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Coordinated nationally by the Institute for Children's Environmental Health |
Dear Colleagues:
Welcome to the Partnership for Health and the Environment's new weekly bulletin. Based on numerous requests from many Partnership members, the bulletin will highlight upcoming conferences and events as well as recent articles and resources relevant to children's environmental health issues. For more information and updates as well as links to other partners' websites, please see www.partnersforchildren.org. Your feedback is welcome!
I also want to take this opportunity to welcome Making Our Milk Safe (MOMS), an organizational Partner that just joined this past week (see announcements below).
Many, many thanks to all of you for the work you and your organizations are continuing to do on behalf of children's health. Together we are making a difference.
Warm regards,
Elise Miller, MEd
Executive Director
Institute for Children's Environmental Health
National Coordinator,
Partnership for Children's Health and the Environment
February 9, 2006
10:00 - 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. EST
Public health practitioners and healthcare providers, disaster managers and water quality specialists must have updated information and "disaster tools" to help them manage and prevent waterborne disease and the health effects of water pollution resulting from biological, chemical or radiologic compounds. This program will provide a review of lessons learned from the water supply disruption and subsequent contamination caused by Hurricane Katrina. This program will feature Patricia L. Meinhardt, MD, MPH, MA, executive medical director of the Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Arnot Ogden Medical Center, Elmira, NY. For the location of the nearest CPHP Grand Rounds downlink site, to register for a free satellite downlink or live webcast, or to obtain online Nursing Contact Hours, CHES or CME credits for participation, visit the website below.
Website: www.ualbanycphp.org
February 15, 2006
Seattle, Washington
at Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Avenue (at Seneca Street)
Plastics permeate our lives – from CDs and cell phone casings to baby bottles and incubators for premature infants. Mounting evidence suggests that exposures to certain chemicals found in hard plastics may contribute to a variety of lifelong human health problems. Frederick vom Saal, PhD, is a Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Missouri-Columbia and has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, such as Neurotoxicology and Teratology and Environmental Health Perspectives. Dr. vom Saal will present his seminal research on the health effects of low dose exposures to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, specifically bisphenol A. Bisphenol A, found in many household, medical and baby products, is now associated with compromised uterine function, thwarted fetal development, decreased sperm production, neurological problems, prostate and other cancers, aggressive behaviors, and more. He will also discuss how this research may catalyze the plastics industry to develop less toxic materials.
This lecture is part of an annual environmental health lecture series, "Our Health, Our Environment: Making the Link" sponsored by the Seattle Biotech Legacy Foundation and organized by the Institute for Children's Environmental Health (www.iceh.org).
Website: washington.chenw.org/lectures.html
February 16, 2006
9:00 - 10:00 a.m. EST
The University at Albany School of Public Health Continuing Education Program is pleased to announce its Third Thursday Breakfast Broadcast, featuring Christina Zarcadoolas, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Community and Preventive Medicine, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. Environmental problems, conservation and planning are often not about nature as much as they are about humans and human behavior. Environmental literacy is the range of skills and abilities that enable people to understand the information needed to lessen environmental risk and take positive individual and corrective actions. Dr. Zarcadoolas will how environmental literacy enhances the ability of citizens to participate in environmental decision making. For the location of the nearest T2B2 downlink site, to register for a free satellite downlink, or to obtain online Nursing Contact Hours, CHES and CME credits for participation, visit the website below.
Website: www.t2b2.org
February 22, 2006
2:00 - 3:00 p.m. EST
Due to the high interest expressed for this lecture, the American Association for Mental Retardation (AAMR) is pleased to announce that we will again have Dr. Slotkin give his presentation for us on February 22, 2006. Stay tuned for details as we get closer to February.
Contact: Michele Gagnon, 202-387-1968 X201 mgagnon@aamr.org
February 22 - 26, 2006
Washington, DC
at the Washington Convention Center
The World Parkinson Congress, Inc. is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an international forum for the best scientific discoveries, medical practices and caregiver initiatives related to Parkinson's disease. By bringing physicians, scientists, allied health professionals, caregivers and people with Parkinson's disease together, we hope to create a worldwide dialogue that will help expedite the discovery of a cure and best treatment practices for this devastating disease.
Website: www.worldpdcongress.org/
Contact: info@worldpdcongress.org
February 24 - 25, 2006
St. Paul, Minnesota
at Weyerhauser Memorial Chapel, Macalester College
This presentation introduces the audience to the problem of environmental injustice/racism and links it to the issues of human rights abuses and ecological destruction around the globe. After laying out in some detail the contours of these problems, the presentation then considers the various ways that social activists are tackling the problems of ecocide and environmental racism. Examples may include New Orleans neighborhoods left wounded by Hurricane Katrina, communities in the Caribbean and Pacific Islands battling the US military and various corporations' environmentally and socially unjust polluting practices, and the efforts of Roma communities in Central and Eastern Europe to address environmental racism and human rights abuses in that part of the world. The main points are 1) to challenge our common wisdom about racism by connecting race to ecological destruction and human rights; and 2) to demonstrate the comparative and interrelated nature of environmental justice movements across racial, ethnic, and national boundaries.
Website: www.macalester.edu/americanstudies/afamconf7.html
Contact: scott@macalester.edu
February 24-26, 2006
Denver, Colorado
at the Adam's Mark Hotel
Living Beyond Breast Cancer and the Young Survival Coalition have created this conference for young women affected by breast cancer and those who support them. The conference offers 1) the latest medical, psychosocial and practical information from nationally acclaimed breast cancer experts; 2) workshops relevant to recently diagnosed young women, those who have completed treatment, those living with advanced or metastatic breast cancer and caregivers; and 3) opportunities to network and explore issues of concern with other women like you.
Website: www.youngsurvivorsconference.org/2006.html
Contact: mail@lbbc.org
February 28, 2006
London, England
at the Society of Chemical Industry, 14/15 Belgrave Square
Following the enthusiastic response to previous symposia, the Green Chemistry Network is holding its third Green Chemistry and the Consumer symposium 'Greener Products: Opportunities and Challenges'. This symposium will highlight the key opportunities and challenges facing the creation of greener products with a particular focus on the area of surfactants, which have a diverse range of applications from cosmetic and personal care products, detergents, paints, coatings, inks to pharmaceuticals and foods. This one-day symposium marks the beginning of a series of annual symposia, which will each year address a different cross-sectorial theme appropriate to greener products. Through a series of presentations, breakout sessions, case studies and current research, the symposium will provide an insight into understanding key challenges and drivers and identifying potential solutions and ways forward for the creation of greener products. This event presents a unique opportunity for academics, industry, retail, government, NGOs and other relevant organisations to come together for mutual learning and technology transfer, as well as providing an invaluable opportunity for networking.
Website: www.chemsoc.org/networks/gcn/events.htm
Contact: Louise Summerton, Green Chemistry Networks Assistant, 01904 434546
March 7 - 9, 2006
Boston, Massachusetts
at the Seaport Hotel
This conference will address our common pursuit of sustainability's best practices. A full schedule of workshops and seminars – led by the leading practitioners in their fields – provides professionals the means to learn what works, who is making it work, and how they can integrate these new technologies and processes into their own practice.
Website: buildingenergy.nesea.org/
March 13 - 15, 2006
Reston, Virginia
at the Hyatt Regency Reston
Meeting Description: Developmental Neurotoxicity (DNT) is a major issue in children's health worldwide. The TestSmart DNT symposium is the first of a series that will bring together leading stakeholders from around the world to develop the DNT testing methods of the future. It is designed for international sectors of industry, regulators and scientists involved in developmental neurotoxicity, chemical testing, risk assessment, children's health, policy integration, and animal protection concerns. TestSmart DNT is a long-term program aimed at identifying a battery of methods for DNT testing that meet government requirements, enhance decision-making, and promote humane science. Current methods for DNT testing are complex and expensive in terms of scientific resources, time, and animal use. Given the increasing number of chemicals that need to be tested and the increasing amount of information needed about them, we must look for new approaches to meet the demands for identifying developmentally neurotoxic agents with speed, reliability, and respect for animal welfare.
Website: caat.jhsph.edu/dnt/
MOMS – Making Our Milk Safe – works to protect children's health by eliminating the threat of toxic chemicals found in human breast milk. Cofounder Mary Brune invites all to find out more about MOMS through their website: www.safemilk.org. You can search the Partnership's online database at www.partnersforchildren.org/members.html to find out more about all Partnership members, including locations, focus areas and constituencies.
Now available: the American Lung Association's annual compilation of scientific studies on the health effects of particulate matter and ozone air pollution. This annotated bibliography presents brief summaries selected research papers published in 2005 (or in press in January 2006) on the health effects of particulate and ozone air pollution. Some of the highlights of the new studies include:
The bibliography is available at www.cleanairstandards.org/article/articleview/454/1/15/.
By Douglas Fischer, Oakland Tribune
January 24, 2006
www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_3434179
Chemical mixtures, such as the soup of pesticides found in agricultural run-off, can be vastly more toxic to humans and creatures than a single chemical, suggesting current efforts to assess health risks posed by such compounds significantly underestimate their danger, researchers find. The threat comes not just from pesticides: The plastic lining your soup can, the additives used to keep nail polish from chipping and beach balls from cracking, even the trace amounts of DDT found in your house dust all can have an effect when mixed with others far greater than any single chemical alone. And that means, scientists say, that safety tests used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration – where one compound is tested and regulated in isolation – miss the real effects of the chemical stew making up our world.
The most recent finding came Tuesday from University of California Berkeley professor Tyrone Hayes. His report, published in the online version of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found significant harmful effects on frogs given mixtures of pesticides commonly found in agricultural runoff – even though levels of the individual pesticides were thought not to cause harm and were 10 to 100 times below EPA standards:
And in a related paper, also published Tuesday, Hayes showed these chemicals are quite efficient at switching testosterone to estrogen. Which means the testes of exposed male frogs don't produce sperm. They produce eggs.
"Metolachlor" – a common herbicide – "Doesn't do anything on its own," Hayes said Tuesday. "But mix it with something else and it becomes bad somehow. You add them all up and you get significant effects. Representatives of CropLife America, a trade group representing pesticide companies, had no comment Tuesday on the new findings. The group has long said, however, that there is insufficient evidence that pesticides harm frogs. Chemical manufacturers decry any effort to link extremely low levels of their chemicals to harm. "The data are extensive. The exposure is quite low. It takes really high levels (to see effects)," said James Lamb, a former regulator who is now consulting for the American Chemistry Council. "We don't have a lot of data on children, but with data on adults, we don't see effects."
