The Pollution Blog

Solving Pollution Problems, Saving Lives

Off to India to Speak about Pollution and Economic Development

Mar 9

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I am heading off to India, today, where I will be the keynote speaker at a gathering about toxic pollution, cleanup and economic development.  I believe this session will spark increasing cleanup efforts in India because of the presenting parties involved — the Aspen Institute India, the Confederation of Indian Industry and the World Wildlife Fund.  This shows that government officials, industry leaders and NGOs are now interested in working together to solve this problem and that is key to getting things done.

While I will talk about why toxic pollution cleanup is important, the Indian Minister of State for Environments and Forests will outline the government’s initiatives for dealing with the issue.  On a global scale, toxic cleanup gets very little attention.  India, which harbors several polluted hotspots, is beginning to realize that cleanup is key to continued economic development — good for business, good for people.  After years of working in India, we have built up a lot of support for pollution cleanup.  Interest in the issue is now the strongest it has ever been.

“The Invisible Pollution That’s Poisoning People Silently” will take place in New Delhi this Friday, March. 12.

Environmental Toxins, Autism and Cancer

Feb 26

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Did you see Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times on the link between autism (and other diseases like cancers) and environmental toxins?  Kristof points to concern about American’s using plastic containers to microwave food, and using products with toxic phthalates like fragrances, cosmetics and shampoos.  All this makes sense.  But how about the men, women and children half a world away who are regularly exposed to levels of toxins far beyond what’s permissible in the U.S.?

The problem is the same.  Its just the scale that’s wildly different.  Pregnant women and children in the developing world in many places are exposed to levels of lead, mercury, cadmium, solvents and other pollutants that cause death and disease that are hundreds, and sometimes thousands of times above safe levels.  They need help removing the toxins that contaminate their communities.

Karti (Karti Sandilya – the former Director General of the Asian Development Bank) and I have just come back from Europe (Sweden, Switzerland and the UK) where we met with governments, WHO, and the United Nations Environment Programme. We have strong partners for our planned Health and Pollution Fund, getting closer to finding global solutions to these problems.

By the way, Kristof’s article refers to the work of Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, a great Blacksmith friend and one of the leading voices in children’s health. When we profiled Dr. Landrigan in our January newsletter, we asked him what he thought was the most important thing people could do to save the planet.  His answer was “protect children from toxic environments.”  What a great guy.

(If you want to read more about the damaging effects of contaminants,  see my earlier post on Pollution and Vaccines, and Pollution, Poverty and the IQ Connection.)

Innovations and Collaborations this September

Feb 18

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I am glad to report that the Rockefeller Foundation has invited us back to the Bellagio Center in Italy this September to reconvene the next international meeting about the Health and Pollution Fund (HPF) – the planned $500 million public health fund to support global pollution cleanup.

The Bellagio Center has served as a launching pad for many groundbreaking international efforts, just as it did three years ago with the HPF.  Then, the HPF was just an idea.  Today, it is well on its way to becoming a reality.

Our 2007 meeting produced the Bellagio Principles, which spelled out the scope of the global pollution problem and the steps that must be taken by the international community.

Blacksmith will be cosponsoring the September meeting with the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank.  Attendees will include senior representatives from a host of countries, the international development community, and leading researchers and scientist from the public health and pollution remediation fields.  We will discuss and exchange ideas about the cleanup of highly polluted sites in the developing world and push forward the HPF effort.

This September, I feel, will mark a milestone in the creation of the HPF.  When people come together, good things happen.

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Pollution and Vaccines

Feb 10

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An interesting new perspective has opened up on the dangers of pollution.  While most people know that pollution poisons, it now seems that the immune system is especially affected by contaminants.  Pollution appears to skew the body away from making certain protective antibodies and may impair the ability of a child to respond to vaccines. This would be disastrous considering the number of lives–children’s lives in particular–that vaccines and  vaccinations save.

Consider these facts from the World Health Organization website:

* For the first time in documented history, the number of children dying every year has fallen below ten million–partly the result of improved access to immunization, integrated delivery of essential health interventions, as well as clean water and sanitation.

* Immunization prevents an estimated 2.5 million child deaths every year in all age groups from diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), and measles. It is one of the most successful and cost-effective public health interventions.

* Vaccination against vaccine-preventable diseases is essential to reaching the Millennium Development Goal 4 on reducing under-five mortality by two thirds by 2015.

Now imagine if toxic pollution is slowly undermining the effects of vaccines and vaccinations? Of course I am jumping the gun a little but this summary, Environmental Contaminants and the Immune System, is just another important reminder of the effects of toxic pollution, which reaches much farther and wider than you think, plaguing millions in the developing world.

