Bag of trouble: Great at repelling grease, PFAS are commonly used in food containers like microwave popcorn bags. But exposure to this class of chemicals poses health risks. (Photo credit: David Jackmanson/Flickr)
A new federal bill would advance public and environmental health by banning toxic chemicals from food packaging.
By Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner, Independent Media Institute
6 min read
While so many Americans have taken all necessary precautions to keep themselves and those around them safe from COVID-19 and prevent severe illness if they do get sick with the virus, there are plenty of other factors in Americans’ daily lives that are beyond their control that may actually worsen the effects of the novel coronavirus and especially result in the vulnerable population being more susceptible to the virus despite their best efforts to get vaccinated and boosted and ensure they are masked up and are socially distanced from others.
Chemicals commonly found in consumer products have been proven to harm human health, yet they still remain legal stateside. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which negatively affect human hormones, can exacerbate COVID-19 in particularly vulnerable individuals, yet these EDCs can be hard to avoid for any American consumer. “Certain underlying chronic conditions associated with exposures to… [endocrine-disrupting] chemicals (EDCs) are exacerbating the effects of COVID-19 in vulnerable populations,” confirmed the Collaborative on Health and the Environment.
PFAS (short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances), which are frequently found in food packaging and mass-manufactured goods, like cosmetics, are an EDC.
According to a June 2020 article in the Intercept, “Studies have shown that in both adults and children higher levels of certain PFAS chemicals were associated with weaker responses to vaccines. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the CDC, recognized this evidence in an announcement it recently posted to its website on the ‘potential intersection between PFAS exposure and COVID-19.’”
“PFAS chemicals are a family of chemicals that are widely used in industrial and consumer product applications, and commonly used to make water-, grease- and stain-repellent coatings,” explains David Andrews, PhD, a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit public health advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. “PFAS chemicals are very stable and impervious to breakdown, giving them what is often considered to be a performance advantage in many products. This apparent advantage of chemical and physical stability is what has led to widespread global contamination [by PFAS] and [has provided them with] their ability to cause human health harm.”
These toxins are pervasive in everyday life, but a PFAS ban for food packaging, proposed in Congress in late 2021, can help limit everyday exposure to the toxins. The Keep Food Containers Safe from PFAS Act is a bipartisan effort, introduced in the Senate by Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and in the House of Representatives by Representative Debbie Dingell (D-MI) and Representative Don Young (R-AK). If the bill passes, it is expected to be enacted by January 1, 2024.
A PFAS ban is “long overdue and [is] hopefully the first of many,” says Calloway Cook, president of Illuminate Labs, a dietary supplements company. “It’s unfortunate that many packaged food products in the U.S. contain compounds that are known to be harmful to human health but remain legal to use,” he adds. “The FDA and Congress should review the medical literature on more compounds like PFAS and err on the side of caution, [and look at] banning all compounds that have proven toxicity in animal studies at doses achievable through regular use… The cost to switch to more sustainable alternatives is not much, even with plastics, but most businesses are not focused on long-term environmental effects. It’s absolutely the role of Congress to better regulate the food industry, and I hope the bill banning PFAS is the first of many similar bills.”
Andrews agrees, saying in an EWG press release, “The Keep Food Containers Safe from PFAS Act would quickly cut off a potential major and completely avoidable source of exposure to these forever chemicals.”
PFAS are widely used because they offer a solution to consumer packaging, but what could be used instead? “With hundreds to thousands of PFAS chemicals, it is likely that there will be a significant, if not similar, number of alternative chemicals or alternatives needed to fully replace PFAS,” explains Dr. Andrews, emphasizing that where safer alternatives exist, they should be used instead of PFAS as soon as possible. In other cases, alternatives may need to be developed, and should potentially be incentivized. For example, medical devices, which are essential to human health and safety, should absolutely not have toxins in them. But that is unfortunately not the case.
Still, replacing PFAS with non-detrimental alternatives isn’t that simple. “Many of the PFAS being used today are replacements for different PFAS chemicals such as PFOA [perfluorooctanoic acid] and PFOS [perfluorooctane sulfonic acid] that were used decades ago,” Andrews explains. “Many of the regulations phasing out the use of PFAS, such as the Washington state ban of PFAS in food packaging, require an alternative assessment to ensure that the replacements [provided] are safer [than the original options].” This certainly explains why it would be difficult to ban PFAS immediately, even after knowing the health risks involved in using them: they help support consumerism.
The Environmental Protection Agency is currently investigating more than 1,000 completely legal PFAS chemicals, which is worrisome for environmental and human health. Introducing regulations for various industries, such as food packaging, cosmetics and textiles, will help curb the use of PFAS and halt further contamination and sickness related to these chemicals. To check if you live in an area contaminated by PFAS and should take precautions, such as filtering your tap water, the EWG offers an online interactive map as well as expert-sourced tips on avoiding PFAS exposure.
And just as it is not always possible to avoid all sources of COVID-19, avoiding all potential sources of PFAS isn’t always as easy as it may sound. Research by Greenpeace in 2016 found PFAS contaminants in jackets made by environmentally focused brands like the North Face, which plans to phase out PFAS by 2025, and Patagonia, which aims to ensure that 85 percent of its garments are “PFAS-free by the end of 2022”; in 2014, Greenpeace found PFAS in more than 80 articles of clothing, including footwear, that were purchased in 2013. Finding a water-repellent, affordable and PFAS-free raincoat may not be easy, but cutting back on greasy food packed in PFAS-treated containers or wrappers (such as for fast food and microwave popcorn) and preparing food in non-PFAS treated nonstick cookware—a currently available alternative you could try is learning to cook with a cast-iron skillet or Dutch oven, for example—may help. Still, with the proliferation of PFAS use in so many aspects of Americans’ daily lives, the responsibility for substantial change lies most heavily with the government, which has the power to make legislative changes to curb companies’ reliance on PFAS. As it stands, Americans live in a nation where it is very difficult to avoid PFAS exposure and its harms.
“It is imperative that regulations move forward to limit future harm from PFAS chemicals based on what we know about the extreme toxicity and potent risk that these chemicals pose for human health,” says Andrews. “Regulations should be enacted quickly to stop any ongoing industrial discharges and [to] eliminate approval of new PFAS that may pose risks to health or the environment.”
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Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner is a writer based in New York. She is a writing fellow at Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. She’s written for the New York Times, Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, Glamour, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue, Architectural Digest, Them and other publications. She holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from Columbia University and is also at work on a novel. Follow her on Twitter: @melissabethk.
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Daily dose: You may be surprised to learn how often you are exposed to toxic PFAS chemicals. (Screenshot: Food Packaging TV via YouTube)
“There is no excuse for the FDA to continue allowing millions of Americans to be exposed to toxic PFAS in food packaging and foodware, especially when safer alternatives are available,” said Sue Chiang, pollution prevention director at the Center for Environmental Health. “The FDA needs to turn off the tap to toxic PFAS. We all deserve access to toxic free food that doesn’t harm people across the product lifecycle from workers, to consumers, to fenceline communities disproportionately impacted by irresponsible disposal practices.”
“While states like Maine, Washington, Vermont, and New York have already taken action to eliminate PFAS from food packaging, the FDA has done little to address the clear hazards PFAS poses,” said Patrick MacRoy, Deputy Director of Defend Our Health. “We hope this petition will provide the impetus for the new administration at FDA to finally provide the Federal leadership desperately called for.”
Urge Congress to enact a total ban on the production and use of PFAS.
Cause for concern…
Thirsty: Drought-stressed corn is one of the many effects of climate change. (Photo credit: CraneStation/Flickr)
“The dangers of climate change are mounting so rapidly that they could soon overwhelm the ability of both nature and humanity to adapt unless greenhouse gas emissions are quickly reduced, according to a major new scientific report released [in February].
“The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, is the most detailed look yet at the threats posed by global warming. It concludes that nations aren’t doing nearly enough to protect cities, farms and coastlines from the hazards that climate change has unleashed so far, such as record droughts and rising seas, let alone from the even greater disasters in store as the planet continues to warm.”
Safer travels: Critically endangered scalloped hammerhead sharks are among several imperiled migratory species that will benefit from a newly created marine corridor. (Photo credit: Clifton Beard/Flickr)
“For the first time, during February 2021, scientists documented the real-time journey of a pregnant scalloped hammerhead shark. The shark, whom scientists named Cassiopeia, traveled from the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador to Coco Island, Costa Rica, a distance of 430 miles, which she covered in just under two weeks. From there, she would travel roughly the same distance again to reach the Gulf of Panama to give birth in the safety of mangrove bays before returning home.
“This migratory route connecting Ecuadorian and Costa Rican waters is crucial to the survival of this critically endangered shark among other imperiled migratory species like green sea turtles, whale sharks, and eagle rays. It’s also the very stretch of ocean that Ecuador aims to protect with its January 2022 designation of a new reserve—a first bold step in ongoing efforts within the region that could ultimately help save one of the most famous marine reserves on Earth.”
Tastes funny: If you regularly drink water from plastic bottles, you’re likely ingesting even more plastic than the average consumer. (Photo credit: Ivan Radic/Flickr)
“We are no better protected from plasticized air outdoors than we are indoors. Minuscule plastic fibers, fragments, foam, and films are shed from plastic stuff and are perpetually floating into and free-falling down on us from the atmosphere. Rain flushes micro- and nanoplastics out of the sky back to Earth. Plastic-filled snow is accumulating in urban areas like Bremen, Germany, and remote regions like the Arctic and Swiss Alps.
“Wind and storms carry particles shed from plastic items and debris through the air for dozens, even hundreds, of miles before depositing them back on Earth. Dongguan, China; Paris, France; London, England; and other metropolises teeming with people are enveloped in air perpetually permeated by tiny plastic particles small enough to lodge themselves in human lungs.”
Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.
Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.
Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.
While the Ukraine crisis may put some strain on the Chinese-Russian relationship, it has also spurred deeper collaboration between them. Based on a shared desire to undermine the United States’ global order, their constructive partnership will not only endure the blowback from the Ukrainian invasion but is likely to expand.
By John P. Ruehl
With the world’s attention focused on Ukraine in the weeks since Russia began its invasion of the country on February 24, there has been fervent debate among foreign policy experts on how Russia’s relations with the West will be affected. Officials in Moscow and Western capitals have traded barbs at each other in the media, while sanctions and counter-sanctions have already begun to bite.
But the effects of Russia’s invasion on Chinese-Russian relations have been far less discussed. In recent years, both Russia and China have publicly promoted their increasingly strong partnership. Chinese President Xi Jinping has called Russian President Vladimir Putin his “best friend,” while both Xi and Putin have described the current state of Chinese-Russian relations as “the best they’ve been in history.”
This has been reflected in collaborative military drills, increasing weapons and energy deals between China and Russia, and public support for one another across their state-run media outlets and their dealings within international organizations like the UN. Since the previous Ukraine crisis in 2014, Moscow has been particularly eager to promote these developments in its relationship with Beijing to limit the effects of diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions imposed by the West.
The current crisis in Ukraine is prompting further efforts by China and Russia to confront the U.S. While Russia’s core interest in doing so is in preventing Ukraine from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), China is keen to exploit any opportunity that arises during the conflict between Russia and Ukraine that challenges American influence.
The additional sanctions placed on Russia by the West in recent weeks to “cripple Russia’s financial system and hurt its wealthiest citizens” are likely to spur greater investment by China and Russia in developing their own alternatives to U.S.-dominated financial institutions, like the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) payment verification system. Russia and China both began to invest in their own international payments systems after several Russian banks were blacklisted from SWIFT in 2014.
