Humans are “critically dependent” on the health of the natural world for everything including oxygen and food, Sir David Attenborough has warned.

In an interview with BBC Science Focus Magazine, he said he felt the world was now more aware of environmental issues – though the problems have got bigger too.

But the naturalist said there were some people who would “never change their opinions”, suggesting US President Donald Trump could be one of them, and said it was important to try to put people in power who see the truth.

Opinion

Speaking ahead of his new Netflix series, Our Planet, made with conservation charity WWF and Silverback Films, he said: “You, me and the rest of the human species are critically dependent on the health of the natural world.

“If the seas stop producing oxygen, we would be unable to breathe, and there is no food that we can digest that doesn’t originate from the natural world.

“If we damage the natural world, we damage ourselves.”

Asked what he would say to those who are not working for the good of the environment, he said: “I would do the same as I do to anybody else – I would say: these are the facts.

“But there are some people who are never going to change their opinion, and it could well be that Mr Trump is one of them.

Natural wonder

“If you’re in a democratic society, you convince the electorate that you’re right, and try to put people in power who see the truth.”

Earlier this year, the naturalist urged politicians and business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to protect the natural world.

While he told BBC Science Focus Magazine it would be naive to think powerful people were going to change overnight after he spoke at the event, “great sea changes” do happen and “it’s up to us to bring that about”.

He also said he would love to just highlight the wonders of wildlife, but natural history film-makers “have a responsibility for pointing out that, unless we change our ways, they’re not going to be here for ever”.

Sir David named Australia’s Great Barrier Reef as the natural wonder he most wanted his great-grandchildren to be able to see.

The full interview appears in BBC Science Focus March issue, which is on sale on April 3.

This Author

Emily Beament is environment correspondent for the Press Association. 

We need a whole world of change. But how do we even begin to make that change? What will a changed world look like? A dialectical systems analysis can begin to guide us towards some answers. 

Individual human beings have needs that are met through social interaction and interdependence. The need of the individual is met only by becoming the need of the group, the institution, and of society.

The only needs that can exist are those that can be met. If an absolute need is not met, the individual dies, the society collapses. Therefore the needs of the individual are dependent on, are defined by, the needs that can be met by the society of that individual. The possibilities open to the individual are limited or prescribed by the society in which they live.

Growth of capital

Today, almost all individuals in the world live within the capitalist economic system, either within the exploiting ‘centres’, or the appropriated ‘margins’. Needs are limited to those that are or can be met by capitalism. 

There are absolute human needs which capitalism does has to satisfy. There is the need for sustenance, for shelter, and for at least limited social interaction. There are areas where these needs are not met – where capitalism as scorched the earth and the population – but this cannot be the norm.

However, there is a contradiction between human needs and capitalist needs. Capital has reached a maturity where its needs exhaust, suffocate and surround the needs of the very humans who create and activate it.

The primary need of capital is to valourise capital. The single investor only proffers money when that same money will return, with interest. The investment is in human labour and natural resources, and therefore the human performing the labour must produce more in value than they themselves retain in wages (or there would be no profit, or interest).

In aggregate, this means capital has to grow, and has to accumulate. The growth of capital is in direct conflict with human needs, given the intensity of exploitation and appropriation. 

Labour relations

The need of the investor to gain profit or interest necessitates their position in the relations of capital as exploiters. If the need is not met, the investor will lose their money and their position and role as an exploiter, pressing them down into the position of exploited.

The exploited have no capital to invest; and indeed no money to feed themselves or their families. In order to meet the basic, necessary human needs they are compelled into the marketplace to sell their labour; to create more value than they earn in wages, and to reproduce the capitalist system in which they remain entrapped.

The exploiter chases the opportunities that have the highest returns on investment, irrespective of the experience of the exploited. Those who work are forced to work harder, longer. Labour appears and is repulsive.

There is a contradiction between the needs of the individual and the needs of the system. Those who work witness the exploiters in their development and satisfaction of higher needs: the need for free time, for new experiences, for time with family. These needs evolve and develop.

We need to be free the moment we see others are free, and that therefore we have the potential to be free.

Ecological crisis

Capital seeks out and exhausts all opportunities for profit, intensified by competition. We enter an economy suffering from a crisis of overproduction. For those with money, all conceivable material needs are met, even where earning money crowds out the human need for leisure and free time.

The creative industries – film, television – tantalise with images of human beings replete in the satisfaction of their needs. Advertising identifies needs, and through the ransacking of our cultural industries, convinces us their products will meet these needs. The products that truly meet needs sell well, those that don’t sell even more well.

Even while ensnared in capitalism, we develop vital needs, those needs that become necessary to us but that cannot be satisfied by capital and its institutions. Prime among them is the need for leisure time, the need for individuation, the need to be free.

Ecological crisis – climate change, biodiversity loss, soil erosion – require that we develop a new economic system that reduces (to zero) the rapid exploitation and ruination of the natural environment. This need is utterly at odds with capitalism.

But the evolution to a post capitalist society will not come through a reduction in our ability to meet human needs (or indeed a reduction in the number of humans), but instead through an increased ability to identify and meet human needs. We can only protect that natural environment through improving the lives of those who will deliver on this project.

