Historically, the price of progress has often come at the expense of the other, the excluded or exterior group, on whose back or by whose expulsion has made possible the conditions for something new (Zinn). The use of technology today may well have altered this tried and tested technique of history by mistakenly widening the boundaries of consequence to include the perpetrators in heretofore unprecedented degree: the price of progress is becoming so wide as to blur the traditional line between excluded and privileged.

Pollution of the global commons has already surpassed a world-historical threshold. And now the question will be, perhaps not for us, To what end? Let us begin with the frightening case of plastic; its pervasiveness in our modern landscape. Something akin to the widest-scale biological experiment ever seen has, more or less, unwittingly been carried out over the course of the past five decades. Here I am pointing up the fact that plastic, its chemical markers, now covers the entire globe, and its presence is increasing by degree daily. Think of the plastics encountered in everyday life. There are keyboards, sports watches, eyeglasses, computers, toothbrushes, water bottles, electric fans, laptops, toasters, blenders, hair brushes, water picks, cups, plates (I think the picture becomes clear enough on reflection) ubiquitously standing-by. But the products we use that are made of plastic are far from being contained within our household confines. Our neighborhoods and schoolyards are littered with candy wrappers and drink bottles; our parking lots collect empty cups from fast food chains and plastic bags from shopping centers. Of course all of this gets cleaned up, to some degree, regularly; but then, where does it go? In some cases it may be recycled, but often these new age material wonders find their way into obscure wilderness areas, rivers, and oceans.

New research has opened our eyes, to the extent that it has been read and disseminated, to the dangers of this silent threat. It turns out that chemicals in plastic do not interact with our bodies the same way that other toxins do, so normal toxicology testing is worthless for detecting the impact of plastics. Chemicals in plastic, such as bisphenol A (BPA), that can be classed under the heading of endocrine disruptors, interfere with our bodies by mimicking hormonal signals. The Centers for Disease Control released a report indicating that many Americans have levels of BPA in their bodies that are above the current safety threshold—which is practically out of date anyway in light of recent evidence. Therefore it has become increasingly important to understand just what hormone-mimicking chemicals do to complex biological organisms—like us. Patricia Hunt is a reproductive biologist at Washington State University. She tested the effects of BPA, at levels that are “environmentally relevant”, on female mice in the womb, and discovered unsettling results. The eggs of the female mice that were prenatally exposed to BPA had higher levels of genetic errors, 20 times higher actually, resulting in “chromosomal abnormalities in 40 percent of the next generation's eggs” (Neimark). With close to one in five human pregnancies ending in miscarriage today, and half of the miscarriages being due to chromosomal abnormalities, the implications from Hunt's research are frightening (Neimark). Duke University geneticist Randy Jirtle is another researcher whose recent work on the effects of BPA in food should give us all, especially policy makers, concern. In his study, lean, brown-furred female mice were exposed to 50 milligrams of BPA per kilogram of body weight daily; the result: more of the next generation of mice were fat, blond furred—in a word, transformed: “If I were a pregnant woman, I would try hard to avoid exposure to BPA,” said Jirtle (Neimark). As rates of testicular and breast cancer continue to rise, sperm counts continue to decline, and more human males are born with abnormal urethras, there are plenty of reasons for us all to avoid, seek to limit the prevalence of, endocrine disruptors. Taking breast cancer as an example: in the past a woman's lifetime risk was roughly 1 in 22; today, it is 1 in 7. Experts believe this could very well be due to the influence of endocrine disrupting chemicals (Neimark). One study published in the journal Cancer Research, titled “Bisphenol A Induces a Profile of Tumor Aggressiveness in High-Risk Cells From Breast Cancer Patients”, concludes in the article abstract that the presence of endocrine-disrupting agents “in the microenvironmental milieu of high-risk breast tissue could play a deterministic role in establishing and maintaining tumor aggressiveness and poor patient outcome” (Dairkee).

