Researchers have a scientific reason for the value of spending more time outdoors. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
Past research has found that bacteria found in dirt can ease allergic reactions, reduce anxiety, and improve a person’s mood. Now, new research finds the bacteria might make us smarter. Mark Brush reports:
Transcript
Past research has found that bacteria found in dirt can ease allergic reactions, reduce anxiety, and improve a person’s mood. Now, new research finds the bacteria might make us smarter. Mark Brush reports:
Researchers fed mice M. Vaccae bacteria and found the mice were twice as fast at navigating a maze.
Dorothy Matthews is an Associate Professor of Biology at Sage College in Troy, New York. She presented her research at a recent meeting of American Society for Microbiology. She says the bacteria are something we used to be exposed to more. Her comments were posted on the Society’s website:
“For most of our history we were hunter gatherers, rooting around in the soil, following the tracks of animals. It’s only been a hundred years or so ago, that we moved into cities and have become disassociated with nature.”
Researchers have found that M. Vaccae found in dirt can boost serotonin levels in the brains’ of the mice they studied. Serotonin can affect mood, appetite, memory and learning.
So every year, dozens of homes are flooded. That's in part because 28% of the entire watershed in this region around Washington DC is paved over.
(Photo by Sabri Ben-Achour)
With federal Recovery Act money, the town is rebuilding its main street from top to bottom.
(Photo by Sabri Ben-Achour)
One component of the construction are bio-retention tree boxes - native trees grown in gravel and compost to absorb and filter water.
(Photo by Sabri Ben-Achour)
Stormwater runoff can be one
of the main ways that urban
areas create pollution. In
some cases it can dramatically
suffocate marine life. It
can also cause flooding. One
small town in Maryland is on
the receiving end of its region’s
runoff. As Sabri Ben-Achour reports,
it’s trying to set a national
example with its approach to
solving the problem:
Transcript
Stormwater runoff can be one
of the main ways that urban
areas create pollution. In
some cases it can dramatically
suffocate marine life. It
can also cause flooding. One
small town in Maryland is on
the receiving end of its region’s
runoff. As Sabri Ben-Achour reports,
it’s trying to set a national
example with its approach to
solving the problem:
Anytime it rains, the ground in Edmonston, Maryland quickly becomes waterlogged. Here’s Brigitte Pooley and her mother Maggie.
“When the river gets flooded with rainwater, for example, if it continued raining like this, it literally comes up all over, and then all the debris that comes from upstream, municipalities upstream, as the water recedes it just leaves milk cartons and trash, tires everywhere.”
Adam Ortiz is the mayor of this low income, low-lying town of 1400. He says his town is a trap for stormwater runoff from all the paved surfaces in the area.
“At least 30 to 56 homes would be under water at least once a year because of flooding from parking lots, highways, shopping centers and streets.”
So every year, dozens of homes are flooded. That’s in part because 28% of the entire watershed in this region around Washington DC is paved over. But flooding isn’t the whole story.
“If a watershed is more than 10% paved you’re going to have impaired water quality.”
Jim Connolly is Executive Director of the Anacostia Watershed Society. He says stormwater smothers or poisons aquatic life, and causes erosion.
“It’s all the oil or grease that comes out of cars, the trash we throw in the streets, the pesticides we use in our lives. Stormwater is the base cause of all the problems in our urban rivers.”
So the town of Edmonston decided to do something about it. A new pumping station is keeping floods down, but the town wants to be a model for how to prevent stormwater runoff in the first place. So with federal Recovery Act money, the town is rebuilding its main street from top to bottom. Mayor Ortiz sidesteps a bulldozer to show off what’s now a construction site on the roadside.
“This is a bio-retention treebox, so instead of the water going directly into the drains and into the river, it will go directly into this bed.”
In that bed will go native trees grown in gravel and compost – to absorb and filter water. The street itself is going to be repaved with permeable concrete to let some water pass right through.
“The water’s going to filter naturally into the water table, so everything will be taken care of onsite as it was a few hundred years ago.”
85-90% of run off will be trapped by this system. But what about cost? Dominique Lueckenhoff directs the Office of State and Watershed Partnerships for this region at the Environmental Protection Agency.
“It is not more costly with regards to the refurbishing and additional greening of this street.”
But this wouldn’t have happened had this community not organized to fight for it. Allen Hance is with the Chesapeake Bay Trust. He says that to have a major impact, many more communities will have to follow Edmonston’s example.
