New Pcb Chemical Found in the Air

  • One study found PCB-11 in 90% of the air samples from Chicago (Photo by Lester Graham)

A potentially toxic chemical called
PCB-11 has been found all over the air in a
major city. That’s surprising, because people
thought the chemical hadn’t been used in years.
Gabriel Spitzer reports regulators could start
looking in other cities:

Transcript

A potentially toxic chemical called
PCB-11 has been found all over the air in a
major city. That’s surprising, because people
thought the chemical hadn’t been used in years.
Gabriel Spitzer reports regulators could start
looking in other cities:

Keri Hornbuckle says not much is known about PCB-11.

That’s because no one really expected to stumble on it.

“This finding is important, and I think it’s alarming. We should find out what the
health effects are for this chemical.”

Hornbuckle is a University of Iowa professor.

She looked at air samples from all over Chicago, and found the chemical in about 90% of
the samples.

She says the source is a mystery, though it might come from paints breaking down.

“Now, it could be that in all those places where we would expect to see the other
PCBs, we’d also see this one. But it’s a surprise, because no one thought it would be
produced.”

Hornbuckle says she found PCB-11 using a new, detailed way of analyzing air samples.

Other PCBs have been linked to cancer and neurological problems.

For The Environment Report, I’m Gabriel Spitzer.

Related Links

Defense Dept. To Clean Up Military Mess?

The Defense Department will be paying for a study to find ways to remove ammunition barrels the military dumped into Lake Superior during the Cold War. For 30 years, environmentalists have been asking the government to clean up the mess. Mike Simonson reports that the federal government is now paying for a study to find ways to remove the barrels:

Transcript

The Defense Department will be paying for a study to find ways to remove ammunition
barrels the military dumped into Lake Superior during the Cold War. For 30 years,
environmentalists have been asking the government to clean up the mess. Mike
Simonson reports that the federal government is now paying for a study to find ways to
remove the barrels:


The Red Cliff band of Lake Superior Chippewa will study ways
to remove the barrels of munitions. Documents show that between 1959
and 1962, the Department of Defense had 1,437 drums dumped into Lake
Superior. It amounts to about 400 tons of munitions containing toxic chemicals such as
PCBs, mercury, lead, chromium, benzene and even uranium.


Patricia DePerry is the Red Cliff Tribal Chairwoman. She says the barrels must be
removed:


“Not only the time is of essence, it’s the not knowing what the contaminants have been
doing at the bottom of the lake.”


DePerry says not only is the ecology of the lake at risk, but the barrels of munitions lie
within a quarter mile of Duluth, Minnesota’s drinking water intake.


For the Environment Report, I’m Mike Simonson.

Related Links

Turning Nuke Waste Sites Into Playgrounds

  • Grassland prairie flowers from Weldon Spring, part of the Department of Energy's restoration effort to control erosion and add aesthetic beauty to the area. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy)

Across the U.S., there are more than 100 sites contaminated by radioactive waste from the nation’s nuclear weapons programs.
The government is trying to return these Cold War relics to safe and useful purposes. Some of these once toxic zones are being treated much like public parks. The GLRC’s Kevin Lavery visited one that was recently opened to the public:

Transcript

Across the US, there are more than 100 sites contaminated by radioactive waste from the
nation’s nuclear weapons programs. The government is trying to return these Cold War
relics to safe and useful purposes. Some of these once toxic zones are being treated much
like public parks. The GLRC’s Kevin Lavery recently visited one that was recently
opened to the public…


A thick grove of trees opens up to a clearing that reveals a white mound of limestone
rock. It rises like a tomb from some long-forgotten civilization, were it not for the water
towers and golf courses on the horizon.


Mike Leahy and his 9-year-old son Cameron came to this rock dome to catch the view
atop its 75 foot summit. But the real attraction was what they did not see:


“We read the sign and saw what was buried and how they did it, and – it’s kind of
disturbing, what’s in there.”


Beneath their feet lay more than a million cubic yards of spent uranium, asbestos and
PCB’s. The 45 acre mound is a disposal cell, where the government buried thousands of
barrels and tons of debris. That history didn’t bother young Cameron:


“It’s really cool. They keep all that nuclear waste under all that and it can’t harm
anybody.”


