To join the Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative (LDDI), please complete the form at http://www.iceh.org/LDDImembers.html.
July 19, 2006
10:00 a.m. Pacific / 1:00 p.m. Eastern time
Topic of the call is "NIEHS Research on Asthma, Pulmonary Health and the Environment: An Update and Discussion with NIEHS Director, Dr. David Schwartz." For more information about this call and to RSVP, please contact Julie as described below.
Contact: Julia Varshavsky, Julia@HealthandEnvironment.org.
July 20, 2006
9:00 am Pacific / 12:00 noon Eastern
This call will focus on diabetes and metabolic disorders. Confirmed speakers are Ted Schettler, MD, MPH, Director, Science and Environmental Health Network; David Carpenter, MD, Professor, Environmental Health and Toxicology, Institute for Health & the Environment, University at Albany, SUNY; and Dr. Greg Ferguson, Wellness Coordinator, Eastern Aleutian Tribes, Alaska.
In order to join this call and receive dial-in information, please RSVP to Julia Varshavsky, CHE Program Associate, at Julia@HealthandEnvironment.org.
July 20, 2006
2:30 -- 4:00 p.m.
Washington, DC
628 Dirksen Senate Office Building
submitted to this bulletin by Clare Barnett, Healthy Schools Network
The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) invites you to a Congressional briefing on the value of incorporating high-performance "green" design in buildings -- including schools. Buildings account for more than 40 percent of annual U.S. energy use and are, in turn, responsible for more than one-third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. As the lifespan of a typical nonresidential building is over 75 years and that of public schools is 50 to 60 years, the economic, environmental and health impacts of inefficient building design are long-lasting.
Speakers:
This briefing is open to the public and no reservations are required. For more information, contact Theresa Murzyn at 202-662-1884 or tmurzyn@eesi.org.
August 6 - 11, 2006
Madison, Wisconsin
at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center
This is an international forum for formal presentation and discussion of scientific advances concerning environmental mercury pollution. The conference organizing committee has set three principal goals for the conference: 1) to enhance the synthesis of information presented at the conference through an integration of focused plenary sessions, poster sessions, conferee discussions, and synthesis papers; 2) to focus and enhance the integration of science and policy concerning environmental mercury pollution; and 3) to increase participation by underrepresented groups, including graduate students, beginning professionals, and representatives of developing nations.
Website: http://www.mercury2006.org/Default.aspx?tabid=1435
Contact: conference organizing committee at info@mercury2006.org
December 4 - 6, 2006
Atlanta, Georgia
Presented by Centers for Disease Control's National Center for Environmental Health, The 2006 Environmental Public Health Conference has a theme of "Advancing Environmental Public Health: Science, Practice, New Frontiers." The conference committee is now accepting submission forms for abstracts for workshops, posters, and exhibits. The deadline is August 1, 2006.
Website: http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/conference/abstract_submission.htm
by Alan Bjerga, Wichita Eagle
July 17, 2006
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/15053970.htm
WASHINGTON -- If you want to know whether your bottled water contains arsenic, you may be less likely to find out under federal legislation that may finally pass Congress this year. Legislation to create nationwide standards on food warnings would overrule warnings put on products that are mandated in certain states, but appear on shelves nationwide -- California's warning about arsenic in bottled water, for example. The food industry has pushed for the change, saying it won't have to change products nationwide to suit the whims of individual states that slap a warning on a product.
But consumer advocates say the legislation will result in less information for consumers across the country. Consumers in Kansas, which follows federal rules without adding its own, benefit from other states' vigilance, they say. Once federal law overtakes state actions, warnings about lead in candy, arsenic in bottled water and other potentially harmful substances could be rolled back.
Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts joined two other senators in introducing the National Uniformity in Food Act in the Senate in May. The bill is meant to streamline food safety regulations nationwide by putting all rule-making for warning labels in the hands of the federal Food and Drug Administration, rather than allow states to come up with their own guidelines and labels.
A federal law
The bill would supersede current state food warning rules and ensure that future rules would comply with federal law. A state could still ask the federal government to impose a new standard, or in an emergency situation impose one on its own, but ultimately food safety labeling would be a federal matter. Roberts said he supports the bill so "we can be sure that consumers have the most clear, consistent and scientific information about the safety of their food." The bill has been introduced in Congress regularly since 1998, but had never passed any chamber until March, when the House of Representatives approved it. All four members of Kansas' U.S. House delegation supported the bill.
Currently, states can set their own rules, which can create different standards for food labeling from state to state. Most prominently, California law requires companies to warn the public of potential toxins in food. Other states mandate labels for mercury in fish, allergy-causing sulfites and other areas. When a state decides it wants a warning label, food companies often end up adding labels everywhere else.
That's not fair, and it's not good policy, said Susan Stout, a top lobbyist for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, a trade group that includes Cargill, owner of Wichita's Cargill Meat Solutions. "You have one state dictating what the other 49 are going to do," she said. She also said that states sometimes use scientific standards that are set too low to justify a warning, which weakens the credibility of warnings themselves. She cited efforts in New Mexico to put warning labels on products linking aspartame, an artificial sweetener often found in diet sodas, to cancer as an example. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has found no link between the two.
Consumer advocates disagree, saying the law is a way food companies can keep consumers in the dark about potential problems by making sure only the federal government can act.
Protecting consumers?
A Congressional Budget Office study found that as many as 200 state laws or rules could be struck down under the House-passed bill, including regulations on shellfish, dairy products and lead.
Bruce Silverglade is the legal director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington, D.C., watchdog group with roots in Ralph Nader's consumer protection movement. He said states have been more likely to regulate food safety in recent years than the budget-starved FDA, which he said is less likely to fund the necessary research. And food companies are more likely to avoid potentially dangerous substances if they know they have 50 watchdogs instead of one. Take away state power, and you take away consumer protection, he said. "States have filled in where the federal government has dropped the ball," he said.
When the House bill passed in March, 39 state attorneys general opposed it, including Oklahoma's and Missouri's. Kansas' did not. Historically, the state has simply followed federal food-warning guidelines without adding its own standards, said Kansas Department of Health and Environment spokesman Mike Heideman.
This year is probably the bill's best bet to pass Congress, Silverglade said. Republicans tend to be more likely to favor the bill, and with Democrats expected to gain seats in the fall elections, food industry lobbyists are in high gear to get something done this year. "This has been a lifelong project for (food) industry lawyers," he said. "They're going to push."
See a related article from the San Francisco Chronicle at number 10 below.
by Denise Grady, New York Times
July 16, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/health/16cnd-alzheimer.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Several new studies suggest that diabetes increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease, adding to a store of evidence that links the disorders. The studies involve only Type 2 diabetes, the most common type, which is usually related to obesity. The connection raises an ominous prospect: that increases in diabetes, a major concern in the United States and worldwide, may worsen the rising toll from Alzheimer's. The findings also add dementia to the cloud of threats that already hang over people with diabetes, including heart disease, strokes, kidney failure, blindness and amputations.
But some of the studies also hint that measures to prevent or control diabetes may lower the dementia risk, and that certain diabetes drugs should be tested to find out whether they can help Alzheimer's patients, even those without diabetes. Current treatments for Alzheimer's can provide only a modest improvement in symptoms and cannot stop the progression of the disease. The new findings were presented today at a six-day conference in Madrid by the Alzheimer's Association and attended by 5,000 researchers from around the world.
Alzheimer's affects one in 10 people over 65, and nearly half over 85. About 4.5 million Americans have it, and taking care of them costs $100 billion a year, according to the association. The number of patients is expected to grow, possibly reaching 11.3 million to 16 million by 2050, according to the Alzheimer's Association. But those projections do not even include a possible increase from diabetes. "Alzheimer's is going to swamp the health-care system," said Dr. John C. Morris, a neurology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and an advisor to the Alzheimer's Association.
In the past decade, several large studies found that, compared to healthy people of the same age and sex, those with Type 2 diabetes were twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's. The reason is not known, but researchers initially suspected that cardiovascular problems caused by diabetes might contribute to dementia by blocking blood flow to the brain or causing strokes. More recently, though, scientists have begun to think that the diseases are connected in other ways as well. In both, destructive deposits of amyloid, a type of protein, build up: in the brain in Alzheimer's, in the pancreas in Type 2 diabetes.
People with Type 2 often have a condition called insulin resistance, in which their cells cannot properly use insulin, the hormone needed to help glucose leave the blood and enter cells that need it. To compensate, the pancreas makes extra insulin, which can reach high levels in the blood. Too much insulin may lead to inflammation, which can contribute to damage in the brain. In addition, abnormalities in glucose metabolism and insulin levels in the brain itself may be harmful. Some research has found that too much insulin in the brain can contribute to amyloid buildup. Some researchers have even suggested that Alzheimer's disease may actually be "Type 3 diabetes," a form of the disease affecting the nervous system.
About 20 million people in the United States have Type 2 diabetes. The number has doubled in the past two decades. Another 41 million are "pre-diabetic," with blood sugar rising toward the diabetic level. Diabetes rates are expected to increase because rates of obesity are rising, and epidemiologists predict that one in three American children born in 2000 will eventually develop Type 2. Worldwide, diabetes is also on the rise, increasing to 230 million cases from 30 million in the past 20 years.
One of the new studies found that even people who had borderline diabetes were 70 percent more likely than those with normal blood sugar to develop Alzheimer's. The study, by researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the Stockholm Gerontology Research Center, included 1173 people 75 and older. The risk of dementia was highest in borderline diabetics who also had high blood pressure. But the risk occurred only in those who did not carry a gene called apo E4, which raises the Alzheimer's risk. The director of the study, Dr. Weili Xu, said that since increased exercise and changes in diet can improve borderline diabetes, they may also help ward off dementia.
Another study found that in people with diabetes, the higher their blood sugar, the greater the risk of dementia. Higher levels of blood sugar mean the disease is severe or is being poorly treated, or both. The study, led by Rachel A. Whitmer of Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research in Oakland, was based on the records of 22,852 patients with Type 2 diabetes who were followed for eight years. Initially, none had dementia. The researchers looked at glycosylated hemoglobin, a blood test that reflects blood sugar levels for the previous two months. Normal is 7 or lower. Here, the risk of dementia rose when the level reached 10. Those with readings from 10 to 11.9 had 13 percent more risk than people with levels under 10. From 12 to 14.9, the risk was 24 percent higher. Over 15, it jumped to 83 percent higher.