New economy

This is a cause of celebration, rather than abdication. The project of developing a society that shares the purpose of meeting human needs is one and the same as the project to save and enhance the natural environment, not least because a primary human need is to feel and to be a part of and not apart from the natural environment.

From the vantage point of capitalism we can see the contours of a post-capitalist society, and this vision has further definition through the use of dialectical systems thinking. This thinking posits that history is an iterative process, that a society evolves through daily change rather than simply rebooting with an entirely new operating system.

We can begin to sketch the first two major iterations of a post-capitalist economy, where the needs of human beings rather than the needs of capitalist accumulation are paramount.

The new economy will be radically different. The purpose will have changed, and the objects and the methods will in due course change to meet this purpose.

Some aspects, some individuals and institutions, will change more radically than others, and the complexity of the change will render the scene chaotic. We can time the tides, we cannot predict the waves.

Defining production

A society based on human need presumes conscious planning and production. Those humans engaged in the economy will have to identify though some method which needs are necessary, which are artificial, and where along that spectrum the collective efforts of society should be engaged.

The participants in the future economy will need to decide whether we need nuclear power, whether we need to visit other planets. Will we need to cure all disease, everywhere at all times, whatever the resources this demands. They will need to balance the need for major infrastructure with the need for idleness and leisure.

This future economy will compel its participants to seek not lower or reduced levels of production, but higher. The material needs advanced and prioritised by capitalism can be satisfied, saturated. But in any case they will begin to recede into the background. Few will decide to spend time in a mouth wash factory, rather than collecting pebbles on the beach with their daughter.

The core of the discussion would be the separation of the category of necessity and the category of freedom. It will be nature – our own nature, our natural needs – that will define the category of necessity. We will produce food, keep ourselves warm, satisfy our need for contact with others. Human needs will move well beyond material goods, or the status they infer, because this satisfaction is always a proxy.

The increased rate of production will very likely not result in an increase in production in the absolute. Instead, it will result in a rapid and defining reduction in the time and resources spent in production. Today, right now, just seven workers in Britain can produce a million potato waffles in a single day.

Fully automated

A decision for the participants within the future economy will be how much time they dedicate to production to make things of higher quality at a lower cost to the environment.

They will choose whether not only to create zero emissions and zero waste production processes but whether to invest time and resources into improving and enhancing nature, by whatever measure can be devised.

Indeed, a future economy will be fully automated. We already have machines that can make machines. We also have ‘machine learning’, and are on the cusp of an era of ‘artificial intelligence’. The possibility – and therefore following, the desire and the need – for free time is already expanding beyond the ability of capitalism to contain it.

Automation means that humans can and will likely occupy their time as instigator, designer and regulator of natural processes. Indeed, humans will themselves fall away as the primary force in mechanical or industrial production having created, discovered or understood the forces inherent in nature. We can step back in awe as nature itself recovers from the tyranny of capitalist production.

This iteration of a new society will retain some of the conditions of today. It seems likely that people will still have their contributions counted, and the amount they draw from the general stock will relate to these contributions.

Negotiating needs

Those living in the earliest stages of a post capitalist society are likely to be concerned with fairness, and to see this best realised by counting and comparing hours worked, and benefits gained. Those who work harder (longer, or more intensively) may expect to get a little more.

However, those who work will be the primary decision makers tasked with understanding human need, calculating what needs to be produced to meet these needs, and how this production should be organised and distributed.

This process should immediately see a fundamental reduction of the impact of human production on the natural world, not least because there is a fundamental and absolute human need to sustain that environment.

A further dividend will come from avoiding the madness of the capitalist market system: major corporations will no longer compete against each other in increasing unnecessary needs and simultaneously engaging in a race to the bottom in terms of cheap – and therefore almost always more harmful – production methods.

The needs met through production will also fundamentally change. People will discuss consciously and collectively what needs to be produced. The absolute needs of food, warmth, medicines will naturally come first, but the exact line between necessary and unnecessary needs will be understood to be socially contingent and also negotiable.

Coming together

People will no longer work because of the compulsion and coerciveness of the wage labour system. They will not be driven to starvation or abject poverty if they refuse to do harmful, painful and environmentally harmful work.

Another motive would have to take its place. In the earlier iterations of this new society the desire to work will derive from the human as a social animal. Pleasure will be gained from taking an active and positive role in meeting the social and individual needs of themselves, their families and their communities.

Work itself will become a source of pride and pleasure as useless industries (legal, fashion, politics, road building) will be abandoned across the board.

People will also experience a social duty to work. This can take a positive form in being celebrated, but may also manifest in other ways. It may become socially unacceptable for those who are able to contribute to be seen not to. Those people may find themselves excluded from events or moments in the social calendar designed to celebrate the wealth created by those who contribute.

Even at the earliest stages of a post-capitalist, needs-centered society, there will be enormous benefits in terms of wellbeing and increased productivity, to be gained from the simple fact that society will be organised through people coming together to work for the common good (where the common can be extended beyond the human) rather in competition, alienated from each other and from nature.

Social systems

The second stage, or later iterations, of a post-capitalist society will witness even greater benefits. This will be the society defined by the fact that all production is based on human needs, where the needs of each individual is met irrespective of any contribution they may make in terms of work.

This society will be made possible because of increases in productivity, rather than production, where the abundance and faculty of nature is at last experienced in human societies.

