A Midwest researcher has found that the combination of chemicals in some common weed killers may complicate pregnancies. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
A Midwest researcher has found that the combination of chemicals in
some common weed killers may threaten human fetuses. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Warren Porter is an environmental toxicologist at the University of
Wisconsin – Madison. He says he went to the hardware store and bought
common herbicides containing the chemical compounds 2-4-d, dicamba, and
mecoprop. Porter diluted the mixture with water and fed it many times
to hundreds of lab mice. Porter says the mice experienced a 20 percent
increase in failed pregnancies and he contends exposure to the
combination of chemicals is to blame. He says government regulators
often test only individual chemicals and don’t realize how chemical
mixes might affect a living cell.
“It’s like a molecular bull in a china shop. It’s almost impossible to
predict in advance all the possible things they might do.”
Porter says exposure to the mix of weed killer chemicals can also
threaten human pregnancies. But other researchers say the risk to most
people is very low.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach in Milwaukee.
The world’s largest automaker is doing something it’s never done before. General Motors is recruiting people who live near its assembly plants to help the company find ways to pollute less. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports, some environmentalists say GM’s efforts are missing the point:
Transcript
The world’s largest automaker is doing something it’s never done before. General Motors is
recruiting people who live near its assembly plants to help the company find ways to pollute less.
But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports, some environmentalists say GM’s
efforts are missing the point.
The city of Lansing, Michigan is the car Capital of North America, producing nearly a
half-a-million Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, Chevrolets and Cadillacs every year. Later this year,
General Motors adds another car to its Lansing lineup – a brand-new Chevy roadster. But it
almost didn’t happen.
Environmentalists threatened legal action to block production because they weren’t satisfied with
the factory’s air pollution controls.
Steve Tomaszewski is General Motors’ Lansing environmental manager.
“People were concerned, everyone was concerned. There was a breakdown of communications,
on all parties.”
The disagreement was over air pollution from one of GM’s plants. Those emissions were due to
nearly double under a new state air quality permit.
Some Lansing residents and two state environmental groups threatened to appeal that new permit
if GM didn’t agree to use better pollution controls. The two sides made their cases in the local
papers and eventually struck a deal.
Again, GM’s Steve Tomaszewski.
“We’ve come a long way, a long way, from where we started in the process. You know, we sit
down and we know more about people’s families other than just concentrating, on you know, the
industrial odor issues, which is great.”
General Motors agreed to join a new Air Quality Task Force. It’s made up of GM engineers,
environmental officials and people who live near the plants. GM also brought in an odor expert to
train the group to sniff out emissions from the plants’ paint shops. This “odor patrol” then files
reports to a new Web site.
Marci Alling is part of the group.
“They kind of calibrated our noses, that’s about the best way to describe it to kind of get us all
where we are more or less reporting the same levels of odor.”
Alling and her husband have lived near GM factories for 10 years. Often, whether they spend
time in their backyard depends on which way the wind blows. In certain weather conditions,
typically on hot, sticky days, a paint-like smell from the plants drifts through their neighborhood.
They’ve wondered whether the odors are making them sick.
State officials say the odors might be annoying, but recent studies found people who live near the
plants are not at a greater risk of cancer or other illnesses.
GM’s Steve Tomaszewski says the odor patrol will help the automaker better monitor emissions.
“We know we can’t be completely odor free. We strive to do our best. But this information, what
we’ll do is be able to go back and it’s more real time. You’re able to link it to the day and the time,
and we’re able to go back into the process to see what’s happening.”
But environmental groups say General Motors should be doing more to reduce pollution in the
first place, instead of tracking emissions after they become a problem.
James Clift of the Michigan Environmental Council says technology is available to make the
painting process cleaner. But he claims GM isn’t using it.
“If what you need is pollution control equipment and it’s not there, the odors may continue. We
might know better what they are, but if the permit doesn’t require them, it doesn’t matter. Now,
the department always has the ability to bring what they call an odor violation against General
Motors. In my mind, they’ve received lots of complaints over the years, but the DEQ has never
acted and actually issued a violation on odors.”
But the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality says it has issued odor violations against
General Motors. GM was ordered to raise its smokestacks in Lansing a couple of years ago
because of a violation. And GM says it recently spent 4-million-dollars on new painting
technology that greatly cuts down on pollution.
Now, General Motors is counting on its neighbors and their noses to help the company improve
air quality near its factories. GM says the project could lead to better pollution controls at plants
throughout the country, including more than 40 in the Great Lakes region.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.
