Death by a thousand cuts

Lingchi, or ‘death by a thousand cuts’ refers to the now-defunct Chinese method of torture and execution; the unfortunate victim would be tied up and systematically hacked-at with sharp things until they died. This charming term has been loosely co-opted by ecologists, and is now used as a sort of slang to refer to species, ecosystems or environments that are under pressure from a range of different sources; for example, habitat loss, changing climate, feral species, changes in nutrient loadings, pollution, increasing salinity, increasing turbidity, loss of keystone species, overfishing, overstocking, soil degradation …the list, unfortunately, is quite long.

The thing about death by a thousand cuts, especially when taken in the ecological context to mean ‘the cumulative impact of stressors’ is that it is really difficult to determine exactly which stressor broke the camel’s back. There are two quite interesting examples of death by a thousand cuts that have been in the media over the past few decades; the collapse of colonies of the honeybee (Apis mellifera), and the ongoing decline of the health of the Great Barrier Reef.

Colony Collapse Disorder

In the early 2000s, apiarists in North America and Europe noticed, that honeybee colonies were collapsing and dying – the symptoms were the same on both continents. This collapse has been provided with the Asimov-sounding term ‘Colony Collapse Disorder’ or CCD. Now colony collapse disorder is nothing new; bee colonies have been known to die showing similar symptoms for centuries.The thing about the more recent CCD events is that they have increased enough to get scientists concerned. Really concerned.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

So – enter the researchers. For the past decade, a large number of studies have been undertaken in an attempt to determine which particular straw broke the camels back. Was it Neonicotinoids, which are currently the subject of an emotive pesticide tug-of-war in the European Union? Electromagnetic Radiation from increased numbers of mobile phone towers? The varroa mite? Climate Change?


Australian researchers came up with what may the answer to this question, and their findings were met with the sort of collective ‘uh – what?’ that is to be expected when the answer is ‘death by a thousand cuts’. Essentially, bee colonies are subjected to ever-increasing pressure from multiple stressors, and fewer colonies are able to survive. This is compounded by the behaviour of younger bees in stressed colonies – they will go and forage at a much younger age. This is on par with sending 5-year-old children to the supermarket. They lack the bee street-smarts required to evade nature’s equivalent of an odd looking man in a creepy white van. They also avoid the bee equivalent of ‘doing your chores’; by going out into the big wide world soon after pupation they spend less time contributing to the welfare of the colony as general housekeepers. This ends up badly for all involved, and the colony collapses.

The decline of the Great Barrier Reef

I had the great fortune to work with Professor Michael Warne on a project in tropical Cairns in Far North Queensland. While we were steering a small boat around the muddy estuarine waters of Trinity Inlet, I asked him about his thoughts on the health of the Great Barrier Reef. As it had happened, he mentioned that he had just finished working on a Scientific Consensus on the health of the Great Barrier Reef, and referred me to that exact document:

“The overarching consensus is that key Great Barrier Reef ecosystems are showing declining trends in condition due to continuing poor water quality, cumulative impacts of climate change and increasing intensity of extreme events.”

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

The reef is the equivalent of a massive super-colony of organisms, the vast majority of which are sensitive to changes in water quality, nutrient inputs and pesticide loads. Corals themselves are a pretty neat example of a symbiotic organism; during the day, the 'plant portion' of the coral photosynthesises and produces carbohydrates, oxygen and other bits and pieces; these are consumed by the 'animal portion' of the coral, which in turn breathes out carbon dioxide, providing the raw food for the plant.

It's a pretty neat balancing act that could, say, be completely screwed over by tiny amounts of herbicide (sayonara plant-portion of the coral), changes in turbidity (less sunlight =/= photosynthesis) or increased nutrient loads (this screws everything up by encouraging marine algae and Crown of Thorns Starfish to thrive, prosper and fuck shit up). The Great Barrier Reef also receives vast quantities of terrestrial runoff, containing diuron (from sugarcane farming - yep, a herbicide), fertilisers and elevated turbidity.


Again, death by a thousand cuts.


