July 3, 1997
INDEX

LET'S STOP WASTING TIME

RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #553

The mainstream environmental movement spends its time urging government to regulate corporations that are making people sick while poisoning the planet's air, water, and soil. Regulation is what mainstream environmentalists aim to do. They gather data, write reports to show how bad things have gotten, and then they ask government regulators to modify the behavior of the responsible corporations. In Washington, D.C., and in all 50 state capitals, hundreds or thousands of environmentalists toil tirelessly year after year after year, proposing new laws, urging new regulations, and opposing the latest efforts by officials (corporate and governmental) to weaken existing laws and regulations. They write letters, meet with agency personnel, publish pamphlets and hold conferences, prepare testimony for subcommittees, serve for years on citizen advisory boards, create "media events," mail out newsletters and magazines, organize phone trees to create awareness and raise funds. They pore over immense volumes of technical information, becoming experts in arcane sub-specialties of science and law. They work hard, much harder than most other people. When they find that their efforts have been ineffective, they redouble their efforts, evidently hoping that more of the same will work better next time. Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Audubon, National Wildlife Federation, The Wilderness Society, The Environmental Working Group, and many others that make up the mainstream environmental community are well-intentioned, earnest, and diligent. They are also, it must be admitted, largely ineffective.

An eye-opening new book describes the nearly-complete failure of all our attempts to regulate the behavior of the chemical corporations. TOXIC DECEPTION, by Dan Fagin and Marianne Lavelle,[1] is subtitled "How the Chemical Industry Manipulates Science, Bends the Law, and Endangers Your Health." In his day job, Dan Fagin writes for NEWSDAY (the Long Island newspaper) and Marianne Lavelle writes for the NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL. Both are award-winning investigative reporters, and this book shows why: it is thorough and thoroughly-documented, even-handed, careful in its conclusions, and absolutely astonishing in how grim a picture it paints of our corporatized democracy. Even those of us who study chemicals-and-health full-time have never put all the pieces together the way these two have.

The book is organized as a case study of only four dangerous chemicals: atrazine, alachlor, perchloroethylene and formaldehyde.

** Atrazine is a weed killer used on 96% of the U.S. corn crop each year. Introduced in 1958, some 68 to 73 million pounds were used in 1995, making it the best-selling pesticide in the nation. Atrazine interferes with the hormone systems of mammals. In female rats, it causes tumors of the mammary glands, uterus, and ovaries. Two studies have suggested that it causes ovarian cancer in humans. EPA categorizes it as a "possible human carcinogen." Atrazine is found in much of the drinking water in the midwest, and it is measurable in corn, milk, beef and other foods.

** In 1989, Monsanto introduced Alachlor, a weed killer that complements atrazine. Atrazine is best against weeds and alachlor is best against grasses. Often both are applied at the same time. Alachlor causes lung tumors in mice; brain tumors in rats; stomach tumors in rats; and tumors of the thyroid gland in rats. It also causes liver degeneration, kidney disease, eye lesions, and cataracts in rats fed high doses. Canada banned alachlor in 1985. EPA's Science Advisory Board labeled alachlor a "probably human carcinogen" in 1986. In 1987, EPA restricted the use of alachlor by requiring that farmers who apply it must first take a short course of instruction. Much of the well water in the midwest now contains alachlor and its use continues unabated.

** Perchloroethylene ("perc") is the common chlorinated solvent used in "dry cleaning" (which is only "dry" in the sense that it doesn't use water). In the early 1970s, scientists learned that perc causes liver cancer in mice. Workers in dry cleaning shops get cancer of the esophagus seven times as often as the average American, and they get bladder cancer twice as often. A few communities on Cape Cod in Massachusetts have perc in their drinking water; a study in 1994 revealed that those communities also have leukemia rates five to eight times the national average. Perc is ranked as a "probable human carcinogen" and we all take it into our homes whenever we pick up the dry cleaning.

** Formaldehyde is a naturally-occurring substance present in the human body in very small quantities. Mixed with urea, formaldehyde makes a glue that handily holds plywood and particle board together. Mixed with a soap, urea-formaldehyde makes a stiff foam that has excellent insulating properties. After the oil shortage of 1973, Americans began to conserve fuel oil by tightening and insulating their homes, and it was then that people discovered that formaldehyde can be toxic. In tens of thousands of individuals, urea-formaldehyde has caused flu-like symptoms, rashes, and neurological illnesses. In some people, it triggers multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), a life-long, debilitating sensitivity to many other chemicals, including fragrances and perfumes. In recent years, scientists have confirmed that formaldehyde causes rare nasal tumors in mice and in industrial workers exposed to high levels of formaldehyde gas. It is also linked to brain tumors in people exposed to it on the job (embalmers and anatomists). It is ranked as a "probable human carcinogen" in humans, and we are all widely exposed to it through cabinets, furniture, walls and flooring.

TOXIC DECEPTION documents how the manufacturers of these chemicals --and thousands of others like them --have managed to keep their dangerous, cancer-causing products on the market despite hugely expensive government regulatory efforts, civil litigation by citizens who feel victimized, investigative news reports, congressional oversight of the regulators, right-to-know laws, and hundreds of scientific studies confirming harm to humans and the environment. The book documents how corporations buy the complicity of politicians; offer jobs, junkets and sometimes threats to regulators; pursue scorched-earth courtroom strategies; shape, manipulate, and sometimes falsify science; and spend millions of dollars on misleading advertising and public relations to deflect public concerns. In sum, the book shows how corporations have turned the regulatory system --and those who devote their lives to working within that system --into their best allies.

