For the people of the densely populated city of Bhopal, India, December 2 and 3 of 1984 mark a very dark anniversary — a time that left thousands dead and thousands more deathly ill and clinging to life. 

It all started in the late 1970s when Union Carbide India Limited constructed a pesticide plant in Bhopal. Their initial goal was to produce pesticides that would help increase production on local farms. However, the sale of pesticide did not pan out and the plant soon began losing money.

Then in 1979, the factory began producing huge amounts of the highly toxic methyl isocyanate, or MIC, because it was a cheaper way to make a pesticide known as carbaryl. In an attempt to further trim the company’s budget, employee training and factory maintenance were radically cut.

This is when many factory employees began complaining about working in potentially dangerous conditions. Many warned of possible deadly disasters, but management appeared to turn a deaf ear to these warnings.

Late in the evening of December 2, 1984, something began going desperately wrong in storage tank E610. E610 just happened to be the tank that contained some 40 tons of MIC. Water leaked into the tank, which ultimately caused the MIC’s temperature to rise dangerously high.

Some sources report that water actually leaked into the tank during a routine cleaning of a pipe, and the safety valves inside the pipe were faulty. The Union Carbide company claims that a saboteur placed water inside the tank. To date, there is still no proof to back up the company’s claim. It has further been posed that some of the workers may have thrown water on the tank once it began overheating, not realizing they were only making matters worse.

Whatever the cause, by 12:15 in the morning on December 3, MIC fumes began leaking from E610. There should have been six safety features, which would have either prevented the leak in the first place or, at the very least, contained it. Each of the six safety features failed that night.

The cause of the incident has been extensively researched. As water began causing the exothermal reaction, which released an amount of gas big enough to open the safety valves, the scrubbers failed. Under safe working conditions, the scrubbers would intercept any escaping gas.

Research also shows how factory personnel neglected numerous safety procedures. There were no valves to prevent water from entering the storage tanks in the first place, and the cooling installation of the tanks and the flaring installation that might have burned the escaping gas were also out of order.

In short, compared to its other locations, safety was very low on the priority list for this Union Carbide factory. As is often the case, imperative safety procedures were neglected because of budget cuts.

An estimated 27 tons of MIC gas escaped from E610 and began spreading across the densely populated city of roughly 900,000 people. In an attempt to warn the citizens of Bhopal, a warning siren was turned on; however, it was quickly turned off again to prevent people from panicking.

So as the gas began and continued to leak from E610, most Bhopal residents slept. Many only awoke when they heard other family members coughing and trying to get their breath, or when they found themselves choking on the mysterious, noxious gas.

It is reported that many people felt severe burning in their throats and eyes as they frantically got out of their beds. Some even choked on their own bile, while others fell to the ground in anguish and pain.

As panic ensued, thousands of people ran from their homes, but they did not know where to go for safety and help. Many families were separated in the mass confusion, and numerous people fell to the ground, became unconscious and were then trampled.

It is important to note that estimates of the death toll vary greatly. Most sources, however, report that at least 3,000 people died from immediate exposure to the gas, with higher estimates going up to 8,000. In 14 years following this terrifying and deadly disaster, about 20,000 more people have died from damage caused by the MIC gas.

Yet another 120,000 people are still living every day with the effects and fallout from being exposed to MIC. These people suffer from various ailments, including blindness, extreme shortness of breath, cancers, birth deformities and early onset of menopause.

To date, chemicals from the pesticide plant and from the leak have infiltrated the water system and soil near the old factory. Because of this, people who live near the factory site are still being poisoned.

Just three days after the disaster, the chairman of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson, was arrested. When he was released on bail, he fled the country. Although his whereabouts were unknown for many years, he was eventually discovered living in the United States with one home in the Hamptons in New York and another in Florida. Anderson continues to be wanted in India for culpable homicide for his role in the Bhopal disaster.

One of the worst parts of this tragedy is actually what has happened in the years following that fateful night in 1984. Although Union Carbide has paid some restitution to the victims, the company claims they are not liable for any damages because they blame a saboteur for the disaster and claim that the factory was in good working order before the gas leak. The victims of the Bhopal gas leak have received very little money. Many of the victims continue to be in poor health and are unable to work.

