Environmental Amnesia
While questioning what we buy, we’ve forgotten where we live
I would like to report that it takes two hours to jog around the periphery of the Mall of America, the nation’s largest indoor shopping center in Bloomington, Minnesota. The two hours includes circumnavigating the mall’s 520 stores along with its 20,000 parking spaces, which are mostly contained within orbital rings of monumentally sized parking garages.
I began this run early in the morning and, during my circuit, saw one other human being: a man with a cigarette standing against the largest expanse of brick wall I had ever seen. Near him was a door with no doorknob. From the depths of the parking garages, a few car alarms pulsed, some near, some far, like foghorns. The wind that pours through the loading docks of the Mall of America is fearsome. It slowed my progress considerably.
When I returned to my room in the Ramada Inn-which required crossing fourteen lanes of traffic — it was almost time for my keynote address at the twenty-first annual North American Hazardous Materials Management Conference. I don’t believe its organizers intended to make an ironic statement with their choice of venue. They seemed a sincere, overworked lot. They probably figured that the continent’s hazardous-materials managers might appreciate the chance to get an early start on holiday shopping.
Ten years ago, I published a book called Living Downstream that was about, among other things, hazardous materials. Ever since, I’ve received invitations to speak about the topic. Wherever I go, I do two things. One, I look up the Toxics Release Inventory for my host-community’s zip code. I study the location of the dumps, the routine chemical emissions, the accident reports, the off-site transfers, the permitted releases. And then, once I get there, I run.
Both rituals are ways of paying attention. When I run, I can feel the slope of the land under my feet and figure out how water flows here. I notice the decrepit apple tree that means this subdivision was once an orchard. I notice the aluminum smelter’s proximity to the floodplain. Sometimes the names of streets — Creamery Road — provide clues. Sometimes a windbreak of trees does. Even when I’m completely confounded — I cannot tell you how groundwater flows beneath the Mall of America — I discover something amazing. Once, in Livonia, Michigan, while running beside glass office complexes with glabrous names like Techtron and VisTaTech, I veered off toward a small scrim of woods. Within it, three derelict buildings flanked a derelict tennis court, its green surface shattered by sprouting trees. One of the buildings was entirely filled with chairs. The other was entirely filled with bicycles. Birds flew in and out of slumping holes in the roofs.
During these ten years of running and speaking, I’ve noticed two opposing trends. The first is that people increasingly believe that their health is affected by hazardous materials in the environment. And they know a lot more about hazardous materials. Pesticides in strawberries. Lead in lipstick. Bisphenol A in water bottles. But there is decreasing knowledge about the actual environment itself. Public awareness is specific to chemicals in consumer products-which are produced elsewhere (increasingly China) and brought into our homes. The location of those homes on former orchards (where arsenical pesticides were used) or near old toxic-dump sites (where drums of solvents were buried) — these matters seem blurrier and blurrier to the folks in my audiences. In fact, I’ve had to start explaining the word “Superfund,” as it doesn’t seem to ring any real bells for a lot of people-including people in communities where Superfund sites are present. (Superfund sites are the nation’s worst toxic-waste sites. There are 1,305 of them, and they are named for the “super” fund of money put together by Congress in 1980 to clean them up, a trust that went bankrupt five years ago.)
I was recently invited to Rockford, Illinois, to speak about toxic chemicals. That seemed appropriate because Rockford is the site of a longstanding Superfund site. Solvents used by former businesses had drizzled into drinking water wells. Rockford is famous within toxicology circles because of the bladder-cancer cluster that was discovered here and because it was here where researchers figured out, in the 1980s, that the level of solvents in human blood is predicted not by the amount of water drunk from the tap but by the length of “shower run times.” In other words, inhalation is a bigger route of exposure to solvent-contaminated drinking water than drinking it, and showering provides the biggest dose. And yet only two people in my college audience knew about these studies — or even knew that Rockford had a Superfund site. Even the local emergency-room physician hadn’t heard the news.
What’s inducing this epidemic of environmental amnesia? Maybe one contributor is the long silence of the federal government on environmental catastrophes of all kinds. In the breach, activist groups have tried to protect the public. In need of positive messages and deliverable results, they focus on individual solutions. Don’t microwave in plastic. Buy organic. There is no place in that discussion for the barrels of waste buried atop the aquifer. The very mention of them fills a room with paralyzing despair.
