Rachel Carson
When Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in
1962, she was viciously attacked. Huge sums
of money were spent to discredit her. She was
called “an ignorant and hysterical woman who
wanted to turn the earth over to the insects.”
While her scientific methods were problematic,
her message about the environment as an
interrelated organic system struck a popular
nerve. The smear campaign backfired. Silent
Spring sparked a revolution in government
environmental policy and became instrumental
in creating a new ecological consciousness.
H
Cl
C
Cl
Cl C Cl
Cl
Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane DDT
DDT was banned for use in the US on January 1, 1973.
DDT was a suspected carcinogen
DDT was known to be accumulating in the lipids of
Bald Eagles interfering with reproduction
Silent Spring
The Video
Sustainability
Development that meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs. Brundtland
Commission – 1987 Our Common Future
Stewardship of the world’s natural resources
in a manner that meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their needs.
Webster’s Ninth Collegiate Dictionary
defines needs as – of necessity vs. wants –
something wanted or desired
Three legged stool
Consumption – the rate of use of natural
resources.
Population – the growth of the human
population
Resources – air, land, water, biota
Sustainability
Ecological Footprint
One way to measure consumption is to
calculate how much land/sea area is required to
support the consumption of an individual in a
country (ecological footprint).
If a country’s per person footprint is multiplied
by its population, and the result is larger than
the resources of that country, then the country
is living beyond its means and must take
resources from another country.
• The footprint of an individual in
the U.S is 23.2 acres (an acre is
slightly smaller than a football
field).
• World average ecological
footprint is 6.7 acres per person,
a sustainable footprint is 5.2
acres per person.
Footprint Measures
• The ecological footprints given here are based on
six main categories.
– Arable land for cultivation of food, animal feed, fiber,
oil crops, and rubber
– Pasture- Grazing land for producing meat, hides, wool,
and milk
– Forest for harvesting timber, fuelwood, and wood fiber
for paper
– Sea space – for catching fish (93 million tons)
– Built-up land for accommodating infrastructure for
housing, transportation, and industrial production
– Direct CO2 emissions from fossil fuels; indirect
emissions for products manufactured abroad; gas
flaring; cement production and tropical fires
Yield
Fecundity
Fisheries
density dependent regulation
Maximum
Sustained
Tragedy of the Commons
Yield
93 million
tons
Population Density Females
Catch per Unit Effort
Population Density (2008)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
China – 1,330,044,600
India – 1,147,995,900
USA – 303,824,650
Indonesia – 237,512,36
Brazil – 191,908,600
• The ecological footprint of a person in India is 2.2 acres,
for the US it is 23.2 acres. The per person footprint of
someone living in the US is 10.5 times larger than that of a
person living in India.
• The impact of a country on the Earth’s resources can be
measured by multiplying the per person ecological
footprint times the countries population density.
• The ecological footprint of a person in India is 2.2, its
population is 1,147,995,900 billion. 2.2 x’s 1,147,995,900
is 2,525,590,980. The ecological footprint of a person living
in the US is 23.2 acres times 303,824,650 is 7,048,731,880.
The impact of the people in the US on the world’s resources
is 2.79 times greater than that of a person living in India. The
US is deficit in resources and must take from someone else.
2007 Global Footprint Network, Mathis
Wagernagle: “The United States has
one of the largest footprints per
Earth wide
from and
Space
1968 take
person world
it would
about 6 planets like planet earth to
support the world population if
everybody assumed current American
consumption patterns.”
“We have met the enemy and he is us!”
Pogo Used by Walt Kelly on a 1970 poster
for the first earth day
John Mitchell AG- Convicted
and imprisoned 1975 for role
in the break-in at Watergate
J. Edgar Hoover
cross dressing
Director of the FBI
Nixon administration 1969-1974
Spiro T. Agnew
VP – Forced to
resign for accepting
bribes.
Population
• World population increases
when births > deaths
• Those countries with the highest fertility rates (the number
of children born per woman in her lifetime) are:
– Mali 7.34
Somalia 6.6
– Niger 7.29
Afghanistan 6.58
– Uganda 6.81
– U.S. 2.1, Hong Kong 1.0, Taiwan 1.13, South Korea
1.2, Japan 1.22, Spain 1.3, Italy 1.3, European Union
1.5
– Note: the only recognized and independent country that
is missing from this list is Vatican City.
