Revealing the relationship between the natural world and the everyday lives of people
More than year ago peanut butter made in the southern U.S. sickened hundreds of people and killed as many as nine.
The outbreak set off a scramble to make food safer and the impacts are starting to be felt on the farm.
But it’s not clear how much the push for “food safety” will change anything.
Peter Payette reports.
The government is not requiring farms comply with its safety rules yet, but some grocery chains and food distributors are.
Chris Alpers runs two farms in northern Michigan that grow both cherries and apples.
He figures he’ll spend $7,000 getting them certified.
When asked if that will make his fruit any safer he pauses.
“That’s a hard one to answer. I don’t think we’ve had any issues in the past, nor would we if we continue the way we are currently doing things. But I guess the possibility is there that something could happen so certain things they are requiring us to do might make the fruit a little safer I suppose.”
In fact, nobody has ever heard of this region’s main crop making anyone sick.
It’s hard to imagine tart cherries being a little safer.
They grow well off the ground. They’re not picked by hand and are soaked in water on the way to be processed.
Nevertheless, growers along the coast of Lake Michigan will line up this summer to pay inspectors ninety-two dollars an hour to make sure they’re following a list of rules.
These include things like making sure workers only water drink in the orchard and that they wash their hands properly.
Nobody complains the rules are unreasonable.
But Dave Edmondson says they’re impractical.
“They want me to sign a piece of paper that this is going to happen every single day. I can’t guarantee that!”
Edmondson says he’s happy to run his farm according to the new rules but there are limits.
“It’s like the Indy 500 come harvest time. You have to focus on the movement of the fruit and taking care of it.”
There’s also concern in this region about what new rules might do to the growing number of small farms.
There’s a trend here of farmers growing food to sell locally rather than for processing or to ship cross-country.
There’s even a distributor that supplies area restaurants, schools and grocers with local food.
That company, Cherry Capital Foods, is not requiring its farms be certified.
The manager Evan Smith says he doesn’t want to see the local food movement killed with new costs and paperwork.
Smith says they visit farms they work with and he thinks small farms selling to neighbors are not the problem.
“That’s not to say it can’t be better but I’m not sure we’re going to see a significant change in the amount of food-borne illnesses or a decrease in those because quite frankly we’re not seeing that occur right now.”
Still the dangers of a tomato or spinach leaf making someone sick are real.
That’s why Don Coe says it will be better if everyone tries show their farms are clean and safe.
Coe owns a winery and is a Michigan agriculture commissioner.
He says one illness caused by a small farm selling locally would smear the movement.
“That’s my concern, is that we have to have an acceptable level of compliance with good food handling systems. We have to back it up with some kind of inspection service. It doesn’t have to be as rigid as foods going into the major food channels.”
The U.S. Congress might soon decide who needs to pass what sort of safety tests.
Under legislation now pending a farmer selling a few bags of spinach at a farmers market could be subject to the same standards as huge processing plant.
For The Environment Report, I’m Peter Payette.
Environmental groups suspect tight
security at the Vancouver Olympics
has shifted an environmental risk
from Canada to the US. Shawn Allee reports:
A Canadian chemical manufacturer shipped rail cars of toxic chlorine away from Vancouver and is storing them in rural Washington State.
The company says it’s part of a long-planned renovation of the chemical plant. Environmental groups suspect the rail shipments were timed to move tanks away from the Olympics.
Fred Millar is watching this development for Friends of the Earth. Millar says terrorists have shown interest in rail cars filled with chlorine gas.
“And that’s what people are mostly worried about because just one chlorine tank car could put out a cloud over any city at a lethal level that’s 15 miles long by 4 miles wide.”
US rail companies make 100,000 shipments of chlorine and similar toxic chemicals per year. Their safety record has largely been good, but accidents have released deadly chlorine gas.
One derailment in South Carolina killed nine people.
For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.
There are tens of thousands of
chemical compounds on the market
these days. And, for the most part,
unless regulators can prove a chemical
is harmful, it stays there. Now, Europe
has turned that way of doing things
on its head, and the US is showing
signs of moving in that direction, too.
Liam Moriarty has this report:
(sounds of a street)
Brussels, Belgium is sort of like the Washington, DC of Europe. It’s here – in the seat of the European Union – that the 27 nations that make up the EU hash out their common policies.
I’m sitting in the office of Bjorn Hansen. He keeps an eye on chemicals for the European Commission’s Directorate General for the Environment. To give me an idea of how ubiquitous chemicals are in our everyday lives, Hansen points around his office.
“Just us sitting here, you are probably exposed to chemicals, which come from the office furniture, which have been used to color the textile, which has been used to create the foam, the glue under the carpet that we’re sitting – you name it, you’re exposed.”