But what alarms Hayes is that he sees effects in frogs at 0.1 parts per billion, far below any health threshold. The urine of a farm worker contains, on average, 2,400 ppb of some of these compounds. Hayes said he could dilute that urine and effectively castrate 720,000 frogs. We don't know what that means for humans, however. But Dr. Shanna Swan, a researcher at the University of Rochester, has found an association between low fertility in men and pesticide concentrations in urine as low as 0.1 ppb. "All we know is that humans are exposed to large amounts of chemicals," Swan said. "Rodents are exposed to one chemical at a time."
Swan has found similar problems in baby boys born to women with high levels of phthalates (THAAL-ates), a common additive used to make nail polish chip-proof, to dissolve fragrances in cosmetics, and to soften plastics. That meshes with research by the U.S. EPA in North Carolina that finds phthalates, when added together at levels known to cause little or no problems individually, somehow afflict upwards of a quarter of the test animals with permanent reproductive damage. Levels of those phthalates in the amniotic fluid of the most highly exposed women in the U.S. are not too far from levels known to cause harm in rats. And, Hayes notes, a fetus in amniotic fluid is not all that different from a tadpole in a pond. "It's like pregnancy: The longer you're pregnant, the bigger your baby. The longer the tadpole (stage), the bigger the frog," Hayes said.
But for the tadpole, at least those in pesticide-laced run-off, that is no longer true. "It's like, the longer she's pregnant, the smaller your baby's going to be," Hayes added. "That says the womb is not a nurturing place."
This newspaper's investigation of our chemical "body burden" can be found on the web at www.insidebayarea.com/bodyburden. Wire services contributed to this report. Contact Douglas Fischer at dfischer@angnewspapers.com. For the full article, please see ehp.niehs.nih.gov/docs/2006/8051/abstract.html.
By Douglas Fischer, Oakland Tribune
January 24, 2006
www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_3433899
As many as half of all new breast cancers may be foisted upon woman by pollutants in the environment, triggered by such items as bisphenol-A lining tin cans or radiation from early mammograms, according to a review of recent science by two breast cancer groups. Their report, "State of the Evidence," released Tuesday, buttresses what many researchers increasingly suspect: that repeated low doses – particularly in early childhood – to chemicals normally considered harmless can have a profound effect.
It also suggests that, for half of the 211,240 woman diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, lifestyle choices and genetics played no role. "You just can't blame it on lifestyle factors, like when you have children, or if you have children," said Nancy Evans, health science consultant for the Breast Cancer Fund and the report's principle author. "Half the cases are not explained by genetics or the so-called `known risk factors.' There's something else going on."
The report, by the San Francisco-based groups Breast Cancer Fund and Breast Cancer Action, analyzed the findings of more than 350 experimental, epidemiologic and ecological studies assessing breast cancer. Breast cancer rates have climbed steadily in the United States and other industrialized countries since the 1940s. In the U.S., for instance, one in seven women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime, almost triple the rate in the 1960s. Researchers believe less than one in 10 cases occur in women born with a genetic predisposition for the disease. Instead, the report says, recent science makes very clear the cancer arises from a multitude of factors, from slight genetic mutations to altered hormone production to even radiation.
For instance, the report cited a study from Tufts University that found that exposing pregnant mice to extremely low levels of bisphenol-A altered the development of the mammary gland in their offspring at puberty. And that alteration makes the gland more susceptible to breast cancer, Evans said. Bisphenol-A, originally developed as a synthetic hormone in the 1930s, today is used as an additive to make plastic shatterproof and to extend the shelf-life of canned goods. Nearly 6 billion pounds are produced annually.
Industry has long maintained there is no evidence repeated low doses of compounds such as bisphenol-A can have such deleterious effects. A legislative effort to ban some of these chemicals from children's toys failed last week after industry scientists argued there was no cause for concern. "A lot of work has been done on those issues," said Lorenz Romberg, a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientist who now works as a consultant and testified before the Legislature on behalf of the chemical industry last month. "When you look at this body of evidence in total, we didn't find any evidence that there is a marked, repeatable-across-laboratories effect that has any clear scientific standing." But the report, Evans said, makes clear there is no one culprit for rising breast cancer rates. What happens, for instance, when bisphenol-A or any several estrogen-like synthetic compounds on the market gets combined with the harm from a few low-dose X-rays?
No one knows, but new research from the National Academy of Sciences suggests there is no safe radiation dose: The lowest possible dose still increases cancer risk. Yet the American Cancer Society still recommends women over age 40 have a mammogram, despite evidence such procedures are not effective until women are 50 years old. "We have to have a replacement for mammography. It's so aggressively promoted, especially for young women," Evans said. But does the chance of early detection outweigh the risks? "I'm not saying they should or shouldn't," Evans said. "They need to be aware of the risk. An additional 10 years of radiation is not insignificant."
The report, "State of the Evidence," can be found at www.breastcancerfund.org. Contact Douglas Fischer at dfischer@angnewspapers.com.
from Risk Policy Report via InsideEPA.com, Issue: Vol. 13, No. 4
January 24, 2006
insideepa.com/
EPA may face internal and external difficulties if it adheres to a recommendation from the Office of Inspector General (IG) to require a controversial toxics test to protect children's health when evaluating pesticides. The White House already rejected an earlier agency pitch to require developmental neurotoxicity (DNT) tests, and EPA departments have split over their usefulness. The IG recommendation to use DNT studies is part of a Jan. 10 report, Opportunities to Improve Data Quality & Children's Health Through the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA). The 1996 law set new requirements for the agency to license and evaluate pesticides, including specific safety measures designed to protect children's health.
The IG encourages EPA to expand use of DNT studies, which are designed to gather data about how a chemical impacts test animals' cognitive abilities and motor control, and could help estimate the chemical impact on humans. Industry experts say the tests are costly and unreliable, but children's health advocates say the tests provide valuable information on how pesticides affect development of the nervous system – information that might otherwise be overlooked.
The IG report bolsters the advocates' standpoint, suggesting that DNT studies may fill data gaps at EPA and that the agency should develop a standard method for evaluating the tests. "EPA's current required toxicity testing does not include evaluation of behavior, learning or memory in developing animals until triggered by predefined effect conditions in other required toxicity studies," the report states. "Also, there is no standard evaluation procedure for interpreting results of such tests."
The report acknowledges that scientists in EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) faced difficulties in evaluating data after the agency requested DNT studies for certain pesticides starting in 1999. The report says OPP examined more than 50 studies, but has not publicly released any conclusions from the data, in part because the agency has not completed a standard evaluation procedure, which the report urges.
In an EPA response to the report, the agency notes it is finalizing a standard evaluation procedure for DNT data, which will guide risk assessors who must evaluate the studies. The agency also says it is finishing a project with the International Life Sciences Institute to determine how to address "sensitivity and meaningfulness" of DNT data. However, the report also indicates tensions over DNT data both internally at EPA and between the agency and the White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB), which must approve agency rules.
For example, the report says EPA's Office of Research & Development (ORD) previously suggested that OPP require DNT studies when licensing, or registering, pesticides. "To protect the health of children, ORD strongly recommended that OPP change its approach to require a developmental neurotoxicity study for pesticide registration."
The report also says EPA softened language in a proposed rule on pesticide data requirements following OMB scrutiny. Initially, EPA wanted to require DNT tests, but the final rule proposal, published in the Federal Register Feb. 28, 2005, said DNT studies would instead be "conditionally required." The report says, "Notes in the revision of the proposed requirements indicated the change was a response to questioning by OMB." Relevant documents are available at InsideEPA.com.
The change sparked outcry from children's health advocacy groups, who called for the agency to require DNT tests for every pesticide registration decision (Risk Policy Report, March 8, 2005, p1). A scientist advocating compulsory DNT testing says the current studies required by EPA are unlikely to trigger further DNT study requests, and could miss key neurotoxic effects. And while DNT studies are expensive, the source says children's neurological disorders also impose costly burdens that could be reduced if DNT chemicals faced heavier regulation. "I know these tests are expensive," the source says, but "there are big social and economic costs for not knowing what these chemicals are doing."
But an industry scientist says the language change is reasonable, considering the cost of the tests and the fact that many pesticides, such as herbicides and fungicides, do not likely cause neurological harm. "It doesn't make sense to spend $1 million or more to perform tests when you already know the answers," the industry source says. The source adds that other studies already required by EPA will indicate which chemicals could have neurotoxic effects.
Some environmental activists have also said the change is reasonable as long as EPA maintains strict criteria for when DNT studies will be required. EPA has yet to issue the final rule, and the agency did not return calls seeking comment. An IG spokesman declined to comment on the report, but did say all recommendations are sent to congressional oversight committees, where they could receive attention from lawmakers.
For the full IG report, please visit www.iceh.org/pdfs/LDDI/USEPA-IGReportDNT2006.pdf.
News release, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Contact: Dale Kemery, 202-564-7839
January 26, 2006
(Washington, D.C.) EPA has released a specialized toolkit to encourage school officials and child care facilities to reduce lead in their drinking water. The "3Ts for Reducing Lead in Drinking Water at Schools and Child care Facilities Toolkit" contains materials to implement a voluntary Training, Testing, and Telling strategy.
"Our drinking water tools for schools teach lead prevention through action and awareness," said Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water. "This new and improved guidance will help students, teachers, and parents have confidence in the quality of their school's tap water."
Testing water in schools and child care centers is important because children spend a significant portion of their days there. The "3Ts Toolkit" explains how to test for lead in drinking water; report results to parents, students, staff, and other interested parties; and take action to correct problems. The toolkit also includes an update to a 1994 EPA technical guidance to help schools design and implement testing programs. Steps in the program include:
EPA developed the toolkit in conjunction with nongovernment organizations and several federal agencies including the U.S. Department of Education, whose Safe and Drug-Free School Coordinators will help promote and distribute the package to schools. Deborah Price, assistant deputy secretary of the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools at the Department of Education, said, "An unhealthy school environment is a serious barrier to learning. This toolkit will help schools work with their community partners to understand and reduce children's lead exposure from drinking water."
Printed copies of the toolkit will be available through the Water Resource Center at 800-832-7828 and through the Safe Drinking Water Hotline at 800-426-4791. To view the toolkit visit www.epa.gov/safewater/schools/guidance.html.
EPA will also distribute toolkits at conferences attended by school officials and child care providers throughout 2006. Information about drinking water and children's health is available at www.epa.gov/safewater/kids/kidshealth
by Erica Werner, The Associated Press, from the Washington Post
January 26, 2006
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/26/AR2006012601610.html
WASHINGTON – The government has incomplete data about lead in the country's drinking water, and that problem and others may be undermining public health, congressional investigators say. A Government Accountability Office study released Thursday looked at implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency's 1991 Lead and Copper Rule. The rule requires water systems to test tap water at certain high-risk locations. If elevated levels are found, the water systems must notify customers and in some cases take action to lessen corrosion.
