To join the Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative (LDDI), please complete the form at http://www.iceh.org/LDDImembers.html.
May 29 - 31, 2006
Stockholm, Sweden
at the Stockholm City Conference Centre
The activities of healthcare facilities have a significant impact on the environment that contributes to the destruction of our natural ecosystems. And an unhealthy natural environment is a danger to human health. As healthcare professionals pledge an oath of "First, do no harm", allaspects of healthcare should be carried out in a way that is not damaging to public health and the environment. Forward-thinking healthcare systems must therefore be ecologically sustainable. CleanMed Europe will show you how to achieve this.
Website: http://www.cleanmed.org/europe/2006/home.html
Contact: cleanmedeurope@congrex.se
June 9 - 11, 2006
Baltimore, Maryland
Join with groups across America who are applying the precautionary approach to environmental hazards by shifting the focus to "how can we prevent harm?", instead of asking "what level of harm is acceptable?" This national event will bring together people working on conservation, disease prevention, environmental justice, environmental health, green purchasing, precautionary business practices, toxic and nuclear pollution prevention, worker safety and more to build a stronger movement to protect our health and environment. The conference will include sessions on 1) model policies and successful campaigns from Europe and U.S. national, state and local initiatives; 2) precautionary tools like safer alternatives assessments and full cost-accounting on pollution's hidden costs; 3) crafting effective messaging, countering the critics and building a broader movement for precaution; 4) collaborative opportunities, with sessions on water, land use and ecosystems, trade, energy, and a cross-fertilization session with groups working on children's health, environmental justice, health professionals, chemical, nuclear and pesticide reforms; and 5) skills trainings on organizing, campaign strategies, media outreach, partnering with tribes and more.
Website: http://www.besafenet.com/
Contact: Anne Rabe, CHEJ, 518-732-4538 or annerabe@msn.com
submitted to this bulletin by Sandy Cort, Learning Disabilities Association of Maine
The Best Start Resource Centre is pleased to announce the availability of a new resource on environmental concerns -- Playing it Safe: Service Provider Strategies to Reduce Environmental Risks to Preconception, Prenatal and Child Health
This Best Start manual was developed in collaboration with the Canadian Partnership for Children's Health and Environment, a multi-sectoral collaboration of organizations working to protect children's health from environmental exposures and toxic chemicals. A companion to "Child Health and the Environment - A Primer", the resource uses program examples, insights and tips to share strategies that practitioners can use to address environmental risks to preconception, prenatal and child health. Information is included about the context of this work, underlying factors, important considerations, as well as steps to plan, implement and evaluate work on this topic.
To view or order a copy of this resource, go to http://www.beststart.org/resources/env_action/index.html.
by Noreen O'Donnell, White Plains [New York] Journal News
May 15, 2006
http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060515/NEWS11/605150333/1027/NEWS11
Lead-free paint. Lead-free gasoline. Pesticide levels lowered tenfold. Credit Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, a pediatrician whose work helped to bring about all three. He has been trying to protect children from environmental threats for more than 30 years -- whether by documenting the dangers of lead and pesticides or these days advocating for the National Children's Study, an ambitious $2.7 billion project that had its funding scrapped by the Bush administration.
"First of all, it's the morally right thing to do," said Landrigan, the head of Mount Sinai's Center for Children's Health and the Environment in New York City and a professor at its School of Medicine. "A study that improves children's health would be a good investment for the country." The study, for which President Bush included no money in his budget for the 2007 fiscal year, would follow 100,000 children across the country from before birth to age 21, tracking all of the factors in the environment that affect their health. The hope is to cut the rates of childhood diseases the way the Framingham (Mass.) Heart Study begun in 1948 reduced the rate of heart disease and strokes. Heart disease remains a killer in this country, but it is down by 50 percent among white men and women, Landrigan says.
So the study -- if it survives the threat to its funding -- would consider questions like these: "Do household pesticides harm neurodevelopment?" "How does your genetic makeup affect how severe your asthma is?" It would look at asthma as well as diabetes, birth defects, learning disabilities and cancers, of which the three most prevalent among children are leukemia, brain cancer and testicular cancer. The last is an epidemic in this country, says Landrigan; the cyclist Lance Armstrong is just one face of the disease. "He's not out there by himself unfortunately," Landrigan, 63, said.
