EPA Questions Pet Pesticides

  • The EPA plans to develop more stringent testing and evaluation requirements for both existing and new products.(Photo courtesy of Isiegert CC-2.0)

Tens of thousands of pets are getting sick when their owners use flea and tick pesticides the wrong way. The Environmental Protection Agency wants the companies to change the directions on the labels. Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

Tens of thousands of pets are getting sick when their owners use flea and tick pesticides the wrong way. The Environmental Protection Agency wants the companies to change the directions on the labels. Rebecca Williams has more:

EPA officials are concerned about spot-on pesticides for fleas and ticks – the drops you put on your pet’s back.

EPA has been investigating these products because of a recent huge jump in reports of negative effects on pets. Most are mild… such as skin irritation. But there have also been reports of vomiting, seizures and in some cases, death.

Steve Owens is with the EPA. He says these products are poisons. And he says the labels are not always clear.

“The consumers in many cases were left to guess for themselves the appropriate amount to be used on their particular pet.”

The EPA is working with companies to put more detailed directions on the labels.

In the meantime, Owens says you should be really careful about reading the directions. He says it’s especially important not to use dog products on cats.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Congress Considering Chemical Law

  • There are 80,000 chemicals on the market. But the Environmental Protection Agency has only tested 200 of them for safety to humans - and banned only 5. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

Congress might make our federal
chemical laws tougher. Rebecca
Williams has more:

Transcript

Congress might make our federal
chemical laws tougher. Rebecca
Williams has more:

There are 80,000 chemicals on the market. But the Environmental Protection Agency has only tested 200 of them for safety to humans – and banned only 5 of the toxic chemicals.

Senator Frank Lautenberg is a Democrat from New Jersey. During a recent hearing, he said the EPA is doing what it can. But its power is limited by the nation’s outdated chemical laws.

“They cannot protect our children with one hand tied behind their back. That’s why I’ll soon introduce a bill that will overhaul our nation’s chemical laws.”

The bill will likely require companies to prove a chemical is safe before manufacturing it or using it. Right now, it’s up to the government to prove a chemical is harming people or the environment before it’s banned.

Some Conservatives in Congress are opposed to this idea. They say this kind of bill would kill industry innovation.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Heavy Metal in Toy Jewelry

  • A nugget of cadmium. (Photo courtesy of the US Dept. of Interior)

The Consumer Product Safety
Commission has been working
to get lead out of kids’ toys.
Now, the government agency
is trying to determine whether
it can do anything about another
toxic chemical found in toys –
a heavy metal called cadmium.
Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

The Consumer Product Safety
Commission has been working
to get lead out of kids’ toys.
Now, the government agency
is trying to determine whether
it can do anything about another
toxic chemical found in toys –
a heavy metal called cadmium.
Mark Brush has more:

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is reacting to a report by the Associated Press that found 12% of children’s jewelry had high levels of cadmium. Some of the pieces tested were almost completely made of cadmium. The heavy metal can cause kidney disease and it’s known to cause cancer.

Scott Wolfson is with the Consumer Product Safety Commission. He says that because of all the problems with lead in toy jewelry – the bottom line is that parents should just stay away.

“Over the past four years, we have done more than 50 recalls of more than 180 million units of jewelry. That’s astounding. It reached a point, where CPSC has been recommending to parents that they stop buying children’s metal jewelry for the youngest of kids.”

And some experts say – if you’ve got old toy jewelry in the house – it’s probably a good idea to get rid of it.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Coal Ash Contamination

  • 2.6 billion pounds of arsenic and other toxic pollutants flooded over nearby farmland and into the river. (Photo courtesy of the Tennessee Department Of Health)

When a dam broke a year ago in Kingston,
Tennessee, the town experienced one
of the biggest environmental disasters
in US history. Billions of gallons
of waterlogged coal ash from a nearby
power plant streamed into the Emory
River. Tanya Ott reports
the contamination was even greater
than originally thought:

Transcript

When a dam broke a year ago in Kingston,
Tennessee, the town experienced one
of the biggest environmental disasters
in US history. Billions of gallons
of waterlogged coal ash from a nearby
power plant streamed into the Emory
River. Tanya Ott reports
the contamination was even greater
than originally thought:

2.6 billion pounds of arsenic and other toxic pollutants. That’s how much
contamination flooded over nearby farmland and into the river.