After reading this book, one realizes that the purpose of the regulatory system is not to protect human health and the environment. The purpose of the regulatory system is to protect the property rights of the corporations, using every branch of government to thwart any serious attempts by citizens to assert that human rights should take precedence. "At the most fundamental level," write Fagin and Lavelle, "the federal regulatory system is driven by the economic imperatives of the chemical manufacturers--to expand markets and profits--and not by its mandate to protect public health."(pg. 13) Why are so many of us still defining our environmental work entirely within the confines of this hopeless system?

After 27 years of unremitting, well-meaning attempts to regulate corporate polluters, here is our situation:

** The government does not screen chemicals for safety before they go on the market.

** Chemicals are presumed innocent until members of the public can prove them guilty of causing harm. Naturally this guarantees that people will be hurt before control can even be considered. After harm has been widely documented, then government begins to gather data on a chemical, but "the agency usually relies on research conducted by or for manufacturers when it is time to make a decision about regulating a toxic chemical."(pg. 14)

** Industry manipulates scientific studies to reach the desired conclusions. According to Fagin and Lavelle, when chemical corporations paid for 43 scientific studies of any of the four chemicals (atrazine, alachlor, perc or formaldehyde), 32 studies (74%) returned results favorable to the chemicals involved, 5 were ambivalent, and 6 (14%) were unfavorable.(pg. 51) When independent nonindustry organizations --government agencies, universities or medical/charitable organizations (such as the March of Dimes) --paid for 118 studies of the same four chemicals, only 27 of the studies (23%) gave results favorable to the chemicals involved, 20 were ambivalent, and 71 (60%) were unfavorable.(pg. 51)

** As of 1994, after 24 years of trying, EPA had issued regulations for only 9 chemicals.(pg. 12) EPA has officially registered only 150 pesticides, though there are thousands of others in daily use awaiting review by the agency.(pg. 11) The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has done only slightly better, setting limits on 24 chemicals after 18 years of effort.(pg. 81)

** Close to 2000 new chemicals are introduced into commercial channels each year in the U.S., virtually none of then screened for safety by government prior to introduction. When screening does occur, it occurs AFTER trouble has become apparent. All together, about 70,000 different chemicals are now in commercial use, with nearly 6 trillion pounds produced annually in the U.S. for plastics, solvents, glues, dyes, fuels, and other uses. All six trillion pounds eventually enter the environment.

More than 80% of these chemicals have never been screened to learn whether they cause cancer, much less screened to discover if they harm the nervous system, the immune system, the endocrine system, or the reproductive system. In sum, in the vast majority of cases, nothing is known about the health or environmental consequences of dumping these chemicals into the environment. It's a huge corporate experiment on the public.

The corporations use a single line of defense: we don't know FOR SURE how dangerous these chemicals really are. But this simple strategy works perfectly because Congress has placed the burden of proof on the public, not on the corporations. We have to prove that we have been harmed. Because we are all exposed to hundreds if not thousands of chemicals each day, pinpointing the source of a rash, a headache, or a brain tumor is next to impossible. Meanwhile the exposures continue. The dice in this game are loaded. Why do we continue to play?

Instead, why doesn't the environmental movement come together to discuss a new strategy --one that asserts the right of a sovereign people to control subordinate entities like corporations? We could lawfully shift the burden of proof onto the purveyors of poisons. We could legitimately deny them the protections of the Bill of Rights. (Rule of thumb: if it doesn't breathe, it isn't protected as a person under the Constitution). We could legally define what corporations can and cannot do, JUST AS OUR GREAT GRANDPARENTS DID IN THE EARLY DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. (See REHW #488 and #489.) Such a program would no doubt have enormous popular appeal because so many people have been treated with injustice and disrespect by one corporation or another in recent years. Why keep wasting our time? Let's get together and focus our energy on DEFINING (not regulating) corporations. It's the only way we'll ever achieve environmental protection. And it would give people some control over their lives once again.

Peter Montague
(National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO)

[1] Dan Fagin, Marianne Lavelle, and the Center for Public Integrity, TOXIC DECEPTION (Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Publishing Group, 1996).

June 16, 1997
INDEX

NAFTA TO ELIMINATE TWO PESTICIDES

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (ENS)

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Environment Commission's fourth annual session wrapped up Friday with an action plan for the reduction and eventual elimination of two pesticides, chlordane and DDT. A number of other joint actions were taken to meet the goals set under the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), the environmental side accord to NAFTA.

The NAFTA Council of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) is made up of Mexican Secretary of Environment Natural Resources and Fisheries Julia Carabias, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner, represented by Deputy Administrator Fred Hansen, and Canadian Environment Minister Christine Stewart, represented by Environment Ambassador John Fraser.

The meeting featured an open dialogue with members of the public from Canada, Mexico and the United States. The environment leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the CEC as a "dynamic and open forum for helping the NAFTA partners meet global goals to ensure a cleaner, healthier environment for future generations."

The Council has completed regional action plans for the reduction and eventual elimination of two dangerous pesticides, chlordane and DDT, from the North American environment. A regional action plan for the reduction of PCBs was completed in April, and is already being implemented. Implementing these actions plans will also contribute to the reduction of long-range transport of air pollutants to the Arctic, the Council said.

A draft regional action plan on human-caused releases of mercury will be made public for comment and review by July 15. A final plan will be ready in September. Criteria to select additional toxic substances for priority action will be presented to Council this fall.