These new international payments systems include Russia’s System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS) and the National Payment Card System (now known as Mir), as well as China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) and UnionPay. Russian and Chinese banks are active across these platforms, and the number of banks utilizing these alternative systems in Russia and China will only increase as the two countries seek to maintain and “deepen” their business ties and bypass the sanctions by the West.
Encouraging the development of separate financial systems outside Western control will also result in increased participation by so-called “rogue states” in global finance, which are often accustomed to conducting business on the black market.
In early February, just weeks before Russia’s Ukrainian invasion, China and Russia also agreed to a 30-year natural gas deal through a new pipeline. Transactions will be conducted in euros for this deal, which is part of wider efforts by both Russia and China to lower their vulnerability to the U.S. dollar and the threat of sanctions.
After hundreds of Western companies declared their intention to “pull out” from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow stated it is looking at nationalizing the infrastructure of these foreign companies and will strip them of patent protections. Western assets and intellectual property rights may be of use to China, which is similarly wary of Western firms operating domestically, and the Chinese also seem intent on challenging these firms globally.
The current escalation in Ukraine has also reinforced diplomatic support between Beijing and Moscow, including a Chinese abstention from the UN General Assembly vote on March 2 to condemn Russia for its Ukrainian invasion. China’s state-run media outlets have also promoted Russia’s views on the war on Facebook and Instagram after Russia’s media outlets were banned by several Western countries, and it has also supported Russia’s claims of the U.S. “financing biological weapons labs in Ukraine.”
While still short of an official alliance, the announcement by Moscow and Beijing of a “no limit[s]” partnership made on the opening day of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing in February has shown that Russian and Chinese interests have increasingly converged. China also “endorsed a Russian security proposal” to exclude Ukraine from joining NATO through a statement made by Xi with Putin on February 4, according to the New York Times, and there is no doubt that China received a warning from Moscow that it was planning an invasion of Ukraine within the coming weeks after this statement was made.
However, the current flareup in Ukraine has exacerbated larger global economic instability, and several immediate and longer-term consequences stemming from the Russian invasion may cause some strain to the China-Russia partnership.
For example, Ukraine is a major corn exporter to China. With food prices rising globally, even before the Russian invasion, the Russian offensive has already had negative effects on China’s food security. While Russia is also a major food exporter to China, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed an order on March 14 that banned grain exports to Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) members, indicative of the difficulty Russia is facing in meeting foreign food export demands even to close Russian allies.
China is also highly dependent on energy imports from other countries. In comparison to Russia or the U.S., it is far less able to influence the price of resources and far more vulnerable to energy disruptions. While Russia may be able to help meet the Chinese energy demand, the current spike in prices will likely accelerate China’s push for energy self-sufficiency, removing a vital pillar of the Chinese-Russian relationship.
And in a rare public display of frustration toward China, a Russian official admitted that China refused to supply Russia with aircraft parts after Russia repossessed roughly $10 billion in Boeing and Airbus planes. China’s dismissal showed a clear hesitation to risk a wider confrontation with the West despite Russia’s increasing brinkmanship.
China is also wary of being perceived as enabling Putin, and Russia’s heavy-handed approach in Ukraine has attracted more attention to Taiwan’s security. Since the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1995, Beijing has been avoidant of confronting the U.S. militarily. Aside from limited skirmishes in its border regions with India, China has preferred using its economic power rather than its military to pressure other countries into submission in recent decades.
But China’s assistance to Russia will raise fears among China’s neighbors with their own disputes with Beijing. This support being provided to Russia by China could be enough to galvanize coordinated regional antagonism toward Beijing, supported by a heightened U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific region.
Despite these real and potential consequences, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has already instigated greater cooperation between China and Russia—a trend that will only continue. Russia’s need to shore up its situation may have expanded China’s leverage over it, but both Beijing and Moscow are well aware of the need to work together to undermine the U.S. dominance in world affairs—and they see the wider global instability resulting from the conflict in Ukraine as an effective way to do so.
John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. He is currently finishing a book on Russia to be published in 2022.
The kids are alright: Fundred founding artist Mel Chin and participating children cut the blue ribbon to officially open the 2017 Fundred Reserve at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Chin’s work is the subject of a new article by Rachel Raphaela Gugelberger, a new editorial fellow at the Independent Media Institute and the founding editor of &Art, a project of Earth | Food | Life. (Photo credit: Sarah Buckner, courtesy Fundred Project)
Dear Earth | Food | Life reader,
It is a distinct pleasure to introduce Rachel Raphaela Gugelberger, a newly minted fellow here at the Independent Media Institute (IMI), and the founding editor of &Art, a new project at Earth | Food | Life (EFL).
Over the last two decades, Rachel and I have discussed the many possibilities of art to engage with environmental issues, including climate change, food and agriculture, and animal rights. As a contemporary art curator and advocate of justice not just for humans but for all species, Rachel is uniquely qualified to create a dynamic and critical space for cross-disciplinary dialogues that extend IMI’s focus on producing media that has the power to shift attitudes and sensibilities.
Rachel has more than 20 years of experience in the arts, spanning nonprofit, education, and commercial sectors. Many of the exhibitions she has organized underscore how art can welcome local communities in conversations about art and culture—for example, through thoughtful, site-specific, and unusual uses of spaces like empty storefronts. Recent projects of the New York City-based &Art founder include “Storying” at the Andrew Freedman Home in the Bronx; “Bound up Together: On the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment” at Smack Mellon in Brooklyn; “(after)care” at Kings County Hospital Center in East Flatbush, Brooklyn; “Jameco Exchange” in Jamaica, Queens; and “Hold These Truths” and “Bring in the Reality” at the Nathan Cummings Foundation in Manhattan.
Rachel has designed &Art with a specific remit: Investigate the work of activist artists, cultural workers, and arts and social justice organizations who fight for the environment, food justice, and intersectional animal rights. One of EFL’s primary contentions about our world is that everything is connected—including systems of oppression that impact not only BIPOC communities, fenceline communities, and food system workers, but also wildlife and nonhuman animals trapped in our food system. &Art will navigate these complex issues by examining not only how contemporary artists address them, but also how art can advance practical approaches toward manifesting meaningful, positive change.
It is an honor to launch &Art with Rachel’s take on the work of conceptual artist and social activist Mel Chin, a recent recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship (aka the “Genius Grant”). Chin’s work is complex, critical, eclectic, and challenging. But his work also has a social impact that is absent in much of conceptual art. It is in this way that Chin’s creative practice exemplifies a central ambition of &Art: to uncover the capacity of art to transcend an aesthetic experience and to inspire the kinds of personal and social transformations that can ultimately shape civic and political discourse.
Reynard Loki is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute, where he serves as the editor and chief correspondent for Earth | Food | Life. He previously served as the environment, food and animal rights editor at AlterNet and as a reporter for Justmeans/3BL Media covering sustainability and corporate social responsibility. His work has been published by Yes! Magazine, Salon, Truthout, Asia Times, BillMoyers.com, Counterpunch, EcoWatch and Truthdig, among others, and in Spanish, Italian and German translation by Pressenza.He was named one of FilterBuy’s Top 50 Health & Environmental Journalists to Follow in 2016.
Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.
Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.
Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.
Making change: Artist Mel Chin takes House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to see the 2017 Fundred Reserve at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, part of Chin’s Fundred Project (2008-2019). (Photo credit: Yassine El Mansouri)
For MacArthur fellow Mel Chin, art is a powerful tool for addressing complex environmental issues.
By Rachel Gugelberger, Independent Media Institute
17 min read
I began to grasp the breadth of Mel Chin’s work in 2015 when I included his video document “S.O.S. (Straight off the Street) Reloaded” in the first exhibition that I curated for the art organization No Longer Empty (NLE). Chin’s 2012 video document portrays Bronx residents with their messages to then-President Barack Obama scrolling across the screen to the sound of their respective heartbeats. A copy of this was sent to Obama.
In 2018, NLE partnered with the Queens Museum and produced a citywide exhibition of Chin’s work, which helped me understand his activist streak, especially relating to the environment. Spanning four decades of his career, the sprawling exhibition was a testament to the sheer magnitude of Chin’s curiosity. As an artist, he is tough to pin down. Hence, the 2018 exhibition title “Mel Chin: All Over the Place,” which tapped into the artist’s myriad interests, with newly commissioned projects that explored water rights, New York’s maritime history, and sea-level rise. And while he may have a “malleable and wide-ranging approach to [his] artistic practice,” being anchored to a particular “place” is something that informs much of his work; he responds to unique histories and characteristics.
In the work “Flint Fit,” for example, Chin worked with residents of Flint, Michigan, and Detroit/New York City-based fashion designer Tracy Reese to pilot an innovative economic system that simultaneously addressed the city’s water crisis, plastic pollution, recycling, and labor problems. This “prototype for action” transformed empty water bottles into a woven fabric that was sewn into clothing, ultimately providing new jobs for members of St. Luke NEW Life Center, a Flint-based organization that provides life skills, education, and workplace training. The first “Flint Fit” collection was unveiled at a fashion event at the Queens Museum.
Mel Chin, Rendering of “Flint Fit,” 2018. Courtesy Mel Chin.
During a recent phone conversation, we touched on Chin’s “origin stories” and his collaborative, interdisciplinary art approach, how he consistently brings diverse groups of people together to transform ideas into action, and the power of art as a medium to achieve societal change: an effect of his work he is hesitant to claim. “Even the word ‘change’… that may be putting too much of a premium on this idea of art,” he tells me.
One thing is certain: Chin is interested in the process and the possibilities that may emerge from art. Like many of his works, “Flint Fit” is a concept, a prototype, a system. Its fundamental idea could be applied elsewhere, and perhaps be scaled to work on a regional, state, or federal level. A 2019 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship (aka “genius grant”), Chin refers to his work as activism. But don’t call him an “activist artist,” a term he flatly rejects. He prefers “recovering conceptualist.”
Art, Activism, and Ideas
While the term “artivism”—a portmanteau of art and activism—is relatively new, the kinship between art and social responsibility or activism through art is not. In 2021, Social Movement Studies, a peer-reviewed academic journal, published an article by Stephen Duncombe and Silas Harrebye comparing “creative activism” to more conventional forms of activism. The authors of this research found that when it comes to raising awareness and inspiring engagement, a creative approach is much more effective than traditional advocacy methods. One of the partnering organizations for this research, the Center for Artistic Activism, meanwhile, points out that creativity alone isn’t enough to carry an activist message all the way through. “Training and organization… [are] key,” the organization states on its website. Chin emphasizes the role of empathy in promoting change: “Empathy must be used to increase the criticality necessary to launch into all the variables that are required.”
Chin does intensive research, talks to people in the communities where he produces work, and has a knack for deep listening. He collaborates and organizes. His cross-disciplinary practice often invites collective storytelling. “You listen to people,” he tells me, as he describes his collaborative process, which involves trial and error. “And then you apply your creative impulse and say, ‘Well, let’s try this.’”
Chin eschews the romanticized notion of the artist as an individual and as a sole creator of work; he is fueled by the energy and knowledge of others. Quick to downplay his own centrality, he prefers to call his work a “public practice” in which he acts as an artistic facilitator seeking co-creation with others. “The notion of the artist as the inventor or the creator in the public practice—that’s an impossible situation since it involves a connection with others,” he says. “The ego-driven [impulse] must be set aside if you want to have a collaboration… to be open to the creative impulses [that can be] regenerated in a more collective fashion.”