Union Carbide was accused of deliberate evasion of regular safety procedures. During legal proceedings, where victims demanded compensation, solid evidence was shown that proved Union Carbide used untested technology in the Bhopal factory on a regular basis. In fact, when the gas leak occurred local physicians were not told anything about the gas. This resulted in a serious delay in getting proper treatment for exposure and developing emergency safety measures.

After long legal proceedings, in February 1989, a settlement was achieved. Union Carbide promised to pay 470 million dollars in compensation, but only a small part of this compensation was ever paid to the survivors.

However, Union Carbide states on its website that it paid the full settlement to the Indian government within 10 days time. In 2004, the Supreme Court forced the Indian government to pay the remaining 330 million dollars compensation to the victims and their families.

Eventually, Union Carbide sold the Indian factory to a battery maker. Then, in 2001, Dow Chemical Company took control of Union Carbide. This takeover led to discussions on who should be responsible for cleaning up the tons of poisonous waste that is still present.

Environmental activists are trying to convince Dow Chemical Company to clean up this massive toxic mess, which could lead to serious nervous system failure, liver and kidney disease, and cancer for many years to come.

December 3, 1984 will likely always be memorable for the city of Bhopal in Madya Pradesh county, India. The day when a cloud containing at least 15 metric tons of methyl isocyanate covered an area of Bhopal of more than 30 square miles.

Approximately 100,000 people still suffer from chronic disease related to gas exposure, and ten more people die from this exposure every year. This event is now known as the worst industrial environmental disaster to ever have occurred.

Today, the location is still polluted with thousands of tons of toxic chemicals, such as hexachlorobenzene and mercury. These chemicals are stored in open barrels. Rainfall causes rinsing out of pollution to local drinking water sources. Research also shows that some wells still contain up to 500 times the legal limit of these toxins.

The Aral Sea is in the Republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It is largely shallow with many lagoons and islands and was once the world’s fourth largest body of inland water. Today, it is the eighth largest, and one of our greatest ecological disasters.

In the 1960′s increasing amounts of water were diverted from the Aral Sea to the Amudarya and Syrdarya rivers for irrigation of rice and cotton crops. Over the years, the Aral Sea has retreated by as much as a hundred meters, leaving a vast area littered with abandoned fishing boats and other marine equipment.

Photo credit: upyernoz

Because the volume of water has shrunk so much, the salt in the water has risen to toxic levels, 23% in the late 1980′s. Once carp, bream, sturgeon, pike-perch and other fish provided a good living for commercial fishermen. Others made a living trapping muskrats. By 1982, all commercial fishing had ended and about 60,000 people lost their livelihoods.

With 500 species of birds, 100 species of fish and 200 species of mammals, the Aral Sea Basin had a diversity of wildlife that compared with Africa. Most of these animals have now died.

Every year the prevailing northeast wind carries over one hundred million tons of salt-laden, fertilizer- and pesticide-contaminated dust from the former sea. This dust has been found in Antarctic penguins. The same deadly mix has filtered into the ground water and into irrigation water.

Hospitalization rates have risen dramatically and the mortality rate has gone up by fifteen times in a ten year period. Local child mortality, due to the deterioration of the environment, is higher than anywhere else in the former Soviet Union.

The remnant of the Aral Sea has been divided by a dam. The North Aral Sea has seen an increase in water level due to many large international projects. The success there has given some hope for the South Aral Sea, which had been abandoned to its fate.

Most of us have heard stories of some unsuspecting child or fisherman happening upon a frog that seems completely healthy, except for the fact that it has no legs or an extra eye. At one time, these stories were deemed as oddities or unusual, freak occurrences. Now, however, malformed frogs are much more common than once thought and are real life indicators of significant problems in our environment.

It is true that some variations of morphological abnormalities are expected among the world’s vast amphibian population, including more than 4,000 species of frogs and toads. These anticipated abnormalities, however, are typically due to some type of trauma, developmental problems and mutations rather than environmental factors.

