#222: Losing The Battle Against Cancer.

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RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #222
---February 27, 1991---
News and resources for environmental justice.
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Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
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A new report from the U.S. National Cancer Institute makes it clear that we are losing the battle against cancer in the sense that more and more of us are getting it. In the U.S., the incidence rate for all cancers except three (stomach, rectum, and cervix) has risen steadily since 1950; see Table 1. (Incidence rate means the number of people each year diagnosed with a new cancer per 100,000 population.) These are age-adjusted data, which rules out the explanation that "people are living longer so they're getting more cancer." At the same time that the incidence rate for 14 types of cancer has risen during the last 37 years, the death rate (the number of people each year dying of a cancer per 100,000 population) for 11 types of cancer has fallen while the death rate for only 6 types of cancer has risen; see Table 1. Some government officials, and some medical doctors want to put a good face on this and declare it a kind of victory to have more and more of us living with a cancer that we have to fight, sometimes for the rest of our lives. As the NEW YORK TIMES said recently (Feb. 4, 1991, pgs. 1, B6) there's a "Changing View of Cancer: Something to Live With." The TIMES story opens with a vignette of what it means to live with cancer:

"Margaretta Young was a Charlotte, N.C., teacher when she felt a tiny lump in her breast on Easter weekend in 1963. Since then, doctors have found tumors in her bones, liver, brain, parathyroid, and stomach.

"Mrs. Young has had seven operations, 30 sessions of radiation therapy, and 17 years of weekly chemotherapy. She is not cured, and after 28 years of cancer and treatment, she is weakened, scarred, and often in pain." But she is alive, the TIMES points out, and she says she still enjoys the life she is hanging on to.

The TIMES speaks of "real advances in treatment" for cancer, but goes on to describe the harsh reality that cancer patients face: "Most cancer patients say they are constantly aware of their disease, sometimes because of tangible reminders like having to take a pill every day, feeling pain, or dressing to cover up scars or prostheses. Many have serious side effects from treatment, including sterility, nausea, profound exhaustion or organ failure.

"And almost all cancer patients say there are emotional reminders, too, in the form of a new sense of mortality, added fear of the future, and a sense of somehow being apart from those who have never had cancer. Each new ache or pain, they say, brings with it a special terror that their cancer is growing or spreading....

"The expanded arsenal of cancer treatments, which still mostly involve some form of surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy, can be brutal, causing side effects that may be as severe a burden as the disease. So many patients with incurable cancers are faced with decisions about just how much they are willing to go through to stay alive for a few more years.... 'Some people feel we're prolonging living, others that we're prolonging death,'" says Dr. John Rowe, president of the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York.

The new report from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) says, "Each race and sex group [in the U.S.] showed statistically significant increases in the overall incidence of cancer between 1973 and 1987." (Pg. I.1 of the NCI report, which is cited in our last paragraph, below.) In this overall negative trend, there are scattered bits of good news; for example, in the period, 1983-1987, the incidence of lung cancer among men declined 0.6% per year--no doubt related to changing patterns of tobacco use (pg. I.1). (However, among white females, both the lung cancer incidence rate and death rate more than doubled between 1973 and 1987 [pgs. I.7-I.8]--again a reflection of tobacco use: yes, you have "come a long way, baby" as the cigarette ads like to proclaim.)

Since 1980, the incidence of breast cancer among U.S. women has increased "rather dramatically" from 84.8 per 100,000 to 111.9 per 100,000--a 32% increase. (NCI, pg. I.2.) Better screening by mammography partly explains the change, but "these increases are a major concern" says NCI (pg. I.9). The incidence of malignant melanoma--an aggressive and deadly form of skin cancer--increased 78.8% among whites during the period 1973-1987.

The incidence of cancer of the colon and rectum increased slowly, 1973-1987, from 46 per 100,000 to 49. However it increased more rapidly among men (from 53.2 to 60.4). (Pgs. II.12, II.13).

Cancer of the prostate gland "has become the number one cancer for men," says NCI (pg. I.11). Prostate cancer incidence increased 46% between 1973 and 1987; it affects black men (132.0 per 100,000) much more than white men (88 per 100,000) (pg. I.11).

Between 1973 and 1987, the incidence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma increased 50.9%; only malignant melanoma and female lunger cancer increased faster during the period (pg. I.11). Cancer of the testicles increased 37% during 1973-1987; the death rate from this cause dropped 60% during the period (pg. I.14.)

The incidence of urinary bladder cancer is rising at about 1% per year among white males but at more than twice that rate among black males. (Pg. I.14). The death rate among both groups is dropping.

Brain cancer increased slowly from 1973 to 1980; then "around 1980 the incidence of brain cancer began increasing at an alarming rate among people 65 and older with an increase of more than 3% per year," says NCI (pg. I.14). Survival rates for this cancer are "dismal," says NCI. An estimated 15,600 new brain cancers were diagnosed in 1990.

Incidence of cancer among children increased 6.1% during the period 1973-1987; the death rate dropped dramatically, however (36% overall, and 50% or more for four cancers). (Pg. I.15)

Get: Lynn A. Gloeckler Ries and others, editors. CANCER STATISTICS REVIEW 1973-1987 [National Institutes of Health Publication No. 90-2789]. Bethesda, MD: National Cancer Institute (NCI), 1990. Free from Office of Cancer Communications, NCI, Building 31, Room 10A24, Bethesda, MD 20892; phone (301) 496-6641.

Table 1 -- U.S. Cancer Incidence and Deaths in 1987, and the Percent Change in Rates of Incidence and Death per 100,000 U.S. Population, 1950-1987.

Cancer type	Incidence in 1987	Deaths in 1987	Percent change in Incidence, 1950-1987	Percent change in deaths, 1950-1987
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stomach	24,600	13,740	-72.6	- 75.3
rectum	43,000	7,638	-12.5	- 65.9
cervix	12,800	4,423	-78.5	-73.0
colon	102,000	49,613	+24.	- 3.1
ovaries	19,000	11,838	+0.6	- 0.5
larynx	12,100	3,670	+57.3	-8.1
testicles	5,500	422	+97.3	-64.5
bladder	45,500	9,589	+52.5	- 35.3
Hodgkin's	7,300	1,755	+15.1	- 61.7
childhood	6,600	1,787	+28.4	- 58.7
leukemia	26,400	17,440	+2.6	- 1.8
lung	154,000	129,866	+256.9	+245.0
skin	25,800	5,912	+283.8	+147.2
breast	130,000	40,896	+58.3	+3.6
prostate	96,000	27,863	+97.3	+10.9
kidney	21,900	9,332	+101.0	+28.9
lymphoma	29,900	16,269	+153.1	+100.0
All types (excluding lung)	811,000	347,028	+27.4	- 19.0
All types	965,000	476,894	+42.2	+7.0

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: nci; cancers; bone; liver; brain; parathyroid; stomach; new york times; race; gender; breast; melanoma; colon; rectum; prostate; lung; urinary bladder; brain; children; hodgkin's; kidney; ovaries; cervix; larynx; testicular; lymphoma; skin cancer; john rowe; death statistics; diseases; studies; health effects; skin;

#252: Some Good News: We Could Give Up Oil

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RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #252
---September 25, 1991---
News and resources for environmental justice.
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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========================

Our addiction to fossil fuels (oil and coal) is killing us. Oil alone is responsible for smog, nitrogen oxides and fine particles--in sum, urban air pollution--which is killing an estimated 30,000 to 60,000 Americans each year.[1] To these deaths we must add the regional and global consequences of oil and coal-related pollution: regional destruction of forests, crops and fish by acid rain, and the mounting threat of severe floods, harsh droughts, devastating storms, large forest fires, and ruinous declines in crop yield--which are the most likely consequences of global warming.[2] Other, lesser, consequences of our oil addiction include massive oil spills, wildlands devastation by oil exploration activities, and occasional small wars.

Now technical developments during the past eight years have made it realistic to say we can end our use of fossil fuels in the U.S. and worldwide. All we have to do is decide to do it.