According to EPA data, the number of water systems exceeding the lead action level dropped by nearly 75 percent over about a decade beginning in the early 1990s. But GAO investigators found that recent test results from over 30 percent of water systems were missing from EPA data, apparently because states were not reporting them. Also, the EPA requires states to report certain "milestones" to indicate whether water systems' lead levels are acceptable, but this information was missing for more than 70 percent of water systems, the report said. "EPA has been slow to take action on these data problems and, as a result, lacks the information it needs to evaluate how effectively the lead rule is being implemented and enforced nationwide," said the report. This weakness and others – including standards for plumbing fixtures that might not be protective enough – "may be undermining the intended level of public health protection."
The EPA defended implementation of its lead rule. "The Lead and Copper Rule has been effective in more than 96 percent of water systems serving 3,300 people or more, and we are committed to further strengthening protections from lead through additional actions," said Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water. He said the agency will be proposing improvements to the rule in coming weeks. The EPA also announced in March plans for stricter lead level monitoring and reporting. The report recommended changes, including improved data collection, lead monitoring requirements and standards for plumbing fittings.
The findings sparked criticism from Democratic Reps. John Dingell of Michigan and Hilda Solis of California and independent Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont, the lawmakers who requested the report. "It is unacceptable that the Bush administration cannot account for the water quality of more than 33 million Californians, including our children," Solis said. "The status quo of allowing our children's health to be put at risk while failing to take action is beyond irresponsible."
from Environmental News Service
January 26, 2006
www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2006/2006-01-26-01.asp
Montreal, Quebec, Canada, (ENS) – The first report on children's health and environment indicators in North America by a NAFTA Commission shows a rising number of childhood asthma cases across the region, but improvements in children's blood lead levels, and a decrease in deaths from waterborne diseases. It finds that North America's 123 million children remain at risk from environmental exposures.
For the full article, please visit www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2006/2006-01-26-01.asp.
By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post Staff Writer
January 26, 2006
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/25/AR2006012502041.html
Eight U.S. companies, including giant DuPont Co., agreed yesterday to virtually eliminate a harmful chemical used to make Teflon from all consumer products coated with the ubiquitous nonstick material. Although the chemical would still be used to manufacture Teflon and similar products, processes will be developed to ensure that perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) would not be released into the environment from finished products or manufacturing plants. PFOA – a key processing agent in making nonstick and stain-resistant materials – has been linked to cancer and birth defects in animals and is in the blood of 95 percent of Americans, including pregnant women. It has also been found in the blood of marine organisms and Arctic polar bears.
The voluntary pact, which was crafted by the Environmental Protection Agency, will force companies to reduce manufacturing emissions of PFOA by 95 percent by no later than 2010. They will also have to reduce trace amounts of the compound in consumer products by 95 percent during the same period and virtually eliminate them by 2015. The agreement will dramatically reduce the extent to which PFOA shows up in a wide variety of everyday products, including pizza boxes, nonstick pans and microwave-popcorn bags.
While not as sweeping as the federal ban on DDT in 1972, yesterday's agreement is expected to have profound implications for public health and the environment. An independent federal scientific advisory board is expected to recommend soon whether the government should classify the chemical as a "likely" or "probable" carcinogen in humans, which could trigger a new set of federal regulations. "The science is still coming in on PFOA, but the concern is there," said Susan B. Hazen, acting assistant administrator of EPA's Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances. "This is the right thing to do for our health and our environment."
The move, which came just a month after DuPont reached a $16.5 million settlement with EPA over the company's failure to report possible health risks associated with PFOA, drew applause from environmental groups that have frequently criticized both the administration and DuPont. "This is one of those days when the Environmental Protection Agency is at its best. With its announcement today, the EPA is challenging an entire industry to err on the side of precaution and public safety, and invent new ways of doing business," said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization. "As harshly as we have singled out DuPont for criticism for its past handling of PFOA pollution, today we want to single out and commend the company and acknowledge its leadership going forward."
DuPont officials said they were confident they could alter manufacturing methods over the coming decade to contain PFOA exposure from products that generated $1 billion in sales for the company in 2004. "It's important to do this because this is a persistent material in the environment, and it's at low levels in people's blood," said David Boothe, DuPont's global business director. To remove PFOA, he said, the company will subject some of its products to extra heat and will sometimes add a step in the manufacturing process. "We're going to push it really hard and take it as far as we can."
Scientific studies have not established a link between using products containing trace amounts of PFOA, such as microwave-popcorn bags or nonstick pans, and elevated cancer levels. Hazen said yesterday's announcement should "not indicate any concern . . . for consumers using household products" with such coatings. Several other companies agreed yesterday to reduce public exposure to the chemical, including 3M Co., Ciba and Clariant Corp. But DuPont, which settled a class-action suit last year accusing it of contaminating drinking water in Ohio and West Virginia communities near its plant in Parkersburg, W.Va., has attracted the most public scrutiny over its PFOA use.
William Bailey III, who was born in 1981 with multiple birth defects while his mother, Sue, was working with the chemical at the Parkersburg plant, said he will "be watching" to see if the chemical giant complies with the new agreement. "They're trying to save face," said Bailey, who is suing DuPont over his birth defects.
By Sam Roe and Michael Hawthorne, Chicago Tribune staff reporters
January 27, 2006
www.chicagotribune.com/features/health/chi-0601270193jan27,1,7450296.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
Newly released government data provide the best evidence to date that some cans of light tuna – one of America's favorite seafoods – contain high levels of mercury. Testing by the Food and Drug Administration found that 6 percent of canned light tuna samples contained large amounts of mercury, a toxic metal that can cause learning disabilities in children and neurological problems in adults. The findings are significant because the government has repeatedly stated that canned light tuna is low in mercury and a good choice for pregnant women and young children.
The FDA also found high mercury levels in samples of Chilean sea bass, which is often sold in high-end restaurants. Previously, the FDA had tested only one sample of the fish. High levels were detected in big-eye tuna, a species sold as ahi tuna and served in sushi. No federal warnings exist for either fish, even though the average mercury level detected in the FDA tests was above the average in albacore tuna, which the government tells pregnant women and young children to limit eating. In all, the FDA released testing results for more than 25 kinds of fish, sampled between 2001 and 2005. The findings were not released until now partly because the analysis wasn't complete, the agency said.
While a few species, such as tuna and Chilean sea bass (also known as Patagonian toothfish), were tested frequently in the latest round of sampling, many were not. Only one catfish, one flatfish, two mahi-mahi, four crabs and seven sardines were tested, the FDA data show. On Thursday, the agency said it would not take any action based on its newly released results, which come at a time when the FDA has been under fire for not adequately policing mercury in seafood, particularly canned light tuna. Most light tuna is made with skipjack, a relatively low-mercury species. But a Tribune investigative series recently reported that the U.S. tuna industry often uses a high-mercury species, yellowfin, to make some cans of light tuna.
Toxic metal high in samples
The FDA had been unaware of the practice, so the agency's latest testing did not address the yellowfin issue. Responding to the Tribune series, though, FDA officials started investigating whether canned light tuna contains hazardous mercury levels. In the 216 samples of canned light tuna tested by the FDA, the mercury levels averaged 0.12 parts per million, in line with previous limited testing and well below the legal limit of 1.0 parts per million. But 12 samples exceeded 0.35 parts per million, an amount the government considers high. When the Tribune recently tested 36 cans of the same type of canned tuna, none of the samples exceeded that level. The discrepancy might be due to the difference in sample size or because mercury levels can vary widely in all fish.
When asked about the FDA's latest testing results on light tuna, an agency official said consumers should not be concerned that 6 percent of canned light tuna tested high in mercury. What's important, the official said, is that on average, such tuna tested relatively low. The official, who answered questions on the condition of anonymity, also said the results for all fish tested indicate that mercury levels in commercial seafood were "relatively stable" compared with previous testing. But many scientists said consumers should be concerned about mercury contamination even in fish that on average test low in the toxic metal. Though it is unclear whether a single high-mercury meal could harm a fetus, many experts said the developing nervous system is so sensitive to toxic substances that caution should prevail. "I give a lot of talks to parents, and they always ask what is a safe fish to eat. I tell them I cannot give them an honest answer," said Vas Aposhian, a University of Arizona toxicologist who resigned from an FDA panel that advised the agency as it crafted its 2004 mercury warning for seafood. He accused the FDA of minimizing the risks and bowing to industry pressure.
Of the five seafoods listed in FDA warnings as low-mercury options – shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollock and catfish – only light tuna occasionally tests in the high range. Many of the FDA's new mercury results were from samples taken several years ago. An agency spokesman said results are not released to the public until "the analysis is completed and the quality assurance has been completed. Sometimes that process can be delayed." All the FDA data can be found at www.cfsan.fda.gov/(tilde)frf/seamehg2.html.
Tuna industry calls food safe
The U.S. Tuna Foundation, the industry's leading lobbying group, said the FDA's new data actually confirm the safety of canned light tuna. "FDA's latest findings about mercury levels in canned tuna should end the debate over whether canned tuna is a safe and healthy food for all Americans," David Burney, the foundation's executive director, said in a statement. "No one is at risk from the minute amounts of mercury in any form of canned tuna."
Medical experts and the U.S. government disagree. In 2004, the FDA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency jointly warned high-risk consumers to eat no more than 6 ounces of albacore canned tuna per week because of high mercury levels. Even if women of childbearing age and young children followed that suggestion, the EPA's own calculations show they would absorb too much mercury. In addition, the tuna industry acknowledges that tens of millions of cans of light tuna are made each year with yellowfin and contain amounts of mercury equal to cans of albacore. These yellowfin cans are often marketed as gourmet light tuna, though most cans do not indicate that yellowfin is inside.
Among the fish testing relatively low in mercury in the FDA's latest round of tests was tilefish, a species the agency warns pregnant women and young children not to eat. Previous testing in the Gulf of Mexico found high mercury levels in tilefish. The latest samples came from waters off the Atlantic Coast, raising questions about the reliability of the FDA's consumer advice. "They don't fully understand levels of mercury in fish and they're trying to provide advice to people based on shoddy science," said Jane Houlihan, vice president for research at the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit organization that has criticized the FDA's mercury policy.
