Our NIMBY and OSOM attitudes about Pollution
The recent Ohio train derailment and its never-ending trail of pollution has highlighted the alarming frequency of such disasters occurring around the world. This is indicative of the lack of governmental and corporate safety protocols, driven by a prioritization of profits. As a result, transportation accidents involving toxic substances are becoming more common, making evident our culture’s disregard for the extreme pollution that these chemicals can cause and their devastating effects on communities and the environment.
The generalized lack of awareness of pollution is very much based on the NIMBY (Not in my backyard) and OSOM (Out of sight, out of mind) attitudes that pervade our society. We talk about pollution only when an accident like the one in Ohio happens and even then, these events are not only barely mentioned by the media but also rarely properly explained. This allows most people to continue with their NIMBY and OSOM attitudes, thinking that all is fine as long it doesn’t happen near them. We continue feeling quite safe, thinking that these events usually happen to ‘others’, in ‘dirty’ states or countries, places that don’t share our ‘green-aware’ or correct political views.
The NIMBY and OSOM attitudes appear in full force whenever there is a proposition for a possibly dirty project near us. In such a case, we try to learn everything about the project’s pollution and we fiercely fight it, without thinking that it will ultimately have to go somewhere else, and equally pollute someone’s air, soil, or air.
The modern life of the privileged Global North resembles a cocoon, where most people believe that our extremely technology-filled way of life can happen in a weird vacuum. In this cocoon, the energy laws of the universe have stopped working and energy transformations can unbelievably do work without producing much waste. In this cocoon, people accept the existence of some waste but are still deluded by thinking that it is possible to escape most of this pollution, just by having enough money to make the right choices –living in the right place!
This stratification of society in which the affluent can select areas with less pollution while the poor are forced to live near train tracks where extremely toxic substances are carried, nuclear waste is buried, or toxic slag-causing mines operate, is one of the great inequalities of our times. We are quite unaware of how the majority of the burden of pollution is often transferred to poorer states and countries, leading to very harmful circumstances, such as children mining cobalt with their bare hands, people relying on dark and foul-smelling water year-round or getting sick from ‘recycling’ e-waste created by wealthy countries.
These NIMBY and OSOM attitudes — thinking that we can securely escape pollution — are allowing for it to expand around the world, affecting all the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the survival of much fauna and flora, including ourselves –whether we are rich or poor.
The train’s cargo, though highly toxic, is an essential component of modern life. Vinyl chloride is the basis for the manufacturing of the plastic polyvinyl chloride (PVC), used in many of our daily life items. To start with, we couldn’t have reliable plumbing, electrical wire, and cable insulation for the electrical systems in homes and cars. A stay in the hospital would be much more complicated as many medical devices rely on it and we could not use credit or ATM cards to pay for the hospital’s services since these cards are also made of PVCs. Once at home, we would find that much of the house, furniture, gadgets, and kitchen appliances also have great percentages of PVCs. The list could go on and on –polyvinyl chloride comprises about twelve percent of the total plastics manufactured in the world.
Though we take these objects for granted, the Ohio accident shows us how toxic their components are –experts have said that their polluting effects will be felt for decades, not just in the area but in many others. PVC is a flammable gas, so the accident provoked an awful black smoke that filled most homes, nearby water sources, and wildlife areas. People immediately had trouble breathing, their water became undrinkable, and their creek and river were full of dead fish.
The first responders feared an explosion, so they recommended a slow burning of the train cargo, which created more environmental concerns. Since then, the soil contamination has proven so high that the experts are talking about sending the contaminated soil to a nearby incinerator, Heritage Thermal Services, even if the company has broken EPA rules several times before.
Experts are afraid that the soil incineration will help to spread other types of very toxic chemicals, which were also found in the 2018 wildfire in the town of Paradise, in Butte County, California. The chemicals, called per and polyfluoroalkyls (PFAs), and dioxins, are sometimes called forever chemicals since they never seem to degrade. This means that once there, they will bounce around from ecosystem to ecosystem forever!
PFAs were developed by the company 3M in the 1930s, rapidly becoming an integral part of everyday life. The 1950s housewife could cook without the food sticking to the pan and if she felt tired of cooking, she could order food brought in PFA-made containers. Kids could go camping with water-resistant gear and if the teenage son fell asleep while smoking and the house unfortunately burnt, the fire could be put out more efficiently by using 3M foams.
Other chemicals spread by the Paradise fire and the Ohio accident are the dreaded dioxins. These compounds produced a scare when the news announced their presence in Chinese-made baby food. The media never explained that dioxins are not made, they are a byproduct of the manufacturing of paper and pesticides. This is why, foods around the world might end up having very high contents of these substances, especially if there has been continuous bio-accumulation all along the food chain.
Despite the mountain of evidence that shows how PFAs and dioxins are linked to a variety of health problems that include birth defects, reproductive problems, increased cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, these substances are now surprisingly used in many states as lubricants for aiding the drills for fracking. This very energy-intensive method for obtaining oil and gas out of rocks, allowed recent US presidents to proudly proclaim that the US was energy independent once more, even if it implied further environmental damage.
The evidence from the Paradise wildfire showed how these toxic chemicals can also cause intense water pollution that according to experts was one of the most extensive disasters ever seen in the US. The water samples had about a dozen volatile organic chemicals, including benzene, which affects the bone marrow — causing anemia and leukemia, and many others. No one knows how long these will stay in the area or how far they will go — especially if it rains in the following days. Many of the experts at the site said:
“it is anyone’s guess what the real effects of this disaster will be”.
