Please check the CHE-WA website to stay abreast of the latest postings, news and events: http://washington.chenw.org.
To join the Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE) and CHE-Washington, please complete the form at http://www.healthandenvironment.org/roles/register?&phase=registerform. Be sure to mark that you want to join the Washington State Regional Group at the bottom of the application.
September 1, 2006
Portland, Oregon
at Kaiser Permanente Internal Medicine Grand Rounds
Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility's "In Harm's Way: Toxic Threats to Health" program educates health providers about the linkages between environmental toxins and development, in order to prevent exposure. Health care providers are uniquely positioned to provide information to parents at critical developmental stages and identify opportunities for intervention. The routine well-child exam is an ideal time for families to receive information, understand the links between environment and their child's health, and make changes necessary to minimize exposure. Through providers, information about avoiding exposures to environmental toxins can reach thousands of Oregonians of every age, class and ethnicity.
Website: http://www.oregonpsr.org/programs/InHarmsWayToxicThreatsToHealth.htm
September 7-8, 2006
Bellevue, Washington
at the Meydenbauer Center
The Puget Sound Partnership meets regularly in its quest to develop an aggressive 15-year plan to solve Puget Sound's most vexing problems. The Partnership is holding a series of general public forums and specific scientific forums throughout the summer and fall.
Website: http://www.pugetsoundpartnership.org/
Contact: Martha Neuman, 206-625-0230 or mneuman@sharedsalmonstrategy.org
September 12, 2006, in Detroit, Michigan
September 13, 2006, in Foster City, California
September 15, 2006, in Seattle, Washington (correction from last week's bulletin)
8:30 a.m. - 4:15 p.m.
In order to help US companies prepare for REACH and move beyond the law toward sustainable chemicals management, the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production is organizing a series of one-day training workshops. These workshops will explain the key features of REACH, giving participants a chance to ask experts about how REACH will affect their companies. The LCSP will also provide training in the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling (GHS), the use of sustainable chemicals management, green chemistry, and cleaner production approaches, and how they can help businesses turn REACH around from a challenge to an opportunity. Andrew Fasey, one of the key authors of REACH and the GHS, will be the lead trainer in the workshops, along with LCSP senior staff. The new REACH system will put much more responsibility on companies to collect data on most chemicals on the market, assess the risk of these chemicals, and define safe use down the supply chain. It will also create a new system for dealing with the most hazardous chemicals, in which companies will have to justify continued use of chemicals of very high concern. Any company that exports chemicals or chemical mixtures into the EU, that competes in Europe, the US, or elsewhere with products meeting European standards, or that exports finished products to Europe, will be affected.
Website: http://www.chemicalspolicy.org/registration.shtml
[Editor's note: See the related workshop under the "CHE-WA Events" section above.]
September 22, 2006
8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Des Moines, Washington
at Highline Community College
Presented by the Washington State Food and Nutrition Council, this event will feature several speakers: Fred Kirschenmann (agricultural ethicist), David Granatstein (Washington sustainable agriculture leader), Don Stuart (American Farmland Trust) and Linda Stone (Children's Alliance and Western Region Anti-Hunger Coalition). Washington State legislators and representatives from Washington State agricultural organizations will also participate.
Website: http://www.wsfnc.org/conference.htm
Contact: Donna Parsons, 360-725-6222 or dparsons@ospi.wednet.edu
from CLEARCorps
Are you concerned about the rising asthma epidemic? Do you support education and prevention as effective tools to promote lung health? If so, then the American Lung Association of Washington's award wining Master Home Environmentalist© Program (MHE©) is looking for you. Our Master Home Environmentalist© program is currently seeking volunteers to help educate communities about the hazards of indoor air pollution. Volunteers make free home visits to families throughout King County and provide low or no-cost tips on ways to reduce air pollutants, such as dust and mold, in the home.
To become a Master Home Environmentalist© volunteer, applicants go through a free 35-hour, ten-week training course. The next training session begins on September 5th and lasts through November 7th. Classes will meet on Tuesday evenings from 6:30-9pm in downtown Seattle. In exchange for the free training, volunteers give back a minimum of 35 hours of service. If you are interested in becoming a Master Home Environmentalist© volunteer or if you would like a free home environmental assessment, please contact Casey Coulombe at the American Lung Association, 206-441-5100 ex 50, email: casey@alaw.org, or visit http://www.alaw.org for more information.
Contact: Casey Coulombe 206-441-5100
by Ron Scherer, Christian Science Monitor
August 28, 2006
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0828/p02s01-ussc.html
NEW YORK -- Smoking is back in the cross hairs. This fall, voters in a record eight states will be voting on tobacco-control initiatives that range from sharply higher taxes to smoking bans in most workplaces. Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled that the tobacco industry had conspired to mislead the American public about the health effects of smoking. She also ruled that one remedy is to end use of the terms "light" and "low tar." And the industry may face yet more counteradvertising: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently said he was donating $125 million for global antitobacco efforts.
The results of the state initiatives in particular will be a gauge of political will, antismoking groups believe. If the initiatives pass, they say, members of Congress will take notice and perhaps consider national regulation of tobacco. And as more states protect the rights of non-smokers, they point out, pressure mounts on more lenient states. "By 2008 or 2009, we may have made every state smoke-free in restaurants and the workplace," says Paul Billings, vice president for national policy at the American Lung Association in Washington. "As people visit places like New York, California, Delaware, or Maine and have a smoke-free experience, they come to expect it in their own state."
As part of the tobacco-control efforts, states have been steadily raising per-pack taxes. The current average state cigarette tax, including Washington, D.C., is 93.7 cents per pack, up from 91.6 cents this January and up from 72 cents a pack in January 2004. One of the latest such efforts is in California, where a coalition of health groups met last year to begin a citizen process to raise the state's cigarette taxes, which had not been hiked since the late 1990s. Using a recommended level suggested by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the groups settled on a hike of $2.60 a pack, which would make California cigarette taxes among the highest in the nation. "We said, what is the amount that actually has an impact?" says Kris Deutschman, communications director for Proposition 86, the name of the ballot initiative. According to the American Lung Association in California, 200 underage kids begin to smoke in the state a day, and there are currently 200,000 underage smokers. "We think between the size of the increase and the use of the funds, it will prevent 700,000 kids in California from starting to smoke," says Ms. Deutschman.
But those opposed to the new tax, a combination of tobacco interests and business groups, have already been hitting the airwaves. John Singleton, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco in Winston-Salem, N.C., says raising taxes would "create all kinds of problems for retailers." It would "exacerbate" the smuggling problem, he says, and perhaps give extra money to those raising money for terrorism. Terrorism and smuggling are "red herrings," replies Paul Knepprath, a vice president at the American Lung Association of California in Sacramento. "We already have the infrastructure to combat smuggling, and 70 percent of people buy their cigarettes at the most expensive place -- the convenience store."
Reynolds, which has said it will spend $40 million fighting the ballot initiatives, is bankrolling opposition to proposed smoking restrictions in Arizona and Ohio. The company's strategy includes a competing proposal that sounds like health measures but allows smoking in bars and other places. "One of the few places we can interact with adults who smoke is in bars and nightclubs where typically the owner can set the smoking policy," says Mr. Singleton. But the health sponsors of Arizona's proposed ban on smoking respond that there "clear differences" between the two plans. If Reynolds's sponsored proposal were voted in, it would potentially allow smoking at 3,000 restaurants that have bars. In addition, the Reynolds proposal does not provide enforcement. "Their proposal just protects the pocketbook of Big Tobacco," says Troy Corder, communications director for Smoke-Free Arizona.