– A total fertility rate of 2.1 is known as the replacement
fertility since in the long run if the population will
stabilize at this rate.
– http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php accessed
1/2009
• A total fertility rate of 2.1 will not immediately
result in a stable population with zero growth
– Death rate may fall
– If a population has many young people in it that are or
will be having young the population will continue to
increase even if the families limit themselves to 2.1
children.
– Depending on the number of young in a population it
may take 20 years to a century to stabilize so that there
is no net growth.
– Currently there is a net increase of approximately 2.44
people per second in the world! (Based on 2008 data)
– The thing that is grossly wrong with this is that it seems
to think that the only important specie on Earth is
Homo sapiens
Resources
• Land, air, water, biota
• Water
– Quantity
– Surface waters including the oceans
– Freshwater
» Fossil aquifers
» Alluvial aquifers
» Rivers, streams
» Lakes, Reservoirs, Ponds
The percent of the Earth that is
covered by water is _______
70%
97% is salt water, <3% is
freshwater.
Water Resources
• Quality
– Aquatic life
– Human consumption
As more and more water is withdrawn from rivers, streams,
lakes, and aquifers to feed thirsty fields, and the voracious
needs of industry and escalating urban demands, there is
often little left over for aquatic ecosystems and the wealth of
plants and animals they support.
Currently humans expropriate 54% of all available
freshwater from rivers, lakes, streams, and shallow aquifers.
Projected levels of population growth in the next 25 years
alone are expected to increase the human take of available
freshwater to 70%. As a global average, most freshwater
withdrawals-69%- are used for agriculture, while industry
accounts for 23% and municipal use (drinking water,
bathing and cleaning, and water plants and grass) just 8%.
The competition for water is intense.
According to Sandra Postel, Director of the
Global Water Policy Project, it takes about
1000 tons of water to grow 1 ton of grain,
which has a market value of $200, or if used
for industrial products a value of $10,000 $20,000. Water used in industry creates more
jobs than in farming, increasing pressures to
shift scarce supplies away from agriculture.
It is cheaper to import grain and use water
for industrial purposes.
As the number of people in water stressed
countries climbs towards 3 billion, competition
for water will spread across borders through
the global grain trade as more countries try to
import enough grain to fill their food gaps.
Whether the U.S., Western Europe, and other
food exporters will be able to satisfy these
demands is only half the issue.
Equally important is whether importers—
primarily poor nations of South Asia and subSaharan Africa—can afford to buy the grain
they need.
Destruction of habitat is the largest cause of biodiversty
loss in almost every ecosystem, from wetlands and
estuaries to prairies and forests. But biologists have
found that the brunt of current plant and animal
extinctions has fallen disproportionately on those species
dependent on freshwater and related habitats. One fifth
of the world’s freshwater fish –2,000 of the 10,000
species identified so far– are endangered, vulnerable, or
extinct. In North America, the continent most studied,
67 percent of all mussels, 51 percent of crayfish, 40
percent of amphibians, 37 percent of fish, and 75 percent
of all mollusks are rare, imperiled, or already gone.
The global decline in amphibian populations may be the
aquatic equivalent to the canary in the coal mine.
Pollution is also
exacting a significant
toll on freshwater and
marine organisms. For
instance, scientists
studying beluga whales
swimming in the
contaminated St.
Lawrence Seaway that connects the Atlantic Ocean to
America’s Great Lakes found that the cetaceans have
dangerously high levels of PCBs in their blubber. In fact,
the contamination is so severe that under Canadian law
the whales actually qualify as a toxic waste.
Orcinus orca
Orca facts:
Adult weight: 3,000 to 12,000 lbs
Adult length: 16 to 32 feet
Lifespan: about 50 yrs females, 30 years males; male
orcas carry their contaminant body burden their entire
lives. Females pass a lifetime dose of the contaminants
to their first born calves.
Speed: up to 30 mph
Habitat: all oceans
Calving: every 3 to 5 years, but intervals sometimes to
10 years.
Social structure: Killer whales live in pods.
In the Pacific Northwest, they are divided into transients and residents that do not
interact and have different lifestyles.
