RACHEL-4CM: Toxicity

Showing posts with label Toxicity. Show all posts

Monday, 31 March 2014

#169: Toxicological Profiles of Chemicals.

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

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #169
---February 21, 1990---
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========================

As part of the Superfund amendments of 1986, Congress told ATSDR (the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which is part of the U.S. Public Health Service) to produce a series of studies of the 100 toxic chemicals found most often at Superfund sites. Between them, ATSDR and EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) came up with a list of 100 chemicals, which they published in the FEDERAL REGISTER April 17, 1987 (pgs. 1286612874) [see RHWN #027b].

Now the first batch of Toxicological Profiles on these chemicals has been published. If you are engaged in a fight that involves common toxic chemicals, you may find useful ammunition here. These reports are intended for ordinary people. They do use some scientific jargon, but if you keep a dictionary handy, you will be able to read them from cover to cover. Let's look at the report on the toxic metal, cadmium, to see what all the reports in this series contain (they all have identical section titles).

1) Public health statement on cadmium (6 pgs.). This is a quick summary of information about the toxic metal, cadmium, in the form of questions and answers. Here we learn, for example, that "The largest source of cadmium release to the general environment is the burning of fossil fuels [coal, oil, etc.] or the incineration of municipal waste materials." (pg. 1) And: "Cadmium is not known to have any beneficial effects, but can cause a number of adverse health effects." (pg. 2) And: "Studies in humans also suggest that long-term inhalation of cadmium can result in increased risk of lung cancer." And: "Other tissues reported to be injured by cadmium exposure in animals or humans include the liver, the testes, the immune system, the nervous system and the blood."

From this, you can see that even the first few pages of the document tell you something useful: cadmium in the environment gives you no benefits; it offers you the possibility of many unhappy consequences if you are exposed to it; and the major sources of exposure are coal burning and trash burning.

2) Health effects summary (22 pgs.). Here we get into more detail about the health effects of cadmium on humans. Unfortunately, this section seems to have been written for doctors; it uses terms like "parenteral administration" and the glossary at the back does not define "parenteral," which usually means "by needle injection under the skin or into the muscle." (You'll need a medical dictionary.)

This section has one particularly valuable part: a graph demonstrating the adequacy (or inadequacy) of the information that scientists have gathered about the toxicity of cadmium. There is one graph for "animal data" (meaning laboratory animals, not wildlife) and "human data." There are three measures of the adequacy of the information available: no information, some information, and adequate information. There are five big categories of information: lethality (the ability of cadmium to kill quickly); systemic poisoning (meaning, poisoning of one or more of the body's systems, such as liver, kidneys, etc.); developmental toxicity (cadmium's ability to interfere with growth of young people or animals); reproductivity toxicity (ability to interfere with conception, growth of the fetus, or birth); and carcinogenicity (ability to cause cancer). The category "systemic toxicity" is subdivided into three categories: acute [high-dose for a short time], intermediate, and chronic [low dose for a long time].

It is interesting to note that, for humans exposed to cadmium, there is "sufficient information" in only two of the seven categories: lethality and acute systemic toxicity. For three other categories (intermediate and chronic systemic toxicity, and carcinogenicity), there is "some information," but for developmental toxicity and reproductive toxicity there is "no information." So someone who exposes a pregnant woman to cadmium (via an incinerator, for example) is subjecting her to a crap shoot--they can't know what the effects might be because there is no information available.

3) Chemical and physical information (3 pgs.). As the name implies, this is standard information on the melting point, density (weight of a cubic centimeter [cc] of the stuff; one cc of water weighs 1 gram), color, and so forth, of the various forms that cadmium can take (cadmium oxide, cadmium nitrate, etc.)

4) Toxicological data (22 pgs.). This is a rundown on the various bodily systems that are affected by cadmium (skeleton, brain, kidney, etc.) and what is known about the mechanisms by which cadmium interferes with your bodily functions.

5) Manufacture, import, use, and disposal (2 pgs.). This describes the commercial sources and uses of cadmium.

6) Environmental fate (3 pgs.). This tells you how cadmium moves through the environment once it gets loose. It also describes where cadmium gets loose from (combustion of coal and oil release 100 tons per year; municipal solid waste combustion releases 90 tons per year but "the number of municipal solid waste incineration units is expected to triple in the next ten years." (pg. 59) And, we are told, "Cadmium is strongly accumulated by all organisms, both through food and water. Cadmium accumulates in freshwater and marine organisms at concentrations hundreds to thousands of times higher than it is in water." (This is why clams and oysters often contain high levels of cadmium.)

7) Potential for human exposure (4 pgs.). This brief discussion just scratches the surface, but does say that people particularly likely to be affected by cadmium include those with kidney disease, genetic susceptibility (sensitivity they were born with), inadequate diet and extreme youth (babies are more prone to absorb cadmium from the stomach than are adults).

8) Analytical methods (4 pgs.). This discusses proper laboratory methods for measuring cadmium.

9) Regulatory and advisory status (8 pgs.). This tells what regulations and advisory warning have been published for cadmium. This gives you something to compare against when someone discovers cadmium in your water supply or your town's air supply.

10) References and bibliography (24 pgs.).

11) Glossary (2 pgs.).

These are useful reports despite their failure to consider anything except human beings. They are also a little too technical in vocabulary to suit us, but if you work at it, you can understand everything they contain. Unfortunately, they are not cheap. For example, the TOXICOLOGICAL PROFILE FOR CADMIUM costs $21.95 plus $3.00 shipping from National Technical Information Service (NTIS), 5285 Port Royal Rd., Springfield, VA 22161; phone (703) 487-4650; request NTIS item number PB89-194476.

Other reports issued in this Toxicological Profile series so far include:

2,3,7,8-TETRACHLORODIBENZO-P-DIOXIN [PB89-214522; $21.95]; SELECTED PCBS (POLYCHLORINATED BIPHENYLS) (AROCHLOR-1260, -1254, 1248, -1242, -1232, -1221 AND -1016) [PB89225403; $21.95]; VINYL CHLORIDE [PB90-103870; $21.95]; CHLOROFORM [PB89-160360; $21.95]; NICKEL [PB-160378; $21.95]; BERYLLIUM [PB89-148233; $15.95]; N-NITROSODIPHENYLAMINE [PB89-154090; $15.95]; ARSENIC [PB89185706; $21.95]; METHYLENE CHLORIDE [PB89-194468; $21.95]; DI (2-ETHYLHEXYL) PHTHALATE [PB89-194484; $21.95]; HEPTACHLOR/HEPTACHLOR EPOXIDE [PB89194492; $21.95]. BENZENE [PB89-209464; $21.95].

New reports are appearing all the time; to keep abreast you must write asking to be put on the mailing list to receive the monthly FACT SHEET from the office with responsibility for this series of Toxicological Profiles: c/o Ed Skowronski, Division of Toxicology, ATSDR, 1600 Clifton Road -Mail Stop E-29, Atlanta, GA 30333; phone (404) 639-0730.

Mr. Skowronski's office publishes drafts of these reports, which are free; write asking for the ones that are available; they won't take your request over the phone.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: superfund; water supply; toxicity; atsdr; cadmuim; heavy metals; incineration; health effects; liver; testicular immune system; nervous system; blood; reproductive hazards; systemic toxicity; developmental disorders; infants;

Sunday, 30 March 2014

#405: Turning Point for the Chemical Industry

=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #405
(formerly RACHEL's HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS)
---September 1, 1994---
News and resources for environmental justice.
==========
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ==========
RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com =======================Original Source========================

In St. Louis, Missouri on July 30, Dr. Barry Commoner gave the keynote address at the Second Citizens' Conference on Dioxin. Here are excerpts:

...We meet at a crucial time in the history of dioxin. I am convinced that 1994 will be seen as the year in which --despite every effort of the chemical industry and its journalistic allies to confuse and misinform us --the true dimensions of the ominous threat of dioxin to human health became known. The profound significance of its diverse attack on living things has now become clear: Dioxin and dioxin-like substances represent the most perilous chemical threat to the health and biological integrity of human beings and the environment.