In an interview, Dr. Whitmer said that one implication of the study is that tight control of blood sugar is important in elderly patients, even though some doctors tend to relax the rules for them. "Tight control is important for the whole life span," she said. "The older you are, the more likely you are to get dementia." She added: "With the whole diabetes epidemic we're seeing much more Type 2, so are we going to see even more Alzheimer's than we thought we would see? If we continue in this direction, it's a little bit frightening."
Another study suggested that a certain class of diabetes drug, commonly called "glitazones," may lower the risk of Alzheimer's in people with diabetes. Pilot studies in small groups of patients had hinted that the drugs might be of some help, and the National Institute of Aging is sponsoring research this area. In the new study, researchers used the records of 142,328 patients in the Veterans Affairs system, who did not have dementia but were just starting to take a glitazone or insulin. They tracked the patients for six years. Compared to those using insulin, the patients who took either pioglitazone (Actos) or rosiglitazone (Avandia) had nearly 20 percent fewer cases of Alzheimer's. The glitazones had a similar advantage over another diabetes drug, metformin. Glitazones lower blood sugar by helping the body to use insulin more efficiently, so that less insulin is needed. The drugs may also lower inflammation.
Though the results sound like good news for patients, the director of the study, Donald R. Miller, an epidemiologist at Boston University and the department of veterans affairs, cautioned that the findings were not conclusive and did not mean that people should start taking the drugs to ward of Alzheimer's. "This is preliminary, the first study of its kind," Dr. Miller said, emphasizing that more studies are needed to verify his results. GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of rosiglitazone, sponsored the study but did not control the way it was done or interpreted, Dr. Miller said.
Another study, a small one with only 25 patients, tested pioglitazone for 18 months in nondiabetic people with Alzheimer's to see if it was safe and showed signs of slowing the disease. The drug did seem safe, causing only some foot and ankle swelling. But compared to people taking placebos, patients taking the drug showed no statistically significant differences in memory, thinking, daily function or abnormal behavior. But there were hints that some measures worsened less in the patients on the drug, and the researchers, led by Dr. David S. Geldmacher, of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, said it deserved further study in Alzheimer's. The was sponsored by the drug's maker, Takeda.
by Margaret Allen, Dallas Business Journal
July 16, 2006
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13898309/
Carbon dioxide may soon be targeted for the first time by North Texas clean-air officials. Regional concern about CO2's role in global warming is coalescing around a potential spate of 17 controversial new coal-fired power plants, including 11 proposed by Dallas-based TXU Corp. The proposed plants would use an older technology allowing greater emissions of C02. A build-up of that gas in the earth's atmosphere has triggered global warming, experts say, and could ultimately impair human health and the environment.
Concern about the power plants and CO2 is coming not only from environmental and public-advocacy groups, but from the relatively conservative North Texas Clean Air Steering Committee. The committee is a 26-member volunteer group of local business and political leaders that advises the state on ways to clean up Dallas-Fort Worth's dirty air. The steering committee has agreed to hear expert presentations about CO2 and its relationship to global warming at its next regular meeting on Aug. 11. The group's meetings are hosted in Arlington at the headquarters of the North Central Texas Council of Governments.
Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck, a member of the steering committee, asked the group in a May 23 letter to look at predicted heavy CO2 emissions from the proposed power plants. Cluck's request was officially brought to the committee at its June 30 meeting. Cluck asked the group to broaden its scope. It currently limits itself to proposing controls -- related to cars, trucks and construction equipment -- on sources of smog-producing nitrogen oxide, or NOx, and volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. Cluck said he's been studying global warming and its health and environmental impacts for the past few years. He wasn't moved to action by "An Inconvenient Truth," the new Al Gore movie on global warming; in fact, he says he hasn't even seen it. "We want to make sure the power companies are using the latest technology," said Cluck, who is a physician by profession, explaining his motives for the proposal. "If we do nothing, we are in deep trouble."
Activists want the utility companies to use a newer, cleaner technology called "gasification," short for Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle. TXU and others building in Texas want to use more conventional technology that allows greater C02 emissions. TXU argues that its technology choice is based on what is currently "commercially viable" for the plants, which will be located in proximity to North Texas -- including several around Waco in Central Texas and in Fannin County, northeast of Dallas. "With regard to carbon, we've got people working diligently on this," said TXU spokeswoman Kim Morgan. "But there's no proven technology to address it."
Morgan said TXU wants to be "the clean-coal leader in the United States," but considers IGCC technology experimental. "We have $2 billion ready to move forward on this next-generation technology as soon as it's commercially ready," she said. Critics dispute that view, saying the IGCC technology is already in use in Europe, with some utilities planning to use it in future U.S. units.
Lois Finkleman, a former Dallas City Council member who sits on the Clean Air Steering Committee, said reaction to Cluck's CO2 proposal was mixed from the group's nearly 30 business and political leaders. She supports the discussion. "The reality of the significance of the problem has really awakened both political and business leaders," Finkleman said.
'A global problem'
Up until now, public advocacy and environmental groups in Texas have taken the lead in criticizing the proposed new coal-fired units. The plants would put more than 100 million tons of CO2 into the air annually, according to http://www.stopthecoalplant.org by the advocacy group Public Citizen. If the Clean Air Steering Committee decides to take up CO2 as part of its cause, it would be the first time, according to Mike Eastland, executive director of the COG. Several TXU representatives regularly attend the meetings and actively participate. While the company doesn't have a seat on the committee, it is a member of the nonprofit, Irving-based business advocacy group North Texas Commission, which does have a seat. TXU supports the CO2 discussion and plans to participate in it, Morgan said. "We share the same concerns about CO2," she said. "We think it's an issue that needs to be addressed. It's a global problem."
Currently, CO2 emissions, a byproduct of fossil fuel combustion, aren't specifically regulated by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. But 12 states -- not including Texas -- have sued the federal government in a bid to get CO2 regulated. That case is still pending. In addition, the Texas Legislature has granted the TCEQ authority to regulate global warming gases, like CO2, according to Public Citizen.
Observers of the judicial process under way at the national level predict it's only a matter of time before CO2 from industrial plants is regulated. CO2 from industrial sources has been increasingly implicated over the decades in what scientists warn is a global warming crisis, according to Neil Carman, formerly with the state as an environmental regulator, now a leading expert and advocate for clean air in Texas. Many think there's a likelihood for regulation, and believe that has prompted the current flood of permit applications for coal-fired power plants, Carman said. TXU's Morgan disagreed. "We don't think it's going to happen anytime soon," she said.
Industry may be trying to get in before the pollutant is regulated, then perhaps have the plants grandfathered out from under any later controls, Carman said. Or, if cleaner control technology is later mandated, the utilities could simply abandon their plans to build the conventional units, he said.
TXU will comply with whatever new regulations are initiated by Texas or the EPA, Morgan said. However, she added, "it would be very risky on our part to make a multibillion-dollar business decision based on regulations that may or may not be in effect 10 years down the road," she said. "We're looking at what we can accomplish now under state regulations and guidelines that are currently in place."
Because of the complex regulation issue, Eastland said COG's impact on the global warming debate may be mainly political. It's possible, he said, that an official push from the committee could add momentum to the growing movement to have C02 regulated. "They may want to write Congress and the EPA and say, 'This ought to be one of the regulated pollutants,' " Eastland said.
Morgan declined to say whether TXU would support such an effort. "It will be something we'll have to evaluate," she said. Carman sees the local initiative as part of a growing grassroots movement. "It's part of a growing effort across the nation," he said. "People feel the federal government has fallen by the wayside."
by Paula Lavigne, Dallas Morning News
July 16, 2006
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/071606dnccoorganics.19c550e.html
More and more shoppers are forking out extra money for organic foods to avoid chemicals, eat healthy and support the environment. But the USDA Organic label, stamped on foods as diverse as cookies, milk and mangos, may not be a mark the public can always trust. Organic food is supposed to be free of most chemical pest killers, fertilizers, antibiotics, hormones and genetic engineering. Organic farmers and ranchers must enrich the soil and be kind to animals; chickens should strut outside and cows should regularly graze.
But a Dallas Morning News analysis has found that the United States Department of Agriculture does not know how often organic rules are broken and has not consistently taken action when potential violations were pointed out. "The USDA has failed to enforce the regulations," said Jim Riddle, former chairman of the National Organics Standards Board and an appointed adviser to the USDA when the organic standards were enacted in 2002. "There have been no prosecutions of violations for the organic law yet. ... They've failed to take action."
Though a small slice of the overall food market, organics is growing at 16 percent a year, while overall food sales are rising only 3 percent. They are forecast to continue that pace as big grocers, most recently Wal-Mart, expand their organic offerings.
Barbara Robinson, the USDA executive who oversees the National Organic Program, said her small staff struggles to keep up with the booming industry. "When you have eight or nine people, and everybody wants something, you try to do a little bit of everything." She said the label is as good as the people who are growing and monitoring the products. "I don't think there are any absolutes in the world anywhere. I think that's kind of a ridiculous question," she said.
Ms. Robinson acknowledged that the agency hasn't fined anyone for misuse of the label, but she said certain products have been ordered to yank it. Retailers say the label is their cue that products are authentic. "If you buy an organic product at Wal-Mart, you can trust that it is USDA certified. But I would not be able to speak to whether those are the right standards or the wrong standards. We are retailers; we are not agronomists or scientists," said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Gail Lavielle.
The organic program monitors at least 20,000 organic growers, ranchers, processing plants and others worldwide. Texas looms large in organics, with more organic land than any other state. It is also home to one of the nation's biggest organic companies, Dean Foods in Dallas, which distributes Horizon Organic dairy products and Silk soy milk. Whole Foods of Austin is the nation's largest organic retail chain. Representatives from both companies say they take measures to make sure their products are organic.
USDA officials say the organics label is a selling point rather than a mark of nutrition. The dietary benefit of organics is the subject of debate. However, shoppers often view organic food as an investment in their health. About 66 percent of U.S. consumers buy organic products occasionally, according to a 2004 survey by the Hartman Group, a consumer research company. Almost half said they bought organic for their health and nutrition.
