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Coordinated nationally by the Institute for Children's Environmental Health |
To join the Partnership for Children's Health and the Environment (PCHE) and receive this bulletin, please complete the form at http://www.partnersforchildren.org/members.html#member.
September 12 - 14, 2006
Atlanta, Georgia
The Coordinating Center for Health Promotion (CoCHP) will sponsor this conference at the Atlanta Hilton and Towers. This conference will bring together over 2,000 health professionals representing the Office of Genomics and Disease Prevention (OGDP), the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP), and the National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD) as well as their partners. Matt Sones, Acting Enterprise Communications Officer for CoCHP, will provide the leadership, assisted by Beth Patterson who will serve as the conference manager. The executive committee will consist of representatives from each CIO. The committee representatives are Denae Ottmann and Melanie Myers from the Office of Genomics and Disease Prevention, Barbara Kilbourne from the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, and Claudia Brogan, Stacey Mattison, and John Korn from the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. The members of the executive committee will be working closely with both internal coordinating center staff and external partners to ensure the success of this event.
Website: http://www.cdc.gov/cochp/conference/
Contact: 770-488-2875 or chronicconf@cdc.gov?subject=2006 National Health Promotion Conference Inquiry
This part-time position (20-30 hours/week) involves organizing and coordinating activities and programs of the Collaborative on Health and the Environment in Pennsylvania (CHE-Penn). The primary focus is on identifying and collaborating with key constituencies including health-affected groups, health professionals and researchers regarding critical regional environmental health issues. Candidates with a proven record of exceptional collaboration-building skills among diverse constituencies and a background in health are strongly desirable. For more information on CHE-Penn visit http://www.che-penn.org/, and for information regarding CHE National visit http://www.healthandenvironment.org.
If interested, please email your resume and cover letter by August 16th, 2006 to Eleni Sotos, CHE National Coordinator at eleni@HealthandEnvironment.org (please do not send duplicate copies by mail). Commonweal is an Equal Opportunity Employer. No phone inquiries please.
On July 24, 2006, the Center for Science in the Public Interest held a panel discussion in Washington, D.C., where representatives from the Food and Drug Administration, industry groups, and academics debated conflict-of-interest issues on panels at federal agencies and the National Academy of Sciences.
The transcript of that discussion, featuring moderator Snigdha Prakash (National Public Radio), David Michaels, PhD (George Washington University School of Public Health), James Conrad, JD (American Chemistry Council), Steven Nissen, MD (Cleveland Clinic), Scott Gottlieb, MD (Food and Drug Administration), Merrill Goozner (Center for Science in the Public Interest), and Frederick Anderson, JD (McKenna Long & Aldridge), is now available online at http://www.cspinet.org/new/pdf/scientific_panels_transcript.pdf.
For a press release and copy of CSPI's report, "Ensuring Independence and Objectivity at The National Academies," visit http://www.cspinet.org/new/200607241.html.
by Sarah Schmidt, CanWest News Service
August 8, 2006
http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/news/story.html?id=21991598-a15e-4c27-90e8-8b337fa047f0
OTTAWA -- Health Canada is drawing on disputed research about a controversial chemical to create new drinking water guidelines for the country. The guidelines, to be released by the end of the year, will provide direction to the provinces on how to treat drinking water with enough disinfectant to kill deadly bacteria, but not so much as might cause a health risk. The pressure to get it right is immense in the aftermath of the Walkerton disaster in May 2000. Serious flaws in the municipal drinking water system resulted in the breakthrough of a deadly pathogen, causing seven deaths in the southwestern Ontario town.
The majority of water treatment plants in Canada use chlorine to purify water and help prevent waterborne diseases, but chlorine dioxide is a much-touted alternative to chlorine and is gaining in popularity in North America. As a result, Health Canada, after reviewing the health risks associated with chlorine dioxide and its two byproducts, chlorite and chlorate, is set to announce new guidelines for the purpose of protecting public health.
Its draft document, circulated for public comment, proposes guidelines for the two byproducts, but none for the maximum acceptable level of chlorine dioxide itself. This approach is different from the United States, where chlorine dioxide in drinking water leaving a treatment plant must not exceed 0.8 milligrams per litre. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency enforces this strict cap because chlorine dioxide could trigger problems in the nervous systems of some infants, young children and fetuses of pregnant women who drink water containing a higher concentration.
Justice Dennis O'Connor's report on the causes of the Walkerton tragedy noted that chlorine dioxide is considered to have adverse health effects. In building its case against setting a maximum acceptable level of chlorine dioxide, Health Canada cites an academic publication involving a pioneering full-scale chlorine dioxide study in Canada. The project, carried out just after the Walkerton tragedy in the summer of 2000 in the nearby town of Wiarton, was characterized as a success. Health Canada, which relies on published scientific research related to health and esthetic effects to draft federal drinking water guidelines, cites the publication as evidence that chlorine dioxide can "maintain" water quality.
At issue is whether the published report Health Canada is drawing upon represents a complete picture of what transpired in Wiarton, where Sterling Pulp Chemicals Ltd. tested the feasibility of replacing chlorine with chlorine dioxide, which the company produces. "This record is out there that is incomplete at best," says Christopher Radziminski, acting municipal water quality co-ordinator of the Greater Vancouver Regional District. "People are reading it, believing it's the whole story, and people are basing federal drinking water guidelines on it."
The Ontario Clean Water Agency, the provincial Crown agency operating the water facility, gathered routine sample data throughout the Wiarton trial; the Ontario Ministry of the Environment actively promoted the trial, established reporting requirements and oversaw the pilot project. Sterling, since renamed ERCO Worldwide, also hired a team of University of Toronto researchers, headed by civil engineering professor Robert Andrews of the Drinking Water Research Group, to monitor the Wiarton system and analyse water samples. Andrews and Christian Chauret of Indiana University, along with academic and corporate partners from Dalhousie University and ERCO, published the results of the Wiarton trial in the Journal of Environmental Engineering in September 2002.
The primary purpose of the project was to determine what impact the switch to chlorine dioxide would have on water quality. The authors reported it was "critical to monitor consumer complaints, since specific taste and odour problems may be associated with chlorine dioxide. No customer taste and odour complaints were reported during the study." Radziminski, who completed a separate chlorine dioxide pilot study at Ottawa's Britannia Water Treatment Plant under the supervision of Andrews and Chauret to earn a Master of Applied Science degree in November 2000, says his former advisers fail to mention multiple problems with the Wiarton trial. These problems evoke a reasonable public health concern, he says.
Data released to Radziminski under Ontario's Freedom of Information Act show an online analyser measured 0.8 mg/L of chlorine dioxide in drinking water leaving the treatment plant during the trial. Separately, after residents complained to their town council during the trial about bleached laundry stains, Andrews and his academic colleagues at the Drinking Water Research Group conducted tests using clothing samples from Wiarton households. Their report, released by the Town of Wiarton, shows the researchers could only duplicate the laundry damage when chlorine dioxide levels were 0.8 mg/L or higher. Further, the Ontario Clean Water Agency conducted a survey at the end of the trial after multiple complaints about water quality. The survey data, tabulated by the research group, show 40 per cent of respondents reported bleached laundry stains and 35 per cent reported changes in their tap water during the project. Many offered specific complaints, including references to "strong bleach odour," "very strong chlorine smell," a "strong taste" and "taste terrible."
Health Canada says it will take Radziminski's comments under consideration in preparing its final draft of new drinking water guidelines, adding the Wiarton publication did not play a major role in the decision for not establishing a guideline value for chlorine dioxide. However, Health Canada concedes chlorine dioxide is not generally considered a good option as a secondary disinfectant -- a chemical that is added to be present in the drinking water all the way to the consumer, as was the case in Wiarton.
The players involved in the Wiarton pilot project stand by their assessment. Environment ministry spokesman John Steele says the ministry is unaware of any problems with the Wiarton project, characterizing the drinking water quality through the study as "excellent." The ministry has not seen the survey results enumerating multiple complaints about the taste and odour of the water, he added. "All of the samples collected and analysed by the ministry met provincial criteria for water quality. We have no record of taste and odour concerns," said Steele.
by Sally Squires, Washington Post
August 8, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/07/AR2006080700956.html
The conflicting health information about seafood can make you feel ready to go off the deep end. First, fish are touted for their health benefits. Then, sometimes soon after, they're condemned for containing too much mercury, PCBs or other contaminants. Some health experts worry there's enough conflicting advice to make the public avoid fish altogether. "It's a shame that people are running away from seafood at a time when it gives so many benefits," notes William Lands, a retired National Institutes of Health researcher who has studied the healthy fats found in fish.
That could be a big mistake. The benefits of eating seafood "are likely to be at least 100-fold greater than the estimates of harm, which may not exist at all," according to Walter Willett, professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. He notes that "the kinds of levels of contaminants that are being talked about are not a reason for people to reduce their fish intake."
Rich in omega-3 fatty acids, a healthy kind of fat, seafood is known to help protect the heart, the brain and the joints. Reporting in this month's Journal of the American College of Cardiology, researchers from the Harvard-affiliated Channing Laboratory found that increased fish consumption is linked with a lower risk of irregular heartbeat, which can lead to death. These findings fit with other studies that suggest eating at least two meals of seafood per week has health benefits, including a reduced risk of stroke. Emerging evidence also suggests that omega-3s, which are most plentiful in deep-ocean fish, could also help prevent, and possibly alleviate, some mood disorders, including depression and bipolar disorder. The health advantages of eating seafood are sufficiently clear that the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, the American Heart Association, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute recommend fish for at least two meals a week (unless it's deep-fried).
But concerns about mercury and other potential risks continue to muddy the waters. Both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency warn young children, women who might become pregnant and those who are pregnant or nursing to completely avoid eating shark, swordfish and king mackerel and to limit albacore ("white") tuna, all of which can be high in mercury. Mercury occurs naturally in the environment and is also spewed into the air by industrial emissions, particularly from power plants. As the mercury drifts down, it accumulates in streams and oceans, where bacteria convert it to a toxic form of the chemical called methylmercury, which is then absorbed by fish. The higher a fish is on the food chain, the more mercury it accumulates. Experts have worried that this could be damaging, particularly if the mercury crosses the placenta and passes into the fetal brain, where it could affect hearing and intelligence.
As with many things in science, there is controversy about what levels of mercury are safe. "There is evidence that mercury taken out of a bottle or out of a smokestack is toxic," Lands says. "But there is no evidence that methylmercury in seafood causes a problem." Both the National Academy of Sciences and the FDA have convened expert groups to study the risks and benefits of seafood consumption. Their findings are expected later this year.
Mercury isn't the only concern. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) -- substances linked to skin problems, reproductive disorders, liver disease and neurological problems and suspected of causing cancer -- also accumulate in both wild and farm-raised seafood.
So what should consumers do? Whether fish is farm-raised or wild, "it would be unfortunate if people cut their consumption," Willett says. Neither the mercury concern nor the PCB contamination levels are "enough for people to reduce their fish intake."
