Many people are becoming aware that this industrial society has done terrible things to our earth mother. And, to be clear, essentially all of us (myself included) have promoted environmental contamination with our purchasing and use of modern products. This issue is highlighted in the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) phenomenon. As this point, based on our desire for comfort and convenience, the rivers throughout much of the United States are contaminated with these endocrine-disrupting, cancer-causing, and long-lasting substances. Please allow me to be a little more blunt than usual as forever chemicals necessitate it. Because we don’t want to use effort to clean our cooking pans or fabrics or upholstery, the fish in many of our rivers are severely contaminated to the extent that a single meal translates to increased PFAS in the blood serum of humans (and any other organism that eats fish; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935122024926?via%3Dihub). Because we don’t want to get wet (i.e., be uncomfortable for any length of time), our clothing is now a major source of PFAS contamination that is making food that humans eat unsafe for consumption. And, we could go on (such as packaging in the fast food industry). Many of the significant sources of PFAS are based on our need for unprecedented comfort and convenience—they are not necessities. Therefore, we have to contend with the fact that our population is so lazy and so fragile that we are filling up the soil, air, and water with chemicals that cause cancer in living beings. That’s quite a privilege (one we never discuss)—the privilege to use completely unnecessary and harmful objects, devices, and coatings for the simple reason that they make life easier. That is a freedom worth examining critically.
I know, you’re thinking that was borderline (or perhaps it crossed a line with you). You might also be thinking this is an example of the pot calling the kettle black because PFAS are used in electronics (including computers and cell phones, the former of which I’m using right now). However, regardless of any hypocrisy you believe you can identify, my comments are still correct. Most of the PFAS contamination comes from uses that are not necessary. Period. How is it that this culture of progress accepts this? Why do we allow the chemical industry to produce novel compounds that are continually found to be harmful years or decades later when it is too late? Why do we have a policy of considering chemicals as safe until they are proven harmful? Novel chemicals require the precautionary principle, which would make them guilty until proven safe by independent study (not chemical-industry-funded studies). I can tell you why, and it comes down to two items: (1) we don’t want to live without extreme comfort and convenience and (2) our lives are too hollow, so we fill them up with things we hope will make us feel happiness and have no time or energy tackle issues like this. We hide behind statements like “that is their free choice to buy what they choose to” or other hollow mutterings that remove responsibility from anyone. Don’t say the chemical industry is too big to fight because it isn’t. We buy their products. If we stop buying them, the chemicals will stop being produced. Just like that.
And here we are, with PFAS chemicals nearly ubiquitous in our flowing waters. And they will be for millennia. While we wait for an industrial solution from the technological savior, what are we to do in the meantime? This is the food that my family and many others consume. While I understand that in the current political setting my interaction with freshwater fish is considered optional, and no amount of explaining will change this, what about Native Peoples who rely on these animals for their subsistence? Are they simply required to accept a heightened risk of cancer because some American doesn’t want their eggs to stick to a pan (which is solvable in most cookware by learning how to cook)?
While I know that there are some who will read this writing and consider my pale skin to be an indicator that the religion we practice here can be ignored and denounced, there are people of color on this continent who are also experiencing victimhood due to the actions of the very same people that will complain about me. In fact, black Americans are the highest frequency consumers of freshwater fish. If we can, as a culture, come to consider racism to be a worldview that need to go away (and rightly so), we can also come to consider environmental contamination to be something that needs to go away. Our society can believe that polluting is a taboo that results in cultural consequences (similar to disrespecting trans people) and not allow it to be something that is a freedom of choice. It can be a perspective that we are born into. But, it will require us to step out of our comfort zones and be willing to do work. It will require a supportive culture of people who don’t just point fingers but find ways to make their households less culpable for these harms. We don’t have to be perfect beacons of purity all at once. That is completely unrealistic and only overwhelms people so that the only thing they engage in is inaction. We can start eliminating our need for these products one step at a time. Defensiveness won’t inspire change, it will only hinder it and continue the desecration of Gaia. Start the change by using some of your screen time to identify where PFAS are used and avoid those products in your home (at least the ones that are not necessities). Help me (please) keep the wilderness from being defiled by that which spews out of our cities and towns. One could write that we have a moral obligation to end ecocide and pollution—there are beings counting on us to do so.