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Is it just something about Western New York? No—it is the entire, petro-dependent world.
Social analysts, such as Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens, have applied the phrase risk society to a period beginning roughly around the end of the Second World War. The complex production technologies that were introduced at that time expose people to unprecedented health risks from radioactive substances, heavy metals, and petrochemicals. Reliance on these technologies thrusts scientists into the policy-making process as experts. Citizens’ access to adequate and timely information about risks is routinely restricted. Corporations guard information related to production as a proprietary commodity, and the government withholds information for ideological and security reasons.
The most extensive production technologies of the risk society are associated with the petrochemical industry. In the industry’s postwar expansion, many naturally occurring materials used in agriculture and manufacturing were replaced with petrochemicals. Petrochemicals are synthetic organic compounds—synthetic because nature does not make them.
Nature uses a limited number of the possible combinations of the 20 amino acids to produce organic compounds. Organic compounds always match corresponding natural enzymes that facilitate the material’s biodegradation. In contrast, human beings use petroleum as a base to manipulate unique combinations of amino acids and to produce synthetic organic compounds. These substances lack corresponding enzymes needed for biodegrading. Instead, synthetic organic compounds bioaccumulate, absorbed through food webs into living tissue, where they pose constant threats to life. They disrupt normal biochemistry, attack central nervous systems and nerve impulses, and can cause mutations and cancers. The United States and Canada annually produce approximately 4 billion pounds of petrochemicals.