Arthur Firstenberg passed away earlier this year. However, his work and his words must live on. He is most known for writing-- and being an activist -- on the health impacts of electromagnetic radiation. And he tackled other critical issues.
He authored the books "Microwaving Our Planet: The Environmental Impact of the Wireless Revolution," "The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life," and "The Earth and I."
"The Earth and I" was published in January.
Firstenberg, at 74 died, in Santa Fe, New Mexico in February.
In the opening pages of "The Earth and I," Firstenberg writes: "The deterioration of our environment is rapidly becoming an emergency. Pollution, deforestation, and species extinctions are accelerating, and the earth's life support systems are failing. The very survival of earthly life is in question. Yet this is not due to any lack of awareness or education or for want of individuals organizing to protect our world. There is no lack of scientists studying the situation. There is no end to the steady flow of environmental books into our bookstores, and environmental courses into our schools and universities. We are all more or less aware of the problems and their apparent causes and no one wants them to continue, yet not only is our environment not improving, it is deteriorating more quickly than ever."
He quotes Rachel Carson from her 1962 landmark book "Silent Spring" that exposed the deadly dangers of DDT and other insecticides: "Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life."
And he quotes in 1862 historian Henry Brooks Adams, whom he notes was the grandson of U.S. President John Quincy Adams, writing: "I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of man. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Some day science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world."
"The difficulty, I think," writes Firstenberg, "is not so much in finding alternatives, but in making decisions. And while the immediate causes of our troubles are known, the deeper roots are clouded with confusion. There is wide disagreement, for example, about the role of economics, for example, and little understanding of the causes of overpopulation. Most importantly, are we in control of our technology, or is it, as Henry Brooks Adams implied, in control of us?"
His first of 35 information-rich chapters in "The Earth and I" provides history, including that of the "Industrial Revolution"usually dated from the invention of the steam engine in England in the early 1700s." And he continues: "Warfare was still a fact of life, and it remains so today, when we wage our battles with warships, submarines, tanks, aircraft, missiles, bombs and chemical and biological weapons. Our most sophisticated technology is no longer used for hunting animals at all, but instead for hunting each other."
In the book's chapter, "Living on the Edge," Firstenberg writes: "After World War II there came into being a new medical disorder caused by the wholesale poisoning of our living environment. 'Environmental illness,' it was called, or 'twentieth-century disease'".And in the twenty-first century the disease has become a pandemic. The toxins and electromagnet fields have become impossible to escape. But people are so mesmerized by the way of life woven by those toxins that they do not even acknowledge the connection."
"The marketing phrase Americans used to hear after World War II, when the
chemical industry was still in its infancy, was 'Better Living Through Chemistry,'" he notes. "It gave us such seemingly useful items as insecticides, synthetic fertilizers, antibiotics, detergents, synthetic fabrics, and plastics. The chemical industry is now grown up to be a tyrant, ruling every aspect of our lives, and it has gone absolutely wild. Over 50 million different chemicals have been created, and more than 350,000 of these are on the market. They are in your food and your water as deliberate additives".Your clothes are dyed with them. Your bed is permeated with them".You clean your floors and your oven with them"."
"We are now playing with our life force without respect for life," says Firstenberg. "In the past century, especially in the last few decades, we have blanketed the earth with so many new powerful and violent electromagnetic fields"."
Firstenberg continues: "Environmental levels of ionizing radiation have been increased by the explosion of more than 2,000 atomic bombs [in atmospheric nuclear weapons testing], and by the by-products of the nuclear weapons and nuclear power industry. Unlike other electro-magnetic pollution, this radiation will not go away instantly when we turn off the power. We have managed to sterilize or lethally contaminate fair-size chunks of the earth"Nuclear power stations dot the surface of the globe"."
"Ionizing radiation causes cancer. But so does non-ionizing radiation, which is emitted by every wireless device and every radio antenna," he writes. He speaks of, "Our cell phones, upon which we rely to make us safer, and around which our social and professional lives have become structured," and how they "emit powerful radiation, and they control, require, and create the infrastructure that makes them work: the cell towers, antennas and satellites that, together with our phones, are strafing the earth with bullets of radiation, day and night, year in and year out."
Of plastics, "They are themselves pollutants, containing as they do poisonous and cancer-causing chemicals that continually ooze out of them. And the microplastics that they shed and break down in our water, our air, our soils, and our bodies."
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