“We want this to become a matter of course in how people build streets, and how they design streets.”
Edmonston will be putting all of its designs, and experiences online for other communities to use as a blueprint.
2.6 billion pounds of arsenic and other toxic pollutants flooded over nearby farmland and into the river.
(Photo courtesy of the Tennessee Department Of Health)
When a dam broke a year ago in Kingston,
Tennessee, the town experienced one
of the biggest environmental disasters
in US history. Billions of gallons
of waterlogged coal ash from a nearby
power plant streamed into the Emory
River. Tanya Ott reports
the contamination was even greater
than originally thought:
Transcript
When a dam broke a year ago in Kingston,
Tennessee, the town experienced one
of the biggest environmental disasters
in US history. Billions of gallons
of waterlogged coal ash from a nearby
power plant streamed into the Emory
River. Tanya Ott reports
the contamination was even greater
than originally thought:
2.6 billion pounds of arsenic and other toxic pollutants. That’s how much
contamination flooded over nearby farmland and into the river.
That comes
from a report by the Environmental Integrity Project.
Eric Schaeffer is the
project’s Executive Director and a former official with the Environmental
Protection Agency. He says 2.6 billion pounds is more than the total
discharges from all U-S power plants last year.
“The toxic metals, once they get into the environment,
and especially once they get into sediment, are notoriously difficult to
clean up.”
Difficult and expensive. The Tennessee Valley Authority puts the price tag
at about a billion dollars.
The EPA was supposed to propose tougher
disposal standards for toxic ash by the end of 2009. But the agency delayed
that decision.
West Michigan Park lies along the Tittabawassee River.
Large swaths of its soil was removed and re-sodded due to dioxin contamination.
The removal was part of a US EPA effort to have Dow clean up several hot
spots in the rivershed.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Imerman Park sits on the flood plain of the Tittabawassee River.
Signs along the trail warn walkers about dioxin contamination in some of the park's soil.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Two rivers in central Michigan were
polluted with dioxin 30 years ago.
The dioxin came from a Dow chemical
plant. The toxin’s been found in fish,
animals, and dirt, but, of all those,
contaminated soil might be the touchiest
subject. A study done in the area suggests
dioxin in soil might not be getting into
people living there. In the final part
of a series on Dow Chemical and dioxin,
Shawn Allee looks at that study
and the government’s take on it:
Transcript
Two rivers in central Michigan were
polluted with dioxin 30 years ago.
The dioxin came from a Dow chemical
plant. The toxin’s been found in fish,
animals, and dirt, but, of all those,
contaminated soil might be the touchiest
subject. A study done in the area suggests
dioxin in soil might not be getting into
people living there. In the final part
of a series on Dow Chemical and dioxin,
Shawn Allee looks at that study
and the government’s take on it:
To understand what’s at stake over the science of dioxin and soil, I want to talk with Marcia Woodman.
So, Woodman and I talk in this big, three-season room with tons of windows. It’s like you’re outside in some woods.
“I love it, so it wasn’t hard to convince me to move here.”
From here, the trees look inviting, but Woodman says she only lets her kids enjoy them from a distance.
“They’re not allowed to play back in the woods anymore. They used to play and we used to take walks back there.”
You see, eight years ago, the state tested soil for dioxin. Her place was okay, but there were high levels in the neighborhood. So, Woodman worried dioxin might move from soil into her kids, and maybe they’d get cancer or some other disease. But, what if dioxin in soil is not getting into people nearby?
“We found virtually no relationship between soil contamination and blood dioxin levels. In other words, the amount of soil contamination on your property really didn’t relate to blood levels.”
This is Dr. David Garabrant. He researches public health at the University of Michigan. Now, we need to tell you, in the interest of full disclosure, The Environment Report is produced at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Garabrant looked at whether people in the contaminated region have higher dioxin levels in their blood. They do – but just slightly. And those higher dioxins levels? They’re probably from other factors, like living in that area when dioxin pollution was highest – decades ago. Again, for him, soil is less of an issue.
This conclusion bothers two groups of people that really matter. That would be the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the State of Michigan. The EPA would not provide an interview on this, but they have public documents about it. Michigan has the same reservations about the study. Here’s just one.
“He didn’t test children. And children, typically, have some of the highest exposures.”
This is Steve Chester. He heads Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality.
