Dr. Trevor Hancock – Healthy people, healthy communities, a healthy planet

We need to ensure the economy is subservient to, not dominant over, societal wellbeing and planetary health.

• Published as “The economy should serve well-being, planet health, not dominate them”
• The economy is not a natural phenomenon, it is a human construct, so if it doesn’t work for us we should change it

Dr. Trevor Hancock

2 July 2024

702 words

In exploring the need for a transformation of our values so they are fit for purpose in the 21^st century I have been using a piece of ‘scripture’ from the World Wide Fund for Nature’s 2014 Living Planet Report.

The third realm from my piece of ‘scripture’ is the economy, and the text makes an important but often over-looked point: Societies create economies. The economy is not a natural phenomenon, it is a human construct, so if it doesn’t work for us we should change it.

Well, this economy does not work for us. The Institute for Health Improvement, rooting its idea in systems engineering, states: “Every system is perfectly designed to achieve the results it gets”. Our current economic system seems perfectly designed to damage and destroy the Earth’s natural systems while undermining society and heightening inequality.

At the heart of this problem are a set of values that prize money, wealth, greed, profit and ‘stuff’ above planetary health and societal and human wellbeing; that is opposed to paying taxes on principle; that covets and accumulates power by heightening inequality, and that adheres to the absurd notion of indefinite growth. 

Disastrously, the only wealth that is really valued is economic wealth, be it money or ‘stuff’. As I noted in an earlier column, natural capital is not included in most economic models, nor for that matter are human or social capital. The latter, by the way, is distinguished from human capital because human capital is all about the ‘wealth’ of an individual – their level of education, creativity, health, sense of compassion etc – while social capital is all about the extent and strength of our relationships with each other – the realm of community and society.

But in the 21^st century we have to value all these forms of wealth, which means we need at the very least to reform capitalism so it integrates all these forms of capital. Real capitalists increase all forms of capital at the same time, and they most certainly do not deplete natural, social or human capital just so they can increase economic capital – that is false capitalism.

Turning to taxes, nobody said it better than US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes a century or so ago: “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilised society”. So if you have a nagging feeling that society is less civilised than it used to be – and a society with the levels of hunger and homelessness we see today can hardly be called civilised – then there is your answer.

When it comes to the issue of continuous economic growth, Kenneth Boulding, a former President of both the American Economic Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, told the U.S. Congress as far back as 1973: “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”

So the third set of value transformations we need has to do with the economy, which must a) be consistent with the reality of the finite and limited Earth on which we live, and b) be in service to society, thus creating the conditions that enable wellbeing for all, both now and for future generations.

Among other things, that means abandoning the absurd and impossible dream – actually, the nightmare – of perpetual and exponential growth, in favour of a steady state economy. That will mean valuing sufficiency rather than affluence and excess: As the late Herman Daly wrote, “Enough should be the central concept in economics,” where enough means “sufficient for a good life”.

We also need to find new and better ways to value progress. The GDP was never intended as a measure of social welfare, and it is profoundly misleading, since it includes many unhealthy and indeed harmful costs, such as the costs of cleaning up after disasters or all the money spent on tobacco as well as the costs of treating tobacco-related diseases.

Alternatives include the Genuine Progress Indicator, Gross National Happiness, as pioneered by Bhutan, and here in Canada, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing. But above all else, the economy must be put in its place – subservient to, not dominant over, societal wellbeing and planetary health.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the                                            University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

We need a re-awakening of our sense of kinship with and shared responsibility for our fellow humans, of a sense of community

Dr. Trevor Hancock

25 June 2024

699 words

I am exploring my ‘scriptural text’ from the Word Wide Fund for Nature’s 2014 Living Planet Report that was the basis of my homily for the First Unitarian Church back in April. The report stated: “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies. It does not work the other way around.”

Many of our problems, I believe, stem from a mis-aligned set of values that are unfit for the 21^st century challenges we face. Those values relate to the three realms included in my chosen text: The Earth (ecosystems), society and the economy, and how we prioritise among them. Two weeks ago I discussed our need to develop a reverence for the Earth and all it contains, an awareness of a connection to nature that is, at its heart, spiritual.

The second realm from my bit of scripture is society, and thus about our relationship with each other. In recent decades, we have seen society and community de-valued and undermined by a radical neo-liberal philosophy that prioritises the individual over society and community; promotes the pursuit of self-interest and greed over the common interest, which it devalues; worships profit and wealth above all else; and sees government as a problem that gets in the way of private wealth accumulation.