And while Chin is rooted in ideas—his far-ranging work has investigated philosophy, histories of landscape painting, multiculturalism, identity politics, global imperialism, inequality, and ecological issues—he’s all about the “thingliness” of things and choosing certain materials not only for their physical and formal characteristics but also for their symbolism and histories. “Vertical Palette” (1976-1985), for example, is a sculpture of five glass storage bottles containing materials that represent the Chinese Five Element Theory: water, wood, fire (smoke), earth (clay), and metal (lead). This work is a semantic nod to traditional Chinese painting and the painter’s tools that links the Chinese philosophy of life to the creative process.
Mel Chin, “Vertical Palette,” 1976-85. Lead, wood, water, smoke, clay, in scientific glass storage bottles with Bakelite® caps in artist-designed rack of oak and steel. Courtesy Mel Chin.
In the 1991 installation “Landscape,” Chin created mediated paintings of historical landscape traditions: a 13th-century scroll from China’s Yuan Dynasty, a 14th-century Persian miniature from Iran, and a 19th-century romantic American landscape. These paintings were installed one to a wall, with each wall constructed according to the topography of the 30th parallel along which China, Iran, and the United States all sit. And the three distinct landscape traditions were linked by locally sourced landfill soil (sanitized for museum requirements) seeping from the base of the walls. Uniting past philosophies of idealized nature with evidence of our waste and pollution, Chin showcased how distanced we are from our environmental impact. This approach to the physical elements and symbiotic cycles of destruction and renewal resurfaces in much of his work.
Mel Chin, “Landscape,” 1991 (detail). Sheetrock cut to topography of 30th parallel, dirt from local landfill, plywood. American landscape painting: oil on linen, wood, plaster, gold and metal leaf; Chinese scroll: ink, pigments, ground malachite and azurite on silk; Persian miniature: paper mounted on wood, watercolor, oxidized silver leaf. Courtesy Mel Chin.
Tackling Childhood Lead Poisoning
Chin’s ongoing Fundred Dollar Bill Project highlights not only the power of tangibility of lived experiences and notions of value but also the fungibility of money. Launched in New Orleans in 2008, the project highlights a persistent yet often ignored environmental health problem, lead pollution. The project began in 2005; shortly after Hurricane Katrina caused widespread destruction, Chin went to New Orleans, joining other artists and cultural producers to imagine ways to respond to the devastation through artistic means. Feeling helpless in the face of the magnitude before him, he “was compelled to respond, and the only way to do so was to keep returning to [New Orleans to] learn [about] what needed to be made.” His research brought to the fore that long before the hurricane, “30 to 50 percent of the inner-city childhood population [had been] poisoned with lead.” A home that had been devastated by the floods caused by Hurricane Katrina was transformed into “Safehouse Temple Door,” which is a social sculpture that served as the project’s headquarters; a gathering place, workspace, and operable safe house, inviting “children, families and communities to imagine, express and actualize a future free of childhood lead poisoning,” states Mel Chin’s website. A steel and wooden bank vault was customized to replace the front door, making the safe house resemble a literal safe where valuables are stored.
Fundred Project early diagram, courtesy Mel Chin and Fundred Project.
“Safehouse” in New Orleans, where the Fundred Project was launched in 2008. [Fundred Project, 2008-2019.] Photo: Mel Chin, courtesy Fundred Project.
Lead enters the environment from paint, gasoline, and water pipes, affecting an estimated 37 million U.S. homes. While lead poisoning is difficult to detect, the symptoms for lead poisoning range from lethargy and reduced attention span to violent behavior and swelling of the brain; long-term effects may include brain and nervous system damage, convulsions, and death, according to the Fundred Project website. Populations most at risk from chronic lead poisoning in the U.S. include children between the ages of 1 and 3, people living in large metropolitan areas and in homes built before 1978, and children in low-income families and communities of color, underscoring pervasive issues of race and environmental justice.
On Chin’s website, “Fundred” is presented less as art and more as “a creative campaign advancing public education and community engagement”; community members, including children, are invited to create original, hand-drawn interpretations of $100 bills, or “Fundreds,” which represent the voices of people calling on those in power to address lead poisoning. “The goal,” Chin’s website says, “is to exchange the value of informed public voice into real resources to leverage 100 percent [lead] prevention.”
Students draw Fundreds on the handcrafted cherry tables in the Charlotte branch of the Fundred Reserve Even Exchange Bank, 2013. [Fundred Project, 2008-2019.] Photo: Ben Premeaux, courtesy Fundred Project.
Fundred founding artist Mel Chin and participating children cut the blue ribbon to officially open the 2017 Fundred Reserve at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University, Washington, D.C. [Fundred Project, 2008-2019.] Photo: Sarah Buckner, courtesy Fundred Project.
The scope of this creative, symbolic currency initiative has transformed the response to the ongoing lead crisis—and has even led to changing lead policies. In 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s funding for the Healthy Homes and Lead Poisoning Prevention Program was cut from $29 million to $2 million, and in 2015, the Flint water crisis shifted the way that “Fundred” operated: Roles changed and the Fundred Project’s network of participants, collaborators, and educators expanded to show that lead contamination isn’t just a problem for New Orleans but also an issue impacting communities across the nation. Students at schools across the U.S. have created thousands of “Fundreds” that were picked up in a specially designed armored truck and delivered in 2017 to the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington, D.C., to be exhibited, but more importantly, to amplify the voices of those affected by lead poisoning with policymakers and regulators. Efforts to place Fundred artists and their work before their congressional representatives and to advocate for more funding and lead-safe policies are ongoing.
The Fundred Pallet, with more than 450,000 Fundreds on view in the rotunda of the Fundred Reserve at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design. [Fundred Project, 2008-2019.] Photo: Ben Tankersley, courtesy Fundred Project.
Climate Change: A Multifaceted Investigation
In 2018 as part of “All Over the Place,” Chin unveiled a different kind of creative campaign to highlight climate change with a two-part public “mixed reality experience” in New York City’s Times Square. One part, commissioned by the Times Square Arts, was the 60-foot-long installation “Wake.” A haunting, hulking, skeletal sculpture that evoked images of the hull of a sailing vessel and the skeleton of a whale, the installation was modeled after the USS Nightingale—whose own layered history spoke of conflict and change—and served as a fitting scaffold for Chin’s multifaceted investigation. The vessel upon which Chin’s “Wake” is based was launched as a “slave ship” in 1851. It was later captured by the U.S. Navy, serving as a Union supply ship during the American Civil War, and finally serving out its years as an Arctic research vessel. The title, “Wake,” suggests both what a ship, or indeed, humanity, might leave behind as it surges ever-forward, as well as represents the wake-up call that is required in order to prevent the worst consequences of man-made environmental damage and human rights violations.
Mel Chin, “Wake,” 2018. Wood, steel, fiberglass, electronic and mechanical components, paint. 24’H x 34’W x 60’L. Exhibited at Times Square from July 11 to September 5, 2018. Co-presented by Times Square Arts, No Longer Empty, Queens Museum. Fabricated in partnership with University of North Carolina Asheville (UNCA). Image courtesy Ian Douglas for Times Square Arts.
The other part of the installation, “Unmoored,” invited visitors to wear 3D goggles (or launch an augmented reality app on their mobile devices) to experience a vision of Times Square, submerged by the rising sea levels. An impressive technical feat, it also packed a wow factor by putting the possible underwater scenario of cities around the world like New York into clear, almost frightening, focus. New York is one of the nation’s most vulnerable cities to rising sea levels.
Like many of Chin’s works, the Times Square project conferred an urgency of action, almost demanding viewers—nearly 360,000 pedestrians who enter the heart of Times Square each day, pre-COVID—to stop, think, and listen to Mother Nature, amid the extreme capitalism on display. “I think the most important motivation as an artist is to use what James Baldwin has described as extracting the question that is buried within the answer,” said Chin, about “Wake.” “If the answer is, ‘The world will be inundated and destroyed by our own doings,’ then what is the question that we have to ask now?”
Origin Stories
Chin was born in 1951 in Houston to Chinese parents and was raised in a predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood. He experienced extreme mental stress around the age of 13 or 14 that left him catatonic and hospitalized for months, during which time he underwent shock therapy. Chin describes his mother’s will, unbridled care, and refusal to institutionalize him, combined with his father’s philosophical disciplines, as the remedy that gave him “the time to heal.” As he began to emerge from the fog of medications and regain ambulatory ability, he found that he had lost the capacity to draw; however, other sensitivities emerged that he says, “can drive the investigations of a lifetime.”
“I had the delusion that one day, I could be a fine artist,” says Chin, “a painter, sculptor, and all these things, all the trimmings of fine art.” Eventually, his interests became less about working with a particular medium and more about art’s “liberating aspect.” Perhaps that liberating aspect is generational. “My generation really did believe in transformative possibilities,” he tells me. But he also acknowledges that his generation was ultimately “unsuccessful based on the ecological, environmental, and societal record.”
When it comes to uncovering transformative moments to solve environmental problems, Chin has been trying to turn things around. In the early 1990s, he went to a Superfund site in St. Paul, Minnesota, called Pig’s Eye Landfill. There, he worked with Dr. Rufus Chaney, a senior research agronomist in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to see if they could clean up soil that was contaminated by heavy metals left behind by industrial processes using “special hyperaccumulator plants.” It worked. One species of plant, in particular, Thlaspi (an edible herb also known as pennycress), demonstrated a knack for sucking cadmium out of the soil, drawing the chemical into its leaves and stems. A nasty byproduct of burning fossil fuels, cadmium is a major environmental contaminant and a Group 1 human carcinogen that, even with very little exposure, can potentially cause harm to virtually all of the body’s systems.
“Revival Field” at Pig’s Eye Landfill in St. Paul, Minnesota, 1990, in collaboration with Dr. Rufus Chaney, then senior research agronomist, USDA. Plants, industrial fencing on a hazardous waste landfill. Courtesy Mel Chin.
The ongoing project “Revival Field” is a stark reminder that creative and natural solutions to persistent problems exist and can be replicated anywhere. Iterations have been developed in Palmerton, Pennsylvania (1993-1997), as well as in the Netherlands (1992) and Germany (2000-2001). And the project was ahead of its time; in 1998, several years after “Revival Field” was launched, the world’s greatest soil minds, gathered at the 16th World Congress of Soil Science, proposed that “phytoremediation using Thlaspi caerulescens would be entirely feasible for low levels of cadmium”—something that Chin and Chaney proved at Pig’s Eye Landfill seven years earlier.
While soil researchers and environmental advocates might look at “Revival Field” through the lens of science, Chin also sees the artistry behind both the process and the final piece. “We live in a world of pollution with heavy metals saturating the soil… If that [pollution] could be carved away, and life could return to that soil and then a diverse and ecologically balanced life, then that is a wonderful sculpture,” Chin said during an interview with Art21 about “Revival Field.”
Mel Chin, original study for “Revival Field,” 1990. Courtesy Mel Chin.
Documentation of Mel Chin’s “Revival Field,” 1991-ongoing. Plants, industrial fencing on a hazardous waste landfill. Courtesy Mel Chin.
Profound, simple, and utterly natural, “Revival Field” stands in stark, yet graceful, contrast to more aggressive options of remediation, like using diggers and other heavy construction equipment to physically excavate the soil. Chin offers his solution both “as a conceptual artwork with the intent to sculpt a site’s ecology” and a “low-tech alternative to current costly and unsatisfactory remediation methods.”
