12 Pollution
12.1 Fertility
Following current projections, the median sperm count is set to reach zero in 2045.
Asexuality
Asexuality, an orientation estimated to apply to 1% of the global population, although some think the number is higher.
“Our society is increasingly hyper-sexualised,” she says, “and that can make it particularly alienating for asexual people who don’t have those feelings, or don’t want to live that life.”
Asexuality has sometimes been dubbed the “forgotten” or “invisible” orientation owing to its lack of public prominence. Until recently it was deemed a medical issue by the US’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – which added an exception in 2013 to state that asexuals do not have a desire disorder – and many continue to erroneously dismiss it as an affliction.
It has also been labelled “the world’s first internet orientation,” implying that people who feel this way have only existed since the advent of the internet – and suggesting it’s a fad.
12.2 Plastics
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)
Independent
The United States recycles less than 9 per cent of items but “the plastics industry has managed to convince us all that it’s our fault”.
Plastic production is booming with more than half of all plastic ever made created within the last two decades.
Vast amounts of plastic aren’t recycled for reasons including its complex mix of resins; contamination or difficulty in sorting; or the simple fact it’s cheaper to make virgin plastic.
The pollution ends up in landfill, is incinerated or shipped overseas to less wealthy nations.
An estimated 10 million tons of plastic ends up in the ocean annually - the equivalent of a garbage truck every minute.
Despite spending millions of dollars in ad campaigns that highlighted consumers’ responsibility for recycling, the plastics industry was aware that large-scale recycling would not work.
The recycling movement is “often bankrolled by companies that wanted to drill home the message that it is your responsibility to deal with the environmental impact of their products.
The “real behaviour change” has to come from those who make the plastic in the first place. Legislation called “extended producer responsibility (EPR)” would shift more obligation to industry for the environmental price-tag of their products.
12.2.1 Dirty-Thirty
Thoumi
• In 2019, 30 publicly traded companies - the Dirty Thirty - produced 58% of single-use plastic (SUP) 1 . The top 10 - ExxonMobil, Dow, Indorama, Sinopec, LyondellBasell, PetroChina, Alpek, Aramco, Reliance and Braskem - were responsible for 39%. • The Dirty Thirty footprint is highly concentrated in a few clusters, including the US Plastic Production Corridor and the EU Trilateral Chemical Region. • The top ten equity and top ten fixed income investors own 76% and 43% of the Dirty Thirty’s equity and debt respectively. BlackRock, Vanguard and Capital Group are on both lists. • The Dirty Thirty’s SUP supply chain encompasses multiple risk factors ranging from carbon and other emissions, end-product waste and operational spills. The industry poses threats to society and human health, with amplified effects often felt by more marginalised or vulnerable communities. • As a result of its wide-ranging impact, the industry is more exposed than others to regulation, policy change and legal challenges. The Dirty Thirty in particular are experiencing increasing pressure from business clients to meet 2025 SUP reduction commitments, increasingly viewed as accountable for combatting plastic pollution. • Plastic pollution is forecast to triple by 2040, with 80% expected to come i from SUP. Without serious change, by 2050, in a 1.5°C scenario, plastic lifecycle emissions are forecast to make up roughly 13% of carbon budgets. ii • Solving the plastic pollution crisis, including the pollution from plastic production itself - for example, GhG emissions and toxic chemical releases - will play a key role in addressing the climate crisis and achieving goals outlined in the Paris Agreement. • Both solutions and green financing are available for companies looking to retool towards sustainable plastic production, but uptake is slow among the Dirty Thirty, many of whom appear to be adopting a wait-and-see approach.
12.2.2 Virgin Polymer Production
Guardian
Twenty companies are responsible for producing more than half of all the single-use plastic waste in the world, fuelling the climate crisis and creating an environmental catastrophe, new research reveals.
Among the global businesses responsible for 55% of the world’s plastic packaging waste are both state-owned and multinational corporations, including oil and gas giants and chemical companies, according to a comprehensive new analysis.
The Plastic Waste Makers index reveals for the first time the companies who produce the polymers that become throwaway plastic items, from face masks to plastic bags and bottles, which at the end of their short life pollute the oceans or are burned or thrown into landfill.
The enormous plastic waste footprint of the top 20 global companies amounts to more than half of the 130m metric tonnes of single-use plastic thrown away in 2019, the analysis says.
Mindero Foundation
The Minderoo Foundation is funded in part by one of the world’s largest suppliers of iron ore. The plastics industry has been allowed to operate with minimal regulation and transparency for decades. Government policies, where they exist, tend to focus on the vast number of companies that sell finished plastic products. Relatively little attention has been paid to the smaller number of businesses at the base of the supply chain that make “polymers” – the building blocks of all plastics – almost exclusively from fossil fuels.
These companies are the source of the single-use plastic crisis: their production of new “virgin” polymers from oil, gas and coal feedstocks perpetuates the take-make-waste dynamic of the plastics economy. The economies of scale for fossil-fuel-based production are undermining transition to a “circular” plastic economy, with negative impacts on waste collection rates, on end-of-life management and on rates of plastic pollution. The focus needs to be on producing recycled polymers from plastic waste, on re-use models and on alternative substitute materials.
1. In 2019, just 20 polymer producers accounted for more than half of all single-use plastic waste generated globally – and the top 100 accounted for 90 per cent.
