Controversies in Aquatic Sciences

The aquatic sciences have their share of scientific controversies. In some cases the controversy is the classic situation of economic benefit versus environmental protection; in other cases it involves “genuine” scientific debate over uncertainties of the science or debate over what management option is optimal. This chapter discusses two pollution cases that pit scientists from universities or government agencies against those supported by the industry responsible for the pollution. Additional controversies that are also discussed are a disagreement over management options for shoreline protection, and a scientific disagreement over uncertainties in data on fish populations, which is usually the reason for controversies over fisheries. Controversies over effects of pollution often focus on how much (what concentration) of a chemical is needed to produce a certain harmful effect. Chemical companies tend to argue that levels of a chemical found in the environment are too low to cause problems, while environmentalists typically contend that lower levels can be harmful. One chemical about which there is sometimes controversy is oil. In the case of oil spills, debate commonly centers on how long the effects of pollution last. Oil degrades over time, resulting in less oil in the environment. The critical issue here is: When does this degradation reach a point where spilled oil is no longer harmful? Oil is a complex combination of various hydrocarbons that generally floats on water, although some lighter-weight components (the water-soluble fraction) dissolve. Weathering is a process that takes place in the air and water, in which the lightweight components evaporate, thus leaving the heavier components (e.g., tar), which have traditionally been viewed as less toxic. When oil comes into shallow water and marshes, it can coat and smother resident communities. It can sink below the surface of beaches and marshes and remain there for many years. Oil in marsh sediments undergoes some microbial breakdown but very slowly. Effects of a small oil spill (190,000 gallons of number 2 fuel oil) in Falmouth, Massachusetts, in the late 1960s lasted for over a decade, according to Sanders et al. (1980).

Of Baby Bottles and Bisphenol A: Debates about the Safety of an Endocrine Disruptor

In a 2009 episode of The Simpsons, Marge Simpson baked what she considered the ultimate healthy, socially conscious, safe snack food: “home­made, organic, nongluten, fairtrade zucchini cupcakes.” Proudly presenting the cupcakes to her daughter’s playgroup, Marge was asked what kind of butter she’d used. “None!” she exclaimed; she had baked the cupcakes in a nonstick pan. But Marge’s beaming pride quickly dissolved into embarrassment when she learned of her apparent eco-stupidity. Marge didn’t know that nonstick pans were made with PFOA (perflurooctanoic acid). “There is only one thing more dangerous than PFOAs, Marge,” one mother declared. “Plastics made with BPAs. Never, ever let your child near any product with the number 7.” At that moment, a child tips a cup up to his mouth revealing the number 7 on the bottom of the cup. The mothers scream in unison and run hysterically out of the house. Bisphenol A (or BPA) had become a three-letter household word. The chemical, used for over a half-century in plastics, was now at the center of a contentious scientific and political debate as well as fodder for prime-time cultural satire. Was BPA safe? On the one hand, a growing number of researchers, championed by environmental and health advocates, point to a growing body of research suggestive of serious health risks of BPA. This includes animal research on low-level effects of BPA exposure on prostate and mammary gland development and neurobehavioral function and development; a small but growing body of epidemiological research on BPA exposures and cardio­vascular disease, diabetes, and social behavioral problems; and evidence of widespread, low-level human exposure including in pregnant women (vom Saal et al. 2007; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2008). On the other hand, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its counterpart in Europe, the European Food Safety Authority, maintain that the levels in food are low enough to be considered safe for all humans.

How to Feed Ourselves—Could This Be the Biggest Question of the 21st Century?

