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by Stephanie Zimmermann, Chicago Sun-Times
April 24, 2006
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-lead24.html
The dangers of lead poisoning go beyond traditional worries about lead-based paint, as evidenced by the recent death of a 4-year-old Minnesota boy who swallowed a lead-filled trinket that has since been recalled. Now, Illinois is poised to become one of the first states to ban the sale of many consumer products that contain lead. Legislation introduced by Rep. Harry Osterman (D-Chicago) would strengthen existing law by banning the sale of clothing, accessories, jewelry, decorative objects, candy, food and dietary supplements used by or intended to be used by children if the lead content is more than .06 percent of the total weight. Previously, state law focused on paint, toys and furniture.
Osterman's bill passed through the General Assembly earlier this month. Gov. Blagojevich intends to sign it into law soon, said spokesman Gerardo Cardenas. "This goes hand in hand with other initiatives that the governor has taken to fight lead poisoning, protect the environment, protect children's health," Cardenas said. "It's something that we support." The ban would put Illinois in the forefront of protecting children from the harmful effects of lead, said Amy Zimmerman, children's policy adviser for Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.
Larger national effort urged
Even though most lead exposure comes from old paint or contaminated soil, it's important to get rid of other sources of lead, which can accumulate in the body and cause behavioral disorders, learning disabilities, lowered IQ, stunted growth, hearing impairment and problems with organs. Convulsions, coma and death can occur at higher levels.
The lead danger issue has grabbed headlines in recent years, first with the July 2004 recall of 150 million pieces of kiddie vending machine jewelry found to be contaminated with lead, and more recently with questions about lead content in children's vinyl lunchboxes. Last month, lead again became an issue in a national recall of heart-shaped charm bracelets that had been given away with Reebok shoes over the last two years, following the death of a 4-year-old Minnesota boy who suffered lead-induced brain swelling after swallowing a piece of the bracelet. The federal government estimates 310,000 children ages 1 to 5 have elevated lead levels in their blood.
Nancy Cowles, executive director of the nonprofit group Kids in Danger, applauded the recent legislation but said a larger effort must be made at the national level to stop imports of products containing lead. U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has introduced the Lead Free Toys Act of 2005, which seeks to ban any children's toys containing more than a trace amount of lead. Obama also co-introduced a bill last fall that would provide tax credits for lead abatement and control in homes and rental units.
by Felicity Barringer, New York Times
April 24, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/us/24lawn.html
ALPHARETTA, Ga. -- Some have automatic transmissions. Drink holders. Electrical outlets. That staple of the American suburb, the lawn mower, now has many features of a late-model car. But not a catalytic converter, a muscular piece of antipollution engineering. At least not yet.
As warm days move north and America's lawns awake and grow, homeowners and lawn care services are revving up some of the dirtiest engines in the national garage. Gallon for gallon -- or, given the size of lawnmower tanks, quart for quart -- the 2006 lawn mower engines contribute 93 times more smog-forming emissions than 2006 cars, according to the California Air Resources Board. In California, lawn mowers provided more than 2 percent of the smog-forming pollution from all engines.
But as soon as air pollution regulators suggested adding a golf-ball-size catalytic converter to the lawn mower, they found themselves in one of their fiercest political battles of the past decade. On one side, the federal Environmental Protection Agency and state regulators in California. On the other, the largest lawn and garden equipment maker in the country and a powerful Republican senator. And in the middle, the six million or so lawn mowers shipped to retailers every year.
For older regulators, it is a replay of Detroit's initial resistance to those who wanted clean up car exhaust by installing catalytic converters, which pull smog-forming chemicals and carbon monoxide out of the exhaust. "I think it's very analogous to what happened in the 70's," said Robert Cross, chief of the California air agency's Mobile Source Control Division. "The arguments are all the same."
A pending regulation in California that is scheduled to take effect next year, if the E.P.A. approves, would tighten emission requirements for small engines, cutting 22 tons of smog-forming chemicals from the California air daily, or the equivalent of more than 800,000 cars a day. It would almost certainly require the use of a catalytic converter -- a requirement that Briggs & Stratton, the dominant engine maker in the struggling lawn care equipment field, vigorously opposes.
Briggs and some other American equipment makers argue that the converters could add a dangerous amount of heat to already hot engines, creating a fire hazard. They point out that these machines are used or left standing amid dry brush or newspaper and other flammable garage debris. It is an argument similar to one automakers made before the government required the devices three decades ago. But four small-engine makers say that their engineers have figured out how to meet the pollution standards safely, with or without the devices.
Like the Michigan Congressional delegation that argued on behalf of automakers decades ago, Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, has repeatedly put hurdles in front of regulators. Mr. Bond operates from a position of strength in these matters. He is chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that controls the budgets of agencies like the E.P.A. and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
While Briggs & Stratton is based in Wisconsin, it has two factories in Missouri. The possibility that increased costs will squeeze tight profit margins has led Mr. Bond to argue that tightening small-engine standards nationally would take 1,750 jobs from his constituents and send them to China.
Senator Bond's main adversaries are regulators in California, who have largely independent authority to set air emission standards independent of the Environmental Protection Agency. In the 1990's the California Air Resources Board first put controls on emissions from these engines and subsequently tightened them. The new, tougher standards they drafted in 2003 would be the first that are likely to require the addition of a catalytic converter. In 2003 and 2005, Mr. Bond inserted provisions into appropriations legislation to delay the California regulations and limit their possible scope. The 2003 amendments, reached as part of a deal with Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, took away the right of other states to adopt California's tougher regulations and required the E.P.A. to hold off its approval until it satisfied itself that the California rules would not entail safety risks.
Last month, Mr. Bond's two studies were released. The research council report was a paean to California's regulatory leadership. And the E.P.A. said the new standards for lawn and garden equipment could be met safely. The senator's staff has since criticized the environmental agency's study, saying, in the words of Mr. Bond's spokesman, Rob Ostrander, it "was not a public process. There was no input or comment by members of the public or stakeholders." Margo Oge, director of the Office of Transportation and Air Quality at the E.P.A., said that a public hearing last fall was open to "equipment manufacturers, states, public workers."
Patricia Hanz, an assistant general counsel for Briggs & Stratton, said, "We acknowledge that there's an air quality problem in California." But she added that Briggs engines were 70 percent cleaner than they were than 15 years ago, before regulation. To meet the new standards, she said, would require a minimum 30 percent price increase "across our product line." Ms. Hanz did not explain the components of this projected price increase. The E.P.A. estimates that a catalytic converter and new hoses would cost a company about $20 to $25 per machine, on average. California regulators estimate the price increase at 18 percent for the smallest machines, those costing about $150 to $200. In Alpharetta, Heidi Ramaekers said she would be willing to pay $25 more for a model like her current $175 mower "if it would make things better."
