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Due to the holiday next week, no bulletin will be published.
by Bill Wolfe, Louisville Courier-Journal
June 26, 2006
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060626/BUSINESS/606260316
Americans discard more than 125 million broken or obsolete cellular telephones a year -- a mountain of toxic trash that can leach arsenic, lead, beryllium, cadmium and other dangerous substances into the soil and ground water, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But there's also gold in cell phones, along with other valuable materials like silver, rhodium and palladium. A Louisville company, Eco-Cell, is mining the junked phones for their remaining value -- and turning part of the proceeds back to nonprofit partners such as the Louisville Zoo. "It actually enables you to do a very simple action to help participate in the conservation effort," said Eric Ronay, Eco-Cell's president.
The company sells functional phones for use in areas such as Latin America, Africa and China -- "places where you can't necessarily afford a $350 (Palm) Treo, but you can buy a used cell phone for $15," Ronay said. Phones that have outlived their usefulness are recycled for their raw materials.
Eco-Cell pays zoos and other participating organizations up to $15 per phone donated through them. The average phone value is $1.67. "We resell as many phones as we can," Ronay said. Working, late-model units bring the best prices, but the company accepts all cell phones and accessories, even if it's likely to lose money on them, he said.
Eco-Cell is on target to collect 40,000 to 50,000 cell phones this year, Ronay said. That's double the number last year and four times the count for 2004, when he came to the company. Many of the phones are recycled through a Belgian company, Umicore. Newer batteries also are sold for reuse, while others go to the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corp., a nonprofit, industry-supported organization, Ronay said.
Eco-Cell also promotes recycling as a way to preserve gorilla habitat in the Congo. Forests there are being destroyed to mine coltan (columbite-tantalite) ore. Conservationists believe that reducing the demand for coltan by reclaiming it from junked phones, will help save gorillas. The conservation connection made the Eco-Cell collection program an easy sell for the zoo and its Gorilla Forest, said Mark Zoeller, the zoo's assistant director. "It was such a natural fit to what we are doing out here at the zoo ... that it just became a great partnership," he said. So far, the zoo has received about $3,100 from the program, which "goes straight back to saving the gorillas" in wildlife-preservation efforts, Zoeller said. "It's really a great program."
The zoo program also has gained some major partners, including metro government and businesses such as E.ON U.S., parent of Louisville Gas and Electric Co., which placed a phone collection box at its headquarters last month. The zoo gets credit for phone donations by the energy company. "It's kind of a nice double dip. We get to do something really good for the environment, and then help the zoo as well," said E.ON spokeswoman Chris Whelan.
The zoo was already a client when Ronay took the reins at Eco-Cell, founded by his father, Louisville entrepreneur Bill Ronay. It seemed like a relationship that would appeal to zoos everywhere, said Eric Ronay, who consulted the membership list of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association "and called every single zoo in the United States." "It was just really pretty overwhelming how many signed up. We now have 57," he said. That represents about 35 percent of the association's zoo members, excluding sanctuary or research zoos, he said.
Eco-Cell maintains relationships with other nonprofit groups, such as Louisville's Alley Cat Advocates, but zoos represent a tremendous donor base, Ronay said. About 134 million people went to zoos in North America last year, he said, "more than major league baseball, football and basketball combined." In addition, zoos have "a huge volunteer force that's willing to go out and help raise money" through programs like cell-phone recycling, Ronay said.
Eco-Cell distributes collection kits to clients, which periodically ship the phones to Louisville. Every day, the company receives about six boxes holding about 200 phones each. A staff member sorts the phones by brand and model, and the company sells them by auction. "We don't refurbish them. We don't fix them. We don't do anything with them other than get them in the inventory and get them out to bid," Ronay said. Other companies have tried to collect and repair, but "ended up being kind of mediocre at both. Plus, it adds a heck of a lot of overhead," he said.
Ronay, 36, graduated from the University of Louisville with a bachelor's degree in English and spent four years in the Navy, where he learned to work on computers. He turned to Eco-Cell after spending several years in computer networking. That provided a steady paycheck, but Ronay wanted more. "I didn't like being compartmentalized. I wanted to see everything that was going on in whatever business I was working in. I could never just keep to my own little realm," he said. He works with his wife, Lindsey Ronay, who handles the company's books.
What's the business potential for Eco-Cell? Eric Ronay isn't certain, except that there's plenty of room for growth. "We really don't know what that saturation point is," he said, but "right now in this country, less than 5 percent of phones are being recycled."
from the UK Daily Mail
June 25, 2006
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=392440&in_page_id=1770&ct=5
Common pesticides dramatically increase the risk of Parkinson's disease, research has revealed. A study of chemicals in everyday products such as weedkillers and fly sprays found users were almost twice as likely to develop the brain condition. Only last week it was revealed that much of the fruit and vegetables we eat -- including free fruit given out in schools -- is tainted by pesticides.
There are 120,000 Parkinson's patients in Britain, with 10,000 new cases each year. Worldwide, one per cent of those over the age of 65 are affected. Michael J Fox and Muhammad Ali are among those with the degenerative brain disease.
Last night, environmental campaigners warned that not enough is known about the dangers of the chemicals we use in our homes and gardens. Elizabeth Salter Green, of WWF, said: "There are lots of man-made pesticides that attack the neurological system. Many of the fundamental building blocks of life, be it hormones or neurotransmitters, are exactly the same in all living organisms. So if you put a pesticide on the market that is good at killing a pest, you have got to be extremely circumspect as to what it is going to do to humans."
Previous studies have suggested that exposure to even small amounts of pesticides may play a role in Parkinson's disease and, last week, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced it was funding a £1million project to examine the link. In the latest study, the U.S. scientists examined data on over 140,000 men and women from a national survey. Of these, exposure to pesticides was reported by 7,864 participants, while there were 413 cases of Parkinson's. After taking into age, sex, and other factors such as diet and exercise, the researchers concluded that individuals who reported exposure to pesticides had a 70 per cent higher incidence of the disease than those who did not. While farmers were more likely to have been exposed to pesticides, the development of Parkinson's was equally prevalent among other kinds of workers.
Potential sources of exposure include crop spraying, weedkillers, pesticides and insecticides used in the garden and fly sprays and ant powders used in the home. Writing in the journal Annals of Neurology, the researchers said they did not find any link between the amount of time the men and women had been exposed to the chemicals and the risk of Parkinson's. Nor was there any increased risk from exposure to other occupational hazards, including asbestos, coal or stone dust, chemicals, acids, or solvents.
Lead researcher Alberto Ascherio, whose work was part-funded by the Michael J Fox Foundation, said: "The findings of this large investigation support the hypothesis that exposure to pesticides is a risk factor for Parkinson's disease." No specific chemicals or pesticides were named in the study and the researchers said more work was needed to examine which pesticides are likely to cause the condition.
Georgina Downs, of the UK Pesticides Campaign, said the finding was 'highly significant'. Writing in the ME charity magazine Interaction, she said: "Pesticides, by their very nature, are designed to kill living organisms. People can be exposed to these chemicals via air, water, contaminated surfaces and food. Once pesticides have been absorbed, they can enter the blood stream and be carried throughout the body. Babies, children, pregnant women, the elderly and those with pre-existing medical conditions are particularly vulnerable to the effects." She added: "Considering many pesticides are neurotoxic then it isn't surprising that study after study has found associations with various chronic neurological and neuro-degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's."
"This is highly significant in relation to the long-term exposure of rural residents and communities living near sprayed fields, where they can be repeatedly and frequently exposed to mixtures of pesticides, throughout every year and in many cases for decades." Much fresh produce is also contaminated with pesticide residue.
Studies published last week by the Government's Pesticides Residues Committee found contamination in 39 per cent of food sold in the high street. A second, looking at free fruit given out in schools, found an even higher proportion -- 66 per cent -- contained one or more residues. While most of the levels were below what is considered safe, two per cent of the samples from the high street study were above the legal limit. The Crop Protection Association said pesticides are vital to farming and gardeners and their use is strictly regulated.
Helen Lynn, of the Women's Environmental Network, said not enough was known about the safety of pesticides and other chemicals. Kieran Breen, of the Parkinson's Disease Society, said: "This is the largest study of its kind and backs up other studies that have shown a link between exposure to pesticides and Parkinson's." Last year, an official inquiry warned that families living near farms could be in danger from the spraying of pesticides and other chemicals.
The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution said that spraying fields was a potential health risk and could be responsible for diseases including Parkinson's, cancer and ME. The Government, however, rejected the commission's calls for buffer zones to be set up around farms, stating the pesticide-free zones would scare rather than protect the public.
Parkinson's disease is caused by the degeneration of nerve cells in the brain that send chemical messages to neurons controlling the muscles. Symptoms include tremors, stiffness and a gradual slowing down of the body. As the disease progresses, speech, facial expression and balance can be affected and some sufferers end up in a wheelchair.
by Sharon Coolidge, Cincinnati Enquirer
June 25, 2006
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060625/EDIT03/606250346/-1/newslead
Hundreds of homes are contaminated by poisonous lead paint in Cincinnati and the city's Health Department is not forcing property owners to fix the problems. The department has filed just two criminal complaints this year despite dealing with hundreds of foot-dragging landlords. Health officials are thousands of times more likely to go after a property owner for litter than one with a lead-poisoning problem. Since 2002, the department has pursued 17,000 property owners for litter but taken only five to court for failing to clean up lead.
Since 2002, more than 570 young Cincinnati children have been poisoned by lead, which can stunt their growth both intellectually and physically. Experts say that doesn't have to happen. They say the Health Department, the Cincinnati Board of Health and the Cincinnati City Council ignore their warnings that homes coated inside and out with lead-based paint are an environmental danger, something that's been proven scientifically for decades.
Critics say city lead-prevention administrators are don't-rock-the-boat bureaucrats more interested in collecting their salaries than tackling the problem. Less than 1 percent of the nearly 300 property owners who have thumbed their noses at city Health Department orders to clean up properties are taken to court despite an April 2004 Board of Health vote that added jail time to the law. The department's failure to treat lead-tainted homes as a serious situation and its lack of get-tough enforcement put Cincinnati's most vulnerable residents -- poor, black children -- at risk, the experts say.
But lead poisoning doesn't discriminate. The hazard is found all over Greater Cincinnati -- from grubby inner-city apartments to grand, old homes on tree-shaded streets in Clifton and Hyde Park. U.S. Census figures indicate 154,667 of Cincinnati's 165,945 homes were built before 1979 and are likely to be tainted with lead. That means that 93 percent of the homes in Cincinnati -- one of the Midwest's oldest cities -- could have lead paint, a substance banned from use in homes in 1978. "Lead is Cincinnati's secret problem," said Bill Menrath, a University of Cincinnati researcher and longtime chairman of the city's lead advisory committee. "It's one of the most important public health issues facing the city."
