The Precautionary Principal and the Tale of Two Disasters: the BP Spill and Cancer

By Ann Cooper

I spent the weekend with a good friend who has cancer and in the next few weeks I’ll go to visit another.  Both 50-something women who eat well, get lots of exercise, take care of themselves, have work they love, spouses and families they love and who love them and live in places they love.  Yet both these wonderful women who I love very much have cancer and frankly it’s just horrible.

Over Memorial Day weekend I thought about cancer a lot, but I also heard over and over and over in the news all about the BP oil spill, which will very probably decimate the Gulf of Mexico’s wild-life, fishing industry and perhaps even the area’s economy for generations to come.  Today is day 48 of the oil spill, 48 days with accusations, lies, dying fish, dying communities, dying fishing industry, false promises, plenty of blaming and tens of thousands of gallons of oil spewing forth.  And yet, there doesn’t seem to be a clear understanding of how and why we find ourselves in this situation; however I believe it’s because we don’t often invoke the precautionary principal when money and power are in the balance. The Principal states:

"When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof. The process of applying the precautionary principle must be open, informed and democratic and must include potentially affected parties. It must also involve an examination of the full range of alternatives, including no action." - Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle, Jan. 1998

So if we had held up deep water drilling to the lens of the precautionary principal would we be where we are today, 48 days into a crisis where the nearest end in sight seems to be 90 days away and the outcome seems assured; a staggering loss of wildlife, wildlife habitat, sea life, fisheries and communities.  But in our capitalist/corporate greed environment that’s not how we think.  Oil is money and power and between lobbyists, the congress and even the White House money and power outweigh precaution.

With the culmination of the Second World War, our country found itself at a cross-road from an industrial revolution perspective.  The war machine had birthed technologies that would help our troops win ultimate victory.  Some of these technologies were nitrogen for bombs, herbicides used as defoliants and pesticides to stave off malaria carrying mosquitoes.  When the war was “won” all of these new technologies and the businesses that had sprung up around them needed to become part of the peace-time economy, which in turn birthed industries that promoted nitrogen fertilizers and agricultural pesticides and herbicides. 

The unintended consequences of this birthing was the transformation of our agricultural system from one that basically promoted natural/sustainable agriculture to one that became increasing chemically dependent and the chemically dependent model was one promoted by our own government.

As often happens, it’s the unintended consequences that “get” us.  As our government promoted the “new” technologically advanced agriculture, as the government promoted chemical inputs and the new “green” revolution, a “genie” was let out of the bottle.  A “genie” in the form of potentially cancer causing chemicals; a “genie” whose ramifications would not be known for many decades.

Recently a government report that was commissioned by the Bush White House came out that stated that conventional agriculture could be seen as part of the cause of spikes in cancer rates and further that organic agriculture could help to mitigate some of the incidence of cancer.  Not an “out-there” idea really, equating chemicals to cancer and eating chemical free to mitigating cancer, but not one that’s especially popular in the agribusiness world.

But back to the Precautionary Principle, BP and cancer.

As I previously stated, the Precautionary Principle would have led us to consider the consequences of deep water drilling until we were “SURE” that the technology was safe.

And I believe that if people and our planet were considered in equal measure with profit, a true triple bottom-line, that well before we were seeing an increase in cancer, and well before two wonderful women were under-going chemo and radiation we would have considered the ultimate consequences.

I went for a hike this am and spent the early morning hours thinking about these issues and I came home wishing and praying that implementing the Precautionary Principal would be a part of our short-term future.

Because how many wonderful women need to become ill, how many amazing communities need to become ill and how many fisheries need to become ill – before people will become more important than business and profit.

I sure hope NOT MANY!!!