Murray Bookchin
Our Synthetic Environment
Table of contents:
Chapter 1: THE PROBLEM
Chapter 2: AGRICULTURE AND HEALTH
Chapter 3: URBAN LIFE AND HEALTH
Chapter 4: THE PROBLEM OF CHEMICALS IN FOOD
Chapter 5: ENVIRONMENT AND CANCER
Chapter 6: RADIATION AND HUMAN HEALTH
Chapter 7: HUMAN ECOLOGY
Chapter 8: HEALTH AND SOCIETY
Appendixes
***********
CHAPTER ONE: THE PROBLEM
Our Changed Environment
Life in the United States has changed so radically over the past one hundred
years that the most wearisome historians tend to become rhapsodic when they
describe the new advances that have been made in technology, science, and
medicine. We are usually told that early in the last century most Americans
lived heroic but narrow lives, eking out a material existence that was insecure
and controlled by seasonal changes, drought, and the natural fertility of the
soil. Daily work chores were extremely arduous; knowledge, beleaguered by
superstition, was relatively crude. Historians with an interest in science often
point out that medical remedies were primitive, if not useless; they may have
sufficed to relieve the symptoms of common diseases, but they seldom effected a
cure. Life was hard and precarious, afflicted by many tragedies that can easily
be avoided today.
In contrast with the men of the last century, men today, we are told, have
developed nearly complete control over the natural forces that once were the
masters of their ancestors. Advances in communication have brought knowledge and
safety to the most isolated communities. The most arduous work has now been
taken over by machines, and material existence has become secure, even affluent.
Common illnesses that once claimed the lives of millions are now easily
controlled by a scientific knowledge of disease, effective drugs, new diagnostic
devices, and highly developed surgical techniques. The American people, it is
claimed, enjoy more leisure, better health, greater longevity, and more varied
and abundant diets than did their forebears a hundred years ago.
On the face of it, these statements are true, but by no means are all the
advances as beneficial as the historians would have us believe. Recent changes
in our synthetic environment have created new problems that are as numerous as
those which burdened the men of the past. For example, soon nearly 70 per cent
of the American population will be living in large metropolitan centers, such as
New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. They will be exposed in evergreater numbers
to automobile exhausts and urban air pollutants. Perhaps an even larger
percentage of the employed population will be working in factories and offices.
These people will be deprived of sunlight and fresh air during the best hours of
the day. Factory and office work, while less arduous than in the past, is
becoming more intensive. Although the working day early in the last century was
very long, "the worker worked comparatively slowly, and both the employer and
employee gave relatively little thought to productivity." Today, employers
require a greater output per hour from each worker. The use of machines tends to
make work monotonous and sedentary, often exhausting human nerves as completely
as manual work exhausted human muscles. Modern man is far less physically active
than his forebears were. He observes rather than performs, and uses less and
less of his body at work and play. His diet, although more abundant, consists of
highly processed foods. These foods contain a disconcertingly large amount of
pesticide residues, coloring and flavoring matter, preservatives, and chemical
"technological aids," many of which may impair his health. His waterways and the
air he breathes contain not only the toxic wastes of the more familiar
industries but radioactive pollutants, the byproducts of peacetime uses of
nuclear energy and nuclear weapons tests.
With the rise of these problems, dramatic changes have occurred in the incidence
of disease. In 1900, infectious diseases, such as pneumonia, influenza, and
tuberculosis, were the principal causes of death. Death from heart disease and
cancer occupied a secondary place in American vital statistics. Fifty years
later, mortality rates from infectious diseases had declined to a fraction of
what they had been, but the percentage of deaths from heart disease and
malignant tumors had more than doubled. It is very difficult to obtain reliable
comparative statistics on the incidence of chronic, or persistent, diseases, but
we can regard it as almost certain that the proportion of chronically ill
individuals in the American population has increased. In any case, millions of
Americans today suffer from major chronic disorders. Nearly 5 million people are
afflicted with heart disease; another 5 million have high blood pressure. More
than 12 million suffer from arthritis, 4 million from asthma, and at least
700,000 from cancer. Additional millions suffer from diabetes, kidney disease,
and disorders of the nervous system.
