| Pollution and Adaptation What Hope for Man? HUGH H. ILTIS Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin, Madison Based in part on an address given at the University of Michigan "Teach-in on the Environment" (En-Act), at Ann Arbor, March 13, 1970. Man cannot adapt to culture; culture must adapt to man. Why has pollution become such an important ques- tion today ? Bad odors, noise, a few dead birds, and the many dirty beaches are indeed unpleasant, but most of us seem to have successfully deluded our- selves as to their importance, or have merely learned to ignore them. It is perhaps for these reasons that the insidious beginning of the burgeoning pollution crisis went unnoticed, for the change has been continuous but largely imperceptible, like milk turning sour. Thus today we suddenly find ourselves faces with a problem of global dimensions, the solution and amelioration of which we must perform in all haste, encumbered as we are with a stultifying conglomer- ate of antique ideologies and sociological complexi- ties. We often hear about the obvious manifestations of pollution, but do we really comprehend the serious- ness and urgency of our situation? Today we ought to understand what we did not understand 30 years ago. Pollution affects the physiological processes of the exposed individual and may even bring them to a lethal halt. This individual phenomenon, seen in ag- gregate, may work to maim the entire people of a |
city, rich and poor alike. The
unabated addition of a mulitude of chemical compounds, generated as a direct response to increasing population and tech- nology, virtually insures the further degradation of the environment and evermore frequent instances of potentially lethal levels of pollution. More serious is the realization that pollution recognizes no political boundaries. It pervades the entire world and disrupts the totality of life in some degree, whether palpably at its point of greatest concentration, or half the world away at a lower byt insidious level, leading to chronic, long-range effects. These may include out- right extinction of selected species or may be masked in some way by the organism and thus become insen- sible to science. Consider penguin eggs and DDT in Antarctica, where the compound was, of course, never used. If man is not very careful, most complex life forms on this planet may well become extinct - an ecological suicide lurking around the corner. Pollution: Clinical Versus Subclinical Effects Leaving discussions of eco-catastrophes to others, let us focus on the effects of pollution on city people. Emphysema, lung cancer, and chronic brochitis af- fect tens of millions, mostly children, are gradually initiated into their own physiological hells. The clinical effects of these diseases, of course, make grim statisitics of which the general public is now well aware. In addition, one may be impressed be well- publicized disasters such as the London smog of December 1952, which killed 4,000 people, or by far greater disasters for Chicago, Los Angeles, Tokyo, or Calcutta, predicted for the near future. Not as well known are the less spectacular, but far more prevalent and significant subclinical effects, the subtle consequences of chronic exposure to air, water and food pollution found in the larger cities. The problem is well phrased by Cassidy (1) who cites the allergist Theron Randolph's study of pollu- tion effects in Chicago: ". . . in one third of his chronically ill patients, the leading causative factor was susceptibility to pollu- tants in air, water, food, and drugs; in another third, it appeared to be a contributing factor. Now consider the effects of chronic exposure. These are mani- fested in asocial attitudes, morosenses, sullenness 'Seclusive, and sometimes hostile and paranoid be- havior,' dopeyness, indifference to surroundings sometimes approaching lethargy, etc." "Put all these discoveries together and realize that the people affected are continually making decisions - sometimes major ones, like determining com- munity policy; sometimes minor ones like initiating |
| a quarrel. If irritability is
increased, asocial attitudes enhanced, and judgement impaired, the effects [of pollution] can become amplified to enormous pro- portions. We have here a factor that is not commonly mentioned in listing the causative reasons for riots, crime and the less spectacular idiocies we see prac- ticed in our cities. Now, for sake of argument, consider the President and his Cabinet meeting in the White House, Consti- tution Avenue on one side, Pennsylvania Avenue on the other, both crowded with trucks and cars. They are discussing a critical issue, when a series of trucks sends huge clouds of exhaust gases into the confer- ence room. Remember some of the subclinical effects of such pollution: ". . . asocial attitudes, . . . hostile and paranoid behavior, dopeyness . . . " Fantasy? Perhaps. But who can say it isn't so? Similar concerns have been voiced by Rene Dubos (2), relating to the truly devastating subclinical ef- fects of pollution, especially on children: "All environmental influences have their deepest and most lasting effects when they act on the