The history of dioxin is a sordid story --of devastating sickness inflicted, unawares, on chemical workers; of callous disregard for the impact of toxic wastes on the public; of denial after denial by the chemical industry; of the industry's repeated efforts to hide the facts about dioxin and, when these become known, to distort them.

... We need to learn what must be done, now, not merely to diminish, but to end --the menace of dioxin and its many toxic cousins to life.

... On May 26, 1971, 2,000 gallons of what was supposed to be waste oil were sprayed on the soil in a nearby horse arena [in Times Beach, Mo.]. Three days later the arena was littered with dead birds; four days later three horses and the ringmaster were sick. By June, 29 horses, 11 cats and four dogs had died; in August the six-year-old daughter of one of the owners was admitted to St. Louis Children's Hospital with a severe kidney disorder.

[This led to a decade of scientific study of dioxin, during which it became clear that dioxin is an inevitable by-product of chlorine chemistry.] ... The chemist learns to favor the production of a particular molecule by controlling temperature, pressure and other conditions and, more precisely, by introducing a catalyst. But the process is never perfect; some unwanted molecules that happen to be very stable and resist further transformation will persist --as waste. [Dioxin is one of these stable waste products.] ... Toxic waste is not simply a matter of poor housekeeping or bad management; it is an inescapable part of chlorine-based chemical production.

... In 1985 the EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] issued its first formal cancer risk assessment of dioxin. ...EPA estimated that people would be exposed to the one-per-million [cancer] risk if they lived near soil contaminated at the level of one part per billion. When soil in Times Beach [Mo.] was found to considerably exceed this level, the EPA decided to evacuate the town.

[Because controlling dioxin is expensive, since 1985 industry has maintained relentless pressure on government to relax dioxin standards. Some animal studies showed dioxin to be an extremely potent toxin in some species; other studies showed it to be weaker in other species. EPA established a Workgroup to review the data and conclusions of its 1985 assessment.] ... The Workgroup decided that the "scientifically sound" thing to do was to average the potency values indicated by the different theories. Because the high potency value of the 1985 assessment's theory was outweighed by the more numerous low-potency theories, the average turned out to be 16 times less stringent than the 1985 risk assessment. ...[However] if the low-potency theories are right, then the original high-potency theory is wrong, and vice versa --a situation that can hardly be corrected by averaging their mutually contradictory results. [The Workgroup's flawed efforts died somewhere inside EPA, and the 1985 risk assessment survived.]

... [In 1986 EPA proposed controls on dioxin emissions from the paper industry. The industry responded by re-evaluating the data upon which EPA's 1985 risk assessment was based.] And once more, under this new assault.... the 1985 risk assessment survived. [In October 1990 EPA and the Chlorine Institute ---an industry group --convened a conference at the Banbury Center in Long Island.] The purpose of the conference was to review new data about how dioxin caused cancer in order to provide a "scientific" basis for a new risk assessment. The "new data" were studies that actually went back to the 1970s....

The EPA participants in the Banbury Conference hurried back to Washington with news that prompted the Administrator, William K. Reilly, to predict that a new reassessment would in fact reduce the dioxin risk. [This latest dioxin risk assessment has now been prepared and will be released September 13.] But we already know what it will say, thanks to a leak of the report's conclusions a few weeks ago. The new attempt to downgrade the dioxin hazard, like all the earlier ones, has failed. But in failing, it has not simply confirmed the important but narrow result of the 1985 risk assessment that dioxin is an enormously potent carcinogen. It has also greatly expanded the range and biological impact of dioxin's effects, at levels of exposure already experienced by the entire U.S. population.

... Apparently Americans are sufficiently exposed to some very general source of dioxin to put us all well above the "acceptable" cancer risk of one in a million, and within range of its numerous other harmful effects. That source, according to the forthcoming EPA report, is chiefly food [meat and dairy products]....

Stated more simply, the situation is this: The general spread of dioxin and dioxin-like chemicals in the U.S. environment has already exposed the entire population to levels of these extremely toxic substances that are expected to cause a number of serious health effects. These include an average risk of cancer of 100 or more per million in the entire U.S. population --100 times greater than the risk standard that has triggered EPA remedial action, for example at Times Beach.

The EPA document also acknowledges that the newly appreciated hazards of dioxin go far beyond the risk of cancer... the expected non-cancer effects include:

** disruption of endocrine hormone systems, especially those related to sexual development;

** disruption of critical stages of embryonic development, for example of the nervous system;

** damage to the developing immune system, leading to increased susceptibility to infectious diseases.

These are intergenerational defects, they are imprinted for life on the developing fetus by the effect of dioxin on the mother and sometimes the father.

...Dioxin and dioxin-like chemicals have become widely known as "environmental hormones"... [but] There is a crucial molecular difference between dioxin and hormones. Dioxin is distinctively characterized by its chlorine atoms, which, when linked to particular carbon atoms in its molecular structure, give rise to dioxin's powerful toxic properties. In contrast, no natural hormone is chlorinated.

... [Chlorinated molecules] are rare in living things; only about 600 such substances have been identified, compared with tens of thousands of different organic substances made by living things that are not chlorinated. Moreover, not a single chlorinated compound has been identified as natural in mammals. In Gribble's compilation of 611 chlorinated (and other halogenated organic) compounds produced by living things, there are numerous examples from fungi, higher plants, algae, sponges, jellyfish, worms, and other marine animals.

... When the first mammals --or possibly vertebrates --emerged, chlorine was abruptly excluded from this new form of life. As a result, chlorinated organic compounds like dioxin are incompatible with the distinctively complex hormonal systems and developmental processes that are characteristic of vertebrates, especially mammals.

... The industry's chief defense against shutting down the use of chlorine in chemical manufacturing is that it is essential to the manufacture of most of its products (true), which are in turn essential to most other industries and agriculture (not so true). It is true that synthetic organic chemicals --plastics, pesticides, detergents and solvents --have deeply penetrated the modern world. This was done not so much by creating new industries as it was by taking over existing forms of production. After all, we did have food before synthetic pesticides, and there was furniture, flooring and paint long before plastics. In fact, as pointed out by one of the leaders in the development of the petrochemical industry, Lord Beeching, it grow through a virulent form of industrial imperialism:

..."Instead of producing known products to satisfy existing industrial needs, it [the petrochemical industry] is, increasingly, producing new forms of matter which not only replace the materials used by existing indus-tries, but which cause extension and modification of those industries.... To an increasing degree it forces existing industries to adapt themselves to use its products."

I believe that this is where the [chemical] industry is most vulnerable. The chemical industry is the source of persistent, dangerously toxic substances that must be eliminated. To meet that obligation, the industry must change its methods of production --and, where necessary, its products --beginning with the elimination of chlorine. Of course, the industry will use its enormous wealth and political power to resist such a far-reaching change. But some of its equally powerful corporate customers --paper mills, electronics manufacturers, and the food industry --may be less rigid. Yes, they have been invaded by the chemical industry's products that they use. But with those products have come the built-in toxic accompaniments and the economic liability for their damage.

We now know, for example, that the U.S. population is exposed to dioxin not so much from the chemical industry's direct emissions, but chiefly from food that has been contaminated with dioxin entering the food chain, especially beef and dairy products. These industries, already suffering from reduced consumption to avoid fat and cholesterol, are now likely to be hit once more, this time by the dioxin problem. Sooner or later, to protect their own economic interests--properly encouraged by grass-roots activists --they will use their own corporate power to help persuade the chemical industry to change its ways. Already the paper industry has begun to make plans for ending chlorine bleaching processes. There are even whispers from the chemical industry itself that they have got the message; very quietly, I have heard, their chemists are looking for ways to take chlorine out of their processes.

