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)
A group of one-hundred organizations is calling on the government to
release a twenty-year-old report on a toxic group of chemicals called
dioxins. Kyle Norris reports:
Transcript
A group of one-hundred organizations is calling on the government to
release a twenty-year-old report on a toxic group of chemicals called
dioxins. Kyle Norris reports:
Dioxins are everywhere – they’re created through manufacturing, burning
garbage, even burning gasoline.
The US Environmental Protection Agency did this big assessment of
dioxins, 20 years ago. But the report’s release has been stalled all that time
by industry lobbyists.
Michael Schade is with the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice. He
says not releasing this report is a health-risk to all of us.
“Every time you go to the grocery store and you buy milk or cheese or you eat beef or
pork or fish, you’re being exposed to this chemical in the food that you eat. And until the
EPA releases this report we’ll continue to be exposed to potentially dangerous levels of
this chemical which has been linked to cancer and endometriosis and other serious health
problems.”
The one-hundred groups have sent a letter to President Obama saying the
government has a responsibility to tell us exactly how dangerous dioxins are.
A lot of people who drive gas-electric hybrid cars love how quiet they are. But others say hybrids are so quiet they’re hazardous. People in the blind community say they can’t hear hybrid cars coming… and they’d like to have sound added back into the cars. Rebecca Williams has the story:
Transcript
A lot of people who drive gas-electric hybrid cars love how quiet they are. But others say hybrids are so quiet they’re hazardous. People in the blind community say they can’t hear hybrid cars coming… and they’d like to have sound added back into the cars. Rebecca Williams has the story:
(tap tap tap of white cane)
Fred Wurtzel has excellent hearing but he can’t see.
He can tell by the echo from his white cane when he’s gotten to the edge of a building or the corner of a city block. And he knows cars by their engines.
(sound of car rumbling past)
“That car has a tweety bird under its hood, a loose belt or whatever it was. Now, there was a car going the other direction. (sound of truck going past) That’s probably a UPS truck.”
But he can’t hear hybrid cars – at least not until they’re right at his feet. That’s because the electric motor is very quiet. And when a hybrid comes to a stop, the engine shuts off.
“If you don’t know there’s a hybrid car there waiting, it may start turning and you may step into its path and not even be aware that there’s a car coming around.”
Wurtzel is president of the Michigan chapter of the National Federation of the Blind. He says the blind community wants some sound added back into hybrid vehicles.
“’Course I grew up in the 60’s so a nice Mustang or something like that would be good (laughs)… just a sound that would let me know that the car’s accelerating or the car’s decelerating – whatever a normal vehicle would sound like.”
Well that’s one idea.
Patrick Nyeste has several ideas. He’s a researcher at North Carolina State University. He tried out 18 different sounds on his test subjects.
Everything from sirens (sound of siren)… to whistles (sound of whistle) … to engine sounds (sound of engine).
“I had a horn from a Beetle – so it’s, ‘meep meep,’ and I would just get giggles from that.”
But, he says to make a quiet car safer, the sound needs to be continuous – like a traditional car. That means some sounds can get annoying really fast.
(sound of continuous beeping)
Yeah that’s enough of that.
Nyeste says that engine noise we heard earlier was one of people’s favorites. They also liked white noise (sound of white noise), and the hum sound (sound of humming). He says that’s because we’re used to hearing those kinds of sounds when a car goes by.
He says a sound added to a hybrid also has to be loud enough to be heard above lawn mowers and garbage trucks.
“You want to make sure that the noise is heard, especially by the blind around corners, around objects, I mean some of these sounds can get masked and that’s important information to know where an object or a vehicle is.”
But some people are worried about adding sound to our cities and suburbs, they say they’re already so noisy.
Lotus Engineering says it has a solution for that. They added a four cylinder engine sound to a Toyota Prius. But the volume’s adjustable.
Colin Peachey is an engineer with Lotus.
“You could set the sound to be higher in certain circumstances or quieter in other circumstances. We could actually make the sound to be whatever level we fancied.”
And you don’t have to hear the sound inside the car.
