Urban Confrontation; 31; Attack on the Life Cycle: Pesticides Since Silent Spring Frank Graham

From Northeastern University. National Information Network for example. Urban confrontation. The idea that scientists now are looking into the effects of these chemicals on children with believing that in many cases first effects are caused by the impingement of chemicals on the fetuses. And so there are the very real dangers key expressed in say an in doctors warnings now for pregnant women not to spray their rooms with many of these pesticides. And yet there have been many disasters which ship the chemical companies will say well could have could have been avoided if a little more care had been taken. Certain areas have been large numbers of people killed by accidents to pesticides. Yet these are warnings to us as there are warnings that say among the pilots who go pilot these spray planes his crop dusters they have a lot of trouble. These people have them now with illnesses not only physical illnesses but mental illnesses. And these are men who have safeguarded themselves supposedly who have followed all the directions where the proper equipment. And yet Federal Aviation Agency reports indicate that they come down with schizophrenia and other

such disturbances. This week on urban confrontation. Frank greyer editor of Audubon Magazine and author of the recent bestseller sense Silent Spring. This week's program. Attack on the life cycle. Pesticides sense. Simon. Right. Here is your host Joseph Darby. In 1062 Rachel Carson wrote a scathing indictment of the way pesticides are used and how they are poisoning man. At that time she was a single lonely voice crying for a man to look to his environment. More than eight years after the writing of the book Silent Spring and six years after Rachel Carson's death we're talking high above the Boston Common in his hotel room with a man who has written a book indicating Rachel Carson's ideas about pollution. Frank Graham has the

environmental situation improved or worsened since the publication of Silent Spring. This is a difficult thing to say in that we like to think that things are getting better because there is an increasing awareness of that there is a problem. But in many areas and I think this is one that by its very nature has to be getting worse because what we're dealing with here are chemical substances DDT and it's so-called sister pesticides these persistent pesticides which do not break down but which persist in the environment. So naturally as we continue to use them over a period of years they're getting worse in the environment. They're not breaking down that fast and we are using many of them even though in the United States our use of DDT for instance is declining. We're using these other pesticides which are just like DDT like Aldrin dieldrin. We're using them and rising quantities so that these materials are getting into the environment and staying there at higher rates than they ever were before. Let's talk specifics Frank exactly what pesticides are bad Rachel Carson

didn't hold that all pesticides were bad which ones in your opinion should now be immediately removed from the market and which ones ought to still be made available to the public. I would say the chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides which include DDT dieldrin aldrin and dran have to close or lindane and talks a feen. These are the ones that are persistent which do not break down and which are causing the trouble. The other pesticides they use carelessly they can only kill you. But these pesticides their affects can be so far reaching that if they're not controlled and if they're not handled properly I think that they could affect the survival of the human race because they do have these long lasting effects and they have been shown to affect other carnivores like eagles and Ospreys and so on. The peregrine falcon so that their their numbers are declining and they are threatened with extinction. How would you translate the phrase affecting other carnivorous species into something that would really hit home to the person

listening to this program in a graphic way and communicate with him in a way that he can identify with as he looks around his everyday environment. What is the effect of these pesticides. A biologist said and looking at some of these creatures that have been affected but these pesticides like DDT act precisely as an oral contraceptive. Obviously there is a birth control problem but we do this by choice. If it turns out that these pesticides have the same effect on us as they have on these other creatures we in a sense are going to phase ourselves out of existence in voluntarily. Could you elaborate on how the effect of pesticides would act to affect the population. Most of the studies on this have been done in birds obviously experiments of delicate nature cannot be made on human beings but in birds they have caused certain processes to take place which inhibit reproduction among these creatures. So.