“It’s probably even more of a concern for children who get down into the dirt and get it on their hands and shoes and so forth.”
Chester says the state needs to create regulations that take risk to kids into account. That makes Dr. Garabrant’s study a bit beside the point. Dr. Garabrant says he wanted to get kids into his study, but you have to draw lots of blood.
“You can’t ethically take enough blood from a child to find the dioxins. And that’s a real dilemma.”
Garabrant says his study went as far as it could.
For some people, there’s a different problem with the research.
“The study is funded by the Dow Chemical company through an unrestricted grant to the University of Michigan.”
That would be Dow Chemical – the company that polluted the Tittabawassee River and floodplain decades ago. Soon, Dow might have to spend tens or maybe hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up contaminated river silt and soil. Still, Garabrant insists Dow has no influence.
“The only thing we give Dow is when they sit in meetings like the rest of the public and they hear what we have to say.”
Garabrant’s study on dioxin exposure is getting attention right when the US EPA is taking another look at the risk dioxin poses to people. Critics of his study worry it will stir up a whole new debate that could delay dioxin clean ups in Michigan and other toxic waste sites across the country.
The EPA insists it won’t let that happen – and it’ll soon have more science to back up its position.
Fish advisories dot the banks of the Tittabawassee and
Saginaw Rivers. Various forms or pollution, including historical dioxin
pollution from Dow Chemical, have led to warnings to avoid certain species
of fish and limit consumption for them. Pregnant woment and young children
are given more stringent warnings. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
It’s deer season in Michigan, and
hunters are trekking through the woods,
trying to bag dinner or something
special for the holidays. Hunting’s
gotten a little complicated in some
areas recently. Just because you catch
something doesn’t mean you should eat
it. That’s because a stretch of river
in Michigan was polluted with dioxin –
decades ago. In the fourth part of a
series on Dow Chemical and dioxin, Shawn
Allee found the state thinks
old dioxin pollution from a Dow chemical
plant poses a health risk today:
Transcript
It’s deer season in Michigan, and
hunters are trekking through the woods,
trying to bag dinner or something
special for the holidays. Hunting’s
gotten a little complicated in some
areas recently. Just because you catch
something doesn’t mean you should eat
it. That’s because a stretch of river
in Michigan was polluted with dioxin –
decades ago. In the fourth part of a
series on Dow Chemical and dioxin, Shawn
Allee found the state thinks
old dioxin pollution from a Dow chemical
plant poses a health risk today:
It was hard for me to understand why wild game like deer or turkey might be contaminated from river pollution, so I hit up Daniel O’Brien for some answers. O’Brien’s a toxicologist with Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources. He says the problem starts with dioxin in the river.
“It’s in the sediments in these contaminated parts of the Tittabawassee River, and after flood events in the spring when, say, mud in the river gets deposited onto bushes or whatever and deer browse those, then they pick up soil that way.”
Part of O’Brien’s job is to spread the news about the contamination. He says when you buy a hunting license in Michigan you get this brochure.
“It’s a booklet that has all the regulations for hunting and trapping in it.”
These wildlife consumption advisories are voluntary but they kinda read like owners manuals. They lay out where the dioxin-contaminated animals are. They tell you what animals you can eat, and what parts. For example, no one’s supposed to eat deer liver from the areas – that’s got the most dioxin in it. And, of cuts you can eat, the advisory says how much, and how often. Plus, they tell who should eat less or maybe none at all.
“Kids might be more sensitive. They might have a more stringent advisory than somebody like me who’s kinda your middle-aged man and we might not be as susceptible to toxic effects.”
The idea’s to protect people from dioxin, and the risk it poses for cancer and diseases of the immune, reproductive, and developmental systems. It’s an important job, given how big hunting is in Michigan.
“We have three quarters of a million hunters every year that go afield and harvest half a million white-tailed deer.”
Michigan scientists take the issue seriously, but I’m kinda curious whether hunters do. So, I visit the Saginaw Field and Stream Club. Inside, there’s this paneled wall with faded pictures of club presidents. It stretches from the club’s founding in 1916 – all the way to this guy, current President Tom Heritier.
“We’re still here today.”
Heritier says his club’s smack-dab in the contaminated area and everyone knows about the advisories, but, well …
“With the game advisories, I have not heard one person who has any problem with the deer or the birds around the watershed.”
This goes for him, too.
“Nobody is sick from it. I don’t know of anybody that has died of exposure. That’s never been proven. It’s nothing to take lightly, but then again, it might be a little bit on the overblown side, too.”
