Tag: pollutants

Prescription: Enviro-Knowledge for Doctors

Chances are your doctor doesn’t know much about environmentally-related
illnesses. Ann Murray looks at why most US doctors and nurses aren’t even
talking about environmental connections to their patients’ health and what’s
being done to remedy the situation:

Transcript

Chances are your doctor doesn’t know much about environmentally-related
illnesses. Ann Murray looks at why most US doctors and nurses aren’t even
talking about environmental connections to their patients’ health and what’s
being done to remedy the situation:


In 1999, Jo Ann Meier was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was shocked
to discover she had the disease. No one in her family had a history of cancer.
And she only had one of the standard risk factors for the illness:


“Of course, you always speculate when you have a disease like this. Was it
something I did or was it something that I was exposed to?”


Meier says her doctors never talked to her about possible environmental
links to her illness. Today, Meier is cancer free and runs a non-profit that
raises money for breast cancer research. She hears similar stories about other
primary care physicians from the breast cancer patients she works with every
day.


“There’s a great deal of anger about the misinformation or lack of
information given to them in general. I mean, it would be great if your PCP would
say you have to look at what you’re doing on a day-to-day basis that might
be affecting your health.”


Jo Ann Meier’s experience isn’t unusual. Experts agree that most doctors and
nurses aren’t ready to deal with the environmental links to dozens of
illnesses like cancer or lung disease. Sometimes crowded doctors’ schedules
or fear of being seen as an environmental advocate get in the way. Leyla
McCurdy directs the Health and Environment Program at the National
Environmental Educational and Training Foundation in Washington, DC.
McCurdy says medical providers don’t know much about environmental
health issues because training is so hard to come by.


One of the challenges that we are facing in terms of integrating environmental
health is the lack of expertise in the area. There are very few leaders who
are willing to take the time and create their own materials to educate the
students at the medical and nursing schools:


“As a result of this small pool of experts, and an already crowded set of
courses, most med students get only about seven hours of environmental
health education in four years of school. Established doctors and nurses have
even fewer training options.


A small but growing number of health care institutions, non-profits and
agencies are stepping in to fill the training gap. On this morning, medical
residents and staff doctors crowd into a hospital lecture hall.


“Welcome to medical grand rounds. Our speaker today is Doctor Talal ElHanowe,
who is going to talk to us about estrogenic pollutants in the environment and
the risk they pose to people.”


“Can these chemicals, which resemble estrogen, in one way or the other, cause an increase in the risk
to develop cancer? And the answer is yes.”


ElHanowe is a medical doctor and research scientist. He works with the
University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Environmental Oncology. The Center
is developing environmental health training for doctors and nurses. After his
seminar, ElHanowe says response to the program has been good. But his job
of relating environmental health risks can be tough because doctors aren’t
used to treating diseases with causes that are hard to pin down.


“In the scientific community, we can’t prove everything. Many things are
very difficult to prove.”


ElHanowe’s boss, Devra Davis, says medical providers will have to be
satisfied with substantial evidence, not absolute proof, that certain
environmental toxins increase the risk of illnesses, and steer patients to safer
alternatives. Davis is a nationally known epidemiologist. She says
environmental medicine’s emphasis on prevention is the shot in the arm
American health care needs:


“Because no matter how efficient the health care system becomes at finding
and treating disease, if we don’t reduce the burden of the disease itself, we’ll
never be able to improve the health of Americans.”


But to make environmental medicine standard issue in schools and practice,
a lot more doctors and nurses will need to be educated. And that means a lot
more funding. It’s hoped as medical providers make the connection between
environmental exposures and public health, funding sources will open up
and environmental medicine will make its way into mainstream health care.


For the Environment Report, this is Ann Murray.