These are some of the reasons why we are at a turning point not only in the history of dioxin, but of the chemical industry itself. What has brought us to this point, I am convinced, is the environmental movement --at its powerful grassroots: the numerous community campaigns against trash-burning incinerators; the valiant battles against hazardous waste incinerators in East Liverpool [Ohio] and Jacksonville [Arkansas]; the struggles at Times Beach [Mo.] and Love Canal [N.Y.]; the campaign for justice for the veterans exposed to Agent Orange. Let this conference, here in the place where it all began, be the start of new campaigns and new victories --for the sake of the environment and the people who live in it.

--Peter Montague

Descriptor terms: barry commoner; center for the biology of natural systems; cbns; st. louis; second citizens' conference on dioxin; times beach; dioxin; chemical industry; wildlife; epa; risk assessment; banbury center; banbury conference; william reilly; cancer; carcinogens; endocrine system; hormones; developmental disorders; teratogens; nervous system; immune system; food safety; beef; milk; cheese; dairy products; wti; east liverpool; oh; love canal; ny; jacksonville; ar;

#RRT-001: The Trashing of the Arctic

==========
RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library.
Dioxinnz.com ==========Original Source==========

This original draft (dated October, 18, 2000) is reprinted with permission
of the author. An edited version of this article appeared in the December
2000 issue of The Progressive.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Trashing of the Arctic

Military Installations, Mines, and an
Atmospheric "Assembly Line" of Chemical Toxins
are Destroying the Inuits' Health, as well as
the Lives of the Animals on Which They Depend.

By Bruce E. Johansen

As we put our babies to our breasts we are feeding them a noxious,
toxic cocktail," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a 47-year-old
grandmother who is president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference.
"When women have to think twice about breast-feeding their babies,
surely that must be a wake-up call to the world."
Watt-Cloutier was raised in an Inuit community in remote
northern Quebec. Unknown to her at the time, toxic chemicals were
being absorbed by her body, and those of about 140,000 other
Inuits in Canada's Arctic. Watt-Cloutier now ranges between her
homeland, Montreal, and New York City, doing her best to alert the
world to the poisoning of her people.
Today [October 4, 2000] at Queen's University, New York City,
Watt-Cloutier is taking part in a press conference by telephone,
announcing, with ecologist Barry Commoner, that the lower-latitude
sources of Dioxins that are afflicting the Inuit can now be
identified. She can, for example, tell me, in Omaha, that one of
the principal sources has been a cement plant in nearby Ash Grove,
Nebraska.
As Geoffrey Lean wrote in London's Independent:

Their language may have 30 different words for "snow",
but it does not have one for "contamination". So it is
hard to explain to the Inuit people of the remote and
pristine Broughton Island, in the Canadian Arctic, that
-- thanks to a strange and newly discovered trick of the
world's natural systems -- they are more polluted by
some of the world's most toxic chemicals than any other
people on earth. (Lean)

The dangers threatening the Arctic ought to be a warning to
the entire world that nothing is "pure" or "natural" anymore, said
Watt-Cloutier. The Arctic region that seems "so pure and pristine
is already laced with deadly and invisible pollutants." To a
tourist with no interest in environmental toxicology,
Watt-Cloutier's Arctic homeland may seem as pristine as it ever
has been during its long, snow-swept winters. Many Inuit still
guide dogsleds onto the pack ice surrounding their Arctic-island
homelands to hunt polar bears and seals. Such a scene may seem
pristine, until one comes to understand that the polar bears' and
seals' body fats are laced with Dioxin and PCBs.
The toxicological due bills for modern industry at the lower
latitudes are being left on the Inuits' table in Nunavut, the
Canadian Arctic. Native people whose diets consist largely of sea
animals (whales, polar bears, fish and seals) have been consuming
a concentrated toxic chemical cocktail. Abnormally high levels of
Dioxin and other industrial chemicals are being detected in Inuit
mothers' breast milk. The bodies of Inuits on Broughton Island,
thousands of miles from the sources of the pollution, have the
highest levels of PCBs ever found, except in victims of industrial
accidents. Some Native people in Greenland have more than 70 times
as much of the pesticide hexaclorobenzene (HCB) in their bodies as
temperate-zone Canadians.

Dioxin, PCPs, and other toxins accumulate across generations in
breast-feeding mammals, including the Inuit and many of their food
sources.
Inuit infants have provided "a living test tube for
immunologists." (Cone) Due to their diet of contaminated sea
animals and fish, Inuit women's breast milk contains six times
more PCBs than women in urban Quebec, according to Quebec
government studies. Their babies have experienced strikingly high
rates of meningitis, bronchitis, pneumonia and other infections
compared with other Canadians. One Inuit child out of every four
has chronic hearing loss due to infections.
Born with depleted white-blood cells, the children suffer
excessive bouts of diseases, including a 20-fold increase in
life-threatening meningitis compared to other Canadian children.
Their immune systems are so dysfunctional that they sometimes fail
to produce enough antibodies even to react to the usual childhood
vaccines.
The reproductive cycle of humans and other mammals compounds
the toxic effects of these chemicals. Airborne toxic substances
are absorbed by plankton and small fish, which are then eaten by
dolphins and whales, and other large animals. The mammals' thick
subcutaneous fat stores the hazardous substances, of which are
transmitted to offspring through breast-feeding. Sea mammals are
more vulnerable to this kind of toxicity than land animals, so the
levels of chemicals in their bodies can reach exceptionally high
levels. The level of these toxins increases with each breast-fed
generation.
"In our studies, there was a marked increase in the incidence
of infectious disease among breast-fed babies exposed to a high
concentration of contaminants," said Eric Dewailly, a Quebec
Public Health Center researcher who coordinated the work. (Cone)
According to the Quebec Health Center, a concentration of
1,052 parts per billion of PCBs has been found in Arctic women's
milk fat. This compares to a reading of 7,002 in polar bear fat,
1,002 ppb in whale blubber, 527 ppb in seal blubber, and 152 ppb
in fish. The United States Environmental Protection Agency safety
standard for edible poultry, by contrast, is 3 ppb, and in fish, 2
ppb. At 50 ppb, soil is often considered to be hazardous waste.
Inuit babies have experienced strikingly high rates of
meningitis, bronchitis, pneumonia and other infections compared
with other Canadians. One Inuit child out of every four has
chronic hearing loss due to infections. A study published
September 12, 1996, in the New England Journal of Medicine
confirmed that children exposed to low levels of PCBs in the womb
grow up with low IQs, poor reading comprehension, difficulty
paying attention, and memory problems.

The Arctic has become a dumping ground for PCBs, Dioxin and
agricultural chemicals. All are manufactured organic chlorine
compounds released by industries at the lower latitudes. The
compounds are swept into the Arctic by ocean currents and
prevailing winds, diffusing quickly and easily. Pesticide residues
in the Arctic today may include some used decades ago in the
southern United States. Cold also slows the natural decomposition
of these toxins, so they persist in the Arctic environment longer
than at lower latitudes. At the same time that Inuits are being
poisoned by several "persistent organic pollutants" ("POPs" to
environmental toxicologists), they are discovering that parts of
their homelands also are laced with toxic "hot spots" left behind
by abandoned military installations and mines, all also imports
from the industrial south.
Dioxin is produced by a number of chemical processes,
including some metal-refining methods, the chlorinated bleaching
of pulp and paper, and, most importantly, as a byproduct of the
combustion of certain materials. The biggest Dioxin sources in
North America are municipal waste incinerators (25 percent),
backyard trash burning (22 percent), cement kilns burning
hazardous waste (18 percent), medical waste incinerators (11
percent), secondary copper smelters (8 percent), and iron
sintering plants (7 percent). Together, these six categories
contributed more than 90 percent of total North American emissions
during the middle 1990s.
One household's trash, burned in a backyard barrel, may
release more Dioxins, furans, and other chlorine-containing
pollutants tons of trash burned by a municipal waste incinerator
serving tens of thousands of homes, according to a report by the
Environmental Protection Agency's Open Burning Test Facility in
Research Triangle Park, N.C. Roughly 20 million people in rural
areas burn trash in their backyards, according to E.P.A. surveys.
(Saar, 2000) The report appeared in the February 1, 2000 issue of
Environmental Science & Technology.
Such backyard burning may contribute as much chemical toxicity
to the air as all the United States' municipal waste incinerators
combined, said Dwain Winters, director of the agency's Dioxin
Policy Project. "With improved pollution controls on incinerators,
backyard burning may turn out to be one of the largest sources of
dioxins and furans to the air," Mr. Winters said. "We need a
better understanding of barrel burning before we set policy on
this source of air pollution." (Saar, 2000)
The amount of dioxins and furans produced by any given
trash-burning site are influenced by temperature, burn time, trash
density and the presence of chlorine. PVC plastics, salt in food
wastes and bleached paper products, among other things, produce
Dioxin and furans.
The agency estimates that wood burned in fireplaces and stoves
produces very small amounts of dioxins and furans compared with
trash burned in barrels.

