Just in the wake of the recent worldwide rise in concern about the pollution effects of plastic products, which now have been discovered world-wide, here is another installment of the many “unpleasant surprises” resulting from the virtually unbridled development and introduction of technologies and products without giving adequate consideration to their potential effects on humans and the environment.
An article in the Guardian of 28 August 2018 (“Air pollution causes ‘huge’ reduction in intelligence, study reveals”) reported on research undertaken in China that has shown that air pollution has a significant effect on human cognitive capacity. “It found that high pollution levels led to significant drops in test scores in language and arithmetic, with the average impact equivalent to having lost a year of the person’s education.” As 95% of the global population breathes unsafe air, this affects most people; however, the effect appears to be worse for the elderly, especially older men.
This is just another example of the numerous instances, starting with Rachel Carson’s revelations about the harmful effects of pesticides, where the development and introduction of new technologies and products have occurred without a rigorous assessment of their compatibility with both ecological systems and human health and well-being. This, of course, may require considerable research, take time, and be costly; things not compatible with short-term economic interests. In a competitive (capitalist) economic system, companies are under pressure to cut costs and corners for the sake of profit, shifting the burden of “unforeseen side-effects” or “externalities” to consumers, societies, and the environment. If anything, since Rachel Carson rang the alarm bells, the stream of new technologies and products that have hardly, if at all, been assessed on the unpleasant side effects of pollution that have been allowed to occur under the assumption that the effects on humans (and the rest of nature) were (‘probably’) not serious enough to worry about.
The approach to pollution control has commonly been reactive and fragmented, with measures taken only after the adverse effects on humans or the rest of nature have become apparent and are considered serious enough, and then usually only aimed at a single source or category. To date, no country has adopted a comprehensive approach aimed at preventing pollution, which would require the establishment of criteria and standards (for both products and production processes) based on the recognition that all products must be compatible with ecological systems and processes, and conducive to human health and well-being. In other words, this latest finding is just another illustration of the fact that environmental integration in the realm of production (in this case, of cars, trucks and buses, but also factories and the products that they make) still has to begin.