The Long and the Short of It - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 344

the time of writing, an innovative EU attempt to deal with the environmental disposal of
pharmaceuticals is running into very determined opposition.

What has our society learned from the POPs and mercury stories? The Arctic Messenger
would conclude that our societies have not learned too much. They have not learned that:

· Humankind, with an ever-increasing industrialized population, cannot continue to

use its finite environment as a sewer for persistent, chronically toxic and biomag-
nifying substances.

· Continuing to apply regulatory controls only after a huge persistent inventory has

accumulated in the environment is a strategy that is unsustainable.

· To pursue this strategy will continue to place us in the situation where we wait, for

example, for evidence to accumulate from studies of cohorts of children showing
that a particular substance is endocrine disrupting or neurotoxic or that it affects
behaviour at very low doses of exposure before birth.

· A new paradigm is essential to efficiently bridge the stages of scientific anticipa-

tion and the perception of an issue to an appropriate regulatory response. Without
it, how can we avoid the tragic human and environmental costs implied by the
growing evidence of long-term and even intergenerational impacts from exposure
to endocrine-disrupting POPs?

We have been so slow to learn because powerful elements of our society promote the belief
that a precautionary approach to chemical regulation is not financially feasible. What this
really means is that they are not prepared to accept any short-term pains that are neces-
sary to ensure long-term environmental and economic sustainability. Biological, social and
commercial history is littered with the carcasses of species, political regimes and commer-
cial enterprises that were unable to change. Some important industrial lobby groups that
perpetuate this state of affairs in, for example, North America strongly influence political
decision making.