Issues > July/August 2003 (#97) > Matters of Scale: Chemical Warfare

Matters of Scale: Chemical Warfare

This telling list of facts and figures about where chemicals are made, stored, used and the health consequences of exposure is reprinted with permission from World Watch Magazine, July/August 2003.

Maximum safe level of perchlorate, the main ingredient of rocket and missile fuel, in drinking water

 

0.03 micrograms per kg of body weight

 

Perchlorate found in leafy vegetables grown in California with irrigation water contaminated by leaks or dumping from military contractors

 

4,490.00 micrograms per kg of produce

 

Total weight of chemical weapons in Iraq before the 2003 war, as estimated by the American Federation of Scientists

 

3,850 tons

 

Total weight of just six of the most dangerous pesticides at large in the global environment

 

7,000,000 tons

 

People killed by Iraqi chemical weapons in the six-year period preceding the 2003 U.S. War on Iraq

 

0

 

People killed by pesticides, as estimated by the World Health Organization, during the same six-year period

 

over 1,000,000

 

Number of deaths in the United States each year for which death certificates list the cause of death as air pollution

 

0

 

Number of U.S. deaths actually caused by air pollution, as estimated by the Harvard School of Public Health

 

60,000

 

Projected increase in the world's population between 1995 and 2020

 

25 percent

 

Projected increase in the world's chemical production between 1995 and 2020

 

80 percent

 

SOURCES: Safe level of perchlorate: Draft Risk Assessment, Environmental Protection Agency, January 18, 2003; perchlorate level in lettuce: Environmental Working Group, Washington, D.C., April 29, 2003; weight of chemical weapons in Iraq: Federation of American Scientists; weight of six pesticides (DDT, chlordane, HCB, toxaphene, aldrin, and dieldrinc): Paul Johnston, et al., Natural Resources Forum, May 1999; chemical weapons deaths in Iraq: the last known attacks occurred in 1988; pesticide deaths: World Health Organization estimate of more than 500 deaths and 8,000 nonfatal poisonings per day; air pollution deaths: John Spengler, director of Environmental Science and Engineering program, Harvard School of Public Health, cited in Devra Davis, When Smoke Ran Like Water (New York: Basic Books, 2002).

 

Information brought to you through a collaboration with the Worldwatch Institute, an independent research organization that works for an environmentally sustainable and socially just society. For more information, visit them on the web at www.worldwatch.org.