We obviously did not just start producing plastics yesterday, so it is a fair question to ask how these major risk factors actually did manage to fly under the public radar for so long. The fact that typical toxicology was unable to detect the effects is certainly one big reason. Unlike other typical toxic substances, hormone-mimicking chemicals are able to produce powerful, transformative longterm effects in non-obvious ways. Because our bodies are extremely sensitive to small amounts of estrogen and other sex hormones, our brains and reproductive systems can be perturbed by and react to exceedingly small changes in the fluctuations of these chemicals; which effect our behavior, core physiology, endocrine system, and metabolism (Neimark). These are all fairly subtle, non-obvious effects, that have taken a long time to be brought into the mainstream spotlight. But there could be another good, more cynical, reason for the delay in public awareness. Plastics are big business. And this does not bode well for future regulation, despite the latest research findings. Bisphenol A is conservatively estimated to be worth at least a million dollars every hour, and (seemingly challenging my thesis) the CDC findings revealed that families with the highest household incomes had the lowest levels of exposure (Neimark; Meyers). As long as threat levels are unequally distributed, economics will continue to play a significant factor in determining the prospects of future regulation.

Despite the setbacks, delays in recognition, regarding the situation, there has been some good news recently. The term endocrine disruptor is beginning to appear in more headlines. Significantly, Canada became the first nation to take action against these chemicals, completing a risk assessment of BPA, consulting with industry and other stakeholders, and initiating a public comment period to open discussion on whether to ban baby bottles containing this chemical from store shelves and commercial space (Government). And Democrats in the U.S. are trying to follow suit by introducing a bill to the U.S. Senate. Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has taken the lead on this proposed ban that would limit BPA to below detectable levels in products intended for children under the age of seven. Senator Schumer's proposal also calls for a comprehensive strategy for investigating the health effects of BPA on all citizens, particularly pregnant women, to be presented to Congress by the CDC (Cassandra).

The issue has not escaped the attention of the National Resources Defense Council. Frances Beinecke, the president of NRDC, blogged about the urgent threat these substances pose back in April. In her article, titled “Why Endocrine Disruptors Should Be a Household Word”, Beinecke gives solid arguments for making such a swift addition to our lexicon. To summarize: they are pervasive (in shampoos, lotions, baby bottles), they act in tiny doses to interfere with the hormone system (one of the most sensitive and crucial systems of our body), and the most threatened are the most vulnerable in society (developing babies and young children). Bisphenol A can alter the developing breast buds of baby girls, making them more susceptible to breast cancer later in life. With NRDC's backing, the struggle to raise awareness of the threat of endocrine disruptors has a powerful ally on its side; Beinecke hopes to persuade companies to join them "in the call for much needed science and regulation" (Beinecke). In order to better inform consumers and world citizens, NRDC has a useful endocrine disruptor FAQ on their website. The FAQ explains what the endocrine system is, how the disruptors work, where people are being exposed to them, and why research evidence says we should be concerned. There is also a list of precautions to take to reduce the risk of exposure: engage in self-education; buy organic; avoid pesticides; avoid fatty (non-organic) foods; do not eat fish from bodies of water that may be heavily contaminated; do not heat food in plastic containers; do not store fatty food in plastic; do not give young children anything made out of plastic; encourage the government to increase research and regulation on endocrine disrupting chemicals (Endocrine).

As mentioned above, these new and potentially deadly substances are making their way into our previously pristine environments. In fact the largest landfill on the planet has become the Pacific Ocean. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a floating-island-soup of trash between Japan and California, is great both in terms of its size and the extent to which it warrants our odious response to its ignominious nature. Estimated to be roughly one and a half times the size of the United States in its sprawl, the garbage is believed to extend to a depth of perhaps 300 feet. However, this is not even the half of it. According to The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 70 percent of all trash in the ocean sinks. With this much plastic in the world's oceans, virtually no place on Earth now falls outside of the makers indelibly left by the chemicals in plastic. The impact on oceanic ecosystems, from the bottom of the food chain right up to the top, requires urgent action; especially because of the degree to which land dwelling organisms, including us, rely on sources of nutrition from these aquatic habitats for our well being: the chain of being remains unbroken by land barriers (Kostigen 24-25).