So far, neither Briggs nor Mr. Bond's office has explicitly said that the California regulations should be delayed further, though there have been hints. Asked if she thought Mr. Bond might try again to delay the standards' scheduled 2007 implementation, Ms. Feinstein said: "We made a deal. In the Senate, your word is your bond." She added: "My comment to Briggs & Stratton is: You can learn from the dinosaur. Mutate or you're gone."
Briggs & Stratton has another idea: another study. It is helping pay for a $650,000 safety review by a Swedish government institute at the behest of the relatively new nonprofit group, the International Consortium for Fire Safety, Health and the Environment. And the company is part of a group talking to the Consumer Product Safety Commission about doing its own study on fire hazards -- even though the commission staff wrote in March that it was "satisfied that likely fire hazard scenarios were accounted for" by the E.P.A.
Mr. Ostrander, the spokesman for Mr. Bond, said of a possible safety commission study, "It's hard to argue against increasing scientific knowledge to avoid people getting burned or having their houses burned down."
Bill Boltz, the merchandising vice president for Home Depot's lawn and garden division, was fretting about managing a national inventory that breaks every lawn mower model in two -- one for California and one for the rest of the country. "We don't want to have to manage multiple programs," Mr. Boltz said. The Environmental Protection Agency could make his day by tightening its national standard to mirror California's. It is due to produce a draft of a new rule by year's end.
But no one is counting out Briggs & Stratton or Mr. Bond. Tom Cackette, chief deputy executive at the California air agency, said that, politically, "I don't think there's been any other kind of engine that has proved so difficult to control."
by Anton Caputo, San Antonio Express-News
April 23, 2006
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA042306.01A.mercury.34d28f8.html
As any visitor to eBay knows, the beauty of the free market is its ability to put a price on just about anything. Starting in 2010, that will include the right of power companies to spew toxic mercury into the air. The going price: $23,200 a pound.
And Texas is home to some likely buyers: coal plants that can't meet the federal government's new mercury control standards, say state regulators. With the credits bought from plants in other states, they could emit more mercury than the new limits allow.
Not every state is in Texas' predicament. In contrast, several states, such as Pennsylvania and Michigan, have criticized the federal standards as too lax and are mandating more stringent controls. In some cases, states are forbidding power companies within their borders from buying pollution credits. But in Texas, where 17 new coal plants have been proposed and Gov. Rick Perry has ordered the fast tracking of new plants, regulators say they've been instructed to do exactly what the federal government requires and no more. "It's a salute-and-march type of deal," said Cory Chism with the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality's Emissions Banking and Trading Team.
Coal-fired plants across Texas will have to reduce mercury pollution or spend tens of millions of dollars each year buying pollution credits. This includes CPS Energy's coal plants, which will have to cut mercury emissions by 132 pounds, or 25 percent, from what they produced in 2004, or go shopping on the emerging mercury market for about $3 million a year in credits. Given the utility's massive environmental cleanup program, it expects to make the deadline with relative ease, said Joe Fulton, the utility's director of research and environmental management.
Others may have a harder time. Texas has five of the top 10 mercury-emitting power plants in the nation, with 17 proposed plants on the horizon. Given the situation, regulators and environmentalists believe some Texas plants will pay to pollute. "There's a big collision coming," said Neil Carman, clean air program director with the Alamo Chapter of the Sierra Club.
Among the companies with the most at stake is Dallas-based TXU Energy, which runs some of the nation's biggest mercury polluters. Based on newly released 2004 statistics, the company will have to reduce mercury emissions from its plants by a whopping 842 pounds in 2010 or buy $20 million worth of pollution credits. And the company will have to accomplish this while doubling capacity -- which it believes it can do. In a surprising announcement Thursday, TXU unveiled a $10 billion plan to build another 11 power plants by 2010.
Skyrocketing energy costs have both utilities and regulators looking at coal as a big part of the solution, a company spokeswoman said. "We all know that Texas is growing at a phenomenal rate," Kimberly Morgan said. "We need to make sure we can meet the state's growing needs with a stable low-price power supply."
A powerful neurotoxin
Mercury is a powerful neurotoxin that, even in minute amounts, is dangerous to young children and developing fetuses, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. It has been linked to autism and decreased brain function. The metal is sent into the air by coal-fired power plants, incinerators and natural phenomena, including volcanic eruption. Once airborne, rain deposits mercury into water where fish absorb it. People eat the fish and ingest the toxin. At least 44 states have issued mercury advisories warning people about eating certain fish from various bodies of water, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. In Texas, such advisories cover the entire coastline and several lakes, although none is in the San Antonio area.
Everyone agrees coal-fired power plants are the major man-made source of mercury. But because U.S. coal plants account for about 1 percent of worldwide emissions, many in the industry have downplayed their potential health impact. In the United States, domestic coal plants account for about 8 percent of mercury pollution, according to EPA estimates. That number drops to about 5 percent in Texas. But regulators admit such statistics are uncertain at best.
A new, yet unpublished EPA study shows how uncertain. The study, conducted in the coal plant-laden Ohio River Valley, is the first to sample rainfall instead of just depending on computer modeling. It found that perhaps 70 percent of the mercury in the Ohio Valley comes from local or regional coal-fired power plants. Federal officials point out that the analysis was conducted in an area where they already suspected regional plants contributed to the local problem. They caution against generalizing those findings in other parts of the country. "I think there is a lot of uncertainty," said Matt Landis, lead EPA scientist on the project.
Critics, who point out that the new mercury program targets only a 20 percent reduction in mercury in 2010, contend the study is just more proof that government regulators are conforming with the power industry's efforts to underplay the impact of its pollution. "It's no mistake that many of the lakes polluted with mercury are near power plants," said Tom Smith of the advocacy group Public Citizen. "These rules are just designed to excuse the dirtiest plants."
Buying by the ounce
When the federal government finalized the mercury rules last year, it was after several years of contentious debate over whether regulators should require all of the nation's 1,100 coal plants to install potentially costly mercury-control equipment. Ultimately, the agency decided on a cap-and-trade system where each state, and each plant within that state, is allocated a mercury allowance. Any that cannot meet that pollution cap, or judge that the pollution control is too expensive, can go to the new mercury credit trading market and try to buy their way out. When the new program begins in 2010, regulators will mandate that the nation's power plants cut their mercury emissions from 48 tons to 38 tons. The cap becomes much more stringent in 2018, when the nation's power plants are limited to 15 tons of mercury. Plants that can't meet the standard will be able to purchase credits from plants that can.