Landrigan, who lives in Mamaroneck village with his wife, Mary, the spokeswoman for the Westchester County Health Department, would direct the test center for the New York region in Queens. He and others were to have begun signing up families in the summer of next year. The Boston native, who this spring was honored as a children's environmental health champion by the Environmental Protection Agency, has been an advocate from the start of his career. He did his residency in the late 1960s at the Boston Children's Hospital, where doctors were still treating cases of lead poisoning so severe that children died. "High-dose lead poisoning is a terrible disease," he said.
From there, he signed on as a globe-trotting epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and became among the first to show the insidious damage that lead could do to children, from lower IQs to shortened attention spans. Another pioneer was Dr. Herbert Needleman, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh and a friend.
Before then, it was thought that lead poisoning was an all-or-nothing phenomenon: It caused coma or convulsions or nothing at all. They showed that children who had elevated lead levels but no obvious symptoms had suffered from the exposure. It was a breakthrough and helped to convince the federal government to ban lead from paint and gasoline.
By the late 1980s, Landrigan was studying the harm done to children by pesticides, something he noticed while on assignment in El Salvador. "I started thinking along the same lines as I had thought with lead," he said. "If high-dose exposure could cause obvious poisoning, what might be the effects of a lower dose of toxicity?" As the chairman of a National Academy of Sciences committee, he helped to change the way the country regulates pesticide use. Until then, the government had thought of children as young adults, but as Landrigan says, "As soon as you sat down and thought about that, it just didn't make any sense."
Children are growing and developing. They are more vulnerable, and he argued they needed more protection. You can wash some of the pesticides off fruits and vegetables, but the rest is in the flesh of the fruit. Peaches and strawberries, which he describes as the most notorious, sometimes contain five or six different kinds. The result was the Food Quality Protection Act, which was passed unanimously by the Senate and House of Representatives in 1996 and sharply reduced the permissible levels of pesticides.
Now Landrigan again is focused on Congress. He and others are trying to persuade the lawmakers to disregard President Bush's priorities and fund the National Children's Study. The Senate has called for adding $7 billion for health and other programs, including medical research, but the House is still debating.
Even if it were not the right thing to do, Landrigan says, it makes sense economically. Diseases caused by exposure to such toxins as lead, pesticides and air pollution cost the country $55 billion each year. If the National Children's Study helps some children not get sick, it could quickly pay for itself. "The clock is ticking," Landrigan says.
by James Rusk, Ontario Globe and Mail
May 12, 2006
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060512.POLLUTE12/TPStory/Environment
TORONTO -- The Ontario government has joined a legal action that would force six coal-fired power plants in the Midwestern United States to install modern pollution-control equipment. At stake, according to the Environment Ministry, is hundreds of thousands of tonnes of smog-causing pollution that cross the international border into Ontario each year.
This week, the province filed a brief in the United States Court of Appeals in Chicago that supports the U.S. Justice Department and several states against Cinergy Energy Corp., which is appealing a district court ruling last September that ordered it to install the equipment. The Ontario brief, filed at the request of New York Attorney-General Eliot Spitzer, argues that the lower court ruled correctly when it found that the six plants, which are among the largest emitters of air pollution in the United States, must follow a stringent test that limits their annual emissions of pollutants.
Cinergy, which merged with Duke Energy in April, wants the appeal court to overturn the decision and to apply a different test that sets hourly limits on emissions. The original case against Cinergy, filed by the U.S. Justice Department in 1999, charged that the company had violated the Clean Air Act by failing to install pollution-control equipment when it made modifications to plants that increased emissions. The U.S. government charged that the modifications, which did not change the plants' emissions level per hour, increased total emissions because the company was able to run the plants for more hours each year.
