Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

by William McDonough

Everyone’s body is subjected to stress, from both internal and external sources. These stresses may take the form of cancer cells that are naturally produced by the body—by some accounts, as many as twelve cells a day—exposure to heavy metals and other pathogens, and so on. The immune system is capable of handling a certain amount of stress. Simplistically speaking, you could picture those stressors as balls your immune system is juggling. Ordinarily, the juggler is skillful enough to keep those balls in the air. That is, the immune system catches and destroys those ten or twelve cells. But the more balls in the air—the more the body is besieged by all kinds of environmental toxins, for example—the greater the probability that it will drop the ball, that a replicating cell will make a mistake. It would be very hard to say which molecule or factor was the one that pushed a person’s system over the edge. But why not remove negative stressors, especially since people don’t want or need them? Some industrial chemicals produce a second effect, more insidious than causing stress: they weaken the immune system. This is like tying one of the juggler’s hands behind his back, which makes it much harder for him to catch the cancer cells before they cause problems.