Because mercury is highly toxic, the credits are being sold in ounces. A credit for an ounce of mercury is expected to sell for $1,450 in 2010, according to EPA documents. That price could jump to more than $2,400 an ounce in 2020.
The cap-and-trade system, in effect, produces a national mercury limit, but doesn't guarantee a reduction in specific regions. This has many worried about mercury "hot spots" in areas where power companies decide to buy their way out of compliance instead of reducing their mercury output. EPA officials say they know of no evidence that this will happen. The agency defines hot spots as areas where the mercury pollution from coal plants will cause an accumulation in fish above safe levels. "We looked very closely at this issue," said Jason Burnett, policy adviser to the assistant administrator of EPA's Office of Air and Radiation. "We can say that based on what we know, there isn't any evidence that there will be (hot spots)."
Critics of the new mercury rule contend it is not only weak, but also illegal under the Clean Air Act because it allows plants to buy their way out of compliance. They include former EPA scientist Martha Keating, who was project manager on the agency's mercury report to Congress in 1997 and, after leaving the agency, worked on an advisory group to the EPA for the mercury rule. She said there was virtually no discussion of a cap-and-trade system during the advisory group meetings and was astounded when the federal government decided to go that way. "What the group operated under was the assumption that requirements from the Clean Air Act would be followed," she said. "When the group convened, EPA managers said that cap and trade was not even on the table."
Keating, who now works for the environmental group Clean Air Task Force, said the EPA simply ignored the requirements of federal environmental laws and changed the status of coal-fired power plants in the Clean Air Act to allow for the cap-and-trade system.
States sue feds
Critics of the rule aren't limited to environmental organizations. Eleven states, mostly in the Northeast, sued the Bush administration over the rule last year.
That litigation continues. And earlier this month, a federal judge ordered the EPA to release documents outlining the agency's analysis of the cap-and-trade program verses one that would have required all plants to put on the best available mercury-control technology.
The EPA's inspector general also was critical of the agency on this point, saying in a report that federal regulators failed to adequately research what reductions could be achieved with specific mercury controls. Burnett conceded this point. He said the 2010 mandated levels are a calculation of the mercury reductions coal plants can achieve by adding pollution-control equipment already mandated to reduce smog-forming nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide. However, he pointed out that the program becomes much tougher in 2018. "Utilities have the incentive to overcomply in the first phase in order to ease their transition," Burnett said. "Over time we expect mercury-specific control to be installed."
Texas came out at the top, or last, depending on your point of view, in the new program. Its plants were allocated 9,314 pounds per year -- by far the most in the country and more than twice that of second place Ohio's 4,112 pounds. It's not only the size of the state's coal plant inventory that netted it such a large allowance, but the type of coal used. Many of the state's plants use dirty lignite coal mined in Texas. It is much harder to remove mercury from such coal, Burnett said, so the federal government allowed lignite plants to emit up to three times the mercury as plants that burn cleaner coal. The state's allocation is about on par with what Texas plants emitted in 2000, but 1,500 pounds less than they emitted in 2004. By 2018, the state's overall output needs to drop to 3,676 pounds. "They've got all these existing plants and all these new plants coming," said Carman of the Sierra Club. "They've got some big problems."
Living on Earth host Steve Curwood interviews Professor Tyrone Hayes of UC Berkeley
week of April 21, 2006
http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=06-P13-00016&segmentID=1
CURWOOD: From the Jennifer and Ted Stanley studios in Somerville, Massachusetts, this is Living on Earth. I'm Steve Curwood.
The European Union has banned the herbicide Atrazine, effective next year, after finding it contaminated a number of drinking water supplies. The weed killer first came under scrutiny for its effects on frogs, and more recently has been linked to adverse affects on human health.
Some 70 million pounds of Atrazine are used in the U.S. each year, mostly on cornfields. After studying Atrazine, the Environmental Protection Agency decided not to ban it in the U.S., but says its research into the chemical continues.
Joining me now is Tyrone Hayes, a professor at UC Berkeley who's done pivotal research on Atrazine. And he's just back from Europe, we caught up with him at the airport. Professor Hayes, welcome to Living on Earth.
HAYES: Good to be here.
CURWOOD: So from your expertise, what's your analysis of the science behind the EU's decision to ban Atrazine?
HAYES: Well, there's a great deal of data showing Atrazine is in fact an endocrine disrupter. In amphibians, Atrazine results in the demasculinization -- chemical castration -- of male frogs, and subsequent feminization. It produces hermaphroditic frogs, males with ovaries and eggs. And in rodents and humans Atrazine is associated with breast cancer and prostate cancer and low sperm count.
The European Union has a slightly different approach to regulating chemicals than the United States. It operates under the precautionary principle, which says that if there is the potential for a chemical to cause environmental and public health harm, then that chemical is regulated. And in the case of Atrazine, banned, because it's found in the water.
The United States counts on the industry that produces the chemical to produce data to actually prove that the chemical's harmful. There are states that have made some movements towards regulating Atrazine. For example, Wisconsin bans Atrazine county by county, depending on when it shows up in the water.
CURWOOD: Now, what about the exposures here in the real world. How much Atrazine has been found in U.S. drinking water? And how does that compare to what's been found in Europe?
HAYES: I think the levels are about equal between the United States and Europe. The current drinking water standard in the United States is three parts per billion, and, particularly in the Midwest, that three parts per billion can be exceeded. But, in fact, we know now that Atrazine is biologically active as low as .1 parts billion. So that's 30 times lower than the current drinking water standard in the United States.
CURWOOD: There's a lot of concern about prostate cancer and breast cancer here. What relationship, if any, is there between Atrazine and those diseases?
HAYES: The relationship between Atrazine and prostate cancer and breast cancer is very significant. Excremental evidence in rodents show that Atrazine is associated with an increased incident of both prostate cancer and breast cancer. And correlational evidence in humans shows that people who are exposed to Atrazine have higher rates of breast cancer and prostate cancer.
In fact, if you feed a female rat Atrazine -- her pups that she is suckling, her male pups, can develop prostate disease. So those effects of Atrazine are transferable even from the mother to the suckling pup.
There's also studies showing that prostate cancer was increased in men who worked in a factory that produced Atrazine. The levels of prostate disease and prostate cancer were 8.4-fold higher than expected, and 8.4-fold higher than men who worked in the factory but were not exposed to Atrazine.