Most of us think of earthworms as beneficial creatures. Gardeners are always happy to spot a worm in the flowerbed because they add fertilizer to the soil. Many anglers say they’re the best thing for catching fish. But scientists are beginning to learn worms aren’t so friendly to Great Lakes forests. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Transcript
Most of us think of earthworms as beneficial creatures. Gardeners are always happy to spot a
worm in the flowerbed because they add fertilizer to the soil. And many anglers say they’re the
best thing for catching fish. But scientists are beginning to learn worms aren’t so friendly to
Great Lakes forests. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports.
(fade up Girl Scouts)
This Girl Scout troop is learning about worms. Judy Gibbs is a naturalist at the Hartley Nature
Center in Duluth. She shows the girls how to coax worms out of the soil. They pour water laced
with powdered mustard into the worms’ burrows.
It irritates the worms and they come squiggling up by the hundreds.
“Pour it in. Wait a minute. Here it comes. It doesn’t like the mustard and it comes right up.
Look at this one (laughter). oh, there’s another one. Look at it go!” (shrieks)
On their walk through the woods, the girls look for dead leaves. There aren’t many. Judy Gibbs
explains why.
“Here’s a leaf stem that’s being pulled into this hole. Who’s doing this? Ants! No. Worms.
There’s big night crawlers. You know what a night crawler is? They grow straight down into the
ground, and they come up at night and pull leaves down into their burrows. And they eat the leaf
right off. That’s why we’re not finding any leaves.”
Worms eating leaves might seem natural, but it turns out these worms aren’t native to these
woods. The last glacier buried most of what is now the Great Lakes region. When it melted,
plants and animals returned to create a community of maples, pines, songbirds, and tender plants
growing on the forest floor, like trillium…but not earthworms.
Cindy Hale is a biologist who studies the native wildflowers that grow in northern hardwood
forests. She loves the spring bloomers that take root in the spongy layer of decaying leaves on
the forest floor. Trillium, bloodroot, solomon’s seal.
Hale says many of these plants are disappearing.
“Sites that forty years ago were carpets of trillium have been slowly over the last two decades
declining to almost nothing, and people were scratching their heads, trying to figure out just
what’s going on.”
Earthworm populations are thickest close to cities. But Hale says people bring worms with them
when they come to the woods.
At first, settlers carried them in, along with the animals and plants they brought from Europe or
the east coast. These days, worms are spread by people who drive in the woods – loggers, ATV
riders…
“But in particular, fishing bait is a huge way that worms get moved around in our region.
Because there’s so many lakes and so much fishing.”
Hale and her colleagues set up test plots along an advancing line of worms in the Chippewa
National Forest in central Minnesota. The worms crawl about three yards further into the forest
each year. Hale is studying how the soil and the plants have changed as the worms advance.
Worms eat the decaying leaves on the forest floor. They mix that organic matter into the mineral
soil beneath it. And in time, they can use up all the organic matter and leave only mineral soil
behind.
That means the plants that have evolved to take root in the leaves on top of the soil have lost their
home.
Hale says these changes could affect every plant and animal that lives in the woods. She says,
for instance, even birds have declined by nearly 50% in the last fourteen years.
“Because ovenbirds nest in that forest floor, so if you lose the forest floor, then you may well
affect ground-nesting birds such as that. So when you start thinking about it, the potential
ramifications across the ecosystem get really wild.”
Hale says one of the big challenges in studying this problem is that there’s been very little basic
research – like how many worms are there are and where.
To gather more information and to get more people involved, Hale created a web-based learning
program. She’s asking teachers from around the country to have their classes do worm counts
and other research. Hale plans to add their data to the web page.
In Minnesota, the Department of Natural Resources is working with interest groups to try to slow
the spread of worms. Next year’s fishing regulations will include instructions not to dump your
worms at the end of a day of fishing.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill in Duluth.
States might soon be taking a new approach when considering permits for huge livestock farms. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has more:
Transcript
States might soon be taking a new approach when considering permits for huge livestock farms. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
These big livestock growing operations such as hog confinement areas are controversial because they’re smelly and they often have large lagoons of liquid manure. In some cases, that manure leaks into waterways, polluting streams. In Iowa, the Department of Natural Resources is developing an environmental checklist… several dozen things that hog producers can do to score points that make approval of the operation more likely.
They’re things such as keeping the operations far from homes, hospitals, roads and water sources.