What makes both of these examples interesting is that they are both in the public eye, and are both widely reported on, but there isn't really a 'single bullet' answer that can save these critical environmental issues. Rather, the thousand ecological cuts that are currently contributing to a critical decline in the health of the Great Barrier Reef and the collapse of European Honeybee colonies require a high-level multi-faceted approach (science-speak for "we need to do a lot, and we also need to understand what we need to do to make these approaches effective". Unfortunately this sort of thing isn't cheap, or easy, or quick, especially in a world where science funding is cut by the sort of slash-happy bureaucrats who think that investing in science and innovation is terrible for society at-large, because who would want, like, clean air or renewable energy when we have all this lovely coal in the ground? /rant). 

While I understand that some of the greatest minds are currently working on these problems, I also get the feeling that what we are seeing may be the tip of the iceberg; while ecosystems and habitats can be resilient, ongoing degradation and stress will inevitably tip an ecosystem or environment over the edge and into decline. We just need to be aware that just because something is 'minor' or 'inconsequential', it may be the ecological straw that breaks the camel's back.

To Shampoo or Not to Shampoo

My hair is the bane of my existence; where others have thick, silky braids of lustrous silk, my hair is a thick, incalcitrant mop with a side-order of frizz. On top of that, before experimenting with the wonders of No Shampoo, I suffered from a sensitive, itchy scalp, incredibly dry ends and small but remarkably productive zones of dandruff that would dust my shoulders with tiny silver flakes (insert maudlin violin line here). Ok, so my hair issues are very much a #firstworldproblem, but I found that the answer to my woes was also a solution that is much more gentle for the receiving environment.

After doing some desperate reading and research on the subject (i.e. typing ‘Unmanageable Hair’ into Google), I discovered that shampooing (as we know it today) is a very recent phenomenon. Cultures globally have maintained hair and scalp health with rinses, oils and various astringents, but the shampoo / conditioner that we now apply tends to work against the hair and scalp’s natural cleaning and protection mechanisms. We exude sebum onto the base of our hair shaft, and this particular waxy compound coats the hair and protects it from the elements, making hair smooth and manageable.

Applying shampoo to our hair and scalp dissolves the sebum that is present on our hair and scalp, leaving the hair dry, tangled and vulnerable to damage. So we then need to apply artificial oils / silicones to the hair shaft to make the hair manageable again. Meanwhile, the scalp sends off that ‘Whoop Whoop’ alarm you’d normally associate with fire drills to the hair follicles and a feedback loop is formed – the scalp becomes oilier and oilier, requiring regular application of shampoo, while increasing amounts of conditioner are needed to combat the desperately dry ends.

I recently embarked on a bit of a personal experiment – commercial shampoo brands are a chemical soup of ingredients that have varying levels of toxicity;  there are numerous studies that demonstrate elevated levels of contact dermatitis in beauticians and hairdressers when exposed to common shampoo ingredients, and other ingredients such as parabens are known to have more insidious effects on our bodies.

Experiment #1: Co-washing

My research and reading for the best way to manage my hair-type (curly / frizzy / unmanageable) led me to consider, firstly, eschewing shampoo completely and switching to a regime known as ‘co-washing’. Co-washing essentially involves washing the hair in conditioner only. Well, it seems that the silicone products (these are easy to detect on the conditioner label; they end with ‘cone’ in the ingredients list) and coconut oils in the conditioners that I experimented with didn’t agree with my scalp. I developed blizzard-like dandruff, and my hair became greasy and lank. I gave this method a good month before throwing in the towel and foaming up my head with a thick ball of much-needed shampoo.

Experiment #2: Apple Cider Vinegar Rinse

So my oily scalp has always been an issue. Enter the Apple Cider Vinegar Rinse. The theory behind this is that the vinegar has a low pH, and helps to dissolve the sebum from the hair, leaving it fluffy, clean and smelling like the bottom of a cider barrel. Well this experiment lasted even less time than experiment #1. My poor hair does not respond well to having all the oils stripped from it, and it felt like frizzy straw despite rinsing for over a minute in the shower. 