Antitobacco activists had hoped to get an infusion of money as a result of the government's racketeering lawsuit against the tobacco companies. But Judge Gladys Kessler did not fine them massive amounts of money because an appeals court had already limited the potential penalty. However, Judge Kessler did prohibit the companies from marketing cigarettes by using terms such as "low tar" as of Jan. 1, 2007. According to the Federal Trade Commission, in 2003 these brands represented 85 percent of all cigarettes sold in the US. However, antismoking groups expect the tobacco companies to adapt. "The European Union and Brazil banned the use of light and low-tar cigarettes, but during the transition, the industry color-coded the products," says Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids in Washington. "By the time the ban went into effect, smokers didn't need the labels."
However, antismoking forces can expect an influx of fresh money sometime in the future once Mayor Bloomberg decides how to distribute his funds to combat global tobacco use. "It could be the start of one of the most important public-health campaigns in history," says Mr. Myers. "It could speed up the process of reducing tobacco use in developing nations and those with the highest smoking rates."
by Scott Streater, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
August 27, 2006
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/15374748.htm
From a remote site in the heart of Bavaria, in southern Germany, the modest Solnhofen cement plant is a model for reducing pollution. Once a dirty industrial facility, the plant has dramatically slashed lung-scarring emissions with a cutting-edge technology that converts pollutants into water vapor. The technology's success in Germany, however, has placed the Solnhofen plant at the center of an increasingly contentious debate in Texas over whether cement kilns in Ellis County -- long a target of local clean-air advocates -- should follow their German counterparts' lead.
The outcome could have serious implications for local residents, who face the possibility of severe driving restrictions if air pollution cannot be reduced in other ways. The decision will rest with state and federal environmental regulators. But a growing number of cement kiln experts and engineers say installing the new pollution control technology at the three Midlothian kilns should be part of any plan to bring Dallas-Fort Worth into compliance with federal ozone standards by a 2010 deadline. "As far as I can see, there is not a technical reason that it will not work," said Al Armendariz, a chemical engineer at Southern Methodist University who is advising local clean-air advocates on pollution control alternatives.
The technology could cost tens of millions of dollars to install. And industry officials say that it's still unproven for use in cement kilns and that there are differences between the local and German kilns that may prevent the pollution controls from working. "I think there is a basic disagreement about whether this will work in Texas," said Al Axe, an Austin lawyer representing the Portland Cement Association, the national trade group of cement kiln operators.
The debate has been going on behind the scenes, overshadowed by the controversy surrounding 17 proposed power plants and whether they will hurt Dallas-Fort Worth air quality. Studies show that installing the pollution controls in the cement kilns would improve air quality in Fort Worth and Arlington. Regional and state leaders have discussed restricting driving to every other day and banning drive-through windows during ozone season as part of a federally mandated plan now being drafted that will outline steps the region must take to meet the ozone standards. The less regulators require of major industrial polluters like cement kilns, the more will get passed to motorists and other businesses, officials say. "If we talk to people about changing their behavior in the way that they conduct their daily lives, they're rightfully going to want to know if we have gotten the maximum reductions from industry sources," said Richard Greene, the federal Environmental Protection Agency's regional administrator. "We have to be able to say yes to that."
Meeting the standard
For years, the Solnhofen cement plant belched out thousands of tons of smog-forming pollutants over a tree-shrouded valley. The plant, in the Altmuhltal Nature Park, about 50 miles southwest of Nuremburg, was not even equipped to control ozone-forming pollutants when German regulators began to crack down on the industry. In 2001, Solnhofen plant operators decided to roll the dice on a pollution control system that could virtually eliminate ozone-forming emissions.
Selective catalytic reduction chemically alters pollutants into harmless nitrogen gas and water vapor. It had been used for years at power plants, waste incinerators and other industries but never at a cement plant. No one was sure it would work. But it did, consistently slashing ozone-forming emissions by nearly 70 percent, German regulators reported. "We proved the applicability of this technology in the cement industry," said Sebastian Plickert, a cement industry specialist with the German Federal Environmental Agency.
It should work in Midlothian, too, according to a state study by a group of cement kiln experts that said the system could cut smog-forming pollutants at local kilns by as much as 85 percent. The technology, they reported, is available, affordable and "must be seriously considered." That was good news to some Ellis County residents and regional leaders who have long complained about cement kiln pollution. The three kilns -- TXI Operations, Holcim and Ash Grove Cement -- are the region's largest industrial source of nitrogen oxides, the chief man-made component of ozone.
The nine-county region needs to cut an estimated 166 tons a day of nitrogen oxide emissions. Installing the pollution controls could slash as much as 20 tons per day of the ozone-forming pollutant, according to studies. "I don't want to create the impression that the cement plants have the power with their operations to solve the [ozone] problem, because they don't," Greene said. "But for our assignment here in North Texas, we have to get 166 tons of reduction ... and right now we don't have 166 tons of reductions."
Past efforts to increase kiln restrictions have met stiff resistance, mainly from U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Arlington, chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. Barton, whose committee has legislative oversight of the EPA, thinks regulators need to look elsewhere. "There has been a big whoop-tee-do about the cement plants here in Midlothian, that we ought to shut them down," Barton told the Midlothian Chamber of Commerce this month. "You could shut them all down and you wouldn't decrease the ozone one-tenth of 1 percent," he said. The studies, however, indicate that reductions could be as high as 12 percent of the total needed to reach compliance.
Industry fights back
In May, a group of cement industry representatives and their consultants traveled to Germany to check out the Solnhofen plant. But at the time of the visit, the plant was not using the system. It was testing a different technology that the plant operators are considering as a backup. The system remains off-line, though German officials say it will soon go back into use. The industry representatives wrote an unflattering report and submitted it in June to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Among other things, they reported that the less expensive pollution control system being tested as a backup at the kiln was working just as well. German regulators disagree, saying that if regulations required it to, the selective catalytic reduction system could easily reduce pollution to a greater extent than it does.
The American cement industry officials also raised concerns about reliability. The system at Solnhofen was found to have worked only 72 percent of the time in 2004 and 92 percent of the time in 2005, said Bob Schreiber, a St. Louis-based chemical engineer and the lead consultant for the cement industry trade association. "That doesn't work in the U.S.," he said.
German officials were not pleased. They said the U.S. industry representatives misled the plant manager, Gerd Sauter, who does not speak English. "Mr. Sauter was really upset" with the report, said Plickert, the German cement kiln regulator. "He had simply told them the facts and showed them the plant, and they didn't tell him what they really were about to do."
The cement industry wants to install the cheaper pollution control system, which is similar to selective catalytic reduction in that it chemically alters emissions. But the EPA says the alternative system would curb ozone-forming pollution only about one-third as much as the costlier system. One local kiln is already reporting success with the alternative, however. Holcim installed the cheaper system at its Midlothian kiln this year in settling a legal challenge from environmental groups that were fighting the company's efforts to increase emissions. The system came on line in April and halved emissions of nitrogen oxides, said Nick Tzourtzouklis, the environmental manager at Holcim's Midlothian kiln. "It's been a definite success," he said. TXI and Ash Grove are making moves to test that technology at their plants this year, according to the companies' officials. If it works, "we will make it permanent," Grove said in a statement.