The big question is whether all this exposure is harming our health or the environment. The answer?
“We, by far, do not know what chemicals are out there, what the effects of those chemicals are, and what the risks associated with those chemicals.”
In the European Union, that uncertainty led to a new law known by its acronym, REACH. That’s R-E-A-C-H. REACH requires that tens of thousands of chemicals used in everyday products in the EU be studied and registered. If a substance cannot be safely used, manufacturers will have to find a substitute, or stop using it. REACH has, at its core, a radical shift: it’s no longer up to the government to prove a chemical is unsafe.
“The burden of proof is on industry to demonstrate safety. And by demonstrating the safety that they think, they also take liability and responsibility for that safety.”
Even for industries accustomed to tougher European regulations, REACH was alarming.
“There were very, quite violent opposition in the beginning.”
Lena Perenius is with CEFIC, the European Chemical Industry Council.
“In the EU, we already had a very comprehensive set of regulations for ensuring safe use of chemicals. And the industry saw that this was putting an unreasonable burden on the companies.”
Corporations may not have liked it, but the measure had strong public support. After several contentious rounds of negotiations, Perenius says the industry feels it got key concessions that’ll make the far-reaching law workable. Now, she says, the industry has come to see the up-side of REACH.
“Now, when we have the responsibility, that gives us a little bit of freedom to demonstrate, in the way we believe is appropriate, how a substance can be used safely.”
Here in the US, there are signs of political momentum building around taking a more REACH-like approach to regulating the chemicals in everyday products. New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg recently said he’d introduce a bill that would shift the burden of proof for safety onto chemical manufacturers.
“Instead of waiting for a chemical to hurt somebody, it will require companies to prove their products are safe before they end up in the store, in our homes, and in our being.”
Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson recently told a Senate committee that – out of an estimated 80,000 chemicals in use – existing law has allowed the EPA to ban only 5, and to study just 200.
“Though many of these chemicals likely pose little or no risk, the story is clear – we’ve only been able to effectively regulate a handful of chemicals, and we know very little about the rest.”
More than a dozen states from Maine to California have already moved to toughen safety standards for chemicals. Even the American Chemistry Council has agreed to support more vigorous regulations to assure consumers that the chemicals in the products they use are safe.
As always, the devil is in the details. But the coming reform is shaping up to look a lot like what Europe is already putting in place.
For The Environment Report, I’m Liam Moriarty.
The power industry wants to create
loads of low-carbon electricity. To
make that happen, they want to build
more than two dozen nuclear reactors.
Shawn Allee reports there could be
delays for at least half of those:
Westinghouse’s AP-1000 reactor was supposed to revive the nuclear industry. But recently, government regulators said they can’t say whether the current design can withstand earthquakes and other disasters.
Critics of nuclear power are pouncing on the news.
Henry Sokolski is with the Nonproliferation Policy Center. He says one government agency’s set to approve loan guarantees to build these reactors.
“If you do that, there won’t be much discipline in the industry to not screw up, there’ll be less.”
Westinghouse says it will provide the government with tests to prove its reactor is safe.
It’s not clear whether the government will delay final approval of the design.
For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.
Playgrounds are supposed to be
safe places for kids to play.
But Tamara Keith
has the story of a leaked memo
from the Environmental Protection
Agency that indicates there might
be a problem with crumb rubber:
(sound of kids playing)
Shawn Clancy’s two sons are having fun running around a community play set. And if they fall, he says there’s plenty of crumb rubber. It’s made from recycled tires and it should stop them from breaking any bones.
“I’ve seen kids fall from far distances. I’ve seen the give. I’ve seen them get right back up and kids are playing with it. It’s fun to dig in. They can kind of play with it. It’s about 8 inches thick, so there’s quite a bit of it.”
Clancy and his neighbors like the fact that it lasts a long time and that it keeps old tires out of landfills. And they’re not the only ones.
(outdoor sound)
I’m outside of the White House right now, just on the other side of the fence. And somewhere on those grounds, probably behind some tall shrubs, there is a play set. It’s a new play set that Sasha and Malia, the first family got. And underneath that play set is a pretty thick layer of rubber crumb to protect the girls if they fall.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting that this exposure is good for kids. The only question is how bad could it be.
Jeff Ruch heads Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. His group got its hands on some documents where scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency question whether there’s stuff in the crumb rubber that could be toxic to kids.
“What’s known is very very little. They list, I think it’s 30 toxic chemicals in one of the memos. And so far work has only been done on two of them.”
An EPA spokesman says the agency is doing a preliminary study of 4 playgrounds, looking for lead and volatile organic compounds. The results aren’t in yet.
