Toxic Waste

Every year, industrialized nations—via their industries, consumers, and cities—produce millions of tons of toxic waste. These hazards directly and indirectly contribute to high rates of human morbidity and mortality and to ecosystem damage on every continent and ocean system. Since the end of World War II, industrialized nations have generated increasing volumes of hazardous chemical wastes—a result of technological developments across all industry sectors. Reinforcing this trend is a culture of increasing acceptance of such risks in this late modern era.

Every living thing on the Earth has been exposed to some level of human-made toxic substances. Toxic chemicals and their residues pervade our environment and reside in all of our bodies. For example, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study in January 2003 in which they tested a sample of more than 9,000 individuals across the United [Page 948]States and found pesticides in 100 percent of their bodies.

This is a relatively new phenomenon, as the production and use of hazardous substances increased exponentially in warfare, agriculture, electronics, and a range of industries in the past six decades. Since that time, the industrial and consumer economies have come to rely heavily upon products made of chlorinated hydrocarbons. The size of the industries associated with these substances (plastics, oil, pharmaceuticals, and pesticides and chemicals) grew in response to increased demand from related industrial sectors and increased consumer demand for related products. The associated by-products were thus intensely toxic and increasingly ubiquitous. Today's hazardous wastes are the perilous physical and cultural residues of industrial production with deep historical roots, as the rise of urbanism and industrialization in the West went hand in hand with pollution.

The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) is a federal U.S. law that defines as “hazardous” those materials that may present a significant threat to human health or the environment when treated, transported, disposed of, stored, or managed improperly. While this definition is technically correct, the emphasis on the idea that such wastes only present a danger when “improperly” handled is misleading, since the very existence of these materials is hazardous. Moreover, the designation of materials as hazardous suggests they lie at the extreme end of the production spectrum when, in fact, they are at the core of any industrial society. The numerous industries that generate hazardous wastes are at the center of industrialized nations, producing employment, revenue, and social benefits. Hazardous wastes are generated by nearly every industry, and those industries that themselves generate few hazardous wastes nonetheless use products from hazardous waste-generating industries. Societies in the global North are particularly implicated in this process because they tend to be the largest producers of such toxins.

There is a general absence of rigorous, longitudinal, and definitive data on the health and environmental risks of our chemical intensive lifestyle. Despite Rachel Carson's own research and dire warnings in her classic book Silent Spring, we continue to produce and use even more chemicals today and have taken few steps to understand their potential effects before doing so. This is why many scientists, policymakers, and environmental activists are calling for the adoption of the “Precautionary Principle”—the policy that if there is a reasonable indication that a chemical may be unsafe, then we should refrain from using it, even if there is not yet conclusive scientific evidence to that effect. This is a regulatory approach that shifts the burden of proof that chemicals are safe onto the producers rather than allowing them to essentially test these materials on an unwitting public. The current regulatory framework in the United States presumes chemicals are innocent until proven guilty and simply releases them into widespread use until there is reason to believe they are unsafe. The consequences have been disastrous. We have scarcely any toxicological data on the more than 80,000 chemicals in use today. The extent of toxin production and its associated risk in the United States is staggering. The United States produces nearly 6 trillion pounds of chemicals annually. Toxic materials exposure can cause genetic defects, reproductive disorders, cancers, neurological damage, and the destruction of immune systems.

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