Plastics

Further development in synthetics with the invention of Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) and Viscose Rayon. 

Sharpe, C. (2016) *In the Wake: On Blackness and Being*. Durham: Duke University Press.

Culture

In the Wake: On Blackness and Being.

Tsing, A. (2015) *The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins.* Princeton, N.J.; Oxford: Princeton University Press.

> “Everyone carries a history of contamination; purity is not an option” (2015: online)

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. 

Runcorn Castner-Kellner Alkali company in Liverpool produced caustic soda and chlorine by the electrolysis of brine that found its way into the Rover Mersey. In 1926 it underwent a nationwide merger into the then known, Imperial Chemical Industries company.

Mersey Ecosystem Management

Imperial Chemical Industries opened. 

Report of the proceedings of the european workshop on the impact of endocrine disrupters on human health and wildlife. Weybridge, UK. Report EUR17549 of the environment and climate change research programme of DGXII of the european commission. 

Endocrine-disruption

The Weybridge Meeting. 

Thermoplastic Polyester. This includes trademarked Dacron, Mylar, Melinex, Teijin and Tetoron.

Carson, R. (1951) *The Sea Around Us*. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

> "Beginnings are apt to be shadowy, and so it is with the beginnings of that great mother of life, the sea." (Carson, 1951: 3). 

> "When they went ashore the animals that took up land life carried with them a part of the sea in their bodies, a heritage that they passed on to their children and which even today links each animal with its origin in the ancient sea. Fish, amphibian, and reptile, warm-blooded bird and mammal—each of us carries in our veins a salty stream in which the elements sodium, potassium, and calcium are combined in almost the same proportions as in sea water....In the same way, our lime-hardened skeletons are a heritage of calcium-rich ocean of Cambrian time. Even the protoplasm that streams within each cell of our bodies has the chemical structure impressed upon all living matter when the first simple creatures were brought forth in the ancient sea" (Carson, 1951: 13-14). 

 The Sea Around Us. 

The first man-made plastic called Parkesine is invented by Alexander Parkes and exhibited at the Great International Exhibition in London.

In 1993, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the recombinant bovine growth hormone (rbGH), also known as bovine somatotropin (rbST) for use in dairy cattle. Recent estimates by the manufacturer of this hormone indicate that 30% of the cows in the United States (US) may be treated with rbGH.

Use of synthetic hormones starts for the meat and dairy industry in the US. 

Glissant, É. (1997) Poetics of Relation. Ann Arbor, Min: University of Michigan Press.

> “In actual fact the abyss is a tautology: the entire ocean, the entire sea gently collapsing in the end into the pleasures of sand, make one vast beginning, but a beginning whose time is marked by these balls and chains gone green” (Glissant, 1997). 

Of Opacity 

One of most significant leglislations against water pollution in the UK, the Control of Pollution Act (COPA) covered all discharges (existing, new, inland, underground, tidal, coastal out to 3 mile limit) and introduced public participation in decssion making. The Act also allowed private prosecutions against companies. However, it took 10 years to be implemented as government worries about economic costs. This meant it wasn't until 1985 that all discharges into the Mersey came under full legal control. 

Control of Pollution Act (COPA) 1974

Second World War (WWII)

Bennets H., Underwood E.J., & Shier F.L. (1946) 'A Specific Breeding Problem of Sheep on Subterranean Clover Pasture in Western Australia'. *Aust Vet J *, 22, pp. 2–12; Woods H.F. (2003) (chairman), Phytoestrogens and health. Crown copyright UK.

Reports from sheep farmers in Western Australia reporting infertility in their sheep after grazing on certain fields of clover, again later shown to result from consumption of phytoestrogens in the plant material. 

Early indications of an endocrine-disrupting activity affecting fertility in sheep. 

Environmental Protection Agency is established in the USA.

Hyde, C. (1912). ‘Notes on Rivers as Boundaries’. *American Journal of International Law*, 6(4), pp. 901—909. 

