Reports on Health and the Environment

Many have thought that action on climate change may have to await a calamity. The question is whether the Gulf oil spill will change the course of history by encouraging the USA to serious development of alternative energy.

Furthermore will this spill draw attention to the appalling environmental and health impact of Big Oil around the world and make it more difficult to exploit poor legislation in developing countries and the political process in the rich countries.

History suggests business will be as usual.   In 1989 the Exxon Valdez spill of 11 million gallons was the worst in American history. It damaged 1,300 miles of shoreline, disrupting the lives and livelihoods of people in the region and killing hundreds of thousands of birds and marine animals. Despite the clean-up, oil remains on beaches and the ecology has not recovered. The herring fishing was lost completely. After 20 years in court $500m damages was awarded, a pittance.

This is a remarkable story and if you saw both episodes of Australian Story Something in the Water  on ABC TV then you don’t need to read this introduction.
For the videos Click here and Here

Introduction
Alison Bleaney is a general practitioner (and DEA member) in St Helens, NE Tasmania. She was concerned by the number of unusual cancers and other illnesses that were diagnosed in her small community and when in 2004 a large flood of fresh water from the surrounding catchment rushed into the St. Helens bay and there was a large oyster kill, her attention turned to pesticide spraying in the catchment plantations. This was an appropriate question for the spraying practices in forestry had been a concern of many Tasmanians for a considerable time. She had difficulty getting government to investigate the problem and her experiences are detailed in our previous article, Click here  Spraying practices were detailed in a further article, Click here

In this report the European Environmental Bureau and the International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN) Nanotechnology Working Group, challenge industry claims about the potential environmental benefits provided by nanotechnology products:
 
Nanotechnologies are presented as providing unprecedented technological solutions to many environmental problems including climate change, pollution and clean drinking water. Proponents claim that it enables economic growth through better products and new markets while dramatically reducing our ecological footprint. However there is emerging evidence these claims do not provide the whole picture, with serious environmental risks and costs being trivialised or ignored.

The Premier of Tasmania says that Tasmania is clean and green and its future is to provide clean, green food produce to the world. Water will be provided to irrigate a productive centre of the island.

To be clean and green is laudable but perhaps the Premier needs to be reminded of three major problems to be solved if his claim is to be accepted.  Firstly, the material below relates to meetings held in Launceston and at the Royal Hobart Hospital which documented chemical spraying practices dangerous to the environment and to human health. Secondly,the proposed pulp mill assessment procedures question the judgement of the Tasmanian government. Thirdly, forestry practices which include the wood chipping of old growth and regrowth forest are now reprehensible in terms of Australia fulfilling its necessary role in reducing green house emissions. Once the Premier has acknowledged and acted on these problems it will be satisfying for us to remove the question mark from the title of this article.

There are many interesting means by which humankind acts to ravage biodiversity.The following example is taken from a recent book "The climate change challenge and the failure of democracy", Shearman and Smith, Praeger, Westport, Connecticut, London

"...the arrival and spread in the United States of the West Nile virus will be described. This virus is normally confined to parts of Asia and Africa. Mosquitoes transmit the virus from birds to humans, resulting in encephalitis, an often fatal inflammation of the brain. In the summer of 1999 birds at the Bronx Zoo in New York died inexplicably. Then humans began to die from encephalitis. The diagnosis of the problem was very slow because Ronald Reagan, believing in small government, had severely reduced funding of the public health service and it had never recovered. However when it was realized that West Nile virus had succeeded in evading the U.S. quarantine service, there was official panic in New York City Hall.