A Republican congressman is calling for stricter control of mercury emissions. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
A Republican congressman is calling for stricter control of mercury
emissions. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
reports:
In Representative Mark Kirk’s congressional district on the
north side of Chicago, samples of rain water have shown mercury
levels as much as 32 times higher than the mercury levels that the
Environmental Protection Agency considers safe
in water.
Mercury is a naturally occurring element, but much of the
mercury in precipitation comes from coal-burning power plants.
Mike Murray is with the environmental group National Wildlife
Federation,
which supports Congressman Kirk’s legislation. Murray says forms of
mercury are taken up into the food chain, where its toxic effects multiply.
“Fish concentrations can be millions of times higher than the
concentrations
in the surrounding water, and that’s where it becomes a problem.”
Mercury contamination can cause neurological damage in fetuses and
small
children, leading to decreased intellect and problems with language
skills, among other things. High levels of mercury have been found in a
number of areas throughout the Great Lakes states.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Lawn pesticides are killing a lot more than grubs and weeds, according to the National Audubon Society. They want to let people know that if they use the chemicals, they are unintentionally killing birds. And they’re possibly putting their families at the same risk. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joyce Kryszak has more on the educational campaign:
Transcript
Lawn pesticides are killing a lot more than grubs and weeds, according to the National Audubon
Society. They want to let people know that if they use the chemicals, they are unintentionally
killing birds. And they’re possibly putting their families at the same risk. For the Great Lakes
Radio Consortium, Joyce Kryszak has more on the educational campaign:
People throughout the region have been scooping up dead bird corpses and sending them off for
testing since the West Nile Virus first hit. But research shows West Nile is usually not to blame.
Studies done on about eighty thousand dead birds found in New York state showed aesthetic
lawn care products were the leading killers.
William Cooke is a regional coordinator for the Audubon Society. He says the toxins from these
common product rivals the chemicals used on golf courses and farms.
“We’re going to have our kids play on this, we’re going to have the dog play on this, and then come
into the house? People are not connecting between the pesticides they put down and the impacts.
And we’re doing this for a green lawn?”
Cooke says the national educational campaign hopes to alert more than a million people to the
dangers of pesticide use. It will also tell people how to find and use organic alternatives to
maintain a healthy lawn and environment.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Joyce Kryszak.
An internal report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency shows that a chemical used in the making of Teflon products at DuPont plants might be harmful to girls and women of childbearing age. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Natalie Walston reports the study runs contrary to what the company has been telling people who drink the water and breathe the air near one of its plants:
Transcript
An internal report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency shows that a chemical used in
the making of Teflon products at DuPont plants might be harmful to girls and women of
childbearing age. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Natalie Walston reports, the study runs
contrary to what the company has been telling people who drink the water and breathe the air
near one of its plants:
The draft of the EPA study wasn’t meant to be released to the public, but was obtained anyway
by a group that monitors federal environmental policy. It was then taken and studied by the
Washington D.C. based Environmental Working Group. That group’s scientists say the findings
are alarming. They say it shows lab rat pups exposed to the chemical C8 commonly died days
after being born. Also, the exposed rats had lower weight body organs, including smaller
“master gland” or pituitary glands, which scientists say can be a precursor to developing cancer.
Jane Houlihan, Vice President of Research at the Environmental Working Group, says the
problems found in rats translate to problems such as birth defects and possibly cancer for people
who breathe in the C8.
“Um, the EPA’s risk-assessment was pretty astounding in that they found that people’s exposures
to C8 are much much closer to the levels that harm animals than what the EPA would normally
like to see. It was a big surprise that the human population is widely contaminated with C8 and
that those exposures, particularly for women and young girls, is in a range that sets off all kinds
of alarm bells relative to the levels that are known to harm lab animals.”
The concern is that C8 builds up in the blood and it doesn’t break down in the body or in the
environment very easily. It’s primarily an airborne chemical that’s closely related to chemicals
once used to make Scotchguard fabric protector. The 3M Company, which makes Scotchguard,
stopped manufacturing C8 three years ago, but DuPont makes it at a plant in North Carolina.
DuPont still uses the chemical at its West Virginia plant to make Teflon-coated products. The
Ohio EPA is concerned that testing done by DuPont shows levels have been at least three times as
high as the company’s standards. But, the EPA has no standards of its own in place. DuPont has
put in pollution control devices to cut down on C8. But the Environmental Working Group’s
Houlihan says it’s highly likely the air and water are still laden with C8 because the chemical is so
persistent.
