Hello friends, it's the Environment Show and welcome.
Study says it does not.
Experience says it does.
A new study says ultraviolet light is no more harmful beneath the ozone hole, but travelers
report skin rashes.
So what is the story?
We'll have the story.
Also making new history along the Tennessee River.
And if you want something done, do it yourself.
It has its rewards.
My neighborhood is completely different.
We have a unity among ourselves now.
It was just amazing to me to see people get together and work.
Have fun.
Last get to know each other.
These stories this time on the Environment Show, a national production made possible by
Heming's Motor News, the monthly Bible of the Old Car Hobby, 1-800-C-A-R-H-E-R-E.
And this is Bruce Robertson.
Ultraviolet radiation is no more dangerous in Chile than it is in Florida, despite the
loss of protective ozone over the southern hemisphere.
This is the conclusion of Dr. Oliver Schein, a practicing ophthalmologist at Johns Hopkins
Hospital in Baltimore.
Schein says it is well known that welders typically have a higher incidence of eye disease
being exposed to the damaging light from the welding arc.
This is true worldwide.
So having heard dire reports of blind fish, sheep with cataracts and human skin cancers
on the increase in regions beneath the now famous ozone hole over Antarctica, Dr. Schein
says he wanted to find out what is going on.
The goal of our expedition to southern Chile was to investigate some of these reports
in humans and animals and to try to look at the actual exposure that had occurred on
the ground and to try to put that into some kind of context.
What we found was that the reports turned out not to be, we couldn't substantiate the
reports.
There were a few cases of ultraviolet light related eye disease, but they were in welders
just the way you would expect to see them in a place in the world.
And we had with us a veterinarian, he specializes in eye disease, and he examined hundreds
of sheep from different ranches in the area.
And the most alarming reports were actually not in humans, but in sheep.
And he was unable to find any cataract or any blinding disease in these or other animals.
This despite the fact that he also measured more than twice the normal amount of ultraviolet
light coming to the surface on several occasions when the ozone hole was known to be particularly
thin and wide.
In fact, shine says the amount of UV hitting the surface at the southern tip of Chile was
less than the amount registered over 1,000 miles north in Santiago.
Further he says the amount was even less than you would get in Florida or any other sunny
environment.
This because of the cloud cover over the south and because of the angle of the earth's
axis near the equator where sunlight strikes more intensely.
So the actual contribution on a monthly or yearly basis of that ozone hole to the ultraviolet
exposure was very, very minimal.
So there was a real occurrence there in that the ozone layer has been thinning and that
is a cause for a long term concern.
At least the short term reports of human and animal disease are not supportable.
But don't tell this to Melody Duchen.
An expert in ozone and atmosphere issues, Duchen campaigns for policy reform at the Green
Peace Office in Seattle, Washington.
I traveled down to the southern tip of South America last December as the Antarctica
ozone hole was breaking up.
Although this is clearly anecdotal evidence, I broke out in a skin rash and had to keep
myself covered from head to toe.
I was walking around with gloves and a hat and a whole nine yards even though it was summertime
dot down there.
And it felt very strange.
The sun was incredibly strong down there and it's very akin to if you put your hand
into an oven to pull something out and you get that incredible hot feeling on your skin.
So it's completely unsigned to think it's just an anecdotal observation on my part but
I definitely felt the difference and my skin burned in about 10 minutes down there, 10
or 15 minutes.
So clearly because of CFCs and HCFCs there is very, very severe ozone depletion down in
the southern hemisphere as well as in the northern hemisphere during our winter and spring.
And that's causing ultraviolet radiation to more ultraviolet radiation to hit the planet.
And the point that I'd actually like to make is that only about 100 studies, 100 scientists
globally are studying the impacts of ultraviolet radiation.
So there is so much that we don't know about what's going on in southern Chile or what's
going on in our environment up here in the northern hemisphere.
But in the absence of that data given what we do know, it's not an excuse for continuing
the production and the emissions of those undisturbing chemicals.
And that's why Greenpeace is calling for the immediate haul to the production of these
chemicals because the ozone layer is already well past its breaking point.
In fact nearly every scientific study corroborates the findings of NASA that ozone is thinning
over the poles and that chemical analysis point to human-induced chemicals as the cause.