There’s also a startup company in California – Enhanced Vehicle Acoustics. It’s designing a similar system for hybrids.
But it’s not clear how soon quiet cars might start making noise.
Spokespeople for Toyota and the Big Three say their companies are working on solutions. And some states and members of Congress have been talking about requiring hybrids to make some minimum level of sound.
Then, automakers will have to figure out exactly what a hybrid sounds like.
A catfish farmer in Mississippi (Photo by Stephen Ausmus, courtesy of the USDA)
The Food and Drug Administration
has once again opened the debate about
how much fish pregnant women can safely
eat. Lester Graham reports the FDA might
abandon guidelines it issued less than
five years ago:
Transcript
The Food and Drug Administration
has once again opened the debate about
how much fish pregnant women can safely
eat. Lester Graham reports the FDA might
abandon guidelines it issued less than
five years ago:
In early 2004 the FDA suggested pregnant women or women planning to become
pregnant should avoid fish with higher levels of mercury such as swordfish or shark.
And limit all other fish to a couple of meals a week.
Now, a proposed FDA recommendation indicates fish is too healthful to worry about
the mercury, and suggests instead of avoiding fish altogether, pregnant women
should eat more.
Sonya Lunder is with the advocacy organization, The Environmental Working Group.
She says the recommendation won’t hold up to scrutiny.
“And all the flaws in it will come to light. My concern is that the headlines that come
out that there’s a debate about the toxicity of fish or what pregnant women should
eat cause a lot of confusion.”
The FDA’s proposal comes after years of lobbying by the seafood industry.
For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
A lead detector finds over 5000 parts per million of lead in this toy. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)
Millions of toys were recalled
last year because of lead contamination.
There were about half as many recalls this
year, but lead in toys is still a problem.
Rebecca Williams reports there’s a new law
that will limit the amount of lead in any
toy or children’s product, but it won’t go
into effect until after the holidays:
Transcript
Millions of toys were recalled
last year because of lead contamination.
There were about half as many recalls this
year, but lead in toys is still a problem.
Rebecca Williams reports there’s a new law
that will limit the amount of lead in any
toy or children’s product, but it won’t go
into effect until after the holidays:
There is already a federal limit on how much lead can be in the paint on
kids’ toys. But lead can also be in places you might not expect – like plastic
parts of toys.
The new law puts a limit on lead in any part of a toy. But the new law won’t
take effect until February 10th. So that means toys that you can buy now
can legally have very high levels of lead embedded in them.
Mike Shriberg is with the Ecology Center. It’s an environmental group
that’s been testing toys for lead.
(beep)
He has an analyzer that tells you what elements are in a toy – in this case, a
plastic building block.
“So when I look at the results here, this orange block has over 3,000 parts
per million of lead. Now remember this will be illegal to be on the shelves
in February. It’s legal now because the lead’s not in the paint, it’s embedded
in the plastic.”
Babies and little kids’ brains and bodies are still developing. Since they tend
to put toys in their mouths, they’re really vulnerable to damage from lead.
“There is no safe level of lead in blood. Pediatricians have said a little bit of
lead causes a little bit of brain damage and a lot of lead causes a lot of brain
damage. We think toys shouldn’t be involved in causing any amount of
brain damage.”
Mike Shriberg says there is no way to know just by looking which toys have
lead and which ones don’t. But he says children’s jewelry is by far the
worst. They found it’s five times more likely to have lead than other toys.
He says simpler toys, such as unpainted wooden toys, tend to be safer.
“Just to be clear there is no surefire rule.”
Shriberg’s group has tested 1,500 toys this year and has put the results up on
their website: healthy-toys dot org.
The group found about one in every five toys still has lead.
Mattel and Hasbro say they’re carefully testing their toys this year. And
retailers such as Toys R Us and Wal-Mart are also testing toys.
The National Retail Federation did not return calls for comment.
The National Association of Manufacturers did not want to comment for this
story. But in a recent Wall Street Journal article – a spokesperson for the
trade group said billions of dollars in inventory could be lost when the new
lead law goes into effect.