When rivers began to be used as “arteries of commerce” they needed to be navigable, and with this came an assertion of control and ownership that assigned riparian proprietors rights, those who owned the river banks had rights of sovereignty over flowing water as well. 

Notes on Rivers as Boundaries. 

Wylie, S. A. (2018) *Fractivism: Corporate Bodies and Chemical Bonds.* Durham: Duke University Press.

> "The interconnection of synthetic chemicals, endocrine disruption, fracking and fossil fuels is not incidental. it is based on a growing recognition of the adverse impacts of modernity's historical, material, and cultural investment in controlling biological  environments" (41-2)

> "Synthetic chemicals have been wielded to generate and stablise boundaries in agriculture, manufacture, households, and laboratories as well as to control and influence basic human biology" (42)

Fractivism: Corporate Bodies and Chemical Bonds.

Nylon and Neoprene are invented by Wallace Hume Carothers and considered a replacement for silk and synthetic rubber respectively. 

Mersey Population was about 5,000.

Alaimo, S. (2016) *Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times.* Minneapolis, Min; London: University of Minnesota Press. 

> “Origins often presume or shore up ontological boundaries, delimiting material agencies and possibilities of becoming, as the present has already been formed by the past.” (2016: online).

Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times.

Fortun, K. (2012) ‘Ethnography in Late Industrialism’. *Cultural Anthropology*, 27(3), pp. 446–464. 

Ethnography in Late Industrialism. 

Discovery of the Great Plastic Garbage Patch, a giant gyre of plastic litter that has collected in the North Pacific Ocean. 

The river was so polluted that it caught fire, raising concerns about pollution. Awareness of environmental issues spread and the persistence of plastic waste began to trouble observers. 

Major oil spill off the coast of California pollutes the Cuyhoga River in Ohio. 

This opened the door to discussion concerning a role for environmental chemicals more widely in increasingly reported female and male reproductive problems, increasing incidence of cancers in reproductive tissues and disorders of thyroid and adrenal function. 

Reports of declining sperm quality in men living in Denmark compared with those in its less industrial neighbour Finland.

Rick Leah, (2003) *The Mersey—A Case History*. Original material is copyright of University of Liverpool. Available: [http://pcwww.liv.ac.uk/aquabiol/ecol198_web/mersey+estuary/mersey.htm](http://)

Silting up of the Dee Estuary in 15th century caused a decline in trade at port of Chester and boosted Liverpool trade.

On the 28th of August 1207, in Winchester, King John issued the Steward of West Derby with a charter in the form of Letters Patent that created the new borough of ‘Lurpul’. The charter, amongst other things, invited people to settle in the area by offering tax concessions and land grants.

Port of Liverpool Royal Charter 1207.

Plastic debris in the Ocean is first observed.

Cats were seen dancing strangely and frenetically before suddenly dying. Shortly afterward, fishermen were afflicted with a comparable mysterious evil. It gradually became evident that these unexplained deaths were due to releases from the Chisso petrochemical plant, which had adopted mercury oxide as a catalyst for the synthesis of acetaldehyde. Mercurial compounds (400 metric tons between 1932 and 1966) were released into the bay, contaminating marine fauna, accumulating in the food chain, and poisoning the local populations. There were over 900 deaths recorded between 1949 and 1965 and more than 10,000 patients were compensated.

Minamata Bay Disaster, Southwest Japan. 

Darbre, P. D. (2019) 'The History of Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals', *Current Opinion in Endocrine and Metabolic Research*, 7 (August), pp. 26-33. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245196501830067X?via%3Dihub. 

Known as the "silent Thalidomide", DES is a synthetic nonsteroidal oestrogen that was first made synthetically. It wasn't patented and went on to be produced by more than 200 companies. It was subsequently prescribed to several million women between 1950 and 1975 to prevent threatened miscarriage in the first trimester of pregnancy. 

Diethylstilbestrol (DES) was first synthesised in the UK. 