Doubt cast on FDA warnings
The FDA's recent testing of fresh and frozen tuna raises additional questions about the agency's warnings. Samples of yellowfin and big-eye tuna showed high levels of mercury, the FDA data indicated. One sample of yellowfin tuna was over the legal limit of 1 part per million. Samples of big-eye averaged 0.62 parts per million, among the highest of any fish sold. An industry spokesman previously told the Tribune that high-mercury yellowfin and big-eye are used in gourmet and regular canned light. The Tuna Foundation maintains that only small yellowfin and big-eye are used in the regular cans.
In general, larger fish such as tuna and longer-lived fish such as Chilean sea bass are higher in mercury because they can eat more food contaminated with it. Just how much mercury might be in a single can of tuna is unclear. That is because the FDA does not test individual cans. Instead, it removes small pieces of tissue from 12 cans and mixes the tissue together. The agency then tests the mixture, masking any extreme amounts of mercury in a single can. This is done with other fish species as well.
Testing method questioned
In the FDA's recent testing, one sample of light tuna showed mercury levels of 0.72 parts per million – a high amount but still within the 1.0 legal limit. But because this result was a composite of 12 cans, it is likely that some of the individual cans had higher levels. It is impossible to know whether one of those cans tested over the legal limit. The FDA said it tests a mixture of cans rather than individual cans partly to save money. "It would cost 12 times as much to test 12 separate cans and then average the data, which is what we would have to do," said the FDA official who requested anonymity. That methodology troubles some doctors. "I find that incredibly disturbing," said Jane Hightower, a San Francisco internist who treats patients with mercury-related ailments. "That is falsifying data as far as I am concerned."
Hightower also said the FDA should do a better job of informing consumers about high mercury levels in Chilean sea bass and other fish. "This information should be made available to the public in a user-friendly format and not buried in the depths of an Internet Web site," she said.
January 27, 2006
www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5501a1.htm?s_cid=ss5501a1_e
Abstract
Problem/Condition: In the United States, developmental disabilities affect approximately 17% of children aged <18 years, resulting in substantial financial and social costs.
Reporting Period: 1996 and 2000.
Description of System: The Metropolitan Atlanta Developmental Disabilities Surveillance Program (MADDSP) monitors the occurrence of mental retardation, cerebral palsy, hearing loss, vision impairment, and autism spectrum disorders among children aged 8 years in the five-county metropolitan Atlanta area (Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett). MADDSP uses a multiple source ascertainment methodology.
Results: During 1996, the prevalence of mental retardation was 15.5 per 1,000 children aged 8 years; it decreased to 12.0 per 1,000 in 2000. The overall prevalence of cerebral palsy was 3.6 per 1,000 in 1996 and 3.1 per 1,000 in 2000. The prevalence of mental retardation and cerebral palsy was highest among males and black children. The prevalence of hearing loss was 1.4 per 1,000 in 1996 and 1.2 per 1,000 in 2000; the prevalence of vision impairment during 1996 was 1.4 per 1,000 and 1.2 per 1,000 in 2000. Minimal differences by study year were observed in the prevalence of all four disabilities when examined by sex, race, and severity.
Interpretation: The prevalence of these four select developmental disabilities in MADDSP was higher in 1996 than the annual average prevalence estimates for these disabilities during previous MADDSP study years (1991-1994) study years; the highest increase was observed among children with mental retardation. However, prevalence estimates during 2000 were more consistent with the estimates from the early 1990s. Data from additional surveillance years (2002 and beyond) are needed to determine if the prevalence for 1996 was an anomaly and to continue to monitor trends in the prevalence of developmental disabilities over time.
Public Health Actions: MADDSP data will continue to be used to examine trends in the occurrence of these disabilities over time, facilitate the development and implementation of appropriate intervention programs, and provide a framework for conducting population-based etiologic studies.
This report provides prevalence estimates for mental retardation, cerebral palsy, hearing loss, and vision impairment for 1996 and 2000, according to specific demographic and severity characteristics. For the full report, please see www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5501a1.htm?s_cid=ss5501a1_e.
By Marla Cone, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 30, 2006
www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-drugs30jan30,0,5723467.story
Behind a tangle of willows, every second of every day for almost half a century, recycled sewage has gushed into an El Monte creek and nourished one of Los Angeles County's most precious resources: the drinking water stored beneath the San Gabriel Valley. Cleansed so thoroughly that it is considered pure enough to drink, this flow from the Whittier Narrows reclamation plant meets all government standards. Yet county officials now report that they have found some potent – and until recent months undetected – ingredients in the treated waste: prescription drugs.
As new technology enables detection of infinitesimally smaller doses of chemicals in the environment, Southern California water-quality officials have learned that an array of hardy pharmaceuticals are defying even the most sophisticated sewage treatments in use. Around the world, waterways and groundwater basins are virtual drugstores, awash in low doses of hundreds of prescription drugs excreted by people and flushed down drains. Wherever there is sewage, there are traces of whatever pills people have popped: antibiotics and antipsychotics, birth-control hormones and beta blockers, Viagra and Valium. "There is no place on Earth exempted from having pharmaceuticals and steroids in its wastewater," said Shane Snyder, head toxicologist at Las Vegas' water provider, the Southern Nevada Water Authority, and one of the nation's leading experts on pharmaceuticals in water. "This is clearly an issue that is global, and we're going to see more and more of these chemicals in the environment; no doubt about it."
Locally, small amounts of medicines for depression, seizures, high cholesterol, anxiety, infections, inflammation and pain – among other ailments – have been detected in the wastewater that flows into California streams and seeps into drinking-water aquifers. The contamination raises questions about the safety of reclaimed water consumed by the public and the health of wild creatures that inhabit waterways. The concentrations are so minuscule – in parts per trillion, or a few drops in an Olympic-sized swimming pool – that scientists suspect there is little or no human danger. They acknowledge, however, that no one knows the effects of ingesting tiny doses of multiple drugs continuously over a lifetime.
So far, concerns have focused mostly on the ecological threat. Biologists studying frogs on Prozac, insects dosed with anti-seizure drugs, algae killed by antibiotics and fish feminized by birth-control pills have discovered that some streams contain pharmaceuticals and synthetic estrogen at levels harmful to aquatic life. "All the data we have compiled indicates these concentrations are trivial to public health. Even putting massive safety factors on this, it still wouldn't have a [human] impact," Snyder said. "Now for wastewater – that's a different story. When you have a fish or endangered species that is exposed 24 hours a day, we do need to look at this."
With thousands of varieties of prescription and over-the-counter drugs being sold, there are no government standards restricting any of them in drinking water or in effluent released into streams or lakes. Water and sewage agencies aren't even required to look for them – and most don't. Testing of drinking water for drugs has been so infrequent that no one knows how much people are ingesting. A national association of wastewater agencies warned in November that pharmaceuticals are a "potential sleeping giant."
Los Angeles and Orange counties are among the world's leaders in recycling sewage to replenish water supplies, and officials there worry that the public's perception of the water supply will be tainted. The Whittier Narrows plant, which has operated in El Monte since 1962, was the nation's first reclamation plant. Since then, nearly half a trillion gallons of treated sewage from Whittier Narrows and two other county plants have replenished the Central Basin aquifer beneath the San Gabriel Valley, which supplies water to 4 million people.
Sewage in Southern California undergoes some of the world's most rigorous cleansing – tertiary treatment – to protect rivers and streams from bacteria and nitrogen. Much of the wastewater then is routed into aquifers, where it remains for at least six months so soil can filter out more contaminants before potable water is pumped. In November, the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts reported at a scientific conference that they found high levels of ibuprofen, naproxen and acetaminophen in raw sewage coming into its Whittier Narrows plant, and very small concentrations going out.
In waste that had undergone treatment, the antibiotic sulfamethoxazole and anti-cholesterol medication gemfibrozil were found at fairly high levels of around one part per billion. The antidepressant fluoxetine, the arthritis drug diclofenac, anti-anxiety and anti-seizure drugs, three more antibiotics and others were detected at lower levels, in parts per trillion. Estrogens also were measured in low levels. Similar findings from two Los Angeles County reclamation plants will be published later this year by Jorg Drewes, an assistant professor of environmental science and engineering at the Colorado School of Mines.
Robert Horvath, the districts' technical services director, said tiny doses of over-the-counter drugs aren't that worrisome, but other less common medications can amount to an involuntary though "extremely low" public exposure. The agency, which operates 10 reclamation plants, is one of a few with the ability to test for pharmaceuticals. "It's such a large list of compounds that even the testing is a lot of work – just teasing out which ones are important. So far, we have no [federal or state] goals to shoot for," Horvath said.
News Release, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Contact: Roxanne Smith, 202-564-4355
January 30, 2006
(Washington, D.C. - January 30, 2006) In order to save energy and protect our nation's environment, EPA and several federal agencies, including the Department of Defense and General Services Administration, agreed to a set of guiding principles for designing, building, and operating federal facilities. Energy efficiency is a key element of the principles, officially titled, "The Federal Leadership Memorandum of Understanding to adopt Guiding Principles for High Performance and Sustainable Buildings."
"Whether you are running a business, a school, or the government of the United States, getting the most out of our energy dollars just makes sense," said EPA Assistant Administrator for Administration and Resources Management Luis A. Luna. "In meeting President Bush's call to conserve our energy resources, the federal government is leading the way in the national march toward energy security and a cleaner environment." Agreed to at the White House Summit on Federal Sustainable Buildings, the guiding principles integrate design, energy performance, water conservation, indoor air quality, and sustainable materials to ensure that new buildings are among the most energy efficient in the country. They also outline that building components should exceed the energy code, and that the actual energy performance of a building, during and through the first year of operation, should be verified against its design target using EPA's Energy Star performance rating system for buildings.
The federal government owns approximately 445,000 buildings with a total floor space of over 3 billion square feet, in addition to leasing 57,000 buildings comprising 374 million square feet of floor space. If federal buildings reduce energy by 10 percent, in 10 years taxpayers would save $420 million dollars and reduce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those from more than 625,000 cars. Energy Star is a government-backed program helping businesses and consumers protect the environment through superior energy efficiency. By partnering with EPA through Energy Star, more than 8,000 private and public sector organizations, in 2004 alone, saved enough energy to power 24 million homes and avoid greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those from 20 million cars – all while saving $10 billion.
For more information on Guiding Principles for Federal Leadership in High Performance and Sustainable Buildings, visit EPA's Web site at www.energystar.gov/news.
For information on Energy Star buildings, visit www.energystar.gov/buildings.