2. Major global investors and banks are enabling the single-use plastics crisis.
3. There has been a collective industry failure to transition away from fossil-fuel-based feedstocks.
4. Planned expansion of virgin polymer production capacity threatens to overwhelm hopes of a circular plastics economy.
5. Single-use plastic waste is an entrenched geopolitical problem. Mindero Foundation: Plastic Waste Makers Index
American Chemistry Council
Minderoo Report Fails To Factor In Plastics’ Key Role In Lowering Greenhouse Gas Emissions.
The Minderoo Foundation misconstrues the relationship between plastics and our carbon footprint. Some of the most comprehensive studies to date have found that replacing plastics with other materials would drive up waste and carbon impacts.
Glaringly absent from the Minderoo report is a recognition of plastic’s critical role in enabling innovations we need for sustainable infrastructure, such as solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles and charging stations.
12.2.3 Nurdles
McVeigh
Nurdles, the colloquial term for “pre-production plastic pellets”, are the little-known building block for all our plastic products. The tiny beads can be made of polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride and other plastics. Released into the environment from plastic plants or when shipped around the world as raw material to factories, they will sink or float, depending on the density of the pellets and if they are in freshwater or saltwater.
They are often mistaken for food by seabirds, fish and other wildlife. In the environment, they fragment into nanoparticles whose hazards are more complex. They are the second-largest source of micropollutants in the ocean, by weight, after tyre dust. An astounding 230,000 tonnes of nurdles end up in oceans every year.
Like crude oil, nurdles are highly persistent pollutants, and will continue to circulate in ocean currents and wash ashore for decades. They are also “toxic sponges”, which attract chemical toxins and other pollutants on to their surfaces.
“The pellets themselves are a mixture of chemicals – they are fossil fuels,” says Tom Gammage, at the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an international campaign group. “But they act as toxic sponges. A lot of toxic chemicals – which in the case of Sri Lanka are already in the water – are hydrophobic [repel water], so they gather on the surface of microplastics.
“Pollutants can be a million times more concentrated on the surface of pellets than in the water,” he says. “And we know from lab studies that when a fish eats a pellet, some of those pollutants come loose.”
Nurdles also act as “rafts” for harmful bacteria such as E coli or even cholera, one study found, transporting them from sewage outfalls and agricultural runoff to bathing waters and shellfish beds. The phenomenon of “plastic rafting” is increasing. Advertisement
Yet nurdles, unlike substances such as kerosene, diesel and petrol, are not deemed hazardous under the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO’s) dangerous goods code for safe handling and storage. This is despite the threat to the environment from plastic pellets being known about for three decades, as detailed in a 1993 report from the US government’s Environmental Protection Agency on how the plastics industry could reduce spillages.
McVeigh (Guardian) (2021) Nurdles: the worst toxic waste you’ve probably never heard of](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/29/nurdles-plastic-pellets-environmental-ocean-spills-toxic-waste-not-classified-hazardous)
12.2.4 Finance
Memo
To address plastic pollution, a fundamental shift away from business models that depend on sin- gle-use packaging towards those that prioritise reuse and more localized supply chains and services is needed. Banks should make funding of corporate actors within the plastic packaging supply chain contingent on companies implement- ing best practice. Governments should stop protecting banks and re-write the rules of finance to hold banks liable for the damage caused by their lending. Companies must adopt international best practice to reduce the production and use of virgin plastic and increase the reusability of plastic packaging products.
Banks are silent and out of touch with reality This global public outcry led to a set of govern- ment and business responses. As of June 2020, it was reported that 69 countries had passed a full or partial ban on plastic bags. Some companies have made comparatively strong commitments to reduce plastic packaging. Despite public outcry over the serious impacts of plastic pollution, and efforts by some companies within the plastic value chain to reduce their impacts, none of the banks analysed have developed due diligence systems, contingent loan criteria or financ- ing exclusions when it comes to this industry. This means banks are currently not taking responsibility to understand, measure, and reduce the impacts of their loans within the plastics value chain. By indiscriminately funding actors in the plastic supply chain, banks have failed to acknowledge their role in enabling global plastic pollution. They have fallen far behind the crowd of other actors that contribute to the plastic pollution crisis.
By indiscriminately funding actors in the plastic supply chain, banks have failed to acknowledge their role in enabling global plastic pollution. They have fallen far behind other actors that contribute to the plastic pollution crisis.
The concentration of finance from banks Headquarted in a few jurisdictions indicates that legislative measures, such as introducing lender liability which holds financiers and investors responsible for the impacts their financing has on biodiversity, could be highly impactful even when initially implemented in a small number of geographic regions.
A limited number of banks have started to adopt policies that allow them to limit investments for other high biodiversity impacting sectors such as fossil fuels, forest products, and some agricultural commod- ities. However, this has not yet occurred for plastics.
Governments and financial institutions should both recognise that investment in the plastics supply chain without sufficient investment in the plastics value recovery chain (reduction, recovery, re-use and recycling), causes and contributes to this harm. To remedy the problem, governments should:
Extend investor liability for any future envi- ronmental or health related legal challenges to those responsible for plastic pollution, especially effects of it entering the food chain.
Introduce a mandatory tax on virgin plastic at the point of importation to or production within a country, in order to raise its price relative to recycled plastics, achieving equivalence by channeling the receipts from the tax into incentives to recover and reuse plastics waste streams. This would require trade related controls to ensure equivalence in imported packaging.