Human exposure to Dioxin is almost entirely (95 percent) through
consumption of animal fats. In temperate climates, dioxin enters
the food chain through animal food crops and appears in milk and
beef. In the Arctic, Dioxin enters the food chain through lichen,
mosses and shrubs eaten by caribou, and through algae eaten by
fish on which seals and walruses feed.
PCBs -- polychlorinated biphenyls -- are a family of more than
200 related organic compounds. Nearly every animal and plant on
Earth now contains trace levels of these toxins. Some are
harmless, while others are extremely toxic and have been linked to
diseases of the blood, immune and nervous systems, as well as with
respiratory and skin problems, and with underweight and premature
babies.
POPs have been linked to cancer, birth defects and other
neurological, reproductive and immune-system damage in people and
animals. At high levels, these chemicals also damage the central
nervous system. Many of them also act as endocrine disruptors,
causing deformities in sex organs as well as long-term dysfunction
of reproductive systems. "POPs" also can interfere with the
function of the brain and endocrine system by penetrating the
placental barrier and scrambling the instructions of the naturally
produced chemical messengers. The latter tell a fetus how to
develop in the womb and post-natally through puberty; should
interference occur, immune, nervous, and reproductive systems may
not develop as programmed by the genes inherited by the embryo.
Because they are not easily broken down or excreted, the
compounds remain in the body for months or years. In ecosystems,
they tend to concentrate or "bioaccumulate" in animals at the top
of the food chain, in the bodies of large meat-eaters such as
marine mammals, polar bears, raptors and human beings. Dolphins,
seals and whales in the northern seas are being contaminated.
Large land animals, such as caribou, also are affected.
The use of PCBs has been banned in North America since the
late 1970s, a ban that has not been strictly enforced. PCBs are
still used in third-world countries. Even in areas where they are
no longer being manufactured (such as Canada), PCBs are still
being released into the atmosphere, sometimes in unexpected ways.
The big ice storm that hit Eastern Canada and parts of Upstate New
York during 1997 knocked down transformers and power lines had a
little-known side effect: it spilled PCBs into the environment.
Canada has banned production of the toxic chemicals but they
remain in wide use as insulating agents. It is not known how much
PCBs the ice storm released into the air.
Rapid economic growth, especially in Asia, has increased the
discharge of various POPs into the air of the lower and middle
latitudes. More people are living more affluently, stoking the
industrial engines which produce Dioxin and other POPs. Rising
populations also have been supported by increasing use of
industrialized agriculture (including the "green revolution"),
which utilizes many organic chemicals in fertilizers, pesticides,
and herbicides. More than 90 percent of the chemicals sprayed on
farmland evaporate in a short period of time and begin drifting
through the atmosphere.
The concentration of chemical toxins in the Canadian Arctic is
also intensified by ocean circulation, notably the movement of
water from the Atlantic Ocean through the Canadian archipelago to
the High Arctic. The upwelling of this "older" water in the Arctic
Ocean and Beaufort Sea may help explain why industrial or
agricultural chemicals used decades ago are only now being
detected in regions of the High Arctic.
High concentrations of Dioxin in the Arctic have been traced
to specific sources in the United States, Canada and Mexico. A
study, "Long-range Air Transport of Dioxin from North American
Sources to Ecologically Vulnerable Receptors in Nunavut, Arctic
Canada," was conducted for the Montreal-based North American
Commission for Environmental Cooperation by the Center for the
Biology of Natural Systems, Queens College, City University of New
York. The study covered a one-year period beginning in July, 1996.
This report is the first to use weather patterns, pollution data
and corporate emissions records to track Dioxin through the
atmosphere to the Arctic from specific sources across North
America, said Barry Commoner, who co-authored the report. (NACEC)
Using an air-transport model developed by the U.S. National
Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a research
team headed by Commoner, of Queens College, New York, identified
facilities which have caused Dioxin pollution at eight locations
around Nunavut, the Canadian territory covering the eastern Arctic
north of the 60th parallel to the pole. This study compiled 44,091
specific Dioxin sources, of which 16,729 were in Canada, 22,439 in
the U.S., and 4,923 in Mexico. Nine of the top-ten contributors of
Dioxin deposited in Nunavut were from the United States, including
three municipal waste plants in Minnesota, Iowa and Pennsylvania;
three cement kilns in Michigan, Missouri and Nebraska; two iron
plants in Indiana, and a copper smelter in Illinois. Some have
since reduced or eliminated their Dioxin emissions.

"The last thing we need at this time is worry about the very
country food that nourishes us, spiritually and emotionally,
poisoning us," Watt-Cloutier told reporters. "This is not just
about contaminants on our plate. This is a whole way of being, a
whole cultural heritage that is at stake here for us." (Mofina)
In many cases, the Inuit have no practical alternative to
"country food." Although a few small general stores do business in
Canadian Inuit hamlets today, all the food is flown in. Weeks-old
produce is usually of very poor quality. No roads or natural land
bridges lead south from the villages. The cost of air freight,
compounded by distance, raises cost of a quart of milk to $4, and
that of a battered head of lettuce to $3. A tiny frozen turkey the
size of a stewing hen costs $40 in the Arctic.
Active as well as abandoned mining and military sites compound
the problems of the Inuit with toxic organic compounds. Joe Kunuk,
Mayor of Iqaluit, described recent efforts to clean up Iqaluit's
Upper Base, a military installation established just north of the
community by the U.S. Air Force during the early 1950s. Like a
number of similar sites scattered throughout the North, the base
was found to be contaminated with PCBs from a variety of sources.
A clean-up program, co-ordinated with the regional Inuit
Association and the Tunngavik Federation of Nunavut, provided more
than 50 local people -- 90 per cent of them Inuit -- with training
in toxic waste handling and disposal. All told, more than $2
million was spent to clean up the site, and local businesses
benefited greatly from the project.
Extensive hydroelectric development also took place in James
Bay during the 1970s, before an alliance of Native and non-Native
peoples put a halt to hydroelectric development in the area. The
creation of hydroelectric reservoirs intensified the methylation
of inorganic mercury into methylmercury; once transformed, the
methylmercury enters the food chain. In 1986, Hydro-Quebec and the
Quebec government, along with the nine Cree communities of the
James Bay region, signed an agreement to monitor exposure levels
in the Cree population.
Chief Ed Jack, an Elder from the Taku River Tlingit First
Nation in Atlin, B.C., described environmental problems associated
with mining in the Taku Valley of northern British Columbia, about
30 miles inland from Juneau, Alaska. He described how his small
community had witnessed firsthand the gradual destruction of
salmon streams and wildlife habitat. However, over time, the
Tlingit began to develop the skills necessary to challenge the
accepted practices of resource-development companies. They
developed effective communication strategies, launched challenges
in the courts, and educated people in the community about
environmental regulation. Jack gave this account at hearings
conducted during 1996 and 1997 by the Canadian Polar Commission.
(CPC)

There were three mines going, the Takuchi, the Polaris,
and the Big Bull Mine. There were 250 men working three
shifts day and night. They never stopped the work; they
worked the graveyard, night shift, and day shift.
Everything was brought up by barge. The stuff that came
off the mine when they washed the ore went right into a
creek, called Canyon Creek....The mine just dumped the
garbage off the bridge into the plains, and you have a
huge garbage pile lying in the plains. I say the
`plains' because the glacier dammed up a lake, and twice
a year the whole valley floods. The whole valley floods
as high as you can see it, twenty feet of water, just
the trees are sticking out. All that garbage gets washed
away; at that time, I thought, they sure are smart and
know how to get rid of their garbage. Later on, I
thought about it, and all the tailings were put into the
flood plain? Now, the scientists have checked into it,
and those tailings are still there, giving off
acid...still polluting the river.