The ability of human beings to meet their own needs, individually and as a social animal, will be fully realised, and the need for any kind of rationing (including that based on wages or salary, or money even) will simply fall away.

In this society there will be no distinction between work and play. Today, even childcare has been commodified, professionalised, alienated and removed from the everyday activities of being alive. Playing with a child should always be a source of joy, rather than a stressful and degrading job. This is true of all human activity, where feeding, taking care of, building, making, writing should be – and should always have been – vital pleasures rather than paid work.

This future society will be made possible by the collective efforts of human beings, who will come together through different forums on a global, regional, local stage in order to make conscious decisions. This will likely evolve into an integrated social plan, where social systems are designed to work as an aspect of natural systems (respecting rather than ignoring seasons, the capacity of nature to recover).

Mutual dependence 

But life in this society will not be characterised by constant committee meetings, or centralised political bodies, or blueprints for massive factories. Each human being will contain within her the ‘interests’ of the human species, and of nature, en totum.

Society will be the mediation of humans and nature, where each is dependent on and beneficial to the other.

In this society the needs of the whole society can be understood and can be met. In the same moment the individual is given the most freedom, the most free time, possible to explore her own interests, her own curiosity, her own abilities to make and fashion and feel.

These are the contours of a society based on meeting human needs. This is the society we need if we are going to escape climate breakdown and ecological collapse.

These claims are specific and, for some, seductive. But is this utopian delusion? Simple wishful thinking.

In the rest of this series I will be looking at dialectics and systems theories as methods for identifying and understanding human needs, how these manifest for individuals, groups and societies and finally how a better understanding of these needs can help us as activists both imagine and begin to build a future society with the purpose of meeting human needs.

This Author 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague. 

Read, Why we need ‘ecolocracy’

Read, An introduction to ‘ecolocracy’ – pt.2

Read the On The Nature of Change (OTNOC) series.

The She Grows appeal will help people reverse the effects of deforestation and climate change in the drylands of Africa.

The UK government will match pound for pound any public donations between 1 April and 30 June through the UK Aid Match scheme. 

Tree Aid was set up by foresters in 1987, and has planted more than 16 million trees and supported more than 1.2 million people. Their programme is increasingly gaining recognition for its long-term solution to help alleviate poverty and halt deforestation in the poorest and most arid parts of Africa. 

One thousand women 

Joanna Lumley, Tree Aid’s patron and supporter of the She Grows appeal, explained: “I have been supporting Tree Aid for more than 25 years because it provides such an effective, practical solution to the urgent issues of poverty in Africa and the environmental decline that so often causes it. 

“Trees are being wiped from the landscape in the African drylands and the desert is spreading, making it harder for people, especially women, to feed their families and earn an income.

“I urge local people to please give what they can to the She Grows appeal, knowing their gift will be doubled by our government. If ever there was a time to support a local organisation working on global issues, it is now.”

The She Grows appeal will help one thousand women in Mali to set up small businesses that process and sell shea butter and honey, and give them the tools and training they need to save and replant their local forest.

Mali is a country in West Africa that is two-thirds desert and where more than 50 percent of people live below the poverty line. The burden of poverty falls hardest on women who have limited access to land and few opportunities to earn an income.

Critical year

These women are expected to feed their children and families but their land is some of the driest in the world and, as climate change effects deepen, the situation is getting worse.

Trees are a lifeline, surviving drought, improving the soil and providing fruits, nuts and seeds for food and income.

The She Grows project comes at an important time, with the UN naming 2019 as a “critical year” for climate action and with scientists around the world calling for reforestation to slow down climate change.

Setou Traoré is one of the thousand women in Mali who will benefit from the Tree Aid project. Due to frequent droughts and deforestation, Setou is finding it harder to find food for her family and she can’t afford to send her children to school: “Trees are vital, especially for us women.

“Without trees, we wouldn’t eat. The produce from the fields has reduced. Farming doesn’t feed us anymore, the sources of income are weak. There aren’t many trees anymore. I am worried for my children.”

To donate and find out more, visit the Tree Aid website.

This Article

This article is based on a press release from Tree Aid. 

The She Grows appeal will help people reverse the effects of deforestation and climate change in the drylands of Africa.

The UK government will match pound for pound any public donations between 1 April and 30 June through the UK Aid Match scheme. 

Tree Aid was set up by foresters in 1987, and has planted more than 16 million trees and supported more than 1.2 million people. Their programme is increasingly gaining recognition for its long-term solution to help alleviate poverty and halt deforestation in the poorest and most arid parts of Africa. 

One thousand women 

Joanna Lumley, Tree Aid’s patron and supporter of the She Grows appeal, explained: “I have been supporting Tree Aid for more than 25 years because it provides such an effective, practical solution to the urgent issues of poverty in Africa and the environmental decline that so often causes it. 

“Trees are being wiped from the landscape in the African drylands and the desert is spreading, making it harder for people, especially women, to feed their families and earn an income.

“I urge local people to please give what they can to the She Grows appeal, knowing their gift will be doubled by our government. If ever there was a time to support a local organisation working on global issues, it is now.”

The She Grows appeal will help one thousand women in Mali to set up small businesses that process and sell shea butter and honey, and give them the tools and training they need to save and replant their local forest.