---

June 21, 1997
INDEX

Mercurial storms rage in the Arctic

New Scientist, IPC Magazines Limited 1997

By Fred Pearce

A toxic rain of mercury falls on the Arctic every spring, a study by researchers in Canada suggests. They say chemical reactions similar to those that destroy ozone are turning mercury vapour in the atmosphere into particles that fall to Earth.

Mercury, alone among major heavy-metal pollutants, has a boiling point low enough for it to be blown around the world as a gas. Mercury vapour is widespread in the atmosphere especially at the poles, and concentrations are believed to have more than tripled in the past two centuries. Most of it comes from coal burning, waste incineration and other types of combustion. Bill Schroeder of the government research agency Environment Canada has been measuring concentrations of gaseous mercury in the air at Alert, the atmospheric monitoring station on Ellesmere Island, Canada's most northerly island. He started in the summer of 1994, taking measurements every five minutes. Levels remained boringly constant for nine months, until late March the following year when "all hell broke loose", says Leonard Barrie, Schroeder's colleague. The amount of gaseous mercury in the air over Alert plummeted, then rose and plummeted again many times. "Bill thought his instruments might be broken, so he replaced them and waited a whole year to check the results the next spring. It was the same again." This time Schroeder also measured particulate mercury--and discovered that mercury was being transformed from a gas to a solid.

The reaction seems to take place in the "boundary layer", stretching from the Earth's surface to a kilometre or so up, Schroeder told a conference on Arctic pollution held in Troms¿, Norway, earlier this month. Barrie and Schroeder have yet to demonstrate why the phase change is so rapid. But the pattern almost exactly mimics the timing of ozone depletion and they predict that similar processes drive both. Springtime ozone destruction occurs mostly in the stratosphere, but it is known to take place in the boundary layer too, driven by the same photochemical reactions involving chlorine and bromine atoms. These atoms come from man-made chemicals and from sea salt trapped in the icepack and released when the sun returns after the polar winter.

"Our guess is that the mercury reacts with the chlorine and bromine to produce mercuric chloride and bromide," says Barrie. "These compounds are less volatile than elemental mercury, and so would condense out and form particles." Barrie warns that the intense springtime fallout of mercury occurs just when ecosystems are preparing for a spring flush of activity, and are likely to absorb the toxic metal. Mercury levels in Arctic ecosystems are high and continuing to rise.

To plot the mercury fallout across Canada, government scientists are this summer coordinating a nationwide collection of snow by students. They particularly want to see whether there is more mercury further north, following the pattern of ozone depletion.

From New Scientist, 21 June 1997
© Copyright New Scientist, IPC Magazines Limited 1997

---

June 27, 1997
INDEX

TOXICS AND VIOLENT CRIME

Pollution causes people to commit violent crimes --homicide, aggravated assault, sexual assault and robbery --according to new research by Roger D. Masters and co-workers at Dartmouth College.[1] Sociologists have known for a long time that violent crimes occur more in some places than in others. Some U.S. counties have only 100 violent crimes per 100,000 people per year; other counties have rates of violent crime that are 30 times as high. The question is why some places have high crime rates and others don't. Masters says pollution is part of the answer.

Masters has developed what he calls the neurotoxicity hypothesis of violent crime. According to this hypothesis, toxic pollutants --specifically the toxic metals lead and manganese --cause learning disabilities, an increase in aggressive behavior, and --most importantly --loss of control over impulsive behavior. These traits combine with poverty, social stress, alcohol and drug abuse, individual character, and other social factors to produce individuals who commit violent crimes.

Masters argues that, to be taken seriously, such a hypothesis must pass five tests. He then demonstrates how the neurotoxicity hypothesis meets all five, as follows:

1) It must be shown that individuals who engage in criminal behavior are more likely to have absorbed toxic chemicals than a comparable control population. Masters cites studies showing that low-level poisoning by lead, and by manganese, is associated with learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder, which are themselves associated with deviant behavior. (We reviewed some of this evidence for lead in REHW #529). Masters cites seven other studies showing that violent prisoners have significantly elevated levels of lead, manganese, cadmium, mercury or other toxic metals, compared to prisoners who are not violent.

2) If it is valid, the neurotoxicity hypothesis must be able to predict future violent behavior of young people exposed to toxins. Masters cites two prospective studies (and suggests we need more) showing that lead uptake at age 7 is associated with juvenile delinquency and/or increased aggression in teenage and early adult years. (See also REHW #529.) The largest study, of 1000 black children in Philadelphia, showed that both lead levels, and anemia, were predictors of the number of juvenile offenses, the seriousness of juvenile offenses, and the number of adult offenses, for males.

3) Is there a biological basis for believing that lead, manganese and other toxic metals could cause a person to lose control over impulsive and aggressive behavior? Here Masters cites a wealth of studies showing how lead and manganese cause changes in the development of the brain, and in the functioning of neurotransmitters in the brain.

Different pollutants harm the brain differently. Lead in the brain damages glia, a kind of cell associated with inhibition and detoxification. Manganese has the effect of lowering levels of serotonin and dopamine, which are neurotransmitters associated with impulse control and planning. Masters notes that low levels of serotonin in the brain are known to cause mood disturbances, poor impulse control, and increases in aggressive behavior --effects that are increasingly treated with Prozac.

Masters emphasizes that children who are raised from birth on infant formula and who are not breast fed will absorb five times as much manganese as breast-fed infants. Calcium deficiency increases the absorption of manganese. A combination of manganese toxicity and calcium deficiency adds up to "reverse Prozac," Masters says.

