Paper continues to play an integral role in today's society even as we move further into the electronic realm. Paper is ever-present: in our food and product packaging, the bulk of our reading material, our physical mail, the receipts from our holiday shopping ventures, even in so-called "paperless offices." Unfortunately, there are environmental costs associated with the production of paper of which most people are unaware.

A great deal of this paper has been bleached, a process whereby a paper manufacturer uses chlorine compounds to bleach white the raw wood pulp, which is brown in its raw form. The creation and use of chlorine creates highly toxic chemicals called "organochlorines," which are basically poisons, such as dioxin. The organochlorines are released into the environment through air, water, and solid waste discharges from the paper and pulp mills. The poisons then settle in the fatty tissues and glands of animals exposed to them, gradually "bioaccumulating" up through the food chain--after one animal consumes another, its body inherits the poisons present in the prey.

The more chlorine our society uses, the more toxic substances such as dioxin there are in our water, air, soil, and in our bodies. Humans, being at the top of the food chain, therefore inherit significant amounts of the poisons through bioaccumulation. We are most prone to exposure to organochlorines when we eat seafood and other meat products, but are also exposed through chlorine-bleached products, through the air we breathe, and through the water we drink.These very deadly poisons have been linked to such human health problems as:

• breast cancer
• reduced sperm count
• diabetes
• immune system damage
• birth defects
• learning disabilities

Here in the American Northwest, many bodies of water, including rivers, lakes, and salt-water bays, have been contaminated with organochlorines discharged from pulp and paper mills situated nearby. (Affected bodies in this region include the Columbia, Snake, and Willamette Rivers; Puget Sound bays near Shelton, Port Angeles, Bellingham, Port Gardner, Commencement Bay, the Inner Everett Harbor; Snohomish River, Roosevelt Lake, Grays Harbor, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.) Contamination can then be spread by the natural flow of rivers, carried by ocean tide and currents, and by organochlorine-laden rainfall. This directly and adversely impacts many different animal species in this area: shellfish; fish, including the Northwest salmon species; eagles, gulls and other birds; whales, seals and other marine mammals; as well as any animals that may consume them, including humans.

Fortunately, this human-generated problem also has solutions available to humans. As consumers choose unbleached products whenever possible, and industry begins using non-chlorinated bleaching agents that are less toxic, we can stem the flow of these toxins into the environment and hence, into ourselves. For more information, please see the Products for a Better World articles about unbleached papers and alternative papers in this issue. For places to buy, see sources for unbleached and recycled papers.

"Reach for unbleached!"

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We are grateful to Washington Citizens for Resource Conservation (WCFRC)  for providing technical and product information used in this article.