Kara Flynn is with the National Pork Producers Council. She says an
Iowa-type plan isn’t necessary for the big pig farms.
“They’re not operating in the 1970’s; they’re operating in 2002. And they’re using technology that allows them to, as best that they can, be environmental or better environmental standards, if you will.”
No other state has gotten this far with such restrictions, but almost every hog-producing state is trying to find a solution to the environmental problems associated with the large confinement farms.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Lester Graham.
In the 1970’s, Cleveland was the poster child for industrial pollution. Today, this rust-belt city will soon become home to the nation’s first gas station that will sell clean-burning hydrogen fuel. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Schaefer reports:
Transcript
In the 1970’s, Cleveland was the poster child for industrial pollution. Today, this
rust-belt city will soon become home to the nation’s first gas station that will sell
clean-burning hydrogen fuel. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Schaefer
reports.
The public hydrogen fueling station will open in two years off of the Ohio Turnpike. It
will cater to cars that are powered by fuels cells. These cars are still in development, and
have yet to make it to dealer showrooms. But Clean Cities Coordinator Stephanie Strong
says building the new station will demonstrate that a hydrogen infrastructure is possible.
“There’s been a problem up ’til now with alternative fuels, either the availability of the
fueling infrastructure or the availability of the vehicles. It’s been a chicken and egg
syndrome.”
The project is being funded as part of Ohio Governor Bob Taft’s 100-million dollar
initiative to boost high-tech industry in the state. The new station won’t sell soda and
cigarettes, but it will have a learning center promoting new vehicle technologies. The
complex itself will be powered by a fuel cell, the kind that may eventually power people’s
homes.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Schaefer.
A commission that monitors the environmental health of the Great Lakes says current trends fall short of protecting the Great Lakes from pollution. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports:
Transcript
A commission that monitors the environmental health of the Great Lakes says current trends fall
short of protecting the Great Lakes from pollution. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark
Brush has more:
Under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, the U.S. and Canada decided to reduce and
clean up pollution in the Great Lakes.
Thirty years have gone by… and now the commission that monitors the progress says that the
countries have yet to make a strong commitment to clean up the lakes.
Dennis Schornack is the U.S. Chair of the International Joint Commission.
“The public cannot always safely swim at Great Lakes beaches, nor safely eat
many of the fish from the Great Lakes.”
Schornack made the statement while presenting the Commission’s latest two-year report on the
lakes. This report echoes much of the criticisms of the Commission’s last report.
Schornack says despite the current focus on national security issues in Congress – it shouldn’t
overlook spending to clean up the Great Lakes. He says it’s a pressing public health issue.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush..
A recent report finds that the U.S. Department of Agriculture needs to work more closely with Customs inspectors in order to stop foreign animal diseases from hurting livestock in the U.S. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
A recent report finds that the U.S. Department of Agriculture needs to work more closely
with Customs inspectors in order to stop foreign animal diseases from hurting livestock
in the U.S. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has this report.
When foot and mouth disease hit livestock in Britain, the U.S. Department of
Agriculture quickly notified its various agencies, state and local governments and even
veterinarians. They received notices and guidance on prevention of outbreaks of foot
and mouth disease in case the disease found its way to U.S. shores.
But the USDA did not notify Customs inspectors. In fact, according to a report by the
General Accounting Office, Customs received the information only after formally
requesting it, more than a month after the British outbreak. The GAO reports that many
Customs inspectors said they felt ill equipped to adequately process international cargo
and passengers at U.S. ports of entry. The GAO report noted that the Department of
Agriculture has taken steps to improve notification to Customs, but the USDA still needs
to establish clear procedures and find a more permanent solution.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Farmers in the Midwest grow all kinds of crops – corn, soybeans, beets, and many different types of fruit. This summer, however, a farmer in Michigan has been growing art. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney explains:
Transcript
The agricultural fields of the Great Lakes region grow all kinds of crops – corn, soybeans, beets,
and many different types of fruit. This summer, however, a field in Michigan has been growing
art. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports.
(natural sounds: moving and walking through crops, sounds of birds and crickets,
and distant traffic)
Mike Murphy has been farming land near Albion Michigan for almost 30 years. He grows corn
and soybeans in neat orderly rows. This year though he’s been working for an artist on a 37 acre
field not far from his. But instead of neat orderly rows, he’s been planting, growing, and mowing
the crop fields into the shapes of stars, moons, and circles. Its been his job to take an artist’s
concept and literally plant it something that seemed odd to him and to his neighbors.
