#102: What We Must Do--Part 9: It's Time For A Tax On Toxics.

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RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #102
---November 7, 1988---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ==========
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Since World War II the synthetic organic chemicals industry has grown at a steady 6.5% per year, doubling its total output every 11 years.

During the past 35 years, since 1950, the industry has grown by a factor of 10, from an annual output of 50 billion pounds to an annual output of 500 billion pounds. During that same period, the industry has been responsible for the creation of some 20,000 Superfund sites that we know of, and countless other dumps that have not yet come to light as problems. (Some officials within EPA guess that there may actually be as many as 200,000 places in America where toxics have been buried.) Although Congress has allocated upwards of $10 billion for cleanup of old dumps, no one pretends that this is sufficient to do the job. It may clean up the first 1000 sites, though even this is doubtful. Before it is over, cleanup will cost hundreds of billions of dollars if, indeed, it can be done at all. Furthermore, we are still creating new Superfund sites each year. These are pits, ponds, lagoons and landfills allowed under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) subtitles C and D (which legalize chemical landfills and municipal solid waste landfills).

In an attempt to control the problem during the past 25 years, we have passed 10 major pollution laws and have published 8,000 pages of regulations in the Federal Register. We are currently spending about $10 million annually for each page of regulations (total: $80 billion per year spent on end-of-pipe pollution control).

Unfortunately, it will be obvious to anyone who thinks about it that we are losing the battle. The earth's protective ozone layer is disappearing, the planet is heating up, the world's oceans are turning into sewers, acid rain is killing lakes and forests, the nation's groundwater is becoming unsafe to drink, half the planet's living species will become extinct in the next 50 years. This is only a partial list. The catalog of horrors is growing year by year. Only a few captains of industry and their indentured savants will argue that our present course makes any sense.

To the technical experts who are wrapped up in maintaining their credibility and impressing their peers with their analytic detachment, the situation seems paralyzingly complex. But to the general public, the situation has become rather clear: with the chemical industry doubling in size every 11 years, we are saturating the air, water and soil with toxic contaminants, and each year the situation grows worse. An old adage recommends, "Don't shit where you eat," but that's exactly what we've been doing. If asked, most people would agree, it is time for new departures.

There are at least three new approaches that we can try. One is to ban certain toxic materials entirely. A second is to ban the mining of certain materials (for example, lead and cadmium), thus requiring recycle of existing stocks because new stocks will no longer be legally available. A third is to tax toxics.

Today we'll examine taxes on toxics. In the past when this approach has been suggested, it has been attacked as a "license to pollute." However, in the past the toxics tax has been suggested as an alternative to the current regulatory system. We, on the other hand, are not suggesting that the nation abandon any of its existing pollution control programs. We merely suggest toxics taxes in addition to all existing pollution control programs.

We favor two taxes: one on the discharge of toxics into the environment, and another on the use of toxics in products that will, themselves, eventually be discarded into the environment. Let's look at the two taxes separately.

The toxics discharge tax is fairly simple. A tax rate is set on each pound of toxics discharged into the environment. A pound of cyanide might be $1.00; a pound of sulfur might be 30 cents. The dischargers would have responsibility for measuring their own discharges, filing tax returns, computing the tax, and mailing a check. There would be heavy penalties, including stiff jail terms, for cheating.

The discharge tax would apply to anyone discharging toxics into the environment, not just chemical firms. Anyone, including manufacturers, users, government agencies and waste haulers, would pay for the privilege of degrading the earth's air, water or soil if they chose to discharge toxic materials in any form.

This plan has the advantage of causing the Internal Revenue Service--the pit bulls of government--to care about the quantities of toxics entering the environment. Clearly the EPA does not really care. The more the EPA knows about toxic discharges, the bigger and more difficult its job becomes; so for 15 years the EPA has consistently underestimated the size of the toxics problem, and other agencies (the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment) have repeatedly had to embarrass the EPA into revising its numbers upward. The EPA is not enthusiastic about measuring contaminants because the numbers reveal the agency's continuing failure to stem the tide of toxics. Getting the IRS into the act would rather quickly provide us with more reliable facts on the amounts of toxics being used by industry because the IRS would collect a tax for each pound measured. The IRS enjoys collecting taxes.

The discharge tax has other advantages as well. It gives industry a continuing incentive to reduce its use of toxics. When today's regulations have been met, industry can relax. But with a tax on toxics, industry would be reminded every April 15 that they are throwing away profits by discharging toxics. This is a message industry will hear and will respond to.

The third advantage of the toxics tax is that it provides revenue. The government could use this money (a) to enforce the toxics tax, doing spot checks on industry to catch cheaters; and (b) to do the necessary research to establish a rational basis for the second tax--the tax on commercial products which contain toxics that will harm the environment when the products are discarded. (Even with maximum recycling, all items will eventually be discarded, so we should tax items that will eventually degrade the environment, creating an incentive for those products to disappear from our markets.) Research will be needed to decide what chemical compounds in what commercial products are worthy of a tax. The program can begin with the obvious ones: plastics can be taxed. Any item that contains lead, cadmium, arsenic or mercury can be taxed. As time passes and our understanding improves, new products can be taxed.

Such taxes should be instituted at the federal level, but they could also be imposed by states, or even by counties and municipalities having taxing authority.

Both taxes can be adjusted up or down as we see results. We note that industry does not favor this approach. They know it would work; it would force new ways of doing business and even new ways of thinking. We've got little to lose by giving it a try. It couldn't be less effective than what we've got now.

The discharge tax has been discussed in several books; one of the best is Allen Kneese and Charles Schultze, POLLUTION, PRICES AND PUBLIC POLICY (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1975).

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: taxation; regulation; discharge tax; pollution tax; chemical industry statistics; growth; global environmental problems; internal revenue service; irs; epa; superfund;

#095: Urgent Action Alert: EPA Setting Deadly Air Standards.

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RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #95
---September 19, 1988---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ==========
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========================Original Source========================

We rarely ask our readers to write their government, but today we urge you to take up the pen IMMEDIATELY and write two sentences. The health of your family is at stake, and you only have until October 3rd to act. Mr. Reagan's EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) is about to decide how much risk the American public is willing to accept from toxic industrial air pollution. The decision will have far reaching consequences; as many as 25,000 people may be legally killed or injured each year by each air pollutant if the decision goes the wrong way.

Congress passed the federal Clean Air Act in 1970 and within a few years the EPA set regulations for six kinds of air pollution: sulfur dioxide, particulate matter (soot), carbon monoxide, ozone, nitrogen oxides, and lead.

In 1977, Congress was not satisfied by the "progress" EPA was making toward cleaning up the nation's air and they passed Section 112, requiring the EPA to control toxic air emissions. Since then (11 years later), EPA has used Section 112 to set air regulations for six more pollutants: radionuclides, beryllium, mercury, vinyl chloride, benzene, and arsenic. So in 18 years, EPA has set regulations for 12 air pollutants (out the thousands that exist).

Some of these Section 112 standards (national emission standards for hazardous air pollutants, or NESHAPS) were challenged in court, and the judge decided the EPA really wasn't doing its job. The judge told the EPA to go back and start over on toxic air pollutants.

The judge said the EPA must take two steps whenever they regulate the emission of a toxic air pollutant: (1) the EPA must determine a "safe" or "acceptable risk" level (the judge used the terms interchangeably); and (2) the EPA must then set an emission level that may not be higher than (but may be lower than) the "safe" level and that protects public health with an ample margin of safety. The judge said that the EPA may not consider economic factors, or feasibility, in determining what is a "safe" level, though they may consider economics and feasibility in the second step (deciding on an ample margin of safety).

