Last night PBS aired Trade Secrets, a program by Bill Moyers about the chemical industry. I was not able to watch (though I hope to see it on videotape sometime fairly soon). I have browsed briefly on the PBS web site for the show .

Like it or not, traces of man-made chemicals are in each one of us and in practically every ecosystem on earth. For example, DDT is still knocking around the planet decades after being banned. Chances are good that both you and I have some traces of DDT in our bodies this moment. No one seems to have a clue what all this might mean to our health and no one seems to be trying to find out. Sort of the classic "see no evil" approach.

I'd be interested in hearing others' opinions on this and other issues raised by this show. I would especially like to hear what people like eve, who believe mightily in the free market solving all problems, have to say.

Off the bat, I would identify two enormous problems for a market-based solution:

1) When market decisions are made with incomplete, false, flawed or biased information, then they produce incomplete, false, flawed or biased solutions. That is generally the only kind of information currently available in regard to the health issues of most chemicals.

2) These chemicals are no respectors of boundaries. If you choose to make an organic molecule and sell it, or you choose to buy it and set it free into the environment, then I have no choice over whether it finds its way into my water, food or air. I believe Libertarians should frown on this, based on their principle that my freedom ends where it starts to harm you.

Any takers?

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), March 27, 2001

Answers

"Any takers?"

Way too many. You give them an inch and they'll take a mile. Not enough givers, if you ask me.

-- Miserable SOB (misery@misery.com), March 27, 2001.

DDT: A Lifesaving Pesticide

If environmental activists have their way, DDT -- the most effective mosquito-control agent known -- will soon be banned from the planet. For nearly 30 years, DDT has been banned from America's arsenal of pesticides because of environmental concerns. And the United Nations Environmental Program is now sponsoring a legally binding convention for a worldwide ban on DDT.

But strong opposition to such a move has arisen from doctors and public health experts due to a resurgence of mosquito-borne malaria cases in areas where it had previously been eradicated.

Earlier this year, a group of 380 scientists signed an open letter arguing for the renewed use of DDT inside houses to fight the accelerating number of malaria cases.

In poor, developing countries, DDT would be sprayed on the inside walls of homes and huts -- with negligible environmental consequences.

After the U.S. and other industrialized countries outlawed DDT, the ban was gradually extended to countries in the developing world through threats to withhold foreign aid -- in effect, blackmailing them into dropping their most effective anti-malarial weapon.

The decline in DDT use was followed by malarial epidemics in developing countries around the world -- resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

Even here at home, two Boy Scouts contracted malaria while camping in New York state last summer.

There is substantial doubt that DDT is even a threat to the environment. As a recent article in the Lancet, a British medical journal, notes, we have yet to find a single significant health threat from DDT use even after 40 years of exhaustive research.

Source: Alex Avery and Dennis Avery (both of the Hudson Institute), "Bring Back DDT, and Save Lives," Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2000.

-- O (badscience@eco.org), March 27, 2001.

OK. DDT kills insects, including mosquitos. Mosquitos can carry disease. Perhaps somebody here did not know that - though I would be surprised if that were true.

This only begs the question: how do you think this affects the issues raised by Moyers? To be specific, what about the fact that, although the chemical industry widely publicizes the presumed benefits of their products (as shown in your cut-and-paste job), it attempts to hide all evidence of their harms? It seems to me that this approach is designed to permit them to do harm with utter impugnity without having to bear any responsibility for their actions.

I thought that "bearing personal responsibility" was a big deal for conservatives this year? Oh, that was that last year's slogan! Now the slogan is "we must move on and put all that unpleasantness behind us."

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), March 27, 2001.

Perhaps a study of economics would help. Pollution is an example of an external cost. The only efficient way to eliminate external costs is to ensure these costs are incorporated in the price of a good or service. For example, one can calculate the costs of pollution from producing tires and then allocate these costs to producers. This cost is reflected in the price of tires. This creates an incentive to producers to lower pollution so they can lower costs and increase profits and market share. Environmentally friendly products become cheaper than "dirty" products rather than more expensive as they are now.

The tricky part of the health effects of chemicals is avoiding hysteria. DDT may actually save more lives than it harms. Many of the scientific criteria for determining risk are extraordinary. Sure, many chemicals are bad for you if you eat them undiluted with a large spoon. The health effects of minute amounts (PPM/B) are far from certain. The starting point for any discussion of external costs is good science.

-- Economist (thinking@home.com), March 27, 2001.

Whatever the technological marvel, be it radium, plastic, or cell phones, there will usually be health problems that are exacerbated by greed and mistakes. But without both of these, progress cannot be made.

We know it is morally wrong, but is it "evil" for corporations to justify the total of 450 employee's lives (estimate by PBS) that were lost at the plants in the name of economically feasible plastics production? That's another question, and it depends on your definition of evil.

What is very interesting though, is that most folks scoff at the concept of the Illuminati, CFR or NWO, yet in viewing the program, the organization of secret corporate cabals, and their drives and motives, is clearly exposed for all to see.

-- Charles Shultz (peanuts@gallery.com), March 27, 2001.

Economist, I happen to agree with your general approach of having prices accurately reflect costs. However, when you say:

"For example, one can calculate the costs of pollution from producing tires and then allocate these costs to producers."

... I hope you understand that the only known method for allocating these costs to producers is through government regulation or court-imposed liability judgements. It is precisely these mechanisms that most corporations are resisting fiercely.

Their resistance takes many forms. It includes incessant propaganda in the media against "saddling business with the cost of regulation" and "distorting the free market" and "outrageous judgements and court settlements". It also takes the form of pouring millions of dollars into election campaigns to ensure that elected representatives do not propose or support laws that hold industry responsible for the true costs of their products. It also takes the form of placing as many proponents of industry as possible into the very government positions responsible for regulating industry. Lately, industry has been pushing "tort reform" as a means to deflect these costs.

So, if you want prices to reflect costs so the marketplace can react more appropriately with more complete information, then you had better be prepared to fight an uphill political battle. It isn't simple economics.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), March 27, 2001.

Studies of effects on people tend (when performed at all) to be latitudinal -- lots of people, short term -- rather than longitudinal. This is understandable, because if we come up with a new drug, pesticide, or any of many other inventions, we don't want to wait to test it on a generation or two before marketing it. The information simply isn't there for the market to discount.

So we are currently engaged in a massive, uncontrolled long-term health experiment, with ourselves as the subjects, like it or not. And the results are starting to come in -- even in the western world, more and more countries are experiencing *diminishing* life expectancies. Economic externalities aren't completely external; even polluters must live in the environment they pollute, and you can only build smokestacks so high.

There really is, in principle, a carrying capacity that our world has for human beings. We don't know what it is, and we don't know how to find out, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Indications are piling up that we may have exceeded it. 100 years ago, there were 1.6 billion people. Today there are over 6 billion. More people are *alive* today than ever *existed* in human history (of, say, 2 million years) altogether! But motherhood is still sacred and abortion is still opposed by some. We learn slowly.

I don't know what form the backlash will take, but I'm willing to bet on sudden implosion. I'd give it 60-80 years.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 27, 2001.