The “pharmacopornographic” control of subjectivity, early birth control pill packets designed to look “feminine”.

The use of oral contraceptives containing synthetic oestrogens and progestins is embraced. 

Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), trade name Teflon, is invented by Roy Plunkett.

Map showing water quality in the Mersey Basin in 1984 – with most stretches falling into the ‘poor’ and ‘bad’ categories. The Mersey is not an entirely freshwater. Water flows into it before entering the sea and there are points of both marine and freshwater courses. It receives drainage from a huge catchment (5000 km2). The Mersey rises in Peak District and then has major connurbations of Manchester, Warrington/Widnes and Liverpool. Historically, the area was the growth and development of the British Chemical Industry. It was and still is a centre of manufacture, a Major port and has all the implications of spills. There is a huge increase in mersey basin population from 1700 to now (5+ million). These are some of the widely accepted reasons the Mersey is regarded as one of the most polluted estuaries in Europe.

Mersey Water Quality

The first dock in Liverpool became a major factor in making the Mersey catchment a prime location for industrial expansion. Over the following years, in close vicinity spinning and weaving mills were sited along waterways to get power for water wheels; the textile industry and its processes (bleaching, dying and finishing) all required huge amounts of water; and the supporting industries of manufacturing dyestuffs and chemicals sprang up along the transport waterways as well as paper, heavy chemicals and glass production also flourished. The Old Dock, originally known as Thomas Steers' dock, was the world's first commercial wet dock. The 3 1⁄2 acres (1.4 ha) dock was built on the River Mersey in Liverpool, England, starting in 1710 and completed in 1716.

The Old Dock

Dodds E.C., Goldberg L., Lawson W., et al. (1938) 'Estrogenic Activity of Certain Synthetic Compounds'. *Nature*, 141. Pp. 247–248.

Sir Charles Dodds led a group of chemists in London to synthesise a range of chemicals with oestrogenic properties. Initiated with the intentions of studying the mechanisms of oestrogen action, a potential pharmaceutical value of such compounds was realised and a new industry of synthetic hormones was born.

Sir Charles Dodds was synthesing a range of chemicals with oestrogenic properties. 

The relationship between water quality and economic regeneration in the Mersey Basin: [http://merseybasin.org.uk/archive/items/MBC151.html](http://http://merseybasin.org.uk/archive/items/MBC151.html). 



The relationship between water quality and economic regeneration in the Mersey Basin. A report to Northwest Water, the Environment Agency and the Mersey Basin Campaign. The report explores the role, both actual and potential, of investment in improved water quality in the stimulation of economic activity, particularly in traditionally rundown inner-city areas adjacent to rivers and canals. This is part of the recasting of the region's image, with good water quality central to the vision of a 'green and pleasant region', and the creation of a credible setting for growth and investment. The study covers the economy, environment and policy setting in the Mersey Basin, economic regeneration and property development. 

Water Quality and Economic Regeneration in the Mersey Basin Report. 

Roberts, E. F. S. (2017) 'What Gets Inside: Violent Entanglements and Toxic Boundaries in Mexico City', *Cultural Anthropology*, 32(4), pp. 592–619.

What Gets Inside: Violent Entanglements and Toxic Boundaries in Mexico City. 

The introduction of Saran Wrap was made possible thanks to the accidental discovery in 1933 of Polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC) or Saran, by Ralph Wiley, a Dow Chemical Lab worker.

Saran Wrap is introduced by Dow Chemicals.

Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) is invented by English chemists John Whinfield and James Dickson.

Genital abnormalities were reported in both male and female alligators, and Apopka female alligators were reported with abnormal ovarian morphology, large numbers of polyovular follicles, and raised plasma oestradiol levels.

Accidental spill of the pesticide dicofol into a tributary of Lake Apopka in Florida, USA, in 1980 resulted in serious loss of the alligator population.

Mersey Basin Campaign - new life for the North West: [http://merseybasin.org.uk/archive/items/MBC010.html](http://http://merseybasin.org.uk/archive/items/MBC010.html). 