Or maybe we’re now spending so much more time with consumer objects than with our natural environments that we have forgotten how to think about them. Sport water bottles are real to us — polycarbonate? or stainless steel? — but creekbeds are fuzzy concepts.
Or maybe our unremembering is a wall against grief. My own elementary school — along with the field, playground, and wooded path to the crosswalk — was razed years ago to make way for discount shopping. I have steadfastly refused to frequent that part of town. But when my son needed a haircut for my father’s funeral, I found myself driving my old walking route to school, in search of a salon open on a Monday. It was supposed to be in here somewhere. While navigating the service roads, I tried hard to forget. But while my son was being pumped up in his pneumatic chair, I saw reflected in the mirror a retaining wall at the edge of the parking lot. I know that pattern of stones. I looked at them every day during math. I was standing in my fifth grade classroom. And the military recruiting center next door would have been the lunchroom. And that drive-through over there was the field where, every recess, my sister and Danelle and I ran, circling and whinnying like wild, wild horses.
Sandra Steingraber lives in Ithaca, New York, where she is busy exploring the 2006 Toxic Release Inventory data, recently released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. As an antidote to environmental amnesia, she recommends entering your zip code into http://www.scorecard.org and then visiting the Web-based public-art project Superfund365, launched by digital artist Brooke Singer.
I’ll buy that the Mall of America is an absolute eyesore…but two hours to run around it? Using Google maps, it looks to be about 2 miles around the mall, plus another mile to and from the closest Ramada. Maybe she should just call it walking, because she’s moving really, really slow.
mjtimber,
A little off-topic? Too much time on your hands?
Have trouble with a little truth?
Trying to distract from a well-written sad commentary on real problems in our environment affecting our lives - both physically and mentally?
Maybe you work for Monsanto or its equivalent - noone else would ignore the message and criticize the metaphor.
Have trouble with a little truth?
Trying to distract from a well-written sad commentary on real problems in our environment affecting our lives - both physically and mentally?
Maybe you work for Monsanto or its equivalent - noone else would ignore the message and criticize the metaphor.
“Or maybe our unremembering is a wall against grief.” — Sandra Steingraber
Good point, barely human.
I guess my negative thoughts kicked in too soon.
Thanks for the reminder.
The ‘unremembering’ is all too true - from all of us.
On the one hand the great power of so-called “Western Civilization” is its ability to go anywhere, put up some industrial strength living quarters, ship in food etc from anywhere on the globe, and allow the inhabitants to exist almost totally isolated from the local environment.
On the other hand, this great power is clearly to be its downfall.
Sandra, you didn’t leave an email contact but it seems you are checking these comments … please get in touch with me… you are I worked at Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First in the 80s and I’m so pleased to see this article. email me at motherspeak@motherspeak.org or susan@raisingsandradio.org.
I’ll keep looking for a way to contact you in case you are not checking these responses….
/susan g
“Superfund sites are the nation’s worst toxic-waste sites. There are 1,305 of them, and they are named for the “super” fund of money put together by Congress in 1980 to clean them up, a trust that WENT BANKRUPT FIVE YEARS AGO.” How super is that?
Gee, what else happened 5 years ago? Oh yeah, the American people were defrauded into and their government hijacked into the Illegal BushWarCrime that turned Iraq into just One Giant Superfund Site for the measly cost of three Trillion dollars of taxpayers’ money!
No wonder we can’t affort to protect the American people!
No wonder we can’t afford nature, so it has to go!
But of course, Bush and Cheney are the Deciders that will damn well tell you what Reality is! Thus, there is no global warming caused by humans (even though their gaseous output is more than that of 17,000 volcanos going off permanently), and there is No Need for the Superfund as there is no such thing as pollution or toxic waste. And we still have yet to chop down that remaining 3% of pesky redwood trees, that are so in the way of progress.
What kind of noxious big fat stinky turds are running this now-god-forsaken country? And why aren’t they all struck dead with lightning for their murderous crimes against nature and humanity?
Oh I forgot, they’re Republicans so they want ALL the money for themselves, and can’t be touched with sympathy or logic because that would cost them some of it. Hey, good luck with that “money” thing when the biosphere ceases to support life!