That comes
from a report by the Environmental Integrity Project.

Eric Schaeffer is the
project’s Executive Director and a former official with the Environmental
Protection Agency. He says 2.6 billion pounds is more than the total
discharges from all U-S power plants last year.

“The toxic metals, once they get into the environment,
and especially once they get into sediment, are notoriously difficult to
clean up.”

Difficult and expensive. The Tennessee Valley Authority puts the price tag
at about a billion dollars.

The EPA was supposed to propose tougher
disposal standards for toxic ash by the end of 2009. But the agency delayed
that decision.

For The Environmental Report, Im Tanya Ott.

Related Links

Cleaning Up Dioxin

  • West Michigan Park lies along the Tittabawassee River. Large swaths of its soil was removed and re-sodded due to dioxin contamination. The removal was part of a US EPA effort to have Dow clean up several hot spots in the rivershed. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

One thing we hear over and over
from the Obama Administration
is that when it comes to the
environment, science should set
the agenda. Right now, though,
the chemical industry is accusing
the administration of abandoning
that idea. Shawn Allee reports it has to do with the science
behind a potent toxin:

Transcript

One thing we hear over and over
from the Obama Administration
is that when it comes to the
environment, science should set
the agenda. Right now, though,
the chemical industry is accusing
the administration of abandoning
that idea. Shawn Allee reports it has to do with the science
behind a potent toxin:

President George W. Bush took it on the chin when it came to the environment. One accusation is that he ignored science that suggested we should get tougher on green house gas emissions.

President Obama’s Administrator at the US Environmental Protection Agency is Lisa Jackson. She said things would be different.

“On my first day, I sent a memo to every EPA employee stating that our path would be guided by the best science and by the rule of law, and that every action we took would be subject to unparalleled transparency.”

It hasn’t taken long for the chemical industry to say Obama’s Administration is back-tracking.

“There’s been this notion to get things done, and it get it done fast.”

That’s David Fischer, an attorney for the American Chemistry Council. Fischer’s concerned about new standards on dioxins.

Dioxins are by-products from producing chemicals. They also get into the environment from burning trash and wood.

The government says dioxin causes cancer and reproductive and developmental diseases.

It’s known this for decades, but it’s been finishing a report to show exactly how toxic dioxins are. It’s been writing this dioxin reassessment for 18 years, and it was supposed to put out a draft last week.

But it didn’t do that, and it hasn’t said when it will.

That didn’t stop the EPA from proposing a new rule about how much dioxin should be allowed in the soil in peoples’ yards.

Fischer says that rule should wait.

“If they’re going to base goals based on the best available science, and they have, in fact, stated they plan to, it’s hard to imagine how you can do that before the reassessment’s finished because that does after all represent or should represent the best available science.”

The chemical industry’s concerned because dozens of sites across the country are contaminated with dioxins. And the rule would lower the amount of dioxin allowed in residential soil. It would go from 1000 parts per trillion to 72 parts per trillion – that’s a drop of more than 90%.

Fischer says that could cost companies millions of dollars in extra clean-up costs.

“Again, that begs the question, Why?”

One accusation is that the Obama administration wanted to finalize dioxin soil regulations in time to coincide with controversial, on-going dioxin clean-ups, such as one in central Michigan.

The EPA didn’t answer this question directly and wouldn’t provide an interview in time for this report. But it did say it’s got sound science to justify the proposed dioxin soil rule.

You might ask why this matters. Well, just look at central Michigan, where there’s a large, on-going dioxin cleanup.

Linda Dykema works with Michigan’s Department of Community Health. She creates state standards on how much dioxin should be allowed in water, fish, and soil. To protect people in Michigan, she needs help from the EPA.

“We rely a great deal on federal agencies to provide us with some hazard assessment for chemicals. The ability of the state to public health staff to do those kinds of assessments is pretty limited. They can do what needs to be done and what we can’t do here at the state.”

And a ruling on dioxin levels in soil should help Dykema. But this move by the EPA might cause more problems than it solves. For years, the chemical industry’s argued that the science behind dioxin isn’t complete.