Now the EPA wants YOU to tell them what YOU consider a "safe" level or an "acceptable risk" level for toxic air pollutants. On July 28, 1988, EPA published a notice in the FEDERAL REGISTER (pgs. 28496-28592), seeking comments on how much risk the public is willing to endure from toxic industrial air pollutants. The immediate goal is to set a standard for benzene, a known human carcinogen, but EPA says this will form the basis for all their toxic air pollutant standards from now on. Since 75% of the American people live near an industrial facility, the EPA's current effort may directly affect 180 million people. Indirectly, it will affect all 245 million Americans, so this is an enormously important decision.

The EPA is considering four different ways of deciding what risk is "acceptable." They label these Methods A, B, C, and D.

Method A is the "case by case" method. Method A would leave the EPA free to decide for itself how much pollution was OK. Basically, this is the "trust me, I know what's best for you" method.

Method B considers only the "total incidence" of disease. Under Method B, the EPA would not consider the risk to any individual but would only consider the total number of people made sick or killed. They propose that one death per year from each kind of regulated pollutant would be acceptable. This method would allow small groups of individuals all over the country to be subjected to very high individual risks--literally comparable to Russian roulette in our neighborhoods. Failure to limit the risks to individuals would allow a few individuals to endure a much higher risk than the general public would endure.

Method C would consider ONLY the risk to individuals, and the "acceptable" lifetime risk of death from each pollutant would be one chance in ten thousand. This means if you exposed 10,000 people to the legal amount of that pollutant, one of those 10,000 people would die. Since there are about 245 million Americans, this method says (in simplest terms) it's OK for each regulated pollutant to kill 24,500 people each year.

Method D is the same as Method C except that it's 100 times stricter: Method D considers ONLY the risk to individuals and it says the "acceptable" risk is one in a million. In effect, this method says its OK for each regulated pollutant to cause disease or death in 245 Americans each year.

The EPA reportedly favors Method C, the one that would limit individual risk to one in ten thousand, thus allowing each pollutant to kill or injure up to 24,500 Americans each year. You may be shocked that your government might propose air standards that seem so lax. However, EPA considers that they are beefing up some earlier positions they have taken. For example, in 1985, they published the opinion (FEDERAL REGISTER, Feb. 6, pgs. 5191, 5193) that an individual's lifetime cancer risk of one chance in a thousand was too insignificant to regulate. Compared to this 1985 approach, the Method C proposal, which would limit an individual's cancer risk to one in ten thousand, can be considered an improvement.

Method A, which would allow the EPA to decide what's an "acceptable risk" on a case by case basis, gives the agency too much leeway. Almost everyone familiar with EPA will agree that the agency cannot be trusted to make decisions consistently to protect public health and safety. EPA's discretion should be limited.

Method B could also be rejected because it fails to protect the lives of individuals. Method B would allow small numbers of people in isolated neighborhoods to be sacrificed. Recent history tells us the sacrifice would occur in neighborhoods inhabited by the poor, the poorly educated, the politically unorganized, and by minorities. WE BELIEVE NO INDIVIDUALS SHOULD BE SUBJECTED TO HIGH RISK.

Of the four methods proposed, only Method D, which limits the risks endured by individuals, comes close to being satisfactory, in our view, and even Method D seems highly questionable. Killing people is wrong. It is also unconstitutional. The U.S. Constitution says no one may be deprived of life or liberty without "due process." Method D seems to say it's OK for each regulated pollutant to kill a few hundred people each year without due process. No indictment, no trial, nothing. Their "crime" is living near an industrial facility, which most of us are "guilty" of.

We ask you to take 3 minutes to write a brief note to the EPA saying something like, "I don't think it's acceptable to kill anyone with industrial air pollution. Of the methods you proposed July 28 for deciding what's an acceptable risk for benzene, I favor the approach of Method D, limiting individual risk, but I want something stricter than one in a million." Or tell them whatever you like. WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT IS THAT THEY KNOW YOU'RE WATCHING THEM. We'll keep you posted.

Send your letters BEFORE OCTOBER 3 to: Central Docket Section (LE-131), Docket No. OAQPS 79-3 Part I, Environmental Protection Agency, 401 M Street, SW, Washington, DC 20460. You can bet industry will send comments, so we had better do the same.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: air; air quality; standards; epa; air pollution; health; congress; legislation; clean air act; sulfur dioxide; particulates; carbon monoxide; ozone; nitrogen oxide; lead; regulations; enforcement; neshaps; risk assessment; health statistics; benzene; carcinogens; strategies; disease statistics; regulation; cancer; acceptable risk;

#107: What We Must Do--Part 11: Reducing The Use Of Toxics.

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RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #107
---December 12, 1988---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ==========
RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com
========================Original Source========================

The use of toxic chemicals is more common and more unnecessary than most people think. The names are familiar: carbon tetrachloride, trichloroethylene, perchloroethylene, benzene, and so forth. These chemicals are useful and relatively cheap. Unfortunately, they are also hard to contain and, when they escape, dangerous. Many of these chemicals cause cancer, but they also cause deterioration of the central nervous system, headaches, lethargy, seizures, and a wide range of other nonlethal but serious effects.

A startling array of American industries are now using such chemicals. We recently compiled a 288-page book entitled WHAT CHEMICALS EACH INDUSTRY USES, which lists, industry by industry, what toxic chemicals each type of industry has reported using. (The reporting occurred under the New Jersey right to know law, but NJ industries are no different from industries elsewhere, so the NJ reveal something about industry everywhere.) Industries are designated by "standard industrial classification" (SIC) codes. The most benign-sounding industries now use toxic chemicals. For example, the manufacture of dolls and stuffed toys (SIC 3942) uses substantial quantities of 1,1,1-trichloroethane, dichloromethane, trichloroethylene, toluene, and tetrachloroethylene. The "chocolate and cocoa products" industry (SIC 2066) uses carbon tetrachloride, diethyl ether, acetone, chloroform, 1,1,1-trichloroethane, xylenes, toluene, lead acetate, and a long list of other toxics. And so it goes, industry by industry. These lists do not even include the use of plastics because plastics themselves are not reportable under right to know laws; they are not considered particularly dangerous to humans. The impression that one gets from these lists is that American industry is saturated with toxics. One wonders, did we have stuffed toys and chocolate bars before we had toxic chemicals to make them with? Of course we did.

Barry Commoner has argued that, with few exceptions, the entire petrochemical industry, at least on its present scale, is largely unnecessary. The consumer products created with petrochemicals have replaced earlier items made with naturally occurring materials. Products made from cotton, wood, leather, paper, glass and metal have now been replaced by synthetic materials made from petroleum. We could still return to these earlier kinds of products with little or no loss in "quality of life."

Industry may argue that we do not need to reduce the use of toxic materials, we simply need to manage them better and discharge a smaller fraction of them to the environment. This is what "waste reduction" is all about--use the same amount of toxics but dump less of them into the environment.

Unfortunately, waste reduction will not suffice. The production of synthetic organic chemicals is increasing by a factor of 10 every 35 years; American industry produced 50 billion pounds in 1950 and 500 billion pounds in 1985. There is no sign of a letup in this steady rate of growth. At this growth rate, the use of synthetic organics will grow by a factor of 100 within one human lifetime (70 years). It must be obvious to everyone that the earth cannot sustain such an increase.

Even aggressive waste reduction will not do the job. In an eye-opening move, the Monsanto Chemical Corporation recently announced that they plan to reduce their toxic discharges to the environment by 90% in the early 1990s. (NY TIMES Nov. 13, pg. F3). Monsanto is saying that, by the mid-'90s, its waste production will be only 10% of what it was in 1987. This a laudable waste reduction goal. Unfortunately, even if all industries could achieve Monsanto's goal quickly, which is very unlikely, within 35 years we would be right back where we are today because total output will have grown by a factor of 10. Thirty-five years later our situation would be 10 times worse than it is today, which would clearly be intolerable. Therefore, we can see that simply restricting discharges, even by drastic cuts like 90%, will not solve our problems. We will have to reduce the total use of toxic materials, not just their discharge into the environment at manufacturing sites. Thus we can see that waste reduction is the wrong goal. We must aim to reduce the use of toxics.

Reducing the use of toxics is going to require new approaches. We have already discussed two. In RHWN #102 we advocated a tax on toxics; in #106 we advocated zero discharge, or "no dumping allowed" (an idea already embodied in the Clean Water Act of 1972 [33 U.S.C. 1371(b)] which stated the goal as, "discharge of pollutants into the [nation's] navigable waters will be eliminated by 1985").

If industry wants to argue that zero discharge is not achievable, that some fraction of all toxics will always be released into the environment, then our only remaining option is to reduce the use of toxics.

How can we reduce the use of toxics?

The use of certain chemicals will have to be banned. As Barry Commoner has pointed out (RHWN #30), the only time we have seen significant reductions in environmental contamination by individual chemicals is when they have been banned. An international treaty banned atmospheric dumping of strontium-90 through weapons tests; DDT use has been banned in the U.S.; PCB production has been banned. Now the levels of these toxins in air, water and human tissue are decreasing markedly. Banning chemicals is effective. Furthermore, the legal authority for banning chemicals already exists in federal law: the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA; 15 USC 2601; P.L. 94-469), Sections 6 and 7.

We can offer industry a wide range of carrots and sticks to force reduction in the use of toxics. However, no matter what approach we take, we will have to measure the production and use of toxics. No matter what we do, we will have to measure success or failure. Furthermore, it is essential to measure toxics in relation to a plant's overall production. If we don't measure toxics in relation to overall production, we won't know whether a measured reduction in toxics is due to efficiency (fewer toxics used per pound of useful product), or whether the plant simply had a bad year and produced less useful product. Measuring chemical production and use is the most fundamental step for learning whether any toxics use reduction program is achieving its goals. Such measurement could be required by local, state, or federal law. Our new report, WHAT CHEMICALS EACH INDUSTRY USES (Princeton, Nj: Environmental Research Foundation, Dec., 1988), is available for $25.00; among its 288 pages is a section on how to find the SIC code that covers your local industry; then, for each SIC code operating in the state of New Jersey (which is most all of them), a list of toxic chemicals they reported using, including the quantities reported. For each chemical, we give the name, and we give the Chemical Abstract Services (CAS) number so you can learn more about the characteristics of each chemical through standard sources such as the REGISTRY OF TOXIC EFFECTS OF CHEMICAL SUBSTANCES (rtecs). Rtecs is sold by the U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, Dc 20460; phone (202) 783-3238. Ask for USGPO No. 017-033-00431-5. Rtecs is 7 paperback volumes: a $68.00 bargain.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: sic codes; waste reduction; toxics use reduction; pollution prevention; waste avoidance; waste minimization; zero discharge; goals; agendas;

#098: What We Must Do--Part 8 What The Poisoners Knew In 1961.

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RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #98
---October 10, 1988---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ========== RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com
================== Original Source ==================

[Continuing our series, What we must do: We first looked at the waste industry which buries poisonous chemicals in the ground for the producers of those chemicals; now we are looking at the producers themselves, asking when they learned about the toxicity of their products and the effects those products would have if dumped onto, or into, the ground. Did they ever have reason to believe people would not be poisoned?]

The U.S. Public Health Service sponsored a national conference in April, 1961, entitled "Ground Water Contamination." Three hundred experts attended from government, industry and universities. The 1961 report of the conference summarizes a large body of scientific knowledge that had accumulated during the first half of the 20th century. The report makes it crystal clear that the entire problem of groundwater contamination from chemical waste disposal, and from landfilling of municipal wastes, was well understood, well documented, and the subject of urgent warnings in 1961.

The picture in 1961 was essentially as we know it today:

95% of the nation's surface waters were being used in 1961 so "groundwater affords the only water resource available for supplying much of the anticipated three-fold increase in the amount of water that will be required 30 years from now [i.e., in 1991]," said the U.S. Geological Survey. (pg. 32)

Underground water is vulnerable to poisoning by chemicals, because when chemicals are dumped onto, or into, the ground, gravity pulls them down until they reach the saturated zone, the large lakelike body of water called groundwater. This view of the earth was described in detail at the conference by the U.S. Geological Survey. (pgs. 4, 8)

"Passage of landfill leachate through sand or gravel may be expected to improve conditions so far as bacterial and organic pollution is concerned, but chemical pollution can be expected to reach the ground water...," said the U.S. Public Health Service. (pg. 109)

Bacteria are filtered out by the soil and only travel a few hundred feet; chemicals, on the other hand, can travel as far as 15,000 feet or more through soil. Evidence supporting this view was presented by the U.S. Geological Survey, as well as by university researchers. (pgs. 37, 108, 213)

Groundwater does not mix the way a turbulent surface stream mixes. In addition, the earth below ground is dark and cool, and the population of bacteria below ground is much smaller than on the surface. Consequently, contaminated groundwater tends to remain contaminated for long periods, or forever.

"Although our present information on the persistence of organic contaminants in groundwater is limited, indications are that once such materials reach the water table they may persist for long periods of time," said the U.S. Public Health Service. (pg. 54)

One outstanding example of groundwater poisoning was the subject of several presentations--the situation in Suffolk County (Long Island), New York. There, chromium wastes and municipal solid wastes had ruined water quality in the 1950s.

"Ground water is extremely vulnerable to contamination by the introduction of industrial and domestic wastes into subsurface leaching systems. This is evidenced by the numerous incidents of contamination that are constantly being brought to light by complaints and spot check water quality surveys," said the Suffolk County Health Department. (pg. 81)

"We have found from bitter experience that it is unwise to depend on any dilution factor in our ground waters. Hexavalent chromium was found to have traveled over a mile from the source of contamination and with concentrations as high as 40 ppm off the plant site," said another representative of the Suffolk County Health Department. (pg. 155)

The population of Suffolk County, Long Island produces 450,000 tons of garbage each year [in 1961]; a small part of this is incinerated and the remainder "is incorporated in raw form into landfill. Undoubtedly the decomposition of vast quantities of organic material is affecting the ground water" near each of the county's 19 landfills, said the Suffolk County health department. (pg. 75)

"[The U.S. Public Health Service] described the newcomer in the field of contaminants, organic [chemicals]. Most common offenders are gasoline, oil, detergents, and phenols. As recently as 1952, only a few states recognized organics as a problem. Now the problem is full blown, but knowledge is scarce.... A feature of organic pollution is its persistence; it has been shown to travel 15,000 feet over a period of 7 years," said the Illinois State Water Survey. (pg. 213).

"Of more immediate concern is the organic, inorganic, and bacterial pollution of ground water that can result from improperly located dumps and landfills," said the Illinois State Water Survey. (pg. 214).

The Suffolk County health department warned that industrial innovation, the creation of new chemicals, had already in 1961 overwhelmed society's ability to cope with the resulting problems. They also pointed out that regulatory authorities were not the ones discovering the damage: people using the water were discovering it the hard way--by being poisoned. After poisonings occur, then the regulators get involved; this is still true today.

"The nature of the waste introduced into our ground water changes as rapidly as new products are produced by our chemical industries. These wastes become firmly entrenched in our ground water long before we have an opportunity to evaluate their effect," said the Suffolk County Health Department. (pg. 82)

Health officials learn of groundwater contamination not by vigilant enforcement of laws, but because users complain of bad taste and odors, said the Suffolk County Health Department. (pg. 76)

"I was struck by the fact that we professionals have generally not been the ones who initially uncovered ground water contamination. More likely the revelation stemmed from citizens' complaints of taste and odor, or foam, or crop damage, or sickness," said the Illinois State Water Survey. (pg. 214)

"Many incidents of contamination resulting from waste dumping into pits or upon the surface in highly permeable sands or gravels have been reported. Some of these have required the abandonment of private wells and great personal hardship.... Where materials are dumped onto the ground, normal observation should detect the potential danger to ground waters. It is when, under the guise of 'good citizenship,' fluids are injected into the ground that detection may be delayed until actual damage has occurred," said a private consulting engineer. (pgs. 118-119)

"One thing stands out in all the reports on the subject--we are up against another crisis resulting from man's perversity in breaking the laws of nature," said a conservation consultant in 1961.

The U.S. Public Health Service's report, GROUND WATER CONTAMINATION (Cincinnati, OH: Robert A. Taft Sanitary Engineering Center, 1961) is still available from the National Technical Information Service in Springfield, VA; document No. PB 214 895; it's $25.95 plus $3.00 shipping. Phone (703) 487-4650.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: culpability; responsibility; liability; groundwater; water pollution; conferences; u.s. public health service; history of pollution;

#106: What We Must Do--Part 10: No Dumping Allowed.

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #106
---December 5, 1988---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ==========
RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com
========================Original Source========================

During the past year, our readers have been sending suggestions for "what we must do" to take control over the toxics crisis. For the most part, our readers are not legislative lobbyists or armchair environmentalists; they are grass roots activists struggling in the trenches to protect their children, their homes, and their health from brutal assaults by individuals and corporations who are, directly or indirectly, trying to kill or maim them. If this sounds overly dramatic to you, you are probably reading this from the sidelines.

In our series, "What we must do," we set out to explore the nature of the problem(s) our readers face. We have seen that the poisoners are not merely ignorant, well-meaning bumblers: the poisoning of America has not occurred by accident, and it has not occurred out of ignorance. It has been deliberate. We have also seen that the polluters are continuing to grow in strength and numbers, that the quantity of pollution is continuing to grow exponentially at a steady 6% to 10% per year, thus doubling every 7 to 11 years. We have seen that government has largely abandoned its role as protector of the people. In general, modern government acts as a wholly owned subsidiary of the polluters, licensing the poisoning, and running interference for the poisoners. We have seen, in short, that though we are winning many local battles, we are losing the war.

We have seen that the earth is being damaged on a massive scale, that the number of animals and humans being poisoned is continuing to grow, and that leaders of the older environmental movement (as distinct from the movement for environmental justice) have allowed themselves to get caught up in no-win debates such as cost-benefit analysis and risk assessment. In their well-meaning but misguided desire to be viewed as "reasonable" in terms defined by our adversaries, the leaders of the environmental movement have fallen into snares laid by industry lawyers and technocrats. Industry has been allowed to frame the debate in narrow, technical terms. No wonder they're winning.

It is time for new departures, new ways of thinking. As the burgeoning "movement for environmental justice" begins to see itself as a coherent, connected whole, it is right and good to establish new goals, new visions of where we want to be 10 years from now. Do we want to be hunkered in conference rooms debating what constitutes "best available control technology" with engineers employed by some poisoner? Do we want to be arguing with an army of lawyers whether it's OK to kill one in a million of us at random, versus killing one in a hundred thousand? If we force some government agency to give us the lip service of one more public hearing before they issue the next license to the next poisoner, is this what we will call "progress" and "success?" We think not.

From our readers, and from other friends of the movement for environmental justice, here is a series of ideas that can stoke the engines of change, and may--if we will adopt them--make a difference:

We must establish our right to a clean environment. Who gave the polluters all the rights anyway? We can transform the environmental justice movement into a civil rights movement. The principle of "no dumping" must be established. This has been advocated most eloquently by Dr. John Gofman, M.D., Ph.D., professor emeritus at University of California, Berkeley, and former Associate Director of the Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Gofman says, "The no-dumping principle simply means no one has any right to dump anything into the world's common supply of air and water.... The point is that the no-dumping principle and highly industrial societies can become compatible, if the will exists to do it. Of course it cannot happen overnight, which is all the more reason to adopt the principle immediately. Then you apply it gradually. It's both practical and fair to be gradual in the transition to new rules, because current operations began in good faith under the old rules. But there is all the difference in the world between adopting a good principle gradually, versus denying the principle, which is what we do today. Today people are claiming polluters have a right to kill some people, at random, for the economic benefit of some others. Only the exact number is debated. [For example, see RHWN #41b and #95.--P.M.] It's called the 'risk-benefit' doctrine. I call it premeditated random murder," says Dr. Gofman.

Dr. Gofman says, "The key to stopping every type of pollution begins with convincing people to agree on a really simple principle of human rights, whose fairness is self-evident. It can be stated in one sentence:

"All peaceable people (that excludes criminals) are entitled to hold themselves and their property free from coercion, intrusion, and fraud, provided they secure the identical right for each other. This definition of human rights clearly prohibits people who own property from letting it intrude on anyone else's body or property, which includes the common air and water.

"We've all known the headache of owning some pieces of unwanted property, say a derelict car or an old mattress. But we clearly have no right to dump them in someone else's driveway or in the public forest, although neither is even toxic.

"Unwanted medical, chemical and radioactive wastes also belong to someone. They are the property of whoever owns their source, until title has been transferred to some willing recipient. So the owners of waste are obliged to do whatever it takes, regardless of cost, to keep their property from intruding into either common or private property.

"It is not the obligation of other humans to prove that the dumping would be lethal or even a hazard at all. There is just no right to let your property intrude on others, and you'd better consider that before you make it or buy it."

Dr. Gofman has put his finger on two important principles: first, we have an inherent right to clean air and water, the polluters do not have a right to dump on us. Second, the burden of proof is not on us to show that exotic chemicals are harmful. It doesn't matter whether exotic chemicals are harmful or not--no one has a right to dump them into our air or water. Period. We can say, "I don't want to be dumped on, and that's that." We don't have to prove that 1,1,1-tri-whatever is bad for us; it's sufficient that we don't want our children and ourselves exposed to it. Who gave the polluters all the rights in the first place? We must take back America from the polluters, starting with first principles: no dumping allowed.

(To be continued next week.) #107

Dr. Gofman heads the Committee for Nuclear Responsibility (CNR), P.O. Box 11207, San Francisco, CA 94101; CNR has no phone. Donations to CNR are tax deductible. Dr. Gofman is the author of what we think are the best books on the effects of radioactivity on humans, including RADIATION AND HUMAN HEALTH (1981), X-RAYS: HEALTH EFFECTS OF COMMON EXAMS (1985) and RADIATION-INDUCED CANCER FROM LOW-DOSE EXPOSURE: AN INDEPENDENT ANALYSIS (1989). To see where the "no dumping" principle could take us, read Theodore Taylor and Charles Humpstone, THE RESTORATION OF THE EARTH (NY: Harper & Row, 1973).

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: what we must do; no dumping; regulation; philosophy; principles; radiation; landfilling; releases;

#092: New Study Shows Incinerator Ash More Dangerous Than We Realized.

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #92
---August 29, 1988---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ==========
RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com
========================Original Source========================

A new study by a team of engineers at Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey, shows that municipal incinerator ash is more dangerous than previously realized.

When household garbage burns, the resulting ash has two parts: fly ash, most of which is captured from the smoke stack by an air pollution control system, and the heavier "bottom ash" which falls through the grate of the combustion chamber into an ash pit; both types of ash must be carted away. Both types of ash contain toxic heavy metals (chromium, cadmium, lead, arsenic, zinc, and other metals) as well as organic compounds (PCBs, dioxins, benzene, and other cancer-causing organics). Here we will discuss only the metals.

When the ash is thrown away, the metals in the ash become available to the environment. Currently, such ash is typically heaped on the ground somewhere, or is dumped in a municipal landfill. Then rainwater seeps into the ash and begins to dissolve the metals and carry them into the general environment.

Chemical engineers at Rutgers have released a new study showing that toxic metals in municipal incinerator ash are more abundant and more soluble, and therefore more dangerous, than previously thought.

The Rutgers team took samples of household solid waste from three locales (Pennsauken, NJ, Magnolia, NJ, and Somerset County, NJ) and burned them in a small (50 ton per day) solid waste incinerator. They captured the fly ash and the bottom ash. The solid waste samples did not include substantial quantities of industrial trash but were restricted to household wastes.

The actual composition of the ash is shown in Table 1. There were, of course, other elements and compounds in the ash, but the Rutgers team did not measure these because they are not regulated under federal law. As is obvious from these numbers (which are all given as parts per million, or ppm) there are large quantities of metals in the ash.

Table 2 shows how many pounds of metal are found in each ton of ash, using the "average" values given at the bottom of Table 1. (We, not the Rutgers group, did the averaging in Table 1.)

The numbers are quite astonishing. Take lead, for example. If a 2000 ton-per day incinerator produces 500 tons of ash per day, and if 10% is fly ash and 90% is bottom ash, the total daily ash will contain 2935 pounds of lead. That's a ton and a half of lead per day. The same arithmetic tells us that one day's ash will contain 48 pounds of chromium, 61 pounds of cadmium, and 97 pounds of arsenic. In a year's time (operating 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year), such an incinerator will put out 12,610 pounds of chromium, 15,990 pounds of cadmium, 25,246 pounds of arsenic, and three quarters of a million pounds of lead (763,256, actually). These are all metals that are toxic in microgram quantities (there are 454 million micrograms in one pound).

ALL of this metal will most likely leach into the environment sooner or later. But the law does not view it that way. The law requires that the ash be tested for toxicity using something called the "extraction procedure" toxicity test (EP Tox Test for short). The EP tox test asks, "If we mix the ash with a dilute solution of acetic acid and then test the dilute solution, how much metal do we find has dissolved into the solution?" If we find more than 100 times as much metal as is allowed in drinking water, then the ash is declared a "hazardous waste." If the metals are not present at levels 100 times the drinking water standard, the ash is declared "nonhazardous" no matter how many tons of dangerous metals it may contain. (This system clearly does not protect the public, but it's what the EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] has set, so it's what we've got.)

Many scientists have criticized the EP Tox Test for a variety of reasons. So the EPA has proposed a new test, which will soon replace the EP Tox test. The new one is called the TCLP extraction test (short for Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure). The details of the TCLP are different from the EP Tox test, but the basic idea is the same.

The Rutgers team tested the ash from the three locales with the EP Tox Test, and the Pennsauken sample was given the TCLP test. All the fly ash samples were deemed "hazardous" for both lead and cadmium by the EP Tox test. The TCLP results showed that THE TCLP LEACHED EVEN MORE METALS THAN 

THE EP TOX TEST. Lessons from the work at Rutgers: 

(1) The amount of metal in solid waste ash varies from place to place with socio-economic status, geographic location, season, collection patterns, and recycling practices. Your local waste stream should be sampled every 2 weeks for a year to see what it really contains; some consulting firm's "estimate" of what's in your local waste is most likely off; 

(2) the quantity of toxic metals in your waste may be very high and the toxicity will endure forever; ask how long the landfill liners are guaranteed. 

(3) The EP tox test may show that the ash is legally "hazardous" but the TCLP test is even more likely to show that the ash is legally hazardous. Get T.L. Clapp and others, "Municipal Solid Waste Composition and the Behavior of Metals in Incinerator Ashes," ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRESS, Vol. 7 (Feb., 1988), pgs. 22-30. Dr. Clapp 's address is: Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, College of Engineering, Rutgers, P.O. 909, Piscataway, NJ 08854; phone (201) 932-3047 or 932-2213.

TABLE 1-- Metals in ash resulting from combustion of household wastes
============================================

Waste Source	Metal	Fly ash (ppm)	Bottom ash (ppm)
Pennsauken	Chromium	30	40
	Cadmium	490	100
	Lead	4990	6970
	Arsenic	47	118
	Zinc	4700	4400
Magnolia	Chromium	50	73
	Cadmium	130	5
	Lead	2838	650
	Arsenic	80	71
Somerset	Chromium	52	35
	Cadmium	227	8
	Lead	3993	852
	Arsenic	87	112
Average	Chromium	44	49
	Cadmium	282	37
	Lead	3940	2824
	Arsenic	71	100

============================================
============================================
TABLE 2 -- Pounds of metal in each ton of ash

Metal	Fly ash (lbs.)	Bottom ash (lbs.)
Chromium	0.09	0.1
Cadmium	0.56	0.07
Lead	7.9	5.6
Arsenic	0.14	0.2

============================================

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: incineration; ash; studies; findings; rutgers; ep toxicity; msw; landfilling; heavy metals; cancer; disease statistics; risk assessment; leachate; groundwater; nj; lead; chromium; cadmium; arsenic; monitoring; drinking water; hazardous waste industry; epa; tclp extraction test; t.l. clapp;

#104: The Children of Love Canal.

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #104
---November 21, 1988---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org==========
RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com =======================Original Source========================

Love Canal, in Niagara County, New York, is the place where the modern toxics movement began. In 1896, William Love dug a canal nearly two miles long, hoping to connect the upper and lower Niagara River. The canal was abandoned before it ever carried traffic. In 1942, a chemical company began using the abandoned canal as a dump, burying 19,000 cubic yards of toxics in the long trench. Some time after 1953, ownership of the land was transferred to the Niagara Falls Board of Education, which built a school on top of the dump. In 1977, tests revealed toxic chemicals seeping into the basements of homes near the canal. At first it was mysterious and frightening; as it became better understood is became even more frightening. Two hundred and forty eight different chemicals were identified, 30 of them embryotoxins or fetotoxins, and 18 suspected teratogens. At least 34 of them cause cancer. FOR 100 OF THE 248 CHEMICALS, NO TOXICOLOGICAL DATA WHATEVER COULD BE FOUND. In 1978 the state of New York found a high rate of miscarriages among families in the first tier of homes fronting on the canal; authorities declared a health emergency, closed the school on top of the dump, and evacuated 235 families. The following year New York state authorities evacuated families with pregnant women, or with children under 2 years of age, from the southern half of the Love Canal neighborhood, which was considered most heavily contaminated. In May, 1980 the federal government offered evacuation to everyone in Love Canal.

(We state these facts as if they had a life of their own, as if governments did these things spontaneously, without urging from anyone. Nothing could be further from the truth. The story of Love Canal is one of massive citizen struggle, and of victory against tremendous odds. But that is a story for another time.)

Later in 1980, health researchers began formal studies of the children living within a few hundred yards of Love Canal. They also studied the outcomes of pregnancies. Their results, published in 1985, show the dangers of doing health studies in what had become a political war zone, but they also show the dangers of exposing children to even low levels of modern chemicals.

The levels of a few chemicals were measured in homes; the levels were 1% or less of the allowable occupational standards. Of course occupational standards are not set to protect the general public; they are set to protect young, healthy males in the prime of life. The general public contains large numbers of people who do not fit the profile of employed males: many old people, many children, many people with chronic illnesses, with allergies, with poor diets, and so forth. This is why, for the general public, occupational standards are entirely inappropriate as a measure of acceptable exposure.

In any case, despite living in Love Canal, the population under study was not exposed to huge levels of exotic chemicals; however they WERE exposed to more than the average, and they suffered the consequences.

Two different studies of the children of Love Canal reveal ill effects among those who lived near the Canal vs. those who lived further away. The authors point out correctly that the disease patterns they observe do not prove that Love Canal caused the harm. However, reading these studies will definitely convince you that, if you can, you'd be better off avoiding contact with a wide range of organic solvents and chlorinated hydrocarbons.

Two groups of people were studied: 239 children born to mothers exposed to Love Canal chemicals while pregnant, and 707 controls (children from the same city whose families were similar to the Love Canal families in every respect expect where they lived). The two groups were specifically matched for socioeconomic status, smoking, alcohol consumption, and medication taken during pregnancy.