I was born in 1948, the same year that the National Health Service was established in the UK. The years that followed, the years in which I grew up and went to medical school, were a time of public investment in housing, education and social welfare. But with the advent of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and the triumph of neo-liberal values, much of that has been torn down.

In the pursuit of lower taxes, smaller government and increased private wealth, we have abandoned social housing and cut back on education funding (ask yourself why schools are scrambling to fund arts and music, why university departments of humanities are struggling to survive?). We have reduced unionisation, kept wages and social welfare low and pared back on benefits. Among other things we have seen the re-appearance of food banks and homeless encampments. Is the average person better off for these changes?

On top of all that, we have become a much more atomised, alienated and lonely society; in fact, loneliness is now recognised as a significant and growing public health problem! This is not only because of the emphasis on individual responsibility (which absolves the government and the corporations of responsibility), but also because of the insidious impact of what I have started to call the ‘anti-social media’ that have come to dominate so much of our lives.

Yet humans are perhaps above all else a social species. So the second set of transformed values I propose is the need for what the Great Transition Initiative calls ‘solidarity’, a re-awakening of our sense of kinship with and shared responsibility for our fellow humans, of a sense of community.

We need to value society and community, not necessarily above the individual but equally, seeking a better balance between individual and shared rights and responsibilities. Related to this, we need to value the common good – including in particular the common good of future generations – over the pursuit of short-term self-interest at the expense of others.

A recent letter to this newspaper from David Conway expressed the same point at the national and international level. He was objecting to what is in essence a very whiny and selfish view; that Canada is so small that what we do does not matter – so let’s keep on expanding fossil fuels, driving big cars and so on. “I still believe that taking individual responsibility for doing my bit to shoulder the load is the right thing to do”, he wrote. And he challenged us: “do we still believe the same goes for our national responsibility to make the world a safer and more stable place?”

Moreover, as part of valuing our relationships with each other, we need to recognise the role of government as an agent for the common good, and particularly see its role to protect and promote interests of the disadvantaged and the vulnerable, both in Canada and around the world, now and into the future.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the                                            University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

• Published as “Physician group fighting for health and planet marks 30 years”

Those of us who founded the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment in 1994 were ‘a bunch of environmentalists who just happened to be physicians’.

The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment: Working to better human health by protecting the planet.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

18 June 2024

700 words

In my time I have co-founded a number of organisations, but I am particularly proud to have helped start CAPE – The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment – thirty years ago. Three of us, independently, had started to develop the idea of some sort of doctors’ organization focused on the health of the planet in the early 1990s.

Warren Bell was – and still is – a family physician in Salmon Arm B.C., while Tee Guidotti was a Professor of occupational and environmental health at the University of Alberta (although he subsequently moved to Washington DC) and I was an independent public health physician in Toronto. We were, said Warren, a bunch of environmentalists who just happened to be physicians.

I had been calling for the creation of an organization of ‘Physicians for the Environment’ in my work in the early 1990s, as had Warren, and I had served with Tee on a Task Force on Human and Ecosystem Health for the Canadian Public Health Association in 1992. So we all got together in mid-1994 and by the end of 1994 had incorporated CAPE and become the Canadian affiliate of the International Society of Doctors for the Environment.

We started small, and all our work was voluntary, but we spoke out and had an important impact. In a 1996 brief to the National Forum on Health on the importance of ecosystem health as a determinant of human health we noted: “As physicians, we are concerned both professionally and personally about how the health of our patients may be affected by environmental degradation.”

But we also spelled out the wider aims of CAPE: “Our objectives as an organization are to better understand the health implications of environmental problems and global change, to educate physicians and the public on these health implications . . . and to encourage effective change in the way Canadians deal with environmental problems and global change so as to protect the health of the population.”

Today, having become a well-established organisation with 18 staff and 10 regional committees, CAPE continues to pursue its vision that “the health of people and the planet are prioritized in society and policy in Canada.” It does so by “mobilizing the credible voice of health professionals, health science, and evidence”; over the past 30 years, CAPE has “engaged over 25,000 supporters . . . with close to 16,000 having taken action on a campaign!” 

