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Chapter 5: Environmental Technologies

A Safer Food Supply
There is almost universal agreement that the food we eat today is safer than that of any previous time. When
we bite into a hamburger or munch on fresh fruits and vegetables, we are not generally putting our health at risk. This is largely a tribute to our nation’s food production system, which reduces the possibility of exposing us to harmful pathogens or chemicals, all the way from farm to table. Although our food supply is one of the world’s safest, we still need to do better. Every year far too many people, especially the very young and the elderly, become ill or die as a result of contaminated food.

Recent advances have helped scientists better understand the role of pathogens in food contamination, creating new opportunities to improve the safety of our food supply. There is a new emphasis on preventing contamination throughout the entire production process, rather than simply inspecting food at the end of the cycle. Tests for pathogenic bacteria that once took days to complete now take minutes. Researchers are developing biosensors that will be used to indicate whether a product on the shelf in the store is suitable for consumption. With research efforts such as these tied to strong regulatory programs, we can expect to see a significant reduction in cases of foodborne illnesses over the next decade.

When contaminated foods do cause illness, new tools help us control those threats. For example, thanks to breakthroughs in computer networking technology and genomics, we are now able to track the DNA fingerprint of specific pathogens — the telltale genetic code that proves the identity of a contaminating organism. With that information in hand, we can quickly determine whether its appearance is related to other outbreaks and even whether separate incidents can be traced to the same source in the food supply and distribution chain.

Food Technologies of the Future
New technologies may soon be used to engineer functional foods to be eaten for specific needs. Vitamin A-rich produce will be grown in developing countries, where a deficiency of this nutrient causes a half-million children each year to become permanently blind. Future “nutraceuticals” will likely include staple foods, such as potatoes and bananas, genetically engineered to contain vaccines that will stimulate human antibodies against disease.

Advances in food technologies promise to continue today’s trends toward healthier food, available in a wider variety of convenient forms, delivered more safely to our table, and produced with less impact on the environment. The farmer will remain at the center of our food production system, but increasingly science and technology will give farmers — and consumers — new confidence in a bountiful harvest.

During the past 30 years, environmental science has dramatically altered our perception of the relationships between human activity and the natural environment. Back in the 1950s, it would have seemed absurd
to suggest that humans could in any way alter the global cycles that sustain life on our planet. In particular, the oceans and the atmosphere — our two global commons — seemed to be inexhaustible resources whose very vastness made them invulnerable to influence by humans.

Today we know this view was wrong. Global population has more than tripled over the last century, and human expectations have risen steadily. Consumption of natural resources by the industrialized world has risen to heights undreamed of even a few decades ago. In just a global instant, the world has ceased being “wild.” It is estimated that humans now consume or divert nearly half of the net plant productivity of the land, use more than half
of the available fresh water, and significantly modify the composition of the atmosphere. Environmental science has given us a better understanding of the complexity of the Earth’s environment and its sensitivity to stresses caused by a growing human population. It has also revealed much about human dependence on the healthy functioning of those ecosystems for food, timber, clean water, medicine, and recreation. But we are still learning painful lessons; for example, the devastating floods that China suffered in 1998 were partly a result of extensive deforestation in critical watersheds.

The Goal of Sustainability
New knowledge has led to a new emphasis on developing sustainable uses of natural resources. The challenge is to enable development — including economic growth — without harming the natural environment. Sustainability requires consideration of complex interactions: maintaining biological diversity, safe water resources, and air quality; protecting the population from toxic substances and natural hazards; reversing stratospheric ozone depletion; and understanding, mitigating, and adapting to climate change.

Developing sustainable practices requires a comprehensive scientific understanding of the environment and the development of innovative and creative new technologies to help solve those problems. There is no better example of this process than the story of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). As early as the 1960s, scientists were beginning to understand that these industrial chemicals — widely used because of their many desirable chemical properties — pose a threat to the thin layer of stratospheric ozone that protects life on Earth from dangerous levels of cancer- causing ultraviolet radiation from the sun. As this threat was more fully documented, scientists and engineers from the government and the private sector helped solve the problem by developing safer, less ozone-destructive substitutes for CFCs. Thanks to those efforts, the world was able to sharply reduce CFC use years earlier than originally thought possible. Today, those efforts are paying off: atmospheric measurements show that levels of CFCs in the stratosphere are already leveling off.