A Dow Chemical sign next to a river in Michigan contaminated with dioxin. Homeowners downstream are still waiting for their case against Dow to be heard. (Photo by Vincent Duffy)
The world’s largest chemical company is fighting a lawsuit filed because of dioxin pollution. Rick Pluta reports neighbors downstream from Dow Chemical’s headquarters in Michigan want something to budge in the case:
Transcript
The world’s largest chemical company is fighting a lawsuit filed because of dioxin pollution. Rick Pluta reports neighbors downstream from Dow Chemical’s headquarters in Michigan want something to budge in the case:
A Dow chemical plant near the company’s headquarters in Michigan produced all kinds of products over decades, including Agent Orange. Dioxin polluted the Tittabawassee River and its flood plain. A group of 173 people have sued, after learning their property is contaminated. Many of these people have been involved in this litigation for six years. The courts still have not gotten around to their case. Attorney Theresa Golden took their case to the Michigan Supreme Court.
“The clients obviously are concerned and disappointed that it’s taken us long to get to this point.”
The group wants class action status, so every single homeowner does not have to take on the corporate giant. There are a couple thousand property downstream of this plant. And Dow does not like the idea of potentially having to pay every one of them.
This train in Graniteville, South Carolina, crashed while carrying chemicals called "toxic inhalation hazards." Transporting these chemicals is extremely dangerous, and rail companies think chemical companies should share some of the insurance burden. (Photo courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency)
Workers in Hazmat suits at the site of the Graniteville crash, which killed nine people. (Photo courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency)
Toxic Inhalation Hazards are a class of chemicals with a notorious name: if you inhale them, you die.
On the flip side, they’re useful: Take chlorine. It purifies drinking water. Another is anhydrous ammonia. It’s used for corn fertilizer.
The government feels some toxic inhalation hazards are so important it forces railroads to ship them, even though insurance is expensive.
Shawn Allee says rail lines now want the chemical industry to chip in:
Transcript
Toxic Inhalation Hazards are a class of chemicals with a notorious name: if you inhale them, you die.
On the flip side, they’re useful. Take chlorine: it purifies drinking water. Another is anhydrous ammonia. It’s used for corn fertilizer.
The government feels some toxic inhalation hazards are so important it forces railroads to ship them, even though insurance is expensive.
Shawn Allee says rail lines now want the chemical industry to chip in:
To understand why the railroad industry wants help with insurance, you should know what happened in Graniteville, South Carolina.
Phil Napier is Graniteville’s fire chief. Napier tells me, one night in January 2005, he got paged about a train wreck.
He hopped in his truck and before long, he found the train engineer.
“I stopped to roll the window down and this gentleman told me they had a chemical leak and he couldn’t breathe and he fell to the ground. And immediately, it hit me. It basically took my breath and all I remember is taking a U-turn heading north but I ended up south. There’s a time-zone in there that I have no memory.”
When Napier came to, he got word from his radio: the train carried chlorine and a toxic cloud was spreading.
Napier evacuated Graniteville. Later, he got a look by helicopter.
“We did a flyover. I mean, it was like a Twilight Zone – you could see cars all up and down the highways, with the doors open.”
Nine people died in the Graniteville derailment and chlorine spill. Since then, the railroad industry worried an accident like this could ruin them.
“The lesson we drew from that was, if there is a major catastrophe by the railroad carrying this material, could be forced into bankruptcy and be forced out of operation.”
That’s Ed Hamberger, the head of the Association of American Railroads.
Hamberger calls the Graniteville accident a tragedy for the town and a financial mess for the railroad responsible – Norfolk Southern.
“The accident in Graniteville resulted in damages of 400 to 500 million dollars.”
Norfolk Southern won’t confirm the figures, but consider this: it’s still in court over an incident involving nine deaths.
Experts say if a similar derailment happened in the middle of a big city like Chicago, it could kill at least 10,000 people.
Hamberger says railroads can’t insure against that.