Ontario Environment Minister Laurel Broten said that the difference in choice of emission standards is crucial for Ontario, a province where more than half the air pollutants are transported across the border from U.S. sources, primarily coal-fired power plants in the Midwestern states. "If we roll back the pollution control and test hourly versus annually, which is the issue in this case, what's at risk for Ontarians is about 300,000 tonnes of pollutants [per year]. If you put the best pollution controls in place on these facilities, you can reduce that 300,000 tonnes by 90 per cent," Ms. Broten said in an interview. "I'm committed to doing everything that I can to make sure that 12 million Ontarians . . . have clean air. That means that I work in co-operation with jurisdictions like New York, like Connecticut, New Jersey, who are plaintiffs in this case, and the many other parties that have filed amicus briefs." She added that "in this case, we have been able to stand side by side with the [U.S.] Department of Justice who are enforcing the rules."
The minister said that a provincial study of air pollution across boundaries found that it costs the Ontario economy $5.2-billion in annual health and environmental damage costs, and is responsible for more than 2,700 premature deaths and 14,000 emergency-room visits.
by Melanie Warner, New York Times
May 12, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/business/12organic.html
Starting this summer, there will be a lot more organic food on supermarket shelves, and it should cost a lot less. Wal-Mart has asked suppliers to help it offer more organic food.
Most of the nation's major food producers are hard at work developing organic versions of their best-selling products, like Kellogg's Rice Krispies and Kraft's macaroni and cheese. Why the sudden activity? In large part because Wal-Mart wants to sell more organic food -- and because of its size and power, Wal-Mart usually gets what it wants. As the nation's largest grocery retailer, Wal-Mart has decided that offering more organic food will help modernize its image and broaden its appeal to urban and other upscale consumers. It has asked its large suppliers to help.
Wal-Mart's interest is expected to change organic food production in substantial ways. Some organic food advocates applaud the development, saying Wal-Mart's efforts will help expand the amount of land that is farmed organically and the quantities of organic food available to the public. But others say the initiative will ultimately hurt organic farmers, will lower standards for the production of organic food and will undercut the environmental benefits of organic farming. And some nutritionists question the health benefits of the new organic products. "It's better for the planet, but not from a nutritional standpoint," said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. "It's a ploy to be able to charge more for junk food."
Shoppers who have been buying organic food in steadily greater quantities consider it healthier and better for the environment. Organic food -- whether produce, meat or grain -- must be grown without pesticides, chemical fertilizers and antibiotics. Then, before it is sold, the food cannot be treated with artificial preservatives, flavors or colors, among other things.
When Wal-Mart sells organic food on a much broader scale, it will have to meet the same Agriculture Department requirements. But nutritionists say the health benefits of many of these new offerings are negligible. Wal-Mart says it wants to democratize organic food, making products affordable for those who are reluctant to pay premiums of 20 percent to 30 percent. At a recent conference, its chief marketing officer, John Fleming, said the company intended to sell organic products for just 10 percent more than their conventional equivalents. Food industry analysts say that with its 2,000 supercenters and lower prices, Wal-Mart could soon be the nation's largest seller of organic products, surpassing Whole Foods. Already, it is the biggest seller of organic milk.
While organic food is still just 2.4 percent of the overall food industry, it has been growing at least 15 percent a year for the last 10 years. Currently valued at $14 billion, the organic food business is expected to increase to $23 billion over the next three years, though that figure could rise further with Wal-Mart's push. Harvey Hartman, president of the Hartman Group, a consulting firm in Seattle that is working with Wal-Mart on its organic food initiatives, asserted: "What Wal-Mart has done is legitimized the market. All these companies who thought organics was a niche product now realize that it has an opportunity to become a big business."
Kellogg and Kraft say they began working on organic Rice Krispies and organic macaroni and cheese before having conversations with Wal-Mart. But David Mackay, chief operating officer at Kellogg, says it was helpful knowing that a big customer like Wal-Mart was enthusiastic about the product. In July, Kellogg is planning to introduce organic Raisin Bran and organic Frosted Mini Wheats, with packages featuring the word 'organic' at the top in giant letters. Other food companies say they are working on products at Wal-Mart's direction. General Mills and Pepsi say they plan to introduce new organic versions of some of their well-known brands late in 2006. These products are expected to appear in Wal-Mart first and then at other major retailers. Officials at General Mills, the producer of Cheerios, Yoplait yogurt and Green Giant vegetables, among other things, and at PepsiCo, which owns the Tropicana and Quaker brands, declined to identify those products.