“I thought you guys got to be nuts. It’s like the people who come drive by like the other night
when I was out here . . . What’s this guy doing out here driving around in a circle in the middle of
field? (ha ha ha) You’re in a farm community. I take a lot of harassment.”
It’s Murphy’s job to actually make this art project grow from drawings given
to him by an artist. The artist had the vision but not the technical
know-how to make it work.
“You know they thought I could plant those stars with my planter, but no, I can’t. My
input’s been that they know how to do it on paper, but I know how to do it out here.”
To create these designs in the field, Mike Murphy has had to work with people he doesn’t usually
come in contact with. Such as the man at work on the other side of the field. He’s walking
around wearing a yellow plastic satellite receiver on his back and holding a Global Positioning
System or GPS in his hands.
“This in one of the corners of the triangle, the metal stake.”
This is Dave Lemberg, a Professor of Geography at Western Michigan University. Usually he
spends his summers researching how development affects shorelines, but this summer he’s been
using the high tech tools of his trade to map an artist’s design onto the earth.
“Artists and scientists certainly can do some interesting things together.”
He’s using the GPS to methodically plot out the outlines of stars, circles, and other patterns in the
field.
“Okay, we’re getting close. I feel like I’m doing the time warp. . . step to the left, step to the
right. And we’re here. “X” marks the spot.” (sound of banging stakes fade under)
At each point, geographer Dave Lemberg places color coded flags on the
field so that farmer Mike Murphy knows where to plant, disc, and mow.
Both men are out here helping an artist named Lou Rizzola create what is
being called the Starr Earthwork.
“Designs with soil – it is a remarkable thing to watch growth and texture and pattern come from
different crops but by cutting and arranging patterns we’re designing with soil in a way.”
Rizzola created this project as a way to bring people from different walks of life together to do
something creative.
“There’s an opportunity for more people to participate in the creative experience and, uh,
sometimes we do have a tendency to get locked up in our lofts with our berets and fairly isolated,
but I think today’s art includes many, many people.”
This creation has a political message. It is the first project in a program Rizzola has started called
the “World Peace Art Initiative.” Over the last two years he’s been meeting with artists from
Australia, China, Italy, Norway, and elsewhere to develop plans for projects like this all across
the globe. He says it’s a way to use art to teach people from different backgrounds that they can
come together and work in peace and harmony.
“So are we ready to start? Can we start to get the figures? We have a lot of people here and if we
all get at it I think we can get the three figures done and we’ll be in good shape.”
Over the next few hours, this unlikely team of artists, geographers, and farmers will puzzle out
how to mark off and then get rye grass to grow in patterns in the center of the field.
“So if we did the geometric things today, the flowy thing could be done later.”
“Right, you can put some fluidity into my basepoints.”
“Okay, so let’s work on your basepoints, we”ll work with flags…
we’ll pull this out of the way.”
None of these guys have ever before grown crops in the shape of stars, moons, and the like. For
farmer Mike Murphy, getting a chance to work out in the field with geographers and artists has
been an unusual but strangely satisfying experience.
“They know what they’re doing and it’s realizing their input. Not knowing the farm part of it, what
I can do, or the way it can be done, the equipment you can use – it’s something you’ve never done
in your life, probably never will do again, that’s real enjoyable.”
When the designs in the field are finished there will be celebrations here featuring music,
dancing, and exhibits of peace banners. And there will be balloon rides. That’s how visitors to
the Starr Earthwork get a bird’s eye view of the art Mike Murphy has been growing.
“Lou, you get 8 or 9 people with weedeaters and paint the outside perimeter of this.”
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.
Some states are arguing with the federal government's program to hand out radiation pills to those who live near power plants. The states say the pills don't protect from all exposures and give residents a false sense of security. Photo: Lester Graham
A group of scientists concerned about the environment wants the federal government to force states with nuclear power plants to stock-pile pills that help prevent exposure to radioactivity. Some states don’t think the pill is helpful. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has more:
Transcript
A group of scientists concerned about the environment wants the federal government to
force states with nuclear power plants to stock-pile pills that help prevent exposure to
radioactivity. Some states don’t think the pill is helpful. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham has more.
The Union of Concerned Scientists wants the potassium iodide pills distributed to
everyone who lives within ten miles of a nuclear power plant. David Lochbaum is with
the group. He says it’s protection in case there’s ever an accident or a terrorist attack on
the plant and radioactivity is released.