The Weldon Spring site, 30 miles west of St. Louis, Missouri began during World War
Two as an Army TNT factory. In the 1950’s, the plant refined yellow cake uranium for
later use in nuclear weapons. All that stopped in 1966 and all the radioactive waste just
sat there. Weldon Spring became an EPA Superfund site in 1987. After a 900 million
dollar cleanup, the site was opened to tourists in 2002.


(Sound of frogs)


Today, frogs sing in a native prairie at the foot of the cell. In April, officials opened a
hiking trail adjacent to a once-radioactive landfill. The route connects to a state park.


Weldon Spring is not a park per se, but project manager Yvonne Deyo says urban sprawl
prompted them to think like one:


“There’s subdivisions and lots of infrastructure going in…and that just kind of hits home
how important green space is, and that’s kind of what we’re trying to do a little bit of
here at the site.”


Weldon Spring is one of about 100 such sites the Department of Energy is converting to
what it calls “beneficial re-use.” Many are becoming recreational venues. Another
closed uranium plant near Cincinnati is adding horseback riding trails. In Wayne, New
Jersey, a former thorium processing facility is becoming a baseball field. And a national
wildlife preserve is in the works at Rocky Flats, the site outside Denver that made the
plutonium cores of nuclear warheads.


The Department of Energy says Weldon Spring is safe for visitors – though some residual
contamination remains.


(Sound of Burgermeister Spring)


Burgermeister Spring runs through a 7-thousand acre state reserve adjacent to the site.
This is where uranium-laced groundwater from Weldon Spring rises to the surface.
Though the spring exceeds the EPA’s drinking water quality standard, there’s no warning
sign here. Officials say the contamination is so low that it poses no immediate public
hazard. The spring feeds into one of the most popular fishing lakes on the property.
Most visitors are surprised to hear that:


“Huh.”


Jeff Boeving fishes for bass four or five times a month:


“(Does that concern you to hear that?) Yeah – absolutely…I mean, they’ve got a great
area out here and they’re kind of messing it up if they’re going to have contaminants, you know, going into it.”


The government’s vision of post-nuclear playgrounds is not without its critics. Arjun
Makhijani heads the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park,
Maryland. He says recreational sites near urban development zones risk losing their
original purpose:


“Institutional memory tends to be very short; after 30, 40, 50 years people forget, they
begin to develop the land, and pretty soon you could have houses, farms and schools in
the area. So it’s not necessary that it will stay recreational forever.”


Recreation is only one option the Department of Energy is considering for all of its sites.
In the last two years, the agency’s budget has doubled with the addition of nearly a dozen
radioactive properties. Officials say Congress has so far supported its fiscal requests.
And with the future of a proposed permanent nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain still
in doubt, even more tax dollars will likely be spent converting the nuclear dumps in
America’s backyards to a place where families play.


For the GLRC, I’m Kevin Lavery.

Related Links

Epa Touts Toxic Release Decrease

The Environmental Protection Agency is reporting that the amount of toxic chemicals released into the environment is down. But critics say the agency’s positive spin on the report is deceptive. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency is reporting that the amount of
toxic chemicals released into the environment is down. But, critics
say the agency’s positive spin on the report is deceptive. The GLRC’s
Lester Graham reports:


The EPA reports that toxic chemical releases from industries went down
by four percent from 2003 to 2004. The EPA noted that dioxin releases
were down… mercury pollution was down… and PCB releases went down
92 percent.


A spokesman for the environmental group the National Environmental
Trust says the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory report is misleading.
The group says changes in the definition of what’s toxic in the mining
industry made it look as though there were fewer toxic releases overall.


The EPA plans to make more changes in future reports on toxic
releases. It’s proposed that companies only report every other year
instead of annually and exempts some plants that are required to
report now. Some members of Congress have asked the Government
Accountability Office to investigate the changes.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Ten Threats: Pollution Hot Spots

  • Ruddiman Pond has been listed as a Great Lakes 'Area of Concern' for more than 18 years. (Photo by Michael Leland).

For decades, heavy industries made the Great Lakes a center of manufacturing
and employment for the United States. Those factories also left polluted waters
in many areas. In 2002, Congress passed and President Bush signed legislation
that promised to clean the Lakes’ pollution hot spots, known as Areas of Concern.
So far, work has only begun at three of those sites. Reporter Michael Leland
visited one of them:

Transcript

We’re continuing our series Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. Our guide
in the series, Lester Graham, says one of the threats identified by experts
across the region is known as “Areas of Concern.”