CAPE is an effective and powerful voice on a range of environmental issues, which in its latest strategic plan includes the three elements of the UN’s ‘triple planetary crisis’ (climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution), as well as the broader policy framing of social justice and equity and the need to create a wellbeing economy and society.

Some of CAPE’s highlights in the 2020s include becoming a founding partner in PaRx, Canada’s first national nature prescription program; advocating for successful passage of federal climate accountability legislation and convincing the province of Québec to reject a new LNG project.

CAPE also advocated with others to strengthen the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. The revised Act now includes the recognition, for the first time, of the right to a healthy environment. The Act also updates the framework for toxic substances, another CAPE priority campaign, requiring the federal government to consider the cumulative impacts of toxics, and their effects on vulnerable populations.

In 2022 CAPE launched a campaign to ban fossil fuel ads, a call that was joined earlier this month by UN Secretary General António Guterres, who called on countries to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies.

Additionally, CAPE filed a complaint with the Competition Bureau to investigate green-washing by the fossil fuel industry and joined a complaint to Ads Canada about misleading pro-LNG adverts. The latter led to a recent ruling that the ads “paid for by Canada Action, are inaccurate, misleading, and distort the true meaning of statements by scientists.”

Many Canadians, and others around the world, have benefited from CAPE’s work over the past 30 years to better human health by protecting the planet. It is hard to think of a more important task today, so it is vital that CAPE continue this important work in the years ahead.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the                                            University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

We need a reverence for the Earth and all it contains, an awareness of a connection to nature that is, at its heart, spiritual.

• Published as  ‘We are deeply connected to and kin with all of life’

Dr. Trevor Hancock

11 June 2024

702 words

Two weeks ago, I ended my column on values fit for the 21^st century by stating that we have a set of values that are not fit for purpose today. One of those unfit value sets relates to our relationship with nature, which is rooted in a sense that we are separate from and indeed superior to nature. We believe we can manipulate and manage nature for the benefit of our societies and our economies.

In a very real sense we are indeed separated from nature. In North America we are 80 percent urbanised and we spend 90 percent of our time indoors – and a further 5 percent in cars and other vehicles. So we – and especially our children – have very little contact with nature, and most of that is a constrained form of nature in an urban setting.

Moreover, in economic terms we discount nature. A forest has no economic value until it is cut down and turned into lumber or paper. The pollution of air, water and land, especially well away from us, is considered an externality, not factored into our economic models and measures, “for no better reason”, wrote the late Herman Daly, a leading proponent of an economics of wellbeing, “than because we have made no provision for them in our economic models.” 


But this set of values is incompatible with our survival. So the first of four sets of value transformations I propose is the need to (re)establish a sense of reverence for the Earth and all it contains, an awareness of a connection to nature that is both rooted in ecological reality and is, at its heart, spiritual.

Duwamish Chief Seattle reportedly said almost two centuries ago, “we are part of the great web of life, and whatever we do to the web of life, we do to ourselves”. We need to recognize that simple fact and acknowledge that ecosystems and the species they contain have intrinsic worth, that nature has rights, that other species have rights, and we owe them justice.

All of this has enormous resonance with long-held Indigenous world views and traditional teachings. I was powerfully struck by this point from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report in 2015:

“Reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians, from an Aboriginal perspective, also requires reconciliation with the natural world. If human beings resolve problems between themselves but continue to destroy the natural world, then reconciliation remains incomplete.

This is a perspective that we as Commissioners have repeatedly heard: that reconciliation will never occur unless we are also reconciled with the earth.”

I am also moved by the oft-heard concept among Indigenous people of ‘all our relations’ – that we are deeply connected to and kin with all of life – something modern DNA studies show to be true to a remarkable degree.

Now I am not Indigenous, but I am a member of a Global Working Group of the International Union of Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) that is Indigenous-led and focused on what Indigenous perspectives and spirituality bring to our understanding of planetary health – the health of human civilizations and the natural systems that support them.

We just authored for IUHPE a Position Statement on Planetary Health Promotion and Indigenous World Views and Knowledges. In it we stated:

“Viewing humanity as deeply connected with the environment is a central element of Indigenous knowledge systems. This interdependence is not a romanticized version of the environment, but one that is perceived through a worldview that our health is tied to the health of the planet. We cannot separate human and ecosystem wellbeing in this interconnected paradigm.”