“Potassium iodide is taken to saturate your thyroid with a stable or benign form of iodine
so when radioactive iodine goes by and your body breathes it, it’s not retained by the
body. You just exhale it.”
But fewer than half of the states with nuclear power plants have signed up for the federal
program to make the potassium iodide pills available. One of the concerns is that people
will stay longer gathering belongings, thinking the pill protects them from radioactivity.
It actually only protects for one of several different harmful radionuclides. Some
emergency experts say the best bet is to simply evacuate people as quickly as possible.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Lester Graham.
Some states are arguing with the federal government's program to hand out radiation pills to those who live near power plants. The states say the pills don't protect from all exposures and give residents a false sense of security. Photo: Lester Graham
Since the September eleventh terrorist attacks, political pressure has been building to distribute potassium iodide pills to people who live around nuclear power plants. The pills help reduce the damage from exposure to certain kinds of radioactivity in the event of a release, but not all states with nuclear power plants are distributing the pills. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Since the September eleventh terrorist attacks, political
pressure has been building to distribute potassium
iodide pills to people who live around nuclear power
plants. The pills help reduce the damage from
exposure to certain kinds of radioactivity in the event of
a release, but not all states with nuclear power plants
are distributing the pills. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
David Lochbaum is a former nuclear engineer who is now with the Union of Concerned
Scientists. He says everyone at risk should have some of the pills handy….
“We feel the federal government should step in and require potassium iodide to be stock-
piled for the residents within ten miles of all nuclear power plants, not just some people
in some states.”
Lochbaum and his colleagues at the Union of Concerned Scientists say if the potassium
iodide pill is taken at the proper time, it saturates the thyroid with a stable or benign form
of iodine. That way, if a radioactive cloud is released from a nuclear power plant,
harmful radioactive iodine breathed in is not retained by the thyroid.
“If you don’t take potassium iodide, your body tends to absorb the radioactive iodine. It
tends to assault your body for days or months and can lead to thyroid cancers and other
illnesses that are easily avoidable with this very cheap pill that can be taken.”
But some of the states with nuclear power plants say too much stock is being put into the
potassium iodide pill. Illinois has more nuclear power plants than any other state in the
nation. Thomas Ortciger is the head of the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety…
“It’s a bogus issue that I think has been blown way out of proportion because of 9-11.”
Ortciger says his state is not participating in the federal government’s potassium iodide
pill program. He says handing out the pill to everyone who lives near a nuclear power
plant can give the residents a false sense of security…
“It is not a cure all. It is not a total radiation pill. It defends one small part of the body —
quite frankly it there was an accident or there was an act of terrorism and there was a
release from a plant, there’s probably seven – eight other nuclides that could be just as
dangerous that the people would become contaminated with.”
That’s not stopping the federal government from encouraging the states to sign on to its
potassium iodide pill program. Sue Gagner is with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
She says the N.R.C. believes the potassium iodide pills are helpful…
“It is certainly true that potassium iodide does only provide protection from the one
radioactive nuclide, radioactive iodine. So, there are others that could be released in a
severe nuclear accident. That’s why we only refer to potassium iodide as a supplement to
evacuation and sheltering which could be needed.”
Gagner says citizens should be instructed that the potassium iodide pill does not mean it’s
safe to stick around a contaminated area to gather a few more belongings. People should
leave as soon as possible. But… in the states where the federal program has been used…
surveys a year after the potassium iodide pills were pre-distributed have found that as
many as 90-percent of the people can’t even locate the pills. Gagner told us the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission doesn’t implement the program… so, it leaves it up to the states
to decide whether or not it works… when we asked about the programs effectiveness…
“So, there’s no way to measure whether this is effective or a complete waste of money.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s a complete waste of money. No, I think it can be effective when
used along with the other methods of possible evacuation or sheltering and it can be
effective.”
But some state regulators are skeptical. In Illinois, the Department of Nuclear Safety
refuses to get involved with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s program… but it has
launched it’s own potassium iodide pill program. Director Thomas Ortciger says there’s
been too much political pressure to completely ignore the issue… so the pill is being
made available to people who live near a nuclear power plant and who ask for it…
“For people who feel that this will give them some comfort, we’re going to make this
available, but it’s certainly not going to be part of the Illinois plan.”
Ortciger says the terrorist threat since nine-eleven has only persuaded Illinois emergency
officials to concentrate on the one thing they’re certain will work in case of a radioactive
release… quick evacuation… and the potassium iodide pills are a distraction from that
goal.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Lester Graham.