Invest in a new generation of recycled plastics markets by establishing forward contracting arrangements akin to renew- able energy feed in tariffs to incentivise investment in modern recycled plastics value chains.
12.3 Chemicals
12.3.1 Chemicals’ Pollution
The chemicals industry consumes more than 10% of fossil fuels produced globally and emits an estimated 3.3 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions a year, more than India’s annual emissions.
While the industry has an important role to play in moving to low-carbon economies – providing coatings for solar panels, lightweight plastics to reduce vehicles’ energy consumption and insulating materials for buildings – it’s also hugely carbon intensive and predicted to become more so.
Oil companies have been betting on chemicals as a way to remain profitable as the world pledges to turn away from fossil fuel energy. The International Energy Agency predicted that petrochemicals could account for 60% of oil demand in the next decade.
The chemicals sector is the largest industrial user of oil and gas but it has the third-largest carbon footprint – behind steel and cement – because only about half of the fossil fuels that the industry consumes are burned for their energy. The rest is used as feedstock for products such as plastics with the emissions released only when these products reach the end of their lives, for example, when waste plastic packaging or an old mattress is incinerated.
Most of the industry’s direct carbon dioxide emissions come from burning fossil fuels to power chemical transformations, many of which take place at high temperatures and pressures.
Chemists continue to look for ways to power traditionally heat-driven chemical transformations with electricity instead – such as the process of converting nitrogen to ammonia, mostly used for fertilizer, which requires temperatures of about 500C (932F).
Many chemical products themselves cannot be decarbonized because they are made of carbon.
Removing fossil fuels from the raw materials used to create carbon-based chemicals and materials is crucial. Products made from fossil fuels – such as clothes, toys and paints – is a carbon debt, because the carbon embedded within them will only be emitted in the future.
To stop adding to this debt, chemicals and materials could be made with sources of carbon that are already above ground, such as plants. Bioplastics – made with plant materials such as sugar, corn or seaweed – are booming.
Another idea is to turn waste products into raw materials for the chemical industry. Chemists have been using agricultural waste or waste plastics – even the ultimate waste material, carbon dioxide – as feedstocks. A Berlin-based startup, Made of Air, is attempting to create plastics from wood waste, while an Icelandic company, Carbon Recycling International, turns captured carbon dioxide emissions into methanol, used in fuels and for making other chemicals such as formaldehyde.
But all these ideas – especially those involving a shift in feedstocks – are very hard to implement.
Technologies to turn agricultural or plastic waste into new chemicals are still unproven on a large scale and using carbon dioxide as a raw material will require vast amounts of zero-carbon energy.
Manufacturers making products with plants rather than fossil fuels need to ensure that they do not create new problems through deforestation, destroying wildlife habitat, raising food prices or increasing the use of water or pesticides. Biomass resources also tend to be more spread out, whereas traditionally, chemical plants stay close to where fossil fuel resources are easily accessible.
The clean power infrastructure requirements alone are tremendous. Electrifying Europe’s chemicals sector would require 4,900 terawatts of renewable electricity - almost double the total amount of electricity Europe generated in 2019.
One important, but neglected, lever for cutting emissions from the chemical sector is to simply use and produce fewer chemicals.
The business model is driven by how many chemicals you sell, it’s not necessarily driven by the added societal value of the chemical.
Guardian (2021) How the chemicals industry’s pollution slipped under the radar
12.3.2 PFAS - “forever chemicals”*
The end of humankind? It may be coming sooner than we think, thanks to hormone-disrupting chemicals that are decimating fertility at an alarming rate around the globe. A new book called Countdown, by Shanna Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, finds that sperm counts have dropped almost 60% since 1973. Following the trajectory we are on, Swan’s research suggests sperm counts could reach zero by 2045. Zero. Let that sink in. That would mean no babies. No reproduction. No more humans. Forgive me for asking: why isn’t the UN calling an emergency meeting on this right now?
The chemicals to blame for this crisis are found in everything from plastic containers and food wrapping, to waterproof clothes and fragrances in cleaning products, to soaps and shampoos, to electronics and carpeting. Some of them, called PFAS, are known as “forever chemicals”, because they don’t breakdown in the environment or the human body. They just accumulate and accumulate – doing more and more damage, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. Now, it seems, humanity is reaching a breaking point.
As if this wasn’t terrifying enough, Swan’s research finds that these chemicals aren’t just dramatically reducing semen quality, they are also shrinking penis size and volume of the testes.
In the state of Washington, lawmakers managed to pass the Pollution Prevention for Our Future Act, which “directs state agencies to address classes of chemicals and moves away from a chemical by chemical approach, which has historically resulted in companies switching to equally bad or worse substitutes. The first chemical classes to be addressed in products include phthalates, PFAS, PCBs, alkyphenol ethoxylate and bisphenol compounds, and organohalogen flame retardants.” The state has taken important steps to address the extent of chemical pollution, but by and large, the United States, like many other countries, is fighting a losing battle because of weak, inadequate legislation.