Those surveyed said having children was the most significant reason to go organic, and that's what prompted 28-year-old Megan Stewart of The Colony. Her 1-year-old daughter was recently strapped into a shopping cart filled with organic baby food in an aisle at Whole Foods in Plano. "I only get the USDA certified, rather than just packages that say all natural or organic," Mrs. Stewart said. "They are really under tight regulations."
But The News found the following reasons that organic shoppers may not be buying what they think they are:
Organic cheaters
Organics is full of true believers, farmers and food processors who go above and beyond what they're required to do. But they worry about organic scofflaws making a bad name for the whole industry. "There's definitely people who don't follow the rules," said Conner Updike, who grows organic beans and squash in central Florida. He uses chicken manure to fertilize his crops, but he's heard that some people cut corners and use ammonium nitrate -- a banned fertilizer -- that costs half as much and is hard to detect. "It's not fair to me," he said. "I'm trying to obey all the rules, and then someone else cheats."
The Washington State Department of Agriculture, for example, discovered a fruit farmer who applied banned chemicals to his orchard and a mint grower selling regular mint under the organic label. A Canadian certifier cried foul when inspectors found chickens at a Manitoba poultry producer that had no access to the outdoors, as required in organic laws. Among 268 complaints released by the USDA, about 50 were products erroneously claiming to be organic or falsely using the label. The USDA ordered them to stop.
Problems continue to crop up, but there's no way for the public to know how many cheaters there are. In April, The Dallas Morning News requested records of all violations regarding individual farms, ranches and handlers. USDA officials said they could not provide the documents for at least six months. Officials said it would take that long to collect and organize the information, though organic program rules require the USDA to make violation information available to the public on the program's Web site. But after four years, Ms. Robinson said her staff hasn't had time to make that happen.
Missing information
The USDA does not know how many violations there are because it is missing information from those who are supposed to be policing the industry at the ground level. The agency collects information from 56 certifiers in the United States and 40 in foreign countries, usually state-run agencies or private companies. Farms and processing plants can choose any USDA-approved certifier. A banana from Ecuador or rice from southeast Texas can carry the USDA label only if a certifier has given approval. Certifiers hire inspectors to walk through fields, interview plant workers and comb through records. The certifiers are then supposed to notify the USDA when there are problems.
However, The Dallas Morning News reviewed hundreds of audits of certifiers that show many violations. Yet the USDA has never yanked or suspended a certifier's accreditation, despite auditors' recommendations to do so. Auditors, from a separate USDA branch, wrote that certifiers approved food producers despite evidence that banned chemicals were used. Some gave approval without conducting inspections. USDA officials would not discuss the individual audits. It's unclear whether officials addressed problems auditors pointed out. But several audits note the same problems with the same certifiers year after year.
Inspectors, organic farmers and certifiers themselves say they know some cut corners. Sam Welsch, owner of OneCert, a certification agency in Lincoln, Neb., said some companies hire the cheapest inspectors, not the most qualified. "Even if one organization is doing a bad job, and a fraud issue would come up, that's bad for the whole industry," he said.
Big companies, such as Dean Foods, say they protect their consumers by going with reliable, trusted certifiers. "A lot of certification agencies have been doing this for decades. I see a lot of integrity in the certifiers and think they really have been working hand in hand with the USDA," said Kelly Shea, vice president of organic stewardship for WhiteWave Foods, a Dean Foods subsidiary. Ms. Shea said the industry would benefit if the USDA spent more money on enforcement.
Whole Foods took another route to assure customers and is a certified organic retailer. This special status requires the chain to make sure labeled products have documents to back them up. Whole Foods also tracks food back to its producers, said Joe Dickson, the company's organic programs coordinator.
The China connection
About 40 percent of organic farms and handlers are in foreign countries, including 300 farms and processing plants in China. Wal-Mart used some Chinese organic soybeans in its private-label soy milk. They've also been in Silk, the popular soy milk brand from WhiteWave.
The United States has 2.2 million organic acres; China has 8.6 million. Almost 90 percent was certified in 2004, which raises a red flag with Mr. Riddle, who said it's questionable that China could have transitioned farmland that quickly. China has a history of dousing fields with chemicals, researchers say. Fred Gale, a senior USDA economist who has researched Chinese agriculture, said it was "almost impossible to grow truly organic food in China." "The water everywhere is polluted, and the soil is contaminated from industry and mining, and the air is bad." Despite concerns about China, Ms. Robinson said the USDA is only responsible for approving the certifiers, whose job it is to check on Chinese farms or handlers.
The Organic Crop Improvement Association, a certifying agent in Lincoln, Neb., has given USDA Organic certificates to about 200 operations in China. Executive director Jeff See said his company has built trust with its producers since it started in China more than 12 years ago. At Rizhao Huasai Foodstuffs Co., in China's Shandong province, sales official Cui Min said workers sometimes use a fertilizer mix that includes human waste on their crops. It's a common practice in China but a clear violation of the USDA rules. Mr. See, whose company certified Rizhao Huasai, said workers there signed an affidavit stating they follow the rules, including those regarding fertilizers.
Simply trusting the word of a farmer might not be an adequate failsafe, said Mr. Gale, of the USDA. In China, "there have always been laws and regulations on the books, but you find a way around them," he said. Mutsumi Sakuyoshi, a Japanese inspector who has checked Chinese soybean fields for many of the world's largest certifiers, said she confronted one farm's workers after finding an empty plastic bag of herbicide. Workers told her wind must have blown it from a neighbor's field.
Another farmer gave her an affidavit stating the land under inspection hadn't been used for at least three years. Ms. Sakuyoshi found the government official who stamped it and questioned its accuracy. "He said, 'No. I don't know. I don't care. They just asked me to stamp it, so I stamped it,' " she said.
Mr. See said American farmers are more skeptical of Chinese organics because they're a competitive threat to domestic producers. "I wouldn't say there's probably never any problem with what OCIA has going on in China, but we find problems all around the world, even in the U.S.," he said.
Vague rules
Even when standards are upheld, there are concerns throughout the industry that rules are unclear. One of many examples is a rule that livestock must have "access to pasture." It doesn't say how much, for how long, or how much of a cow's meal has to come from leisurely munching. Big dairies, such as Aurora Organic Dairy and Horizon Organic, were criticized by activist groups for running "industrial-scale" feedlots, where they said cows rarely roamed on acres of dry, stubbly grass. Both companies insist their cows do graze and meet the requirements. Both have already added pasture. The debate triggered boycotts and led to a lengthy discussion during the Dean Foods shareholders meeting in Dallas in May.
The National Organic Standards Board stepped in and offered more detail, including a provision that cows must be on pasture for at least 120 days each year. It's now up to the USDA whether to make the recommendation law. Representatives of both dairies said they support the rule's precision.
Chris Grotegut is a farmer in the Texas Panhandle who grows corn, wheat, soybeans and other organic crops used in products distributed nationally. He said enforcing clear rules is the only way to make consumers trust the organic label. "That is a concern ... that credibility is maintained and people don't look at [organics] as a way to turn a conventional product into a fast buck to cheat the system."
by Dan Shapley, Poughkeepsie [New York] Journal
July 16, 2006
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060716/NEWS04/607160340/1006/NEWS01
While the national and state governments have started a crackdown on toxic mercury pollution from power plants, the largest sources of mercury in the Hudson Valley remain completely unregulated. The Hudson Valley's cement plants are owned by the world's largest cement manufacturers and they are New York's two largest sources of mercury air pollution, according to the latest federal data. The industry and the Environmental Protection Agency agree the technology that exists to reduce emissions wouldn't work well on cement kilns, but critics are skeptical. "It's mind boggling that it doesn't happen. Mercury is a well-known neuro-toxin," said Susan Falzon, a board member of Friends of Hudson, a nonprofit fighting for strict controls on cement plant emissions. "From the perspective of the public, with the power plant regulations, the public believes the EPA and the DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) are protecting public health from the effects of mercury. They're not," Falzon said.
The LaFarge Building Materials Inc. cement plant in Ravena, Albany County, and the St. Lawrence Cement Co. plant in Catskill, Greene County, top the state's mercury emissions list. Those two plants accounted for nearly 40 percent of New York's mercury pollution. The EPA has been successfully sued -- twice -- by environmental groups seeking to force the agency to set rules for curbing mercury emissions from the nation's 100 cement kilns, as the Clean Air Act requires. The rule it proposed under a court order, this fall, would require no reduction in mercury emissions.
Power plants may use a system called activated carbon injection to curb mercury emissions. Such systems would be costly for cement plants and could increase other types of liquid and solid wastes, EPA spokesman John Millett said. Because plants use limestone mined at the plant, setting a standard based on the level of mercury in limestone would also be unfeasible, he said.
Processes differ
In a power plant, a bag house traps dust from its boiler, then the activated carbon injection system could be used to extract mercury. But a cement plant kiln's high temperatures would melt a bag house, and the carbon injection won't work in the presence of excessive dust, said Luc Robitaille, corporate director of environment for St. Lawrence Cement Co., which is part of Holcim, a Swiss company with worldwide operations. "They ruled that there is no technology that exists in the cement industry to control mercury," Robitaille said.
Critics of the decision point to Zurich, Switzerland, where a cement plant is the world's only kiln using mercury controls. They also say emissions control is a chicken-and-egg process, and sometimes the requirement to reduce emissions is needed to spur technological innovation. New York, which just set strict mercury control rules for power plants, will turn its attention to other major sources of mercury pollution after it implements the power plant program, Department of Environmental Conservation spokeswoman Maureen Wren said.
This spring, the DEC permitted LaFarge, which is based in France, to burn waste tires along with coal at its Ravena plant, which it bought five years ago. That has a slight potential of increasing mercury emissions, but John Reagan, the plant's environmental manager, said an increase was "not likely."
Mercury occurs naturally on Earth, and can be released when soil erodes or volcanoes erupt. However, mercury concentrations in lake sediments have ebbed and flowed in lockstep with the trends of coal-fired industry. Cement kilns emit mercury both from burning coal and processing limestone and the degree of mercury in limestone deposits being mined influences how much particular plants emit.