For decades, heavy industries made the Great Lakes a center of manufacturing
and employment for the United States. Those factories also left polluted waters
in many areas. In 2002, Congress passed and President Bush signed legislation
that promised to clean the Lakes’ pollution hot spots, known as Areas of Concern.
So far, work has only begun at three of those sites. Reporter Michael Leland
visited one of them:


Picture what you might think one of these heavily polluted sites looks like.
Did you think of a big park in a quiet neighborhood, with lots of tall
trees, and a bandstand next to a lagoon? No? Well, welcome to McGraft Park
in Muskegon, Michigan, the home of Ruddiman Pond, one of the most polluted
spots in the Great Lakes.


“This little lagoon here is a sediment basin. It is a sediment trap.”


Rick Rideske is a research scientist at the Annis Water Resource Institute
in Muskegon. It studies the quality of Michigan’s lakes and rivers.


“All of the contaminated sediment from the upper part of the watershed has made
its way down here and is being deposited. They are taking out, in some places,
15 feet of contaminated sediment.”


Beginning in the 1930’s, heavy industries began setting up shop along
Ruddiman Creek, a few miles from the park. Many dumped their toxic wastes
into nearby storm sewers, which emptied into the creek, and flowed toward
Ruddiman Pond. Toxic heavy metals like chromium and lead, along with
hazardous chemicals like PCB’s, settled to the bottom. It’s been a long
time since the pond has been safe for swimming.


Rideske points to a yellow sign nailed to a tree next to the pond. It says,
“No entry. Hazardous substances.”


“If you look at that sign over there, that sign was put up in maybe 1997, 98.
You can see the tree has grown over the sign.”


But beyond that sign is some hope for Ruddiman Creek and Pond. Workers are
scooping toxic mud from the bottom of the lagoon. The material is trucked
to a landfill licensed to receive toxic stuff like this. The project should
be finished by next summer.


Ruddiman Creek and Pond make up one of 43 pollution hot spots in the Great
Lakes that the U.S. and Canada call Areas of Concern. So far, two in Canada
have been cleaned up. Ruddiman Creek is one of only three in the U.S. being
cleaned.


David Ullirch would like to see that work move a lot faster. He directs the Great
Lakes Initiative. It’s a group of mayors and other officials from the U.S. and
Canada that works to preserve the Lakes.


“This is a serious problem, not only in terms of a threat to the natural environment,
there are public health issues associated with them and often, even worse, is that
they are a stigma to those areas, whether it is Waukegan Harbor, or Gary, Indiana, or
Ashtabula Harbor, these are things that these cities have had to live with for
years, and it’s time to get them cleaned up and get on with it.”


The government is supposed to provide 270-million dollars over five years to
clean up the Areas of Concern in the United States, but so far, congress
has appropriated only about 35-million dollars. That relatively small amount
of cash has limited the number of cleanups that can be started, and it frustrates
Dennis Schornack. He’s the U.S. chairman of the International Joint Commission.
It’s a watchdog group that monitors the water quality treaty between the U.S. and
Canada.


“These areas were identified back in 1987, and only two, both of which are in Canada,
have been delisted since that time. At that pace of progress, it will be 400 years
before we are so-called clean, and I think that is very disappointing.”


In the case of Ruddiman Creek, they’re glad at least one site is being cleaned up.
Rick Rideske of the Annis Institute says the fact that it’s in a neighborhood park
played a big role in attracting the attention, and government cash needed to clean
it up.


“It really took the local residents, public advisory council, we have a Ruddiman
Creek Task Force, which is made of local people from this neighborhood. They called
frequently state representatives, federal representatives. Getting this site on the
priority list was a community effort for a lot of people.”


Rideske and people who live near McGraft Park are looking forward to celebrating a
small victory in the fight to restore the Great Lakes, and they’re looking forward to
taking down that yellow warning sign next year.


For the GLRC, I’m Michael Leland.

Related Links

Epa Completes Toxic Sediment Cleanup

The Environmental Protection Agency says it has completed
toxic sediment cleanup at one of the most polluted sites along the Great
Lakes. There are 31 such sites in the U.S. known as “Areas of Concern.”
Officials say this site is one step closer to being cleaned up. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland reports:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency says it has completed toxic sediment
cleanup at one of the most polluted sites along the Great Lakes. There are
31 such sites in the U.S. known as “Areas of Concern.” Officials say this
site is one step closer to being cleaned up. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Michael Leland reports:


The Black Lagoon along the Detroit River in Trenton, Michigan, got its name
because years of industrial contamination had discolored the water. Months of
dredging has changed that.


