If You Love This Planet, Dr. Helen Caldicott

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Founder of environmental non-profit research group Earth Policy Institute as well as the Worldwatch Institute, Lester Brown has been describes by the Washington Post as “one of the world’s most influential thinkers.” In this interview with Dr. Caldicott, he talks about the rise of failed states around the world, how the price of grain will in the future be linked to the price of oil, and the danger posed to civilisation if food shortages and hunger continue to increase.

Brown’s recent book titled Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization is published by W.W. Norton. Read A Conversation with Lester Brown in the summer 2009 issue of Earth Island Journal. Read Brown’s article in the May 2009 Scientific American, Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civiliza-tion?

Longer show description coming soon.

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This week’s guest, Dr. Bryan Brooks, is an Associate Professor of Environmental Science at Baylor University in Texas. He has given over
60 invited presentations and lectures in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Poland, Portugal and Australia on the water quality dynamics of rapidly urbanizing regions. Dr Brooks is particularly interested in contaminants like pharma-ceuticals, personal care products and endocrine active substances, and the way in which these chemicals - as well as the excretion of medical drugs - affect the ecosystem and marine environment in which they end up. Read Baylor Begins First National Study On Pharmaceutical Contaminants, Personal Care Products in Fish Tissue.

In this interview, Dr. Brooks starts off by defining the term “PPCP” (pharmaceuticals and personal care products) as first used in the Journal of Environmental Health Perspectives. These PPCPs are entering the wastewater stream as consumers excrete or throw away drugs, and as they use shampoos, detergents and other body care goods that are washed down the drain. See the EPA’s Pharma-ceuticals and Personal Care Products as Pollutants (PPCPs) page.

Dr. Brooks is asked which surfactants or soaps are having adverse effects on aquatic life. Dr. Caldicott brings up the topic of antimicrobial soaps and other anti-germ agents, and what she calls an obsessive drive to sell people products that over-sterilize bathrooms and kitchens, when in fact we must live with some bacteria to develop our resistance. Read Cleaning Up Antimicrobial Hand Soaps and Warning: Toxic Chemical Triclosan Can Turn Your Toothpaste or Bathroom Soap into Chloroform about the negative aspects of these cleansers.

Dr. Brooks says scientists are assessing if current approaches to assess the environmental impact of PPCPs and hormone-disrupting chemicals are stringent enough & have the right design. He refers to the effects of water pollutants on alligator sexual development. Read the PBS Frontline Fooling with Nature feature, “Teeny Weenies.” Dr. Brooks also mentions the study by John Sumpter, Feminized responses in fish to environmental estrogens.

Dr. Caldicott refers to recent medical literature about more boys being born with smaller-than-normal or malformed penises, and she says we are definitely seeing the results of unstudied chemicals entering the environment. Read It’s official: Men really are the weaker sex: Evolution is being distorted by pollution, which damages genitals and the ability to father offspring, says new study.

The program discusses antibiotics in animals, and the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, before Dr. Caldicott asks Dr. Brooks to explain his findings on antidepressants and other pharma-ceutical drugs which are ending up in rivers (and other studies find, in tap water). Dr. Brooks says he found Prozac and Zoloft in fish. He describes how fish affected by antidepressants lose their ability to catch prey. Read Study: Pharma-ceuticals Found in North Texas Fish: Human drugs show up in fish caught near wastewater treatment plants about one of Dr. Brooks’s studies.

Dr. Brooks says the notion of mixtures is part of our lives with the advent of chemicals, and the challenge for scientists is to find the consequences in aquatic life of mixtures of drugs excreted or thrown by humans. Read the full text of Effects and Interactions in an Environmentally Relevant Mixture of Pharmaceuticals which describes a study of drug combinations similar to those combinations entering the water supply on the health of fish. Dr. Caldicott emphasizes that the EPA must become more involved in investigating the chemical cocktail humans and other creatures are forced to live in now.

To read more on the topics in this week’s program, see Endocrine Disruption Found in Fish Exposed to Municipal Wastewater and Cancer Drugs Found in Tap Water and Fish in U.S. Rivers Tainted With Common Medications and AP: Drugs found in drinking water and Benadryl, Antidepressants Found Tainting US Rivers
and Earthwatch – drugs in the water and Tests for drugs in tap water and How Drugs Can Contaminate Drinking Water.

Read Dr. Brooks’s paper, Ecotoxicological Investigations In Effluent-Dominated Stream Mesocosms (161 pages, 2002) and read an abstract of Dr. Brooks’s 2005 study Determination Of Select Antidepressants In Fish From An Effluent-Dominated Stream.

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This week, Dr. Caldicott continues her exploration of the “plastic plague” that is seriously harming ocean life and increasingly linked to numerous human health problems. Her guest Dr. Richard Thompson is a Senior Lecturer and Reader in Marine Ecology at the University of Plymouth in the UK. He is a leading scientist on the subject of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) binding to ocean plastic debris. His research, some of which he discusses in this interview, focuses on three main topics: the effects of plastic trash in the marine environment, the ecology and conservation of shallow-water habitats, and habitat modification to enhance biodiversity of marine engineering such as coastal defenses and off-shore renewable energy devices.

Dr. Caldicott asks Dr. Thompson to talk about what plastic debris in the oceans is doing to the marine food chain at the macro and micro level, and he starts off by pointing out the enormous increase in plastic production. He mentions the shocking fact that in the first nine or 10 years of the 21st Century (in other words, from 2000 through 2010), the world will have produced more plastic than in all of the 20th Century. And nearly all that new plastic will stay in existence for a very long time. In the oceans, he says, plastic items dating to World War II have been found perfectly intact.

As discussed in Dr. Caldicott’s recent interview with Captain Charles Moore, plastic particles of all sizes can harm sea organisms. The ocean plastic may disintegrate into smaller fragments, but it continues to be harmful to sea life, and does not disappear. Dr. Thompson’s laboratory has studied recovered plastic particles as small as half the diameter of a human hair in the seas and in the creatures that live there. Read more about
Dr. Thompson’s and Captain Moore’s pioneering research in the article, Polymers Are Forever: Alarming Tales Of A Most Prevalent And Problematic Substance, an excerpt from Alan Weisman’s book The World Without Us.