When Summer Cook, age 1, stopped eating and seemed less like her playful self, her parents took her to a doctor who identified the problem -- severe lead poisoning. Summer had four times more lead in her system than what is considered dangerous by the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An inspection of Summer's Price Hill home found the attic where she and her siblings played was littered with lead-based paint chips. The Cooks' landlord spent $6,000 on repairs. Summer, now 2, spends one Wednesday a month at Children's Hospital Medical Center, where doctors monitor her lead levels, which are slowly dropping. "She was sick and we didn't realize it," said her father, Steve Cook. "And that was scary. We're afraid when she goes to school, she'll fall behind because of this."
City response muted
Cincinnati Health Commissioner Noble A-W Maseru refused to discuss his agency's lead prevention program or why it is not tougher with recalcitrant property owners. After three calls to his office, a secretary referred questions to Walter Handy, the assistant health commissioner. Handy refused to talk about specific cases. He also said he felt uncomfortable quantifying how problematic lead-tainted homes are for the city, even though he is a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's childhood lead poisoning prevention committee.
Rashmi Aparajit, the Health Department's lead-paint program manager, said that in 2001 more than 2,000 cases were open, a number whittled to 300. She called the two current court cases a start. "We're waiting for the one to go through as a model as how we're going to proceed, and then we're going to follow through with the others," Aparajit said. Handy described the department as "historically proactive."
The department didn't want its lead-paint scofflaw list made public, claiming federal law kept the records secret. The Enquirer spent two years in court fighting for the records before the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in March that the department must make the information public. In what's believed to be the first ruling of its kind in the country, Ohio's high court ordered the department to turn over the information to the newspaper, saying the state's open records law takes precedence over the federal law. The Enquirer got the records April 17.
An analysis of the properties that haven't been cleaned up and a second list of closed cases illustrates how the department handles lead hazards. The department has 300 open cases, 225 dating back more than two years, meaning the statute of limitations has run out. For the department to take action, new clean-up orders must be issued, and the department hasn't done that. The Health Department says it can't get into some homes without owner permission.
That's not true. Ohio law allows the director of the local board of health -- in this case Maseru -- to go to court to get a court order allowing his inspectors access to properties. The Enquirer visited all 300 properties in late May and early June and found that only five had lead-hazard warning signs. Signs are required on 74 of the properties, those inspected after new state lead regulations became law in April 2004. Handy said that while signs are posted as required by Ohio law, they're almost always taken down. Of the 300 properties, The Enquirer found that 150 are occupied and at least 54 kids live in the homes. Nineteen are for sale. Another 12 are for rent.
The department lists 2,335 closed cases, but that doesn't mean the property was cleared of lead paint hazards. In 171 instances, cases were closed because the child or children living in the property moved, leaving the landlord to possibly rent to other unsuspecting families. In 185 cases, landlords refused to give the Health Department access to their properties, so the cases were not pursued. Despite the state law that gives the Health Department director the right to seek a court order requiring the owner to allow access, department officials said they cannot enter properties without permission from tenants or landlords. If that happens, the case is closed, records show. Another 428 cases indicate the properties didn't have lead hazards. In other cases, buildings were demolished, were not within city limits or had no children living in them. The department lists 1,374 as being cleaned.
The department's record keeping also is not complete. For example, records are not uniform and the landlords aren't always current. That's crucial to prosecuting the 300 open cases. How does the city go after the property owner if it doesn't know who owns it? The department also doesn't make the list available to the public, something the Building Department does online with its own list of problem properties.
Children susceptible
Young children are particularly susceptible to the effects of lead because they explore the world with their hands and mouths, increasing the chance for ingestion, experts say. Although taking children away from the source of the poison will leech the toxin from their bodies, the damage already has been done. "The quicker we act to minimize the child's exposure, the lower their risk for long-term damage," said Dr. Adam Spanier, a pediatrician who works at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. "If a child has already suffered damage, though, some of it might not be reversible. The way to reduce the risk is to place the child in a lead-safe environment."
Children are particularly at risk because of Cincinnati's old housing stock. Of the state's list of 513 high-risk ZIP codes -- areas where children should be tested because of the age of the housing and demographics -- 34 are in Hamilton County, the most found in Ohio's 88 counties. When a doctor discovers lead in a child, the case is referred to the Ohio Department of Health, which in turn notifies the city Health Department.
A 2004 study by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington state, nonprofit environmental group, estimated that 19,000 children across Ohio and more than 2,000 in Hamilton, Butler, Warren and Clermont counties have lead poisoning and don't know it. It's a faulty system, said Bruce Lanphear, a Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center researcher whose 2003 research indicates that lead harms children at lower levels than previously thought. Lanphear said all children should be tested for lead poisoning before going to school. And properties should be inspected before a child moves into a house or apartment. "If we wait until a child has an elevated level of lead in their blood to take action, we have failed to protect the child," he said.
As people leave the city for the suburbs, many properties are turned into rentals, buildings often not cared for as well as the owner's home. The danger comes when paint is disturbed, either through deterioration or rehabbing. "From a moral standpoint, we all should be concerned about children in our community suffering unnecessarily," said Menrath, the UC researcher. "And if that's not enough, from a practical standpoint this costs everyone money." Menrath said research by the University of Cincinnati and other experts shows lead-poisoned children commit more crimes, have problems in school and require medical care, all expenses for taxpayers. "It may cost $9,000 to abate a property, but if you think about how many children won't be poisoned, that money isn't so much," Menrath said. "It costs more to do nothing."
Landlords are responsible to keep property lead-free, said Charles Tassell, director of governmental affairs for the Greater Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Apartment Association. In the past the state made it difficult and expensive to do lead clean-up, but an April 2004 state law made it easier, Tassell said. "More landlords are doing maintenance to avoid getting the Health Department involved," said Tassell, whose organization represents 80,000 apartment units. While the law works most of the time, some cases are difficult because owners can't afford to fix problems. The Health Department can't force a grandmother caring for young children onto the street, Tassell said.
Menrath said the Health Department's apathy dates to the 1990s when it mismanaged a federal lead grant. The city received $6 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1994 to correct health hazards caused by lead-based paint in 250 homes. More than three years later, the city had started work on only two apartments. Eventually 102 properties were rehabbed, significantly fewer homes than expected because the repairs were more expensive than anticipated, according to Handy, grant documents and health department databases. Almost a half million dollars had to be returned to HUD.
After that, former Health Commissioner Malcolm Adcock, who died in 2004, wanted nothing to do with the lead program, Menrath said. "I think Malcolm got burned badly on the lead grant," Menrath said. "He liked to have a clean reputation, so in response to that mess he decided to cover it up and insist lead wasn't a problem in Cincinnati.
Tom Rotte, Cincinnati's Lead Advisory Committee chairman and a retired supervisor of the city's lead program, put it more bluntly: "In total honesty, those people are there to collect a salary, they don't want any trouble. "It's, 'Let's wait for the state to do something' or, 'There's no money to do this kind of program,' " Rotte said.
Mayor Mark Mallory said the city needs to be proactive. "Dealing with lead abatement is a very serious issue," he said. "It sounds like we need to explore real options for ensuring the health and safety of people in this area." Mallory pledged to look at legislation other cities have used to successfully deal with lead paint. Mallory said he will ask Cincinnati City Councilman Chris Monzel, chairman of council's Education, Health and Recreation Committee, to look at what can be done.
Process supposed to be fast
Getting a child out of a lead-tainted home should be done quickly. Once a child is identified as poisoned, the Health Department tracks the source, which is often the child's home, and issues a clean-up order. The order requires the property owner to get a licensed lead contractor to do the work within 45 days. Problems arise when property owners ignore the orders. "Three hundred is a lot to be open at any one time," Rotte said. "I don't believe just because time transpired they should be off the hook. That number would dwindle quickly if a landlord knew prosecution was a possibility."
The Health Department has two options to force landlords to act. It can file a civil action and take the landlord to the Office of Administrative Hearings, which can impose up to a $1,000 fine. Yet, that isn't happening. Handy said they don't bring property owners in for administrative hearings on lead because they don't show up. The department also can refer a property owner to the Cincinnati Solicitor's Office for criminal charges. Yet, the Health Department rarely takes that route. Just two cases have been filed this year. "The impression now with landlords is if you procrastinate nothing will be done," Rotte said.
Menrath said the city doesn't have to wait for a lead-tainted property to harm a child. Regulations for rehabbing properties with lead could stop problems at the onset, Menrath said. The city's lead regulations date to 1974 -- four years before lead-paint was banned from use in residential housing. "We lobbied for years and years to get Cincinnati to adopt very simple lead regulations, but the Health Department always stood in the way," Menrath said. Suggestions for updated regulations include banning the sand-blasting of lead paint and requiring owners of buildings built before 1950 to get rid of peeling paint and to clean floors before new tenants move into a property.
The Board of Health has also not addressed safe lead cleanup, although it, too, has the power to update the regulations, Menrath said. Environmental health has never been a priority with the Health Department, said Kim Dietrich, a professor of environmental health at the University of Cincinnati and director of the university's division of epidemiology and biostatistics. "As a city we have to have the political will to spend the kind of money it would take to environmentally remediate this problem," Dietrich said.
The lead experts said they hope for a renewed effort by the Health Department under Maseru's direction. "I want to give him a chance," Dietrich said. Azel Mincy Jr.; his wife, Lashaya Mincy; and their four young children live in a South Cumminsville home the Health Department ordered cleaned up in 2003. Instead of forcing the landlord to act, the Health Department watched as the building was sold to a new owner, who allowed the Mincys to move in with no warning of the danger. Within a month, all four children suffered lead poisoning. "The city shouldn't let people get away with not cleaning up," Azel Mincy Jr. said. "If they don't force landlords to clean up, there might be other families just like us, moving in with no idea how dangerous it is."
The Mincys have been searching without success to find a new place to live. Every day that means the children risk higher and higher lead levels. "The city has a duty to protect its citizens, especially in a case like this where there are laws," Mincy Jr. said. "They could press charges against the landlords of all 300 properties if they wanted to."
[Editor's note: See a related article at http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060626/NEWS01/606260341/1002/NEWS]
by Sharon Coolidge, Cincinnati Enquirer
June 25, 2006
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060625/EDIT03/606250344/-1/newslead
Researchers knew lead poisoning could be deadly to children and cause brain damage in the late 1970s. What impact that had on the children's behavior was unclear. That's why Kim Dietrich, a professor of environmental health at the University of Cincinnati, spent from 1979 to 1984 recruiting 305 children with lead in their blood from Cincinnati's poorest neighborhoods for a study that's allowed him to study the children as they grew.
Now, 22 years later, one thing is clear: The more lead in a person's system when they're young, the more likely they are to engage in delinquent behavior such as assaults, property crimes and disturbing the peace -- acts that carry the risk for arrest, experts say. "We all know there is a relationship between lead and lower IQ, but there is an extension to criminal activity," said Dietrich, who is director of UC's division of epidemiology and biostatistics program and conducted the study with a team of four others. "And this has terrible implications for not only the individual, but for society as a whole."
While the National Institute of Health estimates that lead-poisoned children cost the county an estimated $17.2 billion every year just in medical costs, lost work days and reduced productivity, Dietrich's research means it also potentially costs millions more in criminal justice costs and medical care for crime victims. Dietrich's findings, based on a look at his study group when its members reached age 16 and 17, were published in 2001.