So given that Atrazine is the number one selling pesticide in the world, and given that breast cancer and prostate cancer are the number one cancers in men and women, respectively, then I think this is a big concern.
CURWOOD: How prevalent is the presence of Atrazine in U.S. drinking water supplies? Is this a problem for five percent of the country? Ten? Twenty? Fifty percent?
HAYES: You know, the bigger problems for Atrazine are in the Midwest, where it's used mostly, so like Nebraska and Iowa, Indiana. The concerns are not just for people who live in areas where Atrazine is used. But people have to also understand that Atrazine travels quite far and can be found in areas that are even considered pristine. Both in Europe and the United States it's been shown that Atrazine can be found as much as 600 miles from where it has been applied.
CURWOOD: So in your view is there enough evidence out there to ban Atrazine in the United States?
HAYES: Certainly, when you look at the environmental health risks and the public health risks and the prevalence of Atrazine in groundwater and drinking water, there's cause for concern. When you consider on top of that the evidence in every animal class that's been examined that Atrazine causes adverse biological effects, then this raises concern. Essentially, in the United States, we've put a price on our breasts, on our prostates, on our environmental health, and decided that the economic hit to banning Atrazine, that that concern exceeds our concern for environmental health and public health.
CURWOOD: Tyrone Hayes is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Thank you so much for speaking with me.
HAYES: My pleasure.
by Warren Cornwall, Seattle Times
April 21, 2006
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002943714_asianair21m.html
On the day a Boeing 747 delivered Chinese President Hu Jintao to Everett this week, a tiny twin-propeller airplane loaded with electronic instruments lifted off from the same airport, looking for another delivery from China: dirty air. Toxic mercury from Asian power plants. Ozone produced by growing fleets of Chinese cars. Smoke from burning Siberian forests. It all rides the jet stream across the Pacific Ocean and lands in places as remote as the Olympic mountains, scientists are discovering.
Most pollution here is still from local sources, and much of the Asian pollution is thought to reach the Northwest only in the spring because of seasonal weather patterns. But some local problems -- mercury in fish in local lakes, for example, or the haze that rings Mount Rainier -- could have Asian connections.
While local air-quality officials aren't worrying, federal scientists say the influx of bad air can exacerbate West Coast air-quality problems, especially as countries such as China rapidly industrialize. "Environmental issues are really now a global concern, there's no question about that," said Professor Dan Jaffe, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Washington's Bothell campus.
Using a cramped Beechcraft Duchess airplane launched from Everett's Paine Field, Jaffe and his team of researchers have been continuing a yearslong search for international pollution to gauge how serious the problem is. Now the hunt is getting a big boost with the addition of two huge, state-of-the-art planes, the first concerted federal effort to decipher how the air floating from Asia carries pollutants to America.
Years on the trail
Jaffe's quest to pinpoint the pollution from Asia has taken him and his teams from laboratories atop Mount Bachelor in Oregon to high on Cheeka Peak in the Olympics. They use complicated computer models and measure certain chemicals that are associated with industrial activity, such as mercury and carbon monoxide.
In 1997, on Cheeka Peak, near the northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsula, Jaffe started finding higher-than-expected levels of carbon monoxide and a chemical that helps create ozone when the winds were blowing from Asia. Four years later, he discovered that dust from massive Asian dust storms made up more than half of the small-particulate pollution in Seattle during one particular week. In 2003, he determined ozone that had pushed Seattle-area levels above federal air-quality limits could be traced to Siberian forest fires. Then in 2004, Jaffe and his team found that mercury in the air around the summit of Mount Bachelor had originated in Asia, where coal burning is a major source of atmospheric mercury.
Cruising for plumes
Tuesday, Jaffe and two other UW scientists scrambled about the tarmac at Paine Field, piling computers, scientific instruments, and yards of wires and air hoses into the back of their rented Beechcraft. The skies were relatively clear, but Jaffe's computer models suggested that a big puff of pollution was about to arrive from Asia. So the mission was to fly toward Tatoosh Island off Cape Flattery, the northwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula where the Strait of Juan de Fuca meets the Pacific. The pilot and one scientist would go up to 20,000 feet, so high they would need to bring oxygen to breathe. Then they would gradually descend, measuring air all the way. This particular mission came back empty-handed -- they didn't find the pollution they had expected.
But now they have some help. Monday, a modified C-130 cargo plane from the National Center for Atmospheric Research landed at Paine Field. And in Hawaii, a DC-8 jet from NASA has joined the hunt. In a project spearheaded by NASA, both planes will spend the next month buzzing over the Pacific Ocean, sucking up samples from plumes of pollution from Asia.
Industrial growth
There has been a greater awareness lately that Asia is a source of U.S. air pollution, said Bill Brune, a Penn State professor who is helping to head up the NASA project. That's partly because scientists have more sensitive equipment to track the pollution. And it's partly because Asian industry is growing. "The concern is ... if it's business as usual, it's just going to get worse," Brune said.
For its part, China has been sensitive to claims that its pollution is spreading overseas. Earlier this month, the government-run Xinhua News Agency reported that a Chinese environmental official called the idea that mercury from Chinese factories was reaching the U.S. "entirely groundless." And Denis Hayes, a leading environmentalist from Washington who has traveled and spoken in China about environmental problems, cautioned that while it's easy to point a finger across the Pacific, some of the Asian pollution is created by factories making products for U.S. markets. "It's American consumers that are still creating demand for it," he said. "We've just off-shored the production and the pollution."
For now, air-quality officials in the Puget Sound area aren't focusing on air pollution from Asia. "It's not an issue that we have a great ability to control, and it's insignificant in comparison to the local emissions that we can work with," said Dennis McLerran, executive director of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency.
Nonetheless, the added pollution could push parts of the country over clean-air thresholds, or erase gains made from costly efforts to cut local pollution, said Terry Keating, a senior scientist in the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) office of Air and Radiation. "If it takes millions of dollars of investment in the United States to get a small change in ozone and fine particles, and that same increment can be coming from overseas and may potentially grow in the future, then that's something that we're concerned about," he said.