DeDe Priest, senior vice president for dry groceries at Wal-Mart, said the company had been urging food suppliers for the last year to embrace organic foods. At a recent conference in Rogers, Ark., near the company's headquarters in Bentonville, she said, "Once we let the companies know we were serious about this and that they needed to take it seriously, they moved pretty fast." Bruce Peterson, head of perishable food at Wal-Mart, said that it aimed to change the way people think about the retailer. "Consumers that gravitate to organic products don't always think of Wal-Mart as a top-of-mind destination to pick up those products," Mr. Peterson said. "We want to let customers know, 'Hey, we're in that business.'"
The strategy of working with food makers to tie in organic products with well-known brands represents a departure from the approach many of Wal-Mart's competitors are taking. Safeway, Kroger and SuperValu, which is set to acquire Albertsons, have private label organic lines with names like Nature's Best and O that they sell at prices below those of brand organic products. Mr. Peterson said he thought that Wal-Mart's method would be more effective in appealing to customers because it relies on powerful brand names that have million of dollars in advertising backing them up.
But Wal-Mart's new push worries Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association, an advocacy group that lobbies for strict standards and the preservation of small organic farms. He said Wal-Mart did not care about the principles behind organic agriculture and would ultimately drive down prices and squeeze organic farmers. "This model of one size fits all and lowest prices possible doesn't work in organic," Mr. Cummins said. "Their business model is going to wreck organic the way it's wrecking retail stores, driving out all competitors."
Part of the problem, Mr. Cummins said, is that Wal-Mart is making a push into organics at a time there is already heavy demand and not enough supply. "They're going to end up outsourcing from overseas and places like China," he said, " where you've got very dubious organic standards and labor conditions that are contrary to what any organic consumer would consider equitable." Currently, some 10 percent of the organic food consumed in the United States is imported, according to the Agriculture Department. Kelly Strzelecki, an agricultural economist there, said she expected that share to increase.
Mr. Peterson, the Wal-Mart executive, says Wal-Mart is not now getting any of its organic products from overseas, but cannot predict if that will change. And he says Wal-Mart does not pay organic farmers less than others do, in part because the demand is so high. He said the lower prices offered to consumers were made possible by Wal-Mart's enormous volume and by having efficient distribution and inventory systems. Some organic food advocates also fear that large-scale organic farming will not use the crop-rotation practices of the small farms, hurting the fields and reducing the health benefits of organic food.
Mr. Peterson's view of organic agriculture is markedly different from many of those involved in the field. "Organic agriculture is just another method of agriculture -- not better, not worse," he said. "This is like any other merchandising scheme we have, which is providing customers what they want. For those customers looking for an organic alternative in things like Rice Krispies, we now have an alternative for them."
Organic agriculture arose in the 1970's as a reaction to large-scale farms that confined animals and the increased use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers on crops. Many advocates of organic produce consider conventional agriculture to be harmful to the environment and to human health. But Wal-Mart and some large food manufacturers are careful not to position their organic versions as superior to the original. "We have no intent to send a message that the standard Rice Krispies are somehow not great brands," Mr. Mackay of Kellogg said. Organic Rice Krispies are made with cane juice instead of high-fructose corn syrup and without the artificial preservative BHT.