Looking ahead
For now, the state continues to draft its plan for meeting the federal ozone standards, with restrictions on residents and businesses still up in the air. That plan will eventually be forwarded to the EPA for final approval. "I think we've definitely got the cement kilns recognizing the fact that they're going to have to do something," said Dallas County Judge Margaret Keliher, co-chairwoman of a group of local leaders, advocates and industry representatives studying cement kiln pollution. Greene wants to see selective catalytic reduction tested at the local kilns. And if it works, he said, "we need to encourage them to use that technology and come up with some reasonable time frame to put it into place."
But it doesn't appear likely. State regulators have not even talked to the cement industry about a pilot study, said David Schanbacher, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's chief engineer. "I'm not ruling it out," he said, "but it's not where we are right now."
Ground-level ozone
The federal government regulates ozone levels as a health concern. At high concentrations, ozone can trigger asthma attacks, stunt lung development in children, and aggravate bronchitis, emphysema and other respiratory problems.
Ozone -- the main ingredient in smog -- needs lots of sunlight and heat to form. For that reason, ozone season in Dallas-Fort Worth runs from May 1 through October.
Ozone is produced when nitrogen oxides mix with volatile organic compounds. The nitrogen oxides and organic compounds come mostly from automobile exhaust and industry smokestacks. Trees also produce the organic compounds as part of photosynthesis.
SOURCE: Environmental Protection Agency
by Carolyn Marshall, New York Times
August 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/us/27build.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
LATHROP, Calif. -- Developers and air quality regulators are locked in a legal battle over new construction fees for the California Central Valley intended to reduce the region's chronic smog problem. The fees, which went into effect in March in eight counties in this fast-growing valley, are the most far-reaching in the country in their effort to link development and air pollution. A legal campaign to have them thrown out is being watched closely in other parts of the state, including Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area, where officials say they hope to impose similar fees. "It's on the docket for examination next year," said Aaron Richardson, a spokesman for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, one of 35 regional air quality agencies in the state. "We're definitely interested in land use, smart growth and mitigating traffic emissions."
The fees are part of a new regulation by the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District requiring builders of commercial and residential projects to use energy-saving technology and traffic-reduction features in their projects. The rule requires payment into a fund for pollution control. The idea is to make developers more accountable for the explosion in traffic and emissions that typically accompany building.
Interest in the new rule is high, regulators say, as much to see if it improves air quality as to weigh how developers adjust to it. The next generation of urban sprawl in California is under construction across the Central Valley. Kathryn Phillips, an air quality expert for Environmental Defense, a nonprofit advocacy group, said the San Joaquin rule would be watched closely by almost every state air district. "I wasn't surprised, but I was disappointed when they sued," Ms. Phillips said of a lawsuit filed to overturn the rule. "The building industry was the one large industry in the valley that had not stepped up to the plate or done its fair share."
She said that while the San Joaquin rule was the most sweeping and complex measure of its kind, other cities, including Los Angeles and New York, have tried similar efforts over the last 10 or 15 years. "They were ultimately pushed back by a combination of resistance and legal challenges from builders and other business owners," Ms. Phillips said.
In Lathrop, about 75 miles east of San Francisco, rooftops have replaced fields where crops once grew. Traffic jams have become part of the everyday landscape. Big rigs rumble to and from building sites, contributing to what the authorities say is one of the worst air pollution problems in the country. For two years, the construction industry fought fiercely with the San Joaquin district to kill the proposed regulation, but it was approved at a stormy meeting of the district board in Fresno last December. In late June, a coalition of builders, business groups and anti-tax advocates sued. "This rule fails miserably," said Tim Coyle, senior vice president and spokesman for the California Building Industry Association, among the groups involved in the lawsuit. "They haven't even established that there is a science to support the notion that new housing contributes to poor air quality."
The lawsuit, filed in Fresno County Superior Court, asserts that the district has exceeded its authority by imposing fees that duplicate regulations already covered by other state agencies. It also argues that the district has failed to demonstrate how the fees would reduce pollution or how the district would spend the money it collects, which could top $100 million a year when the rule is in full effect in 2010. "Not only are the district's new rules unlawful," the lawsuit says, "they are a terrible illustration of bureaucracy run amok." It also argues that the new regulation "would enthrone the district as an unelected ‘czar' reviewing, regulating and taxing new development."
In a court filing in July, the district called the arguments "inflammatory, irrelevant and improper." Kelly Morphy, a spokeswoman for the district, said the rule was a lawful and necessary tool to help the district overcome its history of failing to comply with federal air quality standards. "Our position is that the rule meets the requirements of law," Ms. Morphy said. "It's effective and actually a crucial element of our air pollution cleanup plan."
The lawsuit asks a judge to halt the imposition of the fees and to refund those already collected. Under the rule, developers must pay an average of $600 per residential unit, an amount that will triple by 2008. Air regulators have received 54 applications for consideration under the new rule, Ms. Morphy said, and 24 of those have been approved. The district estimates that the 24 projects will generate $3.1 million in fees over the next 10 years.
by John Flesher, Associated Press, Houston Chronicle
August 26, 2006
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/science/4143545.html
MARQUETTE, Mich. -- It somewhat resembles a honeycomb: row upon row of sturdy fabric bags, each 26 feet long and stretched over a steel frame that preserves its conical shape. For high-tech gadgetry, it's short on bells and whistles. Yet this mechanism inside a cavernous building at the Presque Isle Power Plant may help achieve one of the nation's top environmental goals: slashing mercury emissions from incineration of coal to generate electricity.
It's part of a new system called Toxecon. Designed by industry researchers, it prevents gaseous mercury from escaping into the atmosphere by mixing it with carbon, creating ash that is collected in the fabric bags and trucked to landfills. Power companies are rushing to develop such technology as pressure mounts from government regulators and environmental activists to reduce emissions of mercury and other harmful pollutants. Presque Isle was chosen in 2003 to host the first demonstration of Toxecon under real-world operating conditions.
After initial testing this year, project manager Steven Derenne says there's reason for optimism that Toxecon can filter out 90 percent of the mercury from low-sulfur, subbituminous coal burned at many U.S. electric plants. The state Department of Environmental Quality will impose that standard by 2015 for Michigan, while the Bush administration is requiring a more gradual 70 percent nationwide reduction. "I'm confident that we can make this work," says Derenne, an engineer with We Energies, the Milwaukee-based company that owns Presque Isle. The 625-mewagatt plant on the Lake Superior shore produces half the electricity generated in the Upper Peninsula -- and is the region's leading generator of atmospheric mercury pollution. But problems remain, Derenne said, from operational glitches to major hurdles such as figuring out how to calibrate instruments so they can measure the tiny bits of mercury captured in the gas.
The Toxecon experiment comes amid debate over whether power companies have the ability -- and the money -- to hit the 90 percent mercury reduction target set by Gov. Jennifer Granholm in April. A number of other states, including Illinois, Pennsylvania and Minnesota, are adopting the same requirement. Vince Hellwig, chief of the state DEQ's air quality division, says technology is available that can enable companies to meet the 2015 deadline. If they implement a strategy in good faith and it flops, they'll get more time, he says. Industry leaders say the job is harder than it sounds.
Mercury is a trace element in coal and forms roughly 1 part per billion of the gas created by incineration. Capturing 90 percent of it is like dumping 30 billion white pingpong balls and 30 black ones into a football stadium, then tracking down 27 of the black balls, says Lou Pocalujka, senior environmental planner for Consumers Energy. "It really relies on the technology being able to deliver," he says. Companies also say a mandatory 90 percent reduction will make them pour money into research and equipment yielding relatively little benefit. "It's really not going to gain very much in terms of public health," says Leonard Levin, principal technical manager with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in Palo Alto, Calif., the industry's research arm.