Masters says toxic metals affect individuals in complex ways. For example, because lead diminishes a person's normal ability to detoxify poisons, lead may heighten the effects of alcohol and drugs. P> 4) For the neurotoxicity hypothesis to hold up, individuals must receive doses of toxic metals sufficient to be associated with violent behavior. Masters argues that, despite recent significant decreases in lead in the environment (because leaded gasoline and lead paint have been banned in the U.S.), in neighborhoods where automobile traffic has historically been high, and in towns where industries have released large quantities of toxic metals for years, many local soils still contain toxic quantities of lead, cadmium, and manganese sufficient to poison children who play in the dirt. He also argues that aging water delivery systems very likely contribute lead and manganese because lead pipes and even iron pipes contain these toxins.

Masters argues that (a) children absorb up to 50% of the lead they ingest (compared to 8% for adults); (b) even low exposures in the womb and in early childhood can have permanent effects on intelligence and behavior; (c) current lead levels are known to have direct effects on neurotransmitters that are known to affect cognition and to influence impulse control; and (d) the highest levels of lead uptake are reported in precisely the demographic groups most likely to commit violent crimes (inner city minority youths).

Masters emphasizes the importance of studies showing a synergistic effect (multiplier effect) between toxic metals and poor diet. For example, it has been thoroughly documented that uptake of lead is greatly increased among individuals who have a diet low in calcium, zinc, and essential vitamins. Similarly, as noted above, calcium deficiency greatly increases one's absorption of manganese. Thus, Masters argues, amounts of lead and manganese that wouldn't harm a well-nourished individual may poison undernourished children.

Masters cites federal studies of nutrition to make the point that black teenage males consume, on average, only about 65% as much calcium as whites. The calcium needs of pregnant or breast-feeding women are higher than average, which creates a particular problem for minority women. And non-Hispanic black women get only 467 milligrams of calcium per day (mg/d), compared to 642 mg/d for white women, government studies show.

Because of increased manganese absorption by babies who drink infant formula and who are not breast fed, Masters considers infant formula toxic. He emphasizes that poor mothers tend not to breast-feed their babies. By 1986-87, 73 percent of infants born to mothers with more than 12 years of education were breastfed compared with 49 percent of infants born to mothers with 12 years of education, and 31 percent of mothers with less than 12 years of education. Furthermore, white infants are more than three times as likely to be breast fed as black infants. "The effects of manganese toxicity associated with infant formula are thus greatest for the poor, for ethnic minorities, and for those with little education," Masters says.

Masters cites studies showing that alcohol increases the uptake of toxic metals, at least in laboratory animals, and probably has a similar effect on humans.

5) If the neurotoxicity hypothesis is valid, then measures of environmental pollution should correlate with higher rates of violent crime.

To test his hypothesis, Masters acquired data from the FBI for violent crimes in all counties of the U.S. He correlated this with data on industrial releases of lead and manganese into the environment of each county, using data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's TRI [toxic release inventory] database. He also examined other variables for each county --population size, population density, housing built before 1950, number of police officers per person, number of school dropouts and high school dropouts, educational achievement, unemployment rate, race and ethnicity [white, black, hispanic], persons below the poverty level, number of people on welfare, infant deaths per 1000 live births, all alcohol-related causes of death, and all causes of death with explicit mention of alcohol.

The EPA's recorded releases of toxic metals are not predicted by these demographic or socio-economic variables. In fact, less that 5% of the variance of reported releases of lead is accounted for by 19 socio-economic factors (many of them listed in the previous paragraph).

Masters split all U.S. counties into six groups --those with and without industrial lead releases; those with and without industrial manganese releases; and those with higher-than-average or lower-than-average rates of alcohol-related deaths. After controlling for all the conventional measures of social deterioration (poverty, school dropouts, etc.), Masters found that counties having all three measures of neurotoxicity --lead, manganese, and high alcohol --have rates of violent crime three times the national average.

In other words, environmental pollution and alcohol have a strong effect on violent crimes, completely independent of any of the "traditional" predictors of violent crime (poverty, poor education, etc.)

As Masters says, neurotoxicity is only one of many factors contributing to violence, but he believes it may be especially important in explaining why violent crime rates differ so widely between geographic areas and by ethnic group. Masters says that traditional sociological approaches to crime cannot explain why the availability of handguns or drugs triggers violent behavior in only a small proportion of the population, a proportion that varies greatly from place to place. Part of the explanation may be the way the physical environment affects brain chemistry and behavior, Masters says.

"The presence of pollution is as big a factor as poverty," Masters said recently in an interview in NEW SCIENTIST magazine.[2] "It's the breakdown of the inhibition mechanism that's the key to violent behavior," he says. When our brain chemistry is altered by exposure to toxins, we lose the natural restraint that holds our violent tendencies in check, Masters believes.

Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop has said, "Regarding violence in our society as purely a sociologic matter, or one of law enforcement, has led to an unmitigated failure. It is time to test further whether violence can be amenable to medical/public health interventions."[3]

For decades, researchers have focused on the human health consequences of toxic metals --mainly asking, do they cause cancer? This new research seems to be telling us that we should also be looking at the way these pollutants are affecting human BEHAVIOR.

--Peter Montague
(National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO)

[1] Roger D. Masters, Brian Hone, and Anil Doshi, "Environmental Pollution, Neurotoxicity, and Criminal Violence," in J. Rose, editor, ENVIRONMENTAL TOXICOLOGY (In press. [London and New York: Gordon and Breach Publishers, 1997]).

The particular crimes are defined as follows:

Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter: the willful (nonnegligent) killing of one human being by another.

Forcible rape: carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will. Assaults or attempts to commit rape by force are also included; however, statutory rape (without force) and other sex offenses are excluded.