Not all scientific controversies are fought in the laboratory: Today much of our planet is the testing ground in a scientific controversy touching virtually every human being on Earth. It centers on the path we choose to feed ourselves, a choice that will create ripples ranging from the extent of hunger and the severity of climate change to how many species remain at century’s end. And that path will be shaped by what social philosopher Erich Fromm (1973) called a “frame of orientation”—the core assumptions, often beneath conscious awareness, through which we each view our world. For human beings, these frames function as filters, determining what we see and what we do not see. Today, two quite different ways of seeing the global food challenge are emerging as scientists, farmers, and engaged citizens struggle to answer the question: How will we feed ourselves? Here I contrast the frames, the first and dominant one—promoted in most US agricultural universities and by farm-related corporations—I call “productivist” because the frame defines the challenge of conquering today’s hunger and meeting growing demand largely as that of producing more food. Limiting the human population is also seen as critical. The second lens is my own and that of a growing number of food and farming experts worldwide. It is sometimes described as “ecological” or “sustainable.” But such terms might mislead by suggesting a worldview focusing principally, or exclusively, on the environment. So I prefer to call the lens “relational,” suggesting a way of seeing that embraces both the ecological and social dimensions of the food system. Its focus is not primarily on the quantities produced but the qualities of relationships within both human and nonhuman aspects of food systems, as it asks whether these relationships enhance life. I first present the productivist frame and then the relational. Worldwide, our “food system is working for the majority of people,” notes the UK think-tank Foresight (2011, p. 36). Yields of major food crops have grown markedly.

Privacy Concerns for Ubiquitous Data Aggregation and Storage

Information technology has drastically changed the ways in which individuals are accounted for and monitored in societies. Over the past two decades, the United States and other countries worldwide have seen a tremendous increase in the number of individuals with access to the Internet. Data collected by the World Bank shows that 17.5 of every 100 people in the world had access to the Internet in 2006, and this number increased to 23.2 in 2008, 29.5 in 2010, and 32.8 in 2011 (World Bank 2012). According to the latest Cisco traffic report, Internet traffic exceeded 30 exabytes (1018 bytes) per month in 2011 and is expected to reach a zettabyte (1021 bytes) per month by 2015 (Cisco Systems 2011). Activities on the Web are no longer limited to seemingly noncontroversial practices like e-mail. The sheer growth of the Internet as a medium for communication and information sharing as well as the development of large, high-performance data centers have made it easier and less expensive for companies and governments to aggregate large amounts of data generated by individuals. Today, many people’s personal lives can be pieced together relatively easily according to their search histories and the information that they provide on social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Therefore, technological breakthroughs associated with computing raise important questions regarding information security and the role of privacy in society. As individuals begin using the Internet for e-commerce, e-government, and a variety of other services, data about their activities has been collected and stored by entities in both the public and private sectors. For the private sector, consumer activities on the Internet provide lucrative information about user spending habits that can then be used to generate targeted advertisements. Companies have developed business models that rely on the sale of such information to third-party entities, whether they are other companies or the federal government. As for the public sector, data collection occurs through any exchange a government may have with its citizens.

Biological Invasions: Impacts, Management, and Controversies

A biological invasion occurs when a species introduced deliberately or inadvertently by humans establishes a population far from its native home, maintains itself without human assistance, and spreads beyond the point of introduction (Richardson et al. 2000). Some definitions (e.g., President Clinton’s Executive Order 13112 of 1999) require that the spreading species have a harmful impact, but this is not a part of biologists’ definition. The rare occasions on which a species arrives on its own and spreads in a distant location—such as the African cattle egret reaching the New World—do not qualify as invasions. Although some invasions (e.g., ship rats on Mediterranean islands) occurred thousands of years ago (Ruffino and Vidal 2010), the major surge began with the European discovery and colonization of the New World, which initiated the widespread intercontinental movement of animals, plants, and humans known as the Columbian Exchange. Early explorers and colonists observed European plants in North America by the 17th century, and by the 19th century biogeographers routinely classified species as native, introduced, or of unknown origin (Chew and Hamilton 2010), but few concerned themselves with impacts of introduced species. A remarkable 1958 book for a lay audience by English ecologist Charles Elton, The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants, described many invasion impacts. It is often cited as having founded the modern field of invasion biology (see Elton 2000). In fact, it was ahead of its time and had little effect. Rather, a project in the mid-1980s of the international Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment engaged hundreds of scientists in an attempt to understand why only certain invasions led to impacts and how to minimize these (Simberloff 2010a). These efforts led to the rapid growth of a distinct science, invasion biology, and today thousands of researchers annually publish hundreds of papers on invasions. Invasions are idiosyncratic, and the routes to some impacts are so tortuous that one would never have predicted them.