Dennis Schornack is the U.S. chairman of the International Joint Commission.
It monitors the water quality treaty between the U.S. and Canada.


“Over 115-thousand cubic yards of muck, heavily contaminated with
PCB’s, oil, grease, mercury and other toxic metals, have been removed from
the Detroit River, and disposed of and secured in a facility that will be operated
by the Detroit district of the United States Army Corps of Engineers.”


Three years ago, the Great Lakes Legacy Act authorized 270-million dollars
over five years to clean up the pollution hot-spots. It’s never been
fully funded, and is currently paying for cleanup work at only two other
sites along the Lakes.


For the GLRC, I’m Michael Leland.

Related Links

Ten Threats: The Beloved Invader

  • Because alewives are the main source of food for some sport fish, some people forget that they're an invasive species. (Photo courtesy of NOAA Fishery Service)

As we look at the “Ten Threats to the Great Lakes,” we’re spending some time examining the effects of the alien invasive species that have changed the Lakes. One of the first invasive species to arrive in the Great Lakes was the alewife; it’s native to the Atlantic Ocean. It has become the most beloved of all the invasives. That’s because it’s food for the most popular sport fish in the Great Lakes. But in the beginning, the sport fish was introduced to get rid of the alewives. Peter Payette reports:

Transcript

Today we’re continuing our series on Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham is our series guide:


As we look at the “Ten Threats to the Great Lakes,” we’re spending some time examining the effects of the alien invasive species that have changed the Lakes. One of the first invasive species to arrive in the Great Lakes was the alewife; it’s native to the Atlantic Ocean. It has become the most beloved of all the invasives. That’s because it’s food for the most popular sport fish in the Great Lakes. But in the beginning, the sport fish was introduced to get rid of the alewives. Peter Payette reports:


When autumn arrives in Northern Michigan, salmon fishermen line the rivers. The fish, native to the Pacific Ocean, swim upstream to spawn and then die. That’s why Tim Gloshen says they’re not interested in his bait.


“But if you irritate ’em enough and keep putting it in front of them, they’ll snap at it sometimes and you got to be ready when they hit it and set your hook.”


Anglers caught eight million pounds of salmon in Lake Michigan last year. Most of the fish are caught out in the lake.


“I got buddies that are catching couple hundred a year out there. They’re out there twice a week at least, all summer long, you know.”


Tim and his buddies and everyone else who fishes for salmon in the Great Lakes are at the top of the food chain. The money they spend on food, lodging, tackle, and boats figures heavily into decisions about how to manage the Lakes.


But it wasn’t always so.


Pacific salmon were stocked here about forty years ago to control the invading alewives. The native lake trout had just about been wiped out by overfishing and the sea lamprey. With no big predators left, the alewife population exploded.


At one point, it was estimated that for every ten pounds of fish in Lake Michigan, eight were alewives. Occasional die-offs would cause large numbers of alewives to wash up on beaches all over the Great Lakes. Historian Michael Chiarappa says all this was happening as America was feeling the urge to get back in touch with nature.


“And that’s when you get this rise in greater interest in sport fishing, recreational fishing, hunting. Teddy Roosevelt sort of epitomized the spirit of the strenuous life; get back out there and engage nature. It’s good for the soul, it’s good for the body, it’s good for the mind.”


So the salmon was brought in to control the alewife population and transform the Great Lakes into a sport fishing paradise. And it worked. But alewives remained the best food source for the ravenous salmon.


So now a healthy alewife population is seen as a good thing by the states that benefit economically from the recreational fishing. Mark Holey, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says this has caused people to forget alewives are an invasive species.


“If alewives were knocking on the door today, there may be a much different discussion about it. It may be more like the Asian carp.”


How the alewife would compare to Asian carp is unknown, because the Asian carp has been found in the Mississippi River, but not yet in the Great Lakes. What is known is that when alewives are abundant, native fish don’t do well. For example, Holey says biologists used to think PCBs caused many young lake trout to die. Now they know early mortality is mostly due to thiamin deficiency.
Thiamine is a vitamin lacking in lake trout that eat too many alewives.


“From the studies that we’ve been involved with, anywhere, right now, anywhere between thirty to fifty percent of the females that we take eggs from show some… their eggs show some signs of thiamine deficiency. Which means survival of those eggs are impaired.”