An early prospectus produced shortly after the Mersey Basin Campaign was launched and aimed at attracting potential partners. Details some of the improvement work that had already been done, as well as proposed future projects. Also include information on how the Campaign was organised at the time. 

Mersey Basin Campaign Prospectus. 

First true plastic Phenol-Formaldehyde (trade name Bakelite) is invented by Leo Baekeland. 

Cellulose Nitrate or Celloid is invented by John Wesley Hyatt, while searching for a suitable substitute for ivory.

Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive 1991. 

Mersey Basin Campaign partnership structure diagram.

Kuratsune M., Yoshimura T., Matsuzaka J., Yamaguchi A. (1972) 'Epidemiologic study on vusho, a poisoning caused by ingestion of rice oil contaminated with a commercial brand of polychlorinated biphenyls', *Environ Health Perspect*, 1. Pp. 119–128.

The toxicity of PCBs had been highlighted by an incident in Japan in 1968 where many people had been poisoned by consumption of rice oil contaminated with PCBs from a heat exchanger liquid, and research into the mechanisms of action revealed effects on the thyroid and, in particular, on thyroid hormone synthesis.

Incident of rice oil contaminated with PCBs in Japan.

Pollock, A. (2016) Queering Endocrine Disruption. In *Object-Oriented Feminism*. Edited by Katherine Behar. Minneapolis, Min: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 183–99.

Queering Endocrine Disruption.

Chen, M. Y. (2012) Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect. Durham; London: Duke University Press.  

Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect.

Earliest evidence comes from the Olmec culture who used natural latex from the Hevea tree for making balls for a popular Mesoamerican game.

Natural rubber is first used by the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica.

Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” is an 85-mile stretch of land that runs alongside the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orlean. 

The expansion of petrochemical corridors—significantly called “Cancer Alleys” in the US—contaminates water and air for residents, most notably in the Lower Mississippi River. Located near oil and coal deposits, these corridors were first developed in the US before expanding into the Global South.

At the beginning of the 19th century, ships begun to be built in Liverpool. Engineering works, fertiliser plants, sugar refineries, cement production and vegetable oil refineries also developed.

Mersey Population was about 78,000.

Bellacasa, M. P. (2011) Matters of care in technoscience: Assembling neglected things. Social Studies of Science. 41(1), 85–106.

> "It is not so much that 'social' interests are added to the non-human world by acting upon the course of natural phenomena and technological development, but rather that interests and other affectivtly animated forces—such as concern and care—are intimately entangled in the ongoing material remaking of the world (Barad, 2007)" (87).

> "Concerns, in turn, call upon our ability to respect each other's issues, if we are to build a common world." (88). 

Matters of Care in Technoscience: Assembling Neglected Things.

Thomas Hancock and Charles Macintosh use gum rubber to waterproof cotton and the 'mac' is born.  

Shotwell, A. (2016) *Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times*. Minneapolis, Min; London: University of Minnesota Press.

> "We cannot be separate from the world that constitutes us. Corporeal exceptionalism cannot be sustained because interabsorption is the way things actually are." (85)

Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times.

It calls for more research to fully understand the associations between EDCs and the risks to human and animal health.

The World Health Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme released a comprehensive report on EDCs.

DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) ban in the USA.

Wingspread Consensus Statement: [https://endocrinedisruption.org/assets/media/documents/wingspread_consensus_statement.pdf](http://https://endocrinedisruption.org/assets/media/documents/wingspread_consensus_statement.pdf).

In July 1991, a group of scientists, including Theo Colborn and Pete Myers, came together for the first time to discuss their concerns about the prevalence and effect of endocrine disrupting chemicals in the environment. The list of scientists who signed this consensus are listed at the end of the statement. Theo Colborn’s Wingspread, as the meeting came to be known, became a watershed in the study of endocrine-disruption. It introduced the terms ‘endocrine disruption’ and ‘endocrine disruptor’ into our vocabulary, produced the first Consensus Statement on endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), and marked the dawn of the endocrine disruption field as we know it today. 