Governmental actions are beginning to cut Dioxin emissions. In
June, 1998, negotiators from 120 countries gathered in Montreal to
start work on an unprecedented United Nations treaty to phase out
DDT and eleven other toxic compounds that have been linked to
cancers, birth defects and ecological disruption. Canada, Denmark,
Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation, Sweden and the
United States are working together to accomplish a phase-out of
PCBs, and to develop environmentally sound disposal practices.
(Binder, McAndrew)
In the United States, the U. S. Environmental Protection
Agency has promulgated regulations that should reduce dioxin
emissions by 99 percent from municipal waste incinerators and by
about 95 percent from medical waste incinerators. The United
States Environmental Protection Agency also has promulgated
regulations to reduce Dioxin from some hazardous waste
incinerators, including cement kilns.
In Canada, environment ministers in June, 2000 accepted a
Canada-wide Standard for Dioxins and Furans. Six types of sources,
including waste incineration, burning salt-laden wood, residential
wood combustion, and electric arc furnace steel manufacturing,
have been identified for early action. The municipal waste
incinerator in Quebec has undergone modifications to virtually
eliminate its Dioxin emissions.
Jack Anawak, a member of the Canadian Parliament from
Nunatsiaq, told the Canadian Polar Commission that

The first step is one that's already been taken: we've
regulated PCBs, DDT, and other toxins that, when
released to the environment, get carried up to the North
and affect the people who have had nothing to do with
the creation of the problem in the first place. We must
get our own house in order, and that's what we are
doing. The next step is to put pressure on the
international community so that other countries will
understand the consequences of their actions and stop
polluting. (CPC)

Watt-Cloutier told the Canadian Polar Commission that the World
Health Organization and similar groups must come to understand
that the reclamation of indigenous wisdom is a process that will
reap the greatest benefits for aboriginal populations. "Without
that input and that kind of focus, the world really does run the
risk of operating under the illusion that it is helping when,
actually, sometimes, the reverse is happening," she said. "The
dominant world will continue to be baffled as to what really ails
us, despite the fact that they provide a lot of money and effort
to try to help us. This very expensive and ineffective aid only
perpetuates our problems and, in my opinion, is another subtle
form of the big `C word' -- colonialism. In fact, this subtle
form, in the appearance sometimes of true help with lots of funds
attached to it actually keeps us and the donors stuck in a very
non-productive form of dance, even destructive at times." (CPC)
One of the most acute problems is finding a replacement for
DDT, residues of which have also been found in Inuit mothers'
breast milk and the fat of arctic animals. The insecticide is
still the first choice to kill the mosquitoes that transmit
malaria, which kills more than a million children in tropical
countries each year. Pyrethroids are presently favored, but they
are more expensive. In South Africa, the mosquitoes developed a
resistance against a pyrethroid within five years, whereas they
never became resistant against DDT during 50 years of usage.
International negotiations in Bonn, Germany, aimed at an
international treaty to eliminate organic toxins chemicals went
slowly during the spring of the year 2000. "What we are talking
about now is what qualifiers we can put on the word
`elimination,'" one observer told the Nunatsiaq News, a newspaper
serving Canadian Inuits, in its March 31, 2000 edition (Ell).
Total elimination is impossible because Dioxin is an unintended
byproduct of combustion whose production cannot be totally
avoided. In its own laws, Canada uses the expression "virtual
elimination," meaning "as little as technically feasible."
Watt-Cloutier summarized the situation: "A comprehensive,
verifiable, and rigorously implemented global convention to
eliminate these POPs is required. Will we get it? Can Canada
persuade others that such a convention serves their self-interests
as well as ours?"(Watt-Cloutier)

REFERENCES

* Binder, Sarah. "United Nations Sets out to Ben Chemicals Like
DDT, PCBs." Ottawa Citizen, June 29, 1998, n.p.

* Canadian Polar Commission. For Generations to Come: A
Canadian Conference on Contaminants, the Environment, and
Human Health in the Arctic, October 8-10, 1996. Iqaluit,
Northwest Territories.
[Paper listed at:
http://www.polarcom.gc.ca/publications.htm#polarispapers,
and can be ordered thru the Ottawa Office:
http://www.polarcom.gc.ca/contacts.htm ]

* Cone, Marla. "Human Immune Systems May be Pollution Victims."
Los Angeles Times, May 13, 1996, A-1.

* Ell, Renate. "Bonn POPs Talks Fall Short of Expectations."
Nunatsiaq News, March 31, 2000.
[ http://www.nunatsiaq.com/archives/nunavut000331/nvt20331_09.html ]

* Lean, Geoffrey. "World Industry Poisons Arctic Purity; A
Climatic Trick Dumps Chemicals from Afar on People and
Animals in the Far North." The Independent (London), December
15, 1996, 15.

* McAndrew, Brian. "World Takes Aim at `Dirtry Dozen'
Pollutants: Montreal Talks Bid to Ban Use of Worst Toxins."
Toronto Star, June 29, 1998, 1.

* Mofina, Rick. "Study Pinpoints Dioxin Origins: Cancer-causing
Agents in Arctic Aboriginals? Breast Milk Comes from U.S. and
Quebec." Montreal Gazette, October 4, 2000, A-12.

* North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation.
Study Links Dioxin pollution in Arctic to North American
Sources. October 4, 2000. [ http://www.cec.org/ ]
[ http://www.cec.org/news/announce/Data.cfm? varlan=english&vardate=60&unique_no=291 ]

* Saar, Robert A. [No title.] New York Times, January 4, 2000.
[ http://irptc.unep.ch/pops/POPs_Inc/press_releases/pressrel-2k/pr28.htm ]

[listed in: http://irptc.unep.ch/pops/newlayout/press_items.htm ]

* Watt-Cloutier, Sheila and Terry Fenge. "Commentary: impasse
at POPs talks Unacceptable for Inuit." Nunatsiaq News, March
17, 2000.
[ http://www.nunatsiaq.com/archives/nunavut000331/nvt20317_24.html ]

Saturday, 29 March 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

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

Friday, 28 March 2014

#310: The N.Y. Times Detoxifies Dioxin (Again)

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

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #310
---November 5, 1992---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ==========
RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com ========================Original Source========================

During August and September U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released drafts of 8 chapters of its long-awaited report on the dangers of dioxin. The agency then promptly convened a 4-day meeting of independent scientists September 22-25 to review and discuss the drafts.

The day after the meeting ended, the NEW YORK TIMES reported (Sept. 26, 1992, pg. 9) that "An independent panel of scientists concluded today that dioxin was not a large-scale cancer threat except to people exposed to unusually high levels of the toxic compound in chemical factories and from accidents."

The TIMES said, "The panel based its conclusions about the effects of dioxin on human health largely on four studies...."

