CHAPTER 18
BAD ENVIRONMENTAL AND RESOURCE SCARES

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the [Alaska      
National Wildlife Refuge pollution] debate is the false      
information being disseminated by well-meaning zealots      
who oppose any human activity on the Coastal Plain.  Do      
they believe that their cause is so just that they are      
above and beyond the truth?  (Walter Hickel, former      
governor of Alaska, 1991).

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: TABLE OF CONTENTS
Known Killers
Possibly Dangerous Threats
Questionable Issues
Definitely Disproven Threats
Major Environmental Scares of the 1990s
The Ozone Layer
Summary
Afternote: Healing the Planet

   Here is the plan for this chapter:  First comes a list of the known killers.  Next 
are mentioned a few phenomena whose effects are in question.  Then comes a long list 
of threats which scared many people when first made public - and still frighten many - 
but which have now been thoroughly disproven.  (The refutations are not given here but 
references are given for most.)
   Last is brief discussion of acid rain, the ozone layer, and global warming.

                          KNOWN KILLERS  

   These are important pollutions that certainly can kill many: Plague, malaria (the 
worst killer in the 19th century into the 20th century);, typhus, tropical yellow 
fever, encephalitis, dengue fever, elephantiasis, African sleeping sickness, river 
blindness, and dozens of other diseases carried by insects, often through the air; 
cholera, dysentery, typhoid fever carried by polluted water; leprosy, tuberculosis, 
smallpox, and other epidemic diseases.  Spoiled food (botulism and other ills) from 
primitive preparation and lack of proper storage.  Cigarettes (tobacco causes 25-40 
percent of all cancer deaths in the U. S.).   Poor diet (causes perhaps 35 percent of 
all cancer deaths in the U.S.).  High doses of medical X-rays.  Dust particulates and 
smoke from burning coal and wood.  Overuse of almost anything - for example, alcohol 
and drugs.  Guns, autos, ladders.  Work-related exposure to formaldehyde, EDB, Bhopal-
type chemical accidents and kepone.  Chernobyl-like nuclear accidents due to 
carelessness and bad design.  Coal-mining, police work, and fire fighting.  War, 
homicide, suicide, forced starvation, and other deaths caused by human predators.  
Figure 18-1 shows some relative risks.
     FIGURE 18-1  
                   POSSIBLY DANGEROUS THREATS

   These are some phenomena which may be dangerous but whose effects (if any) are not 
well-understood:  Too much ozone in Southern California (see chapter 00 re Krupnick 
and Portney).  Low-voltage electric and magnetic fields around power lines and 
appliances.   (There is no known evidence of damage to health from either.  They are 
listed in this section only because some reputable scientists are still asking for 
more research on the subjects, although others say it is a waste of funds.)

                       QUESTIONABLE ISSUES

   These are phenomena whose dangers have been alleged.  They have not been supported 
by any solid evidence, but have not yet been conclusively disproven: 
   1900s - 1990s:  Global warming. 
   ? to 1990s:  Ozone layer.  See discussion to follow.
   1992: "Big Drop in Sperm Count Since '38."   A Danish study asserts drop of almost 
25 percent in human sperm count in past half-century.  PCBs are said to be the cause 
by some "experts".  Would anyone care to bet on whether this new scare turns out to be 
valid?
   1992:  Chlorinated water causing birth defects.  Study finds that among 81,055 
births in New Jersey, 56 were born with spinal defects, and 8 of those were born to 
women exposed to high levels of chlorine in the water; 2 or 3 would have been expected 
among this group if there were no effect.  Since every medicine has side-effects, and 
just about everything "causes" cancer in one fashion or another, it would not be 
surprising if chlorine does, too.  But given the sample size, and the number of such 
possible effects that are examined by researchers, the odds are very high that this 
effect will be found not to exist.  Yet it occasioned large newspapers stories with 
headlines such as "Chlorination Byproducts in Water Seen as Risk During Pregnancy."   
No mention is made in the article of the huge pollution-reducing effects of putting 
chlorine into the water. 
   1992:  "Study Suggests Electric Razor Use May Raise Risk of Getting Cancer".  A 
study of 131 men who had leukemia.  For readers some years in the future, you may test 
the plausibility of new scares then by checking whether this and other 1992 scares 
have been validated or disconfirmed by then.  (Also, only about 3 new cases of 
leukemia are reported per year per 100,000 people.)  And consider, too:  are there any 
dangers from shaving with a straight-edge razor that are avoided with an electric 
razor?