A consensus statement is a document developed by an independent panel of experts, usually multidisciplinary, convened to review the research literature for the purpose of advancing the understanding of an issue, procedure, or method. Here, the consensus statement can be read as another kind of matrix; a knowledge tool with an “effective power”. The Wingspread Consensus Statement became a “flow of force” generated by a particular combination of heterogeneous people coming to see their work and themselves as interrelated. Colborn drew people together from various disciplines from the issues outlined in her initial matrix and together they exposed a flow of synthetic chemicals that “propagated previously unseen relationships of becoming between humans and other organisms, scientific disciplines, and regulatory agencies” (Wylie 2020:43).

Wingspread Consensus Statement. 

Letter from Michael Heseltine and Government Consultation Paper (Department of the Environment, 1983): [http://merseybasin.org.uk/archive/items/MBC009.html](http://http://merseybasin.org.uk/archive/items/MBC009.html). 

Michael Heseltine's Letter

Lee, R. (2020). ‘A Lattice of chemicalized kinship: Toxicant reckoning in a depressive-reparative mode’. *Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience*, 5(2), pp. 1—27.

> A “psychic cover” that enables “elite subjects not to feel morally culpable because no intentional war (by the sovereign nation to which one holds allegiance) has been declared against either the people or habitats that have been so fouled.” (Lee, 2020: 2).

A Lattice of Chemicalized Kinship: Toxicant Reckoning in a Depressive-Reparative Mode.

Mitman, G., Murphy, M., & Sellers, C. (2004) ‘A Cloud over History’. *Osiris, Landscapes of Exposure: Knowledge and Illness in Modern Environments*, 19(1), pp.1—16. 

> "Uncertainty is perhaps the single most pervasive characteristic of the history of exposure...But just as we understand perceptions of the natural world as historically constructed, situated, and conditioned, so we can approach uncertainty as a historical artifact, produced by particular ways of apprehending the world or by clashes between different versions of the world." (13); "If non-human actors have concrete effects in the history of environmental health, so, too, does the deployment of uncertainty—"geographies of unknowing" to Kirsch, "regimes of imperceptibility" to Murphy. The controversial nature of many environmental health problems raises the tricky question of how exposures remain unknown or come to seem less known, even as others become more known." (13-14).

A Cloud Over History

John Hutchinson built his first factory in 1847 on land between the Sankey Canal and the railway which became known as Spike Island. The factory used the Leblanc process to make alkali and was ideally located as the raw materials required could be brought there by the rail and waterways, similarly the end products could be moved anywhere else in the country or abroad. In addition to the the manufacturing of products such as soap, borax, soda ash, salt cake and bleaching powder, other industries grew including iron and copper works. This led to Widnes becoming heavily polluted with smoke and chemical emissions.

A large chemical works sited near the Mersey in Widnes opened disposing waste directly into the estuary.

Davis, H. (2015) ‘Toxic Progeny: The Plastisphere and Other Queer Futures’. *Philosophia A Journal of Continental Feminism*, 5(2), pp. 231—250.

> Plastic”, Davis writes “is the ultimate material of “tempogaphy”, or time-eating, one that consumes the compressed bodies of ancient plants and animals, a process that took thousands of years, only to be transformed to a single-use container” (Davis, 2015: 234). 

Toxic Progeny: The Plastisphere and Other Queer Futures.

The first Earth day is declared in the USA.

Tributyltin is a biocide which was introduced in the 1970s into antifouling paints for treating the underside of ships, but the release of this compound into harbour waters led to widescale masculinisation (imposex) of bivalves and gastropods and consequent population declines. 

Extensive loss of bivalves and gastropods in harbour waters after exposure to tributyltin. 

Monsanto becomes aware of the toxicity of PCBs but continues to produce and sell the product until the 1980s. These long-lived pollutants cause a range of health problems and vast amounts of marine pollution. 