We also explicitly connected Indigenous world views and knowledges with spiritual approaches:

“Spirituality is another facet of human life that offers pathways to re-engage with humanity’s deep connection with the natural world, and to foster environmental awareness, activism and wellbeing in ways that can enhance both health promotion and planetary health.”

Whether we approach the issue of a reverence for nature through ecological science, Indigenous values or spirituality does not matter. The point is to see ourselves in context, and with humility, as just one small part of the global ecosystem that sustains us, and all of life.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

•  Published as ‘Morris dancing is good for sinners and non-sinners alike’

Benefits include being physically active, with good balance, agility and strength, as well as the mental health benefits of having to create, learn and remember dances

Dr. Trevor Hancock

4 June 2024                                                             

701 words

I am a Morris dancer, which means – in the eyes of the 17^th century Puritan polemicist William Prynne – that I am a sinner, bound for Hell. His blast against dancing, in his 1632 book Histriomastix is so wonderful it bears repeating here.

“Dancing, is, for the most part, attended with many amorous smiles, wanton compliments, unchaste kisses, scurrilous songs and sonnets, effeminate music, lust provoking attire, ridiculous love pranks, all which savor only of sensuality, of raging fleshly lusts. Therefore, it is wholly to be abandoned of all good Christians.

Dancing serves no necessary use, no profitable, laudable, or pious end at all. It is only from the inbred pravity, vanity, wantonness, incontinency, pride, profaneness, or madness of man’s depraved nature. Therefore, it must needs be unlawful unto Christians.

The way to heaven is too steep, too narrow for men to dance in and keep revel rout. No way is large or smooth enough for capering roisters, for jumping, skipping, dancing dames but that broad, beaten, pleasant road that leads to HELL. The gate of heaven is too narrow for whole rounds, whole troops of dancers to march in together.”

Guilty as charged – well, except I don’t think anyone would describe me or my attire as lust-provoking! And he didn’t even mention going to the pub afterwards!

I tell you this to warn those of you of a sensitive nature to avoid the front steps of the BC Legislature on Saturday June 15^th at about 4 PM. For those who are more bold, if you show up there, you will have a chance to see Canada’s oldest Morris side celebrating its 50^th anniversary, along with the other two local Morris sides. (You have another chance, when we are joined by Sound and Fury Morris from Seattle on July 6^th at 4 PM at the Legislature.)

Morris dancing is a traditional English folk dance, and is first mentioned in 1448 in a record of payment to some Morris dancers. Today it is danced all over the world. Indeed, Morris dancers around the world get up to dance at dawn on May Day – May 1^st – because if we don’t, the sun will not rise. Yes, you can thank us when you see us!

Hollytree Morris was established by David and Christine Winn in 1974; they had already co-founded the Saanich International Folk Dancers Association a few years earlier, having arrived here in 1969. Interested in their own English cultural traditions, they were inspired to create Hollytree Morris, who first performed in Victoria (originally as the Victoria Morris Men) in 1974. Since then, Hollytree Morris has danced at countless festivals and events throughout the region, across Canada and as far afield as the USA and England.

David, sadly, died in 2014, but Christine is still dancing, and dancing well, at 83, and we have dancers and musicians – yes, we are blessed with live music too – in their 80s, while many of us – including me – are in our 70s. So when I say Hollytree is the oldest Morris side in Canada, I mean that in both ways – longest established, and probably oldest average age.

I have not been dancing quite that long, but I started Morris dancing with Green Fiddle Morris in Toronto in the late 1970s, and have enjoyed the benefits of Morris dancing ever since. Those benefits include being physically active, with good balance, agility and strength, as well as the mental health benefits of having to create, learn and remember dances. Beyond that, there are also the social benefits of being with a group of friends every week.

On top of that, as a City of Victoria Proclamation for Folktoria (held last week, June 1^st and 2^nd) and Hollytree’s Golden Jubilee notes, “an important purpose of international folk dance is to learn dances from other countries and traditions, and in doing so to learn about and celebrate them: and this celebration of many cultures is shared with the community through public performance, bringing pleasure to hundreds of dancers and thousands of audience members over the years.”

So if you don’t mind hanging out with a bunch of sinners, join us as we celebrate on June 15^th or July 6th.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

• Published as “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies”

It’s is a simple prescription, but in practice, we try to make it work the other way around

Dr. Trevor Hancock

27 May 2024

701 words

Last week I suggested that the bad decisions that government and corporate leaders are making, in the face of growing evidence of ecological decline and potential collapse, are rooted in a set of societal values that are unfit for purpose in the 21^st century.