Everything that is not biodegradable stays and spreads around virtually forever. The message is that the long lasting poisons that are made cannot be contained by burial, and they spread around, become part of biosphere , and become part of what we eat , drink and breath. The cellular, metabolic and hormonal effects are subtle and cumulative. On the whole, we are better off not making the dammed chemicals in the first place. If the costs of proper safe disposal were included in the manufacture, they might not be made at all.
Where does a nine hundred pound gorilla take a crap?
Hopefully on ~MJTIMBER’S~ head.
Toxic wastes? It’s everyplace now, EVERYWHERE. It’s in the air, blowing in the wind.
Example: We live high in the mountains of the western U.S. Our property borders thousands of acres of BLM land and we have few near neighbors in our hiddden valley. It’s 20 miles to the nearest town. No one in the valley uses any toxic chemicals for their gardens, orchards or on their property.
Three years ago it was much liken ot a wildlife refuge here, we have two beautiful mountain streams flowing through the property, thousands of red and white oak, huckberry, pine and mesquite trees. Our trees are all in bloom now but not any type of bees of the 20,000 specie known in the world, or any butterflies, wasps or hornets have arrived. It’s not a wildlife refuge anymore.
It is not just the large variety of animals that are now very scarce, there are no bugs, no butterflies, no bees or beetles, no bats, very few birds and no frogs and lizards. It’s so quiet now. Last night I purposefulLy left our rear patio lights on for two hours after sunset.
It’s been very nice and warm weather for the past six weeks but NOT ONE single moth, miller, praying mantis or spider apperared. __ NONE.___ The walls near the lights should have been covered with bugs. We have seen exactly one house fly in the past week. Glad of that, ___but actually, I’m not glad of it at all.
Something is seriouly out of whack. It feels sort of like we now live in a dead zone, it’s that way every place we visit in the state and most everyone is unaware of it until we mention it.
And when we go fishing now in the beautiful nearby mountain lakes, we are warned by Fish and Game personnel, that it is not safe to eat the fish. Actually there are’t many fish left to catch anyway, something is killing them.
Hi KEM: Your place sounds like an episode of The Twilight Zone. I believe it’s “The Butterfly effect,” this idea of a moth or butterfly flapping its wings in one place affecting everything else. With that being said, the amount of pesticide, insecticide, and other “icides” lavished on golf courses and condo complexes in S. Florida could be sending death waves up the food chain starting with “the least of these,” the insects. Surely all these chemicals intended to kill pests routinely used in lawns and agriculture have to have longer term impacts. Just as the bees carry pollen, it’s conceivable that insects who do survive, carry toxic residue along to new zones. It’s in our water. Maybe the insects in your region don’t do well with what, 100 different big pharma cocktails now in our water supply? If enough flies grow breasts, maybe it’ll be considered a good thing and Republican pro-genetic engineering scientists will think they have created something worthwhile. I would NOT put that past them…
Thank you for speaking up for the Earth. Beautifully written and moving. Yes, this takes the average American deep into denial territory…and hopefully wakes them up quickly.
EPA remember those people who are to take care of these things?
Bush has the EPA in his back pocket and it is not there to help people but companies.
No wonder as another story posted said the average life span of Americans dropped 1.3 years since 1999. So 1.3 years every 9 years I wonder if that number will increase say to 1.5 or 1.75 years less as toxic dumping is flat out under Bush regime? Easy to do the math what it will be in 50 years, you average life span would be in the 60’s OR just about the time to retire. Bush’s long term solution to a pension fund, just kill everyone before they collect.
scorecard.org is looking good these days. Send plenty of positive feedback to deter them from whacking the design/layout.
Rainwater harvesting and solar distillation: Dig a hemispherical hole in the ground, line it with bentonite clay. Paint the top of the cistern cover black, cover that with a clear plastic sheet, elevated an inch. Tilt the cover slightly. Trickle cistern water across the black surface, evaporates, condenses on the inside sheet surface, and is collected in a clean container. Enjoy political/economic independence, clean water and connection with nature.
greetings! I read your book 10yrs ago. It served a terrific purpose for me at the time. I had a growing feeling that the organizations who were supposedly researching cancer and it’s cures were accomplishing very little. Oh yes, they threw us a bone now and then with some slight information.But my friends were continuing to die. Before they died I asked each and every one if their docs had questioned them about their life style, etc. Not one answered in the afirmative. It became clear that causes were not being explored or if they were they were not being publicized. cures were what they were raising money for which would of course help the pharma’s bottom lines more than the patients’. If they were serious about finding a cause they would have had a ?aire in the top drawer of every doc who had to tell patients the bad news. ?’s like what are your fave foods, where have you lived, where have you worked .Sooner or later a common denominator would pop up. I believe I have survived because I moved away from our town which is surrounded by golf courses and apple orchards.Whenever studies have been done by the private sector it is immediately challenged in one way or another. Thanks for the wake-up call and the web page which I hope I can use in my private crusade against the pharmas and megacorps that are killing us.