Politics in a Bottle: BPA, Children’s Health, and the Fight for Toxics Reform

The nationwide legal uprising against the chemical bisphenol A (more popularly known as BPA) began in Minnesota in 2009 when the state legislature there voted to ban the substance from children’s products—including sippy cups and baby bottles. Grassroots activism aimed at insti­tuting local and state-level legislation banning BPA in children’s products has since escalated as new players in the world of toxics activism have emerged with demands to remove the controversial chemical from products designed for use by children. Frustrated with inaction at the federal level following scores of health studies, a slew of ambiguous regulatory reviews, and staunch efforts by lobby organizations, these new groups have taken their fight about BPA and health to states, counties, cities, and local municipalities. As of this writing, eleven U.S. states now have legislation banning or restricting the use of BPA in products for kids. These actions in the United States followed actions taken by Canada to first identify BPA as a minimal health hazard to children (in 2008) and then to later officially recognized BPA as toxic (in 2010), a declaration that requires government action. Indeed, all of this action at the state level is having the intended effect: The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced in July of 2012 that BPA could no longer be used in baby bottles and children’s drinking cups. But that pronouncement has done little to quell the debate. As the president of the National Research Center for Women and Families noted about the July 2012 decision: “[The FDA is] instituting a ban that is already in effect voluntarily.” The sentiment is congruent with the statements made by the American Chemistry Council (the nation’s largest lobby group for the chemical industry) following the announcement. According to the statement, the American Chemistry Council requested that the FDA take action because of the patchwork of legislation taking shape at the state level and that had already encouraged most manufacturers to simply stop using BPA in these products (Tavernise 2012).

Chemicals Policy in the United States—The Need for New Directions

The system for regulating toxic substances in the United States is broken. It is disjointed and reactionary, lacking in information, authority, and primary prevention. The case study of bisphenol A (BPA) demonstrates a myriad of limitations with the way we evaluate, regulate, and manage toxic substances in society. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a brief overview of the current U.S. system for regulating toxic chemicals and to identify limits in that approach with particular emphasis on BPA. It provides an overview of some of the drivers shaping new approaches to chemicals regulation and management and a framework for designing more precautionary and solutions-stimulating policies in the future. The U.S. system for regulating toxic chemicals in production systems and products is relatively complex. Different types of chemicals are regulated in various ways in the U.S. system, depending on how that chemical is being used. For example, cosmetics, chemicals used in food applications, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act, and each of these types of chemical applications is regulated differently under the Act. For chemicals used in cosmetic products, the FDA has no premarket authority and can regulate a chemical ingredient only if it is mis­branded or adulterates the product. In the case of new food contact substances and uses of them (indirect food additives including chemicals that might leach out of packaging such as bottles), manufacturers are required to submit notifications, including safety data, to the FDA, except when a substance is previously regulated or considered “generally recognized as safe” because earlier evidence on that material did not indicate concerns. At the FDA, the highest evidentiary burdens are for medical devices and pharmaceuticals that have strong premarket testing requirements to ensure safety and efficacy. Chemicals in many consumer products, such as toys, are regulated by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act and the Federal Hazardous Substances Act.

Endocrine Disruptors in the Environment

Since World War II, the production of synthetic chemicals has increased more than 30-fold due to the post-war boom in petrochemical exploration, manufacture, and marketing. The modern chemical industry, now a global enterprise of $2 trillion annually, is central to the world economy, as it generates millions of jobs and consumes vast quantities of energy and raw materials. Today, more than 70,000 different industrial chemicals are synthesized and sold each year (Chandler 2005; McCoy et al. 2006). New technologies and methods for the detection of these synthetic chemicals have drawn increasing attention to the pervasive and persistent presence of hormone-disrupting chemicals in our lives. Hormones—the chemicals that deliver messages throughout the body in order to coordinate physical processes—are deeply sensitive to external interference, and the consequences of such interference are becoming ever more apparent. In July 2005, the Centers for Disease Control (2005) released its Third National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, revealing that industrial chemicals now permeate bodies and ecosystems. Many of these chemicals can interfere with the body’s hormonal signaling system (called the endocrine system), and many persistently resist the metabolic processes that bind and break down natural hormones. More than 358 industrial chemicals and pesticides have been detected in the cord blood of minority American infants (Environmental Working Group 2009). Accumulating data suggests that reproductive problems are also increasing across a broad range of animals, from Great Lakes fish to people. Many researchers suspect that the culprits are environmental exposures to synthetic chemicals that disrupt hormonal signals, particularly in the developing fetus. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals are not rare; they include the most common synthetic chemicals in production, such as many pesticides, plastics, and pharmaceutical drugs. Since World War II, synthetic endocrine-disrupting chemicals have permeated bodies and ecosystems throughout the globe, potentially with profound health and ecological effects (Krimsky 2000). Hormones are chemical signals that regulate communication among cells and organs, thus orchestrating a complex process of fetal development that relies on precise dosage and timing.