Most of the mercury that can become methylmercury, the form that accumulates in fish and can cause neurological damage in humans, would be captured under the Environmental Protection Agency's plan for a 70 percent rollback, Levin says. That could be achieved mostly with existing technology, such as smokestack scrubbers, used for reducing other pollutants, he says.
Detroit Edison is spending more than $1 billion on such equipment for its Monroe Power Plant, the biggest mercury emissions source in Michigan, says Skiles Boyd, vice president for environmental management. The remaining 30 percent of mercury would be mostly a different variety that doesn't settle in nearby waters, but tends to circulate globally in the atmosphere with mercury generated elsewhere, Levin says. Costly new technologies such as carbon injection are needed to capture it.
But Derenne says it's not certain that existing technology can achieve the 70 percent reduction. It depends on the type of coal used and other factors, he says. Either way, EPRI is pushing ahead with technology aimed at reaching the 90 percent goal -- including Toxecon, which the institute patented.
The U.S. Department of Energy considered its prospects solid enough to pay half the $53 million cost of installing and testing the system on three of the Presque Isle plant's nine generating units. Toxecon injects activated, powdery carbon into the superheated gas from coal incineration. The carbon absorbs the mercury and flows into a newly constructed building called a "bag house," where it's trapped inside the network of fabric bags. As a bonus, designers hope the process also will remove up to 70 percent of the sulfur dioxide and 30 percent of the nitrogen oxide from the gas, along with the 1 percent of fly ash from coal combustion that isn't captured earlier.
The system has reached the 90 percent threshold for mercury removal during testing this year, although not continuously. Once perfected, it should be able to average 90 percent if the correct amount of carbon is injected, Derenne says. The three Presque Isle units emit a combined 90 pounds of mercury in a typical year. If Toxecon succeeds, it will prevent about 82 pounds from slipping into the air.
But nagging problems have surfaced, such as overheated gas burning the bags and water collecting in ash hoppers for no apparent reason. Those issues were resolved, but the latest struggle involves how to make the captured mercury less dusty so it doesn't blow away. "We're plowing new ground and there's always these setbacks," Derenne says while conducting a tour of the baghouse. But the industry can benefit from them, he adds. "They're going to build on the lessons learned at Presque Isle -- probably not just in the U.S., but the world."
Regardless of how the experiment turns out, Toxecon is not "a uniform magic potion" for all mercury emissions, Levin says. Power plants have varying configurations and use different types of coal, so a mechanism that succeeds one place might not somewhere else.
by Alan Wirzbicki, Boston Globe
August 26, 2006
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/08/26/cleaners_told_to_green_up_their_act/
WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency, more accustomed to going after large-scale polluters like smoke-belching factories, is cracking down on neighborhood mom-and-pop dry cleaners, forcing them to switch to greener cleaning agents instead of relying on a powerful stain remover linked to various health risks, including cancer. Last month the EPA announced that many dry cleaners in urban areas must phase out the use of perchloroethylene, a heavy-duty solvent that removes dirt and grease from suits and jackets and sometimes leaves the familiar chemical smell on newly dry-cleaned clothes. The agency cited studies showing that exposure to the chemical can cause headaches to neurological damage and increases the risk of cancer if it seeps into the air or water.
The crackdown gives the 28,000 dry cleaners across the country, including about 600 in Massachusetts, until 2020 to switch to greener technology if their stores share a building with apartments. But many of the dry cleaners, which tend to be locally-owned small businesses, say the transition is one they can't afford. The cleaners, who lobbied unsuccessfully against the EPA ruling, say there are no good substitutes for "perc," as it's known in the industry. The cost of complying with the new regulations, including spending tens of thousands of dollars for new equipment, could financially cripple some small businesses, they say. "A lot of [dry cleaners] are very worried that they're not going to be able to adapt to these changes and survive," said Peter Blake, executive vice president of the Northeast Fabricare Association, which represents 8,000 dry cleaners in the Northeast. Buying new ecologically friendly equipment, Blake said, can cost as much as $80,000, an overwhelming burden for some family-owned cleaners. "Everyone thinks they're big cash cows," he said. "They're a Main Street business, and they are struggling."
Soon Young, the owner of Bijan Cleaners in Boston, said he was relieved that he would have 14 years to comply with the EPA's decision, but expressed concern that a new solvent wouldn't be powerful enough to satisfy his customers. "The problem I can see is that the solvent replacing perc is not as good," said Young, who immigrated to the United States in 1990 and has owned the store since 1995. "Without the regulation, I would continue using perc, because I got used to it and its cleaning power is much better. I've been exposed much more often than regular people, but so far I don't have any health problems."
But environmental groups say the new rules are long overdue. Research linking dry cleaners to elevated perchloroethylene levels in humans emerged 15 years ago after several studies of apartment residents in New York City. "Historically, dry cleaners have contributed quite a bit of pollution," said Liz Harriman, the deputy director of the Toxic Use Reduction Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.
The new EPA rules target cleaners that use older equipment or operate in a residential building. Blake said the impact on cleaners in the Commonwealth was likely to be "severe" because of the size of Boston's urban areas, where dry cleaners tend to be located in residential buildings.
Judith Schreiber, one of the authors of a 1993 study that showed unhealthy perc levels in the bodily fluids of people who live close to dry cleaners, said the risks from dry cleaners were in some cases worse than from more obvious sources of pollution, like motor vehicles or factories. Exposure to dangerous chemicals from cleaning shops "are orders of magnitude higher than we see at Superfund sites, where we spend millions of dollars" to remove the hazard, said Schreiber, who is now a top scientist for New York's attorney general, Eliot Spitzer.
Schreiber praised the EPA rules, but criticized the agency for giving dry cleaners so long to change their ways. "I think that is really a wrong-headed public health decision," she said. "It's going to expose a whole generation of people to this chemical."
The dry-cleaning industry has developed several alternatives to perc, but they cost more and are labor-intensive, some dry cleaners said. They typically aren't as effective. For example, cleaners have reported that a hydrocarbon solvent that has become one of the most popular alternatives to perc takes the sheen off silk gowns.
Dry cleaner Carl Levine, owner of Ross Cleaners in Brookline, said he has used perc for 40 years, and "I have no horns growing out of my head." Ross Cleaners won't fall under the EPA ban because it's in a free-standing building. Levine said he spent $60,000 on a new perc cleaner and did not seriously consider the alternatives. "I've seen them in action, and maybe you can drink the stuff and maybe it's 100 percent safe, but it's not effective as far as dry cleaning goes," he said.
Cleaners have voluntarily reduced their use of perc in recent years. The average amount of perc used in dry cleaners in the Bay State has declined from 181 gallons in 1997 to 107 gallons in 2005, according to Joe Ferson, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.
Still, specialists say some emissions are inevitable from even the most conscientious dry cleaners. Paul Reilly, an environmental analyst at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, said consumers should be wary if they notice a strong, sickly sweet odor, which indicates the chemical is in the air. "When they walk into the store they shouldn't be able to get a smell of perc," he said.