Fish is contaminated
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Mercury contaminates fish, and people are exposed primarily by eating tainted fish -- including fish caught in pristine mountain streams, or bought from grocery stores. The body is slow to release mercury, so toxic levels can accumulate, particularly in children and unborn babies, leading to brain damage and other neurological problems. Consumers are often confused by conflicting advice on eating fish, which accumulate contaminants but also supply protein-rich meat and healthy Omega-3 fatty acids.
The federal and state governments have taken a number of steps to curtail mercury pollution. Mercury has been phased out of use as an ingredient in many products, like batteries, for instance. States also publish advisories against eating fish from certain waters -- including Chodikee Lake in Ulster County and the entire Catskill and Adirondack Mountain regions. Women and children should avoid frequently eating many fish species because of the risks of mercury contamination. However, advisories are posted only on those lakes and streams that have been tested, and some experts believe many untested waters are also contaminated.
Cement plant emissions represent a gap in the national push to reduce mercury pollution, restore polluted streams and make fish safe to eat. The debate over national mercury regulations on power plants highlighted the risks that downwind communities face from specific smokestacks. For that reason, several states, including New York, rejected the federal strategy of allowing power companies to trade mercury pollution credits so long as the nation's overall pollution level decreased. Instead, New York has required all coal-fired power plants to reduce emissions by 90 percent by 2015. When that rule takes effect, the two Hudson Valley cement plants will release three times as much as all New York's power plants combined, assuming emissions from the kilns stays constant.
Air pollution is key worry
Air pollution permits in the Hudson Valley are granted based on weather data from Albany that suggest pollution is primarily dispersed and carried east by prevailing winds. New research suggests, however, the Catskill and Berkshire-Taconic mountains act like a funnel to channel winds -- and presumably the pollutants they carry -- into the valley. They also can trap low-lying air masses in the valley, while westerly winds flow over the top.
David Fitzjarrald and Jeff Freedman of the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at the State University of New York at Albany, last month completed a three-year, $650,000 study paid for by the National Science Foundation. The research has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. "What goes on in the Hudson Valley is a phenomenon called channeling and it's been more extensively studied in the Rhine Valley in Germany -- another heavily industrialized region where they've studied how the valley affects the winds," Fitzjarrald said. "As you start thinking about where the outflow goes from one of these tall stacks ... that would lead to serious uncertainties about who would be getting the dose."
The scientists plan a follow-up study that could begin in fall and last two years. If funded again by the National Science Foundation, they would try to create a computer model describing the air flow in the Hudson Valley. That could then be used for air pollution models to better predict the effect of specific industries.
Many risks unaddressed
While the overall level of mercury in the atmosphere will decrease significantly as a result of national and state efforts to curb power plant pollution, many smokestack-specific risks of mercury were left unaddressed.
The nation's largest source of mercury was the Lehigh Southwest Cement plant in California. Five more of the nation's top 100 mercury polluters are cement plants, including LaFarge's Ravena plant, which landed at No. 89. Three of the nation's top mercury polluters were gold mines, including two of the top 10. Another six of the nation's top polluters were steel plants. New York's No. 3 mercury polluter is a Finger Lakes-region steel plant. The five other on the top 100 list were other types of metal or chemical plants.
In 2000, a federal judge ordered the EPA to draw up rules for limiting mercury, hydrochloric acid and hydrocarbons at the nation's cement plants. The decision was prompted by a lawsuit by EarthJustice and the Sierra Club, and the judge agreed the new rules were required by the Clean Air Act. After the EPA took no action, the environmental groups joined with others in a coalition and again sued successfully, in 2004, to force action.
Last fall, the EPA proposed new rules, and determined new and existing plants would face limits on hydrochloric acid and hydrocarbons, but that cost and technological barriers prevented regulation of mercury. The environmental coalition has protested. A final decision is expected in December. "It's just ridiculous," said Jim Pew, an attorney for EarthJustice. "These guys are big emitters and for whatever reason, EPA has decided to blow it off."
by Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post
July 15, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071401366.html
The Environmental Protection Agency tightened public health standards for dry cleaners yesterday, saying that cleaning shops in residential buildings must stop using a toxic solvent in their machines by 2020. Administration officials said the new restrictions on perchloroethylene, or perc, a hazardous air pollutant, would reduce Americans' exposure to a chemical linked to cancer and neurological damage. But environmentalists said the rule did not go far enough, since it will take years to phase out machines using the harmful solvent. About 28,000 dry cleaners across the country, many in major cities such as New York and Washington, use perc in the wash cycle to clean clothes. Of the total, 1,300 operate in residential buildings.
Several scientific studies have found a connection between dry cleaning employees' exposure to perc and impaired neurological function, along with a higher cancer risk. One study of two New York couples living above a dry cleaner on the Upper West Side found elevated levels of the chemical in their blood, urine and breast milk, as well as vision impairment linked to exposure. "This is an important step in our comprehensive strategy to expand and enhance public health protections in the dry cleaning industry," said William Wehrum, EPA's acting assistant administrator for air and radiation. "The phaseout in residential buildings and improved protections are good for public health and good for the environment."
Judith Schreiber, chief scientist for the New York attorney general's Environmental Protection Bureau, said "there's good news and there's bad news" in the EPA's decision. She welcomed the ban on any new perc operations in residential buildings, but she questioned why the agency was allowing cleaners 14 years to get rid of their old machines and why they were allowing dry cleaners in buildings housing offices and day-care centers to meet a less stringent standard. "An entire generation of newborns, infants and nursing mothers will be certain to be exposed to elevated perc levels in their homes," Schreiber said in an interview.
Frank O'Donnell, president of the advocacy group Clean Air Watch, noted that agency officials say Americans living above dry cleaners will still be exposed to the chemical for several years under the new regulations. In a fact sheet accompanying the rule, officials wrote that the rule would "gradually reduce risk from existing co-residential dry cleaners. However, risks from these co-residential facilities could remain significantly higher than EPA considers acceptable in some buildings until the phase-out of perchloroethylene machines is complete."
Agency officials wrote that the phaseout allows the government to protect the public health "without causing unacceptable adverse economic impact" on the industry. Tong Luu, who runs Cleaner Express in Aspen, Colo., said he did not object to the new rules but believes that the government may eventually ban perc. Luu's machines capture all perc emissions before they enter the atmosphere, he said, but he has not found a substitute that cleans as well. "It's not a bad thing, but sometimes you can't be asking for perfect, 100 percent" compliance, he said. Luu added he had to attend a one-day class in Colorado Springs after state inspectors found he did not lock the plastic container containing perc in back of his store.
The new rule also requires dry cleaners in nonresidential buildings to use devices to detect leaks and to reduce emissions by conducting the wash and dry cycles in the same machine. About 12 major dry cleaning operations would also have to install machines to capture emissions. New residential dry cleaners are not allowed to use perc, and existing ones must phase out the chemical as their older machines wear out. Dry cleaners have reduced perc emissions from 25,000 tons to 10,000 tons a year over the past decade by replacing older dry cleaning machines and improving their machines' efficiency, the EPA said.
by Marla Cone, Los Angeles Times
July 14, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-insecticides14jul14,0,4922297.story
Alarmed that popular insecticides that end up in urban streams are killing tiny aquatic creatures, California's pesticide agency is conducting a review that is likely to lead to restrictions on many products used on lawns and gardens. The chemicals, pyrethroids, are man-made versions of natural compounds in chrysanthemum flowers. Their use has skyrocketed in the past few years as U.S. consumers and exterminators search for less-toxic alternatives for dangerous insecticides already banned.
But last fall, a UC Berkeley scientist reported that pyrethroids are polluting streams in Northern California suburbs, wiping out crustaceans and insects vital to ecosystems. Mary-Ann Warmerdam, director of the state Department of Pesticide Regulation, said Thursday that notices will be sent next month to manufacturers of about 600 pyrethroid products informing them that the state is reevaluating their use. That kicks off a process that will probably culminate in new regulations, and perhaps bans of some products in California. "We've got the caution flag out," Warmerdam said. "This is a shot across the bow to the manufacturers that we found a reason for concern and you need to provide us with data to either eliminate the concern, reformulate your products or consider taking them off the market."
Allan Noe, a spokesman for CropLife America, representing pesticide manufacturers, said Thursday that the companies were unaware of California's intentions but will cooperate with its requests. He said the industry does not agree that there are toxicity problems but is analyzing the way the products are used. "The valuable contributions that pyrethroids make through agricultural and urban uses are many and these benefits need to be considered," Noe said.
The compounds, particularly one called permethrin, are prevalent in lawn products and household and pet sprays, as well as in insecticides sprayed by exterminators and farmers. Also, many cities and counties spray a pyrethroid for mosquito control to prevent the spread of West Nile virus.
Although they poison nerve cells of invertebrates, the compounds are among the least toxic insecticides for humans and other mammals as well as birds. That is why they have replaced the organophosphate insecticides diazinon and chlorpyrifos, which were phased out by the EPA because they are particularly hazardous for children. Use of pyrethroids by California farmers and exterminators has nearly tripled, growing from about 420,000 pounds in 1999 to 1.1 million pounds in 2004. Consumers' retail sales are not included in those numbers but state officials say their usage probably doubles that volume.
Donald Weston, an adjunct professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley, said his studies have shown that pyrethroids are flowing into storm drains and building up to toxic levels in stream sediment. Creeks in the Sacramento suburb of Roseville that contain high pyrethroid levels are devoid of tiny crustaceans called hyalella, while nearby streams with low levels are inhabited by them, according to Weston's study, published in October. In lab tests, nearly all samples of the pesticide-tainted sediments from the creeks killed the creatures. The creatures -- shrimp-like amphipods that live in bottom sediment -- are important prey for small fish, frogs, salamanders and aquatic insects. Their presence is often considered a sign of a healthy waterway.
Weston said that the most toxic compound in the creeks is bifenthrin, which is sprayed around houses by exterminators and is found in some consumer products that are spread on lawns. He did not find pyrethroids from farms or mosquito control in the creeks. About 20% of the Central Valley's streams contain pyrethroid levels that are toxic to the crustaceans. In addition, they have been detected in creeks in the Monterey area and the Imperial Valley. No tests have been done in the Los Angeles region.