The United States is home to roughly 230 amphibian species, which includes 90 frog and toad species. Beginning in the early 90s, in several of Minnesota’s wetlands, malformation rates were found to be between 30 to 50%. With the typical, expected malformation rate between zero and two percent, this finding was cause for concern. Once Minnesota’s frog problems were unearthed, elevated malformation rates were discovered in 56 of the United States’ native species and in 48 states.

While these abnormalities are often referred to as “deformities,” most of the abnormalities found are actually “malformations.” Notably, there is a real difference between the two conditions. Deformation is the process of disfiguring or distorting an already existing body part while malformation is the process of disrupting a normally-formed body part or organ during those vital first stages of development.

The malformations most commonly reported by herpetologists involve missing legs, extra legs and paralyzed or misshapen legs. Also seen are frogs with legs that are fused against the frog’s body, webbed together with extra skin or split into two new legs halfway down.

Images of malformed frogs

Other malformations are also reported. Frogs with missing or extra eyes, as well as eyes that are unusual in size, shape and location have also been found. Misshapen jaws and incomplete tail absorption have also been documented.

Because frogs are extremely sensitive to their environments, they have long been considered the “canary in a coal mine” for environmental disasters. In the past, before better methods had been developed, coal miners commonly relied upon canaries to detect toxic or explosive gases in mines. These delicate birds are more sensitive to toxic gases than we are and would collapse long before any miners were affected. A collapsed canary made the perfect alarm for miners to get out immediately and for management to investigate the noxious problem and fix it.

As with the coalmining canaries, frogs are especially vulnerable to the environment in which they live. Frogs are especially sensitive to pollution and other environmental stressors. They live at the meeting place of two very different environments, the land and the water, and easily absorb damaging pollutants directly through their skin.

As human beings, we breathe through our lungs, which are obviously tucked safely inside our bodies. Our bodies provide much protection from direct contact with polluted air and contaminated water. Although some amphibians do breathe completely through their skin, the majority breathe and receive their oxygen partially through their skin, which is always open to the elements. Whether breathing partially or completely through their skin, the amphibian body is much more vulnerable and susceptible to outside factors, including diseases, toxic chemicals, ionizing radiation (UV-B) from the sun and habitat destruction.

Because of this special vulnerability, we continue to see an increasing numbers of malformed frogs along with a steadily decreasing population of frogs, and amphibians as a whole. Like the coalminers, this should be our alarm to look into and fix this problem. This complex problem, however, will not be easy to remedy because there are several possible contributing causes.

Photo Credit: Hamed Saber

Consider this. Amphibians are such effective indicators of significant environmental variations that many ecological problems may go undetected by our human eyes until significant environmental damage has occurred. The current worldwide amphibian population is declining and the number of bodily malformations is increasing. This may be an early warning to us – an early warning of serious ecosystem imbalances.

WHAT’S TO BLAME

First, consider the extensive use of pesticides across the United States. The chemical runoff collecting in the vast Midwestern farmlands is causing much damage to frog populations. Not only do excessive pesticides and other xenobiotic chemicals affect the sexual development of frogs, but it also makes them more susceptible to often fatal bacterial meningitis as well as some dangerous, parasitic fungi.

Scientists have confirmed that agricultural contaminants may be an important factor in amphibian declines in California. According to an article recently accepted by the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, a study by scientists of the U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Department of Agriculture indicates that organophosphorus pesticides from agricultural areas, which are transported to the Sierra Nevada on prevailing summer winds, may be affecting populations of amphibians that breed in mountain ponds and streams.
USGS

Studies at the University of California Berkeley have been conducted on delicate developing tadpoles. The tadpoles were reared in a watery environment contaminated with a mixture of nine pesticides, fungicides and herbicides – chemicals commonly found in ponds located close to Midwestern cornfields.

The evidence showed that polluted tadpoles take longer to complete their metamorphosis into adult frogs. Because of this delay, they are smaller, which makes it harder for them to catch and eat their prey and turns them into easier prey for other animals. Research also showed that these frogs had increased levels of a stress hormone that causes holes to develop in the thymus gland, which likely causes an impaired immune response to disease.