For many years, Schreiber said, regulators were hesitant to move against dry cleaners, instead focusing on big corporate polluters. That has changed as regulators found that pollution from dry cleaners, nail salons, and gas stations accounts for an increasingly large share of toxic pollution entering the atmosphere. "The government is doing much better about regulating the very large factories, and now it's time to look at the more nuanced sources of pollution in our neighborhoods," said Leise Jones, a spokeswoman for Clean Water Action in Massachusetts.
by Alex Breitler. Stockton [California] Record
August 26, 2006
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060826/NEWS01/608260327/1001
STOCKTON -- Once first-class, now a mess of shattered glass, a Cadillac sedan in Art Gustafson's 10-acre wrecking yard awaited merciful melting at a steel recycling plant in the Bay Area. Gustafson, a kind of coroner for cars, already had stripped this corpse of anything valuable or dangerous: He yanked off the sedan's aluminum wheels, drained its oily fluids and cut out its catalytic converter. Then he lifted the Caddy into a huge hydraulic crusher, where it met a wrenching demise Thursday.
The process is repeated every day at wrecking yards across the country. But federal officials are asking Gustafson and other dismantlers to pay special attention to two of the most seemingly insignificant features of a car: The tiny lights that illuminate the trunk or engine. Many of these lights are operated by mercury switches. Until recently, these switches have been left in dead cars, crushed and melted in the process of making new steel. The mercury vaporized into the air, where it mixed with rain and fell to the ground, seeping into soil and water.
Your car's lights may harbor only a few drops of mercury, but each drop contributes to a worldwide health problem, experts say. Exposure to mercury causes nervous-system ailments and, according to one study, reduces the intelligence of hundreds of thousands of unborn American babies every year. "People didn't know," said Gustafson, 60, who now removes mercury switches from all cars at his 33-year-old wrecking yard east of Stockton. "We just didn't know about stuff like that."
A new agreement among dismantlers, car manufacturers, environmentalists and the government will make proper disposal of these switches easier, proponents say. An estimated 67 million switches are in operation today in cars manufactured before 2003, when mercury use was phased out. Removing those switches could reduce mercury air emissions by up to 75 tons over the next 15 years. Mercury also is released into the environment by coal-burning power plants, hazardous-waste fires and spillage from other mercury products, such as old thermometers.
Gustafson already is required to remove switches under a recent California law. The federal agreement, finalized this month, means automakers will pay for collecting and transporting switches to be recycled. About $4million has already been allocated for the next three years. This creates a financial incentive for dismantlers, officials say. "They will get monetary compensation for the switches they remove," said Peggy Harris, chief of the regulatory and program development division of the state's Department of Toxic Substances Control.
And that incentive can be important. Dismantlers such as Gustafson are the last line of defense; once any of the 1,000 cars on his lot is crushed, it's too late to take out the mercury. In the past, getting rid of the switches typically has cost dismantlers up to $800 a year, said Manuel Souza, president of the State of California Auto Dismantlers Association. "It's been really hard," said Souza, who runs a wrecking business in Merced. "We're trying to do the right thing."
The switches are tiny, bulletlike casings about three-eighths of an inch long. When you open your trunk, the casings move; gravity causes the mercury inside the casings to shift. That mercury then conducts electricity, and the light comes on.
Today, Gustafson collects the switches in a white bucket in his back office. There was a day when folks in his line of work didn't worry about these things -- a day when dismantlers doused cars with gasoline and set them on fire to burn off the upholstery. "You'd have this big, black smoke coming out," he said. "That's just how it was done."
by Michael Reilly, New Scientist
August 26, 2006
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9860-pollutant-damages-child-immunity.html
A banned pollutant may be damaging children's immune systems before they can properly develop. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have long been known to cause a variety of illnesses, from skin irritation to cancer. Now a study suggests that the chemicals, which were commonly used in electrical equipment and heavy machinery until the 1970s, are also causing immunodeficiency in children living in the Faroe Islands. Carsten Heilmann of the National University Hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark, and his colleagues measured the response to tetanus and diphtheria vaccines of 119 healthy Faroese children aged 18 months and 129 7-year-olds. They found that a high concentration of PCBs in the children's blood correlated with a reduced antibody response to the vaccines. Every doubling of PCB levels reduced the diphtheria antibodies in 18-month-old children by about 25 per cent. In the group of 7-year olds, tetanus antibodies were down 16.5 per cent. To purchase the complete article, please visit http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9860-pollutant-damages-child-immunity.html.
by Sue Nichols, Michigan State University News
August 25, 2006
http://www.msutoday.msu.edu/25Aug2006-5
Climate change appears to be contributing to the waking of a dangerous sleeping giant in the most northern wetlands of North America -- mercury. Released into the atmosphere most prodigiously with the launching of the industrial age, the toxic element falls back onto Earth, and accumulates particularly in North American wetlands. An MSU researcher working closely with the U.S. Geological Survey finds wildfires, growing more frequent and intense, are unleashing this sequestered mercury at levels up to 15 times greater than originally calculated.
The report, "Wildfires threaten mercury stocks in northern soils," appeared recently in the online edition of Geophysical Research Letters. "This study makes the point that while peat lands are typically viewed as very wet and stagnant places, they do burn in continental regions, especially late in the season when water tables are depressed," said Merritt Turetsky, assistant professor of plant biology and fisheries and wildlife at MSU. "When peat lands burn, they can release a huge amount of mercury that overwhelms regional atmospheric emissions. Our study is new in that it looks to the soil record to tell us what happens when peat soil burns, soil that has been like a sponge for mercury for a long time."
Normal atmospheric conditions naturally carry the mercury emitted from burning fossil fuel and other industry northward, where it eventually settles on land or water surfaces. The cold, wet soils of the boreal forest region in Alaska and northern Canada have been efficient resting places for mercury. "When we walk across the surface of a peat land, we are standing on many thousands of years of peat accumulation," Turetsky said. "This type of wetland is actually doing us a service. Peat lands have been storing mercury from the atmosphere since well before and during the Industrial Revolution, locking it in peat where it's not causing any biological harm, away from the food web."
In addition to industrial activity, climate change also appears to be disrupting mercury's cycle. Increasingly, northern wetlands are drying out. Forest fires are burning more frequently, more intensely, and later in the season, which Turetsky believes will make peat lands more vulnerable to fire. In May, Turetsky co-wrote another Geophysical Research Letters paper that documented recent changes in North American fires and suggested that more frequent summer droughts and severe fire weather have increased burn areas. "We are suggesting that environmental mercury is just like a thermometer. Levels will rise in the atmosphere with climate change, but due to increasing fire activity in the north and not solely due to warming," said Jennifer Harden, soil scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey and co-author of the study.
In this month's paper, Turetsky, with co-authors Harden and James Crock of the U.S. Geological Survey; Hans Friedli and Lawrence Radke of the National Center for Atmospheric Research; and Mike Flannigan and Nicholas Payne of the Canadian Forest Service, measured the amount of mercury stored in soils and vegetation of forests and peat lands, then used historical burn areas and emission models to estimate how much of that mercury is released to the atmosphere at a regional scale during fires. The group has spent more than five years studying prescribed burns in addition to natural fires to measure the influence of burning on terrestrial mercury storage. They also have sampled smoke plumes to measure atmospheric mercury levels as fires blaze.
Their findings indicated that drier conditions in northern regions will cause soil to relinquish its hold on hundreds of years of mercury accumulation, sending that mercury back into the air at levels considerably higher than previously realized. "We're talking about mercury that has been relatively harmless, trapped in peat for hundreds of years, rapidly being spewed back into the air," Turetsky said. "Some of it will fall back onto soils. Some will fall into lakes and streams where it could become toxic in food chains. Our findings show us that climate change is complex and will contribute to the pollution of food chains that are very far away from us, in remote regions of the north."
