Spread of Synthetic Chemicals
Unfortunately we have all contributed to the spread of synthetic chemicals: benign and malignant. Our demands upon industry to provide us with materials which will make our lives more comfortable in all senses of the word have encouraged the industrialists to come up with ever greater amounts of synthetic chemicals to satisfy our wants. And so, we have chemicals such as phthalates that make vinyl flexible giving lotions the right consistency; PFAs that make fabrics scratch and stain resistant; dioxins, an industrial byproduct of great toxicity; bisphenols which give rigidity to plastics; and PBDEs that act as fire retardants. All of these chemicals are released into the air by such innocuous items as mattresses, aromatic candles; shower curtains, plastic containers, baby bottles and so on. Of course none of us really gives a thought to the effects of the chemical compounds within the products we purchase or how they will interact with other organisms. The products meet our needs and that is really all that most of us think about.
Perhaps a few of us have begun to think of alternate means to fertilize our lawns or to reduce the amount of pesticides and insecticides that we use. But we still use them. We still use and buy products that use treated wood because we feel that they will last longer and resist termites. We still use plastic containers to store our food in the refrigerator or freezer knowing that the containers an imperceptibly thermo degradable. Then we warm the preserved food in the same container by means of the microwave.
But, how do these chemicals infiltrate our bodies as well as those of other animals? These chemical compounds are very persistent. They leach into liquids through heat or cold, they ride in the wind; float in the water; become part of sediments; rocks, or plants where they might have fallen. There they will stay until some activity dislodges them, carries them away and deposits them elsewhere. If the item upon which they came to rest is an edible organism then the feeder will ingest them and harbor them until it dies or is eaten. Helped by rain or irrigation pesticides, insecticides, and fertilizers filter into water features through the ground. More directly, industrial waste from refineries, paper mills and chemical plants, is disposed of into the water. There the chemicals enter the food chain. Some fish, thinking that the chemicals are either phytoplankton or zooplankton feed on them: So will bottom dwelling creatures such as mollusks and crustaceans. These in turn will probably be eaten by herons, gulls and cormorants. Animals at the top of the food chain ingest and retain a logarithmically increased amount of synthetic chemicals along with their food. Eagles, swordfish, porpoises, gulls, polar bears, alligators, and otters are all top predators. So are humans.
Smoke rising from industrial chimneys or refineries is another way in which synthetic chemicals spread. As the air borne molecules descend they can be inhaled. The rest will repose on whichever surface they happen to land on until dislodged and consumed by herbivores if the surface is a plant. The cycle begins again.
One more way in which the chemicals spread is through our rubbish. Because we have become such avid consumers and prone to disposing our refuse in the easiest manner; we toss out enormous amounts of rubbish everyday. The organic portion of the rubbish works its way into the ground and becomes part of the soil, but the inorganic matter degrades much more slowly, perhaps in hundreds of years, releasing its toxic compounds into the soils, water and air. Among the inorganic materials that we dispose of most frequently are the plastics. They are not biodegradable although they break down into very tiny portions (but not disappear) by thermal effects over a very long time.
An unintended monument to our way of life that has been forming during the past century is to be found in the North Pacific Gyre, a gigantic circle of currents thousands of miles wide in that ocean. There, the slow moving winds and currents naturally collect all of our debris carried by the rivers, streams, wind, etc. The debris that collects there is one form of plasticide or another. Since most plastics are lighter than sea water, they float on the surface for years, slowly breaking down into smaller and smaller fragments. In the process they often end up in the ocean's drifting, filter-feeding animals, like jellyfish. 17 Other marine animals like the dolphins and sea turtles confuse the plastic bags for jellyfish or medusas swallow them and choke. Many fish that gulp down nurdles (plastic pellets produced to be formed into all kinds of plastic products) discover that they are not fish eggs. Still other marine animals such as the monk seals are trapped and die in the large masses of fishing nets in the Pacific Garbage Patch. So plastics mimic food for many marine animals that not only do not derive any nutrition from the plastics, they are also poisoned because these frequently leach out diverse chemicals such as D.D.T., DEHP, BPA, natural and synthetic dioxins.
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