orga- nism during the early . . . formative development . . . It is not an overstatement to say that in human be- ings the first four years of life - and for that matter, prenatal life are of such critical importance that if the environment at that time is not just right the organism suffers some kind of handicap from which it will never recover (italics added). In the light of this fact, the worst effects of environmental pollution are probably yet to come, since it is only during recent decades that certain chemical pollutants have reached high levels, and that children have been ex- posed to these pollutants almost from birth. "Clearly these children are not going to die. What will happen is that in 20 or 30 years, as a resut of that slow, chronic response to environmental insult, these children will certainly suffer from some form of chronic disorder . . . " Dubos points out that, despite our high levels of technological knowledge, these man-made poisons - in car exhaust alone there are hundreds - are all but unknown: "Most important and generally overlooked is the disturbing fact that some 70% of the particulate contaminants in urban air are still unidentified. Their biological effects are unknown. But recent experi- ments have shown that newborn animals exposed to these undefined contaminants may show disastrous consequences when they become adults." Democracy and Pollution: Who Pays The Price for Affluence? The political implications of pollution and conse- quent ill health are immense. Consider the millions of children who, at least in this upside-down society, have to live in the effluents of affluence, without any free choice whatever - tied to big city ghettos, to crowded smoggy streets, or to noisy highways by chains of poverty, color or simply fate. They are |
literally poisoned, day-in,
day-out, by the many hundreds of chemicals from factories, cars, sewage, and foods - not in the "industrial sinks" of Dickens' England in 1830, but in "progressive" America, in 1973! Can the hallowed concepts of democracy, freedom, or equality-under-law be operative in any meaning- ful way in an over-civilized, polluted and denatured environment? Compare two hypothetical high school students living in economically similar, but ecologi- cally very different environments. One of the boys lives in Lisle, Illinois, 30 miles west of Chicago, in open prairie and corn country, and breathes clean air fresh from the western plains, on a quiet, clean, tree-lined street. The other boy exists in Gary, In- diana, 30 miles east of Chicago, in brick, concrete and asphalt canyons, breathes foul air from the steel plants, and monoxide and dust from East Chicago, on a noisy, dirty, tree-less street. Democracy? Freedom? Equality under the law? These two boys are of the same age, are governed by the same laws, are equally intelligent and go to equally good schools - but one is poisoned and bio- logically deprived, the other is not. The first boy is probably white and will go to Yale or Purdue. The second boy is probably black, and he will go to Bethlehem Steel. And nothing the latter boy might do to help himself will undo the irrevocable chemical damages to his mind and body. For the sake of argument we have assumed eco- nomic and educational quality. But, in fact, there are some segments of the population that are more equal than others, and those that are more equal financially are able to make sure that they remain more fortunate environmentally as well. They tend to end up living in unpolluted suburbia, while the poor remain in their industrially polluted Garys. Thus, in industrial regions, air pollution, espe- cially, becomes a double insult by which most often the poor are volunteered to donate their health, to allow the rich to enjoy their unpolluted or air- conditioned wealth. This is not to imply that this was originally conspiratorial, just very convenient, a convenience now so widely maintained that it has led Steven Antler to write in The Nation (Oct. 4, 1971) that, "Essentially, pollution is a mechanism which redistributes income from the poor to the] rich." This is, of course, a bit too simple. For ironi- cally, and in poetic justice perhaps, superhighways have often carried pollution to the very doors of those that benefited most from their construction. Eventually, of course, air and noise pollution become almost regional, and neither rich nor poor can escape its effects. As long as any man is born into, and lives in, a poisoned environment, no matter how high his standard of living or his aspirations might be, this environment can never be considered (to use Dubos' apt phrase) "just right." And as long as the poor are differentially placed into double jeopardy, any government which permits this can never be con- sidered just. |
| Let us cite just