Three billion toys are sold in the US each year. So who’s going to make
sure all those toys comply with the new law? A small government agency.
Julie Vallese is with the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
“CPSC always has investigators in the field looking for products in violation
of safety standards. Now it is a big market and we do have limited
resources. But we have a systematic way of going about looking for
violations and we will be doing that come February 10th.”
Last year, the New York Times reported that just one man, named Bob, was
responsible for testing toys for safety.
Agency officials say that’s not true – they say many people test toys. We
asked how many. We asked repeatedly. We wanted to know the exact
number of people who test toys for lead. But they refused to tell us.
Congress has promised more money for more toy testers. But that has not
happened yet.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission says besides – industry has the
biggest responsibility here.
The agency says when the new toy law goes into effect in February, it’ll be
up to the manufacturers, the retailers and the importers to make sure the toys
they’re selling are not in violation of the new lead law.
Toy makers use phthalates to make hard plastic pliable (Source: Toniht at Wikimedia Commons)
By early next year, a new law
should make plastic toys less toxic.
But consumer advocates say the Bush
administration is bending the new law
to suit the toy industry over children’s
safety. Julie Grant reports:
Transcript
By early next year, a new law
should make plastic toys less toxic.
But consumer advocates say the Bush
administration is bending the new law
to suit the toy industry over children’s
safety. Julie Grant reports:
Chemicals known as phthalates are used to make rubber
duckies, teethers, and lots of plastic toys softer and more
bendable.
But they can also cause genital deformities, lower sperm
counts, and early puberty.
Liz Hitchcock is with the US Public Interest Research Group,
which cheered when Congress banned many phthalates in
toys. The law goes into effect in Februrary.
But now Hitchcock says the government’s Consumer
Products Safety Commission is telling toy makers they can
continue to sell toys with phthalates – as long as they don’t
manufacture any more after the law takes effect.
“What they’re saying is that if an industry or a store has
existing inventory of these toxic toys as of February 10, they
can keep selling until they exhaust their supply.”
Congress has scheduled a hearing this week to clarify the
law.
In China, infant formulas contaminated with melamine killed four babies and made
thousands sick. (Photo courtesy of the CDC)
Earlier this year, when Chinese
infant formulas were found to be contaminated,
the US Food and Drug Administration banned
imports. The FDA said no amount of
industrial chemicals should be allowed in
infant formula. Now that the FDA has
found the same chemicals in US-made infant
formulas, the government says a little is
safe. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Earlier this year, when Chinese
infant formulas were found to be contaminated,
the US Food and Drug Administration banned
imports. The FDA said no amount of
industrial chemicals should be allowed in
infant formula. Now that the FDA has
found the same chemicals in US-made infant
formulas, the government says a little is
safe. Lester Graham reports:
In China, infant formulas contaminated with melamine killed four babies and made
thousands sick. The FDA said no amount was acceptable.
Then the FDA started secretly testing infant formulas made in the U.S. It found
melamine or a related chemical, cyanuric acid, in Nestle’s Good Start formula and
Mead Johnson’s Enfamil. ‘
Suddenly, the FDA decided a trace amount, one part per million is safe.
Lisa Madigan is the Attorney General for the State of Illinois. She says the FDA
should stop sales of those formulas.
“We have directly asked them to make sure these formulas are recalled as well as to
make sure that people across the country are aware of the problem.”
The FDA stresses levels of the chemicals in the U.S. infant formulas are more than
10,000 times lower than the levels reported in the Chinese formulas.
For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
Parents and students at Monee Elementary take
over the road that leads to the school. They
hope to raise awareness about an unfinished
sidewalk that makes the route to school hazardous
to pedestrians. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
As a contrast, here's the same route after
the children have headed into Monee Elementary. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
There’s an ideal image of being young
and being in school. There’re the friends,
the apple for the teacher, and walking to
school. Well, the walking-to-school part is
off-limits to millions of children. Even if
they felt like getting exercise, some suburban
kids are too far from school or the route is
dangerous. Shawn Allee dropped in
one school that wants to change that:
Transcript
There’s an ideal image of being young
and being in school. There’re the friends,
the apple for the teacher, and walking to
school. Well, the walking-to-school part is
off-limits to millions of children. Even if
they felt like getting exercise, some suburban
kids are too far from school or the route is
dangerous. Shawn Allee dropped in
one school that wants to change that:
In the small surburban town of Monee, south of Chicago, police and firefighters are not
used to big protests.
