=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #172
—March 14, 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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SUPERFUND–PART 5: SOME KEYS TO A SUCCESSFUL CLEANUP.
[Continuing our series on Superfund cleanups. Page numbers in our
text refer to pages in the latest report from Congress’s Office
of Technology Assessment (OTA), COMING CLEAN, cited in our last
paragraph, below.]
During the long process of cleaning up a contaminated site,
government and the polluters will make many choices that will
affect the quality of the final result. Often they make choices
that are not in your best interests and are illegal, so you must
watchdog every decision. To be effective, you need to know how
the Superfund process works (we reviewed it in RHWN #160). The
RIFS (remedial investigation, feasibility study) is the place
where the government (or the polluter, when the polluter is
selected to do the RIFS, which is more often than not–see RHWN #166) gets
to describe the problem and the range of possible
solutions. The final decision (formally contained in the ROD, or
record of decision) is limited to alternatives that were
presented in the RIFS, so the RIFS is key. The RIFS not only
defines the problem but it also defines the range of possible
solutions.
Here are some points that may help you get what you want from the
RIFS and ROD:
Cost effectiveness should guide cleanup
What does cost effectiveness mean? The principle of
cost-effectiveness means that you first select the level of
environmental and health protection to be achieved; then,
afterward, you select the lowestcost alternative that is able to
provide that level of protection. Using cost-effectiveness to
guide a cleanup means that cost alone is never supposed to
control Superfund cleanup decisions.
Cost-effectiveness analysis and cost-benefit analysis are not the
same thing. The SARA law (the federal Superfund amendments of
1986) required EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) to use
cost-effectiveness analysis, but EPA has often substituted
cost-benefit analysis (pgs. 65-67; be sure to read footnote 64 on
pg. 65). This is wrong and illegal, yet EPA persists in doing it.
What’s the difference between the two?
Cost-benefit analysis measures the costs of a project and the
benefits of the project, compares the two and decides which is
greater. The greater of the two determines whether the project
goes forward or not. This technique was first developed by the
Army Corps of Engineers to evaluate dams. To make comparison
easy, everything is reduced to dollars. Using this technique, it
is easy to show that incineration is expensive, landfilling is
cheap, therefore landfilling is a “better” alternative at a
Superfund site, according to the principles of cost-benefit
analysis. The SARA law specifically says the EPA should not make
this kind of comparison for Superfund cleanups, but EPA continues
to make such comparisons routinely.
Cost-effectiveness analysis, on the other hand, requires the
agency to establish health and environmental goals, then to
select the technology that meets those goals by the cheapest
means. If incineration and landfilling could achieve identical
health and environmental goals, and if incineration were more
expensive, then cost-effectiveness analysis would dictate the
selection of landfilling. But landfilling and incineration do not
give equivalent levels of health and environmental safety because
one is a permanent cleanup measure (incineration) and the other
is temporary (landfilling). Therefore the two technologies do not
provide the same level of protection and they cannot be compared
using cost-effectiveness analysis.
How clean is clean?
It has become standard within the EPA to consider a cancer risk
of one in a million as being “acceptable.” The question, “How
clean is clean?” is often answered by performing a risk
assessment on a few key chemicals, called “indicator chemicals”;
if the risk of them causing cancer is one-in-a-million (10-6) or
less, this is deemed “clean enough.”
However, there are instances in which the agency uses a cancer
risk of one in one hundred thousand (10-5) or even one in ten
thousand (10-4) to define “acceptable risk.”
Be sure you are aware what level of risk is being used to decide
how clean is clean enough. Also, be aware that the “indicator
chemicals” may not represent the full range of hazards actually
present in the chemicals at the site. For example, a recent risk
assessment for Love Canal was done using seven “indicator
chemicals” but there are more than 200 chemicals buried in the
Love Canal dump, so the seven chemicals obviously can’t truly
represent the full hazard.
Make EPA give you evidence of what levels of contamination (and
risk) have been deemed acceptable at other sites with similar
chemicals, what cleanup levels have been set elsewhere to define
“how clean is clean.” [You can find limited information about
other sites in Are We Cleaning Up?, cited in our last paragraph
(below), but EPA officials should have, or be able to get for
you, information about all other sites.]
Watch out for risk assessment
Risk assessment is a technique used by government and by
polluters to reach a quantitative (numerical) estimate of the
likelihood that you will be harmed by exposure to chemicals at
the site (after it is cleaned up). Unfortunately, the people who
do risk assessments often fail to tell you how little they
actually know about the ability of chemicals to harm humans and
the environment. Getting risk assessors to talk about the
unknowns is as important as their discussion of the knowns. Here
are a few points to remember:
a) A risk assessment should consider damage to creatures besides
humans. Although humans are generally the most sensitive species,
there are some creatures that are more sensitive than humans.
These other creatures need to be protected as well as humans do,
since the environment consists of interdependencies and
interconnections that give every creature a role to play in
supporting life.
b) To be useful, a risk assessment needs to consider human
diseases besides cancer, including (1) reproductive problems
[inheritable genetic changes, birth defects, low sperm count,
inability to conceive, spontaneous abortion, low birth weight,
and so forth], (2) developmental disorders, (3) nervous system
effects, and (4) damage to the immune system. For example, a
chemical exposure that caused rashes in 20% of children, or
caused pain in the joints of 20% of elderly people would create a
social disaster, yet would not be recognized by a “standard” risk
assessment focused only on cancer.
c) To be useful, a risk assessment needs to be explicit about the
unknowns, the gaps in available information, and the assumptions
that are used to fill those gaps. This can be the most valuable
service a risk assessment provides, because when you look for
information about most chemicals and their effects on human and
animal reproduction, their effects on human and animal
development, their effects on human and animal nervous systems,
and their effects on human and animal immune systems–you
generally find that the unknowns are much larger than the knowns.
Thus a good risk assessment can show us how ignorant we are about
most aspects of most chemicals, and can give us good reason to
question whether the proposed level of “clean” is clean enough.
Get: U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, CLEANING UP:
SUPERFUND’S PROBLEMS CAN BE SOLVED (Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1989). Available for $10 from U.S.
Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402-9325; request
GPO stock No. 052-003-01166-2. Phone (202) 783-3238. Charge it to
Visa, Mastercard or Choice.
And: U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. ARE WE
CLEANING UP? 10 SUPERFUND CASE STUDIES–SPECIAL REPORT
[OTA-ITE-362] (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office,
June 1988); available for $3.75 from U.S. Government Printing
Office, Washington, DC 20402-9325; phone (202) 783-3238; request
GPO stock number 052-00301122-1.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: superfund; ota; epa; cost benefit analysis;
risk assessment; remedial action; health effects; birth defects;
reproductive hazards; developmental disorders; immune system
disorders; nervous system;