This proposed soil rule gives the chemical industry another chance to say, ‘here we go again.’ And the justification it needs to keep fighting a rule the EPA insists protects people’s health.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Waiting for the FDA to Rule on BPA

  • The chemical Bisphenol-A, or BPA, is found in some plastic food packaging and the inside of most tin-cans. (Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)

The government missed a deadline to
declare whether a chemical in food
packaging is safe. Shawn Allee reports critics are growing
tired of the delay:

Transcript

The government missed a deadline to
declare whether a chemical in food
packaging is safe. Shawn Allee reports critics are growing
tired of the delay:

The chemical is Bisphenol-A, or BPA. It’s found in some plastic food packaging and the inside of most tin-cans.

The US Food and Drug Administration is reviewing whether BPA causes developmental diseases and some cancers. The agency missed a deadline of November 30th, and some groups are getting impatient.

Sarah Jennsen is with the Natural Resources Defense Council. She says while the Food and Drug Administration deliberates, more studies are coming out against BPA.

“We’ve had studies now published that show toddlers exposed to BPA behave diffrently from toddlers who are not exposed, and so this human research which is being published is very concerning because it’s replicating what we’ve already seen in the animal studies.

The Food and Drug Administration won’t say which studies it’s including in its scientific review of BPA or when it will finish.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Part 5: The Science Behind Dioxin Delays

  • West Michigan Park lies along the Tittabawassee River. Large swaths of its soil was removed and re-sodded due to dioxin contamination. The removal was part of a US EPA effort to have Dow clean up several hot spots in the rivershed. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Two rivers in central Michigan were
polluted with dioxin 30 years ago.
The dioxin came from a Dow chemical
plant. The toxin’s been found in fish,
animals, and dirt, but, of all those,
contaminated soil might be the touchiest
subject. A study done in the area suggests
dioxin in soil might not be getting into
people living there. In the final part
of a series on Dow Chemical and dioxin,
Shawn Allee looks at that study
and the government’s take on it:

Transcript

Two rivers in central Michigan were
polluted with dioxin 30 years ago.
The dioxin came from a Dow chemical
plant. The toxin’s been found in fish,
animals, and dirt, but, of all those,
contaminated soil might be the touchiest
subject. A study done in the area suggests
dioxin in soil might not be getting into
people living there. In the final part
of a series on Dow Chemical and dioxin,
Shawn Allee looks at that study
and the government’s take on it:

To understand what’s at stake over the science of dioxin and soil, I want to talk with Marcia Woodman.

So, Woodman and I talk in this big, three-season room with tons of windows. It’s like you’re outside in some woods.

“I love it, so it wasn’t hard to convince me to move here.”

From here, the trees look inviting, but Woodman says she only lets her kids enjoy them from a distance.

“They’re not allowed to play back in the woods anymore. They used to play and we used to take walks back there.”

You see, eight years ago, the state tested soil for dioxin. Her place was okay, but there were high levels in the neighborhood. So, Woodman worried dioxin might move from soil into her kids, and maybe they’d get cancer or some other disease. But, what if dioxin in soil is not getting into people nearby?

“We found virtually no relationship between soil contamination and blood dioxin levels. In other words, the amount of soil contamination on your property really didn’t relate to blood levels.”

This is Dr. David Garabrant. He researches public health at the University of Michigan. Now, we need to tell you, in the interest of full disclosure, The Environment Report is produced at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Garabrant looked at whether people in the contaminated region have higher dioxin levels in their blood. They do – but just slightly. And those higher dioxins levels? They’re probably from other factors, like living in that area when dioxin pollution was highest – decades ago. Again, for him, soil is less of an issue.

This conclusion bothers two groups of people that really matter. That would be the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the State of Michigan. The EPA would not provide an interview on this, but they have public documents about it. Michigan has the same reservations about the study. Here’s just one.

“He didn’t test children. And children, typically, have some of the highest exposures.”

This is Steve Chester. He heads Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality.

“It’s probably even more of a concern for children who get down into the dirt and get it on their hands and shoes and so forth.”

Chester says the state needs to create regulations that take risk to kids into account. That makes Dr. Garabrant’s study a bit beside the point. Dr. Garabrant says he wanted to get kids into his study, but you have to draw lots of blood.

“You can’t ethically take enough blood from a child to find the dioxins. And that’s a real dilemma.”

Garabrant says his study went as far as it could.

For some people, there’s a different problem with the research.

“The study is funded by the Dow Chemical company through an unrestricted grant to the University of Michigan.”