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Pollution, Poverty and the I.Q. Connection

Feb 3

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Does pollution plague a country because it is poor? Or does pollution make a country poor?

While the case for the former can be easily made — poorer nations have less resources for cleanup and regulations; the case for the latter is often ignored. But the fact is, pollution destroys economies, triggering an endless cycle of poverty.

Here is a vivid example of how this happens:

Under normal circumstances, in a population of 100 million, if average IQ is 100, there are 6 million gifted people (IQ above 130) who can be expected to drive the economy forward, and 6 million cognitively impaired (IQ below 70) who will likely depend on social or government welfare.

If the average IQ in that population is driven down 5 points to 95 as a consequence of widespread exposure to lead, the number of gifted individuals falls by more than half to 2.4 million, while the number of cognitively disabled persons rises to 9.4 million.  This decimates the future leadership of entire countries and further increases disparities between rich and poor nations.

It is a little ironic but the growing worldwide focus on global warming issues and the environment has, in a way, made the problem of toxic pollution more widespread.  All the increased scrutiny on industry has given rise to a sad legacy in many developing countries — legacy pollution, which refers to pollution left behind when a factory is closed or abandoned, or if the polluter has gone bankrupt.  At many of these “orphaned” sites, the pollution…and the population remain.  Here, people are routinely exposed to levels of toxins simply unacceptable in the West.

So what’s the lesson? Toxic pollution does more than just cripple and kill.  It traps and engulfs.

Here’s a one-page summary, The Effects of Toxic Pollution in the Developing World, looking at how health, education, economic development, and the ecology are all affected.

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Back from Mexico – Removing Lead from a Tradition

Jan 28

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Just returned from Mexico with Blacksmith’s globe-trotting program officer Bret Ericson (who’s also the task manager for our global inventory project).  For me, Mexico always brings to mind wonderful, colorful pottery, perhaps because there is a such a strong ceramics tradition there. Unfortunately, this tradition also involves the use of toxic lead-based glazes.  Even though there is now a lead-free alternative glaze that is available and CHEAPER,  it is a hard habit to break for the 50,000 or so Mexican potters. Because it is something so entrenched in their way of life, the potters are, in a way, blinded to the lead poisoning that goes on around them.

About 50,000 ceramics producers in Mexico use toxic lead-based glazes

About 50,000 ceramics producers in Mexico use toxic lead-based glazes

A year ago, we entered into a partnership with Fondo Nacional Para El Fomento De Las Artesanias (FONART), a Mexican government agency that has been working on the problem (see Blacksmith August newsletter). We went back this time to collaborate with FONART and the Mexico Ministry of Environment on a 2-part plan to convince Mexican potters to stop using toxic lead in their ceramics glazes, and then to clean up the contamination.

We decided that to break the habit, we had to show the potters hard data to prove that they and their families are being poisoned. To do this, we are going to test their children to highlight their extremely elevated blood lead levels. Once the potters make the switch to lead-free glazes, we will launch into step 2 — cleaning up the lead contamination in the community.  We also plan to re-test  the children to show the corresponding drop in blood lead levels.  Cause and effect.  That’s the best way to educate and get change to happen.  That’s the way to spread the message from one family-run pottery to the next.

While in Mexico, we also hired a Mexico country coordinator for Blacksmith — Daniel Estrada.  Daniel will oversee the project on the ground.  One of his first tasks will be to train nurses to take blood lead samples from the potters’ children.

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How to Build the World’s First Database of Polluted Sites

Jan 21

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It’s been a good start to the year for us on the funding side. We just received confirmation that we will be getting a $900,000 infusion to complete work on our Global Inventory Project, which is about one-third done (see snapshot in my December 23 post). This new grant will allow us to hire more investigators and pay for equipment, travel and training for them.  It’s a big job — building the Global Inventory – the world’s first comprehensive database of polluted sites with human health impact.  Here is a behind-the-scenes look at what the grant is supporting/what our investigators are doing on the ground in over 60 countries:

Over the past year, we have been training teams of investigators around the world for the Global Inventory Project. These local teams are then dispatched to assess and collect data on polluted sites in their region using the Initial Site Assessment (ISA) protocol and other resources developed by Blacksmith. This ISA protocol involves a visit to the site and a review of key technical and historical information. Our investigators review and collect as much information as possible from all stakeholders, including local NGO’s, businesses, technical agencies, and governments. Samples are taken, where credible test results are not already available, and information collected is related to population and pollutant pathway.  This data is then used to calculate a ranking for the site on the Blacksmith Index, which assigns a number from 1 to 6, with the latter indicating the highest risk to human health from pollution. All site information is inputted into an online database and reviewed by a team of technical experts. Other experts conduct field visits for quality assurance purposes.