The Rubber Manufacturers Association says there are more than a hundred studies showing scrap tires are safe in playgrounds and that environmental groups are over hyping the concerns.
Richard Wiles isn’t buying it. He’s senior vice president of the Environmental Working Group. And he feels like he’s seen this movie before – with arsenic treated wooden playground equipment.
“It was a really bad idea to use arsenic in this way and for about 20 years this is what we did.”
And kids all across the country were playing on this contaminated wood. But the thing is, initially arsenic treated wood seemed like a great idea, because it prevented decay – and made play structures safe and strong for years.
Parents might be left with the feeling that you just can’t win. Wiles thinks there’s another lesson.
“The basic problem is, we tend to use these products before we evaluate the health and safety concerns. We tend to just throw it out there without thinking that oh this is a surface that is made out of something that was previously considered hazardous waste.”
With all the alarm about very real arsenic problems, and yet to be verified concerns with crumb rubber, Donna Thompson says it’s easy to forget that playgrounds today are safer than they’ve ever been. She’s executive direction of the National Program for Playground Safety. For now she’s standing by crumb rubber, because it does such a good job of preventing broken bones.
“I’m not going to worry about it yet until I hear what the results are because I think sometimes we make too big a deal out of something and then it’s just not the case.”
The EPA says it will have results in a few weeks.
For The Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.
The current recession has caused the price of oil to drop – most think temporarily. James Woolsey was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, during the Clinton Administration. The Environment Report’s Lester Graham recently talked with him. Woolsey has been arguing that no matter what the price, dependence on oil is a national security problem that we need to solve:
James Woolsey: Well, I think moving away from oil dependence, period, is extremely important for our security, and it’s important because of climate change. We are funding both sides of the War on Terror. Oil, when it comes into a hierocracy or into a dictatorship, tends to enhance the power of the state. Tom Friedman summed that up very well in his chapter of his new book ‘Hot, Flat, and Crowded,’ the chapter is called ‘Fill’er Up With Dictators,’ and it’s a pretty accurate statement. We’ve also run the risk of oil cutoffs, of terrorist attacks in the Middle East, oil is just a very big national security problem for us, and it has a 97% monopoly on transportation. So, we’ve got to break that monopoly.
Lester Graham: It seems the only time you can get the general public’s attention on this issue is during periods of gas price spikes. What do you think it will take to get a sustained effort at the personal level to become more energy independent?
Woolsey: Most major automobile companies are coming out with plug-in hybrids here before long. Plug-in hybrids let you drive all electric for 30 or 40 or 50 miles before you then become just a regular hybrid using some liquid fuel. Three-quarters of the days, the average American car goes less than 40 miles. You’re driving on the functional equivalent of 50 to 75 cents a gallon when you’re driving on electricity. And that, I think, is going to get people’s attention and provide a real economic incentive to move toward plug-in hybrids – if the up-front cost of the battery is taken care of, by a tax credit, or by leasing the battery instead of buying it, or by some other financial arrangement. So people can then see they can drive on a lot less than the cost of driving on gasoline, whether it’s driving on $3 a gallon or $4 a gallon.
Graham: Now, you’ve stated your concern on climate change, global warming on several occasions, you consider yourself fairly conservative politically, I’m wondering what you make of the controversy and the debate that you recently heard in the House and what we’re likely to hear in the Senate.
Woolsey: Well, I’m kind of liberal on domestic things, and kind of conservative on defense and foreign policy things – which, to me, is a perfectly reasonable balance, but some people don’t see it that way. I think part, and possibly a very important part, of warming and climate change is likely to be being produced, most climatologists would say, by the fact that we’re pumping so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and trapping heat, that creates a problem. We still need to get the job done of stopping, as much as we can, something that could make the world a very, very unpleasant place – in terms of the height of sea levels and other things – for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Graham: I read an article in The Futurist Magazine from the World Future Society which explained you’re doing a lot in your personal life to become more energy independent – what’s worked for you?
Woolsey: Well, we have photovoltaic cells on the roof of our farmhouse, and lead-acid gel batteries in the basement, and a plug-in hybrid. It’s a little expensive, but you can do a lot these days to make it possible to operate your home, at least the key functions of it, even if the electric grid goes down because of an accident or some kind of hacking attack or something. And you can be, at least, partially independent. It’s not ideal, it’s not perfect, it’s going to get better, it’s going to get cheaper, but you can get started now, if you want to.
Graham: James Woolsey is a former CIA Director, and is now a partner at Vantage Point, a venture capital firm. Thanks for your time.
Woolsey: Thank you.