That would be Dow Chemical – the company that polluted the Tittabawassee River and floodplain decades ago. Soon, Dow might have to spend tens or maybe hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up contaminated river silt and soil. Still, Garabrant insists Dow has no influence.

“The only thing we give Dow is when they sit in meetings like the rest of the public and they hear what we have to say.”

Garabrant’s study on dioxin exposure is getting attention right when the US EPA is taking another look at the risk dioxin poses to people. Critics of his study worry it will stir up a whole new debate that could delay dioxin clean ups in Michigan and other toxic waste sites across the country.

The EPA insists it won’t let that happen – and it’ll soon have more science to back up its position.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Part 4: Hunters Warned After Dioxin Delays

  • Fish advisories dot the banks of the Tittabawassee and Saginaw Rivers. Various forms or pollution, including historical dioxin pollution from Dow Chemical, have led to warnings to avoid certain species of fish and limit consumption for them. Pregnant woment and young children are given more stringent warnings. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

It’s deer season in Michigan, and
hunters are trekking through the woods,
trying to bag dinner or something
special for the holidays. Hunting’s
gotten a little complicated in some
areas recently. Just because you catch
something doesn’t mean you should eat
it. That’s because a stretch of river
in Michigan was polluted with dioxin –
decades ago. In the fourth part of a
series on Dow Chemical and dioxin, Shawn
Allee found the state thinks
old dioxin pollution from a Dow chemical
plant poses a health risk today:

Transcript

It’s deer season in Michigan, and
hunters are trekking through the woods,
trying to bag dinner or something
special for the holidays. Hunting’s
gotten a little complicated in some
areas recently. Just because you catch
something doesn’t mean you should eat
it. That’s because a stretch of river
in Michigan was polluted with dioxin –
decades ago. In the fourth part of a
series on Dow Chemical and dioxin, Shawn
Allee found the state thinks
old dioxin pollution from a Dow chemical
plant poses a health risk today:

It was hard for me to understand why wild game like deer or turkey might be contaminated from river pollution, so I hit up Daniel O’Brien for some answers. O’Brien’s a toxicologist with Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources. He says the problem starts with dioxin in the river.

“It’s in the sediments in these contaminated parts of the Tittabawassee River, and after flood events in the spring when, say, mud in the river gets deposited onto bushes or whatever and deer browse those, then they pick up soil that way.”

Part of O’Brien’s job is to spread the news about the contamination. He says when you buy a hunting license in Michigan you get this brochure.

“It’s a booklet that has all the regulations for hunting and trapping in it.”

These wildlife consumption advisories are voluntary but they kinda read like owners manuals. They lay out where the dioxin-contaminated animals are. They tell you what animals you can eat, and what parts. For example, no one’s supposed to eat deer liver from the areas – that’s got the most dioxin in it. And, of cuts you can eat, the advisory says how much, and how often. Plus, they tell who should eat less or maybe none at all.

“Kids might be more sensitive. They might have a more stringent advisory than somebody like me who’s kinda your middle-aged man and we might not be as susceptible to toxic effects.”


The idea’s to protect people from dioxin, and the risk it poses for cancer and diseases of the immune, reproductive, and developmental systems. It’s an important job, given how big hunting is in Michigan.

“We have three quarters of a million hunters every year that go afield and harvest half a million white-tailed deer.”

Michigan scientists take the issue seriously, but I’m kinda curious whether hunters do. So, I visit the Saginaw Field and Stream Club. Inside, there’s this paneled wall with faded pictures of club presidents. It stretches from the club’s founding in 1916 – all the way to this guy, current President Tom Heritier.

“We’re still here today.”

Heritier says his club’s smack-dab in the contaminated area and everyone knows about the advisories, but, well …

“With the game advisories, I have not heard one person who has any problem with the deer or the birds around the watershed.”

This goes for him, too.

“Nobody is sick from it. I don’t know of anybody that has died of exposure. That’s never been proven. It’s nothing to take lightly, but then again, it might be a little bit on the overblown side, too.”

The State of Michigan tried to survey hunters like Heritier. Officials wanted to know if hunters were feeding tainted game to young children. That survey never made the budget.

Before I leave the hunting club, Heritier wants to clear something up. He’s actually mad about dioxin. It’s in the environment – he wants it gone.

