Rachel's News #996

[news....@googlemail.com]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Rachel's Democracy & Health News #996 "Environment, health, jobs and justice--Who gets to decide?" Thursday, January 29, 2009..............Printer-friendly version www.rachel.org

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Featured stories in this issue... The Modern Solution to Pollution Is Dilution Since the earliest days of Rachel's News, we have covered the creation and management of toxic wastes of all kinds. Here for the first time we describe the current U.S. strategy for managing all such wastes. Lingering Hazards of Nuclear Waste Despite continuing denials by government, citizens have understood for decades that dangerous wastes were being routinely and deliberately released into the environment as a matter of policy. EPA a Failure on Chemicals, Audit Finds "The Environmental Protection Agency's ability to assess toxic chemicals is as broken as the nation's financial markets and needs a total overhaul, a congressional audit has found." Emissions Cut Won't Bring Quick Relief, Scientists Say "Many people who worry about global warming hope that once emissions of heat-trapping gases decline, the problems they cause will quickly begin to abate. Now researchers are saying that such hope is ill-founded, at least with regard to carbon dioxide." Most Effective Climate Engineering Solutions Revealed "There is a worrying feeling that we're not going to get our act together fast enough," says Tim Lenton, referring to international efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists have reached a 'social tipping point' and are starting to wonder which techniques might complement emissions cuts, he says." NASA Study Links Severe Storm Increases, Global Warming "At the present rate of global warming of 0.13 degrees Celsius (0.23 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade, the NASA team inferred the frequency of these storms can be expected to increase by 6 percent per decade." Environment Blamed in Western Tree Deaths "The authors of the new study said in a teleconference that if tree mortality rates continued to rise, the average size of trees could fall because trees would die at younger ages. Smaller trees cannot store as much carbon dioxide as large ones." :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: From: Rachel's Democracy & Health News #996, Jan. 29, 2009 [Printer-friendly version] THE MODERN SOLUTION TO POLLUTION IS DILUTION By Peter Montague As we approach Feb. 26, the date when Rachel's News will cease publication, I will reflect on some of the major changes of the past 2 decades. One of the most important changes has been the adoption by state and federal agencies of a consistent strategy for managing toxic wastes. The strategy is now being applied to municipal solid waste, legally- hazardous chemical wastes, sewage sludge laced with industrial poisons, toxic coal combustion wastes, and many kinds of radioactive wastes. The strategy is to allow these wastes to disperse slowly into the natural environment, leaving no fingerprints behind. This approach has proven to be a politically robust -- if ethically reprehensible -- solution to a massive problem that would otherwise be exceedingly nettlesome and expensive. The strategy is reprehensible because, as we all know, after pollutants disperse into the natural world, they have a way of re- concentrating and entering food chains where they can exert a poisonous influence. Mercury provides an excellent example. When mercury -- the familiar silvery liquid metal -- is released from underground by mining (or by burning coal), it eventually enters air and then water. In water, bacteria convert mercury into methyl mercury, which is far more toxic than elemental mercury. Methyl mercury is water-soluble, it enters food webs, and it slowly concentrates upward into the top predators -- big fish, big cats (the endangered Florida Panther comes to mind), large birds, and big mammals such as whales, bears, and humans. Therefore releasing mercury into the natural world is a surefire recipe for harming animals and people. So it is with many other wastes -- arsenic, cadmium, thallium, toxic lead, soluble forms of nitrogen, pesticides, certain solvents, many pharmaceutical preparations, and so on. The rule of thumb can be stated simply -- Toxics: release them and they will maim and kill, somewhere, some time. I first described this emerging waste-dispersal strategy in 1997 (Rachel's #560). Since that time, the strategy has been universally embraced and adopted at all levels of government, by Republicans and Democrats, by the corporate elite who are chiefly responsible for creating most of the waste, and even by many Big Green environmental advocates. Of course humans have been dispersing their wastes into the natural environment forever. But our wastes used to be fairly harmless. Our great grandparents threw away mostly food scraps and their own excrement, plus wood, cotton, flax, wool, stone, clay, glass, and iron. Nature recycles these things handily. Then starting about 1900, the chemical industry developed all manner of exotic (and highly useful) molecules that nature had never encountered before, and so a new breed of trouble appeared. The world was surprised -- and perhaps somewhat amused -- when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught on fire in 1969. Nine years later, in 1978, the discovery of serious harm to children living near Love Canal (outside Buffalo, N.Y.) frightened anyone who was paying attention because we recognized our dispersed wastes coming back to bite us. Lined landfills created the modern garbage industry After Love Canal, we enjoyed 20 years of furrowed brows, mea culpas, a new federal law ("Superfund" -- a law and program now defunded and defunct), along with many solemn promises. Solemnity and a new law were sufficient to convince the public that the problem was under control. But it wasn't. Among available alternatives, government agencies chose double-lined landfills as the preferred way to handle toxic waste. A landfill is a bathtub in the ground and a double-lined landfill is a bathtub within a bathtub. A bathtub can leak two ways: out the bottom if a pinhole develops, or over its sides if rain gets in. The garbage industry loved this double-bathtub solution because only big firms could afford to build double-lined landfills. The new regulations forced mom-and-pop waste haulers to accept merger offers they couldn't refuse from the big operators, who quickly consolidated into a nationwide garbage industry. With their new size and wealth (and therefore political power), garbage corporations got cozy with government officials at all levels and made sure that waste avoidance never rose to the level of government policy. In his book, Getting to Zero Waste, Paul Palmer gives us a glimpse of how this has worked. In 1981, in the Federal Register, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged what most scientists already knew -- that all landfills inevitably leak, even those with the most high-tech double liners of clay and plastic. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that the disorder in a system spontaneously increases. Drop a teacup onto an unyielding surface and it shatters. You never see a shattered teacup spontaneously put itself back together. This is the second law at work. So long as humans will repair a landfill, applying energy to the problem (like glue to a shattered cup), they can perhaps prevent major leakage (though it remain unclear how to repair a leak when one develops beneath a million tons of garbage). But the moment human efforts cease, nature takes over and disintegration begins: nature has many agents that work to dismantle a landfill: small mammals (mice, moles, voles, woodchucks, prairie dogs, etc.), birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians, worms, bacteria, the roots of trees, bushes, and shrubs, plus wind, rain, lightning, freeze-thaw cycles, and soil erosion -- all combine to take apart even the most carefully- engineered landfill. Eventually a landfill's contents disperse into the local environment and then move outward from there, often into local water supplies. It may take a decade or it may take 50 years or more before a landfill spills its contents, but nature doesn't care. Nature's got all the time in the world. Sooner or later wastes buried in a shallow hole in the ground will escape and disperse. Our federal laws make a distinction between municipal solid waste and hazardous waste, but in reality they are all dangerous. Municipal waste contains pesticides, paint, shoe polish, alcohol, lubricating oil, oven cleaner, liquid plumber, plastic exudates, dog poop, rat poison, bug repellent, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, you name it. After rainwater seeps through a mountain of household garbage, the "leachate" seeping out the bottom is toxic. Despite these facts, almost all municipal and legally-hazardous wastes are today being "disposed of" by burial in engineered holes in the ground. (Some are being incinerated first, dispersing large quantities of poisonous gases into the natural environment, leaving behind a huge mass of concentrated toxic ash, which then gets buried in the ground.) With modern lined landfills, yes, the present generation is somewhat protected but in future these wastes will enter the natural environment and contaminate the planet more than it already is. No doubt about it, our modern waste policies are committing the future to serious trouble. We are spending down the future before it arrives. Of course a hole in the ground provides one unbeatable advantage: underground is out of sight and out of mind. In all 50 states, landfills are being "capped" with a plastic tarp or a layer of asphalt which is then overlain with parking lots, shopping malls, commercial complexes, parks, schools, ball fields, playgrounds, sports complexes, golf courses, residential dwellings, daycare centers, or other human projects. In this "capping," my home state of New Jersey has been leading the way -- you name it and we're building it on top of buried toxic waste. In recent years this reprehensible activity has accelerated under the watchful eye of Lisa Jackson, former head of our N.J. Department of Environmental Protection, now head of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Such "capping" just makes it harder -- I want to say, impossible -- to monitor for leakage. It makes it harder for the next generation to even remember that there's a pot of poison lurking beneath the surface, waiting to be released by natural forces. But release will come, sooner or later. You can bet money on it because the second law guarantees it. Coal combustion wastes Of course not all toxic wastes are being dumped into carefully- engineered high-tech double-lined landfills. After municipal solid waste, the second-largest category of harmful waste produced each year in the U.S. is the 131 million tons of toxic coal combustion wastes. These are mostly just dumped into "holding ponds," which by design only "hold" temporarily. As the New York Times wrote Jan. 7, 2009, "The coal ash pond that ruptured and sent a billion gallons of toxic sludge across 300 acres of East Tennessee last month was only one of more than 1,300 similar dumps across the United States -- most of them unregulated and unmonitored -- that contain billions more gallons of fly ash and other byproducts of burning coal. "Like the one in Tennessee, most of these dumps, which reach up to 1,500 acres [in area], contain heavy metals like arsenic, lead, mercury and selenium, which are considered by the Environmental Protection Agency to be a threat to water supplies and human health. Yet they are not subject to any federal regulation, which experts say could have prevented the spill, and there is little monitoring of their effects on the surrounding environment." The Times went on, "Numerous studies have shown that the ash can leach toxic substances that can cause cancer, birth defects and other health problems in humans, and can decimate fish, bird and frog populations in and around ash dumps, causing developmental problems like tadpoles born without teeth, or fish with severe spinal deformities." The Times points out that EPA "has been studying [coal ash disposal] for 28 years" without taking any regulatory action. If they did take action, it would be to require double liners -- delaying but not preventing the release of these highly-toxic wastes into nature. The 131 million tons of coal combustion wastes released into the environment each year in the U.S. contain roughly 2.7 million tons of arsenic, 2.9 million tons of toxic lead, and 5.4 million tons of chromium,[1] among many other nasties. So much for "clean coal." These metals are toxic in micrograms quantities -- so releasing millions of tons of them from the deep earth each year could be considered a kind of toxic tsunami. Some of these toxic coal combustion wastes are being assigned new "beneficial