Body Burden of Toxic Chemicals

Nicholas Kristof of the New York TImes wrote an editorial yesterday about an about to be released report from the Federal Cancer Panel, entitled: New Alarm Bells about Chemicals and Cancer.  Read it here.  This is on the heels of a report released earlier this year, and reported on by Blake Morrison for USA Today. In this study the General Accounting Office, chastised the EPA for its failure to protect children from toxic chemicals.  Read Blake's article here.

This is all the more reason for us to question the decade old Air Toxics Benchmark program in Oregon.  We need to press the state to ensure that the best new science is taken into consideration when new air toxics benchmarks are adopted.  The problem with these benchmarks, if they stand on their own, is the false pretense they provide for polluters.  These allow company's to assert, like ESCO did in a letter to the NW Examiner in December last year, that the toxic releases that have put 35 of Portland schools in the top 5% of schools across the nation with the worst air due to the aggregate load of toxic industrial air pollution, are "doing no harm."

Please help us send a strong message to the DEQ and the EQC - the rule making body for that agency - that we expect the state to adopt air toxic standards that are protective of public health, particularly children and other vulnerable populations, who live in urban areas with high industrial air toxics.  Sign the petition here.

And attend the hearing on May 18th:
Public Hearing on Air Toxics Benchmark Rulemaking

DATE: May 18, 2010

TIME: 6 p.m.

LOCATION: ODOT, Main Floor, Conf Rm AB

Address 123 NW Flanders, Portland

Why BPA and Air Toxics are linked

Our friend at USA Today, Blake Morrison, has just published an article covering the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) damning report on chemical policies released this past week.  The report was an assessment of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) performance over the past decade in regards to safeguarding our children from toxic chemicals.  Morrison reports: "Top officials routinely ignored scores of recommendations by the agency's own children's health advisory committee."  And the article goes on to quote Ted Schettler, science director for the advocacy group Science and Environmental Health Network, who has served on EPA and National Academy of Sciences advisory committees: the problems "are setting the stage for an overwhelming wave of disease and disability...in the coming decades."  Of particular concern, Morrison notes: "the lack of information about thousands of chemicals and how they interact with each other."

Which brings me to the toxic bisphenol or BPA.  Oregon's failure to pass a bill to ban BPA in baby bottles seems like a very sad indicator of the political will in this state.  As I reported in an earlier blog,  Jon Isaacs of OLCV said of this bill:  "I don't think it's possible for a public health issue to be any less controversial and straightforward to Oregonians than keeping toxic chemicals out of food containers intended for babies." But instead of joining the ranks of Maryland, Washington, and Wisconsin -states who all figured out that we need to act faster on information that the FDA and others have now- Oregon legislators split 15 - 15--and a tie means a loss.

What to do now?  Oregon Environmental Council has vowed the fight over BPA is not over.  And I would implore that we consider the BPA fight closely linked to the air toxics fight.  This isn't a niche issue, this is a chemical used ubiquitously: plastic bottles, baby bottles, nearly all canned goods.  Consumer Reports and Environmental Working Group each issued extensive studies of the hazards of BPA late last year. And this issue is about the broader issue of chemical reform and the proliferation of industrial chemicals into our air, our food chain and our environment.  We need to raise our voices and let our legislators know we expect Oregon to be at the front of this movement.

Right to Know

"Every American has the right to know the chemicals to which they may be exposed in their daily living. Right-to-know laws provide information about possible chemical exposures." EPA website: Protect the Environment: Learn about your right to know.

A recent NW Examiner article documenting the contradictions and discrepencies in the emissions reports from ESCO Corp. reveals a troubling picture of the current state of toxins reporting. First established by the EPA in 1986, the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) was passed in response to concerns regarding environmental and safety hazards posed by the storage and handling of toxic chemicals. These concerns were triggered by the disaster in Bhopal, India. The Bhopal disaster, or Bhopal gas tragedy, was an industrial disaster that took place at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in the Indian city of Bhopal, Madhaya Pradesh. At midnight on 3 December 1984, the plant released an estimated 42 tons of toxic methyl isocynates (MIC) gas, exposing more than 500,000 people to MIC and other chemicals. The first official death toll was 2,259. The government of Madhya Pradesh has confirmed a total of 3,787 deaths related to the gas release. Others estimate 8,000-10,000 died within 72 hours and 25,000 have since died from gas-related diseases.

The Bhopal disaster is frequently cited as the world's worst industrial disaster. To reduce the likelihood of such a disaster in the United States, Congress imposed requirements on both states and regulated facilities, a hallmark of which was the creation, in 1988, of the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), a database which provides information to the public about releases of toxic chemicals from manufacturing facilities into the environment through the air, water and land.

But what Paul Koberstein of The Cascadia Times, the investigative reporter responsible for the September Examiner article, uncovered as he plumbed the depths of the many reports of ESCO emissions is a dizzying array of calculations and varying lists of toxins, one list reported to EPA for TRI, one to DEQ, others that come up on their testing reports, and still others reported nowhere in the previous reports that come up in the fenceline monitoring that was conducted by Cooper Environmental Services. The effect for residents of the NW neighborhood reading this article is confusing and troubling. As one neighbor asked me after reading it, "why do they (ESCO) seem to lie if there is nothing to hide?"