one more example of the magni- tude of the problem, which again applies especially to the urban poor. There are in the United States today, according to recent estimates (3), nearly one- half million cases of lead poisoning, which is an ex- clusive disease of urban slums. The victims are chil- dren from 1 to 6 years old who have ingested bits of crumbling lead-based paint. "Since lead often accumulates slowly over a period of months, a child can carry dangerously high levels of lead without exhibiting any external symptoms. A recent HEW report estimated that lead poisoning affects 400,000 children annually and causes 200 deaths. Of those 400,000, the re- port said that 16,000 require treatment, 3200 incur moderate to severe brain damage, and 800 chil- dren receive brain damage severe enough to re- quire care for the remainder of their lives. Lead poisoning thus kills and cripples more children than did polio before the advent of the Salk vac- cine." Though the disease could readily be prevented, hardly any money has been appropriated, perhaps because it affects mostly the poor and then, in par- ticular, the black poor. To prevent lead poisoninf, the first step would involve the renovation of 7 million dilapidated housing units, surely a small price to pay for the health of 400,000 children. In any case, a child in one of these old houses is totally at the mercy of the lead dust and cannot adapt to it. But society can recognize the child's inability to tolerate lead, and provide it with a lead-free environment. The biological injustices resulting from pollution are so fundamental, that we must no longer ignore them. American social priorities, for a long time incom- patible in any sense with democracy, can now be readjusted on the fulcrum of pollution to give all children at least a physical environment that is, in fact, "just right" and secure for them, if nothing else, a fair start in life. Genetic Adaptation vs. Cultural Adjustment The human body is not adapted to pollution. Granted! But, one may ask, cannot the human body become adapted to pollution? Could we not, or should we not, just accept what seems to be the inevitable, and simply adapt ourselves accordingly? But whether man can adapt, or whether he cannot, depends not on his biology, but on how one defines "adapt," this elusive word, so commonly used, and with so many meanings (4). Dubos (2), for example, gives the word "adapta- tion" a very broad meaning: "Man . . . can adapt to almost anything. I am sure that we can adapt to the dirt, pollution, and noise of New York City, or Chicago. That is the real tragedy - we accept worse and worse conditions without realizing that a child born and raised in this |
environment has no chance of
developing his total physical and mental potential." No one would quarrel with this conclusion, since Dubos, who as much as any man today has given us awareness of man's limitations to physically "adapt," here employs the word in a commonly used, all- inclusive sense. However, such somewhat imprecise usage may mislead one into a semantic "adaptation trap;" for what is meant by adaptation in the above is by no means genetic adaptation, where the body would function harmoniously within these, alas un- natural, conditions, but is instead a "getting-used-to," a personal, emotional or physical acommodation, a partially cultural, partiall psychological, partially even physiological non-genetic adjustment, for which body and mind may pay a very severe price. Thus, there is no such thing as becoming adapted to "ac- ceptable levels of pollution," for nearly all pollution is harmful to man, as it is harmful to the ecosystem as a whole. Not only is the human body not geneti- cally adapted to smog and the many chemicals of technology, but, considering the rapidly changing nature of the chemical environment in which new major chemical "families" are appearing every de- cade, man can never become genetically adapted to pollution, because the evolution of such adaptation would require much more time than is available. A Winston Churchil story illustrates well the dif- ference between cultural adjustment and genetic in- flexibility. An angry lady member of Parliament looked at a slightly intoxicated Churchill and said, "You, sir, are drunk." "And you, madam, are ugly," he replied. "But tomorrow I shall be sober . . . " Our genes, like the ugliness of Churchill's lady, have to be accepted; but drunkeness does not. Thus, while we cannot change our genes, at least there is the possibility that we can change our culture, our social, political, and industrial customs. We do not have to pollute. We do not have to exploit. We do not have to have huge families, or two cars in the garage. We do not have to wage war, build the S. S. T., insist on huge profits and land rape, construct the Alaskan oil pipeline, or depend on unlimited growth and development to sustain an insanely un- balance economy. And if we must have a clean and unpolluted environment for our physical health - and much contact with a diverse natural environ- ment for our emotional health - then we must insist on its preservation (5). We have a free choice here, and had better take it. Only within the cultural flexibility to make biologically wise choices, and not in any genetic adaptability, is there hope for a sen- sible and healthy future for human society. The aceptance of inherited internal human limita- tions is by no mean universal, even among scien- tists. There are many intellectual factions, both left and right, who for ideological reasons migh wish man to be genetically adaptable to new, previously unmet environments, and by wishing, make him out to be so. They ignore the bigness of the cities, the crowding, the technologically saturated landscapes, |