The State of Michigan tried to survey hunters like Heritier. Officials wanted to know if hunters were feeding tainted game to young children. That survey never made the budget.
Before I leave the hunting club, Heritier wants to clear something up. He’s actually mad about dioxin. It’s in the environment – he wants it gone.
Heritier: “There’s absolutely no reason for industry to be polluting our natural resources, whether it be air, soil, or water.”
Allee: “Even if it’s not a slam-dunk, for sure, killing people off sort of thing?”
Heritier: “Number one, God didn’t put it there, it don’t belong there. That’s the way it is.”
Well, Heritier wants the environment protected from dioxin, but not necessarily himself.
State scientists say, if Heritier changes his mind and wants to reduce his health risk – they’ll keep printing those game advisories for him.
Mitch Larson lives in Saginaw's Riverside neighborhood,
which saw a large dioxin removal project last year. His home is on the
banks of Tittabawassee River. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
The plaque recognizes Dow Chemical's generosity in contributing
toward improvements at Imerman Park, which lies along the Tittabawassee
River. The plague does not mention that Dow was required to perform several
improvements as part of dioxin remdediation activity. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Several communities in central Michigan
are polluted by dioxins from a Dow Chemical
plant. People there have known about
it for thirty years. But, residents
are divided over whether the government
should force Dow to pay for a cleanup
that could cost tens, or even hundreds,
of millions of dollars. In the third
part of a series on Dow and dioxin,
Shawn Allee traveled to the
area and talked with some of them:
Transcript
Several communities in central Michigan
are polluted by dioxins from a Dow Chemical
plant. People there have known about
it for thirty years. But, residents
are divided over whether the government
should force Dow to pay for a cleanup
that could cost tens, or even hundreds,
of millions of dollars. In the third
part of a series on Dow and dioxin,
Shawn Allee traveled to the
area and talked with some of them:
Dow Chemical is not just some company in Midland, Michigan. It’s part of life there.
Dow employs thousands of people. It pays for libraries and civic gardens. A high school football team is even named “The Chemix.”
I talked with plenty of people who’ve sided with Dow over the dioxin pollution issue. One works right across the street from the chemical plant.
“We’re in my law office and my house is two blocks south of us here.”
Bob McKellar says Dow’s been good for Midland, and, as far as he’s concerned, the federal government’s been trashing the town.
McKellar: “Dow, rightfully so, takes the position that, you know, ‘why are you always picking on us? We agree we’ve done some of this and we agree we’ll help clean it up.’ But then the EPA comes back and says, ‘well, you’re not doing enough.'”
Allee: “But the EPA says they’ve been dealing with the issue for 30 years.”
McKellar: “It’s because the EPA’s had the fist out – they haven’t come with a little bouquet of flowers and say, ‘okay folks, let’s sit down and talk about this and let’s get this thing done right.’”
McKellar says, getting things done right means the government should pay for a big hunk of any dioxin cleanup. It’s only fair – because he thinks pollution in the river and soil is overblown, and the EPA’s the one overblowing it.
Downstream, fewer people work at the Dow plant. They see less benefit, but they live with more dioxin pollution.
“Well, This is the Tittabawassee River. This is my homestead.”
I’m with Mitch Larson. He lives 20 miles downstream from Midland. His home’s in a woodsy part of Saginaw.
“When I bought this place, I was thinking that this would be a great place for kids to grow up. As they grew up, it was a right of passage to swim across the river. You know, I’d swim alongside them, you’d swim across to the other bank, and you’d have them sign their name in the sand, you know, you did it.”
The Tittabawassee River floods, and it left silt and traces of dioxin on Larson’s yard, but he didn’t know that until the state government tested his soil and found the dioxin.
They even tested his pet chickens and the eggs he fed his kids.
Larson: “They tested those also.”
Allee: “What did they tell you?”
Larson: “Don’t eat them. Chickens eat the dirt. The dirt was where the dioxin was, and eggs were full of dioxin. So, for the past couple years, every egg we ate was like a little shot of dioxin.”
He got rid of the chickens, of course, but he had to have a talk with his teenage girls. A report said the dioxin put them at risk for having kids with birth defects.
“You know, when they were all tested for the dioxin, I told them they were all high in dioxin and I had information about, you know, about the child-bearing thing. It put them at risk for having kids. You know, it’s not a good feeling.”
