Is Toxic Chemical Pollution a Civilisational Risk?

Toxic chemical pollution may have played a role in the decline and collapse of past civilisations.

The Romans famously sweetened their wine with lead acetate (also known as sugar of lead) and drank water that flowed through lead pipes. They also inhaled a lot of lead produced as a result of their extensive smelting and silver mining operations.

Some researchers estimate that lead pollution caused a roughly 2.5–3 point drop in average IQ across the Roman Empire and may have been one of the many factors that led to its ultimate demise.

There’s also evidence that one of the largest pre-Columbian Maya cities bit the dust in part because of how badly it polluted its freshwater sources with mercury (and other toxins), which it did primarily because of how much its inhabitants seemed to like painting their houses with red cinnabar, a form of mercury sulphide.

But these cases sit at the extreme end of the spectrum. Environmental toxins don’t actually need to contribute to the complete unravelling of an entire civilisation to significantly undermine its health and functioning.

For instance, a fascinating 2023 study sought to estimate the total number of IQ points lost due to lead pollution worldwide, finding that it was responsible for the loss of a staggering 765 million cumulative IQ points in children under five and the deaths of over 5.5 million adults from cardiovascular disease; both effects were felt most strongly in poorer countries. We also know that lead exposure is associated with an increased risk of violent and antisocial behaviour.

In this post, we’re going to try something a bit different and move beyond the usual research updates and commentary to step back and spend some time thinking about how pervasive chemical pollution could be causing—or could cause in the near future—widespread dysfunction at the societal level, giving rise to problems far more severe than the immediate individual health impacts that form the focus of this newsletter.

Ecosystem collapse and soil degradation

Unsurprisingly, hidden hazards are interfering with the ability of the Earth’s ecosystems to perform the crucial services needed to sustain human life.

Biodiversity is essential for keeping the civilisational show on the road, but it’s been under attack in recent decades, with wildlife populations of virtually every kind dropping dramatically around the world.

Researchers attribute the decline in large part to pesticide use, industrial run-off, and other unfortunate features of the modern world that harm both us and the biosphere.

Microplastic pollution is confusing bees, rendering them less able to carry out the essential work of pollinating our crops.

When bees inhale or ingest microplastics, the particles can damage their guts and enter their brains, wreaking havoc on their memory and learning abilities.

As a result, bees can forget what scents are associated with sugary rewards and end up searching for nectar in all the wrong places.

It isn’t just microplastics getting in the way of bees doing their thing: one study found that PFAS (forever chemicals) are finding their way into bee food via pollen and pose a serious threat to their health. PFOS, a type of PFAS, is already known to be deadly to bee larvae.

This is all on top of synthetic pesticide use, heavy metal pollution, and the many other human-made accelerants of die-off and colony collapse confronting the world’s bees.

Microplastics have also been found at alarming levels in soil and may be making it harder to grow food. A study from a few years ago found that microplastics exert a deleterious effect on soil health—disrupting plant growth, seed germination, nutrient uptake, and photosynthesis.

Microplastics also affect the health and vitality of soil fauna such as earthworms and alter the structure and functioning of the microbes that call soil their home, impacting carbon and nitrogen cycling.

This is to say nothing of the fact that microplastics in soil also, of course, means microplastics in the food we manage to grow in that soil.

Impaired cognition

Modern society is the product of—and to some significant degree depends on—our huge brains and our ability to use them well.

A slight drop in the decision-making and critical-thinking prowess of any single person won’t have much of an effect on society at large (and may even go unnoticed by the individual in question). But a significant drop at the population level would undoubtedly impact societal functioning.

Education would become more difficult, scientific breakthroughs less frequent, and the ability of society to understand and formulate the laws and rules that govern it would take a hit. In general, people would become less able to make the right decisions for themselves and others, resulting in a gradual degradation in quality of life across the board.

Unfortunately, pervasive environmental nasties are very likely affecting our cognitive capacities in all sorts of ways and at every stage of development.

There’s so much to share here, but to offer just a handful of data points: a 2023 study from Denmark found that prenatal exposure to phthalates was associated with lower IQ in children.