One thing for instance is that they they interfere with a calcium metabolism of these creatures and their egg shells are no longer thick enough to support the embryo when they often we've seen some of these creatures when they nest they crush their own eggs in the nest and then the young are destroyed. This is happening again and again with a number of species from the eagle to the brown pelican reproduction has been inhibited by pesticides and other creatures ranging all the way from fish to phytoplankton which form the base of the ocean's food chain. Let's talk about DDT and some of these other toxic pesticides that DDT is just one member of a family of pesticides called chlorinated hydrocarbons I believe you describe them yet it seems to be the real villain now. Why has it been the first to be banned by the government why was it singled out. Well because most of the work has been done on that DDT was introduced right after World War Two. And at that time it was was called a savior chemical This was the one that was going to solve all of our pest problems and it did have some rather spectacular successes in the

beginning because it did help to smother certain epidemics of typhus and malaria. But people began to depend upon and fill the environment with DDT for almost even the most minor problems. And suddenly what we had thought was a one of DDT has advantages for its persistence. Suddenly turned out to be a great hazard because it it just doesn't break down. By a breaking down for the uninitiated in terms of the chemical definition of breaking down what does it mean for a chemical not to be susceptible to breaking down. Well it means it exists in the environment as a toxic substance that when you spray it it just doesn't go away it doesn't lose its toxicity and a couple of weeks like most of these other chemical poisons do some of the other pesticides do after a short period of time some even within a matter of hours others amount of days or weeks really break down because EDT almost literally does not fall apart as a chemical it retains its They it has one of that's called a half life. So that if you spray a certain amount of

DDT over a period of time half of it will breakdown disappear. The other half remains in the environment retains its toxicity. And so we remains a contaminant. Now there are drugs besides DDT there are other chlorinated hydrocarbons that the public should be made aware of that are dangerous if not lethal for human consumption I think we'd agree on that they're dangerous because they do not break down as you describe DDT is not breaking down these drugs were accepted by the Food and Drug Administration way back in the 1950s and it's estimated that they probably could not pass inspection if they were presented for inspection today. You mentioned dieldrin. You mentioned Alderman Endor and kept a core lindane talks a feen benzine. Hex a core IDE and block b a c. Now that is so much Greek to the average listener and I'll be the first to humbly confess it's so much Greek to me. What will that mean in terms of someone reading a bottle reading the contents of reading the label of

a pesticide or insecticide that they are using. How could they tell that they are using something which could have a harmful effect on mans a whole ecological being. Anyone who is interested in this has a duty to familiarize himself. I think there are a number of conservation organizations which which will give you the lists of these deadly pesticides. These persistent ones in my book for instance the book I do have a section on the safe use of pesticides in Home and Garden and I think of there are a number of outstanding conservation organizations on both the state and national level where you can get some material on this. The name of these substances will be printed in fine print to be sure on the back of these containers. And these are the ones that we should avoid. And the dish should be more warning on from the federal government. Why isn't there warning and why is the Prince so fine on the labels. I mean is this is some sort of a conspiracy or is that's no reason why you see just the way that the way we do business. Somebody is making a profit on this. They want to keep selling it. These

pesticides are cheap and easy to make. The companies that make them don't want any restrictions on their sale of these that they've they're making a lot of money on them and they fight fiercely against any attempt to regulate the use of these pesticides or to ban them from the market as we see now. Just one of them DDT has been banned the only one supposedly banned by the federal government but the manufacturers of DDT are protesting the decision that we're going through this long rigamarole all over again to really study something that has been studied almost to death. The idea is that these were passed once and then the chemical companies don't see any reason why they they shouldn't go on using the list you know as well the recollection that I had of the immediate reaction to Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring when it was first published and almost hysterical attempts by the chemical industry to defend itself. But it would seem to me that by 1970 millions of Americans would have acknowledged by this point the effects of chemicals by the 70s we certainly should have a body of public opinion that is strong enough to counter

avail against the vested interests and the dollar profit worship of the chemical industry. This is a built in syndrome I'm afraid we have the chemical industry of to turn this around on people and has intimated that they are unpatriotic if they attempt to place regulations on this that in effect we are going to cause a famine if they are not allowed to sell these pesticides. Which is ridiculous in the first place. Back in the 1980s we did not have these chlorinated hydrocarbons on the market. We raised large crops we had surpluses. Farm surpluses crops were plowed under. Mankind has survived with his forests and his fields have survived for centuries without these sophisticated poisons. We should pause at this point in the program Frank to let those who may have just tuned into our discussion around the country let them know that we're talking with Frank Graham Frank Graham has written a book entitled since Silent Spring. And that book deals with the effect of pesticides on diet and SEC decides on man's