Photo Credit: Stadtwald

Pesticides are just one factor causing the decline of amphibian populations. This problem is the result of a combination of factors. Excessive chemical applications, the introduction of nonnative predators and competitors, increasing levels of ultraviolet light and global warming, acid rain, mercury pollution, eradication of wetlands and overall habitat destruction are all contributing to the decline of the frog.

While it is a natural occurring process for amphibian populations to fluctuate according to environmental conditions, such as rainfall amounts, the human population is the most likely component to the amphibian malformation and population decline.

Humans have the capability to improve or correct environmental problems. We also possess the ability to exacerbate the same ecological problems at local, regional and global levels. It’s up to us!

Karimov’s human rights record is abysmal. He has been known to boil political dissenters alive. He has repressed religious rights, ostensibly as part of the war on terror. When it comes to human rights in Uzbekistan, there aren’t any. Karimov has detained human rights workers and ordered his troops to fire into crowds of demonstrators. Political opponents end up in prison and are tortured or killed.

The violent restriction of human rights grows from the paranoia so commonly seen among totalitarian dictators. Karimov even banned the playing of billiards because he was afraid that people would talk about politics while playing. While that may sound humourous, it goes a long way towards demonstrating the depth of Karimov’s paranoia.

Despite all of the well-documented problems in Uzbekistan over a decade of Karimov’s rule, the United States and allies such as Britain welcomed Karimov into the war against terror. In exchange for military aid, the US received the use of the Karshi-Khanabad air base and facilities for 800 US troops. The Bush administration ignored criticism of having such a brutal regime as an ally until last year.

Even with the criticism of their relationship with Karimov, a relationship that echoed the Reagan administration’s relationship with Saddam Hussein, The US maintained a relationship with Uzbekistan while choosing to ignore Karimov’s abuses in exchange for his cooperation. While the need for an ally in the war on terror is often cited, Uzbekistan is strategically located between Russia and China and has sizable natural gas reserves, estimated in 2005 to be 1.875 trillion cubic meters, and a small amount of oil. Considering the strategic importance of energy in the area, relations with Uzbekistan could have more to do with natural gas reserves than the war on terror.

The relationship between Uzbekistan and the US, as well the European Union did finally begin to sour in 2005, however. A small armed uprising in the province of Andizhan was followed by a large, peaceful demonstration. Reports vary, and there may or may not have been a few armed militants among the protestors, but the Uzbek military responded to the demonstration by firing into the crowd. The true extent of the casualties is not known, but human rights experts have responded to the incident as being on a par with the Tiananmen Square massacre. The government crackdown on political opponents and human rights advocates since the massacre is brutal and repressive, with torture, disappearances, and politically-motivated murder becoming commonplace.

After the incident in Andizhan, pressure began to grow in the EU for sanctions to be put in place against Uzbekistan and the accounts of officials in the Karimov regime frozen, although no comprehensive action was taken. There was little reaction in the United States, with aid ( $91.6 million in 2005) continuing to flow, but some harsh words about human rights from the Bush administration caused Karimov to kick the US military out of the Karshi-Khanabad air base. Since that time, both Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) and Congressman Christopher Smith (R-New Jersey) have introduced bills calling for an end to all aid to Uzbekistan and the freezing of foreign accounts and travel restrictions for Uzbek officials.

Karimov is now currying favour with Russia and China, who have far less interest in human rights abuses than western countries claim to have, and are even more likely to ignore, or partake in, gross abuses to gain access to energy reserves or strategic military advantage.

The spectre of further human rights abuses and the poverty that is so pervasive under totalitarian regimes points to an unhappy future for the people of Uzbekistan, but making things worse is trying to eke out a living in a country that has suffered serious environmental damage.

During the Soviet era the excessive use herbicides, pesticides, defoliants, and other chemicals combined with the diversion of water for irrigation from two major rivers devastated the environment. The diversion of the Amu Darya and Syrdariya Rivers has caused the Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth largest inland body of fresh water, to shrink in size. The Aral Sea is now less than half the size it was in the 1960s, holding only about one third of the water it once did.

Widespread irrigation has contaminated what water still exists with agricultural chemicals. Naturally occurring soil salt, has become concentrated from excessive irrigation. The dried lake bed where large portions of the Aral Sea used to be now produces dust storms full of agricultural and industrial chemicals which, combined with the salt, blow for up to 800 miles. The contaminated dust in these storms kills plant life, causing desrtification.