Dietrich and the study's others authors have monitored the group at ages 20 through 22, and found the trend continues. "Those exposed to higher levels of lead more likely to engage in criminal activities, some that resulted in convictions and incarceration," he said. "I was interested in this because we know lead attacks areas of children's brains that are involved in aggression and impulse control," Dietrich said. "It was logical to examine this relationship between lead exposure and incidents of delinquent behaviors."
Pittsburgh researcher Herbert Needleman, using his own group of children who had lead poisoning, reached similar conclusions. He found juvenile delinquents are five times more likely than other children to have elevated lead levels. Lead exposure in early childhood may have played an important role in the national epidemic of violent crime in the late 20th century and the dramatic decline of crime rates over the past decade, said Rick Nevin, an economist for the National Center for Healthy Housing in Washington. Nevin, hired by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the early 1990s to do a cost-benefit analysis of removing lead paint from public housing, said he was stunned to discover a strong relationship between the use of leaded gasoline and violent crime. "The statistics show lead has had a significant impact on crime," he said.
Dietrich knows skeptics might say, "Well, the people grew up in Over-the-Rhine and the West End, so they're more likely to commit crimes." But he said the study was adjusted for social class, quality of care they got as children, nurturing they received and their mother's use of alcohol, drugs and cigarettes. Children in the highest lead group on average said they committed five more act of delinquency over the last year than children with the lowest levels.
"There are a lot of causes of crime," Dietrich said. "These children are already living in environments with social forces that are conducive to crime. Then, on top of that, their central nervous systems are being attacked by lead, which reduces their ability to resist those forces. "The city needs to act when they are children, not when they're adults committing crime," he said.
by Asle Hansen, Oslo Dagbladet
June 23, 2006
http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2006/06/23/469714.html
In the spring of 2003, Dagbladet commenced a series of articles about toxic organophosphates in turbine and hydraulic oils after the trade union OFS, now SAFE, had raised the alarm at its 2002 annual congress, referring to a number of alarming incidents in international air traffic since the 1980s. Recently, Chris van Netten, Professor of Toxicology at the University of British Columbia in Canada, has made discoveries that reinforce suspicions that several thousand pilots and cabin crew throughout the world have incurred permanent neurological damage as a result of toxic gasses penetrating into the cabin air in connection with oil leaks in aircraft engines.
Found toxic substances in all aircraft
On 2 June, van Netten sent a disturbing letter to the Secretary of State for Transport, Douglas Alexander. Van Netten has analysed a number of roof filters from the cockpits of British-registered Boeing 757 airliners to determine whether they contain traces of the neurotoxin tricresylphosphate (TCP). The professor also analysed samples taken from the cabin walls of the same aircraft. The samples were sent to him by the British Air Line Pilots Association, BALPA. Van Netten has now raised the alarm after finding unmistakeable traces of TCP in all seven aircraft from which he received samples. TCP is known to cause paralysis and other permanent neurological damage in humans.
British and American investigations
As a result of Dagbladet's series of articles three years ago, the Norwegian National Institute of Occupational Health (STAMI) initiated a four-year research project in the autumn of 2003 which will cost NOK 5.2 million. Researchers from STAMI are currently monitoring the presence of toxic organophosphates in aero engines.
After several years of pressure by the Aviation Organophosphate Information Site (AOPIS), the American Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) has also initiated a research project which is to investigate so-called organophosphate poisoning in airline employees. AOPIS is a non-commercial international group of aviation personnel who wish to make airline staff aware of the hazards connected with toxic fumes originating either from oil leaks or electrical equipment. Several thousand cabin crew are believed to have sustained permanent damage as a result of such poisoning. AOPIS currently has about 1500 sufferers registered in its organisation.
The Ministry of Transport in the United Kingdom has also set up an investigative committee to look into the problem of contaminated cabin air. Chris van Netten is the FAA's senior physician in the American project. In his letter to the British Minister of Transport, he writes that the samples "quite clearly indicate that aircrew are exposed to these toxins in their working environment". Van Netten goes on to say that he hopes British authorities make this a high priority in their investigative work.
Hazard to air safety
The British Committee on Toxicity (COT) has asked Sarah Mackenzie-Ross, a neuropsychologist at University College London, to submit a report following a clinical study of 27 pilots. This report also adds weight to the hypothesis that compounds resembling nerve gas in cabin and flight deck air have caused irreparable neurological damage in aircrew. The report indicates that cognitive failure in exposed pilots is a significant safety hazard. 20 of the 27 pilots were subjected to fat and blood analyses. All showed traces of one or more toxic organic compounds such as benzene and toluene, while traces of nickel were found in all Boeing 757 pilots. The presence of the toxic organophosphate TCP was confirmed in three of the pilots.
The pilots were also subjected to 30 neuropsychological tests which revealed that the pilots' condition can have an effect on air safety. The pilots reported widespread cognitive failure after incidents involving contaminated onboard air: There were reports that pilots were unable to respond to simple instructions from the air trafic control and failed to follow procedures in connection with take-off and landing. Critical information about height, speed, course and altitude also escaped their notice.
"We're going to die"
Dagbladet has previously described the safety hazards connected with dangerous gasses in aircraft. More than three years ago, on 6 April 2003, the newspaper's headline read "Pilots knocked out by toxic gas". 73 human lives were at risk when Captain Niels Gomer and his co-pilot on flight BU925 between Stockholm and Malmö on 12 November 1999 were overcome by a toxic gas on the flight deck during their landing approach to Malmö. Within a period of a few seconds, both experienced severe dizziness and nausea. Fortunately the co-pilot revived quickly enough to get the aircraft, a BAe 146, with 73 people aboard, safely down to earth.
"There's no doubt that this was the worst thing I've experienced in my whole life. Once I began to feel ill, things happened extremely quickly. If I hadn't managed to get my oxygen mask on in 15 seconds, I would never have succeeded in getting it on. I was so ill that I couldn't even lift an arm," said Niels Gomer to Dagbladet in 2003.
The airline captain said that he was frightened to death every time he flew for a whole year after the incident, and did not hide the fact that the incident could have had fatal consequences. "If we had been closer to the ground when my co-pilot and I became incapacitated, things could have gone seriously wrong. The aircraft could not have landed itself," said Niels Gomer.
The worst of it for him was that they didn't know what was happening to them. An engine fire, for example, is something specific which we have been trained to handle, but we had never heard of anything like this, and didn't realise that we were being intoxicated before we were really ill." "My first thought was "We're going to die here -- all 73 of us," said the captain. Both the cabin personnel and the 68 passengers on board were severely affected by the unknown toxic gas after landing.
Passengers like zombies
All the passengers were remarkably subdued and some were asleep. "Several of them were tired and had itchy skin. Others were so deeply asleep that it was difficult to wake them up," said Captain Gomer. "According to the crew, several of the passengers were in a zombie-like condition," stated aircraft accident investigator Olle Lundström to Dagbladet. According to the Swedish Aircraft Accident Investigation Board, the incident must have been caused by toxic gas following an oil leak. Turbine oil used in jet engines contains toxic organophosphates which may become converted into nerve gas at high temperature.
Nerve gas
The turbine oil in aero engines contains chemical substances which can develop into compounds resembling nerve gas at high temperature. Halvor Erikstein, an industrial hygienist in SAFE has learned a lot about how dangerous these toxic chemicals can be: "In the event of strong heating, chemical compounds can be formed which act as nerve gasses similar to those developed for chemical warfare. It is believed that this can have contributed to the poisoning of airline crew members," says Erikstein to Dagbladet.
by Ad Crable, Lancaster [Pennsylvania] New Era
June 23, 2006
http://local.lancasteronline.com/4/23676
LANCASTER COUNTY, PA -- Lancaster County's farm fields and rivers have not escaped the fallout of mercury. A state-run monitoring station near Millersville has measured mercury levels here among the highest in the state. Of eight sampling sites around the state, the average level of mercury here over the last two years was the third highest.
In an interview this week, state Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen McGinty cautioned that the agency likes to have multiple years of data before drawing conclusions, as just two years of mercury readings can be influenced by the vagaries of weather. But high levels of mercury found in fish in local waterways is evidence that vaporized mercury is falling into the soil and waters here. Because of mercury buildups, anglers are advised against eating more than two meals a month of rock bass caught in the Conestoga River from the Millersville area down to the river's mouth at Safe Harbor. Similarly, walleye caught from the Susquehanna in the Conewago Falls area off Conoy Township should not be eaten more than twice a month.
Fish captured by the state at those two locations were ground up and their tissue measured for mercury. They were found with mercury at more than twice the level the state begins recommending restricted meals. Since 2001, the state, in fact, has sought to limit the eating of all fish caught in Pennsylvania waters because of mercury, PCBs and other long-lasting contaminants. Consumption warnings due to mercury also extend above the water. The Pennsylvania Game Commission warns hunters against eating mergansers, a duck that dives for fish.
DEP officials warn that areas most likely to get the highest buildups of mercury contamination are those within 90 miles downwind of power plants. Deposits accumulate in the water, building up in fish, and in the soil, where it is taken up by grains, milk and particularly in the livers of cows, DEP says. Just upwind from Lancaster County, on the shoreline of the Susquehanna in York County, is PPL's Brunner Island coal-fired power plant. Brunner Island was the 110th-largest source of mercury in the country in 2003, and eighth-largest source in Pennsylvania, according to the federal Toxic Release Inventory. The plant released 272 pounds of mercury that year. The facility is adjacent to the area of the Susquehanna where high levels of mercury have been found in walleye fish.
Last year, PPL announced it was installing coal "scrubbers" to comply with new air-pollution controls on sulfur dioxide and particulate matter. The scrubbers, to be working in 2008 or 2009, also will reduce mercury emissions, the company said. Until recent years, the major sources of mercury emissions in the U.S. were hospital and trash incinerators. Municipal-waste incinerators released mercury from burning batteries, fluorescent lightbulbs, old thermometers and other mercury-containing waste. Lancaster County's trash-to-steam incinerator in Conoy Township along the Susquehanna, just downstream of Brunner Island, emitted an estimated 200 pounds of mercury in 1998, according to the Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority. But federal controls mandated for all municipal and medical-waste incinerators resulted in $2.5 million worth of mercury-cleansing equipment at the county incinerator that year. In 2004, mercury emissions had fallen to 4.5 pounds, a 98-percent reduction.
In a voluntary move to keep mercury out of the trash before it gets to the incinerator, the authority now recycles old thermometers, batteries and fluorescent bulbs at its drive-through Household Hazardous Waste facility on Harrisburg Pike. "We do as good a job at controlling mercury emissions as anybody in the country," says James Warner, the authority's executive director.
Other local sources of mercury emissions listed by the state include Armstrong's ceiling plant in Marietta. In 2002, the plant emitted 2 pounds of mercury. Armstrong's floor plant in Lancaster also released about 2 pounds that year, but the plant has since closed.
Earlier this year, the University of North Carolina-Asheville announced the results of a nationwide study of mercury levels found in the hair of 6,600 women of childbearing age -- developmental damage to fetuses is the biggest concern of mercury poisoning. One in five women was found to have mercury levels exceeding what the federal government considers safe. Of six women tested in Lancaster County, two had mercury levels in their hair above the safe level.
by Michael Milstein, Portland Oregonian
June 24, 2006
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1151115921164470.xml&coll=7
Battered for not doing enough to limit toxic mercury releases, Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality will develop a new, tougher strategy to control mercury from Portland General Electric's coal-fired power plant near Boardman. DEQ officials said they were responding to a backlash against their mercury-control proposal, which critics blasted as one of the weakest in the nation. "The reaction against our current proposal has been very strong," said William Knight, a DEQ spokesman. "We're basically going to be starting over." Stephanie Hallock, the agency's director, decided on the reversal of course, he said.
A new federal mandate requires states to limit mercury from coal-burning power plants, the largest national source of the toxic compound that contaminates the food chain. Mercury collecting in women's bodies, mainly from the consumption of fish, can lead to learning disorders in their children. But the DEQ proposal went barely beyond the minimum federal standards -- also under criticism as too weak -- and fell short of the limits many other states are pursuing.
The initial DEQ approach, the subject of public hearings this week, allowed the PGE plant to continue releasing mercury as long as it offsets the releases by purchasing credits from cleaner coal plants elsewhere. The company would have until 2018 to install mercury controls that would cut the plant's mercury emissions by at least 60 percent.
Many other states are considering tighter controls on earlier deadlines, according to a national association of air-quality regulators. For instance, Washington and Montana are expected to call for 80 percent reductions in emissions. Some states also are refusing to allow plants to offset their mercury emissions by purchasing credits, forcing them to install controls instead. Additionally, an alliance of states has sued the federal government for not requiring tougher mercury-control standards. Mercury occurs naturally in many earth sources, but a significant amount of airborne mercury falls with rain to waterways and the ocean, contaminating fish.
Many of those speaking this week at public hearings in Oregon blasted the department for weighing the costs to PGE of controlling mercury more heavily than the benefits to the public. They said the agency should have more closely examined the public health consequences of mercury emissions. PGE officials say mercury-control technologies remain in early stages of development. They said that when they install controls, they want them to be as effective as possible.
But others said control technologies are available and are being used in other states. Critics who hammered the DEQ's proposal said they were pleased the agency was reconsidering. "The agency just seems completely unwilling to lead on matters that are important issues of public health," said Mark Riskedahl of the Northwest Environmental Defense Center. "Maybe they've finally realized they've strayed too far."
Oregon's largest source of mercury emissions is a cement kiln in the Eastern Oregon town of Durkee that is not subject to any mercury-control regulations. Former Gov. John Kitzhaber, a physician, directed the DEQ in 1999 to eliminate by 2020 releases of mercury statewide. But the agency concluded in 2002 that it could not meet the goal.
The comment period on the DEQ's initial coal-plant control proposal will end Monday. The agency then will issue a more stringent mercury-control proposal in mid-July for another round of public review, Knight said. "We need to re-evaluate in light of what we have heard and come up with a proposal that is more amenable to the people of Oregon," he said. He said many people made clear in their comments that the DEQ's call for reducing mercury emissions 60 percent by 2018 is not good enough. "They really don't want any mercury," he said. "They're not so concerned about what it costs."
by Marla Cone, Los Angeles Times
June 23, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-autism23jun23,1,732425.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
Children with autism disorders in the San Francisco Bay Area were 50% more likely to be born in neighborhoods with high amounts of several toxic air contaminants, particularly mercury, according to a first-of-its-kind study by the California Department of Health Services. The new findings, which surprised the researchers, suggest that a mother's exposure to industrial air pollutants while pregnant might increase her child's risk of autism, a neurological condition increasingly diagnosed in the last 10 years. But the scientists cautioned that the link they found in the Bay Area is uncertain and that more definitive evidence would be needed before concluding that mercury or any other pollutant could trigger autism.
Gayle Windham, the study's lead researcher and senior epidemiologist in the department's environmental health investigations branch, called it "a single small study" and "a first look" at whether toxic pollutants play a role in the neurological disorder, which is often marked by poor verbal and communication skills and withdrawal from social interaction.
Scientists have long wondered if the surge in diagnoses is due, in part, to environmental causes. Some of the increase comes from growing doctor and parent awareness, but experts say that cannot explain all of it. "Clearly this suggests that there may be correlations between autism onset and environmental exposures, especially as it relates to metal exposures," said Isaac Pessah, a toxicologist who heads UC Davis' Center for Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention. Pessah, who was not involved in the study, is also a researcher at the university's MIND (Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders) Institute, which studies autism. "It would be prudent to reserve judgment until we see if this study can be replicated and whether it's of general significance" by looking for the same link outside the Bay Area, he said.
About 300,000 U.S. children have been diagnosed with autism and often need special education. The study compared 284 children from six Bay Area counties who were diagnosed as having so-called autism spectrum disorders -- which include a less-severe syndrome called Asperger's -- with 657 children from the same counties without the disorders. All were born in 1994. The scientists reviewed data for 19 hazardous air pollutants that are known or suspected neurotoxins: chemicals that have a toxic effect on the brain.
They found that the children with the autism disorders were 50% more likely than the non-autistic children to be born in areas with higher estimated levels of three metals and two chlorinated solvents: mercury, cadmium, nickel, trichloroethylene and vinyl chloride. No significant link was found with 14 other solvents and metals, including compounds such as lead, benzene and chromium. The national autism rate is six children per 1,000, so a 50% increase would elevate that rate to nine per 1,000. The biggest increase came with heavy metals including mercury, a pollutant from power plants, factories and mines that can disrupt brain development.
The Bay Area was chosen for the study because extensive data are readily available there because of a federally funded program to count and track autistic children. The region's toxic air pollution is considered typical for urban areas. San Francisco County had the highest estimated levels of metals and solvents, including mercury, and Marin County had the lowest of those studied. But the researchers did not compare autism prevalence by county.
In their report, published online Wednesday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, the authors said their research "suggests that living in areas with higher ambient levels of hazardous air pollutants, particularly metals and chlorinated solvents, during pregnancy or early childhood, may be associated with a moderately increased risk of autism. These findings illuminate the need for further scientific investigation, as they are biologically plausible but preliminary and require confirmation."
The study is the first to look for a connection between autism among children and levels of hazardous air pollutants at birth. Last year, scientists who compared volumes of industrial mercury emissions in Texas with autism in schoolchildren reported a similar link. Autism is believed to start in the womb, early in pregnancy, when the brain develops. Genetic factors determine who is susceptible, but experts theorize that environmental factors contribute. The new study found that mercury was the "most significant correlation with autism," Pessah said, "but every family may not be affected the same way because of their genetic makeup."
Many parents of autistic children blame vaccines that contained a type of mercury called thimerosal. Expert reviews have found no link between vaccines and autism, but some scientists do not consider them definitive. No assumptions about vaccines can be made on the basis of the air pollution study. "Mercury in the air is a different type than in vaccines," Windham said.
The new study examined elemental mercury, which is released into the air from coal-burning power plants, chlorine factories and gold mines. It spreads globally and builds up in food chains, particularly in oceans. Levels of mercury are increasing in many parts of the world, largely from power plants in China and India. The researchers had not expected to be able to discern a relationship between autism and the air pollution data. The five metals and solvents are common industrial pollutants, but air is only one source of exposure, because they also contaminate water and food.
Some experts say that if there is a link between mercury and autism, it most likely comes from fish consumption, the main route of mercury exposure. A 20-year, ongoing study in Denmark's Faroe Islands has shown that children have slightly reduced intelligence when mothers consumed excessive mercury in seafood.
The largest limitation or uncertainty in the Bay Area study is that the pollution data did not come from measurements of compounds to which the mothers were actually exposed. Instead, they were based on estimates calculated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency using computer modeling of industrial emissions. Windham said that "there could be other explanations" for the link they found. For example, it could be that women who live in the worst-polluted areas also smoke more or eat more contaminated seafood. The scientists did not track down the mothers to compare lifestyles.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University's School of Public Health are conducting a similar study in the Baltimore area to see if they replicate the findings.
by Mike Taugher, Contra Costa [California] Times
June 22, 2006
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/14881811.htm
SACRAMENTO -- State regulators on Thursday extended by five years a highly controversial program designed to rein in historically unregulated pesticides and other pollutants that wash off millions of acres of California farms. Environmentalists, who came into the meeting furious over the proposal, left somewhat mollified after winning a series of concessions. Farmers came to the meeting thinking they had struck a deal with regulators. They were miffed by the changes, particularly one that will allow regulators to collect the names of individual farm "dischargers" to help track pollution. "They've created a big problem by asking for both maps and lists (of farmers)," said Bill Thomas, who represents a coalition of southern San Joaquin Valley farmers. "Some of the members might say screw it if I'm going to have to subject myself to that."
The 3-year-old program is attempting, for the first time, to regulate water pollution on farms, dairies and other agricultural businesses whose runoff eventually drains to the Delta. It was set to expire at the end of this month. Underscoring the difficulty of developing the program from scratch, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board does not even know how many agriculture businesses it oversees or how many acres they cover. The board estimated the figure at somewhere between 8 million and 10 million acres; the number of businesses that will be regulated is somewhere between 25,000 and 80,000, with state regulators saying the number is at the high end of that range.
The program, called "conditional waivers," encourages agricultural dischargers to voluntarily join watershed coalitions, which are meant to monitor water quality, isolate pollution problems and develop cleanup plans. Farmers who do not join the coalitions will face compliance with the program's requirements on their own -- meaning they would have to pay individually for monitoring and cleanup -- or face strict enforcement of water quality laws.
But three years into the program, only 43 percent of the farms in the region have signed up, according to a recent report by the Legislative Analyst's Office that was critical of the program. "While still a form of regulation, 'conditional waivers' provide a less stringent method of regulation" than is normally required for polluters, the LAO said.
But regulators said building a sprawling new program would be daunting, and that the waivers offer a more efficient way of getting cleaner water. "This is a group that's never been regulated before (for water pollution)," said Liz Kanter, a spokesman for the state water board. "We want to say, work with us."
In a 5-2 vote, the regional board approved a five-year extension of the program and vowed to get more aggressive in removing farm pollution from the valley's rivers and streams. "I don't know if that message has been expressed loud and clear," from the board's governing panel to regulators, said board executive officer Pamela Creedon. "It's loud and clear now."
In response to testimony from dozens of residents of poor communities that rely on wells, many of whom traveled hundreds of miles to attend the hours-long hearing, the board said it would also soon address groundwater pollution. One of those residents, retired nurse Ruth Martinez, held up a plastic bottle filled with foul greenish-black water she said came from a faucet in her community of Ducor, about 32 miles north of Bakersfield. "The water in the valley is being poisoned by agriculture and dairies," Martinez said.
The two board members who voted against continuation of the waivers program, which conditionally excuses agriculture from traditional pollution permit requirements, said they did not think the plan was effective. "I'm not persuaded that this approach can work," said board member Christopher Cabaldon. Board chairman Robert Schneider also expressed frustration with its lack of progress, but still voted to continue the program. "What you heard today was a very strong commitment from the board that we need to move to an enforcement mode to make this work," Schneider said. "Why should people who thumb their noses at us get a free ride?"
In addition to requiring farm coalitions to turn over membership lists, the board also said it could ask for digitized maps from the coalitions. It also set a Dec. 31 deadline for farmers to join a coalition or face the board's rules individually. The board also said it would require cleanup plans to be developed if river monitoring turns up water quality violations. "I think it is a significant step forward," said Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, who before the changes had vowed to sue over the plan. "We don't believe it goes far enough, but we'll have to consider our options."
by Mimi Hall, USA TODAY
June 22, 2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-06-22-chemical-trains_x.htm
At least a half-dozen U.S. cities are considering a ban or limit on rail shipments of deadly chemicals in an effort to prevent terrorists from turning tank cars into weapons of mass destruction. The restrictions would apply to rail cars carrying lethal chemicals through populated neighborhoods. Rail industry figures show that 1.7 million carloads of hazardous material are shipped along the nation's tracks each year. "I cannot imagine an easier way for al-Qaeda to fulfill its goal than to take out a (chlorine-filled) tank car," says Fred Millar, an environmentalist who helped get a ban passed in Washington, D.C., last year, the nation's first. The rail industry is fighting the ban in court. Among the other cities that might ban or limit shipments: Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Las Vegas and Buffalo.
President Bush's former deputy homeland security director, Richard Falkenrath, and Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., warned Congress last year of the danger posed by the rail transport of chemicals. About 100,000 carloads of hazardous material being hauled each year contain "toxic-by-inhalation" chemicals that could quickly form a devastating cloud over a city. According to the U.S. Naval Research Lab, 100,000 people could be killed or injured in one attack.
The rail industry opposes cities' efforts to reroute trains because longer routes increase the chance of accidents and injuries, says Peggy Wilhide of the Association of American Railroads. In Cleveland, Councilman Matthew Zone wants rail companies to send toxic shipments through less populated neighborhoods. "There are in excess of a million people living and working less than a quarter-mile" from toxic cars, he says. "There's a lot of concern."
William Flynn of the Homeland Security Department says security assessments have been conducted along tracks in five cities. Flynn acknowledges the measures may not stop a terrorist attack. "We can reduce risk," he says. "We can't eliminate it."
from the Swampscott [Massachusetts] Reporter
June 22, 2006
http://www2.townonline.com/swampscott/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=520578
Advocates and consumers gathered Tuesday at Wild Oats in Medford to applaud the store for posting warning signs informing customers that certain fish may contain toxic levels of mercury. A new "Green List," a directory of stores across the country that are posting signs at seafood counters, compiled by Clean Water Action and Oceana, will encourage shoppers to patronize the stores owned by companies that are protecting their customers' health.
In 2004, the Food and Drug Administration issued an advisory informing citizens that certain types of seafood contained high levels of methylmercury, a chemical known to damage the nervous system, especially in children and the developing fetus. The Swampscott Board of Health was listening and it, led by then-chairman Dr. Lawrence Block, soon required the signs at restaurants and markets selling certain kinds of fish here in town. The FDA advised women of childbearing age and children not to eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel or tilefish and to limit consumption of all other fish to 12 ounces (two average meals) a week, including no more than six ounces of albacore tuna or tuna steaks. Some supermarket chains including Wild Oats, Safeway and Whole Foods, have independently required their stores to post signs bearing this advice.
Many national chains were officially contacted by Oceana, an international conservation organization working to fulfill "the consumer's right to know about mercury in fish." Most, however, have not taken that warning-sign step, according to Oceana spokespeople. "When pregnant women or women of childbearing age are walking up to fish counters and unknowingly purchasing high mercury fish for themselves or their young children, we have a problem," said Elizabeth Saunders, Mercury Campaign organizer for Clean Water Action. "Most stores know that swordfish or tuna could be high in mercury and yet they sell it without warnings. It's great that Wild Oats is on the Green List; it shows that the store really values customers' health."
Customers will also find similar signs when they shop for fish in Swampscott. Since 2004, the Board of Health has required local restaurants and grocery stores, including a Stop & Shop and a Whole Foods, to post warnings about mercury in fish at fish counters and on menus. "We are proud of our Board of Health for choosing people, standing on principle, and taking this step," said Smilia Marvosh, a resident of Swampscott and member of the North Shore environmental group C.H.A.I.N. (Coalition for the Health of Aggregate Industries Neighbors). "We have a right to know what's in the food we eat, and we are glad that this is recognized in Swampscott so that we have this information readily available to us."
Clean Water Action and Oceana said their mission is not to discourage people from eating fish. They argue that shoppers should be able to make informed choices for themselves and their families. While the warning is targeted mainly toward women and children, studies suggest that mercury can contribute to neurological, cardiovascular and immune problems even in adults who are heavy fish eaters. "Posting the signs is an easy and inexpensive, common-sense way to fulfill shoppers' right to know what is in the food they buy and prepare for their families," said Jackie Savitz, director of Oceana's Campaign to Stop Seafood Contamination.
Clean Water Action is a national citizens' organization working for clean, safe and affordable water, prevention of health-threatening pollution, creation of environmentally-safe jobs and businesses, and empowerment of people to make democracy work. Oceana is an international organization working to protect the world's oceans.
by Robert Cohen, Newark Star-Ledger
June 22, 2006
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-3/1150951632260560.xml&coll=1
WASHINGTON -- A congressional investigative agency warned yesterday that the federal government still has no realistic ability to make sure that high-risk chemical plants are protected against terrorist attack. The Government Accountability Office said the existing law provides the Department of Homeland Security with "only limited authority to address security concerns at U.S. chemical facilities" that could potentially endanger millions of Americans.
In a report to Congress, the GAO said the government must rely on voluntary industry actions that so far have been inconsistent, and cannot even enter most chemical facilities without their permission to assess security or to impose any needed improvements. "As a result, DHS cannot ensure that high-risk facilities are assessing their vulnerabilities to terrorist attacks and taking corrective actions where necessary," said the GAO. "Given that the nation's chemical facilities pose significant risks and the extent of their security preparedness is largely unknown, legislation giving DHS the authority to require the chemical industry to address security at their plants is long overdue." DHS has identified 3,400 facilities that, if attacked, could present the greatest hazard to human life and health.
Congress has been debating chemical plant security since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but legislation repeatedly has stalled because of opposition from the chemical industry. Last week, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved a bill that would give DHS power to establish and enforce mandatory security standards at chemical plants. The plants would be required to conduct vulnerability assessments and develop site security and emergency response plans. In addition, the measure would give the department authority to shut down facilities that do not meet the new standards. The fate of the legislation in the full Senate and in the House remains uncertain, with little time remaining on the election-year legislative calendar.
The Senate measure was criticized by environmental groups, which want a requirement that facilities substitute safer chemicals and processes when practical to lessen the potential consequences of a terror attack. An amendment backed by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) to impose a safe technology requirement was rejected by the committee.
Yesterday, New Jersey Environmental Protection Commissioner Lisa Jackson told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that the state has its own strong chemical security law that includes safer technology provisions. She said the regulation covers 157 facilities. But Jackson said it is imperative for the federal government to enact its own law. "While New Jersey is doing its part, we renew our call for federal standards and protections that will reinforce our work, ensure a level playing field for firms operating in New Jersey and provide equivalent protection from facilities that operate near our borders," said Jackson.
She emphasized that any federal law should not preempt state standards that might be stronger. "I must emphasize that given New Jersey's demonstrated attractiveness as a target for terrorism, our state must have the discretion to impose stricter requirements, when necessary, to adequately safeguard our citizens," she said.
by Peter Calamai, Toronto Star
June 22, 2006
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1150927811490&call_pageid=968332188774&col=968350116467
OTTAWA -- Ontario should expand nuclear power by more than 50 per cent over the next four decades as a key part of a made-in-Canada climate change plan, a blue-ribbon national advisory group urged yesterday. The recommendation would add more than 9,000 megawatts of electricity generation to Ontario's current installed capacity of 14,000 megawatts. By contrast, the energy blueprint unveiled last week by the McGuinty government froze total nuclear generation in the province at 14,000 megawatts until 2025, with one or two new reactors added solely to replace old units that shut down.
Glen Murray, chairman of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, said more nuclear was necessary to meet a goal of slashing Canada's energy-related greenhouse gas emissions to 40 per cent of current levels by 2050. This could be done despite a doubling of both Canada's population and economic activity, including massive increases in energy exports, mainly from Alberta's oil sands. "We see nuclear power as a bridge. Some of our members didn't like the idea of more nuclear fuel waste but if we don't solve the climate change problem, a lot of other issues like that become inconsequential," he told the Toronto Star.
Murray said federal Environment Minister Rona Ambrose has already welcomed the group's proposed approach to reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other man-made greenhouse gases, the chief cause of global warming over the last half-century. "We're singing to the choir when we talk with her," Murray told a news conference here that released the group's report.
The key recommendations include:
Set up in 1994, the independent Round Table includes 14 members appointed by the federal cabinet from the top ranks of business, labour, environmental groups, municipalities and aboriginal communities. It produced several reports about climate change at the request of the previous Liberal federal government. In an interview, Murray said the extra nuclear power in Ontario could be added in three ways -- new nuclear reactors, restarting mothballed reactors and upgrading existing power stations as they are replaced. If the 9,000 megawatts of additional nuclear power came entirely from new installations, it would require 17 more reactors like those at the Pickering nuclear power plant near Toronto. The largest Candu reactors on the drawing boards are 1,000 megawatts, so nine of those would be required to meet the target.
Asked about the difference between the Ontario government's plan and the round table's proposal, Murray said his group was taking a longer-term view of Canada's need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It did not look into meeting Kyoto targets by 2012. "This is a huge issue. There isn't yet an understanding among most people of the seriousness of the challenge we're facing on this planet," he said. Having sketched out what can be done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the advisory group is now investigating how the reductions can be accomplished.
Murray dodged questions about a carbon tax or legislated limits on emissions. "This is not a plan. It's a scenario on which a plan can be built," he said. Murray also said the round table had not looked at environmental fallout from expanded oil sands operations beyond controlling greenhouse gases. At present, producing a barrel of synthetic oil from the tar sands uses between three and five barrels of water. Yet Alberta is facing major water shortages, partly caused by climate change.
by Fred Pearce, New Scientist
June 22, 2006
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025574.000-kyoto-promises-are-nothing-but-hot-air.html
MANY governments, including some that claim to be leading the fight against global warming, are harbouring a dirty little secret. These countries are emitting far more greenhouse gas than they say they are, a fact that threatens to undermine not only the shaky Kyoto protocol but also the new multibillion-dollar market in carbon trading. Under Kyoto, each government calculates how much carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide its country emits by adding together estimated emissions from individual sources. These so-called "bottom-up" estimates have long been accepted by atmospheric scientists, even though they have never been independently audited.
Now two teams that have monitored concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere say they have convincing evidence that the figures reported by many countries are wrong, especially for methane. Among the worst offenders are the UK, which may be emitting 92 per cent more methane than it declares under the Kyoto protocol, and France, which may be emitting 47 per cent more.
Peter Bergamaschi of the European Commission Joint Research Centre at Ispra, Italy, used an alternative "top-down" technique to study emissions across Europe. His technique is to measure in detail how concentrations of greenhouse gases vary across the globe. Levels are generally higher near major sources such as industrial centres, and when weather conditions trap the pollution. They are lower near natural "sinks" such as cold areas of ocean. Concentrations can also vary widely depending on factors such as the weather. Over London, for example, methane levels vary from 1800 parts per billion (ppb), the global background level, on windy days to upwards of 3000 ppb when local emissions from landfills and gas pipelines are trapped by cold night air.
By measuring these differences and tracking air movements, the scientists say they can calculate a country's emissions independently of government estimates. Bergamaschi's calculations suggest that the UK emitted 4.21 million tonnes of methane in 2004 compared to the 2.19 million tonnes it declared, while France emitted 4.43 million tonnes compared to the 3.01 million tonnes it declared. Methane is an extremely powerful greenhouse gas. While it persists in the atmosphere for only one-tenth as long as CO2, its immediate warming effect, tonne for tonne, is around 100 times greater. According to some estimates, methane is responsible for a third of current global warming, and reductions in methane emissions may be the quickest and cheapest way of slowing climate change.
Bergamaschi's figures are based on real atmospheric measurements that integrate emissions over large areas. While he admits that they cannot be entirely accurate, they are free from some of the sources of error that apply to national declared figures, which are based on uncertain extrapolations from sites such as landfills, whose emissions are highly variable.
During the course of Bergamaschi's study, the German government revised its estimate of national methane emissions upwards by some 70 per cent, placing it close to his estimate. The British and French governments continue to stick with their low estimates. Bergamaschi told New Scientist that the UK appears to be badly under-reporting methane bubbling out of landfill sites, while France's emissions seem to be generally under-reported. On the other hand, Ireland and Finland may be overestimating emissions from peat bogs.
Bergamaschi's calculations are supported by a similar study led by Euan Nisbet of Royal Holloway University of London, who is a member of the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW), a network of atmospheric scientists organised by the UN's World Meteorological Organization. Nisbet estimates that methane emissions in the London area in the late 1990s were 40 to 80 per cent higher than declared by the government at the time. Both scientists believe that countries outside Europe are also likely to be under-reporting their emissions, and that the problem is global. "We know the total global emissions well enough, but individual national numbers may be badly out. Some are too big and some are too small," Nisbet says.
In the past, he says, estimates of greenhouse gas emissions were inaccurate simply because of the difficulty of measuring them, but that may have changed. "Now that money enters the picture, with the Kyoto protocol rules and carbon trading, so also can fraud. There will be an incentive to under-report emissions." Nisbet, Bergamaschi and other scientists now want to create a global system for auditing emissions claims by directly measuring concentrations of greenhouse gases in the air.
"Now that money enters the picture with carbon trading, so does fraud. The incentive will be to under-report emissions"Most existing monitoring sites are intended to measure background gas levels in clean ocean and mountain air. The oldest and most famous is on top of Mauna Loa in Hawaii, where US researcher David Keeling first proved half a century ago that CO2 levels in the air were rising. The network now run by GAW is far from comprehensive: it includes just one station in China, sited on the relatively unpolluted Tibetan plateau, while India's sole site is in the unpolluted mountainous Ladakh region. There is no continuous monitoring in inland Africa, and only a few stations in South America and south-east Asia. Yet these regions support more than half the world's population and are responsible for a growing proportion of its greenhouse gas emissions.
Some western governments, say the scientists, have been reluctant to set up permanent monitoring stations. "Of all the G8 nations, the UK does the least," says Nisbet, who runs the only permanent monitoring point in England, from his lab near Egham, on the south-western fringes of London. The longest-running CO2 monitoring point on British soil, in the Shetland Islands, was run by Australia till 2001 and is now funded by Germany. France runs a network of monitors on its remote island territories round the world, but the UK government refuses pleas for it to do likewise on territories such as Ascension Island or South Georgia in the remote South Atlantic, or the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. The European Union recently shut down its pioneering programme of measuring atmospheric methane across the continent. "Ironically, the best monitoring is done by the US and Australia, which are both in denial over Kyoto," Nisbet says.
The GAW scientists say that a global greenhouse gas monitoring network should provide open access to the information it collects. Only then, they say, will it be possible to do independent calculations to discover who is emitting what, and test which countries are complying with Kyoto and making accurate claims about their emissions. Until such a network is in place, it will be all too easy for nations such as the UK to talk green while acting dirty.
by Li Fangchao, China Daily
June 22, 2006
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2006-06/22/content_623152_2.htm
The country is expected to spend billions in the next decade to curb the problem of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), Xinhua quoted an environment official as saying yesterday in Beijing. Zhuang Guotai, deputy director of the Stockholm Convention Implementation Office under the State Environment Protection Administration, said that in order to fulfil the already-drafted implementation plan, the country will have to spend at least 34 billion yuan (US$4.25 billion) within the next decade. Zhuang said the number was just a "rough" figure and does not include the money needed to treat land that has been polluted by POPs.
POPs are chemicals that remain intact in the environment for long periods. They are widely distributed geographically and can accumulate in the fatty tissue of living organisms and are toxic to humans and wildlife, said Tang Xiaoyan, director of the Environmental Science Centre of the Peking University. "The reduction of a man's sperm count and the feminization of men are believed to be highly linked to POPs," she said.
The Stockholm Convention is an international agreement on POPs initiated in 2001. In implementing the Convention, governments will take measures to eliminate or reduce the release of POPs into the environment. According to the plan, by 2010, the country will have to ban the production and use of chlordane, mirex and DDT, three kinds of pesticides that are listed among the 12 kinds of POPs that need to be reduced in the Convention. And by 2015, the country will finish the work of proper treatment of the vast amount of obsolete electric power equipment, mainly transformers made with materials containing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a toxic substance that may contaminate the ground, Zhuang said.
Another goal is to try to stabilize the country's emission of dioxin by 2015, a carcinogenic substance that is mainly produced by incomplete burning of urban refuse or improper treatment of chemical waste through burning. Zhuang revealed that the draft plan will be submitted for approval by the State Council next month, and nationwide co-ordination work for its implementation has already kicked off.
China joined the Convention in 2001 and it began to be effective in 2004 after the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress approved it. Zhuang admitted that the country faces both opportunities and difficulties in meeting the goals. "Lack of related laws to regulate the treatment and control of POPs, unclear vision of the total amount of POPs, backward technology in pollutant emission reduction, lack of substitutes and shortage of funds are just a few of the problems we are facing," he said. "But through our implementation of the Convention, we can force domestic companies to upgrade their technology level and prod them to make changes in industrial structure in a more environment-friendly direction," he said.
by Alistair Gray, Edinburgh Scotsman
June 22, 2006
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=914692006
THEY grace the walls of hundreds of homes, a reassuring reminder of a bygone era. But now mercury barometers face being consigned to history thanks to a ruling drawn up by the European Union. The remnants of an industry in which Edinburgh once led the world face oblivion under the proposals, described as a "sledgehammer to crack a nut". The rules would not only ban the manufacture of new barometers but also forbid their repair and import.
Edinburgh antiques specialists said the rules were needless on safety grounds and would eventually lead to the demise of the much-loved collectibles. Mercury has the potential to be harmful, but only when people are exposed to it in large quantities. The UK's modern mercury barometer manufacturing firms face being wiped out under the proposals.
Michael Bennett-Levy, the owner of an Edinburgh-based firm that specialises in the technology of days gone by, said: "My customers, those that are very interested in antiques will be extraordinarily sad. This ban is complete nonsense. With mercury barometers it's not in any concentration that would ever be harmful." Mr Bennett-Levy, who runs Early Technology from his Old Craighall home, said: "This is a total absurdity. There are several million British people walking around with mercury fillings -- there's no sign of them having mercury poisoning." Mr Bennett-Levy, who holds a degree in Chemistry and Physics, said he had been handling with mercury himself for 40 years without any problem.
Renton Mein, owner of Potterrow barometer manufacturer Stevenson Reeves, recently switched production to the modern electronic version. But he said their mercury counterparts retain great sentimental value for enthusiasts. He said: "I think a ban would be completely disproportionate -- it's a sledgehammer to crack a nut. "The only risk would be if the mercury was spilt, or if someone ate it. "But these days they're all in enclosed cases anyway. The risk is very, very minor.
Scottish Conservative MEP Struan Stevenson is pressing for an exemption to the proposed legislation for the barometer industry. He said: "The art of manufacturing barometers first came to Edinburgh from Italy over 400 years ago and soon Edinburgh and London became world leaders in the trade. "I am urging my colleagues to seek an exemption from this legislation for barometers."
Edward Allen, owner of Russell Scientific, which is the one of the largest manufacturers of mercury barometers in the UK and is based in Norfolk, said his business faces ruin under the proposals. "It's typical and usual of Brussels not to consider what they're actually doing. I'm completely fed up with them. They think they know all about this -- they don't have a clue. "They've just decided they don't like Mercury and so have just decided to ban it. "They're forcing us out of a business that's been around since 1862."
There is considerable debate in the scientific community regarding the effects of mercury. The European legislation is designed to reduce the quantity of overall level of mercury amid concerns that the toxins could enter the food chain. The Commission argues that mercury and its compounds are highly toxic to humans, ecosystems and wildlife. A spokesman insisted that the proposals would not mean the end of specialist businesses since the ownership and sale of old mercury barometers will not be banned under the legislation. The Environment Committee in the European Parliament will meet to discuss the proposals at the start of July.
by Marla Cone, Los Angeles Times
June 22, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-me-teenair22jun22,0,5751258.story?coll=la-home-health
Teenagers in Los Angeles and New York City face a substantial -- and strikingly similar -- cancer risk from breathing the air, largely because of toxic chemicals inside their homes and schools, a new scientific study shows. For the research, 87 high school students, including 41 from Jefferson High School in South Los Angeles, wore backpacks equipped with air monitors that measured what each was exposed to throughout the day. Although outdoor air in both cities is heavily polluted, indoor air was responsible for 40% to 50% of the teenagers' cancer risk from the compounds measured.
The New York and Los Angeles teenagers were the only groups looked at in the study. They were exposed to virtually the same average concentrations of nearly all of the 19 carcinogens examined, according to the research by a Massachusetts consulting firm, Columbia University, UC Davis and the Harvard School of Public Health. "Given that we spend most of our time indoors, we're really affected by indoor sources. We use a lot of cleaners and we're exposed to off-gassing from furnishings," said Sonja Sax, the study's lead researcher and an associate at Gradient Corp., which specializes in risk science.