Also lost in much reporting is the fact that any potential problems of mercury contamination appear to be limited to children and to women of childbearing age. "Other adults should not be concerned about mercury at all," notes Joshua Cohen, author of a recent analysis of mercury exposure conducted for the Harvard School of Public Health's Center of Risk Analysis.
Some of the environmental groups that see dangers in mercury-tainted seafood also urge consumers to eat at least the federally recommended minimum of two meals a week. "Even the higher-mercury-containing fish, if they are not eaten frequently, are not a big concern," says physician Gina Solomon, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which tracks mercury levels in seafood.
There's also reason to think that even fish laced with mercury has more benefits than risks for a fetus. Omega-3s are so crucial for brain and nervous system development "that limiting fish consumption during pregnancy may cause the very harms that everyone involved has been working to prevent," says Nicholas Ralston, who studies mercury at the University of North Dakota's Energy & Environmental Research Center. Those worried about mercury's effects in pregnant women often point to a study recently conducted in Denmark's Faroe Islands. The study found that children born to mothers with the highest levels of mercury had a very slight decrease -- just a millionth of a second -- in the time it took for a sound to pass from their ears to their brains. Recent findings show that the children who are now 14 years old have persistent attention deficits and score lower on tests that measure motor skills and verbal ability. But often overlooked is that the major source of mercury in the Faroe Islanders' diet was not fish, but rather pilot whales, which have very high concentrations of the chemical.
Other recent research, including an ongoing 20-year study among residents of the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean, has not linked adverse effects with increased fish consumption. "In fact, some children actually did better on tests," notes the Seychelles study's lead investigator, Gary Myers, a professor of neurology and pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. "We don't think that is related to mercury consumption, of course, but to fish consumption" and the higher amount of omega-3 fatty acids it contains. Similar results were reported in October from a continuing study in England.
One theory is that the mineral selenium may help protect against mercury contamination. Selenium is present in deep-water seafood at five to 20 times the concentration of mercury. When the two chemicals bind, methylmercury appears to become harmless. While the selenium theory is still under investigation, "the conclusion [for now] is to tell people to continue to consume fish," notes Conrad Shamlaye, an epidemiologist and part of the Seychelles study.
What makes the Seychelles experience especially relevant is that the fish eaten there contain nearly identical levels of mercury as does the seafood consumed in the United States. The difference is that people in the Seychelles "consume 10 times the amount of fish that we do here," Myers says, noting that his study has found no ill effects in children whose mothers ate a lot of mercury-containing seafood during pregnancy. As Myers notes, "the entire population of Japan also has methylmercury levels that are above the Environmental Protection Agency's reference level for methylmercury, and they don't seem to be having any problems with mental deficits."
No one suggests that eating large amounts of mercury is a good idea. But as NRDC's Solomon notes, there are also plenty of low-mercury seafood options. No matter what kind of seafood you choose, skip anything deep-fried. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Nutrient Database, breaded, fried shrimp -- as well as other similarly prepared seafood -- has few or no omega-3 fatty acids. And depending on the oil used to prepare it, these foods could also come laden with unhealthy saturated and trans fats, both known to increase risk of heart disease. Nutritionally speaking, not a good catch.
from BBC News
August 6, 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5246538.stm
Second-hand smoke increases the risk of the bone disease osteoporosis, researchers have found. The US/Chinese study showed exposure to passive smoking boosted pre-menopausal women's osteoporosis risk threefold. An International Osteoporosis Foundation meeting in Toronto, also heard men, as well as women, increase osteoporosis risk by smoking. Experts said the studies added to understanding of the link between smoking and the bone disease.
Osteoporosis, which affects one in three women and one in 12 men, is responsible for 200,000 broken bones per year in the UK -- and 40 deaths a day. It is often known as a silent illness because many people do not know they have it until it is too late. Although it is thought of as a disease of old age, its roots are thought to lie in adolescence.
Harvard School of Public Health researchers looked at over 14,000 men and pre and post-menopausal women in rural China. The scientists measured hip bone mineral density, and recorded non-spine fractures and smoking history. Second-hand smoking was defined as living with one or more people who smoked each day. Pre-menopausal non-smoking women who lived with one smoker had more than double the risk of osteoporosis compared to those who lived with none. And those who lived with two or more smokers exposed to second-hand smoke were found to have a threefold greater risk of the condition. They also had a 2.6 times greater risk for a non-spine fracture, compared to non-smokers.
Dense bone
A separate study by Gothenburg University researchers looked at 1,000 men aged between 18 and 20-years-old. It was found that smokers' bone density in the spine, hip, and body as a whole, was lower than in their non-smoking peers. A CAT (Computer Tomography) scanner was used to obtain 3D images of bone. The researchers say smoking appeared to primarily affect a specific type of bone called cortical bone, by reducing its thickness. This very dense bone forms a layer, similar to the enamel on teeth, around softer, spongy bone. The effects was most striking in the hip, where the mineral density was over 5% lower than in non-smokers. Fractures are more common in people with low bone mineral density.
'Interesting addition'
A spokeswoman for the UK's National Osteoporosis Society said: "We know that smoking is becoming a much more significant risk factor for predicting whether you will break a bone because of osteoporosis due to the increasing amount of research being done into this area. "However, our understanding of the effects of passive smoking on bone health is not quite so well researched so this study is an interesting addition to our cumulative knowledge of what smoking does to our skeletons. "It does all add up to the fact that smoking is just plain bad for bones, whether you smoke yourself or if you live with someone who smokes. "So it's another good reason to consider either giving up yourself or encouraging and supporting your loved ones to quit."
Amanda Sandford, of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) said: "If there is a link between actual smoking and a condition, it's not surprising if a further link is found between passive smoking -- albeit at a lower rate. "The carcinogens in tobacco smoke can affect any organ of the body, once it's absorbed. "This is further evidence for a ban in public places."
by Liz Szabo, USA TODAY
August 6, 2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-08-06-thirdhand-smoke-usat_x.htm
As any parent knows, crawling babies explore the world by touching -- and tasting -- anything they can get their wet little hands on. If their parents use tobacco, that curiosity may expose babies to what some doctors are calling "thirdhand" smoke -- particles and gases given off by cigarettes that cling to walls, clothes and even hair and skin. Up to 90% of the nicotine in cigarette smoke sticks to nearby surfaces, says Georg Matt, a professor at San Diego State University.
Preliminary research by Matt and others suggests the same chemicals that leave a stale cigarette odor on clothes and upholstery also can be swallowed, inhaled or absorbed through the skin of non-smokers. Smoke residue may linger for hours, days or months, depending on the ventilation and the level of contamination. In some cases, contaminants may need to be removed by rigorously cleaning or replacing wallpaper, rugs and drapes, Matt says. Matt cautions that his research needs to be confirmed by other studies. But his work suggests that babies may take in nicotine and other chemicals just by hugging their mothers -- even if their mothers never light up next to them.
About 43% of children ages 2 months to 11 years live with a smoker, according to research described in Matt's 2004 study in the journal Tobacco Control. In his small study of 49 infants under 13 months old, Matt found nicotine in the air and dust throughout smokers' homes, even when parents smoked only outside. Tests also found a nicotine byproduct, cotinine, in babies' urine and inside shafts of their hair. As expected, babies whose parents smoked around them had the highest cotinine levels -- nearly 50 times higher than the babies of non-smokers, according to the study.
Smokers who tried to shield their infants had only partial success, Matt says. The babies of parents who smoked only outside had cotinine levels seven times higher than in the infants of non-smokers, the study showed. Adults also may be exposed to significant smoke residue if they rent cars, hotel rooms or apartments that have soaked up years of smoke, Matt says. He worries more about youngsters, however, because they may be exposed day and night for years. Children also may be at greater risk because they breathe faster than adults and inhale more chemicals, says Jonathan Winickoff, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Crawling babies may take in chemicals through their skin.
Though scientists have extensive evidence about the damage caused by secondhand smoke, they know relatively little about the potential risks of thirdhand exposure, says Brett Singer, a scientist at California's Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. "The million-dollar question is: How dangerous is this?" Singer says. "We can't say for sure this is a health hazard." Matt agrees that doctors should study children -- ideally for 10 or 15 years or more -- to see whether low levels of smoke residue worsen asthma or harm the development of a child's lungs.
by Alexander Lane, Newark Star-Ledger
August 6, 2006
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-8/1154887661280380.xml&coll=1
In 1992, a New Jersey appellate court handed down a famously scathing opinion. For almost two decades ending in 1969, a three-judge panel found, the Diamond Shamrock Chemicals Co. had polluted the Passaic River, illegally and intentionally. "Diamond's management was wholly indifferent to the consequences," Appellate Division Judge David Baime wrote. "Profits came first." The decision came in an insurance dispute. But it had a larger significance: It gave the federal Superfund program greater leverage to order, in 1994, that Diamond's corporate successors clean up its river pollution.
Twelve years later, the pollution is still there, and spreading. Dioxin, which the National Research Council says is among the most dangerous chemicals humankind has ever created, has spread from Diamond's old plant in Newark to the Hackensack River, Hudson River, Arthur Kill, Kill Van Kull, Newark Bay and New York Harbor. In the meantime, the family of companies that bought Diamond's assets, led now by Spanish oil giant Repsol YPF S.A. and its subsidiary Tierra Solutions Inc., have financed the creation of a vast body of scientific literature on all aspects of Passaic River pollution. They say the research, which their hired scientists have disseminated in journals, conferences and textbooks around the world, has been conducted in earnest preparation for a cleanup.
But in recent weeks, state environmental regulators have stepped up complaints that the companies' studies are scientifically unsound, and have been carefully designed to help the companies avoid the potential $1 billion cost of removing their toxic waste from the river. They say federal officials, under intense pressure from lobbyists, have allowed the companies to postpone a cleanup perhaps indefinitely, and structure it so taxpayers will shoulder much of the cost. "It seems just incredible that Tierra has been able to do nothing, essentially, but studies," state Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Lisa Jackson said. "And really studies that I think are geared only toward making sure they never have to do anything substantive."
Executives at Tierra and Repsol declined requests for interviews. But their public relations representative and lobbyist, Michael Turner of the MWW Group, said it was only fair that the cleanup costs be shared, since the Passaic contains a great deal of pollution from other companies and public sewers. "The river has suffered over 100 years of industrial activity," Turner said. "We're willing to pay our fair share, but we're not the only ones involved here."
In an interview Friday afternoon, Environmental Protection Agency Regional Administrator Alan Steinberg said he chose to focus on the future, not the past. "What is past is not prologue here," Steinberg said. "I am determined that the days of exposure to dioxin will come to an end."
Trouble from long ago
Diamond's old factory site, along the river in Newark's Ironbound section, is covered in cement now, and topped with potted trees. Entombed within is soil laced with 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, often called TCDD, or simply dioxin. A highly toxic byproduct of waste incineration and herbicide manufacturing, dioxin causes disfiguring skin problems and altered liver function in the short term, and cancer, as well as immune and reproductive disorders, in the long term, according to the World Health Organization and the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
From the water, Diamond's old property appears silent and sterile now. When New York-New Jersey Baykeeper Andrew Willner motored down that stretch of the river in a small boat last month, he encountered almost no other traffic, save for a cormorant carrying an eel. "This was all commerce," he said, passing abandoned berths outside old factories. "Barges, tugs, small ships." Diamond acquired its property on Newark's Lister Avenue in 1951. It manufactured pesticides, including DDT and Agent Orange, the deadly Vietnam-era defoliant. Its waste contained high levels of dioxin, and until at least 1956, the company's disposal policy amounted to dumping all of it in the Passaic River, courts found.
