Natural hazard

“ But there are more facts in nature than these. There is premature death, pestilence, famine. And if you answer: Man has control over these; they are caused by man’s ignorance and sin, and by his breaking of natural laws—what will you make of those destructive powers over which he has no control; of the hurricane and the earthquake; of poisons, vegetable and mineral; of those parasitic Entozoa whose awful abundance, and awful destructiveness in man and beast, science is just revealing—a new page of danger and loathsomeness? ”

“ Instead of restraining the natural enterprise and ardor of the troops, prohibiting and deprecating all hostile contact with the enemy, as if they were no match for the rebels, thus keeping them under the cowing of Bull Run, and aggravating the awe of the enemy’s prowess inspired by that defeat, they should have been continually brought face to face with the foe, scouts and reconnoissances kept afoot and boldly pushed, and parties of picked men under picked officers sent to fall upon the enemy’s pickets and exposed detachments at every favorable opportunity. ”

“ In a state of necessity, such as a state of war, the occurrence of a public danger, or fire, flood, famine, earthquake, serious epidemic among human beings or animals or animal diseases, insects or pests or any other similar events, or in any other circumstances which might endanger the safety of the population, in whole or in part. ”

“ The decay, however, had attacked its centre, even while it stood erect in the pride of vegetation, bellowing out its heart, as disease sometimes destroys the vitals of animal life, even while a fair exterior is presented to the observer. ”

“ Growth and decay, health and disease, are alike continuous with activities of the natural surroundings. The difference lies in the bearing of what happens upon future life-activity. From the standpoint of this future reference environmental incidents fall into groups: those favorable to life-activities, and those hostile. ”

“ The waters thus polluted were a source for propagating the disease. The very water, gift of purity and cleanliness, became the channel of a loathsome death. An internal fire ate out the very core of life. ”

“ Suppose that all the dead animal matter, human or other, were to be incorporated with the soil under these rapid changes of saturation and drying, of diffusion and emanation, what a mass of poison, what danger to the living! What foresight they showed in avoiding it, what labour and effort, but what results! Can anyone pretend that a system so vast, so beautiful, so coherent in all its parts, had been engendered and conserved merely by an ignorant fanaticism, or that a people who had so much of wisdom in their actions had none in their thoughts? ”

“ Hence impure air and water, polluted soil from defective sewerage, adulterated food-stuffs, and the unhealthful conditions imposed during the school-going period of life—which are questions of public hygiene and general concern—contribute, in no small degree, to his mortality. But aside from these influences, common to all people, he is subject to others peculiar to himself, on account of the environments that govern him. ”

“ The release and use of toxic substances, the exploitation of resources, and physical alterations of the environment have had substantial unintended consequences affecting human health and the environment. ”

“ If they were to be weak and sick, suffering from all kinds of diseases, dying in great numbers, all these things would count for little. But men and women, as they are learning how to conserve their natural resources, are thinking far more than ever before of health and how to keep it. It is necessary to think of these things, for as people crowd into cities, where they live a life different from that which nature [Pg 266] intended, sickness and the death-rate increase greatly. ”

“ If the refuse matter and excreta of a city are not promptly and carefully removed; if the streets are not of the proper width, and regularly cleansed; if houses are allowed to be so constructed that effective ventilation is impossible; if the water-supply is insufficient, or tainted with organic matter; and if persons are allowed free entrance, suffering with dangerous infectious diseases, and no well-directed efforts are made to destroy the noxious matters thus introduced, misery, disease, and a fearful rate of mortality, will be the normal results. ”

“ We interfere with the soil as nature made it when we force it to produce from one acre the natural produce of ten; we interfere with the processes of nature when we load the air with the products of thousands of furnaces, manufactories, and the poison exhaled from poisonous rivers and brooks; and we interfere with nature when we alter the constitution of those streams and rivers from a natural to an artificial state, loading them with the refuse of our artificially-drained fields, &c. ”

“ Upon reconsidering the dangers of fevers, dysentery, etc., in the swampy and confined districts described, the naturalist may become somewhat less ardent in following his favorite pursuit. Of one fact I can assure him that no matter how great the natural strength of his constitution, the repeated exposure to the intense heat of the sun, the unhealthy districts that he will visit, the nights redolent of malaria, and the horrible water that he must occasionally drink, will gradually undermine the power of the strongest man. Both sportsman and naturalist in this must share alike. ”

“ These conditions comprise the proper supply of food and oxygen, the necessary removal of the waste products formed by the chemical activity of all parts of the body, the protection against external mechanical forces and temperature, as well as a number of minor details. Any interference with these conditions of life impairs the normal activity of the entire body, or, as the case may be, of the individual cells concerned. But the animal system possesses the means of resisting damaging influences. Death or inactivity of one or a few citizens does not disable the state. ”

“ Who gives thanks aright for the cheap blessing of the unstained light of heaven?
But we are insensible to the every-day teaching of this narrative: we turn our rivers into fluid poison; we spread all around us deleterious influences, which breed by minute forms of parasitical life the germs of cruel disease; we load the atmosphere with fumes which slay our cattle with periodical distempers, and are deadlier to vegetation than the hail-storm or the locust ”

“ When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. ”

“ The organic germs that caused these diseases depended on swamps, stagnant pools, and decaying animal and vegetable matter for nests in which to be cultivated, and from such places they were conveyed by the air or water and so reached the fluids of the human body in which their further cultivation went on, to the great grief of your race. Now there is not a swamp nor any such thing in all the world, and nothing whatever is allowed to decay. Everything that grows is either utilized or cremated. ”