                  DEFINITELY DISPROVEN THREATS 

  Earliest history to the present:  Land shortage.  As nomadic groups grew, land 
scarcity increased.  This led to agriculture.  This is just the first in the sequences 
of technical advances [arrow here] population increase [arrow here] new food or land 
scarcities [arrow here] new advances described in chapters 5 and 6.  
   ???BCE: Running out of flint. Worries about running out of resources have been with 
us since the beginning of time.  Shortages surely occurred in many places. 
Archaeologists studying two Mayan villages in Central America found that about 300 BCE 
in the village far from plentiful flints supplies, there was much more conservation 
and innovation by reusing the flint in broken implements, compared to the village with 
plentiful flint nearby.  The Neandertals could produce five times more cutting edge 
from a block of flint as could their predecessors.  And successors of the Neandertals 
increased their efficiency to be produce 80 times as much cutting edge per block as 
the Neandertals predecessors. Eventually, flint was replaced by metal, and scarcity 
declined.  This is the prototype of all resource scares. 
   1700 BCE?:  Running out of copper.  Iron was developed as a replacement for tool 
manufacture.
   1200 BCE?: Tin.  New sources were found from time to time. Bronze became 
increasingly scarce and high-priced in the Middle East and Greece because of a tin 
shortage probably caused by a war-induced breakdown in long-distance trade.  Iron-
working and steel-making techniques developed in response. 
   550 BCE?: Disappearing forests.  The Greeks worried over the deforestation of their 
country, in part for lack of wood to build ships.  When scarcity became acute, 
shipbuilders shifted to a new design that required less wood.  Greece is well-forested 
now. 
   1500s, 1600s: Running out of wood for fuel.
   1500s to 1700s CE:  Loss of trees in Great Britain. See chapter 10 for outcome.  
   Late 1700s: With the invention of lightning rods came fear of electricity 
accumulating in earth (B. Franklin's time).
   1798:  Food - the Malthusian mother of all scares that warns: increasing population 
must lead to famine.  Since then there has been continuous improvement in average 
nutrition.  (See chapter 5.)
   1800s: Running out of coal in Great Britain.  Jevons's book documented the scare.  
See chapter 11 for outcome.
   1850s and intermittently thereafter: Running out of oil.  See chapter 12 for 
outcome.
   1895-1910:  Rubber.  Wild-grown public-property supplies became exhausted and the 
price of rubber rose from $.50 to $3.  Plantations were established in response.  
Price fell back to $.50 by 1910, and then went further down to $.20. 
   1900s:  Timber in the U.S.  See chapter 10 and Olson (1971).
   1922-1925:  Rubber again.  British-Dutch cartel squeezed supplies, and prices 
tripled. Increased scarcity provoked conservation in production, increased 
productivity on plantations, and recycling.  Price returned to $.20 and cartel was 
broken.  Research on synthetics began as a result of the price run-up. 
   1930s, 1950s, 1980s in the U.S., other periods in other countries:  Water. See 
chapters 10 and 17.  
   1940-1945: Rubber again.  War cut supplies. The research on synthetics, induced by 
the earlier episode, was available for rapid development.
   1945:  DDT, sensationalized by Rachel Carson in 1962.  Said to cause hepatitis.   
Discontinued in U.S. in 1972.  Known then to be safe to humans (caused death only if 
eaten like pancakes).  Some damage to wildlife under special conditions. 
   With the aid of DDT, "India had brought the number of malaria cases down from the 
estimated 75 million in 1951 to about 50,000 in 1961. Sri Lanka...reduced malaria from 
about three million cases after World War II to just 29 in 1964". Then as the use of 
DDT went down, "Endemic malaria returned to India like the turnaround of a tide".  By 
1977 "the number of cases reached at least 30 million and perhaps 50 million".  

