Which generation are you?

Talking in terms of generations goes way back, well before someone came up with Gen X. The generation gap, the younger generation, and on through a range of, often, pejorative expressions. Over the last decade or so, the whole generation thing has creeped into everything.

The main current way of dividing up the generations is as follows:

Glorious Generation (Before 1890)

Lost Generation (1890–1910)

Greatest Generation (1910–1927)

Silent Generation (1928–1945)

Baby Boomers (1946–1964)

Generation X (1965–1980)

Millennials (1981–1996)

Generation Z (1997–2012)

Generation Alpha (2013–Present)

The Glorious Generation is the one that set up the industrial world that the following generations spent their lives working in. The Boomers shaped the modern industrial world.

OK, so good so far, but is there another way to portray generational differences? Is there another metric that could be used and one that would shine a light on what is happening ‘behind the scenes’? Well, that’s the subject of this article.

Unforeseen and foreseeable consequences.

We’ve all heard about that bloke who lept from his bath shouting ‘Eureka!’ We hear little or nothing about the ones who had a sudden revelation a bit later on and shouted ‘Dystochia!’ Basically, this can be interpreted as ‘oh shit!’ and happens when someone realises that their invention or whatever has unforeseen and negative consequences. I’m going to assume that this has happened quite often. I base this on the assumption that, in general, people mean well but make mistakes that they couldn’t have foreseen.

Then we have those who knew/know that their new thing is going to have some bad consequences. Maybe they shout something like ‘Skase’, meaning ‘Whatever’ or ‘Ki an den’ … ‘so what?’ An example of this would be dosing petrol with tetraethyl lead. There was plenty of evidence in the 1920s that lead was toxic. At the time, Alice Hamilton spoke out against using lead in petrol. The motor and petrol industry leaders knew but didn’t care. More recently, we see the same thing with DuPont and 3M, who knew, back in the 1960s, that PFAS were toxic molecules, and they took them to market anyway.

We often hear talk about progress, but what we don’t hear enough about is that this progress goes hand in hand with unforeseen and negative impacts. The dark side of the force, so to speak.

I decided to use the evolution of foreseen and unforeseen consequences as a basis to redo the generation thing. Here it is:

The IP Generation, 1900-1945, IP is industrial pollution from coal burning and other sources of air pollution.

The CB Generation, 1945-1970. The Chemical boom, DDT and the other synthetics, nuclear fallout, microplastics, and smog.

The TW Generation 1970-1990. Toxic waste, PCBs, Dioxins, CFCs, industrial waste, and heavy metals.

The MpHD Generation, 1990-2010. Microplastics and Hormone disruptors, BPA, E-waste, etc.

The EM Generation 2010-today. Eternal molecules everywhere, doing their thing, being eternal. Nanoparticles, fine particulate pollution, antibiotic resistance, etc.

We’ve had a few successes and leaded petrol is now banned virtually everywhere. The world gathered to do something about CFCs, most countries stopped nuclear testing. But what is obvious from the list above is that each generation inherits the toxic burden produced by the previous one.

Back to using the other category of generations.

We inherit a toxic load from the past, increase it, make it more diverse, and pass it on to future generations. The Gen X cohort got hammered when compared to the boomers and Gen S (Silent Generation 1928-1945).

Thyroid cancers more than 2.67 times higher.

Kidney cancer, 1.99 times higher.

Rectal cancer, 1.84 times higher

Leukemia, 1.27 times higher.

And for men, prostate cancer 1.25 times higher.

That’s just some cancers, we also see increases in obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Baby Boomers saw an increase in life expectancy, but later generations are facing stagnation or decline. They aren’t as healthy, they won’t live as long, and they will have more health problems later in life. Dystochia!

We see the above scenario being played out with Gen Z, with increases in pre-morbidity and pre-mortality when compared to Gen X.

The future?

We continue to ignore the warnings and continue to increase and diversify the toxic load. Perhaps natural selection will sort it out? Those who are best adapted to living and working in toxic environments, eating contaminated food, and drinking poor-quality water will survive and reproduce. Perhaps they will have much longer and more hairy noses to filter out air pollution and microplastics? Could it be that their stomachs will be more acidic, and they will have shorter intestines? Or perhaps they would have longer intestines that would harbour microbes capable of breaking down plastic, PFAS, and other synthetic molecules. They could well pick up some Tardigrade traits and have built-in DNA repair mechanisms. They will also have to be adapted to higher temperatures, so longer and leaner limbs? A smaller body mass? More efficient sweat glands?

It would probably be more efficient to stop the production and use of toxic materials than to wait for humans to adapt. It would seem logical to stop all forms of air and water pollution. But what is logical isn’t necessarily what appeals most to industry and consumers.

It’s most likely that, in the longer term, those who don’t live in cities, who have access to good food and a supportive local community, will have more offspring who will survive to reproduce. We’ll see.