You might think they would refuse to carry toxic inhalant hazards, but the government says they have to – because rail has the best safety record.
“The freight railroad industry has what is known as a common carrier obligation to carry these toxic by inhalation materials. Several of our members have said if they were not forced to, they would not carry it because of that liability threat.”
Hamberger says if the government won’t lift the obligation, it’s fair to require chemical companies to pay some insurance.
And, he says, it would make the public safer.
The argument goes, if chemical companies paid more to insure against transportation accidents, they’d create safer chemicals.
“With regard to the argument the chemical industry needs an incentive to make safer products, frankly, we have all the incentive in the world.”
Marty Durbin is with the American Chemistry Council.
He says chemical companies already pay insurance against accidents in their factories.
And they are looking for alternatives to chlorine and other toxic inhalant hazards.
Durbin says, besides, when trains leave their factories financial risk should be out of their hands.
“You have to have liability throughout the chain that helps motivate safety improvement.”
The chemical and railroad companies will battle this out in front of government agencies for a while.
In the meantime, each year, trains will make 100,000 shipments of toxic inhalation hazards along the nation’s railroads, even if some freight rail companies don’t want to.
Airborne toxins could be causing health problems for residents near this coal ash spill (seen in the background) in Tennessee. (Photo by Matt Shafer Powell)
A broken dam caused this cement-like sludge to spill into the Emory River in East Tennessee. (Photo by Matt Shafer Powell)
The coal ash sludge could dry out, putting toxic dust into the air. (Photo by Matt Shafer Powell)
The Tennessee Valley Authority has dropped straw and grass seed from helicopters and coated the ash in an acrylic mixture, attempting to keep it from drying out. (Photo by Matt Shafer Powell)
Both The United Mountain Defense (an environmental group) and the Tennessee Valley Authority have started testing for airborne toxins. (Photo by Matt Shafer Powell)
Environmentalists don’t want a lot of new coal-burning power plants to be built. They’re concerned about more greenhouse gases from the plants and environmental damage from mining the coal. Late last year, another concern came to light. For decades a power plant disposed of coal ash in a pond next to it. The dam holding back the coal ash sludge failed. Matt Shafer Powell reports more than a billion gallons of the sludge caused plenty of damage to the soil and water. Now, there’s concern about the air:
Transcript
Environmentalists don’t want a lot of new coal-burning power plants to be built. They’re concerned about more greenhouse gases from the plants and environmental damage from mining the coal. Late last year, another concern came to light. For decades a power plant disposed of coal ash in a pond next to it. The dam holding back the coal ash sludge failed. Matt Shafer Powell reports more than a billion gallons of the sludge caused plenty of damage to the soil and water. Now, there’s concern about the air:
In December, the massive coal ash spill at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in East Tennessee made people aware of a hazard they’d never really considered before. And no one knows how much of a problem it’s going to be.
“We’re looking across the Emory River.”
Matt Landon is a volunteer for the environmental group United Mountain Defense. These days, he spends a lot of time near the Tennessee Valley Authority’s ash spill site. His double respirator mask, his personal video camera and his vocal criticism of the T.V.A. have all become fixtures here. It was on one of his recent rounds near the Emory River that he saw something that scared him.
“I drove around the bend here on Emory River Road and I witnessed a massive dust storm coming off the entire coal ash disaster site.”
Landon says the dust cloud was about 70-to-80 feet high and about a half mile wide. Coal ash can contain several toxic heavy metals — like arsenic, lead, and mercury. For Landon, the site of this swirling cloud was a sobering and frightening reminder that it wouldn’t take much for the toxic materials contained in the wet cement-like sludge to dry out and become airborne.
When Landon walks up to Diana Anderson’s house on the Emory River, her shih-tzus go nuts. And no wonder. Here’s this tall, lanky guy in a double-respirator mask headed their way.
Anderson has lived here for forty years now, just downwind from the plant. And she never worried about it. But since the spill, she’s begun to notice changes in her health.