Dr. Caldicott asks Dr. Thompson to explain what she understands to be the five major categories of plastic, and he describes the different polymers.
Dr. Thompson argues that there are many societal benefits of plastic (in hospitals or schools, for example). He contends that how industry wastefully uses plastic to create packaging, and then fails to recycle most plastic, is the essential problem, not plastics themselves. Read Plastic. Fantastic? Can we learn to live with (and even love) plastic? Dr. Thompson says he believes the pace of industrialization and how goods are transported globally today would make it nearly impossible to eliminate plastic.

Dr. Caldicott questions if plastic is really necessary. She asks if we should abandon plastic in favor of re-usable items like glass beverage bottles. Perhaps only 2% of plastics are recycled now, and recycled plastic is presently used for a limited number of products. Dr. Caldicott talks about the amount of electricity and fossil fuel that would be required to recycle more plastic (vs. making products that can be reused virtually forever). Many people are attempting to remove plastic from their lives, and they describe their experiences in blogs. Read the articles Get Plastic Out Of Your Diet (If Your Food Or Drink Is In Plastic, The Plastic Is In You) and Alternatives to Plastic.

Dr. Thompson says that industry must consider how all products impact the environment, “cradle to cradle.” The book entitled Cradle to Cradle, mentioned by Capt. Moore, advocates redesigning everything with sustainability in mind. Dr. Thompson provides one solution to the problem of excess packaging. He notes how the United Kingdom is now requiring all food products with salt to rate the amount of salt with red, amber or green dots. He says a color rating system should also be used to rate the amount of packaging – minimal to excessive, which would force manufacturers to reduce excess packaging. Up to 60% of plastic, according to some figures, is packaging that is discarded. Americans produce about 250 pounds of plastic garbage per person, per year. Both re-use and recycling can be very successful, as exemplified by Germany, where among other practices, consumers return packaging to stores and manufacturers must take it back and recycle it. Read more about Germany’s policies here and here.

One topic not addressed on this program, which would factor into the future of plastic, is peak oil. If petroleum is no longer available or severely restricted, the majority of plastic materials as we know them today would be impossible to produce. Listen to Dr. Caldicott’s interview with Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute on the topic of peak oil (and peak coal).

This episode also does not investigate bioplastics made from corn, soy, hemp, etc., and whether plant plastics are the correct solution to the plastic problem. Capt. Moore stated that plant plastics often do not biodegrade as advertised without being sent to special facilities which break them down. Plant plastics also play into the notion of disposability instead of re-use, and do not not alleviate the problem of people littering. Growing corn and other crops solely for plant plastic (or for biofuels) would displace land used for food production. While plant plastics would not have nearly the toxicity of oil-based plastic, they could still become debris that harms marine and land creatures. Read more about bioplastic in this Wikipedia article. Read about the bioplastic on the horizon in Biodegradable plastic made from plants, not oil, is emerging and A Turn to Alternative Chemicals and Coca-Cola Introduces Plant-Based Plastic Bottle [a bottle which is still 60-75% petroleum] and Scientists unveil plastic plants [genetically-engineered plants that actually “grow plastic”].

Dr. Caldicott moves the conversation with Dr. Thompson into the issue of toxicity of plastic, and the prevalence of the toxic chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) as discussed in her recent interview with Dr. Maricel Maffini. She refers to the recent Harvard University study that found that students who drank water out of plastic bottles had 70% more BPA in their urine than students in a control group who did not. Read Use of plastic bottles increases BPA in study. She mentions one of the highly toxic industrial corridors in New Jersey where plastic is made. Read about some of the pollutants released in the production of plastic in Plastic at your peril: The environmental and health costs of plastic.

Dr. Thompson talks about research studies finding minute particles of plastic in many consumer products like skin cleansers. If we are constantly flushing pieces of plastic into the water supply, he says, these microplastics are likely to harm many life forms. Do pets have plastic in them? Read about the findings of the Environmental Working Group’s study, Polluted Pets: High Levels of Toxic Industrial Chemicals Contaminate Cats And Dogs.

Dr. Thompson says the tiny plastic pre-production pellets or “nurdles” are becoming ubiquitous in the marine environment and in storm drains and rivers. He says that 95% of one seabird species has plastic in it. Nurdles now comprise 11 percent of beach litter.
Dr. Thompson discusses his findings about plastic on beaches throughout the world, and the increasing abundance of plastic fragments. One of Dr. Thompson’s studies showed that, in his words, “small plastic particles translocate to the circulatory system of the common mussel Mytilus edulis.” Read an abstract of Ingested Microscopic Plastic Translocates to the Circulatory System of the Mussel, Mytilus edulis (L.). Dr. Caldicott says she was fascinated to read how plastic particles can migrate throughout an organism, which she says could have major ramifications for animals and humans as plastic contaminants bio-concentrate in the food chain, and fish and other marine life become increasing polluted with plastic (and mercury, flame retardants, etc.).

Dr. Thompson explains how plastic polymers absorb carcinogenic and estrogenic mimickers from sea water, and which of these hydrophobic chemicals the plastic tends to absorb. He continues to study which chemicals are being absorbed, and which creatures are ingesting the most contaminated plastic. Dr. Thompson refers to the work of Dr. Hideshige Takada who is mapping the location of plastic pellets found worldwide, and which chemicals are binding to the nurdles. See more information on the International Pellet Watch website. Dr. Thompson says he is finding plastic particles everywhere in the world.

For more on Dr. Thompson’s research, read his 2004 article on microplastic, Lost at Sea – Where is All the Plastic? Read more on this study in Rising tide of micro-plastics plaguing the seas. Also read Potential for Plastics to Transport Hydrophobic Contaminants, another study by
Dr. Thompson.