Glenn Brank, a spokesman for the state pesticide department, called the targeting of pyrethroids "definitely the biggest regulatory initiative ever in California involving pesticides and surface waters." "It will be the kickoff for regulatory oversight for years to come," he said.
In restricting pyrethroids, however, the state agency hopes to keep some as options and ensure that people don't switch to products that wind up being worse. "We want to do our best to maintain these materials and their viability. They are relatively safe. They don't pose a human health problem like these other materials do," Warmerdam said. The EPA is also reviewing pyrethroids for possible national restrictions.
Consumers can identify pyrethroids in products by checking labels for compounds that end in "thrin." They are broad spectrum insecticides effective against a wide variety of flying and crawling insects. State officials said they will be particularly careful in restricting any pyrethroids sprayed by vector control agencies, since combating the West Nile virus, which is spread by mosquitoes, is important.
When manufacturers receive the state notices next month, they must agree within 60 days to begin gathering information about their products' toxicity and buildup in waterways. If they refuse, the agency will immediately cancel their products and they cannot be sold in California. Labels required by the EPA define how much should be used and prohibit application within 100 feet of waterways. But Warmerdam said the current warnings may be insufficient because consumers now use large volumes. "The problem is not the material itself. The real challenge is trying to address what appears to be misuse and misapplication ... We may have to eliminate products altogether" or require them in different forms less prone to runoff, she said.
by Connie Paige, Boston Globe
July 13, 2006
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/07/13/pesticides_foes_make_it_personal/
If you notice a small, brightly colored sign about the size of a checkbook hung on your doorknob in Newton, consider it a kindly reminder -- not a challenge. In what could seem like an aggressive new tactic, members of the local environmental group are delivering the notices to neighbors to warn against the use of harsh chemicals on lawns, shrubs, and flower gardens, and to recommend healthier choices.
On a recent walking tour around one Newton Centre neighborhood, Lucia Dolan and Karen Albert, two of the three cochairs for the Green Decade Coalition's Committee for Alternatives to Pesticides, considered carefully which homes they should target. Dolan said she looks for the tiny yellow flags stuck into lawns that indicate they have been treated by a landscaping company using pesticides, and approaches only those front doors. Albert puts the door hangers everywhere. Since this was Dolan's neighborhood, she made the choice. She found only one yellow flag and affixed only one door hanger.
Dolan compares the campaign to the antitobacco activism that eventually led to the banning of smoking in public places. "It's like second-hand smoke," she said. "In some ways smoking is seen as a personal choice, but everybody has to breathe the air."
The grass-roots organizers in Newton may soon be joined by others statewide. Earlier this month, Maeve Ward, the third cochairwoman of GreenCap, participated in a conference in Worcester aiming to start a Northeast regional anti-pesticide coalition. GreenCAP organizers say that they do not blame those who rely on chemicals. "I give them the benefit of the doubt: They don't know what they're doing," said Ellie Goldberg , a founder of GreenCAP in 1994 as part of the Green Decade Coalition in Newton. "The status quo is that people have license to poison and that citizens should be intimidated," said Goldberg, whose husband died of cancer and whose oldest daughter has asthma. "What's a bigger violation of community or of a behavioral norm: Is it somebody trying to reach people with opportunities to live a better way, or is it people who go around spraying poison or getting other people to poison?"
GreenCAP and Green Decade have amassed information about the chemicals in pesticides, and the harm they could cause. Quoting research from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, GreenCAP members say studies have found pesticides could be linked to asthma, learning disabilities, and behavioral problems, as well as rising rates of some cancers. They say the research suggests that children are more vulnerable than adults. GreenCAP members consider the term pesticide as a broad category that includes herbicides and fungicides, which are also considered harmful, Dolan said.
The environmentalists have compiled lists of alternative treatments for lawns, shrubs, and flowers. They also recommend training courses for landscapers through the Northeast Organic Farming Association. GreenCAP has printed up about 500 of the door hangers and is about to complete a second printing. Members hand them out at farmer s markets in the city and display them at events sponsored by Green Decade.
Dolan said she sympathizes with neighbors and other city residents who see a perfect lawn as a necessity to convey a tidy professional image -- such as for psychiatrists using a home office to see patients -- and strong doses of chemicals as the only way to attain it. Still, she believes she can appeal to them on the basis of what might be their individual concerns, such as danger to their children. "The first couple of times you say something, a lot of people might not listen," she said. "A lot of it is a just the convenience barrier. Like getting kids to eat broccoli."
by Anton Caputo, San Antonio Express-News
July 13, 2006
http://www.mysanantonio.com/salife/health/stories/MYSA071306.01A.corpus_defect.16e53d4.html
A long-awaited study of babies born in the Corpus Christi area has found them 17 percent more likely to have a severe birth defect and nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with any birth defect as those born in the rest of the state. The finding, using six years of data from the Texas Birth Defects Registry, is the first of a two-phase study trying to determine if a link exists between higher rates of birth defects and environmental hazards such as refineries and landfills in Nueces County, as some local residents long have feared.
The next phase, which should take at least a year to complete, will look at how close to potentially hazardous sites the mothers lived during their pregnancies. "Further investigation is definitely warranted," said Dr. Peter Langlois, senior state epidemiologist with the Texas Department of State Health Services, who conducted the study. "The tricky part with epidemiology is that you will always have some areas that are higher and some that are lower," Langlois said. "It's important to proceed with the case-controlled study."
Suzie Canales, who heads Citizens For Environmental Justice, a local group that requested the study, has firsthand experience with the issue. Her two grandsons, now ages 4 and 10 months, were born with holes in their hearts. Both are being closely monitored for signs of slow growth -- which could mean they would need a corrective procedure -- but both have been doing well. "What I remember is being in the waiting room holding my 4-day-old grandson and wondering how anyone so little can need a cardiologist," she said.
Because birth defects are such a hot topic in Corpus Christi, Langlois said state health officials literally are ignoring the overall birth defects statistics -- which are 84 percent higher than the state average -- and concentrating on only the severe defects for the second part of the study. That's because it's possible minor birth defects are diagnosed at a greater rate in the Corpus area because doctors there are more likely to diagnose them. Severe defects are defined as those that require surgery or some other type of corrective procedure, or as cases in which the pregnancy was terminated or the baby was stillborn or died within the first year. Most of the defects found at higher rates involved heart abnormalities.
A similar set of studies was conducted from 2001 to 2003 and found a loose correlation between environmental hazards and elevated rates for six birth defects. However, Langlois acknowledged those studies "suffered from some problems" -- mainly relying on only two years of data. That study also didn't account for the size of the hazardous sites, which in many cases were several acres.
The newly released study analyzed 170 potentially severe birth defects that occurred between 1996 and 2002. Of those, 16 types of defects were found at a rate 50 percent or greater than the state average. Most of them, except for those with too few numbers to be statistically significant, will be included in the second phase.
Dr. Mark Morales, a thoracic surgeon at Corpus Christi's Driscoll Children's Hospital, said he's curious to see the final geographical breakdown, which should come with the second phase. There's always been a perception that birth defects are higher in Corpus Christi, Morales said, adding that he hopes the research provides some much-needed answers. "I'm very interested in this," he said. "There has always been a feeling that there is an increase of heart defects in South Texas and Nueces County."
The state registry was created in 1993 after a cluster of babies born without brains, a condition known as anencephaly, was discovered in the Brownsville area. A subsequent investigation found a higher than expected rate of neural tube defects, including anencephaly and spina bifida, born to South Texas Hispanic mothers.
See a follow-up story at http://www.caller.com/ccct/local_news/article/0,1641,CCCT_811_4849780,00.html.
by Zachary Coile, San Francisco Chronicle
July 13, 2006
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/13/MNG20JU7DK1.DTL
Washington -- House Republicans are pushing new legislation that could wipe out the ability of California and other states to ban or strictly limit the use of pesticides and toxic industrial chemicals that can jeopardize human health. The measure, approved by a House committee Wednesday on a mostly party line vote, is the latest effort by the Republican-led Congress to block states from enacting environmental, public health or consumer protections that are more stringent than federal standards.
The bill could override a new California law to ban the use of brominated fire retardants, which are believed to have some of the same neurotoxic effects as PCBs and have been found in high concentrations in fish in the San Francisco Bay. The measure could also thwart new restrictions passed last month by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to restrict the use of certain chemicals in plastic baby bottles, pacifiers and toys, after studies showed they could pose a health risk.
California officials say the bill is part of a broader push by Republicans to aid their allies in industry with weaker national standards on issues from food labeling to fuel efficiency to consumer financial privacy -- although some of the efforts have been blocked in the Senate. Sponsors of the new bill say it is aimed at implementing the Stockholm Convention, an international treaty signed by 127 nations to ban some of the world's most dangerous chemicals -- called persistent organic pollutants, or POPs for short. The treaty was first negotiated by President Bill Clinton and signed by President Bush in 2001, but it has yet to be ratified by Congress.
The treaty also is known as the "Dirty Dozen treaty" because it requires all signing countries to outlaw or severely restrict a dozen toxic chemicals -- such as DDT, dioxins, PCBs and the pesticide chlordane -- that can accumulate up the food chain and are linked to health effects including allergies, cancer, birth defects and damage to the immune and reproductive systems of humans and other species.
Bush endorsed the treaty at a Rose Garden ceremony in April 2001, saying, "We must work to eliminate or at least to severely restrict the release of these toxins without delay." But environmentalists and public health advocates argue the new bill pushed by GOP lawmakers and backed by the White House is actually an effort to undermine the treaty by creating new loopholes that would allow the chemical industry to keep producing and selling potentially toxic agents.
The legislation would require the Environmental Protection Agency to use a cost-benefit standard when determining whether to ban chemicals in pesticides or industrial products. Critics claim the provision could delay the phasing out of toxins by forcing the agency to conduct economic analysis on whether new regulations are too onerous on the industry. "These new criteria will expand the number of analyses required, delay regulatory action and provide many new opportunities to judicially challenge any EPA regulation of a future listed (toxic) chemical," said Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., the ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
On a party line vote Wednesday, the committee defeated an effort to replace the cost-benefit standard with a standard that focused solely on human health risks. Democrats complained the new legislation was aimed at blocking state and local governments from enacting their own tough standards to ban or restrict the use of toxic chemicals. The bill is opposed by a dozen state attorneys general, including California's Bill Lockyer, as well as the American Nurses Association and more than 60 environmental and public health groups.