The EPA has been seeking alliances with China to help cut air pollution there. In 2003 the EPA struck a deal to help Chinese officials monitor air-pollution levels and cut emissions. Such efforts will lay a foundation to address the air pollution crossing oceans, said Keating. "We're just at the beginning," he said.
by Rebecca Renner, Environmental Science & Technology
April 19, 2006
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2006/apr/policy/rr_childhealth.html
The U.S. EPA's new perchlorate cleanup goal isn't supported by science, fails to protect children's health, and needs to be lowered, according to an agency scientific advisory panel. The goal, revised in January by the EPA's Office of Solid Waste, is at least 4 times less stringent than similar goals recently proposed by 3 states. The cleanup goal, a target level for drinkable water when contaminated sites are remediated, allows for perchlorate levels of 24.5 parts per billion (ppb) up from the previous level of 4-18 ppb. The new cleanup level "is not supported by the underlying science and can result in exposures that pose neurodevelopmental risks in early life," wrote Melanie Marty, chairperson of EPA's Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee and chief of the Air Toxicology and Epidemiology Section in California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.
These risks include impaired brain development that can result in such problems as low IQ scores and attention deficits. In sufficient amounts, perchlorate inhibits the uptake of iodide, an essential component of hormones produced in the thyroid. These hormones help guide proper brain development in fetuses and infants.
The EPA goal is based on National Academy of Sciences recommendations that allow an uncertainty factor to account for one sensitive population -- the fetuses of pregnant women who have untreated thyroid problems or low iodine levels. But that factor doesn't protect infants, who could be exposed through breast milk and drinking water used in formula, the advisory committee writes.
The committee of 26 scientists wrote that because the goal follows the current EPA policy of assuming that all exposure comes from drinking water, it does not account for exposures from other sources. "This is an obvious concern given the recent widespread detection of perchlorate in lettuce and milk," the advisers write.
As reported in February in ES&T, perchlorate appears to be ubiquitous. Water contamination was first linked to rocket fuel and ammunition, but studies have shown that perchlorate also forms naturally. Recently, it has been found in prenatal vitamins and seaweed. A small U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study designed to test a new analytical method that detects minute amounts of the chemical found perchlorate levels in the urine of 61 CDC workers that could not be explained if the only source were drinking water.
On March 14, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection released its proposed drinking-water and waste-site cleanup standards of 2 ppb. This proposal assumes that 20% of perchlorate exposure comes from water. New Jersey is considering a standard of 5 ppb and uses the same assumption, whereas California has proposed a drinking-water standard of 6 ppb and assumes that 60% comes from drinking water. EPA has not responded to the committee's letter, but that's not unusual, Marty adds.
by Mary Kathleen Flynn, Environmental Science & Technology
April 19, 2006
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2006/apr/tech/mf_wood.html
Wood treated by an innovative and environmentally friendly process called TimberSil will soon be available to builders and consumers for decks, docks, fences, and children's playground equipment. TimberSil, based on a sodium silicate formula, protects wood in a radically different way than competing products by eliminating the toxic and corrosive side effects associated with conventional arsenic- and copper-based treatments. The new product promises to be gentler to the environment than products based on pesticides.
Timber Treatment Technologies
When wood infused with TimberSil is heated, the compound polymerizes to form larger and larger molecules. In the process, the silicate molecules are rendered insoluble, thereby eliminating the treated wood's attractiveness to insects and microbial organisms. Wood intended for outdoor use must be treated to protect it from insects and microbial agents. Since the 1970s, most wood used in outdoor residential settings has been treated with chromated copper arsenate (CCA), a chemical preservative containing chromium, copper, and arsenic. Because of health and environmental concerns about the chemicals, including arsenic, that leach out of structures made with CCA-treated wood, CCA was phased out of consumer use in 2003, thanks to an agreement between the U.S. EPA and industry. Concerns about the long-term environmental impact of CCA-treated wood were heightened recently when researchers found that arsenic is leaching from utility poles and railway ties -- structures not covered under the agreement with EPA.
Since the phaseout of CCA, several arsenic-free wood treatment alternatives have emerged, including preservatives based on amine copper quat (ACQ), borates (disodium octoborate tetrahydrate), and copper azoles. Other building materials, including composites and redwoods such as cedar, have also grown in use. The other wood treatments work essentially the same way CCA did -- as pesticides that poison invading organisms.
TimberSil takes a different tack. The treatment infuses wood with amorphous glass, making it water insoluble and therefore no longer an attractive form of food for bugs and other microbial agents. "We don't kill anything," explains TimberSil's inventor Karen Slimak, an environmental toxicologist and CEO of Timber Treatment Technologies. "We just don't interact at all. Organisms are not going to get a food source or a water source. We have modified the habitat enough so that it no longer fulfills the survival requirements for the organisms, and they move on."
TimberSil uses a "micro-manufacturing process" to create a barrier, making wood unavailable to small insects and microbes and rendering it unrecognizable as a food source at the cellular level. Although, for competitive reasons, Slimak declines to describe the process in much detail, she acknowledges that it involves first infusing a water-based formula containing various ingredients, including sodium silicate, into the wood and then heating it under certain conditions. The end result is that "we surround the millions of fibers that comprise wood with layers of amorphous glass that are only a few molecules thick." Organisms perceive the finished product as amorphous glass, not wood, and lose interest.
Because TimberSil is not toxic, its environmental impact is expected to be negligible, says Slimak. "The properties of amorphous glass are well known, and known to be innocuous." Timber Treatment Technologies has met with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to discuss pursuing the organization's LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification. Early reviews of TimberSil from the rapidly growing green building market have been positive. For example, Environmental Building News, which is published by BuildingGreen, a member of USGBC, recognized TimberSil as one of its top-10 green products in 2004.
"Assuming that it performs as expected [over the years], the TimberSil sodium silicate treatment process has the potential to revolutionize wood treatment, because it eliminates the use of toxic chemicals," explains Alex Wilson, executive editor of Environmental Building News, who served on USGBC's board of directors from 2004 through 2005.
Unlike CCA, "sodium silicate is a fairly harmless chemical that has been widely used in laundry detergent and other consumer products for over 100 years and as a corrosion inhibitor in municipal water treatment plants. It is not considered harmful to humans and is not regulated by the EPA," Wilson says. A further benefit of sodium silicate, he points out, is that, "unlike the conventional replacements to CCA [ACQ and copper azoles], TimberSil is not corrosive to steel. Corrosivity has become a very significant problem, particularly with ACQ. In some situations, steel fasteners are corroding and structural failures may occur."