Perfluoroalkyl compounds (PFCs) are a class of organic molecules that are used in many everyday products such as oil and water repellents, coatings for cookware, carpets, and textiles. Their attractive physio-chemical characteristics (i.e., colourless, odourless, high thermal stability, low chemical reactivity and durability), high availability and low cost ensure widespread use in the industry but also drive persistent accumulation into the environment, making them a potential biohazard for human health. Indeed, PFCs have been found in human fluids and tissues including the brain, placenta, and testis, which are protected by strong selective barriers. Interestingly, and for unknown reasons, there seems to be a sex-dependent pharmacodynamic profile, with adult males having a much higher tendency to PFCs accumulation and lower clearance.
PFCs may be absorbed by the intestine or inhaled and, once in the circulation, they may act as endocrine disruptors (ED) ultimately leading to genital disorders, such as impaired spermatogenesis and reproductive defects, and antiandrogenic-driven conditions, such as testicular dysgenesis syndrome, which is an established risk factor for testis cancer. PFCs could exert their toxicity on the foetus, new-born, as well as during development, especially in teenagers due to alterations in sex hormones biosynthesis.
This study documents that PFCs have a substantial impact on human male health as they directly interfere with hormonal pathways potentially leading to male infertility. We found that increased levels of PFCs in plasma and seminal fluid positively correlate with circulating T and with a reduction of semen quality, testicular volume, penile length and AGD (ano-genital distance).
Di Nisio (2018) EDCs Androgenic Activity Perfluoroakyl (pdf)
PFAS
The UK government is not testing drinking water for a group of toxic manmade chemicals linked to a range of diseases including cancers, while across the world people are falling sick and suing for hundreds of millions of dollars at a time after finding the substances in their tap water.
Known collectively as PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), or “forever chemicals” because they are designed never to break down in the environment, the substances are used for their water- and grease-repellent properties in everything from cookware and clothing to furniture, carpets, packaging, coatings and firefighting foams.
When PFAS, of which there are thousands, enter the environment, they accumulate in soil, water, animals and human blood. Following a landmark legal case in the US made famous by the Mark Ruffalo film Dark Waters, a huge epidemiological study was carried out that linked PFAS to high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, testicular cancer, kidney cancer and pregnancy-induced hypertension.
Separate studies have made connections between PFAS and miscarriage, reduced birth weight, endocrine disruption, reduced sperm quality, delayed puberty, early menopause and reduced immune response to tetanus vaccination. Scientists have also found that the substances can be passed from mother to baby via the placenta and breast milk.
The EU recently revised its drinking water directive, reducing the acceptable level to 100ng/l for 20 types of PFAS and 500 ng/l for all PFAS substances. The directive entered into force in January and member states have two years to adopt it.
An outright ban on all non-essential uses of PFAS is under discussion among EU countries, but there are no signs that the UK intends to take the same tack.
Responding to the use restrictions put in place on PFOS and PFOA, the industry has created replacement chemicals known as GenX, but researchers suggest these could be just as harmful to humans and the environment, and could be even harder to detect.
Perfluorinated Chemicals
Perfluorinated chemicals is a term that some scientists use to refer to the group of toxic chemicals that includes PFOA and PFOS and other per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs).
Perfluorocarbons
The other “PFCs” – perfluorocarbons – is a group of chemicals closely related to PFASs that share common features with PFASs:
- Both perfluorocarbon and PFAS molecules contain fluorine and carbon atoms.
- Both persist in the environment for long periods.
- PFAS are not found naturally in the environment. The same is true for perfluorocarbons, with the exception that small amounts of one perfluorocarbon, carbon tetrafluoride, are emitted from granite.
Perfluorocarbons, however, are quite different from PFASs in significant respects:
- Unlike PFAS molecules, which can include oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur and/or nitrogen atoms, perfluorocarbon molecules contain only carbon and fluorine atoms.
- Perfluorocarbons are used in and emitted from different applications and industries than PFASs are.
- The effects of perfluorocarbons on human health and the environment are substantially different than the effects of PFASs:
Perfluorocarbons are not toxic, and there are no direct health effects associated with exposures to them.
However, perfluorocarbons are among the most potent and longest-lasting type of greenhouse gases emitted by human activities; the chief impact of environmental concern is global climate change. Some Clean Air Act regulations apply to perfluorocarbons. If you view an EPA web page about atmospheric or climate issues or programs, and you see the term “PFCs”, that page is likely to be referring to perfluorocarbons, rather than to the larger set of perfluorinated chemicals (PFASs). EPA programs that seek to understand and reduce emissions of perfluorocarbons include the:
12.3.2.1 Scale of ‘forever chemical’ pollution across UK and Europe
Guardian
The substances have been found at about 17,000 sites across the UK and Europe. Of these, PFAS have been detected at high concentrations of more than 1,000 nanograms a litre of water at about 640 sites, and above 10,000ng/l at 300 locations.
Belgium is home to the highest levels of pollution, where PFAS was found in groundwater at concentrations up to 73m ng/l around 3M’s PFAS manufacturing site in Zwijndrecht, Flanders.
Guardian (2023) Revealed: scale of ‘forever chemical’ pollution across UK and Europe
12.3.3 TCE -> Parkinson
A Parkinson’s epidemic is on the horizon. Parkinson’s is already the fastest-growing neurological disorder in the world; in the US, the number of people with Parkinson’s has increased 35% the last 10 years, says Dorsey, and “We think over the next 25 years it will double again.”