uses" -- a term of art meaning "dispersed directly into the environment." Large quantities of toxic coal wastes are being plowed into agricultural soils, some are being packed inside wall board, which is then sold to an unsuspecting public, and some is being hidden beneath a thin layer of asphalt in road construction. The common objective is low-cost dispersal of unwanted toxicants into the environment, leaving nary a fingerprint to mark these crimes against the future. Sewage Sludge Most modern sewage treatment plants combine human excrement (which is good fertilizer) with toxic industrial discharges, thus producing huge unmanageable masses of toxic fertilizer. Science Magazine reported recently that sewage sludge -- the solid residues from cleaning up wastewater -- "contains a wide variety of toxic metals, pharmaceuticals, flame retardants, and other compounds, including some antibiotics in surprisingly high concentrations. That's significant because every year more than half of the roughly 7 million metric tons of these so-called biosolids produced in the United States are applied as fertilizer to farm fields." No subtlety here. Got a mountain of excrement laced with industrial poisons? Just plow it into the soil and then grow crops. The crops will help disperse the toxicants further. Writing in Environmental Health News, Matthew Cimitile reported Jan. 6, 2009 that antibiotics are now measurable in crops like corn, potatoes and lettuce -- presumably because cows were given antibiotics to stave off disease in the crowded-prison conditions of cattle feedlots, and their manure was then spread onto crops. Sewage sludge is contributing additional antibiotics to crops. A recent EPA study of sludge from 74 large sewage treatment plants revealed the presence of 12 antibiotics in all samples. Science Magazine wrote, "Two of the most common drugs were the antibiotics triclocarban and ciprofloxacin. Although the average concentrations were similar to those in previous small-scale studies, several samples harbored up to 440 parts per million of triclocarban, which is added to antimicrobial soap and other personal care products. That's almost 10 times higher than ever reported in biosolids [sewage sludge] and "astonishingly high," says Rolf Halden, an environmental scientist at Arizona State University, Tempe. Just a few days ago researchers reported finding toxic mercury in high-fructose corn syrup. High-fructose corn syrup is a cheaper sweetener than sugar, so it is now a major ingredient of salad dressings, soft drinks, candy, and commercial baked goods. In the U.S. we reportedly each eat 63 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup each year. U.S. EPA had previously reported that each year 600,000 babies in the U.S. are exposed to mercury in the womb at levels that exceed what EPA considers a "safe" dose. In babies, mercury causes permanent brain damage. EPA said in 2000, "Almost everyone agrees that the fetus is particularly sensitive to the toxic effects of methylmercury." Who popularized the practice of plowing toxic sludge into farmer's fields? U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the leadership of Carol Browner, now a top environmental adviser to President Obama. In 2004, the New York Times wrote, "The popularity of the practice is in part due to the environmental agency's enthusiastic promotion, which started after Congress prohibited the ocean dumping of sewage sludge in 1992. The agency spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a public relations campaign for recycling sludge as fertilizer, which at that time accounted for less than a third of the sewage waste disposal. The agency even created a brochure in 1994 that said that processed sewage sludge may 'protect child health.' The brochure cited a study showing animals that ingested biosolid-treated soil and dust may have a decreased absorption of lead into the bloodstream, thus lessening the potential for lead-induced nerve and brain damage," the Times said. Yes, indeedy, toxic sludge is good for you, even Carol Browner's EPA said so. To this day, EPA insists that plowing toxic sludge into soil for crops is "safe," -- and has fired employees who published scientific articles showing otherwise. However, the Times reported in 2004, that "...hundreds of complaints have been documented over the last decade, including accusations that the toxic chemicals and pathogens have caused sickness and death in animals and humans." Radioactive waste Starting early in the 20th century, radioactive medical wastes have steadily grown. Most of these are short-lived (meaning they are highly radioactive) so within a few months to a few years their radioactivity subsides. However, many medical devices have relied on cobalt-60 and cesium-137 which are very radioactive but still have dangerously-long half-lives. (The half-life of a radioactive isotope of the time it takes for half of its mass to change into something else by radioactive decay.) Besides medical diagnosis and therapy, there are two other major sources of radioactive wastes: Since 1941, radioactive materials have been produced in enormous quantities by the atomic weapons industry, much of which has been buried in unlined, unmarked trenches in the ground or dumped directly into mountain canyons and the oceans. zens And starting about 1950, commercial nuclear power plants began making their own contributions. These include radioactive liquids, gases, and solid wastes such as metals, clothing, gloves, boots, tools, containers, reinforced concrete, pipes, worn out machine parts, and so on. In coming decades, the "decommissioning" of more than 100 nuclear reactors will hugely increase this source of radioactive debris of every description. And of course at this moment the nuclear industry is bucking for federal subsidies to build a new generation of nuclear plants with their attendant unmanageable wastes. As a rule of thumb, these radioactive materials must all be sequestered for at least 10 half-lives, at which time only one one- thousandth of their original mass remains. But this can be a long time. Cobalt-60 has a half-life of 5.7 years, so it's a 60-year problem. Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years, so it's a 300-year problem. Plutonium-239 -- deadliest of them all -- has a half-life of 24,000 years, so it's a 240,000-year problem. (Is 240,000 years a long time? Consider that our species, homo sapiens, has only stalked the Earth for 100,000 years.) Of course capturing, transporting, and burying all these wastes in shallow holes in the ground (landfills) proved to be exceedingly costly as well as ineffective. Leakage within just a few years has been common. So starting in the early 1960s, the federal government began selling radioactive metals to commercial scrap dealers -- thus dispersing the problem directly into the environment leaving no telltale fingerprints. In 1990, we reported (Rachel's #183) that the federal government was planning to release one-third of all so-called "low-level" radioactive waste into the environment. Since then the government has legalized and institutionalized such releases -- some of it gets dumped in municipal landfills, some of if gets sent to "recyclers" who blend it into products, which are then radioactive. When a radioactive cheese grater (Ekco brand) was accidentally discovered in Michigan late last year, China got blamed. But the original source of China's radioactivity was very likely the U.S. Officials at the time assured us that housewives need not keep a geiger counter in their shopping basket, ha, ha. But the humor fell flat. This government "solution" to the problem of radioactive waste -- releasing it into public realms -- has been understood and opposed by citizens for decades. For example, anti-nuclear activist Key Drey in St. Louis (burial site of the nation's first uranium wastes) described these problems clearly in the early 1990s (see here and here). More recently, the problem has been studied thoroughly and documented in great detail by the Nuclear Information Resource Service (NIRS) in its 2007 report, Out of Control -- On Purpose, by the redoubtable team of Dianne D'Arrigo, Mary Olson, Marvin Resnikoff, and others. This 120-page NIRS report documents a 20-year campaign by the U.S. Department of Energy to change the rules for radioactive materials -- a successful campaign whose goal was to "enable manmade radioactivity to get out into the open marketplace, landfills, commercial recycling and into everyday consumer products, construction supplies and equipment, roads, piping, buildings, vehicles, playgrounds, basements, furniture, toys, zippers, [and] personal items, without warning, notification, or consent," as the report puts it. Never mind that the government's own BEIR VII report concluded definitively in 2005 that any amount of radioactivity is harmful to living things. Once released, no one keeps track of where the radioactive materials end up, or who may be exposed. So government officials can honestly say, "We have no knowledge of any harm resulting from release of these radioactive wastes into the environment." So there you have it -- the outlines of our current national waste strategy, which has never before been written down but is fully operational in every part of the economy, understood and embraced (though never formally endorsed) by every government agency. What could be done? There seem to be only two possible solutions to our toxic waste addiction: (1) secure above-ground waste-storage in concrete buildings, or (2) detoxifying the economy. Secure waste storage could occur in multi-story steel-reinforced concrete buildings, with wastes placed only in the upper stories. The first floor would be left empty so regular inspections could examine for leakage or other signs of structural deterioration. Prompt repairs could sequester wastes for as long as humans were able to pay attention and react. When buildings deteriorated (after perhaps 100 years), they could be replaced. Such buildings were designed and described by engineers at the Universities of Alabama and Florida in 1988 and again in 1989. They calculated that such buildings would cost less than equivalent storage capacity in double-lined landfills. So why are we still using landfills, guaranteed to leak, instead of the cheaper solution, concrete buildings guaranteed to prevent leakage? The answer must be that underground storage is out of sight and out of mind. We can cover it with a high school, a daycare center, or a housing development and wash our hands of the whole sordid mess. Clusters of huge concrete buildings, on the other hand, would stand as perpetual monuments to our foolish, toxic civilization, permanent headstones memorializing cupidity, stupidity, and failure of imagination. The other solution, far preferable but even less likely to happen, would be to embrace serious green principles -- say, the four system conditions embodied in the Natural Step (see Rachel's #667, #668, #676, and #878) -- and get the toxics out of our economy. Is this doable? Of course it is. Will it be done? That depends on how riled the citizenry becomes. The corporate monarchy is not going to make such fundamental changes spontaneously. We're surely not there yet, but the unfolding catastrophe of global warming could provide a series of wake-up calls, the likes of which humans has never heard before. We can only hope that, when such calls begin, there's someone left to hear them who has sufficient capacity to respond. ============= [1] I calculated these amounts using data that appeared in the New York Times Jan. 7, 2009. The Times says 2.2 million pounds of coal combustion wastes contain 45,000 pounds of arsenic, 49,000 pounds of lead, and 91,000 pounds of chromium. If this is true, then 131 million tons of such wastes will contain the amounts of metals given in the text. Return to Table of Contents :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: From: St. Louis Post-Dispatch (pg. 17C), Nov. 3, 1995 [Printer-friendly version] LINGERING HAZARDS OF NUCLEAR WASTE By Kay Drey More than 20 years ago, environmentalists began warning Missourians that no safe place exists on Earth for radioactive waste. That was even before the Callaway plant began operation, and before it began to fission uranium fuel and generate its first tons of waste. To date no safe, politically viable site has been found, and no technology exists to contain the wastes or destroy their radioactivity. At the Callaway nuclear power plant, where more than 99 percent of Missouri's radioactive waste is generated, some of the "low-level" waste is so radioactively hot that it must be handled by remote- control equipment or the workers could get a lethal dose. The only radioactive waste allowed to be called high-level is the irradiated fuel after its removal from the reactor vessel; that is, the fuel rods themselves. All other waste at Callaway must be called "low-level." St. Louisans should know a lot about radioactive waste, because we still have over a million cubic yards of the oldest