#234: Push Comes To Shove. PCBs, (dioxin)

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

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #234
---May 22, 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========================

Two researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Curtis Travis and Sheri Hester, have just published a new study of chemical contamination of planet Earth and have confirmed what many people already knew: the entire surface is polluted. What separates Travis and Hester from other U.S. government researchers before them is their stated belief that all this pollution is taking its toll on human health: "We maintain that ambient [normal, everyday] levels of pollution have risen to the point where human health is being affected on a global scale." Furthermore, they conclude that planet-wide contamination seems certain to increase because U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not even try to prevent the spread of low levels of chemicals through air, water, and soil. EPA's regulatory programs have other goals.

EPA's regulatory programs are aimed at protecting the most-exposed individual near any given facility. Whether it's mercury released from a municipal solid waste incinerator or radioactivity released into water from a low-level radioactive waste dump, EPA's regulations say, "Our goal is to protect the individual who may be getting the biggest exposure." EPA therefore picks a spot where they believe the greatest exposure will occur, then EPA establishes the concentration (in parts per million) that they believe the individual can "safely" receive during a lifetime of exposure. They define "safe" as "an exposure that will kill no more than one in every million individuals so exposed." EPA then figures out, as best they can, how much dilution will occur from the point of release to the place where the most-exposed individual resides. Based on these goals (and assumptions about dilution), EPA then issues a permit for a particular polluter to release a certain amount of mercury (or radioactivity, or other toxin) into air or water continuously. Since the allowable release is set to protect the maximally-exposed individual, EPA assumes all is well, never considering the combined consequences of many "safe" releases.

One could raise doubts about many aspects of this approach to pollution control, but the ORNL researchers highlighted only one key problem: continuous releases of mercury (or radioactivity, or other toxin), although they may protect the most-exposed individual, do nevertheless allow toxic materials to enter the environment continuously. Toxics released from thousands, or perhaps millions, of different sources add up. Additional "adding up" occurs in the food chain. A low concentration of mercury in water turns into a slightly higher concentration in plants living in that water, an even higher concentration in animals eating those plants, and so on up the food chain. You may start off with a small dose in air or water, but large predators at the top of the food chain (big fish, big birds, wolves, humans, bears, etc.) get a large dose.

Once they are released into the environment, chemicals seek out the environmental medium (air, water, soil, or living things) in which they are most soluble. Trichloroethylene (TCE) and benzene are most soluble in air, so they tend to be found in air. DDT and PCBs are most soluble in the fatty tissues of living things, so they tend to move into the food chain and concentrate in living things.

Transport through the atmosphere is the main way chemicals spread around the globe; even fat-soluble chemicals initially move via the atmosphere, then they enter food chains and concentrate in animals (including humans). So most pollutants travel via the atmosphere, but food is the main source of pollutants for humans.

Travis and Hester focus on PCBs, dioxins, benzene, mercury, and lead, showing how "ambient" (normal, everyday background) levels of these contaminants are high enough to make people sick. They make the point--worth emphasizing--that they chose these chemicals only because data exist for these chemicals. For the vast majority of the 65,000 chemicals we dump into our air and water routinely via incinerators, landfills, and intentional releases from factory pipes and stacks, no data exist on how much is dumped, where it goes, or what effects it may be having. EPA has spent 20 years not gathering the necessary data.

PCBs. Although Congress banned PCBs in 1976 and EPA banned them in 1977, an estimated 900 tons of PCBs cycle through the U.S. atmosphere each year. Somewhere between 60% and 90% of the PCBs entering the Great Lakes come from the atmosphere, according to Travis and Hester. The average PCB concentration in breast milk in the U.S. is 89 micrograms per kilogram. They calculate that the background level of PCBs in the U.S. food supply creates a cancer risk of 110 per million (using EPA's method for calculating cancer risks). That is to say, among every group of one-million U.S. citizens [and there are 245 such groups in our population of 245 million people], 110 individuals can be expected to get cancer from normal, background PCB exposures.

Dioxins. Background dioxin levels in the American people are lower than PCB levels, but dioxins are more potent carcinogens than PCBs. The "background" cancer risk from dioxins, according to Travis and Hester using EPA's methods, is 210 per million.

Benzene. The background cancer risk from routine exposure to benzene in the U.S. is 100 per million (or one in 10,000).