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Manure Spreading Pollutes

The government is studying ways to reduce water pollution from
spreading manure on farm fields. Lester Graham reports some experts
believe the way many farmers spread manure is more likely to pollute
lakes and streams:

Transcript

The government is studying ways to reduce water pollution from
spreading manure on farm fields. Lester Graham reports some experts
believe the way many farmers spread manure is more likely to pollute
lakes and streams:


A lot of times, farmers don’t spread manure for fertilizer in the spring because
it can get in the way of opportunities to plant. So, a lot of farmers
spread manure in the winter. But spreading liquid manure on the frozen
ground means it doesn’t get plowed into the soil. Snow and rain can
wash the manure over the frozen dirt and into waterways.


Steve Jann is involved in a study by the Environmental Protection
Agency and the U.S. Department of Ag:


“When that runoff occurs it can carry manure pollutants with it. And
those pollutants when they enter surface waters can kill fish or allow
pathogens to enter surface water.”


And if that river or lake supplies drinking water, it can make people
sick. The study will compare pollution levels in waterways from
manure-spreading in the winter and the spring to see if pollution
from farm fields can be reduced.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Good Fish, Bad Fish

  • Some grocery stores are training their staff on the benefits and risks of eating some kinds of fish. Nels Carson (pictured) answers customers' concerns about fish contamination. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Fish advisories are confusing. Their guidelines change depending on your gender and age,
and on the type of fish you’re eating. Reporter Kyle Norris boils down
some of the information in advisories and comes up with a few things to think about
when you eat fish:

Transcript

Fish advisories are confusing. Their guidelines change depending on your gender and age,
and on the type of fish you’re eating. Reporter Kyle Norris boils down
some of the information in advisories and comes up with a few things to think about
when you eat fish:


So I did a little informal survey the other day where I asked my friends what they knew about
eating fish. Some of my friends said, “Hey, isn’t eating fish good for you?” Well, turns out they’re right. Fish are
great sources of protein. They’re low in “bad” fats and high in “good” fats, or omega-3
fatty acids, which help your heart stay healthy.


And some of my other friends knew that fish were bad for you. Turns out they’re also right. Fish
take in pollutants through their food and water. Toxins such as mercury, PCBs, and
dioxins. If humans eat enough contaminated fish, those contaminants can build up in our
bodies and cause serious health problems. Contaminants are especially threatening for
small children and women of childbearing age because they can affect children’s
developing nervous systems.


Governments put out advisories so we know which fish are safe to eat. But advisories aren’t
the easiest thing to understand. And anyway, what do you do if you’re in a restaurant, or
cruising through the grocery store and you just want some fish?


“Uh we’re standing in front of the seafood counter at Whole Foods and we’re looking at
our fresh case…”


That’s Nels Carlson. He heads up the seafood department at my local Whole Foods
Market. He says people ask him about fish safety everyday:


“It can be kind of a daunting topic, I think, because there is such a variety. It’s not just a
gross generalization. So it really, it takes a lot of dialogue between customers and team
members and having a very knowledgeable team member base here really helps that.”


They’ll ask him about mercury in the fish, a highly toxic metal that occurs naturally but is a lot more prevalent
mostly because of coal burning power plants. Mercury shows up in higher concentrations
in certain kinds of fish. It’s nice to have a knowledgeable guy like Nels to talk with. Good fish vendors, such as
Whole Foods, go through special training on fish safety. But what if there’s no seafood
expert hanging out next to the fish sticks in the freezer section, if you know what I mean?


Anita Sandretto teaches in the Environmental Health Sciences department at the
University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, and she said that my friends are right.
Okay, well, she didn’t really say that, but she said there are good things about fish and there are bad things about fish:


“If you want to have the benefit of the fat and the omega-3 fatty acids, eat fish with more
fat, but the fat will also be where you will see the contaminants such as PCBs, dioxin.
The flesh will also be where you might have the mercury contamination.”


See, that’s the thing about eating fish: it gets complicated and there are no hard and fast
rules. Sandretto says eating fish is all about treading a line between the advantages and
the risks. So, if there is a risk, you want to reduce it as much as possible:


“…Because if you have any risk in a particular type of food, if you only consume once in
while, you have a less risk of anything bad happening.”