The environmental devastation continues. Although Uzbekistan is a signatory to several environmental treaties, including clean air and water agreements and the Kyoto protocol, less than half of the smokestacks in the country have filtration devices. The most common method of chemical disposal remains dumping it into a rudimentary sewer system if one exists in the area.. Only about 50% of urban areas and 25% of rural villages have sewers in Afghanistan, so chemicals are often just dumped in the nearest ditch or river.

The result is that most of the underground water supplies are contaminated and the rivers and ditches are basically open sewers. Water-borne illness is common and chemical-related disease is not unusual. Respiratory illness is common in both rural and urban areas.

All indications are that the environmental situation will continue to worsen under the reign of Islam Karimov. Those who speak out against it risk imprisonment, torture, and death. Complaints from international agencies have little impact on the Karimov regime and local activists are silenced, so the environmental issues worsen with the human rights abuses.

There is no end in sight to the suffering of the people of Uzbekistan. The west failed to help them for strategic and economic reasons. Russia and China have shown even less of a compunction to use their influence to better human rights or environmental conditions. Unless some way is found to intervene, Uzbekistan will continue to be one of the worst places on earth in the foreseeable future.

In 1964, a report produced by the Tennessee Department of Public Health stated that the Chattanooga Creek was “without a doubt, the most grossly polluted stream in the Chattanooga area.”

In 1969, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare determined that Chattanooga, Tennessee had the poorest air quality in the nation. This was due, in large part, to a heavy manufacturing industry that included chemicals and pesticides.

Many cities have faced these same challenges. Many cities still do. But Chattanooga’s responses and solutions have been unique, and very successful.

One of the first things the city did was create, and have approved by the state, the Hamilton County Air Pollution Control Bureau. The Bureau was charged with establishing air quality regulations for the city. In an effort to ensure compliance of these regulations, the Bureau worked directly with the manufacturing sector. At the time, the primary need was for smokestack “scrubbers”, which remove most of the toxic by-products typically released by industrial smokestacks.

The manufacturing sector responded quickly and creatively. Not only did they agree to the $40 million in renovations that was needed, but local entrepreneurs chose to build the scrubbers in town. Today the scrubbers are still being manufactured, and are being exported worldwide. Thus, a profitable industry was created, while simultaneously improving air quality.

The city began holding “community visioning” meetings, seeking resident assistance with the environmental and economic troubles it was facing. One outcome of those meetings was the creation of the Moccasin Bend Task Force. This task force studied the 22-mile long Tennessee River and, with the input of hundreds of local citizens, developed the Tennessee River Park Master Plan. The Master Plan eventually resulted in the development of a 23-mile River Walk. The city maintains it through a yearly River Rescue clean-up effort, and it has enabled Chattanooga residents and tourists to enjoy the river again. The Master Plan didn’t just focus on the banks of the Tennessee River. It also included strategies for cleaning up and beautifying the banks of the creeks that feed into the river. In addition, a water treatment facility was built farther upstream, to aid in purifying the streams and lake. Now, where “no swimming” signs used to be the prominent feature, you can instead see people swimming, boating, or simply walking along the river’s edge.

From the river, the environmental revitalizing moved to the downtown district. Trees were planted along the streets. Not just for aesthetic purposes, but to help reduce pollution. The trees are purchased from a local, private nursery. Street pavers were built to help reduce the effects of storm water run-off. Air and traffic pollution have been reduced with the introduction of an electric mass transit system. The technology and vehicles were developed and built locally, and are now being exported globally. People who work downtown can park in garages at the edge of the downtown district, then take electric shuttles to their final destinations. The money generated from the parking garages helps cover the cost of the electric vehicles.

One of the most aggressive and innovative projects is the South-Central business district. Being built as an eco-industrial park, the goal is zero emissions. This means that the waste products from one industry become resources for another within the district.