For further information on this week’s topic, have a look at the following articles: Why Small Plastic Particles May Pose a Big Problem in the Oceans and Oceans Awash With Microscopic Plastic, Scientists Say and Warning on plastic’s toxic threat and Plastics ‘poisoning world’s seas’ and How to Help Prevent Birds and Sea Life from Dying. Learn about the new 85-minute documentary film, Addicted to Plastic : The Rise and Demise of a Modern Miracle, and watch the two-minute trailer here. And visit the website of Plastic Debris-Rivers to Sea, a project of Capt. Moore’s Algalita Marine Research Foundation and the California Coastal Commission.

This week’s interview with Dr. Richard Thompson is a vital use of your time to learn even more about the multifaceted problem of plastic.

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Do Pentagon nuclear-war planners really take into account the destruction nuclear weapons would unleash? This week’s guest, Lynn Eden, has found that the devastating and far-reaching fire damage that would result from use of nuclear weapons is not considered by the U.S. military, which only pays attention to the more limited blast damage. Eden is the acting co-director (2008-09) of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, where she is a senior research scholar. She is a co-chair of Pugwash USA. Her focus is on foreign and military policy, and science and technology in the nuclear realm. This program discusses Eden’s most recent book, Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge and Nuclear Weapons Devastation, which won the American Sociological Association’s 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book on science, knowledge and technology.

Dr. Caldicott has Eden expound upon the history and the more dysfunctional aspects of U.S. war planning and nuclear weapons targeting. Edens describes how much more destructive any nuclear blast on a U.S. (or Russian) city would be when firestorms are taken into account. Many U.S. and Russian cities have over 40 weapons targeted on them, a case of extreme “overkill”. This episode also looks at the Pentagon’s use of language regarding nuclear war casualties and the concept of “deterrence;” the number of U.S. and Russian weapons on alert and in storage; and the “football” that U.S. and Russian presidents would have to activate to launch nuclear weapons. Read Obama Gets Nuclear “Football”. Read more about the U.S. football here and see close-up photos here. Read about the Russian football or “cheget,” and how U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons-launch protocols differ in Changing the Nuclear Command.

The horrific damage that nuclear weapons can unleash, as explained in this episode, is well represented in Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors’ accounts in the Emmy-Award-winning 2007 documentary White Light Black Rain, now available on DVD. Dr. Caldicott and Eden explore how present-day nuclear weapons are much more powerful than those used on Japan. Our host refers to an article she co-wrote with former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Still on Catastrophe’s Edge: In a flash, U.S. and Russia could hurl thousands of missiles at each other, which notes the redundancy of cities nuclear targeters select to bomb. Watch a still-relevant 2003 lecture by Dr. Caldicott at the Goldman School of Public Policy, U.C. Berkeley in which she covers the present nuclear alert situation, the medical effects of nuclear war, and other nuclear weapons topics.

Today, U.S.-Russian relations are on the mend, and President Obama has declared his commitment to eliminate all nuclear weapons (though he has absolved himself of some responsibility by saying total disarmament may not be achieved in his lifetime). However, for now the possibility of global nuclear war between the superpowers, by computer or human accident or by design, is still a real possibility at every moment. Read about just a few of the known False Alarms on the Nuclear Front. Nuclear weapons could also be launched by the smaller nuclear states, which would create a regional catastrophe and exacerbate global warming, as described in
Dr. Caldicott’s interview last year with Professor Alan Robock.

Eden describes how her research on the fire damage of nuclear war enabled her to discover a great deal about how organizations make decisions and solve problems, often with pronounced blind spots and tunnel-vision thinking. Dr. Caldicott notes that as the work of U.S. and Russian nuclear-war planners involves the very real possibility of global annihilation, what they do in secret and how they think “affects every person on earth. They are determining our future.” Don’t miss this episode to learn more about the still-urgent issue of preventing nuclear war.

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How can we halt the pollution of our oceans with plastic garbage? And how can we stop the production of plastics which are contaminating not only the seas but also our bodies? In this fascinating episode, Dr. Caldicott speaks with Captain Charles Moore, who founded the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in 1994. In 1995, Moore launched his purpose-designed, aluminum-hulled research vessel, Alguita, in Hobart, Tasmania. On his return voyage from a yacht race in 1997, Moore veered from the usual sea route and saw an ocean he had never known. “There were shampoo caps and soap bottles and plastic bags and fishing floats as far as I could see. Here I was in the middle of the ocean, and there was nowhere I could go to avoid the plastic.” Ever since discovering this enormous plastic oceanic gyre the size of Africa, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Moore has dedicated his time and resources to understanding and remediating the ocean’s plastic load. This program addresses the enormous problem of plastic in the ocean, and also expands on the issue of how chemicals used to make plastic are damaging the human body, a topic first discussed in our recent program with Dr. Maricel Maffini.

Capt. Moore, an ocean researcher, sea captain, racing sailor and surfer, describes how the floating plastic debris is damaging and killing many life forms, and is now found on one-quarter of the planet’s surface area, a total of 10 million square miles of ocean plastic litter. Moore has written about plastic particulate pollution for scientific journals and has developed protocols for monitoring beach and plastic pollution. See his articles A Comparison of Plastic and Plankton in the North Pacific Central Gyre and A Comparison of Neustonic Plastic and Zooplankton Abundance in Southern California’s Coastal Waters.

After Moore tells how he first came upon the vortex, he talks about how the ocean circulates the plastic trash, which now covers 10 million square miles. See this graphic of the approximate location of the trash vortex, and how deep underwater the trash goes. In 2006, the UN Environment Program figured that each square mile of ocean includes 46,000 pieces of floating plastic. Moore stated in another interview that “Except for the small amount that’s been incinerated – and it’s a very small amount – every bit of plastic ever made still exists.” See this chart showing how plastic production is growing at alarming rates. In this program, you will learn how plastic in the ocean never disappears, and that even when it breaks down into tiny particles, it is still extremely destructive. Moore describes how fish, birds and other marine life are killed by the plastic debris.