Port Sunlight is a model village and suburb in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Merseyside. It was built by Lever Brothers to accommodate workers in its soap factory (now part of Unilever). The name is derived from Lever Brothers' most popular brand of cleaning agent, Sunlight. It wasn't just local industry that impacted the cleanliness of the River Mersey, but industry from all over. The Midlands (metals), Pennines (textiles) and Warrington (Iron and Tanneries) used the area as a gateway to the international market. As a result, Ellesmere Port and Stanlow area developed as Shropshire Union Cnal used to transport material from further afield. 

Lever Bros soap factory at Port Sunlight opened.  

Beginning of the plastic era is marked by the discovery of a number of natural and semi-synthetics, including Polystyrene, Vulcanite, Gutta-Percha, Shellac and Bois Durci.

Maxwell, James Clerk (1873) Molecules. Nature 8, 25 September 1873: 437–441. [https://www.nature.com/articles/008437a0](http://https://www.nature.com/articles/008437a0)

In 1873, Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell published 'Molecules' in the September issue of *Nature*. Origin stories tend to demarcate singular and "fossilized" sources that most new materialisms deter. However, the discovery of the molecule in the 18th century had an impact so great that it is hard to ignore. From the 19th century onwards, western science began to think in terms of the 'molecular' and needed to create molecular-based theories to further explore.

Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell published 'Molecules' in the September issue of Nature.

Carson, Rachel, 1907-1964. Silent Spring. Boston :Houghton Mifflin, 2002.

This seminal publication warned of the long-term consequences for loss of wildlife populations after the liberal agricultural use of pesticides and herbicides. 

Silent Spring

The natural rubber method of processing is devised by Charles Goodyear. 

Shadaan, R. & Murphy, M. (2020) ‘Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) as industrial and settler colonial structures: Towards a decolonial feminist approach’, *Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience*, 6(1), pp. 1-36.

> “Land is composed of earths that carry histories, ancestors, and future generations… this sense of Land stretches forward and backward in time and is importantly reproductive. That is, it understands that communities and humans are made of and through Land; they are themselves a manifestation of Land.” (2020:8) 

Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) as Industrial and Settler Colonial Structures: Towards a Decolonial Feminist Approach

Daphnia have a long and rich history as a study organism in evolutionary ecology dating back more than 250 years, and covering a variety of fields as diverse as ecotoxicology, host-parasite biology, ecosystem functioning, and more recently ecological genomics and epigenetics. They have been included as they are part of an anthropocentric consciousness, as are indicator species; a individual or group of species whose function, population, or status can reveal the qualitative status of the environment.

Anderson began using Daphnia Magna to assess toxicity of substances found in the industrial wastewater.

Frost, D. & Philips, R. (2011) *Liverpool ’81 Remembering the Riots*. Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press.

""In the summer of 1981, disturbances took place in many of Britain's major cities, and these were particularly intense and sustained in Liverpool. For four nights from the 3rd July rioting took place in the city's Liverpool 8 district, followed by 6 weeks of aftershocks, which were to leave a strong mark on the city and beyond. These events were sparked when a black motor cyclist was arrested by the police. A crowd gathered and stone the police while the motorcyclist made his escape. When police reinforcements arrived, a battle ensued. After four days of riots, 150 buildings had been burnt down and countless shops looted, while 258 police officers needed hospital treatment and 160 people had been arrested. 

The events of Toxteth riots are vividly remembered by the Liverpool community. Following national attention through the Toxteth Riots (1981) the then Secretary of State, Michael Heseltine, highlighted the problems of pollution who used the event as one of the catalysts for the creation of the Mersey River Basin Campaign. This 25 year-long program costing £4 billion aimed to harness efforts of public authorities, private investors and voluntary organisations to revitalise the area concentrating on water quality and bankside redevelopment. 

The Mersey River Basin Campaign was seen as a success, however, environmental and economic responses to the riots were criticised for deflecting attention away from the most thorniest issues they had raised: policing and racism." 