But on the morning I visit, they’ve got one on their hands.
(sound of kids whooping it up)
Cops closed the street between a church and the elementary school.
Five hundred kids, dozens of parents and a smattering of teachers fill up the church
parking lot.
They’re ready to take over the street and march to school.
Parent Arnold Harper’s near the head of the line.
Shawn Allee: “What’s the special occasion?”
Arnold Harper: “The special occasion is about the sidewalks so the kids can get
safely to school. If you’re walking to school, you’re going to run into a part just
before the school. There’s no sidewalk and the kids have to walk out in the street.
Or if they’re riding their bikes, they have to ride out in the street for a brief
moment. You don’t want that – you don’t want your kid ever on the street.”
Allee: “So the school discourages kids from walking?”
Harper: “Absolutely.”
Actually, the parents and the school are tired of discouraging kids from walking.
They want someone: the city, the county, the state – anybody, to build sidewalks between
the subdivisions and the school.
So kids want to hit the street and make noise over the sidewalk issue – only they can’t get
started.
No one brought a whistle.
A snickering fireman takes things into his own hands.
(sounds of honking, etc.)
Kids walk past new homes and corn fields.
I find principal Joanne Jones in the crowd.
Shawn Allee: “In this kind of small town suburban environment, people are used to
driving. What’s the big deal that kids can’t walk to school?”
Principle Jones: “As we know, our country is suffering from childhood obesity and
part of the reason is they don’t get enough exercise. And we feel that if kids get an
hour, sixty minutes, of exercise each day, that would help them be more healthy.”
Allee: “You think if more kids were able to walk, they would?”
Jones: “Yes. We’ve had kids ask us before, why can’t we ride our bikes to school,
why can’t we walk to school? We’ve had parents let them ride their bike, while they
drive alongside. They want to do it.”
If Principal Jones wins this fight, she’ll be bucking a trend.
Very few children walk to school anymore.
Research shows in the sixties, about half walked or biked to school.
Now, only fifteen percent of kids do.
Missing sidewalks aren’t always the problem.
In suburbs and small towns, housing developers sometimes forget about pedestrians when
they build homes.
Heidi Gonzalez helped organize the walk-to-school rally.
She says school district rules and laws don’t always help.
Heidi Gonzalez: “You have to have a certain amount of open acreage when new
elementary schools are built. A lot of developed areas are finding it hard to find nine
acres of space to put a school on.”
Shawn Allee: “So there’s a requirement to plop a school down where they’re on the
edge of development instead of where there are a bunch of houses with finished
sidewalks and other infrastructure.”
Gonzalez: “Exactly.”
So, the school’s aren’t connected to their communities.
The kids had been whooping it up, but their enthusiasm dies when they reach the school’s
flag pole.
As for the adults, like me and Heidi Gonzolez?
We’re left behind.
Gonzalez: “Now we have the dangerous walk to go back to our cars.”
Allee: “Because we won’t have the luxury of police and fire protection.”
And it was a kinda scary to dodge traffic from the school to where the march began.
BPA is found in things such as plastic water bottles, canned goods, and baby bottles
(Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of the USDA)
Canada has become the first country to
begin the process of banning plastic baby bottles
containing the chemical Bisphenol-A. Environmental
activists are praising the move, but want Ottawa
to go further. Dan Karpenchuk reports:
Transcript
Canada has become the first country to
begin the process of banning plastic baby bottles
containing the chemical Bisphenol-A. Environmental
activists are praising the move, but want Ottawa
to go further. Dan Karpenchuk reports:
Bisphenol-A, or BPA, is just about everywhere – one of most commonly manufactured
chemicals in the world. It’s main use is to make plastics hard and shatterproof.
