RACHEL's Hazardous Waste News #272

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #272
—February 12, 1992—
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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AFTER 12 YEARS STUDYING TOXIC
DUMPS, GOVERNMENT KNOWLEDGE REMAINS SKETCHY

How much toxic waste is generated in the U.S. each year? Where
does it go? And does it endanger the public? In 1992, 12 years
after the federal government officially began studying these
questions, you might think it would be easy to find answers, but
you would be disappointed.

In 1973 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated
annual U.S. toxic waste production at 10 million tons, or roughly
100 pounds for each person in the U.S. Throughout the ’70s, that
was the official story. Eight years later, in 1981, EPA estimated
annual U.S. toxic waste production at 290 million tons, or
roughly one ton per person per year. (pg. 60)1 Throughout the
’80s, that was the official story. In 1989, the American Chemical
Society estimated annual U.S. toxic waste production at somewhere
between 580 million tons and 2.9 billion tons. [See RHWN #148.]
That same year EPA estimated U.S. annual toxic waste production
at 6.0 billion tons, or 50,000 pounds (25 tons) per year for
every man, woman and child. (pg. 60) This, then, is the current
best estimate, but history shows it will not be the last
estimate, and the next one will most likely be larger.

Of the 6.0 billion tons of toxic waste produced each year, only
300 million tons (5% of the total) is managed according to rules
established by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
(RCRA)–the nation’s official law for managing hazardous wastes
from cradle to grave. (pg. 102) Thus 95% of toxic waste is still
handled outside the restrictions of the nation’s toxic waste laws.

Where does hazardous waste go?

The vast majority of hazardous waste has gone–and still
goes–into the ground somewhere via pits, ponds, lagoons, and
landfills, where gravity pulls the waste down into the ground, or
it has gone into deep injection wells, where the waste is pumped
under pressure down into the ground.

In 1980 Congress passed CERCLA [Public Law 96-510], commonly
known as Superfund, which required EPA to locate all contaminated
sites, establish priorities for cleaning them up, then clean them
up. Many people assume that, because Congress passed a law to
control this problem, it must be under control. They would be
disappointed. EPA has listed just over 1200 sites as official
Superfund sites at this point. But EPA knows of 32,000 additional
sites that contain chemical wastes; the agency has said it keeps
the official Superfund list relatively small because it isn’t
able to manage the cleanup of more than the 1200 sites it has
listed so far. (pg. 77) (As we saw last week, EPA is
probably right about this. Spending at least $7.5 billion over
the last 12 years, the agency has managed to clean up only 64
sites.)

Unfortunately, there is evidence that even EPA’s list of 32,000
sites merely scratches the surface of the problem. In 1989, one
of Congress’s research organizations, the Office of Technology
Assessment (OTA), gathered information from government agencies
besides EPA and concluded that the number of
chemically-contaminated sites is much larger than even EPA’s list
of 32,000. OTA said that, if you include military sites, mine
wastes, leaking underground storage tanks, pesticide-contaminated
sites, non-military federal properties, radioactive release
sites, underground injection wells, municipal gas facilities,
and wood-preserving plants, there are probably about 439,000
chemically-contaminated sites. (pg. 76)

Why does EPA estimate there are 32,000 sites and OTA estimate
there are 439,000 sites? It is because no single government
agency keeps a complete inventory of sites, and there is no
government program to discover new sites. As OTA reported in
1989, “EPA has never requested funds from Congress for site
discovery. EPA has no site discovery program, has no budget for
site discovery, and does not allow States to spend Superfund
money for site discovery.” (pg. 77) New sites are discovered by
accident as farmers or hunters stumble upon them, or by
householders who smell strange odors in their water or whose
children complain of rashes and dizziness. State government
agencies learn about sites and report them to federal officials
in at least six different programs, but federal officials in the
different agencies do not communicate well, if at all, and some
agencies do not even maintain records of the sites they learn
about.

Does hazardous waste endanger the public?

The National Academy of Sciences published a new book late last
year–from which all the preceding information about contaminated
sites is taken–trying to answer that question. The Academy
concluded, from the few sites where human health has been
studied, that there is good evidence people have been harmed by
chemical contamination–including birth defects, nervous system
damage, damage to the immune system, skin disorders, kidney and
liver diseases, blood disorders, cancer, and more–but no one
knows what is going on at most sites. (pg. 104) There is little
doubt that hundreds of toxic chemicals reside at each of these
sites–but it is not certain to what extent most people have yet
been exposed and thus directly affected. For this reason, no one
knows the extent of the harm to public health today. (“[W]e find
that the health of some members of the public is in danger,” the
Academy said [pg. 97], but “We are currently unable to answer the
question of the overall impact on public health of hazardous
wastes.” [pg. 21])

However, saying we don’t know the extent of the problem is quite
different from saying there is no problem.

The Academy points out that “Millions of tons of hazardous
materials are slowly migrating into groundwater in areas where
they could pose problems in the future, even though current risks
could be negligible.” (p. 10) The Academy points out that half
the U.S. population, and 95% of the rural population, relies on
groundwater as its main source of drinking water. (pg. 5)

One federal agency studied 725 Superfund sites to learn how many
people live nearby and they found 4.1 million people living
within one mile of a contaminated site; nearly half of these
(46%) are women of child-bearing age, are children, or are
elderly persons, “all of whom can be considered at particular
risk from toxic chemical exposures,” the Academy said (pg. 68).

If four million people live within one mile of 725 official
Superfund sites, how many people live within one mile of the
439,000 chemically-contaminated sites that OTA identified?

In typically understated fashion, the Academy speculates about
people who are being exposed today without anyone paying
attention: “…the committee does find sufficient evidence that
hazardous wastes have produced health effects in some
populations. We are concerned that populations may be at risk
that have not been adequately identified, because of the
inadequate program of site identification and assessment.” (p.
20) WE ARE TOO.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
===============
[1] Throughout this week’s text, page numbers inside parentheses
refer to pages in the National Academy of Science’s recent book
ENVIRONMENTAL EPIDEMIOLOGY, VOLUME 1: PUBLIC HEALTH AND HAZARDOUS
WASTES. $29.95 plus $3.00 shipping, from: National Academy Press,
2101 Constitution Ave., NW, P.O. Box 285, Washington, DC 20055.
Telephone: (202) 334-2000. THIS IS AN EXCELLENT BOOK.

Descriptor terms: epa; american chemical society; rcra;
superfund; ota; hazardous waste sites; national academy of
sciences; nas;

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