The EPA discovered the contamination in 1982, and placed the site on the Superfund list. Contaminated soil was gathered from around the area and capped at the site. Gov. Thomas Kean declared a state of emergency and banned the consumption of fish and crabs from the river in 1983. But the toxic muck at the bottom of the river remained. The Army Corps of Engineers stopped dredging the contaminated river that same year. Silt filled the shipping channel, choking off commerce. Marinas and berths went to rot.
Diamond sued its insurance companies seeking coverage for the pollution damage, but the courts denied it. The appellate court found in 1992 that Diamond had failed to control its dioxin simply because doing so would have cost money and slowed production. Concentrations of dioxin are normally so small that they are measured in parts per trillion. In one spot near Diamond's Newark plant, however, river sediment had 5.3 parts per million, about a half-million times more than what is typically found in an urban river, DEP officials said. Consuming fish or crabs from the river sharply increases a person's cancer risk, according to a 2002 DEP assessment. Yet DEP surveys of the river have shown that people in nearby working-class communities regularly fish in it to put food on the table.
Many of Diamond's assets were purchased by Occidental Petroleum Corp. in 1986, though most of its environmental liability fell to a spinoff called Maxus Energy Corp., which later changed its name to Tierra. In 1994, under EPA pressure, the companies signed an administrative order compelling them to study pollution in six miles of the Passaic surrounding the former Diamond plant, then clean it up. They did study the pollution. But not in the way EPA wanted them to.
Hired experts
Between 1990 and 2005, scientists retained by the companies published at least 35 studies or papers on Passaic River pollution in academic journals, most of them vetted by other scientists in a quality control process called peer review. The companies' consultants also presented their science at conferences and symposia around the globe, including events in Newark, Washington, D.C., Venice and Vietnam. They did so as well in at least three toxicology textbook chapters on dioxin, an article in the magazine of the New Jersey League of Municipalities and a general interest book titled "A Common Tragedy: History of an Urban River."
A review of the research reveals two dominant themes. The first: Dioxin was not as dangerous as regulators believed, and those seeking an expensive cleanup of it were on the wrong track. The second: The cleanup should focus more on a host of other contaminants -- ones that came from all kinds of sources, not just Diamond. For example, the book "A Common Tragedy," contained much discussion of all sorts of Passaic River polluters dating to the colonists and before. But it barely mentioned dioxin, the river's most notorious contaminant. And it cautioned against high hopes for the Passaic. "It can never be returned to its primeval state," the book said. "Nothing is pristine."
EPA staff scientists alleged in the late 1990s that the hired scientists were trying to distract the agency. The companies "should not be permitted to obfuscate the (Superfund) requirement of investigating the off-site release of dioxin into the Passaic River with their proposed goal of attempting to investigate the ecological 'state' of the river," the leader of an EPA technical team wrote in a memo to the site supervisor in 1998.
A different approach
In 2002, the federal government changed course, embracing the companies' view that a sweeping river cleanup was called for, not just of dioxin, and that the costs should be shared with others. The EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers decided that dredging and cleanup needed to be coordinated. The approach was called the Urban River Restoration Initiative, and the lower Passaic River was declared a pilot area for it in 2003.
In interviews, state regulators have criticized the current federal approach, saying it will take far too long, and that by the time the studies are finished the dioxin will have spread so far it will be less practical to remove it. And they said that although plenty of governments and companies poured sewage and chemicals into the Passaic over the years, Diamond did far more damage than anyone else. "What's going to make that job really expensive is the fact that there's dioxin in that sediment," Jackson, the DEP commissioner, said. "The polluter should pay, not us. The federal government is us."
A lawsuit and a threat
Last year Jackson's predecessor, Bradley Campbell, also dissatisfied with the federal approach, took harsh enforcement actions against Diamond's successors. Campbell issued a directive giving them 30 days to pay for a $2.9 million study -- by a consultant the state hired -- on how to clean up the river by dredging up to 10 million cubic yards of dioxin-contaminated sediment. That sort of project, involving dredges specially outfitted to contain the contamination, could cost $500 million by one estimate, not including the cost of treating the contaminated sediment.
Campbell also sued the companies to force them to pay for any eventual dredging. In its lawsuit, the DEP argued that the companies had "orchestrated and implemented a strategy to delay and impede the cleanup and restoration of the Passaic River." In turn, Tierra has threatened to sue the state, as well as Essex, Union and Bergen counties, the cities of Newark and Elizabeth and the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission for contributing to the pollution.
Pascrell, who has received $6,000 in campaign contributions from Dawson since 2000, sent a letter to Gov. Jon Corzine in February. Pascrell wrote that he had "worked hard to ensure the federal government is contributing its part to a full and comprehensive study" and argued the state's aggressiveness could undermine his efforts. Nevertheless, Corzine included $12 million in the state budget to continue the lawsuit. So far, Jackson has allowed Tierra to ignore the 30-day deadline to fund the $2.9 million study. She said that should not be interpreted as leniency. "That goes to litigation strategy, which I really shouldn't discuss," she said.
Steinberg, the EPA regional administrator, defended what he called the agency's "holistic" approach to the Passaic, but offered only limited support for its past actions. "The question is what are we doing now," Steinberg said. "We are right now heavily focused more than ever on the remediation of the Passaic River." An EPA spokeswoman said the agency did not plan to make a final decision until at least 2011 on how to clean up the Passaic. But Steinberg said he is examining what can be done to stop dioxin exposures in the meantime. "There may be opportunities to take early cleanup actions on the lower Passaic River," he said. "But we need to make sure those early actions make sense and are supported by sound science."
The new approach called for a $19 million investigation of 17 miles of the Passaic and Newark Bay, a study expected to take at least a decade. Federal and state taxpayers would supply $9 million. The other $10 million would come from Tierra and dozens of other current and former Passaic River companies. The EPA's Steinberg said the public money was to pay only for measures that were beyond the scope of the Superfund cleanup. "That $9 million was never intended to defray Tierra's costs," Steinberg said.
Nevertheless, the approach was one that Tierra had been advocating for years. In fact, Tierra's Washington lobbyist, Robert Dawson, states on his Web site that he had developed this "fundamentally new approach" alongside "senior officials of the executive branch and key members and committees of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives." Dawson, principal of Dawson & Associates Inc., and former head of the Corps of Engineers, did not return calls for comment. But federal records show that Tierra has spent $1.7 million on federal lobbying in the past six years, with annual expenditures increasing from $200,000 in 2000 to $380,000 last year. Rep. William Pascrell (D-8th Dist.), who has been involved in the discussions about how to approach the Passaic cleanup, confirmed that Dawson played a key role. "Dawson was at every meeting," Pascrell said.
by John Flesher, Associated Press, Detroit Free Press
August 5, 2006
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060805/NEWS12/608050390/-1/BUSINESS07
[Free Press] Editor's Note: Mercury has proven helpful over the years, but it's also a toxin with the potential to seriously damage the human nervous system. The Bush administration last year proposed reducing mercury emissions by 70 percent from coal-fired power plants, the nation's biggest source of atmospheric mercury. Gov. Jennifer Granholm has ordered Michigan's electricity generators to slash their mercury output 90 percent by 2015. In a package of stories, The Associated Press examines Michigan's strategy for reducing mercury pollution, explains how people can become exposed to mercury through consumption of the Great Lakes region's fish, and discusses what some hope will be a breakthrough in the search for technological solutions to the mercury problem.
WELLSTON, Mich. (AP) -- As the setting sun casts long shadows over Pine Lake, its surface rippled by a gentle breeze, Jimmie Mitchell drops a pinch of tobacco into the water -- a gesture of gratitude for nature's bounty. Mitchell, chairman of the natural resources commission with the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, and tribal biologist Marty Holtgren have netted 11 yellow perch and two bluegill from the small lake in southern Manistee County. Their mission is partly scientific -- evaluating fish population dynamics in area lakes. But the perch and bluegill will be frozen and eventually served during a ceremony, perhaps a funeral or festival. To the Anishnabe tribes of northern Michigan, fish is more than just food. It's a link with past generations, a symbol of cultural identity.
And that makes mercury contamination a particularly touchy matter. Tribal leaders walk a fine line between encouraging their citizens to retain ancient traditions and cautioning them against the modern threat of tainted fish, the leading cause of human mercury poisoning. "Our people have always gained subsistence from rivers and lakes," Mitchell says. "Eating fish is part of our DNA; it's part of who we are." For American Indians, he adds, "the connection to fish and meat and natural things is so strong, no matter what the danger of contamination is, they're still going to eat it."
At least 40 states and the federal government issue fish consumption advisories because of mercury, PCBs and other toxins. The latest Michigan advisory warns against eating more than one meal a week of species such as walleye, northern pike and muskie caught in inland lakes, as well as rock bass, yellow perch and crappie over nine inches long. These species prey on smaller fish, passing mercury up the food chain in ever-larger concentrations. Women of childbearing age and children under age 15 should eat such fish no more than once a month, the advisory says. Fetuses and young children are particularly vulnerable to impaired neurological development from exposure to methylmercury, the form of mercury that accumulates in fish.
But while the warnings are for everyone, the significance of fish for many Indian tribes puts them especially at risk. Urban blacks and Hispanics also are considered "sensitive populations," says Amy Roe of the University of Delaware's Center for the Energy and Environmental Policy. "They're going to be fishing local rivers more often than others and eating what they catch more often than others," says Roe, who included Chippewa tribes of Minnesota and Wisconsin in a study of mercury contamination among native peoples. Some Indian subpopulations eat four to five times the amount of fish the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency assumed when developing models for federal consumption advisories, she says. The average Chippewa eats about 62 fish meals a year, compared to 42 for the typical sport angler and 36 for Americans in general, her report says.
Studies have detected elevated mercury levels in the blood of some Chippewas, Roe says in her 2003 paper, published in the Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society. "Indigenous groups who fish in contaminated waters are paying for their culture with their health," it says.
The Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority, which oversees fishery management for five northern Michigan tribes, is developing a fish consumption brochure after a series of meetings on the reservations. It should be completed this fall, says Mike Ripley, environmental coordinator for the authority's Intertribal Fisheries and Assessment Program. Also in the works is a video that will explain the importance of fishing to native communities, the health benefits of eating fish and how to limit risk of toxic exposure. "We don't want to tell people don't eat fish," Ripley says. "People want to practice their tradition and culture, but there's some confusion and we're hoping to help clear it up."