Mr. Hartman, the Seattle consultant, said organic now means different things to different people. "It's a multifaceted symbol representing everything from quality to health to ideology, and everything in between," he said. "It's something that lets people feel even better about their choices." With processed products like organic Rice Krispies and organic macaroni and cheese soon to appear on store shelves, the organic movement seems to be fitting itself more into the wide variety of food available to Americans. "People want you to offer them organic and natural," said David Driscoll, a food analyst at Citigroup. "But sometimes, they just want to eat a Pop-Tart."
by John M.R. Bull, Hampton Roads [Virginia] Daily Press
May 11, 2006
http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/dp-23762sy0may11,0,6232617.story?coll=dp-news-local-final
The military would have to conduct an in-depth study of the potential harm caused by chemical weapons the Army dumped off the country's coastlines decades ago under a bill moving through Congress. The House voted Wednesday to require a full epidemiological study to determine whether people have been harmed, or could be harmed, by leaking mustard and nerve gas dumped over the span of 50 years. The amendment to the annual defense spending bill was sparked by a Daily Press investigation that revealed that the Army dumped at least 64 million pounds of chemical weapons -- including bombs and rockets -- in dozens of dumpsites that virtually circle the country. The amendment was introduced by U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews, a New Jersey Democrat.
At least eight mustard gas artillery shells, dating back to World War I, were dredged up off the coast of New Jersey during the past two years. The shells injured three bomb-disposal technicians, and there is evidence of arsenic contamination on the sea floor where they were found. "It's very important," Andrews said. "There's arsenic 10 miles off the coast of my state. That's as important as it gets." Arsenic, an especially potent poison, is a component in some of the dumped chemical weapons. It can accumulate in fish and shellfish, posing a risk to people who eat them. Several of the dumpsites are off the Eastern Shore in Virginia.
No one objected to Andrews' amendment on the House floor, he said. The must-pass defense-appropriations bill, with its amendments, is to go to a full House vote today then on to the Senate for final passage. "I'm counting on Senator Warner to keep it in the appropriations bill," Andrews said. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and his voice is usually heeded in the Senate on military issues. "Senator Warner supports the department conducting a full study of all aspects of offshore munitions dumping, to include location of ordnance, risk to persons and property and possible health effects of munitions dumping over time," said Warner spokesman John Ullyot.
There is no doubt that chemical weapons remain on the ocean floor at sites up and down the East Coast. Andrews wants to know whether they have leaked or are leaking and what dangers they pose to mariners, people who live on the coast, marine life and the economically important seafood industry. "The question is, 'Has it hurt anybody?' " he said. "I hope this study shows no harm was done."
Mustard gas, nerve gas and Lewisite -- an arsenic-based chemical akin to mustard gas -- were the most commonly dumped chemical weapons. The Army is nearing the end of an extensive records search to determine whether other chemical weapon dumpsites exist and where they might be located. A report to Congress on the search is expected this summer. So far, no additional dumpsites have been discovered, but records are sketchy, vague or missing, and the Pentagon fears that World War I-era dumpsites never will be located in surviving records.
From World War I until 1970, Army policy was to dump surplus or damaged chemical weapons into the ocean at varying depths and distances from the shoreline. The thinking at the time was that the ocean was vast and would absorb the deadly chemicals when they eventually leaked.
According to a March 3 "information paper" the Army released to Congress, the earliest dumpsites were in what now is considered to be shallow water. In 1944, the War Department -- which became the Department of Defense -- required chemical weapons to be dumped in at least 300 feet of water and at least 10 miles from shore, according to the information paper. Scallopers now routinely dredge in water that deep. Ten miles is within sight of the coast.
In 1945, dumpsites were required to be in at least 600 feet of water. As the years went by, the Army gradually went farther from shore to dump their deadly loads. The last dump, in 1970, was in extremely deep water, 6,000 feet.
Mustard gas is extremely hazardous and can survive up to five years in seawater, rolling around in gel form on the ocean floor. So if the shells, which corrode at different rates, began leaking today, the threat would persist for another five years. The information paper revealed new information on the impact of the nerve gas VX in seawater. It might remain dangerous, floating around with the prevailing current, for up to three years, the Army reported. VX is so deadly that one drop can kill a person within a minute.
by Jane Kay, San Francisco Chronicle
May 11, 2006
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/05/11/BAGI1IPJMO1.DTL
The Tylenol, antibiotics, ibuprofen and Prozac that people toss into the toilet or down the drain may be flowing straight to the bay and contaminating fish, warn local sewage treatment officials who want to stop it. Sewage plant operators who have curtailed everything from industrial waste to household chemicals and pesticides and mercury from dental offices are now trying to reduce pharmaceuticals from homes by offering a safer disposal method for unwanted pills.