“C8’s not like any other environmental pollutant. When we banned PCBs and DDT a quarter of a
century ago, we’ve seen levels of those chemicals decline in the environment because they break
down. C8 is really different.”
That’s just what people who live near DuPont’s Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, West
Virginia are afraid of. The village of Little Hocking, which is across the Ohio River from the
plant is a cluster of small houses, a general store and a tiny post office.
(sounds of her answering phone)
That’s where Judy Pashun works as Postmaster.
“When I found out about the Little Hocking Water Company, I quit drinking the water here at
work, so I bring water here to drink.”
Pashun is referring to the Little Hocking Water Authority, which supplies water to some 12,000
people in the southern Ohio area, all of whom are involved in a class action lawsuit against
DuPont. DuPont has said in the past and keeps on saying that levels of C8 are in the water, but
aren’t at levels high enough to cause concern. The water company’s general manager, Bob
Griffin, begs to differ. He says high concentrations of C8 ride over to southern Ohio on the
prevailing wind and settle in the company’s well fields.
“People that live in the community could have twice as much C8 in their blood than somebody
that works at DuPont. I mean, there’s people that work at DuPont that said they’ve got so many
parts per million in their blood. Now when we talk about what’s in the water is parts per billion,
but people that work there actually have parts per million.”
DuPont, on the other hand, disagrees with Griffin and the Environmental Working Group’s
interpretation of the internal EPA study. Its toxicologists argue that C8 has no known adverse
affects to human health. Robert Rikard is a company scientist. Rikard, in an interview conducted
before the EPA’s study was leaked to the media, said the public’s concern about and the media
attention to C8 is unfounded.
“There is a lot known about this compound. We’ve had over 50 years of experience, and we’ve
closely monitored it for many, many years. And, all of the data would indicate there is no known
human health effects and no known environmental effects with this compound.”
And, DuPont says the report findings were prematurely leaked to the media. A company news
release reminds the media that the document was, quote, an internal and deliberative draft and,
therefore, not subject to the Freedom of Information act, which requires that documents be made
public.
Still, this problem has raised a wider question about the use of Teflon and other products, because
it’s not just a problem confined to people living near DuPont plants. The Environmental Working
Group says the EPA needs to move quickly to ban the chemical C8 and similar families of
chemicals because traces of the chemicals have been found on produce such as apples and green
beans in grocery stores throughout the country.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Natalie Walston.
Fish is healthy food, but contamination from pollution means people should limit the amount of inland lake and river fish they
eat. Photo by Lester Graham.
States are struggling with ways to warn people, especially women of childbearing years and children, about the hazards of eating too much sport fish contaminated with toxic chemicals.
There are three major questions often asked when considering the environmental health of a body of water. Can you drink the water? Can you swim in it? And… can you eat the fish? Often the answer to the last question is very complicated. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has the first report in a two-part series on the fish that ends up on your table:
Transcript
There are three major questions often asked when considering the
environmental health of a body of water. Can you drink the water? Can you
swim in it? And… can you eat the fish? Often the answer to the last
question is very complicated. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham has the first report in a two-part series on the fish that ends up on
your table:
Mark Ford goes fishing almost every weekday. This day, he’s at a small
marina off of Lake Michigan. He’s carrying several rods and reels and a
couple of tackle boxes with him to an old dock…
Lester Graham: “Now, what do you fish for?”
Mark Ford: “Right now, whatever bites on the hook. Basically, I fish for bass,
catfish, walleye.”
This day, he’s just testing some new gear…
“Set my drag. Too loose.”
When Ford got his fishing license, he also got a guide telling him that the fish
he eats is contaminated. All inland lakes have some level of contamination
which could include pesticides, PCBs, and mercury.
Ford has a pretty good idea about what to do to reduce his exposure to the contaminants when he eats the fish..
“Yeah, first thing you want to do is cut off all excess fat to get away from a lot of the chemical
pollutants that’s not in the actual meat of the fish. That’s where most of the chemicals lie, in the fat. So, you cut that off and get to cookin’.”
Ford’s preparation is a good start. Trimming the fat will reduce exposure to PCBs and
similar compounds that are stored in fatty tissue. And just cooking the fish reduces some of the exposure to contaminants. But if a contaminant such as methyl mercury is present in the flesh of the fish, no amount of rinsing, boiling or frying will change that.