Companies that make things like cosmetics, household cleaners, and toys are not required to list every ingredient that’s in their products. Now, some shoppers are dialing up that information on their cell phones. Mark Brush has more:
There’s a new app for the iPhone that can give you information about products. It’s called Good Guide.
And you basically take a picture of a barcode – on say a bottle of shampoo – and then Good Guide gives you a score.
The guide can rate products on their environmental footprint – how socially responsible the company is – or how safe it is.
Other phones can access the same information using text messages.
Dara O’Rourke is the founder of Good Guide. He says he started the company after he discovered a sunscreen that he put on his daughter contained a potential carcinogen.
“And that really initially, actually kind of upset me, that this product that I’m bringing into my house and putting on my young daughter has chemicals that have been banned in Europe, banned in Australia, banned in many industrialized countries, but still are in products on our store shelves.”
O’Rourke says if consumers are interested, they can access the research and the life-cycle studies behind each product’s overall score.
For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.
Researchers are working
overtime to find ways to kill dangerous bacteria in food such as Salmonella and E. coli. Rebecca Williams reports one researcher has found a new way to kill bacteria:
Food processors expose produce like lettuce to ozone for a few seconds or minutes to kill bacteria.
Kevin Keener has been working on a device that turns the air inside food packaging into ozone.
Keener is a food process engineer at Purdue University.
He attaches the device to the outside of food packages – like a bag of lettuce – and applies electrodes that send high voltage through the bag.
“Visually it’s very Frankenstein-ish. It’s a safe process, there is a high voltage, but it’s similar to a spark you’d get with an electric fence.”
Keener says the ozone spends more time with the food so it kills more bacteria.
There’s a problem though – in some of their tests the device turned green spinach white.
So there are a few kinks to work out. But food companies are interested and we might see this commercialized in a year or two.
For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.
Most people probably don’t enjoy
cleaning. But we’ve all got to do it.
And if you’ve ever looked at the household
cleaner aisle in the grocery store, you
know there can be some pretty strong
chemicals involved. Karen Kelly reports
on a cheaper, chemical-free alternative:
(sound of store)
I’ve just arrived at my neighborhood grocery store with a plan: to find what I
need to make my own household cleaners.
I head over to the cleaning aisle and pull out a list of ingredients I got off the
internet.
I see borax and
washing soda on the shelf.
They`re both made from naturally-occuring minerals and cost about five bucks
each for a 4 to 5 pound box.
I look around for soap flakes – to make my own dish soap – and find a big bar I
can grate myself.
The only thing missing is castile soap. It’s a biodegradable soap used in a lot of
these recipes.
I’ll grab that next at the natural foods store.
To be honest, I never paid that much attention to the ingredients in household
cleaner – until I used something with dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride on
my bathtub. It comes with warnings.
I rinsed it and took a bath. My 4-year-old also took a bath.
And we both ended up with a very itchy skin rash.
That convinced me. I had to find a safer way to clean the tub that, number one,
worked. And number two, wasn’t too expensive.
Which pretty much meant I’d have to make it myself.
We decided to start with the all-purpose cleaner.
Karen Kelly: “Okay. We need borax, which we have, castile soap, hot water.”
Child: “We have that! We can just turn on the sink and make hot water!”
Kelly: “And vinegar.”
Child: “We have, do we have vinegar?”
Kelly: “Yes.”
Child: “And Mom, we have hot water.”
We mix up a recipe I found on the David Suzuki Foundation’s website.
(sound of stirring and banging)
They’ve got a whole bunch of do-it-yourself recipes for bathtub scrubbers,
laundry soap, furniture polish, you name it.
Lindsay Coulter is the person who devised these concoctions.
She says a lot of people forget that you don’t need fancy products to get your
house clean.
“You know, if you talk to your grandmothers or your great-aunts, you’ll find that
they too used things like washing soda, baking soda, white vinegar, and a basic
castile soap. Things like vinegar – it’s acidic and helps lift grease and
deodorizes. A lot of the things you’re cooking with anyways, so you probably
already have it in your kitchen. And the benefit? Just peace of mind that you
know what goes into it.”
But does it work? It’s time to find out.
(sound of spraying)
We spray. We wipe. The bathroom sink shines.
Next, we try the bath tub scrubber. It’s a mix of castile soap, vinegar – which is
a natural disinfectant – baking soda, and water.
(sound of cleaning the tub)
The tub looks great, actually. And you know what? This is a lot cheaper.
Brand name all-purpose cleaning sprays are about 4 bucks a bottle where I live.
It cost me just a dollar – and about 5 minutes – to fill that same bottle with my
own mix.
So it’s cheap, it’s easy to make, and, best of all, I don’t have to worry about chemical reaction after a soak
in the tub.
For The Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.
Child: “Is it recording? Okay.”