Moore informs Dr. Caldicott where the litter originates on land. He describes how sea traffic is increasing by leaps and bounds, increasing the stress on the oceans. Globalization, competition and consumerism are vastly and exponentially increasing the amount of plastic worldwide. Dr. Caldicott asks Moore about the carbon footprint of ships. See the press release EPA Urged to Reduce Global Warming Pollution from Ships and read Oceana’s report Shipping Impacts on Climate: A Source with Solutions. Capt. Moore talks about the unenforced treaty to halt marine pollution, and the outlook for the future of the oceans. No subsequent generation will swim in the ocean without encountering plastic, Moore says.

Moore mentions how plastic absorbs huge quantities of other oil-based chemicals. He describes the plastic pellets called nurdles which absorb up to 1,000,000 times their weight in pollutants, attracting chemicals such as DDT and hydrocarbons, and becoming part of the food chain. Moore refers to the work of Dr. Hideshige Takada of Tokyo University, author of the study Plastic Resin Pellets as a Transport Medium of Toxic Chemicals in the Marine Environment. Takada is now mapping the location of beached plastic pellets from oceans around the world through his group International Pellet Watch. See the diagram of how plastic pellets are transported and ingested by sea creatures. Moore describes how a plastic spill in the ocean is far more catastrophic than an oil spill. See Plastics ‘poisoning world’s seas’.

Moore refers to the book Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, and says we have to rethink how everything is designed if we are ever to stop damaging our planet with toxic chemicals and disposable products. Dr. Caldicott says that as with nuclear waste, the only sane solution to the plastic problem is to stop making it. Recycling is not a viable solution. Read Plastics: Your Formidable Enemy - Questioning exposure, recycling, biodegradability, alternatives which also talks about ocean plastic and the human health aspects of plastic.

This program does not explore whether efforts should be made to remove and recycle the ocean plastic, and whether such capture-and-recycling efforts would further harm ocean life. To read more about the pros and cons of the recycling idea, see the articles Feds want to survey, possibly clean up vast garbage pit in Pacific and Mission to Break up Pacific Island of Rubbish Twice the Size of Texas and So we’ve got this trash-filled gyre, right? Can we fix it? and Media Catches the Boat to Pacific Garbage Patch and Ocean garbage mess and possible solutions and Can’t we just scoop up the trash? Eliminating the use of plastic bags can definitely reduce the ocean plastic problem. Read about one determined anti-plastic activist in A Woman, a Village and a War on Plastic Bags.

Why do people litter? Eighty percent of the ocean plastic originates on land (some of which occurs when nurdle pellets are spilled off trucks, but much of the trash starts with individuals littering). Read a U.S. study of littering behavior in Southern states and an Australian study about how to prevent littering. Also see this Litter Facts page.

Later in the show, Dr. Caldicott and Capt. Moore talk about phthalates, bisphenol-A and other toxic components in plastic, and how these chemicals are damaging human health from the womb to old age, disrupting hormone function and causing disease. See a handy table of plastics and their health effects, and visit the website Our Stolen Future for the latest on endocrine disruption research.

Moore describes how plastic is not inert, and releases chemicals at every stage. Moore mentions the work of Dr. Frederick vom Saal who contends that bisphenol-A is responsible for the epidemic of diabetes and obesity. See Diabetes and Obesity are Related to Plastics in Food and Beverage Containers. Also see An extensive new literature concerning low-dose effects of bisphenol A shows the need for a new risk assessment.

Americans go through 5 million disposable polyethylene bottles a day, Moore notes. Read the May 25 article Elevated BPA levels in people drinking out of plastic bottles, study finds which describes a 70% increase in bisphenol-A in urine among those drinking from plastic bottles. Read the study here. Moore says that Americans now have 100 -200 chemicals in their body – a large “body burden” of toxins that were unknown to science before the 1950’s. He says we have a huge challenge ahead of us to rid ourselves of these contaminants, especially when faced with a “growth economy.” Bioplastics (from corn, soy, potato, etc.) present their own problems as described in Rejecting the toxic plague: War on plastic.

In the oceans, Moore says, the ratio of plastic to plankton is increasing, and now averages a whopping 46 to 1. The plastic debris is creating oceanic deserts with very little plankton, and plankton is also being reduced by global warming. Plankton is the building block of all ocean life. See Decline in oceans’ phytoplankton alarms scientists: Experts pondering whether reduction of marine plant life is linked to warming of the seas and Warmer Seas Will Wipe Out Plankton, Source of Ocean Life.

For more on the big picture on the world’s oceans, read Altered Oceans, a five-part Los Angeles Times series which includes the article, Plague of Plastic Chokes the Seas. To learn about the threat of overfishing, see the report Hungry Oceans: What Happens When the Prey is Gone?. Also read about the study, Ocean acidification impairs olfactory discrimination and homing ability of a marine fish and the report Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. And read the article Anthropogenic carbon and ocean pH: The coming centuries may see more ocean acidification than the past 300 million years. And visit the Web site of the Ocean Acidification Network. Climate change is also bringing a jellyfish plague. Read Beautiful, but Deadly: Jellyfish Blooms Appear to be on the Rise. Is Global Warming Causing an Ocean Swarming?.

For more on the problem of ocean plastic, see the Greenpeace report Plastic Debris in the World’s Oceans and the new Sierra magazine article Message in a Bottle. Also read Our Oceans Are Turning Into Plastic…Are We? and Why plastic is the scourge of sea life and The world’s rubbish dump: a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan. Visit Greenpeace’s Disposal Oceans? page. Watch videos about ocean plastic on the Plastic Soup website. For more about the work of Captain Charles Moore, read Conversation: Captain Charles Moore Talks Trash and Plastic Soup: Where Trash Lives Forever. Watch Moore’s 7-minute presentation at the 2009 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference, “Capt. Charles Moore on the seas of plastic.”

As Dr. Caldicott states on this episode, we must become scientifically literate to lead the planet toward survival. Be sure to listen to this program to inform yourself.

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This week’s guest,
Maude Barlow, is a Canadian author and activist. Holding seven honorary doctorates, she is the national chairperson of
The Council of Canadians, a progressive citizens’ advocacy organization with members and chapters across Canada. In October 2008, she was named Senior Advisor on Water Issues by the President of
the 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann. Barlow founded the Blue Planet Project “to protect the world’s fresh water from the growing threats of trade and privatization”. She is the author of 16 books including her latest title Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water as well as Blue Gold: The Battle Against Corporate Theft of the World’s Water. In 2005, she won the Right Livelihood Award (the alternative Nobel Prize).