The one thing we can be sure of is that these toxic chemicals will spread in very large areas, ensuring wider contamination through the whole food chain.
We feel sorry for the people in East Palestine and Paradise, but inside, we are happy it isn’t us. As long as our water doesn’t look dark, nor smell or taste weird, the air doesn’t hurt our lungs, we don’t get a rash all over our body after taking a shower, and we don’t see fish and birds dying in droves near us, we continue our lives, deluding ourselves that we are safe from pollution.
In reality, our way of life based on consumerism and progress relies on vast networks of technology which wouldn’t be possible without great quantities of energy and its corresponding waste, most of it, toxic. We are awash in pollution in our homes, cars, and offices.
A good way to understand the toxicity inherent in our homes is to look at what happens to the garbage and recycling of our objects, usually brought to the Municipal Solid Waste department of our town or city. They receive our garbage — a variety of product packaging, furniture, clothing, bottles, toys, appliances, paint, batteries, etc. — which is then usually deposited in landfills.
Despite our belief in the importance of recycling, in reality, the world only recycles 5% of the plastic and about 17% of the e-waste that we diligently put in the respective bins. The disposal of our garbage and recycling is like a game of passing the hot potato to somebody else. We don’t want to see our garbage or where the objects that we recycle really end up, so the OSOM attitude is transmitted all the way down the chain, like the hot potato.
Most of the plastics and e-waste end up in landfills, some in the US, and mostly in Third World countries. Once the hot potato has been passed to a poorer country, the OSOM behavior continues in full force, this transfer makes it appear as though it is no longer our problem. This is why we can see pictures of the nightmarish abundance of plastics that clogs up rivers in Africa, the mountains of plastic, and e-waste that have become the homes of the poorest of Bangladeshis or Indonesians where they survive by selling the valuable copper that they strip from our e-waste.
Sometimes the locals are so overwhelmed by the trash, that they burn some of the plastics and e-waste, creating toxic fumes passing the hot potato to the air and unfortunately their lungs too! Another common OSOM behavior in these countries is to throw plastic into the ocean, the last of a series of OSOM solutions. Once in the ocean, it forms huge and ugly plastic islands that some yachts, and fishing ships deplore— the hot potato has finally come back to where it began!
The problem is that there is no place to pass the hot potato since pollution is a generalized problem. Our tactic is to devise pointless chains of OSOM solutions that only manage to ensure that the toxic components spread far and wide.
The abundance of pollution created by each of us combined with the NIMBY and OSOM attitudes is why there is not one ecosystem — from the polar areas to the lush tropics — that isn’t polluted by the toxic cocktail of chemicals that our modern life implies. When we see pictures of uninhabited islands in faraway places with beaches full of plastics, masks, toys, and batteries, we know that pollution is everywhere, and not even humans can escape it.
We can see and acknowledge this and yet the allure of all these things is too powerful, we don’t even want to imagine our life without them. We can see nature shows about how corporations are cutting the Amazon for industrial agriculture and minerals and hear the pleas of Indigenous people asking for our help to save their forest and its biodiversity, but we don’t connect this with our consumption and way of life. We reject the ‘awful corporations’ that destroy the Amazon forest, but at the same time, we want the new phone that can function with the latest bandwidth, the latest watch that will count every step along with all the calories consumed during the day.
We can’t understand that we are in a terrible conundrum. We want the Amazonian people to keep their forest, reduce any health-affecting pollution worldwide, and continue with our technological progress and consumerism as usual. Basically, we want our cake and eat it!
The Indigenous Amazonian person seems to know more about the dangers of mining and industrial agriculture than their sophisticated counterparts in wealthy countries. They are more aware of the dangers implied in mining waste which can produce cancer and other illnesses, and in the very toxic pesticides and fertilizers which along with the ubiquitous plastic can cause hormonal disruption to every plant and animal on Earth.
Experts say that even at very small doses, the chemicals in plastics and fertilizers can affect the normal workings of the nervous, reproductive, and immune systems by blocking or enhancing hormonal functioning. CDC scientists confirm this — it found all toxic elements in the serum of nearly all of the people tested.
As the top predator in the food chain, we are the sad winners of the bio-accumulation of these toxic chemicals that go all the way up the food chain. We are not even safe from this pollution at birth. Our mother’s milk is full of fat, which tends to accumulate more pollution than leaner kinds of milk and these contaminants are even present in the umbilical cord of most newborns.
Our love of technology, combined with our NIMBY and OSOM attitudes, have allowed the destruction of most ecosystems on Earth to such a extent that they will be impossible to repair. The complicated network of biological connections that fit perfectly in healthy ecosystems is not something that can be put together just by planting a few trees here and there, restoring some species in broken ecosystems, and increasing the use of solar or wind power.
NIMBY and OSOM are just delusions that help most people to cope with the broken world we have created, a reality that we don’t want to see. We try to feel optimistic by giving money to any NGO that promises to preserve some animals or create reserves somewhere very far away, even if we can never see if the project worked or not –what matters is that we have done something. We are very ready to protest a mine or other destructive project but we don’t think that without the ores from those mines our modern world would come to a halt.
As long as business as usual continues, there will always be somebody or some ecosystem that will suffer the consequences of the gargantuan needs of modern life. We don’t like connecting the dots to come up with the logical conclusion –our NIMBY and OSOM attitudes are not helping us at all, they are preventing us from seeing the reality of the world we have created, a polluted world in which even our survival is at stake.
