Killing The Environment Is Killing Ourselves
It goes way beyond global warming.
A few days ago, I was reading promising research published by Nutrients called “The Role of Vitamin D in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Mechanism to Management.”
Being a victim of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) myself, I was particularly fascinated by this 2019 report claiming that “vitamin D deficiency has been associated with inflammatory diseases including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).” I moved on to the introduction of the piece and was hit with key information that made a lightbulb flicker in my head. The introduction reads:
The incidence of IBD is rapidly increasing in newly industrialized countries strongly implicating environmental factors.
When I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis (UC) at age 11, I was told the disease is simply genetic and irreversible. But that was over a decade ago. Population-based studies compiled since then are undoubtedly showing how IBD is an ailment of “newly industrialized countries whose societies have become more westernized.” As I continued reading, these questions dawned on me: What’s causing our world’s seemingly “irreversible” illnesses? Are most of these illnesses, like IBD, ailments of the present, industrialized world?
Industrialization, Inflammation, and Death
It was the spring of 2018 when in university I studied the poetry of William Blake in my class, “British Romanticism.” His work is uniquely apocalyptic with a twist of parody, unlike anything I’ve read. Thinking back, it’s obvious why.
William Blake was extremely wary of the Industrial Revolution, whose epicenter was 18th-century Britain. Blake saw everything becoming mechanized and worse, children were dying from working in toxic environments such as chimneys. Here’s what Blake reports in his poem “London.”
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hearHow the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
Readers needn’t be well-versed in poetry to catch Blake’s use of doom-ladened imagery here. Economic historian Jane Humphries’ book Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution describes how industrialization was practically driven by child labor. Children faced premature death, and not only from accidents such as falling and asphyxiation; creosote and soot from chimneys destroyed their lungs. It is now widely accepted that air-pollution from industrialization causes disease. There is a positive correlation between air pollution and cardiorespiratory diseases, for example.
In 2018, a meta-analysis of cohort studies published by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health states that a close interpretation of “cohort studies indicates that exposure to the main air pollutants is associated with increased mortality from all cancers.” The research goes on to explain the primary mechanisms of action seem to be oxidative stress and inflammation. Low-grade, long-term inflammation (chronic) is a direct indicator of disease and even an independent risk factor for total mortality.
Destroying Our Environment = Inflaming Ourselves
Of course, environmental and health measures have been taken since the Industrial Revolution’s smoggy start. But have they gone so far as to protect us completely?
When thinking about the prospect of destroying humanity by first destroying the planet, most of us think about the catastrophic implications of global warming. While global warming is an obvious threat to our species, I’m here to make the argument that we’re already killing ourselves via environmental degradation.
And yes, it is happening on a catastrophic level.
Our industrialized environment is inflaming humanity on a level that is at least partially responsible for various cancers, inflammatory bowel diseases, and even, as more recently discovered, possibly depression. As professed by researchers whose work is published in the American Psychological Association:
There is now plenty of experimental and clinical evidence showing that inflammatory mediators induce neurovegetative and psychological symptoms of depression.
That was published in 2012.
Depression is detrimentally impacting humanity, with more than 264 million people affected worldwide. And while, yes, there are many factors that play into whether someone develops chronic depression, according to current research, it’s worth studying our damaging environments as a large culprit.
“Toxins, Toxins Everywhere!”
Two years ago, I learned that a few elementary schools near my house were being torn down. Many of these schools had been built with asbestos, a toxic silicate mineral shown to cause cancer and asbestosis (inflammation and scarring of the lungs) upon inhalation.
A coworker of mine at the time was part of the project to tear down the schools. When I asked him his thoughts of working with the cancerous asbestos, he threw his arms up in a parodical fashion and yelled:
Toxins, toxins everywhere!
To be clear, asbestos has been used for millennia, perhaps since the Stone Age where it was first utilized to strengthen ceramic pots. Beginning in the industrial era, however, mining and utilization of asbestos began on a mass and harmful scale. The detrimental effects of asbestos were first brought to light in the 1970s partly due to the research of Julian Peto. I dug for more info surrounding asbestos and found that it causes an almost-always-fatal form of lung cancer called mesothelioma. Asbestos is today recognized as a known carcinogen.
So why did it take so long for us to recognize asbestos as a deadly material? What might this imply about the potential of other poisons lurking hidden in our industrialized world? Aside from other obvious toxins: things like household cleaners caked with warnings, BPA, the foods we feed our children in mass quantities that should be labelled as poison, and again, cigarettes—we can look at something else that’s gained recent traction in becoming recognized as a known carcinogen: heavy metals.
The main problematic heavy metals are arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, and mercury. They’re cancerous and known to cause toxicity, genotoxicity, and carcinogenicity. Millions of people worldwide are exposed to toxic heavy metals via water contamination, food contamination, air contamination, employment in the metal industry, and more. It’s alarming how much of the world is consuming these poisons, particularly (and sadly) in countries that are marginalized and host poor environmental regulations and leadership such as Bangladesh, India, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, and Taiwan.
Solutions and Exploitations
Our world is rampant with disease. I for one have a chronic disease, an IBD known as ulcerative colitis (UC). Am I concerned that the sometimes-chronic levels of inflammation in my body can lead to cancer? The answer is yes, I am concerned, especially since people with UC have higher risks of developing colon cancer.
But there are solutions to our health.
In 2017, Iranian researchers published research in the American Journal of Cancer Research offering a comprehensive review of functional foods and their role in cancer prevention. They begin by claiming that more than half of cancer cases and deaths worldwide are preventable. Then, they move on to the role of functional foods.
Functional foods are the compounds in foods themselves that are found to have antioxidants and thus anticancer properties. For example, the β-cryptoxanthin in orange fruits inhibit the risk of some cancers. Meanwhile, the astaxanthin in green algae, salmon, and trout “improves antitumor immune responses by inhibiting. . .lipid peroxidation induced by stress.”
Some other foods to look out for are berries, multiple cruciferous vegetables, leafy green vegetables, apricots (for their powerful lycopene), and tomatoes.
If we eat well, exercise well, think well, and supplement well, we’ll be healthier and prevent disease. Most of us know that. But why should we have to live in a world where we must try extra hard to prevent disease? Degeneration of human health is natural to some extent, of course, but we are living in times of unprecedented toxic pollution. The industrial era is still very much with us, a fact that becomes particularly clear when studying the environmental and human exploitation taking place in marginalized countries such as the Congo.
As a society, we must take action to eliminate such exploitation, stop the wildfires, deforestation, child labor, the erroneous behavior of our modern world—behavior that prioritizes capital gain over the well-being of the environment and thus the well-being of humanity.