Critical Infrastructure in Extreme Events

The September 11 attacks triggered concern about the performance of “critical” infrastructure on which social, political, and economic activity depend. The attacks moved terrorism to the top of the national security agenda and led to significant legislative, regulatory, and behavioral changes. Furthermore, the shift in focus to the threat of terrorism diminished policymakers’ appreciation and preparation for the natural disasters that communities typically face every year (Boin and McConnell 2007). The increasing number of declared natural disasters, coupled with the threat of terrorism, suggests that “extreme events” can lead to failures in critical infrastructure. These failures have national implications that can ripple through society and the economy. This chapter is about the performance of our interdependent infrastruc­ture systems in extreme events, which are outside shocks to infrastructures; we do not consider failures internal to a system, such as major power blackouts that are not triggered by some significant external shock. We argue that “infrastructure” is best considered as systems of technical and social systems that interact in both predictable and unpredictable ways. As such, we cannot simply consider their design and performance as solely technological problems. There is no one universally accepted definition of “infrastructure.” The Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines the term as “the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g., buildings, roads, power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise” but uses the example sentence “the social and economic infrastructure of a country,” suggesting that the term is very broad and very vague. The term came into widespread use in the 1960s and 1970s to mean “public works” (Boin and McConnell 2007). Alternative definitions link “public works” with narrowly defined systems, such as telecommunications and electrical systems, as well as broader systems such as finance, health care, and food production and distribution. The broader definition of infrastructure, which gained currency after September 11, refers to what’s become known as “critical” infrastructure.

Introduction: From Sustainability to Surveillance

At Stanford University, a long-standing tradition is for undergraduate students to identify themselves as “techies” or “fuzzies.” Techie students study math, engineering, physics, biology, and related fields in the natural sciences, and most of their coursework revolves around solving problem sets. Fuzzy students study art, history, communications, and other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, and most of their coursework involves writing term papers. When asked to explain the difference between the two, one student offered a very simple, quotidian explanation: Techies study questions that have right or wrong answers, while fuzzies study questions where acceptable answers can be multiple and ambiguous. While the techie/fuzzy distinction is largely intended to be humorous, there is nonetheless something to it; it reflects multiple historical cleavages: fact versus opinion, natural versus social world, and science versus non-science. The existence of scientific and technological controversies illustrates the woeful inadequacy of these dualistic categories for two reasons. First, the acquisition of scientific knowledge is not a simple matter of factfinding, whereby scientists go out and discover The Truth, straight-forwardly reading off of nature. Scientific knowledge reflects the historical, political, economic, cultural, and institutional environments in which it is embedded (Latour and Woolgar 1979; Pinch and Bijker 1984). Favored methods of investigation, what levels of uncertainty are acceptable, and error type preferences (false positive versus false negative), among other factors that shape how science is done, reflect human history and values. In this context, science and technology are neither above nor immune from controversy. Second, social problems that are intrinsically related to certain technologies (for instance, the environmental consequences of fossil-based energy production) are arguably becoming increasingly acute. In the face of these kinds of challenges, it is no longer sufficient for scientific and technological controversies to be left solely in the hands of scientists and other experts. Scientific claims are becoming increasingly politicized by citizen groups, public officials, and others, many of whom are actively challenging traditional notions of what constitutes valid and acceptable knowledge. The “black box” of scientific expertise has been cracked open, and it is only likely to open wider.