The research was funded by the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Center of Atmospheric Research (supported by the National Science Foundation), and the Electric Power Research Institute. Turetsky's May paper in Geophysical Research Letters was funded by NASA. Turetsky's work also is supported by the MSU Michigan Agricultural Research Station.
by Fiona MacRae, UK Daily Mail
August 25, 2006
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=402333&in_page_id=1770
A gender-bending chemical found in babies' bottles and tin cans may cause breast cancer, scientists have warned. Bisphenol A, used in the manufacture of CD cases, lunchboxes, sunglasses, water bottles, babies' bottles and tin cans, has been linked to health problems ranging from cancer to miscarriage and infertility. Industry has previously claimed the chemical is broken down by the body, making it safe to use. But new research casts doubt on this, with experiments showing the chemical remains carcinogenic.
The research has reignited calls for the compound -- a manmade version of the female sex hormone oestrogen -- to be banned. The scientists looked at what happens to bisphenol A inside the body and whether it affects the growth of breast tumours. They found that while the chemical is initially broken down, chemicals produced by cancerous tumours can lead to it quickly returning to its original state. Once back to normal, the chemical can go on to speed up the growth of the tumours.
Researcher Dr Theodore Widlanski said: "Enzymes present on the surface of breast tumour cells appear to convert the modified bisphenol A back into bisphenol A." The Indiana University biochemist said the results meant he was unable to give the chemical a clean bill of health. "We set out to show the opposite, that bisphenol A is not harmful," he said. "If the answer to any of our questions had been 'no', then we would have concluded bisphenol A was not dangerous. But we can't do that, or we can't do it yet." Advising pregnant women and those with hormone disorders to be particularly wary of the chemical, he said: "It doesn't mean that your bottled water is any less safe today than it was yesterday.
Industry profits
"It just means that if it isn't safe, we might be able to explain why." He added that was unlikely that bisphenol A was 'the only culprit' in causing or speeding up breast cancer. Instead, it is probably one of a cocktail of cancer-causing chemicals.
The experiments -- which were been done in the test-tube, rather than in the body -- looked at the effects of levels of bisphenol A similar to those the average person would be exposed to over their lifetime. The findings, published in the journal Chemistry & Biology, have alarmed British experts, who called for industry to re-think its stance. Gwynne Lyons, a World Wildlife Fund chemicals expert, said: "This should be another nail in the coffin for bisphenol A. It is well known that this substance can derail oestrogen, the female hormone, and evidence for a potential role in breast cancer is now mounting. Unfortunately, proof will be very difficult to achieve, and regulators seem more concerned with industry profits than protecting our health."
There is also evidence that synthetic oestrogens affect the environment, leading to fish changing sex and snails' reproductive systems going into overdrive. DES, a pregnancy drug similar to oestrogen, has been linked to a string of health problems, including cancer and infertility.
by Sandy Bauers, Philadelphia Inquirer
August 25, 2006
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/15354672.htm
Leila Varella's son Darius, 9, no longer munches tuna sandwiches for lunch. His mother now regrets the slabs of shark she tossed onto the grill. Two years ago, amid national concern about mercury in seafood, they plucked strands of hair to be tested in a national survey of mercury levels in the U.S. population by the environmental group Greenpeace. Darius' level was slightly high, so Varella nixed the fish. "Mercury," said Varella, of Philadelphia, "is not something he needs."
It's not something anyone needs. It can interfere with fetal brain development. At high enough levels, it can cause other health problems in children and adults. As evidence of its harm mounts, regulators and public-health officials have sought stricter controls, especially on the biggest source: coal-fired power plants. Although the federal Environmental Protection Agency instituted new restrictions on plants in 2005, New Jersey recently trumped them by passing more stringent rules, and Pennsylvania is on the brink of doing likewise. The industry opposes the Pennsylvania proposal, which calls for a 90 percent reduction in emissions by 2015, while the public has supported it in a record number of comments.
Mercury is everywhere. Part of the Earth's crust, it is emitted naturally in volcanic eruptions. But humans are adding far more. About 100 manufacturing processes use and emit some form of mercury -- notably from coal-fired power plants -- which then falls to the ground and is transformed by microbes in streams and lakes to the more toxic methylmercury. Little fish eat it, big fish eat them, and the concentration grows with each gulp. Then people eat the big fish.
About 60 unsuspecting children in South Jersey got an extra portion when they attended the Kiddie Kollege day-care center, later discovered once to have been a thermometer factory. Tests showed the air inside had elevated mercury levels, as did a third of the children, who now require monitoring. "The reality is that mercury is a ubiquitous environmental toxin and a significant public-health threat," said Leonardo Trasande of the Mount Sinai Center for Children's Health and the Environment in New York.
While exposure to mercury vapor can be harmful, the cases are isolated, often the result of a child filching some from a school chemistry lab and playing with the silvery substance. By far, the most common exposure in North America is to methylmercury through the consumption of fish. The substance enters the bloodstream. In a pregnant woman, it crosses the placenta to her fetus and makes a beeline for the brain, where it can prevent neurons from forming connections. Once that occurs, "you can't press rewind," Trasande said. "You've lost your chance." Trasande has concluded that among the roughly four million children born in the United States each year, 300,000 to 600,000 are likely to have reduced IQs -- anywhere from a smidgen to as much as 24 points, making some children mentally retarded -- because of methylmercury toxicity.
Methylmercury in fish has not been considered much of a risk for most adults. But new research suggests that it could increase the risk of cardiovascular disease for men. Some studies have shown that prolonged exposure to high levels of methylmercury can harm the heart, kidneys and immune system. Based on a study of fish-eating populations in some Pacific islands, the EPA has set a methylmercury "reference dose" that is used in policymaking. But "the question is, is there a lower limit of mercury that is safe?" said Kevin Osterhoudt, medical director of the Poison Control Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "That requires more research." About six percent of women of childbearing age have methylmercury levels near the reference dose, putting their unborn children at risk for neurological damage, concluded the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2005.
With Pennsylvania second in the nation in the amount of mercury emission, Kathleen A. McGinty, secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection, has stumped hard for the restrictions on the state's power plants, saying the state was morally compelled to protect its people. The power industry says the federal EPA plan is adequate; it contends Pennsylvania's rule could result in power shortages because some plants would be forced into retirement. A gush of 6,600 responses during a public-comment period, which ends tomorrow, has astounded state officials.
The EPA, in a mercury "road map" released in July, estimated 83 percent of the mercury deposited in the United States originated from other countries, blowing here on the prevailing winds. Earlier this month, more than 1,000 scientists concluded at an international mercury conference in Wisconsin that reductions in U.S. emissions were being offset by increases abroad. "There's a big concern about industrialization in China," said James Hurley of the University of Wisconsin, cochair of the conference. Just in one province, he said, China plans to build more than 10 coal-fired plants by 2010.
Although the concern has been about what happens when the emissions hit waterways and get into fish, a big question is whether breathing mercury emissions is harmful, said Ellen Silbergeld, professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Efforts continue to reduce mercury exposure in other ways. Newer thermometers are made with a mercury substitute. Schools are taking mercury out of chemistry labs and replacing fluorescent light fixtures because the bulbs contain mercury. A mercury preservative, thimerosal, is no longer used in childhood vaccines. Although studies have not proven a link, some people are replacing their metal dental fillings, which contain about 50 percent mercury.