It’s found in consumer products such as plastic baby bottles, water bottles, C-D cases,
eyeglasses and the lining of tin cans.
Rick Smith is with the group, Environmental Defense. Smith says particularly at risk are
infants.
“So there’s very good evidence that kids that are exposed to it earlier on in life are
more prone to breast cancer, prostate cancer later on in life.”
Research has also linked BPA to heart disease, diabetes, and liver problems. Smith says
BPA is in virtually every tin can in people’s cupboards, and evidence has shown that it
can leach into the food or beverage, even at room temperature.
Health Canada says the levels of BPA most adults are exposed to are not harmful.
But Smith and other environmentalists are calling for a complete ban in consumer
products.
Jim Gilligan, president of Snedicor’s Cleaners, made the big switch to liquid silicone (Photo by Kyle Norris)
There’s a push in the dry cleaning
industry to become more environmentally
friendly. But this change can be a big risk
for business owners. Kyle Norris talks to
one dry cleaner who has made the change.
And he says he’s not looked back yet:
Transcript
There’s a push in the dry cleaning
industry to become more environmentally
friendly. But this change can be a big risk
for business owners. Kyle Norris talks to
one dry cleaner who has made the change.
And he says he’s not looked back yet:
Jim Gilligan is president of Snedicor’s Cleaners.
And for years, his business has used a chemical called perchloroethylene to
clean clothes. Actually, let’s just call it ‘perc’ which is what everyone calls
it. But Gilligan says he did not like perc, for lots of reasons. For one thing,
he had to store the chemical in these big tanks.
“It was hard to deal with, it was heavily regulated, there was potential for
spills and other types of disasters.”
Perc is a toxic air contaminant. There’s evidence it can cause cancer, as well
as liver and kidney damage. Contact with perc can cause lots of problems
like nausea, dizziness, skin irritation, loss of consciousness, and even death.
If perc leaks into the soil or ground water it can be a disaster. Partly because
perc is hard to extract from water.
Perc was the industry standard for years. And today about 70% of American
dry cleaners still use it. But there’s a growing movement to stop using it and
embrace greener techniques.
Gilligan had heard about some of these newer, eco-crunchier techniques. But
he’d also heard that they did not work as well as perc.
Then he visited another dry cleaning plant. Its owner had switched from
using perc to using liquid silicone. Which is basically liquefied sand.
“That gave me a confidence, right. That was, because we’d been hearing
from the industry as whole that it didn’t clean as well. And of course it’s
great moving into a green technology but if your customers wind up
dissatisfied and you go out of business, that would sort of defeat the
purpose.”
Gilligan says he was impressed with how well liquid silicone cleaned
garments. So he made the big switch. He got rid of his perc machines. And
he bought a new machine that used liquid silicone. To the tune of $80,000
bucks.
And as he gathered his employees to show them the new machine, he did
something kind of kooky.
“I actually took a little cup and I drank it.”
The liquid silicone. The stuff that cleans the clothes. Dude drank it! Says it
tasted like salty vegetable oil.
“Everyone was shocked to see that, but I just wanted to show them that how
confident I was that this was a safe technology.”
And since that shot of liquid silicone, Gilligan hasn’t had any issues. His
customers tell him they’re happy with the results. And financially he’s done
really well this year.
But not all dry cleaners are ready or willing to take this kind of risk. Dry
cleaning is a tough business to make a profit in. So plenty of cleaners want
to stick with what they know works—which for a lot of them, is using perc.
In fact, there’s a tension in the industry these days. Between the old
schoolers—cleaners who use perc. And the new schoolers—people trying
out newer, greener methods.
Chris Allsbrooks is with the Drycleaning and Laundry Institute.
“And right now our mix is changing because there’s
more people coming into the industry as some of the people with the older
views are leaving the industry.”
And the laws are changing, too. California has said that perc can no longer
be used by that state’s dry cleaners by the year 2023. And New Jersey is
considering following in California’s footsteps.
For Jim Gilligan, the switch was the just right thing to do: as a business
owner and as someone who cares about the environment. He says now, he
breathes easier. And so do his employees. And his customers say a green dry
cleaner works for them.