Chattanooga has excelled at developing a sustainable community, because it has re-integrated the human element. At the heart of most of its initiatives has been the Chattanooga citizens themselves. The community vision meetings were the cornerstone for most of the changes that have been made. But the citizens don’t just offer ideas, they help implement and maintain them. This is done, not only through clean-up efforts like River Rescue, but also through everyday activities. The Orange Grove Recycling Center is a perfect example.

Though it could use machinery to separate the recyclable materials that come in from the nearly 60,000 homes and municipal drop-off sites, the Center instead employs about 100 developmentally disabled adults. Not only does manual sorting reduce industrial pollution, but it also gives an often-ignored part of the population a sense of purpose and belonging. The workers are paid for their time, and are given the opportunity to become and integral part of this community’s sustained environment.

Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise was yet another result of the community vision meetings. It is currently creating a mixed-use, mixed-income development in a part of downtown Chattanooga’s Southside district. Included is an elementary school that will allow children in the area to walk to school for the first time in years.

While most cities, nationally and globally, make an effort to reduce negative affects on the environment; few (if any) have attained the level of success enjoyed by Chattanooga. Here, industry is not the enemy, but instead has offered viable and effective solutions. Here, the citizen and the government official aren’t at odds. Rather, they work together to creatively address the environmental challenges the city has faced.

Chattanooga has become one of the few cities designated as an EPA attainment city. This has been due, in large part, to combined efforts of Chattanooga citizens and city officials.

From “most polluted city in the nation” to one of the best (possibly the best) models of an environmentally healthy and sustainable city, in under 40 years. Not bad.

Sources: Chattanooga Horizon Plan 2010, RiverCityCompany.com, CneInc.org

With that great American crop, corn, threatened, so was the livelihood of our all-American corn farmers. Enter High Fructose Corn Syrup – the new sweetener that would drive up demand for corn and provide a super cheap new form of sweetener for packaged foods, breads, cereals, sodas, spaghetti sauce, ketchup – you name it, HFCS would be in it. The future looked sweet indeed.



More stable than sugar against the disintegrating elements (such as moisture), foods with High Fructose Corn Syrup can literally travel thousands of miles and sit on the shelf of your local convenience store forever and (almost) never go bad. Cheaper ingredients meant cheaper groceries for the good American consumer. A win- win situation, it seemed.

Because of the unusually long shelf life of HFCS, store-bought cakes, cookies, brownies, mixes, breads, sodas, juices, tomato sauce and all of the rest could be sold with practically no expiration date. HFCS, despite misleading labels that read “all natural,” is an ENTIRELY man-made substance. It’s almost indestructible. Like Styrofoam, eternal and immortal.

The pornographic underbelly of all this (and there always is one, it seems, where money and government and conflicting desires come into play) is that in laboratory tests High Fructose Corn Syrup causes male rats to never fully develop their testicles. And High Fructose Corn Syrup also causes the hearts of female rats to expand until they burst. Exit pornography, enter horror flick.

But is this a rat tragic story or a human tragedy? Well, hold into your seats because the seemingly innocuous little sweet nothings that Secretary Butz so gracefully introduced to our bellies in the seventies are now linked to obesity, diabetes, and yes, even cirrhosis of the liver. And as if the above were not enough, there is also some preliminary evidence that HFCS is carcinogenic.

In his groundbreaking book FatLand, Greg Critser breaks down exactly how HFCS is metabolized by the human body. In short, because our bodies have absolutely no way of understanding this highly engineered substance…they convert it into storage material and chuck it away…hence we are fattened up.

The explanation goes like this: glucose molecules, which are the building blocks of sucrose, can be metabolized (used, eaten) by any and every cell in the human body. This is not so with Fructose. It has to be metabolized through the liver. Hence, your liver ends up releasing triglycerides into your bloodstream and generally has trouble dealing with this weird substance. Fructose, which used to be advised for diabetics because it did not stimulate insulin production, really does appear to do a lot of fancy footwork with enzymes and other hormones, too. It does not allow the release of the hormone that tells the brain you are full. Hence, you overeat.

Now, what about the HFCS advocates who maintain that High Fructose Corn Syrup really is an “all-natural ingredient” because, they say, it is made from corn and fructose is the sugar naturally occurring in fruit? Well, wine and isopropyl alcohol both contain alcohol. However, the rubbing stuff for cotton balls should never go in your wineglass. Get it?