| and man's need for nature - his
qualitative need for the kind of environment in which he evolved. They attack pleas for environmental preservation as com- munistic or reactionary. There is no compromise between nature and technology possible in their view, for man must always come out best. But, wishing man to have unlimited adaptability to an unnatural world, which his cells and senses cannot accept, isn't going to give him adaptability. He can- not become adapted to these new environments - certainly not in any one man's lifetime. It takes many sexual generations - many millenia - for nat- ural selection to produce a population adapted to even one new pollutant. And such a change might not even be desirable. While we may be able to produce, in 500 generations, or 10,000 years, a Homo post-sapiens who will be at home only in crowded denatured cities, consider some of his characteristics, which we can see foreshadowed today in the be- havior of the mass man of Megalopolis. He would probably have high perceptual barriers, tolerating dense crowds, extreme noise and the worst pollution imaginable. With reduced, squinty, unfocused eyes selected by smog, with insensitive detoned ears se- lected by noise, he would appreciate little of what diversity in nature, or culture, has to offer. To him Beethoven and Shakespeare, flowers and humming birds, wild geese and the free and loving human spirit, would be incomprehensible curiosities. The culturally programmed environmental morons of today will become the genetically programmed en- vironmental idiots of tomorrow. And no political, no social panacea will be able to salvage that Brave New World. In any case, no ancient natural selection has given us gene combinations to cope with this new techno- logical environment, and no natural selection will in the near future. In the crowded Megalopolis, our human genetic adaptations are simply out of evo- lutionary context. As T. S. Elliot put it in The Cock- tail Party, we become her "nothing but a set of obsolete responses," pawns in a gigantic experiment in sensory deprivation. Man is dehumanized in his denatured cities, defeated because of his "victory" over nature. When the last tree dies in Brooklyn, dehumanization will spread like a plague. Eventual- ly, ever-increasing destruction of nature will mean ecological as well as emotional suicide for man. Pollution and Population Though technology must soon learn to cope with much of our current types of pollution, and the political bodies of the world may soon learn to cope with the profit-oriented and more blatant abuses of industry, still the adverse effects of pollution and nature destruction will continue if we do not rec- ognize and accept their strong interrelationship to the touchy and confused problem of overpopulation. Just as too much pollution is incompatible with human health, so are too many people incompatible |
with the preservation of wild
nature: tigers and cattle, grizzly bears and tourists, 10,000 busy human feet and flowers on an alpine meadow - these cannot co-exist. With too many people, biological diversity will disappear, and with it joy, balance, perspective, and evolutionary and ecological options. Too many people, in fact, are a pollution problem in themselves, if for no other reason than that they wish, in their healthy natural curiosity, to see and to fondle the environment, and have now, in many places, fondled it to death. Add to this the million refugees from the polluted cities, the deliberate dispersal of city popu- lations by well-intentioned planners and engineers, the hungry billions especially in the tropical regions, and the deliberate damages of war, agriculture and forestry; and soon there will not be a square mile of natural ecosystem left anywhere in the whole wide world, not in northern Wisconsin, not in Ne- braska, not in Alaska, nor on the Amazon River. Pollution and over-population show strong inter- relationships, despite recent misdirected and mis- leading disclaimers (6,7). While I would tend to agree that people do not cause as much industrial "pollution" as technological misdesign, or political indifference or neglect, nevertheless, it is, in my opinion, a crucial misjudgement to write off popula- tion as one of the major factors. This is permissible only if "pollution" is defined very narrowly. If "pol- lution" is defined broadly enough to include the multifarious ways by which humanity fouls up and destroys its environment, especially the natural en- vironment, then, even in the United States, the sheer impact of great numbers of people can obliterate an otherwise fine environment even if protected with care. This the people crunch in National Parks, sub- urbia, Jones Beach, and downtown in any American city readily demonstrates. The population-pollution relationships will become more obvious especially when, as time goes on, the resilience and diversity of the biosphere begins to decrease with continued and often