Robbery: taking or attempting to take anything of value from the care, custody, or control of a person or persons by force or by threat of force or violence and/or by putting the victim in fear.

Aggravated assault: unlawful attack by one person upon another for the purpose of inflicting severe or aggravated bodily injury.

[2] Alison Motluck, "Pollution may lead to a life of crime," NEW SCIENTIST Vol 154, No. 2084 (May 31, 1997), pg. 4.

[3] C.E. Koop and G.D. Lundberg, "Violence in America: A Public Health Emergency," JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION," Vol. 267, No. 22 (1992), pgs. 3075-3076.

---

April 24, 1997
INDEX

Solvents can cause brain damage, experts warn.

Solvents, from paint thinners to industrial fuels, can cause brain damage and must be treated carefully, two U.S. experts warned Friday. Signs of nerve damage were subtle and treatment possibilities limited, Roberta White and Dr. Susan Proctor of Boston University School of Medicine said in the Lancet medical journal. Such chemicals include carbon tetrachloride, methanol, benzene, ethyl acetate and ethylene glycol. They could be inhaled or could get into the body through the skin, they wrote -- and they are everywhere.

California's coast is a hotbed for a growing national problem--toxic sediment. Silty residue can endanger marine life, pose a human health risk and clog harbors.

---

LONDON (Reuter) - Solvents, from paint thinners to nail polish remover and industrial fuels, can cause brain damage and must be treated carefully, two U.S. experts warned Friday.

Signs of nerve damage were subtle and treatment possibilities limited, Roberta White and Dr Susan Proctor of Boston University School of Medicine said in a clinical review in the Lancet medical journal.

Such chemicals include carbon tetrachloride, methanol, benzene, ethyl acetate and ethylene glycol. They could be inhaled or could get into the body through the skin, they wrote -- and they are everywhere.

``An estimated 49 million metric tons of solvents are produced per year in the USA alone and more than 9.8 million people experience daily solvent exposure,'' they wrote.

Effects on the brain could be subtle and difficult to detect, ranging from difficulty remembering to personality changes, listlessness, irritability or depression.

Nerve damage in the limbs could show up as intermittent tingling, numbness and muscle weakness.

``Treatment options in patients with toxicant-induced neurological disorders are limited,'' they wrote.

``The first step is usually to remove the patient from the exposure until symptoms remit and to judge carefully whether it is advisable for the affected individual to work with solvents in the future.''

Patients whose moods had been affected could sometimes be helped with therapy and psychiatric medication, they added.
REUTER@

---

March 31, 1997
INDEX

Solutions to This Puzzle Are Clear as Mud

Source: By MARLA CONE, Times Environmental Writer

California's coast is a hotbed for a growing national problem--toxic sediment. Silty residue can endanger marine life, pose a human health risk and clog harbors.

Off Southern California's shore, purity is an illusion that lies only a few feet deep.

The trouble's not with the water; it's with what lies beneath it.

From Santa Catalina Island to New York Harbor, the mud and silt that line the bottom of rivers, bays and lakes contain chemicals deemed potent enough to kill aquatic animals and endanger the health of people who consume marine life. Dangerous compounds such as mercury, arsenic, lead, PCBs and DDT--the residue of years of pollution--are hidden below the surface.

Among the local hot spots are coveted coastal playgrounds including Catalina, Malibu, Santa Monica, the Palos Verdes Peninsula, Newport Beach, Dana Point and Coronado--most of Southern California's offshore waters.

The underwater legacy of sediment contamination is one of the country's most extensive and intractable--yet overlooked--pollution problems.

"For the last 20 years, we've focused on the water, and there are appreciable changes for the better," said Jim Keating, who is heading up an unprecedented study of the problem for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "But there has not been a lot of focus on the sediment. And sediments are the ultimate sink for water pollutants."

Nearly 5,200 bodies of water--three out of every four targeted for testing--contain sediment likely to injure marine life or human health, according to the EPA's National Sediment Quality Survey. People who eat fish, mussels or other aquatic life from 2,300 sites face a significantly heightened chance of cancer or birth defects, the EPA data show.

Individual problem areas have long been recognized, such as Puget Sound, Cape Cod and Chesapeake Bay. But the sheer number discovered to pose a high risk has astonished the EPA research team.

There is so much "hot sediment" in so many places that there is little hope of a quick or easy cure.

In the meantime, the buildup of silt is also wreaking economic havoc. Where sediment is contaminated, routine dredging often is halted, creating "mud lock" that blocks ships at many of the nation's busiest ports and marinas, including New York, Oakland and Marina del Rey.

Soft, muddy sediments are like sponges that slowly soak up the world's most dangerous and persistent chemicals, including some now banned because of their toxicity.

Poisons are spread throughout the food web from fish to bird to mammal, starting with the variety of creatures that feed and spawn in the silt and sand.

Particles embedded in the mud are ingested by small burrowing animals such as worms and crabs. Crustaceans and other organisms can die from poisoning, and fish can grow cancerous tumors and cataracts. Once-thriving shellfish harvests have been shut down on both coasts, including much of the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay. If a creature survives, its body can build up a toxic load over its lifetime that passes to whatever consumes it.

While never touching the sediment itself, fish-eating birds such as eagles and pelicans can perish from poisoning, or produce unhatchable eggs or chicks with deadly birth defects. Seals, dolphins and other water-reliant animals may grow tumors or lose their ability to fight off disease.

People are not immune. In the water itself, the pollution is often barely detectable, so swimming above the sediment is safe. But eating the tainted fish can cause cancer or birth defects.