The amount of mercury in an individual fish depends partly on where it's caught, he says. Great Lakes fish, except those found in wetland areas, tend to have lower mercury content than those in inland lakes. Tests of whitefish from tribal commercial operations in northern Michigan consistently find tissue mercury levels below 0.5 parts per million, the level that triggers state consumption advisories, Ripley says. Lake herring and smelt also tend to have low mercury content.
The Little River Band, based in Manistee, surveyed its 3,200 citizens a couple of years ago and found that some regularly eat more than 200 pounds of fish per year -- well above amounts recommended by state and federal agencies. Aside from the cultural tug, there's economic reality: "It's an available food source and it certainly does help some people meet the budget," biologist Holtgren says.
Springtime spearfishing is a long-standing tradition, but members also use hooks and lines and limited netting in keeping with tribal regulations, he says. It's common for families to stock freezers with fish for winter meals and ceremonies where other native dishes are served, such as wild rice, strawberries and corn soup. Mitchell, a father of four, says his family reluctantly heeds the recommended limits on eating fish. "It is very troubling to have to restrict ourselves like that," he says.
The Little River Band helped lead the fight against a proposed coal-fired electricity plant near the Manistee River, a prized fishery. Coal-burning plants are the biggest source of mercury emissions in Michigan. City officials denied an application to build the plant in 2004. The tribe also has joined a multistate lawsuit demanding tougher federal mercury standards. While fighting on the political and legal fronts, the tribe has programs that encourage members to avoid overfishing and keep local stocks healthy, Holtgren says. During their expedition on Pine Lake, he and Mitchell retrieve fish from nets, throw some back and place the keepers in an ice chest. They measure the fish to track growth rates, and record how many of each species they take. The nets are a type that keep fish alive, so unwanted ones can be released. "It's the tribe's charge to make sure the next seven generations of our people are protected, so they will have the same ability we have to exercise our cultural identity," Mitchell says.
by Mike Taugher, Contra Costa [California] Times
August 5, 2006
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/15205851.htm
In their most detailed look yet at water quality in the streams that drain into the Delta, regulators found widespread pesticide pollution and compounds that have been banned for three decades. Pesticides were found at 98 of 107 monitoring stations in the Central Valley. More than one-third of the time they turned up at levels high enough to exceed water quality standards set to protect fish and humans. The results are the latest from a program that, for the first time, is attempting to regulate water pollution in the runoff from California farms.
Many farmers have refused to participate in the program by not joining water quality coalitions or fully complying with information requests. The monitoring showed that DDT lingers in Central Valley streams 33 years after it was banned, but the pesticide that most often exceeded water quality limits was chlorpyrifos, essentially prohibited in urban areas but still widely used on farms. Eight percent of the time, water samples were toxic to aquatic organisms. Sediment was toxic 25 percent of the time.
Regulators say the results are not surprising, but do represent a significant step toward better understanding where the pollution is coming from so that steps can be taken to reduce it. The idea, said Ken Landau, assistant executive officer at the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, is to find pollution and then expand monitoring upstream to pinpoint sources. Then farmers, either voluntarily or through regulatory order, can begin to limit the pesticides and other pollutants flowing into streams.
Three years after the program lifted agriculture's decadeslong exemption from clean water laws, the reviews are mixed. Regulators acknowledge it got off to a rough start but say it is now heading in the right direction. "I think there have been some missteps in the past," said Jovita Pajarillo, assistant water division director for the Environmental Protection Agency's regional office in San Francisco. The agency is not directly responsible for the state-run program but does work closely with state regulators on water quality issues. "I'm hoping things get back on track," Pajarillo added. "It's a program that's in its infancy. It's immense."
State regulators still do not know how many farms they are regulating. Estimates range from 25,000 to 80,000, and the number of acres is estimated from 7 million to 10 million. No requirements to reduce pollution have been imposed. And although Landau said the farm industry has made general claims about addressing some pollution problems, details have not been reported to regulators, apparently out of concern that environmentalists or others could target individual farmers. So far, the farm industry also largely has not complied with regulators' demands for lists of farm "dischargers," making it impossible for water quality regulators to identify and take action against farms that discharge high levels of pollution. Landau said a small set of farmers in the Sacramento Valley have submitted their names, but most farming coalitions that have formed to meet the water board's monitoring requirements have ignored request for names and filed maps instead.
by John Flesher, Associated Press, Lansing State Journal
August 5, 2006
http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060805/NEWS01/608050331/1001/news
Jen Eyer acknowledges going overboard now and then about protecting her 3-year-old daughter. She isn't the author of a Web log called "Neurotic Mom" for nothing. But with a second child due in September, the Ann Arbor woman makes no apologies for all but eliminating fish from her diet. The reason: mercury contamination, a problem so prevalent in certain species it has prompted government fish consumption advisories for pregnant women and young children. "My husband is an avid fly fisherman, and I think it's sad that we can't go fishing and eat what we catch," Eyer says. "But when you're talking about a developing fetus, the experts say any level of exposure to mercury can be unsafe."
Mercury, a heavy liquid metal, has proven its usefulness over the years in products as varied as thermometers, fluorescent light bulbs, mechanical switches and tooth fillings. But it's a toxin that can wreak havoc on human nervous systems, particularly in children, prompting a nationwide campaign to find alternatives and rid the environment of mercury pollution.
In April, Gov. Jennifer Granholm ordered Michigan's coal-burning electric power generators -- by far the biggest producers of mercury -- to slash airborne emissions 90 percent within nine years. She had been under pressure from green activists to fulfill a 2002 campaign promise to crack down on mercury.
Developing regulations
It took about three years for the governor to assemble an advisory panel, await its recommendations and make a decision. But the task of meeting the governor's goal is only beginning. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality is developing a set of regulations for power companies in their quest for a 90 percent cutback. A panel of state officials, outside experts and interest groups will advise the DEQ, even as debate continues over how much of a rollback really is needed.
Industry leaders prefer a mercury reduction plan announced by the Bush administration last year. It envisions a nationwide average cut of 70 percent by 2018, although some believe the fine print would give producers considerably longer. Targets would differ by state; Michigan's would be about 66 percent.
Granholm's plan will force electricity generators to invest huge sums developing mercury reduction technology that might not work, imposing higher costs on their customers, says Michael Johnston, regulatory affairs director for the Michigan Manufacturers Association. "We're already the only nation on the planet regulating mercury, and Michigan wants to go beyond the federal requirement. Talk about a competitive disadvantage," Johnston says.
DEQ Director Steve Chester says nationwide studies suggest the cost of mercury controls would be minimal for electricity consumers -- 60 cents a month or less for the typical residential user once the controls are fully in place.
Program too weak
Three other Great Lakes states -- Illinois, Minnesota and Pennsylvania -- also have set a 90 percent standard. Sixteen states, including Michigan, have filed suit challenging the federal plan as too weak. Supporters of the tougher requirements say power companies can already meet them. "The proposed rule gives them nine years to perfect technology that's available today," says Mike Shriberg, director of Environment Michigan, an advocacy group.
Most damage to humans from mercury comes when pregnant women eat tainted fish and pass the toxin to the fetus. Removing that cloud over fish caught in Michigan waters would be "a huge boon to the recreational economy," more than offsetting the costs of filtering out mercury, Shriberg says. An even bigger consideration: sparing children from mercury exposure, which has been linked to problems with memory, language, learning and intelligence.
Unsafe levels
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says about 6 percent of women of childbearing age have unsafe levels of mercury in their blood. Scientific reports have estimated the number of babies born each year at risk of neurological disabilities from mercury exposure at 60,000 to 300,000 or more.
Mercury is a naturally occurring element -- harmless when embedded in rocks such as coal. It becomes a problem when pumped into the atmosphere as a colorless, odorless vapor. Michigan's 21 coal-fired power plants produce nearly 40 percent of the state's mercury emissions. The Department of Environmental Quality estimates the state's power plant mercury emissions totaled 2,488 pounds in 2002, the latest number available. When mercury vapor settles into waters, it can be converted by bacteria into a form known as methylmercury, easily absorbed by tiny creatures such as zooplankton. Small fish eat the zooplankton and in turn become prey for larger fish. That's how mercury travels up the food chain, becoming increasingly potent. By the time it settles in sport species such as largemouth bass or walleye, methylmercury concentration can be 10 million times higher than in surrounding surface water.
The Great Lakes and Michigan's inland waterways have been polluted with methylmercury for decades -- not just from the air, but also from direct industrial discharges until they were outlawed in the early 1970s. Since 1988, the Department of Community Health has issued periodic consumption advisories regarding fish caught in Michigan waters, particularly for children and women of childbearing age. "The problem is that once mothers get mercury in their body, it takes six to 12 months to get it out," says Dr. William Weil, a retired Michigan State University pediatrics professor. "If they get pregnant in the meantime, that mercury gets transmitted to the fetus ... where the brain is still early in its development and very susceptible to mercury damage."
State agencies have encouraged industry to phase out mercury use since the early 1990s. The DEQ's regulations go further by making reductions mandatory for electric plants. Also in the works are rules for cement manufacturers, which generate about 10 percent of Michigan's mercury emissions. Michigan's two largest electric utilities, Consumers Energy and DTE Energy, say their ability to meet Granholm's 90 percent emission reduction target will depend largely on the regulations being drafted by the DEQ, which will settle a host of technical issues.
Example: Will the starting point for the 90 percent cutback be the amount of mercury in existing emissions or in the coal before incineration? Vince Hellwig, chief of the DEQ's air quality division, says it will be the latter -- an easier task for the power companies. Not every plant will have to meet the goal. Unlike the federal government, Michigan won't let big polluters wriggle off the hook by purchasing credits from those with low emissions. But companies will be allowed a "system-wide" average reduction of 90 percent, meaning some of their plants can fall short if others pick up the slack.
If Michigan retreats from Granholm's standard to the Bush administration's, considerably more mercury pollution will result, Hellwig says. The DEQ estimates that after the 90 percent reduction, Michigan's annual emissions would be 480 pounds. With a 66 percent cut, the EPA estimates Michigan power plants would release 1,028 pounds a year. DEQ critics say the federal standard is good enough, since the biggest polluters are overseas -- particularly emerging powers such as China. U.S. power plants generate only about 1 percent of atmospheric mercury worldwide, says Dan Bishop, spokesman for Consumers Power. But Hellwig says studies in several Great Lakes states suggest more than 50 percent of the mercury deposits in some areas are generated by local power plants. Preventing such "hot spots" will be a DEQ priority as it drafts the regulations.
by Michael Janofsky, New York Times
August 4, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/04/washington/04pest.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 -- The Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday that it was recommending new restrictions on thousands of uses of pesticides because of their adverse effects on public health. "Whether planting crops, de-bugging a home, working in the garden or just sitting down at the dinner table, Americans can now be assured the pesticides used in the U.S. meet the highest health standards in the world," Stephen L. Johnson, the agency administrator, said in a statement announcing the completion of a 10-year review, ordered by Congress, of pesticide chemicals. The study, which focused on more than 230 chemicals known as organophosphates and carbamates, could lead to the elimination of 3,200 uses and the modification in use of 1,200 others, like chlorpyrifos, diazinon and methyl parathion, which have been long been controversial for their role in causing illnesses.
