Here's a pristine example of acting without caution: A few years ago, while my neighbor and I talked near my strawberry patch, a swarm of ants suddenly appeared. "I have a can of poison on my porch!" my friend cried.
"Okay," I said, oblivious to potential consequences, focused on the quick solution.
In a blink, the ant swarm died.
The next time I looked, the strawberry patch was gone, too.
When no policy limits manufacturers' use of toxic chemicals
For eons, physicians have sworn to first, do no harm. Elders have taught youth to not unto others as you would not have them do unto you; to look both ways before crossing a street.
Then, in the 19th century, mass production became possible. Manufacturers threw caution to the wind. We got trains, denim jeans, cast iron pots and treadle sewing machines. Electricity became available around 1900; and factory-made refrigerators, washing machines, radios, TVs, telephones and cars became common. We got pesticides, herbicides, GMOs, pharmaceuticals, PFAs and Teflon-coated pans-- and distribution systems for perishable food.
To people who had survived only by what they could hunt, harvest and build themselves, machine-produced goods made life much easier.
But industrialization also brought problems.
Starting in the 1970s, John Raffensperger, a pediatric surgeon, cared for hundreds of children with cancer or birth defects. These children lived near industrial sites, and Dr. Raffensperger was convinced that their cancers and birth defects came from exposure to toxic chemicals-- but he couldn't prove it. Without proof of harm, the chemicals proliferated. So did childhood diseases.
By the mid-1990s, scientific research showed how exposure to chemicals disrupted the endocrine system and other bodily functions. Theo Colburn published Our Stolen Future: Are we threatening our fertility, intelligence and survival? Reports emerged about Love Canal, a New York town built over an industrial dump. The dump's rotting containers (holding dioxin) leached into the backyards and basements of 100 homes and a public school. (Dioxin comes from burning hazardous waste; from producing paper, iron and steel; from burning chlorinated pesticides, solvents and polyvinyl chloride plastics.) The town's children were born deaf, with cleft palates, extra teeth, slight retardation and eye defects.
Physicians, environmentalists and parents wanted to prevent the widespread suffering caused by chlorinated compounds.
But internationally, no policy had limited manufacturers' vast array of chemicals.
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