  In 1971, amidst the fight that led to the banning of DDT in 1972, the president of 
the National Academy of Science - distinguished biologist Philip Handler - said "DDT 
is the greatest chemical that has ever been discovered".  Commission after commission, 
top expert after top Nobel prize-winning expert, has given DDT a clean bill of health.       
   1950s:  Irradiated foods.  Now approved in 30 countries for various uses, approved 
in U.S., 1992.  
   1957 - continues: Fluoridated water.  The arguments used against fluoridating water 
were eerily similar to those later used against nuclear power - but from the other end 
of political spectrum.
   1960s: PCBs. Banned in 1976.  A side-effect of banning PCBs is malfunctions in 
large electrical transformers.  One such case caused the July 29, 1990, blackout 
covering 14 square miles in Chicago, leading to rioting and three deaths.
   Early 1960s: Low-level nuclear radiation. Rather than being harmful, this was later 
shown to produce a beneficial effect called hormesis (see chapter 13). 
   November, 1959: Thanksgiving cranberries and pesticides. 
   Mid-1960s:  Mercury dental fillings.  Declared safe in 1993 by U.S. Public Health 
Service.
   Mid-1960s: SST threat to ozone layer; two scientific flip-flops within a few years. 
(See below.) 
   1970:  Mercury in swordfish and tuna.
   1970:  Cyclamates banned for causing bladder cancer.  Totally cleared in 1985.  But 
ban never lifted.  
   1972:  Red dye #2. One Russian study claimed dye caused cancer.  Many subsequent 
studies absolved the dye.  Nevertheless, banned in 1976.  
   1970s (and earlier): Running out of metals (see chapters 1-3).
   1970s: Saccharin causing bladder cancer.  Exonerated in 1990s.   But warning still 
required on containers.
   Early 1970s:  Pesticides aldrin and dieldrin, suspended in 1974.   Chlordane and 
heptachlor.  All banned in the 1970s because of belief that they cause tumors in mouse 
livers.  But "[t]here has never been a documented case of human illness or death in 
the United States as the result of the standard and accepted use of pesticides.  
Although Americans are exposed to trace levels of pesticides, there is no evidence 
that such exposure increases the risk of cancer, birth defects, or any other human 
ailment." 
   1970s: Acid rain.  Shown in 1990s not to harm forests.  (See below.)
   1970s:  Agent Orange (dioxin).  Dioxin declared safe by federal court in 1984 when 
veterans brought suit.  August, 1991: New York Times front-page headline was "U.S. 
Backing Away from Saying Dioxin is a Deadly Peril".  The story continued, "Exposure to 
the chemical, once thought to be much more hazardous than chain smoking, is now 
considered by some experts to be no more risky than spending a week sunbathing".  Re 
the Agent Orange case:  "Virtually every major study, including a 1987 report by the 
Centers for Disease Control (CDC), has concluded that the evidence isn't strong enough 
to prove that the herbicide is the culprit" in the bad health of some Vietnam 
veterans. 
   Mid-1970s: Humanity in danger because of a millenia-long reduction in the number of 
varieties of plants used for food.  Belied by evidence on famine prior to the 1970s 
and since then, as explained in the afternote to chapter 6.
   1976:  Chemical residues at Love Canal.   Scare ended 1980; solid scientific 
consensus is that there was no observable damage to humans from living near Love 
Canal.  
   1976:  Explosion of PCB plant in Seveso, Italy. The PCBs caused no harm to anyone.  
(See the statement by Haroun Tazieff on page 000 [in present chapter 40].  
   Mid- and late-1970s: Global cooling.  By 1980s, replaced by the scare of global 
warming. (See below.)
   1978:  Asbestos in schools and other buildings.   The ill-considered regulations on 
the use of asbestos not only are costly, but have had a devastating side-effect:  the 
Challenger space shuttle disaster.  The sealant used to replace the asbestos-based O-
ring sealant in the rocket engine that launches space shuttles malfunctioned at the 
low temperature at which Challenger was launched, causing the explosion shortly after 
launch and deaths of the astronauts.  As in many such cases, it is impossible to 
foresee all the consequences of an environmental regulation and as David Hume and 
Friedrich Hayek teach us, we should be extremely wary of altering evolved patterns of 