In some cases, none of the eggs will survive. So a worse case estimate would be half of the wild lake trout in the Great Lakes can’t reproduce because of alewives. This is why advocates for native fish species have been happy to see the alewife populations decline in recent years. They almost disappeared from Lake Huron.


Mark Ebener is a fisheries biologist for the Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority. He says the government agencies that stock salmon and lake trout should stock more than ever to keep pressure on the alewife. Ebener thinks with alewife numbers down, there’s an opportunity to reestablish the native herring as the main prey fish in the Lakes, especially in Lake Huron.


“Saginaw Bay used to have a huge population of lake herring that’s essentially gone. They used to have a tremendous commercial fishery for it, and people used to come from miles around to buy herring there, and everybody in the lower end of the state used to have herring come fall and the springtime when the fishers were fishing, but they’re gone.”


This opportunity to bring herring back might not last much longer. The warm weather this past summer will probably help alewives rebound next year.


For the GLRC, I’m Peter Payette.

Related Links

Defense Department Re-Opens Cold War Barrel Mystery

  • The Department of Defense is working on cleaning up barrels dumped into Lake Superior. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of the Interior)

The Department of Defense will re-open the case of 14-hundred mystery barrels secretly dumped into Lake Superior during the Cold War. The barrels were dumped in an area where the Red Cliff Band of Chippewa Indians have territorial rights. The DOD now has an agreement with the Red Cliff Tribe to investigate the weapons dump site. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson has this report:

Transcript

The Department of Defense will re-open the case of 1400 mystery barrels secretly dumped into Lake Superior during the Cold War. The barrels were dumped in an area where the Red Cliff Band of Chippewa Indians have territorial rights. The DoD now has an agreement with the Red Cliff Tribe to investigate the weapons dump site. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson has this report:


Documents show barrels of weapons scraps manufactured by Honeywell from 1958 to 1962 were secretly dumped by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers a few miles east of the Duluth-Superior harbor.


Red Cliff Environmental Consultant Dave Anderson believes there is an imminent danger to Duluth’s water supply. The barrels are rusting away 100 to 300 feet deep near the city’s water intake. He says he’s found evidence of PCB’s and unidentified ash.


“Right now we know that there is more to these barrels than what has been disclosed in the past. That the barrels are not just scrap steel grenade parts. There are other wastes that are hazardous that are contained in the barrels and we now know that the barrels are leaking some of those substances.”


The DoD has awarded the Red Cliff Tribe a 105-thousand dollar grant to assess and further investigate this 20 mile square site and report the findings in October for possible clean-up.


For the GLRC, I’m Mike Simonson.

Fire Retardant Chemicals Ring Alarm Bells

  • Meredith Buhalis and her daughter Zoe. Meredith's breast milk was tested for PBDEs as part of a study by the Environmental Working Group. (Photo by Meredith Buhalis)

Flame retardant chemicals help make our lives safer.
The chemicals are designed to keep plastics and foam from
catching on fire, but the flame retardants are worrying some
scientists because these chemicals are turning up in people’s
bodies, sometimes at alarmingly high rates. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

Flame retardant chemicals help make our lives safer. The chemicals are designed
to keep plastics and foam from catching on fire. But the flame retardants are
beginning to worry some scientists because these chemicals are turning up in
peoples’ bodies. Sometimes at alarmingly high rates. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:


If you take a look around your house, you can find a lot of things that have
flame retardant chemicals in them. They’re in your television set, the cushions
in your couch, and the padding underneath your carpet. They’re known as poly-bromiated-diphenyl
ethers, or PBDEs. And they’re either mixed in or sprayed on plastics and foam to keep a fire
from spreading.


Five years ago a Swedish study found these chemicals were accumulating in women’s breast
milk. Studies in the U.S. followed, and researchers also found PBDEs in Americans, but at
even higher levels. In fact, Americans have some of the highest levels ever measured. And
over time, the levels have been going up.


(sound of baby)


Meredith Buhalis was one of those people measured in a study by an envrionmental organization
called the Environmental Working Group. Buhalis and 20 other first time moms sent in samples
of their breast milk. When the samples were tested, all of them had some level of PBDEs in
them. Buhalis says when she read the results she didn’t know what to think.


“I guess I kind of read the results and the study was like, ‘Oh, well that sort of sucks.’
I wish I knew more about what that meant. ‘Cause I don’t. You know, they don’t know what
that means.”