Toxteth Riots

The effects of hormones has been known about since ancient times, most notably in the context of the use of castration to change serving males into eunuchs.

The earliest record for intentional catastration in Lagash, Sumeria.

Polystyrene is adapted for practical use.

The Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) Act 1951: [https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/14-15/64#:~:text=An%20Act%20to%20make%20new,annual%20reports%20of%20river%20boards](http://https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/14-15/64#:~:text=An%20Act%20to%20make%20new,annual%20reports%20of%20river%20boards).

The Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) Act 1951 prevented poisonous, noxious or polluting matter or discharges of trade/sewage effluent to enter inland waters without discharge consent. This only applied to inland, not estuarine or coastal waters, omitting the River Mersey Estuary.

The Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) Act 1951. 

The phrase 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle' is first used.

Plastics industry offers recycling as a solution. This led to the adoption of PETE and HDPE plastic in the 1990s, which were designed with recycling in mind.

Two million used tires are dumped a mile off of the Florida coast near Fort Lauderdale under the ‘conservation’ scheme to create artificial reefs. In France 90,000 cubic meters of used tires go into the Mediterranean Sea. Portugal, Spain and Italy follow suit. Japan tops all by dumping 20 million cubic meters of tires at sea. Unsurprisingly, environmental damage was considerable.

Failed tire conservation scheme. 

The United Kingdom joined the European Communities on 1 January 1973, along with Denmark and the Republic of Ireland. The EC would later become the European Union.

In the USA, the Environment Protection Agency has set up screening programmes for chemicals for endocrine disrupter activity and now incorporated into the ToxCast programme.

CompTox Chemicals Dashboard

In the European Union, EDCs are now managed under the legislation of REACH (registration,
evaluation and authorisation of chemicals). International initiatives include agreements under the Rotterdam
Convention of the United Nations Environment Programme (www.pic.int) and the Stockholm Convention (www.pops.int) and from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

REACH

Swiss-German physician, botanist, occultist, alchemist, and astrologer, Paracelsus (1493/1494—1541) is often considered “the father” of toxicology. He is credited with the classic toxicology maxim, “Alle Dinge sind Gift und nichts ist ohne Gift; allein die Dosis macht, dass ein Ding kein Gift ist,” which translates as, “All things are poison and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes a thing not a poison.” This is often condensed to “The dose makes the poison” or in Latin ""Sola dosis facit venenum"" — meaning that harmless substances can be dangerous when consumed in large quantities, and that even dangerous substances must reach vital parts of the body in sufficient concentrations to do any damage. In other words, any chemical — even water and oxygen — can be toxic if too much is ingested or absorbed into the body. The toxicity of a specific substance depends on a variety of factors, including how much of the substance a person is exposed to, how they are exposed, and for how long.

The western scientific history of endocrine-disruption problematizes this maxim: very small amounts of hormone-disrupting chemicals can have toxic effects and it depends at what time in a species’ lifecycle they are exposed as opposed to simply the dosage. One of the reasons that the effects of hormone-disrupting chemicals were hard to find was that in laboratories only high doses of these toxicants tended to be tested, each individually, on adult bodies. The result was that for many years synthetic chemicals slipped through the cracks of scientific and regulatory structures perceived and mobilised by western toxicology (Wylie 2018).

Sola Dosis Facit Venenum.

McMenamin, M. A. S. & McMenamin, D. (1997) *Hypersea: Life on Land*. New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press. 

"Land organisms have, by necessity, evolved together as part of a greater interconnected mass of living cells. In moving out of marine waters, complex life has taken the sea beyond the sea and folded it back inside of itself to form Hypersea.” (1997: 25) 

Hypersea: Life on Land. 

Preciado, P. B. (2013) *Testo Junkie Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era*. New York, N.Y.: Feminist Press. 

Testo Junkie Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era

The first clinical trials on HRT and chronic postmenopausal conditions were started in the USA in the late 1990s.

