Detergent suds in water boosted the call for techno-environmental impact assessment.

Evidence

Even for many who did not share the concern about the potential cancer risks, the presence of detergent foam in drinking water was still troubling. By the early 1960s, the contamination of milk by fallout from atmospheric testing of atomic weapons and the devastating effects of the pesticide DDT on wildlife had raised doubts in the minds of many Americans about the unintended and unforeseen consequences of new technologies, and the detergent problem intensified those doubts. As one authority on water pollution argued, “A cardinal mistake had been made, and this oversight holds some lessons for the future. The experience shows how easily and suddenly a new, different, and widely used product can upset the already overloaded purification mechanism of the physical environment. It also points out that the manufacturers and responsible government agencies had neglected or had not thought of testing other characteristics of the product beyond its immediate use. The side effects in this case interfered with our well-being and aesthetic sensibilities; next time they may threaten our very survival.” The detergent issue thus added force to the evolving environmentalist argument about the need for new institutions to assess the likely costs of technological development. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 420

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the book’s core causal argument — suburban land-use pattern generating demand for environmental regulation — which is the reader’s stated purpose. — connects to: Suds from household detergents in suburban wells nationalized water pollution concern — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 1530