=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #456
—August 24, 1995—
News and resources for environmental justice.
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MYSTERIOUS MOTIVES AT EPA
In 1990, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funded the
construction of an incinerator in a residential neighborhood in
Jacksonville, Arkansas, to destroy dioxin-contaminated
chemical-warfare wastes. At the time, EPA’s decision raised
eyebrows. For at least 100 years in the U.S., the basic
philosophy of public health policy has been prevention. Since
EPA studies show that dioxin damages the immune system and
reproductive system of humans, and probably causes cancer as well
(RHWN #390, #391, and #414), no public health official favors
exposing people needlessly to dioxin. At the same time, no one
–not even the most ardent advocates of incineration –claim that
hazardous waste incinerators break down 100% of the chemicals
that are fed into them. Therefore, it seemed certain that people
living near the Jacksonville incinerator would be exposed to
airborne dioxins released during the burn. On the face of it,
building the Jacksonville incinerator in a residential
neighborhood violated long-established public health principles.
This was perplexing.
EPA took the public position that there were no alternatives to
building the incinerator in a residential neighborhood. On three
occasions, a majority of voters in Jacksonville had voiced
opposition to a dioxin incinerator nestled among their homes.
One obvious alternative would have been to remove the waste by
rail (a rail spur serves the site) or even by truck, to a remote
location where fewer people would be directly exposed. Another
obvious alternative would have been to build a reinforced
concrete building on the site and store the waste in a secure
fashion until better technology became available. But EPA
officials said it would be too “dangerous” to move the
dioxin-containing barrels of waste out of town, and too expensive
to store them in a special building on-site. This didn’t seem to
make much sense at the time. The leaking waste drums had already
been “overpacked” into larger non-leaking drums, which could have
been readily loaded onto a train or a truck. And concrete
buildings are not nearly as expensive to build and monitor as
incinerators or landfills. (See RHWN #260.)
Arkansas governor –later U.S. President –Bill Clinton
personally promoted the unpopular incinerator for 12 years.
“He’s been beaten up pretty badly over this,” one aide told the
NEW YORK TIMES. Still, Mr. Clinton persevered, insisting on
building a dioxin incinerator in a residential neighborhood. (See
RHWN #311.) From 1990 through 1992, citizens and government
officials struggled bitterly over the incinerator as it failed
its test burns but was nevertheless declared “safe” by EPA. (See
RHWN #311 and #312.) On October 27,
1992 –one week before he
was elected President –Mr. Clinton took time out from his
frenzied campaign schedule to sign an order officially commencing
the incineration of 13 million pounds of dioxin-contaminated
herbicides a stone’s throw from homes occupied by families with
children. The drums contained an estimated 75 pounds of dioxin
–by any measure, a huge quantity of a supremely powerful poison.
(See RHWN #312.)
After he became President, Mr. Clinton’s appointees continued to
promote the Jacksonville incinerator. When citizens sued in
federal court to have the incinerator shut down because of
flagrant violations of EPA’s own regulations, Mr. Clinton’s EPA
argued that loopholes in the law allowed them to continue burning
and releasing dioxin into the neighborhood. Court documents
reveal that the machine was unexpectedly emitting large “puffs”
of white smoke from the boiler itself, which bypassed the
pollution control system entirely –a clear indication of
improper pressures inside the machine. Incinerator workers were
issued gas masks, just 100 yards or so from families with
children, who were not issued gas masks. Raw waste was reported
bubbling through the boiler seals and baking onto the outside of
the combustion chamber, creating black smoke and strong odors,
which wafted offsite into the surrounding neighborhood –a
malodorous caricature of how an incinerator is supposed to
operate. (See RHWN #345.)
By this time Greenpeace chemist Pat Costner had demolished EPA’s
decade-old claim that incinerators can destroy 99.9999% of the
dioxin fed into them. (See RHWN #280, #312, and #318.) Internal
EPA memos, leaked to the press, revealed that EPA’s staff agreed
with Costner’s analysis. (RHWN #312) EPA’s own monitoring data
showed that the Jacksonville incinerator was emitting 800 times
as much dioxin as EPA recommends as “safe.” However, in court
EPA argued that no court had a right to shut them down until
after the burn was completed. A federal judge in Arkansas
ordered the incinerator shut down as a public health hazard, but
EPA appealed and won on the basis that citizens can’t claim in
court that they are being poisoned by a Superfund cleanup until
after the cleanup is completed. (RHWN #345.)
In the summer of 1993 it was revealed that the Jacksonville
incinerator had done such a poor job destroying waste that the
residual incinerator ash –heaps of salt, 43% larger in volume
than the original liquids fed into the incinerator –were so
contaminated with dioxin that they could not legally be removed
from the incinerator site. EPA’s incinerator had burned 9600
barrels of dioxin-contaminated liquid waste and in the process
had created 13,730 barrels of dioxin-contaminated salts. (REHW
#325)
EPA then built a 30,000-square-foot secure concrete storage
building on the Jacksonville site to house the 13,730 drums of
incinerator waste –a solution which EPA had previously rejected
as prohibitively expensive.
In February 1995, EPA shut down the Jacksonville incinerator
down, even though not all the waste had been incinerated. The
remaining 3260 drums of heavily-contaminated dioxin wastes are
now being loaded onto trucks and driven across Oklahoma to a
Westinghouse incinerator in Coffeyville, Kansas –an alternative
that EPA had previously rejected as too dangerous.
In this story, Mr. Clinton’s EPA would appear to be guilty of
malfeasance, misfeasance and nonfeasance –all the ‘feasances’
possible. But there is more.
Despite all the problems at the Jacksonville site, a study funded
jointly by EPA and by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and
Disease Registry (ATSDR) was released May 2, 1995, showing that
dioxin in the blood of people living near the Jacksonville
incinerator had actually DECREASED between 1991 and 1994. In
other words, while the incinerator was releasing dioxin into the
neighborhood, the dioxin levels in the blood of people living
nearby had gone down, not up.
From this study, EPA officials immediately drew optimistic
conclusions about incinerators in residential neighborhoods. The
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH reported, “The Environmental Protection
Agency says the new study proves that dioxin could be burned
safely at Times Beach.” [1] Jacksonville went so well that it
should be repeated in Times Beach, Missouri, EPA is now saying.
The ATSDR pulled together a “peer review panel” of outside
“dioxin experts” who agreed that the new study showed that dioxin
levels had gone down in people living near the Jacksonville
incinerator.
Then Greenpeace chemist Pat Costner of Eureka Springs, Arkansas,
sent a Freedom of Information Act request for the data and let it
be known that she would be providing an independent analysis of
the findings. With that, the EPA-funded researchers sharpened
their pencils and examined their data again. A month later they
announced they had discovered that their first conclusion was
false; now they said dioxin levels in the blood of families
living near the incinerator had gone up, not down. It turned out
that the principle researcher, Dr. Morris Cranmer, had done his
arithmetic wrong and ATSDR’s peer review panel of “dioxin
experts” had failed to notice the huge mistake. [3]
Pat Costner’s 28-page analysis, published this month, leaves the
Cranmer study in tatters. [4] For example, the incinerator had
been burning for 8 months before the “pre-burn” blood samples
were taken–and these were probably the “dirtiest” 8 months of
burning because the incinerator was new and the company had never
operated an incinerator before. The “control” group was selected
from the town of Mabelvale, only 25 miles from Jacksonville. EPA
says air pollution from an incinerator travels at least 50
kilometers (31 miles) –so the “control” group was almost
certainly exposed to dioxin from the Jacksonville incinerator.
In addition, there are several other incinerators that pollute
Mabelvale with dioxin–one of them operated by EPA itself in
Jefferson, Arkansas. A worse “control group” could not have been
found.
Furthermore, the selection of the study group itself biased the
study’s results. Youngsters under 18 and people over 65 were
excluded –the very people most likely to spend time at home and
be most affected by the Jacksonville incinerator. People who had
elevated levels of dioxin in their blood to begin with were
excluded; these were the people who had been most-exposed by the
site in the past and therefore would be most likely to be
impacted by the incinerator, which was built directly on the old
site.
In sum, the Cranmer study seems to have been DESIGNED to reach
false or misleading conclusions. Dr. Cranmer was well-qualified
for conducting such a study. In 1988 had been convicted by a
federal judge of bilking the federal government out of $9.5
million dollars. He appealed his conviction and lost. While he
was serving his sentence of “community service” he was hired to
do the Jacksonville study. [2]
Costner offers many additional criticisms of the Cranmer study.
And she shows that the data reveal a dioxin increase of 22% in
the blood of the Jacksonville residents who participated in the
study.
Despite these remarkable revelations, EPA today is still
insisting in public that burning dioxin-contaminated wastes in
residential neighborhoods is entirely safe, and is good public
policy, pointing to Jacksonville and the Cranmer study as
evidence. Today EPA is promoting dioxin burns in Times Beach,
Missouri, in Holbrook, Massachusetts, at the Crab Orchard site in
southern Illinois, and at other sites around the country.
What could possibly be motivating this $7 billion-per-year
bungling behemoth? Why in the world is EPA eager to burn
powerful poisons, releasing the residuals directly into
neighborhoods where families live? If readers can suggest
possible EPA motives, we’d be pleased to hear them. We are
perplexed.
                
                
                
                
    
–Peter Montague
===============
[1] Tom Uhlenbrock, “Researcher Reports Drop in Level of Dioxin
in Blood,” ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH June 10, 1995, pg. 4B. The
POST-DISPATCH missed the actual public meeting May 2 but U.S. EPA
officials made available to the paper’s reporter a transcript of
the hearing.
epa; dioxin; incineration; jacksonville, ar; arkansas; bill clinton;
lawsuits; der; destruction and removal efficiency; ash; landfills; hazardous
waste; above-ground storage buildings; ok; oklahoma; aptus; ks; kansas;
coffeyville; westinghouse; agency for toxic substances and disease registry;
atsdr; morris cranmer; hazardous waste incineration; superfund; malfeasance;
misfeasance; nonfeasance; holbrook, ma; massachusetts;