Back in April I was asked to be the homilist at the First Unitarian Church just before Earth Day and to talk about the values revolution that is needed. Now I don’t know about you, but I didn’t even know there was such a a beast as a homilist, and only a vague sense of what a homily is. So I looked it up. A homily, I found, is “a commentary that follows a reading of scripture, giving the ‘public explanation of a sacred doctrine’ or text.”

Clearly I needed a piece of scripture on which to base my homily. But not being a theist, I had no sacred text to turn to. So I looked to a piece of wisdom that might be considered scripture – a word that means “sacred writings”; it certainly is scripture for me: “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies. It does not work the other way around.”

The source is the 2014 edition of the bi-annual Living Planet report from the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF). This simple piece of scripture contains a great deal of wisdom that is relevant to our modern conundrum, and underscores the need for a values revolution.

Indeed, it is a simple but profound prescription for how we should organise our societies, communities and economies. But in practice, driven by a set of distorted values, we try to make it work the other way around. As a result we live in a world where economies shape and distort societies that then damage or destroy ecosystems – to the detriment not only of our health and wellbeing, but that of a myriad other species with whom we share this one small planet.

There are four elements in the WWF ‘scripture’ that I want to explore with respect to the values we currently exhibit and how they need to change. They are the three realms of the Earth (ecosystems), society and the economy, and how we prioritise among them.

These three realms are congruent with what the Great Transition Initiative calls “the conventional triad of individualism, consumerism, and domination of nature” that lies at the root of our current global and local crises.

The Great Transition Initiative is focused on a deep transformation of culture and society and proposes that in opposition to the conventional – and mis-aligned – triad of values noted above – individualism, consumerism, and domination of nature –  we need to develop “a constellation of values – human solidarity, quality of life, and ecological sensibility” that will get us to the future we need.

Let’s start with the realm of the Earth and its ecosystems. As the WWF makes clear, ecosystems – and more broadly, the Earth – contains everything else. Every human we know of, except for the 10 currently on the International Space Station, lives on Earth – all  8+ billion of us. Every human there has ever been, and every member of every species there is or has ever been, lives or lived on Earth.

This one tiny blue dot contains all the life of the universe, as far as we know at present, and it is the basis of our very existence.

So you would think we would treat the Earth with great reverence, respect and care. But we know we don’t. Ever seen a clearcut? A polluted river? A burned forest? A destoyed reef? A tarsands mine? A tailings pond? An oceanic plastics gyre? Cities and the lands that surround them covered in air pollution?

We are in deep, deep trouble. We have already crossed six of nine planetary boundaries and are approaching two of the remaining three. In the process we have triggered a sixth ‘Great Extinction’.

All this stems from an unfit set of values rooted in a mistaken belief that we are separate from and indeed superior to nature, and can manipulate and manage nature for the benefit of our societies and our economies. I will discuss this further over the coming weeks.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

The Lalonde Report, tabled in Parliament on May 1, 1974, was the first significant government report to suggest that health-care services were not the most important determinant of health

Dr. Trevor Hancock

30 April 2024

705 words

As I look back on my life, I seem to have had the happy knack of being in the right place at the right time. At the age of seventeen I heard about Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), the British forerunner of the Peace Corps and CUSO, and before my 18^th birthday was a volunteer teacher in Lundu, Sarawak, in the northern part of Borneo. It was an experience that changed my life in ways I did not fully realise for decades; it certainly shaped my decision to work in public health.

Another example of this happy knack was to arrive in Canada in January 1975 – to practise family medicine in New Brunswick – and almost immediately come across “A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians”, otherwise known as the Lalonde Report. I still have my original copy of the report, along with my excited and enthusiastic marginal notes.

Named for the then federal Minister of Health and Welfare, the late Marc Lalonde, it was tabled in Parliament on May 1^st 1974. Of course, while it came out with his blessing and support, he was not the author; that honour belongs largely to Bert Laframboise and Huguette Labelle, two federal public servants at the Long-range Health Planning Branch – yes, we had something that useful back then, but sadly, not now.

Nonetheless, Mr. Lalonde clearly was fully engaged with the report that bears his name. He presented it at the World Health Assembly in Geneva in June 1973, at a meeting of the Pan-American Health Organization in Ottawa in September 1973 and at a meeting of the Federal and Provincial Ministers of Health in February 1974.  It was apparently well received at all of these meetings, and importantly the conceptual approach was adopted by the provincial ministers of health.

