Is America Solving, or Just Exporting, Its Environmental Problems?

In this photograph taken on July 9, 2012, a Pakistani shipyard worker uses a blow torch to cut through a metal platform of a vessel beached and being dismantled at one of the 127 ship-breaking plots in Geddani, some 40Kms west of Karachi. Geddani's ship-breaking yards employ some 10,000 workers including welders, cleaners, crane operators and worker supervisors. The yards are one of the largest ship-breaking operations in the world rivaling in size those located in India and Bangladesh. It takes 50 workers about three months to break down a midsize average transport sea vessel of about 40,000 tonnes. The multimillion-dollar ship-breaking industry contributes significantly to the national supply of steel to Pakistani industries. For a six-day working week of hard and often dangerous work handling asbestos, heavy metals and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), employees get paid about 300 USD a month of which half is spent on food and rent for run-down rickety shacks near the yards, a labour representative told AFP. AFP PHOTO / Roberto SCHMIDT Photo credit should read ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/GettyImages

As regulations around toxic substances have tightened in the United States, American companies have increasingly looked to foreign markets where regulations are more lax.

For example, pesticides banned in the United States due to known impacts on human health and the environment, are still exported for use in other countries.

As the United States has cracked down on lead poisoning hazards at home, the overseas export of some lead products has increased.

Instead of recycling electronic devices according to American regulations, some U.S. recycling companies send them to China and other countries, where the toxic components are handled improperly, poisoning people and the environment. American ships are similarly dismantled in a process that releases toxins on South Asian beaches.

These are just a few of the cases in which the United States and other developed countries have dispensed with environmental problems by exporting them to the developing world.  

Pesticides

The toxic pesticide moncrotophos was banned for use in the United States in 1989. But it is still being exported by American companies, said Evan Mascagni, director of the new documentary “Circle of Poison,” which explores the issue of banned pesticides sold abroad. 

U.S. federal regulations state, “Pesticides that are not approved—or registered—for use in the United States may be manufactured in the United States and exported.”

When pesticides are banned domestically, American companies try to recoup lost profits by selling them abroad, or by offloading excess stock instead of trashing it after a ban, Mascagni said.

Mascagni traveled to villages in India and Mexico to see the effects.

He found farm workers using the pesticides without any protective gear and children even laying in the fields waiting to be sprayed with the pesticides as a way to cool off in hot weather. 

He also found rampant birth defects and chronic health issues among adults and children where these pesticides were heavily used.

Jay Vroom, president and CEO of CropLife America, the national trade association of the pesticide industry, has long defended the industry against the critics like Mascagni.

A stillshot from the documentary "Circle of Poison" of Afsel, a young boy in Kasaragod, India, has Hydrocephalus, a condition that causes his head to be swollen, caused by the pesticide endosulfan. Courtesy of Evan Mascagni