By Lee Bowmanm, Scripps Howard News Service
January 31, 2006
www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=BIRTHDEFECTS-01-31-06
There's a largely hidden epidemic of birth defects running through the world's infants and children, striking about 8 million every year, about 6 percent of those born, according to a new study. An estimated 3.3 million children under age 5 die from a serious birth defect of genetic or partially genetic origin, while another 3.2 million of those who survive are mentally or physically disabled for life, researchers from the March of Dimes reported Monday. It is the first global effort to calculate the toll. Estimates are based on data from the relatively few countries where birth defects have been well-documented and where projections based on the demographics, economies and cultures of those where conditions are less well-recognized. Those estimates show that the vast majority of the impact from birth defects is felt in middle- and low-income countries.
The report does not attempt to calculate the hundreds of thousands more infants born each year with birth defects caused by exposure during pregnancy to environmental toxins, alcohol, tobacco smoke and diseases such as rubella and syphilis. The March of Dimes – an advocate for ending birth defects in this country since 1938 – went international in 1998 to help set up a global alliance of organizations dedicated to preventing and correcting birth defects. The new report is part of a concerted effort to place birth defects on the public-health agenda of national governments and international health organizations. "This is a serious, vastly unappreciated and under-funded public-health problem," said Dr. Jennifer Howse, president of the March of Dimes.
Christopher Howson is an epidemiologist and vice president for Global Programs with the March of Dimes who worked on the report. He said the report's data on 193 countries is still too imprecise to do valid comparisons of birth-defect rates between countries, but does allow broad comparisons across regions and among countries of different income levels. "We can't say from the data we have why the rate in the U.S. is 47.8 per 1,000 births and the rate in the Russian Federation is 42.9, but we do know that there are a lot of factors that are common across national boundaries," Howson said.
In addition to addressing poverty and the health problems that go with it, the report notes there are significant demographic reasons why poorer nations have higher birth-defect rates. They include: more women of advanced age having children and a greater frequency of marriages between individuals who are close blood relatives. Five common defects of genetic or partially genetic origin accounted for about 26 percent of such birth defects in 2001: congenital heart defects (more than 1 million), neural tube defects (324,000), Down syndrome (218,000), hemoglobin disorders called thalassemia and sickle cell disease (308,000) and another blood-related defect called G6PD deficiency (177,000).
"There are a lot of misperceptions around the world about birth defects, including that they're a problem only rich nations can afford to address or that only countries with sophisticated health-care systems can make any progress," Howson said. Many birth defects aren't recognized or considered a cause of death in nations where young children die so readily from infectious diseases, the report says. Even in the most developed nations, only about 50 percent of birth defects are accurately diagnosed. Yet, "with some relatively low-tech interventions and training that we're advocating in the report, a lot of improvement could be attained," Howson said.
Among the proposed interventions: folic-acid supplementation to prevent neural tube defects, such as spina bifida; iodination of salt to prevent congenital hypothyroidism; and rubella vaccinations to prevent a congenital rubella syndrome. "Experience from high-income countries shows that overall mortality and disability from birth defects could be reduced by up to 70 percent if the recommendations in this report were broadly implemented," said Dr. Arnold Christianson of the National Health Lab Service and University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Howson noted that many middle-income nations have birth-defect rates roughly equivalent to those found in the United States in 1960, which have been reduced by 62 percent over the past four decades. Other interventions proposed by the report include educating health workers, political leaders and the general public in each country about the toll of birth defects and the risk factors that might be changed to avoid them, such as having children at older ages and intermarriage. Moreover, Howson said, general education in medical genetics would not only help various countries curb birth defects, but could help poorer nations tap into the promising fields of genetic testing for disease risk and the tailoring of medicines according to genetic profiles.
Press release
February 2, 2006
Contact: Sara Whitman, 212-931-6121 or swhitman@peppercom.com
Grand Rapids, MI. Metro and its parent company, Steelcase Inc. (NYSE: SCS), a global office environments manufacturer, announced today that they have eliminated the use of Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) in the Topo™ scrims and modesty screens manufactured by Metro. Topo is a flexible furniture system designed for both open-plan and private offices.
Topo modesty screens and translucent space division components, known as scrims, now feature an environmentally friendly, PVC-free fabric that is completely recyclable, contains no Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and produces no off-gassing.
"The use of this fabric is an important part of Metro's and Steelcase's strategy to find viable alternatives to materials that include PVC," said Kevin Owens, director of product applications and environmental strategy, Metro. "Our ultimate goal is to create products that minimize or eliminate any long-term impact on the environment – without sacrificing the caliber of design and refined execution for which we are renowned."
The new scrim fabric is an off-white mesh material that, when installed, is visually similar to the existing scrims. Topo modesty screens for work surfaces feature a dark gray version that matches the existing screens. Pricing for both products will remain the same.
"Last year Steelcase announced its plan to be PVC-free by its 100th anniversary in 2012 and this initiative brings us another step closer to that goal," said Allan Smith, director of environmental strategy at Steelcase. "In addition to working with our suppliers to find environmentally-friendly alternatives, Steelcase has also made the commitment to eliminate PVC from all future products. This is a shared promise with many of our partner companies, including Metro."
About Metro
Metro brings life to work by creating refined, modern furniture that improves the experience of life at work – through award-winning concepts pioneered by our observations, intuition and research. Our comprehensive portfolio emphasizes collaboration and provides high performance worksettings for individuals & teams in meeting spaces, private offices and the open plan. We produce premium furniture with a blend of modern precision, an age-old sense of craft, and a dedication to environmental stewardship. Our factory and corporate headquarters is located in Oakland, California, and we have showrooms across the country in Chicago, Santa Monica, New York and Grand Rapids. Founded in 1905, Metro celebrated its centennial anniversary last year. Metro is a Steelcase Company. To learn more, visit us at www.metrofurniture.com.
About Steelcase Inc.
Steelcase, the global leader in the office furniture industry, helps people have a better work experience by providing products, services and insights into the ways people work. The company designs and manufactures architecture, furniture and technology products. Founded in 1912 and headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Steelcase (NYSE:SCS) serves customers through a network of more than 800 independent dealers and approximately 14,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2005 revenue was $2.6 billion.
By Sara Schaefer Muñoz, Staff Reporter of the Wall Street Journal
January 31, 2006
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113867354944860566.html
The push by federal regulators last week to cut back on certain chemicals used to make nonstick, water-repellent and grease-resistant products could affect an array of consumer goods. The Environmental Protection Agency is pressuring eight companies to reduce the presence of a group of chemicals that are used in the manufacture of such things as nonstick cookware, microwave popcorn bags, fast-food containers, carpeting, nail polish and stain-resistant clothing.
Yesterday, an EPA advisory group issued a statement, saying the majority of its members agree that the main chemical under review – perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA – is a "likely" cancer-causing agent. However the group, made up of outside experts, failed to agree unanimously on this likelihood and recommended further study. The findings come after a lengthy review of EPA data on the chemical, including studies linking it to cancer in rats, and indicating that PFOA is found in many people's blood.
The EPA says it will review the findings of the panel, issue a final report assessing the risks, and take any necessary regulatory steps. Already some companies, including DuPont Co., 3M Co. and McDonald's Corp., say they are reducing their use of PFOA-related products or emissions of PFOA. So far, the EPA has said that use of products that involve PFOA is safe. "The information that we have available doesn't indicate that the routine use of household products poses a concern," said Susan Hazen, EPA's acting assistant administrator for the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxins.
A large part of the EPA's concerns center on the release of PFOA into the environment during the manufacturing process. PFOA is a vital processing aid in the manufacture of nonstick coatings, such as the Teflon found in cookware. But the agency is also trying to determine whether trace amounts of the chemical left over in final products can get into people's bodies and pose risk. In addition, the agency is looking at so-called precursor chemicals, called telomers, that can break down into PFOA. Telomers are used to make grease-, stain- and water-resistant coatings such as those used on french-fry containers or outerwear. Telomers released during manufacturing are known to break down into PFOA. But the EPA is also looking into whether telomers in the products themselves can break down, possibly through wear and tear, and cause adverse health effects in humans.
Regulators stepped up their focus on PFOA in humans in 2003 after the EPA took samples from three random population groups and found low-levels residues of the chemical in many people's blood. Given the widespread presence of PFOA in humans, in contrast with the limited number of factories making or using the chemical, EPA concluded that human exposure couldn't come only from direct industrial pollution. So officials set out to determine how people are exposed and to determine their risk. DuPont, of Wilmington, Del., is the only U.S. manufacturer of PFOA, and is also the maker of Teflon, the popular nonstick coating. Teflon and other so-called fluoropolymers are manufactured using PFOA and constitute a $1.5 billion industry in the U.S. In addition to cookware, DuPont says the Teflon brand is used in products with water and stain-resistant coatings, like windshield wipers, carpeting and nail polish. DuPont says that any remnants of PFOA found in final products are tiny. And in response to the EPA panel's statement, the company reiterated that the chemical hasn't been linked to cancer in humans. Last week, DuPont said it had committed to "virtually eliminate" sources of exposure by 2015, and has already reduced manufacturing emissions by 94 percent.
Scientists at the Environmental Working Group, an activist group in Washington that has been sharply critical of DuPont in the past, note that the government hasn't identified threshold safety levels of PFOA in the human body. "There is no context for high or low levels," said Lauren Sucher, the group's director of public affairs. To minimize risk of exposure to the chemical, the group suggests avoiding fabrics treated with stain repellents and keeping the stove on low to medium heat when using nonstick cookware. They point to a 2001 study in the journal Nature that showed PFOA was released from nonstick cookware when it was heated to 680° Fahrenheit – a temperature that can be reached after about five minutes on medium to high heat. Hugh Rushing, executive vice president of the Cookware Manufacturers Association, says that most stove-top cooking wouldn't require temperatures above 500°.
A study conducted by researchers from the Food and Drug Administration published in October, found residual levels of PFOA in some cookware, but said "extreme heating did not appear to increase the residual amount of PFOA." It did find, however, PFOA in microwave popcorn bags made with grease-repellent coatings, and said the agency continues to study people's possible exposure to fluorochemicals through packaging. One reason telomers and fluoropolymer coatings are so widespread is because alternatives have been hard to develop. A spokesman for Akzo Nobel, a Netherlands-based maker of nonstick coating used in major cookware brands, said the company has been exploring alternatives to fluoropolymer coatings made with PFOA without success. The substitutes the company has looked at couldn't withstand the same temperatures and don't have the same nonstick properties. "The food would stick a little bit more" with these alternate products, said general manager Harold Dodd.
ConAgra Foods Inc., which owns the popcorn brands Act II and Orville Redenbacher, said last week that they use packaging made with a material that has PFOA as "a trace impurity" but that no PFOAs migrate into the final product. Even before EPA's request, some of the eight manufacturers and users of PFOA cited had already begun to stop using it. 3M/Dyneon Co., a unit of 3M Co., says it began a PFOA phase-out in 2000 and stopped manufacturing it in 2004 because the company wanted to focus on substances "that have a better health and environmental profile," says spokesman Bill Nelson.
