Toxic Shock
Rosita Sweetman reviews two compelling books on the devastating effects of the nuclear and petrochemical companies
The Dioxin War: Truth and Lies about a Perfect Poison. By Robert Allen. Published by Pluto, €15
No Global: The People of Ireland Versus the Multinationals. By Robert Allen. Published by Pluto, €20
Terrible news people: our prophets (James Lovelock, he of The Quest for Gaia), and our poets (Gunter Grass, he of The Tin Drum) both agree it's all almost over. We have polluted and poisoned our beautiful world beyond the point of return. Lovelock gives us 25 years to meltdown. Grass, five. We can reduce, re-use and recycle all we like: basically we're fucked. Two detailed books by Irish Robert Allen (who started life as a plumber in Shorts of Belfast) show what has happened, how and why: here and everywhere. Oh yes, we're right up there when it comes to turning the Garden of Eden into a toxic cesspit.
The terminal destruction we now face began life in the years between the wars when the chlorine chemists and the petroleum extraction chappies got together. Next came the catastrophe of the second world war and a host of extremely toxic nasties (from nerve gases to the atom bomb) were "rushed into production without any thought about their effect on individual species and the ecosphere". The petrochemical and nuclear industries were born. After the war, the nerve gases were turned into pesticides, the atom bomb gave birth to nuclear power stations, and we (all) have been living with – and perhaps will soon be dying from – the consequences of their terrible grip on our world.
Take the nerve gases that were turned into pesticide – dioxin, for instance. Discovered by an accidental outspill from another chemical process, it is the main ingredient in Agent Orange, the defoliant dropped by the million-gallon-load on Vietnam, ostensibly to flush-out Vietcong, but which has left thousands of acres of Vietnam poisoned and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese struggling with cancers, birth defects and blood disorders. (As well as the thousands of American ex-soldiers who were exposed.)
Dioxin is also one of the most serious by-products of incineration: soon all of us will know about it if Minister for the Environment Dick Roche has his way and starts building incinerators in Sandymount, Meath, Cork.
Dioxin (from an incinerator) was also the baddie in the poisoning of the Hanrahan family in Tipperary who famously took on US chemical giant Merck Sharp and Dome. It was an assignment to cover this ongoing David versus Goliath battle that started writer Robert Allen on his passionate quest – get the truth about what 'they' are up to.
The tactics used by the big boys to shut worried people up, and keep the greedy ones on side, would be laughable, if they didn't concern such an important issue. As Allen delineates, palms are greased, neighbours are divided, 'scientific' studies are produced 'proving' there is nothing to worry about in pumping carcinogenic/sex-altering/immune system-depressing chemicals into the environment by the ton, government officials are wined and dined, samples showing evidence of pollution are 'lost', witnesses are intimidated and, if all else fails, the victim is painted as 'mad'. From Cork to Oregon to Bhopal – the lies are the same.
When it comes to chemicals it's usually the good guys who get hung, drawn, quartered and shot. Allen tells the story of one woman living beside a chemical plant in Scotland who had eight stillbirths. In Oregon, a single mum gardening a small holding started worrying about the state forestry company's practice of spraying "unwanted vegetation" with dioxin-containing herbicide (denied by the authorities). Within days of the spraying her chicks and ducklings died. Her son developed bloody diarrhoea. Local pregnant women miscarried. Local children were hospitalised. The samples that the woman had handed over to the EPA were 'lost'. Within seven years, the woman was dead – from brain, lung and breast cancer. In Seveso in Italy, in the 1970s, a dioxin plant exploded, exposing 250,000 local inhabitants. Within weeks, 80,000 animals died. The 'toxic refugees' were found to have 56,000 times more toxin in them than normal. As one chemical worker said, "If we were told we had an 82 per cent higher chance of getting cancer, would we still take the job?"
The petrochemical and nuclear industries spend billions suppressing negative information about their products and processes, and the truth – that the entire planet has been polluted by their unregulated 60-year rampage, bringing us to the brink of extinction – is cloaked in spin. Robert Allen's research into it is relentless and remarkable. The least we can do before the lights go out is arm ourselves with the truth of what 'they' did, and continue to do, to our beautiful 'Gaia'. Before, as Luke says, there is so little left to save as to make it worthwhile to pray for an asteroid.