Some places are so severely damaged by sediment that they are virtually void of life.

"There's no question that some systems are highly stressed by toxics," said Raymond Alden, director of the Applied Marine Research Laboratory at Old Dominion University in Virginia, who has studied sediment along the Eastern Seaboard for almost 20 years. "We see certain species disappearing, and eventually everything starts disappearing. Diversity goes down, and that's a good measure of how healthy a community is."

Still, scientists in the relatively new field of sediment toxicology question how serious the ecological risk is in the thousands of places where the injury to animals is less obvious. If a type of worm, or brittle star, is killed in one spot, what, if anything, does that mean to a marine ecosystem as a whole? No one at this point has an answer.

For decades, sediment has been a case of out of sight, out of mind.

Some of the contamination dates to the chemical boom just after World War II. Until the late 1960s, disposal offshore was deemed safe because the chemical doses were too low to be considered poisonous. It came as a harsh surprise when many of the compounds, insoluble in water, worsened over the years by accumulating in animals' bodies.

The worst compounds--especially PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, employed mostly as insulation in electrical transformers--have not been used since the 1970s, but they simply refuse to go away. They can remain toxic for decades, perhaps centuries, before degrading to harmless levels.

Today, much of the waste dumping has stopped under laws protecting water quality. However, toxic chemicals still flow from modern sewage plants, urban streets, farm fields and industrial sites. Some, such as mercury spewed by coal-burning power plants, fall from the air.

Some sites are getting worse, some better, but the vast majority have stayed the same despite an array of pollution laws, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently concluded.

n a report to be unveiled Thursday, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences will identify sediment contamination as an immense problem that warrants more attention. The panel of experts will recommend policies aimed at finding effective yet reasonable solutions.

Getting rid of tainted sediments--or at least ensuring that they are entombed--poses a monumental engineering challenge.

Does digging them up make matters worse by stirring them up? And once removed, what do you do with tons of contaminated material? Where, especially in congested urban areas, is there room on land to dump hundreds of truckloads? And when left in offshore waters, do tomb-like pits covered with sand really keep the material sealed permanently?

Most sediments are not bad enough to be declared hazardous waste. Instead, they are half-jokingly called "chemically challenged"--although perilous in waters as they build up in animals, they are fairly safe on land.

At New York Harbor, sediment has touched off a crisis.

Every year, millions of cubic yards of chemical-tainted mud accumulate on the harbor floor. Until recently, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredged and dumped it off New Jersey. But in 1995, the EPA deemed it too contaminated for ocean dumping, and an impasse among local authorities has left mud clogging much of the harbor.

Meanwhile, barges and tankers are switching to other ports or transferring cargo to smaller vessels, threatening the harbor's billions of dollars in annual revenue and raising the cost of fuel and other goods.

At the Port of Oakland, ships used to line up, awaiting high tide to avoid running aground on silt. After a heated debate over drawing the line between clean and dirty sediment, the EPA recently approved a novel solution--the California Coastal Conservancy used large amounts of the least tainted material to construct new wetlands at San Francisco Bay.

Still, more than 1 million cubic yards contain so much ship-building waste and coal tar that the port had to spend $15 million to create a special landfill and haul the sediment there over the past three years, said Jim McGrath, the port's environmental manager.

In the Los Angeles area, recreational boaters at Marina del Rey have navigated around sediment hazards for 15 years. Choked with polluted silt washing down Ballona Creek, the channels are periodically shut down. Fed up with the recurring hunt for disposal sites, county supervisors and the Corps of Engineers last month launched a $2.7-million search for new solutions.

Trouble is also brewing at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The California Coastal Commission warned in January that it will no longer allow disposal of contaminated sediment in marine waters because of heavy metals and other toxic compounds.

That leaves port officials and the Corps of Engineers with few options. They had been excavating silt from the harbor and moving it to waters near shore, creating special pits covered with sand. But the coastal commissioners question whether this is a safe and justifiable use of California's ocean resources. A task force has just been formed to head off a disposal crisis.

Compounding the fears, the EPA is drafting more rigorous national guidelines. Now, a small amount of silt is tested in a laboratory aquarium before disposal to see whether it kills small aquatic creatures. But if new testing criteria are applied rigidly--so that sediment either "passes" or "fails"--the Corps worries that it would stymie more navigation projects.

"What I foresee is a potential for whole mud lock," said James Raives, a program analyst at the Coastal Commission. "These problems will happen more and more, and we will eventually get to a point where there will be no dredging of any contaminated sediments at all."

To end the paralysis, John Farrington, a geochemist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said the parties involved should be willing to try some controversial disposal techniques on a small scale.

"People say it is experimenting with the environment, but by leaving the stuff in place, we are experimenting too," Farrington said. "In some instances, it's not going to make it any worse and it could make it better. But some groups want an answer that's going to survive for eternity and, of course, science can't give that answer right now."

Although most biologists and chemists agree that toxic sediment threatens underwater life, some question whether the EPA used too stringent criteria in highlighting 5,200 sites.

Robert Risebrough, who discovered in the 1960s that DDT-tainted sediment off California was inflicting severe ecological damage, says most of today's lingering problems are nowhere near as serious as they were 30 years ago. At most sites today, he says, there is no proof of serious injury to birds and mammals, so expensive cleanups are unwarranted.

"I don't believe there is any hazard to most of these sediments in the real world," said Risebrough, a researcher at the nonprofit Bodega Bay Institute in Berkeley. In the laboratory, "you put a tiny amphipod in the mud, and if it doesn't like it, then the sediments are considered toxic. You can't predict anything from those laboratory tests."