Diet: About 200 lbs of meat a day, residents eat fish, transients eat marine mammals
mostly seals.
Population off of British Columbia: 84 residents and about 220 transients.
Declining populations? Nature lovers, declining salmon populations, contamination.
PCBs – polychlorinated biphenyls block the formation of vitamin A.
Calves are hit with a large dose in their mother’s milk just at the time they need
vitamin A to develop normally.
PCBs do not cause outright death. But extensive laboratory animal experiments
and captive feeding studies of seals show contamination can weaken immune
systems, hamper reproduction, and cause skin disorders and subtle changes in
physiology.
The study showed that PCB levels in the fat of transient males averaged 251 ppm.
In southern pods, levels were 146 ppm. Humans average less than 1 ppm. This
means that these animals are 400 to 500 times more contaminated than humans.
PCBs were banned from use in the US in 1977.
On March 20, 2000 a group of
monkeys, driven mad with thirst,
clashed with desperate villagers over
drinking water in a small outpost in
northern Kenya near the border with
Sudan. The Pan African News Agency
reported that eight monkeys were
killed and 10 villagers were injured in
what was described as a fierce twohour melee. The fight erupted when
relief workers began dispensing water from a tanker truck.
Locals claimed that a prolonged drought had forced animals to
roam out of their natural habitats to seek life-giving water in
human settlements. The monkeys were identified as generally
harmless vervets.
The most striking example of human water demands
destroying an ecosystem is the nearly complete annihilation
of the 64,500 square kilometer Aral Sea, located in Central
Asia between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Once the fourth
largest inland sea in the world, it has contracted to half its
size and lost three quarters of its volume since the 1960s
when its two feeder rivers—the Amu Darya and the Syr
Darya-were diverted to irrigate cotton fields and rice
patties.
For a long time the, the ecological impact of the sea and
surrounding area were largely hidden from public view.
The once-thriving fishing industry that depended on the
water is all but gone. Some 20 of the 24 fish species there
have disappeared.
The fish catch which totaled 44,000 tons per year in the
1950s and supported 60,000 jobs dropped to zero. Another
apparent consequence of the dried-up sea is a host of human
illnesses. A high rate of throat cancer is attributed to dust
from the drying sea. Each year winds pick up 40 million to
150 million tons of a toxic dust-salt mixture from the dry sea
bed and deposit them on the surrounding farm land, harming
or killing crops. The low river flows have concentrated the
salts and toxic chemicals, making water supplies hazardous
to drink and contributing to disease. In the northwest
Republic of Uzbekistan, the infant mortality rate is the
highest in the former in the former Soviet Union. The
former fishing center, Muynak is now landlocked some 30
km (18 miles) from the water. Less than 25 years ago
Muynak was a seaport.
Lake Chad, too, has shrunk—to one-tenth its former
size. In 1960, with a surface area of 25,000 square
kilometers, it was the second-largest lake in Africa.
When last surveyed, it was down to only 2,000 square
kilometers. And here, too, massive water withdrawals
from the watershed to feed irrigated agriculture have
reduced the amount of water flowing into the lake to a
trickle, especially during the dry season. Although
water has been flowing into the lake from its rivers over
the past decade, the lake is still in serious ecological
trouble. The lake’s fisheries have more or less collapsed
from over-exploitation and loss of aquatic habitats as its
waters have been drained away. Though some 40
commercially valuable species remain, their populations
are too small to be harvested commercially.
Lake Chad
Once the sixth
largest lake in
the world.
It’s not just “over there” where there are problems…..
The two key treaties that divide the Colorado River water among
seven states and Mexico allocate more water than the river actually
carries in an average year—a mistake that occurred because the
river’s annual flow was determined in an unusually rainy period.
As a result virtually no fresh water flows through the Colorado
delta and into the Sea of Cortez in an average year. The Colorado
delta in northern Mexico, and the native Indian communities that
live there, have been decimated. Had the treaty designers set aside
fresh water to maintain this critical downstream ecosystem, they
might have prevented substantial ecological and social harm.