So think in terms of moderation and variety. Sandretto says it’s cool if you want to eat fish once or
twice a week, and to try and vary the kinds of fish that you eat. She says moderation and
variety are actually great rules of thumb to apply to your entire diet. So you could eat a
turkey sandwich on white one day, tuna on whole wheat the next, and a veggie burger the day
after that.


If you eat fish caught from local waters, check with your regional or state health
departments for their fish advisories. Just because a waterway looks clean or is in a
picturesque setting does not mean that its fish are harmless. Contaminants enter the
water in all kinds of ways.


One last thought: imagine a little fish with a little bit of contamination in its body.
Now imagine a medium-sized fish, who swims along and eats that fish and 99 of its closest small
fish friends. That medium guy now has 100 times more contamination than the small fish.
And now let’s say a big fish swims up and gulps down ten medium fish. That big fish has a
concentration that’s 1000 times higher than what that origianal small fish had.


So the moral of that story is, eat smaller fish when possible, also called pan fish. And
at the end of the day, keep in mind that the majority of research, including a recent study
from Harvard’s School of Public Health, say that the benefits of eating fish in moderation
outweigh the risks.


For The Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Related Links

Pbde Levels Increase in Great Lakes

Great Lakes scientists say there’s been some progress made against traditional chemical threats, but researchers say other chemical contaminants are emerging in the lakes. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Great Lakes scientists say there’s been some progress made against traditional chemical threats. But researchers say other chemical contaminants are emerging in the lakes. Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Scientists report overall declines in PCB’s, dioxin, and certain pesticides, partly because some of those substances are banned. But one chemical compound apparently on its way up is polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDE’s. They’re used as fire retardants.


Carri Lohse-Hanson is with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. She says even though scientists are still trying to learn more about PBDE’s, there should be controls on the chemical.


“I think the preventative approach would be preferable than waiting until we had all the information to figure out if we had to do some kind of reduction.”


Lohse-Hanson says there have been some changes in the use of flame retardants and the phasing out of certain forms of PBDE’s.


The EPA says it still needs to determine the effects of the compound at the levels it’s being found in the environment.


For the Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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Trees Under the Influence of Ozone and Co2

  • The circle of trees, as seen from the outside. The white pipe seen near the top delivers either normal air, one, or both of the experimental gasses to the trees. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)

In northern Wisconsin, they’re finding that gasses such as carbon dioxide and ozone will change the makeup of what survives in a future forest. An open air experiment called the Aspen FACE project has been testing trees in elevated levels of ozone and carbon dioxide for ten years. But they don’t know whether the forest can change as quickly as the climate does. The GLRC’s Bob Kelleher has more:

Transcript

In northern Wisconsin, they’re finding that gasses such as carbon dioxide and ozone will
change the makeup of what survives in a future forest. An open air experiment called the
Aspen FACE project has been testing trees in elevated levels of ozone and carbon dioxide
for ten years. But they don’t know whether the forest can change as quickly as the
climate does. The GLRC’s Bob Kelleher reports:


We’re standing inside a circle of trees: paper birch, aspen, and sugar maples, maybe 15
feet high. And they’re surrounded by a ring of large white pipes spraying the trees with
gasses – that’s the high pitched noise.


Among 12 different circles of trees, some get carbon dioxide, or ozone, or a
combination. These are the very gasses believed responsible for changing the climate –
they hold in the earth’s warmth, forcing surface temperatures higher.


Dave Karnosky, with Michigan Technological University, heads the Aspen FACE project,
near Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Karnosky’s trying to predict how these gasses will affect
the northern forest:


“Those species, with aspen and aspen mixed with birch and maple make up a huge
portion of our northern forests, and there was a lot of interest by industry as well as to
what’s going to happen in the future as these greenhouse gasses continue to build up in
the atmosphere.”


Even ten years ago, when this project started, it was clear that carbon dioxide and ozone
levels were on the increase.