A number of other consumer companies say they have cut back use of products made with PFOA or its chemical precursors. McDonald's said it is switching to PFOA-free coating on its food packaging. Burger King stopped using paper products made with fluorochemicals in 2002. Swedish home-decor company IKEA Group phased out use of fluorochemical stain repellents on furniture several years ago due to health and environmental issues, a spokesman said. The other companies that received the EPA request last week are expected to comply, and some have already begun reduction efforts. They are Paris-based Arkema Inc.; Japan's AGC Chemicals/Asahi Glass; Switzerland's Ciba Specialty Chemicals Holding Inc.; Switzerland-based Clariant Corp.; Japan's Daikin Industries Ltd.; and Italy's Solvay Solexis.
Write to Sara Schaefer Muņoz at sara.schaefer@wsj.com1.
By Kathleen Burge, Boston Globe Staff
February 2, 2006
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/02/02/bill_sets_goal_of_barring_mercury/
The state House of Representatives is expected to consider a bill today that would phase out products containing mercury, such as thermometers and thermostats, and that would require them to be recycled or to be disposed of as hazardous waste. Environmentalists argue that Massachusetts lags behind other New England states in regulating the sale and disposal of products containing mercury, a well-known ecological and public health threat. Four other states -- Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maine -- have enacted laws restricting the use and disposal of mercury. In 2000, New Hampshire was the first state in the country to ban the sale of mercury thermometers.
Although some Massachusetts municipalities have enacted bans – in 2000, the Boston City Council passed an ordinance fining retailers $700 for selling mercury thermometers – earlier mercury bills never made it out of committee. "We've known for quite a while that mercury . . . has poisoned virtually every lake and stream in Massachusetts," said Representative Douglas W. Petersen, the bill's chief sponsor. "Pregnant women and their fetuses are highly susceptible to the absorption of mercury," he said. "It causes brain damage."
Petersen and other supporters expect the bill, which has support from House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, to pass the House. However, legislators may consider several amendments, which could weaken key parts of the measure.
Mercury released into the environment eventually makes its way into streams and rivers. The state Department of Public Health has recommended that pregnant women, women of childbearing age, nursing mothers, and children younger than 12 years old avoid eating all freshwater fish caught in the state, as well as shark, swordfish, king mackerel, tilefish, and tuna steak. Petersen has repeatedly tried to get the House to pass a version of the bill over the past six years. Each time, the bill has died a quiet death and has never reached the House floor. In past years, legislators say, the bill faced heavy opposition from businesses. This year, the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, which has about 2,500 members, testified against the bill because the group opposes mercury regulations that vary from state to state, said Bill Rennie, the association's public affairs director. "We would much rather impose a national solution that crosses all state lines and is uniform," he said. "It becomes difficult for retailers and manufacturers to navigate their way through a state patchwork of regulations."
The bill targets products containing mercury, such as thermometers and blood-pressure cuffs, that can be replaced by products without mercury. Banned items would also include gastrointestinal tubes and measurement devices, including thermostats, barometers, hydrometers, manometers, pyrometers, and flow meters that contain mercury. The sale of cars made after Jan. 1, 2007, would also be banned if they contain switches that use mercury. "All of these have nonmercury alternatives in use," said Elizabeth Saunders, coordinator of the New England Zero Mercury Campaign. "There's no reason to be using these products anymore."
One of the most disputed sections would require proper disposal of mercury in vehicle switches. Scrapyards now have no incentive to remove switches, banned in Europe but still in cars made in the United States, before they dispose of vehicles, sponsors of the bill say. The bill would require scrapyards and dismantlers to remove the switches and return them to manufacturers before the vehicles are crushed and sold for scrap. The bill would also require individuals and business to properly dispose of products containing mercury, recycling them or disposing of them as hazardous waste, rather than sending them to landfills and incinerators.
Saunders's group says there are 3.3 million mercury-containing thermostats in Massachusetts. In 1998, New England governors and premiers of Canada's eastern provinces agreed to try to slash mercury emissions in half by 2003, a goal Massachusetts met. Laws in other states grew from this pledge.
Kathleen Burge can be reached at kburge@globe.com.
Felicity Lawrence, The Guardian (London)
February 2, 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1700223,00.html
The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Friday February 3 2006: The source of the data in the following article was omitted. It came from an analysis by David Thomas in the Food Magazine of figures in McCance and Widdowson's, The Composition of Foods, 1940 and 2002 editions.
The mineral content of milk and popular meats has fallen significantly in the past 60 years, according to a new analysis of government records of the chemical composition of everyday food. The research looked at government tables published in 1940, and again in 2002, in the nutritional bible, The Composition of Foods, to establish levels of important minerals in dairy products and meat before the second world war and today. The research, which is contested by the food and farming industry, found a marked decline in nutritional value during the period. The analysis is published in this month's Food magazine by the consumer watchdog the Food Commission.
The levels of iron recorded in the average rump steak have dropped by 55%, while magnesium fell by 7%. Looking at 15 different meat items, the analysis found that the iron content had fallen on average by 47%. The iron content of milk had dropped by more than 60%, and by more than 50% for cream and eight different cheeses. Milk appears to have lost 2% of its calcium, and 21% of its magnesium too. Most cheeses showed a fall in magnesium and calcium levels. According to the analysis, cheddar provides 9% less calcium today, 38% less magnesium and 47% less iron, while parmesan shows the steepest drop in nutrients, with magnesium levels down by 70% and iron all gone compared with its content in the years up to 1940.
The research was conducted by David Thomas, a chiropractor and nutritionist who prescribes and sells mineral supplements. He published an earlier historical analysis of the nutrient content of fruit and vegetables in 2000 which showed a similar decline in those foods. He attributes the loss of nutrients to intensive farming and industrial production. Academics in the US and Denmark have also reported significant changes in the nutritional profile of modern foods.
The Food Commission believes that changes in the methods of measuring the composition of food cannot account for the huge difference in nutrient content and has called for independent research on the effects of different farming methods. "Minerals are easy to detect and measure and have been since the 19th century. It is almost impossible that methods have changed so much that it would explain the huge difference between these figures," the Food Commission's director, Dr Tim Lobstein, said. "One of the key arguments is that today's agriculture does not allow the soil to enrich itself, but depends on chemical fertilisers that don't replace the wide variety of nutrients plants and humans need."
Scientists at the University of Newcastle's agriculture school have looked at differences in the fat and vitamin composition of milk produced in different farming systems. "We know that the faster grass grows the more you dilute the uptake of trace elements," Gillian Butler, a researcher, said. Another explanation might be that in traditional farming, clover, which is higher in minerals than grass, also played a greater part in feeding animals.
The director of the Italian parmesan consortium, Leo Bertozzi, said the figures were a puzzle. "Our methods of making cheese have not changed, but milk in 1940 was not the same as milk today. Today cows yield five to six times as many litres a day, and their feed is different, with cereals and soya added to hay. But I find these figures surprising," he said. The research has, however, been challenged by the food and farming industries which argue that the testing methods have changed. They also say that huge changes in the varieties grown and the ways in which food is transported and stored, make direct comparison difficult.
The Food Standards Agency, which publishes The Composition of Food, agrees that using the government tables to make historical comparisons is problematic. "Any differences over time could be due to a wide variety of factors, including variety and breed, animal husbandry, growth, storage conditions, preparation and cooking methods as well as differences in analytical methodology," it said in a statement. The Dairy Council said it believed that changes in farming practices and environmental factors would account for only a small reduction in mineral content. "It is more likely that the differences are due to improvements in analytical methods used to measure minerals in milk," its director, Judith Bryans, said. The Meat and Livestock Commission also attributed the decline in nutrients to better testing methods. "What goes in is what comes out, and the only significant shift in beef production has been from hay to silage. If these figures were true we'd expect to see a lot of anaemic cows wondering around," Mike Attenborough, an MLC technical expert, said.
from Environmental Health Perspectives
http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2006/114-2/focus.html
With about 17 percent of school-age children in the US suffering from a some form of neurodevelopmental impairment, researchers are taking a hard look at the impacts of low-dose exposures in utero and during childhood. This seven-page cover article in Environmental Health Perspectives encapsulates the latest research on the links between environmental exposures and neurodevelopment. Read the full article.
By John Heilprin, Associated Press Writer
February 2, 2006
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/1500AP_Diesel_Pollution.html
WASHINGTON – Trains and boats powered by diesel-fueled engines cause about 4,400 premature deaths, nearly 5,700 nonfatal heart attacks and more than 73,000 asthma attacks in children, says a study by associations representing air pollution control officials. The study by the trade groups - the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators and the Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials - is an attempt to prod the Environmental Protection Agency to make good on its promise of new regulations. "These are among the largest and most dangerous under-regulated sources of pollution in the United States," Bill Becker, the executive director for both groups, said Thursday. "It is within EPA's power to avoid most of these premature deaths as well as most of the other adverse health consequences." The groups used an EPA formula for calculating health and economic impacts.
The Environmental Protection Agency said almost two years ago it would propose by mid-2005 new emissions standards for diesel-fueled locomotives and marine engines, such as those used in passenger and cargo trains, yachts, fishing vessels, tugboats and ferries. It still has not done so. EPA officials said Thursday they agreed with the groups that cleaning up fine particle pollution from locomotive and marine sources is an urgent matter, and that they will propose the new regulations later this year.
The agency did issue new regulations in 2000 and 2004 on two other diesel-engine fronts. First it called for cleaner-burning diesel-powered trucks and buses, both improved engines and lower sulfur content in fuel. Then it did the same for off-road farm and construction equipment, and required lower sulfur content in fuel used in locomotives and marine engines. Allen Schaeffer, executive director of the industry-sponsored Diesel Technology Forum, said requiring new engines in trains and boats to run cleaner would provide benefits, but cleaning up older engines would be more cost effective.
Janet Raloff
February 4, 2006
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060204/bob9.asp
Rachel Carson turned the pest-control world upside down in 1962. In Silent Spring (Mariner), she documented how long-lived organochlorine pesticides, most notoriously DDT, were not only ridding croplands of insects, streets of mosquitoes, and homes of spiders but also exacting a high toll on songbirds and other nontargeted species. The chemicals' broad-spectrum potency and resistance to breakdown, advantages in their use against pests, emerged as hazards. Shortly after the publication of Carson's book, industrialized countries began phasing out such persistent organic pollutants, or POPs. There's now a United Nations treaty aiming at their global elimination.