radioactive waste of the Atomic Age here in our midst. These historic wastes were generated from 1942 until 1957 for nuclear weapons purposes and now lie splattered in and around the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works buildings near downtown, at the St. Louis Airport, Latty Avenue in Hazelwood, West Lake Landfill next to Earth City, in Coldwater Creek, and along truck and rail routes. A million cubic yards, and no one knows what to do with the first cupful. A thousand laboratories at Washington University use radioactive materials in research. They share a total of two curies at any one time; most technicians work with only tiny fractions of one curie and treat that with great care and caution. In comparison, the Callaway reactor vessel while in operation contains some 15 to 20 billion curies, and the spent-fuel pool contains hundreds of millions of curies. No site has been built or even geologically approved for the nation's high-level fuel-rod wastes, and none may ever be. Some particulate and gaseous wastes leak out of Callaway's 50,000 fissioning fuel rods into the reactor vessel water and some leak into the air inside the buildings. Much is captured and filtered; the rest is released into the Missouri River or the atmosphere. [See Kay Drey's 1991 article on routine releases from nuclear power plants.] When the saturated filters are replaced, they are called "low-level" waste. That is, the same extremely dangerous fission products that are called high-level waste when inside the fuel rods are called "low- level" when they leak out of the rods. When highly radioactive parts and components are replaced because of accidents, defects or aging, they, too, are called "low-level." "Low-level" and high-level wastes will continue emitting radioactive particles and rays that can mutate and otherwise damage cells of humans and other living creatures virtually forever into the future. Power-plant wastes have half-lives of hundreds of thousands of years and longer. In 1987 Michigan was chosen as the first state to receive the wastes of the seven-state Midwest Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact. Its citizens and political leaders understandably protested and got their state kicked out of the compact. Ohio residents are now protesting their status as the Midwest's next appointed host, as will people no doubt do in Missouri, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Indiana when each state successively is threatened with becoming the host state. At present, the only "low-level" waste facility willing to accept the nation's commercial wastes -- from nuclear power plants (containing over 91 percent of the U.S. "low-level" radio activity), medical/academic wastes (with only two-tenths of 1 percent), and industrial and government wastes -- is located at Barnwell, S.C.,in a very humid and therefore unsuitable site. Even though the Barnwell facility is known to generate money for its state's schools, nearby residents no doubt have legitimate concerns. One would think that the federal government would mandate a moratorium on the generation of more nuclear-power and nuclear-weapons wastes until safe locations and technologies are found to isolate the stockpiles that are already burdening countless communities nationwide. Electric utilities and the public have found nuclear power to be too expensive, dirty and dangerous. That's why the last viable order for a nuclear power plant in the United States was placed in October 1973 -- 22 years ago. When the Missouri Legislature reconvenes in January [1996], it is scheduled to begin debate on changes to the Midwest Compact. It would be helpful if the legislators and their constituents were provided accurate information about the hazards of Missouri's "low-level" waste. Only then can we be assured that the Legislature will be able to evaluate responsibly Missouri's continuing participation in the Midwest Compact. ============== Kay Drey, University City, is a longtime activist on nuclear issues. Return to Table of Contents :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: From: The Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, Wisc.), Jan. 24, 2009 [Printer-friendly version] EPA A FAILURE ON CHEMICALS, AUDIT FINDS Assessment of toxic risks inadequate, says new chief By Meg Kissinger of the Journal Sentinel Warning: Chemicals in the packaging, surfaces or contents of many products may cause long-term health effects, including cancers of the breast, brain and testicles; lowered sperm counts, early puberty and other reproductive system defects; diabetes; attention deficit disorder, asthma and autism. A decade ago, the government promised to test these chemicals. It still hasn't. The Environmental Protection Agency's ability to assess toxic chemicals is as broken as the nation's financial markets and needs a total overhaul, a congressional audit has found. The Government Accountability Office has released a report saying the EPA lacks even basic information to say whether chemicals pose substantial health risks to the public. It says actions are needed to streamline and increase the transparency of the EPA's registry of chemicals. And it calls for measures to enhance the agency's ability to obtain health and safety information from the chemical industry. Lisa Jackson, the EPA's new administrator, promised to take the report under consideration. "It is clear that we are not doing an adequate job of assessing and managing the risks of chemicals in consumer products, the workplace and the environment," Jackson said in a prepared statement Friday. "It is now time to revise and strengthen EPA's chemicals management and risk assessment programs." The Journal Sentinel has chronicled the failure of the EPA to disclose information about toxic chemicals in its series, "Chemical Fallout," which began in 2007. Last month, the newspaper reported that the agency routinely allows companies to keep new information about their chemicals secret, including compounds that have been shown to cause cancer and respiratory problems. Earlier in 2008, the Journal Sentinel revealed that the EPA's Voluntary Children's Chemical Evaluation Program, which relies on companies to provide information about the dangers of the chemicals they produce, is all but dead. And it disclosed that the agency's program to screen chemicals that damage the endocrine system had failed to screen a single chemical more than 10 years after the program was launched. Health and environmental advocates pounced on the GAO's findings as