Mali is a country in West Africa that is two-thirds desert and where more than 50 percent of people live below the poverty line. The burden of poverty falls hardest on women who have limited access to land and few opportunities to earn an income.

Critical year

These women are expected to feed their children and families but their land is some of the driest in the world and, as climate change effects deepen, the situation is getting worse.

Trees are a lifeline, surviving drought, improving the soil and providing fruits, nuts and seeds for food and income.

The She Grows project comes at an important time, with the UN naming 2019 as a “critical year” for climate action and with scientists around the world calling for reforestation to slow down climate change.

Setou Traoré is one of the thousand women in Mali who will benefit from the Tree Aid project. Due to frequent droughts and deforestation, Setou is finding it harder to find food for her family and she can’t afford to send her children to school: “Trees are vital, especially for us women.

“Without trees, we wouldn’t eat. The produce from the fields has reduced. Farming doesn’t feed us anymore, the sources of income are weak. There aren’t many trees anymore. I am worried for my children.”

To donate and find out more, visit the Tree Aid website.

This Article

This article is based on a press release from Tree Aid. 

The city of San Francisco recently moved to ban the sale of plastic bottles on city-owned properties. Environmentalists hope measures such as these will expand to other locations to reduce the U.S. addiction to single-use items. 

Plastic waste destroys wildlife habitats and leads to the untimely death of countless animals. Plastic requires a long time to biodegrade, meaning discarded bottles clog landfills and enters the water system.

While recycling plastic reduces waste, relatively few of these bottles make it to the sorting facility. Governments are only just beginning to wake up to the enormity of the plastic problem.

Plastic pollution

Human beings purchase a million plastic bottles every minute of every day. Less than a quarter of these bottles gets recycled in the US. 

The environmental impact of plastic bottles begins in the production stage and ends with serious consequences to animal and human health. 

It takes more water to produce a plastic bottle than the amount packaged inside. Additionally, the production of bottles requires the use of petroleum, a non-renewable fossil fuel. Factories which produce such bottles release tremendous amounts of pollution into the air. 

Chemicals in plastic itself can harm human health as well as factory pollution. BPA, a chemical which affects human hormones, gets released when plastic heats up, such as when exposed to sunlight.

The combination of factory particulates and released chemicals leads to increased reports of serious health issues, even in areas like California with relatively strong healthcare landscapes. 

Ocean plastics

Plastic wreaks havoc with sea life too. As much as 80 percent of ocean pollution consists of plastics, and animals mistakenly consume the objects which then lodge in their digestive tract, causing painful death. Smaller organisms sometimes enter the bottles and find themselves unable to escape. 

Pathogens from discarded bottles also decimate ocean life. Coral reefs exposed to high levels of plastic pollution fall prey to disease far more quickly than those unexposed to the substances. 

Plastic waste can take nearly 500 years to biodegrade, meaning the bottle someone casually tosses out may still plague human animal life for centuries.

Considering how many bottles people go through annually, failure to stop the spread of this pollution could render the world’s oceans into giant plastic pools. Already garbage patches have grown to enormous sizes in the Pacific. 

Many public locations such as gas stations and convenience stores offer only trash cans, not recycling bins. This means road trippers who stop to dump their trash add to the growing plastic problem even if they recycle religiously at home.

The ‘San Fran Measure’

In 2014, the city of San Francisco incorporated the first plastic bottle ban, though it prohibited far less than the current rules.

The new regulations prohibit the sale of plastic bottles at events held on city-owned property. Additionally, government agencies may not purchase bottled water. 

Private businesses such as grocery stores and mini markets may continue to sell bottled water in the city. To date, little data exists on how the regulations have reduced overall plastic bottle use.

However, any measures to reduce plastic consumption makes a difference, and other cities have now begun enacting similar bans none too soon. 

The city hopes that more consumers make the switch back to drinking regular tap water in lieu of pricey bottled stuff. The city has the advantage of possessing high quality tap water, making this goal reasonable.

Other cities, most notably Flint, MI, may have difficulty enacting similar bans until public infrastructure repair makes tap water safer for consumption. 

​​​​​​​Expand recycling?

Measures to expand recycling efforts likewise help decrease plastic pollution. But many environmentalists argue that only bans like the one enacted by San Francisco will make a meaningful difference in slowing the destruction.

Given current production rates, few individual actions could make the impact prohibiting plastic bottles in the first place can potentially make. 

That isn’t to say individuals are absolved from doing their part. Those who purchase reusable bottles instead of buying new ones do make a difference. But they can go a step further with their environmental stewardship by urging local officials to enact similar bans in their hometowns. 

​​​​​​​If human beings hope to halt the destruction of planet Earth, everyone must adopt practices that ease consumer demand for the products that harm the environment.

Banning plastic bottles will not eliminate the trash currently choking the air, land and oceans, but prohibitions can reduce the number of such items produced in the first place. Waving goodbye to disposable plastic bottles will mean many people will have to change their habits to those more friendly toward the world we share. 

This Author 

​​​​​​​Kate Harveston is a vegan health and sustainability writer and the editor of women’s wellness blog, So Well, So Woman.

Outdoor air quality has been receiving rather a lot of attention recently.  The new UK air quality strategy was published in January 2019 and the comparable document in Scotland, published in 2015, is currently under review.  

The main focus is certainly and unsurprisingly on outdoor air pollution since the UK is currently awaiting the outcome of a European Court of Justice referral for failing to meet the terms of the European Directive on ambient air quality.

But we all spend around 90 percent of our time indoors – at home, at work, or in school.  So surely our greatest exposure to possibly harmful air pollution may well be in the home? What might be the risks, and is there much we can do about it?

Assessing risk 

Worldwide, air pollution is estimated to be the fourth most serious risk of attributable health impact and this risk is about equally divided between indoor and outdoor air pollution. 

In fact, indoor air pollution in isolation presents as the 7thmost important risk, above both unsafe water and unsafe sex.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) attributes 4.3 million deaths annually to household air pollution.  In western societies, the risk factor is relatively much less although WHO still reckons that 120,000 deaths are caused each year in Europe by indoor air pollution – stacking up as 3 percent of all heart disease, 3 percent of chronic pulmonary disease, 3 percent of stroke and 2 percent of lung cancer fatalities.  

The WHO has estimated that the economic costs of deaths from air pollution, outdoor and indoor, amounts to 3.7 percent of UK national GDP, or over £70 Bn each year – so this is a very costly problem. 

Is anything being done?  Well, the European Commission established an indoor air quality working group in 2006, which was disbanded in 2012.  The European  seventh Environmental Action Programme in 2013 calls on the EU to develop an indoor air quality strategy – but, as yet, nothing further has happened.  

Determined action 

Independently, however, France has adopted an action plan; Italy has established its own indoor air quality standards for schools; and Finland has adopted its own general indoor air quality standards.  

The EU Directive on energy performance of buildings could eventually require new EU building regulations to adopt mandatory indoor air quality targets but, as yet, there are no measures in place beyond a requirement “to address the issues of healthy indoor climate conditions”.

This is despite very determined action on passive smoking. Early action was taken with smoking bans in aircraft from the 1980s, and now all EEA countries have some bans in place on smoking, but only in public places.

Indoor air quality can’t be considered in isolation, and is clearly related to the ambient outdoor air quality.  There are many challenges with harmful outdoor air quality but indoor air quality can, rather often, be even worse.  Equally, for some pollutants, it can sometimes be better. The relationship is complex.

The common pollutants, found outdoors and indoors at impactful concentrations, are nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, ozone and particulate matter (PM).  The pathways between outdoor and indoor environments are classified as through mechanical ventilation (air conditioning), natural ventilation (opening windows and doors) and infiltration (leaks around window and door frames, and through roof space).  

Anthropogenic particles

Typically, houses in the UK seem to show that about a third to a half of indoor air is exchanged between inside and outside each hour, but a huge range is found of about 10x between the most leaky and the most air-tight houses.

The permutations found across different buildings and with different outdoor conditions, of say wind strength and direction, can begin to produce hugely variable observable results.  

However, studies have shown that around 50 percent to 75 percent of the variability of indoor air quality of these common pollutants, is explained by outdoor variation.  If pollutants enter a building they can subsequently, to some degree, be diluted or concentrated by specific indoor conditions and activities.

Let’s look, first, at airborne particulates.  These come in various forms – some of which may well be natural, such as fine sand picked up from the Sahara Desert and transported on southerly winds to the UK, or volcanic ash blown here from Iceland. 

But, more generally, particulate matter is created by burning fossil fuels and, especially in urban areas, derived from vehicle exhaust fumes and dust created from vehicle brake-pads and tyres. 

These anthropogenic particles are oily-based and contaminated with numerous exotic chemicals.  Physically, a range of sizes of particles is created. From fairly large, known as PM10, indicating they have diameters of 10 microns or less (for comparison, a human hair has a diameter of about 50 microns) to very small, known as PM2.5 with diameters less than 2.5 microns.

Physiological effects

The physiological effects of these different particles are important:  larger particles (>10 microns) are filtered out in the nose and upper pharynx, while smaller particles (around 1 to 2 microns) reach deep into the alveoli, the air sacs, of the lungs and can cause much more severe damage.

The physical behaviour of these particles is also important. The fall velocity of particles of 1 micron diameter is as little as 0.1 mm per second.  Natural air movement in any room is likely to well above this value, so the particles never settle out.  In fact, it’s generally thought that particles below 10 microns will usually stay suspended indefinitely.

The ratio of indoor to outdoor air quality is found not to be lower than 0.7 for PM10 when there is no additional harmful indoor activity.  This suggests a small benefit of being indoors when high levels of PM10 are encountered outdoors.  

However, it is the finer particles, PM2.5, that are more dangerous to human health and these are not much reduced by being indoors, unless there is specific mechanical filtering by air conditioning units.  

It’s worth remembering that, for example, around 95 percent of the population of London are routinely exposed to harmful outdoor concentrations of fine particulates. Sources of additional particles, produced indoors, can include cooking and malfunctioning gas heaters or wood/coal burners, thereby adding to indoor concentrations.

Internal pollutants 

In contrast, at times of high outdoor pollen levels then these much larger particles (pollen is generally between 10 micron and 100 micron) are greatly reduced indoors and may only be at a level of around 2 percent or 3 percent. So, advice to hay fever sufferers to stay indoors is clearly well founded.

Some significant air pollution is generated solely within buildings.  Under extreme adverse conditions, what is known as sick building syndrome can have detrimental effect on wellbeing and also reduce productivity in affected offices. 