The TIMES story said, "...the risk to average Americans exposed to dioxin, principally by eating beef, dairy products, chicken and fish, is lower than previously believed."

The TIMES reported that, "The risks, said several panelists, are largely confined to chemical workers and people exposed to high levels of dioxin from industrial accidents. They said the levels of dioxin ordinarily found in the environment had not been shown to be dangerous to people."

The TIMES went on, "Scientists have known for a long time that laboratory animals are apparently much more sensitive to the dioxin molecule than people for reasons that are not well understood, and newer studies have shown that trout, salmon, and some species of birds also are very sensitive."

The TIMES concluded, "In separate interviews, several panelists said today that they did not consider the levels of dioxin in most Americans, about 5 parts per trillion in fat, to be an important health hazard."

In sum, the NEW YORK TIMES led its readers to believe that a panel of independent scientists reviewed four studies and concluded, apparently by consensus, that dioxin is only a danger to the health of heavily-exposed chemical workers and victims of rare accidents, and even for them the only danger is cancer; that existing levels of dioxin in the environment are not dangerous to people; that the risks of dioxin are lower than previously believed; that laboratory animals and some wildlife may be at risk but this has little to do with humans because humans--for reasons unknown--seem to be uniquely unaffected by low doses of dioxin.

The TIMES put this comforting story on the wire and many U.S. newspapers picked it up. The result was a nation-wide press blitz saying dioxin is basically harmless to humans. For example, the DETROIT NEWS reprinted the TIMES story, then capped it off Sept. 29 with an editorial,"The End of Dioxin Hysteria?" which concluded, "But the fact that dioxin has turned out to be something of a non-issue where humans are concerned suggests the religious zeal with which some environmentalists are trying to close down the chemical industry deserves to be greeted with extreme skepticism."

Is this the last word on dioxin? It's not a threat to human health; levels found in the environment today are of little concern; the risks used to seem worse than they seem today; and the risks are limited to cancer among chemical factory employees. Is that what EPA spent 18 months and untold millions of dollars to find out?

It seems not. Other reporters and participants in the four-day meeting--including top EPA officials who called the meeting--came away with views and information almost 180 degrees out of sync with what the NEW YORK TIMES reported. On October 9, Erich W. Bretthauer, EPA's Assistant Administrator for Research and Development, sent a memo to EPA chief William Reilly giving Reilly his own views on what EPA has learned so far about dioxin. In his memo, Bretthauer made seven points, each of which was either contradicted, or missed entirely, by the TIMES:

1. To understand the risks of dioxin, we should consider a broad range of health effects, not just cancer, Bretthauer told Reilly.

2. Dioxin has been observed to cause certain non-cancer effects in animals by disrupting the body's endocrine system (glands and tissues that control bodily functions via chemical messengers called hormones). These endocrine effects include reproduction, behavior of offspring, and changes in the immune system. "Some data suggest that these effects may be occurring in people at body burden levels that can result from exposures at, or near, current background," Bretthauer told Reilly. In other words, the amount of dioxin already present in the environment, and in the bodies of Americans, is at, or close to, levels that, in animals, cause hormone shifts, reproductive disorders, changes in behavior, and immune system damage.

3. Recent studies indicate that dioxin causes cancer in humans; these studies need to be evaluated further and then EPA needs to form a new official position about the cancer hazard to humans.

4. Additional compounds besides dioxin (for example, some types of PCBs) have dioxin-like effects and should be included in EPA's reassessment of the hazards of dioxin.

5. There is insufficient data to develop a model that will allow us to predict the cancer hazards to humans from low-level exposure to dioxin. During the next 3 to 5 months, government studies may provide the needed data.

6. The available data seem to indicate that dioxin will cause cancer in humans in proportion to the exposure--high doses will cause many cancers, lower doses will cause fewer cancers, and the only dose that is risk-free is zero. In other words, the so-called "linear hypothesis" of cancer causation appears to hold true in the case of dioxin, though this is not certain.

7. Risks from existing background levels of dioxin in the general population need to be "carefully considered."

The WALL STREET JOURNAL (Oct. 16, 1992, pg. B9) summarized Bretthauer's memo this way: "Data reviewed by an independent scientific panel suggest that the danger from dioxin may be broader and more serious than previously thought, according to an internal Environmental Protection Agency memo."

The business journal, ENVIRONMENT REPORTER [ER] (Oct. 2, 1992, pg. 1504), offered its own coverage of the Sept. 22-25 meeting. The basis of ER's story was an interview with William H. Farland, director of the EPA Office of Health and Environmental Assessment, the man in charge of the EPA's reassessment of dioxin. Farland summarized the four-day meeting by saying dioxin is "a major health threat," and that the draft report on dioxin is "unlikely to ease public concern over dioxin."

Farland said that "scientists at the recent meeting reported a host of non-carcinogenic effects at very low dose levels--near background levels--as well as the ability to cause cancer in humans at high doses,"

ENVIRONMENT REPORTER said.

In sum, EPA's scientific reassessment of dioxin--which is based on several thousand studies of dioxin--isn't over yet, but so far the scientific evidence is showing dioxin to be a worse problem than formerly believed. The reassessment was initiated by EPA chief Reilly 18 months ago in response to complaints by the paper and chlorine industries, who charged that EPA's regulation of dioxin was too strict because low doses of dioxin are harmless. These industries argued that there is a "threshold," an amount of dioxin below which no effects will occur. EPA's scientific reassessment of dioxin has, so far, substantiated EPA's original view of dioxin, that it is a potent toxin for which there is no observable threshold. Furthermore, the reassessment has added a host of new concerns, which were discussed at length during the four-day meeting--concerns about disruption of the reproductive system, harm to the immune system, and behavioral changes in offspring of dioxin-exposed parents.

The really big news from the meeting was the revelation that these endocrine-system effects in animals are observable at body burdens similar to the body burdens in Americans today. If this view is upheld in the next few weeks as scientists continue to review the available data, it will mean that any addition of dioxin to the environment will be adding to an already-unacceptable situation. This would provide a scientific foundation for a demand that "zero discharge" be adopted as the basis for control of dioxin. William Farland nearly said as much in his interview with ER: "We have to be very cautious about any additions of dioxin to the environment. We must be very concerned about these high background levels of dioxin and what they may mean for human health."

Industries that emit dioxin into the environment--paper producers, waste incinerators, metal smelters, and herbicide producers and users--are feeling tremendous pressure to curtail emissions, and the pressure seems likely to increase.

Newspapers, of course, are dependent upon paper for their existence and they have a material interest in

keeping paper prices low. According to the WALL STREET JOURNAL, the paper industry has already spent over a billion dollars trying to control dioxin.

The NEW YORK TIMES, which has a history of odd reporting on dioxin (see RHWN #248, #249, #275), received at least three letters to the editor complaining about its misleading coverage of the September meeting--two of them from scientists who participated in the meeting and who objected strongly to the TIMES's reporting. The TIMES also received a letter from a consultant to the incineration industry who said it was "comforting" to learn that the dioxin found now in the bodies of Americans is "less toxic than previously assumed." The TIMES did not print either of the letters from the scientists but did print the letter from the incineration consultant, who argued that automobiles are the leading source of dioxin. This point of view, which is no doubt comforting to the incineration industry, and to the paper and newspaper industries, is almost certainly wrong.

We will provide more details next week.#311

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: epa; dioxin; incineration; health; pulp and paper industry; dioxin reassessment; birth defects; ny times; carcinogens; cancer; wall street journal; automobiles;

#275: Dioxin Detoxification Campaign Exposed

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

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #275
---March 4, 1992---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ==========
RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com ========================Original Source========================

A remarkable front-page story in the WALL STREET JOURNAL February 20 confirmed that the paper and chlorine industries have waged a successful two-year campaign to bamboozle the nation's media about the toxicity of dioxin, and that U.S. Environmental Protection (EPA) fell for it too.