proof that the EPA has been shirking its responsibilities for years. "This just shows that the EPA is not any better able to protect Americans from risky chemicals than FEMA was to save New Orleans or the SEC was to cope with the financial collapse," said John Peterson Myers, a scientist and author who has been writing about chemical risks to human health for more than three decades. For the EPA to be compared to the collapsed financial markets dramatically underscores the need for a complete overhaul of the regulation of toxic chemicals, said Richard Wiles, executive director of Environmental Working Group, a health watchdog organization based in Washington, D.C. "The EPA joins the hall of shame of failed government programs," Wiles said. The EPA is at high risk for waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement and needs a broad-based transformation, the auditors found. "The EPA lacks adequate scientific information on the toxicity of many chemicals that may be found in the environment -- as well as on tens of thousands of chemicals used commercially in the United States," the GAO report said. "EPA's inadequate progress in assessing toxic chemicals significantly limits the agency's ability to fulfill its mission of protecting human health and the environment." The EPA's ability to protect public health and the environment depends on credible and timely assessments of the risks posed by toxic chemicals, the GAO found. Its Integrated Risk Information System, which contains assessments of more than 500 toxic chemicals, "is at serious risk of becoming obsolete because the EPA has been unable to keep its existing assessments current or to complete assessments of important chemicals of concern." The EPA urgently needs to streamline and increase the transparency of this assessment process, the report says. "Overall, the EPA has finished only nine assessments in the past three years," the report found. "At the end of 2007, most of the 70 ongoing assessments had been under way for more than five years." The EPA needs additional authority to that provided in the Toxic Substances Control Act to obtain health and safety information from the chemical industry, the GAO auditors found. "They need to shift more of the burden to chemical companies to demonstrate the safety of their products," the report found. Strengthening the EPA is one of the GAO's three most urgent priorities for the Obama administration. The GAO also called for overhauling the nation's financial regulatory system, whose inattention helped trigger the global financial crisis, and improving the Food and Drug Administration's ability to protect the public from unsafe or ineffective drugs and other medical products. The list is updated every two years and released at the start of each new Congress to help in setting oversight agendas. Recent Congresses and administrations have been particularly alert to GAO's High-Risk List and have used its findings to help tailor agency-specific solutions as well as broader initiatives across government. Copyright 2009, Journal Sentinel Inc. Return to Table of Contents :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: From: New York Times (pg. A21), Jan. 27, 2009 [Printer-friendly version] EMISSIONS CUT WON'T BRING QUICK RELIEF, SCIENTISTS SAY By Cornelia Dean Many people who worry about global warming hope that once emissions of heat-trapping gases decline, the problems they cause will quickly begin to abate. Now researchers are saying that such hope is ill-founded, at least with regard to carbon dioxide. Because of the way carbon dioxide persists in the atmosphere and in the oceans, and the way the atmosphere and the oceans interact, patterns that are established at peak levels will produce problems like "inexorable sea level rise" and Dust-Bowl-like droughts for at least a thousand years, the researchers are reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "That peak would be the minimum you would be locking yourself into," said Susan Solomon, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who led the work. The researchers describe what will happen if the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide -- the principal heat-trapping gas emission -- reaches 450 to 600 parts per million, up from about 385 p.p.m. today. Most climate researchers consider 450 p.p.m. virtually inevitable and 600 p.p.m. difficult to avoid by midcentury if the use of fossil fuels continues at anything like its present rate. At 450 p.p.m., the researchers say, rising seas will threaten many coastal areas, and Southern Europe, North Africa, the Southwestern United States and Western Australia could expect 10 percent less rainfall. "Ten percent may not seem like a high number," Dr. Solomon said Monday in a telephone news conference, "but it is the kind of number that has been seen in major droughts in the past, like the Dust Bowl." At 600 p.p.m., there might be perhaps 15 percent less rain, she said. In 1850, atmospheric carbon dioxide was roughly 280 p.p.m., a level scientists say had not been exceeded in at least the previous 800,000 years. In their paper, Dr. Solomon and her colleagues say they confined their estimates to known data and effects. For example, they based their sea level estimates largely on the expansion of seawater as it warms, a relatively straightforward calculation, rather than including the contributions of glacial runoff or melting inland ice sheets -- more difficult to predict but potentially far greater contributors to sea level rise. The new work dealt only with the effects of carbon dioxide, which is responsible for about half of greenhouse warming. Gases like chlorofluorocarbons and methane, along with soot and other pollutants, contribute to the rest. These substances are far less persistent in the atmosphere; if these emissions drop, their effects will decline relatively fast. Michael Oppenheimer, a geoscientist at Princeton, praised the report in an e-mail message as a "remarkably clear and direct" discussion of whether it would be possible to temporarily exceed a level like 450 p.p.m. and then reduce emissions in time to avoid catastrophic events like the collapse of a major inland ice sheet. Dr. Oppenheimer said the new analysis showed that "some dangerous consequences could be triggered and persist for a long, long time, even if emissions were cut radically." "Policy makers need to understand," he continued, "that in some ways once we are over the cliff, there's nothing to stop the fall." Dr. Solomon said it would be wrong to view the report as evidence that it was already too late to do much good by reducing carbon emissions. "You have to think of this stuff as being more like nuclear waste than acid rain," she said. Acid rain began to abate when pollution contributing to it was limited. But just as nuclear waste remains radioactive for a long time, the effects of carbon dioxide persist. "So if we slow it down," she said, "we have more time to find solutions." For example, engineers may one day discover ways to remove the gas from the atmosphere. But "those solutions are not now in hand," Dr. Solomon said. "They are quite speculative." Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company Return to Table of Contents :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: From: New Scientist, Jan. 28, 2009 [Printer-friendly version] MOST EFFECTIVE CLIMATE ENGINEERING SOLUTIONS REVEALED By Catherine Brahic Many scenarios have been proposed to help us engineer our way out of potential climate disaster, and now a new study could point us towards the ones that are most effective. Tim Lenton of the University of East Anglia, UK, has put together the first comparative assessment of climate-altering proposals such pumping sulphur into the atmosphere to mimic the cooling effect of volcanic emissions, or fertilising the oceans with iron. "There is a worrying feeling that we're not going to get our act together fast enough," says Lenton, referring to international efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists have reached a "social tipping point" and are starting to wonder which techniques might complement emissions cuts, he says. Lenton says he is not necessarily advocating engineering the climate, but, faced with a growing trend among his peers, he and colleague Naomi Vaughan decided to provide a comparison of the options that are on the table. First, Lenton says the exercise shows there is no "silver bullet" -- no single method that will safely reverse climate change on its own. Scrubbers and mirrors Climate engineering schemes would work by either removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or reflecting solar energy back out into space -- both with the intention of lowering global temperatures. Proposals for removing CO2 from the atmosphere include planting vast forests, chemically absorbing the gas, or turning agricultural waste into charcoal and burying it. Reflecting solar energy back into space does not decrease the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere [and thus does not solve the problem of acidfying the oceans -- Rachel's editors], but lessens their warming effect by reducing the amount of solar energy that gets trapped near Earth's surface. Possible schemes have included space mirrors in orbit around the planet, clouds of sulphur particles in the atmosphere, or ground-based reflectors. The researchers calculated how effective each scheme is at reducing the amount of solar energy trapped in our climatic system -- a measure known as "radiative forcing". Sunshade risks If we continue to burn fossil fuels at the same rate as today, the greenhouse effect will boost radiative forcing by 7 watts per square metre of Earth surface by 2100. By some calculations, strict targets to reduce emissions could bring that down by 4 W/m2. Lenton's calculations show the only methods powerful enough to have a significant effect in the relatively short term (in the second half of this century) involve placing physical barriers between Earth and the Sun. This would involve either orbiting space mirrors, stratospheric mists of sulphur, or using seawater to make reflective clouds. But Lenton warns that these options also carry the most risk. A sulphur sunshade could reduce radiative forcing by 3.7 W/m2, but would have to be continually replenished. If it was allowed to disappear, temperatures could shoot up by as much as 5 deg. C [9 deg. F.] within decades (Climatic Change, DOI: 10.1007/s10584-008-9490-1). After sunshades, the most effective method is "scrubbing" carbon dioxide out of air and storing it underground. This could reduce radiative forcing by 1.9 W/m2 by 2100. Burn it and bury it Most other methods, including increasing the reflectivity of deserts or fields of crops, and fertilising oceans show little promise or would not have global effects, the study shows. Some, like increasing the reflectivity of roofs in cities, could offer localised relief from climate change. "There's been far too much focus on iron fertilisation" given its lack of potential, says Lenton. His calculations suggest that the boost which agricultural fertilisers inadvertently give ocean plankton in runoff is probably already more effective that iron seeding is ever likely to be. A German-Indian project to test iron fertilisation in the oceans was given the go-ahead yesterday after activists had previously halted the ship's departure from port. Lenton says turning agricultural waste into charcoal and burying it may hold the most promise. Although it would only reduce radiative forcing by 0.4 W/m2 by 2100, the method is cheap, low tech, and would have the added advantage of fertilising the soil. Journal reference: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (9, 1-50, 2009) Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd. Return to Table of Contents :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: From: Pasadena Star-News (Pasadena, Calif.), Jan. 23, 2009 [Printer-friendly version] NASA STUDY LINKS SEVERE STORM INCREASES, GLOBAL WARMING The frequency of extremely high clouds in Earth's tropics -- the type associated with severe storms and rainfall -- is increasing as a result of global warming, according to a study by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in La Canada Flintridge. In a recent presentation at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, JPL Senior Research Scientist Hartmut Aumann outlined the results of a study based on five years of data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft. The AIRS data were used to observe certain types of tropical clouds linked with severe storms, torrential rain and hail. The instrument typically detects about 6,000 of these clouds each day. Aumann and his team found a strong correlation between the frequency of these clouds and seasonal variations in the average sea surface temperature of the tropical oceans. For every degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in average ocean surface temperature, the team observed a 45 percent increase in the frequency of the