Larson and one hundred seventy two other plaintiffs sued Dow to pay for follow-up medical monitoring.
The courts said no.
Six years after dioxin was first found on the property, Dow chemical paid to clean and re-sod Larson’s lawn. He says it looks great, but he worries another flood’s gonna leave behind dioxin.
Right now, Dow and the EPA are negotiating an agreement that might make Dow clean up river sediment.
“If it takes them thirty years to clean this river up so it’s clean for the next 200 years, it’d be worth it. People are fishing, kids are swimming across the river to show, you know, they’re a bad-ass.”
Larson says he’d welcome that future – even if it cost Dow a lot of money.
The southeast corner of the Dow Chemical plant, from the vantage
of Midland's Whiting Overlook Park, which features an homage to and
history of the company and its founder.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
The State of Michigan, the US
Environmental Protection Agency
and Dow Chemical are negotiating
an agreement to clean up dioxin
pollution in towns, two rivers,
and Lake Huron. The pollution
is largely from a Dow chemical
plant in Midland, Michigan. The
government worries the pollution
poses a risk of cancer and other
health problems, and it’s been
found in fish, on property, and
in the blood of some people there.
Residents are asking why it’s taken
so long to get cleaned up. In the
second part of a series on Dow and
dioxin, Shawn Allee went
looking for an answer:
Transcript
The State of Michigan, the US
Environmental Protection Agency
and Dow Chemical are negotiating
an agreement to clean up dioxin
pollution in towns, two rivers,
and Lake Huron. The pollution
is largely from a Dow chemical
plant in Midland, Michigan. The
government worries the pollution
poses a risk of cancer and other
health problems, and it’s been
found in fish, on property, and
in the blood of some people there.
Residents are asking why it’s taken
so long to get cleaned up. In the
second part of a series on Dow and
dioxin, Shawn Allee went
looking for an answer:
If you want to see an environmentalist kinda lose his cool – talk to James Clift of the Michigan Environmental Council.
And bring up dioxin pollution.
Clift: “Um, it’s … people are think, frustrated. It is my entire career of working environmental protection in Michigan, this has been an issue. I’ve been doing this for over twenty years, and from day one I’ve been sitting on meetings about this site.”
Allee: “You’d rather work on something else? Birds or something?”
Clift: “I’d rather work on something else.”
Clift is frustrated with people who could have wrapped this up.
“I believe that each administration at both the state and federal level is culpable in failing to move this forward.”
When I talked to federal and state officials about this, they did some serious finger-pointing.
Let’s start with Steve Chester. He heads Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality. Chester says when people first learned about the dioxin problem at Dow’s chemical plant, the federal government was the lead regulator.
That changed.
“The federal government wanted to transition and hand the project off to the state of Michigan and we were in fact given this corrective action authority in the mid-nineties, and so there was a period of time quite frankly, the agencies didn’t take advantage of moving a little bit quicker.”
Actually, it took Michigan almost ten years to re-license the Dow chemical plant. That meant the state was slow to find out exactly where old dioxin pollution was in the river system, so some people didn’t know there was dioxin in their yards until the past few years. That’s decades after dioxins got into local rivers.
But what about the US Environmental Protection Agency?
Several former officials said the polluter, Dow, slowed things down.
One of these who would go on the record is Mary Gade. She led the EPA office that regulated Dow. Now, in the past we’ve reported Gade said she was fired by the Bush Administration because she got tough with Dow.
The EPA wouldn’t comment on that.
But even today, Gade says Dow slowed down the clean-up.
“I think this corporation is hugely adept at playing the system and understanding how to build in delays and use the bureaucracy to their advantage and to use the political system to their advantage.”
A confidential memo leaked from the EPA says when Dow didn’t like what Michigan’s technical staff had to say, they’d go higher up and try to get rules changed.
For a month, I requested comment from Dow. A spokeswoman said the company is interested in talking about the future, not the past.
People who’ve watched this say, there’s been plenty of foot-dragging.
But why should this dioxin cleanup even matter to people who don’t live there? It’s Michigan’s problem, right?
Well, James Clift, that environmentalist, says, no, there’s a long list of toxic waste sites across the country. And Clift worries the government gets bogged down with big, slow cleanups.
“If they’re not even getting to the big ones which are known to everyone as known as causing widespread problems, that means they’re not getting to the medium sized ones and they’re not getting to the small ones.”
