Seeker Magazine

SkyEarth Letters

by Cherie Staples

Having Faith**

a pregnant ecologist
a nursing ecologist
searches the scientific literature on the poisoning
of earth and humans (and unacknowledged nature)
pandemic in our world
after decades of the chemists' "better living"

DDT, PCB, dioxin, chlordane, heptachlor, paraquat,
atrazine a.k.a. Round-Up
this list contains more than 75,000 names
75,000 chemical "wonders"
none tested well, most not at all, on their effects on humans
250 billion – yes, billion – pounds
sprayed all over the world since 1900

when Bill Moyers had his cell tissue tested for toxins
he had many, as do we all, for they store well in our fat cells,
products as we are of the 20th century love of "better living"

I thought:
I grew up on a very small farm
we didn't used herbicides on our corn
we didn't spray insecticides in our barn
and yet…I remembered:
every summer evening when the cows came home from
the day's pasture, we'd spray a fine mist of fly insecticide on their skin
(I think to keep them from twitching and kicking during milking)
my sister reminds me that Mom would have sought out the least toxic insecticide
ardent fan of Rodale's Organic Farming and Gardening that she was

1964: I wrote a term paper on Rachel Carson's Silent Spring
pulling information from those Organic magazines in support of Carson's
bringing to light the devastation of nature by the ubiquitous use of DDT
the absolute croniness of federal regulators and chemical companies' CEOs and attorneys
the outright lies of those chemical companies as to the safety of their products

the photos of children playing in streets filled with DDT spray in the '50s
following the trucks as the mist engulfed them

why are we surprised at high numbers of cancer victims

having Faith
ecologist Sandra Steingraber chooses her daughter's name – Faith
(perhaps Hope would have been more appropriate)
because she is bringing this child into the world
with an inordinate amount of Faith
that we will, as a world, get it right
sooner rather than later

pregnant as she researches the effects of the many toxic chemicals
endemic now to our environment
discovers how easily they cross the placental barrier
their effects during the first month of cell differentiation
into the beginnings of the brain and the nervous system, the digestive system,
in the second month of leg and arm buds
Thalidomide, diethylstilbestrol
ah, yes, the chemistry of "better living"

nursing Faith
as she researches the content of breast milk
tainted as it is in every mother now
(if it were subject to product purity testing, it would fail)
yet confirming that it is still the best provider of the immunities
that newborns and infants need

nursing mothers tread a thin line

she finds that PCBs – polychlorinated biphenyls –
a favorite lubricant of the past 50 years and a lover of fat cells
still not totally banned from use in the U.S.
drift in the air around the globe
and the air currents (in the northern hemisphere) slowly
rotate northward
until drifting down in Arctic cold
PCBs are taken up by fish, bear, seal
and human – the highest accumulation in Inuit mother's milk
and passed on to the ultimate top of the food chain – her nursing baby

her book is a call to arms to the parents of the world
to say "stop!!" to our poisoning: our self-poisoning
and our "non-point source" poisoning
(where we cannot point to the absolute source of the poisons
but we know that we've been poisoned)

to say no more toxins – it will take us generations to
rid the earth of the ones already here
and yet the country I live in – the United States –
is the absolutely worst offender in lack of oversight
of the companies that produce these poisons
we've allowed the poisoning of at least three generations
and not one federal agency looks at the synergistic toxicity of
the multiple poisonous compounds taken into our bodies

we've allowed the exportation of these poisonous chemicals
to countries with little or no environmental protection laws
to be applied by people with little or no training in the application of them
and they come back – on our food, on fabrics, on products
made in factories where we have no way of knowing what was used
in maintaining and cleaning the workspaces

the only thing keeping us alive is the miraculousness of our own bodies
in their abilities to corral and/or remove these poisons

as more dust clouds circle the globe
moving bacteria and viruses and air-borne poisons
including carbon and nitrogen compounds
from one country to the next

when we will say, it has to stop
we're killing the planet that sustains us
as we are sickening ourselves

billions of people and the global corporations just don't get
the fact that the natural capital of the earth
is finite
it is possible to use it all up

responsibilities:
keeping the earth the jewel of the solar system
healthy in ecosystems for all
stable in population of humans
ample in natural places
where people work within the firm belief that good health comes before profit

** Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood by Sandra Steingraber

Read about Steingraber's Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment, which Skyearth Letters discussed in October 1997

An April evening sky along Dry Creek, Westminster, Colorado

Photographs and Writing Copyright 2002 by Cherie Staples. No reproduction without written permission.

Table of Contents

Letter to the Author:
Cherie Staples at skyearth1@aol.com