The bill's sponsor, Rep. Paul Gillmor, R-Ohio, insisted that state and local governments would still have some authority under existing law to ban toxic chemicals or to petition the EPA to implement tougher restrictions. But the bill's language makes clear the United States can only have a single national standard on new pollutants to meet the treaty's requirements, not a series of state standards.
Critics also complained the new legislation has no clear timetable to force EPA to act to regulate a new pollutant once it's been added to the treaty's list of banned substances. "There's no requirement that EPA do anything after an international decision has been made to add a new (chemical) ... and no citizen participation process to challenge the EPA," said Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara.
But Republicans on the panel said the measure was carefully written to avoid giving too much power to environmental officials at the United Nations and foreign countries over regulations in the United States. "Simply put, (the bill) protects U.S. sovereignty," said Rep. John Sullivan, R-Okla.
The bill passed, 28-15, but it still faces several hurdles. The House and Senate Agriculture committees must also approve bills to implement the treaty because it regulates pesticides. The Senate Energy and Public Works Committee has yet to take up any legislation related to the treaty.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee also sparred over a proposal to require manufacturers of antifreeze to use denatonium benzoate -- an extremely bitter substance that makes antifreeze unpalatable to drink. About 1,400 children and 10,000 animals are poisoned each year after drinking ethylene glycol, a toxic substance in antifreeze that has a sweet taste and smell that can be attractive to kids and pets. But some Democrats argued the bill, despite its good intentions, may have unintended consequences. Denatonium benzoate does not biodegrade easily and some water agencies fear it could contaminate groundwater.
Critics said it would be irresponsible to pass the requirement and give broad legal immunity to antifreeze makers who use it without more research on the chemical's effects on human health. But the bill's sponsors said the concerns were overblown, since the substance has been in widespread use in products since the 1960s. California, New Mexico and Oregon have passed laws requiring that a bittering agent be used in antifreeze, and other states are considering them. The bill passed by a 30-15 vote.
by Naomi Lubick, Environmental Science & Technology
July 12, 2006
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2006/jul/science/nl_plasticizers.html
Infants imbibing breast milk may also be sucking down a high dose of phthalates, the ubiquitous toxic plasticizers that are in many consumer products, from lipstick to vinyl flooring. New research published today on ES&T's Research ASAP website provides one of the first snapshots of phthalate delivery through breast milk. For 6 months, scientists tracked phthalate levels in the breast milk of Canadian mothers, but the health implications remain unclear and the data show that the amount of the toxic ingested by infants can vary from feeding to feeding.
The preliminary results of the long-term study show significant levels of phthalates in breast milk from >80 women: The mean values of di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), dibutyl phthalate (DBP), and diethyl phthalate (DEP) were 222, 0.87, and 0.31 ppb (ng/g), respectively, although DEP appeared in only a few samples. (Three other target esters -- dimethyl phthalate, butyl benzyl phthalate, and dioctyl phthalate -- were not found.) The researchers, led by Jiping Zhu of Health Canada, translated that load to a phthalate esters dose of 167 µg/d for a 7-kg baby drinking 750 g of breast milk daily.
The team also reported that the amount of each phthalate varied in a subset of 21 women tested. In some women, the levels gradually increased during the study period, while other mothers showed declining concentrations or levels that increased and then declined. The team could not control for that variation, which they hypothesized could be attributable to exposures during the women's daily activities to products containing phthalates. The researchers compared their results with those of a previous study of German women, finding that the levels of DEHP were much higher and of DBP much lower in the Canadian mothers than in the German mothers. The disparity between these studies adds a regional twist to the exposure and transmission story that remains to be explained.
Overall, the work is "another piece of evidence that phthalates are being detected in biological samples of many types," from urine to blood, says Gary Adamkiewicz, a research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health. He adds that the results raise more questions than they answer. "The fact that you're seeing it in breast milk highlights the fact that you need to understand the effects of a significant dose during that first year of life," he says. "What are the health effects down the road? What are the health effects for that child? That is the one big question highlighted."
Other factors could possibly produce the variability documented within individual mothers, Adamkiewicz notes. But if exposure is the key, then more controlled studies (although incredibly difficult) could lead to ways of limiting phthalates in everyday use and thus minimizing the amount a mother carries in her breast milk. "This is not a call to stop breast-feeding," he emphasizes.
Phthalates are quickly metabolized, within a matter of hours on average, and kicked out of animals' systems, says Antonia Calafat, a research chemist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Environmental Health. Calafat emphasizes that she has not seen the research of Zhu and colleagues, but she says that DEHP could partition into fat, so its presence in fatty breast milk is not surprising. She also notes that earlier studies that used phthalate diesters (generally in blood) as markers of exposure were limited to highly exposed populations (e.g., in occupational settings) because the analytical methods for measuring these diesters are difficult. Typically, detections of phthalates come from measurements of monoesters, after the body metabolizes the phthalate diesters.
The Health Canada researchers document some of the precautions they took to avoid outside contamination, such as using glass and nonplasticized containers for collecting the breast-milk samples. The researchers also emphasize that the benefits of breastfeeding, both social and physical, still outweigh any perceived hazard of phthalate consumption in infants. The compounds' effects on children remain controversial, though previous studies in rats as well as humans show that they potentially affect development.
by Bill Hendrick, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
July 12, 2006
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/health/stories/0712meshemory.html
People who were exposed to a common pesticide while in the womb or during breastfeeding decades ago may be at increased risk of developing Parkinson's disease after age 50 than contemporaries who weren't, according to Emory University scientists whose studies on pregnant and nursing mice demonstrated the link. The pesticide dieldrin was commonly used for insect control in crops and as a termite killer in home foundations, said researcher Gary Miller, a neurotoxicologist at Emory's Center for Neurodegenerative Disease. Environmental exposures have long been thought to trigger Parkinson's in adults, but this is the first study to suggest that exposure to fetuses and breastfeeding babies could be harmful, Miller said. "Although most people are diagnosed in mid to late life with Parkinson's, experimental evidence suggests that neurodegeneration begins long before clinical diagnosis," Miller said.
Dieldrin, developed in 1940 as an alternative to DDT, is a probable human carcinogen, Miller said. The Environmental Protection Agency banned the pesticide for all uses except termite control in 1974 and that use was banned in 1987.
Defining Parkinson's
Parkinson's disease involves the death of brain cells that produce the chemical messenger dopamine, a neurotransmitter that sends information to parts of the brain that control movement and coordination. Victims are left incapable of initiating and controlling movements normally. Though Parkinson's is usually considered a disease of aging, 5 percent of its victims are thought to inherit a mutated gene that causes it, Miller said. Fifteen percent of Americans diagnosed with Parkinson's annually are under 50. All told, about 1.5 million Americans have the disease. Miller said the incidence of Parkinson's is highest in the South and in rural areas. Emory sees about 2,000 patients with Parkinson's a year.
Dieldrin is still detectable in the environment -- in the ground, in home foundations, and many food sources, including shellfish, meat, dairy and root crops -- but levels of the pesticide have decreased dramatically in recent decades, Miller said. Because it and similar chemicals persist in the food chain, exposure by pregnant women now could still pose a risk to their babies, he added.
But Miller said his research should not discourage women from breastfeeding. "The pesticides currently in use do not accumulate in mother's milk the way these older compounds did," Miller said. "The risk of potential pesticide exposure via breastfeeding today is far outweighed by the beneficial effects of breastfeeding."
In the Emory study, pregnant mice were given a dose of dieldrin, or a placebo, every three days throughout gestation and lactation. Then, when the mice were three months old, they were killed and their brains examined for abnormalities that in humans lead to Parkinson's. In the offspring of mice treated with dieldrin, the researchers found an elevation of the dopamine transporter, a regulator of the brain system that in humans is affected by Parkinson's, said Miller. "Mice," he added, "don't typically get Parkinson's disease." "The fact that we saw these molecular changes in animals ... that had never been directly exposed to the pesticide indicated the importance of the developmental exposure," he said. The study also found that male rodent offspring were more vulnerable than females. Among humans, men are much more likely to get Parkinson's than women, he added.
What can be done
Miller said the study's results "provide a potential molecular mechanism responsible for the association between dieldrin exposure and increased risk of PD and suggests that greater attention should be focused on the role of early life exposures and the development of PD." He said the study suggests that people born between 1940 and 1960 -- when dieldrin was widely used -- who were breast-fed are likely at increased risk for developing Parkinson's. He said he does not know of any registry that links the disease in humans to possible exposure to chemicals.
The study should encourage scientists to look "at where mothers of PD patients lived, whether they breastfed, lived in rural areas where pesticides were more likely to have been used," Miller said. "We have banned these compounds in the United States," he said. "The better we understand what causes the disease, it might suggest a better option for treatment."
Link long suspected
A relationship between pesticides and Parkinson's has been thought to exist for years. Just two weeks ago, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health reported anew that people with exposure to pesticides had a 70 percent higher incidence of Parkinson's than those who hadn't. Dr. Michael S. Okun, co-director of the Movement Disorders Center at the University of Florida, said the Emory study should be interpreted "with caution as it is unclear at this time whether dieldrin is important in the human form of the disease."
But Okun, also medical director of the National Parkinson Foundation, added that "the emerging information on the effects of pesticides and environmental exposures on the development of neurodegenerative diseases represents an important emerging area of research." The Emory study, funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Science, was published June 29 in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal.
by Judy Fahys, Salt Lake Tribune
July 12, 2006
http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_4039619
Mercury sometimes uses air currents like a passenger on a global TRAX light rail train -- catching a ride, hopping off, then jumping on again, all over creation. This "grasshopper effect," says U.S. Geological Survey researcher Donald H. Campbell, means currents often carry mercury soot far from the coal-burning power plants and other pollution sources that produce it. And this air-transport system is so effective that Campbell's team of scientists has found as much mercury in remote, high-elevation areas of the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado as in industrialized mercury hot spots in the Midwest. "There's a global pool of mercury we need to be concerned about," he told Salt Lake City scientists Tuesday during an informal presentation at the USGS office.
