Should we worry Mother Earth is trying to kill us before we kill her? Might be. There is information about that possible threat in nearly all reliable print and online newspapers.
Gari Voss has elegantly written well-researched Allegan County News articles about PFAS and other pollutants in the Kalamazoo River. She keeps us informed about what is being done to fix the problem too.
For decades industries poured waste into the river, and some “forever chemicals” are locked into the dirt and muck along banks and in the bottom.
This will become a greater concern when work starts on tearing down the Trowbridge and other dams in a multi-step project. How will engineers prevent toxins from going downstream and into Lake Michigan? Unfortunately, the waterways are just part of the problem.
Microscopic particulates from these forever chemical easily find their way into our water, soil, air and eventually our food. With one simple swallow we can ingest them and they will stay with us till we die.
Physicians and biologists claim in the meantime these chemicals can cause cancer, heart trouble, organ failure and dementia all the faster.
BPA, a form of PFAS, is in most soft drink and beer cans, bottled water, food containers, some canned goods, on store receipts and even in sunglasses.
This nasty little alien contributes to breast and prostate cancer, and male infertility. It is believed to contribute to several forms of cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease.
Studies indicate those who have served in any branch of the military, worked in commercial aviation or live in less affluent and rural communities have ingested even more of these forever chemicals.
Same for many people of color in urban and rural areas. In cities, it’s often because dwellers live in “food deserts” where, with fresh fruit and vegetables less available, people consume more fast food.
We get an additional dose of forever chemicals that shed off from clothes we wear. Plus, almost everything we buy is entombed in plastic heavily laden with PFAS, BPA and other forever chemicals.
The pre-packaged fruits and vegetables, meals on trays made of and wrapped in plastic, milk and juices contained this, microwave popcorn … same thing. Then, when we get to the checkout lane, everything goes into the flimsy, one-use plastic bag. All of it leaches onto our food.
British scientists have found each 2-liter bottle of water or pop you put in those plastic bags has about a quarter-million microscopic nano-particles in them, each waiting to get lodged in your body.
There is double trouble with fast-food meals. Often the food itself contains artificial ingredients not good for human consumption. Then there’s the chemically-laced paper wrapper for the burger and fries, the cup for the soft drink, plus bag itself.
High-processed foods are made with many unpronounceable chemicals and additives. “If you can’t pronounce it,” a friend told me, “you’re probably eating poison.”
We aren’t perfect but are getting better at recycling paper, aluminum and glass. In fact, most of our paper products — especially brown cardboard shipping boxes and newspapers — are collected, processed, and reused many times over.
Pop and beer cans get recycled because we get a dime apiece for them. But plastic? That’s a different story.
For a while industry oligarchs tried to convince us we must do better recycling plastics, including the flimsy carry-out bags. They promised they would take care of things on our behalf. Unfortunately, we believed their story.
When we caught on to the fact no one wanted our thin plastic, we went back to tossing it into our garbage to have hauled away to landfills. Even much of the plastic we contributed to recycling bins ended up in the dump. That plastic will stay there for a few thousand years until it breaks down, but the nano-particles will remain in the environment.
When governments sought an outright ban on thin plastics, the industry doubled down and promised, “We’ll take care of it through recycling. You can trust us.”
It turned out much of the bundled plastic either went to a third-world nation where, instead of being reused, became their problem, or was buried in our landfills. It appears the plastics industry knew from the late 1980s that recycling their thin products was unsustainable.
Other plastic was simply dumped in the ocean. Today parts of the Pacific the size of small states are huge plastic blobs. That means the fish eat them. Sometimes it slowly strangles or starves them to death. as they cannot digest the plastic.
Last year, when a whale washed ashore, the autopsy revealed 30+ pounds of plastic in its digestive system.
As small fish get eaten by larger ones, plastic moves up the food chain. When we eat seafood, we ingest it too. Persons of child-bearing age or nursing pass it on to the next generation, and perhaps the generation after that.
It has taken us a while to get into this mess and may even longer to clean it up. So far we’ve just kicked this plastic pop bottle down the road. Mother Earth is just biding her time before she kicks back.