A realistic alternative to oil and coal is hydrogen fuel produced by solar energy, according to a thorough study by the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Princeton University, funded by the National Science Foundation.[3]

According to the study, hydrogen fuel produced from water by the action of electricity--particularly electricity created by the sun's rays striking photovoltaic cells--offers a realistic substitute for all our current fossil-fuel uses high-temperature heat in industry, low-temperature heat for space-heating, and liquid fuels for transportation. Hydrogen could do it all, the study's authors say, and solar cells are the best way to make the hydrogen.

For many years, photovoltaic cells ("solar cells") have been expensive toys. A photovoltaic cell is a sheet of dark blue glass with a pair of wires attached. When the cell is placed in direct sunlight, electricity becomes available in the wires. There are no moving parts except electrons moving inside the cell, producing the electric current. (You can buy solar cells for as little as $4.00 from Edmund Scientific, 101 East Gloucester Pike, Barrington, NJ 08007-1380; phone (609) 547-8880.)

Technical advancements in the past 15 years--and especially in the last eight years--have reduced the manufacturing costs for solar cells steadily, and now such cells offer a realistic alternative to nuclear power and to coal-burning power plants. Furthermore, data from a decade of manufacturing now allows conservative estimates of continued reductions in manufacturing costs that are very likely to achieved in the next five years. The age of solar hydrogen is at hand.

As a fuel, hydrogen is almost an environmental ist's dream come true. When hydrogen burns, it emits no carbon monoxide, no carbon dioxide (the main source of global warming), no volatile organic compounds (the main source of urban smog), no fine particles (the chief killers in urban air), and no sulfur oxides (the main source of acid rain). The only pollutant created is nitrogen oxides, which can be controlled by various means (depending on the kind of combustion device the hydrogen is fueling). The main byproduct of hydrogen combustion is water vapor when the hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) combine into H2O.

The particular solar cell technology used as the basis for the Princeton study is called amorphous silicon. Unlike older solar calls which were usually round and an inch or two in diameter, amorphous silicon cells are now manufactured by spraying a thin film onto sheets of regular plate glass 4' x 4' or even larger. The main raw material in such cells is silicon derived from sand, so no raw material shortages stand in the way of large-scale production.

Nuclear power stations and coal-fired power plants make best economic sense when they are built large (1000 megaWatts [one gigaWatt] is the average power plant today); each such plant requires an investment of billions of dollars. In contrast, there are no economies of scale to be achieved in solar-hydrogen plants beyond a 5-to-10 megaWatt facility that would cost only $4 to $10 million to manufacture. These modular units could be combined to give power output of any desired size to meet any foreseeable need. Furthermore, the modular nature of solar-hydrogen plants makes them ideal for construction of demonstration-scale units to show that real alternatives to oil are within reach.

To achieve the necessary efficiencies to make solar-hydrogen plants affordable as a total substitute for oil, they would have to be sited where the sun shines most; the world's deserts would be the best candidates for location of such facilities. The hydrogen would then be piped to consumers through gas pipelines. The land area needed to produce hydrogen equivalent to all U.S. oil would be 24,000 square miles--about 0.5% of total U.S. land area, or 7% of U.S. deserts. The land area needed to collect solar energy to produce hydrogen equivalent to the world's entire oil production in 1987 would total 205,000 square miles or about 2% of the world's desert area. ..TEXT: Photovoltaic panels need not block out the sun and kill desert vegetation; long rectangular panels on stilts, spaced appropriately to allow sunlight to strike the desert beneath them as the sun moved across the sky would allow vegetation, wildlife, and even domestic animals to thrive beneath them.

To replace all U.S. oil used today, the water needed to produce the hydrogen would add about 2% to U.S. per capita water usage. The water would not be destroyed, of course, but it would be moved from the place where the hydrogen was made to the place where the hydrogen was burned.

The Princeton study considers each of the competing alternatives and concludes that hydrogen is the best fuel and that solar cells are the best way to make the hydrogen. The study considers biomass (growing vegetation and burning it for fuel), nuclear energy, natural gas (methane), and synthetic fuels from coal. Each of these competing technologies has benefits and costs. Biomass requires 10 times as much land as solar cells and a great deal more water. Nuclear power--even if the nuclear waste problem could be solved--suffers from one unsolvable: each year a single reactor creates enough plutonium to manufacture 20 nuclear bombs, and we have seen in recent days that even facilities being actively inspected by the international atomic police can extract plutonium from reactors right beneath the policemen's nose.[4] Coal-based fuels produce carbon dioxide that promises without doubt to heat up the planet sooner or later, causing major disruptions of atmosphere and related systems (such as rain and food production). Natural gas suffers from the same unsolvable problem. ..TEXT: The German automobile firm, Daimler-Benz has produced a hydrogen-powered automobile already. The Billings Energy Corp. of Provo, Utah has manufactured a hydrogen-powered bus. Several countries (Italy, New Zealand and Canada) have already demonstrated the feasibility of a gaseous-fuel infrastructure for transportation (in other words, pipelines, tanks, filling stations, and so forth).

People fear hydrogen, principally because of the Hindenburg airship disaster at Lakehurst, NJ, in 1937, which killed 36 people. However, analysis of natural gas, gasoline and hydrogen reveals that each fuel has particular hazards associated with its manufacture, storage, transportation and use and that for each fuel procedures and precautions can be developed for safe handling.[5]

The final chapter of the Princeton study offers a scenario for shifting from an oil-based economy to a solar-hydrogen economy. Even a speedy transition would take several decades; the pace of the transition will depend upon our willingness to make the necessary investment in new facilities. Our willingness to invest depends upon our concern for the wellbeing of the planet and the services it provides to humankind.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.
===============

 [1] The higher estimate is from recent unpublished work by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientist Joel Schwartz reported in the WASHINGTON POST May 13, 1991, pg. A13.

[2] These effects are the ones we should expect as the buildup of so-called greenhouse gases continues, according to Stephen Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (a federal research laboratory); see chapter 1 in Schneider's book GLOBAL WARMING (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1989). ..TEXT:

[3] Joan M. Ogden and Robert H. Williams, SOLAR HYDROGEN: MOVING BEYOND FOSSIL FUELS (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 1989). 123 pgs.; $12.50 plus $3 shipping from WRI Publications, P.O. Box 4852 Hampden Station, Baltimore, MD 21211. Phone (800) 822-0504 or (301) 338-6963; Visa, Mastercard and purchase orders accepted.

[4] "Atomic Regulators Seek Safeguards Against Bombs," NEW YORK TIMES Sept. 24, 1991, pg. A17.

[5] The safety of hydrogen is considered in detail in J. Hord, "Is Hydrogen a Safe Fuel?" INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HYDROGEN ENERGY Vol. 3 (1978), pgs. 157-176.

Descriptor terms: fossil fuels; oil; coal; energy; hydrogen fuel; solar energy; nuclear power; daimler-benz; automobiles; transportation; billings energy corp; renewable energy sources; global environmental problems; petroleum industry;

#259: How To Civilize Corporate Behaviour

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RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #259
---November 13, 1991---
News and resources for environmental justice.
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Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ==========
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Above all else, corporate executives want us to believe they are civilized people who mean well. Perhaps they are, but it doesn't seem to matter. Take the case of DuPont.

DuPont is one of world's leading firms with 1989 sales of $35.2 billion. Founded in 1802, DuPont operates 85 chemical plants in the U.S. and many others overseas. They have 143,000 employees worldwide. Their slogan says they produce "better things for better living" and during the past year or so they've been running an award-winning TV ad with penguins and seals clapping, and whales and dolphins dancing, all celebrating DuPont's environmental record. But there's a deep and abiding dark side to this leading corporate citizen.[1]

It was 1974 when two chemists in California published a technical paper predicting that certain chemicals invented by DuPont (chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs) would float upward in the atmosphere and begin to destroy the Earth's ozone shield, 10 to 15 miles up in the sky. The Earth's ozone shield is a thin layer of peculiar oxygen molecules (O3 instead of normal O2) which filter out deadly ultraviolet rays streaming in from the Sun. People have known for a long time that ultraviolet light is a powerful germ-killing disinfectant. Scientists now understand that life on land was impossible until the Earth's ozone shield developed 450 million years ago. Until the ozone shield developed, life had to stay in the sea because ultraviolet radiation killed anything that ventured up onto the beach.

