Evidence is never clean-cut. Ambiguity of interpretation of the public health effects of new chemicals and technologies can insidiously flourish if there are no alert and quizzical bystanders. The scrutineers keep us on our toes.
Here we publish three articles of the genre. One relates to the biological control of insects and pathogenic organisms for which wholesale or substantial demise is sought. Another applies to radiofrequency radiation from all manner of electronic devices and installations where the array of human-created emissions could stimulate cancer or disturb neurodevelopment. The third is the continuation of our previously published exploration of the many debilitating aspects of multiple sourced urban air pollution descending on a vast and innocent urban population.
Three aspects of the politics and ethics of scientific enquiry connect here. One is the uncertain evidence of long-term consequences of low levels of exposure filtrating across the masses. The second is how dangerously limited are the capabilities of science-based modeling and measuring for safeguarding intergenerational health and well-being. The third is the failure of effective and timely regulation. In all three cases published here there is a sense of unease that not all is either fully known or calculated. There is also an anxiety that vulnerable and innocent citizens are suffering chronic ill health compounded by indifference and lack of care. And there is a third misgiving that regulation gently trots along behind the active debilitating agents that are protected by self-interested lobbies and the silence of commercial discovery.
Readers will make up their own minds on the three cases offered herein. Biological controls are still in their regulatory infancy. The international repercussions of disease-inducing species crossing borders, or entering ports and farms, are not fully understood. The nature of induced genetic manipulation, often heralded as a public medical good that could remove inherited health conditions, is not adequately scrutinized when the intention is to zap an unwanted pest species. We are dangerously dependent on the ethics and excellence of the research laboratories, and the careful but not always fully painstaking assessments of the scrutineers. Like it or not, we want to believe our well-being is being guaranteed. But we cannot be sure.
The conclusions by the author of the pest-focused biological control essay, Florian Rabitz, are well worth considering by Environment readers. He stresses the ambiguities of techno-fixes with strong political and commercial overtones and drivers, where the rate of change in necessary risk assessments exceeds any catching-up capabilities of science, regulation, and public awareness. These are potentially dangerous times for future human and ecological well-being. Removing a whole species, because it is inconveniently costly to health or food security, is almost certain to carry with it unimaginable consequences for the web of nature. We know enough to be aware, but not enough to be sure of all outcomes.
The authors of both this perspective and that on electromagnetic exposures cite the role of precaution. This was the basis of a series of articles in Environment (59(5)) in 2017. The principle of precaution is one of the centerpieces of European Union environmental lawmaking. Its purpose is to pause where there is sufficient ignorance. Pausing offers space and time to reconsider and to consult. The precautionary principle traveled across the world but became enmeshed in the very muddle of techno-politics described by Rabitz. The lead author of the electromagnetic risk review, Paul Ben Ishai, provides strong evidence that the most problematic dangers of lifelong contact lie in damage to the fetus and to young children. Both face “a lifetime of exposure that is without precedent.”
The issue here lies in the troubling question of prolonged susceptibility. We have long entered an age where both physical and mental health can be damaged by creeping accumulations. Prolonged outcomes cannot be discerned from insidious low-level exposures. In the three important cases opened by our authors, there can be no assurance that the longer term of biological pest control, of widespread multiple agent air pollution, and of almost ubiquitous radiofrequency radiation will not harm the vulnerable innocent. What is uncomfortable here is the degree of confidence we have in apparently reliable scientific assessment and modeling, the unmet need for application of timely precaution, and the “full fat” recognition of honesty of ambivalence. Here we face the murmuring of silence.
Let us consider three contemporary comparable cases that remain deeply contentious and unresolved: microplastics, forever chemicals, and solar radiation management. Microplastics are everywhere. Nowhere on Earth is free of them, whether on polar ice or in the deepest oceanic trenches. Every mother and every fetus carry them in increasing quantities. Right now, we have no idea of the possible consequences for any individual, irrespective of protective or unprotective health capabilities. Nor do we have any concept of the combinational effects of such health dangers within whole populations. The popularly named “forever chemicals” are chemically known as perfluoroalkyl or polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS or PFOS). There are well over 10,000 such products, widely used for water repellence and grease removal, among many other properties. They accumulate in any biological pathway and could well impact the emerging human or natural organism over more than one lifetime. They are quite capable of being passed on to all progenies. Again, there is no escape for any living matter. Already there is evidence that reproductive mechanisms of many organisms are affected by this group of synthetic chemicals. The murmurings of silence are resonating.
Supporters of solar engineering management believe that this route is vital to compensate for the general failure to reach net zero in time. One proposed action is to spray sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere. Here it should combine with water vapor to form a sulphuric acid aerosol mist that would reflect sunlight. This is analogous to the cooling role of dust emanating from volcanoes such as Mount Pinatubo, which erupted in the Philippines in 1991. The stratospheric concoction of dust and gases arising from that event was calculated to have cooled the planet by 0.5 °C over a period of a year. We would be tampering with a huge unknown. The aerosols could become the stratospheric versions of triffids, multiplying and accumulating in unmanageable ways. They could affect the life-protecting ozone layer and alter monsoonal timings. And much more besides. They would cross national boundaries, leading to all manner of scientific geopolitical conflict.
What we have published here is a window on a techno-propulsive world where the rate of innovation could be in the hands of huge, well-financed private interests operating largely beyond the uncertainties of scientific prognoses and international regulation. The feeble piping of the soprano recorder of the precautionary principle would be drowned by the cacophony of hubris. It is very much part of the mission of Environment to lay out these dangers by carefully creating an amalgam of scientific innovations, science ethics, science-based policy, and thoughtful measured analysis. This way the murmurings of silence can be heard.
Please do not ignore the Yupik of the Southern Bering Sea. They are organizing to redesign their walrus hunting to fit in with changing sea ice conditions and variable walrus movements, as reported by Vera Metcalf and Henry Huntington in this issue. What is significant is that the young Yupik are sharing and recreating the knowledges of their elders. Both the survival of the walrus and their particular humanistic associations with the Yupik peoples are being reformulated. This story supports an interview and an essay from Australia on the importance of the law in legally safeguarding the rights of Indigenous peoples and natural species.
In the murmurings of silence, the survivalist voices of the past and the future can also be heard.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.