behavior lest we make such tragic blunders with our "rational" assessments of what our 
social interventions may bring about.   For more on asbestos, see the 1992 article by 
Malcolm Ross - a hero in bringing to light the facts about asbestos - and Bennett's 
1991 book. 
   1970s - 1980s: Oil spills.  The worst cases of oil spills have all been far less 
disastrous to wildlife than initially feared.  
   1980s:  Radon.  Eventually, too little radon found dangerous, rather than too much. 
	1979 Lead ingestion by children lowers IQ.  Study by Herbert Needleman led to 
the federal ban on leaded gasoline.  Study entirely repudiated in 1994.  No mention of 
again allowing leaded gasoline has been made, however.
   1981:  Coffee said to cause 50 percent of pancreatic cancers.  Original researchers 
reversed conclusion in 1986.  Also, no connection found between caffeine intake of 
pregnant women and birth defects. 
   1980s, 1990s: BST (Bovine somatotropin).  Assertion that this growth-promoting 
element will make cows more liable to infection proven false.
   1981:  Malathion and med-fly threat to agriculture in the West.  Malathion found 
safe in 1981 as a med-fly killer, after its use had been threatened.
   1982:  Times Beach dioxin threat, found to have caused no harm to humans.  In 1983 
dioxin was cleared of charges.  The Centers for Disease Control asserts that the Times 
Beach evacuation was unnecessary.
   1984:  Ethyl dibromide (EDB).  Banned, though no one harmed.  Result: more 
dangerous pesticides used instead. 
   Mid-1980s, continues:  Ozone hole.  No connection found between thinner ozone layer 
and skin cancer.  See below.  
   1986: In November, warning of lead in drinking water. In December, retraction by 
EPA. 
   1987: Alcohol said to be responsible for 50 percent increase in breast cancers.  
   1987: Sand from Californian and other beaches.  Silica was listed as a "probable" 
human carcinogen, and warnings were required by the State of California on containers 
of sand and limestone.  Has been classified as carcinogenic by OSHA and other 
regulatory agencies. 
   1989:  Red dye #3.  This scare came and went in a hurry.  
   ?DES (Diethylstilbesterol): Cattle growth hormone said to cause cervical cancer.  
Banned.   Only cause for fear was finding of vaginal cancer when DES used in large 
doses as a human drug during pregnancy. 
   1989: Aflatoxin in corn.  Another supposed threat to our food supply.
   1989: Alar.  
   ? Nuclear winter:  Atom bombs can surely kill us.  But this threat to humanity as a 
whole was soon found to be shoddy science.
   1991: Smoke from Kuwait oil fires and global cooling.  No global effects found.  
"Fires in Kuwait Not a Threat to Climate, Federal Study Finds."    First reports 
estimated an "unprecedented ecological catastrophe, the likes of which the world has 
never seen", with five years required to extinguish all the fires.  The last fire was 
extinguished within six months.  
   1991:  Lefthanded people die earlier.  Proved unsubstantiated in 1993.   False 
scare based on faulty age-compositional data.
   1993:  Cancer caused by cellular telephones.  This scare is an excellent example of 
the scare epidemic.  A single layman made the charge on a television talk show of a 
link between his wife's brain tumor and her use of cellular phones.  That was enough 
to produce front-page stories for days, activity in Congress, the Food and Drug 
Administration, and the National Cancer Institute, plus statements by manufacturers 
that studies of the matter will be forthcoming.  All scientists quoted have stated 
that there is no evidence of a connection.  In the meantime, stock prices of firms in 
the industry fell substantially - the price of Motorola, the largest manufacturer, 
falling 20 percent,  and many persons became fearful of using their phones.
   Given that the human imagination is active, and that there is no sanction for 
floating such scares but there is a news value in them, there is every reason to 
expect many, many more false scares to proliferate, each one adding to the impression 
that the environment is a more and more frightening milieu.  Hence a brief digression:
[I]f you were to wear both a belt and suspenders, the 
chance of your suffering `coincident failure' - having 
both snap at once and your pants fall down - is one 
occurrence every 36,000 years. 