In this interview, Barlow discusses with
Dr. Caldicott the water crisis and mismanagement occurring in different parts of the world, particularly the fights in both the Third World and the First World against the privatization of water by large corporations. Barlow’s activism is focused on establishing the right to water as a basic human right in all societies, which she says all nation-states and the United Nations should mandate. She spoke in March at the Fifth World Water Forum, the proceedings of which can be accessed here. Read Blue Planet’s Preliminary Submission to the United Nations Human Rights Council RE: Decision 2/104: Human Rights and Access to Water. Also see A UN Convention on the Right to Water: An Idea Whose Time Has Come.

Barlow explains how the world is running out of fresh water, and how we are creating deserts in many parts of the world because of the way we exploit the land and waste and pollute the water. She underlines that two billion people live in water-stressed areas. The poor do not have access to safe water, and Barlow describes how every 8 seconds, a child dies of a water-borne disease. Dirty water kills more children annually than AIDS and accidents combined. Groups like Global Water are working to create safe water supplies and sanitation in the developing world. For more on the big picture around water, see the reports World Water Development Report: Water in a Changing World and Climate Change and Water. Also read the article River systems worldwide are losing water due to global warming.

Dr. Caldicott asks Barlow to comment on global warming and overpopulation, before they move on to talk about the enormous impact of water privatization. Dr. Caldicott says she is “shocked to my back teeth” that corporations would move into countries, buy the water supplies and then expect people to buy the water back. Barlow talks about the brutal battles around the world against companies such as the French transnational Suez Environment, which tried to privatize Argentina’s water, and how citizens have been victorious in some of these fights to protect their access to water. The U.S. firm Bechtel attempted to privatize the water in Bolivia as outlined in Bechtel vs. Bolivia: The People Win An International Trade Battle. Also see the report Bechtel’s Dry Run: Iraqis Suffer Water Crisis about how profit is the only motive Bechtel has for controlling Iraq’s water. In the U.S., Atlanta abandoned water privatization as described in No Silver Bullet: Water Privatization in Atlanta, Georgia – a Cautionary Tale. The World Bank, as well as Kofi Annan of the United Nations, to their discredit, have advocated water privatization.

For more background, see Public Citizen’s Water for All Campaign Web site and their pages Water Privatization Overview and ABCs of Water Privatization. Also see the report Water Privatization Fiascos: Broken Promises and Social Turmoil and read the article Is the Water Privatization Trend Ending? Water privatization also results in job loss. Read the May 20 press release, New Food & Water Watch Study Reveals Privatized Water Systems Result in Job Losses and read the study here.

Barlow and Dr. Caldicott mention bottled water. Making the disposable bottles, and transporting them, requires a great deal of energy (which contributes to global warming). Their production also generates toxic waste. Discarded bottles may become part of ocean plastic gyres. Barlow says that several municipalities in Canada are banning bottled water. As discussed on last week’s interview with biologist Maricel Maffini, many plastic water bottles contain potent hormone disruptors and carcinogens.

See Dr. Peter Gleick’s blog about water issues, including entries on potential water wars, the amount of plastic bottles we use, conserving water, water to grow beef, etc. Dr. Gleick is the president of the Pacific Institute, which focuses much attention on water and sustainability.

Rainwater collection, Dr. Caldicott and Barlow agree, is an essential component of water conservation. HarvestH2O.com, “The online rainwater harvesting community,” is devoted to education around this issue. See the May 7 article Harvesting the Rain: An Old Idea Takes on New Life. Rainwater may contain some pollutants but not pharmaceuticals. See Drugs found in drinking water. Barlow notes that some societies, such as rural India, are following centuries-old traditions of water conservation and should serve as role models for the more industrialized world which sees water as an unlimited resource. Since the 1950’s, Barlow says, the human population has increased three-fold, but our water use has increased seven-fold. As societies become more “sophisticated” and industrialized, and emulate the consumer-driven culture of the U.S., they use much more water.

The water crisis today also involves the world’s oceans, and Barlow recommends the new book, Sea Sick, by Alanna Mitchell. She says we must stop thinking of the oceans as a giant waste dump. Barlow explains in depth why desalination is mostly a bad idea, and why more energy-saving and sustainable practices should be put into place to conserve water.

Barlow lays down the five principles of water use and conservation that must be implemented around the world. All the solutions to the water crisis must follow these guidelines. She quotes Martin Luther King Jr. who said that “legislation may not change the heart but it will restrain the heartless.” Read the June 3 article Another Water World Is Possible: Managing World Water which links to Barlow’s 10 recommended foundations for a well-managed water commons. Read the new report written by Barlow, Our Water Commons, Towards a New Freshwater Narrative.

Providing inspiration, Barlow explains how we can restore ecoystems, and actually bring back rain and fresh water. She and Dr. Caldicott agree on the importance of trees in mitigating climate change. How we handle the water crisis, Barlow says, is crucial in dealing with global warming. She says “we must put water and nature in the center. Everything we have and are is from nature, and if we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves.”

* * * *

The last third of today’s episode is an excerpt from a lecture given by
Dr. Caldicott in April 2009 at Middlebury College, Vermont, in which she talks about the medical effects of nuclear radiation. In explaining the looming threat posed by nuclear power plants such as Vermont Yankee, she says that most politicians are scientifically illiterate. They do not comprehend the effects of radiation or the causes of global warming. For example, many elected officials think increasing CO2 from the present 387 parts per million (which many scientists says is already beyong the tipping point toward catastrophic climate change) to 550 PPM is acceptable, but in reality such an increase would surely doom the planet. The group Safe Power Vermont wants to shut down Vermont Yankee. In 2007, one of the plant’s cooling towers, supported by rotting wood, collapsed, and water that should be cooling the reactor core spewed out of the broken plant (see photo by anonymous photographer below). Read the May 14 news article, Residents Forceful: Shut Yankee Nuclear Plant Down.