environment and on man himself. We're talking with Frank in his hotel room here in the Ritz-Carlton high above Boston Common. And Frank I'd like to ask you a hypothetical question which we put to our guest from time to time. If you were the president of the United States and had the power to deal effectively with the problem that your book describes in your conversation has just brought out what would you do. Well first of all I would move to have these pesticides banned because only then will industry get down to turning out alternative chemicals. What we're doing here I think it's a it's a serious moral question. Even with DDT we are not using it in this country as much as we were. But what we're doing is we're still manufacturing it in large quantities and we are shipping it overseas to poor countries who claim they can afford it. There's an almost obscene or immoral is that what it's going to lose however they have to turn loose on them something we don't want to use ourselves. Now the United States government has certainly had many precedents where it

subsidizes many products from fighter planes to machine guns and all sorts of destructive devices. Here is certainly an area where we could go in through some sort of subsidies perhaps tied these nations over so they could buy more acceptable chemicals until the price on these other chemicals comes down the price will come down when there's a big demand for them when they're produced in bulk and when they're not just sitting in the wings waiting to take place. Let us return to this real world. You're not the president. Richard Nixon is the president. And let's take a look at what Richard Nixon's administration has done it has contributed four to five billion dollars over the next five years to combat water pollution. The president in his State of the Union address called for a massive commitment to solving the environmental crisis in general to take a comprehensive approach to stopping pollution it will mean stepping on the toes of big business so our album The president is to a greater or lesser degree indebted to big business for financial support. The Republican Party has traditionally been aligned with big business. How

responsive do you expect the president will be to the problem when it comes to translating the rhetoric into realistic programs. Well the president hasn't shown himself very responsive until now. But I think you can also say that this was true of the prior administration President Kennedy himself did show an interest in it. He even appointed as the President's Science Advisory Committee and they came out with I thought a very good report. And I just lay there not very much has been done since since that time. Secretary Finch all of the cabinet members in the administration he's often seen to move out ahead of them in many of his actions and sometimes at his own peril it seems to me. But he has made an attempt to come out and say that DADT should be phased out over two year period but the Seems to be sometime in the future is the this ruling is being appealed by the chemical companies involved. Has a change taken place though in what I guess we could describe as the politics of an environment. In 1968 that recently it was not a safety

issue not a viable issue that either candidate Humphrey or Nixon spend much time dealing with. And yet so recently that you see that not only kids with long hair but kids with crew cuts and button down collars walking around the towns with ecology buttons on their lapels. The U.S. citizens committees composed of John Birch Society members and members of very liberal organizations all merging and coalescing and coming together in a coalition which has the one fundamental purpose of fighting those sections of our society which put a higher premium on the dollar than they do on man's environment. Can't we expect much more from Finch and from Nixon than we could during the period when Kennedy and Johnson were in office when it wasn't a politically viable issue. Well we can certainly expect much more but what happens is that everybody is a conservationist today from the owner of a polluting paper mill to the politicians been letting him get away with it for all these years and they're all willing to try to solve some pollution

problem which is on the other end of the country are of far distant from them when it comes right down to their own area where they're afraid of stepping on their own constituents toes. Then they're not such great crusaders and conservationists as they said in their speech the night before. That's not a very deeply based profound commitment then. I don't think it is no I think what they will only realize it when there is pressure put on in every locality. I think that the people just have to speak out they have to inform themselves on what the dangers are. One point I'd like to make here is that often in these cases citizens can do as much harm as good by getting exercised about problems without being sure they're fact without knowing just what they should be attacking so they write letters and they get up and hearings and so on and they can be discredited so easily for not being sure they're facts that it gives politicians an outlet to disregard the wishes of of the public which is anxious to combat some pollution problem. I think we get bogged down in that sometimes. But we've got to do is inform ourselves if there is a public hearing for instance of your state or your local area