In the domestic situation, the main internally-generated pollutants are:  tobacco smoke, radon, gas and particles from burning fuels, chemicals released from household products, as well as gases released from a number of building materials. 

For example, gaseous aldehydes are released from fabric softeners, ketones from dry-cleaning fluids and various waxes and polishes, alkanes will be released from solvents and other cleaning compounds, esters from glues and resins, and alcohols from spray can propellants.  

Toluene and xylene may be released from paints, printed materials and electronic equipment. It’s been found that paints can continue to out-gas for many months after application.  Formaldehyde out-gases from plywood, and flame-retardant chemicals from furniture and carpets.  Some computer printers generate ozone.  

Candles and incense may release particles as well as benzene and styrene. Carbon monoxide can be a problem with domestic gas cookers, and acrolein is a dangerous product of overheated cooking oils. Pesticides can be released from wood preservatives. Even some house-plants release their own terpenes.

Organic compounds

This wide range of exotic chemicals can cause damage to liver, kidneys and the nervous system and irritate the eyes, nose and throat as well as cause headaches, nausea and, in the extreme cases, be an agent of various cancers.  

Children, pregnant women, existing asthma sufferers, those with cardiovascular or respiratory diseases, and the elderly may all be more vulnerable.

The US Environment Protection Agency reports that, on average, the level of such volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is between 2 and 5 times higher inside houses compared to outdoors.  Some activities, for example paint stripping, can raise levels to 1000 times higher.

As a separate issue, there are numerous domestic biogenic air-borne pollutants that may cause heath impacts.  These include fungal spores, bacteria, viruses, dust mites, arthropods and protozoa deriving from pets, damp conditions, and poorly maintained systems like drip-trays and ventilation systems.  Allergies, infections and asthma attacks are potentially related symptoms.

Many of these in-house problems may be exacerbated by our response to climate change in trying to seal our homes better in order to provide improved energy efficiency, and by installing thermal insulation, some types of which may themselves create air pollution.  

Higher temperatures and higher humidity, related to the sealing of buildings and stagnation of air, may aggravate the formation of fungi and moulds and the release of spores.

Mitigating actions

There are mitigating actions that householders can take: opening windows to ventilate the house, particularly when the outside air has low pollution levels, installing and routinely using an extractor hood over the cooker, extracting damp air from bathrooms, ensuring that low VOC paints are used when decorating, using natural materials for carpets and other coverings whenever possible, and minimising the use of propellent sprays and man-made polishes.

Another proactive response might be to deploy pot plants in the house.  The plant-root-soil zone provides particularly effective bio-degradation of VOCs, while leaves also denature chemicals and physically trap air-borne particles.  

It’s important to select the right plants, among the best being aloe vera, several palms, rubber plant, dragon tree, ivy, ficus benjaminaand the spider plant – all of which are quite tough and thrive in indoor climates. 

Studies of the efficacy of plants/soils was carried out by NASA to investigate ways to purify air in the sealed confines of a space station.  Their experiments showed between 50 percent and 70 percent removal of formaldehyde and benzene and slightly lower, around 40 percent, removal of trichloroethylene over a 24-hour period in a sealed chamber.  

These plants also release very little VOCs, such as terpenes, themselves.  Real life experiments produce quite varying and sometimes contradictory results, but it has been suggested that one plant is required for every 10 sq m of floor area, perhaps occupying about 10% of overall air space.

Coordinated regulation

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been publishing guidelines on safe concentrations of common indoor air pollutants since 1987.  There are, of course, legal requirements under Health & Safety legislation for employees to be provided with a safe working environment, but that doesn’t extend to the home environment.  

There are numerous efforts by many suppliers these days to provide low-emission products, so clearly there is a growing market of consumers who are aware of some of the claims of adverse health impacts of indoor air pollution.  

But there remains little in the way of standardisation or coordinated regulation or consistent labelling.

There can be competing priorities as well – for example, Trading Standards will enforce on retailers the requirements for low combustibility of domestic soft furnishings, but that will likely entail use of chemical fire retardants on the fabrics, which can then be released into indoor air and dust.  These retardants are well-known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors which also bio-accumulate in the body and persist for a very long time.

The most dangerous chemicals have fairly recently been banned and there is an ongoing debate about the relative levels of risk to human health of possible house fires compared to exposure to the chemicals.

Complex environment 

Since we spend so much time indoors, and much of that at home, it is perhaps anomalous, as WHO points out, that routine and standardised monitoring is undertaken throughout Europe for outdoor air quality but routine monitoring of indoor air quality hardly exists.  

The European Commission admits that the variability and complexity of the indoor environment makes risk assessment difficult and that, currently, the studies are insufficient.  

It is suggested that indoor air may contain as many as 900 different chemicals, particles, and bio-materials with potential health effects. The Commission is not in favour of enforceable indoor air quality standards, because of the privacy of the indoor space and also the impracticality of surveillance.  

It seems that a continuing effort to create an evidence base and then apply appropriate building regulations and product standards might be a more acceptable route.  

In the UK, it is really only regulations applying to paints that currently impose some control over the potential release of VOCs into indoor air, while UK Building Regulations also impose requirements on ventilation to limit levels of a small range of aggregated indoor pollutants, but based on an assumption of outdoor air being unpolluted.