Ozone is destructive. It’s bad for people and for plants. Carbon dioxide, on the other
hand, is what we exhale, and what green plants need to grow. Both gasses have been on
the increase, largely due to burning fossil fuels such as in coal-fired power plants and in
cars and trucks. Karnosky says he knew aspen were quite responsive to both CO2 and
ozone:


“We weren’t sure much about the interaction, but we were sure interested in what would
happen with that, because those two pollutants are both increasing at about the same rate
in the atmosphere.”


The Aspen FACE project has shown that most trees grow well when exposed to carbon
dioxide, and most do poorly in ozone. With the gasses combined, bad effects tend to
offset the good ones, but results vary greatly between the different kinds of trees, and
even within a single species of trees, like aspen.


Karnosky has found there’s a tremendous range of genetic variation even among the
relatively few trees they’ve tested. That variation makes clear predictions difficult:


“It’s very tough to make a single prediction for species or individuals within species,
there’s so much genetic variation. So that’s been one of the, I think, kind of the highlights
from what I see in terms of a bit of a surprise for us.”


That genetic variation could be the forest’s salvation. Karnosky thinks that if some
aspens, for example, die off from ozone, maybe others will do okay, and fill the forest
back in. Sugar maples, which seem more tolerant of ozone, could replace some aspen
and birch. Then, the mix of trees in the forest would change, but the forest would
survive.


But, there could be problems if the air changes the forest too quickly. Neil Nelson is a
plant physiologist with the US Forest Service. Nelson says the region’s paper and pulp
industries rely heavily on aspen trees. He’s uncertain how quickly the forest, and forest
industry, can respond if aspen begins to die off – and how long it might take for other
trees to grow in.


“One of my colleagues has said, you know, the key issue may be whether things change
too fast for our society and economy to adjust to, and I think that’s an open question.
There seems to be great plasticity, and we aren’t quite there in terms of predicting from a
forest management standpoint what these results mean.”


It takes time to grow trees, maybe too much time if the climate suddenly shifts. The
Aspen FACE project has already provided regulators preliminary data on ozone. It could
become the basis for future pollution law. But, even ten years into the Aspen Face
project, there’s still a lot more data to harvest among the aspen and hardwoods.


For The GLRC, I’m Bob Kelleher.

Related Links

Campaigning on Great Lakes Cleanup

Cleaning up the Great Lakes has become part of the environment platform for at least one party in Canada’s national election campaign. Canadian Prime minister Paul Martin’s liberals are promising to spend one billion dollars toward cleaning up the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports:

Transcript

Cleaning up the Great Lakes has become part of the environment
platform for at least one party in Canada’s national election campaign.
Canadian Prime minister Paul Martin’s liberals are promising to spend
one billion dollars toward cleaning up the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence
Seaway. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports:


Paul Martin says the pledge is another aspect of the Liberal party’s green
plan. Martin says the one billion dollars would be spent over ten years in
an effort to clean up toxic hot spots along the world’s largest freshwater
ecosystem.


“By taking action we will better protect our water and our wildlife, we’ll
make our waterfronts more vibrant and healthy, and we will ensure that
the revitalization of these ecosystems stands out as our collective
legacy.”


Martin says half the money, about five hundred million dollars, would be
earmarked for sites that have been used for decades as a dump for
industrial and household waste. Some of the money would also go to
assessing ecological threats posed by pharmaceuticals and other
pollutants, and researching the effects of human action on these
ecosystems.


For the GLRC, I’m Dan Karpenchuk.

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Ten Threats: Air Pollution Into Water Pollution

  • Air deposition is when air pollution settles out into lakes and streams and becomes water pollution. (Photo by Lester Graham)

We’re continuing our series, Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. Our guide through the series is Lester Graham. In this report he explains one of the threats that experts identified is air pollution that finds its way into the Great Lakes:

Transcript

We’re continuing our series ‘Ten Threats to the Great Lakes’. Our guide through the
series is Lester Graham. In this report he explains one of the threats is air pollution that
finds its way into the Great Lakes:


It’s called ‘Air Deposition.” Melissa Hulting is a scientist at U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency. We asked her just what that means:


“Air deposition simply is just when materials, in this case pollutants, are transferred from
the air to the water. So, pollutants in particles can fall into the water. Pollutants in rain
can fall into the water, or pollutants in a gas form can be absorbed into the water.”