Environmental groups applauded the recommendation to cancel most uses of carbofuran, a common insecticide used on corn, rice, tobacco and other crops that has had particularly deadly effects on birds. "Removal of this pesticide will save tens of thousands of birds, including bald eagles, hawks and migratory songbirds," said George Fenwick, president of the American Bird Conservancy. "Carbofuran's toxicity to wildlife made it one of America's most harmful licensed products."
Others complained that the agency had not gone far enough, especially in agricultural settings where children might be exposed at home. Margaret Reeves, a scientist with the Pesticide Action Network, an advocacy group, said the agency studied the effects of many agricultural pesticides in food and water but ignored them in residential settings. Ms. Reeves also said the agency had done an inadequate job of measuring effects on brain development in fetuses, infants and young children, echoing a written complaint made public this week by leaders of a union of agency scientists. The scientists also said in their letter that chemical companies had pressured the agency to keep their products in use. "It looks like they have taken a step forward," said William Hirzy, a senior scientist at the E.P.A. and a union leader. "But their work may be incomplete."
The trade association for the pesticide industry, CropLife America, said the E.P.A. "deserves recognition" for the study but it complained that political pressures had forced the agency to make many of the recommendations. "We urge E.P.A. to apply transparency and good science policy to allow statutory standards to be clearly applied to pesticide regulations," said Jay J. Vroom, president and chief executive of the group.
Jim Jones, director of the agency's pesticide office, defended the analysis, saying it had been so thorough that other countries had asked for information on how the work was conducted. "We're the only country in the world that has begun to export the methodology, it is so sophisticated and protective of human health," Mr. Jones said. And now that the study is complete, Mr. Jones said the agency was recommending a new regimen, to review all the pesticide chemicals and their uses again in 15 years.
by Marla Cone, Los Angeles Times
August 4, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-pesticides4aug04,1,2486187.story
Nearing the end of a 10-year review of all pesticides, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to ban a farm chemical that has tainted water and proved deadly to birds, but the agency approved continued use of 32 other widely used insecticides. Under a 1996 food-safety statute, the EPA had to evaluate all 231 active ingredients in pesticides using new safety guidelines focused on the risks to children and the effects of cumulative exposure. Thursday was the deadline set by the statute, though a decision on one controversial chemical is not expected for six weeks.
The EPA proposed to phase out all uses of carbofuran, a farm chemical that is lethal to birds in even small doses. Numerous birds of prey and other species have died from exposure since the chemical's introduction in 1967, according to the National Audubon Society. The EPA concluded that "there are considerable risks associated with carbofuran in food and drinking water, risks to pesticide applicators, and risks to birds that are exposed in treated fields." The president of the American Bird Conservancy, George Fenwick, called the decision "a victory for science and the environment." "Removal of this pesticide will save tens of thousands of birds, including bald eagles, hawks and migratory songbirds," he said. "Carbofuran's toxicity to wildlife made it one of America's most harmful licensed products, and we are delighted that EPA has done the right thing."
Thirty-two other pesticides -- including malathion, used widely in California -- were approved late Wednesday for continued use. All are organophosphates, a class that some scientific studies have linked to cancer, fertility problems and damage to developing brains. Some EPA and other federal scientists have complained that the EPA bowed to pressure from pesticide makers and rushed its safety review of many chemicals. The leaders of nine unions representing 9,000 federal scientists, risk managers and related employees have urged EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson to prohibit organophosphates and several other pesticides. In a May letter to Johnson, they accused the EPA of skipping many steps in assessing the dangers, "in violation of the principles of scientific integrity and objectivity." They were particularly concerned about whether the EPA was adequately assessing potential neurological effects on fetuses and children.
"Our colleagues in the pesticide program feel besieged by political pressure exerted by agency officials perceived to be too closely aligned with the pesticide industry and former EPA officials now representing the pesticide and agricultural community," the letter said. Environmental advocates say the letter proves that there is serious dissent and concern about political interference within the EPA and other federal agencies. "It is amazing how they came together in this precedent-setting way to say that the system is not working, that the administration is being inappropriately influenced by industry and making decisions that are not protective of human health, especially children and the unborn," said Margaret Reeves, senior scientist at Pesticide Action Network North America, based in San Francisco. "It's really telling of internal problems at EPA that need to be addressed in a systematic way."
Johnson disputed the scientists' claims, saying the EPA was "maintaining the highest ethical and scientific standards in its pesticide review." The EPA's top-ranking officials called the review "the most comprehensive and historic overhaul of the nation's pesticide and food safety laws in decades." Johnson said in a statement: "Whether planting crops, debugging a home, working in the garden or just sitting down at the dinner table, Americans everywhere can now be assured the pesticides used in the U.S. meet the highest health standards in the world."
The director of the EPA pesticide program, Jim Jones, said in an interview Thursday that the agency was "confident," after an eight-year review of scientific data detailing health risks and exposures, that the organophosphates approved this week were "safe." Some changes were ordered to limit people's exposure, such as prohibitions on some crops and reductions in the amounts used, he said. Seventeen other organophosphate pesticides -- including the popular household chemicals diazinon and chlorpyrifos, used to control ants, fleas and other bugs -- have already been banned or heavily restricted during the Congress-ordered review.
But the EPA missed its deadline under the Food Quality Protection Act for a decision on the controversial chemical aldicarb, one of the nation's most widely used insecticides. Aldicarb and carbofuran are both carbamates, another class of compounds that the union leaders' letter urged be prohibited. Jones said that the aldicarb decision would be about six weeks late and that rulings on four related carbamate pesticides would soon follow. Earlier this week, the EPA announced a ban on lindane, used to treat seeds. Lindane, which builds up in the environment and human bodies, had already been outlawed in 52 countries.
If the carbofuran proposal becomes final after a 60-day public comment period, the ban would be immediate for its main uses: alfalfa, corn, cotton, potatoes and rice. The EPA would allow a four-year phase-out for six minor crops -- artichokes, spinach for seed, cucumbers, chili peppers, sunflowers and pine seedlings -- so farmers could find effective alternatives.
Representatives of the only carbofuran maker, FMC Corp., an international chemical manufacturer based in Philadelphia, were unavailable for comment Thursday. In California, about 30,000 pounds of carbofuran were applied to crops, primarily alfalfa, in 2004, the latest year for which figures were available. The volumes in use today are about 10% of what they were a decade ago, said spokesman Glenn Brank of the state Department of Pesticide Regulation.
by Jane Kay, San Francisco Chronicle
August 4, 2006
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/08/04/MNGIDKB4DE1.DTL
The U.S. EPA devoted substantial resources to making discretionary rules, many of which are "more congenial to industry," instead of fulfilling its legal obligation to curtail toxic air contaminants, a federal judge has ruled. In the opinion issued Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman in Washington, D.C., sided with the Sierra Club and told the Environmental Protection Agency that he didn't accept the agency's excuse that it missed deadlines for regulating some industries because it was busy taking other actions. Friedman in March told the EPA to complete regulations by 2009, denying the agency's request for a 2012 deadline.
The EPA has set emission standards for only 15 of the 70 industries that must be regulated under the Clean Air Act of 1990, the judge said in the opinion, which gives his reasons for ordering tougher deadlines. Some of those unregulated industries include the manufacturing of plastics, paints, pesticides and chemicals. Others include businesses that strip paint, distribute gasoline, refurbish cars, preserve wood, and forge iron and steel. Dozens of different hazardous air pollutants come under regulation. The EPA also has missed deadlines to control sufficient amounts of smog-forming emissions from consumer and commercial products, the judge said. Products such as spray paints and solvents, for example, can emit compounds that contribute to smog.
The opinion comes a week after the Government Accountability Office released a report saying that the EPA hadn't given top priority to regulating air contaminants, and had failed to protect the public. On Thursday, EPA spokesman John Millett said the agency "is working to meet the new deadlines set by the court." Millett cited the agency's announcement of stronger regulations on dry cleaners three weeks ago as an example. By 2007, EPA's regulations will have cut emissions by an estimated 1.7 million tons per year, he said. Millett wouldn't say whether the EPA intended to appeal the decision. The agency had argued that it couldn't meet deadlines because it needed the time to produce high-quality regulations and was burdened by other regulatory responsibilities.
In the opinion, the judge said he supported the Sierra Club's argument that "it is inappropriate for an agency to divert to purely discretionary rule-making resources that conceivably could go toward fulfilling obligations clearly mandated by Congress." The EPA, including its Office of Air and Radiation, "currently devotes substantial resources to discretionary rule-makings, many of which make existing regulations more congenial to industry, and several which since have been found unlawful," the judge said. "EPA has been grossly delinquent in making serious efforts to comply" with congressional direction in the Clean Air Act, he wrote.
The history of regulation under the law's air toxics and consumer products provisions shows that the "EPA has fulfilled its statutory duties only when forced by litigation to do so," the judge wrote. "By all appearances, EPA's failure to promulgate the required standards owes less to the magnitude of the task at hand than to 'the foot-dragging efforts of a delinquent agency,'" he said, citing language from a U.S. Court of Appeals decision, "or to an attempt by EPA to prioritize its own regulatory agenda over that set by Congress."
Earthjustice, a nonprofit law group that represents the Sierra Club, had supplied the judge with a list of discretionary rules from the EPA that took time away from adopting the air toxics rules for businesses. It included removing coal-fired power plants from the list of sources for which air toxics standards are required and reducing industry's toxic-release reporting requirements. "We're pleased that the judge has put EPA on a schedule to finally control this toxic pollution," said Thomas Pew, an Earthjustice attorney.
from Science Daily
August 3, 2006
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060803182218.htm
submitted to this bulletin by the Chemical Sensitivity Network
When Diethanolamine (DEA) was applied to the skin of pregnant mice, the fetuses showed inhibited cell growth and increased cell death in an area of the brain responsible for memory -- the hippocampus. Previous research on DEA has focused on its potential as a carcinogen. The current study is the first exploration of the compound's affect on brain development.
The finding needs further study and should not cause undue alarm, said Dr. Steven Zeisel, Kenan Distinguished University Professor of nutrition in UNC's schools of public health and medicine and associate dean for research in the School of Public Health. "I don't believe any woman who's been using these products needs to have a sleepless night about having caused harm to her child," Zeisel said. "At this point it is a caution," he added. "But it would probably be prudent to look at labels and try to limit exposure until we know more."
The study is featured as the cover story in the August issue of the FASEB journal, published by The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. In addition to Zeisel, other authors of the study are UNC nutrition research analyst Corneliu N. Craciunescu and postdoctoral research associate Dr. Renan Wu.
DEA appears to block the body's ability to absorb the nutrient choline, which Zeisel has previously reported is essential for normal development of the brain. A pregnant woman requires extra choline so that she can pass the nutrient on to the fetus. "You need choline to build a baby," Zeisel said. More than 100,000 tons of DEA are sold in the United States each year. It is used as a wetting or thickening agent in not only shampoos but also such products as hand soaps, hairsprays and sunscreens.
