ecology and big business - the dangers of the petrochemical industry

The following (from "The Corporation") worries me:

Something happened in 1940 which marked the beginning of a new era. The era of the ability to synthesize and create, on an unlimited scale, new chemicals that had never existed before in the world. 

So, suddenly it became possible to produce any new chemical, synthetic chemicals, the likes of which had never existed before in the world, for any purpose and at virtually no cost. 

For instance if you wanted to go to a chemist and say, look I want to have a chemical, say a pesticide which will persist throughout the food chain, and I don’t want it to, have to renew it very often, I’d like it to be relatively non-destructible and then he’d put 2 benzene molecules on the blackboard and add a chlorine here, and a chlorine there – that was DDT!  

As the petrochemical era grew and grew, warning signs emerged that some of these chemicals, could pose hazards. 

The data initially were trivial, anecdotal, but gradually, a body of data started accumulating to the extent that we now know that the synthetic chemicals which have permeated  our workplace, our consumer products, our air, our water, produced cancer, and also birth defects and some other toxic effects. 

Furthermore, industry has known about this—at least most industries have known about this—and have attempted to trivialize these risks. 

Dr. Epstein

Professor Emeritus of Environmental Medicine, 

Univeristy of Illinois 

Personally I suspect that we are doing great environmental damage to the planet, we often do not understand how modern petrochemicals are toxic until it is too late. Unfortunately we don't generally take a prudent enough approach? Recent research in the UK has shown that the impact on local residents of modern pesticides was not understood as each pesticide was test in isolation and not the various cocktails of pesticides residents in rural areas are routinely exposed to... This just one example and the tip of the iceberg. 

petrochemical |ˌpetrōˈkemikəl|

adjective

relating to or denoting substances obtained by the refining and processing of petroleum or natural gas : a huge petrochemical works producing plastics.

• of or relating to petrochemistry.

noun (usu. petrochemicals)

a chemical obtained from petroleum and natural gas.

emeritus |iˈmerətəs|

adjective

(of the former holder of an office, esp. a college professor) having retired but allowed to retain their title as an honor : emeritus professor of microbiology | [ postpositive ] the gallery's director emeritus.

ORIGIN mid 18th cent.: from Latin, past participle of emereri ‘earn one's discharge by service,’ from e- (variant of ex-) ‘out of, from’ + mereri ‘earn.’