Let’s look a little more closely at how this stuff is made. Saying that HFCS is an all- natural substance is like saying two celebrities naturally bumped into each other and fell in love – when more often their PR agents set them up. HFCS is set up as follows: Corn starch is boiled, distilled, and generally messed with until you get a corn syrup with a big jacked-up amount of fructose…HFCS could have as little as 45% fructose or as much as 85%…the “hard stuff”…

So, the absolutely spine-tingling fact is that shortly after the 1970s, and especially throughout the 1980s, HFCS began to replace sucrose (table sugar, cane sugar, or beet sugar) in almost everything. This means that for the last 25 years — a lifetime for some reading this — this jacked-up, messed up “all-natural” toxic sweetener has been in all of our foods as we developed into the fat ADD-riddled little monsters that we are.

Too often we as consumers are under the spell of the idea that our health depends on our own free will. That is, what we do or do not do for ourselves makes all the difference in our health. Watching a new commercial for Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers on TV, I am struck by how easy, offhand and rampant this assumption is. If only each American could do their part to reverse the obesity epidemic through personal self-control and initiative? And yet this is not entirely true. What we don’t know can hurt us.

I heard recently the claim that health depends less on how we take care of ourselves than how we take care of each-other. This speaks directly to the need for more accurate public health and nutrition information and corporate responsibility. The Land of the free? I don’t know. Freedom from accurate information, freedom from healthy food…these do not really seem like freedoms at all.

Watching the food channel, I recently heard that the most delicious pork comes from Spain, where the swine are fattened up on an all-corn diet. This little tidbit reminded me of we Americans. Surely Americans are often enough referred to as pigs, but who knew we held so much in common with this lowly animal? It seems we and they are being fattened up for some strange slaughter yet to come.

Will Tofu Destroy Argentina?

Every three minutes 8,500 square feet of forest is destroyed in Argentina. The use of genetically engineered (GE) crops, herbicides, and poor farming practices have turned their old fields into deserts, forcing farmers to tear down the forests to create new, fresh land for their crops.

Argentina was in trouble at the turn of the Century. The economy was collapsing and their soil was eroding. GE crops were presented by Monsanto as a solution to both problems.

Argentina’s economy started to falter in 1999 and did a head-long crash in 2001. Businessmen found that the export of feed crops was one of the only industries in the country that could still turn a profit. So they started buying land and using modern equipment and practices to create monoculture farms (where only a single crop is grown). This type of farming can be done at a lower cost and with less labor than traditional farming, forcing peasant and subsistence farmers out of business and off the land.

At the same time farmers were discovering that plowing the land was causing soil erosion and sought a new way to farm. The “direct drilling” planting technique mixes together the top layer of soil with dead vegetation from the previous harvest, drills a hole, drops a seed, fills the hole with the mixed soil, and then presses it all down. But plowing would still be required to remove weeds that grow amongst the plants. The farmers needed a solution to the weed problem in order to stop the erosion.

The Little Seed That Could, For A While

Monsanto’s Roundup Resistant (RR) Soya is genetically engineered to tolerate glyphosate – the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. So instead of plowing the fields to remove weeds, farmers could simply spray them with Roundup. This crop appeared at first to be the perfect answer to both the economic and agricultural problems that the country was facing. Monsanto sold royalty-free seed and discounted Roundup to the Argentine farmers.

While the GE crops themselves are nutritious and relatively harmless, their presence has encouraged poor farming practices and created a cascade of land-destroying, disease-inducing effects.

Soil Depletion

The RR Soya allows farmers to put much more Roundup on their fields than would be used with traditional crops. The soil winds up saturated with the herbicide Glyphosate which also kills bacteria. The absence of natural bacteria in the soil allows snails, slugs, and fungi to proliferate.

To control these, farmers are using additional, highly dangerous chemicals. The bacteria would have broken down the dead plant material left after harvest and turned it into nutrients. Without the bacteria, the detritus of the previous harvest must be swept away prior to re-planting.