“ What is the cause of morbid action in the animal system? Not the air we breathe, for our fellow denizens of nature breathe the same uninjured; not the water we drink, (if remote from the pollutions of man and his inventions [28] ,) for the animals drink it too; not the earth we tread upon; not the unobscured sight of glorious nature, in the wood, the field, or the expanse of sky and ocean; nothing that we are or do in common with the undiseased inhabitants of the forest. ”

“ It is sad to be reminded, that, whatever evils threaten the health of a population, whether from pollutions of water or of air,—whether from bad drainage or overcrowding, they fall heaviest on the most innocent victims—upon children of tender years. ”

“ His advent is a challenge to the entire pack—earthquake, storm, fire, flood, drought, heat, cold, wild beasts, venomous reptiles, noxious insects, bacilli, spectacular plague and velvet-footed household disease—all are fierce and tireless in pursuit. ”

“ Let even some slight variation take place in the atmosphere, and the Lord withdraw the sanitory influences that preserve the earth in its present healthy state, and the murky atmosphere would contain contagion, and disease; the pestiferous air would spread desolation, and death; plague and pestilence would fill the earth; and millions of foetid loathsome beings would be living, and dying examples, of man's impotency and weakness. Even a small insect sent to destroy the grain, accompanied with the blight of the potatoes, such as has already been witnessed, would produce incalculable evil ”

“ Thus, the temperature of the climate, the quality of the food, and the evils arising from slavery, are the three causes of the changes and degeneration of animals. The effects of each deserve to be particularly considered, [323] and their relations, when viewed in detail, will present a picture, in the foreground of which we shall see Nature such as she is at present, and in the distant perspective what she was before her degradation. ”

“ But, so long as dense forest, creeping plants, and swamps encumber the soil, there can be no country within the tropics favourable to the health of man, and all immigrants or other persons who make a sufficiently long stay in such localities, prepare themselves for being visited by maladies of the most formidable nature, among which fever and dysentery play the most conspicuous part. ”

“ You know that even now many tracts of the Earth’s surface are still covered with putrid morasses and impenetrable forests, the cold and damp atmosphere of which gives birth to noxious insects, and breathes forth devastating epidemics; which are almost entirely the dwelling-place of wild animals, and only afford to the few creatures in human form who are to be found in them the means of dragging on a dull and joyless existence, without freedom, usefulness, or dignity. ”

“ The change from animal life on the broad prairies and woods of a temperate [Pg 149] zone, to life in stables of crowded cities and yards of farmers, many of which are in any thing but a sanitary condition, and to the experience of daily exposure and labor, and ofttimes to ill treatment and improper food, induces disease no less surely among animals than among the human race. ”

“ When the non-sustentative forms of lethal selection are considered, it is seen very clearly that man is not exempt from the workings of this law. A non-sustentative form of natural selection takes place through the destruction of the individual by some adverse feature of the environment, such as excessive cold, or bacteria ”

“ Glasgow Thuggery, Chartist torch-meetings, Birmingham riots, Swing conflagrations, are so many symptoms on the surface; you abolish the symptom to no purpose, if the disease is left untouched. Boils on the surface are curable or incurable,—small matter which, while the virulent humour festers deep within; poisoning the sources of life ”

“ The imagination dwells upon the appalling hazards peculiar to their few accessible parts, and on the almost total extinction of life and animal powers, which is the penalty of a few hours sojourn there. ”

“ Thus the very climate is changed from what it ought to be; the elements become hostile to man in an extreme degree, and the whole system of nature, originally designed to give life and happiness to the human race, is, through their own misconduct, changed into a system of misery, disease and death. ”

“ After all, the chief danger is not from underground springs, from clean surface water or an occasional rising of the floods, but from the unclean wastes that in our present half-civilized state are constantly going out of our homes to poison and pollute the earth and air around them. ”

“ We believe existing environmental regulations and other decisions, particularly those based on risk assessment, have failed to protect adequately human health and the environment - the larger system of which humans are but a part.
We believe there is compelling evidence that damage to humans and the worldwide environment is of such magnitude and seriousness that new principles for conducting human activities are necessary
While we realize that human activities may involve hazards, people must proceed more carefully than has been the case in recent history. ”

“ Let it suffice here to observe, that we do not imagine, that the air, water, or manner of living, can produce it; for we have found as many sick in the low marshy places, as in more airy saline places: and if many Negroes were infected in the Grand Terre, where they drink the foul waters of ponds and lakes, we see an equal number ill in places, where they have fresh rivers and running waters; but they may prove proper causes for unlocking, and disposing persons to receive, the disease. ”

“ As regards other factors of the inorganic environment, disasters which come within the scope of our subject may be brought about by many agencies, the mechanical effects of snow and hail, wind, avalanches, etc., the effects of lightning, and so forth, being a few of them. ”

“ Activities which are likely to pose a significant risk to nature shall be preceded by an exhaustive examination; their proponents shall demonstrate that expected benefits outweigh potential damage to nature, and where potential adverse effects are not fully understood, the activities should not proceed ”

“ INDISCRETIONS.—Man's own indiscretion is perhaps as frequent a cause of bad health as climate. One man gets coup de soleil shooting snipe in the heat of the day; another catches fever beating the jungle for heavy game; another gets mauled by a tiger or a bear;and another breaks his leg hunting. Some drink themselves, some eat themselves, some sleep themselves,some gamble themselves, some drug themselves into a state of disease; yet the climate gets a great part of the blame. ”