increasing utili- zation. This has not been considered in formulating grand plans which shift economic activities from the developed countries (DC's) to the under-developed countries (UDC's) of the tropics. Thus, it has been seriously suggested by Commoner (6) that in order to feed and clothe the population of the DC's in a less polluting and destructive way, and, at the same time, to help the economies of the UDC's, nat- ural fibers, natural rubber, etc., be grown in the UDC's which would relieve the drain on coal and oil, and prevent industrial pollution inherent in the manufacture of synthetic fibers, synthetic rubber etc. This solution is fine as far as it goes. But while such a plan would indeed help our pollution prob- lems and support the sagging economies of UDC's as intended, it would at the same time result in a catastrophic acceleration of already rampant eco- system destruction there, and in an increase in |
| world-wide pollution problems,
especially by fertiliz- ers and pesticides. Thus, by shifting the impact scene to the UDC's, even with best of intentions, the same Americans which crowd our cities and now use syn- thetic products, even if their consumptions were low, would have profound environmental effects else- where in the world. And the greater their numbers, the greater their effect. If there is one thing we must prevent at all cost, it is increased utilization of the tropics. Yet, this is precisely what everybody is planning, from Roger Revelle to the FAO! Such plans are generally sug- gested by scientists unappreciative of field ecology and the complex and often esthetical values this discipline not only studies, but also treasures. Such plans are examples of trying to get something for nothing. But the "nothing" turns out to be the fragile tropical ecosystem, a trade-off of dubious validity, based on good intentions, but with disastrous results. It is then no accident that disclaimers of the popu- lation explosion come not only from optimistic tech- nocrats, but from highly homocentric physical sci- entists and laboratory-oriented biologists, who do not seem to value the tropical rain forest, the tiger or the wild rose. To those of us, on the other hand, who daily see the irrevocable effects of the "trample fac- tor" caused by hoardes of people, and the disappear- ance of countless mammals, birds and flowers caused by an agriculture which must feed and clothe ever- increasing numbers of men, too many people repre- sent a real pollution problem in and by themselves. It is significant that of the great names that rang the environmental alarm bell over the last 30 years most of them, including Paul Sears, William Vogt, Fairfield Osborn, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich, and LaMont Cole, all were naturalists or field biologists of one sort or another, and very few were physical or laboratory-oriented scientists. This should be understood when reading certain works which are biased against the population ques- tion, such as Dr. Commoner's otherwise immensely intelligent and significant new book, The Closing Circle (6). Pollution, Population and the Technoogical Bamboozlers What the pollution problems in an overpopulated world of a hundred years hence will be is hard to imagine, let alone comprehend or predict. But to ignore population growth or to belittle its problems, even in the United States, has dangerous conse- quences, for it leads directly to the formulation of insidiously diversionary, destructive Utopias, which, lacking any restrictions on human reproduction, un- questioningly justify the increased subjugation and utilization of nature in the name of noble humanitarian ideals. Thus, to feed the tenfold num- ber of people expected within a hundred years, plans are envisioned to manage all of the world's tropical rain forests, deserts and oceans for agricultural pro- |
duction. Similar wildly
optimistic plans are now in actuality beginning to be implemented on a dis- astrous scale in the Amazon basin, without any thought whatever of the potentially immense pollu- tion, climatic deterioration, and biotic destruction which will surely follow (9,10). This Utopian world of 36 bilion humans is seriously projected for a cen- tury hence, not by futuristic Russians (who never did show much concern for biotic preservation), but by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) based in Rome (vide a recent, ecologically irrespon- sible editorial in The Saturday Review (8)).1 I can- not believe that life would be a cheerful Eden then, as this simple-minded editorial implies, but a crowded hell, with nearly all the doors to evolution- ary options slammed shut, with overwhelming pollu- tion, and with the preservation of a healthy environ- ment all but impossible. I am not suggesting that I believe that we would ever attain that point, for eco-catastrophies would surely intervene. But the reader is left with a dis- tinctly "optimistic" impression that not only will we be able - by irrigating the whole Saharan desert and plowing the Amazon basin - to feed 36 billion souls adequately and easily, but that this ecological in- sanity is inevitable and would be all for the