Dr. Shine has already said that he found evidence of ozone depletion and a higher amount of UV
light hitting Earth's surface.
If we also know that UV light does have a toxic effect on skin and eyes, what then is the
conclusion of the Chilean study?
Again Dr. Shine.
I think it's important to separate the negative findings of our one investigation which followed
a single exposure in one very localized part of the world.
It's important to separate those negative findings from the larger public health concern.
And that is that there is a logic that excess exposure to ultraviolet radiation, whether
it's because of a thinning of the ozone layer or simply because of personal behavior such
as sunbathing or not protecting yourself with sunblock or a hat or sunglasses, that there
are long-term health effects that are important.
So the common sense of behavior is important over a lifetime and ongoing measurement of
the stratosphere, the ozone layer and of the amount of radiation that hits the ground
is definitely needed, absolutely.
Speaking from the Greenpeace office where campaigners are not known to take issues sitting
down, Melanie Ducin is skeptical and politically energized.
Well I think in the absence of any real proof, the most prudent course of action is to take
the precautionary course of action which is if you're not sure exactly what's going
on, then what you need to do is stop production of the offensive chemicals, those are ozone
destroying chemicals, stop ravaging the ozone layer and then let's take the time to
study and figure out are they actually damaging the ozone layer?
If in fact they are, is it actually resulting in damage to the planet?
We have to reverse the burden of proof and put it back on the chemical industry.
I mean these chemicals are being treated as if they have constitutional rights, they're
innocent until proven guilty.
And I think that the kind of work that's going on at Johns Hopkins is very good.
We need to be studying the impacts of additional ultraviolet radiation on the planet, but we
absolutely positively have to take the precautionary approach and stop production of these
offensive compounds while the study is going on.
Melanie Ducin calls herself a chlorine campaigner for ozone protection working out of the
Greenpeace Office in Seattle, Washington.
Dr. Oliver Shine is a practicing ophthalmologist and associate professor of ophthalmology at
the Wilmer Eye Institute of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.
His study was published in the American Journal of Public Health.
This is Bruce Robertson.
You're listening to the Environment Show, a program about the environment, the air,
water, soil, wildlife, and people of our common habitat.
Yet to come, running out of water, citizens in one Maryland community take matters into
their own hands.
If you'd like to drop us a line, dress your questions and comments to the Environment
Show 318 Central Avenue, Albany, New York 1-2-2-06.
That's the Environment Show 318 Central Avenue, Albany, New York 1-2-2-06.
Come down to the river.
This is what people said they wanted to do in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
The Tennessee River once flowed dirty and polluted as it twisted in turn past Ross's landing,
sight of the original outpost now become the city of Chattanooga.
After decades of heavy industrial use, highway development, and neglect, the river was quite
literally off limits out of reach of the citizens of Chattanooga.
Beginning a process to clean up the city, a broad-based coalition from the community convened
in 1984 to start visioning.
It's a term referring to a sort of collective daydreaming.
Eleanor Cooper served as executive director of the organization guiding the visioning process,
Chattanooga Venture.
Today Cooper sits beside the fountains of Miller Plaza Park and recalls those early days.
In the visioning process, we ask people what they valued most about their community and
the natural beauty was the number one asset.
Also when we began to identify goals, returning to the river and creating a river park was one
of the first goals.
We did that first because it had tremendous public impact.
We did it with very high quality and a great deal of sensitivity to the beauty of the area,
to the natural beauty.
When the first day had opened, people instantly felt that they were welcome there.
It's been crowded ever since.
So the river park is not only symbolic, but it's also the actual experience of returning
to the river and seeing the natural beauty in which we live.
Where once the city was cut off from the river by highways and thick undergrowth along the
banks, today a green space park winds for miles and miles.
Sometimes confined to a boardwalk, other times widening to a recreational park with benches
and children's play areas.
At all times the river is nearby, the water and the land in close bond.
The walkway is cantilevered along the river bank in such a way that you have the feeling
of, in fact, coming down to the river.
Periodically well-built piers stretch out into the river, allowing access for fishing and
bird-watching.
It is not difficult to find time alone along the trail, even on a popular and busy day.
It is also not difficult to find new neighbors.
Cooper says this is quite intentional.
All from all walks, all races, economic backgrounds and abilities, all come down to the river.