In the 1960s and '70s, injuries from sediment were obvious.

Brown pelicans nearly became extinct along the West Coast because they ate anchovies and other fish contaminated by DDT that flowed into waters off Palos Verdes from a pesticide plant near Torrance. Even today, those wounds have not healed. Bald eagles on Catalina Island still cannot produce young because their eggs contain too much of the old DDT. Dolphins and seals off Los Angeles County also remain highly contaminated, although no one knows whether it has led to disease or deaths.

But the Palos Verdes site is an extreme case. At most locations with tainted sediment, the damage is more subtle--perhaps reflected in fewer chicks, or a disappearance of tiny sea organisms.

EPA officials acknowledge that many questions remain, and testing of many waterways remains sparse or outdated. Such uncertainty is one reason why they have not ordered cleanups, or told anglers to avoid eating fish at most of the thousands of sites identified as a risk to humans. Only a few are posted with health warnings--including the Palos Verdes area and parts of the Great Lakes. The EPA's Keating said the goal of the new analysis is to highlight troublesome areas that warrant more thorough looks by local authorities.

Alden said the uncertainty comes in "quantifying how bad is bad" when it comes to the threat chemicals pose to underwater life and the people who feed on it.

"It's a political issue as much as a scientific one," Alden said. "Do you try to get a more realistic answer about certain chemicals or do you err on the side of protecting the environment and human beings?"

From the Bottom Up

From the sand-dwelling red tube worm to human beings, polluted sediment can poison every strand of the food web. Fish that feed on bottom-dwelling organisms become contaminated over time through a process called bioaccumulation. This buildup of chemicals can cause death or mutation in contaminated organisms, or be passed along to fish, mammals and humans that eat them.

Toxic 10

From more than 21,000 sampling stations nationwide, 15,922 were found to have levels of chemical pollutants in sediments that pose a high or intermediate danger to human and/or animal life. A look at the top 10 chemicals found in the silt:

Substance: Locations
Copper: 7,172
Nickel: 6,284
Lead: 5,681
PCBs: 5,454
Arsenic: 5,392
Cadmium: 4,808
Mercury: 4,333
Zinc: 3,468
DDT: 3,422
Chromium: 3,070

California's 10 Worst Sites
1. San Francisco Bay
2. Coyote Creek
3. Tulare-Buena Vista lakes
4. Los Angeles River Basin
5. Santa Monica Bay
6. Seal Beach-Huntington Beach
7. San Pedro Channel Islands
8. Newport Bay
9. Aliso Creek-San Onofre area
10. San Diego Bay

Poisonous Side Effects

Benthic (bottom-dwelling) organisms can be exposed to sediment contamination through direct contact, ingestion of particles or intake of dissolved contaminants in the water.

* Eating fish is the most significant route of aquatic exposure of humans to many heavy metals and organic compounds implicated in health problems from birth defects to cancer.

* Fin rot and tumors have been found in fish living above sediments contaminated by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), common compounds in urban runoff.

* Skin lesions are more likely to occur in fish from sites with higher concentrations of chemical contaminants in sediments.

* Some aquatic species can be wiped out by contamination, decreasing the diversity of life in a waterway.

* Above the water, contamination can cause reproductive failure or birth defects in birds such as eagles, bringing them close to extinction. The chemicals may also contribute to death or disease of marine mammals such as seals.

* Various toxic contaminants found only in barely detectable amounts in water can accumulate at much higher levels in sediments.

Above the water

Surface dwellers--brown pelicans and other birds, sea mammals and humans--face health risks from eating aquatic life contaminated by toxic chemicals.
 Below the water

Poisons spread throughout the food web, starting with creatures that feed and spawn in the silt and sand.

Red tube worm: Uses gills to collect plankton.

Clam: Uses siphons like vacuum cleaner to suck minute particles, plankton and algae off ocean floor.

Bay ghost shrimp: Burrows in loose sandy mud; eats plankton, small fish.

Daisy brittle star: Scavenges food particles, algae, plankton under tide pool rocks.

White croaker: Swims in schools over sandy bottoms in shallow water eating smaller fishes and crustaceans.

California halibut: Eats smaller fishes and crustaceans.

Contamination: Soft, muddy sediments slowly soak up dangerous. chemicals, including some now banned because of their toxicity.

Sources: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, California Dept. of Fish and Game, Orange County Marine Institute, National Toxicology Program, "Pacific Coast," "Fishes of the Pacific Coast" and World Book Encyclopedia.
Researched by MARLA CONE and APRIL JACKSON / Los Angeles Times
Copyright Los Angeles Times

---

March 6, 1997
INDEX

Philips Lighting Company Files Suit Against False Osram Sylvania Ad Claims; Manufacturer Cites Disparaging Lowest-Mercury Claims

Source: PR Newswire

Philips Lighting Company announced today that Osram Sylvania Inc. has agreed to cease making claims that its yet- to-be-released low-mercury fluorescent lamps have the lowest mercury dose of any four-foot fluorescent lamp.

Osram entered into an agreement to settle the suit brought by Philips to enjoin Osram from making false advertising claims comparing the mercury dose of its lamps and Philips' ALTO(TM) lamps, the lowest-mercury dose fluorescent lamp sold in the marketplace.* Osram's agreement to cease making these claims is subject to enforcement by the United States District Court.

Osram claimed in advertising, web site messages and other marketing materials that its OCTRON/ECO T-8 Linear and CURVALUME lamps feature the lowest mercury dose of any four-foot fluorescent lamp. In addition, Osram stated that its Reduced Mercury OCTRON T-8 lamps have the lowest dose of mercury in the industry. Both claims were based on inaccurate data according to Philips experts.

