The Pollution Blog

Solving Pollution Problems, Saving Lives

Posts Tagged developing countries

The Brown Agenda

Sep 9

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Over the past decade or so, the talk surrounding environmental issues has mainly been about being green.  Sometimes referred to as the green agenda, its focus is on sustainability, reducing waste and recycling. While all this is good, the green agenda’s growth – mainly in industrialized, wealthier countries – has, in my view, been at the expense of the brown agenda, which mainly plagues low and middle-income countries.

To put it simply, the brown agenda is about pollution.  It is about toxic waste contaminating the environment and poisoning people.  It is about rapid, loosely regulated industrialization and the legacy of toxic waste left behind, even from factories, mines and other facilities that have been shut down because of excessive pollution.

While the green agenda talks about choice – use less, recycle more – the brown agenda, for those directly affected, is about a lack of options.  Poor communities poisoned by toxic pollution have no where to go, no one to turn to. They cannot afford to move.  They cannot afford to clean up the pollution.  They cannot afford to get treatment.

This sense of helplessness is all too common in many of the world’s worst polluted places, where families live with a life-sentence, just waiting for the clock to run out.

So my point?  Don’t forget the brown agenda while you pursue the green.  The brown agenda is not as pleasant to talk about, not as TV-friendly, and might not affect you directly…now.  But its effects are far-reaching.

This Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2011, I will be talking about “The Brown Agenda: Toxic Waste and the Environment” at an event organized by the American Australian Association.  If you are in New York City, register to join us.

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Toxic Mercury Exposure: Huge Increase in U.S., 500,000 Children At Risk

May 9

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Chronic mercury exposure in the U.S. has risen dramatically, not only in numbers of people affected but also in amounts.

A study by Professor Dan Laks found that mercury was detected in only 2% of the blood samples collected over a seven-year period between 1999-2006, but it was present in 30% of samples taken in the one year between 2005-2006.  Furthermore, mercury levels of blood rose from 0.33 µg/L to 0.39 µg/L over the seven-year period, and seemed to increase with age, offering strong evidence of mercury accumulation in the blood.

Another study from Mahaffey et al. estimates that 300,000-600,000 American children born in 1999-2000 had elevated risks of neruo-developmental disorders with blood organic mercury levels of >5.8 µg/L based on the number of births and adult female blood organic mercury levels.

The Price of Gold

But why the huge increase?

The answer may lie in the rising price of gold.

Small scale gold mining is the biggest source of mercury emissions. The Mercury Watch database estimates that mercury releases from small scale gold mining have increased roughly 30% to 1320 tonnes per year in 2011 due to increased gold mining driven by the high price of gold and high poverty rates in countries where it is practiced (70 countries – see map)

Mercury:  A Global Pollutant

And the thing with mercury is that it is a truly global pollutant because it travels so well. 40% of mercury released by artisanal gold mining goes directly into the atmosphere and circulates around the globe before landing in oceans and rivers, contaminating fisheries worldwide. The remainder (about 600 tonne) goes into local waterways and soils but much of this may later also escape to the atmosphere.  So not only are miners and their families (including some 600,000 child gold miners!) at risk from mercury, but also children and pregnant women half a world away. [Read our earlier post, All That Glitters, for a solution]

Thanks to Blacksmith Technical Advisory Board member Dr. Kelvin Telmer, the executive director of the Artisanal Gold Council, who shared this information with us, and the video below:

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Earth Day in the Developing World

Apr 16

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It has been 40 years since the very first Earth Day. No doubt, things have changed for the better, at least here in the U.S. Our environment is much cleaner, and life-threatening pollution of the kind brought to light by Erin Brockovich (chromium-contaminated water) are few and far between. Instead, much of the talk these days about the environment in this country focuses on carbon emissions and long-term goals. It has taken us 40 years to get to this point. But in the developing world, it is still Day 1 in the fight for a cleaner environment.

In poor countries across the globe, the environment is still being used and abused, pushed to the limits by economic pressures as countries play catch up in the global marketplace. The trade-off? Polluted air, water and land, and a global public health crisis that is affecting millions in the developing world. While we cannot expect emerging economies to abandon their economic needs for a cleaner environment, we can help them in a number of ways, most notably by offering filtering technologies to curb pollution, and to clean up what’s already been dumped into the environment. It took us 40 years to learn to do this. Now we can pass the know-how along.

This Earth Day, what is life like in the developing world? This special Earth Day video–”The Story of Lead”–takes you through four countries to show you what is being done about lead pollution–one of the world’s worst pollution problems.

In Haina in the Dominican Republic, many children show signs of lead poisoning.

In Rudnaya Pristan in Eastern Russia, lead is prevalent and many have a casual attitude about the toxin. Our coordinator in Russia recalls staff of a local hospital telling him: “Lead poisoning? Nothing serious! We sometimes operate on people with AIDS without gloves.”

In Senegal, lead in the ground, water and air killed 15 children in 2008 and more are at risk.

In Mexico, a Blacksmith team member recalls finding a pot of food contaminated with lead, but being unable to persuade the family to throw it away. Sometimes, filling empty bellies take precedence.

As we celebrate 40 years of Earth Day, let’s remember that in some places, it is still just Day 1.

Interested in being a part of our Earth Day 2010 campaign?

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Better Living Through Green Chemistry

Apr 1

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Finally the drumbeat is getting louder on the issue of environmental toxins and I say it is about time.

Last month, NYT’s Nicholas Kristof wrote an op-ed on the link between autism (and other diseases) and environmental toxins.  Now, Time magazine has a great piece on Environmental Toxins — The Perils of Plastic.

Blacksmith Technical Advisory Board member Dr. Philip Landrigan was quoted in the Time piece saying, “We don’t give environmental exposure the attention it deserves… But there’s an emerging understanding that kids are uniquely susceptible to environmental hazards.”

This is an issue that Blacksmith knows full well.  We see it first hand in our cleanups around the world. While the threat of toxins here are “invisible,” hidden in products like plastics, perfumes, etc., in the developing world it attacks in its rawest form. Chemicals are dumped into rivers and spew from factories.

As scientists learn more about what small doses can do to the human body, the jury is already out on what large doses do.  They poison.  And that is what is happening today in the developing world.

The solution, the Time piece says, may well be Green chemistry, “in which chemicals are designed in a way that minimizes hazardous risk from the start.”

That would be a good start.  But until we have green chemistry, the answer in the developing world is toxic cleanup.

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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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