The point of the campaign was to salvage the paper industry, which uses 15% of all the chemical industry's chlorine output, and which is facing billions of dollars in lawsuits brought by citizens claiming damages from dioxin released from paper mills.

The JOURNAL's story ("How Two Industries Created a Fresh Spin on the Dioxin Debate") by Chicago-based staffer Jeff Bailey, describes a bald-faced campaign by the American Paper Institute (API) and the Chlorine Institute to "revisit" the scientific evidence that dioxin is a potent carcinogen.

The JOURNAL says, "The paper industry scored its first major public-relations success in 1990, when paper companies arranged to challenge the findings of the most influential dioxin study ever done. That study, reported in 1978 by Richard Kociba, a Dow Chemical Co. pathologist, was done on 485 white rats, whose food was spiked with dioxin. Dr. Kociba found a strong link to cancer: a daily dose of billionths of a gram led to tumors."

To counteract the Kociba study, API hired five pathologists and brought them to a Maryland Lab in March, 1990, where for two days they reviewed Dr. Kociba's rat slides under a microscope. The pathologists voted on each slide--were they looking at a cancer tumor or at a "benign" tumor? At the end of the two days, they had voted for 50% fewer cancer tumors than Dr. Kociba had observed 12 years earlier. Robert A. Squire, the pathologist who oversaw the recount, told the JOURNAL, "There was't much unanimity. This was an uncertain finding."

Nevertheless API managed to ignore the uncertainties. Based on its "new evidence" that dioxin is less potent than previously believed, API wrote stern letters to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to President Bush's science adviser, and to William Reilly, chief of EPA. API told EPA, "All of the Agency's analyses are now out of date in light of the significant new evidence showing that the risks of dioxin has been overstated."

The JOURNAL does not say so, but almost immediately the API's publicity machine began cranking out the "news" that dioxin was no longer considered very dangerous. May 31, 1990 the WASHINGTON POST (pg. A3) surprised the world with the headline, "Scientists Temper Views on Cancer-Causing Potential of Dioxin." The story, by Malcolm Gladwell, said, "Dioxin--the chemical that forced the evacuation of Love Canal, sparked a wave of lawsuits over Agent Orange and became notorious as the most potent carcinogen ever tested--may be far less dangerous than previously imagined, according to new scientific evidence." Gladwell went on, "Enough experts have joined the revisionist chorus that some scientists consider a softening of the government's stance toward the chemical inevitable." Gladwell's "chorus" consisted of quotations from four scientists. Gladwell neglected to mention that three of them were consultants paid by the paper industry.

With the WASHINGTON POST on board, the "detoxify dioxin" campaign was rolling.

The JOURNAL goes on: "Next the Chlorine Institute... arranged to bring three dozen of the world's foremost experts on dioxin to a conference at the Banbury Center [on Long Island in October, 1990]." The JOURNAL continues, "Also present was George L. Carlo, a scientist but not widely regarded as a dioxin expert...." "Carlo is not a scientist with a long history of dioxin credentials," Dr. George Lucier of the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences told the JOURNAL. The JOURNAL goes on: "Why was Carlo there? Though described as a 'conference participant' by the Chlorine Institute, he was actually the industry's $150-an-hour observer. Based on his account, the institute would later circulate reports that the scientists had reached an important consensus...."

Carlo's account, which the Chlorine Institute immediately circulated widely to journalists and to state regulatory officials, said that the scientists at Banbury had reached consensus that dioxin does no harm until a certain threshold of exposure is reached. In other words, Carlo claimed--and the Chlorine Institute sent out press statements claiming--that the Banbury meeting had reached agreement that there is some amount of dioxin that is safe. The JOURNAL continues, "The institute's statement, however, didn't accurately reflect what had happened at the conference....A Chlorine Institute official concedes its representations about the conference were a 'botched publicity effort.' The institute now agrees there was no conference consensus on whether a dioxin threshold exists."

However, before the world had a chance to learn that the Chlorine Institute was playing fast and loose with the facts, the Institute's disinformation about Banbury was fed to William Reilly, chief of EPA, who fell for it. Citing the Banbury "consensus," in early 1991 Reilly ordered his scientific staff to officially "reassess" the toxicity of dioxin.

The paper industry got help from other friends in high places. In May, 1991, a highly-placed federal health official just three years shy of retirement announced that dioxin was much less toxic than previously believed. Dr. Vernon Houk, Director of the Center for Environmental Health and Injury Control, announced that he believed dioxin was only "a weak carcinogen." Houk's statements formed the "news hook" that allowed the NEW YORK TIMES to climb on board with its own page-one story August 15, 1991: "U.S. Officials Say Dangers of Dioxin Were Exaggerated." With the POST, the TIMES, Houk and Reilly all speaking with one voice, the "detoxify dioxin" campaign was clearly succeeding.

But with the publication of the WALL STREET JOURNAL's story Feb. 20, the campaign has come unraveled. The scientist in charge of EPA's reassessment, Peter Preuss, is quoted in the JOURNAL saying that Vernon Houk's statements "misled" the public about the dangers of dioxin. Other scientists on EPA's reassessment team say dioxin seems to be just the tip of a nasty iceberg--that other chemicals in the environment seem to share dioxin's ability to interfere with the human reproductive and immune systems. If we all carry dioxin in our bodies at an average of 7 ppt [parts per trillion], when you add furans and PCBs [polychlorinated biphenyls], our average body burden of "dioxin equivalents" may be as high as 100 ppt.[1] This is not good news. And it means that any additional dioxins or furans added to the environment would worsen a situation that it already unacceptable from a public health perspective. Knowing this, anyone who intentionally emits dioxins into the environment seems like a logical target for a barrage of lawsuits.

It is now clear that dioxin lawsuits can devastate an industry. For example, the WALL STREET JOURNAL reported February 7, 1992 (pg. A5), that the Georgia-Pacific Co.--a major paper producer--recently lost two dioxin lawsuits in which juries awarded $4.2 million to residents living downstream of its paper mill on the Leaf River in New Augusta, Mississippi. Georgia-Pacific has been named in 159 additional lawsuits filed by 8209 plaintiffs who claim they suffered emotional harm after eating fish contaminated with dioxins from the Georgia-Pacific Plant. Furthermore, according to the JOURNAL, Georgia-Pacific's insurance carriers say their policies don't cover damages in lawsuits like these. Georgia-Pacific has now sued Aetna Life & Casualty and seven other insurance companies in Mississippi federal court asking a judge to force the insurance carriers to pay. No matter how that lawsuit comes out, someone is likely to have to pay tens, or perhaps hundreds, of millions of dollars--and this represents the problems of only one mill owned by one company.

As the JOURNAL commented, "Other paper companies are likely taking note of Georgia-Pacific's setbacks. International Paper Co. and Champion International Corp. are among those who faced similar suits." Likely they are.

Other industries are also likely watching the paper's industry's dioxin troubles proliferate.

For example, cement kilns don't produce dioxin in substantial amounts until they start burning hazardous waste as a fuel, which many kilns have recently started doing. It is interesting to note reports that George Carlo has recently been hired as a consultant by a trade association representing the cement kiln industry.

When will dioxin lawsuits against cement kilns and against municipal solid waste incinerators begin? And how big will the jury awards be in these cases? When your community is deciding whether to install a solid waste incinerator,[2] or whether to tolerate a cement kiln seeking permission to burn hazardous waste, ask your community leaders, "Have you been reading the WALL STREET JOURNAL lately?"

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

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

[1] David J. Hanson, "Dioxin Toxicity: New Studies Prompt Debate, Regulatory Action," C&EN [Chemical & Engineering News] Aug. 12, 1991, pgs. 7-14.

[2] A good discussion of dioxin emissions from solid waste incinerators appears in Donald J. Lisk, "Environmental Implications of Incineration of Municipal Solid Waste and Ash Disposal," SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT Vol. 74 (1988), pgs. 39-66, and in the articles Lisk cites in his footnotes.