A preeminent example of “eco-art,” “Revival Field” is acknowledged in USDA commentary as the scientific concept of “green remediation”—what the Environmental Protection Agency calls cleanup actions that “maximize net environmental benefit”—confirmed by an art project. “There haven’t been that many projects big enough or groundbreaking enough like ‘Revival Field’ and its peculiar nature, which were not object-based,” Chin says. And while Chin’s work is rooted in Conceptual Art and Earth Art movements, he moves beyond visual expressions to include the action of reversing environmental damage into the aesthetic.
Certainly, “Revival Field” isn’t an object. It’s a section of land despoiled by human industry that Chin has reclaimed. Chin’s work was produced at an auspicious time in the history of environmentalism. In 1989, a Gallup poll found that more than two-thirds of Americans called themselves environmentalists, a remarkable change from just two decades prior, before the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act were even born. In 1990, a year after Chin began the earthwork “Revival Field,” author, feminist, and social activist bell hooks wrote: “We must all decolonize our minds in Western culture to be able to think differently about nature, about the destruction humans cause” in Belonging: A Culture of Place.
“Chin says he has ‘always been messing with dirt,’” art critic Lucy Lippard observed in her exhibition catalogue essay for “Rematch.” Chin tells me that this association with dirt is actually rooted in clay, a fascination that began as an art student in a required class taught by his instructor Robert Freagon that he originally thought was “crass” but ended up being fertile soil for Chin’s imagination. He was soon knee-deep in everything relating to clay, from “erotic pottery from Peru to Yuan pottery in Japan… through clay, I learned about Zen,” Chin says.
In reclaiming a piece of land, quite literally, from the abuses of corporate greed (as in the case of “Revival Field”), there is a sense of “decolonizing” a place, of bringing it back to its former, unspoiled state. There’s a thematic, even lyrical, resonance between the semantics of decolonization and much of Chin’s creative approach; both are utopian and processual in nature. Where the decolonization process includes notions of “recovery,” Chin’s process includes “reclamation” and “revival.” Instead of “mourning,” Chin’s work “laments.” In place of “dreaming,” Chin “imagines.” And the daily “commitment” required of decolonization to change power dynamics is in Chin’s practice foiled in “ongoing community initiatives” and “action” that he manifests in modalities of “creative engagement toward policy change.”
Chin’s Constant Revolution
On the potential of art to enact social change, Chin says he is wary of “putting too much of a premium on this idea of art.” For Chin, it’s about the process, and, like so many of his works, it’s an ongoing affair, “a process of knowing.” Could this process of knowing help advance a transformational shift on a personal or even societal level? “We do have the capacity conceptually to provoke rapid evolution and mutation,” Chin says. “There’s a constant revolution.”
“Safehouse Temple Door” at Sweet Water Foundation (SWF) with members of UNC Asheville STEAM Studio. Photo: Ben Premeaux, courtesy S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio.
In 2021, the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago presented the exhibition “Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40.” Organized in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the MacArthur Fellows Program, the citywide exhibition was based on the “idea of ‘the commons’” and sought “to explore the current socio-political moment.” For Chin, it presented a perfect opportunity not only to continue the collaborative work of “Fundred” but also to expand the discussion of lead contamination to a wider national level. Underscoring his idea of a “constant revolution,” Chin engineered another iteration of the project, launching—in partnership with S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio, the Hyde Park Art Center, and Sweet Water Foundation—“Fundred Project Initiative: A Bill for IL.” Anyone who wanted to participate created Fundreds, which were collected for the Fundred Reserve, recently acquired by the Brooklyn Museum (where all Fundreds created through spring 2022 will be added). For Chin, it is yet another salvo of public voices calling for change. “This is one more step that we need to make,” Chin said. “It’s not done, is how I feel. It’s not done till the blood is clean of children being born in these places. That’s when it’s done.”
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Author’s note: The work of Mel Chin and the Fundred Project can be seen across the United States. The Fundred Author’s note: The work of Mel Chin and the Fundred Project can be seen across the United States. The Fundred Reserve is on view in the Contemporary Art Collection at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, and “Safehouse Temple Door” is permanently installed at the Sweet Water Foundation in Chicago, Illinois. Fundred Lab is currently active at the Corvus Gallery at the University of Chicago, and the Fundred Project is on view at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin through March 20. The exhibition “Mel Chin: Points of View” is on view at the Five Points Museum of Contemporary Art in Texas, also through March 20, and “Inescapable Histories” is on view at the Gallery at the University of Texas at Arlington through March 30. Chin’s latest exhibition There’s Something Happening Here opens at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin on March 12. To learn more, visit S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio (Sustained Operations Utilizing Resources for Culture, Communities, and the Environment), an action-oriented arts and justice organization founded by Chin in 2017.The work of Mel Chin and the Fundred Project can be seen across the United States. The Fundred Reserve is on view in the Contemporary Art Collection at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, and “Safehouse Temple Door” is permanently installed at the Sweet Water Foundation in Chicago, Illinois. Fundred Lab is currently active at the Corvus Gallery at the University of Chicago, and the Fundred Project is on view at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin through March 20. The exhibition “Mel Chin: Points of View” is on view at the Five Points Museum of Contemporary Art in Texas, also through March 20, and “Inescapable Histories” is on view at the Gallery at the University of Texas at Arlington through March 30. Chin’s latest exhibition There’s Something Happening Here opens at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin on March 12. To learn more, visit S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio (Sustained Operations Utilizing Resources for Culture, Communities, and the Environment), an action-oriented arts and justice organization founded by Chin in 2017.
A project of Earth | Food | Life, &Art highlights the work of creative problem solvers—artists, activist artists, cultural producers, and arts organizations—with a focus on the environment, agriculture, and nonhuman animal rights. Moving beyond representation and visual expression, &Art integrates art, environmentalism, food justice, and intersectional animal rights with examples of pragmatic approaches toward manifesting a more sustainable and just coexistence.
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Our addiction to plastic is having negative effects all along the food chain.
By Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff
This excerpt is from Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2022, edited by Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff (Seven Stories Press, 2022). This web adaptation was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Editor’s note: Every year Project Censored publishes the “State of the Free Press,” which highlights important news stories that the corporate media insufficiently covered and takes the temperature of press freedom and integrity. The project’s student researchers work with faculty advisers at college campuses across the U.S. and Project Censored’s international panel of expert judges to identify the stories that are featured in each year’s publication. State of the Free Press 2022 cites the alarming rise of polyfluoroalkyl substances (or PFAS) in the oceans as one of the most significant but underreported environmental stories of 2020-2021. Although independent media outlets covered this critical piece of news, the corporate press was largely silent about it. The student researchers for this piece are Eduardo Amador, Kolby Cordova, and Natalia Fuentes from Sonoma State University. The faculty evaluator is Peter Phillips from Sonoma State University, and the community evaluator is Polette Gonzalez.
According to a pair of recent scientific studies, microplastics and a class of toxic chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (or PFAS) are becoming increasingly prevalent in the world’s oceans and have begun to contaminate the global seafood supply.
According to a July 2020 study published in the scholarly journal Environmental Science and Technology, PFAS—a family of potentially harmful chemicals used in a range of products, including carpets, furniture, clothing, food packaging, and nonstick coatings—have now been found in the Arctic Ocean.This discovery worries scientists because it means that PFAS can reach any body of water in the world and that such chemicals are likely present in water supplies across the globe.
Meanwhile, researchers at the QUEX Institute, a partnership between the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom and the University of Queensland in Australia, have found microplastics in crabs, oysters, prawns, squid, and sardines sold as seafood in Australian markets, findings that were also first published in Environmental Science and Technology. As Robby Berman reported for Medical News Today in August 2020, the second study’s findings suggest that microplastics—small pieces of plastic “less than 5 millimeters in length, which is about the size of a sesame seed”—that are a consequence of plastic pollution have “invaded the food chain to a greater extent than previously documented.”
The presence of PFAS in the Arctic Ocean is concerning for many reasons. As Daniel Ross reported in an October 2020 article for Truthout, PFAS chemical exposure is known to have serious impacts on human health and is known to cause “certain cancers, liver damage, thyroid problems, and increased risk of asthma.” People with elevated levels of a certain kind of PFAS chemical are “twice as likely to have a severe form of COVID-19,” since these chemicals are endocrine disruptors.
Because the Arctic Ocean is so remote from human population centers, exactly how these chemicals may have reached these waters is also a deeply concerning question. As Ross pointed out in the Truthout article, “Emerging research suggests that one important pathway is through the air and in rainwater,” rather than through ocean circulation. Discovering the pathways through which these “forever chemicals” are contaminating isolated areas is important for regulators as they attempt to remove these chemicals from the environment. Atmospheric spread may make the removal of these chemicals considerably more difficult.
Like PFAS compounds being found in Arctic waters, the discovery of microplastics in popular forms of seafood is truly alarming.
Microplastics are less than 5 millimeters long, and nanoplastics are less than 100 nanometers long. According to the QUEX study, the small size of microplastics and nanoplastics allows them to spread through “airborne particles, machinery, equipment, and textiles, handling, and… from fish transport.” The research team at Exeter and Queensland found microplastics present in all of the seafood samples they studied, with polyvinyl chloride being found in every case. The study’s lead author, Francisca Ribeiro, told Medical News Today that “a seafood eater could be exposed to approximately 0.7 milligrams (mg) of plastic when ingesting an average serving of oysters or squid, and up to 30 mg of plastic when eating sardines.” For comparison, Medical News Today also pointed out that a grain of rice weighs approximately 30 mg.
As Medical News Today further reported in its coverage of the QUEX Institute study, “Roughly 17 percent of the protein humans consume worldwide is seafood. The findings, therefore, suggest people who regularly eat seafood are also regularly eating plastic.” According to Tamara Galloway, a researcher from Exeter University who is one of the study’s coauthors who was quoted in the article, “We do not fully understand the risks to human health of ingesting plastic, but this new method [used in the study for detecting selected plastics] will make it easier for us to find out.”
In October 2020 the Guardian reported that at least 14 million metric tons of microplastics are likely sitting on the ocean floor. The report by Graham Readfearn, based on a study that was published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, also said that there “could be more than 30 times as much plastic at the bottom of the world’s ocean[s] than there is floating at the surface.”
As the Guardian report noted, “Stemming the tide of plastic entering the world’s waterways and ocean[s] has emerged as a major international challenge.” In September 2020, “[l]eaders from more than 70 countries signed a voluntary pledge… to reverse biodiversity loss which included a goal to stop plastic entering the ocean by 2050,” according to the Guardian. The United States, Brazil, China, Russia, India, and Australia, however, did not sign that pledge.
Media coverage of both the study on microplastics in seafood and the research on PFAS in the Arctic Ocean has predominantly come from independent news sources as well as journals and websites aimed at members of the scientific community. Of the articles covering the presence of PFAS in Arctic waters, many simply summarize the findings of the research. However, Truthout and Chemical and Engineering News each took their coverage on the presence of PFAS in Arctic waters further by including professional opinions on the significance of the study by the researchers from Exeter and Queensland and tried addressing remedies to the problem.
Lack of corporate news attention to this issue could stem from the idea that the research findings are nothing new or simply confirm what many have previously assumed: that PFAS are ubiquitous and unavoidable, however harmful they may be to human health. However, the significance of these PFAS pollutants potentially being airborne deserves greater recognition because this poses greater challenges for abatement efforts. The Exeter and Queensland researchers’ findings about the presence of microplastics and nanoplastics in seafood likewise require publicizing despite the findings confirming certain earlier assumptions because the evidence they present could prove crucial in mobilizing political will to address an issue that is barely visible in the international media and that few people recognize as a serious problem. Outside of coverage by the Guardian, no major news outlet has paid attention to the topic of microplastics in seafood.
