By Peter Montague
An International Joint Commission (IJC) was created by treaty between the US and Canada in 1909, to resolve problems in the Great Lakes. Since 1972, the IJC has been working aggressively to improve water quality in the lakes, with some success.
Initially the concern was phosphorus, a fertiliser that can degrade water quality by causing excessive growth of algae and other plants, thus depleting the oxygen supply for fish. The IJC — and the two national governments — tackled the phosphorus problem and made considerable progress.
However, in 1978 the IJC began to focus on another, more difficult, problem: persistent toxic chemicals injuring wildlife and humans in and around the Great Lakes.
In their joint Water Quality Agreement of 1978, the US and Canada defined a "toxic substance" as "a substance which can cause death, disease, behavioural abnormalities, cancer, genetic mutations, physiological or reproductive malfunctions or physical deformities in any organism or its offspring, or which can become poisonous after concentration in the food chain or in combination with other substances".
The IJC subsequently adopted a definition of a "persistent toxic substance": any toxic substance that bioaccumulates, or any toxic chemical that has a half-life greater than eight weeks. The "half life" of a substance is the time it takes for half of it to disappear.
A substance bioaccumulates if its concentration increases as it moves through the food chain. For example, DDT may be found at one ppm (part per million) in fish and at 10 ppm in fish-eating birds.
During the period 1988 to 1992, under the leadership of Republican Gordon Durnil, the IJC developed an approach to persistent toxic substances that seemed commensurate with the problem. The commission turned its back on risk assessment and numerical standards, instead calling for the elimination of persistent toxic substances.
In its sixth biennial report in 1992, the IJC wrote: "It is clear to us that persistent toxic substances have caused widespread injury to the environment and to human health. As a society we can no longer afford to tolerate their presence in our environment and in our bodies ... Hence, if a chemical or group of chemicals is persistent, toxic and bioaccumulative, we should immediately begin a process to eliminate it. Since it seems impossible to eliminate discharges of these chemicals through other means, a policy of banning or sunsetting [phasing out] their manufacture, distribution, storage, use and disposal appears to be the only alternative."
In its seventh and eighth biennial reports, the IJC confirmed and deepened its commitment to the elimination of toxic substances as the only way to solve the problems they create.
In July, the IJC released its ninth biennial report and once again reaffirmed its commitment to the elimination of persistent toxic substances from the Great Lakes ecosystem.
The new report says, "The first evidence of injury by persistent toxic substances was reported more than 50 years ago".
It says that progress was made by banning the most obvious offenders, such as DDT and PCBs, but "evidence [has] continued to build of subtle, more insidious injury, especially neurobehavioural injury resulting from endocrine disruption during fetal development ... Among chemicals widely distributed in our environment and reported to have endocrine-disrupting effects are pesticides such as atrazine, alachlor and methoxychlor as well as industrial chemicals such as phthalates, which are used as plasticisers. Among the effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals on fish and wildlife are behavioural abnormality, compromised immune system and sex change ... Thus, despite improvements, society has not yet gone far enough. Contaminant body-burdens remain a concern — injury is still occurring."
The report goes on: "Most disturbing is increasing evidence that persistent toxic substances also injure human beings ...
"The evidence is overwhelming: certain persistent toxic substances impair human intellectual capacity, change behaviour, damage the immune system and compromise reproductive capacity. The people most at risk are children, pregnant women, women of childbearing age and people who rely on fish and wildlife as a major part of their diet. Particularly at risk are developing embryos and nursing infants."
The report goes on, "Injury has occurred in the past, is occurring today and, unless society acts now to further reduce the concentration of persistent toxic substances in the environment, injury will continue in the future". (Emphasis in original.)
The report notes with obvious approval, "In its Sixth Biennial Report, the Commission concluded 'that persistent toxic substances are too dangerous to the biosphere and to humans to permit their release in any quantity'".
And: "The Commission was quiet emphatic that 'zero discharge means just that: halting all inputs from all human sources and pathways and to prevent any opportunity for persistent toxic substances to enter the environment as a result of human activity'".
That is the good news. The IJC is sticking to its principles: persistent toxic substances cannot be managed, but must be eliminated.
But there is bad news in the report as well: industrial corporations, and the governments they largely control, have dug in their heels and have killed progress toward cleaning up the Great Lakes.
The new report says, "Public opinion polls continually show that people support a clean environment, but governments appear to be less receptive and responsive to advice and to the wishes of their citizens regarding the environment. Opposition to further environmental measures — indeed to retaining successes to date — is mounting.
"... programs to restore and protect the Great Lakes have drastically slowed or halted, especially initiatives for Areas of Concern [specific pollution hot spots identified by the IJC in the early 1990s] and those directed toward persistent toxic substances ..."
As a consequence of opposition by corporations and governments, "Energy and interest are flagging. Funding and resource cutbacks for environmental programs and supporting science have a domino effect on the public's sense of empowerment and mood."
The new report goes on, "Recent budget cuts have resulted in wholesale elimination of surveillance and monitoring programs, especially tributary programs in several major watersheds. Consequently, it is impossible to make [pollution] load estimates, even for phosphorus, suspended solids and other contaminants."
Indeed, the new biennial report is all but an admission of defeat: "Despite years of effort to stop inputs, clean up contamination and eliminate the use of chemicals that have long been known to cause injury, all remain widespread in the ecosystem and many continue to be used".
Unfortunately, the new report never clearly states what has gone wrong, even though most people grasp the situation quite well.
Industrial corporations are simply refusing to eliminate persistent toxic substances. Furthermore, elected officials, who are reliant on corporations and corporate elites for campaign contributions, have created agencies, such as the US Environmental Protection Agency, that are enforcing the law less and less while relying more and more on "voluntary compliance". Wink, wink.
Thus, the industrial corporations have succeeded in derailing progress toward cleaning up the Great Lakes, and indeed the larger environments of the US and Canada.
Because environmental advocacy organisations, for the most part, refuse to tackle the power relationships that block environmental progress, environmental progress remains impossible, and the public is (understandably) less and less supportive of an ineffective environmental community.
Until the environmental community decides to focus on the real source of our problems — the unseemly power of corporations over every aspect of our society — and builds coalitions to challenge the raw power of corrupt money, we will get nowhere.
[From Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly. Like Green Left Weekly, Rachel's is a non-profit publication which distributes information without charge on the internet and depends on the generosity of readers to survive. If you are able to help keep this valuable resource in existence, send your contribution to Environmental Research Foundation, PO Box 5036, Annapolis, Maryland 21403-7036, USA. In the United States, donations to ERF are tax deductible.]