Unfortunately, many anglers are not as well informed as Mark Ford. A study in Canada
found a lot fishers don’t understand the contaminants or what to do about them. They judge
whether the fish is safe to eat by how well it fights on the line… by the color of the
flesh… or by the clearness of the eye. None of those things is an indicator of whether a fish is contaminated by toxic chemicals.
Alan Hayton is with the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. He says how much fish are
contaminated depends on the body of water. A ban on PCBs in manufacturing
has helped, although there are still decades worth of the pollutant in some lake
sediments. Agricultural pesticide restrictions and bans have helped reduce
contaminants in some other lakes.
“Well, if you want – are fish getting better or worse? Certainly over the years,
when you look at the Great Lakes, there’s been a considerable decline in the level of
contaminants in fish. Many of the inland lakes, both in Ontario and elsewhere – not
just around the Great Lakes, but elsewhere – there’s mercury in those fish. Mercury
concentrations don’t appear to be changing. They seem to be quite stable.
So, we find that in quite a high proportion of the inland lakes there are some consumption
restrictions.”
Mercury remains a problem because as coal-fired power plants release mercury
into the air… it’s brought down into watersheds by rain. There the problem is
complicated in some areas by any number of factors, including some bacteria that transform
simple mercury into the more toxic methyl mercury.
So, some bodies of water, such as the Great Lakes, have lower levels of some
pollutants, but some other contaminants are just as bad as ever. To complicate things
even more, some fish are more contaminated than others.
Faith Shottenfeld is with the New York State Department of Health.
“You know, it’s complicated because it’s going to vary from state to state, from body of
water to body of water and from fish species to fish species.”
Shottenfeld says that makes getting the message to anglers all the more difficult.
States are trying to figure out how to get the information to the people who eat
the fish, but there are very few general guidelines.
“So, I think that the best way to work your way through the complexities
is to really have a dialogue with somebody who understands the advisories and can
help you figure out what you need to do.”
But generally speaking, eating smaller fish, and limiting sport fish meals from local lakes to about once a week for men and once a month for women helps.
Angler Mark Ford says he’s not worried. He says to him, the health benefits of
fish offset the health risks of the contaminants.
“A month, I’d say I eat about twelve to 15 pounds of fish. I eat a lot of fish.
I like fish. Fish is healthy for you, too. It’s low in cholesterol if you cut the fat away from
it. It’s good brain food. That’s scientifically proven. And, if you prepare it
right, it tastes good!”
And Ford says he’s healthy. But experts indicate it’s hard to say what long-term
exposure to the contaminants in sport fish from area lakes will mean to human
health. They caution that children and women of child-bearing age should severely
restrict their intake of sport fish because the contaminants can damage the
development of fetuses and children.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
States are struggling with ways to warn people, especially women of childbearing years and children, about the hazards of eating too much sport fish contaminated with toxic chemicals.
Health officials are trying to get the word out about contaminants in sport fish. But the issue is complicated. So, it’s difficult to give people an easy answer on how to reduce the health risk. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Health officials are trying to get the word out about contaminants in sport fish. But the
issue is complicated. So, it’s difficult to give people an easy answer on how to reduce
the health risk. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Sport fish contain contaminants such as PCBs, pesticides, and mercury. But the amount
of contaminants in a fish depends on the body of water, the species of fish, and
even the age of the fish. So, there are very few general guidelines. That makes it difficult for
health officials to tell people what’s best for them.
Faith Shottenfeld is with the New York State Department of Public Health. She says safe
consumption levels vary.
“For some fish, a meal a week, a meal a month. You certainly can talk in general
about eating smaller fish because as you move your way up the food chain, you
know, the bigger fish eat the little fish so they get more and more and more chemicals,
but there are some examples of smaller fish that are highly contaminated.”
Shottenfeld notes that children and women of childbearing age are at more risk
from ill effects of the contaminants in fish than men. She says the best bet is to talk to someone
who’s familiar with your state and area’s fish consumption advisories.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
The people most at risk from contaminants in fish often don’t know it. Different chemicals found in fish from many inland lakes, including the Great Lakes, can be harmful to human development. State governments issue fish consumption advisories that recommend limiting eating such fish. In the second of a two-part series on contaminants in fish… the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports that not everyone learns of the advisories:
Transcript
The people most at risk from contaminants in fish often don’t know it.
Different chemicals found in fish from many inland lakes, including the
Great Lakes, can be harmful to human development. State governments
issue fish consumption advisories that recommend limiting
eating such fish. In the second of a two part series on contaminants in
fish… the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports that not
everyone learns of the advisories:
Horace Phillips likes to fish. He can often be found casting a line into a
lagoon off of Lake Michigan on Chicago’s south side. He says he and a lot of
his fishing buddies know about the fish consumption advisories, but he doesn’t
think he eats enough to matter…
“Sure, it’s always good to know, but, as I say, I’m not consuming that much fish.”