"There were two contaminants driving the risk," she said, "and they were mostly coming from indoors." Formaldehyde -- a colorless gas that wafts mostly from particleboard cabinets and shelving, plywood paneling and other pressed-wood furnishings -- was the biggest culprit by far, responsible for half of the Los Angeles teenagers' cancer risk. A chemical called 1,4-dichlorobenzene, used in solid deodorizers and mothballs, also posed a substantial cancer risk. "Some households had very, very high concentrations and others didn't have much at all," Sax said. The researchers suspect that toilet deodorizers were to blame.
Only one outdoor pollutant, benzene, found in car exhaust, contributed significantly to the risk, and much less so than formaldehyde and dichlorobenzene. Although 42% to 48% came from indoor sources, 24% came from outdoor sources. The source of an additional 32% to 36% could not be determined. The teenagers faced a risk from breathing the chemicals "in the same order of magnitude" as secondhand smoke, according to the study, published online last week in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. In Los Angeles, 513 teenagers per million exposed (equivalent to 1 of every 1,949) could contract cancer from the pollutants, and in New York, 687 per million.
For the Los Angeles teenagers, the researchers reported that the cancer threat was seven times higher than an estimate for the city used by the Environmental Protection Agency, which does not include the effects of indoor air. Most of the chemicals exceeded the 1-in-a-million cancer threat considered acceptable for air pollutants.
Thirteen of the 19 carcinogenic chemicals measured in the study were volatile organic compounds, which are highly evaporative, petroleum-based solvents. Six were metals, which are predominantly found outdoors and posed a much lower cancer risk than the volatile organic compounds. The study probably underestimated the threat because it did not monitor several dozen other air pollutants linked to cancer, including two major ones, diesel exhaust and gases called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from vehicles.
Forty-one students at Jefferson High School and 46 New York teenagers, largely from upper Manhattan and the Bronx and attending a west Harlem magnet school, participated in the study, conducted in 1999 and 2000. All were between the ages of 13 and 17 and most lived in apartments. In Los Angeles, all but two were Latino.
The teenagers wore the backpack monitors for 48-hour periods on weekdays, during two seasons. Air samplers were also put in their homes and schools. All the teenagers spent similar time indoors, on average 22 hours on weekdays. But while the New York teenagers commuted to school from around the city, mostly on subways, the Los Angeles teenagers lived within a few miles of Jefferson High and had little exposure to exhaust during commutes.
The major difference in the New York and Los Angeles exposures was chloroform, a gas that comes mostly from hot showers and other vaporization of chlorinated water. Its risk was nearly eight times higher for the New York City teenagers than the Los Angeles ones. The reasons are unknown; Sax said it could be differences in doses of chlorine added to water or in quantities of water used in the households. The New York teenagers also were exposed to slightly more butadiene, from auto exhaust, and perchloroethylene, used in dry cleaning. California has the nation's strictest standards for auto exhaust and the Los Angeles region has regulations limiting drycleaners' perchloroethylene emissions.
Indoor air pollution has long been considered a serious problem. Previous research by the California Air Resources Board and EPA has shown that indoor levels of several pollutants, such as formaldehyde, chloroform and styrene, are two to 50 times higher than outdoor levels. But state air quality and health officials have little or no power to regulate what is inside homes or schools. For instance, no agency has clear authority to ban formaldehyde in the glues and resins of wood furnishings. Instead, the Air Resources Board has established guidelines for schools to reduce formaldehyde exposure. "We've been nibbling around the edges of indoor air for some time but as of yet we don't have a lot of authority indoors, nor does anybody else," said air board spokesman Jerry Martin. "We think somebody needs to" have this legal authority "because the average Californian spends 80% of his time indoors."
A bill by Assemblywoman Sally Lieber (D-Mountain View) that would have required the air board to establish air quality guidelines and emission standards for indoor air pollutants was defeated last month amid opposition from business groups. In the last year, the Legislature has also rejected several bills that would ban certain toxic chemicals in plastics and other household products.
by Greg Lucas, San Francisco Chronicle
June 20, 2006
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/06/20/BAG1UJGR0B1.DTL&type=politics
Sacramento -- The country's largest faucet-makers came up short Monday in an attempt to kill a bill aimed at reducing lead used in their products, saying they were already working to reduce lead exposure in drinking water. Moen, Kohler and other major makers of faucets and pipes complained that it was impractical and expensive to lower lead content from a maximum 8 percent in pipes and 4 percent in faucets and fittings to .25 percent starting in January 2010. Supporters counter that materials can be substituted for lead and some manufacturers already meet the bill's standards.
Backers of the legislation, which include San Francisco and the East Bay Municipal Water District, insist lead is unsafe at any level. The neurotoxin is particularly harmful to children who get 14 percent to 20 percent of their exposure to lead from the water they drink. "It can cause a variety of adverse health effects," the bill's author Assemblywoman Wilma Chan, D-Oakland, told the Senate Environmental Quality Committee Monday. "We all know about lead."
Older pipes and fittings tend to have higher lead content, and manufacturers have been scaling back lead use in the wake of stricter federal government and state standards. Lead, which is present in brass and stainless steel, can leach off household pipes as water flows through them.
Most of Monday's hearing on the bill -- which the committee ultimately approved on a Democrat-Republican party-line vote of 5-2 -- focused on how lead levels were measured. Manufacturers preferred an existing performance-based test that determines how much comes out of the faucet. Chan's bill, AB1953, limits lead content in pipes, faucets and fittings.
Joel Smith, representing Wisconsin-based Kohler Co., told the committee his company's Coralais bathroom faucet would not be allowed under Chan's bill because of its lead content. However, the water flowing from the faucet contains less than one-tenth of the lead allowed under federal standards and less than one-fifth of the lead permitted under California's more restrictive limits, Smith said. "I also come here as the father of two preschool-age children," Smith told the committee. "Would I allow my kids to drink from cast brass faucets, which they do every day, if they were at risk?"
Chan said some studies worry that the performance-based test may not show the true level of lead emitted from faucets and pipes. The genesis of the bill, which now moves to the Senate Appropriations Committee, came from East Bay Municipal Utility District engineers, who urged the water district to reduce the lead exposure of its customers by replacing pipes, faucets and fittings.
San Francisco's Public Utility Commission has had a get-the-lead-out program since the early 1990s. It replaced 7,000 lead service pipes connecting its mains to houses and sold for $10 each, 3,000 lead-free Chicago brand faucets that normally retail for between $110 and $180. After replacing the lead service pipes, San Francisco conducted nearly 3,300 lead-in-water tests for households with poorer residents. After those tests, only nine locations warranted additional action. After replacing faucets and fittings, only one of those locations required further effort.
"We know there are lots of sources of lead exposure, particularly to children and pregnant women, and water is only one potential source," said Tony Winnicker, a spokesman for the Public Utility Commission. "But since we've begun our replacement program, we've seen measurably less lead -- although the amount in the beginning was rather small."
by Michael Milstein, Oregonian
June 20, 2006
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/115077213426180.xml&coll=7&thispage=1
As Oregon, with federal prodding, clamps down on mercury emitted by a Portland General Electric coal-fired power plant in Boardman, it leaves unregulated an Eastern Oregon factory that is a far larger source of the toxic compound. The state's biggest industrial source of airborne mercury is a cement kiln run by Kansas-based Ash Grove Cement Co. in the town of Durkee. Unaffected by federal laws aimed at coal-fired power plants, it released 632 pounds of mercury into the air in 2004, the last year when records are available, compared with 151 pounds emitted by PGE's facility. Mercury eventually falls out of the air -- often far away -- contaminating the food chain, including fish in many rivers and lakes.
But the cement company and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency say no cost-effective means is available to capture mercury coming from its plant. The EPA never has limited mercury emissions from cement kilns, though it has ordered states to begin doing so for coal plants. That prompted the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to draft new mercury control rules for the PGE coal plant near Boardman, the only one in Oregon. Activists at a public hearing Monday criticized that proposal -- which requires no controls until 2018 -- as one of the weakest in the nation.
But the state meanwhile has no means to address the greater volume of mercury exhaled by the cement kiln, which recently agreed to pay a $164,400 fine for a series of air-quality violations. "It is something we're looking at," said Patty Jacobs, who oversees the plant's permit. "It's not something we're regulating."
Federal authorities, facing lawsuits, are reconsidering whether to regulate cement kiln mercury. Andrew Ginsburg, head of Oregon DEQ's Air Quality Division, said if the federal government doesn't, the state will look at doing so. The situation reflects the uneven struggle to control one of the most troublesome kinds of fallout from coal-burning power plants, incinerators and other industrial facilities. It is a toxic heavy metal easily converted to a form that collects in plants, fish, and the animals and people that consume them.
Concern is especially focused on women because mercury disrupts the developing nervous system of their babies, leading to learning disabilities and other problems. At least one in 12 babies -- and possibly more -- born in the United States is at risk of developmental disorders because of mercury exposure, research shows. Airborne mercury drifts such long distances and lasts so long that officials say controlling it in Oregon will not solve the larger problem of mercury arriving from as far away as Asia, where roaring economies are rapidly sprouting new coal plants.
Much of the mercury entering the air in Oregon, meanwhile, ends up around the globe. An 2001 Oregon Environmental Council report estimated 3,600 to 10,600 pounds of mercury enter the air, water and land statewide each year. It identified the biggest probable sources as abandoned mercury mines that leak it into the water.
Former Gov. John Kitzhaber, a physician, in 1999 signed an executive order directing the DEQ to eliminate releases of mercury statewide by 2020. But the DEQ concluded by 2002 that it could not meet Kitzhaber's goal. New rules have reduced mercury emissions from medical waste incinerators in the last decade, and Oregon has outlawed many products containing mercury so they don't end up in landfills. The DEQ and PGE have sponsored collection efforts for thermostats and other products with mercury.
A national focus for mercury control is coal plants, which are believed responsible for 40 percent of human-caused mercury emissions nationwide. They are more numerous in the East, where they burn a type of coal that deposits more mercury nearby. It's also typically cheaper to control mercury from that coal than coal often burned in Western plants, officials say.
New EPA rules last year capped mercury emissions nationwide, giving each state a share. Plants that emit less than their share of the cap can sell credits to others that emit more. States are enacting the rules, some going further than EPA directed. Oregon largely is following EPA's lead. Starting in 2010 PGE either would have to control mercury from its Boardman plant or buy credits from other plants that have done so.
PGE would need to spend about $163,500 for enough credits to bring its 2004 emissions in line with the 2010 limit, DEQ estimates. Oregon goes slightly beyond what the EPA requires by insisting that the plant capture at least 60 percent of its mercury by 2018. But by that time the credits probably would be so expensive that PGE likely would opt to control its own mercury anyway, officials said.
The Boardman coal plant -- offline until July because of mechanical troubles -- is also under scrutiny for muddying skies in national forest wilderness areas, and as a suspected contributor to acid rain and fog in the Columbia River Gorge.