The out-of-sight, out-of-mind flush recommended for years doesn't work, say representatives for the 40 agencies that operate sewage plants around San Francisco Bay. The plants are designed to treat human waste and other biodegradable organic materials -- not the medicines and chemicals in consumer products that make it through treatment and remain in the effluent that spills into the bay or ocean, and in the sludge that is used for landfill cover, incinerated or placed in farmland. "Some of the pharmaceuticals are definitely making it through sewage treatment plants," said Phil Bobel, manager of the environmental compliance division for the city of Palo Alto and a spokesman for the agencywide Bay Area Pollution Prevention Group.
Studies of fish in waterways near Denver, in Lake Mead and in London's Thames River have found changes in their reproductive systems that apparently are linked to pharmaceuticals that can disrupt the endocrine systems, sewer officials say. While studies continue on the effects of the drugs on marine life and human health, Bobel said, "There's something simple we can do now to cut down on this stuff. ... Unfortunately, the advice of the past was, 'Dump it down the toilet.' Now we're trying to turn it around: 'Don't dump it down the toilet.'"
The group has organized 30 Bay Area events -- called Safe Medicine Disposal Days -- where people may take unwanted pills, starting Friday and continuing through May 21. Banners at BART stations in Fremont, Berkeley, 12th Street Oakland, Civic Center San Francisco and Daly City advertise the events. Walgreen's drugstores, some of which are accepting unwanted pills, are distributing flyers. Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland and other hospitals are passing out information with prescriptions. Newspaper ads and SamTrans buses will carry the message. The Bay Area events will accept all pharmaceuticals. In the future, sewage treatment districts will develop drop-off programs similar to those for hazardous and electronic waste. Most plants recommend that consumers put pills in the garbage until there are proper drop-off plans.
The Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts started a "No Drugs Down the Drain" program in March during National Poison Prevention Week. They accept pharmaceuticals except for controlled substances at hazardous-waste drop-off points. If people can't make it to the drop-off points, they ask for disposal in the garbage.
There is no evidence to show that the levels in effluent have any effect on human health. In fact, scientists are just beginning to look at the effects of pharmaceuticals on fish and other aquatic life. No such studies have been done in California.
Some of the best testing for pharmaceuticals in California's effluent comes from Los Angeles and Orange counties. In surveys last year of effluent treated by the high-quality tertiary method, Southern California officials found detectable levels of ibuprofen; fluoxetine, the generic name for Prozac; and the antibiotics erythromycin, trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole. Tests also found low levels of the anti-arthritis drug diclofenac; the mosquito repellant DEET; the anti-cholesterol drug gemfibrozil; triclosan, an antibacterial agent in soap; and anti-seizure drugs.
A big question is how much of the medicines in effluent come from human excretion and how much are from direct disposal. Ann Heil, supervising engineer for Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, said she worked up data on the top 10 pharmaceuticals sold in the United States and figured out that about 90 percent of the individual drugs are used up in the body while 10 percent of them are excreted. In other California monitoring studies, the San Francisco Estuary Institute in Oakland published results of monitoring in the bay and delta in 2003 in which researchers detected Tylenol, or acetaminophen, DEET and the sunscreen octyl methoxy cinnamate, as well as plasticizers, fire retardants and herbicides.
"There have been studies throughout the world that have found pharmaceuticals turning up in creeks, rivers and bays," said Jen Jackson, pollution prevention coordinator at East Bay Municipal Utility District who's been working to get people to the throwaway event. "We're trying to be proactive."
by Marla Cone, Los Angeles Times
May 11, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-chemical11may11,0,6118965.story
Leaders of California's chemical companies gathered Wednesday in Los Angeles to discuss how best to respond to growing pressure to develop a new state policy that would provide the public more protection from toxic compounds in consumer products and the environment. The chemical industry forum was spurred by a University of California report, released to the state Legislature in March, that advises California to adopt a comprehensive policy because the public is inadequately protected from toxic compounds that are amassing in people's bodies and the environment.