human good! The promoters of these elegant plans neglect to mention where their energy to run this Utopia is go- ing to come from, or where its horrendous pollution is going to go. Needless to say, they ignore problems of biotic extinctions, and the immediate need to im- plement alternate options to the population explosion. The thinking of such men leaves the world with the bitter realization that one must not trust the fate of humanity to this sort of "ecologist" or "agriculturalist." As someone recently complained, the ecology move- ment can protect itself against its enemies, but may Heaven protect it from such "friends." We must not let ourselves be deceived by those who see only political and technical panaceas to the environmental crisis, and who make a hobby of deriding the "population explosion" and its propo- nents. In the same way, we must learn to ignore the continual clamor to use more DDT and other per- sistent pesticides. To insist that there are economic ot technological solutions to the problem of human population growth is to perpetuate an ideological fraud on an unsuspecting, ill-informed and confused public. In a multiplicity of ways, solutions of the pollution crisis must be related not only to technological inno- vation and drastic socioeconomic and political changes, but also to determined efforts not only to decrease the rate of population growth, but to de- crease the absolute population of the world, includ- ing that of the United States. To counteract pollu- tion will take a widespread acceptance of man's fun- damental personal and socio-economic responsibil- ____ 1I doubt whether even the most altruistic and internationally- oriented New Yorker would ever agree to the cutting of all of the 4 million acres of the Adirondack forests, and planting it to high yield potatoes to feed a starving South America. |
| ities and limitations, which
would result in not only the strictest control of industry, profit, and growth, but in the deliberate control of population. Ecological Values and Evolutionary Ethics Never before has the need been greater for a set of economic and ecological values fundamentally dif- ferent from those which now govern us. We must therefore hasten to develop a new land and life ethic, a new and flexible eco-religion, based on man's in- dispensable biological needs, on his acceptance of evolutionary origins, and consequently on deep re- spect for the natural environment. Incorporated in this ethic must be the structure for a new political system, perhaps a kind of biological socialism, a sys- tem not based upon making money out of the eco- logical miseries of others, but based upon the limita- tions of the closed earth-system on which we shall forever be dependent. Man cannot genetically adapt to culture; culture must adapt to man. Not until ecological principles are codified into environmental law; not until environ- mental health is sanctified as an inalienable right of every man; not until children, all children, of what- ever race, station, or inherent ability can grow up in an environment that is unpolluted, and thus physiologically "just right" and in harmony with their human adaptations; and not until much of the wild and unmanaged environment with its fantastic beauty and complex natural diversity is preserved in perpetuity, can man have a future with hope for more than mere survival. |
The priorities of
an exciting if thoughtless past must fall to the ecological realities of a restrained and wiser future. From now on, the earth and its web of life must come first. Man and many of his "freedoms" must come but second. Profits, progress, and affluence must come last. There is no other way. REFERENCES 1. CASSIDY, H. G. 1967. On Incipient Environmental Collapse. BioScience, 17:878-882. Randolph, Theron, 1962. Human Ecology and Sensitivity to the Chemical Environment. Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Ill. 2. DUBOS, RENE, 1970. We Can't Buy Our Way Out. Psychol- ogy Today, March 1970: 20-22, 86-88; 1965. Man Adapting. Yale Univ. Press, New Haven. 3. BAZELL, R. J. 1971. Health Programs: Slum Children Suf- fer Because of Low Funding. Science, 172: 921-925. 4. COHEN, Y. A. (ed.). 1968. Man in Adaptation. Chicago, Aldine. 5. ILTIS, H. H. 1966. The Meaning of Human Evolution to Conservation. Wisconsin Acad. Review, Spring, 1966: 18-22. 1968. The Optimum Human Environment and Its Relation to Modern Agricultural Preoccupations. The Biologist, 50: 114-125. Iltis, H. H., O. L. Loucks, and P. Andrews. 1970. Criteria for an Optimum Human Environ- ment, Bull. Atomic Sci., 26 (1) : 2-6. 6. COMMONER, BARRY. 1971. The Closing Circle: Nature, Man and Technology. Alfred Knopf, New York. 7. THIMANN, K. V. 1971. Letter. BioScience, 21: 400-401. 8. TOBIN, R. L. 1971. Jungle, Desert, Icebergs - and Hunger. Saturday Review, 54 (43) : 20. 9. ILTIS, H. H. 1972. Shepherds leading sheep to slaughter. The biology teacher and man's mad and final war on Nature. Am. Biol. Teacher 34: 127-130, 137. The extinction of species and the destruction of ecosystems. Am. Biol. Teacher 34: 201-205, 221. 10. EHRENFELD, DAVID. 1972. Conserving Life on Earth. Oxford Univ. Press, New York. |