Drift

Both the herbicides and the GE crops drift beyond the property lines of the fields. Farmers spread the Roundup and other herbicides on their fields by airplane. They seem little concerned about the neighbors. In fact, if those pesky peasants would just disappear they’d have more land to cultivate the GE Soya. So there are frequent incidents of “overspray” in which neighboring fields and entire villages are drenched in Roundup and other herbicides. The herbicides have caused neighboring crops to fail, livestock to die, and people to become ill.

The GE Soya is also quite hardy. After harvest “volunteers” will re-populate the fields (if they are not too poisoned or depleted) and neighboring properties. Neighboring farmers then have a choice of using harsher herbicides than Roundup (such as Atrazine) to eliminate the GE Soya, or abandoning their fields.

The gene for resistance to Roundup may also be “crossing over” to the weeds. Farmers are finding weeds that can now tolerate glyphosate. Whether the weeds “captured” the necessary gene from the RR Soya or discovered immunity to the herbicide on their own is irrelevant. In the end the GE crops are creating their own obsolescence.

Deforestation

After a few years of the GE Soya monoculture, the soil is so full of poisons and lacking in nutrients, natural bacteria, and other agents that it can no longer support any plant life and turns to desert.

Currently over 14 million hectares (54,000 sq miles) of Argentina is farmed in this unsustainable way. It’s estimated that over a million gallons of Roundup are used each year. While more land is being cleared and planted with the GE Soya, the yields are starting to drop. Even though 1.5 million additional hectares were cultivated in 2002-2003, production fell by 60 million pounds.

Once a field stops producing, the farmer simply abandons it and tears down the neighboring forest to create new fields. The downed trees are not used for building materials. They are not used for cooking fires. Their bark is not turned into cancer cures. The wood is neither pulped nor planked. The trees are dumped into huge (often kilometers-long) piles and set afire.

The deforestation is allowing Leishmaniasis Braziliensis, a disease caused by protozoa, to run rampant. The protozoa is carried by sand flies that thrive in deforested areas. It can attack nearly any organ in the human body and leaves painful, disfiguring scars in survivors. Death occurs within 3-20 months if untreated in 95% of adults and 85% of children. It is difficult to treat and the medicines required are expensive.

Economy / sustainability

Obviously, the barren, poison-laden fields are not going to contribute to the economy. They provide ground for nothing sustainable. Once fertile ground that produced food for the traditional farms is failing and many foods, including milk and dairy products, must not be imported from other countries.

This is remarkable considering that just a few decades ago Argentina not only produced enough food for its people but also sold ten times that amount to other countries. The poverty rate is somewhere between 44% and 51%, up from 5% in 1970.

The Argentine Government is under pressure from the IMF, other governments, and Monsanto and other corporations to keep going on the Genetically Engineered route. They believe this is the only path that will save Argentina from its financial and agricultural problems.

A Monsanto Solution!

In January, Monsanto stopped selling it’s RR Soya and started recommending crop rotation, which returns nutrients to the soil. However, nothing but RR crops will grow in a field that has been saturated with Roundup. Monsanto has a solution: Maize, special Monsanto maize that is genetically engineered to be Roundup resistant.

Farmers have hoarded the RR Soya seeds, and there is also a thriving black market for them. So there nothing to prevent farmers from growing the genetically engineered crops. Monsanto is considering changing the genetic code of the RR Soya to make seeds from future crops sterile.

Who Cares?

The Argentine people have been fed a steady diet of propaganda about the benefits of the GE Soya. However, attempts to get them to eat tofu have failed for all but the starving. In any case, the average Argentine citizen is unlikely to be aware of what is happening in the rural areas of their country.

Greenpeace, however, is well aware of the situation. They are fighting with everything they have to stop the genemod monoculture. Last month, they used helicopters and motorbikes to temporarily prevent the deforestation of an area north of Buenos Aires. But they cannot fight the battles, let alone win the war, without help.
Once healthy soil has turned to desert, it’s usually gone forever. Countries that cannot produce enough food to feed their own population are at the mercy of others, who can choose to sell or donate food to them, or not.

Once the soil is destroyed, the people are no longer in control of their destiny. The people of Argentina must now stand united and demand that the land be used for the greater good of the people who live there, rather than allowing it be destroyed for the profits of the few.

Sources and References