Descriptor terms: dioxin; detoxification; paper industry; chlorine industry; epa; api; dow chemical; cancer; malcolm gladwell; william reilly; georgia-pacific; cement kilns; incineration;

#175: Dioxin--Part 3: New Evidence That Dioxin Causes Human Cancers And Other Diseases.

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

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #175
---April 4, 1990---
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 recent studies, published in 1988 and 1989, have indicated a connection between exposure to dioxin and development of cancers in humans. Earlier studies had shown little evidence linking human cancers to dioxins, but these earlier studies have now been challenged by U.S. government officials as fraudulent. (See RHWN #171.) One of the recent studies also reveals a connection between dioxin exposure and a variety of non-cancer health effects, including heart attacks (among men), and digestive diseases, cirrhosis of the liver, gall bladder and biliary tract diseases, and genitourinary diseases (among women).

Seveso, Italy

On July 10, 1976, an industrial disaster occurred at a chemical plant operated by the pharmaceutical giant, Hoffman-La Roche, in the town of Meda, Italy. A visible chemical cloud containing dioxin (2,3,7,8-TCDD and other dioxins) spread over several square miles of populated countryside; most heavily hit was the community of Seveso. More than 200,000 people aged 20 to 74 lived in towns near the accident. Nearly 31,000 people aged 20 to 74 lived in zones contaminated to some degree by the accident and about 200 individuals had such high exposures that they developed chloracne, an acne condition known to be caused by exposure to dioxins.

A team of Italian physicians and researchers has been studying health conditions, including death certificates, of 30,703 people aged 20 to 74 living in areas termed "exposed," comparing people's experience there against a larger population of 167,391 individuals aged 20 to 74 living nearby in non-exposed areas. A recent report in the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EPIDEMIOLOGY [1] reveals several elevated disease rates among the exposed group.

The report covers the decade 1976 to 1986, which is a short period in which to find cancer occurrences. All cancers exhibit a "latency period" (or delay period) between the time a cancer-causing exposure occurs and a cancer actually develops; the latency period varies from 7 to 40 or 50 years. Thus a study of cancers occurring 10 years after an exposure to cancer-causing chemicals could only reveal the earliest evidence of cancers and should be understood to be preliminary in nature.

The results of the study are reported for people living in three areas, labeled zones A, B and R. Zone A is closest to the accident site and zone R extends several miles distant; zone B is between the two. The assumption is that people's exposure varied with distance from the accident.

In zone A, women had elevated cancers of the gall bladder and biliary tract. They also had elevated occurrences of circulatory diseases and of chronic rheumatic heart disease. Men in zone A had elevated occurrence of cerebrovascular disease (such as stroke). In zone B, men had elevated melanomas (serious skin cancers) and cancers of the lining of the chest cavity (pleura); women in zone B had elevated incidence of soft tissue sarcomas. In zone R, men had elevated incidence of cancers of the lining of the chest cavity (pleura), and they had increased incidence of all blood diseases, and of cerebrovascular disease; women in zone R had increased incidence of cancer of the uterus, as well as hypertensive vascular disease.

The results reported above are averages for the entire decade. In the case of cancers, which would only begin to occur after a latency period, the timeperiod of interest is the second five years of the decade, and, accordingly, the Italian researchers reported results for each half of the decade.

During the second half of the decade: In zone A there were no elevated cancer levels. In zone B, men showed elevated incidence of cancers of the lung, cancers of the lining of the chest cavity (pleura), serious skin cancers (melanoma), Hodgkin's disease (cancer of the lymph nodes), and leukemia. In zone B, women showed increased incidence of soft tissue sarcomas and of the thyroid gland. In zone R, men showed elevated incidence of leukemia, and women showed elevated incidence of cancer of the brain. It is perhaps relevant to note that two previous studies have implicated brain cancer with exposure to dioxins in weed killers. [2, 3]

This study of the people exposed to dioxin during the Seveso accident does not prove that dioxin exposure caused the cancers or the other serious ailments from which these people suffer in abnormally high numbers (mainly diseases of the heart, blood, and arteries). Nevertheless, this study confirms that it is definitely misleading and untrue when anyone says there is "no evidence" of cancer or other serious diseases among humans exposed to dioxins. (In addition, an earlier U.S. government study has shown that Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange [a weed killer contaminated with dioxin] suffer from elevated incidence of cancers, liver damage, cardiovascular deterioration, and degeneration of the endocrine system. See RHWN #73.)

Sweden

Phenoxyacetic acids (for example, the weed killers known as 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D) are almost always contaminated with dioxins during manufacture. During the late 1970s, Swedish researchers studied workers who had been exposed to phenoxyacetic acids and found increased incidence of soft tissue sarcomas (rare cancers of the connective tissues). [4, 5] During the mid'80s, several additional studies confirmed the relationship between soft tissue sarcomas and exposure to phenoxy herbicides, while other studies failed to confirm such a relationship. Now a new study has once again shown a three-fold increase in soft tissue sarcomas among workers exposed to phenoxy herbicides. [6]This is the tenth study that we know of showing a positive relationship between exposure to phenoxy herbicides and soft tissue sarcomas. [7] Five studies have failed to confirm such a relationship. [8]

How can one make sense out of conflicting reports, when 10 studies show that certain chemicals cause cancer and 5 studies show that those same chemicals do not cause cancer? How can the public know what policies make sense to pursue?

In our experience, people who make money manufacturing, or using, such chemicals prefer to argue that "we just don't know," and "until all the facts are in, we should not make any changes." Unfortunately, all the facts will never be in. People, including consumers buying phenoxy herbicides at the lawn-care store and politicians making laws, will always have to make decisions based on incomplete information.

From our viewpoint, the key question is this: Is it more important to protect people and the environment from damage, or to protect chemicals from regulation, control and outright bans?

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Also see: Dioxin--Part 1: Gauging the Toxicity of Dioxin. #171

Also see: Dioxin--Part 2: Gauging the Toxicity of Dioxin. #173

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

[1] Pier Alberto Bertazzi and others, "Ten-year Mortality Study of the Population Involved in the Seveso Incident in 1976," AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EPIDEMIOLOGY, Vol. 129 (1989), pgs. 1187-1200.."

[2] A. Bair and others, "Lung Cancer and Other Causes of Death Among Licensed Pesticide Applicators," JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE Vol. 71 (1983), pgs. 31-37.

[3] D. Coggon and others, "Mortality of Workers Exposed to 2-methyl-4-chlorophenoxy-acetic acid." SCANDINAVIAN JOURNAL OF WORK, ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH Vol. 12 (1986), pgs. 448-454.

[4] Olav Axelson and others, "Herbicide Exposure and Cancer Mortality," SCANDINAVIAN JOURNAL OF WORK, ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH Vol. 6 (1980), pgs. 73-79.

[5] Lennart Hardell and others, "Malignant Lymphoma and Exposure to Chemicals, Especially Organic Solvents, Chlorophenols, and Phenoxy Acids: A Case-Control Study." BRITISH JOURNAL OF CANCER Vol. 43 (1981), pgs. 169-176.

[6] Lennart Hardell and others, "The Association Between Soft Tissue Sarcomas and Exposure to Phenoxyacetic Acids--A New Case-referent Study," CANCER Vol. 62 (1988), pgs. 652-656.

[7] Nine of the studies are listed in footnotes 1 through 9 of the Hardell study we cited in our footnote 6 (above), and the tenth study is the Hardell study itself cited in our footnote 6 (above).

[8] The five studies are listed in footnotes 10 through 14 of the Hardell study we cited in our footnote 6 (above).

Descriptor terms: seveso, italy; dioxin; gender; male; female; cancers; gall bladder; circulatory; heart disease; herbicides; agent orange; phenoxyacetic; hodgkins; lung; skin; pleural; sarcomas; uterine; leukemiea; brain cancer;