Andy Lee Roth is the associate director of Project Censored. His articles have appeared in YES! Magazine, Index on Censorship, Truthout, and In These Times. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles and a BA in sociology and anthropology from Haverford College.
Mickey Huff is director of Project Censored and president of the Media Freedom Foundation. He is coauthor with Nolan Higdon of United States of Distraction: Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (City Lights Books, 2019) and Let’s Agree to Disagree: A Critical Thinking Guide to Communication, Conflict Management, and Critical Media Literacy (Routledge, 2022). He is a professor of social science, history, and journalism at Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is chair of the journalism department. In 2019, Huff received the Beverly Kees Educator Award as part of the James Madison Freedom of Information Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California. He is also executive producer and host of “The Project Censored Show,” the weekly syndicated public affairs program that airs on over 50 stations around the U.S. and originates from KPFA Pacifica Radio in Berkeley, California.
Cute, not cute: A wild giant otter plays with plastic bottle. Research indicates that about 80 percent of the plastics that pollute the world’s oceans enter via coastlines and rivers. The remaining 20 percent comes from discarded fishing gear. (Photo credit: Paul Williams/Flickr)
If you regularly drink water from plastic bottles, you’re likely ingesting even more plastic than the average consumer.
We are no better protected from plasticized air outdoors than we are indoors. Minuscule plastic fibers, fragments, foam, and films are shed from plastic stuff and are perpetually floating into and free-falling down on us from the atmosphere. Rain flushes micro- and nanoplastics out of the sky back to Earth. Plastic-filled snow is accumulating in urban areas like Bremen, Germany, and remote regions like the Arctic and Swiss Alps alike.
Wind and storms carry particles shed from plastic items and debris through the air for dozens, even hundreds, of miles before depositing them back on Earth. Dongguan, China; Paris, France; London, England; and other metropolises teeming with people are enveloped in air perpetually permeated by tiny plastic particles small enough to lodge themselves in human lungs.
Urban regions are especially replete with what scientists believe could be one of the most hazardous varieties of particulate pollution: plastic fragments, metals, and other materials that have shed off synthetic tires as a result of the normal friction caused by brake pads and asphalt roads, and from enduring weather and time. Like the plastic used to manufacture consumer items and packaging, synthetic tires may contain any number of a manufacturer’s proprietary blend of poisons meant to improve a plastic product’s appearance and performance.
Tire particles from the world’s billions of cars, trucks, bikes, tractors, and other vehicles escape into air, soil, and water bodies. Scientists are just beginning to understand the grave danger: In 2020, Washington State researchers determined that the presence of 6PPD-quinone, a byproduct of rubber-stabilizing chemical 6PPD, is playing a major factor in a mysterious long-term die-off of coho salmon in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. When Washington’s fall rains herald spawning salmon’s return from sea to stream, the precipitation also washes car tire fragments and other plastic particles into these freshwater ecosystems. In recent years, up to 90 percent of all salmon returning to spawn in this region have died—a number much greater than is considered natural, according to local researchers from the University of Washington, Tacoma. As University of Washington environmental chemist Zhenyu Tian explained in an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting, 6PPD-quinone appears to be a key culprit: “You put this chemical, this transformation product, into a fish tank, and coho die… really fast.”
While other researchers have previously searched for, and detected, microplastic dispersed in indoor and outdoor air, a study by Alvise Vianello, an Italian scientist and professor at Aalborg University in Denmark, was the first to do so using a mannequin emulating human breathing via mechanical lung. Despite the evidence his research provides—that plastic is getting inside of human bodies and could be harming us—modern health researchers have yet to systematically search for it in people and comprehensively study how having plastic particles around us and in us at all times might be affecting human health.
Vianello and Jes Vollertsen, a professor of environmental studies at Aalborg University explained that they’ve brought their findings to researchers at their university’s hospital for future collaborative research, perhaps searching for plastic inside human cadavers. “We now have enough evidence that we should start looking for microplastic inside human airways,” Vollertsen said. “Until then, it’s unclear whether or not we should be worried that we are breathing in plastic.”
He speculated that some of the microplastic we breathe in could be expelled when we exhale. Yet even if that’s true, our lungs may hold onto much of the plastic that enters, resulting in damage.
Other researchers, like Joana Correia Prata, a PhD student at the University of Aveiro in Portugal, have highlighted the need for systematic research on the human health effects of breathing in microplastic. “Microplastic particles and fibers, depending on their density, size, and shape, can reach the deep lung causing chronic inflammation,” she said. People working in environments with high levels of airborne microplastics, such as those employed in the textile industry, often suffer respiratory problems, Prata has noted. The perpetual presence of a comparatively lower amount of microplastics in our homes has not yet been linked to specific ailments.
While they’ve dissected the bodies of countless nonhuman animals for decades, it’s only been a few years since scientists began exploring human tissues for signs of nano- and microplastic. This, despite strong evidence suggesting plastic particles—and the toxins that adhere to them—permeate our environment and are widespread in our diets. In the past decade, scientists have detected microplastic in the bodies of fish and shellfish; in packaged meats, processed foods, beer, sea salt, soft drinks, tap water, and bottled water. There are tiny plastic particles embedded in conventionally grown fruits and vegetables sold in supermarkets and food stalls.
As the world rapidly ramped up its production of plastic in the 1950s and ’60s, two other booms occurred simultaneously: that of the world’s human population and the continued development of industrial agriculture. The latter would feed the former and was made possible thanks to the development of petrochemical-based plastics, fertilizers, and pesticides. By the late 1950s, farmers struggling to keep up with feeding the world’s growing population welcomed new research papers and bulletins published by agricultural scientists extolling the benefits of using plastic, specifically dark-colored, low-density polyethylene sheets, to boost yields of growing crops. Scientists laid out step-by-step instructions on how the plastic sheets should be rolled out over crops to retain water, reducing the need for irrigation, and to control weeds and insects, which couldn’t as easily penetrate plastic-wrapped soil.
This “plasticulture” has become a standard farming practice, transforming the soils humans have long sown from something familiar to something unknown. Crops grown with plastic seem to offer higher yields in the short term, while in the long term, use of plastic in agriculture could create toxic soils that repel water instead of absorbing it, a potentially catastrophic problem. This causes soil erosion and dust—the dissolution of ancient symbiotic relationships between soil microbes, insects, and fungi that help keep plants alive.
From the polluted soils we’ve created, plants pull in tiny nanoplastic particles through their roots along with the water they need to survive, with serious consequences: An accumulation of nanoplastic particles in a plant’s roots diminishes its ability to absorb water, impairing growth and development. Scientists have also found early evidence that nanoplastic may alter a plant’s genetic makeup in a manner increasing its susceptibility to disease.
Based on the levels of micro- and nanoplastics detected in human diets, it’s estimated that most people unwittingly ingest anywhere from 39,000 to 52,000 bits of microplastic in their diets each year. That number increases by 90,000 microplastic particles for people who regularly consume bottled water, and by 4,000 particles for those who drink water from municipal taps.
In 2018, scientists in Austria detected microplastic in human stool samples collected from eight volunteers from eight different countries across Europe and Asia. Clearly, microplastic is getting into us, with at least some of it escaping through our digestive tracts. We seem to be drinking, eating, and breathing it in.
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Erica Cirino is a science writer and artist who explores the intersection of the human and nonhuman worlds. Her photographic and written works have appeared in Scientific American, the Guardian, VICE, Hakai Magazine, the Atlantic, and other publications. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and the Safina Center, as well as several awards for visual art.
PlasticFreePresident.org: “The world faces an indisputable plastic pollution crisis. More than 99 percent of plastic is created from chemicals sourced from fossil fuels, including an oversupply of fracked gas, which is spurring a global boom in new plastic production. That plastic is causing serious environmental problems at every step of its lifecycle. President Biden can tackle this crisis with the stroke of a pen.”
Urge President Biden to take action to solve the plastic crisis, including ending subsidies for plastics producers.
A reader writes…
Chemical peels: Two of the most dangerous pesticides that are still in use in the U.S. are paraquat and rotenone, which researchers have linked to Parkinson’s disease. (Photo credit: Oregon Department of Agriculture/Flickr)
“Thanks for the great article (“Can Eating Organic Help Prevent Parkinson’s Disease?” February 15). What you left out however is the needless use of pesticides for corn for cattle which is destroying our environment in numerous ways. It needs to be stopped as well as the pesticides.” —B. Horberg
Author’s reply: “Thank you kindly for your input, you made an excellent point. The demand for animal feed is another means to keep the pesticide industry alive. Glyphosate use on corn has been found to be ineffective for destroying unwanted weeds if the pesticide is not mixed with another one. This also happens in the case of genetically engineered crops (glyphosate ready crops) due to weeds’ mutations. Farmers and agricultural workers could switch to significantly less toxic alternatives to avoid pushing weeds to develop resistance to chemical spraying from the start. Practices such as ground cover, crop rotation, applying organic weedkillers, and biological control, although more time-consuming, can be effective and will not endanger consumers’ health.” —Miguel Leyva
Cause for concern…
Look of fear: Pigs being transported to slaughter are photographed by animal activists during a Save Movement Vigil in Manchester, England, in 2021. The Animal Save Movement’s mission is to hold vigils at every slaughterhouse and bear witness to every exploited animal. As of 2019, there are over 900 Animal Save chapters worldwide. (Photo credit: Tom Woollard/We Animals Media)
“While veganism is a growing lifestyle choice, plant-based consumption is the norm for a miniscule percentage of the world’s population, which consumes billions of animals. Veganism also has little impact beyond animals used for food, including on those industries that torture tens of millions of animals a year in research, and the millions of companion animals worldwide subject to cruelty or neglect.
“Humans replacing nonhumans is the fundamental issue in animal rights. Nonhumans are either disappearing or being used in ways in which the vast majority suffer. And the base driver is not diet or education, but the mere procreation and proliferation of humans––who have so far failed miserably to coexist with other species.
“Even what appear to be victories for nonhumans, like the restoration of certain wildlife populations, are now threatened by the population-driven climate crisis. The creation of humans is this: irrefutably the one behavior of interest to nonhumans. Nothing has a greater long-term impact on the climate crisis than a universal ethic of smaller families, once that ethic supersedes the pronatalism that drives our emissions and cements the anthropocentrism that poisons our relations with the nonhuman world.”
Cleanup crew: Sailors assigned to the USS Patriot join local community members to remove plastic waste from a beach at Seto Inland Sea National Park in Yashima, Japan, in 2012. (Photo credit: Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Devon Dow, U.S. Navy/U.S. Indo-Pacific Command/Flickr)
“Three in four people worldwide want single-use plastics to be banned as soon as possible, according to a poll released on Tuesday, as United Nations members prepare to begin talks on a global treaty to rein in soaring plastic pollution,” reports John Geddie for Reuters. “Activists say the results send a clear message to governments meeting in Nairobi this month to press ahead with an ambitious treaty to tackle plastic waste, a deal being touted as the most important environmental pact since the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015.”
Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.
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Chemical peels: Two of the most dangerous pesticides that are still in use in the U.S. are paraquat and rotenone, which researchers have linked to Parkinson’s disease. (Photo credit: Oregon Department of Agriculture/Flickr)
A growing body of research suggests a connection between the pesticide paraquat and Parkinson’s disease.