That’s because Phillips gives away much of the fish he catches. Like a lot of
anglers, he enjoys the sport, and shares what he catches with friends and
relatives. He doesn’t remember getting a fishing guide when he got his fishing
license, but the retailer was supposed to give him one. It not only outlines limits
on the amount of fish an angler can take, but also includes recommendations
on how much fish he should eat in a given month.
But Phillips says he thinks he learned about fish contaminants from the
newspaper. He never really thought about passing on the warning to people
with whom he shares his fish.
“I suppose the same literature that’s available to me is also available to them.”
But often the people who prepare the fish or who eat the fish don’t have a
clue that there’s anything wrong with the fish.
We should note here that fish is nutritious. It’s a good low-fat, lower calorie
source of protein. Eating fish instead of higher-fat and cholesterol laden foods
is believed to help lower the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure,
diabetes and several forms of cancer. Pretty good food, fish.
But some fish contain PCBs – polychlorinated biphenyls – believed to cause
cancer. Chlordane, a pesticide, has been found in fish. And methyl mercury is
found in some fish. These chemicals can cause serious health problems,
especially for children and fetuses. They can disrupt the systems that
coordinate the nervous system, the brain, and the reproductive system.
Studies have shown women store some of these chemicals in their
fat tissue until they become pregnant. Then, those chemicals are passed
to the child they’re carrying. Studies have indicated that of mothers
who ate three or more fish meals a month, those with the highest exposure
gave birth to children with health problems.
They had significant delays in neuromuscular and neurological development.
Those children continued to show short-term memory problems at age four… and
significant reduction in IQ and academic skills at age seven.
Barbara Knuth is a professor of Natural Resource Policy and Management at
Cornell University. She says given the health concerns with eating too much contaminated fish, the information about restrictions needs to be more widely distributed.
“Where we need to focus effort now is not so much on the angler, but we need to be focusing
on the people with whom they’re sharing those fish, the women, their wives, mothers
of childbearing age, women of childbearing age, children, because that’s where we now know,
scientists now know – who are studying this – where the real health effects are.”
But where to start? After all, the fish might come from a friend… it might be at the deli… it could be on the plate at a local restaurant. There are no rules requiring a notice that fish is from a lake, or the ocean, or farm-raised. So, how do you get the word out?
One federal agency is working to get the information to those at highest risk by going through their doctor. Steve Blackwell is with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
“We’ve taken on trying to reach health care providers that are serving the target
population, the most at-risk population of women, children, pregnant women and reach those
groups such as OBGYNs, family physicians, pediatricians with this information to help raise
awareness within that group that serves the at-risk population to try and make sure that they’re receiving the message and they’re not telling their patients something different from what the patients may be hearing outside that realm.”
Whether the doctors are actually passing on the concerns about contaminated fish is a
whole other question. But assuming they are, there’s still another concern. Many of the women who are most at risk might not see a doctor until the day the baby is due. Poor women… the very same women who might rely on fishing for a good part of their diet… might not be told
about the risks.
And so their children are born into poverty… and the added burden of chemicals that can hurt their development. Blackwell says reaching those women is something the federal government cannot do alone.
“You want to reach those people through local leaders, through churches, through
institutions that aren’t medical.”
And that’s best done, Blackwell says, by local government, not the federal
government. But state budgets are strapped. And, in some cases, states are
reluctant to raise awareness of an issue that they really can’t fix. A source within
a state agency told us that an higher-ranking official indicated to
him that he didn’t want to assign a full-time person to work on fish contamination
awareness alone because it would send the wrong political message. Another state stopped publishing fish consumption advisories as a budget cutting move… that is… until local reporters exposed that particular budget cut.
In short, warning pregnant women and women of childbearing age about the dangers of
eating too much contaminated fish and how that could damage their children’s
intellectual and physical development has not gotten enough attention yet to become a
political priority.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Health and environmental agencies are struggling to find the best way to alert people, particularly women, about the risks of eating too much sport fish contaminated with toxic chemicals. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Health and environmental agencies are struggling to find the best way to alert people,
particularly women, about the risks of eating too much sport fish contaminated with
toxic chemicals. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Some states cut budgets, including money for publishing fish consumption advisories.