to ban the use of DDT. Some of these other chemicals I think youve got to get behind it perhaps align yourself with a local conservation group write letters to the local people most involved the heads of legislative committees and outside of the maker make yourself known and make it known that you are not going to vote for these people who tolerate this kind of thing often they will. You hear such silly statements as well what do you prefer birds or people. We know enough about the pesticide problem right now to know that it is not a matter of making a choice between birds and people. The death of birds the death of fish is a clear warning sign that something is wrong with our environment from top to bottom and that we don't stand apart from nature from the natural world we are part of the universe. And when a bird dies I think it's a warning that we better heed. The bird and the fish that died today that which killed them could kill man tomorrow. That's true I think with a tough moral nose I think that he and I don't think it really gets across to all the people listening to this program right now. For them perhaps the interest environment is or will soon become a fad. There

was an interest in Vietnam for a while in the McCarthy campaign. There's been an interest in our urban centers but some say it has gone to the problems of our cities. Perhaps one can be optimistic only of one is quite naive. I think I would have as I say that it always takes a disaster to really get the message across. I mean he already had enough disasters we're not talking about a prophecy about the future doesn't your book record and analyze numerous disasters that have happened already. Well that's true yes. For example in London in 1952 with the time of the great killer Smaug here this giant smog descended on the city. But Londoners didn't pay much attention to it they thought it was just another incident created by their air pollution and that sort of thing and they went through there were no stories in the paper which indicated that the smog was any different from the other movie few animals had died it was of a few stories about this but it was not until the smog was over a week went by and suddenly people began to tabulate through the death records the records

and mortuaries of burials and so on that an enormous disaster had taken place in London 4000 people had been killed of respiratory diseases from children with respiratory tracks to older people. This disaster had taken place 4000 people had been killed and no one knew about it until it was all over. And this is the kind of thing that we seem to be bringing on ourselves time and again that they were not aware that these disasters are taking place and the federal government eventually is going to have to come to its senses and ban these chemical pesticides only when they are banned. Well the industry and the sections of government responsible for research move into the area of research to find safer pesticides and pesticides which attack only the specific target. What Willow into believing is that we are completely protected by certain government agencies and so on. Forgetting that these government agencies often have their own fish to fry but they often are really promoters of the industries that they're designed to regulate as we know the Department of Agriculture is in the business of promoting the agricultural industry as the Federal

Aviation Agency is in the business of promoting the aviation industry. So we go on thinking while these scientists and bureaucrats know best but they tell us there's nothing to worry about. It's a funny thing science in a way has created this kind of predicament. And yet the scientists are in many cases are afraid to speak up because they claim they don't have all of the information but most people see these things for themselves and they're not. The idea that scientists now are looking into the effects of these chemicals on children with believing that in many cases birth defects are caused by the impingement of chemicals on fetuses and so on. The very real dangers kicks pressed in say an in doctors warnings now for pregnant women not to spray their rooms with many of these pesticides. And yet there have been many disasters which the chemical companies will say well could have could have been avoided if a little more cared been taken. Certain areas have been large numbers of people killed by accidents to pesticides. Yet these are warnings to us as there are warnings that say among the pilot supa who

pilot these spray planes his crop dusters they have a lot of trouble. These people have come down with illnesses not only physical illnesses but mental illnesses. And these are men who have safeguarded themselves supposedly who followed all the directions where the proper equipment. And yet Federal Aviation Agency reports indicate that they come down with schizophrenia and other such disturbances. You know if what you say is true it would stand to reason that a very broad based total commitment not only by our federal government but a commitment which would involve all of the federal all of the state governments and the city the town the local county governments a major commitment. It is necessary to regulate the production and the distribution and the use of pesticides of insecticides. And yet it occurs to me that the threat that you describe the crisis that you described is something between you and me Frank and perhaps a