Aggressive action

The new UK air quality strategy commits the Government to raise awareness specifically of VOC pollution indoors, to seek a voluntary labelling code for VOC-containing products, and to work with producers to reduce the content of harmful chemicals.  These are worthy but rather weak commitments.

No single Government Department has sole responsibility for indoor air pollution, so perhaps a more detailed, co-ordinating strategy and action plan for indoor air pollution in isolation is now necessary.

If the costs to the economy are nearly 2 percent of GDP, or about £30 Bn per year, then the problem surely merits much more aggressive action with regulatory controls on home design, construction materials, finishes, domestic equipment, furniture, fittings and consumables.

Overall, the task is huge and it may well be much better undertaken at European level, or even at wider international level.  

Failing that, there’s no excuse not to act now, here at home, and in the home.

This Author 

James Curran is the former chief executive of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.  He researches and writes on sustainability, climate change, ecosystems, air pollution, and green finance.

Image: Ervins Strauhmanis, Flickr. 
 

Officials have been urged to step up efforts to regulate chemicals which could pose a risk to human health and the environment.

EU governments have not taken action on dozens of substances found to be unsafe, according to a new report by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB).

The group, which represents around 150 environmental organisations, has also called for regulation to be sped up and more checks to be carried out.

No plan

Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) – an EU regulatory process – was set up to protect health and the environment by identifying the properties of chemical substances.

National authorities, including the UK, began substance evaluations in March 2012.

A group of 352 suspected of being potentially harmful were prioritised for evaluation by the end of December 2018.

By this point, safety checks had been completed on 94 substances, 46 of which were declared to pose a possible risk to human health or the environment, according to the EEB report.

In 34 out of the 46 cases highlighted, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) received no plan to manage the risk from the EU member state.

Dangerous

Proposed action could include implementing a ban or improving labelling.

Jeremy Wates, secretary general of the EEB, described the numbers as “stark” and urged officials to “raise their game”.

“The analysis documented here reveals that progress is far slower than expected or hoped and a startling proportion of problem substances remain uncontrolled,” he said.

Tatiana Santos, EEB chemicals policy manager, called for officials to make chemical safety a “much higher priority”.

“Millions of tonnes of dangerous substances are being used unsafely in consumer and other products and getting into the environment,” she said.

Human health

“It can take over a decade for officials to protect us, largely because companies fail to provide sufficient safety information.

“Is it really too much to expect good data from an industry worth £500 billion a year in Europe? It claims safety is a priority. The facts suggest it is not.”

Professor Sir Colin Berry, emeritus Professor of Pathology at Queen Mary University of London, warned chemical testing is a “long and complex process”.

“Looking at the sorts of things that are now being tested, I’m not concerned that they are a real problem in terms of human health,” he added.

“I think there are problems environmentally, from the disposal of chemicals, but that’s a different set of problems which I think has to be managed in a quite different way.”

Data generation

The ECHA said an action plan aimed at increasing the number of checks and accelerating its work was due later this year.

“We agree on the need to speed up and encourage member states to find enough resources to do the work and follow-up on substance evaluation findings through risk management measures,” it said in a statement.

“Our strategic plan for 2019-2023 focuses on ensuring efficient and effective use of the EU chemicals legislation.

“The core of our work for the coming years is data generation and regulating substances of concern to improve the safe use of chemicals.”

This Author

Sally Wardle is the health and science correspondent for Press Association. 

Officials have been urged to step up efforts to regulate chemicals which could pose a risk to human health and the environment.

EU governments have not taken action on dozens of substances found to be unsafe, according to a new report by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB).

The group, which represents around 150 environmental organisations, has also called for regulation to be sped up and more checks to be carried out.

No plan

Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) – an EU regulatory process – was set up to protect health and the environment by identifying the properties of chemical substances.

National authorities, including the UK, began substance evaluations in March 2012.

A group of 352 suspected of being potentially harmful were prioritised for evaluation by the end of December 2018.

By this point, safety checks had been completed on 94 substances, 46 of which were declared to pose a possible risk to human health or the environment, according to the EEB report.

In 34 out of the 46 cases highlighted, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) received no plan to manage the risk from the EU member state.

Dangerous

Proposed action could include implementing a ban or improving labelling.

Jeremy Wates, secretary general of the EEB, described the numbers as “stark” and urged officials to “raise their game”.

“The analysis documented here reveals that progress is far slower than expected or hoped and a startling proportion of problem substances remain uncontrolled,” he said.

Tatiana Santos, EEB chemicals policy manager, called for officials to make chemical safety a “much higher priority”.

“Millions of tonnes of dangerous substances are being used unsafely in consumer and other products and getting into the environment,” she said.

Human health

“It can take over a decade for officials to protect us, largely because companies fail to provide sufficient safety information.

“Is it really too much to expect good data from an industry worth £500 billion a year in Europe? It claims safety is a priority. The facts suggest it is not.”

Professor Sir Colin Berry, emeritus Professor of Pathology at Queen Mary University of London, warned chemical testing is a “long and complex process”.

“Looking at the sorts of things that are now being tested, I’m not concerned that they are a real problem in terms of human health,” he added.

“I think there are problems environmentally, from the disposal of chemicals, but that’s a different set of problems which I think has to be managed in a quite different way.”

