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Paper

The Backstory

Personal Health

Substantial threats to health arise as logs are milled into paper. Wood pulp must be bleached to lighten its color, which usually involves chlorine or chlorine derivatives. When these chlorine-containing compounds interact with organic matter like wood pulp, paper's raw ingredient, organochlorine chemicals are formed, most notably dioxins. These toxic byproducts are then released into the environment, primarily through the wastewater from pulp mills.

Dioxins are highly toxic. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the average American's risk of contracting cancer from dioxin exposure may be as high as 1 in 1,000--1,000 times higher than the government's current "acceptable" standard of 1 in a million. Dioxins are also endocrine disruptors: substances that can interfere with the body's natural hormone signals. Dioxin exposure, moreover, can damage the immune system and may affect reproduction and childhood development. Furans and other organochlorines produced in this bleaching process are chemically similar to dioxins, and pose similar health risks.

Once released into the air and water, dioxins make their way into the food chain. When ingested by animals or humans, dioxins accumulate in fatty tissue. As a result, over 95 percent of typical human exposure comes through dietary intake of animal fats such as meat, dairy and eggs, the EPA says. Because dioxins are so widespread, we all have traces in our bodies.

Many paper mills have acted to reduce the environmentally damaging effects of using chlorine compounds: approximately 80 percent of U.S. pulp mills, for example, have switched from elemental chlorine to less-damaging chlorine dioxide. In spite of these changes, however, U.S. paper mills remain the chief source of dioxin contamination of water. Globally, more than half of the world's paper mills still use chlorine gas--the most toxic option--to bleach their pulp.

As paper decomposes in landfills or is burned in incinerators, chemicals from its inks are released into the environment. Once in our water and air, these pollutants can enter the food chain and our bodies. Lead and other toxic metal pigments, such as arsenic, cadmium, zinc, manganese, mercury, potassium, copper, chromium and nickel, are still used in some printing inks. The printing industry, once a major source of lead waste, has made great strides in reducing toxic mineral use in inks, but the use of lead and other metals has not been phased out entirely. Even small amounts of lead can damage brains and nervous systems, especially in infants and children. Exposure to heavy metals has been linked to mental retardation, kidney damage, cancers, and autoimmune diseases.

Environmental

The pulp and paper industries are the largest industrial wood consumers in the U.S. and in the world. In fact, nearly half of all the timber felled in the U.S. becomes paper, leading to a host of environmental problems.

Deforestation and Habitat Loss: Worldwide, deforestation is occurring at an alarming rate, particularly in tropical regions. The World Resources Institute estimated in 1997 that only a fifth of the world's old-growth forests were undamaged, and almost half of these faced immediate threats from logging and development. Deforestation diminishes biodiversity, since most forest-dwelling creatures cannot live in cleared or damaged habitat. This loss is particularly acute in rainforests, which host rich communities of life, including many unknown, potentially useful plants and trees that may disappear from our world forever before their medicinal or other properties have been studied. Tree plantations are proliferating around the world to meet our growing need for timber, but they are poor habitat compared to diverse, healthy forests and support only a fraction of the species and diversity of life.

Erosion, Siltation, and Floods: When trees are cut down, soil washes into streams, muddying the clear, undisturbed waters that aquatic life rely on. It can become impossible for fish to spawn in sediment-filled water--imperiling the survival of key food sources for other wildlife. Moreover, with trees gone, water rushes down hillsides and causes floods; China has attributed a recent series of devastating floods to a loss of forest cover due to logging.

Disposing of paper also causes environmental problems. Paper that is thrown away fills up American landfills, constituting from 30 to 40 percent of landfill waste. Even though municipal recycling programs are on the rise, less than half of the U.S.'s 80 million tons of paper waste was recycled in 2000. As paper decomposes in landfills, it releases carbon and methane, gases that contribute to global warming. In addition, the dioxin and heavy metals produced by decomposing and incinerated paper can harm wildlife and ecosystems. The paper industry is also the U.S.'s largest industrial water-guzzler: chlorine-based paper processing uses up to 50,000 gallons of water per ton of paper.

Bamboo Paper: Currently, there is no monitoring or certification to ensure that bamboo grown for paper is sustainably harvested. Much of it is grown on converted forest land, turning a diverse ecosystem into a monoculture agricultural plantation. There is also concern about increasing pressure to harvest wild bamboo and further endanger the animals, such as pandas and tigers, who depend on these bamboo forests. Bamboo is pulped abroad, in countries with laxer environmental regulations. For example, in 1997, the Phoenix Pulp and Paper Mill in Thailand, a maker of bamboo paper, was found to pollute local waterways with chlorinated effluent. Until certification processes become clearer and more reliable, ReThink Paper, a project of the Earth Island Institute, recommends avoiding bamboo paper products.

Social

The harvesting of timber for paper and other wood products has some distressing social consequences. As a valuable natural resource, timber has fueled armed conflicts around the world. Forest-dwelling indigenous peoples, who often lack the political clout to control timber resources they nominally own, have especially suffered. The Misquito people of Nicaragua, for example, presently are defending their forests with guerilla warfare, and armed forces have recently fought over timber resources in Burma, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, and other remote forest locales. David Kaimowitz, director-general of the Center for International Forestry Research, summarizes the situation:

There is, it seems, a standard recipe for conflict. Take a remote and inaccessible forested area inhabited by ethnic minorities with little government presence... Outsiders surge in to exploit the potential wealth. Add automatic weapons that can easily be bought on the black market, and the profits of plunder, and you soon end up with jungle warfare between indigenous people and those they regard as invaders.