“You know the price of water when the well runs dry.” – Poor
Richards Almanac
“Whiskey’s for drinking, water’s for fighting about.” Mark Twain
The Ogallala is being
pumped down at a rate of 1
meter per year and being
recharged at a rate of 1 cm
per year. Let’s see ground
water pumped to produce
corn, to feed to cattle in feed
lots to make burgers for?
What was that figure… the
percent of loss in energy at
each transfer in the food
chain is 90% ?
The Rio Grande no longer consistently
flows to the Gulf of Mexico. The River
dried up in Big Bend in 2002.
How Does a City Earn The Right
To Display This Sign?
How many of you drink bottled water?
How many of you drive?
How many of you thought the price of gasoline is too high at
$4.00 per gallon?
If a 20 ounce bottle of Dasani costs a $1.00 how much does
a gallon of Dasani cost? There are 128 oz in a gallon, how
about $6.40 per gallon.
Where does Dasani come from?
Published on Thursday, March 4, 2004 by Reuters
Coca - Cola Admits That Dasani is Nothing But Tap Water
by Trevor Datson
LONDON - It made for great headlines, but the fact that the UK
version of Coca-Cola's Dasani brand bottled water comes out of the
London public supply should hardly have come as a surprise.
Is the drinking water in Denton safe to drink?
Handout
Toxicologists are guided by principles
Principle 1
• In terms of measuring chemicals - you
only find what you are looking for, and
only if it is present in sufficient quantity
to be detected by the method used to
measure it.
Do you remember in the Silent Spring what the biochemist
who was doing the work that the mouth piece was basing his
statements on?
Water Facts
•
•
•
Percent share of all water on Earth that is freshwater
Percent share of all freshwater that is frozen in glaciers and polar ice caps
Percent share of all freshwater that is available for human use
•
•
Average annual per-capita freshwater consumption, North America 1,851,170 Liters
Average annual per-capita consumption, Africa
254,944 Liters
•
•
•
Population world-wide without access to secure water supplies
Population without access to adequate sanitation
Annual deaths attributed to dirty water and poor sanitation
1.1 billion
2.6 billion
1.6 million
•
•
Annual global consumption of bottled water, liters
Percent share of bottled water that is actually tap water
154 billion
40%
•
•
Annual global spending on bottled water
Annual global spending on clean water and sanitation
•
•
Number of people that are living in countries that are over pumping
groundwater
2.5
70
<1
US$ 100 billion
US$ 15 billion
3.3 billion
Copper Acute WQC –
34 ug/L;
Zinc Acute WQC –
320 ug/L
On average, a penny minted
from1983 on contains
approximately 59,500 ug of
copper and 2,420,000 ug of zinc
(both of which are essential
elements). Needless to say that
much copper and zinc is sufficient
to cause significant damage to fish
living in most fountains and
backyard coy pools.
Yet, when we toss these pennies into this
aquarium the fish seems to be perfectly
okay… How can this be?
This particular penny is estimated to be worth $500,000.
• Exposure is the magnitude, duration
and frequency with which and organism
interacts with biologically available
toxicants.
• So, just because you measure
something in the environment it does
not mean it is toxic.
Principle 2
• The dose makes the poison! Paracelsus
(1493-1541) is credited with this dictum
when he wrote, “All substances are
poisons, there is none which is not a
poison. The right dose differentiates a
poison and a remedy.”
Exposure is the magnitude, duration, and frequency with
which organisms interact with biologically available
toxicants.
It is always wise to keep up with the current literature!
Principle 3
• “No instrument has yet been devised
that can measure toxicity. Chemical
concentrations can be measured with
an instrument but only living material
can be used to measure toxicity.”
• John Cairns, Jr. and D.I. Mount, 1990
• Environmental Science and Technology
The point is living material i.e., biological monitors
(biomonitors) need to be used to measure toxicity.
Biomonitors are the only things that integrate the
totality of their environment.
However, the biomonitors do not, for the most part,
tell you directly what is causing the toxicity.
Biominitors tell you only that toxicity is occurring or
has occurred. Physical and chemical measures
ultimately tells us what is causing the toxicity.
Therefore, both biological and physical/chemical
measures need to be used in ambient biomonitoring.
Other biomonitors?
Principle 4
Wherever you go you need to know
Duck Tape or
Duct Tape
Research Requires Funding
A real fourth principle…….
DFS
Don’t Forget the Soup