The good news for builders -- and consumers -- everywhere is that TimberSil products appear to do everything their competitors do -- and do it all more benignly. They are backed by a 40-year warranty, which is twice the industry standard. TimberSil prices are higher than for treated-wood competitors based on copper but lower than for products that use other materials, such as cedar and composites. U.S. consumers will start to see TimberSil products on store shelves this spring. They will be distributed by Huttig Building Products, the largest national distributor of millwork and building products to professional dealers.
by Perry Beeman, Des Moines Register
April 19, 2006
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060419/NEWS03/604190347/1001
Ankeny residents' treated sewage may help scientists learn more about a new concern about water quality -- pollution from everyday activities that can include prescription drugs, antibacterial soap, perfumes and antacids. Many Americans take at least one prescription drug a day, and occasionally use over-the-counter pain relievers or cold medicines. They excrete traces of those drugs, and sometimes inappropriately flush extra drugs down the toilet. Sewage-treatment plants don't remove dozens of drugs, detergents, antibiotics and other substances, so the compounds end up in rivers.
Scientists aren't sure whether low levels of the various medicines, cosmetics and over-the-counter drugs pose a direct health threat to humans or animals, but the so-called "emerging contaminants" represent one of the biggest areas of water-quality research today. Many studies have suggested that antibiotics alone are a problem, because they breed drug-resistant bacteria that could render the usual drugs useless against certain illnesses. "Bacteria's resistance to antibiotics may also increase with the glut of new products available that include antimicrobial disinfectants such as liquid soaps, dishwasher powders and plastics," said Doug Schnoebelen, a federal research hydrologist and co-author of a new water-quality report by the Iowa Policy Project Report, a nonprofit research group based in Mount Vernon. "By increasing the antibiotic resistance of bacteria, these chemicals may also reduce algae diversity in streams and affect natural ecosystem functions such as soil microbial activity."
Other household compounds, such as cleaners and perfumes, are suspected of disrupting the reproduction of fish. Some may damage aquatic plants. The issue has gained attention since U.S. Geological Survey scientists found a range of pharmaceuticals and other household compounds in a nationwide study published in 2002 and led by the USGS's Iowa City office.
The Iowa Policy Project today will release results of a study of Four Mile Creek south of Ankeny. The group picked Ankeny because the treated sewage makes up most of the creek's flow at times -- not because Ankeny had any unusual pollution problems. The scientists stressed that the study would find similar findings below other plants, and that Ankeny met all regulations during the study period last year.
Several years ago, the city was fined for excessive ammonia discharges and fired a plant operator accused of tampering with samples. The policy group, working with USGS scientists, turned up dozens of chemicals running down Four Mile Creek from the Ankeny plant. The analysis by U.S. Geological Survey scientists found antibiotics, antacids and medicines. Sophisticated testing methods allow scientists to find even traces of the compounds. No federal water quality limits exist for most of the chemicals. The new study confirms what many would suspect: Treatment plants can be a significant source of small concentrations of contaminants in urban areas. Antibiotics fed to livestock also pollute waters in many areas.
However, the samples also showed that the number of contaminants drops off rapidly downstream from the plants. For example, the samples pulled in 2002 and 2005 found 11 compounds at low concentrations upstream from Ankeny's sewage-treatment plant. That jumped to 50 at the plant, where concentrations were nearly 10 times as high. As the chemicals moved downstream, the number found dropped to 47 at 1.8 miles downstream from the plant, with concentrations about the same. At 5.2 miles downstream from the plant, researchers found 35 compounds, but concentrations had fallen to four times the level found upstream from the plant. A separate Iowa Geological Survey study in the same Ankeny creek in 2001 found three compounds upstream and 31 downstream.
Scientists say natural processes break down some of the chemicals as they move downstream. That includes the action of ultraviolet rays from the sun, and microbes in the water. The Iowa Policy Group tests checked for 100 different compounds, and found 50 at some point in the Ankeny area. The national study of samples taken in 1999 and 2000 from 139 streams in 30 states published in 2002 found some of the 95 compounds checked in 80 percent of streams sampled. In a USGS study of pollution at 10 major Iowa cities in 2001, researchers found herbicides, antibiotics or other pollutants in all 28 streams checked.
Scientists hope to start studying how those compounds affect aquatic plants and fish. "The effects of long-term, low-level exposure to these mixtures of emerging contaminants on aquatic life and humans are currently unknown," the Iowa Policy Project report said. "Research on the effects of emerging contaminants in the environment is only in the beginning stages."
by Julie Davidow, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
April 19, 2006
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/267209_fillings19.html
Two new studies, one from the University of Washington involving orphans in Portugal, found no evidence of IQ or other neurological impairment caused by dental fillings made with mercury. But the studies have come under fire from some groups who say researchers unnecessarily exposed children to a known toxic substance, failed to get the proper consent from parents and guardians and overstated the results.
The studies are the first to follow children from the time they received the fillings rather than trying to piece together evidence of health problems in retrospect. "It's the first bit of objective evidence other than heated opinion and observational studies," said Dr. Timothy DeRouen, lead author of the Lisbon study and executive associate dean for research and academic affairs at the UW School of Dentistry. DeRouen tracked neurological development in 507 children, ages 8 to 10, at a school in Lisbon where about 20 percent of the students are wards of the state.
The other study, led by researchers in Boston, looked at the effect on intelligence, memory and kidney function in 534 children, ages 6 to 10, from New England. Neither study found a difference in neurological or kidney function in the children with amalgam fillings compared with their peers who received fillings made with other materials. But those with amalgam fillings did have higher levels of mercury in their urine.
Funded by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, part of the National Institutes of Health, the studies were published in The Journal of the American Medical Association. The studies, which both began enrolling children in 1997 and ended last year, did not test for autism. In recent years, the discussion about mercury toxicity has centered on parents who believe a mercury-based preservative used in vaccines may have caused their children's autism. Most experts, however, say there is no evidence of a link between vaccines and autism.
Fewer and fewer dentists are using amalgam fillings, which have been around for more than 100 years. Patients prefer the newer white, resin composite fillings because they blend with teeth, said Dr. Robert Kelly, spokesman for the American Dental Association and a professor of dentistry at the University of Connecticut. Some dentists, however, still favor amalgam for its durability, Kelly said. Amalgam can last up to 14 years, while composite fillings need replacing after four to six years, he said. "I have amalgams in my teeth, and I would use them in my family."
Last year, the UW's Human Subjects Office, at the request of the federal Office for Human Research Protections, investigated concerns raised by Consumers for Dental Choice, according to DeRouen. The advocacy group wants to end the use of amalgam for fillings.
In a letter sent to DeRouen in August, the Human Subjects Office said the consent forms could have more clearly spelled out that the amalgam contained mercury. "However, we don't know how these terms translate into Portuguese, and the terms used may be culturally appropriate," the letter stated. The university office found no basis for other allegations, including claims of conflicts of interest, inappropriate advocates for the wards and that the benefits of the research were overstated in the consent forms. A spokeswoman for the federal agency said the UW study is still under investigation.