Meanwhile, the reach of mercury is widening. Scientists are finding it in endangered Florida panthers, Arctic reindeer and forest songbirds, and they believe it could lead to population declines of wildlife. A University of California researcher has found escalating levels in San Francisco Bay from an unexpected source -- the gold rush of the late 1800s. Mercury was used to extract the gold, and it's still rinsing downstream. Once toxic metals such as mercury get out, "it's very, very hard to put them back in," Silbergeld said. "They really are the genies that get out of the bottle."
by Sacha Pfeiffer, Boston Globe
August 24, 2006
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/08/24/despite_pact_stores_lax_on_giving_lead_paint_advice/
A pact between the paint industry and state prosecutors aimed at fighting lead poisoning is often ignored at the retail level, according to spot checks by the Globe of a dozen Boston-area paint stores. Spearheaded by Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly , the voluntary agreement signed in 2003 is widely trumpeted by paint makers and state regulators across the country as a major step in reducing the number of children poisoned after inhaling lead dust or ingesting lead paint chips. At the time, Reilly heralded it as giving "real protection to families and consumers from the risks associated with home renovation projects," and his office and his gubernatorial campaign offer it as proof that he aggressively promotes lead cleanup and lead poisoning prevention.
But advocates working to prevent childhood lead poisoning say that the agreement lacks teeth and that it has done little to promote safe lead paint removal. "The paint companies have not complied with this voluntary agreement," said Sandra J. Roseberry, vice president of the Maine-based American Lead Poisoning Help Association. "The agreement was really a public relations attempt to ward off any litigation against them by the states, and it's really smoke and mirrors."
The contract between the National Paint and Coatings Association, a trade group, and 49 state attorneys general says that paint makers will put lead paint warning labels on paint cans, provide free nationwide training in safely removing lead paint, and offer discounts on paint cleanup equipment, such as respirators and vacuum filters. A spokesman for the group can point to numbers showing that all three initiatives are underway. However, checks of local paint retailers found that another key provision of the agreement -- that educational brochures be available at stores -- is often breached, and that training in safe lead paint removal offered to maintenance workers, painting contractors, and homeowners, and others often doesn't reach the retail counter.
Meredith Baumann, a spokeswoman for Reilly, defended the pact, saying that the label warnings on paint cans are "a significant victory on behalf of consumers. Our agreement yielded a new national consumer product warning in an area in which the federal government failed to act, which means that labels detailing the dangers of sanding and scraping old paint are on every can of paint sold," Baumann said. She also said that Reilly's office has conducted its own checks and raised shortcomings with industry officials. "The agreement was groundbreaking, but, as with all agreements of this kind, it is a matter of `trust but verify,' " she said.
Only one store visited -- Sherwin-Williams Co. of Lexington -- raised the issue of lead paint proactively when asked how to remove paint from the interior woodwork of an old home. Asked the same question, employees at The Home Depot in Somerville, Tags Ace Hardware in Cambridge, and Wanamaker Hardware True Value in Arlington recommended scraping or sanding without first asking if lead paint could be present -- the worst possible method, since it could cause toxic dust to be inhaled. Tags did not retract its advice even after being told that the paint in question could be lead-based.
Hardware stores and retail paint shops are not bound by the agreement because it contains a substantial loophole: It applies only to paint manufacturers, which means the roughly 120,000 paint retailers nationwide are not required to take part in the effort. Advocates fault the contract's standards for compliance and enforcement. The agreement says that the national paint trade group "shall promote and encourage" the contract's provisions and submit annual reports, and that state attorneys general "intend to monitor compliance." But it does not address penalties for violations.
Stephen R. Sides, a vice president for the trade group, said the agreement has been upheld "splendidly and with full compliance by the industry." Since signing the pact, manufacturers have put warning labels on about 760 million gallons of paint, distributed more than 5 million educational brochures to retailers, and trained more than 10,000 contractors in safe work practices, he said. Addressing the fact that the agreement does not cover retail outlets, Sides said: "We continue to push to have these parties who are not subject to the agreement take on the chore of putting this information out there."
In Massachusetts, more than 1,300 children have been diagnosed over five years with lead poisoning, often related to paint, which can lead to learning disabilities, brain damage, and death.
Reilly has come under fire from advocates working to prevent childhood lead poisoning who say he rejected their request to file a lawsuit aimed at forcing the paint industry to fund lead paint cleanup nationwide, although Reilly's aides say he has not ruled out such litigation. Earlier this year, Rhode Island won a first-ever jury verdict requiring Sherwin-Williams Co. and two other paint makers to rid more than 300,000 Ocean State homes of lead contamination. Reilly, who is running for governor, says on a campaign website that he "led a successful multistate effort to require paint manufacturers to add warnings on paint cans and educate consumers about the dangers of lead exposure."
Other than the Sherwin-Williams employee, no one inquired whether the paint could contain lead or if the house had been built before 1978, the year lead paint was banned. When asked how to proceed if the paint is lead-based, Drive-In Paint Mart in South Boston and a different employee at Wanamaker specifically advised against scraping or sanding, while City Paint & Supply in North Cambridge, ICI Paints in the South End, and Salem Street True Value Hardware in the North End recommended expert removal. At The Home Depot in Somerville, an employee first suggested the lead paint be sanded and encapsulated -- covered with a coating that provides a barrier between it and the environment -- but then warned that sanding "might be dangerous." At Sherwin-Williams in Lexington, industry-supplied brochures on lead-safe painting and home improvement were prominent on the front counter, next to a sign urging anyone planning to renovate a house built before 1978 to read one. But at half the stores, the brochures were not available.
John Wanamaker, the owner of Wanamaker, and Simon Shapiro, co-owner of Tags, said they and their senior employees know about the dangers of lead paint removal and would never recommend sanding lead paint, but that young and part-time employees sometimes give incorrect information to customers. Neither store offers formal staff training on safe lead paint removal, "but I probably should after hearing these results," Wanamaker said. A manager at The Home Depot referred calls to headquarters in Atlanta, where no one responded to a request for comment.
by Rebecca Renner. Environmental Science & Technology
August 23, 2006
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2006/aug/science/rr_fishadvisories.html
Down in the mud that lies at the bottom of lakes and wetlands, bacteria convert inorganic mercury into methylmercury, a toxic organic form of the metal that accumulates in fish. But scientists have not been able to make a definitive link between the amount of anthropogenic mercury in air and the levels of methylmercury in fish. Now, a study published today on ES&T's Research ASAP website suggests that reducing the amount of mercury that rains down on lakes also decreases methylmercury production.
"This paper is important because it is the first field experiment to show a direct relationship between deposition of inorganic mercury and production of methylmercury," says Chad Hammerschmidt of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. In the study, led by Diane Orihel of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, researchers added isotope-enriched mercury to 11 lake enclosures called mesocosms located at the Experimental Lakes Area in northern Ontario (Canada). The extra mercury increased levels of the heavy metal to 2–15× the typical local deposition rate. The boreal lakes of northern Ontario receive relatively low levels of mercury deposition -- water bodies in the northeastern U.S. receive ~4× more, according to Orihel.
The researchers found that after 8 weeks, <1% of the isotope-enriched mercury was converted to methylmercury, while a much higher percentage was re-emitted to the atmosphere. However, Orihel emphasizes that even a small percentage of methylmercury is harmful. "It may be a tiny amount, but that is all it takes to drive those fish advisories," she says.