Dr. Caldicott teaches the audience what would happen if Vermont Yankee, near the Massachusetts border, or the Indian Point reactor, 30 miles from New York City, were to melt down, inducing widespread pandemonium, radiation sickness, and death. She mentions a 2004 report, Chernobyl on the Hudson? The Health And Economic Impacts Of A Terrorist Attack At The Indian Point Nuclear Plant, essential reading about a hypothetical meltdown. If the San Onofre plant, north of San Diego, were to melt down, the same dire effects would engulf much of Southern California. As indicated by this aerial photo, San Onofre could easily be flooded and damaged by the projected 30-foot sea level rise from global warming which could spell disaster for all coastal nuclear plants. A meltdown at any of the 100-odd U.S. nuclear reactors could impact millions of people. This speech also reveals what happened to the 600,000 soldiers who were brought in to clean up after the Chernobyl accident, and Dr. Caldicott explains what percentage of Europe is still radioactive, as suggested by this map showing cesium distribution. See How Chernobyl Could Happen Here about the danger of a U.S. plant accident. She gives examples of how a terrorist or other saboteur could easily melt down a nuclear power plant. And plutonium can be stolen from the plants to make nuclear weapons - read about how a New Generation of Nuclear Power Stations ‘Risk Terrorist Anarchy’. Dr. Caldicott makes it clear how atomic energy plants are really “nuclear bombs” in our midst as they could be intentionally melted down to kill hundreds of thousands of people, “cancer factories” because of the cancers caused by both routine radiation releases and accidents, and “bomb factories” since the material processed in the plants is used to make nuclear weapons.

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Dr. Maricel Maffini is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Cellular Biology at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. Her research interests are in the field of carcinogenesis and developmental biology, and she has made a number of important observations in the field of breast cancer.

In this interview with
Dr. Caldicott, biologist Maffini explains the association between exposures to environmental estrogen-mimics during fetal life like bisphenol-A (BPA), a component in plastic, and breast cancer risk in adulthood. Dr. Caldicott asks Dr. Maffini about the the tremendous increase in breast cancer rates. According to the Breast Cancer Fund, which published the report State of the Evidence 2008:
The Connection Between Breast Cancer and the Environment, “breast cancer incidence rates in the United States increased by more than 40 percent between 1973 and 1998.” In discussing BPAs and their relationship to cancer, Dr. Maffini explains the toxic nature of products containing BPAs: water bottles, canned food containers, Coca-Cola bottles, DVDs, eyeglasses, protective dental substances, and the plastic pipes that transport tap water. She says that all plastics, even those without BPA, release some estrogenic compounds. Read the May 22 news article Drinking from Plastic Bottles ‘Increases Exposure to Gender-Bending Chemical’ and read the new study Use of Polycarbonate Bottles and Urinary Bisphenol A Concentrations.

The program explores bisphenol-A in great depth. Dr. Maffini points to two studies published in 2008 in the Journal of the American Medical Association linking BPA to heart disease and diabetes, plus high concentrations of certain liver enzymes, Bisphenol A and Risk of Metabolic Disorders and Association of Urinary Bisphenol-A Concentration With Medical Disorders and Laboratory Abnormalities in Adults. Dr. Maffini’s lab has also found a strong correlation between BPA and autism, hyperactivity and even obesity, and she describes in detail what happened in test situations.

The discoveries Dr. Maffini and her colleagues have made started with finding that the plastic tubing used in laboratories made breast cancer cells in controlled experiments “proliferate like mad.” Dr. Maffini refers to the 2004 Centers for Disease Control study showing BPA contamination in 93% of the population. She explains how children and women are particularly infiltrated with BPA. Read High BPA levels found in hospitalized, premature infants. And see the six-page brochure Hormone Disruptors and Women’s Health: Reasons for Concern.

Dr. Caldicott asks Dr. Maffini to comment on how girls are reaching puberty at a much earlier age now, with chemicals a suspected cause. The Breast Cancer Fund commissioned a study,
The Falling Age of Puberty in U.S. Girls:
What We Know, What We Need to Know, overseen by biologist and cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber, author of Living Downstream.

Two of the most important points on today’s program are that even minute amounts of many hormone mimickers cause damage, and that the synergistic effect of chemicals in combination is often much stronger than one chemical alone. The Environmental Protection Agency, Dr. Maffini says, does not correctly test chemicals in the amounts that would do the most damage, and does not study how chemicals become exponentially more harmful when blended together. And the Food and Drug Administration does not consider BPA harmful, but their findings may be compromised. Read To ban or not to ban: Bisphenol-A in food is OK with FDA but not with some scientists. Also see Growing controversy swirls around research article key to FDA’s decision on bisphenol A safety and Plastics industry behind FDA research on bisphenol A, study finds.

The air we breathe may also include BPAs. Be sure to examine Clearing the Air – Hidden Hazards of Air Fresheners, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s report about how air fresheners are laced with hormone-mimicking chemicals. For more on BPA, be sure to read Chemical Fallout, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s Scripps Howard Award-winning series on bisphenol-A, which includes the articles BPA leaches from “microwave safe” products and Few companies seeking substitutes to
bisphenol A, study finds.

Dr. Maffini and Dr. Caldicott explore the hormonal effects of other plastic components, including phthlates (which are also hormone disruptors), as well as chemicals like DDT, still used on produce imported to the U.S.; plus Teflon, Styrofoam, parabens (in nearly all sunscreens, skin lotions and shampoos) and pesticides. See the report Concentrations of Parabens in Human Breast Tumors. Dr. Caldicott declares that “we live in a cocktail of estrogen mimickers.”

Today’s show also touches on polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) used in flame retar-dants, which have been found in people and animals all over the world. Read an abstract of the study, Brominated flame retar-dants in polar bears. Read about the study released last month on the prevalence of flame retardants in all U.S. coastal waters and the Great Lakes and read the full report here.

Plastics in many forms are causing havoc around the world, and do not biodegrade. Read Where Plastics Goes to Kill. In past interviews,
Dr. Maffini has recommended not microwaving food in plastic containers. Microwave ovens themselves have been found to damage the colloidal structure of food and water, which in turn weakens the human body, according to some studies.

