Fw: [corp-focus] Close the Lid

[Guest guest]

>Close the Lid

>By Mokhiber and Weissman

>

>The Chlorine Chemistry Council (CCC) has reason to be worried about Joe

>Thornton's new book. CCC's members -- Dow Chemical, Occidental Petroleum,

>PPG, Vulcan Chemical, among others -- sell chlorine to a customer base

>that makes everything from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastics to

>pesticides.

>

>Thornton is a research fellow at Columbia University's Center for

>Environmental Research and Conservation. His forthcoming book, Pandora's

>Poison: Chlorine, Health and a New Environmental Strategy (March 2000, MIT

>Press), argues that chlorine and the organochlorine chemicals made from it

>pose a global health and environmental threat.

>

>Thornton says that evidence exists linking low-level organochlorine

>exposure to an increased risk of cancer, infertility, impaired child

>development, and disrupted immune systems. " The case is not proven, but

>there's enough evidence to cause real concern, " he says.

>

>Thornton advocates a broad policy that would require industry to phase-out

>chlorine-based technologies in favor of cleaner alternatives. He says we

>must do away with a regulatory system that looks at one chemical at a

>time, and replace it with a precautionary approach that addresses major

>classes of chemicals and industrial processes.

>

>We spoke with Thornton about his book, and he began the conversation by

>launching into a chemistry lesson.

>

>Chlorine is one of the universe's basic elements. In nature, it exists

>almost solely in the form of salt -- sodium chloride, the extremely stable

>ionic form of chlorine that is abundant in the seas and in everyone's salt

>shaker.

>

>The environmental issue is not with salt but with chlorine gas and the

>chemicals that the chemical industry makes from it.

>

>Chlorine gas is produced at very large chemical facilities that take a

>solution of saltwater and zap it with an incredibly powerful electric

>current, producing an entirely new substance, chlorine gas, a heavy

>poisonous gas that was used as a chemical weapon in World War I.

>

>Chlorine gas combines rapidly with organic matter and produces a new class

>of chemicals called organochlorines.

>

>Organochlorines are generally foreign to nature, but they are produced by

>the chemical industry in huge amounts -- millions of tons per year. They

>tend to be extremely toxic, many of them are very long living in the

>environment, and they tend to be fat soluble, which means they build up in

>the tissues of human beings and other organisms.

>

>The first uses of chlorine gas were to bleach paper and to disinfect

>drinking water. Now the main uses are to produce plastics, other

>industrial chemicals, and pesticides, and also to bleach paper. It is

>still used for disinfection, but in relatively small amounts. About one

>percent goes to disinfect drinking water, and about four percent in the

>United States goes to disinfect sewage. The other 95 percent goes to

>industrial uses.

>

>The biggest one by far is the production of polyvinylchloride (PVC)

>plastic, which most people know as vinyl. Over 40 percent of the chlorine

>in the United States goes to make this plastic, which is one of the most

>environmentally problematic substances in our society because of the huge

>quantities of toxic chemicals produced during its manufacture, use, and

>disposal.

>

>According to Thornton, anywhere you go on the earth right now, you can

>find a stew of hundreds of long-lived organochlorines in the air, in the

>water, in the food chain, in the bodies of people.

>

>Even if you go to the high arctic, thousands of miles from any known

>source of these chemicals, you will find some very high concentrations of

>PCBs, dioxins, DDT, atrazine and other chlorinated pesticides, and a host

>of other organochlorines.

>

> " This has happened because these chemicals don't break down in the

>environment, so over a very long periods of time, they are distributed

>around the globe on currents of wind and water, " Thonrton told us. " They

>also build up through the food chain. The highest levels build up end up

>in species that are high in the food chain -- species like polar bears,

>whales, seals, and human beings. "

>

>Human children receive some of the highest organochlorine doses of all,

>because breast feeding is an efficient way of transferring organochlorines

>that have accumulated in the mother's body into the body of the child.

>These chemicals also cross the placenta. These exposures occur during the

>most sensitive periods of development.

>

>And these are not exposures that people can prevent.

>

> " Because the chemicals are absolutely everywhere, there is no way to get

>away from them, " Thornton said " They are in the food chain, they are in

>the air and the water. It is not a matter of making healthy consumer

>choices. There is no escape from these chemicals -- all we can do is

>prevent further pollution. "

>

>To get these hazardous chemicals off the market, under the current system,

>the regulatory police must prove that the chemicals are harmful. Thornton

>says that since there are 11,000 organochlorines on the market, plus

>thousands more that are formed as accidental byproducts -- many of which

>haven't been identified -- it would be impossible to effectively test them

>all.

>

>Instead, Thornton says, we should scap the current system and replace it

>with a system that requires the corporations to prove that the chemicals

>are safe -- a system that's largely in place to regulate pharmaceuticals,

>for example.

>

> " Chlorine chemistry is a pandora's box, opened less than 100 years ago and

>still spewing its demons into the environment, " Thornton writes. " While

>governments, cheered on by those who benefit from the open box, tried to

>chase down each and every tiny demon that escapes, we miss the simplest

>and most obvious solution -- close the lid. "

>

>

> Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime

>Reporter. Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based

>Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The

>Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common

>Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org)

>

>© Mokhiber and Weissman

>

>

>

>

>_______________________________________________

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