Cellophane is invented by Jacques E. Brandenberger. 

Integrated Pollution Prevention Control 1993

Hayward, E. (2012) ‘Sensational Jellyfish: Aquarium Affects and the Matter of Immersion’. *Differences*, 23(3), pp. 161–96. 

Sensational Jellyfish: Aquarium Affects and the Matter of Immersion. 

Mersey Basin Campaign – Governance and Organisation, 

Harris, R.M., Waring, R.H. (2012) 'Diethylstilboestrol - a long-term legacy'. *Maturitas*, 72, pp. 108–112.

In 1971, Diethylstilbestrol (DES) was reported to have caused a rare vaginal cancer in daughters born to women who had taken DES during pregnancy, and as a result, further prescription ceased. Longterm follow-on studies have revealed that in utero exposure to DES is associated with an increased lifetime risk of a range of adverse reproductive health outcomes and not only for daughters but also for sons. It is thought that around 300,000 Britons, 300,000 people in Holland and five to 10 million Americans have been exposed to DES.

Ceasure of Diethylstilbestrol (DES) prescription in the US. 

Bayliss, W. M. & Starling E. H. (1902) *The Mechanism of Pancreatic Secretion*. J Physiol, 28. Pp. 325–353.

Hormones were identifiable as chemical messengers after the identification of secretin in the regulation of the digestive system.

The identification of the first hormone. 

Biss, E. (2014). *On Immunity*. NY: Fitzcarraldo Editions. 

On Immunity

Disposable plastic bottles are put on the market. 

Mersey Basin Campaign Corporate Plan: [http://www.merseybasin.org.uk/archive/assets/53/original/53_mbc_CORPORATE_PLAN_2009-10.pdf](http://http://www.merseybasin.org.uk/archive/assets/53/original/53_mbc_CORPORATE_PLAN_2009-10.pdf).

The last edition of the Campaign's annual corporate plan, which outlines the way the organisation planned for the end of its life. The document also gives a useful overview of the Mersey Basin Campaign's areas of activity, projects and approaches.

Mersey Basin Campaign Corporate Plan 

The scientific statement showed how experimental and epidemiological studies converge with human clinical observations ‘to implicate EDCs as a significant concern to public health’. 

Endocrine Society of the USA publishes statement outlining mechanisms and effects of endocrine-disrupters.

Monsanto becomes the main producer of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), before production spreads to Europe after 1945. 

Early indications of an endocrine-disrupting activity were reported already in the 1920s by pig farmers in the USA concerned by lack of fertility in swine herds fed on mouldy grain, which subsequently was shown to result from consumption of mycoestrogens contained in the mould. 

Early indications of an endocrine-disrupting activity affecting fertility in swine. 

Maggic, M (2019) ‘Toxicity is Never Consensual’, *Logic: Bodies*, 8(3). Available at: [https://logicmag.io/bodies/mary-maggic-on-open-source-hormones/](http://https://logicmag.io/bodies/mary-maggic-on-open-source-hormones/). (Accessed: 20 February 2020).

Toxicity is Never Consensual. 

Building a healthier economy through a cleaner environment: Mersey Basin Campaign mid term report: [http://merseybasin.org.uk/archive/items/MBC055.html](http://http://merseybasin.org.uk/archive/items/MBC055.html).

Building a healthier economy through a cleaner environment: Mersey Basin Campaign mid-term report. This report provides an assessment of the Mersey Basin Campaign at the mid-point in its 25-year life span. Contents include; an outline of the current organisational framework of the campaign, the importance of partnership in translating campaign objectives into action, progress in the three principal areas of campaign activity: water quality, landward regeneration and education and awareness. Finally the report looks to the future and explores some of the issues and factors which were likely to shape the direction of the campaign over the following twelve years. 

Mersey Basin Campaign mid-term Report. 

First plastic waste recycling mill is created in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

Mol, A. (2002). *The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice*. Durham: Duke University Press.