Only through this painstaking process will we be able to paint a first clear picture of the scope of life-threatening pollution. You really can’t solve a problem until you know its extent. By next year, our Global Inventory Project will give us just that.

Video of gold miners in Indonesia – Mercury: The Burning Issue

Jan 14

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Amalgam of mercury and gold

Amalgam of mercury and gold

I first blogged about the toxic connection between gold and mercury back in December in my post All That Glitters, when the price of gold reached a record high.  Back then, we asked you to join our December Holiday Challenge and you came through – so far we have raised enough money to buy nearly 3,000 additional mercury-recapture retorts. Thank you. Now I have some video to show you so you can see how those retorts are making a difference.

Watch Mercury: The Burning Issue (Part 1) and Mercury The Burning Issue (Part 2) now.

We have been working with a local NGO in Indonesia to introduce these simple, low-cost retorts that gold miners can use to recapture mercury that is burned off in the gold mining process.  We took our cameras out to the mines in Kalimantan to talk to the miners themselves   One man explained that before the retorts,  “my head feels like it’s about to burst and it gets hard to breathe.” His only wish is for a bigger retort so he can process larger quantities.

Now that the price of gold is still high — I continue to see those ads on television asking you to mail in your gold for cash — it is a good time to stop and think where your gold comes from.  At least a quarter of the world’s total gold supply comes from artisanal gold mining in countries like Indonesia. These are small, very labor intensive operations. Often, men, women and kids work together. To understand what it is like on the ground, this video shows how the miners extract the gold – crushing the ore, mixing it with mercury, then burning the mercury off with a propane torch to recover the gold or adding cyanide to release the mercury.  Either way, mercury leaks into the air and environment, and gets absorbed into the ground, contaminating the water. One village of about 2000 people we visited had more than a dozen gold processing sheds.  The miners there have built their own retort but they are only 60% efficient, meaning 40% of the toxic mercury escapes into the air, poisoning everyone in the village.

Slowly we are  starting to make a difference.

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Save a Life this Holiday Season

Dec 23

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HAPPY HOLIDAYS!  I am taking this shameless opportunity to remind everyone out there that there’s still time to take Blacksmith Institute’s $5 a Day December Holiday Challenge! 

So if you are still wondering what to get that somebody who has everything, why not get them the gift that can be everything for someone.

For the month of December, Blacksmith’s board will double your contribution.  So for the 9 days left in December, your $5 a day will add up to $45, which means that $90 will go towards supporting pollution cleanup. For that amount, you can save 2 lives and have money left over.  That’s because Blacksmith’s pollution cleanup can save a life for as little as $42.

And there are many polluted sites to clean.  We know this because over the past year, we have been building a global inventory of the world’s worst polluted places. The database is 1/3 completed. Here are some numbers behind the project to date:

* 140: the number of Blacksmith investigators currently assessing polluted sites around the world

* 20: the number of coordinating staff on the project

* 12: the number of regional training sessions that have been held around the world linking local investigators with international experts

* 40: the number of countries visited so far

* 60: the number of countries the inventory will cover

* 1,285: the number of polluted sites assessed to date

* 3,000: the number of polluted sites expected to be assessed

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Potty Training Pigs and Other Great Solutions

Dec 14

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I was going to write about Copenhagen and “climategate” today … but then I came across a curious piece of news about potty training pigs! It seems a farmer in Taiwan has trained his pigs to use a litter box, like cats. The result – less pollution resulting in cleaner rivers! I love this simple idea. That’s one farmer thinking outside the box and making a big difference. And that, to me, is the essence of pollution cleanup in much of the developing world today. We are always looking for innovative, cheap methods that can be easily replicated because cost is almost always the biggest factor.

In India, we are using worms to literally “eat” toxins out of polluted soil. In Philippines, we are using a local mineral to absorb pollutants out of industrial waste and sludge that would otherwise pollute rivers and waterways. In Indonesia, we are encourging the use of a simple retort that can be easily built for just $5 to recapture toxic mercury released during the gold mining process. At other sites we are using cow dung and molasses to clean up pollution.

As you can see, we already have a multitude of simple solutions at hand to fight various forms of pollution. All we need is the resources and commitment to implement them.

In Taiwan, authorities are encouraging other pig farmers to follow suit. I am guessing that any resources committed to teaching farmers this pig potty training skill will offer a return much bigger than the investment.

– Richard

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