“My sinuses are irritated, I have a raspy throat, and I do a lot of coughing and my head hurts and I feel very, very, very fatigued.”
Anderson has volunteered to let Matt Landon test the air near her home. So, the two head to her kitchen sink, where they wash and prepare Pyrex dishes.
They’ll set the dishes out on Anderson’s back porch to collect dust. After a while, Landon will send the dust samples off to a lab to find out what’s in the air.
The T.V.A. is also testing the air, with help from the state of Tennessee and the E.P.A. T.V.A. Spokesman Gil Francis says they’ve already collected more than 10-thousand air samples.
“We’re taking samples 24/7, the samples are coming back that the air quality is meeting the National Air Ambient Standards and we’re going to continue to work hard to make sure that’s what the case is going forward.”
That might be easier said than done. Francis says the T.V.A. has done a lot to keep the ash from drying out and blowing around. They’ve dropped straw and grass seed from helicopters and coated the ash in an acrylic mixture. But Steven Smith of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy says nobody really knows what it’s going to take to clean this mess up. Or how the people who live downwind will be affected.
“There are still a lot of unknowns about this. We’ve never had an ash spill this size and I think people ought to err on the side of caution.”
If there’s one bit of consolation for the people living near the Kingston coal ash spill, it’s this: the National Weather Service says that during the summer months this region is among the least windy and most humid in the country.
For the Environment Report, I’m Matt Shafer Powell.
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.
Argonne researchers and technicians are
tracking how well poplar trees are containing and removing
toxic solvents (such as Trichloroethane, 1,1-Dichloroethane,
and 1,1,1-Trichloroethane, Trichloroethylene) from underground
water. Pictured here are Cristina Negri, Lawrence Moss, John Quinn,
Rob Piorkowski.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
rgonne National Laboratory planted
800 poplar trees to remediate land that had been
contaminated with toxic solvents. To ensure the tree
roots suck up polluted groundwater, Argonne researchers
manipulate the trees into sending roots far deeper
than they normally do.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
When you think of cleaning up toxic waste, you might think of technicians digging huge holes
and carting off contaminated soil. It’s expensive, and they’re often just putting the soil and the
problem, somewhere else – say, to a hazardous waste landfill. Shawn Allee met researchers
who hope trees can clean some toxic waste, and leave the landscape in place:
Transcript
When you think of cleaning up toxic waste, you might think of technicians digging huge holes
and carting off contaminated soil. It’s expensive, and they’re often just putting the soil and the
problem, somewhere else – say, to a hazardous waste landfill. Shawn Allee met researchers
who hope trees can clean some toxic waste, and leave the landscape in place:
Argonne National Laboratory is a Big Science kinda place.
It’s a federal lab southwest of Chicago where they study particle physics, nuclear energy, and
advanced environmental clean-up.
The irony is, the place has been around so long, it’s now cleaning up its own environmental
messes.
In fact, it’s Larry Moss’s job. He takes me to a toxic waste site where trees help clean the soil.
More on those trees in a sec – first, here’s why Larry Moss needs them.
“This site was a very busy site back in the 50s and 60s. We had a large manufacturing process
for reactor components – did a lot of testing of reactor assemblies and different fuel mixtures. And to
do that you had to clean all that equipment and a lot of that solvent came down here.
There was a unit that was called a French drain, which basically was a trench filled with gravel. They would come down here and dump chemicals into this trench, and their theory was it would dissolve into the ground. They
thought it would just go away.”
Those solvents did not go away. They leeched into underground water.
The solvents potentially cause cancer and other problems, so the government said Argonne
needed to do something about the mess.
Researcher Christina Negri lays out what the options were.
“Put a parking lot on top of the pollution area
and basically leave it there forever. The other extreme, it would have been: dig out the soil, take it
somewhere – where you haven’t changed much. You’ve moved it from here to a landfill. That’s not the solution as
well.”
Those options – covering it up or carting it off – are also expensive.
So, Argonne researchers figured they’d try something new.