 
   Reassuring people about environmental and resource scares is not easy.  It is like 
reassuring a small child that night noises do not imply danger.  You can investigate 
room after room with the child.  But the fears reappear later, and are directed to 
places you did not investigate.  Perhaps vague fears are an ineradicable part of our 
nature, so long as we lack solid knowledge of the actual conditions. But policymakers 
must try to rise above the childish and primitive thinking of these scares, and to 
gain the necessary knowledge, so as not to make costly and destructive decisions. 
   The possibility of a dangerous or unesthetic polluting effect may be raised against 
almost any substance humans have ever produced or ever will produce.  And we cannot 
immediately rebut any such charge, because it takes much time and research effort to 
get the facts.  It only takes one sentence to accuse a person of murder or a substance 
of causing cancer, but it may take years and volumes to rebut the charge.  It is clear 
that if we act as if all possible dangers from a substance are also likely dangers, 
and if we take seriously all charges even when there is little evidence presented to 
back them up, we will become immobilized. 
   May I now introduce a surprise witness whose qualifications in the fight against 
pollution are formidable?  Here is his congressional testimony about sodium azide, 
which is used in air bags for automobiles. (He was responding to a report that this 
chemical may cause mutations and cancer.)

   Sodium azide, if you smell the gas or taste it, is      
very, very unsafe. So is gasoline. So are the additives      
in gasoline. So are battery additives. So are tire wear      
and tire flakes that get into the air. So are      
hydrocarbons. So is nitrogen oxide, and so is carbon 
monoxide.

     It strikes me as eroding the credibility of some 
of      these opponents who suddenly become full of 
such      concern for these toxic substances because it 
happens      to be in accord with what certain special 
industrial      interests want, and so unconcerned with 
the massively      more pervasive, massively more 
poisonous array of      chemical substances that we too 
charitably call      pollution.

     I also spoke with Dr. Bruce Ames (chairman at the      
Genetics Department at the University of California-     
Berkeley)... Dr. Ames was merely talking about sodium      
azide as it is exposed to human contact. He is not      
talking about sodium azide as it is solidified in      
pellets, and contained in sealed containers, etc. He      
does not have any information on that.

     The point I want to make is that sodium azide, if 
it      is exposed to acidic contact, will under 
certain      extraordinary circumstances, given the 
fact that it is      a solid pellet, emit a hydrozoic 
acid gas which is an      intolerably pungent gas. If 
anybody has ever taken the      slightest whiff of this 
gas, they would know it.

     In all the crashes which involve air bag equipped 
cars      on the highways, and sodium azide as the 
inflator,      there has been no such reaction.

     I don't say that by way of saying that sodium 
azide      should be the inflator.  Undoubtedly it is 
likely that      most of the cars with air bags in the 
'80s will not      have sodium azide.

     But I do point out that the attempt to 
sensationalize      this product in ways that are not 
shared by EPA, the      Department of Health, Education 
and Welfare, or OSHA,      who know how sodium azide 
has been used for years in      medical laboratories, 
for example - your attempt to      sensationalize it 
does not receive much credibility      given the source 
of the persons who are doing the      sensationalizing.

   The irony of this effective defense of sodium azide by Ralph Nader - for that is 
the identity of my surprise witness - is that the consumer and environmental movements 
in which Nader is influential have attacked many other substances and conditions in 
the same way that sodium azide and air bags were attacked, and now the same 
consumerists were suffering from irresponsible attacks on their own pet safety 
project, the air bag.