Many new shower curtains contain PVC (Source: DO'Neil at Wikimedia Commons)
A new study looked at off-the-shelf
shower curtains and came up with some disturbing
findings. The Center for Health, Environment
and Justice studied polyvinyl chloride plastic
shower curtains and found that PVC shower
curtains can release as many as 108 toxic
chemicals. Lester Graham talked with Sarah
Burkhalter with the environmental journalism
site: grist.org. He asked just how
much of a concern these PVC shower curtains
are:
Transcript
A new study looked at off-the-shelf
shower curtains and came up with some disturbing
findings. The Center for Health, Environment
and Justice studied polyvinyl chloride plastic
shower curtains and found that PVC shower
curtains can release as many as 108 toxic
chemicals. Lester Graham talked with Sarah
Burkhalter with the environmental journalism
site: grist.org. He asked just how
much of a concern these PVC shower curtains
are:
Sarah Burkhalter: “It depends. This group – The Center for Health, Environment, and Justice –
tested five shower curtains, and their claim is that new-shower-curtain-smell is up to 108 nasty
chemicals that have been added during processing. At the same time, you know, there are
chemicals in everything. So, to an extent, you just have to choose your battles. Shower curtains
have become the emergency-du-jour, if you will. But, there is plenty else to worry about if you
already have a shower curtain. It’s not an emergency.”
Lester Graham: “Now we should point out that these shower curtains are not special shower
curtains. These were bought at Bed Bath and Beyond, and Kmart, and Sears, and Target, and
Wal-Mart. And I don’t even know what I would replace my shower curtain with. Got any ideas
about that?”
Burkhalter: “Sure. Well, the thing about these shower curtains, you know, it’s not even the shower
curtains themselves. It is the plastic they’re made of. And that is plastic #3. Its poly-vinyl chloride,
or PVC, or you may sometimes you may just see it as vinyl. And at grist.org, our advice columnist
always says, ‘no vinyl, that’s final’. That’s her tagline. She says, ‘no PVC for me’. That’s her other
way to remember it. Really, as much as you can avoid this plastic #3. Which, is difficult to avoid.
It’s in toys, and hospital tubing, and jars, and pill bottles. But as much as you can avoid this, is for
the benefit, certainly. As far as shower curtains go, there are a lot of alternatives. You can always
go for a door instead of a curtain. When our advice columnist, Umbra, wrote about this very issue
in 2006, she recommended polyester shower curtains. They also make organic cotton, and nylon.
There’s a different plastic, its PVC-free, its called ethylene vinyl-acetate, or EVA, so if you look for
EVA plastic shower curtains, those are a good alternative. Or, you could always take up
exhibitionism.”
Graham: (laughs) “Well, how hard are these things to find – these other, non-PVC shower
curtains?”
Burkhalter: “They’re going to get easier and easier to find as time goes by. Actually, IKEA phased
out PVC shower curtains over a decade ago. Sears, Kmart, Wal-Mart, and Target are all in the
midst of phasing out PVC. And, actually, Target had a goal for this spring, I think they said 88% of
their shower curtains now don’t contain PVC. So, if you look at the labels, and try to avoid things
that say PVC, you should be able to find alternatives, even in these big box stores.”
Graham: “So, what do you have hanging in your shower?”
Burkhalter: “Well, I have to say that I took a shower this morning, and it is a plastic shower curtain.
But, you know, I’ve had it for a couple of years, and the Center for Health, Environment, and
Justice, when they tested, they found that some of these chemicals hung-out for a few weeks, but
after a month or so, your shower curtain has probably done off-gassing all the chemicals that it’s
going to. So, if you’ve had your shower curtain for a couple of years, you know, really, instead of
trashing it, it’s probably best just to hold on to it. Don’t’ burn it – that is something that you really
don’t want to do with PVC. That’s kind of one of its great dangers, is that it releases dioxin, a nasty
chemical, when it’s burned. So, but as long as you’re not licking it regularly, you can probably hold
on to your old one.”
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)