Unfortunately, the study was begun too late to include the 235 families who were the first to be evacuated from Love Canal. Those families COULD have been studied if New York State or the federal government had been willing to spend the money to find the families and interview them, but the resources were not available. In addition, children who had died were excluded from the study. For these reasons, it is very likely that the study underestimates the true effect of living near Love Canal. Nevertheless, the study shows that low birth weight babies were 2.3 times as likely to occur among homeowners living near Love Canal, compared to the control group (11.1% vs. 4.8%). Serious birth defects were twice as likely to occur among those living near the Canal (12.1% vs. 6.2%).

The study of childrens' health involved 523 Love Canal children and 440 control children from the same city matched in every respect except where they lived.

The study found seizures 2.5 times as prevalent among Love Canal kids as among controls; learning disabilities were 1.5 times as prevalent; hyperactivity was almost 3 times as prevalent; eye irritation was twice as prevalent; skin rashes occurred twice as often; abdominal pain was twice as prevalent; incontinence occurred three times as often. Thus by seven health measures, living near Love Canal is associated with ill health among children.

Behind these studies lies a political drama of Kafkaesque dimensions. Health researchers at Love Canal who disagreed with the New York State Health Department were demoted, transferred, or harassed. The Health Department undertook studies which are still today totally secret; what they studied, and how, has never been revealed. One tantalizing piece of information appeared in SCIENCE magazine (Vol. 212 [1981], pgs. 1404-1407) showing that lung cancer among Love Canal men was up 70% compared to the average of New York State (excluding NY City), and among Love Canal women it's up 100%. Yet the state still today refuses to publish its data. The message is crystal clear: chemical exposures of the general public by American industry give rise to sick children, but also to state suppression of scientific data, and to loss of rights by those who ask too many questions.

Bev Paigen, the chief health researcher at Love Canal, will tell you one of the most important lessons is this: citizens need their own access to resources and expertise. With control over their own experts, citizens have a chance of learning what's happening and what they must do; without it, citizens can be duped by the state. Hats off to Bev Paigen, a gentle warrior for children and for the truth.

For further information, see: Lynn R. Goldman and others, "Low Birth Weight, Prematurity and Birth Defects in Children Living Near the Hazardous Waste Site, Love Canal," HAZARDOUS WASTE AND HAZARDOUS MATERIALS, Vol. 2 (1985), pgs. 209-223; see also Beverly Paigen and others, "Prevalence of Health Problems in Children Living Near Love Canal," HAZARDOUS WASTE AND HAZARDOUS MATERIALS, Vol. 2 (1985), pgs. 23-43. An even-handed discussion of the political attacks on the health researchers by New York state authorities appears in Beverly Paigen's "Controversy at Love Canal," originally published in THE HASTINGS CENTER REPORT (June, 1982), from the Institute of Society, Ethics, and the Life Sciences in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY; we have been unable to locate the Institute, but reprints are still available from Dr. Paigen who is a research biologist with the Bruce Lyon Laboratory, Children's Hospital Medical Center, 7474 East 52nd St., Oakland, CA 94609; phone (415) 428-3524.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: love canal; niagara county; public health; studies; seizures; learning disabilities; hyperactivity; eye irritation; skin rashes; lung cancer;

#101: Guerilla Media: How to Use Radio as a Tool in Your Local Fights.

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #101
---October 31, 1988---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
==========
RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com ========================Original Source========================

Here's a potent new idea for grass roots activists who want to influence politicians and the public: make radio spots and air them as public service announcements or, for a few hundred dollars, buy air time. This video makes the case that radio advertising is the cheapest, most effective and least-used way to get your message out to a mass audience, throwing light, heat and pressure on your adversaries. Not convinced it's effective? Afraid it's over your head or over your budget? Buy or rent the video tape, Guerilla Media, from Varied Directions, Inc., 69 Elm Street, Camden, Maine 04843; phone (207) 236-8506. This video will convince you that making radio spots is cheap, easy and an effective force for winning your local fight. It sells for $299 but rents for seven days for $75. Your group wouldn't be making a mistake to invest $75 in renting this video. As you watch the tape, pay careful attention and take notes. You'll find a bundle of good ideas packed into this 90-minute tape.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: video; radio; advertising; publicity; mass media; tactics; ads; public relations;

#75: Announcing New Weekly Source of Information for Waste Activists.

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #75
---May 2, 1988---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ==========
RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com =================================Original Source========================

The grass roots environmental movement has just gained an excellent new source of information on incinerators, landfills, and recycling: WASTE NOT, a weekly publication of Work on Waste USA, Inc., edited by Ellen and Paul Connett.

Waste Not discusses technical issues in language anyone can understand. It also announces new reports as they appear. For example, people concerned about incinerator ash and landfill problems will want to know about the following: "THE HAZARDS OF MUNICIPAL INCINERATOR ASH AND FUNDAMENTAL OBJECTIVES OF ASH MANAGEMENT" available from Dr. Richard Denison, Environmental Defense Fund, 1616 P Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036; phone (202) 387-3500. And: "INCINERATOR ASH ALERT" from New York Public Interest Research Group, 9 Murray Street, NY, NY 10007; phone (212) 349-6460. And: "GREENPEACE REPORT ON THE DIOXIN LEVELS IN THE SOIL OF THE COMMUNITY NEAR PHILADELPHI'S N.W. INCINERATOR AND IN THE INCINERATOR ASH." Available from Ben Gordon, 1017 West Jackson, Chicago, IL 60667; phone (312) 666-3305.

Because Paul Connett is a chemistry professor, WASTE NOT gives insight into solid waste that you cannot find anywhere else. For example, WASTE NOT #3 gives information about the chemistry of landfill ash-information that can help citizens see through false arguments by the federal EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency). The ash issue is crucial to the future of incinerators.

Today Americans produce about 160 million tons of MSW each year. About 15 million tons of this (9%) are currently incinerated in about 140 incinerators and these incinerators produce about 4 million tons of ash annually. By the year 2000, Americans will be producing 190 million tons of MSW, available landfill space will have diminished (because old landfills are filling up, and new ones can't be sited because the public now knows that landfills leak and pollute drinking water), the cost of landfilling municipal solid waste (MSW) will have increased greatly--and so, according to EPA, several hundred new MSW incinerators will be needed. Incinerators reduce the volume of garbage that has to be dumped.

Unfortunately, there is considerable evidence that MSW ash is more toxic than the garbage from which it was derived. Incinerators reduce the volume, but they increase the hazards. Heating garbage in an incinerator does two things to increase the hazards: it concentrates the toxic metals, and it produces new chemicals that weren't in the garbage to begin with (or were there, but in smaller amounts). Dioxins and furans are examples of chemicals created inside an incinerator.

In the late 1970s, the EPA developed a test for deciding whether a particular waste is toxic or not. It is called the "Extraction Procedure Toxicity Test" or "EP Tox Test" for short. The test is simple: slightly acid water (intended to simulate natural rain water) is poured onto the waste; water that trickles through the waste (called leachate) is tested to see what it contains. If it contains any chemicals covered by the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA, a federal law) in amounts 100 times higher than the permissible drinking levels established in the SDWA law, then that waste is declared officially toxic and must be disposed of in a hazardous waste landfill, not an ordinary landfill. Disposal in a hazardous waste landfill is very expensive.

For years, people have been dumping MSW ash into ordinary landfills without doing the EP tox test. However during the last two years, the Environmental Defense Fund and others have gathered evidence that about 30% of all MSW ash cannot pass an EP tox test. This means that about 1/3 of all MSW ash should be disposed of in hazardous waste landfills at great expense. If MSW ash has to be disposed of as a hazardous waste, the economics of municipal incineration cease to make sense. Since banks and waste companies like Waste Management, Inc., have billions of dollars at stake in the move toward MSW incinerators, the toxicity of MSW ash is a tremendously important political issue.