For these reasons, scientists in 1974 knew that loss of Earth's ozone shield would be a real catastrophe threatening to make Earth uninhabitable for humans. The nation's scientific establishment soon began studying the situation. By 1976 the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)--the most prestigious body of scientists in America--announced their conclusion that CFC use was most likely going to lead to a 7% loss of the earth's ozone shield--a chillingly large change in a fundamentally important ecosystem.[2] DuPont said, "Prove it" and continued CFC production, full steam ahead. In 1979 NAS revised its estimate to a 16.5% ozone loss. That year DuPont produced another 450 million pounds of CFCs and distributed them into the environment. From 1974 through 1985 DuPont's CFC production held steady at 450 million gallons per year and its corporate position on ozone loss remained unchanged: nothing has been proven, full steam ahead.

Meanwhile NASA (U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration) scientists were looking for measurable loss of Earth's ozone shield. Since 1970, NASA had had satellites (Nimbus 4 and later Nimbus 7) 600 miles above the earth peering down making ozone measurements. But the satellites reported no ozone loss.

Then in 1985 a British scientist named Joe Farman announced he'd recorded a 40% loss of ozone over the south pole and he revealed that his data had begun showing ozone depletion as early as 1977. Farnam had a tiny research program (funded by the British government at $18,000 per year--yes, 18 thousand, not 18 million) that had operated an instrument at the South pole for 25 years measuring ultraviolet radiation striking the ground.

The news stunned NASA scientists whose multi-million-dollar satellites had still found nothing. It turned out NASA's satellites had been collecting data every year showing an ozone hole growing ominously, but NASA scientists had programmed their computers to ignore low readings because they "knew" such readings resulted from faulty instruments, not from a real ozone hole. They had the data but they had programmed their computers to ignore it. After Farnam published his findings, our rocket scientists reviewed many years of Nimbus data and found that, yes, the ozone hole had been visible for years, but they had simply missed it. By the time NASA finally found it, the ozone hole was much larger than the area of the United States and taller than Mount Everest. It was such a huge hole that it would have been visible from as far away as planet Mars if anyone had been there to look.

Each year since 1985, the ozone depletion problem has gotten worse. Many scientists have created mathematical models to predict the rate at which ozone loss will occur. All such models have been wrong. Each year the measured losses have been greater than mathematical models predicted.

Just last month the world received three new items of bad news about loss of the ozone shield. A panel of 80 scientists, gathered under the auspices of the United Nations, announced that ozone destruction is proceeding three times as fast as it did during the 1970s, and they said they expect the accelerated rate to hold throughout the 1990s.[3] No one had predicted this destructive acceleration. The same group also announced ozone loss can now be measured not only over the south pole but also, much more ominously, over the mid-latitudes where the U.S. mainland sits. And, finally, they said ozone loss can now, for the first time, be measured during spring and summer, when the Sun's rays are strongest, when most people are outdoors and when many people are intentionally basking in the Sun.

In April, 1991, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tripled its earlier estimate of the number of skin cancers that ozone loss will cause in U.S. citizens. During the next 50 years, EPA said in April, ozone loss will cause 12 million skin cancers, causing 200,000 deaths. Worldwide, a billion (a thousand million) skin cancers are expected to result from ozone depletion, including 17 million deaths over the next 50 years. And these figures will need to be revised upward in light of the U.N. scientists' October revelations. It is now clear that DuPont scientists have unleashed a human catastrophe that dwarfs all previous chemical disasters. And it is also clear that DuPont's corporate policy is to continue to produce killer chemicals as long as possible, resisting all efforts to bring the earliest achievable end to this nightmare.

This year DuPont is still pumping 450 million pounds of CFCs into the atmosphere, full steam ahead. In 1989, DuPont conducted a campaign opposing CFC phase-out legislation in the U.S. Senate. In 1990 DuPont Chief Executive Officer Ed Woolard said, "In my opinion it has not been proven that CFCs are harmful to ozone...." In 1991 DuPont executives took pains to block a shareholder resolution that called for a phaseout of CFC manufacture by 1995.

Because of rising social pressure, DuPont has said it intends to phase out CFCs but the timetable remains in doubt. Meanwhile DuPont has already built factories to produce CFC substitutes called HCFCs. Unfortunately, HCFCs also deplete the ozone shield, though more slowly than CFCs.

In addition, one of the new CFC substitutes, HCFC-123, has now been found to cause tumors on the pancreas and testicles of rats. DuPont's position is that the tumors on rats' testicles didn't actually KILL any of the rats, and besides humans wouldn't ordinarily be exposed to the chemical in concentrations as high as the rats encountered. DuPont is now aggressively marketing HCFC-123. Full steam ahead....

What must be clear from all this is that corporations like DuPont cannot act responsibly because they have no real incentive to do so. Furthermore, government, even if staffed by intelligent, well-meaning people including large numbers of rocket scientists, cannot curtail the blindness and hubris of a multinational juggernaut like DuPont whose only legally-defined mission is to return a profit to shareholders.

The world's best hope is a citizen's movement bent on reforming the heart of the beast: the corporate charter. The charter is the legal document that gives a company like DuPont the right to exist. If its charter contained language decreeing that it must "Do no harm," DuPont today would stand in real danger of losing its right to exist. This, more than anything else, would get the attention of corporate executives and civilize their behavior.[4]

 --Peter Montague, Ph.D.

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

[1] Jack Doyle, HOLD THE APPLAUSE; A CASE STUDY OF CORPORATE ENVIRONMENTALISM AS PRACTICED AT DUPONT (Washington, DC: Friends of the Earth, August, 1991). $5.00 plus $3.00 shipping from: Carla Gaffey, Friends of the Earth, 218 D Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003; phone (202) 544-2600.

[2] Sharon Roan, OZONE CRISIS; THE 15-YEAR EVOLUTION OF A SUDDEN GLOBAL EMERGENCY (NY: John Wiley and Sons, 1989).

[3] William K. Stevens, "Summertime Harm To Shield of Ozone Detected Over U.S.," NEW YORK TIMES October 23, 1991, pgs. A1, A11. See also R. Monastersky, "Summer ozone loss detected for the first time," SCIENCE NEWS Vol. 140 (November 2, 1991), pg. 278, and R. Monastersky, "Antarctic ozone hole sinks to a record low," SCIENCE NEWS Vol. 140 (October 19, 1991), pgs. 244-245.

[4] Richard Grossman and Frank Adams, "Dog Days at Company Headquarters," E MAGAZINE Vol. 2, No. 6 (Nov./Dec., 1991), pgs. 46-47. Interested in ways to civilize corporate behavior? Contact Grossman and Adams at P.O. Box 3242, Boston, MA 02101.

Descriptor terms: corporations; dupont; cfcs; ozone depletion; nasa; skin cancer; hcfcs; corporate charters;

#246: Dismantling Our Life-Support Systems.

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RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #246
---August 14, 1991---
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 ozone layer, which protects living things from the Sun's harmful ultraviolet rays, has been depleted in many areas of the globe, and at the latitudes of the United States the loss is proceeding twice as fast as scientists had expected, the [U.S.] Environmental Protection Agency announced [in April].

"The agency said the declines measured in the late fall, winter, and early spring amounted to 4.5 to 5 percent in the last decade.

"'It is stunning information,' William K. Reilly, the agency's Administrator, said in an interview after the announcement in Washington. 'It is unexpected, it is disturbing....'

"According to agency calculations based on the new ozone findings, over the next 50 years about 12 million Americans will develop skin cancer, and more than 200,000 of them will die. Under previous assumptions, only 500,000 cancer cases and 9,300 fatalities were forecast....

"Scientists say that for every 1 percent decline in the high-altitude ozone shield, 2 percent more ultraviolet radiation reaches the earth's surface. Besides skin cancer, the harmful ultraviolet radiation can cause eye cataracts. Scientists say it can also affect the human immune system adversely, that it harms the ability of phytoplankton, tiny plants at the basis of the oceanic food chain, to reproduce; that it can damage some crops and wild plants." --NEW YORK TIMES April 5, 1991, pg. 1, D1.

Thus readers of the NEW YORK TIMES in April learned that ozone depletion is now proceeding rapidly in the atmosphere above the United States. For roughly 450 million years, the ozone shield--10 to 30 miles high in the sky--has protected the surface of planet Earth from ultraviolet radiation streaming in from the sun. 

Now chemicals called CFCs, released from refrigerators and air conditioners, are wafting upward, destroying the protective ozone in the stratosphere, allowing ultraviolet light levels to increase on the surface of the Earth. In sufficient quantities, ultraviolet light is a potent disinfectant, killing everything it strikes.

And so a problem that only three years ago seemed confined to an ozone "hole" over the ant arctic is now recognized as a world-wide calamity that will cause skin cancer in caucasians, will cause eye cataracts and immune system disorders in humans of all races, will interfere with the most fundamental underpinnings of oceanic food chains, and will disrupt wildlife reproduction in other ways that are poorly understood. Furthermore, the problem is developing twice as rapidly as scientists had predicted just last year, indicating that scientists--15 years after the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, declared this a serious problem worthy of urgent attention--do not yet understand the problem sufficiently well to predict its course correctly. In this business of dismantling the life-support systems of the Earth, we are learning as we go.

Just this year, scientists seem to be reaching agreement that ozone loss is connected to another worldwide phenomenon that was first noticed in 1989. Scientists have reported simultaneous wildlife losses in places as far apart as California, Australia, Brazil, and Europe. It may sound silly at first, but amphibians--salamanders, toads, and frogs--are declining, disappearing, and becoming extinct at unprecedented rates world-wide. Increased ultraviolet light is now thought to be one important cause, though by no means the only one.

Dr. Henry Wake, a biologist from University of California at Berkeley chaired a panel of 20 experts for the National Research Council (Washington, DC) in early 1990. Dr. Wake compares the loss of frogs to the 19th-century coal miner's canary--when the canary died, it was a warning sign that the air in the mine had grown hazardous to humans. So with frogs, says Dr. Wake: "If frogs and salamanders are dying off in synchrony [at the same time], there's a message there for us," says Dr. Wake. (NY TIMES Feb. 20, 1990, pg. C4; SCIENCE NEWS Feb. 24, 1990, pg. 116, and March 3, 1990, pg. 142.)

The truth is, amphibians are rapidly disappearing from many ponds, rivers, mountains, and rain forests around the world, including places that are not very polluted. Dr. Wake says, "They are disappearing from nature preserves in the most pristine sites of Costa Rica, Brazil, Yosemite, Sequoia and Ile Royale National Parks [in the U.S.]. Meadows where frogs were as thick as flies are now silent," he says.

Individual scientists had been noticing the decline of frogs but it wasn't until 1989 that they compared notes at a global conference and discovered that reports of local losses were coming in from all over the world. Some scientists had refrained from reporting their observations of loss and extinction for fear that younger colleagues, or even children, would find live specimens of frogs reported extinct.

All the reasons for the decline of amphibians are not understood. In some cases, it's loss of habitat. Frogs that used to live in Japanese rice paddies now find golf courses instead. In the U.S., frogs return to ponds only to find condominiums. Stocking lakes and ponds with edible fish, particularly in the western U.S., wipes out frogs when fish eat their tadpoles.

But there's something going on besides direct human intervention. Dr. David Bradford of UCLA reports that in the 1970s he found ponds in the High Sierras containing more than 800 adult yellowlegged frogs and 1500 tadpoles. In 1990, he checked 38 lakes and found frogs in only one.

A leading cause of such declines may be acid rain and acid snow. The spring thaw brings a shock of acid water into mountain streams, killing sensitive creatures in the early stages of life.

Another source of problems is pesticides, including those that are banned for sale in the U.S. but which are still manufactured here and shipped overseas. Many of them, sprayed abroad, travel on the wind and rain down on U.S. soil; some see in this an ironic and fitting gift to us from the developing world, but for frogs and salamanders it represents apolitical destruction and death.

Amphibians are particularly sensitive to chemical pollution because they spend part of their life-cycle on land and part immersed in water; furthermore, they breathe through their skin. Toxic heavy metals and pesticides building up in aquatic food chains, plus a hefty dose of air pollution may be what's killing some frogs, toads, and salamanders.

The latest information is that many researchers now believe that increased ultraviolet radiation may be affecting frogs' eggs, which float on the surface of the water, absorbing sunlight. Too much ultraviolet light evidently interferes with the ability of egg cells to multiply.

What are Humans Doing About It?

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has recently set up a "Task Force on Declining Amphibian Populations," located in Corvallis, Oregon. They are developing a worldwide network of scientists who will document the destruction of amphibians as the ominous global trend unfolds. (SCIENCE Aug. 2, 1991, p. 509.)

Back in Washington, President Bush has steadfastly refused to force an aggressive phase-out of ozone-depleting chemicals. Furthermore, Mr. Bush and Vice-President Quayle recently announced they are reversing U.S. policies established to protect wetlands. Under pressure from some of the nation's wealthiest lobbyists, the Home Builders Association, Mr. Bush will open millions of protected wetlands to development. (NY TIMES Aug. 3, 1991, pgs. 1, 25.)

For its part, DuPont, the company that invented, patented, and sold the CFCs that are bringing ruin to the Earth, has developed only one problem in recent years: managing all the money that is pouring in. As CFCs are slowly phased out, they become scarcer and their price is rising on the world market. Organizations dependent upon refrigeration are willing to pay the rising cost of CFCs to maintain their operations, and thus DuPont is reaping literally billions of new dollars each year in windfall profits. (NY TIMES April 21, 1988, pg. 2F.)

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: ozone layer; global environmental problems; epa; reilly; studies; immune system; skin; cancers; eyes; oceans; food chain; habitat destruction; cfcs; nas; amphibians; wildlife; costa rica; brazil; yosemite; sequoia; ile royale; national parks; conferences; japan; rice paddies; heavy metals; air pollution; iucn; bush administration; wetlands; home builders association; dupont;

#230: The Role of Civil Disobedience.

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

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #230
---April 24, 1991---
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 ==================
What is the role of civil disobedience in the grass-roots movement to control toxics?
On April 4th in Freeland, Michigan, toxics activist Tom Adams, 29, chained himself beneath the wheels of a parked railroad train, 25 gondola cars containing 2500 tons of contaminated soil, cleanup residues from a train wreck and chemical fire at Freeland July 22, 1989. The soil was headed for burial the next day at a solid waste landfill in Michigan. When workers arrived to move the train April 5th they found Tom wrapped in 20 feet of hardened steel chain attached to the tracks with half a dozen padlocks. Authorities broke two bolt cutters and a saw before they got Tom loose. They let him off with a warning. The train's owner, CSX Transportation, realized this train was bound for trouble, and they moved it out of state. The train has been traveling ever since, looking for a home (see map, from USA TODAY April 22, 1991, pg. A5).

Tom's group, the STORM Network--"a merry band of men and women serious about protecting the Great Lakes"--tracked the train into Ohio using high-tech methods they decline to describe. Four days later, Sunday night, Tom chained himself to the train in Walbridge, OH, this time using heavier chain. Authorities had to cut him loose with a blow torch, and this time they charged him with disrupting public transportation and vandalism--both felonies. Tom faced 11 years in prison and $7,700 in fines.

The police incarcerated Tom in the Wood County Justice Center and he immediately began a hunger strike to raise the ante.

The train is owned by CSX Transportation of Richmond, VA, which operates a 19,700-mile railroad system in the East and Midwest. It was their train, carrying chemicals to a Dow Chemical plant in Freeland, that derailed July 22, 1989, spilling 11,500 gallons of acrylic acid, 21,000 gallons of mixed chlorosilanes, and 23,000 gallons of petroleum naphtha, which ignited immediately and burned for over a week. Three thousand people were evacuated from their homes.