So, it’s things like pesticides that evaporate from farm fields and end up in the rain over
the Great Lakes. PCBs in soil do the same. Dioxins from backyard burning end up in the
air, and then are carried to the lakes


One of the pollutants that causes a significant problem in the Great Lakes is mercury. It
gets in the water. Then it contaminates the fish. We eat the fish and mercury gets in us.
It can cause babies to be born with smaller heads. It can cause nervous system damage
and lower IQ in small children if women of childbearing age or children eat too much
fish.


One of the notable sources of mercury is from power plants that burn coal.


(Sound of coal car)


Railroad cars like this one empty their tons of coal at power plants all across the nation.
More than half of the electricity in the nation is produced at coal-burning power plants,
and with a 250-year supply, coal is going to be the primary fuel for a while.


One coal producing state is acknowledging that mercury is a problem. Doug Scott is the
Director of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. He says coal is important to
the energy mix, but we need to reduce pollutants such as mercury as much as possible.


“The policy of the state has been to try to work with the power plants to try to burn
Illinois coal as cleanly as you can. Now, that means a lot more equipment and a lot more
things that they have to do to be able to make that work, but we’re committed to trying to
do both those things.”


And, Scott says the federal government’s mercury reduction program does not go far
enough soon enough, but the electric utility industry disagrees.


Dan Riedinger is spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, a power industry trade
organization. Riedinger says, really reducing mercury emissions at power plants just
won’t make that much difference.


“Power plants contribute relatively little to the deposition of mercury in any one area of
the country, including the Great Lakes, and no matter how much we reduce mercury
emissions from power plants in the Great Lakes Region, it’s really not going to have a
discernable impact in terms of improving the levels of mercury in the fish people want to eat.”


“Relatively little? Now, that flies in the face of everything I’ve read so far. Everything
I’ve read, indicates coal-fired power plants are a significant contributor to the mercury
issue in the Great Lakes and other places.”


“It’s really not quite that simple. Power plants are a significant source of mercury
emissions here in the United States, but most of the mercury that lands in the Great
Lakes, particularly in the western Great Lakes is going to come from sources outside of
the United States.”


Well, it’s not quite that simple either. The U.S. EPA’s Melissa Hulting agrees some of
the mercury in the Great Lakes comes from foreign sources, but recent studies show
some mercury settles out fairly close to the smokestacks. She says you can blame both
for the mercury in your fish.


“You blame the sources that are close by and you blame the sources that are far away.
The bottom line with mercury is that we’re all in this together and it’s going to take
everybody reducing their sources to take care of the problem.”


Taking care of the problem is going to take some money, and that will mean we’ll all pay in
higher utility bills. The Illinois EPA’s Doug Scott says it’ll be worth it if we can reduce
mercury exposure to people.


“We know what the issue is. It’s not a matter of us not understanding the connection
between mercury and what happens in fish, and then what happens in humans as a result
of that. We understand that. We know it, and we also know to a great degree what we
can do to try to correct the problem, and so, it’s a matter of just going out and doing it,
and so I’d like to think it’s something that can be done sooner rather than later.”


And since Great Lakes fish have elevated levels of mercury, sooner would be good.
It’ll take a while for the mercury already there to work its way out of the ecosystem and
return to more normal levels.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

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Ten Threats: Rethinking Urban Runoff

  • Everybody's got a gutter... and they're part of the urban runoff problem. Rain picks up dirty soot and other chemicals from roofs and heads into the gutter. During storms, the dirty water rushes down the gutters and down streets into storm drains... and can pollute beaches, drinking water and wildlife habitat. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