Experiment #3: Water Wash Only

I was close to throwing in the towel when I read about this method on a specialist curly-haired forum. Unfortunately, if you are vegan then this may not be an option; the key to maintaining healthy hair with this method is to use a boar bristle brush and brush the sebum from the scalp through to the ends of the hair on a daily basis, 'scritching the scalp' with a comb where needed. The hair can be rinsed where needed, and if the scalp is particularly oily, the hair can be massaged as would be done when traditional shampoo is used, and the oils can be pulled down the hair shaft physically using water and gentle massage.

Results:

I am a year into water washing and I have to say that it has changed my hair, and my life. I no longer purchase shampoo or conditioner, saving on plastics associated with packaging. As a result there are also less chemicals going down the drain and into our waterways, and my hair and scalp are the healthiest they've ever been (even my hairdresser is amazed). 

An Introduction to PFCs

While fluoride receives a fair bashing in the media for issues associated with possible over-exposure and the potential effects this may have on human and environmental health, many people I speak to aren't aware of some of the most ubiquitous fluorinated compounds that are now present pretty much everywhere that scientists look; perfluorinated compounds, or PFCs. 


Here is an image of a PFC - this one is Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (aka PFOS):

(IMAGE: Wikipedia Commons)

As you can see, it looks a bit like a caterpillar; the green balls are the fluorine molecules, and the red / white 'head' of the caterpillar is the sulfonic acid. The fluorine - carbon bonds are some of the strongest chemical bonds known, meaning that once this cute little guy is created, he's pretty difficult to destroy.

The chemical structure of PFOS (and of other PFCs) result in some pretty neat properties; this compound can both attract and repel water at the same time, and it is very stable. As a result, perfluorinated compounds became very widely used in the mid-to-late 20th century, and were used for things as diverse as  Gore-tex ™, Scotchguard ™, fire-fighting foams, Teflon / non-stick coatings, paper products - basically a whole suite of consumer and industrial applications. 

In the late 1990s, increasing amounts of PFCs in blood serum set off warning bells. The manufacturer and the US EPA announced a voluntary phase-out of PFOS from production and use in the United States. PFOS was then listed under Annex B of the Stockholm Convention in 2009, with acceptable purposes and specific exemptions (decision SC-4/17). The Stockholm Convention is essentially a list of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), the management of which tends to bring up HazMat images that tend to be plastered all over web-pages for shock-value:

(PHOTO: United States Department of Energy , Wikimedia Commons)

Scientists who tested the concentrations of PFCs across a wide range of environments found that PFCs were present in biota across the globe. 

So, what does this mean?

Well, because PFCs were only recently brought to the attention of environmental scientists, toxicity studies are still being done on them - we know that they can have some negative effects on organisms,  but we still don't fully understand just how toxic / non-toxic each of these compounds is. The other problem is that while some of the more persistent compounds (PFOS / PFOA) are being phased-out, their substitutes may come with a whole host of 'other' issues. For example:

1. If an oil terminal is on fire, do you use a fire-fighting foam that isn't as effective, possibly prolonging the length of the fire and putting lives and the environment at increased risk? 

2. What if the new foam is less persistent, but chews up oxygen, creating an oxygen deficient (and therefore more acutely deadly) environment for organisms? 

3. Should we apply the precautionary principle and assume that all of these compounds are highly toxic, and risk spending millions of dollars on 'over-remediation' (i.e. cleaning up more than is necessary)?

I'll talk more about PFCs in this blog, but these are issues that are currently being debated, as the legacy of the widespread historic use of PFCs is now coming to a head around the world.

Introduction

A bit about myself; I am a scientist, an ecologist and an ecotoxicologist. I've worked as a consultant for 10 years, assessing the impact of oil spills, chemical spills, old oil refineries, coal seam gas wells and proposed mines on the environment. I became a scientist because I have always loved the environment; an initial interest became a passion that was, in no small part, fueled by my family. I blame my grandmother and aunt in particular - they are both botanists and they encouraged my curiosity from the time that I could walk.

What do I hope to achieve with this blog? I'd like to disseminate some of the things I've learned on-the-job about the toxicity of some of the compounds that we all use on a daily basis. I'd also like to share some of the things I've learned while reducing my own personal exposure to these compounds. Finally, I'd like to be quite scientific about things, using references from peer-reviewed journals. I may also occasionally ramble on about random things that interest me.