But there seems to be some progress. Recently, the EPA, the State of Michigan, and Dow came to a tentative agreement about cleaning up the dioxin pollution.
That means there’s at least one more delay, that would be public comment until mid-December.
In 1981, Valdus Adamkus was appointed to a regional Environmental Protection Agency office. One of his jobs jobs was to study dioxin pollution that got into the Great Lakes. His office compiled a report that said dioxin is a cancer risk, and that a Dow Chemical plant in Michigan was responsible for some dioxin pollution.
(Photo source: Dantadd at Wikimedia Commons)
Historial dioxin pollution from Dow Chemical spread throughout approximately
fifty miles of a river system that discharges into Saginaw Bay, part of the Lake Huron. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Dioxin pollution has been present in a
watershed in central Michigan for more
than thirty years. People around the
country might think it’s just a local
issue, but there was a time when this
very same pollution problem made national
news. In the first part of a series
on Dow and dioxin, Shawn Allee met the man who took the issue to Congress
and who feels it should make news again:
Transcript
Dioxin pollution has been present in a
watershed in central Michigan for more
than thirty years. People around the
country might think it’s just a local
issue, but there was a time when this
very same pollution problem made national
news. In the first part of a series
on Dow and dioxin, Shawn Allee met the man who took the issue to Congress
and who feels it should make news again:
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed Valdus Adamkus to a regional Environmental Protection Agency office. From the get-go, one of Adamkus’ jobs was to study dioxin pollution that got into the Great Lakes. His office compiled this report that said dioxin is a cancer risk, and that a Dow Chemical plant in Michigan was responsible for some dioxin pollution.
Adamkus says his bosses in Washington called this report “trash.”
Adamkus: “We simply refused to retreat from our findings.”
Allee: “Did they ask you to retreat from your findings?”
Adamkus: “Yes, unfortunately we almost got instructions, let’s use a very mild word, to change our report. And that brought us Congressional hearings, which probably the entire country was watching on TV networks.”
Koeppel (ABC Archive ): “An official at the EPA today said the Dow chemical company was allowed to participate in the redrafting of a report on dioxin contamination that had been critical of Dow. And that official charged that Dow’s involvement was at the direction of the EPA’s acting chief.”
That was March 18, 1983, and ABC’s Ted Koeppel wasn’t the only one covering the Congressional hearings.
All the TV outlets caught this line from Adamkus –
Adamkus ( ABC Archive ): “It’s unethical, unusual, unprofessional to get the internal document approved by outside company.”
So, higher-ups in the EPA allowed Dow to edit the report critical of the company. But, in some ways, Adamkus won. His boss got ousted and Ronald Reagan gave Adamkus a civil service award for integrity.
As for Dow Chemical’s involvement?
For a month, I asked for comment.
A Dow spokeswoman said the company was interested in talking about the future, not the past.
Adamkus eventually left the EPA and he became President of Lithuania. But back in the US, there was a surprising follow-up to his fight over dioxin.
Mary Gade was a young staff attorney back when Adamkus was on TV. Twenty-three years later, President George W. Bush appointed her to Adamkus’ old job. When Gade arrived – dioxin was still a problem in Michigan.
“My staff in the region characterized this as probably the worst dioxin contamination in the country.”
And, she saw it as a national issue.
“You’d like to expect that your government will function appropriately, that corporations will act responsibly and that you can be assured of a safe and healthy environment for you and your family.”
So, Gade ordered Dow Chemical to clean up some hot spots.
“They would either do the work themselves or the federal government would go forward and do it on their own, and then go back and sue Dow to cover our costs.”
Michigan politicians complained about Gade, and some state officials felt some of her actions were counterproductive. In May 2008, she was forced to resign.
Gade told the Chicago Tribune, it was for being tough on Dow.
The EPA hasn’t commented on that, and Dow denies any involvement.
Recently, Mary Gade’s old boss, Valdus Adamkus, returned to his old EPA office to say hello. He asked about the dioxin problem in Michigan, and he learned it’s still around – after all these years, and after all the trouble he and Mary Gade got from it.
“When I hear from them what enforcement actions are being still considered, and that they are not big progress in that respect, that’s what really bothers me and to me this is inexcusable.”
Dow and the EPA are negotiating a final resolution on cleanup right now.
But Valdus Adamkus knows details need to be worked out, and he says all of this has been promised before.