Sandra you have a style of writing that is both eloquent and thoughtful - the way you notice nature (or more recently man’s conquest of it) with an apple tree and recognizing that was once an orchard, much as you can do here in Florida where orange trees can be a marker of a former grove - as well as nature’s determination to survive long after man has paved paradise, with the mention of the trees sprouting in cracks in the abandoned tennis court pavement shows a degree of perspective that reminds me of how I view things.
And of course CONSEQUENCE, which you show you are all too aware of. I believe at least two things are at work here as involves American Amnesia.
One is simply that the government and thus the corporate-controlled media downplay these mega-issues, focusing on sound-bite concepts such as “be careful when you microwave using plastic” etc… when there are macro toxicity issues such as pollution of our air and water sources with so many man-made toxic chemicals. For instance all the pharmaceuticals that Americans take daily which are then passed out of their bodies into streams, rivers, lakes, etc. which there is no practical way of measuring or filtering out.
The second I believe is human’s unique ability for self-deception. Deception of others is a common survival technique for many species in nature. However, this ability to self-deceive, the “out of sight, out of mind” enables us to survive the short-term by not concentrating and being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of pollution of a world that we call home by ourselves which is backfiring and the symptoms are ever more difficult to discount. I suppose it is helpful in that we are able to rationalize that our ego does in face cease when we die through religion, etc. and reinforces the life instinct. However, it seems that as a long-term adaptation, in may in fact be our undoing as a species.
Beautiful writing, Thank you.
I just heard a report about a fire retardant chemical that is everywhere in our environment (children’s car seats, clothing, our food and water etc. - according to the report). Studies show this chemical to b harmful to animals, causing developmental anomalies and possibly cancer. And people in the US have 10x the amount of this chemical in our bodies than other humans on the planet.
It’s deeply distressing to face up to how we have fouled our environment. But we are forced to confront it eventaully whether we want to or not. And the only way for life to survive is the way of cooperation with and stewardship of the earth.
While I very much admire Dr. Steingraber, and read her book Living Downstream while in college for Environmental Studies, I don’t agree entirely with her main point here. My first point of disagreement is that we are only beginning to understand what is in the products we buy. And it seems to me that the stuff that ends up in the products we buy often is the same stuff that ends up creating superfund sites. In the current socio-economic-political climate, the most powerful tool we have is our refusal to participate. If we refuse to buy toxic products, this will automatically reduce pollution of local environments.
My second point of disagreement is that “unremembering” is largely facilitated by the media, and their intentionally distracting focus on Angelina Jolie, or American Idol, or any of the other inane and bogus concerns of the average person. I am reminded of an article several years back in Environmental Health Perspectives, entitled: Is Public Support for Environmental Protection Decreasing? An Analysis of U.S. and New Jersey Data. http://www.ehponline.org/members/2003/6648/6648.html
Interestingly, the author suggested that: “This drop in support is associated with slowing of the economy, fear of terrorism, and other competing priorities.” That is to say, those things that the media brings to the forefront as things we should be concerned about. Go to Google news on any given day, and try to find an article about the devastation happening daily to the environment. They are rare. I look.
If I had to take a guess at why people don’t want to know about what contaminants they are exposed to where they live, it boils down to the fact that they can’t do a damn thing about it. When was the last time the EPA banned a chemical? Any guesses? Try 17 years ago. That includes all of Clinton and Bush. Democrat and Republican.
I know many environmentally aware people, many of a radical bent, and most of them have given up. They are living their lives, and trying to find what joy they can find while they still have breath in them. I can hardly blame them. In that regard, I have frequently, in these last few years, been reminded of a quote from Rousseau’s The Social Contract: “In a well-conducted city, each member flies with joy to the assemblies; under a bad government, no one is disposed to bend his way thither, because no one is interested in proceedings where he foresees that the general will will not prevail, and in the end every man turns his attention to his own domestic affairs.” So it seems to be now.