Scientists don’t know how or if the chemicals affect human health. And some scientists
think the government and the chemical companies aren’t doing enough to look into PBDEs.


(sound of typing)


In his office at the University of Texas in Dallas, Dr. Arnold Schecter is working on an
article about the flame retardants. He’s been studying toxic chemicals for more than thirty
years. He and some of his colleagues think PBDEs are a lot like another type of chemical…


“It reminds us of PCBs. PCBs structurally are similar to the PBDEs. So there is the worry,
or the concern, that they may have many, if not all, the toxic effect that PCBs have on humans.”


So far the data on PCBs strongly suggest that the chemicals can cause cancer in humans as
well as other human health effects such as damage to the nervous and immune systems. The
companies that manufacture the flame retardants say it’s not fair to compare PBDEs with
PCBs. They say the chemicals are vastly different.


But no one really knows whether the chemicals are similar in the way they affect human
health. That’s because no one’s studied the human health effects of PBDEs.


“Unfortunately, there are no published human health studies and I don’t believe any have
been funded by the federal government to date. Nor by industry, nor by any foundations,
which is a bit different than the situation with PCBs and dioxins years ago when many
studies were being funded.”


Some animal studies suggest that the chemicals can permanently disrupt the hormone and
nervous systems, cause reproductive and developmental damage, and cause cancer. All that
makes scientists such as Dr. Schecter especially concerned about the most vulnerable
population – developing babies.


Because of the concerns, the biggest manufacturer of these chemicals in the U.S. has agreed
to stop making two of the PBDE formulations that were found to accumulate in people. Great
Lakes Chemical says production will stop by the end of this year. The chemicals will be
replaced with another type of brominated flame retardant.


The Bromine Science and Environmental Forum is a trade group that represents companies
that make the flame retardants. Peter O’Toole is the group’s U.S. Director. He says so
far the amount of chemicals found in people doesn’t concern the companies, but the upward
trend does.


“And again, it wasn’t of alarming numbers, but the manufacturer was concerned that these
numbers were going up nonetheless. And they thought it was prudent, and they talked to the
EPA and EPA thought it was prudent if there was some sort of mutual phase out of those materials.”


Dr. Schecter says he commends the company for taking this step. But he says even though these
two formulations will be phased out, the flame retardants are already in our environment now.
He says his research has found high levels of PBDEs by wiping the plastic casing on television
sets, and in the dust found in homes. He says what’s in our homes now isn’t going to vanish,
so we need to figure out how the chemicals get into us, so we can avoid potential health problems.


For its part, the U.S. Envrionmental Protection Agency says large-scale human health studies
take a long time to develop. An agency spokesperson says the EPA first needs to learn how a
person becomes highly exposed. After that, they say researchers will be able to ask the question,
“for the highly exposed people, are there any health effects?”


(sound of baby)


That leaves people such as Meredith Buhalis, with a lot more questions than answers.


“We are thinking of having another baby, and I think I would really like to know more about
PBDEs. I think about it when I think about that.” (to her daughter) “Oh thank you. Hi, baby.
Hi, Zoe.”


The Federal government doesn’t plan to regulate the chemicals anytime soon. But some states
aren’t waiting for more studies. A handful of states have placed restrictions on certain
types of PBDEs. And in other states, legislation is pending.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

State Drops Fish Advisory Program

Budget cuts continue to plague states across the country. In Michigan, these cuts led to the elimination of the state’s fish advisory program. It’s the first state in the region to drop its program. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ashley McGovern has more:

Transcript

Budget cuts continue to plague states across the country. In Michigan, these cuts led to
the elimination of the state’s fish advisory program. It’s the first state in the region to
drop its program. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ashley McGovern has more:

Two years ago, Michigan’s legislature cut funding for the state’s fish advisory program.
Since then, Michigan’s Department of Community Health has been struggling to pay for
the advisories. Now, department officials say they can no longer afford to keep the
program going.

T.J. Bucholz is a spokesman for Michigan’s Department of Community Health. He says
the advisories inform an important segment of the population:

“The message is targeted these days at women that are pregnant. Letting them know that ingestion
of too much fish that is contaminated with mercury or PCBs or PBBs can have an
adverse affect on their pregnancy.”

Two years ago, officials from Ohio’s Department of Health threatened to end their fish
advisory program because of budget cuts. But they later found funds from other state
departments. Bucholz says his department will try to do the same.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Ashley McGovern.

Related Links