Utahns have been puzzling for more than a year over why some of the highest levels of toxic mercury have been found in the Great Salt Lake, which is relatively isolated from power plants generally blamed for most mercury pollution. The concern has grown as state health and environment officials issued the state's first-ever advisories against eating fish because of too-high mercury and the nation's first-ever warnings against eating two duck species with excessive mercury.
David Naftz, a Utah-based Geological Survey geochemist, said his colleague's findings offer perspective on the role air currents might play in delivering mercury into the local environment. But he also noted that, while there is good data about mercury falling in the Colorado national park, there is virtually none showing how currents deposit mercury here. "It points to a big data gap here in Utah," he said. "It seems like a big hole we need to try to address."
Scientists and environmentalists have speculated that gold ore "roasters" in Nevada pump tons of mercury into the air every year, which later drifts into Utah. But coal-fired power plants in China and other sources around the world might also be playing a role. State environmental officials have requested a grant of more than $100,000 from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to study the issue. But they have put off air monitoring for now.
The grasshopper effect allows mercury to be washed from the skies onto the ground, and because mercury readily resumes its vapor form when it's warmed, it can go airborne again and again. Neither sulfur nor nitrogen has this hopping habit, making mercury's behavior a new puzzle for scientists. Campbell showed one map that revealed mercury in the snow at Colorado's Buffalo Pass that was 7.6 micrograms per cubic meter -- comparable with sites in Wisconsin, where there is a statewide fish advisory because of mercury.
Mercury sometimes takes a toxic form in the environment that builds up in the food chain. It also builds up in people who eat too much mercury-tainted fish. People with high levels of mercury can suffer a variety of health problems, including neurological problems. Unborn children and young children are considered especially vulnerable. Campbell also has studied acid rain and has watched how increasing amounts of nitrogen wind up in remote parts of the Rockies and disrupt plant and animal systems that are not used to being so heavily fertilized. Logan, in Utah's Cache County, is one such hot spot. Scientists are interested in how this excess nitrogen might contribute to the air pollution problems the northern Utah university town has in the winter.
by Mark Clayton, Christian Science Monitor
July 12, 2006
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0712/p02s01-usgn.html
Tuna is the top fish on American consumers' plates and a favorite of children. But some imported canned tuna may contain far higher levels of toxic mercury than federal warnings indicate, a new study shows. Among 144 cans of mostly foreign brand "light tuna" pulled off grocery store shelves nationwide and tested, the average mercury content was .269 parts per million (p.p.m), more than twice the average reported by the US Food and Drug Administration and far above the FDA's cutoff for fish deemed "low-mercury," the study found.
While mercury in fish isn't new, the study released Tuesday challenges the notion that "light tuna" represents little risk. "Despite the general view that light tuna contains less mercury than white albacore tuna, our results showed that mercury levels in chunk light tuna, depending on its origin, can be as high as and, in some cases far higher than, those in albacore tuna," said the study by Defenders of Wildlife, an environmental group, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Mercury Policy Project, nonprofit public interest organizations.
An industry spokesman for the US Tuna Foundation, which represents US producers, declined comment, saying he needed more time to review the study. But in a December 2005 response to a Chicago Tribune series on mercury in canned tuna, the foundation said "research in the US and abroad confirms that no one is at risk from the minute amounts of mercury in this popular food."
In 2004, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the FDA issued guidelines on mercury intake from tuna, especially for children and pregnant women. Among canned tuna, "albacore" averaged higher levels of mercury while light tuna was a "low-mercury fish," the FDA said. While federal testing has focused on US brands, mercury in imports from Costa Rica, Ecuador, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, and other countries has gone largely unrecognized, says the study.
Imports are now more than half of all canned tuna sold. And some tested cans from Latin America contained more mercury than king mackerel, shark, and swordfish, considered by FDA to have the "highest levels of mercury." Ecuador, in 2003 the second-largest exporter of canned tuna to the US after Thailand, had the highest average mercury -- 0.75 p.p.m., the study found. By comparison, the FDA has recommended against eating king mackerel, a fish found to have average mercury of 0.73 p.p.m.
The study recommends a thorough assessment of mercury in canned tuna, closer examination of imports, and revised FDA guidelines. It also raises questions about federal programs for low-income women and infants that often promote tuna as a low-cost source of protein. "What we've found is that the government is not enforcing its own standards and very high-mercury containing fish is sold all the time in the US," says Caroline Smith DeWaal, of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
An EPA spokesman deferred comment to the FDA. "We can't comment on other studies because we can't validate their test methods," FDA spokesman Michael Herndon says in an e-mail. "FDA has done extensive testing of its own and continues to stand by the [2004] advisory."
by Dale Rodebaugh, Durango [Colorado] Herald
July 11, 2006
http://durangoherald.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=news&article_path=/news/06/news060711_4.htm
Five Colorado environmental groups, including two in Durango, want the state to require gas-producing firms to publicly disclose the names of the chemicals they use in drilling and other subterranean operations. In a June 14 letter to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, the groups said the energy companies are using chemicals toxic to humans in producing gas and oil. "The industry uses at least 190 chemicals in one product or the other, in one way or another," according to Theo Colborn, president of The Endocrine Disruption Exchange. "The components of many of the products are unavailable to the public."
Colborn's organization gathers and interprets research on chemicals called endocrine disruptors -- substances that interfere with hormones, enzymes and growth factors. Colborn has worked for public and private agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the United Nations and the World Wildlife Fund. The San Juan Citizens Alliance and the Oil and Gas Accountability Project, both of Durango, and the Western Colorado Congress, Western Slope Environmental Resource Council and Grand Valley Citizens Alliance signed the letter.
What especially interests the group is hydraulic fracturing. Known as frac'ing, the practice injects fluids under high pressure to open rock strata -- coal beds in the San Juan Basin -- to release gas. The liquids contain toxic chemicals harmful to humans, according to the group.
Water and sand are the main ingredients in concoctions injected into coal formations to extract methane gas, said Dan Larson, the spokesman for BP America in Durango. A thickener (guar gum), similar to one found in ice cream, keeps the sand in suspension so it doesn't sink to the bottom, allowing it to keep the rock fractures open. When it's time to remove the thickener, an enzyme turns it into liquid. The agents used in the processes often are proprietary, Larson said. Energy companies don't want to share their secrets with competitors, he said. But frac'ing is necessary. "You need a way to crack the formations," Larson said. "Without stimulation, a well won't produce. If you can't use frac'ing, you might as well not drill a well."
Guar gum, a food additive, isn't the problem, Colborn said. It's the other substances used. Gas drillers say 70 percent of what they inject into the ground is recovered, but the remaining 30 percent remains in the earth, Colborn said. Recovered substances are stored in open pits where volatile substances evaporate or are injected again into the ground.
Larson said that when BP started its infill program (reducing the acreage required per well pad) in 2001, the company signed an agreement with the state and La Plata County to test the two nearest domestic water wells to a drilling site. "We tested before and after -- thousands of tests," Larson said. "There was never one incident of (potable) water being affected." Probably not, was Colborn's answer. Testing should be done further afield because contaminants drift.
Greg Schnacke, executive vice president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, said the environmental groups are retracing their steps. "This issue has been studied at least a dozen times, including by the EPA," Schnacke said. "The conclusion has been that frac'ing is not harmful. Why go through this again? Where is the evidence? This sounds like a fishing expedition."
Colborn said full disclosure is the issue. If gas and oil companies don't disclose the full range of the chemicals they use, no realistic evaluation of their short- and long-range effects can be made, Colborn said. "These chemicals attack the nervous system, skin and reproductive system," Colborn said. "They can have long-term health impacts, including cancer."
by Julie Davidow, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
July 11, 2006
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/277124_fish11.html
If you are still balancing the risks and benefits of eating fish, stop. There is no contest. Fish, especially fatty fish, is good for you. For most people, experts say, the benefits outweigh any drawbacks related to concerns about toxic matter in fish. In the latest studies of fish-related health benefits, published Monday in the Archives of Ophthalmology, researchers found that eating fish rich in omega-3s reduced the risk of macular degeneration, the leading cause of age-related blindness. The research confirms similar earlier findings.
Omega-3 fatty acids are found in the highest concentrations in oily fish such as salmon, trout and herring. The most documented benefit of omega-3s is to cardiovascular health. Just why it happens is still being studied, but the American Heart Association says research has shown that omega-3 fatty acids contribute to a decreased risk of sudden death and arrhythmia; decreased thrombosis (blood clots); decreased triglyceride levels; decreased growth of atherosclerotic plaque; and lower blood pressure. Omega-3s also show promise for reducing the risk of dementia, arthritis, asthma and kidney disease, the heart association reports.
Despite the clear benefits of fish, warnings about polluted waters have some concerned that a buildup of toxic matter in fish, including mercury and PCBs, could diminish or counteract their good work. High levels of PCBs have been found in Puget Sound chinook salmon, for example. Because pregnant women and children are more vulnerable, health officials recommend taking special care to avoid large fish that tend to accumulate toxic matter, including swordfish, tilefish and mackerel. Canned albacore tuna also should be eaten sparingly.
Still, for the overall population, "There's no evidence that any toxic effect of anything like mercury outweighs the benefits," said Dr. David Siscovick, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Washington. The new studies on blindness aren't the strongest level of scientific evidence, but they confirm the findings of previous studies that also link fish consumption with prevention of macular degeneration.
A study of 681 elderly American men showed that those who ate fish twice a week had a 36 percent lower risk of macular degeneration. In the other study, which followed 2,335 Australian men and women over five years, people who ate fish just once a week reduced their risk by 40 percent. Researchers don't yet know why eating fish seems to protect the eyes. Omega-3 fatty acids may neutralize free radicals in the eye, prevent the formation of new blood vessels, reduce inflammation or all three, said Dr. Emily Chew of the National Eye Institute.
The benefits of a diet rich in fatty fish were first observed in the Eskimos of Greenland and in Japan, Siscovick said. Omega-3 fats, which help keep cold-water fish from freezing, act as a natural blood thinner and anti-inflammatory in humans. And as little as two 3-ounce servings a week can make a difference for cardiovascular health, Siscovick said. "Not all fish are alike," Siscovick said. "The type of fish (and how it's prepared) is important." For example, baked or broiled salmon is a better choice than a fried cod sandwich, he said. Salmon, which is high in omega-3 fatty acids and relatively low in mercury contamination, is generally a good choice, experts say.