But plastic is not the only novel menace on the modern environmental scene. In fact it must take a decisive subordinate role to carbon emissions produced by industrialization; and this in light of fresh evidence about the impact of carbon dioxide absorption on the world's oceans: the future of the vast majority of life in the oceans, and the vast majority of all life as we know it, is in peril. At the turn of the millennium, the overwhelming opinion of advanced technological nations was that our oceans could go on absorbing CO₂ indefinitely: the United States, Germany, and Japan were so confident about this that they were planning to compress and pump CO₂ waste in liquid form directly into the ocean environment. Problems appeared when they started testing this idea in the laboratory. Scientists discovered that as the oceans absorb CO₂, they increasingly become more acidic, and basically unlivable for certain important forms of life; particularly anything with a shell: sea urchins, mollusks, and plankton are included in the list of casualties. The term for this is ocean acidification, and it was coined by Ken Caldeira, a chemical oceanographer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Stanford, California, in a 2003 report featured in the journal Nature. His initial report, however, failed to awaken serious attention outside of a select range of marine biologists. But all that has changed in the last two years. Thomas E. Lovejoy, biologist and president of the H.J. Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment in Washington, D.C., calls ocean acidification "the most profound environmental change I've seen in my entire career, and nobody saw it coming" (McAuliffe 30). Since 1800, overall ocean pH has dropped by 0.1 unit; but because pH is a logarithmic scale, that really amounts to a 30 percent increase in acidity. Twenty-two million tons of man-made CO₂ are being absorbed per day into the oceans. Projecting from the current output onto the future, the International Panel on Climate Change predicts that pH could drop to as low as 7.8 by the end of the century; that represents a 150 percent increase in acidity since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. For a point of reference, coral has been shown unable to survive in the laboratory at a pH of 7.3. All the world's reefs, and the life they support, would disappear, and islands that are atolls could sink into the sea. On top of all that, rather than absorbing CO₂, warmer, more acidic oceans could become a source of CO₂ emissions; contributing, in no small part, to the greenhouse effect and the warming of the planet on a significant scale. "Frankly, ocean acidification is apocalyptic in its impact," said David Hutchins, a biological oceanographer at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (McAuliffe 31-34) .

These latest revelations have scientists working feverishly to come up with plans to offset or mitigate the damage. An early proposal, first made at the end of the 1980s by oceanographer John Martin of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in California, calls for the seeding of the ocean surfaces with iron. This would in turn promote the growth of phytoplankton blooms that could potentially soak up CO₂ in the ocean and carry it down into deep waters; incidentally, allowing for further CO₂ absorption from the atmosphere. But this plan has not been proven to represent a stable longterm CO₂ decrease at the surface, and might disrupt the ocean's biochemical systems in unforeseen ways. Another suggestion is to neutralize the waters, perhaps by dumping limestone from the White Cliffs of Dover into the sea. However, a project of this scale would require enormous energy and coordination; the amount of fossil fuels burned in extracting the minerals and transporting them around the world would only contribute to the CO₂ nightmare. Another proposal for alkalizing the waters would have us harvest hydrochloric acid from the ocean using an elctrochemical treatment in order to expose it to silicates, which could induce a net alkalizing shift. Perhaps the best solution is the most radical, and obvious: drastically lower our levels of carbon emission—starting today (McAuliffe 35).

So what can we do in light of all this startling new information? Well, NRDC does offer that handy FAQ for educating ourselves about the effects of the new and potentially devastating chemicals in our environment. And there are books available, written by various medical professionals, that aim specifically at helping us avoid chemicals and detox our bodies for the healthiest living possible within this increasingly toxic milieu we call home. One book that outlines a comprehensive regime is Detox or Die, written by Sherry Rogers, MD. She provides background information about chemical threats and details an in-depth health program to follow. One key feature of her list of recommendations is the use of Far Infrared (FIR) saunas which she says are able to remove particularly nasty industrial toxins through the body's sweat pores more effectively than any other kind of sauna or exercise (Rogers 199-213). In terms of pollution, each person can certainly make a personal effort to cut back on trash, especially plastic, by not using plastic bags at checkout counters, recycling more, and avoiding litter by carefully sealing garbage bags. But paying attention to the news, staying educated about the latest scientific research (that means reading), and encouraging representatives in Congress, and at all levels of government, to take action is undoubtedly one constellation of activities wherein concerned world citizens may maximize their potential to make the biggest impact. Given the sheer scope, ramifications, of the evidence surveyed above, there remains little question as to how unprecedented these threats are to the human population considered as a totality. And to say that, for this reason, the price progress imposes today is unparalleled in history, is no exaggeration.