The intent behind TRI and emissions reporting is to inform the public. But the information is anything but clear, often inspiring fear and confusion among citizens trying to assess their own risk of living in proximity to industrial sources of pollution. That's why the study of schools and industrial air pollution, reported in the USA Today report, was so useful. It translated complex industrial emissions information into data the public could understand: health risks. Was it a smoking gun, no? But using highly sophisticated risk drivers, which balanced the proportional toxicity of each chemical, its volume, smokestack heights and prevailing wind patterns that would effect its concentrations, it certainly gave us a blueprint for where to start. Looking at the model, and understanding that this model successfully predicted the high levels of toxins in the Ohio school that was subsequently shut down, it was reasonable in the wake of the publication of this report, for communities to investigate further when the data indicated a high probability of a toxic industrial pollution hot spot.

ESCO's answer to the USA Today report, as stated by Carter Webb at the Aug. 7th House Health Committee Interim Workgroup hearing chaired by Rep. Mitch Greenlick: "We look at the DEQ and the ESCO monitoring data and we see that our operations are not creating a risk to anyone." But, in reality, and in closer scrutiny of this self-reported data, and self-funded monitoring that Mr. Webb is referring to, is not that there is any solid science backing the understanding that the ESCO emissions don't cause physical harm or long term health risks. But that instead, ESCO emissions, which include heavy metals like nickel, lead, manganese and Chromium VI - all known to perpetuate indefinitely in the environment once introduced - fall under current ambient benchmark concentrations by which the company is regulated. In other words, the company is fully compliant with the letter of their permit.

But science has not established that there is any safe levels for lead and manganese, known neurotoxins; or Chromium VI the cancer causing compound made famous in Julia Robert's portrayal of Erin Brochovich. Or the synergistic health effects of the 64+ toxic chemicals listed in the emissions reports from ESCO.

This is industry's dilemma. They are paying significant amounts in fees to be permitted to pollute (money that amounts to 70% of DEQ's budget). And I imagine that they pay equal if not greater amounts to meet their compliance requirements and generally jump through the hoops to provide the reports required of them, not to mention the lobbyists to protect them. All for what? If you are not buying public trust with this investment than really what good is it? The EPA, the Clean Air Act, Citizens Right to Know, and TRI are all efforts by our federal government to provide US citizens with peace of mind. If the state agency's process of administering the regulations is flawed, or certainly its stringency - and the agency's loyalty -suspect, then the money and energy that industry dumps into the regulatory process is a waste. My argument is that industry needs transparency and a strong regulatory process as much as neighboring residents, to bank the public trust they so desperately depend on to continue to operate their facilities, emissions from which trespass on our public airshed in annoying odors and black dust.

At this point we can neither afford to go back to unregulated, unfettered toxic industrial emissions, or stay where we are, trapped by confusion, suspicion and fear. Our city and state legislators must provide us with the leadership to forge a new path forward, one that ties regulation firmly to the objective of realizing specific public health outcomes when science exists, and precautionary health safeguards when negative health outcomes can be reasonably anticipated.

Environmental Justice and Industrial Pollution

I went to two environmental Town Hall Meetings this week.  The first, on the joint city/county Climate Action Plan in North Portland sponsored by the Urban League; and the second, sponsored by the Attorney General John Kroger to discuss his newly funded environmental crime division, along the banks of the Tualatin River in the town that bears its name.  One thing that stood out for certain is:  the environment is not an issue that attracts a diverse racial population to its meetings in this area.  As Marcus Mundy, President and CEO of the Urban League, quipped in his opening remarks and introduction of Mayor Sam Adams, he supposed by asking the Urban League to sponsor the event, the city expected a high black turn-out. Mundy went on to add that it was a good thing his family came.

But, not surprisingly, the burdens of climate change and industrial pollution fall disproportionately on the shoulders of African Americans.  According to  J. Andrew Hoerner and Nia Robinson who co-wrote the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative, African Americans are thirteen percent of the U.S. population and on average emit nearly twenty percent less greenhouse gases than non-Hispanic whites per capita.  "Though far less responsible for climate change, African Americans are significantly more vulnerable to its effects. Health, housing, economic well-being, culture and social stability are harmed from such manifestations of climate change as storms, floods, and climate variability. African Americans are also more vulnerable to higher energy bills, unemployment, recessions caused by global energy price shocks, and a greater economic burden from military operations designed to protect the flow of oil to the U.S.

Like-wise, the Political Economy Research Institute at University of Massachusetts Amherst published a report Justice In The Air, that determined "Air pollution from industrial facilities is unevenly distributed...A growing body of research has demonstrated that people of color and low-income communities often face the greatest environmental hazards. Toxic air pollution from industrial facilities is a case in point. Using the RSEI data, EPA researchers have found that nationwide, the most polluted locations have significantly higher-than-average percentages of blacks, Latinos, and Asian-American residents (Bouwes et al. 2003)."

And this seems to be true in Portland as well.  In the USA Today special report, The Smokestack Effect: Toxic Air and America's Schools, the worst schools in Portland are all located in North Portland at the Roosevelt Campus.  

I don't have all the answers, to be sure, but a city that wants to be the "greenest in the world" should start by cleaning up its dirtiest spots. And I believe also find a way to better engage a wider portion of the population in the conversation.  This may entail facing some hard facts of the burden of responsibility for clean up in certain neighborhoods. It might also entail considering it an environmental crime to allow legal, permitted, emissions that in effect have created sacrificial zones of toxic industrial air pollution hot spots in the city.