I noticed this immediately that everyone felt comfortable at the river park and what
I learned from this was that we need new places because the old places are tainted with
history.
The new places give us a place to recreate our future.
Cooper says the south particularly has old history attached to its social gathering
places, places where racial tension and economic disparity have kept people apart.
Although she mentions this concept of new history only in passing, this is actually a powerful
centerpiece of the visioning process, the empowerment of the citizens as they work to improve
their community while paying special attention to environmental issues.
Chenniga is not the place you would most expect and environmental attend to come from because
we were known as a very polluted city and we were very industrial, traditional, conservative
industrial town.
We have a lot of pollution problems.
But this agenda has emerged here partly because of those very reasons because we were
designated the most polluted city in 1969 air pollution.
That gave us a reputation we didn't want to live with.
And so our city leaders came together and made a commitment at that time with a great
deal of pressure from the community as a whole to clean up the air and they did that.
And I think when we actually accomplished that in such a dramatic way and were recognized
as one of the few cities that had made the clean air list, I think we had a sense of
empowerment that we are the ones who made the difference.
People do make a difference in these environmental decisions.
They aren't something that are distant and remote like the whole over the Antarctica or
Dine animal species.
Those are things you feel like you have no control over.
But when you can clean up your own air, you feel like you do have control.
So I think that was one thing that empowered us.
And the second thing was we began to see environmental not as something out there distant from
us but as something that affects our community and our everyday life.
It was the kind of housing we lived in, parks that we could recreate in air and water that
we breathed and drank the kind of food that we could get and where we got it from.
And all those issues are so immediate and have such a dramatic impact on your life that
suddenly environment became equal to community.
The visioning process resulted in the naming of 40 goals, 232 specific projects around
the city, the creation of 1,300 new jobs and the pumping of some $793 million into the
community as a result of working on these projects.
The success of the process begun in 1984 stunned that the community says Cooper, she says
85% of the original goals have been realized.
As a result she says they convened again in 1990 to set up a new set of challenges.
These projects are underway.
Cooper says the results of the visioning process can be seen on the streets of Chattanooga
and in the spirit of its citizens.
I think the visioning process ultimately changed our culture.
It changed the way we define ourselves and what we expect from our government agencies,
our businesses and our collective hope.
We expect a lot more of ourselves.
And it also undermined our ability to be cynical because we now realize it's our own vision
that we're failing and not them.
It's up the they out there who aren't doing it but it's ourselves.
And so I think we have a sense of empowerment rather than cynicism.
Besides the leaping fountains of Miller Plaza Park in Chattanooga, Eleanor Cooper, former
executive director of Chattanooga Venture, the guiding organization for the visioning process
underway in Chattanooga, she's now president of the Cooper Company, a consulting firm providing
assistance to communities wishing to organize in this way.
For their efforts, the citizens of Chattanooga have attracted the attention of the United
Nations which is studying the region as a model community.
President Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development likewise has named the city a success
story worthy of national attention.
Cooper cautions against high expectations.
She says the city is only a real place with real people in the middle of a process, full
of success and failure.
This is Bruce Robertson.
If you want to do it yourself, never has this axiom applied more appropriately than in
a small community near Hagerstown, Maryland where residents were running out of drinking
water.
After watching their wells run dry, the citizens approached the county commissioners asking
to be connected to the town water supply.
Sorry, they were told no money.
If you want the water, you're going to have to pay for the project to be built from
the end of the line to your homes at a tremendous cost.
Sheila Jones is a homemaker in that community and said this was simply not an option.
What was an option was something outlined in a book that she got hold of, Self Help Handbook
for small towns, water and waste water projects.
And through Self Help, we found that we could get those materials ourselves, we could
shop around for prices, we could do all the labor, we could do our own easements.
Self Help, when we were introduced to that, it was like, you know, we were at the end
of the line.
It was like the last straw.
We had nowhere else to turn.
And wells had started to dry up at that point.
And we were introduced to Self Help through our county sanitary district.
And Jane Schott came with another consultant and they explained to us just exactly what
Self Help was.
And they provided us a way to obtain clean safe, drinking water at affordable prices.
More of Sheila Jones in a moment, Jane Schott's, she is co-author of the Self Help Handbook,
published by the Rensselerville Institute in New York.
So what is the deal here?
The idea of Self Help, of course, is not a new idea.