Most cases of Parkinson’s disease are considered idiopathic – they lack a clear cause. Yet researchers increasingly believe that one factor is environmental exposure to trichloroethylene (TCE), a chemical compound used in industrial degreasing, dry-cleaning and household products such as some shoe polishes and carpet cleaners.
Six-fold increase in the risk of developing Parkinson’s in individuals exposed in the workplace to trichloroethylene (TCE)
TCE is a carcinogen linked to renal cell carcinoma, cancers of the cervix, liver, biliary passages, lymphatic system and male breast tissue, and fetal cardiac defects, among other effects. Its known relationship to Parkinson’s may often be overlooked due to the fact that exposure to TCE can predate the disease’s onset by decades.
Its use is banned in the EU without special authorization.
Silicon Valley Exposure
Those near National Priorities List Superfund sites (sites known to be contaminated with hazardous substances such as TCE) are at especially high risk of exposure. Santa Clara county, California, for example, is home not only to Silicon Valley, but 23 superfund sites – the highest concentration in the country. Google Quad Campus sits atop one such site; for several months in 2012 and 2013, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found employees of the company were inhaling unsafe levels of TCE in the form of toxic vapor rising up from the ground beneath their offices.
12.3.4 VOC
While emissions from petroleum products like gasoline or jet fuel have long been known to be dangerous and are subject to state and federal regulation, asphalt and No. 6 fuel oil, classified as “heavy refinery liquids,” have been largely ignored by regulators because it was thought that their emissions were negligible.
But in an 18-month investigation, Inside Climate News found that emissions from heated tanks containing asphalt and No. 6 fuel oil pose a risk to the health of millions of Americans who live close to the tanks, one that federal and state regulators have failed to adequately address.
Changes in the petroleum refining process over the last 30 years have resulted in significant emissions from the two products when they are heated in tanks, as they must be to keep their contents in liquid form. And these emissions often contain VOCs that can pose a threat to human health, in some cases at levels high enough to violate federal clean air standards. The chemicals also combine with other pollutants to form ozone, a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change.
Yet companies that own the tanks have been routinely underreporting the extent of their emissions because instead of measuring the vapors from tanks, they estimate them using a set of equations developed by the petroleum industry and approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
And those equations, it turns out, are often wrong.
Federal regulators and some industry insiders have known this for more than a decade, but have taken no action to mandate that companies report emissions or measure them directly. As a result, some states do not even require companies to track emissions from tanks containing asphalt or No. 6, and an overwhelming majority of states that do require it rely on the estimates from the petroleum industry equations.
12.3.5 Effect on Marine Life
Regulators missing pollution’s effect on marine life, study finds
Increasing chemical and plastic pollution are “significant” contributors to the decline of fish and other aquatic organisms, yet their impact is being missed by regulators. The report, Aquatic Pollutants in Oceans and Fisheries, by the International Pollutants Elimination Network and the National Toxics Network, draws together scientific research on how pollution is adversely affecting the aquatic food chain. It catalogues the “serious impacts” of “invisible killers” such as persistent organic pollutants and excessive nutrients on the immunity, fertility, development and survivaL of aquatic animals.
Regulation of fisheries does not always take into account biologically or scientifically relevant data on all contributors to the health of fish populations, leading to a “narrow view” of declining numbers based on quota catch rates and efforts. “Regulators have yet to grasp the impact of pollution,” the report says.
12.3.6 Pesticides
Jones
When different pesticides mix together, as they often do on farms, they can amplify the effect of one another, according to a new study published in the journal Nature. In deadly combination, they can be even more damaging to bees. Previous research has found that these “synergies” can harm fish and other creatures, too.
What’s most troubling is that regulators in the US and elsewhere don’t take the dangers of these interactions fully into account — even though they’ve long been aware of them. The Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees pesticides in the US, effectively ignored a recommendation to determine which chemicals farmers most commonly mix together, and what risk those combinations pose to bees. Europe is making more progress, but its regulations still fall short, experts say.
So how exactly do things like pesticides and parasites interact to harm bees?
Siviter and his co-authors answered that question through a meta-analysis, which is essentially a study of studies. First, they combed scientific literature about how multiple stressors affect bees, ultimately turning up 90 papers that had relevant data. They then pooled the results in a large analysis in their own paper that shows which combinations are most deadly.
The analysis revealed especially bad news about pesticides. When present together, multiple chemicals can amplify the effect of one another, the analysis found, making them more deadly than you’d expect if you just added up the sum of their individual effects. (Pesticides, which include insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides, work in a variety of different ways; many insecticides target insects’ immune systems.)
All of this matters so much because study after study finds that insects are exposed to more than one chemical at a time. “When we look for pesticides, whether it’s in our water or on our pollinator plants, we’re finding them in mixtures,” Code said.
A study from 2018, for example, found as many as seven pesticides per sample of pollen collected by honeybees in Italy, while other research has found residue from more than 20 chemicals in US hives.
The root of the problem may be bureaucracy, not biology. Regulations in the US and Europe have been slow to consider the impacts of pesticide mixtures on pollinator health. To register a chemical, companies typically don’t have to test how it might interact with other compounds found on a farm or in the environment.
When doctors prescribe medicines, they’re carefully attuned to the ways that different drugs could interact. We would not accept a doctor who didn’t understand the impacts of mixing those medicines. We shouldn’t accept it for our pesticides either.