Data generation

The ECHA said an action plan aimed at increasing the number of checks and accelerating its work was due later this year.

“We agree on the need to speed up and encourage member states to find enough resources to do the work and follow-up on substance evaluation findings through risk management measures,” it said in a statement.

“Our strategic plan for 2019-2023 focuses on ensuring efficient and effective use of the EU chemicals legislation.

“The core of our work for the coming years is data generation and regulating substances of concern to improve the safe use of chemicals.”

This Author

Sally Wardle is the health and science correspondent for Press Association. 

Officials have been urged to step up efforts to regulate chemicals which could pose a risk to human health and the environment.

EU governments have not taken action on dozens of substances found to be unsafe, according to a new report by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB).

The group, which represents around 150 environmental organisations, has also called for regulation to be sped up and more checks to be carried out.

No plan

Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) – an EU regulatory process – was set up to protect health and the environment by identifying the properties of chemical substances.

National authorities, including the UK, began substance evaluations in March 2012.

A group of 352 suspected of being potentially harmful were prioritised for evaluation by the end of December 2018.

By this point, safety checks had been completed on 94 substances, 46 of which were declared to pose a possible risk to human health or the environment, according to the EEB report.

In 34 out of the 46 cases highlighted, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) received no plan to manage the risk from the EU member state.

Dangerous

Proposed action could include implementing a ban or improving labelling.

Jeremy Wates, secretary general of the EEB, described the numbers as “stark” and urged officials to “raise their game”.

“The analysis documented here reveals that progress is far slower than expected or hoped and a startling proportion of problem substances remain uncontrolled,” he said.

Tatiana Santos, EEB chemicals policy manager, called for officials to make chemical safety a “much higher priority”.

“Millions of tonnes of dangerous substances are being used unsafely in consumer and other products and getting into the environment,” she said.

Human health

“It can take over a decade for officials to protect us, largely because companies fail to provide sufficient safety information.

“Is it really too much to expect good data from an industry worth £500 billion a year in Europe? It claims safety is a priority. The facts suggest it is not.”

Professor Sir Colin Berry, emeritus Professor of Pathology at Queen Mary University of London, warned chemical testing is a “long and complex process”.

“Looking at the sorts of things that are now being tested, I’m not concerned that they are a real problem in terms of human health,” he added.

“I think there are problems environmentally, from the disposal of chemicals, but that’s a different set of problems which I think has to be managed in a quite different way.”

Data generation

The ECHA said an action plan aimed at increasing the number of checks and accelerating its work was due later this year.

“We agree on the need to speed up and encourage member states to find enough resources to do the work and follow-up on substance evaluation findings through risk management measures,” it said in a statement.

“Our strategic plan for 2019-2023 focuses on ensuring efficient and effective use of the EU chemicals legislation.

“The core of our work for the coming years is data generation and regulating substances of concern to improve the safe use of chemicals.”

This Author

Sally Wardle is the health and science correspondent for Press Association. 

Officials have been urged to step up efforts to regulate chemicals which could pose a risk to human health and the environment.

EU governments have not taken action on dozens of substances found to be unsafe, according to a new report by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB).

The group, which represents around 150 environmental organisations, has also called for regulation to be sped up and more checks to be carried out.

No plan

Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) – an EU regulatory process – was set up to protect health and the environment by identifying the properties of chemical substances.

National authorities, including the UK, began substance evaluations in March 2012.

A group of 352 suspected of being potentially harmful were prioritised for evaluation by the end of December 2018.

By this point, safety checks had been completed on 94 substances, 46 of which were declared to pose a possible risk to human health or the environment, according to the EEB report.

In 34 out of the 46 cases highlighted, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) received no plan to manage the risk from the EU member state.

Dangerous

Proposed action could include implementing a ban or improving labelling.

Jeremy Wates, secretary general of the EEB, described the numbers as “stark” and urged officials to “raise their game”.

“The analysis documented here reveals that progress is far slower than expected or hoped and a startling proportion of problem substances remain uncontrolled,” he said.

Tatiana Santos, EEB chemicals policy manager, called for officials to make chemical safety a “much higher priority”.

“Millions of tonnes of dangerous substances are being used unsafely in consumer and other products and getting into the environment,” she said.

Human health

“It can take over a decade for officials to protect us, largely because companies fail to provide sufficient safety information.

“Is it really too much to expect good data from an industry worth £500 billion a year in Europe? It claims safety is a priority. The facts suggest it is not.”

Professor Sir Colin Berry, emeritus Professor of Pathology at Queen Mary University of London, warned chemical testing is a “long and complex process”.

“Looking at the sorts of things that are now being tested, I’m not concerned that they are a real problem in terms of human health,” he added.

“I think there are problems environmentally, from the disposal of chemicals, but that’s a different set of problems which I think has to be managed in a quite different way.”

Data generation

The ECHA said an action plan aimed at increasing the number of checks and accelerating its work was due later this year.

“We agree on the need to speed up and encourage member states to find enough resources to do the work and follow-up on substance evaluation findings through risk management measures,” it said in a statement.

“Our strategic plan for 2019-2023 focuses on ensuring efficient and effective use of the EU chemicals legislation.

“The core of our work for the coming years is data generation and regulating substances of concern to improve the safe use of chemicals.”

This Author

Sally Wardle is the health and science correspondent for Press Association.