Heritier: “There’s absolutely no reason for industry to be polluting our natural resources, whether it be air, soil, or water.”

Allee: “Even if it’s not a slam-dunk, for sure, killing people off sort of thing?”

Heritier: “Number one, God didn’t put it there, it don’t belong there. That’s the way it is.”

Well, Heritier wants the environment protected from dioxin, but not necessarily himself.

State scientists say, if Heritier changes his mind and wants to reduce his health risk – they’ll keep printing those game advisories for him.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Part 3: Living With Dioxin Delays

  • Mitch Larson lives in Saginaw's Riverside neighborhood, which saw a large dioxin removal project last year. His home is on the banks of Tittabawassee River. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Several communities in central Michigan
are polluted by dioxins from a Dow Chemical
plant. People there have known about
it for thirty years. But, residents
are divided over whether the government
should force Dow to pay for a cleanup
that could cost tens, or even hundreds,
of millions of dollars. In the third
part of a series on Dow and dioxin,
Shawn Allee traveled to the
area and talked with some of them:

Transcript

Several communities in central Michigan
are polluted by dioxins from a Dow Chemical
plant. People there have known about
it for thirty years. But, residents
are divided over whether the government
should force Dow to pay for a cleanup
that could cost tens, or even hundreds,
of millions of dollars. In the third
part of a series on Dow and dioxin,
Shawn Allee traveled to the
area and talked with some of them:

Dow Chemical is not just some company in Midland, Michigan. It’s part of life there.
Dow employs thousands of people. It pays for libraries and civic gardens. A high school football team is even named “The Chemix.”

I talked with plenty of people who’ve sided with Dow over the dioxin pollution issue. One works right across the street from the chemical plant.

“We’re in my law office and my house is two blocks south of us here.”

Bob McKellar says Dow’s been good for Midland, and, as far as he’s concerned, the federal government’s been trashing the town.

McKellar: “Dow, rightfully so, takes the position that, you know, ‘why are you always picking on us? We agree we’ve done some of this and we agree we’ll help clean it up.’ But then the EPA comes back and says, ‘well, you’re not doing enough.'”

Allee: “But the EPA says they’ve been dealing with the issue for 30 years.”

McKellar: “It’s because the EPA’s had the fist out – they haven’t come with a little bouquet of flowers and say, ‘okay folks, let’s sit down and talk about this and let’s get this thing done right.’”

McKellar says, getting things done right means the government should pay for a big hunk of any dioxin cleanup. It’s only fair – because he thinks pollution in the river and soil is overblown, and the EPA’s the one overblowing it.

Downstream, fewer people work at the Dow plant. They see less benefit, but they live with more dioxin pollution.

“Well, This is the Tittabawassee River. This is my homestead.”

I’m with Mitch Larson. He lives 20 miles downstream from Midland. His home’s in a woodsy part of Saginaw.

“When I bought this place, I was thinking that this would be a great place for kids to grow up. As they grew up, it was a right of passage to swim across the river. You know, I’d swim alongside them, you’d swim across to the other bank, and you’d have them sign their name in the sand, you know, you did it.”

The Tittabawassee River floods, and it left silt and traces of dioxin on Larson’s yard, but he didn’t know that until the state government tested his soil and found the dioxin.

They even tested his pet chickens and the eggs he fed his kids.

Larson: “They tested those also.”

Allee: “What did they tell you?”

Larson: “Don’t eat them. Chickens eat the dirt. The dirt was where the dioxin was, and eggs were full of dioxin. So, for the past couple years, every egg we ate was like a little shot of dioxin.”

He got rid of the chickens, of course, but he had to have a talk with his teenage girls. A report said the dioxin put them at risk for having kids with birth defects.

“You know, when they were all tested for the dioxin, I told them they were all high in dioxin and I had information about, you know, about the child-bearing thing. It put them at risk for having kids. You know, it’s not a good feeling.”

Larson and one hundred seventy two other plaintiffs sued Dow to pay for follow-up medical monitoring.

The courts said no.

Six years after dioxin was first found on the property, Dow chemical paid to clean and re-sod Larson’s lawn. He says it looks great, but he worries another flood’s gonna leave behind dioxin.

Right now, Dow and the EPA are negotiating an agreement that might make Dow clean up river sediment.