One of the ten threats to the Great Lakes identified by experts across the region is nonpoint
source runoff. It’s a catchall category for pollution that’s not being spewed from one identifiable
source. The federal government’s finding that rain washing off concrete and asphalt in cities and
suburbs poses as big a threat to the Great Lakes as waste coming out of a factory pipe. Shawn
Allee has a look at the government’s effort to cut water pollution by remaking the urban
landscape:

Transcript

We’re continuing our series on Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham is our guide through the series. Today a look at a broad problem
with no simple solution:


One of the ten threats to the Great Lakes identified by experts across the region is nonpoint
source runoff. It’s a catchall category for pollution that’s not being spewed from one identifiable
source. The federal government’s finding that rain washing off concrete and asphalt in cities and
suburbs poses as big a threat to the Great Lakes as waste coming out of a factory pipe. Shawn
Allee has a look at the government’s effort to cut water pollution by remaking the urban
landscape:


(rain running into a sewer)


Water from a rain gutter is pouring into a nearby storm sewer drain. That protects property from
water damage and flooding. But at the same time, they pose an environmental problem for the
Great Lakes.


Roofs, streets and parking lots are made of hard materials like concrete or asphalt. During
storms, rain rushes off these surfaces into storm drains.


The problem is this: the runoff isn’t pure.


Brian Bell’s a storm water expert with the Environmental Protection Agency. He says rain picks
up pollutants on all those roofs and streets, things such as:


“Antifreeze from cars, motor oil, brake fluid, copper from the brake pads, cigarette butts from
trash, household hazardous waste, pesticides that may be overapplied.”


And for most sewer systems, that’s not the worst of it.


“The problem with storm water is, once its mobilized and goes into a storm sewer system, that
system does not treat the waste, so all of those things go to the local waterway untreated.”


In this region, runoff flows into the Great Lakes, where it pollutes beaches, drinking water, and
wildlife habitat.


To fight this, the EPA’s trying something new. It wants to make hard, urban landscapes softer.
The idea’s to replace concrete and asphalt with more soil and plants. That way, water can sink
into the ground and stay out of storm drains.


But how do you do that?


Well, the EPA’s working with places like the Chicago Center for Green Technology to show people
how. The city hopes residents and developers will use what they see here in their own projects.


(city sounds in)


Grace Troccolo’s guiding a tour of the facility.


First stop?


“Our parking lot is slightly pitched, so all of our rainwater flows off into these vegetated bioswales,
which when I’m not with people in the business, I call ‘ditch with plants.'”

The plants aren’t typical bushes or flowers. They’re mostly tall, prairie grasses native to the
Midwest. Their roots help water seep deep into the ground. The Center has several bio-swales,
and they all keep runoff on site and in the ground.


Another stop on the tour is a 40-foot section of the building’s roof. It’s covered with a matt of
short, tangled creeping plants. Grace explains why they’re here.


“So here we are at our green roof. Again, getting back to our issue of storm water management,
the city would like to see more vegetated surfaces and of course, in the city like Chicago there are
a lot of roof surfaces and so this section of the roof is designed to hold all of the rainwater that
falls on it during a one-inch storm.”


Again, the roof’s vegetation retains water and keeps it out of storm drains. Because of these
technologies, the building is an urban runoff success story.


All told, the Center releases less than half as much water to storm drains as similar buildings do.


The EPA wants the average home or business owner to follow suit, but price might keep that from
happening. Green roofs, for example, are more expensive than conventional ones.


But some observers say the biggest obstacles in fighting urban runoff are political. Stephen
Bocking teaches environmental policy at Trent University. He says the public’s used to pointing
fingers at a handful of big, industrial polluters.


People just aren’t used to seeing every house and business as a source of pollution.


“It’s much more difficult to deal with the problem when you’re talking about millions of separate
sources. People can’t just say well, it’s the job of industry or the job of the government to deal with
it. It’s the job of everyone to deal with it in some way.”


In other words, we’re all to blame.


Every new building in a city, or home in a subdivision, creates more hard surfaces, such as new
driveways, new parking lots and new roofs.