So what was so important about the Lalonde Report, and how did it change my life? Put simply, it was the first significant government report to suggest that health care services were not the most important determinant of health. Now at a time of crisis in access to health care that may seem odd, but by and large medical care – with the notable exception of clinical prevention in primary care and public health in general – is not focused on keeping people healthy. Instead, the health care system is almost entirely focused on diagnosing, treating and managing disease and injury, restoring people’s health where possible.

The central point of the Lalonde Report was the concept of ‘health fields’ and the report proposed four fields: lifestyle, environment, health care organization and human biology. It pointed out that while “in most minds the health field and the personal medical care system are synonymous”, the historical evidence, coupled with an analysis of mortality and morbidity left “no doubt that the traditional view of equating the level of health in Canada with the availability of physicians and hospitals is inadequate.”

“There is little doubt”, the report stated, “that future improvements in the level of health of Canadians lie mainly in improving the environment, moderating self-imposed risks and adding to our knowledge of human biology.” And  in a speech to the Canadian Public Health Association later that year, Lalonde said “The approach we have outlined, I believe, offers great potential for the prevention of disease and the promotion of health on a much broader scale than has been previously considered.” 

That and other insights from the report led me a few short years later to shift my focus from diagnosing, treating  and managing disease to working to prevent disease and injury in the first place, protecting people from harm and improve the health and wellbeing of the population.

Within a few years I found myself – that happy knack again – working for the City of Toronto’s Health Advocacy Unit.  And that in turn led me to help develop and spread globally the concept of healthy cities and communities – a concept, I realised nearly 30 years ago, had its roots in my experience in Lundu.

So this week I celebrate the Lalonde Report and honour its authors and the Minister who made it possible – and in the process, changed my life.

**********************

I am on vacation the next couple of weeks, so no columns until late May.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest plastic additive chemicals are present in the bodies of nearly all Americans

Dr. Trevor Hancock

23 April 2024

700 words

Last week I looked at the scale of the plastics industry and its environmental impact. This week, I examine its direct impact on human health, the harmful attitude of the industry and the hopes for national and global action.  

A team led by Professor Martin Wagner of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology recently reported that of 16,000 chemicals associated with plastic, at least 4,200 “are of concernbecause of their high hazards to human health and the environment.”

The health impacts were summarised in a commentary last month in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Philip Landrigan, a distinguished American pediatrician who chaired the 2017 Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health. He noted: ”Data from the National Biomonitoring Surveys of the [US] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that plastic additive chemicals are present in the bodies of nearly all Americans.”

Depending on the chemical additive, their toxic effects may include causing cancer, damage to the nervous system, disruption of the endocrine (hormone) system and of lipid metabolism, which in turn can “increase the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and stroke.”

Their potential to disrupt hormones – and of course, this is not just in humans but in many other species – is of particular concern.  A May 2023 UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report noted “women and children are particularly susceptible” and that these chemicals “can have severe or long-lasting adverse effects”, including neuro-developmental problems in children and fertility problems in both women and men.

Moreover, their impacts can cross the generations. In a release from the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) on Earth Day, Dr. Lyndia Dernis, an anesthesiologist in Québec, wrote: “when I administer an intravenous to a pregnant woman, I have to live with the knowledge that I may be exposing three generations to the endocrine disrupting phthalates in that plastic IV: the pregnant mom, her future baby girl, and the babies of that baby to be. Yet the phthalates that continue to be used in Canada have been banned in France since 2012.” 

Just as worrying as the widespread presence of these chemicals in our bodies is that plastic nano-particles are everywhere, throughout the food chain. Two recent articles in the medical literature have reported them in every placenta examined and in arteries, including coronary arteries. As one researcher stated in The Guardian, “If we are seeing effects on placentas, then all mammalian life on this planet could be impacted. That’s not good.”

But as we have seen time and again, just like other industries – such as the tobacco industry – that are focused on their own commercial interests, the plastics industry fights regulations intended to limit harm to health and the environment.

In November 2023, for example, a case brought by an industry coalition and several chemical companies that manufacture plastics overturned the federal government’s attempt to ban single-use plastics such as plastic bags, cutlery, take-out containers and straws. In the USA meanwhile, the Guardian reported last month, after a four-year legal fight “A federal appeals court in the US has killed a ban on plastic containers contaminated with highly toxic PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ found to leach at alarming levels into food, cosmetics, household cleaners, pesticides and other products across the economy.”