“If it takes them thirty years to clean this river up so it’s clean for the next 200 years, it’d be worth it. People are fishing, kids are swimming across the river to show, you know, they’re a bad-ass.”

Larson says he’d welcome that future – even if it cost Dow a lot of money.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Part 2: Foot Dragging Produces Dioxin Delays

  • The southeast corner of the Dow Chemical plant, from the vantage of Midland's Whiting Overlook Park, which features an homage to and history of the company and its founder. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

The State of Michigan, the US
Environmental Protection Agency
and Dow Chemical are negotiating
an agreement to clean up dioxin
pollution in towns, two rivers,
and Lake Huron. The pollution
is largely from a Dow chemical
plant in Midland, Michigan. The
government worries the pollution
poses a risk of cancer and other
health problems, and it’s been
found in fish, on property, and
in the blood of some people there.
Residents are asking why it’s taken
so long to get cleaned up. In the
second part of a series on Dow and
dioxin, Shawn Allee went
looking for an answer:

Transcript

The State of Michigan, the US
Environmental Protection Agency
and Dow Chemical are negotiating
an agreement to clean up dioxin
pollution in towns, two rivers,
and Lake Huron. The pollution
is largely from a Dow chemical
plant in Midland, Michigan. The
government worries the pollution
poses a risk of cancer and other
health problems, and it’s been
found in fish, on property, and
in the blood of some people there.
Residents are asking why it’s taken
so long to get cleaned up. In the
second part of a series on Dow and
dioxin, Shawn Allee went
looking for an answer:

If you want to see an environmentalist kinda lose his cool – talk to James Clift of the Michigan Environmental Council.

And bring up dioxin pollution.

Clift: “Um, it’s … people are think, frustrated. It is my entire career of working environmental protection in Michigan, this has been an issue. I’ve been doing this for over twenty years, and from day one I’ve been sitting on meetings about this site.”

Allee: “You’d rather work on something else? Birds or something?”

Clift: “I’d rather work on something else.”

Clift is frustrated with people who could have wrapped this up.

“I believe that each administration at both the state and federal level is culpable in failing to move this forward.”

When I talked to federal and state officials about this, they did some serious finger-pointing.

Let’s start with Steve Chester. He heads Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality. Chester says when people first learned about the dioxin problem at Dow’s chemical plant, the federal government was the lead regulator.

That changed.

“The federal government wanted to transition and hand the project off to the state of Michigan and we were in fact given this corrective action authority in the mid-nineties, and so there was a period of time quite frankly, the agencies didn’t take advantage of moving a little bit quicker.”

Actually, it took Michigan almost ten years to re-license the Dow chemical plant. That meant the state was slow to find out exactly where old dioxin pollution was in the river system, so some people didn’t know there was dioxin in their yards until the past few years. That’s decades after dioxins got into local rivers.

But what about the US Environmental Protection Agency?

Several former officials said the polluter, Dow, slowed things down.

One of these who would go on the record is Mary Gade. She led the EPA office that regulated Dow. Now, in the past we’ve reported Gade said she was fired by the Bush Administration because she got tough with Dow.

The EPA wouldn’t comment on that.

But even today, Gade says Dow slowed down the clean-up.


“I think this corporation is hugely adept at playing the system and understanding how to build in delays and use the bureaucracy to their advantage and to use the political system to their advantage.”

A confidential memo leaked from the EPA says when Dow didn’t like what Michigan’s technical staff had to say, they’d go higher up and try to get rules changed.

For a month, I requested comment from Dow. A spokeswoman said the company is interested in talking about the future, not the past.

People who’ve watched this say, there’s been plenty of foot-dragging.

But why should this dioxin cleanup even matter to people who don’t live there? It’s Michigan’s problem, right?

Well, James Clift, that environmentalist, says, no, there’s a long list of toxic waste sites across the country. And Clift worries the government gets bogged down with big, slow cleanups.

“If they’re not even getting to the big ones which are known to everyone as known as causing widespread problems, that means they’re not getting to the medium sized ones and they’re not getting to the small ones.”

But there seems to be some progress. Recently, the EPA, the State of Michigan, and Dow came to a tentative agreement about cleaning up the dioxin pollution.

That means there’s at least one more delay, that would be public comment until mid-December.

That’s one delay many people don’t mind.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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