries, European countries and Japan decided to ban the chemical because it “destroys the environment”.
Just at that time, malaria had gradually been decreasing in developing countries thanks to the DDT program, but it was still the most dangerous disease in the region. Then, DDT was banished instead of malaria and the people in developing countries lost the means by which they had driven the disease on the verge of extinction. Malaria came back to life and has constantly increased since then. The correct figures are difficult to decide upon, for there are many different statistics reported on the number of malaria patients in the world 18), but according to the survey by the medical school of Okayama University, about a few million people die of the disease annually 19). In other words, the movement to ban DDT killed about several tens of million people in developing countries.
The weak has always been the victims of environmental movements because the strong has more power and a larger voice. Although the citizen’s movement is always treated as being just, it tends to expand the extent of inequality because it is often forceful and lacks calm discussion. The case of DDT is a typical example.
The second is the case of flame retardants and fires. Industrial goods, especially electric equipments, run high risks of ignition and fire. Therefore, flame retardants have been added to almost all equipments to retard the ignition and combustion 20). The best flame retardant is the mixing agent with halogenated compounds and antimony oxide. The complexes had been added to plastics since the 1950s, which presumably prevented many would-be fires, consequently saving many lives.
Fires are one of the causes of major fatal accidents. For example, traffic accidents are at the top of the list and the number of deaths is about 8,000 a year in Japan. The next are fire accidents and the deaths are over 2,000 21). Half of the victims are infants and the elderly 22). After the ban of halogenated flame retardants, many more became the victims of fires which could have been prevented if the flame retardants had been used. Infants and the elderly are weak and their voices are small. They do not know the relation between the banning of flame retardants (Cause) and the consequent danger (Result) and are not given the means of obtaining such knowledge at all. They are merely left to die in an obscure corner in society.
The third example is dioxin. Because the strong toxicity towards several kinds of animals was observed, the warning and prevention were of course necessary. However, successive studies have showed that the toxicity of dioxin is weak. The acute toxicity only results in pimples and the chronic disease it causes is cancer but the danger level is lower than that of a cigarette per day even if one takes more than 10,000 times of the officially regulated amount. So the social reaction was obviously exaggerated.
On the other hand, some groups in Japanese society needed dioxin to have high toxicity. Four groups profited by spreading the fear of dioxin in Japanese society. Those are 1) the mass media, 2) the “me-too” scholars, 3) the companies which measure the concentration of dioxin, and 4) the companies which manufacture incinerators that eliminate it. The people who were victimized by these groups included very sensitive people, tax payers and honest people who trusted what the government, mass media and scholars showed. They were frightened and wasted precious times of their lives due to various anxieties.
The mass media produced many programs that created an illusion in society without concrete scientific results. The government was forced to take measures to meet the new situation and subsidized huge funds to research the toxins. “Me-too” scholars jumped at the government’s offer and many studies were conducted to clarify the toxicity, the preparation routes, the measuring method, the accumulation in a living body, the spreading over the environment, the method for the degradation, the remedy, etc.
The next easy-money-getter was the analytical centers. As dioxin was thought to possess very strong toxicity, the accurate measurement in the region of low concentration was required. If an accidental error occurs, the mass media and citizen group would severely criticize the person in charge of the analysis. Therefore, the local government, which often bore the full brunt of such errors, could not help but tread warily and paid a lot of money for its self-defense. Although the fee for an ordinary analysis is usually about 10 to 20 thousand yen (US$100 to $200) even if it is relatively difficult, the average price for measuring dioxin was about over half a million yen (US$5,000).
Finally, the incinerator manufacturers received a lot of tax money through complicatedly assembled reasons. The system was constructed follows:
1) Dioxin would be passed off as a very strong poison.
2) It would be mainly synthesized in incinerators [actually, the major origin (90% of the total emission) was the by-product of agricultural chemicals ]].
3) Arrive at a consensus where the old-type incinerators are the cause of the generation of dioxin because their performances are insufficient 23).
4) Finally, a manufacturer shows a new type of incinerator and its excellent performance to encourage the replacement of the old equipment.
After this intricate procedure, the purpose was accomplished and many local governments bought the new type of incinerator.

references

1) John Robert McNeill, Paul Kennedy, “An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World”, W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.
2) T. Tsubaki and K. Irukayama: Minamata disease, Methylmercury poisoning in Minamata and Niigata, Japan. Amsterdam, Elsevier, 1977.
3) W. Eugene, Aileen M. Smith, “Minamata”, Center for Creative Photography, 1975.
4) M. Harada, J. Nakanishi et al: The present mercury contents of scalp hair and clinical symptoms inhabitants of the Minamata area. Environ. Res., 77: 160-164, 1998.
5) Alice Hamilton, “Industrial Poisons in the United States”, 1925.
6) Rachel Carson, “Silent Spring”, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.
7) Sawako Ariyoshi, “Complex Pollution”,Shincho-bunko, Japan, 1978.
8) Theo Colborn, “Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival-A Scientific Detective Story”, E P Dutton, 1996.
9) Paul Muller, Nobel Lectures, “Physiology or Medicine 1942-1962”, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1964.
10) Carl Yaws, “Chemical Properties Handbook: Physical, Thermodynamics, Environmental Transport, Safety & Health Related Properties for Organic & Inorganic Chemical”, McGraw-Hill Professional, 1998.
11) From Statistical data provided by Japanese government.
12) Lois Marie Gibbs, “Dying from Dioxin: A Citizen's Guide to Reclaiming Our Health and Rebuilding Democracy”, South End Press, 1995.
13) Ted Schettler, Gina Solomon, Maria Valenti, Annette Huddle, “Generations at Risk: Reproductive Health and the Environment”, The MIT Press, 2000.
14) Duff Wilson, “Fateful Harvest: The True Story of a Small Town, a Global Industry, and a Toxic Secret”, Perennial, 2002.
15) Mats Wahlgren and Peter Perlmann, “Malaria: Molecular and Clinical Aspects”, Harwood Academic Pub., 1999.
16) Unicef, “The State of the World’s Children 1996”, Internet Home Page.
17) Charles M. Poser and G. W. Bruyn, “An Illustrated History of Malaria”, Parthenon Pub Group, 1999.
18) Okayama University Medical School, (//eagle.pharm. okayama-u.ac.jp/ joho/doc /whatready. html)
19) EFRA, “How flame retardants work?”, Internet Home Page.
20) From data provided by the Fire and Disaster Management Agency, Japan, 2002.
21) Kunihiko Takeda, edi., “Non-brominated flame retardants”, NEDO, 2002.
22) Shigeki Masunaga, Yuan Yao, Isamu Ogura, Takeo Sakurai and Junko Nakanishi: Source and behavior analyses of dioxins based on congener-specific information and their application to Tokyo Bay basin, Chemosphere 53[4] 315-324, Oct. 2003.
23) H. Gregor Rigo, A. John Chandler and W. Steven Lanier, Report of The American Society of Mechanical Engineers United Engineering Center, 1998.

Kunihiko TAKEDA - Nagoya University