Other names for the compound include Lauramide diethanolamine, Coco Diethanolamide, coconut oil amide of diethanolamine, Lauramide DEA, Lauric diethanolamide, Lauroyl diethanolamide, and Lauryl diethanolamide. A list of some products that contain DEA can be found at http://householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov/index.htm.
The dose of DEA a person might get from shampooing is at least 10 times lower than the dose found to interfere with brain development in the study, Zeisel said. Whether the amounts most people absorb from personal care products would cause harm remains unclear. Zeisel and colleagues are now doing further work to find out the lowest dose that causes an effect in mice, a process that could take about a year, he said. The researchers also are exploring DEA's effect on other areas of the brain and are testing the effects of other compounds used in personal care products.
At very high doses, DEA treatment resulted in spontaneous miscarriages. "We saw smaller and smaller litters as we gave higher doses. No one has ever noted that before," Zeisel said. "This agent not only affects brain development, but at higher doses probably affects some other development in a way that is fatal to the fetus," he said.
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
by Janet Wilson, Los Angeles Times
August 3, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-heatsmog3aug03,1,2599988.story
July's scorching heat wave created a "blanket of smog" from California to Maine, with the number of unhealthy days up from last year in 38 states, according to data compiled by a watchdog group. Public health standards for ozone smog were exceeded more than 1,000 times at official air pollution monitors last month, according to Clean Air Watch. The trend could continue this week with record-breaking temperatures in many parts of the country. "California by far has had the worst air quality. But we are even seeing problems at some unusual places -- a lot in Colorado, some in Washington state and Oregon, even Martha's Vineyard," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, which had volunteers review government data.
Southern California once again had the highest smog levels in the nation. The worst single day -- an average of 142 parts per billion -- was July 25 at Crestline in the San Bernardino Mountains. The worst single hour, at 175 ppb, was on July 22 in Glendora. The federal government has set safe limits at 85 ppb; California has a tougher standard of 70 ppb. Above those levels, senior citizens, infants, asthma sufferers and others can experience serious health problems, according to scientific studies.
"This is not a freak thing. This is a horrifically hot summer ... and it's hazardous to your health," said William Becker, executive director of a national association of local air quality officials. "The conditions for creating smog and unhealthy air are extremely ripe ... and it's vitally important EPA take swift and aggressive actions, including regulating locomotives and marine vessels ... which in the next 10 or 15 years are going to be the predominant source of smog." Air quality advocates said the heat wave was perfect for producing peak smog levels, and they warned that reductions in smog in past decades could be eroded by global warming.
Ozone is a colorless pollutant formed when heat and sunlight "cook" nitrogen oxide and volatile organic compounds from vehicles and industrial sources. "Long-term we have made improvements ... but this heat wave and the accompanying smog is a very graphic reminder that we still have a significant problem," O'Donnell said. "Unless we start getting serious about global warming, predicted temperature increases in global temperatures could mean continued smog problems in the future. And that will mean more asthma attacks, disease and death." EPA spokesman John Millett did not dispute the survey findings, although he noted that the group analyzed raw data from government monitors that still needed to be verified. "We've had some awful, hot weather," he said, with conditions "some of the worst we've seen for the formation of ozone in a number of years."
But Millett said, "If we'd experienced these same conditions 10 years ago, we would be having much more severe air quality problems.... Ozone pollution concentrations have declined about 20% since 1980" due to regulation of power plants, car fuel and other measures. He said even if temperatures continued to rise in coming years, new programs to control emissions from diesel trucks and farming equipment, and requiring cleaner diesel fuel would help reduce smog levels further. He said a new rule to regulate marine vessels and locomotives was expected by year's end, and added that technological challenges in developing equipment had delayed its implementation.
Sam Atwood, spokesman for the South Coast Air Quality Management District, said the agency needed as much help as possible from the federal government to reach legal smog levels by a 2021 deadline. He said Crestline often experiences the state's highest smog levels because it catches ozone from across the Los Angeles Basin as it is blown inland by marine breezes and trapped by the mountains. Glendora, he said, "is a bit more of a throwback." He noted that the city had high smog levels in the 1990s, but since fuels had been improved, it usually took longer for fumes to swirl through hot air to form smog -- meaning smog now usually develops farther inland. He said he didn't know why the city would have had the highest hourly reading last month.
Other major metropolitan areas with high smog days included New York; Philadelphia; Washington; Baltimore; Atlanta; Denver; Dallas; Houston; Salt Lake City; San Diego; Sacramento; St. Louis; New Haven, Conn.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; and Baton Rouge, La.
by Elizabeth Williamson, Washington Post
August 3, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/02/AR2006080201990_2.html
Dirty water and contaminated fish in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries pose a public health threat, but spotty monitoring and tourism industry worries can block the public from learning the full picture, health experts say. Millions of people swim, boat and fish in the region's waterways every year with no ill effects. But the water is so dirty that public health officials warn people who swim in it to wash with soap afterward and to avoid entering the water with an open wound.
A new report being released today says more than 40 Maryland beaches, including several on the bay, violated public health standards at least a quarter of the times they were tested. The report issued by the Natural Resources Defense Council -- which documented more than 20,000 days of ocean, bay and Great Lakes beach closures and advisories nationwide last year -- placed three of Maryland's bay beaches among its worst offenders. All three are on the Eastern Shore. Maryland ranks among the 10 worst states for beaches that fail to meet national health standards, according to the report. Yet the state does not require that a contaminated beach be closed -- except after raw sewage spills of at least 10,000 gallons.
Virginia fared far better in the report, ranking among the top five for meeting federal standards. Still, the state tests mostly coastal beaches, not most rivers. "It's 100 degrees outside. People should be able to go to the beach and swim and know that they won't get sick," said Nancy Stoner of the council's Clean Water Project. "There's a lot better information now than there ever was before. But what we're finding is that monitoring is detecting problems, but we're not doing anything about it."
In this coastal region, it seems easier to discover pollution's impact on sea grass than on people. No single agency is charged with finding and alerting the public to waterborne health hazards. Fish- and water-quality monitoring falls to a patchwork of government bodies, students and volunteers. Results are spread across Web sites in two states, making it difficult, especially for tourists, to fully gauge the risks. In 2004, Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health worked with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to link pollution and its human health impact. The effort ran out of money before it got off the ground. "We're not spending enough money and time figuring out the best ways to monitor the water we swim in and the fish we eat, and on a better means of informing and warning the public," said Polly Walker of the Johns Hopkins center involved in the project. "That's not to say things are terrible. But without a monitoring system in place, we won't know when they are."
The information that does reach the public often provokes objections from fishing and tourism interests. "Every story that gets written about the health of the bay hurts my industry," said Susan Zellers, director of the Marine Trades Association of Maryland, an industry lobbying group. With out-of-state boaters pouring $154 million annually into Maryland, she said, "we're all about [saying], 'Everything's fine.' "
But not everything is fine. In September 2004, Jim Byers, a veteran kayaker from Bethesda, headed onto the Potomac after a big rain, eager for a challenging run through flood-stage waters. Two weeks later, Byers, 51, felt pain in his legs so severe that he dropped to his dining room floor. He wound up in the hospital with a 105-degree temperature and a stomach infection that stumped his doctors. As his condition worsened, his wife got a call from a fellow kayaker, who asked whether he'd been tested for leptospirosis, a bacterial disease caused by contact with animal waste, probably washed into the river by the rain. Byers, a Potomac kayaker for two decades, had never heard of it. The guess proved right. Byers spent months recuperating -- and it rattles him that he could have died. "I'm not what you call an educated consumer," he said. "I don't think a lot of people are."
Sally Hornor stood on a pier off a tiny Severn River beach in Annapolis one recent morning, filling a sample bottle while teenage girls smoothed on sunscreen nearby. "We always look for an area where kids would swim the most," said Hornor, of Anne Arundel Community College, dipping her bottle into pale green water at the private beach, one of about 20 she monitors. "On a typical day something like a quarter of the sites do not meet the recommendations."
The federal government provides money to encourage states to monitor water at public beaches but does not require it. According to the report, Virginia monitors 55 beaches weekly, mostly along the coast. Maryland tests 179 coastal and estuary spots, from once a week to once a month. Maryland leaves county health departments to decide what beaches to test and how often, when to close a contaminated area and how to tell the public. The Anne Arundel County Health Department, for instance, monitors 530 miles of shoreline and 101 public beaches with one staff member and three students. Despite a season of heavy rain that sent bacterial numbers skyrocketing, the county has issued three advisories and closed one beach, at Bear Neck Creek near Edgewater, after a massive sewage spill June 28. Bacteria sent two residents who entered the water near the spill to the hospital, said Bob Gallagher, riverkeeper for the West and Rhode rivers, near the spill.
Beaches in St. Mary's County in Southern Maryland and Kent on the Eastern Shore rank among the state's worst offenders in the national report. But a visitor probably wouldn't know that. The Environmental Protection Agency's beach Web site is not kept up-to-date, Stoner said. Maryland state Web sites refer bathers to county sites. Often, the sites don't include full information about precautions, or the consequences of contact with contaminated water. "I don't want to scare anyone away from the water," Gallagher said. "But people are going to get more scared if they learn about other people getting sick and they don't have adequate information."
The same lack of regulation and consistency also affects those who catch dinner in the region's waters. The federal government has set standards for the level of mercury and PCBs in fish sold commercially, but it does not require states to issue consumption advisories for fish caught by recreational anglers. Most states have some form of advisory program, but its quality often depends on its funding, said Tim Fitzgerald, a scientist for Environmental Defense, a national advocacy group.
"Some states are more cautious than others," said Dan Soeder, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Baltimore. "Fishing is a state tourist thing, and if you're telling people they can't eat the fish, that isn't good." In Virginia, a list of advisories is available on state Web sites and in offices, bait and tackle stores, libraries and fishing groups, said Khizar Wasti, director of public health toxicology at the state Department of Health, which compiles them. The state also posts advisories on waterways, he said.
When Maryland created its current guidelines in 2001, "charter boat captains [had] a lot of concern it was going to hurt their business," recalled Joseph Beaman, chief of the chemical assessment division at the Department of the Environment. "The [Department of Natural Resources] was like, 'Oh, my God, we're gonna lose all our license business.'" The state offers its advisory guide on its Web site, at state women's health centers and environmental offices and with fishing licenses. When he tried placing it at tackle shops, "they threw them out," Beaman said. Except for a few locations, the warnings are not posted on waterways. "If you worded it the right way, there might be a way to do that," he said. "But if you have a lot of people with vested interests, they don't necessarily like the information being out there."
by Marla Cone, Los Angeles Times
August 3, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-toxics3aug03,1,1458223.story
At the first Senate hearing in more than a decade to review the nation's toxic chemicals law, the Bush administration on Wednesday agreed with chemical industry representatives that the 30-year-old statute was strong enough to protect public health. James B. Gulliford, an assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, told the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works that the toxics law was "a very effective statute" that gave the agency "broad authorities" to ensure the public was safeguarded from industrial chemicals.
Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), committee chair, convened the hearing to consider revamping the Toxic Substances Control Act. Essentially unchanged since it was enacted in 1976, the law guides the EPA's regulation of 82,000 chemicals, including plastic ingredients in toys, flame retardants in computers, and compounds in cosmetics, cookware and plastic baby bottles. Many political, legal, scientific and economic experts say the law needs to be overhauled because the U.S. trails the European Union and other developed countries in reviewing and restricting toxic substances. "The EPA has slipped in its leadership in the international arena," said Dr. Lynn R. Goldman, a Johns Hopkins University scientist and pediatrician who headed the EPA's toxics program for the Clinton administration.
Several hundred industrial chemicals in use today are known to accumulate in human tissues and breast milk, and persist in the environment without breaking down. The health effects of many of them are largely unknown, though scientific studies have linked some to cancer, altered hormones, reproductive effects and neurological damage, particularly for fetuses exposed in the womb.
Under the toxics law, the EPA has had broad authority to ban or restrict chemical compounds developed after 1976. But the agency can regulate an older chemical only if proof is found that it poses an "unreasonable risk" to human health or the environment, which can require years, even decades, of costly and detailed risk assessments. The EPA must then compare costs and benefits and choose "the least burdensome" rules. The U.S. government has not attempted to restrict an industrial chemical in use before the law was passed since 1989, when an EPA rule banning asbestos was struck down by a federal court, in part because the agency had not proven to a judge that the lung-damaging chemical posed an unreasonable risk.
Instead of imposing rules on older chemicals, the EPA has relied upon voluntary agreements with companies for nearly 20 years. John B. Stephenson, environmental director of the Government Accountability Office, told the Senate committee that the law set "such a high legal standard" that the EPA was "severely inhibited by its cumbersome authorities." Last year, a GAO report concluded that the toxics law had many weaknesses.
Michael Wilson, a researcher at the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at UC Berkeley, urged Congress to enact a "modern chemicals policy." He said the EPA had insufficient data on the safety of chemicals and was not able to properly gauge the dangers to people and the environment. Because of this, he said, the U.S. is "falling behind" in technology innovations that lead to safer chemicals. Wilson earlier this year coauthored a report for the California Legislature that encouraged the state to adopt its own chemicals law because the federal one was weak.
At Wednesday's hearing, which was webcast, Gulliford, the EPA assistant administrator who regulates toxic substances, made it clear he did not think the law should be changed. "I believe that TSCA has been used effectively for the past three decades to protect the American people and the environment," Gulliford said. When asked by Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-New Jersey) if all 82,000 chemicals on the market were safe, Gulliford said, "Their risks to human health and the environment are acceptable."
However, many environmental scientists say the EPA can't know whether the risks are acceptable because the chemical industry is not required by the law to provide enough data, particularly on the potential effects of many chemicals on children and fetuses. Michael Walls, a manager of the American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical manufacturers, told the committee that the toxics law provided "a strong, robust framework for chemical regulation in the United States." Over the last few years, the U.S. chemical industry has voluntarily submitted safety data on 2,800 chemicals used in high volumes. Yet the voluntary program provides only basic data on the chemicals and "does not negate the need" for a stronger law, said the GAO's Stephenson.
Holding up a set of children's blocks, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) pointed out that the European Union had banned chemicals called phthalates in such plastic toys because of reproductive risks while the U.S. had not. "I don't want my grandchildren or anyone's grandchildren or great-grandchildren or children to put this stuff in their mouths," she said. Boxer criticized the EPA's position on the law, saying the public did not know which chemicals were used in which products and what dangers they posed because of the law's confidentiality requirements. "We are left in the dark, to our peril," Boxer said.
Inhofe called chemicals "the essential building blocks" of products and services that were essential to people, and said they should not be "stifled by government regulation" without clear evidence of risks. "There are many people who come to this hearing with a preconceived notion that the U.S. chemicals management program is broken and that Congress needs to completely rewrite" the law, Inhofe said in an opening statement. "I do not come into this hearing with that assumption." Last year, Lautenberg and Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) introduced a bill, called the Kid Safe Chemicals Act, that would require chemical companies to provide more safety data and more protections for children. The bill remains in committee with no action scheduled.
by Kris Christen, Environmental Science & Technology
August 2, 2006
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2006/aug/science/kc_tires.html
Tires crunch against street curbs or come to a screeching halt when drivers stop or swerve suddenly. In the process, one or more of the weights clipped to the wheels to balance the tires -- 2.5 oz/car wheel on average -- may get thrown off onto the roadway. In 2003 alone, ~2000 t of lead may have been lost from vehicles in this fashion, according to estimates released in May by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The USGS study tracks the flow of lead-based wheel weights from their manufacture, through their use, recycling, and disposal. In 2003, ~28,000 t of lead were used in the production of wheel weights in the U.S., and ~65,000 t were attached to the 232 million registered cars, light trucks, and commercial vehicles traversing U.S. roadways, the analysis shows.
Given those figures, the 3% lost along roadways may not seem like much, especially when spread out across the entire continental U.S. But much of it is probably concentrated in urban environments, where most of the stop-and-go traffic occurs, notes Donald Bleiwas, a USGS minerals and materials specialist and author of the report. Additionally, lead wheel weights have been used on vehicles for nearly 70 years, so the cumulative amount of lead dispersed in the environment in this way could be significant.
How big an environmental problem that poses depends on what happens to the weights after they fall off. Do they get ground up by traffic? Do the abraded particles become airborne? Does storm water wash them off roads? Do they make their way into nearby soils, or get transported into urban ponds and groundwater? Do they get picked up by street sweepers? Do hobbyists pick them up and mold them into other items, such as lead weights used by anglers? "I can't answer that side of the equation," Bleiwas admits, but wheel weights "could contribute to the presence of residual lead content in some soils in urban environments." Historically, the main source of lead in U.S. soils was emissions from leaded gas, and they have decreased substantially since it was phased out beginning in 1973.
The USGS study is important because "it's the first [official] attempt to try and get a grasp on what the inventory is and what the scope of the potential problem is," says Jeff Gearhart, campaign director for the Ecology Center, an environmental organization. His group sponsors a project looking at toxic materials in vehicles. "Wheel weights are the second largest use of lead in vehicles after lead-acid batteries, and they're the one use that continues to be dispersed into the environment more than any of the other uses," Gearhart points out.
The EU began banning the use of lead wheel weights last year on new vehicles and replacement tires because of environmental concerns about losses along roadways and inappropriate disposal by tire retailers and scrap processors. No federal regulatory controls currently govern the use of lead wheel weights in the U.S., but car manufacturers, including most U.S. companies, are slowly moving toward other materials, Gearhart notes. Zinc and steel are the most common alternatives. However, the vast majority of wheel weights -- ~80% -- go into replacement tires, Gearhart says. Ironically, even though you might buy a new car with lead-free weights, lead will go back in once you put new tires on.
The U.S. EPA encourages tire dealers to begin using lead-free weights under a voluntary initiative, but the agency rejected a petition [414KB PDF] by the Ecology Center last year to ban the use of lead weights, saying more research is required. Nevertheless, a growing number of states, cities, and private fleets are moving in that direction because of environmental concerns. In 2004, Minnesota became the first state to begin replacing lead weights on its state fleet with lead-free alternatives. "Our approach to this whole thing is pollution prevention," says John Gilkeson, a principal planner for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. "We know lead's a problem; we know it comes off wheels. If we've got an alternative, let's do it."
by Rebecca Renner, Environmental Science & Technology
August 2, 2006
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2006/aug/science/rr_lead.html
High levels of lead in drinking water that poisoned a child in Durham, N.C., probably resulted from a change in the coagulant used to remove organic matter, says a corrosion scientist who tested the Durham water. The incident raises the specter of similar undetected problems in other parts of the U.S., says Marc Edwards, a corrosion engineer at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. This case is especially vexing because Durham's routine water-quality monitoring, which is required by the U.S. EPA's Lead and Copper Rule, failed to detect the problem in 2004.
Since the 2004 Washington, D.C., lead crisis drew attention to lead in drinking water, a few cities that were once meeting the EPA action limit have developed problems. Durham joins Greenville, N.C., and Stafford, Va., on the list of cities where water-treatment changes enacted to reduce disinfection byproducts have unexpectedly raised lead levels. Until now, the prime suspect for these cases was a switch from free chlorine to chloramines for secondary disinfection -- the established cause of D.C.'s problem.
Besides switching to chloramines, all three cities changed from alum or another nonchloride coagulant to ferric chloride to better remove organic matter and further reduce disinfection byproducts. This change increased the ratio of chloride to sulfate in the drinking water. When this ratio is >~0.58, galvanic corrosion occurs and erodes particles of solder, according to Edwards. This process takes place even when other aspects of the water chemistry -- such as pH, alkalinity, and the use of a phosphate-based corrosion inhibitor -- should prevent lead contamination of water, he says.
The chloride-to-sulfate ratio was first reported as an important factor in water corrosion in 1983 by scientists in the U.K. Edwards cited their work in a 1999 publication that indicated the ratio could be important at U.S. utilities. A 2005 American Water Works Association report made passing mention of the ratio. Even so, most corrosion scientists and utilities managers contacted by ES&T were unaware of the issue.
In Durham, a doctor spotted the child's elevated blood lead level, >20 µg/dL, during a routine examination this spring. Public-health officials linked the boy's poisoning to drinking water after they found >800 ppb of lead in tap water and no other source of lead in his mother's apartment, according to Durham County health officer Marc Meyer.
Paint, dust, or soil -- not water -- are generally considered major sources of lead exposure. Lead solder, banned in the mid-1980s, could potentially be a significant source of lead in drinking water, according to Mary Jean Brown, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's lead poisoning prevention branch. However, aging processes are thought to deposit various films or scales on top of the solder that protect it from corrosion. "If the aging process does not protect against this, then it would be new," she says. Plant managers say that the problem is new. After the switch to ferric chloride, Stafford plant manager Harry Critzer watched lead levels climb. After coagulants were changed, the lead levels quickly dropped below the action limit.
Greenville had a similar experience. "We switched to ferric chloride at about the same time as we switched to chloramines," says Greenville plant manager Barrett Lasater. "At first, we thought it was a dissolved-lead problem, so we changed our corrosion inhibitor, but this didn't have much of an effect. EPA, the state regulators, and other consultants didn't know what it was. There is no literature. There are no guidelines." Most corrosion controls focus on soluble-lead leaching, but this is different. It's about physical processes. "Because these are particles, it means that flow rate is important; the aerator is important," Lasater adds.
Aerators on or off, a seemingly minor detail, could explain why the Durham health department found a problem that the water company missed. The health department sampled with the aerators on. The water company took them off. Although the aerator on/off issue was highlighted in a previous ES&T article about sampling in Washington, D.C., schools, where EPA Region 3 agreed to an "aerators off" sampling protocol, disagreement about how to sample still exists. "We want to get a real-world sample that reflects what people are drinking," says Meyer, who advocates leaving the aerators on.
A Region 4 EPA spokesperson tells ES&T that the water utility sampled correctly and that the health department's procedure "differed from what's required by regulation," but the spokesperson declined to explain the results. EPA's proposed revisions to the Lead and Copper Rule, released on July 6, are silent on specific sampling issues. The proposals would require utilities to consult with state regulators when contemplating a treatment change that might lead to corrosion.