Babies, young children, and pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to hormone-mimicking chemicals, and Dr. Maffini says that pregnant mothers should be warned to avoid all the sources of exposure she mentions on the program, just as they are told to not smoke or drink while pregnant. She points to success stories in the fight against hormone-mimicking chemicals like how Suffolk County on Long Island recently banned BPAs, and how removing the toxic lining in canned food in Japan caused a big drop in blood levels of BPA among college students in studies conducted over seven years. New development: read the May 14 article Chicago Bans Sale of Baby Bottles, Sippy Cups With BPA.

Dr. Caldicott concludes near the end of the program that the volume of chemicals linked to chronic diseases has produced a major public health emergency. Of the 80,000 chemicals in use today, only a fraction have been tested for carcinogenicity and other toxicity. Listen to find out much more about how “we have saturated our environment with untested toxins,” as
Dr. Caldicott says, and what you can do to protect yourself and your community from these unnecessary chemicals.

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Joseph Cirincione, President of the Ploughshares Fund, joins
Dr. Caldicott for a lively discussion about the world’s current nuclear environment, and proliferation concerns. Cirincione is author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons (published by Columbia University Press), and an expert advisor to the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. Ploughshares Fund is the largest grantmaking foundation in the U.S. dedicated exclusively to security and peace funding.

Cirincione and Dr. Caldicott start and end their discussion by focusing on the recent meeting between President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who issued a remarkable and historic document calling for a world free of nuclear weapons, and committing to steps to achieve total disarmament, including affirming the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (which has awaited ratification by the U.S. Senate for 10 years). This window to achieve disarmament is tremendously important, Dr. Caldicott and Cirincione agree, and the public must urge Obama to stay the course and eliminate nuclear weapons.

Cirincione talks about the new organization Global Zero, dedicated to increasing the present momentum to disarm nuclear weapons, and whose signatories include many major political and military figures.

This episode also examines the forces in government and industry who want to maintain the nuclear status quo, and continue to build nuclear weapons. Read the May 8 article The News on Nukes about U.S. plans regarding arms control and weapons building.
Dr. Caldicott has Cirincione elucidate exactly why
the nuclear superpowers still retain their weapons
20 years after the Cold War officially ended. Despite major reductions in their arsenals, both nations
still hold 96% of the world’s nuclear weapons, and could destroy the earth many times over in an accidental or deliberate nuclear holocaust. As mentioned previously, the Emmy-Award-winning 2007 documentary film White Light Black Rain powerfully illustrates the effects of nuclear weapons, and buying, watching and sharing the DVD is strongly recommended.

Today’s program covers the numbers of U.S. and Russian weapons and which ones are on alert and ready to fire, what countries the two nations target, and the shocking redundancy of weapons targeted on major cities. See the World Nuclear Stockpile Report (2009). Cirincione mentions how the many human and ecological effects of nuclear detonations, such as firestorms and fire damage, are seldom considered by war planners. In her lectures,
Dr. Caldicott has presented the findings of Lynn Eden, who wrote the report Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation. Dr. Caldicott refers to an article she wrote with former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Still on Catastrophe’s Edge.

Dr. Caldicott asks Cirincione if the U.S. policy of first-strike winnable nuclear war is still in place, and Cirincione talks about the policy of first use of nuclear weapons which was implemented in the George W. Bush administration. In their discussion of nuclear war, Dr. Caldicott mentions the “Dead Hand” which is described in the article The Return of the Doomsday Machine. Bruce Blair, Ph.D., President of the World Security Institute and a former Minuteman ICBM launch control officer, talks about the hair-trigger alert status of the U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons, the few-minute decision time presidents face about whether to launch missiles, and how easily nuclear war could occur in his article A Rebuttal of the U.S. Statement on the Alert Status of U.S. Nuclear Forces. The World Security Institute started the Global Zero project.

The effects of electromagnetic pulse are described, and Dr. Caldicott and Cirincione concur it is a definite threat from nuclear warfare. However, Cirincione says the logic Newt Gingrich uses to support building a missile defense shield in his article EMP From One Nuke Could Destroy America is flawed. Cirincione says any missile defense concept is completely unworkable, and there is no effective protection which can block nuclear bombs once launched.

This program also addresses nuclear power. Dr. Caldicott and Cirincione illuminate how the U.S. selling nuclear power technology around the world means more and more countries could potentially build nuclear weapons. As mentioned on earlier programs, a nuclear power plant is itself a weapon that could kill hundreds of thousands of people, if it is bombed or sabotaged by terrorists and melts down. And contrary to propaganda by the nuclear power industry, atomic energy does not reduce global warming, as Dr. Caldicott describes.

To rid the world of nuclear weapons, Cirincione and Caldicott agree that every nuclear weapons state must eliminate all of their nuclear weapons, and the U.S. cannot enforce a policy of non-proliferation if it keeps any of its arsenal. Cirincione refers to the article The Logic of Zero: Toward a World Without Nuclear Weapons. Dr. Caldicott analogizes that in medicine, removing all cancer from a sick patient is necessary to prevent the cancer from spreading or recurring, and on the planet, eliminating all nuclear weapons is the only way to arrest the dangers nuclear weapons pose. This is another vital episode you won’t want to miss!

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In this episode of If You Love This Planet,
William Hartung, Director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, discusses nuclear weapons, conventional arms sales, national security strategy and the economics of military spending. Hartung has been a featured expert on NBC News, the BBC, and Fox News. He co-edited the forthcoming book Lessons From Iraq – Avoiding the Next War (available May 1).

Hartung and Dr. Caldicott cover perhaps the most important issue facing Americans, whether they know it or not – that most of their tax dollars are spent on weapons and war, not on education, health care, job training, poverty, housing, infrastructure repairs, mass transit and averting global warming. Read more about Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes. Hartung says that the military programs taxpayers fund are in almost every case unnecessary for security, while Dr. Caldicott says the true business of weapons makers like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon is mass murder and global annihilation, not “defense.” Read Iraq Air Raids Hit Mostly Women and Children. Hartung says that of every eighty-eight dollars going to the military, only one dollar is spent addressing climate change, which he calls an “unbelievable outrage.” Read Arctic meltdown is a threat to humanity.