Because many of these illnesses claim the lives of elderly people, we tend to
associate chronic diseases with the aging process, and we usually explain their
widespread occurrence by the fact that people are living longer. Men must die of
something. With a reduction in the number of deaths from tuberculosis,
influenza, and childhood infections, the diseases of aging people, it is
claimed, should be expected to dominate our vital statistics. But are these
diseases strictly products of the aging process? Do we have any evidence that
they arise from basic physical disturbances peculiar to senescence? The answer
is almost certainly no. Many disorders which afflict young people are precisely
those socalled "degenerative diseases" that physicians and laymen associate
with the retrogressive physical changes of old age.
Consider the age distribution in the incidence of cancer. Although many types of
cancer are found mostly after the fourth or fifth decade of life, a surprisingly
large number of varieties occur most frequently in childhood, youth, and early
maturity. Cancers of the kidney and the adrenal glands usually appear before the
age of four. Bone cancers reach their highest incidence in the
tentotwentyfour age group. Malignant tumors of the testes usually occur in
infancy and at maturity. So deeply entrenched was the notion that malignant
tumors are diseases of elderly people that for many years physicians often
discounted early symptoms of certain cancers in children. We now know that
cancer in children occurs in nearly all the major physical organs of the body.
Today, cancer is second only to accidents as a leading cause of death in
American children over one year of age. Although mortality rates for childhood
cancers fluctuate from year to year, they have moved in a decidedly upward
direction over the past two decades; for American children under fifteen years
of age, they rose 28 per cent between 1940 and Igss. In 1959, cancer claimed
4100 lives and accounted for 12 per cent of all deaths in children between the
ages of one and fourteen. These statistics make it hazardous to say that the
illness is essentially part of the aging process. Strong reasons exist for
suspecting that environmental factors contribute significantly to increases in
death from cancer among young people.
The same suspicions can be extended to heart and vascular disorders. Until
recently, heart disease in young people was caused primarily by infectious
illnesses. Rheumatic heart disease, following streptococcal infections, claimed
the lives of many children between the ages of ten and fourteen. Fortunately,
the incidence of rheumatic fever has been reduced dramatically by the use of
antibiotics. On the other hand, coronary heart disease was generally regarded as
a typical degenerative illness of older people, attributable to the onset of
vascular disorders well beyond the peak of life. The disease seemed to be a
culmination of the aging process. This view, too, is no longer a deeply
entrenched medical opinion. Atherosclerosis, the precursor of coronary heart
attacks, is not a universal feature of old age. On autopsy, many an octogenarian
has been found to have coronary arteries that a man in his forties would be
fortunate to possess.
Even more disconcerting is the unexpectedly high incidence of coronary illness
now known to exist among young people. During the Korean War, the U. S. Armed
Forces Institute of Pathology performed a series of autopsies on the bodies of
300 American soldiers, most of whom had been killed in frontline areas. Careful
attempts were made to exclude cases in which there had been clinical evidence of
coronary disease. The investigators, Enos, Holmes, and Beyer,, observed that the
average age in "200 cases was 22.1 years. The ages in the first 98 cases were
not recorded except that the oldest patient was 33.... In 77.3% of the hearts,
some gross evidence of coronary atherosclerosis was found."
In at least 12 per cent of the hearts, the obstruction of one or more major
coronary arteries exceeded 50 per cent of the arterial passageway. These are
extremely high figures for young men who presumably were qualified for military
service. A comparative study performed on the bodies of 350 Americans in Boston
and 352 Japanese in Fukuoka "disclosed a considerable difference in the severity
of coronary atherosclerosis" between the two national ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Go to the beginning of the document
Go to previous page
Go to next page
Go to the end of document