Negri says they hope to eliminate pollution on site – with the help of poplar trees.
Negri: “We’re taking advantage of a trait that these trees have to
go about finding water.”
Allee: “Let me get a closer look at a tree, here.”
Negri: “What you have to picture in your mind – See the height of the tree?”
Allee: “I’m looking at one that’s as tall as a three story walk-up building I live in.”
Negri: “You have to flip it 180 degrees and imagine the roots are going down that deep.”
Negri says they coaxed the roots into going straight down instead of spreading out. It seems to
work; the poplar trees are sucking water out of the ground and taking up solvent.
“Part of it is degraded within the plant. Part of it goes out into the air, which sounds like an
ominous thing to say, right? But if you do your calculations right, there’s much less risk when
these compounds are in the air than there is when they’re down 30 feet below.”
Negri’s team hopes the poplar trees will be more sustainable and cheaper than alternatives, but
they’re likely to be slower.
After all, it took years for the trees to grow. That’s fine for Argonne, because no one’s at risk – but that’s
not the case everywhere.
“Arguably, this is not the remedy you would adopt if you had, like, a tank spill or something that
you really need to go in right away, clean up and be done very quickly. It’s not a remedy if there’s
anybody’s at risk.”
This isn’t the only attempt to use plants to clean up toxic waste. The science behind it is called
‘phytoremediation.’
In other examples, scientists tried alpine pennycress to clean up zinc, and pigweed to suck up
radioactive cesium.
Negri says the trick is to use the right plant for the right toxin and know whether the plants stays
toxic, too.
Still, she says, toxic waste is such a big problem, it’s good to have lots of tools in your clean-up
toolbox.
Makeup and perfumes could come under greater government scrutiny under the Obama administration. (Source: Lupin at Wikimedia Commons)
The cosmetics industry is bracing for some changes under the new Congress and Obama administration. Julie Grant reports that makeup and perfumes could come under greater government scrutiny:
Transcript
The cosmetics industry is bracing for some changes under the new Congress and the Obama administration. Julie Grant reports that makeup and perfumes could come under greater government scrutiny.
(sound of a store)
Claudia Lamancusa has been selling high end cosmetics at the mall for more than thirty years.
She says they recently started making a line of more natural powders, blushes and eye liners – because it’s what customers want.
“Well, I think they’re asking for them. They see it a lot on television and so the trend is going toward more mineral-based and natural products.”
And now the cosmetics industry is expecting the government ask more questions about what’s in makeup and perfumes.
Cosmetics makers already have to test products to make sure they’re safe for people to use. But they don’t have to test the environmental impacts of the chemicals in their products.
Industry officials expect that to change if Congress overhauls the Toxic Substances Control Act. They say that would mean makeup makers will have to start reporting to a new, tougher Environmental Protection Agency.
A lead detector finds over 5000 parts per million of lead in this toy. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)
Kids consignment shops have been worried about a new law limiting lead and other chemicals in children’s products.
Julie Grant reports store owners are glad to finally have some answers from the federal government:
Transcript
Kids consignment shops have been worried about a new law limiting lead and other chemicals in children’s products.
Julie Grant reports store owners are glad to finally have some answers from the federal government:
Amanda Cingle in is manager at Once Upon a Child. It’s part of a franchise of 300 stores that sell used items for kids.
She says the owner was concerned the new law would mean they’d have to throw out their existing inventory – or spend many thousands of dollars having it all tested for chemicals.
But now the government’s Consumer Products Safety Commission says the law will only applies to new products, not those being re-sold.
“We’re so relieved. We don’t have to worry anymore. The owner’s worry was that she was going to have to close her doors and never reopen.”
Cingle says the store has an environmental mission – to reuse and recycle products – so she’s glad they don’t have to throw everything away.
But she’s also pleased that new products will be made with less harmful ingredients.
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.
A Dow Chemical sign next to a river in Michigan contaminated with dioxin. Homeowners downstream are still waiting for their case against Dow to be heard. (Photo by Vincent Duffy)