In the wake of organochlorine pesticides came organophosphate agents. Although these agents are highly effective, their toxicity to nontarget animals -- including people -- echoed the perils of DDT. Regulators responded, and by the middle 1990s, once-popular members of this class of agents -- such as dursban, malathion, and chlorpyrifos -- were being phased out or severely restricted in their uses. In recent years, farmers and others have increasingly turned to products based on pyrethrins, chemicals made by certain members of the chrysanthemum family. Farmers in various parts of the world have for millennia used preparations from these flowers to protect crops from insects. Since the 1960s, manufacturers have produced synthetic analogs -- called pyrethroids -- of the herbal products' active ingredients.
Although pyrethroids have greater toxicity to insects and somewhat more resistance to breakdown than their natural counterparts do, studies have demonstrated that these synthetic chemicals pose little risk to most vertebrates, from songbirds to people. Pyrethroids stand poised to overtake organophosphate insecticides for farm use and are already the leading insecticides sold to homeowners. However, emerging data show that even pyrethroids can pose serious environmental hazards. At concentrations found in streams, the chemicals can kill beneficial insects and crustaceans and may even be acting -- below the radar screen -- to poison fish and lizards.
Most of these findings came to light in some dozen presentations in Baltimore last November at the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) annual meeting. The research described there suggests that, at least where the mum-based pesticides might enter streams, these compounds should be used sparingly. "The Environmental Protection Agency needs to take a closer look at pyrethroids" with an eye toward changing how the 22 such compounds that it has registered are marketed and used, argues Michael J. Lydy, an environmental toxicologist at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Ample and growing data, he says, challenge "the suggestion that in the environment, pyrethroids will be innocuous."
Hunting thrins
"Walk down the pesticide aisle of your local hardware store and read the active ingredients in insecticides. Nearly every one ends in 'thrin,'" a dead giveaway that it is a pyrethroid, observes Donald P. Weston, an environmental toxicologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Only a few pyrethroids -- most notably esfenvalerate -- lack that suffix. Although many of these compounds have been used for decades, especially on farms, "no one had looked for them in the environment," Weston notes. In the past few years, he and his colleagues launched several surveys to check whether pyrethroids were causing harm in streams. Because these pesticides don't readily dissolve, but instead glom on to particles and quickly settle out of water, his team focused its analyses on sediments.
Their findings proved eye-opening, Weston told Science News. In one study of creeks adjacent to farmlands across a 10-county area in California's Central Valley, researchers looked for five pyrethroids and found one or more in at least three-quarters of the 70 sediments sampled. The researchers then tested two stream dwellers: the amphipod Hyalella azteca, which is a small, shrimplike crustacean, and a larval midge of the species Chironomus tentans. Ecologists use these tiny "lab rats of the sediment-testing world" for toxicity assessments, Weston explains. At 42 percent of the sampled sites, the sediment proved deadly to at least one of two species, his group reported 2 years ago.
In a follow-up study, the scientists spiked sediment samples from clean sites with six common pyrethroids to compare their toxic effects on H. azteca. They measured each compound's LC50 -- the concentration lethal to 50 percent of animals exposed in a test. In the April 2005 Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (ET&C), the team reported that permethrin's LC50 was 60 to 110 parts per billion (ppb), depending on how much organic carbon the sediment contained. The LC50 for the remaining pyrethroids was far lower, indicating greater toxicity. The most toxic: lambda-cyhalothrin and bifenthrin, which have an LC50 of 2 to 6 ppb. The crustaceans' growth was significantly retarded at concentrations just one-third of a pyrethroid's LC50.
Lawn pollution
Farm runoff isn't the only -- or perhaps even the most important -- way in which these agents get into streams. Weston and his Berkeley colleague Erin L. Amweg reported data at the SETAC meeting showing that pyrethroids are washed into waterways from suburban yards by rain and lawn watering. In one recent study, Weston, Lydy, and others surveyed streams in Roseville, a suburb of Sacramento, Calif. Only a decade earlier, land along these creeks had been arid grassland. Since then, much of it has been converted to subdivisions sporting four homes per acre, most with manicured lawns. Roughly 90 percent of the stream sediments sampled contained bifenthrin, and the majority of them had bifenthrin concentrations toxic to Hyalella, the scientists report in the Dec. 15, 2005, Environmental Science & Technology. Often, one to five more pyrethroids were present. In contrast, the pesticides didn't show up in waters draining Roseville sites free of residential development.
In toxicity, bifenthrin dominated the suburban sediments. Indeed, Lydy told Science News, "80 percent of our samples had enough toxicity due to bifenthrin alone to cause at least half of our [amphipods] to die." The team recorded pesticide concentrations as high as 437 ppb -- that's about 100 times as great as its LC50 for H. azteca and 15 times the highest bifenthrin concentration seen in sediments of creeks running through Central Valley croplands. This indicates, Weston says, that the highest concentrations of pyrethroids in creek sediments trace to "classic suburbia -- we're talking Mom, Dad, two kids, and a dog."
Although pesticides applied by professional exterminators around the perimeters of homes are a possible source of the creek contamination, the research group strongly suspects that much of the bifenthrin comes from lawn-care products. Some fertilizers even include bifenthrin, so that homeowners can feed their grass and kill bugs in one pass. In the Roseville study, the pesticides didn't appear to travel far once they reached a creek, with the high concentrations appearing only within 100 yards or so of storm-drain outfalls.
What's not clear, Weston and others observe, is whether the California data reflect what's occurring nationally or might instead represent a worst-case scenario. For instance, Amweg presented data at the SETAC meeting indicating that creeks near Sacramento and San Francisco showed substantial sediment contamination but streams in Nashville didn't. The California sites, unlike Nashville, get little summer rainfall to dilute stream pollutants. Moreover, many of California's urban areas rely on concrete storm drains to channel lawn runoff directly into streams, whereas the Nashville sites were separated from waterways by a corridor of greenery.
Too excited
Joel R. Coats of Iowa State University in Ames and his colleagues have been probing why pyrethroids "are as nasty as DDT [is] to a lot of aquatic life -- including fish." Pyrethroids poison pests by wreaking havoc on their nervous systems, as most insecticides do. When nerves transmit an impulse, Coats explains, "there's an electrical ripple that's triggered by sodium gates in [each cell] opening in sequence." Pyrethroids perturb the nerve cells' sodium gates, however, so that once open, they never fully close, Coats says. The resulting sodium leaks maintain nerve cells in a state of overexcitation that kills the insects. Because the nervous systems of crustaceans and many other soft-bodied aquatic animals resemble those of insects, these nontargeted animals are also vulnerable to pyrethroids.
Coats observes that mammals and birds gain some protection from pyrethroid poisoning by two mechanisms: production of esterase enzymes that inactivate the poisons by splitting them in half, and another metabolic process that employs oxidation. He reported at the SETAC meeting that although rainbow trout, bluegill, and fathead minnows can all oxidize pyrethroids, their esterase enzyme activity doesn't break apart the pesticides. Although these pesticides may induce ill effects that fall short of lethality, toxicologists have generally been forced to focus on their deadliness, Weston says, because fatal concentrations tend to be at or near the minimum value at which current technology can detect the pesticides. If the pesticides cause sickness, therefore, it's likely to happen at concentrations too low to measure, he says. To get around this difficulty, some scientists have added minute amounts of the compounds to tanks of water containing aquatic animals.
At Oregon State University (OSU) in Corvallis, Katherine R. Johnson and her colleagues administered esfenvalerate to aquatic nymphs of the caddis fly (Brachycentrus americanus) -- an insect eaten by many fish. For protection from predators, these nymphs enshroud themselves in hard cases. As the OSU researchers increased pyrethroid concentrations above 0.05 ppb, formerly resting animals began fleeing their cases in increasing numbers, notes coauthor Jeffrey J. Jenkins. Among nymphs that fled, three-quarters of those exposed to as little as 0.2 ppb esfenvalerate didn't rebuild their cases. Rebuilt cases were disordered and much weaker than the originals, the scientists reported at the SETAC meeting.
Conditional toxicity
Environmental stressors can sabotage pesticide-detoxification systems, even in animals that would otherwise withstand the chemicals, notes Larry G. Talent. At Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, he studied adult green anole lizards (Anolis carolinensis), 6 to 8 inches long, exposed to a pyrethroid product used to treat birds for mites and lice. When he doused the lizards with a solution of the pesticide and then maintained the reptiles at a comfortable 95°F, none died. However, 70 percent of treated lizards died within 2 days when they were instead housed at a cool 68°F. Without pesticide exposure, the lizards showed no mortality at the lower temperature, Talent reports in the December 2005 ET&C. Low temperatures, which might mimic night or winter environments, pose a double whammy for pyrethroid effects: Not only is the lizard's nervous system more vulnerable to poisoning but its metabolic breakdown of pollutants also slows.
Mark A. Clifford last year reported a similar synergy between two environmental stressors -- pyrethroid exposure and a viral infection -- in young salmon. The University of California, Davis fish pathologist exposed 2-month-old chinook salmon for 4 days to either esfenvalerate or chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate pesticide. He then seeded some of the aquariums holding the fish with infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus, which can kill juveniles. Fish exposed to low doses of the virus survived, as did those exposed to either pesticide alone, Clifford's team reported in the July 2005 ET&C. Deaths occurred only in fish exposed to high concentrations of the virus or to both the pyrethroid and virus. Within 3 days of being exposed to either dose of virus, roughly 70 percent of the pesticide-exposed salmon fry were dead. The pyrethroid's impact "was totally unexpected," Clifford says. Two follow-up trials confirmed that the initial observation was not a fluke.
Winds of change?
EPA considers new data when it periodically reviews its approvals of pesticides registered before 1984. Reevaluations for permethrin, resmethrin, and cypermethrin are slated for completion this year, and three other pyrethroids are to be reviewed by 2008. Because bifenthrin was registered in late 1985, it's not scheduled for such a reevaluation. In a statement to Science News, however, EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) notes that this pesticide's manifestation of "certain toxic properties at the level of detection [makes it] challenging for the agency to determine whether risks from the use of this pesticide are acceptable." In fact, the statement says, to better understand pyrethroids' toxicity and bioavailability to nontarget organisms, OPP is "reviewing the sediment toxicity studies on bifenthrin, cypermethrin, cyfluthrin, and esfenvalerate that were recently submitted [by Weston's group and others]." These pesticides were chosen as "surrogates," the statement says, for assessing the exposures and toxicity of other pyrethroids.
