A guest column appears on Kennislink every two weeks. The columnist is always a different researcher, who writes from his or her field about the science behind an event in society or from our daily lives. This week:Aukje Lettinga of the International Institute of Social History on radioactive water and the rise of environmental movements.
“I got this water from the Rhine. That also seems to be so spicy.” Just a sentence from the Children for Children song 'In de soup' (1987) that comes to mind when I think of the seventies and eighties and the increasing attention for the environment.
Concerns about the environment; they had been around longer. Around 1900 there were already organizations that were engaged in combating 'water and soil pollution'. But it was only after the publication of the Club of Rome report in 1972 that the masses started to become concerned. This report predicted that economic growth would have disastrous consequences for the environment.
Acid rain, polluted water and radioactive pollution. Many people wanted to do something about this. So they turned the heating down a degree, took the bike more often or became donors to an environmental organization. Emerging environmental awareness in the last decades of the twentieth century. The fact that even children began to worry about the pollution of river water is illustrative of this period.
Some people went further than taking the above-mentioned 'home, garden and kitchen measures'. They participated in demonstrations or joined an action group. The bottle of 'Radio-active Maaswater' shown below, for example, was made by a small action group that called itself 'Resistance Circus'. The group sold the bottles at fairs in Limburg to draw attention to the excessive concentration of tritium (a radioactive substance) in the water of the Meuse.
The bottle, along with a lot of other papers and documents from activist groups and environmental organizations, is now kept by the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam. For example, the IISH stores the papers of Greenpeace and Milieudefensie, but also those of lesser-known or disappeared organizations such as the Netherlands Poison Free Foundation and the Landelijk Energie Komitee.
The IISH stores these archives to enable historical research. But why is such a 'potty' bottle kept?
Although an object often does not seem to have such great information value as, for example, a collection of letters or newspapers, you can still read a lot from it. You know, for example, how the campaign material was designed and how people campaigned. The bottle shows that in addition to serious reports and debates, playful means of action were also used. These kinds of objects also make it possible in the future to form a picture of the historical story about the environmental movement.
And…for the observant readers among you:'radioactive' is of course spelled with a 'k' on the bottle. Preferred spelling and action:they are impossible to separate in the 1970s and 1980s.
See further
- International Institute of Social History
- Exhibition World Improvers! 75 years of IISH
- Environmental trends lead to measures
- Millions of subsidy for digital archives