This recent article reports on research linking PFAS exposure to cognitive issues of various kinds, including ADHD and neurodegenerative diseases.

I like this study of office workers in the US showing that exposure to everyday volatile organic compounds significantly impairs cognitive ability. It found that elevated carbon dioxide levels can also have the same detrimental effect—meaning that, as the problem of climate change worsens, indoor environments will become more polluted, which, ironically, will reduce our capacity to deal with the problem of climate change.

At the back end, we looked in the last post at the connection between pesticides and Parkinson’s. I’ve also written previously about a study that found that people who died of dementia had much higher concentrations of microplastics in their brains than those who died of other causes.

Further, we know that microplastics are accumulating in our brains at an alarmingly high rate and that animal models show that they might be blocking blood vessels and interfering with learning and memory.

The basic story here is that, while we still need to work out the details, things are finding their way into our brains that shouldn’t be there and that we’re not evolved to deal with, and it would be something approximating a miracle if it turned out that this was all completely benign.

Hormone levels and reproductive dysfunction

A few years back, US epidemiologist Shanna Swan published Count Down, which meticulously documents drastic changes in the reproductive health and functioning of Western men.

She writes that in just the decades between the 1970s and 2010, sperm count and sperm quality dropped by over 50% in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand—and she identifies the ever-growing toxicity of our everyday environments as the primary culprit. Other researchers have made similar findings in Asia.

Chemicals that mess with hormone signalling, such as phthalates and BPA, are, according to Swan, especially culpable. It’s thought that much of the damage may be irreversible.

Female reproductive health is being similarly undermined. Research shows that endocrine disrupting chemicals can accelerate ovarian ageing, disrupt ovulation, and contribute to the development of endometriosis.

A recent study found microplastics in ovarian follicular fluid for the first time, which I can’t imagine is good news.

Swan also points out that miscarriages have been rising by roughly 1% a year, linking the increase to the escalating prevalence of environmental pollutants.

Across the developed world, but elsewhere too, birth rates are collapsing.

In order to sustain itself (without importing people from elsewhere), a population needs a fertility rate of around 2.1, but no high-income countries (aside from Israel) have a rate at this level—not even close. Some have rates almost fatally low. South Korea’s, for example, isn’t much higher than 0.7, meaning that if current trends continue, it won’t be long before the country ceases to exist.

There are many reasons for the steep decline in total fertility rates, and some are broadly positive. But it’s plausible that one reason is the harm being inflicted on our hormone and reproductive systems by the toxic chemical brew we marinate in day after day.

Falling fertility rates don’t pose an imminent threat to the continuation and flourishing of human civilisation. But, especially if managed poorly, they could cause it to gradually decay over time, as societies become less dynamic and innovative and the burden of an overstretched pension system starts to take hold. I’m also generally a fan of people and, all else being equal, would prefer there to be more rather than fewer of them.

Loss of trust in institutions

As a final civilisation-destabilising effect, I’d wager that toxic chemical pollution could conceivably contribute to a loss of trust in public institutions and the ability of the governments we elect to provide us with the safe and healthy environments we need to live our best lives.

Trust in institutions is the currency of a functioning society. People need to be able to know that, broadly speaking, what they’re being taught at school is correct, the buildings they live in are safe, the doctors treating them generally know what they’re doing, and the financial institutions they bank with aren’t going to swallow their savings and run off into the sunset.

Countries that enjoy high levels of trust tend to be places you’d want to live, and those with low levels tend to be places you really wouldn’t. And it’s no wonder.

As more research on the health risks associated with environmental toxins emerges—and as public awareness of the problem grows—governments, the media, and other public institutions will have to take heed of what we’re learning and recognise concerns about the issue as legitimate, or they’ll risk an erosion of whatever public trust in them still exists.

People losing faith that the food they’re eating, the water they’re drinking, the consumer products they’re purchasing, and so on definitely won’t do them any significant level of harm is fertile ground for the flourishing of a general disdain for public officials and those tasked with keeping us safe (to say nothing of conspiracy theories about how the powers that be are actively out to get us).

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