Local citizens immediately grew alarmed at the way CSX and local officials pretended all was well. A group formed, called TRACC--Tricounty Residents for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination. TRACC began paying close attention to chemical spills by trains in Michigan and they found an average of one spill a month, more than half of them in their threecounty area. "We began as citizens believing our government was there to protect and serve us, and finally we came to see that officials aren't interested in saving lives. They're just not," says TRACC leader Kim Maxwell, 36, who was evacuated from his home for 8 days. "I've got 2 little kids and the state health department tried to pull the wool over our eyes from day one," he says. "I can show you a video, taken seven days after the fire began, where a state health official says the fire is out, the wreckage has been removed, and the contaminated soil has been cleaned up." He goes on, "I came to find out later the fire wasn't even out, the wreckage was still all over the tracks, still leaking, and it was 18 months before they cleaned up the chemicals." Maxwell says, "I had four years in the military and they trained us to recognize propaganda. What CSX put out from day one would have made Joseph Stalin proud."

What happened after that, as Maxwell tells it, was a lot of foot-dragging by state agencies, a lot of fancy footwork by CSX Transportation, and no satisfactory cleanup. "They could have cleaned it up in two weeks back in '89," says Maxwell. "They kept delaying a cleanup, meanwhile nature was washing the chemicals away through rain and runoff. The longer they delayed, the less chemicals there were to clean up. CSX was saving money every day they delayed," he says. "But I live here," he says. "I've got my family here." He describes a holding pond created to contain the chemicals. The dam broke several times, and it was sometimes many weeks before it was repaired, he says. The pond wasn't fenced, so children played by its edge.

Petroleum naphtha is a combination of aliphatic hydrocarbons, naphthenic hydrocarbons, benzene, and aromatic hydrocarbons. Many of these compounds are highly toxic and are known human carcinogens.

Chlorosilanes are a mixture of silicon, hydrogen, and chlorine. "The silanes are reported to be highly toxic by inhalation, ingestion, or skin contact," according to the Handbook of Toxic and Hazardous Chemicals (Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes, 1981).

Acrylic acid is a corrosive material that causes skin and eye burns on contact.

However, by the time the contaminated soil was ready to be shipped off-site, the concentrations in the soil were low. CSX spokesperson Steve Buser, a chemist, describes the soil on the train as "mildly contaminated." State officials we interviewed agree with that assessment.

Under Michigan law, the soil was automatically classified as a legally hazardous waste that had to be buried in a hazardous waste landfill. To spare themselves the expense of such burial, CSX petitioned Michigan authorities to designate the wastes "non-hazardous."

Throughout the fall and winter of '89-'90, TRACC and STORM members opposed the "redesignation" of the waste from "hazardous" to "non-hazardous." Under Michigan law, a solid waste can go to a Type II landfill and a Type II landfill can be unlined and built in a sand and gravel pit, offering no protection to the environment. Finally, the state Department of Natural Resources decided on the basis of chemical analyses and a risk assessment that the wastes should be redesignated non-hazardous. That's when Tom Adams decided civil disobedience was the only way to make the point that "mildly contaminated" wastes shouldn't be buried in the ground for future generations to absorb. The rest is history.

Toxics activists have vowed to carry on Tom Adams's fight. "We are going to hound this train wherever it goes," says John Liebman, a seasoned Greenpeace toxics campaigner from New Orleans who traveled to South Carolina this past weekend to make his point.

Kim Maxwell of TRACC says, "We tried hard to work within the system, to use the system for what it's made for." And how did that work out? "Frankly, we couldn't get the attention of the governor, or any national attention, 'til Tom chained himself to the tracks," he says. Last Thursday--13 days into Tom's hunger strike--a judge threw out the felony charges and Tom now faces 90 days in jail and a $700 fine. He has started to eat but he won't pay a $300 bond, so he remains jailed, awaiting trial.

Brian Hunt, a burly Greenpeace toxics campaigner from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, takes the long view. "You think about American history," he says. "Nothing worth accomplishing has ever been accomplished without civil disobedience. An end to slavery. An end to segregation. Stopping atmospheric nuclear testing. Stopping nuclear power. People have had to break the law to make a point about the bigger issues of right and wrong. That's the way it is. If we think we're going to win this fight to control toxics without civil disobedience, we're kidding ourselves," he says.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: citizens activism; freeland, mi; tom adams; toxic train; hazardous materials; csx transportation; interstate waste trade; storm network; walbridge, oh; protests; dow chemical; accidents; evacuations; citizen groups; tracc; kim maxwell; petroleum naptha; carcinogens; chlorosilanes; toxic substances; acrylic acid; steve buser; landfilling; brian hunt;

#243: Citizens Develop New Tactics To Drive Toxics Out Of Cement Kilns.

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

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #243
---July 24, 1991---
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 fastest-growing sector of the hazardous waste "management" industry is cement kilns that "recycle" hazardous waste by blending it with fuel and burning it for heat to make cement. The trade magazine Waste Age reported results of a survey conducted by the Portland Cement Association [Skokie, IL; (312) 966-6200] in February, 1990 (pg. 146), showing that 24 out of 116 U.S. cement plants were burning hazardous waste. A survey published four months later in June, 1990, in EI DIGEST (pgs. 14-23) revealed that the number had jumped 25% to 30 kilns burning waste. It seems very likely that the number is considerably higher today, a year later. Today somewhere between 1.0 and 1.8 million tons of hazardous waste is entering cement kilns each year.

Citizens are naturally concerned about this trend. Air emissions from cement kilns burning hazardous waste are substantially larger than those of cement kilns not burning hazardous waste. Toxic residues from a hazardous waste incinerator must legally be sent to a hazardous waste landfill where someone must watch them into the foreseeable future. On the other hand, toxic residues from hazardous wastes burned in a cement kiln can legally be mixed into the cement and thus distributed into the environment, liability-free. A 1989 Greenpeace report estimated that cement kilns that year released 14 million pounds of unburned hazardous waste and two million pounds of toxic heavy metals into the environment via the smoke stack. The same report estimated that hazardous residues from hazardous waste combustion in cement kilns in 1989 totaled 6.7 billion pounds of ash, containing as much as 18.6 million pounds of toxic heavy metals.[1] These toxins went into the cement.

According to government insiders, the Combustion Section of the Office of Solid Waste within U.S. EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] has gone out of its way to assist the cement industry as it developed a new sideline: helping make the nation's its hazardous waste problem "go away."

An EPA employee, Hugh B. Kaufman, wrote a letter Dec. 7, 1990, to EPA Administrator William Reilly pointing out that "The Agency [EPA] appears to be engaged in a pattern and practice of accommodating the regulated cement kiln hazardous waste incineration industry with nonexistent, or at best loose, regulation.... As a direct result of the lack of RCRA [Resource Conservation and Recovery Act] regulations, many sectors of the cement kiln industry have been transformed into major commercial hazardous waste disposal companies. The public and the environment have not been protected from the adverse consequences of these incineration activities during this time," Kaufman charged.[2]

What Can Citizens Do?

Consultant Edward W. Kleppinger, Ph.D., has suggested several things citizens could do if they became concerned about a local cement kiln.[3]

1) If your local kiln is not presently burning hazardous waste, ask them to sign a pledge not to do it.

2) Contact your local Congressperson. Express your concerns and ask for public hearings on the matter.

3) Check whether your local kiln is violating its Clean Air Act permit.

4) Check whether your local kiln has a wastewater discharge (NPDES) permit and whether the kiln is in compliance or not.

5) Ask whether the kiln's hazardous waste operations are reflected in your fire department's fire and catastrophe plans? Adequately reflected? Has the fire department inspected the kiln?

6) If hazardous wastes are being trucked or shipped by rail to the kiln, the community could create transport controls, such as: no travel past schools during school hours, or on narrow roads without a police escort.

7) Is the kiln's landfill properly permitted? Is it (yet) impacting local groundwater?

8) Is the kiln complying with any mining permits it holds?

New Tactics Developing

The newest tactic for opposing cement kiln incineration of hazardous waste has developed among a community of people who are asking, "What is this doing to the quality of the cement?"