James Hurley, an aquatic chemist with the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute, says the study shows that decreasing atmospheric loading should lower methylmercury production and, presumably, bioaccumulation in fish. And Hammerschmidt adds that his own studies bolster this conclusion. In Alaskan lakes, he and colleagues measured loadings of inorganic mercury and the flux of methylmercury out of the sediments. The relationship is linear, he reported earlier this month at the Eighth International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant. Last year, Hammerschmidt found a similar relationship between methylmercury in mosquitoes and average deposition rates of mercury in U.S. lakes. At the mercury conference, Orihel reported the same linear relationship for small fish. Her team found that isotope-labeled mercury accounted for up to a third of the total concentration of mercury in the muscle tissues of young trout living in the lake mesocosms.
High methylmercury concentrations in North American freshwater fish have prompted health authorities in Canada and most U.S. states to warn against eating too much of the fish. Coal- and oil-fired power plants are the largest sources of mercury emissions in the U.S., according to the U.S. EPA. But emissions controls are controversial, in part because of the complexity of the mercury cycle. In March 2005, EPA adopted a cap-and-trade rule, which aims to reduce mercury emissions 21% by 2010 and 69% by 2018. The new study suggests that such limits could achieve their intended outcomes rather quickly.
by Curt Guyette, Detroit Metro Times
August 23, 2006
http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=9574
You might say it's a real head-scratcher: Why would the United States ban the use of a highly toxic pesticide on crops and animals yet allow the same substance to be rubbed into the scalps of children? It's a question that has no good answer, say the folks at Ann Arbor's Ecology Center and others. But, as the Ecology Center found recently when it was hit with a federal lawsuit by the U.S. pharmaceutical company that sells lindane, pointing out the dangers of the substance can be risky business.
Lindane lotion and shampoo, manufactured by the Illinois company Morton Grove Pharmaceuticals, is used to treat head lice, pubic lice and scabies. The chemical is a chlorinated pesticide similar to DDT. Earlier this month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency -- which began phasing out use of the substance in the early 1990s -- banned any use of lindane as a pesticide. Use on animals had previously been prohibited. However, the federal Food and Drug Administration is continuing to allow the product to be used as a medicine for humans. "Lindane has been deemed safe and effective when used according to labeling," says FDA spokeswoman Kymberly Rawlings. "The FDA doesn't have plans to take any further actions" regarding the substance.
Activists at the Ecology Center are among those who say that's a grave mistake. "It makes no sense that lindane can't be used on pets or plants or persons serving in the military, but it can still be used on children," said Mike Garfield, director of the Ecology Center, in a prepared statement. But that claim is no different than what any number of other environmental and health care professionals are saying. As Stephenie Hendricks of the Pesticide Action Network in California says, "If Morton Grove wanted to silence all the people in the world who want to ban lindane for pharmaceutical use, they would be filing thousands of lawsuits."
So why would Morton Grove sic its lawyers on the Ann Arbor environmental group in particular? A call to the attorney representing the company wasn't returned. Also named in the suit are Dr. Jon Fliegel, a pediatrician at Ypsilanti's Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital, and Dr. William B. Weil, a pediatrician and professor emeritus at Michigan State University's Department of Pediatrics and Human Development. Ecology Center employee Lauren Zajac is also named. They're being accused by the company of "disseminating false, misleading, and libelous statements about the safety profile and effectiveness of Lindane. ..."
Heavily footnoted reports produced by the Ecology Center (and reviewed by Drs. Fliegel, Weil and the Michigan Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics) identify lindane as being "acutely toxic to the nervous system" and capable of causing "seizures, numbness, motor restlessness, anxiety, tremors, cramps and unconsciousness." It is also considered a "possible" carcinogen, the center reported. In an attempt to limit the possibility of potentially harmful side effects, the FDA in 2003 significantly reduced the amount of lindane that can be prescribed in a single dose. It is also what's considered a second-line treatment, meaning it's used when the medication first used fails. According to environmentalists, it's been completely banned in more than 50 countries.
Supporters of the Ecology Center suggest the lawsuit is an attempt to intimidate and harass the group because it has come out in vocal support of state House Bill 5574. "My gut feeling is they're trying to take resources away from the Ecology Center's efforts to have lindane banned in Michigan," says Hendricks. Introduced in the state Legislature this year, that bill is an attempt to force the phase out of the remaining pharmaceutical uses of lindane in Michigan. A similar ban was enacted by the California Legislature about four years ago.
For their part, the Ecology Center's leaders say they won't be cowed. "We are going to continue to communicate to the Michigan Legislature the well-documented and peer-reviewed scientific findings which demonstrate the hazards of this chemical, regardless of Morton Grove's attempt to silence us," Garfield said.
Controversy over the pesticide is not new. It is claimed in the lawsuit that petitions to ban its use as a medication "have repeatedly been denied and determined to be without merit." That claim would probably come as a surprise to the California Legislature, which banned the pharmaceutical use of lindane in 2000. The California prohibition came about because of concern over contamination of water supplies in the state. Dr. Mark Miller -- director of the Pediatric Environmental health Specialty Unit at the University of California, San Francisco -- tells Metro Times that even small amounts of the substance could pollute waterways. Miller studied the effects of lindane as part of an environmental task force established as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Miller says that, while the California Legislature considered the issue, it heard testimony that one treatment of lindane medication, when washed down the drain, polluted an estimated 6 million gallons of water.
The Ecology Center's echoing of that information is one of the allegedly false statements the Ecology Center is accused of disseminating. Miller says he stopped prescribing medication containing lindane in the late 1980s, turning instead to treatments that were less risky. According to the FDA, lindane "should be used with extreme caution" in cases involving children and in individuals weighing less than 110 pounds. That's particularly pertinent because children tend to be disproportionately afflicted by head lice, says Miller.
The Ecology Center interpreted the warning to mean that the "FDA recommends not using lindane to treat individuals weighing less than 110 pounds ..." That's another of the alleged false statements. Morton Grove also contends in its lawsuit that the Ecology Center made a false statement when it claimed lindane isn't manufactured in this country. However, elsewhere in the same suit the company states that the active ingredient in its lotion and shampoo, lindane, is in fact imported.
The manufacturing of lindane is an important issue, says Miller, because for every pound of lindane that's produced, several pounds of equally toxic waste sludge are also generated, and there's no way to adequately treat or dispose of that waste. Stephanie Hendricks of the California-based Pesticide Action Network says it's uncertain exactly where lindane is manufactured. India is one possible source, China another. Wherever it's being made, though, it's causing a problem for indigenous people living in the Arctic regions of North America. Because of global air and water patterns, the substance is showing up in that part of the world.
"We see that lindane is extremely toxic," says Pamela Miller, executive director of the Anchorage-based group Alaska Community Action on Toxics. "It should have been phased out along with DDT [in the 1970s]. We're very concerned the FDA would allow its continued use." As San Francisco's Dr. Mark Miller explains, when people apply lindane lotion or shampoo, it is washed off after about 10 minutes, flowing down the drain and into lakes, rivers and oceans. It stays in the environment for a long time, and goes long distances so that people who have no connection to it, people in the Arctic who you think live in a pristine environment, are some of the most exposed people in the world."
So why continue using something so potentially dangerous when there are alternatives Miller says the mainstream medical establishment considers to be more effective, safer and cheaper? From the point of view of Ann Arbor's Ecology Center, there is no reason. But now it's being forced to expend energy and resources to defend claims many others in the environmental and medical communities freely share.