Jones (2021) Pesticides can amplify each other. Bees have become the victims.
12.4 Nitrogen
Tullis
The nitrogen in the atmosphere is, on its own, harmless. But when it reacts with other elements, it can form more unstable compounds, like the gases ammonia or nitrogen dioxide. Small amounts of both have always been found in the environment, but thanks to human activity over the past 75 years, emissions of the two gases have skyrocketed. Burning fossil fuels emits nitrogen dioxide, which pollutes sky, land and sea, and causes, among other health problems, asthma in children.
Another contributor to our global nitrogen problem is the way we farm. In the second half of the 20th century, around the same time that nitrogen dioxide-emitting cars, planes, power plants and factories proliferated, chemical fertilisers containing nitrogen began to be widely used. Such ammonia-based fertilisers helped to massively improve grain yields. But crops typically don’t absorb all the fertiliser they’re given, because it’s hard to know exactly the right amount to apply. So the excess ammonia runs off into waterways, causing a chain of chemical reactions that decrease oxygen levels in the water and result in “dead zones”, where fish can’t live. As fish populations plummet, coastal economies suffer, too.
Beyond nitrogen-rich fertilisers and burning fossil fuels, there is another key source of nitrogen pollution. Intensive livestock farming contributes significantly to the increase in ammonia. If you crowd too many cows into a field, they’ll eat all the grass before it can grow back. So farmers prefer to put them in barns and feed them concentrated proteins such as soy, which are between 13% and 19% nitrogen. This has increased milk and beef yields, but again, with environmental costs. A cow’s digestive system didn’t evolve to absorb so much nitrogen-containing protein, so the animals excrete a large amount of it. When the animal’s urine and faeces combine, they form ammonia. (This happens more in barns than in fields, because indoors the cows are standing around in the same place all day, rather than spreading their waste over a wider area, so that it combines less.) As with nitrogen dioxide, ammonia floats into the atmosphere, spreading pollution.
These effects cascade. An excess of nitrogen in the soil sets off a chemical chain reaction that depletes the soil’s calcium. Snails use the calcium in soil to form their shells. No calcium, no snails. Snails are, in turn, a crucial source of calcium for birds. Without it, when fledglings try to stand in the nest for the first time, their legs break. That means they won’t grow up to spread fertiliser or seeds through their waste, a process crucial for maintaining forests. Nor – bringing the effects of nitrogen pollution full circle, back to farms – will these birds consume insects and rodents that devour crops. Everyone – plants, animals, humans – loses.
Tullis (2023) Nitrogen wars: the Dutch farmers’ revolt that turned a nation upside-down
12.4.1 Netherlands Nitrogen War
Tullis
The nitrogen crisis is a story about the political consequences of ignoring a problem for fear of antagonising an important interest group, then fumbling the response when it becomes clear that doing nothing is no longer tenable.
If policymakers cannot devise effective political solutions to urgent environmental problems, they will find themselves in a double bind: watching the natural world fall apart around them, as political upheaval spreads.
An advisory committee, chaired by the former deputy prime minister Johan Remkes, had declared that the government would need to take “drastic measures” to reduce emissions of nitrogen, a formidable contributor to pollution of land, seas and skies worldwide. By far the largest share of nitrogen deposited on Dutch land comes from agriculture, so these measures would need to involve, according to the committee’s report, buying out and shutting down livestock farms. The report – titled, with a very Dutch combination of understatement and candour, Not Everything Is Possible – did not make clear whether these buyouts would be voluntary or forced. Farmers assumed the worst.
Remkes’s announcement did not come out of nowhere. Within the 27 member states of the EU, there are a number of specially protected nature reserves, known as the Natura 2000 network. In the summer of 2019, the Dutch council of state, the highest administrative court in the Netherlands, had ruled that the Netherlands’ nitrogen permits system was failing to prevent emissions harming these reserves within its borders, and it needed to end immediately.
When the Remkes report hit, everyone woke up. Agriculture was responsible for 80% of emissions of one form of nitrogen pollution, and the report pointed out that the largest share was coming from dairy farming. But dairy accounted for just 1% of GDP. Maybe, the logic went, cutting back on production wouldn’t be such a great sacrifice for the country.
This enraged farmers, who in many cases were already feeling mistreated. They had already reduced their nitrogen emissions by almost two-thirds since 1990, mainly through technical advances. Over the same period, government services in rural areas had been cut in favour of investment in cities. And for more than half a century, government policies had encouraged farms to expand, saddling farmers with debts; now they were being told to do the opposite.
the government’s failure to develop a workable political solution to the problem of excess nitrogen has shaken Dutch politics to its foundations. In the Netherlands, it is known simply as the stikstofcrisis, the nitrogen crisis.
An environmental reform that, at first glance, seemed to affect only a small proportion of Dutch society has somehow become not only wildly controversial in its own right, but embroiled in a web of related and unrelated issues, grievances and conspiracy theories.
In June 2020, eight months after the tractor protest, Remkes held a press conference where he released his final report, with Carola Schouten, the agriculture minister, smiling beside him. Nitrogen emissions would need to be halved within the decade. The brutality of Remkes’s demand was the consequence of years of inaction. The government’s proposals to halve emissions seem both harsh and unworkable. The funds were to come from a pot of €25bn for nature restoration, including nitrogen-emissions reduction. But when the cabinet asked the regional governments to come up with nitrogen plans for their own territory, those plans added up to €58bn.