MAJOR ENVIRONMENTAL SCARES OF THE 1990S
Acid Rain

   The acid rain scare has now been exposed as one of the great false alarms of our 
time.  In 1980 the federal government initiated the huge National Acid Precipitation 
Assessment Program (NAPAP), employing 700 scientists and costing $500 million. The 
NAPAP study found - to the surprise of most of its scientists - that acid rain was far 
less threatening than it had been assumed to be at the onset of the study. It is 
mainly a threat to a few lakes - about 2 percent of the lake surface in the 
Adirondacks - all of which could be made less acid with cheap and quick liming.  
Furthermore, before 1860, when forests around those lakes began to be cut and wood 
burned (which lowers acidity), the lakes were as acid as now.  The Clean Air Act of 
1990, which will have large economic consequences for the U.S., was passed while the 
NAPAP findings were unknown to most or all of the Congress; the NAPAP director 
expressed disappointment in 1990 that "the science that NAPAP performed...has been so 
largely ignored."   Indeed, the NAPAP findings were systematically kept from public 
view until the television program 60 Minutes aired a broadcast on the scandal. 
   In Europe, the supposed effects of acid rain in destroying forests and reducing 
tree growth have now been shown to be without foundation; forests are larger, and 
trees growing more rapidly, than in the first half of this century.  (See chapter 10).
   The acid-rain scare reteaches an important lesson: It is quick and easy to raise a 
false alarm, but to quell the alarm is hard and slow. The necessary solid research 
requires considerable time.  And by the time the research is complete, many people 
have a stake in wanting the scientific truth not to be heard - advocacy organizations 
who gain public support from the alarm; and bureaucrats who have a stake in not being 
shown to have been in error, and who already have built some empire on the supposed 
problem.  
Global Warming 
   Along with acid rain and the ozone hole (addressed below), the supposed greenhouse 
effect and global warming must be mentioned in this book because it is so salient in 
public thinking.  I am not an atmospheric scientist, and I cannot address the 
technical issues.  I can, however, try to put these issues in reasonable perspective.  
   Given the history of such environmental scares - over all of human history - my 
guess is that global warming is likely to be simply another transient concern, barely 
worthy of consideration ten years from now should I then be writing again of these 
issues.  After all, when I first addressed environmental matters in the late 1960s and 
1970s, the climatological issue of major public concern was still global cooling.  
These quotations  illustrate the prevailing thinking about climate in the early 1970s, 
only a decade before the hooha about warming began in earnest. 

... climatologist J. Murray Mitchell, then of the 
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, noted 
in 1976:  "The media are having a lot of fun with this 
situation.  Whenever there is a cold wave, they seek 
out a proponent of the ice-age-is-coming school and put 
his theories on page one...Whenever there is a heat 
wave...they turn to his opposite number, [who predicts] 
a kind of heat death of the earth."

	"The cooling has already killed hundreds of 
thousands of people in poor nations.  It has already 
made food and fuel more precious, thus increasing the 
price of everything we buy.  If it continues, and no 
strong measures are taken to deal with it, the cooling 
will cause world famine, world chaos, and probably 
world war, and this could all come by the year 2000."
	--Lowell Ponte, The Cooling, 1976.

	"The facts have emerged, in recent years and 
months, from research into past ice ages.  They imply 
that the threat of a new ice age must now stand 
alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale 
death and misery for mankind."
	--Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist and 
producer of scientific television documentaries, "In 
the Grip of a New Ice Age," International Wildlife, 
July 1975.

	"At this point, the world's climatologists are 
agreed...Once the freeze starts, it will be too late."
	--Douglas Colligan, "Brace Yourself for Another 
Ice Age," Science Digest, February 1973.

	I believe that increasing global air pollution, 
through its effect on the reflectivity of the earth, is 
currently dominant and is responsible for the 
temperature decline of the past decade or two"
Reid Bryson, "Environmental Roulette, Global Ecology: 
Readings Toward a Rational Strategy for Man, John P. 
Holdren and Paul R. Ehrlich, eds., 1971.

	Bryson went so far as to tell the New York Times that, compared to the then-
recent "decade or two" of cooling, "There appears to be nothing like it in the past 
1,000 years", implying that cooling was inevitable. 
   Indeed many of the same persons who were then warning about global cooling are the 
same climatologists who are now warning of global warming - especially Stephen 
Schneider, one of the most prominent of the global-warming doomsters.
page # \ultres\ tchar18  June 12, 1994