Modern technology increasingly is encroaching into human connections with the natural world and University of Washington psychologists believe this intrusion may emerge as one of the central psychological problems of our times.

“We are a technological species, but we also need a deep connection with nature in our lives,” said Peter Kahn, a UW developmental psychologist and lead author of a new study exploring how humans connect with nature and technological nature.

Writing in the current issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, Kahn and two of his UW graduate students, Rachel Severson and Jolina Ruckert, look at the psychological effects of interacting with various forms of technological nature and explore humanity’s growing estrangement from nature.

The UW researchers cite earlier experiments conducted by Kahn’s laboratory, one with a plasma display “window” and several with AIBO, a robotic dog.

The plasma window study showed that people recovered better from low-level stress by looking at an actual view of nature rather than seeing the same real-time high-definition television scene displayed on a plasma window.

“What do we compare technology to? If we compare it to no nature, technological nature works pretty well. But if we compare it to actual nature, it doesn’t seem to provide as many psychological benefits,” Kahn said.

The AIBO studies showed that children were in some ways were treating the robots as other beings But compared to interacting with a real dog, their interactions with AIBO were not as social or deep.

“Robot and virtual pets are beginning to replace children’s interactions with biologically live pets,” said Ruckert. “The larger concern is that technological nature will shift the baseline of what people perceive as the full human experience of nature, and that it will contribute to what we call environmental generational amnesia.”

This concept of amnesia proposes that people believe the natural environment they encounter during childhood is the norm, against which they measure environmental degradation later in their life. The problem with this is that each generation takes that degraded condition as a non-degraded baseline and is generally oblivious of changes and damages inflicted by previous generations.

“Poor air quality is a good example of physical degradation,” said Kahn. “We can choke on the air, and some people suffer asthma, but we tend to think that’s a pretty normal part of the human condition.

“Some people get the idea on one level if they are interested in environmental issues,” said Severson. “They see the degradation, but they don’t recognize their own experience is diminished. How many people today feel a loss such as the damming of the Columbia River compared to a wild Columbia River? A lot of us have no concept of it as a wild river and don’t feel a loss.”

Kahn likened the situation to the effort to convince people that climate change is a serious challenge. But unlike climate change, the threat posed by technological nature, isn’t right in our faces.

“People might think that if technological nature is partly good that that’s good enough,” he said. “But it’s not. Because across generations what will happen is that the good enough will become the good. If we don’t change course, it will impoverish us as a species.

###

The National Science Foundation funded the research.

Reposted from the University of Washington.

Live sustainably just because it’s the right thing to do

Do you “hope” that everyone will see the light and start living more sustainably to save the environment? If so, you may be doing more harm than good.

So say an environmental scientist and an environmental ethicist in a provocative essay in the March 2009 issue of the international journal, The Ecologist. John Vucetich, assistant professor of animal ecology at Michigan Technological University, and Michael Nelson, associate professor of environmental ethics at Michigan State University, challenge the widespread belief that hope can motivate people to solve overwhelming social and environmental problems.

“Is hope a placebo, a distraction, merely sowing the seeds of disillusionment?” they ask, in an opinion piece titled “Abandon Hope.” The authors, co-founders and directors of the Conservation Ethics Group, an of environmental ethics consultancy, examine the proper role of hope in environmentalism. They suggest that hope’s alternative is not hopelessness or despair, but rather the inherent virtue of “doing the right thing.”

For decades, say Vucetich and Nelson, we have been hammered by the ceaseless thunder of messages predicting imminent environmental cataclysm: global climate change, air and water pollution, destruction of wildlife habitat, holes in the ozone. The response of environmentalists-from Al Gore to Jane Goodall-to this persistent message of hopelessness has focused on the need to remain hopeful.

But hope may actually be counter-productive, Vucetich and Nelson suggest. “I have little reason to live sustainably if the only reason to do so is to hope for a sustainable future, because every other message I receive suggests that disaster is guaranteed,” they explain.

People are hearing radically contradictory messages:

• Scientists present evidence that profound environmental disaster is imminent.
• It is urgent to live up to an extremely high standard of sustainable living.
• The reason to live sustainably is that doing so gives hope for averting disaster.
• Yet disaster is inevitable.

“Given a predisposition to mistrust authorities, such contradictions justifiably elicit mistrust,” say Vucetich and Nelson.

If hope for averting environmental disaster is not the right reason to live sustainably, what is? The scholars say we must provide people with reasons to live sustainably that are rational and effective, based on virtues rather than consequences. That means equating sustainable living not with hope for a better future, but with basic virtues such as sharing and caring, virtues that we recognize as good in themselves and fundamentally the right way to live in the present, they explain.

One advantage to such an approach is that it can motivate even people who do not believe that we are on the brink of environmental disaster, Vucetich and Nelson point out. It also clarifies the connection between environmental and social problems, a connection many people fail to grasp.

“Instead of hope, we need to provide young people with reasons to live sustainably that are rational and effective,” they say. “We need to lift up examples of sustainable living motivated by virtue more than by a dubious belief that such actions will avert environmental disaster.”

Reprinted from Michigan Technological University.

by Ellen Holder, citizen journalist

(NaturalNews) A peek into the grocery carts of many families shopping at their neighborhood supermarkets is telling. As we watch prescription drug use, obesity rates, childhood diseases, and other health problems reach epidemic proportions we need look no further than these shopping carts for a glimpse into the nation’s health crisis. It is not a conservative estimate to say that half of the prescription drugs today could be eliminated just by fixing the three most common mistakes people make when shopping for food.

Mistake #1: Spending Too Much Time in the Aisles
The worst place you can go in any supermarket is in the aisles. The aisles of any grocery store, large or small, are filled with processed, chemical-laden foods in cardboard boxes. Keep the focus of your shopping trip on the produce, refrigerated and frozen sections; venture into the middle aisles only if you have a something specific on your list you must pick up (i.e. organic brown rice). Don’t linger in the aisle! Marketing hype on all the boxes lures many, leading to the next mistake.

Mistake #2: Reading Nutrition Labels
On the front of many packages are claims like “healthy”, “fat-free”, “sugar-free” and “low calorie”. These are simply marketing statements to lure you in. The real crime is the nutrition statement. Too many people rely on this little box of information for making their purchasing decisions, thinking that if the calories or fat grams are low or there are a lot of vitamins listed they are making a wise choice. Let’s set things straight. Adding chemical sweeteners or other synthetic ingredients to lower the fat, sugar or calorie count does not make something healthier. You are taking risks with your life by consuming these chemical additives. The only information of any importance is the ingredient listing. If you don’t understand what each and every ingredient is, leave it on the shelf!

Mistake #3: Overlooking the Organics
There is a reason for many of the synthetically added vitamins in food today. Not only does the processing strip many of the natural vitamins, but many crops grown today on conventional commercial farms are grown in soil that has been depleted. Synthetic vitamins will never take the place of whole, organic foods rich in natural vitamins, minerals and other nutrients that we are just beginning to understand. Organic produce and products are not just a luxury or novelty. They are a necessity for good health, not just in avoiding chemical pesticides but for the nutrients they provide that conventionally grown counterparts cannot hold a candle to.

Also, products containing many ingredients, such as corn or soy, may be made from genetically modified or transgenic seeds. It is estimated that up to 90% of all soy grown and up to half of all corn is transgenic. These “frankenfoods”, as they are sometimes called, will not be identified as such on ingredient labels. Buying organic is one way to assure you are avoiding transgenic foods. These genetically modified organisms (GMOs) may end up being the biggest environmental disaster, and possibly health disaster, of our lifetime. A human experiment being carried out in gigantic proportions and putting entire populations at risk is like a genie that has been let out of bottle. Only it’s doubtful any wishes will be granted.

The key to good health has always been tied to diet and exercise. Watching what you eat has been completely distorted over the years in getting people hyper-conscious of things like fat grams and fiber content. The old food pyramid still drives many people to base their diet around processed grains. When many people are lucky to consume at least one serving of fresh fruit or veggie each day, the lifestyle switch to making these foods the mainstay of their diet seems daunting. But the key begins at the grocery store! If you are stocking your home with right things and leaving the tempting, convenience foods behind at the store, you will slowly work your way to not only changing your taste buds to appreciate what nature provides, but improving your overall health too.

About the author

Ellen Holder is a health advocate, blogger and co-founder of Caren, an online store for natural, organic and synthetic chemical free skin care products. http://www.carenonline.com and http://www.carensblog.com

Reprinted from NaturalNews.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 10, 2008) – Presidential scholars have written volumes trying to understand the presidential mind. How can anyone juggle so many complicated decisions? Do those seeking office have a unique approach to decision making? Studies have suggested that power changes not only a person’s responsibilities, but also the way they think.

Now, a new study in the December issue of Psychological Science indicates that having power may lead people to automatically think in a way that makes complex decision-making easier.

Psychologists Pamela Smith, Ap Dijksterhuis and Daniël Wigboldus of Radboud University Nijmegen stimulated feelings of powerlessness or power in a group of volunteers by having some volunteers recall a situation when other people had power over them and other volunteers recall a situation when they had power over other people. Then they were given a complicated problem to solve (they had to pick among four cars, each varying on 12 different attributes). The experiment was designed so that there was a “correct” solution-that is, one of the cars had the most positive and least negative attributes, although the optimal choice was not obvious. Both the “powerful” and the “powerless” volunteers chose among the cars, but some spent time consciously thinking about the problem, while others were distracted with a word puzzle.

Previous research has shown that most people can solve complex problems better if they engage in unconscious thinking, rather than try to deliberately examine and weigh each factor. The conscious mind is not able to consider every possibility-attempts to do so bog the mind down in too much detail. Unconscious thinkers are better at solving complicated problems because they are able to think abstractly and very quickly get to the gist of the problem-they do not spend a lot of time focusing on insignificant details of the problem.

The results showed that the “powerless” volunteers performed better when they were distracted-that is, when they unconsciously thought about the problem. More interestingly, the “powerful” participants performed equally well regardless of whether they were in the conscious thinking or unconscious thinking group.

These findings indicate that powerful people’s conscious deliberation is very much like the unconscious processing of the rest of us-more abstract and better when it comes to complex decisions.

Reprinted from Science Daily.

Our world is awash with petro-chemicals. From plastics to pesticides they are integral to modern life. Wayne Ellwood argues that we are all paying the price for the release of these hazardous substances.

‘Every time I come here my body gets sad and angry at the same time,’ says Ron Plain. ‘You can’t put into words what it means to me.’

We’ve just tumbled out of Ron’s jeep near the end of a three-hour tour of Sarnia, Ontario’s ‘chemical valley’. Ron calls it his ‘toxic tour’. He’s done it dozens of times so the patter is easy and familiar. Sarnia is a gritty blue-collar community of 70,000 people at the top of the St Clair River, on the Canadian side, about a 100 kilometres north of Detroit. The river is wide and fast-flowing here, a natural link from Lake Huron, south to Lake Erie and east to Lake Ontario.

Ron is a member of the Chippewa First Nation of Aamjiwnaang and we’ve stopped at his community’s cemetery, a quiet patch of land ringed by a high steel fence. He’s 46 years old but tells me he doesn’t expect to make it to 60. Ron points out the graves of his parents, his grandparents and great grandparents, his aunts and uncles. Carbon dating shows his ancestors have been living in this area of southern Ontario for 6,000 years. It’s a warm day in early spring and the trees are just starting to leaf out. But nothing can hide the looming petro-chemical plant which abuts the graveyard. A tall chimney burns with an orange flame in the bright sun. To the east, a few hundred yards away, is a parking lot and another chemical complex. The cemetery is a microcosm of the whole reserve. Aamjiwnaang is literally surrounded by dozens of chemical plants. The community of 900 souls on the southern edge of Sarnia sits in the middle of the densest collection of petro-chemical industries in Canada and one of the densest in North America. There are 62 plants within a 25-kilometre radius, 40 per cent of the country’s total. The players include some of the word’s biggest and most powerful corporations – Dow, Shell, Nova, Bayer and Imperial Oil (Exxon) all operate within five kilometres of the reserve, most of them 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Gender bending

In 2005, according to a study by the environmental NGO Ecojustice, these factories released more than 131,000 tonnes of pollutants into the air – a toxic load of 1,800 kilograms for every resident of Sarnia and the Chippewa reserve.¹ There is growing evidence that both Aamjiwnaang and the local townspeople are suffering a range of serious health problems as a result of this rain of toxic chemicals. A community-wide survey carried out with the Sarnia Occupation Health Clinic in 2004-05 found widespread cancers, kidney and thyroid problems. Asthma is ubiquitous (40 per cent of Aamjiwnaang residents use an inhaler) and 23 per cent of children aged 5 to 16 had learning and behavioural problems.

But two of the survey’s findings were particularly unsettling and sparked worldwide attention. The first was an unusually high miscarriage rate – 39 per cent of women on the reserve had experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth. The second was a significant shift in the sex ratio of live births. Starting in the late 1990s the number of boys being born on the reserve began to plummet. Fewer than 35 per cent of live births were male compared to the normal average of just over 50 per cent.  No-one knows for sure what is causing this skewed birth pattern. But there is a strong suspicion that gender-bending pollutants are at the root of the problem.

Research by pioneering scientists like Dr Theo Colborn in the early 1990s showed that common synthetic chemicals introduced into the environment over the past half-century could mimic natural hormones, alter sexual and neurological development and impair reproduction. Dozens of studies have documented the impact of these endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) on animals, frogs, fish and birds with deformed genitals, brain damage, cancers and damaged reproductive systems. EDCs have also been linked to declining male testosterone levels and declining male birth rates in areas with concentrated chemical industries.

Many of the animal studies were in the Great Lakes bioregion where Aamjiwnaang is also situated – an area with a history of polluting heavy industries.

Jim Brophy, Director of the Occupation Health Clinic for Ontario Workers in Sarnia, knows the district well. His centre helped map the pattern of illness and disease in Aamjiwnaang. ‘Millions of tons of reproductive toxins are spewed out by these facilities year in, year out. Their effect on animal life has been well documented throughout the Great Lakes. To think these poisons would affect everything else and not the human population is bizarre.’

Rachel Carson, whose book Silent Spring launched the environmental movement nearly 50 years ago, would have been outraged but not surprised by the findings at Aamjiwnaang.

‘The chemical war is never won and all life is caught in its violent crossfire,’ she wrote. It was Carson who first promoted the notion of ecology, the complex web that binds human life to the natural world. ‘The serious student of earth history knows that neither life nor the physical world that supports it exists in little isolated compartments… harmful substances released into the environment return in time to create problems for mankind… We cannot think of the living organism alone; nor can we think of the physical environment as a separate entity. The two exist together, each acting on the other to form an ecological complex or ecosystem.’²

Carson’s warnings about the toxic nature of industrial society were prescient. Weight of evidence is building that the millions of tons of chemicals released into the environment are altering the basic foundations of life. Male fertility in the West has dropped by an estimated 50 per cent since 1940; breast cancer, testicular cancer and prostate cancer have jumped by 200 to 300 per cent. More and more male babies are being born with genital abnormalities.³

Families tested

We are living in a stew of toxic chemicals, most of which did not exist before modern synthetic chemistry was born in the crucible of World War Two. Estimates vary – there are more than 80,000 chemicals in industrial production today with hundreds added each year. Few have been tested for their effect on human health or the environment. And, critically, there is almost no knowledge of how chemicals interact with each other to affect our health or the wider environment. When the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) was passed in the US in 1976, more than 62,000 chemicals were ‘grandfathered’ into the market – ie no testing, no questions asked. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) admits that 95 per cent of all chemicals in the US have not undergone even minimal testing for toxicity. In the European Union (EU) it’s estimated that two-thirds of the 30,000 most commonly used chemicals have not been vetted. The EPA has banned just five chemicals in the past quarter-century.⁴

All of us live with this toxic burden. The poor, the marginalized, people of colour, those who are cheek-by-jowl with industrial plants, suffer the most – the Chippewa of Aamjiwnaang are a case in point. But, as Rachel Carson understood, where the environment is concerned we all live downstream.

Detailed analyses across Europe, Canada and the US have found hundreds of dangerous chemicals in the blood and urine of ordinary citizens. In Europe, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) tested three generations of women and found everything from banned pesticides like DDT to deadly PCBs. When the Environmental Working Group in the US tested the umbilical cords of 10 infants in 2005 scientists discovered more than 280 chemicals. Greenpeace came up with similar numbers in Europe.⁵ In Canada, the NGO Environmental Defence tested five families from British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. Those included seven children, five parents and one grandparent. On average, 32 chemicals were in each parent and 23 in each child. Of the 46 chemicals detected in total: 38 were cancer-causing substances; 38 were chemicals that can harm reproduction and child development; 19 can harm the nervous system; 23 can disrupt the hormone system; and 12 chemicals were linked to respiratory illnesses.⁶

The Canadian study found that children were less polluted than their parents by PCBs and organochlorine pesticides, most of which were banned before the children were born – an indication that regulatory action can make a difference. But the study also found that some children were more polluted than their parents by chemicals still in use. These included PFCs (used as stain and water repellents in clothing and furniture and for non-stick cookware) and PBDE flame-retardants.

‘Safe’ household items

Many of these chemicals are linked not just to the petro-chemical industry but to the toxins that infuse our daily lives: solvents, detergents, cosmetics, herbicides, pesticides – plastics. As the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center concluded in its recent study of chemical contamination: ‘much of our exposure may be from products we have assumed to be safe for use.’⁷

Recent concern has focused on plastic, perhaps the most ubiquitous material of the modern age. The profusion of plastic has peppered the world with potentially deadly chemicals. One of the most powerful is bisphenol A (BPA), the lifeblood of the plastics industry. Nearly three million tons of the stuff is manufactured every year. It’s used to make polycarbonate plastic, a rigid hard plastic used in everything from baby bottles and sports water bottles to CDs, DVDs, dental sealants and the resin lining food and drink containers. Polycarbonate plastic can be clear or coloured and usually has the number ‘7′ marked on the bottom. The problem with BPA is that it doesn’t stay put. As plastic ages or when liquids are heated or stored in BPA containers the chemical migrates into our bodies. In 2005 the CDC in Atlanta found BPA in the urine of 95 per cent of Americans sampled. In November 2006, 38 leading scientific experts on BPA warned of ‘potential adverse health effects of exposure’ to polycarbonate plastic.

BPA was first identified as an estrogen mimic in 1936. Hundreds of animal studies have shown that low-dose exposure to BPA could lead to a range of human health problems including reproductive tract abnormalities, breast and prostate cancer, spontaneous miscarriage, type 2 diabetes and obesity.

The evidence is not conclusive. Frederick Vom Saal of the University of Missouri, a leading researcher on the health effects of BPA, admits as much. ‘We don’t know for sure,’ he says. ‘Some of these trends are so prevalent they almost seem normal: abnormal puberty changes, fertility difficulties for both men and women, breast cancer, prostate cancer. All of these trends parallel the onset of the plastics revolution… Part of this is just connecting the dots.’⁵

The tide is turning

Although the plastics industry continues to deny the risks of BPA, the tide is turning. Industry officials brushed aside critics of BPA, claiming that the amounts found in humans were so small as to be insignificant. But hormone-mimicking chemicals like BPA don’t work that way. In fact researchers have found that endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are more dangerous at lower doses, a notion which overturns the traditional pharmacological view that ‘the dose makes the poison’.  ‘At low doses hormones stimulate their own receptors,’ says Vom Saal. ‘At higher doses they inhibit their responses.’⁸

In April 2008 Canada became the first country to limit BPA exposure, labelling the chemical ‘a dangerous substance’. Polycarbonate plastic baby bottles were banned and strict targets set for BPA migration from infant formula cans. Within days major BPA manufacturers threw in the towel, including Wal-Mart, Toys R Us and Playtex.

BPA is one of hundreds of synthetic chemicals that alter gene behaviour, what writer Pete Myers calls ‘gene hijacking’.⁹  Other plastic additives with the same gender-bending properties include phthalates and brominated flame-retardants (BPDEs). Phthalates are an essential ingredient in one of the most common of all plastics, PVC. They are used to make vinyl soft and pliable. You can find them in thousands of products, from squishy children’s toys and vinyl shower curtains to medical tubing. The chemical is also found in personal care products – shampoos, soaps, fragrances, and as a coating on some pills. ‘Phthalate syndrome’ is the term scientists coined to describe the constellation of symptoms found in animal studies. These include reduced penis size, lower sperm count, incomplete male genital development, infertility and testicular cancer. The EU has banned phthalates in children’s toys and the state of California has followed suit.

The third major group of plastic toxins are BPDEs. Half of these flame-retardants are used in the casings of myriad consumer electronics – computers, cell phones, printers, TVs, you name it. BPDEs are both persistent – they don’t break down easily in the environment – and bio-accumulative. They build up in the bodies of animals and humans through the food chain.  They also pass easily across the placental barrier in the developing foetus. BPDEs can act as endocrine disruptors and they can harm the brain of developing infants, disrupting learning and memory. They’ve also been linked to thyroid malfunctioning, reproductive problems and increased risk of testicular cancer. North Americans have levels of flame-retardants in their blood up to 40 times higher than people in Europe or Japan. ‘These compounds have the same properties as PCBs and DDT,’ says Ake Bergman, head of environmental chemistry at Stockholm University. ‘It’s just a matter of time before we have a toxic effect. We knew less about PCBs when they were banned than we know about BPDEs today… Didn’t we learn from PCBs?’¹⁰  Proven carcinogens, PCBs were banned in the 1970s. But because they bio-accumulate they are still found in the environment and in the bodies of animals and people.

Tomorrow’s tobacco

Sweden has been one of the main countries pushing the ‘precautionary principle’, a common-sense notion which the chemical industry, driven by a blinkered concern with profits and growth, has fought tooth and nail. The concept is simple: if a chemical looks like it may cause problems, let’s think twice about using it. Better safe than sorry, even if the science is not 100 per cent certain. The chemical giants (in league with Big Oil) reason differently: if it kills someone then it’s time to do something.

The US EPA approves 700 new chemicals a year on the assurance of the industry that they are safe. Meanwhile, there is growing public unease about the toxic storm that engulfs us. In June 2007, the EU adopted its REACH legislation (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals) despite a full-throttle attempt by corporate lobbyists (especially from the powerful German chemical industry) and the Bush Administration to derail the law. The result is a compromise: companies have 11 years to prove safety and chemicals produced in volumes of less than 10 tonnes a year are exempt. But the basic principle of producer responsibility is firmly in place.  Companies can no longer sell a chemical without first providing information about its safety – an important breakthrough which should have global repercussions. Elsewhere environmental and citizens’ groups are advocating ‘right to know’ legislation so polluters can no longer hide their actions from public scrutiny. Power is slowly shifting. There is a growing consensus that the current model is bankrupt. Critics predict that in 10 years the fallout from the petro-chemical and plastics plague will rank with tobacco and pesticides as a major global public health issue.

Back in Aamjiwnaang, Ron Plain would be the first to agree. He’s not about to give up his fight to force industry to clean up its act.

‘Every one of these people tells me to keep going,’ he says, gesturing to his ancestor’s graves. ‘I won’t allow them to be forgotten. This is our connection, this is who we are.’

1. E MacDonald, S Rang, Ecojustice, ‘Exposing Canada’s Chemical Valley’, Toronto, October 2007, www.ecojustice.ca
2. JB Foster, B Clark, ‘Rachel Carson’s Ecological Critique’, Monthly Review, New York, February 2008
3. Robert Allen, The Dioxin War, Pluto Press, London, 2004
4. Mark Schapiro, Exposed: the toxic chemistry of everyday products, Chelsea Green, White River Junction, Vermont, 2007
5. Libby McDonald, The Toxic Sandbox, Penguin, New York, 2007
6. ‘Pollution in Canadian Families’, Environmental Defence, Toronto, June 2006, www.toxicnation.ca
7. Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center, ‘Is It In Us? Chemical Contamination in Our Bodies’, Bolinas, California 2007, www.isitinus.com
8. Martin Mittelstaedt, ‘Inherently toxic chemical faces its future’, Globe & Mail, 8 April 2007
9. Pete Myers, ‘Good genes gone bad’, American Prospect, April 2006
10. Maria Cone, ‘Cause for alarm over chemicals’, Los Angeles Times, 20 April 2003.

Reprinted from New Internationalist.