It’s curtailing the efforts of health officials to tell families that children and women of
childbearing age should severely restrict their intake of sport fish.
Most sport fish contain levels of pesticides, PCBs, and/or mercury high enough to
cause neurological and mental developmental problems in children. Barbara Knuth
is a professor at Cornell University.
“Budgets are limited and until the time when resources are made available through state
governments, through EPA, even through foundations to fund both communication efforts and
evaluation and testing of those efforts to improve them, I think it’s still going to be a struggling
effort.”
Knuth says relatively small investments in information now could prevent great costs to
society and children’s lives later.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Some environmentalists believe President Bush’s Homeland Security Act could have some harmful effects on the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Some environmentalists believe President Bush’s Homeland Security Act could have some harmful effects on the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
The National Strategy for Homeland Security is the White House plan to deal with threats of terrorism. Among a number of proposals, the Bush Administration wants to limit access to information about hazardous chemicals at company plants. Alys Campaigne is with the environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council. The NRDC notes that industry has long wanted to get rid of laws that required disclosing to the public what chemicals they might handle…
“We’re concerned that the Bush Administration is using the guise of Homeland Security to legislate very sweeping exemptions to corporations under public disclosure laws and to give them unprecedented immunity from laws that are on the books now.”
The NRDC says instead of letting companies keep secrets about chemicals at their sites, the government should conduct vulnerability assessments and work with companies to reduce the hazards at a site. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
American Electric Power is buying a village in the Midwest for 20 million dollars. The people who live in the Ohio River village of Cheshire agreed to sell their homes and businesses so they can get away from emissions from AEP’s largest coal-burning power plant in Ohio. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Natalie Walston reports:
Transcript
American Electric Power is buying a village in the Midwest for 20 million
dollars. The people who live in the Ohio River village of Cheshire agreed to
sell their homes and businesses so they can get away from emissions from
AEP’s largest coal-burning power plant in Ohio. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Natalie Walston reports:
Chuck Reynolds bought a house with a large front porch in the village of
Cheshire three years ago. The house is on the banks of the Ohio River.
And his bait shop is next door.
But, by next year, both his house and business will be gone.
“This was gonna be our retirement home. I mean, we planned on staying here
the rest of our lives. We’ve got a beautiful view of the river. We’ve got a
boat dock and of course a boat. And, uh, the business is right next door. Everything’s kind of falling into place for us.”
Reynolds is one of 220 Cheshire residents who have agreed to sell their properties to AEP. For decades people here have complained about the emissions from AEP’s General James M. Gavin plant nearby.
But some people in Cheshire recently threatened to sue AEP after blue clouds of sulfuric acid from the plant’s smoke stacks blanketed the village on humid days last summer. Villagers complained of stinging eyes and sore throats from the clouds.
Ironically, those clouds were created by new equipment that was installed to cut down on smog-causing pollutants that drift to the East Coast. AEP spokesman Tom Ayres says the company has spent millions of dollars to try and stop the sulfuric acid emissions from recurring this summer.
And with that kind of investment … it wasn’t AEP’s idea to buy the community.
“Representatives of the village approached us and we had been in conversations with them on a regular basis since we’d experienced these operating problems last summer. And, um, as I say, over, you know, a course of negotiations this was a solution that was arrived at and sought by, um, you know, representatives of the village.”
Representatives of the village include environmental groups, such as the Buckeye Environmental Council. Theresa Mills speaks for the group. She calls the settlement a victory.
“This village has experienced many, many problems for many years with this plant and they wanted out. And … they got what they wanted. So, in that respect, it is a victory for them.”
While the residents of Cheshire are getting out … school children from the rest of the county aren’t so lucky. There are still two Gallia county schools that remain open within 600 yards of the Gavin plant. Mills says she would like to see the school district sue the Ohio and U.S. EPA for allowing the air to be polluted.
Meanwhile, AEP has plans to expand its Gavin plant once the people move out of Cheshire.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Natalie Walston.
Computers and computer equipment, such as these keyboards, are often thrown in the trash when they break or become obsolete. Efforts are underway to find a safe and effective method for recycling the growing electronic waste stream.
As older computers become obsolete, we’re faced with a dilemma: what to do with the out-of-date equipment? The problem will only grow as personal computers become a stock item in more and more households. But so far, the manufacturers, the recycling industry, and the government don’t have a plan in place to deal with the old equipment. That’s a problem because some of that equipment contains lead, mercury, and other toxic materials that can cause damage to the environment and people’s health. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has more:
