=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #187
—June 27, 1990—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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NIAGARA RIVER–PART 2: A GOLD STANDARD FOR CONTROL OF TOXICS.
The area along the Niagara River in northern New York state has
the heaviest concentration of chemical dumps in North America.
The river connects Lake Erie with Lake Ontario and forms the
border between the U.S. and Canada. Some 5 million people drink
water that flows through the Niagara River and into Lake Ontario,
including 25% of the entire population of Canada. The
international process for cleaning up 66 toxic dumps along the
Niagara River, which began in 1979, has become the subject of an
excellent video called TESTING THE WATERS. Lynn Corcoran, who
produced the video, chose this topic because cleanup of the
Niagara River will set precedents for the way other areas are
cleaned up.
The video looks at two aspects of the problem: industrial dumping
directly into the river through discharge pipes, and industrial
dumping into holes in the ground (so-called landfills). In each
case the video tries to show how we got where we are today, and
what our options are for the future.
Industrial Discharge Pipes
Dumping industrial poisons into the drinking water supplies of 5
million people is entirely legal, so long as you request a permit
to do it. How does our government decide how much dumping is OK
and how much is too much? On the video, a representative of the
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC)
explains that they dole out river dumping permits by first
deciding how much waste the entire river can “assimilate,” then
they divvy up this “assimilative capacity” among the various
dumpers. This explanation is followed immediately on camera by a
representative of Environment Canada, which is Canada’s
equivalent of our federal EPA (Environmental Protection Agency),
who explains that many chemicals such as PCBs, dioxin, and the
pesticides Lindane and Mirex aren’t “assimilated” or degraded at
all by the River. They merely flow downstream and settle in Lake
Ontario, where they build up year after year, slowly accumulating
and concentrating in food chains. This aspect of the problem is
not considered by New York state officials.
In addition to using “assimilative capacity” to apportion dumping
permits among the dumpers, New York DEC and our EPA also use
“risk assessment,” we are told on camera. For each chemical that
a company wants to dump, the government decides how much of that
chemical will kill one in a million people (this is considered an
“acceptable risk.”) They then license the polluter to dump
sufficient quantities of poisons to kill just that many citizens
and no more. However, Professor Ross Hume Hall from McMaster
University appears on camera pointing out that no one really
knows how much of a chemical causes what effects; and, he points
out, each “risk assessment” is carried out as if the human body
only encountered that one chemical alone. Despite large gaps in
our knowledge, and despite incorrect assumptions, governments
routinely use risk assessments to make life or death decisions
that are binding on the citizenry.
Next we see a representative of Occidental Chemical (the people
who created the Love Canal toxic dump), Thomas Jennings. Mr.
Jennings says, “I think we’re all familiar with the way new drugs
and pharmaceuticals have to go through rigorous testing. Well, to
a lesser extent, industrial chemicals have to go through the same
thing.” Unfortunately, Mr. Jennings is simply wrong. Congress did
pass a Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in 1976 containing
language about testing all new chemicals before they are
marketed. But EPA has neither the will nor the money for such
testing, so about 1000 new chemicals are put into commercial use
each year without any testing for their health effects. This part
of TSCA is simply ignored.
Next Mr. Jennings explains that for each chemical there is a
threshold, an amount below which no health effects occur and
above which people get sick. He says, “We have to determine what
that level is. That’s a major task for industry and for health
officials into the future,” he says.
Then we hear once again from Professor Hall who points out that
there are 60,000 chemicals in industrial use and we have
“absolutely no information whatsoever” on 40,000 of them. He goes
on to note that studies aren’t being done and to ask, without
studies, how can we conclude there’s no problem?
The narrator then frames a key question: In the absence of
information proving that a substance is dangerous or safe to
humans and the environment, how should government regulators act?
Should they wait for evidence of danger or should they err on the
side of caution and restrict the discharge of a substance into
the river because it might cause harm? Should chemicals be
assumed innocent until proven guilty, or the other way around?
So there you have the present regulatory system in a nutshell:
40,000 chemicals already in use have never been studied for their
effects on humans and on the environment. Despite what the
gentleman from Occidental says, new chemicals are not tested
before they are put into use. The government hands out dumping
permits on the incorrect assumption that the river can
“assimilate” all the chemicals that will be dumped. Furthermore,
dumping permits are issued based on health “risk assessments”
which assume that the government knows the health consequences of
the chemicals that are being dumped (an incorrect assumption),
and further assumes that any individual is only exposed to a
single chemical at any moment, which is clearly not the case.
Industry says it’s up to government and industry to find “safe”
levels of chemicals; the way this is being done today is to
expose large human populations to a witch’s brew of chemicals
without studying the consequences in any systematic way; when a
cluster of birth defects or cancers shows up and citizens start
hollering, then the government may grudgingly conduct a study.
Meantime, the dumping continues on a grand scale and many fish in
the Great Lakes now suffer from goiter and liver cancer and have
become unsafe to eat (see RHWN #146).
The alternative, of course, is to declare that this massive
experiment on the environment is unacceptably Russian roulettish
and to require industry to shift to closed-loop technology,
designing every industrial system to meet a goal of zero
discharge. As the narrator of this video points out, it has been
the stated intention of all four governments since before the
turn of the century that water used in industrial processes
should be free of contaminants before it is discharged into the
river. Zero discharge of toxics has been the goal for 100 years.
But now a representive of DuPont appears on camera saying zero
discharge sounds good but cannot be achieved. And Mr. Jennings
from Occidental Chemical says zero discharge will simply shut
down industry.
Clearly these gentlemen misunderstand. We are not advocating
perfection. We are merely advocating a gold standard for toxics.
Some 3 billion Troy ounces of gold have been mined during the
past 6,000 years. A tiny fraction of this has been sunk at sea,
has been buried in tombs now lost, or has otherwise become
irretrievable. But in general, we notice that there is not a
“waste gold” problem anywhere in the world. Today gold is
successfully mined at concentrations of only 3 or 4 parts per
million (ppm). At even lower concentrations, it is readily
reclaimed from scrap. Nanograms are captured.
Historically, the real value of gold has not been that it
constantly increases in value, but that it rarely declines in
value. As society applies the “gold standard” to polluters, zero
discharge of their poisonous wastes will likewise allow them to
retain what they already have and cherish: their good names, the
absence of leg irons, and the uninterrupted flow of life fluids
between their shoulders and their heads.
Get: TESTING THE WATERS from Bullfrog Films, Oley, PA 19547;
phone (800) 543-3764. $350 purchase or $75 rental for schools and
citizen groups.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: zero discharge; gold standard; remedial
action; niagara river; love canal; assimilative capacity; water
pollution; rivers; occidental chemical; oxy; tsca; risk
assessment; how clean is clean; great lakes; ny; landfilling;
drinking water; tsca; chemical industry; ross hall; government;