By Miguel Leyva, Independent Media Institute
8 min read
Agricultural workers in the United States currently use more than 400 different pesticides on their crops to ensure “higher yields and improved product quality.” These pesticides, however, threaten the health of people who work with them on farms or agricultural land and of those who live near these areas. Two of the most dangerous pesticides that are still in use in the U.S. are paraquat and rotenone. Exposure to these pesticides was found to lead to an increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, according to various studies.
Paraquat was first commercially produced in 1961 and is used to destroy weeds and grasses resistant to glyphosate, another toxic pesticide sold across the country under the name Roundup. As for rotenone, it was formulated in 1895, but it was only during the last century that it started being employed on a large scale to get rid of unwanted herbs and pests.
Paraquat is extremely dangerous and poisonous, and a single sip of this pesticide can immediately cause death. For this reason, it is a “restricted use pesticide,” which means that agricultural workers who intend to use it have to undergo special training before “mixing, loading, and/or applying paraquat.” During this special training, people who work with this pesticide are taught about the toxicity of paraquat, how to apply it safely to crops, and how to minimize exposure while working with it.
However, even if paraquat is used correctly, it can still cause significant health risks for agricultural workers. When they take off their protective equipment, vapors of paraquat from the crops can easily travel with them to their farms or homes. And there is also the danger of workers unavoidably inhaling the pesticide. Paraquat can also infiltrate groundwater and soil, causing serious environmental damage.
Why Do Authorities Still Allow the Use of Paraquat?
Paraquat is applied to more than 100 crops throughout the country. Developing a pesticide as effective as paraquat is hard work. This is one of the reasons why the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to allow the use of paraquat in the United States. Presently, paraquat is banned in more than 50 countries, including China, the United Kingdom, Thailand and the European Union. Nevertheless, it remains one of the most widely used pesticides in developed countries like the United States and Australia.
Unsettlingly, more than 8 million pounds of paraquat is used throughout the U.S. every year, according to a 2019 press release by the Center for Biological Diversity, with California ranking first as the state using the most pesticides in the U.S., according to the 2016 data provided by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which was published by Priceonomics. California made up for more than 11 percent of all pesticides used nationally. The state “[used] nearly twice as much as the second-ranking state, Washington,” according to Priceonomics.
Paraquat is still used on crops because it spares agricultural workers “arduous labor,” according to Syngenta, an agricultural company that produces paraquat. The pesticide also “[protects] against invasive weeds and [helps] produce agronomically important crops like soy, corn and cotton.” Given the popularity of the pesticide, paraquat can be found on the market under numerous brand names, including, Blanco, Gramoxone, Devour, Parazone and Helmquat.
In 2019, the EPA stated in a draft report on paraquat that there is “insufficient evidence” to link the pesticide to human health concerns. As a result, the agency deemed paraquat safe for use in the United States as a “Restricted Use Product.” In 2019, Representative Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) introduced the Protect Against Paraquat Act, which seeks to prohibit the sale and use of paraquat in the country. There has, unfortunately, been no further substantial progress relating to the bill since then.
As of early 2021, the EPA has been considering renewing its approval for paraquat. The agency is expected to make a decision on this issue by the end of 2022. In the meantime, the EPA advises people to take the following precautions until new regulations come into effect:
Paraquat must be used only by a certified applicator who has undergone the required special training.
Paraquat should never be stored in a food or drink container so as not to be mistaken for a product that can be ingested.
Paraquat must always be kept away from children, as there have been several cases of accidental poisoning.
Paraquat should ideally not “be stored in or around residential [buildings].”
Paraquat must “[n]ever be used around home gardens, schools, recreational parks, golf courses or playgrounds.”
The Link Between Paraquat Exposure and Parkinson’s Disease
Even though the EPA states there is insufficient evidence to support the link between paraquat exposure and Parkinson’s disease, numerous reputable medical studies beg to differ. For instance, according to a Farming and Movement Evaluation (FAME) study, which included 110 people who had developed Parkinson’s disease and 358 matched controls, there is a link between rotenone and paraquat and Parkinson’s disease. “People who used either pesticide developed Parkinson’s disease approximately 2.5 times more often than non-users,” stated a press release by the National Institutes of Health, one of the agencies that was involved with this study.
Parkinson’s disease is a disorder affecting the brain “that leads to shaking, stiffness, difficulty with walking, balance, and coordination,” according to the National Institute on Aging. The symptoms “usually begin [appearing] gradually and get worse over time.” Regular exposure to paraquat is known to cause Parkinson’s disease by increasing the risk of developing the disease by a whopping 250 percent, according to a 2018 study by Canada’s University of Guelph. A medical study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology revealed that exposure to paraquat and another pesticide called maneb within 1,600 feet of a home heightened the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease by 75percent.
People heavily exposed to paraquat who are susceptible to developing Parkinson’s disease include agricultural workers, farmers, people working on animal farms, individuals who reside on farms, and people who live in a rural area and drink well water. Additionally, people working as chemical mixers and tank fillers are also at risk of developing Parkinson’s disease due to their contact with paraquat.
Drinking well water from a location close to a crop to which paraquat has been applied can be dangerous because the pesticide can easily reach the groundwater. Those frequently exposed to paraquat-contaminated water are at risk for the gradual accumulation of the pesticide in their bodies, posing a health danger.
When someone is exposed to paraquat, the pesticide tends to travel through the lungs or the stomach and eventually reaches a portion of the brain medically known as the substantia nigra region. This brain region is responsible for releasing dopamine, a crucial neurochemical that plays a significant role in how many systems of the central nervous system function—from movement control to cognitive executive functions. Once paraquat reaches the substantia nigra region, it depletes the neurons that produce dopamine, a process that is associated with Parkinson’s disease. The damage caused by paraquat to these neurons can ultimately result in the impairment of essential brain functions.
The Future Is Organic
Because fruits, vegetables and cereals harvested from organic crops have been treated with natural and synthetic pesticides, which are less likely to cause health problems, they are the perfect alternative to conventionally grown produce. Natural and synthetic pesticides are not as toxic as paraquat or glyphosate and include copper hydroxide, horticultural vinegar, corn gluten, neem and vitamin D3. Furthermore, organic products usually have more nutrients, such as antioxidants. People with allergies to foods, chemicals or preservatives can greatly benefit from such healthy food sources. They may even notice that their symptoms alleviate or go away when they eat exclusively organic food.
However, the downside of organic food and growing organic crops is that they require more time, energy and financial resources. There is a greater labor input by farmers when it comes to organic crops, which makes these products more expensive. Another reason why organic food is pricier than conventionally grown produce is that organic agricultural farmers do not produce enough quantity of a single product to reduce the overall cost. The regular maintenance of organic crops is also time-consuming, as farmers have to be very careful with unconventional pesticides used to keep weeds, unwanted herbs and pests at bay during organic farming.
Even so, eating organic is undoubtedly the future, as most nonorganic produce contains significant traces of toxic pesticides such as paraquat that inevitably accumulate in our bodies over time, being able to trigger severe diseases in the future. While eating organic food may be more expensive, it is wiser to invest in these products given the health benefits. However, it is true that the accessibility and affordability of healthy organic foods is a strong issue among the U.S. food system inequities. Nowadays, organic foods don’t necessarily come from small local farms. They are largely a product of big businesses, most of them being produced by multinational companies and sold in chain stores. These leading food and agriculture companies should invest more in the consumers’ well-being and offer nutritious food affordable to all communities.
One solution would be the implementation of government schemes to promote organic farming and incentivize farmers to transition to organic agriculture. Instead of supporting factory farms, the government could support sustainable family farms, which often farm more ethically. It could lower healthy food costs and address the health crisis brought on by the mass consumption of unhealthy processed foods. Organic foods will not only lead to better health but will also discourage the practice of applying hazardous pesticides on conventionally grown crops, doing away with the health and environmental hazards involved in the process.
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Miguel Leyva is a case manager at Atraxia Law, where he researches how farmers and workers with Parkinson’s disease and other disabilities have had their health affected by exposure to pesticides such as paraquat.
Take action…
Hunger games: Food and Agriculture Organization Director-General Qu Dongyu speaks at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 65th General Conference in Vienna, Austria, on September 21, 2021. (Photo credit: Dean Calma/IAEA/Flickr)
Pesticide Action Network: “The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently signed a letter of intent to formalize a partnership with CropLife International. CropLife is the global trade association representing all of the largest agrochemical, pesticide, and seed companies. This alliance would be dangerous for the future of our global food systems. …
“Recent estimates show that there are 385 million cases of acute pesticide poisonings each year, up from an estimated 25 million cases in 1990. This means that about 44 percent of farmers and agricultural workers around the world are poisoned each year by an industry dominated by CropLife members. Pesticide products produced by CropLife member companies decimate pollinator populations and are wreaking havoc on biodiversity and already fragile ecosystems.”
Urge Food and Agriculture Organization Director-General Qu Dongyu to end their dangerous alliance with the pesticide industry.
Cause for concern…
Running low: A large piece of ice collapses as Argentina’s Perito Moreno Glacier—the world’s third largest reserve of fresh water—advances. (Photo credit: Calyponte/Wikipedia)
“The world’s glaciers may contain less water than previously believed, a new study has found, suggesting that freshwater supplies could peak sooner than anticipated for millions of people worldwide who depend on glacial melt for drinking water, crop irrigation and everyday use,” reports Raymond Zhong for the New York Times.
“The latest findings are based on satellite images taken during 2017 and 2018. They are a snapshot in time; scientists will need to do more work to connect them with long-term trends. But they imply that further global warming could cause today’s ice to vanish in many places on a shorter timeline than previously thought.”
“A federal judge [on February 10] restored Endangered Species Act protections for the gray wolf, marking a big win for environmentalists in a high-profile fight that’s raged across the Western landscape,” reports Michael Doyle for E&E News. “In a decision that addressed three related challenges filed by environmental groups, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White struck down the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to remove the iconic animal from the ESA list.
“‘The Final Rule relies on the recovery of core metapopulations of wolves in the Great Lakes and Northern Rocky Mountains to conclude that wolves across the entire lower 48 states no longer qualify for federal protection,’ White noted. But White, who was appointed by President George W. Bush to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, declared that ‘the Service did not adequately consider threats to wolves outside of these core populations.’
“White added that the FWS concluded ‘with little explanation or analysis, that wolves outside of the core populations are not necessary to the recovery of the species [and] … in so concluding, the Service avoided assessing the impact of delisting on these wolves.’”
Last female: After the recently discovered female Swinhoe’s softshell turtle was caught and identified, a health check was done, samples were taken, an ultrasound was performed, and a microchip was inserted before she was released back into her lake home. (Photo credit: WCS Vietnam)
“When two of the last remaining Swinhoe’s softshell turtles died without producing any known offspring between 2016 and 2019, this species became the most endangered turtle in the world.
“In response, conservationists and veterinary experts from Vietnam, along with global partners, made the recovery of this turtle one of their highest priorities. Swinhoe’s softshell turtles were also included in the five-year conservation plan of Hanoi People’s Committee in 2018 and added to the committee’s 2030 vision plan.
“Then, in October 2020, a female turtle was captured in Vietnam and confirmed by veterinarians to be a female Rafetus swinhoei. With the leadership of the Hanoi Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, in collaboration with the Asian Turtle Program of Indo-Myanmar Conservation and our organization, the Wildlife Conservation Society, this imperiled turtle species may now have a second chance at survival.”
Shell shine: Jonathan, who at 190 years old is the world’s oldest tortoise, gets a bath on the grounds of Plantation House, the governor’s residence on the island of St. Helena, a British overseas territory in the South Pacific where he arrived in 1882. (screenshot via St. Helena Government/YouTube)
Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.
Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.
Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.
Timberland: The view over the forest from Mildenstein Castle in Saxony, Germany. The castle is near Freiberg, where Hans Carl von Carlowitz was in charge of mining. (Photo credit: Mike Bonitz/Flickr)
Modern sustainability evolved from forest management of the 18th century, and its ancient roots go back even further. Could it help with today’s climate crisis and lumber shortage?
By Erika Schelby, Independent Media Institute
6 min read
The proverb “necessity is the mother of invention” has roots that go back to Aesop’s fable “The Crow and the Pitcher” and to Plato’s “Republic.” It is realistic to assume that Hans Carl von Carlowitz, mining manager for the Saxon court in Freiberg, Germany, during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, was also driven by necessity and a severe shortage of wood to invent the concept of sustainability (“Nachhaltigkeit”).
Or to be more precise, he coined the word to describe the quintessential principles of a human activity that goes back to the dawn of history: the sustainable use of natural resources. Although it may not have been called sustainability until Carlowitz, societies had practiced it for a long time as a vital part of cultural or religious practices. Ancient Egypt pursued sustainable systems for more than 3,000 years. The Maya, according to anthropologist Lisa Lucero, practiced a “cosmology of conservation.” The literature of ancient India is brimful with references to the preservation of the environment.
On the other hand, there are ancient civilizations that may have collapsed because they despoiled the natural world that gave them life. The earliest example may be found in the ancient Mesopotamian “Epic of Gilgamesh,” the first version of which dates back to 2000 B.C. Clay tablets tell the tale of vast cedar forests cut down by the eponymous hero in defiance of the gods, who punish him by cursing the land with fire and drought, turning the region into a desert. Nothing grew anymore, forcing the Sumerians to flee to Babylon and Assyria.
Now, 300 years after Carlowitz gave sustainability its modern name when Europe was short on wood, we again have a timber shortage—this one triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and caused by climate change.
The modern concept of sustainable living on a planet with limited resources evolved from the work done by Carlowitz regarding the need for the sustainable management of forests.
In 1713, just a year before his death, Carlowitz published the 432-page folio book, Sylvicultura Oeconomica oder Anweisung zur wilden Baum-Zucht (“Silvicultural Oeconomica or the Instructions for Wild Tree Cultivation”).
Treehugger: In 1713, just a year before his death, Carlowitz published the 432-page folio book “Sylvicultura Oeconomica oder Anweisung zur Wilden Baum Zucht” (“Silvicultural Economics or the Instructions for Wild Tree Cultivation”), which documents the beginning of scientific forestry and invents the concept of sustainability. (Image credit: Thomas Weidner/FVA-BW)
Sylvicultura Oeconomica documented the beginning of scientific forestry. It also invented sustainability, which had to be accepted to assure the continuity of human societies and of nature. Without scientific forestry, people across Europe and around the world would have faced far more severe economic and social disasters than the ones witnessed in the last few centuries. “In the beginning was the Earth,” said Christof Mauch, a modern-day German sustainability specialist and historian, in a 2013 lecture. “The Earth does not need humans to survive, but humans need the Earth.”
In fact, Carlowitz envisioned the three pillars of sustainability: environmental, economic, and social justice. He rejected short-term thinking. He offered solutions, scientific details, guidelines and practical proposals on how to save, select, nurse, plant, re-grow, maintain and protect forests and their biodiversity. He presented an inventory of conditions across Europe and discussed threats caused by extreme weather conditions, diseases, pests and humans. He pled for careful, frugal consumption and recommended the art of saving timber. His ideas for using energy-efficient stoves in housing or furnaces in smelters, tips on improving the insulation in buildings, and finding substitutes like peat for heating homes are not unlike today’s sustainability efforts. The main part of the book deals with the urgent work that needs to be done to overcome the Holznot, or wood emergency. In his 2010 book, German journalist Ulrich Grober calls Sylvicultura Oeconomica “the birth certificate of our modern concept of sustainability.”
These concepts developed by Carlowitz have been adopted across the globe in the course of the last 300 years. Unfortunately, today the rapid deforestation of large areas continues unabated in various regions, mostly in the Global South. The developed Global North had already done much of its massive deforestation during the era of industrialization. Itshould be noted thattoday, the greed of wealthy individuals, corporations and governments from the rich countries often exacerbate the climate crisis in tropical regions, while Indigenous peoples and those who are not in positions of power due to lack of access to capital or being located in the Global South (particularly island nations) often have proven, long-term sustainable forest management and environmental practices and are most affected by the unsustainable practices of developed nations.
Trailblazer: The underlined text on this page from Hans Carl von Carlowitz’s 1713 book “Silvicultural Economics or the Instructions for Wild Tree Cultivation,” which introduced the concept of environmental sustainability, shows the first use of the word “Náchhaltigkeit” (German for “sustainability”). (Image credit: Thomas Weidner / FVA-BW)
But the rich world has been reeling from the climate impacts of unsustainable development for decades, with increasing temperatures and a rise in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. In many ways, we are losing a race against time. During the summer of 2021 in the United States, firefighters wrapped aluminum foil around the trunk of a giant old sequoia, hoping to save the world’s largest tree from “a raging wildfire” in California. Sequoias, which can live for up to 3,400 years, have coexisted with occasional forest fires for millennia. They don’t burn easily and have survived wildfires over the years, even benefitting from fires that clear away the underbrush, creating new space and providing the required sunlight for seedlings. But this no longer works. The new wildfires of the climate change era last too long and burn too hot even for these huge trees, who were once regarded as invulnerable. According to the New York Times, “in last year’s Castle fire, between 7,000 and 11,000 large sequoias died across the Sierra Nevada or about 10 to 14 percent of them.”
All these natural calamities have come in a cluster, bundled together in the last few years: the pandemic, ever more and ever bigger forest fires in the West and leaping north into Canada, excessive heat, lasting drought and the destruction of millions of trees by a tiny creepy-crawly bark-eating beetle. Businesses closed their doors, sawmills halted production, truckers stopped trucking and logistical bottlenecks multiplied. Builders ceased construction and people were stuck in lockdowns at home.
Then, contrary to expectations, a DIY frenzy broke out. Confined to their houses or apartments because of pandemic-related restrictions, Americans started to improve their private spaces. Perhaps they felt it was the only reality they could count on. It was something they valued as a zone of safety and personal freedom in the midst of turmoil: a room of one’s own.
It’s a vicious cycle: trees are stressed by heat and drought, which makes them less resilient. A cold climate used to keep the mountain pine beetles under control but warming temperatures have upset the balance and increased their numbers. With more mouths to feed, the beetles advanced into new areas, attacked weakened trees, and have already devastated 27 million hectares of forest across North America “an area more than three quarters the size of Germany.”
There are also more and more people who are directly confronted by climate change. The Washington Post reports that “[n]early 1 in 3 Americans live in a county hit by a weather disaster in the past three months… On top of that, 64 percent live in places that experienced a multiday heat wave.”
So how long can people function and be productive under the present and increasingly worse circumstances? How can governments govern? When will the governed discover that the powerful Wizard of Oz isn’t so mighty after all?
Americans are still embedded in a never-ending stream of the same-old growth and consumption messages that contradict what society as a whole must do to become sustainable. But finally, there is a shift in public awareness. According to the Yale Program on Climate Communication, “three out of four Americans now believe that global warming is happening today.” It is hard to tell if this change of mind will last; public opinion is fickle, and there is the fact of a short attention span.
Perhaps it is helpful to acknowledge that the world was in trouble before, and that, driven by necessity 300 years ago, it found solutions. The challenges being faced by people across the globe are far bigger today, but the tools available to them are better too. The world has added much science, and people should have a better understanding of how nature and societies work.
Three scientists have recently been awarded and will share the Nobel Prize for physics 2021: Syukuro Manabe of Princeton, Klaus Hasselmann of the Max Planck Institute in Hamburg, Germany, and Giorgio Parisi of the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. All three of them did long-term groundbreaking work related to complex physical systems and modeling the Earth’s climate.
Hans Carl von Carlowitz had no access to such advanced science. All he had was his observation, the science of his time, and a bold mind. But he would most certainly agree with the physicist Giorgio Parisi, who commented on the timing of the awarding of the Nobel Prize in physics to climate change researchers: “It is clear that for the future generations, we have to act now in a very fast way and not with a strong delay.” We’ve had sustainability concepts for more than 300 years—it’s certainly past time to utilize them.
“[I] the absence of sufficient supplies of wood from its own forests, the EU is heavily reliant on importing wood pellets from forests far away,” writes EFL contributor Danna Smith, founder and executive director of Dogwood Alliance, in Truthout. “In fact, biodiverse and carbon-rich forests across the United States’ Southern Coastal Plain—a region that encompasses coastal North and South Carolina, southern Georgia and Alabama, and northern Florida—have become the primary global target for supplying biomass fuel to the EU. The Southern U.S. is now the world’s largest producer and exporter of wood pellets. Under the guise of ‘renewable energy,’ the voracious European demand for wood pellets has put forests and communities in this region at increased risk.”
Urge President Biden to establish strong, ecologically sound, and environmentally-just protections for our forests.
Cause for concern…
Toxic: The economy of Dalhart, Texas, which is centered around climate-damaging agribusinesses such as ranching, feedlot operations and large-scale pig farms, benefits from relatively lax environment regulations. (Photo credit: Ken Lund/Flickr)
“The global food system is a wonder of technological and logistical brilliance. It feeds more people than ever, supplying a greater variety of food more cheaply and faster than ever. It is also causing irreparable harm to the planet.
“The system—a vast web of industries and processes that stretches from seed to pasture to packaging to supermarket to trash dump—produces at least a third of all human-caused greenhouse gases. Yet somehow these impacts aren’t in the forefront of the conversation about global warming. Indeed, they often aren’t in the conversation at all.”
Plant power: On February 11, 2022, New York City schools will serve Mediterranean chickpeas, with rice or pasta, roasted cauliflower and broccoli, and spinach and cranberry salad (Photo credit: woodleywonderworks/Flickr)
“Plant-based options in schools means healthy eating and healthy living, and improving the quality of life for thousands of New York City students,” said Mayor Eric Adams, who said that the effects of Type 2 diabetes were reversed after he switched to plant-based eating 2016, reports Jessica Gould for Gothamist.
“The earlier in life that we can establish healthful eating habits, the better,” said Eugenia Gianos, Director of Cardiovascular Prevention for Northwell Health and Director of Women’s Heart Health at Lenox Hill Hospital. “I see our young people struggle with overweight, obesity and even diabetes at younger and younger ages. Research shows that plant-based diets help people achieve a healthy weight, so I applaud this positive step.”
Leslie Crawford: What did you find surprising about humans as a child?
Sy Montgomery: I was shocked to learn that people use their language to lie. Even little kids lie. Of course, animals will lie, too. An octopus will say, “I’m four or five sea snakes.” What the octopus does is change each of its arms to look like a sea snake, which is very poisonous. Chimpanzees lie all the time. But the degree to which humans use language to lie shocked me. I’ve always dealt with animals in a very straightforward way. I wasn’t ever trying to conceal things from them. Humans often want incorrect information about you and project incorrect things on you.
LC: So much has changed about our understanding of animals since you started writing about them. When did you first realize that animals are sentient beings?
SM: I think most of us realize as children that animals are sentient beings. But then, somehow, for so many people, this truth gets overwritten—by schools teaching old theories, by agribusiness that wants us to treat animals like products, by the pharmaceutical and medical industries who want to test products on animals as if they were little more than petri dishes. But thankfully, scientific and evolutionary evidence for animal sentience has grown too obvious to ignore.