“It’s pretty hard to deal with a form of development which is intrinsic to our way of life. It involves
thinking about how we live our lives and how design and build our cities.”


Bocking says the EPA’s plan might not be enough to make up for all the roads and other hard
surfaces we’re building. He says, to succeed, we’ll need to change how we develop land.


There’s not much political support to stop that kind of development right now, so for the time
being, hard surfaces will continue to win out.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

New Rules for Haz Waste Burning

The EPA says tighter controls are coming for hundreds
of companies that burn hazardous waste. But the changes didn’t come without a fight. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

The EPA says tighter controls are coming for hundreds of companies that burn hazardous waste, but the changes didn’t come without a fight. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


The new regulations apply to large boilers, incinerators, cement kilns, and other devices that burn hazardous waste. The EPA says it’s trying to reduce emissions of several toxic pollutants.


A few years ago, environmentalists won a legal fight to force tougher controls than the Clinton Administration had originally proposed. Earthjustice attorney Jim Pew says the EPA was told to do its job right.


“Now EPA really hasn’t done it right this time, but it’s done it better, and as the result of the work of environmental groups, we’re seeing less toxic pollution going into peoples’ homes and schools and communities.”


A group representing cement kiln owners says it’s generally satisfied with the new EPA rules, but warns that some kilns may have trouble reaching the tougher targets. The case could wind up back in court.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Creating Particle Pollution Warning System

  • Smokestacks, diesel engines, and a number of other things cause particulate emissions, which can create some negative health effects, and aggravate existing health problems. (Photo by Kenn Kiser)

In the summer, local weather forecasts often
include information about dangerous ozone levels.
But scientists are learning more and more about
another type of pollution that can reach harmful
levels even in the winter months. And as the Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports… we
might be hearing more about this type of pollution in
our daily weather reports:

Transcript

In the summer, local weather forecasts often include information about dangerous ozone levels. But scientists are learning more and more about another type of pollution that can reach harmful levels even in the winter months. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports, we might be hearing more about this type of pollution in our daily weather reports:


Parts of the region recently reached “code red” for poor air quality. And
that had some people perplexed. Warnings about dangerous levels of ozone are
frequent on hot summer days, especially in urban areas. But this was the
middle of winter.


The warnings were for high levels of tiny particles that federal regulators
only recently began monitoring. They’re spewn from diesel engines,
factories, power plants, and fireplaces. Air monitors in Michigan,
Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Indiana recently registered unhealthy levels of
these particles – some of them for a few days straight.


Jim Haywood says the problem was an unusual weather event for this time of
year. Haywood is a meteorologist with the Michigan Department of
Environmental Quality. He says a high pressure system moved very slowly over
the Great Lakes region for several days. When you get high pressure, the air
below sinks, generating a layer of warm air that acts like a lid.


“So that warm air that was sinking effectively stops at a few hundred feet
from the surface of the ground. It acts like a cap. It does not let any of
the pollutants that are released at the surface pop up through that cap.”


So all the pollutants that would have gotten picked up and diluted by the
wind instead just hung out for days – building up, and reflecting sunlight
to create haze.


Eventually, a cold front pushed the high pressure system out of the way, and
took the pollution with it. But what about those few days when the Environmental Protection Agency was warning about unhealthy levels of particulate pollution? For people with
heart or lung disease, agency health officials say short-term episodes can
lead to asthma attacks or even heart attacks. And they say healthy children
and adults can experience throat and lung irritation.


Susan Stone is an environmental health scientist with EPA. She says
particle pollution warnings could soon become a staple of the daily weather
report – much like the familiar summer ozone warnings.


“With ozone, we have the network in place to be able to deliver those
forcasts, people are used to hearing that on TV, and we are working to
provide that same level of coverage for particle pollution.”


Stone says EPA is rolling out a new program called Enviro-Flash
nationwide. It sends real-time air quality information to people’s email
accounts or pagers. EPA is offering the service through state
environmental agencies. And beginning in 2010, areas that register
unacceptable levels of particle pollution will be required to clean up their
air.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.

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