The City Council of Fort Collins, Colorado May 7, 1991, passed a resolution opposing a plan by a major cement company (Holnam, Inc.) to burn hazardous waste in its Boettcher Plant. [Holnam was already burning hazardous waste in its cement kilns at Santee, SC, and Clarksville, MO.] The Council went on record opposing Holnam's proposal and directed the city staff to develop a plan for opposing Holnam. Most importantly, the Council formally outlawed the use of cement from cement kilns burning hazardous waste on any cityfunded projects in Fort Collins.

Two days later in Dayton, OH, Price Brothers, one of the nation's largest suppliers of cement water mains, announced it was suspending use of cement made at kilns burning hazardous waste until such cement was certified safe by the National Sanitary Foundation.

Clearly, this issue of "cement quality" could become the Achilles heel of cement kilns burning hazardous waste: if the public turns against their cement, they'll think twice about adulterating it with hazardous waste.

An interesting sidelight on the "cement quality" issue: Edward Kleppinger, an engineer, petitioned the American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM) November 19, 1990, to consider whether adulteration of cement with hazardous waste is a violation of ASTM regulation C-150, which states, "The cement covered by [regulation C-150] shall contain no addition except..." followed by a short list of materials that can be added to cement, such as water and calcium sulfate; the list does not include toxic metals or other hazardous waste constituents. Dr. Kleppinger asked the ASTM whether a new standard needs to be developed for waste-free cement vs. waste-containing cement. ASTM has charged a subcommittee of Committee C-1 with developing a response to Dr. Kleppinger.

The ASTM subcommittee is headed by Ron Gebhardt of the New Jersey firm, Cemtech L.P. [limited partnership]. Cemtech L.P. was formed in April, 1991, by a partnership between Holnam cement and Chemical Waste Management, Inc., the hazardous waste subsidiary of Waste Management, Inc., which is the nation's largest and most-often-fined hazardous waste management firm. Cemtech, which became Cemtech L.P. in April, 1991, has its own colorful history; as recently as April, its CEO was Herb Case who was convicted in federal court in 1983 for illegally dumping millions of gallons of toxic chemical wastes into the Lone Pine landfill in Freehold, NJ, and into the Newark, NJ, sewer system, according to United Press International.[4] Mr. Case has recently severed all connections with Cemtech L.P. Mr. Gebhardt has been with Cemtech two years. In an interview, Mr. Gebhardt said Dr. Kleppinger was "raising specious issues." A draft response to Dr. Kleppinger has gone out to subcommittee members for approval or disapproval. The subcommittee has 44 members.

In an interview, ASTM staff member Scott Orthey [1916 Race St., Philadelphia, PA 19103; (215) 2995400] said ASTM would welcome participation of "anyone interested in cement quality issues" in the ASTM's deliberations over hazardous waste residues in cement. He said ASTM's goal was a consensus of "everyone interested, not just producers and users of cement." He said ordinary citizens concerned about these issues would be welcome in the ASTM's deliberations.

Citizens are now looking for large projects (sports arenas, hospitals, schools) that local politicians can be persuaded to give assurances will only use toxics-free cement. Through publicity, these citizens aim to create two classes of cement in the minds of the public: toxics-free cement and the other kind, made by kilns burning hazardous waste.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: incineration; cement kilns; waste age; surveys; portland cement association; hazardous waste; toxic substances; regulation; epa; kaufman; reilly; kleppinger; npdes; compliacne; fort collins; co; boettcher; santee; sc; clarksville; mo; dayton; oh; astm; gebhardt; cemtech lp; chemical waste management, inc; wmi; case; freehold; nj; lone pine; newark; upi; orthey; pa;

#260: Long-Term Above-Ground Storage of Superfund Wastes Seems To Make Sense

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

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #260
---November 20, 1991---
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========================

Not all wastes can be recycled. For example Superfund cleanup wastes. These chemical leftovers from the past are sitting around waiting to leak into somebody's drinking water. The point of the Superfund program is to clean them up to protect people. But that's not easy, it's not cheap, and it's a political hot potato.

The Superfund law was passed in 1980 and Congress told EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) to go out and clean up all the old chemical dumps. EPA began doing it and then realized they had no place to put the stuff they were cleaning up. So they started trucking it to Alabama and to Niagara Falls, NY, and burying it in enormous holes in the ground (landfills). That's actually what they were doing--digging up toxic soil in one location, hauling it by truck several hundred miles or more, and burying it in another hole in the ground. Hard to believe, but true.

Then the public began to catch on. In about 1983 Joel Hirschhorn of the Congress's Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) had the guts to point out that this emperor was wearing no clothes. In public Hirschhorn started saying EPA's cleanup strategy was a "shell game" and everyone immediately saw he was right. Congress realized EPA was bungling the job, got serious, and passed a new law that told EPA to "prefer permanent cleanup technologies." This may have been a mistake.

EPA took this to mean incineration. EPA likes incineration. To EPA, an incinerator looks just like a landfill. It's a machine with a hole in its face and you can throw in anything, whether it burns or not. But you say an incinerator produces toxic ash? You rename the toxic ash "special waste" and bury it a hole in the ground out back. Seriously, that's how it works.

Unfortunately, people don't trust incinerators, for good reason, so EPA's new Superfund strategy has shipwrecked on sharp rocks. Massive citizen opposition has developed at nearly every Superfund cleanup site where incineration has been proposed.

What else is there? Chemical detoxification. Set up a chemical factory (small scale) and pull apart the toxic molecules as you dig them up. This is the right approach. Unfortunately, often the wastes being dug up contain a wild mixture of glop and crud so a chemical detox unit to handle them is expensive and tricky to design and run.

What's left? Temporary cleanup. If we believe that technology will continue to produce better solutions to nasty problems like "how to detoxify mixed crud/glop," then we should store the Superfund wastes in large reinforced concrete buildings above-ground where we can satisfy ourselves that they are under control, and then wait for better technologies to develop.

This is a serious proposal. Superfund cleanups are too often stalemated because no one likes any of the available solutions. Meanwhile, real people are poisoned or are terrified of becoming poisoned while the citizenry and the EPA dance around. Superfund victims need real solutions now.

Four civil engineers from Alabama and Florida have proposed large reinforced concrete buildings for long-term waste storage.[1] For some situations--for example, some Superfund cleanups--such buildings appear to make sense.

Such buildings would be square, measuring 250 feet on a side. They would be 70 feet tall. Need more space? Put four such buildings right next to each other. They would be designed to withstand hurricanes and tornadoes. Wastes inside them could be placed in containers, or merely "bulk stored" (heaped into the open concrete sections). In Figure 1, wastes would go where the words "Load Bearing Floor" appear. The base of the building would be a 12" concrete slab. The first floor would hold no wastes but would contain inspection walkways so people could satisfy themselves than nothing was leaking from above. Leachate would be collected, treated by ion exchange, activated carbon absorption, and solidification, then returned to storage in the building.

The buildings could not be placed over sinkholes or over areas where shaft and tunnel mining had occurred, nor over highly compressible soils that would allow different amounts of settling beneath different parts of the building (the floor slab might crack). But except for that, such buildings could be sited almost anywhere. Of course they'd be ugly. But why kid ourselves? Superfund wastes are ugly. I'd emboss the exterior walls with huge skulls and crossbones to get the message across to enthusiasts and critics alike--this building is a deadly tomb for technical hubris and dumb ideas.

Separating such buildings from human communities by half a mile or so would be a good idea. Operator error could, under some circumstances, mix incompatible wastes and cause an explosion--and human error can never be completely avoided. Errors are what make us humans and not computers.

Such buildings would produce no water pollution, no air pollution (a blower with a charcoal filter would keep the interior under negative pressure, so air wouldn't escape outward). Compartmentalization of the wastes would allow an inventory to be kept, so particular wastes could be retrieved when recycling technologies improved.

Such buildings should last for many decades, perhaps as long as a century. The cost of a 250 foot square building 70 feet tall would be roughly $6 million. Considerably cheaper and safer than a landfill. Cheaper and safer than an incinerator for many wastes.