Indeed, OPP notes, despite their use on some 50 agricultural crops, some pyrethroids have only "conditional" approval from EPA, pending future evaluation of their sediment toxicity and of the value of buffer zones in keeping treated areas from tainting streams. OPP says that it anticipates completing a "comparative assessment for pyrethroids" by December.
Pyrethroid manufacturers are already bracing for change. Jim Fitzwater, a spokesman for bifenthrin-maker FMC Corp. of Philadelphia, says that homeowners need to be educated about how and when to apply lawn-care products containing pyrethroids. He notes that his company sells to consumer-products companies rather than consumers and says, "We're looking at working with [these] end-use manufacturers to do a better stewardship job."
Peter Calmai, Science Writer, Toronto Star
February 4, 2006
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1139007012700&call_pageid=968332188774&col=968350116467
Fluorinated polymers are everywhere, even though most people have never heard of them. Microwave popcorn bags, stain-free carpets, fast-food wrappers, denture cleaners, windshield washer fluid – this is just a sample of the consumer products that contain some compound from this vast chemical family. Such widespread use means big dollars. Manufacturing millions of kilograms of fluorinated polymers (and the chemicals used to make them) generates billions of dollars in annual revenue for chemical giants like Dupont Co. in the U.S., Clariant in Germany and Daikin in Japan.
Yet, these ubiquitous compounds are shaping up to be as big an environmental and potential health problem as their better known chemical cousins like PCB and DDT. Possibly even bigger, say some experts like University of Toronto's Scott Mabury. "There was nothing known about these chemicals when we started investigating five years ago. It was a clean slate for research, which is one of the things that makes it so fascinating," says Mabury, who heads an international team considered tops in this specialized research field.
The fascination for Mabury and others isn't the fluorinated polymers themselves but what they eventually become through degradation and other poorly understood processes – a group of nasty chemicals called PFCAs for perfluorocarboxylates. PFCAs really do turn up everywhere in Canada and around the globe, including in human blood, in household air and dust and – in heavier concentrations – in the blood of polar bears and seals in the Arctic, thousands of kilometres from any possible industrial source. Concentrations in seals are doubling every five years, a phenomenal rate, Mabury says.
Not only have PFCAs spread around the world in recent decades but they have been linked to cancer and other developmental effects in animal experiments, and are expected to persist in the soil and elsewhere for hundreds of years. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency is debating whether to classify PFCAs as likely or probably causing cancer. In Canada, the federal government in 2004 banned four new fluorinated polymers from being manufactured or imported for two years out of concern over the environmental and health effects of PFCAs, the first country in the world to take such action. That ban expires for three of the chemicals in June. Next week, Environment Canada is holding a consultation among PFCA experts from industry, environmental groups, government and the universities to discuss making the ban permanent and clamping down on existing fluorinated polymers.
"We took a precautionary approach in the case of the new substances. We didn't want to add more to the environment," says Bernard Madé, who directs Environment Canada's office dealing with new substances. Madé says the department wants "early action" to deal with the potential environmental threat posed by fluorinated polymers already being widely used in Canada. That would mean either voluntary action by industry or imposing controls through government regulations, he said.
The big scientific puzzle concerning PFCAs is how they have become so widespread in the environment, since they are not directly used as commercial or industrial products. Environment Canada based its temporary ban on a complex chain reaction that hasn't yet been conclusively demonstrated. When they slowly degrade chemically, the fluorinated polymers supposedly release one of the chemicals used in making them, called fluorotelomer alcohols. These alcohols can be borne long distances on the wind and then degrade further into the troublesome PFCAs. The general assumption was that this pollution began when chemicals were spilled or deliberately discharged at manufacturing plants or from leakage when being applied in places like carpet factories.
Now, Mabury and fellow U of T chemist Mary Joyce Dinglasan-Panlilio have discovered an even simpler explanation, eliminating one stage of that chain reaction and opening the door for faster remedial action. In a study published online last week by the American Chemical Society, the two researchers instead point the finger at sloppy production of the chemicals in the first place. Testing six consumer and industrial products like carpet stain repellents and windshield washer fluid, they found levels of the fluorotelomer alcohols as high as 4 percent. In effect, the alcohols are chemical leftovers, unwanted residues that remain because the manufacturing process failed to incorporate all of the starting materials into the polymers. This is the first evidence in the scientific literature that the products themselves are sources, not just manufacturing or application processes. Says Mabury: "In essence, they're just waste products. If you turn off the residual tap, you may very well solve the pollution problem of chemicals in the Arctic."
The highest levels of the alcohols, up to 3.8 per cent, were in industrial additives used in paints and polishes, the lowest in Teflon Advance, a spray-on carpet protector with 0.34 per cent, and in Motormaster Windshield Washer fluid, at 0.36 percent. Based on industry estimates of production of the fluorinated polymers, such residual levels would mean annual emissions of at least 100,000 kilograms of fluorotelomer alcohols, enough to account for a substantial amount of the PFCAs being found.
One of the investigators tracking these PFCAs is Tom Harner, an Environment Canada research scientist in Downsview, who draws a parallel with the better-known POPs, or persistent organic pollutants now controlled by a global treaty. "We call them domestic POPs because we think there are many sources in the home, and these may be an important source of these things to the wider environment," he says. In the winter of 2002-2003, Harner and colleagues were checking air and dust samples from 66 homes in Ottawa for contaminants called brominated flame retardants. They found as well a type of fluorinated polymers known as FOSEs. The concentrations were 10 to 20 times higher than in the outdoor air, although still at the modest level of a billionth of a gram in every cubic metre. "These things linger so you're going to continue to see high indoor concentrations. The windows and doors are closed in winter and a lot of people use air conditioning in the summer, so there's not that much ventilation," Harner says.
A final piece of the fluorinated polymers puzzle is how these chemicals get to such remote places as the Arctic, and quickly, too. When the 3M Corp. withdrew its popular Scotchgard product five years ago because of concerns over the PCFA content, Environment Canada scientists saw levels of the specific Scotchgard chemical drop in seal blood within a year. Some researchers, mostly in industry, contend ocean currents are largely responsible for transporting fluorinated polymers that were dumped by factories in years past. Mabury disagrees: "It has to be spread by the atmosphere. It would take decades for these chemicals to reach the Arctic through the oceans."
Rachel's Democracy & Health News provides news and resources for environmental justice. Featured stories in the current edition includes "The Failure of Chemical Regulation: The Case of Mercury" with this description: Year after year since 1953, researchers have uncovered new evidence that mercury is harming humans and other creatures – particularly the developing brains of babies. Yet regulators have consistently argued against protecting public health because risk assessments can't prove harm beyond a shadow of a doubt. And so the devastating pollution continues. To access the full article, visit www.precaution.org/lib/06/mercury_failure.060202.htm.
By Mark Thompson, Karen Tumulty
February 05, 2006
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1156577,00.html
The 3 1/2-hr. conference call brought together nearly two dozen of the nation's best minds on the subject of air quality--and many of them were steamed. As the scientists of the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, they are rarely overruled on their recommendations about how the government should react to the latest and best research on the dangers of dirty air. Seven months ago, they warned the EPA in a letter that unless it made at least modest reductions in the amount of airborne soot, thousands of Americans would die prematurely each year. But last December, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, citing "the best available science," ignored their counsel. On the phone call last week, an exasperated Dr. James Crapo, professor of medicine at Denver's National Jewish Medical and Research Center, told his fellow scientists, "We need to write another letter and this time take a stronger stand."
Starting when he was a presidential candidate in 2000, George W. Bush has often assured voters that his policymaking would be guided by "sound science." Last week, in his State of the Union address, the President pointed to scientific research as the way to "lead the world in opportunity and innovation for decades to come." Yet growing numbers of researchers, both in and out of government, say their findings--on pollution, climate change, reproductive health, stem-cell research and other areas in which science often finds itself at odds with religious, ideological or corporate interests--are being discounted, distorted or quashed by Bush Administration appointees.
White House officials don't see that pattern of interference. "This Administration has been very supportive of science," Bush's science adviser and respected physicist John Marburger told TIME. "The President wants us to do it right, and doesn't want us to do things that contradict the laws of nature." But in the past two years, the Union of Concerned Scientists has collected the signatures of more than 8,000 scientists--including 49 Nobel laureates, 63 National Medal of Science recipients and 171 members of the National Academies--who accuse the Administration of an unprecedented level of political intrusion into their world. "There have always been isolated incidents where people have played politics with science," says Francesca Grifo, director of the group's Scientific Integrity Program. "What's new is its pervasive and systemic nature. We get calls every week from federal scientists reporting stuff to us."
Rarely, however, are they willing to put their jobs and their research grants at risk by going public with their complaints. That's why it was so remarkable when one of the government's leading experts on climate change, 29-year NASA veteran James Hansen, who is director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, charged on the front page of the New York Times that he has been muzzled by the agency. He accused the agency of demanding to review his lectures, papers and postings to the NASA website, as well as screen his media interviews.
So respected is Hansen that he has been invited to brief Vice President Dick Cheney. The White House wanted to hear Hansen's findings that supported its view that there are easier and cheaper steps toward controlling global warming--reducing vehicle soot and methane emissions, for instance--than curbing carbon dioxide, which by some estimates would cost the energy industry $100 billion or more. But Hansen's more recent research suggesting that global warming is accelerating, and that time is running out to find a solution, was less favorably received, he told TIME. "It just became so clear to me that they were interested in those things that they were doing anyhow, but they were not willing to consider the changes that would be needed to reduce the most important greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, in the near term."
NASA officials have denied that Hansen was silenced, and insist public-affairs officers routinely review interview requests. Hansen himself has not stayed outside the realm of politics, having announced in a 2004 speech at the University of Iowa that he planned to vote for John Kerry. Still, his scientific reputation is solid enough that Sherwood Boehlert, Republican chairman of the House Science Committee, wrote NASA Administrator Michael Griffin last week to demand an explanation and make clear that "good science cannot long persist in an atmosphere of intimidation ... NASA is clearly doing something wrong, given the sense of intimidation by Dr. Hansen and others who work with him." By the end of the week, Griffin had e-mailed the agency's 19,000 employees, saying public-affairs officers should not "alter, filter or adjust" the work of NASA scientists.
Boehlert does not see a larger problem of Administration meddling and suggests that Hansen probably fell victim to an overzealous, middle-level bureaucrat. "I don't for a moment think that the Administration is dictating from the White House some policy directed to silence distinguished scientists like Dr. Hansen," he says. And he noted that politics and science have never had an easy, hands-off relationship in Washington. "This is a town where people like to say they're for science-based decision making, until the scientific consensus leads to a politically inconvenient conclusion. Then they want to go to Plan B," he says. "That's seamless from
