water conflict

water conflict

The only water battles ever are with ourselves because no matter how hard we battle, we lose, as capitalism takes a firm hand on our cultural, social, political and economic behaviour. There are currently more than 350,000 chemicals registered in Europe and North America alone, these chemicals are being allowed to circulate through the global eco-system. The Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) database has 279 million chemicals disclosed since the 1800’s.

Just some of those chemicals are embedded in mine and yours everyday life. The keyboard I’m typing on, the screen I’m seeing the words fall onto the page. They have a firm grip on the production of the ‘things’ we often find ourselves purchasing. My biggest battle and my greatest challenge has always been how do we ‘detangle’ from the culture we have created. Then I give up and retreat back into moments of meditation and mindfulness, cowering like a coward who doesn’t want to face up to the reality that I have been poisoned along my journey and how can I stop this happening to future generations?

In 1993 BBC Horizon aired Assault on the Male; What Synthetic Chemicals Negatively Affect Sperm Quality? Diethylstilbestrol, a synthetic oestrogen given to women between 1950- 1980 became the number one contender for the reproductive abnormalities in human males.

Lake Apoka, Florida, US, saw a reduction in the number of alligators and the region underwent research with a focus on abnormalities in genatalia and male species with high levels of female hormones (20% of the lakes population, including turtles). The inhabitants of the lake were having their endocrine systems disrupted, a symptom of synthetic oestrogen poisoning . Dr Theo Colburn from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) furthered this research. The message from BBC Horizon was we are living in a sea of oestrogens in the guise of pesticides and pollutants. That was then and this is now and the male sperm count has significantly lowered, from 99million per ml in 1973 to 47.1 million per ml in 2011.

Novel Entities which include chemicals, pollutants, plastic and Teflon, remain a risk as they continue to flourish through our global ecosystem. They are not currently an imminent threat to humanity but have exceeded the safe operating zone and are now a high risk. Novel Entities have become an assault on humanity and have the ability to change our molecular structure. Synthetic oestrogens do not leave our system. My mum took DES in the 1960’s and she gave birth to me in 1973. I can only assume I absorbed it too, with some symptoms of synthetic oestrogen poisoning. Our endocrine systems are becoming fragile, lets hope not too fragile that we stop reproducing