Other emissions
It faces likely limits on sulfur and nitrogen emissions that contribute to haze and acid problems. The DEQ estimates ratepayers would pay for mercury controls through rate increases of about one one-hundredth of 1 percent. But an alliance of state and local air-quality administrators says the EPA's mercury rules are too lax for adopting the "wacky" trading system instead of requiring real pollution controls on every plant. The Bush administration and utility industry are resisting efforts by some states to adopt tougher standards and earlier deadlines, said Bill Becker, the group's executive director. "There's this drumbeat of intimidation where they're making it very difficult and so, too, are the utilities," he said.
The EPA faces a lawsuit by 16 states -- not including Oregon -- that it's doing too little to control mercury. PGE officials say the DEQ's gradual proposal allows time for controls to improve. Control technology is in such an early stage today that "we wouldn't know what to buy," said Dennis Norton, PGE's manager of environmental services.
Rapid improvement
But Becker said mercury controls are improving rapidly and getting cheaper. Medical incinerators had no trouble controlling mercury on a far more rapid schedule, he said. "This technology is not rocket science," he said. "It's been controlled on other sources." The same point applies to cement kilns, he said. The EPA has been sued for failing to regulate mercury from kilns, and courts have ordered it to do so. But the federal agency maintains no cost-effective control methods are available. The only control options would force the plants to burn more fuel, reducing their efficiency, the EPA says.
The Durkee cement plant surfaced as Oregon's largest industrial source of mercury in the last few years. As recently as 2002 the DEQ estimated 301 pounds of mercury coming from all manufacturing plants in Oregon, including cement kilns. But new tests at the Durkee plant led its owner, Ash Grove, to report its plant alone put out 575 pounds of mercury in 2002. The company says more than 90 percent comes from traces of mercury in the local limestone heated to make cement, while the rest comes from coal burned to heat the kiln.
Result unclear
Whether the mercury ends up nearby or far away is unclear, DEQ officials said. "It's a disconnect," said James Pew, an attorney with Earthjustice, which won court orders directing the EPA to control emissions from cement kilns. "There's lots of attention being paid to power plants, but not cement kilns even though these cement kilns are just as bad or worse."
The EPA estimated the cost of controlling mercury would run $761,000 to $5.5 million a kiln and concluded that was too pricey for the amount of mercury that would be captured. The Portland Cement Association says it spends millions on research to reduce the industry's environmental footprint. Ash Grove recently agreed to pay $164,400 in penalties for air-quality violations the DEQ found at its Durkee plant. About $106,000 will go toward an air-monitoring project in Eastern Oregon, the DEQ said. The company has fixed the problems, the DEQ says.
The Oregon Environmental Council has pushed for tighter mercury controls in Oregon and said the kiln should be under scrutiny just like the coal plant. "We need more consistency," said Laura Weiss of the Oregon Environmental Council. "Yes, it costs money to control mercury. But what's it costing society to have all this mercury in our bodies in terms of learning disabilities and IQ points?"
by Beth DeFalco, Associated Press
June 20, 2006
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/103-06202006-672601.html
TRENTON, N.J. -- New Jersey Attorney General Zulima Farber filed a petition in federal court Monday on behalf of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and 14 other states challenging the federal Environmental Protection Agency's new mercury pollution rules. The petition asks a federal judge to reactivate a lawsuit filed last year on behalf of the states challenging a rule known as "cap-and-trade." That rule allows power plants to buy emissions reduction credits from plants whose emissions fall below target levels, rather than installing their own mercury emissions controls. It's scheduled to go into effect in 2010.
The lawsuit was put on hold in October after the EPA agreed to reconsider the rules. On May 31, the agency announced revisions, but none dealt with cap-and-trade. "After six months of stalling, EPA not only failed to address the grave dangers posed to communities and children by its cap-and-trade program for mercury emissions, it made the program worse by further weakening standards," Farber said in a statement. The petition was filed in federal court in Washington.
"The lack of action at the federal level threatens to undermine the tough regulatory action New Jersey has taken to reduce in-state mercury emissions and protect the health of our residents," said New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Lisa Jackson. Mercury from smokestacks can enter waterways and be consumed by humans who eat contaminated fish. The toxic metal can cause nerve damage and damage the heart, brain and kidneys, according to the EPA.
The lawsuit also challenges an EPA decision to delist coal- and oil-fired power plants from regulations requiring utilities to use the strictest emissions control technology possible to block emissions. Other states included on the petition are: Wisconsin, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont.
"The federal rule is hopelessly flawed," Pennsylvania Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen A. McGinty said. "EPA's rule drives energy investments and jobs out of Pennsylvania. The federal plan puts our mining industry at a severe disadvantage. ... These unfair market barriers pose a very real and very serious economic challenge for our state." The states argue that the cap-and-trade system will endanger children near some power plants that pollute but use credits to do it legally.
The agency defends its mercury rules, saying they represent the nation's first attempt to control such emissions and will reduce mercury emissions by 70 percent. "Because nobody's air gets cleaner in a courtroom, EPA and the Bush administration are acting now to effectively reduce emissions of mercury from power plants," said EPA spokeswoman Jennifer Wood.
by Martin Mittelstaedt, Toronto Globe and Mail
June 20, 2006
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060620.BAN20/TPStory/Environment
Ottawa is moving on two fronts to ban or place strict limits on a family of widely used chemicals that poses a risk to human health and the environment. Federal regulators will block the import into Canada of newly developed products such as grease and water repellents that break down into long-chain perfluorinated carboxylic acids, a group of contaminants linked to cancer and altered fetal development. Regulators also want to reduce emissions from the approximately 60 formulations of non-stick and stain-resistant coatings that can legally be imported because they were on the market before their potential dangers were known. For those products, Ottawa plans to negotiate a deal with the industry to cut emissions. In doing so, it will be trying for a pact like one the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency negotiated earlier this year that contained 95-per-cent reduction targets.
The actions were announced on Saturday through a notice by Environment Minister Rona Ambrose and Health Minister Tony Clement in the Canada Gazette. It is believed to be the first time any country in the world has taken the dramatic step of trying to prevent further increases in exposures to these perfluorinated carboxylic acids -- or PFCAs -- through a prohibition on new products. PFCAs are a virtually indestructible pollutant originating from such popular consumer items as non-stick pans and stain-resistant fast-food packaging, clothing and upholstery found in virtually every home in the country. The substances were recently profiled in a series in The Globe and Mail, called Toxic Shock, on dangerous chemicals in everyday use.
The government said it acted to try to reduce exposures to the chemicals to protect human health and the environment. "You can really see these actions as preventing future problems . . . being ahead of the curve in that sense," said John Arseneau, director-general in charge of risk assessments at Environment Canada. He said that Health Canada doesn't believe concentrations of the contaminant in the population have reached high enough levels yet to cause adverse human health impacts so he said he wasn't advising consumers "to dump all their kitchenware and things like that."
The government also says it will maintain a prohibition first announced two years ago on four new chemicals, known as fluorotelomers, which companies applied to import into Canada, but were temporarily blocked because of concerns they would break down into PFCAs. Fluorotelomers are the basic chemicals used to make many stain- and water-repellent goods.
That decision was criticized by DuPont, the company that makes some of these chemicals. "DuPont believes that the decision by Environment Canada to extend its prohibition of four new fluorotelomer substances (of which DuPont manufactures two) is not warranted based on the available science," the company said yesterday in a statement. DuPont said its fluorotelomer-based products have been used safely for more than 35 years, but that it "will continue working voluntarily with Environment Canada, Health Canada and other interested groups to further the understanding of PFCAs, and to develop and implement effective science-based approaches to deal with PFCAs."
The EPA deal called for eight major chemical companies that make non-stick and stain-resistant coatings, including DuPont, to cut releases of certain PFCAs from manufacturing facilities and products by 95 per cent by 2010, and eliminate releases by 2015. Mr. Arseneau said Canada wants tough restrictions, consistent with those of the EPA to prevent companies from selling products here that don't meet U.S. standards. The government's measures deal with so-called long-chain PFCAs, or those that have nine or more carbon atoms arranged in a molecule.
But the most in-depth studies of health effects for this class of chemical have been for the compound with eight carbon atoms, known as perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, which is subject to a separate review now under way by Health Canada and Environment Canada. The two departments are also studying another related chemical known as perfluorooctanyl sulfonate, or PFOS, that was once used to make the Scotchgard line of stain-resistant coatings.
The lack of firm timelines for dealing with these two other chemicals is a big oversight, according to some environmentalists. "Given that our testing indicates PFOS and PFOA could be present in 100 per cent of Canadians, often at higher levels in children, there is a clear need for the federal government to move aggressively to ban all of these toxic stain repellents, not just the four that are subject to this decision," said Rick Smith, executive director of Environmental Defence, a Toronto-based group.
by Kevin Lavery, Great Lakes Radio Consortium
June 19, 2006
http://www.glrc.org/story.php3?story_id=3060
Across the US, there are more than 100 sites contaminated by radioactive waste from the nation's nuclear weapons programs. The government is trying to return these Cold War relics to safe and useful purposes. Some of these once toxic zones are being treated much like public parks. The GLRC's Kevin Lavery recently visited one that was recently opened to the public...
A thick grove of trees opens up to a clearing that reveals a white mound of limestone rock. It rises like a tomb from some long-forgotten civilization, were it not for the water towers and golf courses on the horizon. Mike Leahy and his 9-year-old son Cameron came to this rock dome to catch the view atop its 75 foot summit. But the real attraction was what they did not see: "We read the sign and saw what was buried and how they did it, and -- it's kind of disturbing, what's in there." Beneath their feet lay more than a million cubic yards of spent uranium, asbestos and PCB's. The 45 acre mound is a disposal cell, where the government buried thousands of barrels and tons of debris. That history didn't bother young Cameron: "It's really cool. They keep all that nuclear waste under all that and it can't harm anybody."
The Weldon Spring site, 30 miles west of St. Louis, Missouri began during World War Two as an Army TNT factory. In the 1950's, the plant refined yellow cake uranium for later use in nuclear weapons. All that stopped in 1966 and all the radioactive waste just sat there. Weldon Spring became an EPA Superfund site in 1987. After a 900 million dollar cleanup, the site was opened to tourists in 2002.
Today, frogs sing in a native prairie at the foot of the cell. In April, officials opened a hiking trail adjacent to a once-radioactive landfill. The route connects to a state park. Weldon Spring is not a park per se, but project manager Yvonne Deyo says urban sprawl prompted them to think like one: "There's subdivisions and lots of infrastructure going in...and that just kind of hits home how important green space is, and that's kind of what we're trying to do a little bit of here at the site."
Weldon Spring is one of about 100 such sites the Department of Energy is converting to what it calls "beneficial re-use." Many are becoming recreational venues. Another closed uranium plant near Cincinnati is adding horseback riding trails. In Wayne, New Jersey, a former thorium processing facility is becoming a baseball field. And a national wildlife preserve is in the works at Rocky Flats, the site outside Denver that made the plutonium cores of nuclear warheads. The Department of Energy says Weldon Spring is safe for visitors -- though some residual contamination remains.
Burgermeister Spring runs through a 7-thousand acre state reserve adjacent to the site. This is where uranium-laced groundwater from Weldon Spring rises to the surface. Though the spring exceeds the EPA's drinking water quality standard, there's no warning sign here. O