It's essentially barn raising, a premise that when there's a problem, everybody rallies
around and fixes it.
And this works to the surprise of many people, very well not only in raising barns, but
in building water systems and sewer systems.
There is no compromise of quality.
Everything is done according to state and federal regulations.
And it relies on an ingredient that is generally overlooked and that is the capacity of individuals
who are strongly motivated.
We believe that a plan is made feasible by the caring and motivation of somebody who is
deeply concerned.
And those are the people that we look for in all of these places, a person we call the
Spark Plug.
Which in this case was Sheila Jones.
What says the Self Help Handbook has become increasingly useful and in demand as federal,
state and local regulations regarding water supply and wastewater treatment get implemented.
She says it is becoming increasingly expensive and just downright confusing to follow these
regulations.
So, a community needs a Spark Plug.
Near Hagerstown, that would be Sheila Jones.
She says by doing the project themselves, they saved as she says, lots.
I can tell you, on the initial cost with the sanitary district head, well, it eventually
got up to $327,000.
And we had hook up fees of $1,585.
And $700 of that would go to the Washington County sanitary district for a quarterly loan
payment, which was $54.25.
And we would be paying for that for over a 30-year period.
And then we would be paying $16.50 for the water.
But by doing it through Self Help, yeah, we definitely, we brought it down.
The project ended up at $179,000.
We saved $89,000 just in our volunteer labor.
I guess so.
Now, this is a big challenge, as you rightly mentioned, that you did it all yourselves.
How did you actually get up this, almost the courage, really, to undertake both construction
project and also dealing with some of the legal issues that are involved?
The book lays it out, but how did you start?
Well, we started just by having meetings in our homes.
I mean, when you all have the same problem, and it's not getting solved, and you find
out that you can do it yourself, you make a quick decision there.
And that's just exactly what we did.
We met in our homes.
We looked at doing it ourselves.
We looked at our options.
We could either just wait, which, to us, wasn't an option because, like I said, so many
of us were ending up with that water at all.
And, or we could go with Self Help.
And that's what we voted to do, and we've got such a determined bunch of people out
here.
I mean, we saw our homes for just property value of what your house works if you don't
have water.
And for our protection, we didn't have any for our protection.
And we just voted to go with Self Help and started organizing and getting things together.
They applied for a loan through a state grant and then got engineers involved to provide
a design.
Job schedules were designed, and the citizens went out to water projects to watch how
it's done.
In the end, the city of Hagerstown and the county roads department supplied the heavy
equipment.
This was just a little ironic that at first these public agencies did not have the money
to put out for a project, but then when the citizens came along, suddenly the equipment
was available.
With a lot of work, the water flowed.
Joan says the project brought more than water to their homes and communities.
I think that, you know, I take a great sense of fire in what we did.
Our neighborhood is completely different.
We have a unity among ourselves now.
It was just amazing to me to see people get together and work.
Have fun.
Last, get to know each other.
And all the time work and to solve a problem that affected all of us.
With regulations being re-examined by the 104th Congress toward possibly loosening those
regulations and eliminating funding, Jane Schott says this style of problem solving is
going to be more and more attractive.
But could this be done in a Chicago or a Los Angeles?
She says it likely will be more effective and in demand in rural communities, less so
if at all for metropolitan districts such as Chicago and Los Angeles.
These communities typically have more revenue and infrastructure.
Rural communities do not.
Jane Schott's co-author of the Self-Help Handbook for Small Towns Water and Waste Water
Projects, published by the Renslerville Institute in New York.
There are self-help projects going on now in many states including Idaho, North Carolina,
Tennessee, Texas and in Washington State.
And this is Bruce Robertson.
Well, that's our report on the Environment Show for another week and we're glad you
joined us.
We hope you'll make a note tuning again next week at this same time for more news on
the environment.
For a cassette copy of this program, phone 1-800-747-7444, ask for the Environment Show,
program number 286.
That's 1-800-747-7444, the Environment Show, program number 286.
Or thanks this week to production assistant Wendy Loetz.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national production solely responsible for
its content.
Dr. Ellen Shartock, executive producer, this is Bruce Robertson.
The Environment Show is made possible by Heming's Motor News, the monthly Bible of the
Old Car Hobby, 1-800-C-A-R-H-E-R-E.