 

 

Works Cited

Beinecke, Frances. "Why Endocrine Disruptors Should Be a Household Word." NRDC. 25 Apr. 2008. 18 June 2008 <http://switchboard.nrdc.org/>.

Cassandra. "U.S. Follows Canada's Lead- a Bill to Ban BPA." Toxic Nation. 5 May 2008. 18 June 2008 <http://www.toxicnation.ca>.

Dairkee, S G., J Seok, S Champion, A Sayeed, M Mindrinos, W Xiao, R W. Davis, and W H. Goodson. "Bisphenol a Induces a Profile of Tumor Aggressiveness in High-Risk Cells From Breast Cancer Patients." Cancer Research 68 (2008): 2076-2080. MEDLINE with Full Text. EBSCOhost. Lake-Sumter Community Coll. Lib., Leesburg. 18 June 2008 <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=9&sid=eeca8fed-ca28-4e82-a618-f36f1ff70385%40sessionmgr3>.

"Endocrine Disruptors." NRDC. 25 Nov. 1998. 18 June 2008 <http://www.nrdc.org>.

"Government of Canada Takes Action on Another Chemical of Concern: Bisphenol A." Health Canada. 18 Apr. 2008. 18 June 2008 <http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ahc-asc/index-eng.php>.

Kostigen, Thomas M. "How the Pacific Ocean Became the World's Largest Dump." Discover July 2008: 24-26.

McAuliffe, Kathleen. "Ocean Reflux." Discover July 2008: 28-37.

Myers, Pete. "Calafat, AM, X Ye, L-Y Wong, JA Reidy and LL Needham. 2008. Exposure of the US Population to Bisphenol a and 4-Tertiary-Octylphenol: 2003-2004. Environmental Health Perspectives 116:39-44." Environmental Health News. 8 Nov. 2007. 18 June 2008 <http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org>.

Neimark, Jill. "The Dirty Truth About Plastic." Discover 18 Apr. 2008. 18 June 2008 <http://discovermagazine.com/2008/may/18-the-dirty-truth-about-plastic/article_view?searchterm=BPA&b_start:int=1>.

Rogers, Sherry A., Detoxify or Die. Sarasota, FL: Sand Key Company, 2002.

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.

Scientific American is reporting on its website that scientists from Davidson College and Missouri Western State have successfully created DNA computers inside living cells for the first time. Inserted into microbes, the single-celled intestinal bacteria Escherichia coli, the circular piece of DNA, known as a plasmid, along with an enzyme from Salmonella bacteria enabled these new cellular computers to solve a technology problem.

Plunging headlong into the onslaught of inexorable scientific advancement, one may wonder what possible use could come of pausing to ask the question of whentofore. A charge of profitlessness may be levied, even justified; to which a radically unanswerable response comes with a wry, sympathetic, pitiless gesture that diverts our gaze to all the comportments of uselessness.

What is this drive to be useful? What is this drive to challenge the bounds of the unthought which mark the exteriority of the cogito? Why such an attempt to beat them back, to forget them? Like the ones who leave Omelas, every useless person has despaired at this question, somehow, each in his own way; make no mistake, those who stay are barbarians, those who leave are are practicing deceit.

Let us be clear: every civilization left standing is perched on a mountain of piled corpses branded with the mark of iniquity. And if you can bear the stench, made palatable by the intoxicating perfume of progress, then possibilities abound.

The new horizon encompasses a technological wonderland; with one stop fixes arriving daily. But this is no time for dizziness, human freedom is a serious matter, as serious as there could ever be in this wasteland: the danger today is not that we perpetuate misery with our technology, this would be gross naivety, nor that we objectify the entire cosmos, but that we become for technology; ourselves resources, merely standing by to await the next great reorganization for the purpose of further standing by.

Heidegger warned of this: when the age of the understanding of being is technological, we must open ourselves to the use of technology without blindly relegating ourselves to the way of being that is ruled technologically. We cannot defeat mobilization, nor should we want to, but we can question it: freedom is to question; there is no other.