very high clouds. At the present rate of global warming of 0.13 degrees Celsius (0.23 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade, the team inferred the frequency of these storms can be expected to increase by 6 percent per decade. Climate modelers have long speculated that the frequency and intensity of severe storms may or may not increase with global warming. Aumann said results of the study will help improve their models. "Clouds and rain have been the weakest link in climate prediction," said Aumann. "The interaction between the daytime warming of the sea surface under clear-sky conditions and increases in the formation of low clouds, high clouds and, ultimately, rain is very complicated." Aumann said the results of his study, published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, are consistent with another NASA-funded study by Frank Wentz and colleagues in 2005. That study found an increase in the global rain rate of 1.5 percent per decade over 18 years. JPL manages the AIRS project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For more information on AIRS, visit http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/. Return to Table of Contents :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: From: New York Times, Jan. 23, 2009 [Printer-friendly version] ENVIRONMENT BLAMED IN WESTERN TREE DEATHS By Mireya Navarro Rising temperatures and the resulting drought are causing trees in the West to die at more than twice the pace they did a few decades ago, a new study has found. The combination of temperature and drought has also reduced the ability of the forests to absorb carbon dioxide, which traps heat and thus contributes to global warming, the authors of the study said, and has made forests sparser and more susceptible to fires and pests. The scientists, who analyzed tree census data collected in 1955 and in later years, found that the mortality of trees increased in 87 percent of the 76 forest plots studied. In some plots, the die-off rate doubled in as little as 17 years; in others, it doubled after 29 years, the study found. "Summers are getting longer," said Nathan L. Stephenson, of the United States Geological Survey, a leader of the study with Phillip van Mantgem, also of the geological survey. "Trees are under more drought stress." The study will appear in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The scientists analyzed the effects of higher temperatures on old- growth temperate forests in three regions: the Pacific Northwest (including southwestern British Columbia), California and inland Western states. The average temperature in those regions rose by more than one degree Fahrenheit from the mid-1970s to 2006. Precipitation and snowpack runoff decreased over the same period. The higher mortality rates held regardless of tree size or type or elevation at which it grew. The fact that birth rates remained unchanged among the nearly 60,000 pines, firs, hemlocks and other trees in the study indicates that forests are losing trees faster than they are replacing them, the authors noted. It remains unclear how much of the regional warming is a result of a natural climate cycle and how much results from a global trend toward higher temperatures. But Jerry F. Franklin, a professor of ecosystem analysis at the University of Washington and an author of the study, blamed global warming. "We see the regional warming as part of a much larger shift globally," Mr. Franklin said. The study focused on forests more than 200 years old where rapid changes in demographic rates would more likely be caused by environmental changes rather than by internal processes like self- thinning that are more common in young forests. The spike in mortality cannot be attributed to aging, fires and other events, the researchers said Warmer weather makes trees more vulnerable to insects and pathogens that thrive in warmer conditions. In a report last year, the Department of Agriculture said that climate change had "very likely" increased the size and number of fires, insect infestations and overall tree die-offs in forests in the West, the Southwest and Alaska, and that the damage would accelerate in the future. The authors of the new study said in a teleconference that if tree mortality rates continued to rise, the average size of trees could fall because trees would die at younger ages. Smaller trees cannot store as much carbon dioxide as large ones. In addition, areas could also become less suitable for some species and more welcoming for others, and existing species might begin to act in peculiar ways. "Novel behaviors on the part of pests and pathogens are the sort of thing we'll get surprised by," Mr. Franklin said. But Steve Pyne, an environmental historian at the University of Texas who has studied fires in forests, said that how bad things became depended on what replaced the vegetation that was being lost. "Part of the trick here is we don't know," Mr. Pyne said. "It's like the financial meltdown. It's the uncertainty. What's going to replace it?" He added, "It may make no difference; it may make a huge difference." Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company Return to Table of Contents :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Rachel's Democracy & Health News (formerly Rachel's Environment & Health News) highlights the connections between issues that are often considered separately or not at all. The natural world is deteriorating and human health is declining because those who make the important decisions aren't the ones who bear the brunt. Our purpose is to connect the dots between human health, the destruction of nature, the decline of community, the rise of economic insecurity and inequalities, growing stress among workers and families, and the crippling legacies of patriarchy, intolerance, and racial injustice that allow us to be divided and therefore ruled by the few. In a democracy, there are no more fundamental questions than, "Who gets to decide?" And, "How do the few control the many, and what might be done about it?" As you come across stories that might help people connect the dots, please Email them to us at d...@rachel.org. Rachel's Democracy & Health News is published as often as necessary to provide readers with up-to-date coverage of the subject. Editor: Peter Montague - pe...@rachel.org :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Environmental Research Foundation P.O. Box 160, New Brunswick, N.J. 08903 d...@rachel.org ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::