few people listening in this audience but it does not come across to most Americans and most significantly it does not come across to the congressman to the administrative heads of our states and of the nation. There is no fundamental comprehensive policy no National Environmental Policy. Yes that's true there is no coordinated policy and until we work one out we're going to have a continuing environmental crisis with this. Well I don't like to engage in melodrama on these programs but it seems to me that there's something obscene about that about the fact that there is no policy and the fact that this threat that you describe is with us now it is not a gloom and doom prophecy about something that might happen in the future about somethings around the corner it's right here and now as we solve certain problems certain health problems in other areas. We're seeing that we have a greater demand to raise food every year now. We are told that pesticide use will increase 15 percent in the world. It means it will double every five years. So unless we get together on this thing

and do the things that have to be done to get rid of these pesticides we're going to find ourselves I think and in a lot of trouble there are pesticide techniques which can do the job integrating certain chemicals the less harmful chemicals with other methods cultural methods and so on farming techniques that will cut down on the need for pesticides. We just can't solve the pest problem with the substances we're now using that causes too many other problems. You know you describe the threat and you do it very well perhaps because you are a mild mannered man I'm an emotional man I've become emotional as I've heard you describe the problem perhaps radio moderators by definition must have a certain amount of emotional content to them or they couldn't hold their jobs. But I think they vary so braai with which you describe the problem makes it even more scary. One last question. How optimistic are you. Is there any hope what will happen if something is not done very soon.

It's hard to be optimistic at the present time because with DDT as we've seen the decision has been put off for a couple of years. If there's any area for optimism as far as DDT goes it's going to have to be on the local level because the government has it set up right now doesn't seem to be equipped doesn't seem to be able to move fast enough in these areas or to move with the speed that's going to be necessary to. Do anything effective. And when DDT is is finally banned everybody's going to save great. We won the battle. Now let's turn our attention to something else. And you're going to be left with this seven or eight other sister chemicals of DDT. All of the almost in every case more toxic and containing the same kind of qualities which which may be out of noxious chemical of the persistence the ability to be magnified up through through food chains. So unless alternatives are are found which I don't think they're going to be found right now there's no there's no pressure on the industry to find new chemicals. There's going to pressure be exerted. Most effectively on the federal government level. For cards letters telephone calls what have you.

Well one area for instance the if people are really concerned I would say to get behind people like Senator Gaylord Nelson who has tried for three or four years now to get a bill through Congress which would ban DDT every year he throws this bill into the hopper and every year it's referred to the Agriculture Committee. And there it dies. The Agriculture Committee is controlled by men of course who his constituents are members of Agriculture and chemical communities. And they just let it die this this bill never appears on the floor of the Senate. And here is an area where I think something's got to be done it's got to be pushed through. Well at this point this radio program like all radio programs must die in effect it comes to an end. Hopefully it will live on. If people listening at this very moment follow your suggestion write to Senator Gaylord Nelson. Backing his proposed bill to ban the sale of DDT in the United States and right to people that you mention during the program such as secretary of Health Education and Welfare Finch supporting

the movement to do something about controlling the production distribution and utilization of pesticides and insecticides in this country. We've been talking with Frank Graham the author of a book entitled since Silent Spring published by hootin muffling and a book which though it does not have the drama of the war in Vietnam issue or the nuclear holocaust threat or any of our various urban problems certainly describes a problem of similar dimension. The problem of the effect of pesticides and insecticides on man and his environment. Thank you very much Frank Graham. Thank you Jeff. Northeastern University has brought you Frank Graham editor of Audubon Magazine and author of the recent bestseller since Silent Spring. Today's program attack on the life cycle of pesticides. Sam

Simon scoring. The views and opinions expressed on the preceding program not necessarily those of Northeastern University or this station. Question ties were the moderators method of presenting many sides of today's topic. Your program host has been Joseph R. Bader Director Department of radio productions. This week's program was produced by Peter Lang record by many. Executive producer for urban confrontation is Peter my. Urban confrontation is produced for the division of instructional communications at the nation's largest private university. Northeastern University requests for a tape recorded copy of any program miniseries may be addressed to. Urban confrontations. Northeastern University. Boston Massachusetts. 0 2 1 1 5. Your announcer. Dave has. This is the national educational radio network.