The authors acknowledged the limitations of the studies. For example, in the study of the New England children, the authors said the "possibility of very small adverse effects of amalgam on IQ score cannot be completely ruled out." Others cautioned against reading too much into either study. "It is predictable that some outside interests will expand the modest conclusions of these studies to assert that use of mercury amalgam in dentistry is risk-free," Dr. Herbert Needleman, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, wrote in an accompanying editorial. "This conclusion would be unfortunate and unscientific." He said, for example, that it is not clear whether either study could measure subtle effects on IQ.
Charlie Brown, counsel for Consumers for Dental Choice, said the studies ignore research that indicates that mercury causes a host of physical and mental problems. Brown blasted both studies as unethical, saying that children or their guardians were never told of the potential risks of the mercury fillings.
DeRouen said the children at the Lisbon school had a large number of untreated cavities and tend not to move around and change schools -- both important criteria for the seven-year study. "We were not doing anything experimental. We were providing standard dental care," DeRouen said.
Critics of the study said purposely exposing children to mercury is unethical and potentially dangerous. "It's obscene, outrageous and definitely wrong," said Dr. David Kennedy, a dentist and past president of the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology. The group, which has about 500 members, including dentists and physicians and is opposed to using mercury in fillings, filed ethics complaints with the schools involved in the new studies, including the UW.
by Kathleen Schalch, NPR Morning Edition
April 19, 2006
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5350341
Teflon may make a great plate of scrambled eggs, but it also may make for a kitchen full of toxic fumes. That is the issue behind a class action lawsuit against the maker of the non-stick coating, DuPont.
Listen to this story at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5350341.
by Jeremy Laurance, [UK] Independent
April 18, 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article358352.ece
One of the largest studies of the impact of food and drink on mental decline has found that eating a Mediterranean diet cuts the risk of Alzheimer's disease by up to 40 per cent. The diet of southern France, Italy and Spain, rich in olive oil and red wine, is known to protect against heart disease and high blood pressure but this is the first time it has been shown to prevent Alzheimer's disease.
Researchers monitored 2,258 healthy, elderly people in New York who were part of a research project into ageing. Their medical and neurological history was assessed, they had standard physical and neurological tests and their cognitive function was measured every 18 months.
To purchase the full article, please visit http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article358352.ece.
by Steven Oberbeck, Salt Lake Tribune
April 17, 2006
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_3721529
Huntsman Corp., the nation's fifth-largest chemicals producer, wants to go green in a big way. The Salt Lake City-based conglomerate said Monday it has organized a business unit to expand the use of "green chemistry" in its products and production processes.
Coined in 1991 by Paul Anastas, the father of Green Chemistry, the term refers to the use of cutting-edge technology by chemists to design products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. "Green chemistry has been around for quite sometime now," said Anastas, director of the Green Chemistry Institute in Washington, D.C. "The chemicals industry, though, has always been a bit traditional, so it has taken awhile for its chemists and chemical engineers to embrace the idea."
Don Olsen, spokesman for Huntsman, said the company started using green chemical principles several years ago and already markets products such as solvents that lower the toxicity of agriculture and industrial cleaning agents, carbonates that reduce the volatile fumes given off by paints, and wood preservatives that can be used in place of a known carcinogen. "With the formation of this new business unit we've committed ourselves to putting a lot more focus on green chemistry," Olsen said. "And one of the nice things about it is that we can take it [green chemistry] as far as we want to go."
Anastas said the use of green chemistry frees companies from having to find "elegant technological bandages" to deal with environmental and health concerns from hazardous spills and unintentional exposure to toxic chemicals. "Instead of a company spending a lot of money to make something less bad, Green Chemistry allows them to focus right up front on building and designing chemicals that are less toxic and better for the environment," Anastas said.
And it also makes good business sense. "It is a profitable way to do things," Anastas said. "Not only is green the color of a healthy environment, it also is the color of our money."
Huntsman's business initiative, dubbed the Green Chemistry Strategic Business Unit, will be based out of the company's new $60 million Huntsman Advanced Technology Center at its operations headquarters in The Woodlands, Texas. Don Stanutz, president of Huntsman's Performance Products Division under which the business unit was organized, said in a statement that the company is eager to expand into the burgeoning "green chemistry" field by taking advantage of the growing availability of "bio-based feedstocks." Such feedstocks include glycerin, natural alcohols, methylesters, carbohydrates and sugars, and are increasingly available as by-products from the growing production of ethanol and biodiesel fuel, Olsen said. And Anastas pointed out there is a lot of new and emerging science that focuses on increasing the uses of such feedstocks.
Olsen added that Huntsman's growing commitment to green chemistry fits in well with its recently announced strategy to separate its commodity chemicals business from its specialty chemicals business, where a lot of opportunities exist to use green chemical principles.
by John Flesher, Associated Press, Chicago Tribune
April 17, 2006
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/michigan/chi-ap-mi-granholm-mercury,1,55659.story?coll=chi-newsap_mi-hed
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) -- Michigan electric companies are being ordered to slash mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants by 90 percent within nine years, a step toward cleansing the state's waters of a poison that has prompted fish consumption warnings. Gov. Jennifer Granholm on Monday said the Department of Environmental Quality would develop a rule requiring utilities to achieve the reductions by 2015. The state policy goes beyond mercury reduction standards announced by the Bush administration last year. The federal goal is to cut mercury pollution 70 percent nationwide by 2018, although the DEQ says Michigan probably would see little if any reduction until 2025 or later.
Michigan and more than a dozen other states are suing the federal government, saying its standards are too weak. The governors of Illinois, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Georgia recently have announced plans to seek 90 percent reductions. "Mercury poses a real and serious health concern for the people of Michigan," Granholm said in a statement. "We are ensuring that future generations can enjoy clean air, and safe water."
The governor, up for re-election this year, pledged during her 2002 campaign to phase out mercury pollution and has drawn criticism from environmentalist groups for not acting sooner. But they praised her plan Monday. "The public asked to be protected from toxic mercury and the governor delivered," said Jason Barbose, spokesman for the Public Interest Research Group in Michigan.
Industry spokesmen reacted cautiously. Dan Bishop of Consumers Energy said the federal rules were sufficient but the company would cooperate with the DEQ as it develops a state alternative. "It's important to balance energy policy, environmental protection and economic issues as we go forward," Bishop said.
