Continuing our two part conversation with Dr Aaron Bernstein from last week (click here to read the first half)….:
Q: It is often difficult for people to make the connection between the choices they make every day and our environment. In your travels, what do you find is most compelling?
A: How about the collection of rubbish in the North Pacific Gyre known as the Pacific Garbage Patch? About 1000 miles north of Hawaii you can find an area maybe twice the size of Texas or larger, chock-full of garbage, 90% of which is plastic. An estimated 80% of that trash comes not from dumping directly into the oceans, but from land-based sources. We don’t know enough yet about exactly where it is all coming from or exactly how harmful it is, but it’s clear that this plastic binds toxins such as DDT and PCB and that much (if not all) sea life in the Pacific has been accumulating these toxins by eating microscopic bits (if not full bottle tops) of plastic. Some of this sea life winds up in us.
A tremendous amount of plastic is marketed to children, often in single-use goods. We need to consider more fully the life-cycle of these plastics and where they might end up and what they might do to our health.
Q: Any insights on how can parents can help their children become better environmental stewards?
A: No single intervention is more important than getting them into and excited about nature. I had a conversation with E.O. Wilson, perhaps the world’s most distinguished biologist, about what he believes may be a “sensitive” period in child development during which children must form a bond with nature. If they do not, they may never gain the experience that will enable them to see that the fate our lives is bound to that of innumerable other organisms, and so they will likely engage in actions that further pollute our water and air, degrade our soils, and eradicate species as if such insults to nature would have no ill-effects on humanity at all.
Q: If I am a parent who cares and wants to learn more and get involved, can you point out a few resources for me?
A: The most compelling reasons to act, the ones that will endure, are the ones that touch us personally. Learn about an illness, be it asthma, diabetes, or cancer, that has affected your family and what in the environment contributed to it or, better yet, helped alleviate it (many medicines still derive from natural sources, particularly cancer treatments and antibiotics). Consider how much of your daily routine relies upon things you use just once or a few times and then dispose of? Can you be just as happy as you are now without these things?
As much as individual actions can make a difference, when it comes to sustainable choices, even those who want to do the right thing may not be able to as we lack good information about so many of the things we buy. To improve this we need more judicious policies to govern how goods are made and disposed of. Without that, we can’t expect the companies that make things or the people who buy them to do what’s necessary on their own. This makes participation in public affairs a must for all parents. We can’t get to sustainability without it.
Aaron Bernstein, MD, MPH, is on faculty at Harvard Medical School and the Center for Health and the Global Environment. His work examines the human health dimensions of global environmental change, such as climate change and biodiversity loss, with the aim of promoting a deeper understanding of these subjects among policy makers, educators, and the public. Along with Nobel Peace Prize recipient Eric Chivian, he co-authored the Oxford University Press book Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity. The book has been widely acclaimed, including by Al Gore, Kofi Annan, and Gro Brundtland, and was named the best biology book of 2008 by the Library Journal.
March 15, 2010