“God help them. I hope this is really coming to the end.”
A sign on the Tittabawassee River, downriver from Dow Chemical Plant, stating to avoid contact with the soil and not eat the fish due to dioxin contamination (Photo by Vincent Duffy)
The federal government and a major
chemical company have reached an
initial agreement about cleaning
up one of the nation’s largest dioxin
pollution sites. But, Shawn Allee reports, the public will
have to wait a bit to examine the
fine print:
Transcript
The federal government and a major
chemical company have reached an
initial agreement about cleaning
up one of the nation’s largest dioxin
pollution sites. But, Shawn Allee reports, the public will
have to wait a bit to examine the
fine print:
Central Michigan has a dubious distinction: The Environmental Protection Agency
claims that a flood plain there has some of the highest dioxin levels ever found in soil.
That dioxin came from a Dow chemical plant decades ago. The EPA and Dow just
concluded negotiations over a clean-up deal.
Wendy Carney is with the EPA’s regional Superfund cleanup office. Carney says the
deal is not done, though.
“This agreement doesn’t actually contain any cleanup options. It also doesn’t
address any cleanup levels for the site. That would be a part of things we would talk
about with the public in a public forum to get their feedback on those issues.”
Carney says the EPA could unveil its agreement with Dow in two weeks.
The EPA suspects dioxins cause cancer and other health problems.
Reporter Karen Kelly and her daughter, Hannah, gather soil from their garden to be tested for toxins. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
Root vegetables - such as this carrot Hannah is holding up - are especially risky because of the soil particles that cling to them. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
All over the country, first-time
gardeners are harvesting their ripe
tomatoes and leafy greens. Gardening –
especially in cities – is thriving.
But Karen Kelly reports on a hidden
danger that isn’t always easy to detect:
Transcript
All over the country, first-time
gardeners are harvesting their ripe
tomatoes and leafy greens. Gardening –
especially in cities – is thriving.
But Karen Kelly reports on a hidden
danger that isn’t always easy to detect:
(sound of little girl in garden)
It’s our first vegetable garden and my daughter and I are looking for some ripe veggies to have for dinner.
It was the highlight of our summer – planting the cucumbers and the eggplant and watching the tomato vines grow higher and higher until we couldn’t even reach the top.
Then I read a story that they had discovered lead in the White House vegetable garden. Exposure to too much lead can cause brain damage, especially in children. And as I read the description of the type of yard that would likely contain lead, I realized that our garden met all of the criteria.
We live in a house more than 50 years old. It’s in an older neighborhood that would have been exposed to residue from leaded gasoline. And we live in a fairly large city -Ottawa, Canada – near a busy road.
So I decided to get our soil tested for lead.
(sound of phone call)
I started by calling the city and other government agencies– no luck. I tried looking for labs in the yellow pages. Those didn’t work out. I moved on to garden centers, a local university, and a local research farm. No one could talk to me.
Finally, I got in touch with a lead expert in Indianapolis, Indiana. He asked me to send him some samples in plastic lunch bags.
“Okay, I just scraped off a place with no wood chips. Okay, so we tested the eggplant, the tomatoes, the lettuce and the cucumbers. Well, we need to do the peppers too, because the peppers are way over here.”
I sent the bags to Gabriel Fillipelli at Indiana University-Purdue University – and waited impatiently. Ripe tomatoes and cucumbers were piling up.
Finally, he got back to us.
“What I found with the samples you took from your soil was relatively high lead values. I was a little bit surprised. Some of them were actually above the EPA levels for playground soils, which is 400 parts per million.”
Great. I figure there’s no chance we could eat these vegetables. But Fillipelli says that’s not the case.
“The other vegetables, like the cucumbers, the eggplants, and peppers – they have very resistant outer skin so as long as you wash them well, very little lead can absorb inside those. The biggest risk you find with vegetables is not lead being sucked up by the roots and poisoning you, it’s actually the soil particles that cling on to the some of these vegetables, meaning beets or carrots or potatoes or, strangely enough, lettuce.”
In terms of children, Fillipelli says the real problem is letting them play in the bare dirt. He actually says covering it with grass or mulch would be safer.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t grow vegetables in a city. You can use containers, or build raised beds with clean soil, and use mulch in between.
It’s still a cheap source of healthy food, and a great way to teach kids about nature, biology and, unfortunately, pollution.
Researchers have a scientific reason for the value of spending more time outdoors. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