The authors of this idea want everyone to adopt these buildings as substitutes for hazardous waste landfills, substitutes for municipal solid waste landfills, substitutes for incinerator ash monofills. To us, they make best sense for Superfund cleanup wastes where you can't make the argument that we should avoid the creation of the waste in the first place. By definition, Superfund wastes already exist.

The original newsletter contained a figure that is not reproducible online. The caption reads: Sectional Perspective of Structure Showing Base Slab, Inspection Walkways, and Double-Tee Roof Sections.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

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

[1] James V. Walters, Tola B. Moffett, Jerry D. Sellers, and W. Adrian Lovell, "Use of Elevated, Concrete Building for 'Sanitary Landfills,' Monofills, and Cogeneration Facilities." JOURNAL OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY Vol. 17, No. 2 (April, 1989), pgs. 123-130.

Descriptor terms: waste disposal technologies; waste treatment technologies; hazardous waste; superfund; epa; landfilling; alternative treatment technologies; ota; joel hirschhorn; incineration; chemical detoxification; above-ground concrete storage buildings;

#248: A Tale of Science and Industry.

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

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #248
---August 28, 1991---
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========================

For the last several years two debates have been swirling around the notorious chemical dioxin. One debate has engaged real scientists in the question, How dangerous is dioxin to humans and to wildlife? The second debate has occurred within industries that release dioxin into the environment and so will be directly affected by the outcome of the science debate.

According to CHEMISTRY & INDUSTRY magazine (Feb. 18, 1991, pg. 112) the chlor-alkali industry (which produces chlorine, the use of which by many other industries creates dioxin) "has taken an active interest in the course of the scientific debate." In fact, the Chlorine Institute--a trade association--is coordinating a "public outreach program" to "capitalise [sic] on the outcome of a recent Banbury conference on dioxin."

Could such a "public outreach program" have any effect? The NEW YORK TIMES took a most unusual step August 15, 1991, when it announced on page one that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was beginning a year-long review to develop "a new formal opinion on the risks of dioxin." The TIMES often reports that studies have been completed, but it rarely reports that studies have been begun. Furthermore, SCIENCE magazine had reported May 17, 1991 (pg. 911) that "(EPA) administrator William Reilly has launched a major new effort to reassess the toxicity" of dioxin--so the TIMES's August 15th news was three months old.

In the TIMES's August 15th story, EPA Administrator Reilly not only announced that his agency was undertaking a year-long review of dioxin toxicity, he also took the unusual step of suggesting to the TIMES how the study would come out: "I don't want to prejudge the issue, but we are seeing new information on dioxin that suggests a lower risk assessment for dioxin should be applied," Mr. Reilly told the TIMES. The next day the TIMES ran an editorial praising federal officials for "sensibly considering new evidence that could lead to relaxation of the current strict and costly regulatory standards [for dioxin]." And three days later the TIMES ran a second front-page story which began, "Dioxin, once thought of as the most toxic chemical known, does not deserve that reputation, according to many scientists." The TIMES did not name any of the "many scientists." What "new information" about dioxin has EPA Administrator Reilly found? According to SCIENCE May 17th, the "new information" is a "description [given to Mr. Reilly by two EPA scientists] of a meeting last November at the Banbury Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory that Reilly says made the most compelling case for change [in EPA standards for dioxin]."

SCIENCE had written its own description of the Banbury Conference Feb. 8, 1991 (pg. 624): Science said 38 dioxin researchers from the U.S. and Europe met at Banbury and "reached an agreement that surprised almost everyone." SCIENCE went on to say, "And this unlikely agreement on how dioxin works at the molecular level--and some hurried calculations scribbled on a blackboard--could force a dramatic change in how the federal government assesses the risk of this and similar carcinogens [cancer-causing chemicals]."

However, two weeks later--February 22, 1991--SCIENCE reported something quite different about the Banbury meeting ("Flap Erupts Over Dioxin Meeting," pg. 866), revealing that the meeting had been sponsored by the Chlorine Institute and that the Institute had hired a public relations firm to circulate a summary of the meeting claiming a "consensus" had been reached when in fact nothing of the kind had happened. For example, one letter, from a PR firm to the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission, said, "The Banbury Conference was organized for the express purpose of developing a scientific consensus concerning a biological basis for risk assessment.... They were able to achieve consensus."

However, independent scientists who had attended the Banbury meeting dispute this view. For example, according to SCIENCE, Dr. Ellen Silbergeld of the University of Maryland and "a number of other participants" at the conference felt "manipulated and misused." Silbergeld sent a letter to the Banbury Center's director saying, "I am in fact rather astounded by such a product from a Banbury Conference.... 

The press releases and statements imply that a major focus of the conference was a discussion of the regulatory risk assessments that have been applied to dioxins; this was not the focus of this meeting." "I did not expect to be manipulated by industry and government spokespeople (who are not dioxin researchers, incidentally) to be made into a supporter of their political views on dioxin and risk assessment," Silbergeld said.

According to SCIENCE, the Chlorine Institute initiated the Banbury Conference and paid for half of it. Science quoted The Chlorine Institute's head of communications, saying the Institute believed the meeting could be "beneficial to our interests, particularly our interest in the paper industry." The use of chlorine in industrial processes often leads to the creation of dioxin as a by-product; the paper industry is under great pressure to reduce its dioxin emissions. For example, the newsletter ENVIRONMENT WEEK reported Feb. 14, 1991:

"A $1 million punitive damages award by a Mississippi jury last October against Georgia Pacific [paper company] for alleged dioxin pollution of the Leaf River has touched off a stampede of similar suits against paper mills in Mississippi, Tennessee and several other states. The legal actions, which involve thousands of plaintiffs and billions of dollars in damage claims against major paper companies, have begun to resemble the avalanche of legal problems that hit the asbestos industry in the 1980s."

Enormous dioxin liabilities don't stop with the paper industry. On July 10, 1991, a Missouri jury awarded $1.5 million to the family of Alvin J. Overmann, a St. Louis trucker who died of cancer; his workplace had been contaminated by dioxin. Several hundred similar lawsuits are pending in the Missouri courts now as a result of the contamination of the town of Times Beach.

Why might the NEW YORK TIMES participate in a public relations campaign to promote the view that dioxin is less dangerous than previously believed? James Ledbetter, a media columnist for New York's VILLAGE VOICE said Aug. 27 (pg. 8) said, "For some reason, August is dioxin revisionism month.... Once again, the chemical industry is trying to bamboozle federal regulators and the public, with the eager cooperation of the mainstream press," he said, citing the TIMES. Ledbetter suggested that perhaps the TIMES's "industrial-strength enthusiasm over eliminating 'strict and costly' standards can be traced to the fact that the New York Times Company has an 80 per cent interest in a Maine paper mill, and a 49 per cent interest in three Canadian paper mills. Indeed, on August 12, just four days before [the Times's] editorial ran, two groups of Canadian Indians filed suit against Kimberly Clark and the TIMES Company for $1.3 billion (Canadian), charging that one of the mills has polluted three rivers with dioxin and other toxins," Ledbetter said.

A two-day Citizens' Conference on Dioxin has been organized by an international group of scientists and researchers.

It will be held Sept. 21-22 1991 at the Omni Europa Hotel in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

The first day ("Defining the Problems") will feature three sessions:

(1) A Lay Person's Guide to Dioxins and Related Compounds;
(2) A Status Report on Dioxin's Impact on Human Health and the Environment; and
(3) Fraud and Manipulation in Dioxin Studies.

The second day will feature "Solutions Promoted by Citizens":

(1) Clean Production, Waste Reduction and Zero Discharge;
(2) Getting the Chlorine Out of the Paper Industry; and
(3) Banning Incineration. 

To attend, phone Paul or Ellen Connett in Canton, NY: (315) 379-9200. Fax: (315) 3790448.

More on this important event next week. #249

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: dioxin; health effects; chemistry & industry; studies; chlorine; banbury conference; NEW YORK TIMES; epa; science magazine; reilly; regulation; standards; chlorine institute; north carolina environmental management commission; risk assessment; industrial waste; fines; leaf river; ms; tn; georgia pacific; paper; liabilities; mo; times beach; chemical industry; ledbetter; citizens conference on dioxin; nc; connett; zero discharge; waste reduction; incineration;

#263: The Wingspread Statement--Part 1: Chemicals In Environment Affect Sexual Development In Wildlife. And Humans?