As a result of the George W. Bush administration’s buildup, Hartung says, the U.S. is spending more on the military than at any time since World War II – over $1 trillion a year when all “defense” programs are included such as Homeland Security and the now military-focused NASA. See more on NASA below.

During the program, Dr. Caldicott and Hartung analyze many critical issues around military spending, including whether the present financial crisis can wake up Americans to stop funding the Pentagon war machine; how lobbyists from weapons firms hold Congress hostage; and what kind of “smoke and mirrors” arms makers use to convince politicians to fund their programs in nearly every state and Congressional district. Several chapters and an appendix in Dr. Caldicott’s 2004 book The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military Industrial Complex reveal how weapons companies shape U.S. foreign policy and government spending priorities.

Hartung and
Dr. Caldicott also explore the new unarmed aerial vehicles (UAVs) also known as drones, that the U.S. is using to kill people by remote control in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Dr. Caldicott describes how the bombing missions could be conducted overseas by personnel in Florida, via computer. To learn more about UAVs, read Remote Control Death, Thousands Flee Bomb Attacks by US Drones, and The Drone War: A Closer Look.

This episode also investigates how all of NASA’s projects in the future will have a military component, mostly aimed at putting U.S. weapons in space. Dr. Caldicott quotes from an article, The Space Arms Race and the NASA Scam.

Dr. Caldicott ponders if President Obama can stand up to the behemoth of the military-industrial complex and withdraw funding for nuclear and space weapons; and she and Hartung question if achieving worldwide nuclear disarmament is possible without stemming the influence of arms makers and war planners. Read how Barack Obama Goes Ahead With Missile Defense Shield Despite Disarmament Pledge. Representative Barney Frank has proposed cutting the military budget by 25%.

Hartung and Dr. Caldicott discuss the fact that 95% of worldwide nuclear weapons are in the U.S. and Russian stockpiles. Each country has about 13,000 nuclear warheads. Hartung says he believes detonating as few as 250 nuclear weapons could induce nuclear winter. Dr. Caldicott and Hartung consider whether Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be a force for nuclear disarmament. As a presidential candidate, she received more donations from arms makers than all other candidates combined.

Now, Hartung says, there is a major opportunity for the Obama administration and Congress to cut the military budget and to stop building nuclear weapons, but only if citizens take a much more active role in their government, and really put the pressure on. Hartung’s organization is writing a report on the U.S. nuclear weapons complex which want to expand and build many new bombs, which would certainly pose a roadblock to any arms control and disarmament treaties that Obama might sign. Read New Promise of a Nuclear-Free World. And be sure to hear this program!

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The U.S. is now spending more money on nuclear weapons than at the height of the Cold War, and the threat of nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia persists, but the
U.S. public is now mostly disassociated from the nuclear weapons issue. Today’s conversation cuts through the pacifying complexity mainstream media and politicians use when talking about nuclear bombs.
Seldom discussed is the
danger the U.S. poses as a preeminent and highly aggressive nuclear weapons power, with its military endorsing the concept of
“full-spectrum dominance” of the Earth and the heavens.

Activist Jacqueline Cabasso has been promoting nuclear weapons abolition for decades. She is the Executive Director of the Western States Legal Foundation (WSLF), a non-profit, public interest organization founded in 1982, which monitors and analyzes U.S. nuclear weapons programs and policies and related high-technology energy and weapons programs - with a focus on the national nuclear weapons laboratories. Cabasso co-founded the disarmament group Abolition 2000 in 1995 and is also active in the organization United for Peace and Justice. She won the MacBride Peace Prize last year. Read her acceptance speech. Cabasso is one of the authors of the 2007 report Nuclear Disorder or Cooperative Security? U.S. Weapons of Terror, the Global Proliferation Crisis, and Paths to Peace.

On today’s program, Dr. Caldicott and Cabasso discuss the present state of U.S. nuclear weapons stockpiles, nuclear weapons laboratories, disarmament treaties, and America’s first-strike nuclear-war-fighting policy. Cabasso says this is a time of great danger in the nuclear weapons arena, in the wake of the disastrous pro-nuclear George W. Bush administration and the tremendously disappointing legacy left by President Bill Clinton, but also a moment of opportunity. Dr. Caldicott places responsibility for the present destabilized nuclear weapons situation between the U.S. and Russia squarely on Clinton’s shoulders. She asks Cabasso for her perception of President Obama, who has stated that while he wants to lead world toward nuclear disarmament, as long as nuclear weapons exist, the U.S. will maintain a strong deterrent.

Cabasso and Dr. Caldicott cover the history of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, particularly the enormous buildup since 1963. The benign-sounding Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program of today, Dr. Caldicott and Cabasso emphasize, is about maintaining an enormous U.S. nuclear arsenal to threaten other nations. The true work of the weapons labs, Dr. Caldicott says, is mass murder and global annihilation. Cabasso explains the rationale the labs now use to justify their nuclear weapons work.

Cabasso and Dr. Caldicott analyze the psychotic thinking around nuclear weapons that permeates how the U.S. government justifies its nuclear-warmongering policies in the media. As an example of such “rubbish,” as
Dr. Caldicott calls it, the 2008 article Pre-emptive Nuclear Strike a Key Option, NATO Told says senior NATO officers believe the West should use nuclear weapons preemptively, to prevent nuclear war!

Why the disarmament movement lost steam, and turned away from the nuclear issue at the ostensible end of the Cold War, is a critical part of today’s discussion. Dr. Caldicott says that the public, including organized religion, must become re-educated about the dangers of nuclear weapons, and become active in demanding disarmament, if the Earth is to survive.
She emphasizes how little most politicians and the general public understand about the destructive power of the atom. Highly recommended viewing to understand the effects of nuclear weapons: Steven Okazaki’s Emmy Award-winning 2007 documentary, White Light Black Rain, available on DVD. Watch a four-minute interview with Okazaki about his film.