Mercury. Travis and Hester do not calculate a cancer risk for mercury. However, they make the important point that mercury released by coal combustion, by the chlor-alkali industry (which produces chlorine and caustic soda), and by municipal waste incinerators has introduced mercury into enormous areas far distant from the places where the mercury was released. In remote lakes in Michigan, 15% of the fish contain mercury concentrations in excess of that state's health advisory of 0.5 parts per million (ppm). Approximately 30% of Wisconsin's lakes and 50% of Florida's lakes contain fish with mercury levels that exceed state health standards. Mercury seems to be becoming a global problem, not limited to areas near point-sources.

Lead. Travis and Hester report that lead is affecting between 3 and 4 million U.S. children adversely (chiefly impaired cognitive development--stunted mental growth) because of "our mismanagement and heavy use of this toxic material." An additional 400,000 fetuses in the U.S. are probably harmed by lead each year before they are born, Travis and Hester report.

Travis and Hester calculated the total background cancer risk from 11 chemicals, using data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (which samples the U.S. food supply for chemicals occasionally), using EPA's method for calculating cancer risks. They conclude that these 11 chemicals create a background cancer risk of 1000 in a million, or one in a thousand. And of course this does not consider consequences besides cancer. It omits consideration of respiratory problems, reproductive and developmental illnesses, nervous system disorders, damage to the immune system, the increasing occurrence of multiple chemical sensitivity (see RHWN #165, #220) and much more.

Travis and Hester's cancer analysis is based on a tiny part of the full picture. They say, "The true extent of human exposure to environmental pollution has never been quantified. For example, the [EPA's] human adipose [fatty] tissue survey has identified only a very small fraction of the chemical mass found in human adipose tissue." In other words, no data exist for the vast majority of chemical exposures that occur routinely. EPA has studiously avoided gathering the data.

As for solving this problem, don't look to EPA. Travis and Hester say, "The only way to diminish global cycling of contaminants is to decrease production of pollutants or to destroy pollutants before they are released into the environment.... At present, the most commonly used method to destroy pollutants is incineration. However, emissions from incinerator stacks tend to release pollutants directly into the atmosphere." EPA has placed all its eggs in the incineration basket and is aggressively trying to force all states to site incinerators (see RHWN #142)--a strategy guaranteed to make the problem of global contamination worse. As for the suggestion to "decrease production of pollutants," this would require governmental intrusion into the manufacturing place, compelling factory owners to avoid certain chemicals, or to use less of them. Travis and Hester argue this is the only way to prevent global contamination, with its attendant human health damage. Thus it seems to come down to this: the health of humans in general vs. the right of American manufacturers to call the shots inside their own factories. Push really has come to shove. Fireworks ahead.

Get: Curtis C. Travis and Sheri T. Hester, "Global Chemical Pollution," ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Vol. 25, No. 5 (May, 1991), pgs. 814-819.

#225: Real Hope for the Great Lakes: Local Groups Form 'Zero Discharge Alliance' PCBs, (dioxin)

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

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #225
---March 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========================

The environmental movement is taking a historic step forward as we speak. Dozens of local groups calling themselves the Zero Discharge Alliance have banded together around the Great Lakes pushing a platform that is simple, yet powerful, far-reaching, and seemingly achievable: they demand an end to the discharge of persistent and/or bioaccumulative toxic substances into the Lakes, starting with a ban on chlorine in the pulp and paper industry. The slogan "zero discharge" is thus transformed from a theoretical idea developed by scientists like Pat Costner, Ted Taylor and John Gofman (see RHWN #155) into a workable program that citizens can campaign to achieve. It seems like an idea ready to take form and substance in the real world: ban the discharge of persistent and/or bioaccumulative toxins. But what do these words mean?

Examples of persistent chemicals are heavy metals such as mercury, lead, arsenic and cadmium which never break down or degrade because they are, themselves, elements; they can never turn into anything else and their poisonous characteristics endure forever. Other examples of persistent chemicals would include DDT, which has a half-life of roughly 20 years in the environment. (A substance's "half-life" is the time it takes for half of that substance to disappear. After 10 half-lives, approximately one one-thousandth [actually 1/1024] of a substance remains, so scientists say, as a rule of thumb, that chemicals persist in the environment for 10 half-lives. Thus DDT, with a half-life of 20 years, takes 200 years (10 half-lives) to disappear after it has entered the environment. There are thousands of persistent toxic chemicals and they are dangerous because they remain available for such a long time to poison plants, animals and humans.