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

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #263
---December 11, 1991---
News and resources for environmental justice.
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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========================

Gradually during recent years a new body of knowledge has developed showing that some chemicals in food and water can mimic hormones and disrupt the development of living things like fish, birds, and mammals, including their sexual development.

In some cases, the effects on wildlife have been dramatic. For example, male herring gulls on Lake Ontario, exposed to DDT and other organochlorine compounds, developed female sex organs. Female-female pairing has been observed in herring gulls on Lake Michigan and on Santa Barbara Island, California. Because humans share the same basic mechanisms of growth and development as wildlife, an increasing number of scientists has become concerned that humans may already be affected without recognizing it.

In July of this year an international group of 21 scientists met at Wingspread in Racine, Wisconsin to assess what is known about these matters. They have now released a "consensus statement" containing information and opinions about the nature and possible causes of these problems. The five-page statement is called "Chemically Induced Alterations in Sexual Development: The Wildlife/Human Connection."

Background

Hormones are produced by the endocrine system--a bodily system consisting of specialized cells, tissues, and organs that create and secrete (usually into the blood) organic chemicals called hormones, which then regulate other kinds of cells in the body. Particular hormones only affect particular cells that contain "receptors" for those hormones. A small amount of a hormone attaches to a "receptor site" and the hormone-receptor pair then initiates a cascade of chemical changes, often with major and far-reaching consequences.

The endocrine system shares with the nervous system the job of adjusting the body's response to a changing external environment. The nervous system copes with environmental changes on an immediate basis, whereas the endocrine system copes with environmental changes on a sustaining basis. For example, when the body gets cold, the nervous system causes shivering, which raises the body's temperature. But each month it is the endocrine system that starts the human female menstrual cycle. In a developing fetus, it is the endocrine system that regulates cell division and organ differentiation. The endocrine system regulates pattern and timing of bird migration and of hibernation in mammals. Examples of endocrine glands in humans include the adrenal gland, pancreas, thyroid, pituitary, ovaries and testes.

The scientists gathered at Wingspread last July focused on the sex hormones--the androgens that make males look and act like males and the estrogens that make females look and act like females. The Wingspread Statement begins, "Many compounds introduced into the environment by human activity are capable of disrupting the endocrine system of animals, including fish, wildlife, and humans. The consequences of such disruption can be profound because of the crucial role hormones play in controlling development...."

"The following consensus was reached by participants at the workshop. "[1]. We are certain of the following:

"A large number of man-made chemicals that have been released into the environment, as well as a few natural ones, have the potential to disrupt the endocrine system of animals, including humans. Among these are the persistent, bioaccumulative, organohalogen compounds that include some pesticides (fungicides, herbicides, and insecticides) and industrial chemicals, other synthetic products, and some metals.[1]

"Many wildlife populations are already affected by these compounds. The impacts include thyroid dysfunction [impaired or abnormal functioning] in birds and fish; decreased fertility in birds, fish, shellfish, and mammals; decreased hatching success in birds, fish and turtles; gross birth deformities in birds, fish and turtles; metabolic abnormalities [impaired or abnormal use of energy, manufacture of tissue, or handling of resulting wastes] in birds, fish, and mammals; behavioral abnormalities in birds; demasculinization and feminization in male fish, birds, and mammals; defeminization and masculinization of female fish and birds; and compromised [impaired] immune systems in birds and mammals.

"The patterns of effects vary among species and among compounds. Four general points can nonetheless be made: (1) the chemicals of concern may have entirely different effects on the embryo, fetus, or perinatal [meaning "near the time of birth," from the 28th week of pregnancy through the first week of life, in humans] organism than on the adult; (2) the effects are most often manifested in offspring, not in the exposed parent; (3) the timing of exposure in the developing organism is crucial in determining its character and future potential; and (4) although critical exposure occurs during embryonic development [from conception through the end of the second month of pregnancy], obvious manifestations [effects] may not occur until maturity.

"Laboratory studies corroborate the abnormal sexual development observed in the field and provide biological mechanisms to explain the observations in wildlife.

"Humans have been affected by compounds of this nature, too. The effects of DES (diethylstilbesterol), a synthetic therapeutic agent, like many of the compounds mentioned [in footnote 1] are estrogenic [meaning they act like estrogen, a family of female sex hormones]. Daughters born to mothers who took DES now suffer increased rates of clear cell adenocarcinoma [cancer], various genital tract abnormalities, abnormal pregnancies, and some changes in immune responses. Both sons and daughters exposed in utero [while in the uterus] experience congenital anomalies of their reproductive system and reduced fertility. The effects seen in in utero DES-exposed humans parallel those found in contaminated wildlife and laboratory animals, suggesting that humans may be at risk to those same environmental hazards as wildlife."

The Wingspread Statement goes on: [2]. "We estimate with confidence that:

"Some of the developmental impairments reported in humans today are seen in adult offspring of parents exposed to synthetic hormone disruptors (agonists and antagonists) released in the environment. The concentrations of a number of synthetic hormone agonists and antagonists measured in the U.S. human population today are well within the range and dosages at which effects are seen in wildlife populations. [An agonist is a chemical that is not a hormone but mimics a natural hormone; an antagonist interferes with a natural hormone.] In fact, experimental results [in animals] are being seen at the low end of current environmental concentrations [in humans].

"Unless the environmental load of synthetic hormone disruptors is abated and controlled, large scale dysfunction at the population level is possible. The scope and potential hazard to wildlife and humans are great because of the probability of repeated and/or constant exposure to numerous synthetic chemicals that are known to be endocrine disruptors...."[3]. Current models predict that:

"... Both exogenous (external source) and endo-genous (internal source) androgens (male hormones) and estrogens (female hormones) can alter the development of brain function.

"Any perturbation [disturbance] of the endocrine system of a developing organism may alter the development of that organism: typically these effects are irreversible. For example, many sex-related characteristics are determined hormonally during a window of time in the early stages of development, and can be influenced by small changes in hormone balance. Evidence suggests that sex-related characteristics, once imprinted, may be irreversible."

The Wingspread statement then gives three reasons why these predictions are subject to "many uncertainties:" (1) effects of exposure of humans are not well understood, especially exposure of embryos; (2) data on reproductive problems in wildlife exist but data on behavior changes are not so readily available; (3) the potency of many synthetic [human-created] estrogenic chemicals is not well known.

The British publisher, Elsevier Applied Science, will publish a book on this subject by next fall. Until then, the best source of information is Theodora E. Colborn and others, GREAT LAKES GREAT LEGACY? available for $20.00 (plus $2.00 shipping) from: World Wildlife Fund, P.O. Box 4866, Hampden Post Office, Baltimore, MD 21211; phone (301) 516-6951.

For $3.00 plus stamped, self-addressed envelope, we can send you the Wingspread statement itself.

[More on this subject coming soon.] #264

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

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[1] A footnote on page 1 of the Wingspread Statement says, "Chemicals known to disrupt the endocrine system include: DDT and its degradation products, DEHP (di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate), dicofol, HCB (hexachlorobenzene), kelthane, kepone, lindane and other hexachlorocyclohexane congeners, methoxychlor, octachlorostyrene, synthetic pyrethroids, triazine herbicides, EBDC fungicides, certain PCB congeners, 2,3,7,8-TCDD and other dioxins, 2,3,7,8-TCDF and other furans, cadmium, lead, mercury, tributyltin and other organo-tin compounds, alkyl phenols (non-biodegradable detergents and anti-oxidants present in modified polystyrene and PVCs), styrene dimers and trimers, soy products, and laboratory animal and pet food products."

Descriptor terms: endocrine disruptors; racine; wi; wildlife; sexual development; endocrine system; fish; birds; herring gulls; mammals; humans; reproductive hazards; reproductive disorders; ddt; des; pesticides; herbicides; insecticides; fungicides; theodora colborn;