Nanotechnology. Human gene doping. Cloned meat. Fire Retardants. Emerging technologies and harmful chemicals are appearing in consumer products and in our communities, and they have serious impacts on people and our environment. Corporations often seek profit from scientific developments, with little regard for human health.
Friends of the Earth is a fierce advocate of scientific progress, but people must be put before profits, and we must take precaution to ensure new technologies don’t do more harm than good.
Read the latest news and updates from our Health and Environment campaigns:
Friends of the Earth is a fierce advocate of scientific progress, but corporations often seek profit from scientific developments with little regard for human health. We must take precaution to ensure new technologies don't do more harm than good.
Eric Hoffman is our new genetic engineering policy campaigner and he works to protect human health and the environment from unregulated new technologies.
Friends of the Earth’s core reason for petitioning the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was due to concern about nanoscale silver and its use in great quantities in many products, which have the potential to generate serious antimicrobial resistance (as the United Nations and much of the scientific community have identified is happening with antibiotics).
We encourage those concerned with our position to take a close look at our detailed report on the issue. Pages 13-14 of our nano-silver report explain the difference between these types of silver: ionic, nano, and colloidal. Colloidal silver is usually a mixture of different sized particles suspended in fluid and may contain nanoscale silver, silver ions or both.
Our Health and Environment Campaigner, Ian Illuminato, will be joining the rest of our team in Copenhagen on December 13. Ian’s mandate during the negotiations will involve lobbying for stricter assessment of risky technologies, which are being promoted to help with the climate crisis.
There is pressing concern that in the panic to respond to the climate crisis, governments and industry will promote risky ‘techno-fix’ solutions that will actually make our situation worse. It may seem like a bad science fiction plot to consider spraying nanoparticles of sulphur in the upper atmosphere to act as a giant planetary sunscreen, or dumping iron nanoparticles in the ocean to trigger giant algal blooms that will supposedly suck up carbon dioxide. However these and similar proposals are beginning to attract qualified support from previously skeptical quarters. Despite the clear need for it, there is a serious shortage of well researched critical information available about the applications and implications of nanotechnology and synthetic biology for climate change and in the areas of energy production and use.
For several years, Friends of the Earth and various other environmental groups, air regulators, and public health organizations have worked with the EPA to create an “Emission Control Area” that would dramatically reduce air pollution from large ships – pollution that is responsible for serious health impacts including premature death, lung cancer, heart attacks, and respiratory illness.
The Humane Society of the United States, in conjunction with Friends of the Earth and other organizations, petitioned EPA to regulate global warming pollution and other air pollution from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), or factory farms.
Friends of the Earth teamed up with Consumers Union (CU) and the International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA) to compile the latest info about nanomaterials in sunscreens and their potential hazards. When you look at the data, it’s clear that sunscreens containing nanomaterials are not worth the risk.
Our Health and Environment Campaigner, Ian Illuminato, travelled to Paris, France in mid July to speak at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) conference, entitled Potential Environmental Benefits of Nanotechnology: Fostering Safe Innovation-Led Growth (click here to view the background document for the meeting). We presented our findings on the human and environmental health risks of nanotechnologies with a ‘green’ purpose such as those used for water filtration, toxics clean-up, and energy conservation applications.
The $600M investment by Exxon into Synthetic Genomics, J. Craig Venter's synthetic biology company, is just the latest in a string of controversial and what should be eyebrow-raising investment deals between the oil industry and synthetic biology research ventures. The BP-Berkeley deal was the first major investment by Big Oil into synthetic biology research, in which BP invested $500M over 10 years to fund researching synthetic biology for the development of new biofuels in 2007. Since then, almost all major oil companies have invested, steeply, in synthetic biology research for biofuels. Here is a report from ETC Group outlining all of these investments.
In an era of green living we often overlook one of the simplest ways to fight global warming – critically examining the food we eat. An ideal low-carbon diet consists of plant-based foods that are locally and organically grown. Meat consumption, particularly from animals raised on factory farms, also known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), is a major contributor to a person’s carbon footprint.
There are millions of hungry people in the world and small farms which seek to provide healthy food for the surrounding areas are being threatened by large-scale industrial agriculture. To make matters worse, genetically modified foods and emerging technologies, like nanotechnology and synthetic biology, continue to threaten the extinction of small farms and the consumer by removing the power of choice.
The Friends of the Earth International Food Sovereignty campaign held a a strategy meeting in Amsterdam recently. Gillian Madill, our Genetic Technologies Campaigner, attended to bring the new technologies perspective, as well as to hear about the work being done in other Friends of the Earth offices around the world.