John Ulrich, a senior consultant to the Chemical Industry Council of California, called the report a "call to action" for businesses and urged them to act now to help craft a state strategy for regulating chemicals. About 100 industry representatives, from industrial giants such as Dow Chemical Co. and DuPont Co. to small biotech firms, attended the forum. However, chemical company representatives at the meeting expressed mixed feelings about California charging ahead. "We all agree with the mission" to move toward safer chemicals, said Martin La Benz of Spectrum Chemicals & Laboratory Products in Gardena. "The question is, can we execute it workably?" He said he was worried that it could lead to a misguided policy and a "burgeoning paper flow" that would just move chemical production to other countries, such as China.
The discussions about California taking the lead in chemical policy come at a time when several dozen bills regulating chemicals are before the Legislature, many scientists are voicing concerns about various compounds in everyday consumer products and Europe is about to adopt a revolutionary law regulating chemicals.
People are exposed to hundreds of chemicals in consumer products and in the environment, some of which have been linked to cancer, reproductive damage or altered hormones. Many chemicals are known to accumulate in human tissue, and many can cross into the womb and build up in breast milk. About 80,000 chemicals have been registered in the U.S., and roughly 15,000 are in use. Although new chemicals are required to undergo thorough testing, federal law does not require chemical companies to review potential hazards of the thousands of compounds in use when the law was adopted in 1976.
The UC report, commissioned by two state Senate and Assembly committees, concluded that "a modern, comprehensive chemicals policy is essential to placing California on the path to a sustainable future." The report is the first in the nation that offers a framework for government to promote "green chemistry," a global movement to design and use chemicals that are less hazardous.
In remarks to the group Wednesday, Michael Wilson, the report's lead author and an assistant scientist at UC Berkeley's Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, said the Legislature considered 35 bills related to chemicals last year, most of which were defeated. "Each of these bills addressed an isolated issue, but none was designed for the purpose of framing a comprehensive approach to chemicals policy," he said.
The report advised the Legislature to name a task force to develop a proposal by next year that would fill data gaps on the health and safety of chemicals, grant state officials more authority to tighten restrictions on risky chemicals and motivate industries to find safer substitutes. Calling California an incubator of ideas, Wilson said he was encouraged by the chemical industry's willingness to open the talks because the federal government would not reform chemical policy anytime soon.
Although it is unusual for industries to start a dialogue that could lead to new regulations, Ulrich warned his colleagues in the industry that they must begin to grapple with the issue or risk being left out of the process. "We can stop right here and do nothing, but the process will continue whether we're participating or not," he said. "If you're not at the table, you will be on the menu."
The state Senate's Committee on Environmental Quality is planning to lead efforts that could reform chemical policies. Bruce Jennings, principal consultant to the Senate committee, said legislators and environmentalists have tried to ban or restrict many compounds individually but failed to act after industry opposition. He warned that this must change or California was likely to face a voter initiative forcing stronger laws.
Tom Jacob, DuPont's Western regional manager of government affairs, said the chemical industry was facing an "evolution of public consciousness" about the risks of its products and "government is struggling to adapt." Industries are grappling with new technologies that enable chemicals to be detected in human bodies and the environment in extremely low levels, and uncertainty about what such discoveries may mean to health. Jacob and many of his colleagues said they were worried that California would embrace a sweeping policy similar to one expected to be adopted by the European Union this fall. Under Europe's plan, industry must provide safety and health data on about 30,000 chemicals and the most dangerous ones could be phased out.
Although the California chemistry council is supportive of discussions about new state policies, a powerful national group, the American Chemistry Council, has said there already is sufficient protection under federal laws and California should not act on its own.
