Views: 6

Experts warn that we have surrounded ourselves with highly toxic substances for our health. We are surrounded by thousands of chemical derivatives. Their individual toxicity thresholds may be more or less controlled, but nobody monitors the combined effect. In territorial risks, we often see the same mistake.

The oil industry currently produces many products beyond fuel. We have textiles that do not stain and do not catch fire because compounds have been added. We have kitchen plastics, cosmetics, pesticides, deodorants, packaging… which easily release what are called endocrine disruptors.

These are chemical substances that affect hormonal functioning. Hormones are the way our cells communicate, and these disruptors sometimes cancel hormones and sometimes replace them. They generate significant imbalances that translate into modern pathologies.

They are modern, yes, but not that much. The first effects were described many years ago. Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring already warned of birds not singing due to endocrine disruption. It is from the early 1960s. Since then, the problem has grown because industry has had more influence than science.

When planning the territory, it is always recommended to work with multidisciplinary teams, precisely because it is necessary to control several combined effects. For example, placing hotels in the countryside without limits on places (as proposed in the modification being prepared for the Island Territorial Plan) can not only contribute to increasing the island’s tourist congestion.

Placing hundreds of people in an area without sewerage systems generates high risks of aquifer contamination, incorporates new pressures of water extraction, and requires more energy supply infrastructures in areas not designed for this.

Building large hotels (or large wineries) on rural land implies significant truck traffic to supply the establishments. A much more intense circulation of vehicles in an area of rural roads. In the long run, attempts will be made to widen the roads, as some hotels are already doing.

It will mean having large parking areas that will most likely be located near areas of high fire risk. How many swimming pools and of what size will be built? Because with the aforementioned modification, the restriction of one pool per establishment is also eliminated, as well as the maximum pool dimensions. Once again, it would be a free-for-all.

Medical advances have made it possible to control infectious diseases very well in richer countries. But they have not been able to control modern pathologies. Scientific research allows the creation of geographic maps to know how new conditions are distributed. This has disproved the theory of vulnerability based on genetic code. Now, experts say, the postal code counts more, that is, the environment in which people live.

When it comes to preventing territorial destruction, the same thing happens. More than the general philosophy between humans and nature, what counts is the wording of the legal instruments with which each community is provided.

When the territory is managed with minor individual contracts, when the Environmental Commission becomes a single person appointed at will, combined effects are not assessed. And this is not by chance.

Science has also identified persistent organic compounds —forever chemicals. In the territory, there are recurring speculative pressures —forever lobbies – that reappear on every favorable occasion.

 

(This text is an adaptation of the original article published by Miquel Camps, as coordinator of territorial policy for the GOB, in the Menorca newspaper on 18/08/2025).