It doesn’t take an expert in public policy or public relations to recognise that the Dutch government has made a mess of the nitrogen issue.
What could the government have done differently? The dairy industry would like to see more pressure on other sources of nitrogen. While the vast majority of current ammonia emissions in the Netherlands are produced by agriculture, 67% of nitrogen dioxide emissions comes from vehicles, and 24% from industry and energy production.
Remkes’s report was clear that nitrogen reduction was not only necessary for farmers. It also targeted the construction industry – another major nitrogen emitter – and proposed other measures, such as lowering the motorway speed limit.
The government could simply tax farmers on the amount of nitrogen they emit. This would both incentivise farmers to emit less nitrogen, and allow them to reduce emissions in the way that suits them best.
Others see technology as the way forward. That was the main driver of the significant ammonia reductions between 1990 and 2010, which have since levelled out.
A new system developed by a Dutch company called Lely, which makes robotic farm equipment. This system separates cattle’s waste streams in the barn so that they form less ammonia, then turns much of the ammonia that is formed into fertiliser that the farmer can apply to their own fields with greater precision
Yet Natasja Oerlemans, head of food and agriculture at WWF Netherlands, dismisses such notions as sticking plasters. “We need a total rethink of the system,” she says. She and others point out that it’s wildly inefficient to give cattle food such as soy, which is suitable for humans, or to raise them on the kind of land that could instead be producing crops. And if consumers ate more plants, and less meat and dairy, ammonia and greenhouse gas emissions would drop.
There may be no proposal that will satisfy dairy farmers. Any solution for reducing emissions will require either fewer farms, or existing farms to function differently, or both. No solution can guarantee that incomes will be unaffected. As environmental protections become more urgent, it is likely that some people will simply have to change the way they work, just as others might be forced to change how they travel or cook.
Turmoil of the kind seen in the Netherlands might be avoided if politicians act with more care and empathy. Drastic measures may be needed, but it isn’t necessarily helpful to frame them as such, or to place stringent demands on already struggling rural communities.
Tullis (2023) Nitrogen wars: the Dutch farmers’ revolt that turned a nation upside-down
12.5 Sewage
12.5.1 Overflows
Raw sewage had been pumped into English rivers via storm overflows more than 200,000 times in 2019. In November, Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) published data showing that untreated wastewater was discharged on to English and Welsh beaches on 2,900 occasions in a year.
The Environment Agency published, for the first time, full data on raw sewage discharges last year, showing a 37% year-on-year increase: 3.1m hours of human effluent flows, pumped via storm drains into English waters in some 400,000 occasions.
The prevalence of raw sewage in British waters is not only about the horror of swimming amid human waste but about the health and environmental threats of microplastics (especially from laundry water), endocrine disruptors (chemicals that interfere with hormones found in plastics, detergents and cosmetics), phosphorus (which causes algae blooms), antibiotic-resistant bacteria and even Covid-19 – all spread through wastewater.
Good days are increasingly rare. Previously, only freak storms would fill the system to the point that the toxic soup would spill out into waterways (to avoid the even grislier prospect of it spouting back up our drains).
Vast tanks, such as those under the promenades in Blackpool and Brighton, have been built to hold excess stormwater, so it can be fed back into sewers once the water levels in the sewers drop. But this “grey infrastructure approach” is not a long-term solution.
Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS)
A key example of green infrastructure solutions are sustainable drainage systems, known as SuDS. These allow the environment to absorb, slow and divert water. They use wetlands, ponds and green ditches called swales, as well as green roofs, rainwater-harvesting systems and replacing nonabsorbent surfaces with porous asphalt or gravel.
Figure: Xinyuexie Park, Wuhan, China, designed to improve a natural storm corridor.
SuDS have been used to stunning effect in China, where flood-prone cities, such as Wuhan, have come to be known as “sponge cities”, full of beautiful, biodiverse parkland that holds on to water. Other examples include Malmö in Sweden, which blazed a trail for “blue-green cities” at the turn of the century after introducing a series of trenches, ponds and wetlands to absorb up to 90% of its stormwater. Davis says the Environment Agency is also looking at “Copenhagen, as well as some of the American and Canadian examples – Seattle and Vancouver – where they’re trying these different approaches”.
Fuzzy Logic Network
SuDS and concrete tanks are not the only weapons in the anti-sewage spill arsenal. Fatbergs and other blockages can trigger sewage pollution events, so having a better idea of what’s going on underground is essential. Harrison says Yorkshire Water is working with Siemens on a pilot “fuzzy logic” network around Ilkley, which uses real-time rainfall data, AI and sensors to better predict blockages. So far, the project has been able to predict nine out of 10 blockages – three times more accurate than existing statistical modelling – while reducing false alarms by half.
Flushless Toilets
A more radical solution to the sewage crisis is to do away with sewers altogether.
For people with gardens, waste would be sanitised and deodorised within the toilet unit, “and the end-product would be made available directly to the user: this would likely involve heat-treatment as the best way to stabilise and dewater the waste as much as possible”. The sanitised waste could then be added to compost heaps.
Another concept is to use a municipal collection system where the product is combined with garden or food waste collections.
