Integrating Human and Ecosystem Health in the Great Lakes Basin: The Rationale for Sunsetting Industrial Chlorine

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Pollution from persistent toxic substances, interpreted as downward causation from the Biosphere, was the primary factor causing the integration of human and ecosystem health in the Great Lakes Basin. Institutional measures that set the political stage for integration were the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreements of 1972 and 1978 (the latter with an accent on an ecosystem approach and persistent toxic substances). Fish and wildlife biologists played a crucial role as “eco-catalysts” in alerting the public and the International Joint Commission (IJC) to reproductive and developmental health problems associated with persistent toxic substances in fish, reptiles, birds, mammals, and—by implication—humans.

The rationale for the recommendation to sunset industrial chlorine stemmed from the IJC’s conclusion that persistent toxic substances, including many organochlorines, are harmful to humans and the Biosphere. It is conjectured that the focus on chlorinated chemicals arose from the fact that more than half of the 373 persistent toxic substances identified in the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem were organochlorines; the uncontrollability of many organochlorines in the production phase, in long-range transport in air and water, in chemical transformations in the environment, and in bioaccumulation in food chains; and the need for a strategic spearhead to break the dysfunctional, after-the-fact, one-by-one approach to regulating persistent toxic substances. Generic controls are necessary whenever public health or property is threatened by environmental conversion from harmless to harmful forms (as in the case of phosphorus, lead, mercury, and PCBs).

Attention is drawn to the rarity of organochlorines in vertebrates and their general use in defense also to the bypassing of lower halogens in favor of iodine (as thyroxine) in regulating basal metabolism in vertebrates. The sunsetting of industrial chlorine is considered essential to the protection of human and biospheric health; however, because of the current requirement for proof of harm, chemical by chemical, the process is likely to take decades.