"These statements attack our proven ALTO(TM) low-mercury technology," said Larry Wilton, President and CEO of Philips Lighting Company. "Many customers are now learning about mercury reduction issues for the first time," said Wilton. "Inaccurate ad claims and statistics taken out of context could desensitize end users to the environmentally responsible goal of mercury source reduction."

Philips began selling the industry's first low-mercury lamp in 1995, creating a new category for the lighting industry. To date, millions of lamps containing Philips ALTO(TM) low-mercury lamp technology have been installed by hundreds of end users, including International Paper and The 3M Corporation.

Philips is the only lamp manufacturer currently selling a low-mercury lamp proven to pass Toxic Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP) at any stage of lamp life. TCLP is the EPA's federal test prescribed in 1990 to simulate the behavior of a waste in a landfill environment, and is used to separate hazardous waste from non-hazardous waste.

Easily identified by their ALTO Green End Caps(TM), the Philips lamps employ a unique capsule dosing process, combined with a chemical buffering system. The lamps contain more than 80 percent less mercury than standard fluorescents, with no loss in lamp performance compared to standard fluorescents.* At this time, mercury cannot be completely removed from fluorescent lamps without diminishing lamp performance.

Since fall 1995, Philips has offered ALTO Lamp Technology in the country's most widely used T-12 fluorescent lamp types, and it recently announced the availability of T-8 ALTO products. By the end of 1997, Philips expexts to sell more than 100 million ALTO low-mercury fluorescent lamps.

The winner of last year's EPA "Green Lights Ally of the Year" Award for its ongoing environmental initiatives, Philips received substantial recognition for its ALTO lamp technology in 1996. ALTO accolades included Popular Science Magazine's "Best of What's New" Award, the National Association of Independent Lighting Distributors "Best New Product of the Year" Award, the National Retail Hardware Association/Home Center Institute "Environmental Achievement" Award and the North American Hazardous Materials Management Association's "Outstanding Product" Award.

For information about ALTO products or lamp disposal, end users can call Philips Lighting Company's Customer Information Network at 800-555-0050.

Headquartered in Somerset, NJ, Philips Lighting markets approximately 4,000 lighting products to retail, industrial/commercial, consumer and original equipment manufacturing markets. Philips Lighting innovations have included ALTO Lamp Technology, the compact fluorescent lamp, QL Induction Lighting and the halogen automotive headlamp. As part of the largest lighting company in the world, Philips Lighting employs more than 10,000 people in over 35 manufacturing, sales and distribution facilities throughout the United States.

Philips Lighting Company can be accessed at http://www.philips.com/lighting/

* Based on average end-of-life data for Philips ALTO T-8 and ALTO T-12 lamps when compared with available published data on standard four-foot T-12 fluorescent lamps.

SOURCE Philips Lighting Company, CONTACT: Steve Goldmacher of Philips Lighting Company, 908-563-3039/ CO: Philips Lighting Company; Osram Sylvania Inc. ST: New Jersey IN: CPR SU:  MT-DA

---

March 6, 1997
INDEX

Hospitals Faulted for Pollution

Source: Associated Press

A coalition of environmental organizations said today that waste incinerators at the nation's hospitals are a main source of cancer-causing dioxin and other dangerous pollutants.

``Medical waste may not be washing up on America's beaches anymore, but it is still a serious problem for the environment and public health,'' said Kenneth Cook, head of the Environmental Working Group.

A report issued by the group criticizes the Clinton administration for proposing new regulations for hospital waste incineration that will ``do next to nothing to halt emissions of dioxin, mercury and other pollutants into the environment.''

It also says the hospital industry's main trade organization, the American Hospital Association, has lobbied to weaken pending air pollution rules from the Environmental Protection Agency for medical waste incinerators.

According the AHA, about 2,300 of the nation's 5,000 hospitals have on-site incinerators. The trade group said it would like to see less restrictive clean-air regulations for some small, rural cash-strapped hospitals, but denies any effort to reduce standards overall.

``The standards we believe they're going to set far exceed what we know in science to represent a health risk,'' said AHA spokesman Rick Wade. ``We will achieve pollution-control standards that are well above any known health risk for dioxin, or anything else.''

The new regulations for hospital incinerators won't be issued until summer and the EPA said the ``current criticism and comments are premature.''

``Our goal is, has been and remains to develop the most protective rule ever to make sure that public health is not threatened by pollutants from hospital incinerators,'' said EPA spokesman Dave Cohen.

The study estimated that America's hospitals generate about 2 million tons of waste each year. Much of that waste is polyvinyl chloride plastic, which, when burned produces dioxin. The incinerators also spew mercury, cadmium and other pollutants, the report said.

The environmentalists found that 69 percent of the incinerators have no pollution control devices and account for 56 percent of the total incinerator capacity.

According to the report, New York produces about 200,000 tons of medical waste per year, more than any other state. The other top states are California, which generates nearly 170,000 tons, Pennsylvania 115,000 tons, Texas 104,000 tons and Florida 104,000 tons of medical waste each year.

The report said scientists have identified medical-waste incinerators as ``a top source of the notorious environmental contaminant dioxin.'' Dioxin, which is created when PVC plastics are burned, has been linked to cancer, birth defects and other health problems.

The study recommends hospitals reduce waste overall, eliminate the ``non-essential'' incineration of medical waste and phase out the use of dioxin-producing plastics and other toxic substances.

[03-06-97 at 16:48 EST, Copyright 1997, The Associated Press]