Environmentalists commended the California council for opening the dialogue. But they expressed doubts about whether industry would support a reform of chemical policy. "We're open to their perspective and ideas to the extent we are at the same starting point -- that the current regulation of chemicals is a broken system in need of repair," said Rachel Gibson of Environment California.
by Naomi Lubick, Environmental Science & Technology
May 10, 2006
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2006/may/science/nl_methylmercury.html
Researchers have long worked under the premise that acid rain triggers the production of methylmercury, the bioavailable and toxic form of mercury that can accumulate in fish living downstream of freshwater wetlands and make them unsafe for human consumption. Now, the first large-scale field experiment on the interactions of mercury and sulfate in wetlands, described in a paper published today on ES&T's Research ASAP website, provides the most persuasive evidence yet that acid rain increases production of methylmercury.
The "cause-and-effect relationship" between sulfur and mercury deposition from the atmosphere has been "demonstrated in the lab and in the field in small-scale experiments," points out Charles Driscoll of Syracuse University. Because this is the first such large-scale ecosystem experiment, Driscoll and other scientists studying the methylation of mercury have been paying close attention to the trial as it has progressed. "It's exciting work," he says.
Jeff Jeremiason of Gustavus Adolphus College and colleagues took an acre-sized patch of a wetland in Minnesota, part of a larger parcel scientists have been studying since the 1950s, and sunk new sampling wells across their test site. They peppered half of the site with sprinklers that could simulate rainfall with sulfate loads four times as high as annual background levels. The sulfate levels used in the test are equivalent to historic levels of sulfate deposition from acid rain in the northeastern U.S., the authors note.
The team applied the first 6-hour sulfate "rainstorm" to the wetland in May 2002, followed by two more "rains" in July and September of that year. They measured the sulfate and methylmercury content of the wetland on subsequent days, with matching measurements in a control section in an upstream and untouched part of the same wetland.
The team found a jump in sulfate levels followed by a surge of methylmercury after the first application, just as the theory behind mercury's methylation predicts. The sulfur apparently stimulates certain microbes that transform other forms of mercury to methylmercury as they respire, although the exact biological mechanism remains unknown. They could also track the concentrations of methylmercury exported out of the swampy wetland, which increased threefold.
Methylmercury surge
Then things got muddy. The researchers still measured methylmercury flowing out of the marsh after the two applications later in the summer, but the levels did not increase dramatically. They could no longer find evidence of sulfate in the marsh, either.
"We might have missed all the action," says Jeremiason, by waiting a day after the extra sulfate was applied before beginning to take staggered measurements. He says his group is also split on other explanations for the conundrum, including a change in marsh chemistry and biology because of higher temperatures as the summer waxed. Another possibility is that the microbial community may have fluctuated as the seasons changed, affecting how much sulfur the bugs could use up and in turn potentially affecting the amount of methylmercury that they produced.
Mark Hines, a microbiologist at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, says that he, too, would have expected bursts of activity following later applications similar to the first event. "You'd think [the microbes] would be raring to go the second time around," creating a surge of methylmercury. He suggests that because the team only measured marsh waters, they may have missed both sulfate and methylmercury that ended up bound to dead organic matter. In fact, the continued output of dissolved methylmercury that the researchers reported could be explained by the slow release of the bound pool, Hines conjectures.
Downstream effects?
The freshwater wetlands setting of this newest study complements observations elsewhere, such as the Everglades, where experiments also substantiate the link between sulfate and methylmercury. The new study makes the connection that much clearer, says Brian Branfireun, a hydrologist at the University of Toronto. The Everglades, for example, start out at higher sulfate concentrations; Branfireun says that these Minnesota peatlands lack sulfate to begin with, and that makes this experiment even more important. He notes, "adding sulfate alone increased the methylmercury in this system and increased the output into receiving waters" downstream. "That's an important message. There aren't any fish living in the peat... . The question is: Is that the [same] methylmercury that gets into the fish [downstream]?"
"Implications of this work are interesting from a policy perspective," Driscoll says. For example, he explains, the research implies that acid-rain regulations, such as the 2005 Clean Air Interstate Rule, could control methylmercury and thus tempt policymakers to relax controls on mercury itself. Still, "mercury is an extremely dangerous substance," Driscoll says, and any evidence that acid rain controls alone could reduce mercury concentrations in fish "will play out for next 15 to 20 years."