The EPA is in a bind. Their job is to protect the natural environment, yet EPA is an executive agency run by political appointees. Clearly, it is in the interests of politicians everywhere to push ahead with solid waste incinerators. The companies that get the huge contracts to build and operate such incinerators will make campaign contributions and cooperate with local officials in other important ways.

Furthermore, if incinerating MSW becomes too expensive, and if landfill space runs out because people won't allow siting of new landfills in their backyard for fear of being poisoned, then there will be no choice left: we will have to begin to look at the individual items in municipal garbage and stop manufacturers from using the most toxic chemicals. Such meddling in industrial decision-making is the last thing this government wants to start.

For these reasons, the EPA needs MSW ash to appear to be non-toxic so that the economics of municipal incineration will continue to be accepted by taxpayers.

Thus EPA administrator Lee Thomas, President Reagan's man at EPA, needs to have us believe that the EP tox test makes MSW ash look worse than it really is. Mr. Thomas testified before Congress April 13 that the EP tox test "may overestimate the amount of metals" that would actually leach out of MSW ash under real landfill conditions. Mr. Thomas argues that the EP tox test simulates acid conditions in a garbage landfill, but that ash in a landfill all by itself, not mixed with garbage, would not be in an acid environment and therefore would not release metals as much as the EP tox test indicates.

In WASTE NOT #3, Paul and Ellen Connett give evidence that reveals the fraudulent nature of the EPA's argument. They cite two studies showing that MSW ash is so alkaline (from the limestone added to the pollution scrubbing system) that normal water leaches out more metals than does acid water. In other words, the Connetts give chemical evidence that the EPA's EP tox test doesn't overestimate the hazards of MSW ash, it underestimates those hazards.

When the EPA sets out to prove a point for political purposes, science takes a back seat. Without people on our side who know chemistry, where would we be? Misled by our government but unable to understand how. Hats off to Paul and Ellen Connett and their new publication, WASTE NOT. Subscribe! It's $25/yr from Work on Waste USA, 82 Judson St., Canton, NY 13617; phone (315) 379-9200. (If you can, send an extra $50--help them expand.)

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: information services; incineration; landfilling; recycling; waste not; work on waste usa, inc.; ellen connett; paul connett; ash; particulates; richard denison; edf; dioxins; ben gordon; epa; msw; drinking water; water pollution; groundwater; toxicity; furans; ep tox test; toxic wastes; leachate; legislation; enforcement; sdwa; edf; wmi; epa; corruption; polititicians; lee thomas; reagan;

#82: Incineration of Infectious Waste.

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #82
---June 20, 1988---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ==========
RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com =================================Original Source========================

In 1985, there were 6872 hospitals in the U.S. with 1.3 million beds. If beds are occupied 70% of the time and each occupied bed creates 13 pounds of waste per day, U.S. hospitals produce 2.2 million tons of waste per year. An estimated 15% of this is infectious waste containing human anatomical waste, plus garments, gauze pads, diapers, catheters, and so forth. But the infectious 15% cannot be segregated from the non-infectious, so it all gets mixed together, creating a larger mass that must all be considered infectious.

An estimated 90% of all hospitals run their own incinerators; this means about 6,200 neighborhoods are impacted by such machines. From the viewpoint of people living near hospitals, there are five items of concern: (1) the emission of bacteria or viruses that might make people sick; (2) the emission of low molecular weight organic molecules (trichloroethylene [a suspected carcinogen], and tetrachloroethylene, among others); (3) the emission of high molecular weight organic molecules, (so called "products of incomplete combustion," benzopyrenes, PCBs, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons and other polycyclic organic matter, much of which is carcinogenic); (4) the emission of toxic particles small enough for a person to breathe deep into their lungs; (5) and the emission of dioxins and furans.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently released a report completed under contract by the Radian Corporation. The aim was to gather what is known about pollution from hospital incinerators. The authors searched the scientific literature, and interviewed many knowledgeable experts: staff of regulatory agencies (EPA, state and local), the American Hospital Association, and incinerator vendors.

Of the estimated 6200 hospital incinerators in use, perhaps 1200 are large incinerators (burning more than 400 pounds per hour or 400 tons per year) and 5000 are smaller. Hospital incinerators fall into three types: rotary kiln, excess air and starved air. By far the commonest (especially among units installed during the last 15 years) is starved air (also called "controlled air," "two-stage" and "modular"). Excess air incinerators (also called "pyrolitic incinerators," and "multi-chamber incinerators") come in two types: large units, which are generally "in-line," and smaller units, which are generally "retort" types.

Radian could find no air emissions data for small excess-air incinerators, the kind that serve perhaps 75% or more of the nation's hospitals. Therefore, the remainder of this article describes air emissions from large controlled-air incinerators.

Even among these few incinerators, the lack of data is shocking. Let's look at the five categories mentioned above.

BACTERIA AND VIRUSES. 

You might think emission of disease-causing organisms (pathogens) from hospital incinerators would be the subject of intense scrutiny. Not so. The Radian corporation could find only two studies in the scientific literature. One study found twice as many bacteria leaving an incinerator smoke stack as were found in normal outdoor air (though the results were not statistically significant; in other words, they may have occurred by chance). The second study showed that, in a two-chamber incinerator, the temperature in the first chamber has to be 1400 degrees Fahrenheit and in the second chamber had to be 1600 deg. F. to guarantee sterilization of bacteria and viruses. (Many incinerators are not designed to exceed 1400 deg. in their secondary chamber, so presumably do not effectively sterilize wastes they burn.) That ends the discussion of bacteria and viruses in the Radian study. The entire section on pathogens takes up 14 lines of text in a 151-page report.

LOW MOLECULAR WEIGHT ORGANIC COMPOUNDS: 

Radian says, "One large data gap in the current hospital waste incinerator emissions data base is for lower molecular weight organic compounds." End of discussion.

PRODUCTS OF INCOMPLETE COMBUSTION, BENZOPYRENE, PCBS AND OTHER CARCINOGENIC ORGANIC MOLECULES: 

These pollutants are "important," says Radian, but are not included in the study "due to lack of emissions data."

TINY TOXIC particles: 

A micron is a millionth of a meter (and a meter is about a yard). If you breathe particles (soot) in the size range of 2 to 10 microns in diameter, they are filtered out by the respiratory system (nose, esophagus, etc.) and are moved into the mouth, then swallowed. Particles smaller than 2 microns are considered "respirable" because they can enter the deep lungs. The smallest particles (1 micron or less) enter the deepest part of the lung, the alveoli, the 3 million little sacs that pass oxygen into the blood and let carbon dioxide pass back out. Particles that enter the alveoli may eventually be removed by natural cleansing mechanisms, or they may lodge there, contributing a grey color to the normallypink lungs, or they may actually pass into the blood stream and go someplace else in the body.

As luck would have it, the respirable particles from an incinerator contain more than their fair share of toxic materials, especially toxic metals and the oftencarcinogenic polycyclic organic molecules. The small particles have a larger surface area in relation to their bulk than do larger particles. (A physicist would say small particles have a larger surface-to volume ratio.) The relatively large surface area of the smallest particles attracts toxic heavy metals during combustion. Thus, respirable particles end up LOADED (Radian says "enriched") with lead, arsenic, cadmium, chromium and other dangerous metals. (Radian presents no data on enrichment by polycyclic organics, unfortunately.) Thus the particles that reach deepest into the lungs are the most toxic. Typical hospital incinerators emit 1.5 to 36 pounds of particles per ton of waste incinerated. (Incidentally, bacteria and viruses have diameters ranging from 0.4 microns down to 0.02 microns, so they are definitely respirable.)