The nano-membrane toilet, developed by Cranfield University. Liquids undergo evaporation, killing many pathogens in the process, and can then be used for washing or irrigation, while solids are burned, producing enough energy to power the unit. Fails to recover some of the useful resources in human waste.
12.6 Genetic Pollution
Study on DNA spread by genetically modified mosquitoes prompts backlash
For 10 years, the company Oxitec has been testing whether genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes can suppress populations of their natural brethren, which carry devastating viruses such as Zika and dengue. Its strategy: Deploy (nonbiting) male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes bearing a gene that should doom most of their offspring before adulthood.
Now, a team of independent researchers analyzing an early trial of Oxitec’s technology is raising alarm—and drawing fire from the firm—with a report that some offspring of the GM mosquitoes survived and produced offspring that also made it to sexual maturity. As a result, local mosquitoes inherited pieces of the genomes of the GM mosquitoes, the team revealed last week in Scientific Reports.
There’s no evidence that these hybrids endanger humans more than the wild mosquitoes or that they’ll render Oxitec’s strategy ineffective, both the paper’s authors and the company agree. “The important thing is something unanticipated happened,” says population geneticist Jeffrey Powell of Yale University, who did the study with Brazilian researchers. “When people develop transgenic lines or anything to release, almost all of their information comes from laboratory studies. … Things don’t always work out the way you expect.”
But the paper’s suggestion that this genetic mixing could have made the mosquito population “more robust”—more resistant to insecticides, for example, or more likely to transmit disease—has triggered anti-GM news reports, a backlash from some scientists, and strong pushback from Oxitec. The company, a subsidiary of U.S. biotech Intrexon, has a lot at stake; it recently submitted a new generation of its GM mosquitoes for U.S. regulatory review and hopes to conduct its first U.S. field test next year.
Even before Oxitec conducted pilot releases of its altered mosquitoes in Brazil, Malaysia, and the Cayman Islands, it knew the inserted gene wasn’t inevitably lethal. Lab tests had shown that when the GM males mated with wild females, roughly 3% of their offspring survived. “We’ve been very clear about that,” Rose says.
What wasn’t clear was whether those rare offspring, often sickly in the lab, could themselves produce progeny, Powell says. To see whether the survivors fared well enough in the wild to spread their DNA, he contacted Oxitec’s collaborators on the eve of a large field trial in the Brazilian city of Jacobina. From 2013 to 2015, Oxitec released roughly 450,000 GM male mosquitoes per week there—which the company reported reduced the overall mosquito population by about 90%. Powell and his collaborators collected mosquitoes from several neighborhoods before, during, and in the 3 months after the trial. Within these populations, they estimate, between 5% and 60% of the insects had some DNA from the Oxitec strain in their genome—as much as 13% of the genome in one case.
Oxitec’s latest strain of GM mosquitoes is designed to spread the lethal gene more effectively. Instead of killing offspring regardless of sex, it eliminates only the females. Male offspring survive to pass on the lethal gene. In a Brazilian field trial, these second-generation mosquitoes caused local populations to dip by as much as 96%, Oxitec announced in June.
12.7 Light Pollution
Guardian
Transition to blue light radiation across Europe increases suppression of sleep hormone melatonin
The orange-coloured emissions from older sodium lights are rapidly being replaced by white-coloured emissions produced by LEDs. The increased blue light radiation associated with it is causing “substantial biological impacts”.
Chief among the health consequences of blue light is its ability to suppress the production of melatonin, the hormone that regulates sleep patterns in humans and other organisms.
The increase in blue light radiation in Europe has also reduced the visibility of stars in the night sky, which the study says “may have impacts on people’s sense of nature”. Blue light can also alter the behavioural patterns of animals including bats and moths, as it can change their movements towards or away from light sources.
Local street lighting has dramatically reduced the abundance of nocturnal insect populations.
Light pollution can dramatically impact invertebrates, whether that be how they go about their daily lives, or even by reducing populations of species that live in habitats lit by LED lights. Given that invertebrates are already suffering dramatic declines, it is vital that we relieve them from all pressures to provide the best chance of recovery.
We should consider light from a wider biological perspective than that of just humans [and] we must focus on better quality lighting that is harmonious with our natural world. Better quality and lower levels of lighting would help save energy, and lower financial costs, while also making our environment safer for invertebrates.
National targets to reduce levels of light pollution are needed. Measurements are patchy and uncoordinated.
Guardian (2022) Increase in LED lighting ‘risks harming human and animal health’
Sanchez de Miguel Abstarct
The nighttime environment of much of Earth is being changed rapidly by the introduction of artificial lighting. While data on spatial and temporal variation in the intensity of artificial lighting have been available at a regional and global scale, data on variation in its spectral composition have only been collected for a few locations, preventing variation in associated environmental and human health risks from being mapped. Here, we use imagery obtained using digital cameras by astronauts on the International Space Station to map variation in the spectral composition of lighting across Europe for 2012–2013 and 2014–2020. These show a regionally widespread spectral shift, from that associated principally with high-pressure sodium lighting to that associated with broad white light-emitting diodes and with greater blue emissions. Reexpressing the color maps in terms of spectral indicators of environmental pressures, we find that this trend is widely increasing the risk of harmful effects to ecosystems.
Sanchez de Miguel (2022) Environmental risks from artificial nighttime lighting widespread and increasing across Europe (pdf) (pdf SI)