Anyone who is unquestionably certain about anything is, equally, by proportion and by degree, in error; of this, I am sure.

On Tuesday, May 13, Microsoft launched its free World Wide Telescope software, contributing mightily to the computational trend that is unequivocally changing the way science is done. The New York Times science page featured an article by Steve Lohr, titled “Two New Ways to Explore the Virtual Universe, in Vivid 3-D.” The article is primarily signaling the WWT launch, but also mentions the competing Google Sky application which began when Google first layered astronomical data and images onto Google Earth in August 2007 (Lohr).

Astronomers are hoping that both WWT and Google Sky can rouse new public interest in the science of astronomy; hoping the visual interface and accessibility will draw the attention of younger generations who are well versed in computer technology and gaming. And if we take the history of Google Earth as an indicator, then expectations can rightfully ride high: after its 2005 release, media coverage (mirroring public interest) of 3D geospatial platforms rose by 1,100 percent in less than a year; with Google Earth representing 83 percent of the coverage (Scharl).

Astronomy's democratizing move to make data equally available to amateurs and professionals alike is the next necessary step in big science, according to a June 2002 technical report by Jim Gray of Microsoft Research and Alex Szalay of Johns Hopkins University. The report explains the growth of the computational branch in science over the past 50 years. Originally, science was primarily a descriptive endeavor, employing a type of pure methodological empiricism. But over the course of the last five centuries, virtually all scientific fields developed a second, theoretical branch to help direct and modulate empirical research. As fields of study grew increasingly complex, there arose a need to computationally simulate models in search for mathematical solutions that closed-form methods were unable to supply; marking the rise of the computational branch of science.

And now this third branch, so to speak, is expanding to accommodate the literally astronomical amount of data that scientists are facing today; due primarily to “four converging trends: (1) the flood of data from new scientific instruments driven by Moore’s Law -- doubling their data output every year or so; (2) the flood of data from simulations; (3) the ability to economically store petabytes of data online; and (4) the Internet and computing Grid that makes all these archives accessible to anyone anywhere” (Gray 1). In the paper, Gray and Szalay explicate the primary goal of the WWT project:

"The primary goal of the World Wide Telescope is to make Astronomers more productive and to allow them to better understand their data. But, it is also an archetype for the evolution of Computational Science from its simulation roots to the broader field of capturing, organizing, analyzing, exploring, and visualizing scientific data. The World Wide Telescope is a prototype for this new role, but similar trends are happening in genomics, in economics, in ecology, and in most other sciences (Gray 4)."

Out of the necessity for academic rigor, I was, ostensibly, compelled to download and try out the WWT software as soon as I became aware of its release. I can report from firsthand experience that it is, technically speaking, very cool. Microsoft's program allows for individuals to build their own cosmic tours and share them with the whole community of WWT users. The release of this new software comes just in time, as the United Nations 62nd General Assembly proclaimed 2009 the International Year of Astronomy, designating the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) “as the lead agency and focal point for the Year” (United Nations).

Establishing a link between science and culture by “highlighting the scientific value of cultural sites connected with astronomy” is UNESCO's expressed Thematic Initiative for Astronomy and World Heritage in 2009 (United Nations). One is invited to imagine the possibilities for connecting geospatial locations with cosmic locations within virtual educational tours for the expedient diffusion of cultural and scientific appreciation in the years to come. Go! civilization.

Works Cited

Gray, Jim, and Alex Szalay. The World-Wide Telescope, an Archetype for Online Science. Microsoft. Redmond, WA: Microsoft, 2002. 1-4. 15 May 2008 <ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/tr/tr-2002-75.pdf>.

Lohr, Steve. "Two New Ways to Explore the Virtual Universe, in Vivid 3-D." The New York Times 13 May 2008. 15 May 2008 <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/science/13astr.html?scp=1&sq=World+Wid+Telescope&st=nyt>.

Scharl, Arno, and Klaus Tochtermann, eds. "Media Coverage of Geospatial Platforms." The Geospatial Web. Springer. 15 May 2008 <http://www.geospatialweb.com/figure-4>.

"United Nations 62nd General Assembly Proclaimed 2009 the International Year of Astronomy." UNESCO. 20 Dec. 2007. United Nations. 15 May 2008 <http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/404>.