Depending on where the fish feed and are caught, they might also have higher levels of contaminants, said Gary Palcisko of the state Health Department. The department is preparing a report looking at salmon caught in Puget Sound, for example. "Although Puget Sound salmon may be more contaminated than those that come from the ocean, relative to other types (of fish) it's still low," Palcisko said. "Salmon is still a good choice."
Unless contamination of the waters is recognized and contained, at some point the risks of eating fish could outweigh the benefits, some activists say. Peter Ross of the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans studies the levels of PCBs in harbor seals in British Columbia and Washington. The seals eat up to 12 pounds of fish a day, including herring, salmon and sole, "serving as a bit of an early warning system as to what's happening at the top of the food chain," Ross said. In the harbor seals he studied, Ross found reduced immune system function and thyroid levels that are consistent with PCB exposure. "It's important for us to identify what's happening in the environment, and it's important for us to act on those trends."
The benefits and risks of eating fish vary depending on a person's stage of life. Children and pregnant and nursing women may be at higher risk of exposure to excessive mercury from fish, according to the American Heart Association. For middle-aged and older men, and women after menopause, the benefits of eating fish far outweigh the risks within the established guidelines of the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, the association says.
by Rex Springston, Richmond Times-Dispatch
July 11, 2006
http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149189068513&path=!news&s=1045855934842
Nearly 9,000 miles of Virginia's rivers and streams are polluted, a new state report says. That's 63 percent of the waters checked. The dirty waters are up from 6,931 miles, or 61 percent, in 2004, when the last report came out. "As we continue to look more closely, we are finding that pollution is affecting waters across the state," said Bill Hayden, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Quality.
The DEQ prepares its water-quality report, sometimes called the "dirty-water list," every other year. It is Virginia's most important document detailing the health of state waters. The polluted stretches -- the state calls them impaired -- include such well-known dirty waters as the James River in the Richmond area, which is tainted by fecal bacteria from animal manure and other sources, and the Elizabeth River in Hampton Roads, which is fouled by the industrial chemical TBT, among other things.
New sections on the list include the James from Big Island, near the Blue Ridge Parkway, to downtown Richmond, which is tainted by toxic chemicals called PCBs. The proportion of waters reported to be polluted has gone up from 7 percent of those checked in 1996, to 15 percent in 1998, to 49 percent in 2002. Hayden warned against comparisons because the DEQ has frequently changed its study methods. "We try to get more precise each time," he said. "We try to get more thorough each time."
The trend looks worse than it is because the numbers are cumulative, Hayden said. Once a stretch gets on the dirty-water list, the state must make cleanup plans and put them in place. It can take years to get a stream off the list. The numbers also reflect tougher standards -- meaning more dirty miles -- established in recent years for mercury and PCBs, state officials said.
While the overall numbers don't look good, many streams, particularly those fouled by bacteria, are showing improvement, Hayden said. The main sources of problems were fecal bacteria, from such things as animal waste; PCBs, which can stem from decades-old industrial pollution; and low dissolved oxygen, which can be caused by an overabundance of algae in waters enriched by fertilizer and waste.
Bill Street, director of the James River Association, an environmental group, said the report doesn't indicate rivers are getting worse so much as it "shows the true state that our rivers are in." "We really need to devote the resources to them to bring them back to health," Street said.
The river numbers don't include tidal waters, which are considered estuaries. The report found 2,216 square miles of estuaries were polluted, or 93 percent of the waters checked. That's up from 1,907 square miles, or 76 percent, found dirty in the 2004 report. Virginia's estuaries, including much of the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal tributaries, are fouled by nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus that aid the growth of harmful algae.
Current questions about foam and phosphorus in the James in Richmond exemplify that problem, Street said. "The foam certainly was a new wrinkle, but some of the underlying issues have been there" for years in state waters. DEQ officials plan to elaborate on the new water-quality report at a briefing today. They posted the report on their Web site yesterday afternoon. Waters in the report were studied from 2000 through 2004.
by Jon Brodkin, MetroWest [Massachusetts] Daily News
July 11, 2006
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=135073
This article was sent separate from the weekly bulletin by Elise Miller.
Proponents of legislation to phase out the use of lead and nine other chemicals in consumer products hailed a state-funded study that found industry could replace hazardous chemicals with cheaper alternatives. The Legislature had provided $250,000 to the Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI) to determine whether it would be economically feasible to require manufacturers to stop using the chemicals.
Advocates for chemical limitations yesterday said the new study refutes industry claims that there are no alternatives. The chemicals are used in a range of products including bullets, fishing sinkers, cables, cosmetics and dry cleaning solvents. "The biggest opposition we were running into was the Associated Industries of Massachusetts and other companies saying you can't prove safer alternatives are available," said Leise Jones, toxics campaign organizer for the advocacy group Clean Water Action.
The chemicals examined in the study are lead, formaldehyde, PCE (perchloroethylene), hexavalent chromium, and a chemical known as DEHP that gives flexibility to rigid plastics. All five are classified as "probable" or "known" causes of cancer by the U.S. government or International Agency for Research on Cancer. The bill phasing out the use of these five chemicals and five others will be refiled in December and discussed in public hearings as early as February, said Sen. Pamela Resor, D-Acton, co-chairwoman of the Joint Committee on the Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture. Resor said the bill would "reduce exposure to both the workers in industrial plants as well as to the general population."
Instead of banning chemicals immediately, the legislation requires the Department of Environmental Protection to determine whether some or all uses of these chemicals could be replaced with "feasible" alternatives. That process would be followed by prohibitions of chemicals, but not necessarily for all uses. "We recognize there may be some areas where there may be no alternatives," Resor said.
According to the state-mandated study, lead is commonly used in firing range ammunition, fishing sinkers, automobile wheel weights and as heat stabilizers in polyvinyl chloride wire and cable coatings. Formaldehyde is used in resins, lawn fertilizers, cosmetics, disinfectants, and in a sanitizer used in barber shop and cosmetology storage drawers. PCE is used primarily as a solvent in dry cleaning and industrial degreasing. It is one of many chemicals that landed the U.S. Army Labs in Natick on the Superfund list due to pollution of Lake Cochituate. The TURI report identified safer alternatives to all five chemicals. The report said some alternatives are more expensive up front but result in long term savings.
The Associated Industries of Massachusetts, a business lobby group, said it had no objection to TURI's findings, but opposes any law requiring businesses to phase out the use of any chemicals. When businesses deal in high volumes, small price advantages can be the difference between profit and loss, said Robert Rio, the group's vice president of environmental policy. "We do not like legislative bans and mandates, because it doesn't take into account the ability of people to pay for it," Rio said. "The world is so competitive today that a cent or half a cent can put somebody out of business."
The Gun Owners' Action League of Northborough said switching to chemicals that seem safe can sometimes backfire. Executive Director Jim Wallace noted that Camp Edwards in Massachusetts switched from lead to tungsten bullets in the late 1990s, just before federal officials began investigating whether tungsten was causing childhood leukemia. "Just look what happened at the military reservation, where they made the quick decision to move from lead to tungsten and found out that tungsten was worse than lead," Wallace said. No definitive link between tungsten and leukemia was established. The TURI report classifies tungsten as one of five safer alternatives that could be used for bullets instead of lead.
from Consumer Affairs
July 10, 2006
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/07/cspi_mercury.html
When it comes to understanding the government's advice on mercury in seafood, most Americans are hopelessly -- and justifiably -- lost at sea, according to new survey commissioned by the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). Two years after the government advisory was first released, only one in five consumers correctly identified swordfish, shark, or king mackerel as the fish highest in mercury. Confusion over low-mercury containing species was equally evident. While 21 percent of consumers identified salmon as having high mercury levels, another 21 percent believed it has low mercury levels. Salmon, as well as shrimp, catfish, and pollock, contains low levels of mercury.
"The FDA/EPA advisory is neither keeping high-risk consumers away from contaminated fish nor is it helping low-risk consumers to secure the health benefits only available at the fish counter," CSPI wrote in a letter to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acting commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach. CSPI urged FDA to remedy the confusion by requiring high-mercury advisories at fish counters or right on fish packages.
Mercury is an environmental pollutant that bioaccumulates in large ocean-dwelling fish, such as swordfish, shark, some types of tuna, and king mackerel. Seafood is the leading cause of exposure to methylmercury, which can cause neurological damage to the developing fetus and young children. Women can easily avoid this risk by steering clear of fish containing high levels of mercury for 12 months before becoming pregnant and while pregnant or breastfeeding.
In 2004, FDA and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a joint advisory on mercury in fish, urging pregnant women, nursing mothers, young children, and those planning to become pregnant not to eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel, or tilefish. But the new survey shows that the advisory has not trickled down to the people who need it the most. In fact, 31 percent of pregnant women, women planning on becoming pregnant, and nursing mothers did not know that seafood with high mercury levels could be harmful. Meanwhile, 18 percent of low-risk consumers may have unnecessarily reduced fish intake for reasons related to mercury.
"Relying on consumers to remember which fish contain high mercury levels is just not working," said CSPI food safety director Caroline Smith DeWaal. "It is time for FDA to do more. Labeling, both through notices at the seafood counter and directly on packages of fish, could easily help at-risk consumers avoid fish high in mercury and might bring others back to the fish counter." CSPI's survey demonstrated that high-risk consumers preferred by a 12-to-one margin the use of labels on or near the fresh fish with high mercury content over the current practice of informing consumers through industry or government websites. Among all consumers surveyed, support for such labeling was equally strong, with a margin of 14-to-one.
While the state of California uses point-of-purchase displays to remind consumers about the government's advice, and some grocery chains voluntarily use signage of their own design, CSPI says that a standardized label for high mercury-containing fish would be the most effective system. In 2003, then-FDA commissioner Mark McClellan told CSPI that printed materials at the point of purchase could be one of many ways advice about mercury could be communicated, but since then the FDA has done very little to advance that idea, according to CSPI. Opinion Research Corporation conducted the random digit-dial nationally projectable survey of 1,018 adults from June 22 to June 25, 2006.