In addition, a recent report from the Center for Climate Integrity, a US non-profit that is committed to holding oil and gas corporations accountable for the massive costs of climate change, finds that plastics recycling is largely a fraud. “Petrochemical companies”, the report bluntly states, “have engaged in fraudulent marketing and public education campaigns designed to mislead the public about the viability of plastic recycling as a solution to plastic waste.”

Small wonder, then that the UNEP suggests that among the actions governments should take are to “eliminate the plastic products we do not need, through bans for example”, as well as recommending other steps to reduce plastics and plastic waste through re-use and recycling.

We all need to support the position of CAPE and “call on the federal government to limit plastics production, eliminate toxic additives, and protect the health of those most at risk – and advocate for this in a strong global treaty.”

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

• Published as “Our addiction to plastics will come back to haunt us”

Plastics contain some very toxic chemicals and break down into nano-particles that end up in our bodies.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

16  April 2024

696 words

Tomorrow, April 22^nd, is Earth Day, and the theme this year is ‘Planet vs. Plastics’. This is timely, because Tuesday 23^rd April marks the start of a week-long session in Ottawa of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution. So this week I begin to look at the plastics industry as yet another example of an industry that harms people and planet in pursuit of profit.

Set up by the UN Environment Assembly, the Committee’s task is “to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment.” This is intended to take “a comprehensive approach that addresses the full life cycle of plastic, including its production, design, and disposal” and should be ready by the end of this year. It can’t come too soon.

According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), on its ‘Our planet is choking on plastic’ website, the world produces an estimated 400 million tonnes of plastic waste every year. This will grow to 1 billion tonnes by 2052 if we carry on as we are. Since the 1970s, adds UNEP, “plastic production has grown faster than that of any other material.” For example, an astounding one million plastic bottles are purchased every minute worldwide – yes, that is every minute! – and up to five trillion – yes, trillion, which is one thousand billion! – plastic bags are used each year, UNEP states.

Making and distributing all that plastic, takes a lot of fossil fuel – “98 percent of single-use plastic products are produced from fossil fuel”, notes the UNEP – and a lot of energy. “The level of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production, use and disposal of conventional fossil fuel-based plastics is forecast to grow to 19 per cent of the global carbon budget by 2040”, UNEP states.

All that plastic has to go somewhere, but not much is recycled; less than 10 percent according to the UNEP. About half goes into landfills, while just under 20 percent is incinerated (which if done poorly can create some very toxic chemicals, such as dioxins and furans – potent cancer-causing and foetus-damaging chemicals).

Almost a quarter is mismanaged: ‘Mismanaged means, in practice, “materials burned in open pits, dumped into seas or open waters, or disposed of in unsanitary landfills and dumpsites”, notes Our World in Data.

As a result, a lot of it ends up in our oceans. The UNEP estimates that 75 to 199 million tons of plastic are currently in our oceans. As of 2016, we were adding about 9-14 million tonnes per year, but the UNEP estimates this could double or triple to 23-37 million tonnes per year by 2040.

The problem with plastic, the UNEP notes, is that it is very durable and resistant to degradation, which makes plastic “nearly impossible for nature to completely break down.” So it floats around, ends up on beaches or sinks to the bottom, and in all of those settings, it can be mistaken for food and eaten by marine life and birds, or in the case of large nets, can ensnare fish or drown birds, turtles and air-breathing mammals.

But all that plastic does not stay floating around in large pieces. Instead, it is broken down into tiny nano-particles, which then enter the food chain. An April 7^th article in this newspaper reported that “earlier this year, UBC and Ocean Wise scientists found that plastics can harm or even kill zooplankton, reducing a food source for many types of fish, including salmon.”

Its bad enough that plastics add considerably to global heating and are a threat to marine life. But just as with persistent chemicals, which I discussed last week, our plastics will come back to haunt us in other ways. They contain, can give rise to or absorb some very toxic chemicals and, we now know, they breakdown into nano-particles that end up in our bodies. The combination of toxic chemicals and nano-particles takes us into very uncharted waters in terms of health impacts.

Next week I will look in more depth at the health implications of plastics, at the way the industry has covered up these problems, and how governments and the international community need to respond.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy