Since I was a child, I’ve always felt a strong connection with nature. When I’m stressed, frustrated, overwhelmed or worried, I head outdoors for a good stomp in the woods, through the fields or along the coastal path. For the past 18 years, I have lived in south Devon where the sea is my playground, my sanctuary and my synagogue. It’s where I feel most grounded, most authentically me and most in tune with the seasons.
This love for the environment that surrounds me has driven me to want to protect it. Fiercely. A few years ago, when my daughter and I discovered discarded pieces of water balloons on our local beach, a remnant of recent summer regatta celebrations, we felt compelled to act. We already avoided as much single-use plastic as possible at home, and whenever we were out and about. But now we wanted to do more. So together, we set up a campaign called Plastic Clever Salcombe, an offshoot of the national Kids Against Plastic initiative. Over the course of two years, we successfully encouraged more than 60 of our local town’s businesses to ditch single-use plastics. We spoke at numerous school assemblies, organised litter picks around the estuary and inspired a wave of change throughout our coastal community.
While the focus was on plastic drinks bottles, carrier bags, disposable straws and throwaway coffee cups, it got me thinking about the less visible pollution. Plastic litter really is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s a messy symptom of our overconsumption and our society’s disconnectedness with the natural world. I wondered about the manufacture of these items, the stuff that makes them and what happens to the chemicals inside them once they end up in the waterways, on the street or caught up in a hedgerow.
Over the course of the past two years, I have researched and written Go Toxic Free to empower more people to understand toxic chemicals a little more, to know how to call for greater transparency and to simplify their own daily routines to reduce exposure to harmful or hazardous substances.
For me, as a progressive Jew and an environmentalist, change has always started in the home. I know that I can’t single-handedly prevent pollution but I can take more responsibility for my own chemical footprint and inspire others to do the same. As a child, I regularly attended LJY Netzer summer camps and “tikun olam” always featured heavily, the simple Hebrew phrase that means “to repair the world”. This Kabbalistic tradition represents our responsibility to proactively look after the natural environment and seek social justice. While the thought of fixing the whole planet is, of course, a rather overwhelming concept, we start by improving ourselves as individuals, at home, then our own communities. Each improvement is like a ripple on the surface of a pond, and when lots of people take this approach, the ripples overlap and can potentially create a big splash.
I often think about these concentric circles and how I can help take action beyond my own family, into the wider world. That’s how Plastic Clever Salcombe came about and grew, and I hope my book will have positive ripple effects too.
Toxic chemical pollution can be a tricky subject to engage with, though. It’s not as tangible or acute as a dolphin entangled in fishing net or a seahorse swimming along with its tail grasping a cotton bud. The knock-on effects can be much more of a slow burn but I have tackled it with a similar philosophy. Rather than being preachy, and asking people to stop doing things, I’ve spoken to leading experts from around the world to uncover the latest research and innovations. There are alternatives, and there is much that we can do right now in terms of making more eco-conscious decisions. We need to learn to read through the greenwash, know which questions to ask and apply much more foresight.
For me, the biggest wake-up call came when I had my own blood and house dust tested for toxic chemicals. Generally, pets and young children are at greater risk of exposure to the chemicals that accumulate in house dust – cats and dogs lick their fur, children play on the floor and regularly put their hands in their mouths. But even adults ingest 20mg or so house dust per day without realising it. To find out more about why this matters and what my own house dust contained, I sent a small fraction of the contents of my hoover bag to Stuart Harrad, professor of environmental chemistry at the University of Birmingham. He describes dust as “the soil of the indoor environment” because it acts like a sponge for chemicals in the air that get deposited on surfaces.
He analysed my dust sample for 24 flame retardants, chemicals that are added to manufactured goods to supposedly make them less flammable. Many are classed as endocrine-disruptors and interfere with the body’s hormone system. Most were present in low concentrations, except for two rarely found in UK samples. It’s possible that these originate from a rug bought abroad and the child car seats, and he assured me there was no need to worry as long as I wipe surfaces regularly — not obsessively — to remove dust before it accumulates. Also, many flame retardants transfer into dust from electronic items such as TVs and Wifi routers so I’ve started being more thorough with my cleaning routine.
I wanted to know which toxic chemicals were inside my body too. Since 2010, scientists at the UN’s Safe Planet programme have monitored the persistent organic pollutants or POPs in the blood of more than 100,000 people globally. These toxic chemicals include flame retardants and pesticides, many of which have been banned but still linger in our bodies and the environment. I had my own blood sample sent to a specialist lab in Norway and tested for the 100 or so chemicals using the same protocol.
Six weeks later, the results came back. While I knew I wouldn’t have been able to avoid everything, I was surprised to find relatively high levels of oxychlordane, a compound that comes from one particular pesticide that was banned in 1981, just a year after I was born. The “half life” of this chemical — that’s the time it takes for it to halve in concentration in my blood — is about 30 years. So not only was it probably passed to me via the womb, but I will have inadvertently passed this toxic legacy on to my own two children. The impacts of some of the most hazardous chemicals last generations.
While there’s no way to remove this from my blood, or that of my children, it’s a reminder that we must have more foresight when it comes to regulations. We need to restrict the most hazardous and harmful toxic chemicals in use today before it’s too late. But sometimes, when certain chemicals are banned, they are replaced with similar ones that might be found to be just as persistent further down the line.
So we need to hold manufacturers, big business and political leaders to account in order to call for more comprehensive legislation and more constructive investment in green chemistry solutions that design safer chemicals in the first place. Every action has a reaction – once again, it all comes back to ripple effects and that starts with each one of us.
Anna Turns is an environmental journalist and author of Go Toxic Free: Easy and Sustainable Ways to Reduce Chemical Pollution (published by Michael O’Mara, £14.99, out now)