But on July 26, EPA Office of Water assistant administrator Benjamin Grumbles, in a letter to a Durham, N.C., newspaper, wrote, "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency does not have stated guidelines concerning the removal of faucet aerators before testing for lead in drinking water. We were unaware that water-treatment facilities may be making such a recommendation. Since this matter came to our attention, we have begun looking into it to determine whether we need to provide supplemental guidance on the issue. We hope to make that determination soon."
Lasater, who switched coagulant a few months ago, is waiting to see whether the change solves Greenville's lead problem, and Durham's water company is also expected to stop using ferric chloride. North Carolina's experiences have raised awareness of water as a source of elevated blood lead, says Meyer. In Greenville, it took a year to determine that water was responsible for high lead levels in children. In Durham, it took a month. "Prior to Greenville, we didn't sample water when we investigated a home. Now, it's routine," he says.
by Michael Hawthorne, Chicago Tribune
August 2, 2006
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0608020263aug02,1,4477084.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
Yielding to pressure from Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration, one of Illinois' largest utilities has agreed to dramatically cut smog, soot and mercury pollution from its coal-fired power plants. The deal between Ameren and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency is the first sign that the state's big coal utilities are backing off their unified opposition to stringent mercury rules proposed by Blagojevich in January in response to a Tribune series about mercury in fish. Ameren is pledging to reduce emissions at its Downstate coal plants far more than federal rules require. The result will be less pollution billowing toward the Chicago area that can take years off lives and contribute to lung damage, heart disease and respiratory ailments.
State officials and environmental advocates said the deal also will curb the amount of mercury falling into lakes and streams, where the toxic metal can build up to the point that children and pregnant women should avoid eating certain fish. "This is a fantastic deal for Illinois," Doug Scott, the state EPA director, said Tuesday in an interview. "We're going to see some improvements that can really make a difference in people's lives."
By agreeing to significantly cut emissions of lung-damaging particulate matter and pollutants that create smog, Ameren will get some wiggle room in reducing mercury pollution. Blagojevich proposed that Illinois coal plants reduce average mercury emissions by 90 percent by 2009, which would make the state's rules among the toughest in the nation. Under the administration's deal with Ameren, outlined in documents filed with a state rulemaking panel, the utility will be required to install mercury controls on most of its generating units by 2009. It won't have to meet the 90 percent target until 2015, though the utility and state said the goal probably will be reached much earlier. The 2009 deadline also exempts six smaller units that account for about 6 percent of the electricity generated by Ameren. The utility has until 2012 to install mercury controls there.
Company officials said they had been concerned that they could not meet the governor's proposed deadline. But they also were aware that the state's utilities could face more stringent limits for smog and soot pollution in order to meet the latest federal clean-air requirements in Chicago and counties outside St. Louis. "We felt the state was probably heading in that direction," said Michael Menne, vice president for environmental safety and health at Ameren. "This allows us to get on one track to reduce our emissions in a coordinated fashion." Among other cuts, Ameren expects to reduce annual sulfur dioxide emissions by 127,000 tons by 2015, a 76 percent reduction. That figure exceeds the total decrease of 125,000 tons anticipated under federal rules covering all the state's utilities by the same deadline.
The Illinois deal prohibits Ameren from achieving its sulfur dioxide goal by buying pollution credits from other companies. Federal rules allow utilities to trade the right to pollute as long as overall emissions decline. Ameren also agreed to cut smog-forming nitrogen oxide emissions by 55 percent by 2015. By comparison, federal rules would require all the state's utilities to cut emissions of the pollutant by 53 percent by 2015.
Ameren officials declined to say how much the company plans to spend on the new pollution controls. Installing equipment that reduces mercury emissions alone is expected to cost up to $2 million at each plant and would increase the average residential electric bill by $1.25 a month for Ameren's customers Downstate, according to the state EPA.
The Ameren deal was hashed out last week by Scott, Deputy Governor Bradley Tusk and representatives from the utility, including Renee Cipriano, a former EPA director who left the agency last year to work for a Chicago law firm that lobbies on behalf of Ameren. Others involved included state Rep. Jay Hoffman, a Collinsville Democrat close to Blagojevich, and Jim McPike, another Ameren lobbyist who formerly was House majority leader. Environmental groups also were consulted to make sure they were comfortable with the compromise. "This is a major breakthrough for clean air in Illinois," said Howard Learner, executive director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, who has been involved in the discussions. "Ameren has decided to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem. Now it's time for the other utilities to step up."
Until now, owners of the state's coal plants had been campaigning aggressively to scuttle the governor's mercury proposal before a rulemaking panel and a committee of legislators that can block government regulations. The industry recently lost an important procedural vote when the Pollution Control Board denied an attempt to throw out testimony from scientists who documented how mercury falls close to its source.
Officials at two other utilities, Dynegy and Midwest Generation, said they are involved in their own talks with state officials but declined to elaborate. Midwest Generation, which operates five coal-fired plants in the Chicago area, is testing equipment this year at the Crawford plant in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood and the Will County plant outside Romeoville that injects activated carbon into the smokestacks to filter out mercury. Dynegy is installing similar equipment at a Vermilion County plant to comply with a federal consent decree that requires the plant to reduce mercury emissions by 90 percent by next year. The same agreement requires the company to install pollution scrubbers at its massive Baldwin plant outside St. Louis that will reduce both sulfur dioxide and mercury emissions. "We think these companies could comply with the basic framework with the Ameren agreement," Scott said. "We're more than open to their suggestions about how to get there."
by Staci Matlock, Santa Fe New Mexican
August 2, 2006
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/47286.html
Attorneys general from 14 states, including New Mexico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday to require the listing of all hazardous ingredients in pesticides on product labels. The petition is good news for Lynne and David Trew of Santa Fe. Lynne Trew has battled for 15 years to stay healthy while surrounded by a world of chemicals that make her sick. She's among thousands of New Mexicans who have physical reactions to everything from cleaning products to paint if they have the wrong ingredients. "It's great they want all the ingredients listed," Lynne Trew said. "That way people can research the list for themselves and make their own decision instead of just trusting the government that it's safe. If you don't know what's in (a product), you can't research it."
David Trew is a ranch consultant who works to improve rangeland and production of organically reared, grass-fed livestock. Some of the ranchers he works with have grazing allotments on national-forest land where herbicides are used. "It would make a big difference to know what the ingredients are so we know what we're dealing with," he said. He said companies patent most of the ingredients in their formulas "so it shouldn't make a difference if they publicize them."
Herbicides and pesticides are sprayed or dripped onto land, houses and pets to control insects and weeds. Some are designed to kill only a specific insect, fungus or plant. Others are broad-based, killing all organisms in a certain area for a time. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires companies to list a product's active ingredients used to kill a pest or weed. But the EPA doesn't require companies to list inert or "other ingredients" used to preserve or improve the effectiveness of active ingredients in a pesticide, according to the New Mexico Attorney General's Office. "Although almost 400 chemicals used for this purpose have been found by EPA or other federal agencies to be hazardous to human health and the environment, EPA does not require them to be identified on pesticide labels," according to a joint statement from the attorneys general.
Inert chemicals include many the EPA has determined under other programs to be hazardous or toxic, including ingredients known or suspected to cause cancer, disorders of the central nervous system, liver and kidney damage and birth defects. Federal law prohibits states from requiring additional labeling on pesticides. "There is a common misconception that inert ingredients are inactive and do not pose any harm," said New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid. "That is not the case, and the public has a right to know. While the inert ingredients in a pesticide many pose no harm to pests, such substances can pose health or environmental hazards."
Twenty-two environmental and public-health organizations filed a similar petition with the EPA on Tuesday. Dr. Erica Elliott, a Santa Fe doctor who specializes in environmental health, said she was "very excited" about the petition. "Sometimes the inert ingredients are as potentially harmful as the active ingredients," she said. People with chemical sensitivities might have damaged livers that are unable to "knock back," or detoxify, chemicals the way healthy livers can, Elliott said. People with chemical sensitivities report symptoms and illnesses including migraines, bloody noses, muscular weakness, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, personality changes and others. Elliott said many inert chemicals haven't been tested for environmental or health impacts. Others have been tested alone and not with the other chemicals in a product, she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
[Editor's note: See a related article at http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060807/NEWS01/608070327/1002/NEWS]
by Marla Cone, Los Angeles Times
August 2, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-lindane2aug02,1,7604837.story
A highly toxic pesticide that is one of the last such holdouts from the 1950s is being banned in the United States after a lengthy review by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA decided not to renew the registration of lindane, an insecticide used to treat seeds for wheat, corn, oats, rye, barley and sorghum crops. In response, the manufacturers agreed to cease sales in the United States, EPA officials said Tuesday.
Lindane is a chlorinated pesticide, much like DDT and similar compounds that were outlawed in most of the world in the 1970s; it is already banned in 52 countries. It does not break down in the environment, so it builds up in food chains and in human bodies, and scatters globally via the oceans and air, reaching even people and animals in the Arctic. For years, environmentalists have sought a ban in the U.S., especially since Mexico and Canada have already acted. The United Nations was considering adding lindane to a global treaty phasing out chemicals considered the world's most hazardous. Kristin Shafer of Pesticide Action Network North America, an activist group based in San Francisco, said Tuesday that she was "pleased EPA has finally done the right thing."
Jim Jones, director of the EPA's pesticide program, said the agency weighed lindane's toxicity and its persistence in the environment against its "very few benefits for users," considering the fact that safer alternatives for treating corn, wheat and other grain seeds were available. "We're making a decision today that I feel very good about," he said. "Most of the uses were deleted a long time ago, and the EPA has taken a number of actions culminating in this one today, where the remaining uses are being voluntarily canceled."
The EPA has acknowledged the hazards of lindane for several years, calling it "quite toxic to humans." It is classified as a possible carcinogen, and in high doses it damages the human nervous system, liver and immune system. The only remaining U.S. use of lindane is for prescription shampoos and lotion treatments for head lice and scabies, which are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, not the EPA. Lindane prescriptions have been banned in California since 2002, and most U.S. doctors no longer prescribe them.
"It's good to the see the U.S. finally stepping up to the plate" on farm use, said Ann Heil, a supervising engineer at the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts who has researched lindane and lobbied the Legislature for the state ban on lindane prescriptions. But, she said, "it is baffling why the federal government has now banned uses of lindane for farming, but still allows it to be put on children's heads."
The decision to end lindane's use as an agricultural pesticide is the culmination of a 10-year review of the more than 200 active ingredients in pesticides that was ordered by Congress in 1996 under the Food Quality Protection Act. The law transformed the EPA's safety standards for evaluating pesticide risks, especially to children, and has led to changes in the allowable uses of many chemicals. "Virtually every chemical that went through that process had some meaningful changes in the way they could be used," Jones said. Seventeen popular chemicals have been banned since the review began.
Lindane has been used on U.S. crops since 1950. The EPA heavily restricted it in 1983, limiting its use to grain
