OEcotextiles

I had a blog post about genetically modified organisims (GMOs) all ready to go,  but then I got  Sunday’s New York Times (September 13, 2009) with a front page story about rising incidences of  violations of the Clean Water Act in the U.S.:  more than half a million violations in the last five years alone.  I had been keeping track of reports of various types of pollution which come to my attention – every week on average, sometimes daily,  there is at least one article in my local paper which gets my blood boiling. Today’s article is about the widespread feminization of fish in American waters, a situation experts see as a wider problem of endocrine disruptive chemicals in our environment.  A few weeks ago I was tempted to write about the 60 Minutes segment that appeared on August 27, 2009.  As 60 Minutes says,  “this is a story about recycling – about how your best intentions to be green can be channeled into an underground sewer that flows from the United States and into the wasteland.”   You can read the story here about a place in China “where you can’t breathe the air or drink the water, a town where the blood of the children is laced with lead”.

But it was today’s article that pushed me over the edge, because we have been working so hard  to remind  people why treating the water used in textile processing is critically important!  People still think using “organic cotton” or “organic anything” results in an organic fabric, when the difference is as much as that between crude oil and silky microfiber.  The textile industry remains the number 1 industrial polluter of fresh water on the planet, and water is a precious resource that we’re having to spread among more and more people.  We can’t afford to keep discharging effluent filled with toxic chemicals that may cause grave damage to us years down the line.  The Clean Water Act regulates 100 pollutants and the Safe Drinking Water Act limits 91 chemicals in our tap water – that’s  191 chemicals in all.  Small potatoes when the list of chemicals used routinely by industry tops 100,000 – but it’s better than nothing.  Now we find even that protection may be illusory.

The article in question is part of a series that the New York Times is running called “Toxic Waters”, which examines the worsening pollution in American waters, and the response by regulators.  Today’s article, “Clean Water Laws Neglected, at a Cost”, by Charles Duhigg, is based on the hundreds of thousands of water pollution records which the Times obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and the national database of violations they compiled from that information.   This database is more comprehensive than those maintained by any state or the E.P.A.  Click here to see the entire report online (where you can also find any violations which may have occurred in your community).

They found:

• that an estimated 1 in 10 Americans have been exposed to drinking water that contains dangerous chemicals or fails to meet federal health benchmarks.
• that 40% of the nation’s community water systems violated the Safe Drinking Water Act at least once during the past year – violations that ranged from failing to maintain paperwork to allowing carcinogens into tap water.
• that more than 23 million people received drinking water that violated a health-based standard.
• that the number of violations is growing significantly.
• and that only 3% of Clean Water Act violations resulted in fines or other significant punishments.

Critics say that the E.P.A. and the states have dropped the ball.  “Without oversight and enforcement, companies will use our lakes and rivers as dumping grounds – and that’s exactly what is apparently going on,” says Representative James L. Oberstar, from Minnesota.  But regulators say they’re overwhelmed, citing the increase in workloads and dwindling resources.

And there are those who say nothing will happen until there is some public outrage.  So please read the story and let’s have some outrage!

We need to take care of the scare resources we have.  We’re running out of water for everybody, and can’t afford to squander it.  Does anybody else get uneasy when you read something like this investor’s recommendation:   “A world that’s running out of clean, dependable supplies of water located where and when farmers need it makes irrigation one of the trends I’d like to invest in.”

So when you read about the jeans factory in Lesotho which supplies denim to Levi’s and the Gap which is leaking untreated wastewater, dyed deep blue and polluted with chemicals, into the  local river – and when you read that most of the children living there have chest infections and skin irritations – don’t think it’s a world away and you’re safely protected by municipal water treatment facilities.  The New York Times findings give us scant reason to depend on our local water treatment facilities to protect us from these insults to our ecosystem.  That factory in Lesotho is spewing the effluent into your groundwater and it circulates in your water system.  Apparently that kind of egregious flaunting of the law is going on in West Virginia (and other states) too.

Note:  I live in Seattle, where the Seattle Times gets a feed from the New York Times; often a prominent story in the New York Times is displayed on the first page (or at least in the first section) of the  Seattle Times.  But this article was not carried by the Seattle Times in any section, let alone the front page.