LC: What have you learned about animals and consciousness?
SM: You don’t want to project onto animals your wishes and desires. You have to respect your fellow animals. I don’t want to roll in vomit, but a hyena would enjoy that. I don’t want to kill everything I eat with my face, but that’s what I’d do if I’m a great white shark. If I were eating a carcass, I would not be as happy about it as a scavenger. We have different lives but what we share is astonishingly deep, evolutionarily speaking.
Alighting: A monarch butterfly takes a rest on a friendly hand. Known for their incredible 2,500-mile annual migration from Canada and the U.S. to Mexico, the monarch is showing a tentative recovery in population numbers after decades of decline. (Photo credit: Franzi takes photos/Flickr)
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” —William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act III, Scene iii
Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.
Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.
Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.
Fanned by fossil fuel: The Marshall Fire as seen from Broomfield, Colorado, on December 30, 2021. The wildfire laid waste to more than 6,000 acres to become the state’s most damaging fire in terms of property loss. (Photo credit: NOAA/NWS Boulder)
More than two dozen states, counties and cities have sued major fossil fuel companies for climate-related fraud or damages, or both.
By Elliott Negin, Independent Media Institute
4 min read
Four years ago, Boulder, Colorado, sued ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy—owner of the only oil refinery in the state—for climate change-related damages and adaptation expenses. Boulder and its co-plaintiffs, Boulder County and San Miguel County, home to Telluride, estimated the damage caused by extreme weather events would cost them more than $100 million by 2050.
As it turns out, they overestimated the time span—and underestimated the price tag.
At the end of December, the Marshall Fire devastated Boulder County, laying waste to more than 6,000 acres and incinerating more than 1,000 homes and seven commercial buildings at a projected cost of $1 billion, making it Colorado’s most destructive fire in terms of property loss.
The Marshall Fire was hardly the only one—or even the largest—in Colorado since the three communities filed their lawsuit, which is still pending in a state court. In fact, four of the five biggest Colorado fires by acreage have occurred since then, ranging from 108,000 to nearly 209,000 acres.
Both ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy, an Alberta, Canada-based company, have a large carbon footprint in Colorado.
ExxonMobil has produced more than 1 million barrels of oil from Colorado deposits, according to the Colorado communities’ complaint, and its subsidiary XTO Energy currently produces 60 million cubic feet of natural gas per day from 492,000 acres in Rio Blanco County. There are also 95 Exxon and Mobil gas stations in the state. Altogether, the company’s production and transportation activities in Colorado were responsible for more than 420,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions between 2011 and 2015, according to the complaint.
Meanwhile, Suncor’s U.S. headquarters is based in Denver, and its oil refinery, which produces 98,000 barrels of refined oil per day, is less than 5 miles from downtown. Suncor’s gas stations, which sell Shell, Exxon and Mobil brand products, supply about 35 percent of the gasoline and 55 percent of the diesel sold in the state, according to a 2016 Denver Business Journal article. According to the complaint, Suncor’s Colorado operations were responsible for some 1 million metric tons of carbon emissions in 2016 alone, equivalent to the annual output of more than 217,000 typical passenger vehicles.
The Colorado communities contend that ExxonMobil and Suncor were aware that their products caused global warming as early as 1968, when a report commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. oil and gas industry’s largest trade association, warned of the threat burning fossil fuels posed to the climate. Regardless, ExxonMobil and Suncor not only continued to produce and market fossil fuel products without disclosing the risks, the communities’ complaint charges, but they also engaged in a decades-long disinformation campaign to manufacture doubt about the reality and seriousness of climate change.
“Defendants’ actions have already caused or contributed to rising temperatures in Colorado,” the complaint states. “Colorado has seen average temperatures rise by 2.5 degrees [Fahrenheit] over the last 50 years, with over a 2 degree [Fahrenheit] rise since 1983.” Those higher temperatures have extended what used to be a four-month-long fire season in western states to six to eight months, if not all year round, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Wildfires are starting earlier, burning more intensely, and destroying larger areas of land than ever before.
The three plaintiffs want ExxonMobil and Suncor to pay “their share” of the damage caused by their “intentional, reckless and negligent conduct.” That share could amount to billions of dollars to help cover the cost of an increasing number of heat waves, wildfires, droughts, intense precipitation, and floods.
Boulder’s April 2018 lawsuit was not the first U.S. climate-related case against the fossil fuel industry. New York City and eight coastal California cities and counties, including San Francisco and Oakland, had already filed similar lawsuits against ExxonMobil and other oil and gas companies, seeking compensation for damage to their communities. As of today, at least 27 states, counties and cities have sued major fossil fuel companies for climate-related fraud or damages, or both—and with good reason. The cost of climate change-related disasters is continuing to climb.
Indeed, the Marshall Fire was just one of the 20 climate and weather disasters in 2021 that resulted in at least $1 billion in damages, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, just two shy of the record-breaking 22 in 2020 and significantly more than the average of 6.3 large-scale U.S. disasters per year between 2000 and 2009. All told, last year’s billion-dollar disasters resulted in $145 billion in damages—52 percent higher than in 2020—and 688 deaths. The common denominator in these escalating numbers? Climate change.
“The fingerprints of climate change were all over many of the billion-dollar events that hit the United States in 2021,” says Rachel Licker, a senior climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “We’re essentially watching longstanding climate projections of the past come true.”
Block party: Extinction Rebellion activists blockade the exit to the ExxonMobil fuel terminal in Yarraville, Melbourne, on December 13, 2021. (Photo credit: Matt Hrkac/Flickr)
“Recent reports have shown that Exxon knew about the threat of climate change decades ago. Yet over the course of nearly forty years, the company has contributed millions of dollars to think tanks and politicians that have done their best to spread doubt and misinformation—first on the existence of climate change, then the extent of the problem, and now its cause,” says ExxonKnew, a global coalition of environmental and public advocacy groups, including 350.org, Center for International Environmental Law, Greenpeace USA, Public Citizen and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“If Exxon intentionally misled the public about climate change and fossil fuels, then they should be held accountable. We’re calling for an immediate investigation.”
Urge the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate ExxonMobil for lying to the public about its climate threat.
Cause for concern…
Troubled waters: Anorthern fulmar, a species of sub-Arctic seabird, skims the waters off the coast of northern California. (Photo credit: Julio Mulero/Flickr)
“[S]cores of dead and dying [northern fulmars, a species of sub-Arctic seabird] littered [Manchester Beach, along California’s Mendocino coast] as far as she could see. … What beached these offshore birds is still not known. Researchers and veterinarians who examined them—both the injured and dead—say they tended to be young and emaciated. Many had lesions on their feet, which veterinarians have identified as a papillomavirus—from the same viral family that gives humans warts but is unique to northern fulmars.
“Over the last half-decade, scientists have documented unprecedented die-offs of birds, marine mammals and other creatures in the northern waters where fulmars breed each year, as [the Los Angeles] Times reported in December. Researchers say the marine food web of the Arctic and sub-Arctic has been drastically altered, possibly because of climate change that has melted ice sheets and warmed the ecosystems of this vast region.”
Moving day: In California, where the burrowed owl is an endangered species, wildlife officials, conservationists and developers are working together to gather and transplant the birds who are displaced when humans move into their natural habitat. (Photo credit: Wendy Miller/Flickr)
“[Burrowing] owls are increasingly on a collision course with humanity … [as] builders have displaced owls by collapsing their burrows, forcing them to find a new place to live nearby. … [I]n heavily urbanized environments, the birds often have nowhere to go, putting the species’ future at risk. … New research published on Thursday in the journal Animal Conservation shows it can be very effective if the birds are tricked into believing there are already other burrowing owls near the places where they are transplanted.”
Chance for change: Evaporation ponds in the Salar de Atacama—Chile’s largest salt flat, part of the nation’s lithium industry—are seen from the International Space Station. Indigenous groups will help shape the nation’s new constitution, which will address the climate emergency, as well as the future of lithium mining. (Photo credit: NASA/Flickr)
“In this episode of Breaking Green, we talk with long-time activist Alejandra Parra about her experiences during the People’s Uprising in Chile and the hopes of recognizing environmental, social and economic reforms in the new Chilean constitution. …
“In 2020 the people of Chile voted in favor of a constitutional convention in order to replace its current constitution that was created under the Pinochet dictatorship. The convention, which grew out of the People’s Uprising, is currently underway with work expected to be finished by March. The convention is being attended not only by representatives of political parties, but elected representatives of Indigenous Peoples, independent citizen groups, environmentalists, social justice activists, and is designed for gender parity.”
Needless abuse: According to USDA figures, in 2019, there were more than 40,000 monkeys held ‘on reserve’ in federal research facilities, in addition to the more than 68,000 monkeys subjected to experiments. (Photo credit: Shankar s./Flickr)
“In the last two years, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has invested nearly $29 million to breed more monkeys for biomedical research, with an additional $7.5 million to be spent by October. The investments, which include infrastructure improvements at the U.S. National Primate Research Centers (NPRCs), have been made in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as researchers have been testing numerous vaccines on nonhuman primates, most commonly rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta)—a species of Old World monkey commonly used to study infectious diseases—before human trials began.
“Using the pandemic as the pretext, the Biden administration has proposed using even more taxpayer money to conduct primate research, suggesting a 27 percent funding increase for the NPRCs in its fiscal year 2022 budget request. If Congress gives the administration its stamp of approval, an additional $30 million would be given to the centers.”
Winter wisdom: A special, up-close and personal encounter with a snowy owl captured on Explore.org’s Mississippi Flyaway Cam (screenshot: Explore Live Nature Cams/YouTube)
There was an owl liv’d in an oak The more he heard, the less he spoke The less he spoke, the more he heard. O, if men were all like that wise bird.
Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.
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Three retired election auditors in Arizona foiled the Cyber Ninjas scam—and may have created a template for how to protect elections in 2022 and 2024.
By Steven Rosenfeld
Since the 2020 election, Donald Trump and his allies have produced no evidence that Joe Biden’s victory was illegitimate despite their dozens of failed lawsuits, shrill propaganda, and bad-faith postelection reviews. But Trump’s party has shown no reluctance to revise the rules of voting to advantage Republicans before 2022’s midterms and 2024’s presidential election.
Led by battleground state legislators, the Trumpers have rewritten voting laws, threatened election administrators, begun purges of county election boards, created new gerrymanders, and more. The worst of these power grabs limit access to a ballot, which is the starting line of voting, for anti-Trump blocs and would disqualify ballots and nullify votes before the finish line.
This playbook is not new. But modern voting systems, from voter registration to tallying paper ballots, contain numerous stages and respective data sets, many of which are public records and are quite detailed. If smartly used after Election Day, these records could provide an easily understood evidence trail that would make it much harder for the Trump faction to proclaim victory prematurely or falsely.
There are formidable obstacles, though—not just to accessing and parsing the data but to getting election professionals and opinion leaders on board. In recent years, their top priority has been countering cybersecurity threats from abroad, not countering domestic disinformation so that average voters, not election insiders, can see and trust what lies behind high-stakes results.
Using public election records to debunk stolen election lies and confront propagandists is not a “fool’s game,” as a New York Times editorial board member recently opined—arguing that “the professional vote-fraud crusaders are not in the fact business.” The template of debunking and confronting election-theft lies is the largely untold story of what happened in Arizona in 2021, where Trumpers ultimately were forced to admit that Biden won, a process I witnessed.
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