A bioaccumulative chemical is one that moves from the non-living environment (air, water, soil) into living things with an increase in concentration. For example, a chemical like DDT may appear in air or water at levels that seem harmless (a few parts per trillion) yet may end up in living things at concentrations that cause cancer or interfere with reproduction. See Figure 1, which shows how the concentration of DDT is magnified 10 million times between water and birds in Long Island Sound. Three parts per trillion (ppt) in water produces 25 parts per million, a toxic concentration, in fish-eating birds (ospreys).

[Omitted from this version: Figure 1. An example of bioaccumulation: The concentration of DDT in living organisms is magnified approximately 10 million times in a food chain of Long Island Sound. Dots represent DDT and arrows show small losses through respiration and excretion. From: G. Tyler Miller Jr., LIVING IN THE ENVIRONMENT Third Edition (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1982), pg. 93.

Bioaccumulative toxins are dangerous because amounts that seem harmless are multiplied as they pass through the food chain; often the result is environmental destruction. The adverse consequences of bioaccumulative toxins may become understood only after it is too late. For example, human breast milk is now contaminated with hundreds of persistent, bioaccumulative toxins (see RHWN #193), but the effects of these poisons upon breast-fed infants is not known except in rare cases. Such dousing of infant children with persistent, bioaccumulative toxins is a massive experiment; the full results may become known in the future, but one thing is known beyond any doubt today: it cannot help the human species to expose it from birth onward to a constant bath of industrial toxins. (People who are tempted to think that the human species might be improved by random meddling with our genetic structure should remind themselves that a human is something like a TV set [though of course much more complex] and the hope of improving a human by randomly introducing poisons into its diet at an early age is like splashing hot solder into a TV set's electronic circuits hoping to improve the picture.)

It is important to note that many of the most toxic, persistent, and bioaccumulative chemicals are formed by the use of the element chlorine. DDT, PCBs, dioxins, CFCs, and many pesticides are chlorine compounds. Most people know of chlorine because it disinfects their drinking water, kills germs in the local swimming pool, or bleaches their clothes in the washing machine. Unfortunately, when it is used by industry, chlorine produces a broad spectrum of toxins that persist in the environment and bioaccumulate. In a very real sense, chlorine lies at the heart of the toxics problem, world-wide.

For two decades, government has tried to control toxic pollutants one at a time, by establishing the exact amount that could be safely released into the environment, issuing "permits" giving industry permission to discharge toxics into air and water, then trying to police the polluters to force compliance with the permitted limits. The entire effort was foolish from the start: there are over 40,000 chemicals in use today and 1000 to 2000 new ones enter commercial channels each year. Meanwhile during its 20-year effort, government has managed to establish "safe" limits for fewer than 100 chemicals. Meanwhile, government has gone ahead and issued permits that ignored most chemicals entirely (because there was no basis for saying how much was safe). Finally, government never showed any real interest (or ability) in enforcing these silly per-mits. A classic house of cards. This wrong-headed effort at pollution control (instead of pollution prevention) has led to massive damage to wildlife throughout the Great Lakes (see RHWN #146) and, worldwide, a dangerous accumulation of toxics in creatures that eat at the top of the food chain, like large birds, large fish, bears, and humans.

It is now crystal clear that the old way has been a complete failure, which, if it is continued, can only lead to the extinction of humans.

The alternative to chemical-by-chemical regulation is zero discharge, a sweeping ban on the release of persistent, bioaccumulative toxins.

How could such a sweeping ban become politically acceptable? That is the nut the Zero Discharge Alliance seems to have cracked.

The Alliance has a three-point Great Lakes program they say is the first step toward a total ban on discharges of persistent, bioaccumulative toxins.

Point 1: Ban the use of chlorine in the pulp and paper industry around the Great Lakes. 

Point 2: Because incinerators are the fastest-growing technology that spews persistent, bioaccumulative toxics into the environment, ban all new incinerators that affect the Great Lakes. 

Point 3: All new discharge permits that government issues to industry (for chemical-by-chemical control) must contain "sunset" provisions that establish fixed dates for the phase-out of toxic chemical discharges and for changing those industrial processes that contribute to persistent toxic pollution. No industry has a right to pollute.

The Alliance is working in the Great Lakes but these ideas will surely spread. (More on this later.)

For further information, contact: Zero Discharge Alliance (ZDA), P.O. Box 32246, Detroit, MI 48232, or ZDA, P.O. Box 7243, Windsor, Ontario N9C 3Z1.