DIOXINS AND FURANS: 

The Radian study describes in detail the combustion conditions under which dioxins and furans will be formed. They conclude that the primary chamber of a hospital incinerator is PERFECT for manufacturing dioxins and furans, and that safety depends upon the secondary chamber completely destroying the dioxins by maintaining ideal combustion conditions. They conclude that the average amount of total dioxins emitted from a 1000 poundper-hour hospital incinerator operating 2000 hours per year would be 3.7 grams of dioxin per year. (There are 28 grams in an ounce.) This may not sound like much, but dioxin is considered extremely toxic, so it may be a lot, depending on where it goes once it is released into your neighborhood.

Conclusion: 

The nation's primary medical care institutions are almost all operating incinerators without knowing what they are doing, literally. The data are simply not available. What data there are, on respirable particles and dioxins, indicate the need for very tight air pollution control, which is not provided under federal law, nor under most state laws. In short, hospital incineration of infectious wastes is a scandal.

To get your free copy of Radian's HOSPITAL WASTE COMBUSTION STUDY, DATA GATHERING PHASE, FINAL DRAFT REPORT, write Ray Morrison, Pollutant Assessment Branch, Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, EPA, Research Triangle, NC 27711; phone (919) 541-5332.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: incineration; hospital hazardous wastes; infectious wastes; carcinogens; trichloroethylene; pcbs; benzopyrenes; polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons; hydrocarbons; particulates; dioxins; furans; epa; lung cancer; american hospital association; rotary kilns; starved air kilns; excess air kilns; radian corp.; bacteria; viruses; air; air pollution; air quality; studies; findings;

#70: Destruction Of Ozone Will Cause Vast Damage To Life On Earth.

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #70
---March 28, 1988---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ==========
RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com =================================Original Source========================

"Vast increases" in melanomas (deadly human skin cancers) will result from thinning that has already occurred in the earth's ozone shield, and there's nothing that can be done about it; the damage has already been done. Worse yet, some farm crops, and populations of some ocean creatures will be "devastated" early in the 21st century (10 to 40 years from now). Nothing can be done about that either; it's too late. This was the message from a panel of 100 atmospheric scientists convened by the government last week. "We're going to have to live with our past mistakes, and the situation will get worse," said Irving Mintzer of the World Resources Institute in Washington, DC. "We've dug ourselves a real hole here," Mr. Mintzer said.

The earth's ozone "shield" is actually a flimsy parasol, a gossamer canopy of ozone molecules wafting in the upper atmosphere (6 to 30 miles above the earth's surface); it averages only 3 parts per million (ppm) in concentration, yet it intercepts dangerous ultraviolet radiation from the sun, protecting earth's inhabitants. Before the earth's ozone shield developed, eons ago, life as we know it could not develop on the planet.

Ultraviolet radiation (UV) burns human skin, but more importantly it damages human eyes (and presumably the eyes of other animals). Even more importantly, it harms the human immune system (and perhaps the immune systems of other animals). UV also damages DNA, the genetic material of life, and it damages proteins. UV is not visible to mammals so we do not know when we are being subjected to its deadly rays. 

As UV increases, the earth will look the same to us, but it will be deadly dangerous.

Among the most sensitive creatures to UV damage are phytoplankton, the tiny floating plants that inhabit the top two or three feet of the ocean surface, converting (through photosynthesis) inorganic minerals and water into living tissue. Phyto plankton are the bottom-most level of the oceans' food chains. As the NEW YORK TIMES, editorialized, "Damage to plankton would quickly reverberate through ocean food chains." [March 24, 1988, pg. A34.]

The damage is already measurable; the earth's ozone shield thinned by 3% between 1969 and 1987. Unfortunately, the worst is yet to come because CFCs rise into the atmosphere only slowly, so large quantities of already-released CFCs are drifting upward now; they will do their damage later. Worst of all, a single CFC molecule stays in the stratosphere 50 to 200 years, destroying thousand of ozone molecules all the while. Early in the 21st century, UV reaching the heavily-populated portions of the earth may rise 5% to 20%--a very large increase, by any measure.

How did this global disaster occur and why did humans not act to prevent it earlier?

The culprit is a group of chemicals developed in the 1930s by DuPont and by General Motors. These chemicals are called chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. They are very useful as refrigerants (your home refrigerator and your automobile air conditioner probably contain them). They are also used in some foam insulation, and they serve as solvents in the computer chip industry.

No one doubts that safe substitutes can be developed. In other words, this was a preventable disaster. DuPont and friends are now racing to create substitutes because they see a huge market developing as the awful truth about CFCs begins to dawn.

Why didn't anyone act earlier?

In 1974 two scientists from the University of California at Irvine published the first paper saying CFCs (being lighter than air) would slowly rise into the atmosphere, where they would interact destructively with ozone. Chemistry is an exact science, so this was an ominous warning and it was taken seriously by thousands of scientists and even a few policy makers. Unfortunately, the people selling CFCs argued persuasively that a chemical is innocent until proven guilty.

This was back in the days before all federal environmental policy makers were doormats for industry, and President Carter's Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) took the ozone problem seriously. The 1977 Report from CEQ quoted the National Science Foundation and the National Research Council: "All the evidence we have examined indicates that the long term release of F 11 and F 12 [two of DuPont's most popular CFC products] at present rates will cause an appreciable reduction in stratospheric ozone."

The 1977 CEQ Report quantified the problem: every 1% reduction in ozone will cause a 2% increase in UV on earth's surface. It said, "Because human health effects and damage to crops, livestock, and natural systems may result from long-term UV increases of only a few percent, predicted ozone decreases are clearly significant." [pg. 194]

The National Cancer Institute identified melanoma (a particularly deadly form of human skin cancer) as a major effect of UV irradiation. The National Academy of Sciences said "the relation of solar UV radiation to melanoma ought to be taken as a likely health hazard of significant size and responded to accordingly."

Still no significant reduction in CFC use occurred; each year humans continued to dump about one million tons of CFCs into the environment--all of it eventually released into the atmosphere as old refrigerators rot in landfills and old McDonald's hamburger cartons get pulverized by natural causes. Industry continued to argue that--despite widespread recognition of the problem by scientists--a chemical is innocent until proven guilty and no one had actually measured a decrease in stratospheric ozone, so let's ignore the problem and continue making money.

DuPont did make one significant change. They shortened their corporate slogan from "Better Things for Better Living Through Chemistry" to "Better Things for Better Living."

A lone scientist, Joseph Farman, has been measuring ozone in the earth's atmosphere at the south pole since 1957. Starting in 1977 he began recording a measurable reduction in atmospheric ozone. However, Mr. Farman did not trust his own results. After all, NASA's Nimbus 7 satellite was not reporting similar results. Finally in 1985 Mr. Farman could hold his peace no longer and he published his findings. NASA scientists then discovered that their computer that analyzed Nimbus 7 data had been programmed to discard readings as low as those Mr. Farman was recording, on the assumption that readings that low represented instrument errors, not ozone losses. Mr. Farman's data turned the scientific world on its ear; here were the "dead bodies" all lined up; indisputably, earth's ozone shield was being depleted.

Still industry fought on, arguing that a chemical is innocent until proven guilty. For three more years they maintained this cruel posture, each year consigning us and our children to a bleaker and bleaker future.

The lesson is crystal clear: all human created chemicals must be considered guilty until proven innocent. New chemicals should be assumed dangerous from the start. Politicians' attitudes toward the modern chemical industry are demonstrably a major menace to life on earth. Our past national policies have proven destructive on a global scale and must be abandoned forthwith.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: ozone; health; studies; findings; health statistics; cancer; skin cancer; melanoma; air; air pollution; air qualith; irving mintzer; world resources institute; uv radiation; radiation; immune system; phytoplankton; water; cfcs; general motors; dupont; federal; ceq; coucil on environmental quality; national science foundation; nsf; national research council; studies; findings; nci; source reduction; joseph farman; nasa;