Coal-fired power plants are by far the biggest source of airborne mercury pollution in Michigan. The DEQ estimates their annual combined emissions at more than 2,500 pounds, or 57 percent of the statewide total. U.S. power plants generate only 1 percent of worldwide mercury emissions, the Environmental Protection Agency says.
Mercury is spewed into the atmosphere through smokestacks before settling in waterways, where it contaminates the food chain. It accumulates in fish, posing a risk of nerve damage for people eating them -- especially pregnant women, women of childbearing age and young children. The Department of Community Health has issued guidelines for eating certain fish species caught in Michigan's inland waters and along its Great Lakes coastlines because of mercury, PCBs and other toxins.
In 2003, Granholm convened a work group with representatives of government agencies, industry, environmentalist groups and academics to develop a mercury plan. The group submitted a report last year that agreed on many points but differed on whether Michigan should exceed the Bush administration standards. Granholm ended up siding with environmentalists, who wanted deeper and quicker emission cuts. "The federal rule is just too little, too late," DEQ Director Steven Chester said.
Power companies say they are developing mercury reduction technology but may be unable to meet the deadline for the steep cuts the state is demanding. Chester said the state rule will grant the industry some flexibility. Unlike the federal plan, it won't let heavily polluting companies avoid cleanups by buying pollution allowances from plants well under the allowable limits. But it also won't require 90 percent reductions at every power plant. Some plants can fall short -- if the company's other plants exceed the standards enough to produce an overall 90 percent average. Companies won't be allowed to achieve that average by concentrating so much pollution at individual plants that they become toxic "hot spots," Chester said.
The Michigan rule will give companies additional time to comply if they install mercury reduction devices that don't perform as expected, or if the cost of meeting the requirements would exceed a certain percentage of their gross revenues. Granholm will appoint another work group to help the DEQ craft the regulation, Chester said.
Bishop said industry would push for higher electric rates to recoup the costs of developing mercury control technology. "Utilities should not be put at a competitive disadvantage by the rule," he said.
Environmentalists said cutting mercury emissions should boost the typical residential customer's monthly electric bill by less than $1 a month because rapid innovation is driving down costs. Cleaner waters will benefit public health and the Michigan economy -- particularly tourism -- in the long run, they said. "This modest investment now will pay big dividends for future generations, whose mothers will no longer need to consult complicated health advisory tables to see if it's OK to eat a walleye fillet," said Lana Pollack, president of the Michigan Environmental Council.
By Jeff Kart, Bay City [Michigan] Times
April 17, 2006
http://www.mlive.com/news/bctimes/index.ssf?/base/news-7/1145286978205940.xml&coll=4&thispage=1
The air over Bay City will feel lighter in the next few years, and so will wallets. Consumers Energy plans to install controls to cut out thousands of tons of harmful emissions at two of its four coal-fired power plant sites in Michigan: the Karn-Weadock complex in Hampton Township, and the J.H. Campbell complex in West Olive. The utility plans to spend about $800 million to retrofit the two sites with systems to knock out nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide from the air, company officials say. Some mercury also will be removed in the process.
The work addresses a Clean Air Interstate Rule that utilities in Michigan and 27 other Eastern states have to meet, beginning in 2009. The CAIR rules, meant to cut into air pollution that moves across state boundaries, became final in March and will be fully in practice by 2015.
Consumers Energy plans to ask the Michigan Public Service Commission to recover its costs through a rate increase in the future. The PSC estimates an average monthly residential increase of $2.55 by 2015, based on federal numbers, which Consumers says is a low estimate. Clean air is good, but it costs money, explained Kelly Farr, Karn-Weadock spokesman. "You have to balance the environment, energy reliability and the economy and not just look at any one of the three in a vacuum, because they're all related," Farr said.
As part of the reductions, two selective catalytic reduction units installed at Karn-Weadock in 2003 will operate year-round to cut levels of nitrogen oxides, which contribute to ground-level ozone, or smog. Usually, the two units only run during the "ozone season," from May through September, said Louis P. Pocalujka, senior environmental planner for Consumers Energy and a former state Department of Environmental Quality coordinator. Running the two units year-round will reduce annual nitrogen oxide emissions from Karn-Weadock by 77 percent, from 4,370 tons to 1,005 tons, Farr said. Consumers Energy also is looking at installing scrubbers at Karn-Weadock to wash out levels of sulfur dioxide, which contribute to fine particulate matter, or soot, in the air. Both targeted pollutants are linked to respiratory problems and premature death, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
"It's definitely in the right direction," David Gard, energy program director for the Michigan Environmental Council, said of the regulations. "But we were hoping for something stronger," said Gard, whose organization includes the Bay City-area Lone Tree Council. Gard said he doesn't think the emission cuts will be strict enough to meet related rules for allowable levels of soot in the air, which are already less strict than ones recommended by an EPA Scientific Advisory Committee.
Teresa Walker, senior environmental quality analyst for the DEQ, said it's also her opinion that CAIR doesn't go far enough, but further reductions would have led to "through the roof" utility rate increases. For example, the state OK'd a Consumers Energy rate increase in January that averaged $4 a month for residential customers; a significant portion of that increase involved gradually recovering $333 million in clean air-related costs.
Walker said the effect of CAIR in Michigan remains to be seen, because it deals with pollution regionally, and plants that upgrade can sell credits to those who don't to help meet the standards. EPA officials say CAIR will achieve the largest reduction in air pollution in more than a decade, with health and environmental benefits valued at more than 25 times the cost of compliance. By 2015, CAIR will reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by more than 70 percent and nitrogen oxide emissions by more than 60 percent from 2003 levels, the EPA says. For Michigan, the EPA estimates a 29 percent, or 34,000 ton cut, in nitrogen oxide emissions.
Meeting CAIR will probably cost Consumers Energy about $800 million, company officials say. That's the amount the utility spent systemwide to install previous nitrogen oxide controls, including the two units installed at Karn-Weadock, which totaled $120 million, Pocalujka said. The $800 million was four times more than the government estimate, he said. "It's a lot easier to do this on the front end when you're designing a plant from scratch," he said. "You've got a lot more design work that goes in when you're retrofitting an existing facility."
Consumers Energy burns about 10 million tons of coal a year, including 3 million tons at Karn-Weadock, which is 45-50 years old.
CAIR also will cut out some mercury, in part to meet a related federal mercury rule estimated to cut 70 percent of utility mercury emissions by 2018. Farr and Pocalujka say it's too early to say how the full mercury cuts will be achieved, because sampling and control technology isn't commercially available yet. But Consumers will make a "significant investment" for mercury controls at Karn-Weadock in future years, Pocalujka said.
